Santha Pub Crawl / Christmas in Desitown

Last weekend we joined up with a group that does an annual "Santha Pub Crawl," dressing up in cheap Santa suits and walking around the downtown area caroling. It was mostly Indians, but word had definitely gotten out to the 20-something expat community. It was probably the largest collection of white people I’d seen in one place since the FRO. This may have been a bizarre Christmas, and my first away from home, but getting to do stuff like this more than makes up for the lost traditions.

Christmas is surprisingly important here. I had no idea. I figured this country had enough religious tension between the Hindus and Muslims, but I’ve found there really isn’t much tension at all in Bangalore. The attitude seems to be that they’ll celebrate any holiday as long as it’s cool. Plus, apparently there are tons of Catholics in the south. Again, who knew?

The general stores are all stocking Christmas stuff, and there are plenty of fake trees and Christmas decorative things available streetside. The children who sell cheap toys to stopped cars at stop-lights are now selling Santa hats instead. At SPAR a few weeks ago, I wound up in line behind a woman buying about $200 of stuff. I only had a couple of things, and she apologized to me: "Sorry, Christmas gifts!" The Taco Bell plays Christmas music, too (digression: Tulsi loves Taco Bell, and I won’t turn down a chance to go, so now the pop refill guy knows who I am. I’ve tried to explain why being a known regular at Taco Bell is NOT a good thing, but it’s falling on deaf ears).

Anyway, back to this Pub Crawl. We met at a bar at the top floor of a mall, but since we showed up a little late, we quickly left this bar full of Santas for our first stop on the steps of the mall. We got some good dhol-led caroling in before a security guard showed up. He was pretty polite about asking us to beat it, but I still got to yell "GRINCH! GRINCH! I CALL GRINCH!" He got the joke, too, but we’d had our fill here anyway. There wasn’t much traffic at the mall.



From there we proceeded on a route of a few blocks, handing out candy to kids and stopping at several points to keep singing. They passed out lyric sheets, but still nobody could sing the verses to anything. You can only sing the chorus to Jingle Bells so many times before that gets really old. Plus we didn’t do the prologue to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but the expats made up for that by knowing the lines that kids add on (...you would even say it glows, LIKE A LIGHTBULB!). Along the way a few Indian girls stopped me to get a photo. I like to think they singled me out. Santa can be White, Black, Hispanic, Minnesotan, whatever. But Indian? That’s a stretch.

Along the way a family of beggars joined us. This was, I think, the mom with baby, two young sons, a young daughter, and one daughter who was probably 13-14. They came for the candy, but stayed for the fun. It was obvious that this was the coolest thing that had happened to these kids in months. The dhol beat made everything a little bit Indian, and they danced to that. At one point a few people just started singing a popular Indian song with the dhol, and the kids went CRAZY at that. At one point, we passed a bakery, and the owner came out and gave us two small cakes. We kept one to eat at the bar, but the other went to the beggars.



When we all gathered at the bar, I met the guy who’d organized this. Turned out he’d lived in Chicago for much of his life, and missed that Chicago spirit of "living for the moment." He particularly missed spending Sundays watching football, not caring about anything else, and drinking all day on St. Patrick’s Day. Here, he said, people get too hung up on all of the other things they have to do and never just enjoy what’s right in front of them. Nobody could concentrate on one thing long enough to watch more than one football game, let alone three on a Sunday. The goal here was just do something awesome and unforgettable, and hopefully to add some in-the-moment cheer to the people we met. I’d say mission accomplished.

They Sell Beef at SPAR!

Sorta. It’s ground buffalo. Apparently you get to call that beef. I’m not really asking questions, though, because this was pretty exciting. Ground meat opens up many routes for non-veg meals. So far that's been spotty.

I know what you’re asking: why did I just now, two months into this trip, discover that there’s ground beef at SPAR, the great Dutch grocery store I’d been to many times? Ground meat isn’t the most popular item in the store, and they don’t stock heaps of it like they do in the States. If it sells out, it sells out. Even major products run out sometimes, too, and at all stores, not just SPAR. SPAR, for example, had no skim milk, forcing me to go to Spencer’s. Last week, Spencer’s was out of skim, as well as Nutella. Both are currently out of Diet Pepsi, even in small bottles (bastards). The supply of honey at both, as well as the Big Bazaar, was spotty, with an inconsistent array of brands and sizes.

This isn’t because any of these products are esoteric here. Honey and Nutella are quite common. Skim milk isn’t the most popular, but it seems to get pretty wide consumption. Nobody drinks Diet Pepsi, but that’s just because no one stocks it. That one’s a poor example. If Pepsi and Coke would JUST GIVE IT A CHANCE.... anyway. They’re out of stock simply because it doesn’t make sense to keep huge quantities of perishable items on hand, nor does it make sense to have constant, flexible shipping to account for uncontrollable spikes in demand. In India, what makes sense is just dealing with the fact that you might have to wait for Nutella, or buy a small jar of honey, or go with regular milk.

Compare this to the US. There it’s virtually unheard of for a grocery store to be out of anything approaching a staple. It’d be weird to be sold out any particular cut of beef, or any particular size of Nutella, much less the whole shebang. I remember once when the Hyde Park Co-op had no bread, but that was because it was going bankrupt and hadn’t paid the bread supplier, sparking the comment "What is this, Russia?" from one of my friends. I think a lot of this is due to our more efficient supply chains–US suppliers can ensure a constant supply of any food, and can deliver extra when demand unexpectedly spikes. This is sort of a waste of money, but thanks to Wal-Mart we do it as efficiently as possible. The main thing, though, is that we’re willing to pay for it. With meat and produce in India, Indians just learn to deal with the fact that supply isn't as consistent, and that it changing that would result in a lot of spoiled meat and produce. In the US, we have meat coming in daily, and when the seasons prohibit a particular vegetable from being available, we just import it. What do you do if you need avocados for your Labor Day party in September? Import them from Chile! What do you do if you need raspberries in March? Import them from Guatemala!

I’m not saying the Indian system is better–far from it. This is one of those American luxuries that’s worth the cost, as opposed to daily lattes or the Chevy Suburban. I’ll adjust, no doubt, but begrudgingly. I can deal with honey shortages and avocado blackouts. It’s only when you cut off my protein and diet pop that you’re playing with fire.

Indian Justice

Last Sunday, Anand (I’d previously called him Ajit to hide his real name. He was displeased at that courtesy), Tulsi, and I drove back to Channapatna, the toy capital. Tulsi works there as a buyer and distributer, and also has done some cool design work in a workshop there. She was going to show us how things work. A tour of sorts. Unfortunately, we never made it to Channapatna because we hit a dude on a motorcycle.

Some primer is in order. Although we were on a "highway," this isn’t much like highways in the US. There are occasional formal on- and off-ramps, but most of the stretch is pretty open. When it goes through towns, people just sorta hop on the highway. The same applies to areas that are just a few roadside food stalls. People are constantly getting on and off. The shoulders in these areas are one with the sidewalks and parking, all the way up to the storefronts. Picture a highway where the shoulders are full of broken down cars constantly rejoining traffic.

Obviously, we were driving on the left, but I’ll translate this into American drive-on-the-right to make it clearer for you all. We were on a four lane highway, and were in the left lane of our two lanes. There was a rickshaw in the right lane, probably 3 car-lengths ahead of us. This blinded us to the motorcycle trying to cross the highway, making a left-hand turn across the median to go the other direction. It also blinded him to us. He staled before the median, planning to wait for a break in that traffic, leaving him stopped right in front of us. Anand slammed the brakes, but there was nothing we could do–we hit his rear wheel, he spun around, and his helmetless self flew off the bike. This was 100% the biker’s fault.

What happened next is all a blur. I recall just staring straight ahead, motionless, as Anand and Tulsi rushed out to deal with things. Eventually Tulsi rushed back and said "Areyouok?stayinthecar!" Anand would later say that the only reason he wasn’t beaten up by a mob at this point was because Tulsi was there, and Indians won’t fight in front of a woman.

As it turned out, the guy was mostly fine. A few scratches. Nothing major. This helped cool the situation down, and we agreed to drive the guy a nearby hospital, because that’s what good people do. Anand followed him in, and it became clear that despite his limited injuries, this day was far from over.

The man demanded that the doctors give him lots of bandages. They didn’t want to put anything on him, since all he had were a few scratches, but he insisted. The man was also demanding an Rs.50,000 bribe from Anand, lest he file a police report. We decided we’d file the report ourselves. Anand also called for backup, and several well-connected friends of his showed up. While we were waiting for them, as well as the police, the man walked away from the hospital with his family, largely unscathed.

At this point we were a little confused about how to proceed. We didn’t want to file a report if we didn’t have to, as that would mean impounding the car for at least a day, possibly a week (all of our knowledge of the law was hearsay). But we also didn’t know what he’d be up to, and again, we were fearful of being accused of a hit-and-run. Even though we’d have proof to the contrary at the hospital, just being charged is way more of a hassle than we wanted to deal with. We decided to drive back to the site, find the guy’s license plate number on his bike, use Anand’s friends’ connections to run that number, and find out where he lives. Tulsi and I laid back for this venture. We left it up to Anand and his gang of cronies.

