India - The Sound of Silence

After the last post I figured it was time to share a little of the audio experience with you. Blogger has been finicky with uploading video; remaining posts to come much sooner than this one did!

India - Weekend Outing: Let's Go For A Drive

During my second to last weekend in India I took things relatively easy. The work week prior had been a bear and I was in full recovery mode. Therefore, my appetite for roaming the streets and expanding my cultural knowledge was mild, to say the least. But by Sunday afternoon I had the itch to leave the hotel. Carson hooked me up with a trusted cab driver, Mr. Sajid, and I booked two hours of his time to ride off into the sunset, stopping by Dhobi Ghat, the Hanging Gardens, and Jain Temple all along the way.

Now, taking a leisurely Sunday drive in India is wildly different than what I experienced as a kid in the back seat of Grandma and Grandpa's car, gently cresting over Ohio's little hills as we stared out at the cornfields. In India, the Sunday drive involved navigating the Mumbai flyover, which could be designated as another Wonder of the World. Imagine the Toad's Turnpike level in Super Mariokart mixed with the grit and grime of Grand Theft Auto. I'd say that'll give you the experience of riding along the Mumbai flyover. This series of mega bridges that weave in and out, up and down throughout the cityscape is really quite cool. You get to see a lot, if you're brave enough to look out the window, that is. Thankfully, for both you and me, I did look around and took lots of pictures!

Mr. Sajid masterfully navigated all these roads and in no time we were at our first stop, Dhobi Ghat. Translation: open air laundromat. 4,000 people - yes, that's 3 zeros - work here throughout the day doing laundry for mostly hotels and hospitals. Take a look in the picture below and notice the pile of white on top of a roof. Those are hotel bed linens. Now look slightly to the right at the bands of pastels. Those are hospital scrubs.

Smaller orders from families also are washed, dried, and even pressed here.

And as with many things in India, there's always a juxtaposition to be had if you look around. Here we've got literally tons of clothing being cleaned and pressed at the exact moment that filthy, smoke-covered trains rush by and stir up train bed dirt.

After Dhobi Ghat we hopped back in the car and headed back in the general direction of the hotel. Instead of continuing south along Marine Drive we motored up the cliff that I could see from my hotel room across the bay. This is Malabar Hill and atop it sits very posh condos and a huge park called the Hanging Gardens.

Within the park there is a nice overlook where you can see out to the bay and beaches along Marine Drive. In the picture below, my hotel is at the far right and is obscured by a few branches from the trees in the right corner. When I ran on the weekends I would start at the hotel and end up at about this spot (down at sea level) before turning around. It's about 2.75 miles to this point, thanks to the swooping edge of the bay.

Look! There was an old woman (and probably many others) who lived in a shoe!

Across the road from the Hanging Gardens is another park that is much different in feel. Whereas the Gardens are pretty lush and made up of small outdoor rooms, Priyadarshini Park feels like you're standing on top of a huge roof terrace amid other skyscrapers.

The park was quite full of people strolling its paths and generally milling about. If I hadn't been hassled to buy postcards or the Kama Sutra, I may have stayed a bit longer. Thankfully, telling hawkers that I'm from Germany shuts this conversation down pretty quickly every time. So, to whomever that man in Delhi was who told me I looked more German than American, I thank you. (I have some ancestors who probably thank you, too.) Evidently nobody wants to bother trying to sell stuff to Germans!

The last stop of the day was to a Jain Temple. Despite being pretty agnostic, I thoroughly enjoy visiting places of worship when traveling. Not sure why this is but at least on one level the architecture is typically astounding. The Jain Temple did not disappoint.

Before we go in, let's establish the house rules:

May I suggest these folks take a lesson from the Disney crew and put the gift shop at the exit to the attraction, where you're a captive audience AND so high on whatever you just saw that you want to buy stuff? Seeing trinkets before the main show kind of spoils the allure of the goods, no?

As you can see from the approach, this place is full of intricate carvings where marble and silver are the main stars.

Bouquets of flowers as column capitals? Now this was one of the orders of architecture that I must have missed during Arch History 101.

I don't know, there's something off kilter about seeing trite English phrases in a Jain temple.

Intensely carved underside of a dome.

Huge doorways made of silver.

Bells to call people to prayer.

Inlaid floors of vibrant stone.

And back out to the street we go.

Well, friends, this post wraps up our series on weekend outings. My last weekend in India did involve going to a street art fair and wandering about a modern art museum. But it may have also involved nursing a slight hangover that then may have been slept off at the pool. It turns out my previous favorite drink, the French 75, has been replaced by the Bombay 75. Sapphire gin and key limes for the win!

