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 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.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Got up at 5:30 this morning to go with Sanju and the wardens of the orphanage to Akshaya Patra’s headquarters to tour their kitchen.  They cook for about 15,000 kids a day in Bangalore, and across the country their kitchens cook school lunches for over a million.

First we had to go through a security checkpoint, which we also had to do when parking at the mall, and when entering the theater to see Endhiran.  They always have you pop the trunk.  We may be annoyed at the US becoming a security state, but it pales in comparison to India.  We arrived and met a very well dressed, barefoot, Hare Krishna, who explained their whole process to us.  We took off our shoes and put on their temporary sandals and hair nets.  Then we walked in.

This place was huge, and really efficient.  Huge, huge vats of rice, beans, and vegetables, all arranged well.  There was rice goop everywhere, as the vats lightly boiled over, but the place was very clean, clearly a priority.  They don’t chop anything by hand–all of the produce is sliced by machine, even the coconuts, it appeared.  They had automatic pestles to grind the spices, too.  All a far cry from the backwards kitchen at the orphanage.

We have huge industrial kitchens in the States, also cooking lunches for thousands of kids.  And those kitchens have the same goals–cook as much food as cheaply as possible.  But we cut corners in all the wrong ways.  We cheapen the food by cooking it at some factory in another state, freezing it, and shipping it in.  We also cheapen it by using chemicals and additives to increase the shelf-life, and by leaving it devoid of spice and flavor.  One of Sanju’s friends said that it would be just unheard of to leave out the spices from these dishes.  I bet at one point Italians would’ve thought it unheard of to make pizza without oregano, or lasagna without ricotta.  Didn’t stop us from doing it.

“Where AM I? What IS this?”

The surreal life continues, and in spades. I spent my third night here at some sort of giant dance. At first it seemed like we’d crashed a wedding, but that wasn’t it. All I know is everyone was dancing with sticks in giant circles, there were 3-4,000 people there, and it was behind the Jumbo Discount Fair.

The night started out with a Shivkumar Sharma concert. He played the Santoor, which is sort of a harp, and was joined by Hariprasad Chaurasia on the flute. This was part of what I can only describe as like a county fair, at the Palace Grounds, in a giant rudimentary building. We didn’t explore much of it except the concert hall, but it really had the feel of a county fair. People selling food, stands advertising Chevrolet, people dressed up as Shiva. Standard fare. We got the cheap seats at the concert, which just meant the furthest away, but as soon as Shivkumar started playing, everybody rushed the expensive seats. I should’ve learned from the Lufthansa experience, but I was still lost in the rush. No big deal, though. Still a cool concert.

But after the concert, we got wind that there was dancing nearby. We left the Palace Grounds and started walking around the neighborhood. We eventually found what we were pretty sure was the dance, but we couldn’t find the entrance, just the Jumbo Discount Fair, which seemed extremely popular for a Saturday night. This is where everything gets really difficult to describe, but we walked probably 200-300 yards behind these signs for the “Jumbo Discount Fair,” and finally found what everybody was going to. We paid Rs.300 to get in, and then it just got crazy. Yeah, 3-4,000 people dancing with sticks in circles. This is the point where I asked my friends “Where AM I? What IS this?” “Join the club” was the reply. None of us really knew what this was, although Sanju vaguely knew the dance, so we were able to join in. Which required taking off our shoes. Since I kept my socks on, I know have the clay/mud stains to prove something serious went down. I’m really at a loss as to how to describe this. We only got the one photo off before somebody ran up to tell us no photography was allowed. So that’s the only proof of this. I’ll consult more Indian friends to figure out where the hell I was on Saturday night. Or what the hell it was.

Akshaya Patra

This post is also private for the time being. Give me a holla to read it.

“We talk of growth.”

All of my posts about the orphanage, specifically, will have to remain private. We just want to make sure we don't wind up burning bridges if someone sees this stuff. So I'll have several posts that are just titles, and if you want to read them, just shoot me an email. I may come up with some sort of distribution list or something. We'll see.

The Biggest Thing on the Subcontinent

Sanju’s been keeping 91.9 Indigo Radio on in the car, and it’s a dead copy of American top 40 radio. It’s fantastic. The music is the same mix of upbeat pop and 80s music that you get on any top 40 radio station, but it goes well beyond that. They have the same DJs who don’t play a lot of music, but instead just do a lot of annoying talking. Their morning guy is an American named “Kenny Jones.” There’s no way that’s his real name. No more so than “The Goose” who lasted about 4 months in 96.3 in Champaign. They have the same recorded voiceover as in American stations, saying things like “The biggest thing on the subcontinent... RADIO INDIGO” and “Commercials off, music ON” while a bunch of bleeps and bloops play in the background. They have people from local businesses calling in to talk about their promotions. Today that was someone from Sanju’s dad’s company talking about how they had people around the city giving out prizes to good drivers. Literally everything they did and said was straight out of American radio, to the point I suspect it’s owned by Clear Channel. But whatever. It’s one thing to give me a fix of Katy Perry, Nelly, and Ke$ha, but it’s quite another to put it in a totally American package.

That Indian Head Bobble Thing

Sanju and I arrived back at her place at about 2:30am. Her roommate was out for the night, and Sanju had to get up at 5:00 to drive a Nepalese orphan to a train station. Lord knows how a Nepalese kid found his way to Bangalore, but the point is that when the maid came at 6:00, I was tasked with letting her in. You can imagine the look on the face of this maid when, instead of Sanju opening the door, it’s some White guy who speaks no Kanada. She at one point asked me some question, I think relating to the fan, but when I responded in English, all I got was the head bobble.

This maid lives in a shack next to the apartment complex, and by appearances, does pretty much everyone’s cooking and cleaning daily. Here, she sweeps and hand-mops, does laundry, and cooks basic Indian food. In the states, the idea of a cleaning lady has become a little more acceptable as of late, I guess, although I still think it’s pretty ridiculous. Personal chefs are more or less unheard of. But here all of this stuff is ubiquitous.

The result, though, is that there’s healthy, home-cooked food around here. I pulled that off, but it was never complicated food. Very rarely would I have anything baked lying around, and my pasta never had interesting pesto sauce in it. If I threw in some garlic powder, that was getting fancy. I do wonder how much we might benefit if cooking became a specialty like any other job. Right now we’re all culinary Marxists, refusing to eat alienated food except occasionally at restaurants. Maybe the Indians have this figured out–food is too important to do poorly, and few people have the time and talent to do it well. Let those few be the only ones doing it. Of course, India is helped on this front by the throngs of the impoverished, without whom this wouldn’t work. Maybe America just needs more dirt poor chefs.