What Anand found on arriving was that his side was hopelessly outmanned, as well as out-armed. While he’d amassed a handful of sharp, well-connected friends, the other guy’s family had summoned a gang. With sickles. Anand described one drunk guy waving his sickle around at him, dangerously close. Anand responded by getting his friends to summon their own gang, who showed up in an oversized van called a Tata Sumo. This just made me think of the scenes in Hotel Rwanda where truckloads of mercenaries with machetes are driving down the streets.

With both sides equally backed up, they negotiated things down to Rs.4,500, or almost exactly $100. A hefty fine, but one we were reluctantly willing to pay. Why not just take things to court, you might ask? We weren’t at all at fault, and wouldn’t a court certainly find that? There were several problems with court. First, like I mentioned, we didn’t want the car impounded. If this thing went to court, the car could’ve wound up impounded for quite a while. Second, we discovered when looking up their address that this guy’s family was a powerful minority family in the area, and courts tend to bend over backwards to protect minorities. The "oppressive majority" line apparently plays really well here. Anand’s friends said they could easily drag the litigation on for at least a year, if not several, and that this stress and hassle would eventually cost us well over a few thousand Rupees. Finally, they had control of the local witnesses. They were already claiming that we hit the bike in its rear end, rather than side, making it seem like we just sped into it. Forensics on the car could prove otherwise, but that’s probably more CSI than real-life Indian law. So even though it wasn’t our fault, courts wouldn’t necessarily agree.

Anand finally rejoined us with the good news (and rounding up cash from us–nobody runs around with 4,500 Rupees). We then took off to hang out with his friends who had come to our rescue. They own a small, very self-sustaining farm in the countryside. Anand said that everything they have they made themselves. I think this means they have their own proprietary software on their homemade computers, too, but I’m not sure. We wound up having an incredible homemade meal at their home, very simple but easily one of the best veg meals I’ve ever eaten. I didn't get a photo of the appetizer plate, which was homemade chips, a sort of raisin blondie/brownie thing, and some other Indian fried thing. It's hard to justify dosas and stew being this good, but they were.



I’d commented to Tulsi on what a waste that day had turned into. It was supposed to be awesome, and had just turned into a total bite. Then we got that meal. And I also got a look at this sweet family photo of theirs. And I got more good blog material. Not a good trade-off, but at least we got something out of the deal.

Photos

I'm not the best photographer, so when I take photos, I tend to go for volume and hope a few turn out. So the Flickr stream's a bit crowded. By request, I've compiled what I think are my best shots so far: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41957090@N04/sets/72157625629777870/.

I'll try to update that page as I keep going.

Imperialist Food: Taco Bell

With much fanfare, they just opened a Taco Bell in my neighborhood. It’s kitty corner to the Sony World store after which the intersection is named, but I predict that within a couple of years, they’ll start calling the intersection "Taco Bell." It’s that gaudy.

This place opened at some point when I was in Dharamsala, and it’s been packed ever since. Based on my limited contacts here, Indians really seem to dig Taco Bell. I keep telling them how odd this is, given that Taco Bell is the single lowest grade food among major American fast foot chains, but I think part of the appeal is just the Mexican food aspect. There’s no Mexican food here, so Taco Bell is as close as they get. Plus they have the free fire sauce packets, and we all know how much Indians love free fire sauce.

In a way, I knew what I wanted when I walked in: as much variety as possible. So I didn’t really care what I was eating as long as each item was different. But for an Indian with NO idea what any of this food is, it’s a daunting process. Somewhat like the "Fahita" stand at the Iroquois County Fair, both sides of the cash register were pronouncing the J in Fajita. They do have a large poster explaining exactly what’s in each menu item, which I sorta wish they had in the States, too, just so you can tell if they’ve exhausted all permutations of the same 7 ingredients.

Anyway, about the food. Unlike the Dominos, this stuff was all pretty similar to what you get in the States. By which I mean: generally nasty, but with just enough good options to make it good comfort food. I hate a potato taco, which was basically tater tots, sauce, and toppings. It failed because the cold ingredients (everything but the tots) won out, and despite being eaten first, it was cold.



I also partook of the nachos, which were flavored in themselves, in addition to the toppings. So rather than just nachos, it was basically topped Doritos. While a pleasant surprise, I don’t think I’d go for the nachos again, for reasons that should be clear when you look an inch below this sentence.



The side item with my potato taco meal was a "snackito," which is basically the world’s most tightly wrapped tortilla. It enclosed a very small amount of, basically, salsa and cheese. Forgettable.



The burrito, however, worked great. Nice and soft, with all of the right stuff inside of it and none of the garbage. The chicken was at least acceptable, and everything else worked. It probably worked, for me, because it was exactly what I’d get in the US. It was not Indianized. When I go back, I’ll probably just get a couple of burritos. And a refillable diet pepsi. I’ve mentioned the dearth of diet pop in this country, but Taco Bell represented. When my brother was in Germany, he described the lack of Mountain Dew, and the eventual craving for this. When he finally found it at a Taco Bell next to a military base in Stuttgart, he parked himself there and downed it all afternoon. His heart’s still beating, and I can only hope the same is true for me when I get done with this place.

One note about the refillable pop, though. In the States, this phenomenon emerged because it’s cheaper to waste pop than to hire someone to pour it. The margins on pop are through the roof, so give out however much it takes to get people to pull the trigger on it, right? Here, you get the "best" of both worlds. A refillable pop from a fountain in the dining area, but poured by an employee standing next to it. They seriously have people standing next to each of the two fountains who take your cup and pour in your drink of choice. Ridiculously cheap labor strikes again.

Stats

I get some interesting stats from Blogger's dashboard. Today's was discovering that a Russian had found my site while doing a google search for "how to marry with banana tree." Glad to see that post is useful to someone.

Adventures in Tibet Part V: It’s 234 kilometers to Chandigarh

We’ve got an empty bladder, two packs of weird sandwich cookies, it’s cold and the bus is air-conditioned. Hit it.

When I booked my flights, I had serious concerns about an early morning flight out of Delhi. The overnight buses from Dharamsala don’t get into Delhi until 8 or 9, and with an hour trip to the airport, plus a minimum of 45 minutes of lead time, I didn’t think it was going to work. But Sanju had to get back in time for a wedding that day, so the upshot was I traveled back from Dharamsala solo. This was an adventure all on its own.

I was able to buy my ticket for a nice, state-run, "luxury" bus two days in advance. I wasn’t taking chances with the buses all selling out from an exodus of Russian Pilgrims. The bus arrived on time, was neat and tidy, and was mostly empty. Or at least it was mostly empty when it departed. As soon as it pulled in, a bunch of Russian Pilgrims rushed on board while the Indian conductor was pleading with them to stop so he could check their tickets to make sure they were on the right bus. They weren’t. So after my travels, I think the order from most to least orderly travelers goes:

Germans -> Americans -> Indians -> Russian Pilgrims

We picked up some people along the way, but only briefly was there anyone sitting next to me. I’ve concluded that lateral space is far more important than leg room for comfort. The seats on these buses recline like hell, to the point where the seat in front of you is only a few inches from your face unless you also recline. That didn’t bother me. But I loved the side space. Perhaps airlines should see if they can’t focus on that instead of leg room.

Once in Delhi, I took a rickshaw to the airport and found my driver not only speaking English, but also being quite chatty. It was here, actually, that I first learned of the cold snap and ice storm in the US. This was the weirdest of sources for my emergence from living under a rock in Tibet, but it was neat to have that sort of a threshold to jump over. That news ended the trip. I still had to get through a delay-stricken, poorly laid-out Delhi Airport (the taxi to the runway was 15 minutes, AFTER we bused to the plane itself). But at that point, I was back to news, and the trip was done.

I’ll get back to posting non-travel-blog stuff very soon. I realize these posts weren’t my best, but they were pretty much necessary. Some teasers: my review of Taco Bell, a "best of" photography post to sort through the hundreds of bad and repetitive photos I took, and more adventures with the law (this time with an angry mob). I’m also now bringing a camera with me whenever I go to the grocery store. There’s too much good stuff there.

Adventures in Tibet Part IV: Buddhism is Weird

One would think that after hearing the Dalai Lama lecture on Buddhism, I’d warm up to the religion. Let’s just say I’m not exactly sold on it yet.

The Dalai Lama gave public lectures on three days, the last three days we were in town. On the first, he lectured on "The 37 Practices of a Boddhisatva," a text outlining the practices of ideal Buddhists, available here: http://viewonbuddhism.org/resources/37_practices_bodhisattva.html. This was somewhat similar to a college lecture, both in it being mentally stimulating and in its ability to be cool despite its fundamental bogusness (according to Corel, bogusness is a word). The next day was a bunch of vows, which I skipped for reasons I’ll explain, and the third day was over my head. So most of my takeaway was from the first day.

