In January of 2003 my company sent me to India for four weeks. While there I kept a travel journal, writing an entry every couple of days. Here are links to the pages containing the trip journal from the second and third trips.

First

So far only minor glitches.  The instructions for the transit hotel in Singapore were confusing - I was supposed to stay in a hotel at the airport but I ended up wandering around the airport at 2 a.m. for a couple of hours before I figured out that I couldn't get to it {"You cain't get they-a from heah-a").   It turned out that I shouldn't have gone through immigration but should have stayed in the "international" part of the airport.  It got quite Kafka-esque as I got conflicting information from various people, and things started shutting down because of the late hour.   For example, I would take an elevator up to an office that someone said I should go to, only to find the office closed, and when I went back to the elevator I found it shut down for cleaning! Stood in a couple of wrong lines and walked around the terminal about five times, but I did survive.   I ended up getting a room at a decent hotel a few miles from the airport.

When I finally got to my room, (to make a perfect end to this story) I couldn't turn on the lights.  I went around and tried all possible combinations of wall and fixture switches, but nothing worked. I finally noticed a card slot next to the light switch at the door, and put my "card-key" in, and on came the lights.   So I washed up, pulled out the card-key (the lights stayed on), got into bed to read some ...and the lights went out... Turns out I had to leave the card-key in the slot. And all this on minimal sleep and being 12 hours out of phase.

I had hoped to do some sightseeing but it's raining cats and dogs here. The humidity is something else - last night when I stepped out of the airport to get a taxi my glasses fogged so bad I couldn't see.

Second

The flights on Singapore Airlines were fine.  The first leg (San Francisco to Singapore via Seoul) was in economy class, but there seemed to be an inch or so more of legroom than in the economy class that I’m used to.  On the second leg (Singapore to Chennai), for some unknown reason they bumped me up to business class!  Lots of legroom, real linens, better food and service, slippers, etc.  I don’t have a clue why they did that, but I wasn’t going to complain.  One mildly amusing episode: I was next to an Indian gentleman who had ordered a vegetarian meal.  When the Chinese flight attendant served him the appetizer, he asked what it was.  She replied “crab” (it was a crab cake).  He couldn’t understand her, and asked a couple of times.  Finally I “translated”, e.g., said it slowly and clearly (both the Indians and the Chinese speak really fast, and with different accents).  He then realized that he had been given the wrong meal and asked for the correct one.  That’s me, Mr. International Translator…

The airports in Seoul and Singapore were equivalent to U.S. airports in terms of construction and cleanliness.  Coming into Chennai, however, was definitely a different world.  Buildings in India (in general) are more run-down, smaller and (in the case of the Chennai airport) somewhat haphazardly constructed.

When I walked out of the Chennai airport (at 11 p.m.) I saw a man (among many others) holding a card with my name on it.  He took me to the hotel where I got a few hours sleep before going back to the airport and getting on the Chennai to Bangalore flight.

Security at the Chennai airport seemed both more restrictive and less coordinated than other airports I’ve been in.  Checked baggage was x-rayed and then sealed with a plastic strap.  My laptop case was “inspected” twice, complete with rubber stamps and all, and the attendant at the airplane checked to make sure that the stamps were there, but the “inspections” were less than rudimentary.

Got into Bangalore at 7 a.m., and expected to see a driver holding up the usual card with my name, but there wasn’t one.  A few taxi drivers came up and tried to talk me into their vehicles, but I just shook my head, and they eventually left me alone.  I didn’t quite know what to do, so I just stood there for a while, hoping that someone would eventually show up.  Finally someone whose business card said he was the “airport coordinator” for some other hotel took pity on me and called my hotel, which informed me that a car had not been requested for me, but that they would send one out.

…driving in India… is not something you really want to do.  A V.P. of Engineering that I used to work for had told me he couldn’t believe the traffic when he was in India a couple of years ago, and the Indians who had come to the Palo Alto office also reiterated that I shouldn’t even think of driving myself anywhere.  The phrase that I heard more than once was, “If you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere in the world.”

And it’s true.  Cars, busses, motorized three-wheel rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians are all going as fast as they can, as close as they can to each other (and I do mean inches).  One of the Indian men, while in Palo Alto, told me “in the US, it’s very rare to use your horn.  In India, it’s very rare NOT to use your horn”.  And that was also true.  The hotel driver in Bangalore was incessantly honking, regardless of whether the car was moving or not, whether other vehicles were close or not.  I just couldn’t figure out the “honking rules” – another language I’ll never decipher.  On the other hand, the woman who gave me a lift back to the hotel from the office at the end of my first day here never touched the horn once.  And (while it’s not like everyone is always honking) from my hotel room I hear at least one horn every few seconds (except late at night or early in the morning).

Third

I’ve spent two full days here now, working through my third.  I walk from the hotel to the office – about five blocks.  My first time walking there, I stayed on the sidewalk like a dutiful visitor, but at one point noticed that everyone else was walking on the edge of the street.  I suddenly realized that I had walked “through” a little shrine of sorts.  There was a “roof” over that section of the sidewalk, and were three or four little rooms all together with statues and altars and flowers in them – open onto the sidewalk, no doors.  I got another cue when I noticed some shoes on the sidewalk at the end of that little “block”.  Luckily there were very few worshippers at that time.  Ever since then I’ve walked around like everyone else, and see (as I go by) people placing flowers on the altars and bowing.

