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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lost in Suburban Bangalore, Part 1: Yelehanka

A few nights ago Sanju and I went to a University of Chicago recruiting session in Bangalore.  Or at least we tried to.  In their infinite wisdom, the U of C scheduled the event at a prestigious high school that happened to be in the middle of freaking nowhere in suburban Bangalore/rural Karnataka.

As I talked about earlier, navigating the labyrinth that is India is an arduous process.  Sanju has been known to match speeds of rickshaw drivers and ask for directions in moving traffic.  This time she pulled that stunt on a highway.  In any event, the lack of signage and the winding, un-gridded streets make navigation very difficult to plan in advance.  As such, finding out way to a small suburban town, and making sure we didn’t drive past it, was tough.  When we finally got to the town, though, which of course had few powered street lights, finding the “Aditi Malia International School” was nearly impossible.  There were no signs for anything, the school was small and on an off road, and few people had ever heard of it.  One guy outside a busy “diner” actually went inside to try to find directions for us, and even inside, nobody had heard of this school.  We finally found some young people who’d heard of it, after a string of about 10 minutes and 5-6 people who hadn’t (at this point on semi-country roads).  We arrived an hour late, as the hour long session was emptying.

It seemed to be standard college recruitment fare, with gunners staying late to ask meaningless questions of the school rep.  And free banana bread.  When we finally got in touch with the woman from the U of C, one of the heads of College admissions who was on a tour of India, we had a good chat about the school and its direction.  Their efforts to find the right kids for the right school are far from dead, but rather are ramping up.  Hence the recruitment trips near and far.  And their efforts to find enthusiastic admissions staff who believe in the product seems to be going great, too.  But in true U of C fashion, they mucked it all up by making the session unreachable.  What’s C-H for?

At least we got to follow her driver back.  He got lost 3 times on the way there, but fortunately not on the return.

Ajit, the Bra King of Bangalore

We had a birthday party for Sanju’s roommate, T, the other night.  In most respects, it was about the same thing as an American birthday.  There was beer and wine, music and people dancing, people pulling up funny stuff on YouTube, delivered Thai food, and a cake.  Pretty much the same thing we’d do in the US.  But we dodged two traditions, though, that I can’t tell if they’re Indian or too American.  The first was “birthday bumps,” which apparently involve tossing somebody into the air, usually resulting in them hitting them the ground hard, repeated for the number of years you are.  T refused, and I was told only girls are allowed to refuse birthday bumps.  T also was very very hesitant to even approach the cake, as apparently in India the cake always winds up in the face of whoever’s birthday it is.  Kanika, my outside counsel for all things Indian, was sorely disappointed that there were no birthday bumps or cake-in-the-face.

But I also got to meet Sanju’s cousin, whom I’ll call Ajit (most names here will be replaced), who until recently ran a successful underwear business, specializing in bras, which he distributed to stores in South India.  He decided, one day, to expand into the plus-size market, and began distributing bras described as large to enormous.  These bras started to sell.  Like hot cakes.  And he couldn’t figure out why.  He’d call the stores and get dodgy answers.  But when he found that one store in Kerala was selling 1,000s of these per week, he decided to take a trip to the store to figure out what was going on.  When he got there, he found that they were selling because Ramadan was coming up.  The owner was taking the bras, cutting out the cups, and selling them as prayer caps.  Which sold extremely well, because unlike most cheap scratchy prayer caps, these were soft and comfortable, but still affordable.  This continued, but after Ramadan, was not quite as big of a deal.  Ajit’s business started to slip when he expanded into the very competitive undershirt market, and he sold it at a substantial profit.

Sorry if you’re looking for a moral in this post.  I say if a story involves enormous bras being converted to prayer caps, it pretty much speaks for itself.