The 37 Practices includes a lot of advice that’s pretty jarring to a western audience. Things like Practice 3, "Withdrawing completely from things that excite us, our mental disturbances slowly decline. And ridding our mind of directionless wandering, attention on virtue will surely increase. As wisdom shines clearer, the world comes in focus, our confidence grows in the Dharma we have learned. Live all alone far away in seclusion - the Sons of the Buddhas all practise this way." See also Rule 33, advising abandonment of family.

The Dalai Lama discussed these rules in surprising detail, from the ground up. He actually started with the Big Bang, but I saw most of that as window dressing to make the rules seem more scientific than mumbo jumbo. Ultimately, it all stems from reincarnation and the idea that our bodies are prisons for our souls. Any pleasure we gain in this life is meaningless, but the pain we experience is not, as it detracts from our ability to meditate and achieve Nirvana. Ergo, live your life to minimize pain, even at the expense of minimizing happiness.

I see several problems with this. Largely, it’s just that this is a huge sacrifice to take on faith, but that’s a theological argument. I think Christianity is more forgiving about keeping the faith without sacrificing much. But, in Buddhisms terms, I see a glaring hole. Several of the rules (see, eg, 11) focus on charity and improving the lives of others. You sacrifice your own meaningless happiness for the betterment of others. But isn’t that betterment a waste of time? Isn’t that pleasure fleeting too? Why give ephemeral happiness to others, while you, yourself, are declining it as harmful? It seems to me that this whole thing dissolves when applied to society, and only works in small doses. You wind up with a double standard: one set of rules for the monks, and another for everyone else. But I could go on for a while on this. For far longer than is interesting on a blog. So I’ll just say that I quickly found holes in this Buddhism thing.

At the end of the first day, there was a public vow, the Pratimoksha Vow. Anybody in the audience could take it. It consisted of five rules: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t rape, don’t drink. Four of those are pretty easy. The Dalai Lama even clarified that once, a guy said he wanted to take the vow, but that he couldn’t give up alcohol. He gave him some leeway: just don’t abuse it. I didn’t want to quibble by saying "what if I only get really ripped once in a while, and am chill when I do it?" That seemed intrusive. So I did not take the vow.

In researching the vow later, though, I got to thinking how similar Buddhist monastic life is to Christian Monastic life in the Dark Ages. See this list of rules here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patimokkha. These are rules describing every aspect of life. Join the monastery and have every decision made for you–rules govern everything. Compare this to The Rule of St. Benedict, a bizarrely similar set of rules for Dark Ages monks. There’s a reason why we use the term "monk" for eastern religions, too. It’s the same thing–a bunch of people who were living in a chaotic, depressing society who found refuge in the order and predictability of religious asceticism. Christianity also has similar tenets on the body being a prison, and about happiness on Earth being ephemeral. The difference is that Christianity didn’t take this to the extremes. It didn’t say that true Christians would live solitary lives. That would never have worked. Christianity was always a practical religion, whether that meant caving to Roman demands, surviving the Dark Ages, reforming the Vatican’s systems, or looking the other way when Catholics support abortion. Buddhism, by my judgments, is more strict. When pressed, it has simply said "you outsiders can do what you wish. We don’t care. We’re Buddhists." And Tibet gets conquered and its citizens either marginalized or eradicated. How’d that hopey-changey stuff work out for ya?

Anyway, the second day was more vows. And while that list of vows was neat, in practice it was like 20 minutes of untranslated chanting (we got an English feed on FM radio). The second day was a whole lotta that, so I skipped it to explore town. The third day was half over my head, and half only for the Russian pilgrims (no English feed). So I only got one real day with His Holiness. I think that was enough. I can say I met him and listened to his lectures. I don’t need to say it was spiritual.

Adventures in Tibet Part III: Triund

I was in Dharamsala for 5 days. The first of those was a groggy half-day, and the Dalai Lama was speaking on the last three. This left one day for an all-day trip, and I decided to hike to Triund, which is basically a ridge with great views of the Himalayas. Dharamsala itself is at the foothills of the mountains, so just looking at it isn’t too spectacular. You have to go in and up a bit to get the real deal.

I started in McLeod Ganj, the part of Dharamsala where the Tibetan stuff and our monastery are, which is at 2,082m (6,831ft). Triund is at 2,875, or 9,432ft. So this was going to be a whole lotta climbin’.

The first 50 minutes or so of the trail was pretty uneventful. It was uphill, but wide paths. Aside from the scenery, it was similar to any State Park trail in the US. I did eventually see some 4-wheelers on this path, which helps explain how the shops along the way get supplied. This part of the trail was pretty obvious in its layout. You couldn’t get lost. So when I passed two Americans who had come with a guide, I briefly considered slowing down and keeping them in sight, but I figured that would only slow me down. The two women were middle-aged, and I figured I had to go faster than them to make good time. Famous last words.



After about 50 minutes of this winding uphill, I got to a temple, café, rest house, and general clearing. The café was called "Rest a While." I wasn’t much in the mood for rest yet, so I took some photos and trudged on. Soon after this I hit the only confusing part of the trail, and I chose wrong. Compare these two photos, and tell me which you think is the right way (no markings):

I came from the left, on this shot:



This was what was staring at me, the alternative to winding back up the hill on that path:



I chose to wind back up the hill. While this did result in some cool photography, it also resulted in me walking along increasingly bootleg paths, without a soul in sight, such as this:



I was having my doubts about this detour being the right path, but just when I considered returning to Rest a While, I started seeing some odd trash. Unlike most of India, there wasn’t much trash in Dharamsala. So when I saw mostly-empty water bottles sitting around, I assumed they were some sort of trail market. Note that I had seen no trail markings at this point–there had been no need early on. So I assumed this was just some sort of "you’re in the right place, people have been here" sort of deal. Wrong.

Eventually this path wound back on itself. Most things looked the same, but when I recognized the same bottle of AquaFina that I’d seen earlier, I knew I was in trouble. And that’s when it dawned on me: these mostly empty water bottles weren’t trail markers, and they certainly weren’t trash. They were last-ditch provisions for lost hikers, and I was a lost hiker.

This was definitely a reality check moment. I still had plenty of water, and it was daylight, but I was still in the middle of the Himalayas, off the trail, and on some pretty sketchy territory. Fortunately, I was still able to easily retrace my steps back to Rest a While, and as luck would have it, I saw a hiker coming down the path I should have taken as I approached it. This put me back on my way, albeit another hour and a half in the hole. The timing wasn’t a big deal, though, since I was making good time. I would have about an hour at the top, eventually, and that would be enough.

The rest of the trail was fairly clean and well-marked, but it got tougher and tougher as I went on. I had over 800m to climb, upwards. That’s a lot of work. The scenery was beautiful along the way (see the Flickr stream), which helped, but all of this combined with the already high altitude made this a tough hike towards the end. The path was basically stretches of slope followed by stretches of steps, and as I got closer to the end, it became all steps. But this was all worth it when I hit the top. The last stretch is walking straight up the last hill. At this point, all of the mountain tips are blocked. All you see is hill. But then you crest, and it just all opens up into this:



At the top, there were more shops. One was cooking rice and daal, and I partook. There were also a bunch of dogs, as well as hippies singing various songs. Note the video on flickr of them ad-libbing a verse to Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

It would be dark by 6:00, and although the trip down would be much quicker, I set out at 3:30. I got back to Rest a While at 5:00, and ran into an Israeli named Alon, who had two dogs with him. They weren’t his. They’d just followed him down from the top. When we made it back to Dharamkot, the village at the start of the trail, one dog was still with us (the other had fallen behind and joined another group). When we got to the end of the trail, three local dogs were waiting, and instantly recognized our dog as an outsider. They didn’t just bark, though–they chased after this mountain dog. He sidestepped and bolted into town, chased at full speed by the three local dogs. That’s the last I saw of him. I figure he probably owed the other dogs money,
and had been hiding out on the mountain all summer. Either that or he just really stunk.


If anyone’s found this page as a result of searching for more info in the Triund hike, drop me a line. I found a dearth of reliable info online, and I’d be happy to answer anybody’s questions.

Adventures in Tibet Part I: The Pilgrimage

In Buddhism, they tend to use the word "auspicious" a lot. In the dictionary I’m seeing definitions like "promising success," "favored by fortune," and "favorable." I’m not quite sure about the intricacies of the Tibetan language (or whatever the original language of Buddhism is), but whether it’s poor translation or not, I think my journey to Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital in exile, can be described as fairly inauspicious.

Sanju and I made our flight to Delhi by about 30 seconds. They make you check into flights 45 minutes before they depart. Probably a security measure, and it’s good policy anyway, but for our 7:00 flight to Delhi, from an airport about an hour away from Koramangala, this meant getting up at the ass crack of dawn. Right after Sanju and I entered the snake line for check-in, they closed it, signaling that the 45 minute barrier was up. Maybe this means someone was looking out for us, but as someone who thinks that stuff’s a crock, to me it just meant that our planning was off.