I will admit I haven’t seen much – just two airports, taxi rides to and from those airports, and the walk to the office, but it’s amazing that I’ve seen nothing that looks new.  Everything - buildings, sidewalks, street signs, buses, the little 3-wheel “rickshaws” – are all battered and patched.  The office here (the second-tallest building in Bangalore at 14 stories) has chair marks on all the walls, old furniture here and there (there is some newer stuff, but the general impression is NOT one of newness).  It depresses me.  I will say, however, the cars seem (a little) better kept up.

Every day I see men and women with brooms made of bundles of branches sweeping by the edge of the streets, the entranceways to buildings, and so forth.  It’s real “stoop” labor – the branches are a couple feet long so these folks are perpetually bent over.  In spite of this, there is a visible amount of trash and dirt around.  The sidewalks tend to have high curbs (8 to 10 inches), which makes for interesting walking.  I’m probably (for many reasons) not going to jog in the streets.  One man here said there’s a jogging track in a park a few minutes walk away, but that I should ONLY jog in the early morning, given that the pollution gets worse as the vehicles come out and the day goes on.

There have been multiple power outages (4 to 5) every day, but they usually only last a few minutes.  The real problem was that I was in an elevator in the hotel when I experienced the first one, and I had no idea how long it was going to be!  Since I’m only two floors up from the lobby I’ve decided to take the stairs from now on.  That won’t help at work, however, because I’m going to either the sixth or fourteenth floor.  Ah well, everyone else does it…

The office hours here are officially 9:30 to 6:30, but I’m coming in around 8 or so and running into the cleaning men.  They water the plants, clean the tops of all the tables and I don’t know what else.  Every day (today is Saturday and they were here in force earlier).

Breakfast at the hotel is mixed Indian and not.  Pancakes of different types, fruit, seasoned potatoes, omelets, etc.  Lunch is served at the office (on the roof).  There is usually some pea/bean/potato mix, another vegetable disk with (okra, onions, etc), a couple of rice mixes, soup, cucumbers and yogurt.  There are spoons for some of the food (especially the soup), but the preferred method of eating is to tear up a tortilla-like pancake and use it as a vehicle for getting the food to your mouth.  I’ve noticed that people tend not to shake hands while they’re eating this way, so I now don’t bother if I’m introduced to someone at lunch.

One characteristic of the Indians is that some of them shake their heads when they are listening to you.  I noticed this first back in the Palo Alto office with one of the guys who had come over from Bangalore.  While it looks (to a Westerner) as if they are saying “No”, they are really just saying, “yes, I understand”.  In some people here it’s turned into a head-wobble (e.g., the top of the head goes back and forth, as does the chin, as opposed to a shake).  Kinda reminds me of a bobble-headed doll whenever I see it.

Fourth

Different areas of India have different languages.  The official language is Hindi, but Indians learn the different languages if they move from place to place.  And these are not just dialects, but can be very different languages.  At lunch one guy said, after listening to a conversation between two others, “I couldn’t understand a thing they said”.  Also, there was an article in the newspaper (“The Times of India”, which slides under my hotel room door every morning) about the state of Karnataka (where Bangalore is) wanting to limit the number of foreign language movies.  In this case, “foreign language” did not mean just non-Indian, but meant any movies in the non-Karnatakan language (which is called Kannada) also.

I was taken out to dinner last night to a northern Indian restaurant.  We first ordered hot and sour soup.  The waiter told my companion (while looking at me) that it was hot, but I said I’d go ahead and try it.  It wasn’t that hot, actually pretty tasty.  It was like the hot and sour soup we get in Chinese restaurants, but with some ginger and other “spicy-er” spices.  It caught me in the throat a bit, but wasn’t anywhere near as bad as habanero peppers, or those small dark red Chinese peppers.  We had a chicken dish and some paneer (which is a cottage-cheese-like curd product sliced into cubes and fried).  There were several different versions of paneer on the menu – this came with tomatoes and green peppers with some tasty green sauce, along with a little pile of some sort of onion slices (with a few other vegetables like carrots mixed in) with a lime on top.  We squeezed the lime on the pile and it was good.  Had some “dal”, which I believe is a kind of pea or lentil, but this version of it was a thin paste that we scooped up with “roti” – tortilla-like bread, though thicker than the stuff served at the company lunches.  Coke in glass bottles.  Tiny onions pickled in vinegar.

At the end of the meal the waiter put a small oblong bowl on the table that contained a cup or two of seeds, with a small container of sugar and some toothpicks.  I asked my companion what it was, but he couldn’t come up with an English word, and I couldn’t get the Indian one.  He said it was eaten “for digestion” after the meal, but was bitter, so that people mixed it with sugar to eat it.  I chewed on a few of the seeds, and I believe it was anise from the shape and flavor.

Very few women in the restaurant.  I asked about that and was told that it’s not common.  We showed up at the restaurant at about 7:15 and it was completely empty.  By 8:15 or so it was almost completely full.  I asked my companion when he usually eats and he said 10:30!  [Later: he does eat that late.  A few days later he told me he’d had dinner with a co-worker at 11:30 in the evening.]

