Some changes to my blog:
I will be posting in parts. Often I have collected huge amount of information and a lot of time passes by between my collection/ assimilation and expansion of those topics. I tend to forget the finer points that I wanted to write about, so, I will be posting one or two paragraphs as and when I've written them. Secondly, if you are reading this, please register yourself for a notification for when the blog is updated. That way I don’t have to spam your account with notifications every now and then.
Thank you
Keep the comments coming
Me, then & now (a year on)
28th July marks my one full year of return to India. My vital signs are the same. I had gained a couple of lbs over the course of the year and shed a few as well. As a self analysis, I would say I have become angry and bitter also happier at the same time in a strange way. I am angry at the gross inefficiencies, superstition & the government that exist here and happier to be back home close to friends and family (Ironically most of my friends are in the US). The other day I took some time to reflect on the first year of return and had no regrets about the relocation. I also realized that with the Americanization of Indian metro's it is easier for people to relocate and it gets easier with every passing year. I would have been devastated if I'd returned a few years earlier or mostly the time when high speed internet did not exist here :) since my wife has concluded that that's all I need to survive more than food and water. Time has passed by very quickly almost too quickly for my comfort. I work six days a week since the Indian private sector doesn’t afford a five day week even though very little ever gets done on Saturdays. I have gotten incredibly busy mostly learning things about the Chemical Industry and revisiting some of the fundamentals of Chemistry after being out of touch for so long. Some of the values I bring to the table right off the bat are discipline, persistence and to some level professionalism in communication and the marketing façade to the customer. I have found that most western customers of ours have found it very comforting that an ‘American’ is talking to them. Not to draw racist connotations to this truth, it is usually perceived that an American person can be related to easily with than a non-American one. I have often been on marketing calls to Europe and the US where they have felt like I was lying in telling them that I was calling from a company in Bombay.
Getting back on track (blasts)
A ton of you asked for my wellness through the terrible blasts on the tracks in Mumbai. I think I've responded to each and every one of you. Thank you for your concern. The blasts came home when a friend of my wife was directly affected by it. She was listening to music on her ipod when a deafening noise came about. She was in the first class 'ladies only' car when this occured. The first class unisex car is the one next to it. Suddenly, a spew of metal and blood was everywhere as they were getting pushed out of the running train. The train screamed to a halt with the emergency brakes as she fell on the adjacent tracks with panicing people trying to run away from the train. She managed to escape an oncoming train that was about to run these people over and into the safety of a street. The tremors of this incident were so graphic and long lasting that she fell ill and still has haunting memories of the bodies that she saw. Another person, a friend of the family was not as fortunate as his friends identified his hand (bracelet & watch) since it was all they could find.
Terrorism struck another blow on the people that least deserved it, the poorest of the poor taking the trains to their livelihood. Ironically, the trains were back on schedule 4 hours later and the spirit of Mumbai getting back on tracks was elaborately discussed across talk shows. The underlying aspect of 'no choice' was not discussed by anyone. For many a people that reside in suburbia, the train is the only way to livelihood. Even if attacks like these were to frequent, these people would take the trains since there's no other choice. Today, the people have shrugged these acts as though nothing has happened. A few CCTV camera's have been installed at places, but, people still commute with the scare that it was really easy for the terrorists to plant these bombs and it probably will be again. Millitancy has a long history in India and it goes deep into how divided our borders are.
In a chapter next week I will be writing on many perspectives on terrorism and how it has affected the Indian people.