We arrived in Delhi and got to the bus station at noon. I didn’t ask questions when we immediately boarded a bus. I’d assumed we’d take an overnight bus, but I also assumed Sanju knew what we were doing. Turned out this bus was not direct to Dharamsala, but was rather a bus to Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, from which we would transfer to Dharamsala. The saving grace here was that this was definitely the nicest bus I’d ever been on. I didn’t play varsity sports, I was only on JV team when IMSA’s Scholastic Bowl team won the 2000 State title, and let’s just say our junior high Science Olympiad team didn’t exactly spring for super quality buses. This thing had leather seats, LA-Z-Boy style leg rests, and free bottles of water for all. Good stuff. It was only a few dollars more than the really crappy buses, but I paid for this luxury in karma when we got to Chandigarh at 6:00.

In Chandigarh, we transferred to the first bus we could find to Dharamsala. This was a local bus. Local=cheapest. Fortunately Sanju and I both snagged window seats, and fortunately we both had warm clothing on. This bus was put to shame by the old school buses that only had half-backed benches. If you’ve been to school recently, you probably know the distinction I’m talking about. I still managed to sleep a little, but things really went to hell when we arrived at our monastery at 3AM, long after everyone had gone to bed. And also after having walked down about 300 steps with our luggage, making walking back up to town impossible for both of us. Did I mention it was about 45 degrees out? After briefly chilling on a bench, we snagged a monk who happened to be running around doing something, and were let into an unheated dining hall to sleep until 7. At that point, someone woke up who let us into our rooms. They were also unheated, but the three huge wool blankets more than made up for that quickly.

Tomorrow, after some rest, things get better. Don’t worry. Like I said, "auspiciousness" is a crock. At least once your planning starts going well.

Adventures in Tibet Part II: I Know Too Much Cyrillic for My Own Good

I rolled out of bed at noon, still really groggy, but well aware from my research that this town shuts down early, and that to have any shot of salvaging the day, I’d have to power through and just get to bed early. I would eventually learn from the Dalai Lama that a true Buddhist should be a loner, rejecting personal relationships, so the fact that Sanju was out of commission on the first day really just made everything more Buddhist.

The first thing I had to do on this good Sunday was register to see the Dalai Lama. I’m not totally positive why they do this, as there was no background check on me or anything, and although I did get a totally sweet ID card with my photo stapled to it and all of the writing in Tibetan, I never actually had to show it to get into the lectures. Anyway, this led me to the main temple complex in Dharamsala, where I noticed all of the signs were in Russian. The conference had been called by Russian Buddhists, so I was expecting some Russian flair to this. And fortunately, I know some really basic Cyrillic, mostly from math classes, and the word "REGISTRATION" had just been converted to the Cyrillic alphabet as РЕГИСТРАЖИЯ. I was able to pick out REG_STRA___ and made some deductions. Unfortunately, registration at the temple was only for Russians, registration for foreigners would open on Monday at an office in town, and what the hell was I doing there looking for registration? I know too much Cyrillic for my own good.

The benefit, though, and where this vacation started to go great in all sorts of ways, was that I was at the Dalai Lama Temple Complex BEFORE it was mobbed with people. For the rest of the trip, this place would be packed, and would also be off limits to photography. So I got to shoot the place, unlike people who didn’t come early, drawn in by Russian signs. It’s a neat place with some cool prayer wheels. They also have an actual temple inside, although photography in there was banned at all times. So I didn’t get to photograph their offerings of Chips Ahoy! to the various deities inside. Chips Ahoy!, mind you, that expired a year ago. I doubt the Buddha is pleased. Unless he likes softer cookies, as I do. Seriously, leave some Chips Ahoy! out overnight. You may enjoy them more.

With the Dalai Complex down, I set out for an afternoon walk to Bhagsu, a nearby village and home to a neat temple and some waterfalls. Neither was spectacular, but the falls were pretty cool, and made for a good warmup to the next day’s hike up the Himalayas.

Adventures in Tibet: A Primer on Dharamsala

I just got back from a trip with Sanju to Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital in exile. I arrived on Sunday, November 28, and left on December 2. With overnight bus trips bookending the trip, and with some flight delays, I was gone 7 days. I got back a little over 24 hours ago.

Tibet has a long history of being in and out of Chinese rule. Various Chinese and Nepalese emperors have conquered it, various Dalai Lamas have raised armies to free it, and the process has all gone back. When the Qing dynasty fell in 1912, the 13th Dalai Lama returned to Tibet from India to assert Tibetan independence. For the next roughly 40 years, China did not contest this, and Tibet governed itself. In 1950, with a newly solidified government and few external problems, China moved to solve this Tibetan issue and moved its troops in. With Tibet’s new leader, the current Dalai Lama, still quite young, their resistance was minimal, and the resulting peace accord solidified China’s control over Tibet.

Over the next ten years, Tibetan anger over this situation simmered, though, and periodically broke out in violence. In 1959, Chinese resistence against this resulted in a full scale uprising in Lhasa. The Chinese invited the Dalai Lama to a theatrical performance at a nearby military base, on the condition that he come without guards or fanfare. Realizing what was up, he instead fled to India, like the 13th Dalai Lama had done. This was probably a prudent move, as China has shown with the current Panchen Lama exactly how diabolical they can be with Tibetan leaders. That boy has likely been dead since his capture in 1995, but as long as the Chinese claim he is alive somewhere, he cannot be replaced, as replacements are chosen via reincarnation. Had Tenzin Gyatso gone to that performance in 1959, he likely would have met the same fate, and there would be no Dalai Lama now, or possibly for quite some time. Now, however, he runs an excellent PR campaign from Dharamsala, with the current government in exile.

As I see it, Tibet has to be considered part of China. If nothing else, they’ve been conquered. If conquest is illegitimate, then none of the world’s borders are legitimate. Maybe San Marino can still claim legitimacy, but few other countries could. But just because China owns Tibet doesn’t relieve them of all responsibilities there. It doesn’t give them carte blanche to flood the province with Hans, run the whole show from Beijing, give Tibetans no special rights, and make them pay to see the Potala Palace. It is in that spirit that I support the Tibetan cause and their right to self-governance.

This isn’t to say that Tibet is special among China’s minorities–when they marched 56 children in black face for the 2008 Openinc Ceremonies, that was wrong towards all minorities, not just the Tibetans. But I’ve also heard their plight compared to that of, say, the Chinese Catholics, and that’s just bunk. The Chinese Catholics are just a group of people of a specific religion, not an ethnicity with a language, a history of independence, centuries of organized governance, and a large identifiable territory.

My feelings about Tibet were a lot of what drew me to Dharamsala. I’m not particularly into Buddhism, and am even less so now, but I support their cause, even if their take on religion is a little funky. Whose isn’t? If you’d asked me when I came to India what one place I’d like to see most, I probably would have said Dharamsala. Tibet has fascinated me, as have the Himalayas. As you’ll see tomorrow, things got off to a rocky start, but Dharamsala was anything but disappointing. It was a beautiful area, and I had a wonderful, stimulating time. I’ll post all about it over the coming days.

Vacation

I'll be gone for the next week, so I won't write again until December 4th or 5th. I'm going to Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital in exile. It should be a way cool trip, but I'll save the details for afterwards. In the mean time, I bet Roger Ebert's written something cool lately. You could check him out instead.

Breaking the Law

I’ve always been something of a fanboy of police, tending to take the side of the boys in blue over, say, Don’t Tase Me, Bro. But living in India has made me appreciate American police even more.

My first encounter with police was last weekend, when we went to a 24-hour truck stop outside of town late at night. Everything closes early here, and some people got hungry, so we made a run. The guy driving had made a point not to drink anything, even a sip, lest he get stopped and get breathalizered. He explained that even though 0.00 isn’t the legal limit, anything above that can get you hassled by the cops, and that can get problematic late at night. Sure enough, there was a road block on the way, with a breathalizer for everyone passing by. I got stopped at a road block once at the U of I. They asked me a couple of questions and sent me on my way. There were no questions here. The cop simply stuck out the breahtalizer, Ajit blew into it, and then we left. I suppose that’s simpler than the Q&A in the US, but it seemed intrusive. But that wasn’t it for the night. We were stopped at a second roadblock, this one much more in the middle of nowhere, and this time with no breathalizer. Ostensibly, this was because they were expecting a security threat, but I’m pretty sure this was just to extract bribes. To be honest, I’m not positive anyone there was actually a cop–you could set up a road block with a couple of barriers and something that looks like a uniform. They were suspicious of why we were going to this truck stop so late at night, but they had no reason to hold us, so even if they were just a bunch of yahoos, they had nothing on us. We encountered neither road block on the return trip.