My companion took me along “MG” (Mahatma Gandhi) Road for a few blocks, then along another street (again, couldn’t get the name at first, but it turned out to be “Brigade Road”).  He said this was the main shopping district, and the sidewalks were a massive crush of people.  There were clothing stores, statues/”knickknack” stores, coffee bars, mobile phone stores and so forth.  Vendors selling paper cones full of warm peanuts – my guide bought us each one, and in spite of having been cautioned not to eat food off the street, I did.  That was last night and so far my digestive system isn’t giving me signals that I did wrong (at least this time).

Fifth

I did a little research on the “digestive” seeds later, and it turned out to be fennel – see http://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/history/people/cuisine/vocab.html and look at “saunf”.  It’s also available at the company lunches on the roof, although this form has been dipped in sugar water and dried with a sugar film, so there is no little separate cup of sugar.  They also use the term “fenugreek”.

“Hundai’s #1 Dealer in South India”, across the street from the hotel, must have gotten a delivery in.  Yesterday they had five cars outdoors and a couple indoors, but today they have twenty-one “on the lot”.  The cars remind me of the little “Swatch” cars we saw when we were in France – they’re four-person (small person!) squashed hatchback-type, but it looks like you could easily fit two into an SUV.

Every morning about seven a motorcycle pulls into the hotel driveway.  A woman gets off the back, unwraps the “scarf” from her head, takes off a western-style jacket and gives it to her (I assume) husband, who puts it on.  She then drapes the “scarf” around the front of her neck with the ends hanging in back (standard style) and goes into the back of the hotel, while he takes off for wherever.  Somehow I’m a bit comforted by this regular domestic ritual.

Motorcycles are called “bikes” here – there are many more motorcycles than bicycles, though I do see a few bicycles here and there.  In the evening in that shopping district near here there will be rows and rows of these “bikes” parked cheek-by-jowl (I don’t know how they get one “out of the middle”), while their owners take in the nighttime scene.  The co-worker who took me to dinner a couple of nights ago offered to take me on his bike, but I declined.  It’s harrowing enough to be in a car in this traffic, let alone a motorbike, without helmet and fully armored suit.

Before I left my boss asked me if I had packed any laundry soap (in semi-jest).  Now that I’m here, I can’t envision going to an Indian laundromat (if such a thing exists).  Sent my laundry out (to the hotel cleaners) for the first time.  When I got back in the evening there was a wicker tray with socks, underwear and so forth, but no shirts and pants.  They were delivered a bit later, and each piece of clothing had a little cloth tag tied to it (through the button hole of a shirt, for example) with my room number drawn on it in pen.  I’m again struck by the amount of “hand-work” done here – e.g., no staple or plastic twist-tie or such, but simple cotton string hand-tied to each article of clothing.  Luckily I had a pair of fingernail scissors to cut them off…

Finally exchanged some dollars for rupees.  The exchange rate is around 47 rupees to the dollar.  I haven’t really had any need for cash yet, but I thought I’d get some anyway.  No one will let me pay for dinner, and I’ve been getting breakfast at the hotel and lunch at work.  The bills are different sizes, not wildly colorful but more interesting than our greenbacks. Gandhi is on the 10 and 500 rupee note.

Last night another member of the team took me around the shopping district.  At one point we stopped and he bought a couple ears of roasted corn from a street vendor.  This vendor had a pot of hot coals where he would just lay the corn until the tops of the kernels were black.  He would then rub lime on the ear and sell it (he was doing quite a lively business).  The corn was much more dense and chewy than the corn I’m used to.  It wasn’t bad, though…

We then went out to dinner at a Southern Indian restaurant that is just across the street from the hotel.  There were big sections of banana leaves at each place on the table, and I first assumed that they were placemats.  The “condiment” tray in the middle of the table had four compartments: salt, very finely ground peanuts (they said “groundnuts” and it took me a bit to figure that out), sun-dried chilies with the seeds out, and some kind of vegetable relish (at least that’s what I was able to decipher).  We ordered some chicken biryani (I think that was the name) and some curry fish… at least I thought it was “we” until they went ahead and ordered other dishes for themselves!

[Beginning Of Slight Digression]  One of the first days I was here I was so tired I went back to the hotel and fell asleep without dinner.  I made the mistake of telling them that, and they were horrified.  Now, every day, they ask me, “Did you take your dinner last night?” and continue to stuff me with food (or at least make sure I have lots) at lunch and dinner. [End Of Slight Digression]

So I end up with these two dishes in front of me.  My companions begin putting their food directly on the banana leaf – it was really the “plate”, not the placemat.  I do the same.  One of them had gotten the same dish I did, which turned out to be a medium size mound of rice with a number of pieces of chicken in it, with sauce (always called “gravy” on the menu) in a little dish on the side.  The other man had gotten a rice dish “in curd”, sort of a rice and yogurt mix.  I also was given a little dish of “salad in curd” – sliced carrots and other vegetables swimming in a yogurt-like liquid.

It was all tasty, but I wasn’t able to eat it all – it was just too much food.  This had also happened two nights before when I was taken out to dinner by the “bike”-driving guy. In both cases they saw pretty clearly that I was slowing down, and assured me that I didn’t have to finish.  The first night my eating companion went so far as to move all the food from my side of the table to his so that I wouldn’t continue stuffing myself (not that he ate it, he just wanted to get it out of my reach). After every meal there are finger bowls, or the ritual of getting up and going to the hand-washing faucets.