India - Three Thoughts

Immersing yourself in a foreign culture provides ample opportunities to dispel whatever myths you had in mind prior to living amongst the people. When it came to India, I had a few preconceived notions. One of them was that the food was spicy hot rather than spicy flavorful. It turns out, if you get Indian food in India, it’s rarely the former.
But the spicy flavorful explained another stereotype of mine, which is that Indian folk have a very distinct smell. They still do, as do peoples all over the world. As a quick side note, this is the sequence of smells that would waft past my nose daily: smoke, incense, sandalwood, lilies, smoke, dog poop, human poop, smoke, musky cologne, chai tea, and eau de urinal biscuit. Then there was one other smell: human sweat. WOAH.

Human sweat in India is a totally different brand of stink than it is in the States. And you know what? I stunk here. Completely. One day after running I pulled off my workout clothes (which I had worn about twice before to manage the laundry orders) and holy hell. All this spicy flavorful food does a number on your sweat glands and therefore your outward odors. So, people of India, my apologies to you for thinking you just didn’t wash up well enough. The truth is, ain’t no amount of soap that can overcome sweating out spices.

If I haven’t fully grossed you out yet then let’s move on to eating, a common topic on the blog. The last thing that I had in mind with Indian preconceptions was that eating with your left hand was taboo. To do so would be uncouth. I’m sure you’ve all heard of this before and have your own suspicions as to why one shant do it. But that’s not why I’m bringing this up.

What finally struck me, after many lunches with the group, is that it’s not about selecting a hand for holding a utensil but rather you literally eat with your hand(s) and use bread, or roti, as the utensil. Therefore, regardless of the hand you favor, you better be sure that hand is clean because you eat everything that it touches. A true sign of immersing yourself in the culture comes when you demonstrate that you can snag a piece of saucy chicken or cooked vegetables using a pinch of bread and three fingers. My big day came when a few of us went to lunch at a Parsi restaurant called Café Brittania.

I tend to go into great detail about the setting of my stories but this time around I’ll let the pictures convey the general vibe.

This restaurant is one of the oldest in Mumbai, is in a business district of the city, is open for no more than 4 hours a day, has a mad lunch rush, and is owned by a 93 year old gent who insists that he takes all the tables’ orders. He’s not afraid to tell you to rethink your selection, either. Upon learning I was from the US he kindly told me that the next time I saw Hillary Clinton I was to tell her he was her biggest fan. Sure thing, dude. Next time Hill and I are grabbing coffee I’ll pass the message along!

Anyway, Purvashri and Chinmay ordered our food and now was my moment to shine. Understand first the standard supporting actors at Indian meals: little lemons/limes for acidity to cut through the spices and some small red onions – raw – that taste delicious with all the gravies (read: sauces).

Most meals require roti as an accompaniment and Americans are probably most familiar with the pita-like variety, naan. This meal had a thinner roti that is more akin to a flour tortilla. The proper way to get a bite sized piece is to use three fingers: pinch and pull with your middle finger and thumb while using your index finger to push the remaining bread away and down from your hand to tear. Should you have to use your ring finger you’ll expose yourself as an amateur, or at least that’s what Chinmay tells me.

Once you’ve got your piece it’s time to scoop and eat. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the left-handed roti grab:

After completing your meal you then rinse that hand in the finger bowl with warm water and lemon. It kind of feels like getting a manicure!

Let me tell you, this whole event was like watching baby’s first steps for Purvashri and Chinmay. They were so thrilled to see me successfully feed myself sans fork it was almost embarrassing! Perhaps the delight was due more to the fact that watching me eat in this manner revealed that the lefties outnumbered the righties at the lunch table that day. And that is always something to celebrate. With sweets, of course.

India - 40 Days, 40 Nights

(12 hours ago)

Greetings from Air India.

Yep, that’s right, I’ve left on a jet plane and I have only a slight idea as to when I’ll be back again.

We’re into hour 16 of the aeronautical journey back to the US and miraculously, I’ve been able to log about 10 hours of sleep on the flight. That, and my general radio silence on the blog this week, should be solid indications as to how busy my last few days in Mumbai were.

Don’t think that my return to the US means the stories have finished, too! I actually have about 3-5 other posts in the hopper and pictures to boot. So, stick around while I adjust to life back at home and begin preparing for the next jaunt back to the subcontinent. Tales of traffic, men, and a final weekend outing await, among other things.