My next one came when Sanju’s car got booted for illegal parking. For starters, the spot she was in was in no way blocking a road–between the curb and protruding driveways, there’s no way anyone could have driven along the path she’d parked in. Second, there were tons of cars parked there, and no clear signage. And their response is... boot everyone? No tickets, just mass-botting? Third, this is freaking India. Come on, people. THIS is what your tax dollars go to? Not, say, cleaning the streets? Or making it so the power doesn’t turn off daily? Anyway, we arrived back at the car to see a sign that said that we’d been "clamped," and which gave a number (this was in Kanada and English). This was a problem because Sanju and I were in the cell phone district to get new phones, as she’d dropped hers in the Arabian Sea and mine had inexplicably stopped turning on. But we were able to get them there to un-clamp us, but only after paying the whopping RS.200 fine (about $4.50). Again, the Indian police confuse me.

Tulsi, Sanju’s roommate, also had a good story of one of her encounters with a cop. She was pulled over for talking on her phone while driving. She truthfully told the cop that it was her mom, and he seemed sympathetic, and they both used this as a segue to bribery, rather than ticketry. Tulsi realized, though, that all she had on her was an Rs.10 note (20 cents-ish), and an Rs.500 note ($12, but quite a bit of money here). She offered the Rs.10 note, and the guy balked. "10 rupees? Really?" She then asked if he had change, which only annoyed him more. In her final act of desperation, she offered her small stash of chocolates that she keeps on hand for beggar children. A huge smile appeared on the cop’s face, and he laughed and took the bribe. If only one of us worked in advertising, we’d have a whole campaign lined up for Cadbury.

On India, Pakistan, and Obama

President Obama’s recent visit to India seemed to be received pretty well here. Based on my limited contact with opinionated Indians, they don’t seem to like the guy much, largely because he’s been much more diplomatic about Islam and Pakistan than Bush was. But while here, he did a lot to mend his past statements, and to return to a recent string of good will that the US and India have enjoyed.

India and Pakistan have a long history of war, one which I wasn’t too aware of when I got here. I knew they REALLY cared about their annual cricket matches (most of which end in ties somehow... I’m still fuzzy on cricket), but I wasn’t particularly aware of just how unfriendly these two countries are with each other. If the US hated a country this much, we would NOT be playing regular sporting events with them.

The very brief history begins with the British Partition of India, which resulted in the border disputes we see today. Several northern “princely states”, including Kashmir, were given the option to join Pakistan or India, and their choices are disputed. Kashmir was eventually split in two by a U.N. mediator, leaving both sides unhappy. So you start off with a war in 1947 over the initial partition and another in 1965 over Pakistan’s invasion of Jammu and Kashmir (the Indian-controlled half of Kashmir). They fought again in 1971 over the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan, and now an ally of India), and then again in the Kargil war in 1999, again over Kashmir. India and Pakistan now fight over the <"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Conflict">Siachen Glacier, a useless plot of land that is the highest battlefield in the world.

More recently, we had the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, or “26/11,” as it’s referred to here. “26/11" references November 26th in the rest of the world’s day-month-year date ordering. It also invokes 9-11, and is considered India’s 9-11. I won’t recap that whole affair, but it was several days of terror in Mumbai, with hostage situations unfolding at lavish hotels and other locales. 175 people were murdered. This was tied to a Pakistani terrorist group, but Indians believe it was so well-organized that the Pakistani government must have been involved. This isn’t too far-fetched, given Pakistan’s history of infiltration into India. I’m skeptical, since all this took was guns, boats, and a landing timed to coincide with the India-Pakistan cricket match that everyone would be watching.

Anyway, we have a long history of being flaky allies of the Indians. They’re obviously our best allies in the area, but India has other allies, too. Iran and Pakistan aren’t the greatest of neighbors with each other, and as a result, India and Iran are fairly close. In 1971, when we attempted to diffuse conflict between Pakistan and India, the Soviets lent their support to India (Nixon supported Pakistan, an ally of China and a bastion against Soviet expansion). The Russians and Indians later co-designed a supersonic cruise missile, the fastest in the world, called the Brahmos, a combination of “Brahmaputra” and “Moscow.” It’s the fastest missile in the world, but it’s a medium range thing, so don’t worry about it hitting the US. The French helped India in its conflicts with China over Arunachal Pradesh, and as a result are also good allies of the Indians. Manmohan Singh was the chief guest at France’s National Day celebrations in 2009 (Bastille Day). And obviously they’re still close with the British.

The US has, in recent times, become more stalwart of an ally. Like I mentioned, Bush was willing to speak out against Islam, and this played well in India. Based on my experiences, Indians detest being equated with Pakistan. They consider themselves (rightly, I would think) far more advanced a society than they are, and would consider this on par with equating the U.S. and Mexico. When we have refused to take sides in their conflicts, we have implicitly equated the two as equal powers. Obama is something of a return to that, though. A small handful of Americans may believe he’s a Muslim, but a whole lot of Indians believe that. Obama has also displayed very harsh rhetoric over outsourcing, an industry which has made our two countries great economic allies. Side note: this is anything but an abusive industry–outsourced work is good work here, as opposed to in China. The newspapers were definitely afraid that he would rebound from the election with a lot of populist commentary here (one newspaper also characterized the election with “Prez whitewashed by voters”).

But while the newspapers were skeptical heading in, they seemed mostly won over by the time he left. He saved his Islam-stroking for later, in Indonesia, and refrained from harsh anti-outsourcing rhetoric while here. Importantly, Obama advocated making India a permanent member of the UN Security Council, something the Indians have wanted for a long time, and something which was not lost in the op-ed pages here.

More on Shopping

After my last post about shopping, I thought of a few more interesting things about shopping here. At least if you stretch the definition of interesting. Here goes:

Milk doesn’t come in gallon jugs. I’m pretty sure we’re the only civilization on Earth that consumes enough milk to make that feasible. Maybe the Canadians do. But nobody else. In India, the milk comes in 500ml pouches for about 30 cents each. You cut off the corner and fold the pouch over itself to reseal it. This actually works well. The web site says it comes in 1L cartons, but I haven’t seen any of those. If they do exist, they aren’t the norm. At stores, huge heaps of 500ml packets are the norm.

The shopping carts here handle like a dream. For starters, they’re all well-calibrated. I haven’t yet encountered a sticky or too-short wheel. Carts also tend to be smaller, which works with the smaller aisles. Again, compare to the huge aisles of large American stores where real estate is cheap. The carts at the Jewel and Dominick’s in downtown Chicago were small, too. The biggest change, though, is that the carts are four-wheel-drive. That is, the back wheels aren’t locked, which enables strafing. I never quite understood why the US does that, and this just reinforces that. You can maneuver around anything without turning the cart. Finally, the carts at SPAR are more of plastic stands for their shopping baskets. If you want a basket, you take one, and if you want it on wheels, you place it on one of the carts. If you want more space, you can put another basket on the bottom of the cart. This allows all parts to be stacked up really neatly, again saving on space.

Chocolate doesn’t melt in your mouth here. Regular chocolate would melt on the shelves at most stores here, and would certainly melt before it made it to your mouth. So Cadbury, the major chocolatier here, had to redesign its formula so chocolate could be sold, with the tradeoff of texture. They recently introduced Cadbury "Silk", in an attempt to achieve the best of both worlds, but it doesn’t really work. And it ain’t cheap.

Shopping

Shopping here can be a baffling ordeal. A lot of it depends on where you’re shopping, but each place has its quirks.

Most stores here are highly specialized–a corner mattress store here, a stand selling fresh potato chips there, five different places selling the same assortment of biscuits and Sprite all over the place, etc. Sony operates a couple of its own stores in town, and basically sells its stuff only at those stores. This is convenient in some ways, but can make it tough to find specific things. For example, I’ve had trouble findings a: a power strip, b: cheap plastic coat hangers, and c: an umbrella. This creates a demand, albeit a small one compared to the US, for larger one-stop-shops. I found the power strip at a place called Reliance Digital, run by a large Indian conglomerate called Reliance. They’re sort of a smaller version of Best Buy, and while there were almost certainly cheaper places for a power strip, hell if anyone knew where those were. For the cheap plastic coat hangers, I found something of a textiles bazaar that advertises, among other things “Export Rejected Door Mats, Rs.100/kg.” If only we bought door mats by the pound in the US. I still haven’t found the umbrella, but I haven’t had a huge need for one, either. The rain tends to be light and misty. I also need a capacitor, but let's not go there.

Check out can also be a pain. Most stores only have a few registers, and tend to have all of them open. Compare this to the dozen registers at Meijer that haven’t opened since Y2K. Like the 600 unused parking spots, they’re there because real estate is cheap. The problem with cheap labor, though, is that you get what you pay for, and the cashiers tend to be pretty slow. Invariably, with you or someone ahead of you, the cashier will either need a managerial override, a price check on something unmarked, or will run out of change. The latter happens ALL THE TIME. At Garcia’s, we’d start each day with hundreds in singles and would still occasionally run out. I don’t think these places have the foresight.