Sixth

Every day I think, “there won’t be anything to write about today…” but there’s always something (and usually more than one thing).

Today was a holiday, some major harvest festival, and not many people were in the office.  There weren’t, however, any indications (aside from the lack of people in the office and the distinct lack of morning commute traffic) that there was anything going on.  One of the guys who was my “escort” today told me that outside of Bangalore where there are actual harvests there are celebrations, but not in the city.  I had planned to work in the morning and then go walk around with him in the afternoon, but I hit a bug that needed to be fixed.

We did, however, go out to lunch.  He started to walk towards his “bike”, but I told him I didn’t ride because friends of mine had been in accidents.  So I took my first ride in one of the motorized three-wheel “rickshaws” with him.  They aren’t as frightening as they seem.  They can’t go very fast, and you’re pretty low to the ground, so they don’t feel unstable.  On the other hand you’re right next to the exhaust of the buses.  They seem like they can hold two people at most, but I’ve seen three and even four packed in sometimes.  They have little gas engines, a cloth roof but no doors, and are steered by bicycle-like handles, not steering wheels.  Both of the ones we went in would stop running whenever we stopped at a stop-light, and the drivers would restart them as needed, but I don’t know if that is a common characteristic or whether these were particularly out-of-tune (if such a phrase can even apply…).  When I got in behind the driver I found myself facing the back of a Nike baseball cap.  At least he wasn’t wearing it backwards.

My coworker took me to a place that was about a fifteen-minute drive from the office, named something like “Orchids and Roses”.  We were the only people in the place – more evidence of the holiday.  He said that normally there would be more people there, coming from their offices for lunch.  We had a kabob platter with chicken and fish, chicken curry named after the man who had the Taj Mahal built, and pineapple in the ever-present curd.  All good.  Fresh pineapple juice.  Slices of little red onions with lime juice squeezed over them.  Yet another kind of flat bread with stuffed with garlic and cheese.

There is a strange mixture of courtesy and, how shall I say, arbitrary authority, about some Indians. A number of times during the meal my companion would, in a somewhat preemptory fashion, ask the waiter to come over to dish us from dishes already on the table.  It would have been just as easy (and probably quicker) for me to dish myself.  Admittedly we were the only people in the place, but it still felt awkward to me (though I obviously wasn’t going to say or do anything).  On the other hand, I cannot convince them to let me pay for anything – meals, rickshaw rides or anything else.  It’s maddening.

We walked a few blocks from the restaurant to a main street where we could pick up another rickshaw to get back to the office.  On the way we were surrounded by a group of young men, a couple who had tin boxes (about the size of a cigar box) full of old coins and little statutes.  My first reaction was just to shake my head, but my companion started looking through and picked out two coins, one very old looking (e.g., hundreds of years) and one less so (maybe within the last century).  Both were about the size of a dime.  He also picked out a little metal statue of Ganesh, the god with the elephant trunk.  I assumed he was getting them for himself but, after he paid for them, he handed them to me. 

He said the old one was somewhere around 400 years old, while the other was from the time of the British Empire.  The old one is very irregular, with indecipherable shapes.  The “newer” one has what looks like a British seal on one side and some Indian/Asian-looking curlicues on the other (that I can dimly see through the tarnish).

We got into another rickshaw, and, as we were driven back he showed me, on the Ganesh statue, two cords that are worn over one shoulder and down to the waist on the other side.  He said this was a caste mark (or some kind of indication) of the Brahmin class. He then reached under his (Western-looking) shirt and produced two similar cords.  There was something very striking about the image of the “ancient” tradition hiding under modern clothing.  I made some joke about him being like Ganesh, and he hastened to assure me that many people wore these cords (although he went on to joke that “I do have a belly like Ganesh” – although he was not quite that chubby).

 I feel quite touched by this gift of a statue, and I’m really at a loss how to respond.  I’m starting to joke with him (and the others that keep taking me out) about the restaurants I’m going to take them to when they come to America.  I keep searching for an example of American cuisine (besides hamburgers!), and the only thing I’ve been able to come up with so far is barbeque, which doesn’t hold a candle to some of the spiced chicken and fish I’ve been scarfing down.

When we got back to the office one of his friends was also coming in.  I’m pretty sure I never met him, but he said “Hello, Chris” and started to talk (immediate paranoia on my part that “everyone knows my name!” or, “I’m meeting people and then forgetting them!”).  My lunch companion showed him the booty from earlier, and he immediately asked where we had gotten them, and looked at them with much enjoyment.

Saw my first beggars today.  On the way to work this morning there was an old man squatting at the edge of the sidewalk.  Also, as we got out of the first rickshaw to go into the restaurant an old woman came up.  My companion shook his head at her a few times, but then gave her a couple of coins.  I have heard that Bangalore is one of the “best” cities for beggars (in that there are fewer here than other places).

Little quirks:  I can’t find wastebaskets in the conference rooms at the office.  Glasses of coke appear from nowhere when I’ve gotten up to do something.