Kaalnirnay calendar
Everybody loves calendars especially when they come around the holidays & new year and when they are free. The Hindu calendar is a lunar calendar. After being ruled by the English, the solar calendar has set itself into our culture here. So, this begs the question of how we preserve these old customary and traditional holidays and days of observance whilst not losing track of the modern day schedule. The answer, Kaalnirnay. A kaalnirnay is the single greatest example of scope creep. This is one confusing document as to start with as it superimposes the lunar calendar on a solar one. To add to this confusion, India, being a secular state has to observe all religious holidays. As a result, to remain appealing to all faiths, this calendar incorporates the religious and other holidays of people of other faiths as well. So, a typical Kaalnirnay calendar will have the hindu lunar calendar superimposed on the solar one with sikh, zoorastrian, islamic, christian, jewish, buddist and jain holidays in it. Since holidays are marked in red, every month is splattered by red. It feels like the whole month is a holiday. Every one of these faiths seem to have their own new year, none of which coincide with Jan 1st !! So, now, you have 7 or 8 types of new years every year, each one being a national holiday. You may ask how many holidays do we have in general then? The answer is simple and the different for the private and public sector. The private sector is required to allocate the standard 13-14 national holidays, however, the government institutions cannot legally give preference to one religion over the other. As a result, through a consensus a few years ago, the government has instituted 65 national holidays a year. That in addition to the personal and sick leave that one gets. As a result, one could work about 200 days a year if you add saturdays and sundays in the mix. No wonder the efficiency of our public sector is unaddressed. You can check out this phenomenon at http://www.kalnirnay.com
The 3 R's (Reading Running and Recreation)
I enjoy the routine of exercise. I have gotten into the habit of running in the mornings and manage to squeeze in a workout every now and then as well. As a result, I think, I am in the best shape of my life in years. I do manage to read a book every now and then and that is besides the enormous amount of news and information I get from my daily browsing on the internet. We also take recreational trips to local places and sights on occasion. I have realized that these are the three fundamental ‘R’s ‘that virtually no one in India does. In any random crowd in the US you are bound to find at least one person who has run a marathon, hiked a peak, camped, read a book in the last month or one that exercises frequently. In India, that isn’t the case. Camping and outdoor activities are out of the question. When I run, I run alone, be it outside or on the treadmill in the gymnasium of my apartment complex. The gym lay sadly deserted most of the time. None of the people I meet ever carry a book around and virtually no one reads on public transit either. And Sidney Sheldon novels are not reading in my dictionary. The general life expectancy of the population is about 62 years for men and 65 for women which is miraculous considering the obnoxiously imbalanced diet that the affluent class consumes. Rich deep fried frankies (wraps) and sugary balls dipped in syrups of sugar are staple diets for many a people. It’s actually frightening to observe how significantly these people depend on their genes to survive. Sedentary lifestyles will result in a breakdown of this notion of genetic immunity as heart disease will emerge over the next few years. What’s scarier is the fact that nearly a fifth of the world’s population is not getting enough physical and mental stimulation to be better citizens of tomorrow.
Divine Intervention (Pictures of God everywhere)
In lieu of the forthcoming Olympics, China has levied a stern notice to all the spitters in town (Beijing). If you are caught spitting in public, you will be fined and could be arrested. It’s one of China’s stern measures to make the city look beautiful for the thousands of tourists that will visit during the Olympics. They have also set up spittoons to be reasonable with the masses. In India, the habit is very ugly and perhaps as ugly as in China. In China, the overwhelming amount of spit might come from tobacco consumption, but, in India there are several variants of it. Tobacco is consumed through modes other than direct consumption and these are in the form of flavored nuts, beetle leaf mixtures (popularly known as paan) and other mixtures of fennel seeds or tobacco coated consumables. These little shampoo sachet sized packets contain a single dose of tobacco that’s supposed to keep the consumer high for a while. Mostly, the socially and economically backward strata of society consume these things. This strata of society also uses a lot of public infrastructure like public transit etc etc and hence the spit from these people lands up in the public domain. Everywhere you look there are streak marks of spit. In offices, on the street, in trains, in parks almost everywhere. It is the single most disgusting and disturbing sight of a third world nation. The civic corporations wouldn’t install spittoons because they would get stolen overnight. They had imposed some toothless measures to curb this habit, but, all of them bowed to the political pressure exerted from the manufacturers of these tobacco products and failed. Finally, when humans couldn’t do it, GOD had to intervene. Some smartass came up with the idea of manufacturing floor and wall tiles that had images of one of the three million gods on them. These tiles were put on the walls where there was maximum likelihood of a person spitting. Lo!! They worked like magic! Soon, pictures of Jesus, the Mecca, The Buddha also sprang up on tiles. No one wanted to spit on god!! At least the privatized spaces would remain spit free. This was the only occasion in my life when I was seriously thinking of quitting atheism.