By far the biggest difference, though, is the ubiquity of assistance in the aisles. The stores run out of cash registers on which to stack people (space is expensive), but can stuff employees in the aisles cheaply. And they want to help. Twice at SPAR I’ve had people come up to me to encourage me to buy a larger size container of something “that’s on special.” One tried to get me to buy a huge bag of Tide, and the other was, I’m not kidding, trying to put me in a 5L jug of olive oil that was like $50. When I went shopping for sheets, I checked out a small sheet store, and from the moment I walked in there was a guy shadowing me. I took a step, he took a step with me, ready to answer any questions. This got awkward in a hurry. I never said a word to the guy, but I did find that the stuff there was pretty expensive, smiled at him, and walked out.

Perhaps I’m just crazy. Why should extra help be a bad thing? Perhaps I only find it awkward because I’m used to shopping in places where there is no help, and am therefore accustomed to finding my own way around a store. Indians seem to appreciate the guided shopping, even if it chased me out of the bedding store. Once I went with Sanju to a small place that sold books on child advocacy. Someone would show her a book, she’d thumb through it, and she’d either say “good,” or “no, we don’t want this” and hand it back. It was all very blunt. Not “this isn’t what we’re looking for,” or “no thanks,” but just “no, we don’t want this.” I found the whole display impolite, but again, I think that’s the American in me. Indians are used to having personal help in stores. They expect it. When I see it, I see an employee basically going out of his/her way to help, and I respond appreciatively. When I get back to the States, if any of you see me being a total douche to a store clerk, slap me. And if you ever see a Desi doing that, just imagine how pissed off they were that they had to do their own laundry today.

Ranganathittu

On Sunday Tulsi, Sanju’s cousin Ajit, and I went to a bird sanctuary near Mysore called Ranganathittu (rahn-ga-na-TEET-oo). Mostly, the photography is the story here, but I suppose this deserves a narrative.

We got something of a late start on the 3 hour drive, but this worked to our advantage. We arrived at about 3:30 to find that until 2:30 that day, the water had been too high to do the boat ride, basically the only thing to do at the sanctuary.



When we arrived, we went through a big gate and bought our tickets for entry and the boat ride. Because I was a foreigner, our “special” boat ride was Rs.500 instead of Rs.250, for the three of us. The “special” boat ride meant that, instead of being on a full boat, we’d have our own rower, and it would be just us on the boat. Our guide, Swami, rowed us around and pointed out the various birds. There were birds there that had migrated from Europe. There was some sort of heron, but it was too fast for my photographic skills. He answered our questions about the pretty sedated crocodiles, too. Crocodiles eat until they’re full, then they stop. When they’re full, they could be right next to a bunch of lame birds and they wouldn’t care. So these guys were just hanging in the sun.



Swami started rowing us around the standard half-hour “special” path, and when we asked if he could take us further, he said it’d be another Rs.500. We were fine with that, especially since the excess went to Swami, and we wound up getting about an hour out of the boat ride. We had dosas at their small restaurant before heading back to Bangalore.



Yeah, this is definitely the sort of trip that’s better told through photos. There wasn’t much history or learning at Ranganathittu. Just nature.

Blog Notes

I uploaded a bunch of photos to flickr. The quality isn't great, because I'm limited to 100mb/month, and I'm trying to get maximum photos at decent quality. They should be fine for screen-viewing, but in case any family members out there are looking for refrigerator material, I'll gladly honor any requests for full-size photos. Or if you're just interested in high-res shots of those crocs.

The photos are from Ranganathittu, a bird sanctuary near Mysore. We went there on Sunday. I'll write about it soon.

I've got another "hidden" post in the pipeline. I realize those aren't too frequent, so the e-mail distribution thing is sort of a hassle for the benefit gained. But if anybody out there wants more to read, drop me a line. You know my email, but if not, use the "Contact" button above. I know word of this blog is starting to spread, so I don't care how distant a Facebook friend you are, or how tertiarily you know my parents. Just drop me a line.

The Cubs failed, the US World Cup team failed, the Bears will soon fail, the Blackhawks are sluggish, and Illini football disappointed. You're all instructed to root for Illini basketball. I-L-L...

Nutrition

If you’ve seen me in the past two years, you probably know that I’ve become a lot more health-conscious as of late. I lost a lot of weight, and have been working hard to keep it off. I haven’t joined a gym here yet, although I will soon, but I have had some encounters with the other side of healthy living: nutrition. Something Indians seem to know nothing about.

Sanju and her roommate, Tulsi, are both on the petite side of things, so they don’t eat much to begin with. They also seem to care less about what they eat than I did when I ate nothing but cheese pizza and got a kidney stone. Tulsi, for example, was pretty surprised when I started looking at a nutrition label and said she’d never really looked at one. Sanju, however, recently tried to convince me that Ghee, or clarified butter, is healthy. Ghee is butter that’s been distilled down to just the fat, removing the milk proteins and some of the unsaturated fat, the point where you’re eating something that’s 1/3 unsaturated fat, 2/3 saturated fat. Sanju claimed that this is the “good” fat. Some web sites agree with her, but they also recommend things like Ear Candling. Ghee winds up in a lot of food, and in large doses. You know how Chinese food is supposed to leave you hungry two hours later? Indian food leaves you full all day, because it’s loaded with saturated fat.

A lot of this is cultural. Sanju touts the skin benefits of ghee, as well as its ability to prevent ulcers. In a society where not a lot of fat is consumed, these are both very real benefits. Add to that the love of chilis here, and the ulcer prevention is quite real. But when you have plenty of access to fat, ghee is a terrible choice. Avocados, nuts, fish oil, and other Polyunsaturated fats will line your stomach without lining your arteries. When your goal is getting bang-for-your-buck, and when meat fat is scarce and lactose intolerant prevalent, ghee works well.

Anyone who saw Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution knows how backwards America’s nutritional standards can be. Not only is the potato classified as a vegetable, but it’s basically THE vegetable in school lunches, despite being almost purely empty calories (yes, my Irish friends, I know the skin has value, but nobody eats the skin). School standards mandate that children be allowed to drink chocolate milk that has as much sugar as pop, to make sure they get enough calcium. India is largely still at the stage where those goals are important-–how do we provide as many calories as cheaply as possible to these hungry kids? While the US has moved on to dealing with health in an affluent society, India is still in an era when ghee and white rice make a lot of sense. So I don’t fault India or Sanju or Tulsi for their love of ghee. Now, when they make fun of me for drinking skim milk, that’s another matter.

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Facebook > Chase

I was sitting on this post for a few weeks, trying to come up with something else to say in it. I'm just publishing it as-is.

When I logged onto Facebook for the first time here, Facebook was understandably suspicious of why Charlie Kinzer was suddenly logging in from India. Its security measure, though, was ingenious. Rather than having me verify through an email, or sending me an SMS message like most places would do, they had me identify photos of my friends. It’d display 3 photos of a particular friend, and would give me a random list of friends from which to choose, including the right one. It did this for 4-5 friends, and it managed to pick only good friends of mine, as opposed to people I’d met once and with whom I’d never interacted on Facebook. It was a great verification system. I handled it with ease, but no one else could have done it. Even a close friend of mine probably could not have, since no particular friend would be able to identify my friends from college, law school, and high school. Only I could do that.

This was also something I could do quickly and easily. Compare this to the credit and debit cards that just shut down the moment I tried to use them here. Chase required me to call them, and not on a 24-hour line, either. I was only able to get Google Voice running on a decent connection, which I didn't really have at home. Chase still won't let me use the card from an Indian IP--only when I log into the U of I's server, thus allowing me to surf from an American IP address, did Chase let me book my ticket to Delhi. Ironic, because they now supposedly know that I'm in India. Shouldn't they be declining anything purchased in America? Anyway, this round definitely goes to Facebook, and not Chase.

“Apparently I’m supposed to marry a banana tree first.”

In the wide range of Indian castes and mysticism, some people are born “Mangliks.” Mangliks are cursed to something like 27 years of bad luck, which I think is divided into 20 years of bad luck and 7 years of really bad luck. The “matrimonials” section of the classifieds, which is a great read, has several listings that specified “non-Manglik.” There was also a guy who was 60, but “looks 50!” and several ads that were overtly seeking a family “alliance” via marriage.

Mangliks have particular bad luck on the marriage front: a Manglik’s first spouse is doomed to die an early death. But there is supposedly a loophole in this curse: you marry an animal or some other semi-animate object first. That way you’re only killing a dog, or whatever. Makes perfect sense, right?

Sanju and I had talked about Mangliks before, but I met a guy at a party last night who’s a Manglik. He said he’s supposed to marry a banana tree before finding a bride. Apparently that’s what Aishwarya Rai did to break her curse. I guess whatever fates are concerned with Manglik punishment are fooled by this. Or bound by Indian bureaucracy to kill the banana tree and break the curse, even if they’re aware it’s a bogus out.

Blackouts Reported. Check Power Map.