Seventh

The power outlet in my room in the hotel is driving me nuts.  Actually it’s not the outlet, it’s the hotel’s trying to “fix” it that’s frustrating me.  I can’t get power to my laptop from that outlet, so I plug it into the outlet in the bathroom and drag a chair in there to use the machine (for this journal or whatever). I reported it to the front desk the first day I was there.  When I came back in the evening there was a note saying “fixed”, but it wasn’t.  I mentioned it again, and they immediately sent someone up, who promptly stuck a screwdriver into the outlet and started wrenching it around (evidently trying to move the contacts around).  I had visions of him getting shocked and his hair standing on end (just like in cartoons).  He got it to work, and I plugged my laptop in and got underway with this journal.  The next day, the outlet didn’t work again.  Not what I would call a long-term fix.  It’s been a couple of days now, and I’m debating whether I should just keep calling them every day until it’s really fixed or just put up with working in the bathroom.

Maybe it’s like all the holes and piles of rubble on the sidewalks.  It works, sort of.

I was surprised to learn that all of India is one time zone.  Looking at a map, I find that the country is only about 1200 miles wide.  I don’t know why – maybe I feel like the country is “bigger” because it has such a large population (over one billion people, adding 18 million, which equals Australia, yearly).

Before I left for India, one of the Indians who was at the Palo Alto office for a few weeks gave me a few items of advice.  One of them I didn’t fully understand.  It had something to do with toilets, something about “we use water, not paper”.  I was wondering if I should pack my own toilet paper, but decided that it couldn’t be.  Well, they do have toilet paper here, but every bathroom also has a short hose and a bucket next to the toilet.  Occasionally I will go to one of the bathrooms on the floor where my “office/conference room” is, and find water over the floor and the toilet.  It’s not dirty, understand, it’s just wet.  I think I have a general idea what’s going on, but somehow I prefer not to think too much about it…

Eighth

Finally hit some Indian food that was too hot for me.  One of the team took me out to lunch on Saturday, and we had (among other items) a plate of battered and fried vegetables (onions, potatoes, “paneer”).  Among the vegetables was “capiscum”, which I had actually been warned about, but the person who warned me compared it bell pepper (which seemed innocuous at the time).  Turns out it looks like bell pepper, but hits like habanero chilies.  [Later: turns out I ate a small, hot chili-pepper, and the bell pepper-like vegetables are OK.]  Luckily I only ate a small piece, but it stayed with me for a long time.  The rest of the meal consisted of small samosas (conical pastries filled with vegetables), small onions and a very tasty vegetable dish in some kind of red sauce (my host was vegetarian, which was fine with me).  It’s a little frustrating sometimes when I’d really like to know what’s in a dish, but because the person I’m with doesn’t have the English words, I end up not knowing.

He didn’t eat much, but kept pressing me to eat, so, as usual, there was food left on the table when we got up.  Maybe that’s the polite way to express to your host that the meal was good, I don’t know.  Also found out that all these meals are really on the company.  In fact, my host said that he had never been in this particular restaurant before.  There were a lot of items on the menu, and I asked him about one that he couldn’t explain.  So even for native Indians there are restaurant mysteries.

After lunch he took me sightseeing.  He had arranged for a “city taxi” – a kind of mini-mini-mini-van that could hold five people in a pinch.  We went to a place called Nandi Hills, about 60 kilometers (36 miles) from Bangalore.  The trip there and back was my first introduction to the Indian countryside.  I was so overwhelmed with impressions that I had jot down some notes the instant I got back to the hotel, for fear that I’d forget something.

The contrast between modern and old India kept hitting me in the face.  Part of the road that we went on was being widened, so there were men in hardhats driving earthmovers and pavement-laying machines and so forth.  By the side of the road were big stumps of trees that had been uprooted to make way for the widening.  I would see skinny, barefoot women in almost African-looking dress hacking away at these roots with axes to get firewood, then collecting the wood in big bundles and walking away with the bundles on their heads.

I also saw a few clusters of small communities of people living in tarp-tents, and right nearby (almost next door) would be a new house under construction with a huge satellite dish.

When we got further out, there would be people herding goats or cattle alongside the road.  A few times monkeys would run out in front of the car.  The driver would honk at them just like he honked at anything else that got in his way (or might possibly get in his way).  Once a small group of pigs moseyed across in front of us, and every now and then there would be a skinny dog or two.  There would occasionally be people driving cattle-drawn carts along the side of the road, sometimes with the horns of the cattle wrapped in colored cloth (or paper?), sometimes with bells on the end of the horns.

I also noticed occasional patches in the road of what looked like straw, and at one point I saw a man actually empty a burlap sack of this stuff onto the road right in front of our car.  I believe that they “use” the traffic to thresh this stuff (some kind of wheat?), because at one point I saw a group of women with brushes sweeping up a conical pile of slightly reddish kernels, and a few of the flatter-looking patches seemed to be straw on top and the reddish stuff underneath.  I would assume that they wash it before they use it for food… or maybe animal feed, though all of the cattle I see are grazing, not at feed troughs, and given the levels of poverty I see I don’t imagine that they would spend all that energy on food for animals.

Indian truck and bus drivers decorate their vehicles with lights, painted designs and sometimes garlands.  One that made me grin was a truck that we approached from behind – the truck bed was high enough to see the differential (the big lump between the back wheels).  On the back of the differential was painted the blue face of some Hindu god.