Newark Airport is showing up on the flight map. A bagel and some legitimate drip coffee have my name on them. Tomorrow night it’s CHICAGO STEAK with my most tolerant and patient husband. A bad joke about a hunk of meat and a hunk of man is on my mind. Blame it on the altitude.

India - News Flash

Loyal readers, I am presently running low on steam. We're back in Delhi and this time it's not about client meetings but rather medical conference dog-and-pony shows. Delhi seems to crush creative juices and time for blog posts. I'm going to have to phone this one in and discuss a topic that, hopefully, will mostly speak for itself: newspapers in India.

Each morning a newspaper arrives on my hotel room door all nicely wrapped up in a canvas sack that proclaims, "Good morning." Yes, indeed. I collect the Times of India (ToI ) and bring it to the breakfast table for a little light reading. No disrespect to the editor of the ToI, but this paper often conjures up thoughts of that scene from So I Married an Axe Murderer in which Mike Myers berates his mother for considering the supermarket tabloids to be of the same caliber as The Washington Post or The New York Times. She retorts that they both have “facts” in them so what's the big deal? I kind of get that vibe from the ToI. But for every bit of newspaper sensationalism there is a nugget of anthropological insight. Since we’ve already covered some of the more eye-catching headlines I’ll instead focus on the general content and format of all the news that’s kinda, sorta fit to print.

Most notable about the front page is that it is not unusual to have the entire thing covered in an advertisement. No joke, above and below the fold real estate given over to some doodad. Kind of remarkable. But on the days that there isn’t a giant advertisement for condos designed by Armani (don’t get me started), you will often see the front pages covered in stories about some new health concern and/or anything having to do with the stress about education here. Some days these topics collide and there will be a story about a new type of bellyache diagnosed as pre-exam stress or some such. Today we’re discussing how students in Maharashtra state are not meeting academic expectations. This is right next to an ad for admissions to some university. Interesting paradox.
Flip the page and on the inside cover is almost always a story about what can best (if not gauchely) be described as “rich people problems.” This is not to say that these stories debate whether that Armani-designed condo is better than jeans designed by Beyonce. Far from it. But the stories on page two often cover topics like “Kids watch too much TV” or “How should teenagers spend their allowances?” or “Good sweets for diabetics” or, like today’s article, which is about letting your child choose his food. Stories like these catch my eye because they speak to new societal problems that are symptomatic of middle class economies. I read them and feel like I’m sitting in my car and looking through my rear-view mirror.

And, um, that’s about where the learning ends and the entertainment begins.

Following other news of the world you get to whirled news. On the “Times Trends” page you can almost always read articles about insanely overstated cancer advances, humorous topics involving human reproduction, how to get a promotion by losing weight, and classic battles of the sexes.

Eventually you’ll come across an international page that provides a little bit of news about the US and other western countries. Curiously, if they’re not talking about American politics they are talking about American celebrities. I realize you can’t see the bottom of the page very well but in the “US News” section a story declares “Kate Winslet Not Worried About Career: Kate Winslet says she no longer worries about her career now that she has gotten older.” Oh, thank God. Since my 6 weeks away from the US I’ve been lying awake at night worrying about her and her job so I’m so glad the ToI has clued me in to this pressing international issue.

Also, may I point out that this “news article” is 22 words long, headline included? While that’s particularly brief it is in line with most articles in the ToI. Very rarely do I have to turn the page to finish reading the story. No, three paragraphs are usually enough to tell you all you need to know. I’ve gotten so used to this that when I got my hands on an International Herald Tribune I felt as though I needed endurance training to read a complete story.

Should you still be investing part of your morning in the paper you’ll then come across a “Sexpert” column that would cause the editors of Cosmo to blush. And this is in the regular weekday paper! “We’re married and live with my parents. How do we keep quiet during intercourse so my parents don’t hear us?” “Is it true my wife’s breasts will grow when she gets pregnant? How do I deal with that?” At the surface level the questions from young Mumbaikars are amusing in a very sixth-grade sex ed class kind of way. But then you realize these are questions reflective of societal constructs, like multigenerational families living in very tight quarters and ignorance stemming from fierce separation of the sexes.

Last but not least, I offer this fun little graphic. It’s not because the story was particularly great but rather I saw the cartoon and had one immediate thought:

Is she not the spawn of the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak and Sour Grapes?

Ya ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tahh ta-ta-ta-ta-tah!