India has some severe infrastructure problems. The first is electricity. We’re in a pretty nice neighborhood in a decent apartment complex, and the power still goes in and out here at least once a day. It’s out right now, even though the weather’s great. This usually only lasts 20 minutes or so, and has only once lasted more than an hour. At some point I’ll try to figure out why this happens. It could be an issue with power plants. It could be circuit breakers in the building. It could be the family of opossums living in the switching station. Some impacts of this: laptops are really popular, since battery backups for desktops don’t last very long. Nobody bothers setting the clock on the microwave or TV, since they reset daily. Everyone has a stash of candles ready. Here, they’re already spread around the apartment, waiting to be lit. Stores seem to continue to function during power outages, although I haven’t gone shopping during one yet (reminiscent of the time when the power was out at the Watseka Subway, and of the three employees, the only one who knew how to take out a calculator and find the taxes by hand was the mentally challenged guy). I’m sure I’ll find more interesting impacts of unreliable power supplies as this sojourn wears on.

The layout in this city is also a total disaster. London puts it to shame. I’ve always said every major city needs to burn to the ground at least once (London did this too early), and this place is in dire need of a reset button. Just look at it:



There’s no order to the streets. The streets aren’t physically labeled, either, making navigation impossible without resorting to [[Indian GPS]], since you can’t tell what street you’re on, even at major intersections. The buildings are numbered, but since most streets are so short, the numbering doesn’t do much, and it certainly isn’t as useful of a numbering system as used in the US. Rather, the numbers begin at 1 at one end of the street and continue to the other end. Navigation winds up being accomplished by neighborhood and landmarks. When I want to go home, I ask for “Koramangala, Sony World.” Apparently this Sony store at a busy intersection qualifies as a landmark, as every rickshaw driver so far has known exactly where it is.

In addition to the gridlessness, there are no real arterial streets. There are some highwayish stretches, but a trip across town involves weaving around many small streets. There are ring roads, Outer Ring Road, Inner Ring Road, and one other, but none of those are true highways, Rather, they’re just routes patched together from existing streets. My guess is that eminent domain isn’t very powerful here, and that it’s impossible to condemn enough property to construct a highway from scratch. So you just draw out a route and designate it as the highway, then you work on making all stretches of that route as fast as possible. If you look at this map of Outer Ring Road, you’ll see how it weaves all over the place:



At least Karnataka isn’t in $15B of debt. Nor, as far as I know, does it owe over $1B to any university system. So at least it has that on Illinois.

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Two Photos

Every other letter of this neighborhood is an A. There's got to be a better way.



The helmet's a good idea, but in a wreck, I'd be more worried about that tank of gas at your feet.

Diwali

November 5 was Diwali. Some sort of festival about Krishna or Rama or one of those gods. I’m hazy on the details. All I know is this is the holiday when Indians light fireworks, and Diwali is more of a week-long thing than just one day.

Diwali is a Hindu holiday, which makes it more popular in the north than down here. There are still plenty of Hindus here, but it isn’t quite as concentrated–lots of Muslims and... miscellaneous. I’m also in a relatively calm neighborhood. Which made it all the more surprising to experience five hours of war noises throughout Koramangala. Seriously, this place sounded like the footage you got from reporters embedded in the Iraq War. Distant explosions, constant rat-tat-tat-tat-tats, and the occasional close BOOM! From what I could tell, nobody was really interested in the bright, shiny fireworks. This was really more about the loud stuff and blowing things up. This made me assume Diwali was a celebration of the time Lakshmi blew open a diamond mine.

Diwali is one of dozens of holidays in India. As you can see, there’s basically a holiday at least once a week, year-round: http://www.thisismyindia.com/nationalholidays.html. But that’s only part of the story, as there are tons more religious holidays, which are observed in some states but not others, and trying to figure out exactly when your business may be closed is quite a task: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_India. For example, Nov. 1 was Karnataka Day, the state’s celebration of itself. Some people observed this, but not all, so my first day in our office space was me alone. Compare this to Diwali, when the office was locked. The day after Diwali, though, is also some sort of Holiday, which was observed by Citibank, but only Karnataka Citibanks, which created some problems for Sanju. Neither of us can explain this, because this wasn’t Karnataka Day, this was a Hindu holiday, which supposedly wasn’t a big deal in this state. Are you confused yet? I sure am. I figure this is only about as confusing as trying to explain Casimir Pulaski Day to someone from outside Illinois, though, so I can’t totally fault the Indians as backwards on this one.

Anyway, the general system is that everyone takes off the three national holidays, while the rest of the holidays are sort of hit or miss. Spin the wheel and see if a particular business is closing for a particular holiday. Or just hope that that business dealt with it by having a diverse enough employee pool that they can absorb some off-days. Sorta like how we have Jewish doctors to work on Christmas. I think India probably does pretty well with that. Citibanks may have been closed today, but most stores were open even yesterday, with reduced hours. And of course Sanju’s Muslim maid came. We’ll see what she does when Eid al-Fitr rolls around

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Lost in Suburban Bangalore, Part 3: BR Pura

I went on my second slum tour the other day, to BR Pura. It’s actually some sort of much larger name, but it’s abbreviated and spoken as BR Pura. The Indians may have really long names, but they aren’t shy about abbreviations and initials. Some famous actors and politicians are simply known by two initials and a last name.

Anyway, this one was much closer than Channapatna, so Sanju just dropped me off at it. Again, I was on the back of a two-wheeler, this time with a 250-300lb woman up front in place of Mr. Kumar. Sanju said this would’ve made the perfect profile shot for Facebook, but sadly, I wasn’t thinking of that. We headed off and wound around some country roads before arriving at the first house.

These slums in BR Pura weren’t really even slums, though, which was sort of anticlimactic. Channapatna was definitely worse. Of the five houses I visited, at least 3 had TVs, and one seemed nice enough to live in, with a washing machine to boot. The houses this time were all well-molded concrete, rather than the lumpy, slanty clay of Channapatna. There was even a school. At about 1:00, the streets were full of kids in uniforms, and one of the meetings was right next to the playground during recess for, I’ll say, 3rd or 4th graders. Several women were late to the second meeting because they were stuck at their jobs. Whereas in Channapatna I had no idea what people did with their time, these women (not dressed all in black this time) had what seemed to be stable jobs.

So this wound up being more of a neighborhood tour than a slum show. But I actually really appreciated that aspect of this. I don’t know what any of these women were actually using the money for, but it could’ve been a lot of things. Most of us think of microfinance as lending to women to buy a sewing machine, but here a lot of it is just basic household loans. Some use the money to send their kids to school, and I was told of at least one person who’d bought a two-wheeler with Ujjivan providing the credit. Which is, really, exactly what we’d use loans for. Most Americans are repaying loans, be they student loans, car loans, or a mortgage. Access to credit is a necessity. Microfinance just brings that access to the destitute, as in Channapatna, and the lower class, as in BR Pura. It is somewhat jarring to think that even somewhat well-to-do, employed people can’t get credit, even in a country with a state bank. You could make a pretty good argument that the poor stay poor just because they can’t borrow at reasonable rates, and that access to banking services is one of the third world’s most critical needs. Think of all that we can do because of loans that we couldn’t otherwise do. Think of how many rungs we would drop on the social ladder if we had to pay cash up front for college, housing, and cars. That’s how many rungs we can raise people through loans.

The women at the last meeting apaprently really wanted to talk to me, but we had nothing close to a shared language. One was able to yell “sir! Hello!” at me, which worked. Couldn’t exchange many ideas that way. Honestly, I wanted to ask them why the hell they like the Chicago Bulls so much, since I’d seen more motorcycles in BR Pura with Bulls stickers on them. For a country that plays no basketball, they do like the Bulls. Maybe they’re just into surplus 90s memorabilia. My mom speculates that it's a Hindu thing, what with the cow worship and all. Could be right.

When we were done, we stopped at a small... convenience store food stall thing... to split a pack of biscuits and some juice. Don’t worry-–it was a juice box. The guy behind the counter started talking in Kanada, and I picked out Obama. He saw me and mentioned about Obama coming to visit India. A couple days later, I was with some friends here, and one was unaware of Obama’s coming visit. So he’s beaten on current events by... the biscuit/juice guy in BR Pura.

On the way back, I couldn’t find a rickshaw to take me all the way to Koramangala, our neighborhood which is on the opposite end of town. I was able to, however, get one to take to MG Road (super bonus points if you can figure out what MG stands for... don’t overthink it). MG Road is a sort of downtown, although this town has many. It’s near the Tibetan Marketplace where I bought my phone, and is a haven for beggars who have no qualms with leaning inside your rickshaw and touching you (I carry sanitizer, don’t worry). From MG Road I got another rickshaw back to Koramangala, all for about $3 US. That’s pretty much all the way across Bangalore. Meat and milk are expensive in this country, but sweet Jesus are the services cheap.


Note: To repeat, I’m not working in microfinance. Sanju used to work for Ujjivan and set up these tours for me. That’s my only connection to this industry.

Indian Halloween

I went to a Halloween party last weekend, and I must say, the Indians pulled it together.

Sanju went as some sort of she-devil, replacing her standard fare of going as a Jedi. I wanted to go as Manmohan Singh, but our attempts at putting a turban together just made me look like a fortune teller, and I also lacked the appropriate Indian dress clothing. I wound up just putting on a wife beater and my shades, which vaguely made me look like I was wearing some sort of costume. Look weird enough and it counts, right? It wasn’t nearly as good as my liquidity crisis costume from 2008, but it was the best I could do out of suitcases.