We drove up to the top of the tallest “hill” – really a small mountain poking up from the plain (see http://travel.indiamart.com/karnataka/hill-stations/nandi-hills.html).  The views were impressive, but I again noticed the general run-down look of most of the buildings at the top.  There were some shops and a temple.  We went into the temple and I witnessed my first Hindu “ceremony” (though it was pretty brief).  We took our shoes off and went into the temple building through a low stone door.  To the left there was a statue back in an alcove, and two lines of Indian school kids (around 10 years old) facing the alcove. Out of the alcove came a priest chanting, and the kids responded with a call-and-response.  They all had their hands held in front of their chests in prayer, and my driver and companion did the same.  The priest was carrying a dish with a bowl in the center with a small flame coming from the bowl.  The kids (and my companion and driver) dropped coins on the plate and passed their hands quickly over the flame.  That priest went back into the alcove and another priest came out with a bowl.  Everyone (except me, of course) dipped their fingers in the bowl and dotted their foreheads with what looked like water.  They sprinkled what water was left on their hands over their heads.

We walked around a bit, took a few pictures (it wasn’t too hazy to see the plains below, but the even the air out there didn’t look particularly good) and then drove down and back to Bangalore, getting lost in the process.  The driver took a wrong turn and ended up having to ask people how to get back.  We finally got back on the road that I recognized and drove back to the city.

On the way back, in the dusk, as we got into the city, I saw something truly terrifying.  Some driver weaved past us through the traffic, weaving through Indian traffic!  Even our driver, who had done his requisite share of heart-stopping maneuvers that day, just shook his head.

Some of the stoplights in Bangalore have countdown timers, so drivers can tell when they are going to go green.  Most drivers seem to turn off there gas while waiting (which can be up to 80 seconds).  Still the exhaust and gasoline fumes are overpowering.

We got back to Bangalore about 7, and then went to the ISKON temple.  This place is huge, seemed to be about the size of four Mormon Temples (the one up in the Oakland hills).  This is a temple to Krishna, built within the last four or five years, by (I believe) what we would, in the states, call the “Hare Krishnas”.  We had to take our shoes off in the parking lot, and were shuffled, along with a large crowd, up flights of stairs through a couple of shrines (although maybe I’m not using the right term – large golden statues in alcoves).  At each shrine people would do the flame and water ritual.  Up at the top was a huge room with a series of statues/shrines, many people on the floor praying or worshipping.  Here we walked in front of the shrines – there were walkways with “gates” with bells (hanging above your head) at each end, so that before you walked in front of the series of statues you rang one bell, and when you got to the other side you rang another bell.

After that you were routed through a long series of “gift shops” – books about Krishna and the founder of this temple (from what I could gather), incense, photographs (no photography was allowed), statues, food, etc.  I bought a few pictures.  My host then bought us all some “dosa masala” – a pancake wrapped around some spiced potatoes and vegetables.  (I have been having masala omlettes for breakfast.)  This was at about 8:30 in the evening, and was considered only a snack – as usual, supper was to come later.  I, however, asked to be taken back to the hotel, as I was completely out of steam at that point.  The drive back through evening Bangalore traffic took almost an hour…

Ninth

Before I came out here, one of the Indian women who had come to the Palo Alto office told me about the “importance of the family”.  Now that I’m here I can see that.  This past weekend two of the four guys on the development team took 8-10 hour train rides (overnight) to go back to their “native place” and be with their parents just for the weekend.  They leave Friday night, get there Saturday morning, and then repeat the process Saturday or Sunday night to get back to Bangalore.  A third would have done the same but he missed the train.  They say that they do this maybe once a month.  The fourth is going back to see his folks in a few weeks (he has a 40-hour train ride).

The first few days I was here, the woman who is the team lead was wearing saris.  A couple of days ago she started coming in pants.  I asked her about it and she said that her in-laws were in town, and that’s why she was wearing saris.

So far (knock on wood), I haven’t been nailed by any Indian bacteria.  I haven’t done what I consider extremely “risky” behavior, but while out walking with people they have offered me food from street vendors (peanuts, corn on the cob), and I haven’t felt like I could turn it down.  An acquaintance of my wife (she has told me) is horrified that I actually did that.  Perhaps I’ve been lucky.  I’m not going out much at this point, so I don’t think that will happen any more.  My wife’s friend also recommended brushing my teeth with bottled water and not opening my mouth in the shower – I’ve been using tap water for my teeth but haven’t been (intentionally) keeping my mouth open in the shower.

At the bus stop (that I walk by every day on my way to the office) are some public bathrooms, with signs exhorting people to use them (pictures of kids holding their noses, etc).  I didn’t think much about that the first couple of days, but lately, about every other day, I’ve been seeing someone peeing in public, and I’ve seen a couple of walls with “No Urinating” signs on them.

Everyone leaves their bicycles unlocked here.  However, there are lots of private guards at the entrances to stores.  I even saw one of them frisk an Indian (employee?) who was leaving the store.  At a bank I see on my way to the office, there are three or four guards in front with (what looks like) an airport-style metal-detecting “gate”.