Rain water harvesting (That's water you fools)
The security guard in my building told me this morning to fill up water containers at home since there would be no water from the municipal water supply through the day. This was not due to any planned maintenance outage or some sort of mishap on the water lines, there just wasnt enough water. When I took a peek outside, rain was gushing down from the skies like there was no tomorrow. wait wait wait a minute..... let me type that again 'rain was gushing down the skies like there was no tomorrow'. Yes, its true, I would hold a glass of water with a funnel made out of magazine covers and I could have a tumbler full of pure drinking water in five minutes. But wait.... is it ok to drink rain water? Arent there birds that poop from the sky?? This is a true story. There is an acute water shortage throughout the year across the metro of Mumbai as across other metro's too. This shortage can be attributed to lack of futuristic civic planning, out of control population growth and an uncontrolled influx into the cities. The water system designed to feed a million people is now feeding twelve million instead. It is bound to fail. Recently, a specialist in rain water harvesting was sought after by the local municipal corporation to present proposals on how this water scarcity can be nullified at least during the rainy season. There were no takers!!
In the meantime I found another similar absurdity as I took a road trip to nearby Gujarat. Along the sidewalk there were women and children walking with finely balanced water containers stacked over their heads. They would stack four to five of them on their heads and walk for miles to bring home precious potable water. Ironically, they were walking in what would be about 1 inch of rain in a day that was pouring down around them. When questioned, they told me that they had to walk to the nearby village 5 miles to get drinking water from a well that the government had dug. When asked as to why they were not storing rain water, they said they had no way to store it!!! My argument that the average intelligence of any society is a constant and is the same as any other society held good here. I’ve seen the smartest programmers & intellectuals in the cities and then there were these people at the other end of the spectrum. I would think the average of their intelligence would be where our country stands.
Kinds of Voicemails
The concept of voicemails is very limited to a few metro areas. Although India's population is expanding wider than the smile on TO's face, only 7% of the total population is connected by the phone line (of any form). Those connected in the cities are heavily connected as well. So, in a land with such little telephone culture, the concept of voicemails has not sunk in yet. Hardly anyone uses the available voicemail facility from their service providers and setting one up is not the easiest job since you have to get transferred to the one guy that works in the entire phone company that knows anything about setting one up. Immediately upon procuring a phone connection, I natually set up voicemail on all the mobile and land lines. About 1/2 the people that called us on any phone line knew what an answering machine was and the rest left curious voicemails. Here is a typical voicemail
Answering Machine: Hello you have reached..... pls leave message after the beep. BEEP
Caller: Hello, hello heeellllloooooooooooo, heeellllllloooooooowwwwwwwww
Caller: kya chal raha hein (what's going on)
Caller: (to a person next to them): abhi abhi baat kar raha tha (sounded like he was talking)
Caller: Lagta hein kaat diya (looks like he disconnected it)
Caller: sunai nahi de raha hein lagta hein (I think he cannot hear me)
Caller: heeelllloooooooooooooo, are you there? Why aren’t you speaking
It is amazing to note how many such messages are on my machine that is almost identical to one another. Another breed of people calling us is the technology handicapped senior citizens and their voicemails are like:
Caller: hello hello hello, I hate this
Caller: These kids from today have no discipline
Caller: They are never at home and then this stupid machine comes up
Caller: What do I say eerrrr ummmmm aaahhhhh psssss ummmmm ummmmm
Caller: Call me, I’m your uncle from Indore call me that’s it SLAM