A few of the hosts were dressed as Chilean miners. I thought this was great, but when I got back, I found my facebook feed flooded with comments about Chilean miner costumes. So maybe they were only as creative as many others. I’d like to think, though, that since our party was 10.5 hours ahead, that everybody in the US must’ve been copying these guys.

When we arrived, there was a man standing next to the elevator to open the door for us. Somewhat standard fare, except in this building, the guy also opens the door for you, without riding the elevator with you. Which means that as soon as he closes the door, he bolts up a few flights of stairs to meet you. Really bizarre things happen with labor gets too cheap.

Two Addenda: Beggars and Eunuchs

First, about the recent beggars post: you don’t give the kids large containers of biscuits. If they’re too large, they’ll try to sell them back to a local shop, defeating the purpose of giving the biscuits instead of change. But this raises more questions. If they sell the biscuits, doesn’t that indicate that they do, in fact, want the change more than the biscuits? And don’t we want to give the kids what they want? You give the biscuits because you assume the kid enjoys the biscuits, but is just giving the change away. But if they want the change instead of the biscuits, that indicates that they do get some utility out of the change, suggesting that the useless change hypothesis is false. I’d need to know more about the structure of these begging outfits to really know how to approach this.

Second, about the eunuchs. My mom asked, simply, “why are there still eunuchs?” Good question. First, many eunuchs are just transgendered men, living their lives as women. In those cases, the term "eunuch" is a misnomer. In addition, though, there are true eunuchs among them. The eunuchs are organized. I don’t want to say it’s like the Teamsters, but they have their own community and they stick together. When intersexual children are born, they are frequently shipped off to the eunuch community to be operated on and raised. So eunuchs are still “made,” but out of intersexual children.

According to Sanju’s roommate, the eunuchs have negotiated for their own time slots at pools where time is split between male swim and female swim. The eunuchs also have a pretty good racket of showing up to marriages and birth ceremonies and demanding money in exchange for not cursing the marriage/child. People are so superstitious that this tends to work. Just pay the eunuchs and get them the hell out of there.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)

Beggars/Choosers

On the way back from a breakfast trip today, we found ourselves stopped at a stop light patrolled by some beggar children. A pathetic-looking child came down our aisle and Sanju’s roommate, whose car we were in, flagged him down and started searching through her car. She always keeps a pack of biscuits (cookies, stateside) handy for the kids. If you give them change, it’ll wind up in the hands of their handlers, but they can eat the biscuits themselves.

Once, walking out of Morry’s Deli in Hyde Park, I had some fries left over. The middle aged, portly gentleman in front asked for change, and I offered the fries. He muttered something about how he couldn’t eat them, and I walked off. We have beggars in the states, and I thought that would prepare me to just steel myself when they came by, but I must say, the begging here is another ballgame entirely.

Imperialist Food: Dominos

There’re quite a few American fast food chains in Bangalore. I’ve seen a KFC, a McDonald’s, a Domino’s, a Pizza Hut, a Taco Bell, a Baskin Robbin’s, and even a Papa John’s. Today at a food court in an IT park in rural Bangalore, I saw a “Jambo Juice.” Sanju thought it was just a rip-off of Jamba Juice, but given that most of these chains are actually officially licensed here, I figure that whatever focus group decided that “Jamba Juice” was a great name also decided that “Jambo Juice” would play better in the subcontinent. I’m sure there are many more options than these, too, so I’ve got options for seeing how Indians bastardize American bastardizations of European food.

Last week, Sanju was out and her roommate showed up late and hungry and decided to order out. We decided I’d give Domino’s my first try at American fast food. So here’s my review:

We ordered a “cheese burst” pizza, which has a layer of liquid cheese in the crust. The pizza itself was “spicy chicken,” which I gravitated to because of the two chilis next to it, indicating very spicy. Sanju’s roommate didn’t want to do one of the bizarre fusion pizzas, but I figure that’s for the best for now anyway.



It was better than American Domino’s, certainly. There was actually sauce on the pizza, albeit not exactly tomato sauce. It had the color and texture of barbecue sauce, and tasted like, well, Indian food. Sorry my pallette isn’t more sophisticated than that. The cheese burst was fine, even if you could tell it was fatty. The chicken, crust, and cheese topping were acceptable, too. Nothing fancy, but unlike American Dominos, this didn’t make me want to wretch, so that’s a plus.



Pizza Hut and Papa John’s are more expensive, but I’ll give them a shot at some point. I’ve also heard good things about the veg burger at KFC (I know, right?) and some of the stuff at McDonald’s. We’ll see if Taco Bell substitutes something edible instead of the surplus circus meat it uses in the States.

Lost in Suburban Bangalore, Part 2: Channapatna

I spent the day in a Karnataka slum, Channapatna, the toy capital of India. This trip involved disembarking a bus at a stop somewhat akin to the Prairie Stop, running across four lanes of highway traffic, riding around a slum on the back of a two-wheeler, and eating food I probably shouldn’t have.

Sanju had the bright idea to send me to Channapatna alone while she got other work done. So she dropped me off at a bus station, made sure I got on board, and I was off on an hour-and-a-half bus ride to rural Karnataka. The scenery was beautiful, even through the smudgy bus windows. Huge bluffs, palm trees everywhere, occasional Coke signs at roadside dives. Great stuff.

The problems began, though, when Sanju’s directions fell apart. She told me it was about 15-20 minutes after a really busy bus station. Unfortunately, the only really busy bus station we pulled into was Channapatna itself. Making things worse, she had told the bus driver to announce Channapatna, which he didn’t. So I missed the stop, only realizing it when I saw signs saying “Thanks for visiting Chanapatna, come back soon.” (“Rod R. Blagojevich, Governor.”) Which raised serious red flags. I asked the conductor, and he motioned backwards, then walked to the front. I was prepared to just hike the kilometer or so back to town, but the conductor instead motioned for me to cross the street to catch a bus that was heading the other way and waiting for me. People are constantly running across traffic here, so I figured “when in Karnataka.” After a 3 Rupee fare, I was on my way back to Channapatna, only moderately late.

I called “Mr. Kumar” and he arrived on his 2-wheeler. I hopped on the back. Two people on a motorcycle is nothing here, though. I’ve already seen a 5-person family on one bike. If you’re a guy, you sit on the back perpendicular to the road, like the driver. If you’re a woman, though, you sit with both legs hanging off one side, parallel to the road. This is done, I think, because this country is much more uptight about opposite-sex contact in public than with same-sex. I’ve honestly seen guys on the back seats hugging the drivers to stay on, something which is actually common in the US when it’s a woman on the back. I elected not to hug Mr. Kumar, though, and instead just held onto the back handle.

We stopped off at Ujjivan’s office, then went out on the first call of the day, a meeting with about 20 Muslim women, all in black, but in various degrees of cover-up. Some looked about my age, all the way up to quite old. They laid out a tarp in front of one of their shacks, and we sat down facing them. Ujjivan lends to individuals, but in groups. Everyone’s loan in separate, but with co-signers, and the meetings are conducted to groups. I found out later that if you miss a meeting, the group is assessed an Rs.5 fine, which I guess they collect from you later. Money seemed to be handed over in one large wad for everyone, though, suggesting they were really functioning as a group.

The next meeting was in a different slum, and this time was inside a clay house. The entry room had been cleared out for the meeting, with some rugs laid out. It was painted pink, and there was molded into the clay walls, but if there was any furniture, it had been moved. This was the same deal–about 20 Muslim women of varying ages and in varying cover-up. Again, a big wad of money being paid, and again, it was all in Kanada, so I understood only as much as I did during Endhiran.

As for the slums themselves, they were pretty ugly. No paving, drinking from plastic jugs and suspicious taps, and all shanties were slanty. There did not appear to be plumbing, aside from the large public taps, so I don’t know what they did about sewage. But this wasn’t some Sally Struthers infomercial either. Nobody was starving, nobody was looking around with big doe-eyes on the verge of crying. The meetings were upbeat, with people joking. Nobody stared at me, suggesting that white people aren’t unheard of there (I thought I saw one white guy on a bike, but it turned out he just had a raging case of vitiligo). There was a real community in Channapatna, even if it’s one that would appal by American standards. The one thing that did jar me was that none of the children were in school, and that’s a real problem. That isn’t a matter of local standards or moral relevance–that’s a severe handicap for those kids, and results in them going nowhere near their potential. Of all of India’s issues, schooling is the most pressing, in my opinion. You can’t have children spending their days running around a slum.

When we were done with the second meeting, Mr. Kumar drove me to the shack of a “third year customer,” which was still kinda iffy, but was a real, private shack with one family and a small yard. They’d clearly done well for themselves through the loans. Before I left for the bus station, the Ujjivan office forced food on me, and chapati roulette worked out in my favor, as I didn’t throw up. Everybody uses bottled water here, and I sure hope they used it in that chutney.