I saw a sign on a bookstore that said: “Books in Kannada, Telgu, Hindi, and English”.  More evidence of the “internal” multi-lingual aspect of India.

Twice I’ve come back to the hotel, picked up my key, but not been able to open the door.  The security people come by and unlock it with one of their keys, and inform me that it was “double-locked” to protect my valuables.  Gives me a pause, but I always have my laptop with me at work, and I don’t have anything really valuable (except for the pictures of my family!) to lose.

I don’t think I could ever get used to the late schedule that people work on here.  Most people get into the office around 9:30 or 10.  Lunch is around 12:30 or so, then there’s usually a break around 5 or 6.  There is someone on the roof selling pastries and drinks.  Then a lot (but not all) of them work till 7 or 8, then go out and have dinner later.  It’s just too late for me.

Tenth

I’ve wanted to get some postcards, so yesterday after lunch they took me to a bookstore where I picked up some, as well as a few calendars with pictures of the multitudinous Indian gods.  On the way, in traffic, I was amused by the license numbers on the rickshaws.  They use some encoding which starts with KA0, so there are KA01, KA02, and so forth.  The license numbers are usually stenciled on the backs of the rickshaws, and the sometimes the “KA05” number really looks (appropriately) like “KAOS”.  The license plates on the “bikes” are all hand-lettered.  The “bike” guy said that you get a blank plate when you “register” your bike, and it’s up to you to get the license number onto it.

The woman who is head of the team drove me.  She has a large red “L” made out of tape on her windshield.  I asked her about it, and she said that it stood for “learner” – some kind of self-defense against the traffic.  I did notice, however, that this time she did not hesitate to use her horn.  I saw the perfect traffic picture: we had stopped at a traffic light, and facing us (on the other side) was a solid wall of rickshaws and bikes.  I thought it would be a good quiz: guess how many lanes are really painted on this street (which bears no resemblance to the number of vehicles actually using it).

As we walked along the sidewalk towards the bookstore a beggar girl came up beside us with her hand out.  She also opened her mouth to me – I assumed that was a signal that she was hungry.  She also had some kind of folded paper in her hand (a begging permit?).  The person with me just said “No” a few times and she went away.

I was talking with some of the team members about the various Indian gods, mentioning that Ganesh seemed the most popular.  One of them said that whenever a business starts up (or any type of endeavor), they always get a Ganesh statue and display the symbol for Ganesh.  I thought back to the little Ganesh statue the one of the team members gave me during one of the first few days I was here.

Eleventh

Yesterday I went out of the hotel and found one of the piles of leaves (raked up by the broom-people) smoldering away.  I wasn’t sure if it was an accident or on purpose, but today I saw that only some of the pile had been burnt, so I’m guessing that it was an accident.  It wasn’t, however, the first time I’ve seen smoldering stuff by the side of the street.

Went into the hotel “gym” this morning and the lights and air-conditioning weren’t on yet.  The lights weren’t a problem because one of the walls is glass, looking out onto the pool, so there’s plenty of natural light.  A couple other times I’ve been in when the A/C was off, and after about a half-hour the glass starts to fog up.  So I propped the door open this time, and sometime later someone turned the A/C on.

Noticed today that the air wasn’t quite as bad as during the week (the usual burning smell was much toned down).  I guess that the air is better today because it’s Sunday and there’s not as much traffic.  It’s also Indian “Independence Day” – when the first Indian government took over from the British.  There’s supposed to be some military show on a parade ground near here, and I’ve seen more military around in the past few days.

There are street vendors on many of the city blocks with little carts, selling cigarettes and snacks.  One of the smokers in this team buys his cigarettes one at time, “because I smoke less”.  Each cigarette costs about 3 rupees – about 6 cents.

Walking to work during the week I will occasionally see schoolboys, some carrying cricket bats.  I’ve been watching some cricket on TV.  There are articles in the newspaper about “cricket” widows (just like football widows in the U.S.).

Even though they are not really needed, there are elevator operators in the elevators in the building where the offices are.  At this point they recognize me, and just automatically press the button for the floor where I have my “office”.  The security guards also know me now, so I don’t bother getting a visitor badge any more.  I wonder if they are automatically signing me in.

There is a lot of construction in Bangalore.  Usually the scaffolding is of the type I’d see in the U.S. (e.g., steel pipe).  Occasionally, however, I see some made of lashed-together tree-trunks.  It’s quite a contrast to see this on the front of an otherwise “modern” building.

Last night one of my coworkers took me out shopping.  Actually I did more looking than shopping that time, so now I know where to get what I want.  As we were walking through the usual crush of people, a beggar woman with a small child in her arms came up to us and made that now-familiar gesture of her hand toward her mouth.  When I shook my head she then laid her hand on my arm and walked with us for a few steps, pleading all the while (not that I understood the words, but the intent was clear).  I do feel bad, but, while there aren’t lots of beggars, there are enough that I don’t want to hand money out willy-nilly.  On the way back from the stores the same woman waylaid us again, and this time she was so insistent that my coworker had to interpose himself between us to shake her off.  Maybe next time (if there is one), I’ll slip her a coin.

Eating lunch with a coworker yesterday, I noticed that he didn’t use his left hand at all.  When he had to tear a piece of bread (a version of the flatbread called “nan”), he would hold it down with the little and ring fingers of his right hand and tear it with thumb and first finger of that same hand.  Now I’ve got to watch others eat and see if they do the same thing.  I’ve read that in some countries you never eat with your left hand because that’s the hand you use to clean up with (after using the toilet).  Don’t know if that’s the reason here or not.  And I’m left-handed.  Oh well…

Twelfth

There haven’t hardly any power outages in the last week or so.  So the power seems to be getting better while the air seems to be getting worse.

Tried to go out shopping yesterday (Sunday) around four, but most of the shops I wanted to go into (that we had been in the day before) were closed.  On Saturday, when my coworker took me to the shops,  he told me we shouldn’t go before four, because some of the shops were closed in the afternoon.

I now believe that the piles of leaves are intentionally burned.  I found the pile (that had been partially burned earlier) burning again, and the next day it was completely gone (e.g., cleaned up), with only scorch marks on the curb as evidence.  The next day there was a “fresh” pile of leaves there.  I’ve seen a number of other smoking piles, including one that was in a trough running along the sidewalk. These troughs are usually covered over with stone slabs about 18 inches wide by 3 feet long, but sometimes are left open (another element of the daily Bangalore obstacle course).  This one was particularly picturesque, because it was evening, and with darkening sky and the light coming up through the smoke “from below”, I immediately thought about Dante’s “Inferno”.

The customer population of the restaurant in the hotel where breakfast is served is usually about half-and-half Indian and western.  One morning, however, I was intrigued to see a table occupied by three Japanese-looking monks in dark red robes, with a (Japanese-looking) woman in “Polo” t-shirt and jeans.  I was struck both by the monks and their contrast with their companion.

There a loose dogs all over the place.  None of them, however, are ever even remotely threatening.

The cleaning boys (and girls) were a little too enthusiastic this morning.  I came in to find that my mouse-pad (???) was extremely wet.

A couple of nights ago I was taken to a Shiva shrine where I saw a white stone (pieced together with masonry) statue of Shiva that must have been 30-40 feet tall.  It was open to the air, with an open area in front where people were praying or (seemingly) just quietly talking.  As we entered the area (after taking off our shoes, of course) there was the bell hanging from the gate (as in ISKON temple).    A curved “backdrop” of snow-looking stuff surrounded the back and sides of the statue (without touching it).  One of my companions said that this represented the mountains in Northern India, and it’s in those mountains that Shiva lives today.  There is a “tunnel” through the base of the “mountain range”, and we walked through it.  It contained a number of “Shiva lingams” – very primitive and primeval representations of Shiva which aren’t much more than a round-topped column sitting on an an oval-shaped “bed” open at one end (a little hard to describe - see http://www.templenet.com/beliefs/shivling.htm).  These Shiva lingams were from various part of India – some of them were covered with shells, some with cooked, puffed rice, a variety of materials.  There was also one of ice (melting slowly away, of course).  There were little donation boxes at each station with a few coins in each.

After we emerged from the tunnel behind the statue. I wanted to take a picture but the “security” guard said I’d have to take it from farther back.  We walked in front of the statue and then stood for quite a while just looking and talking a little bit.  One of my companions said that each family actually picks their own deity (though all the many tens or hundreds of thousands of Hindu gods are really all aspects of the same god).  Some rich families build their own temples.

I was very impressed/moved/affected by this place, much more so than the ISKON temple.  This place is more of a place where even I could meditate and worship.

We then bought some small Ganesh statues, gifts for some people in the office.  My companions attempted to bargain down the seller, but he wouldn’t budge.  They seemed disappointed, but the stuff is so cheap here that it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. They were amazed that I had paid $44 in postage to get maple candy mailed to Bangalore from New Hampshire as gifts for them – and that wasn’t even the $63 3-day rate.

They then took me to dinner in a mall-type of place that’s right in front of the shrine.  This place has “castle”-themed architecture – battlements and towers that seem somewhat out of place.  We first had “pani puri” – small flour shells about the size of small eggs with some potatoes and peas inside.  There was a small cup of “masala water”, which they poured into the “shell”, at which point you had to eat it quickly before the water dissolved the shell.  A taste that’s interesting (in a good way), but hard to describe.  We then had a pancake with onions and chilis (we picked the chilis out), then some rice and noodle dishes.

This was the only time that I got nailed.  Incredible stomach-aches that night and a bad day next day, but the day after I was fine.  Didn't even hit the Cipro my doctor prescribed for me.

The day I left the team gave me a very nice “model” of the Taj Mahal, in marble.  The carving and painting is very well done.  There were also flowers and a vase and a shirt and a Hanuman statue and a little beetle “toy” and a couple boxes of candy.  You can’t stop them…  One of the team member’s wife made some sweets named “Laddu”, a ball of sweetened flour with a raisin on top.

In the Chennai airport I was looking at the monitoers showing the arriving flights (it switched between arriving and departing).  I suddenly noticed a mouse cursor moving around, and then some text being typed into one of the lines of the display. Guess they got out of synch... 

On the way back, I met a man from Singapore in the Chennai airport.  He told me you need three things to drive in India: a good horn, good brakes and good luck.  He also (unknowningly) encapsulated the experience for me when he said, "India is united by its diversities."

And so home.

Last Modified: Wednesday, April 18, 2007