Random Observations for posterity: India trip 10/22-11/4/2019
This was an India trip after 8 years. In some ways it was an eye re-opener for me. I had quaint ideas of how things might be despite the build up of expectations before the trip, and did
not realize my ideas and expectations were quite amiss. Quite often we get stuck in a snapshot of what things
should be like and do not realize that times and rituals change, and our frame
of reference has not. However, I found this trip quite refreshing and instead
of getting stuck on lingering on the memory of the moment, due to the constant
sensory overload, I made an attempt to experience the moment and move on. This
was also because I had limited time and my attention was divided between family
in India and checking back on family in the US. This is a a set of random
observations that I have tried to document in no specific order or pattern,
taking things as they come.
One very striking thing that hit me the very moment I
stepped out of the airport was the sense of needing to define our space and
time you occupied that space as a vehicle driver or pedestrian on the road. It
was that few inches of space and for those few moments that belonged to you. You
had to move to let another person occupy it or else you would be colliding into
each other. It was as if I was the culprit if I did not move in this Brownian
movement of orderly chaos. There was no anger at being pushed out or being
honked at. It was an understood transaction with implicit rules, that there
were no rules! And for this reason, somehow, strangely, everything seemed very
small. This is hard to explain- it is as if the streets were smaller- the
landmarks you grew up with looked petite sized and stunted. Because their being
big was defined by the moment being longer. With so many people on the road,
the moment was smaller, shared.
Driving in India was something I looked forward to, but
riding on the a rickshaw, I began to feel a sinking pessimism about the prospect.
My days in Mumbai I had relished at being able to get on my bike and get to Regal
Cinema for a late-night show or BTC for a sinful lunch or the Worli Seaface or
Bandra for a breather at the spur of the moment. However, there are so many
more cars and 2 wheelers, and so much lesser space on the road, with the Indian
penchant for the elastic waisting of the underbelly, the disregard for traffic
rules and order in street is not unexpected. Driving on 2 lanes is not frowned
upon. It is a way to claim your space.
Uber, especially Uber rickshaw became my go to way of
getting around. In some ways it is such a democratic equalizer. I fell in love
with the ease of being able to summon a rickshaw without having to deal with a
dismissive “nai” for your pleas of “rickshaw aata hai kya?”. It is also less
displeasing to allow the driver from ‘8 drivers nearby’ to refuse your ride through
the app without you seeing it as a dismissive brush-off. There is no haggling over fare, demand for
return fare, or meter “nahi chalu”,” kab chalu kiya”. The security feature is an
important addition and most welcome.
I was also impressed at how good google maps was at locating
the best route to your destination despite landmarks being random/non-orderly
like the Maruti mandir on your street corner or near the chakki mill en route
to the talao.
Getting through a day of work with many distracting demands of
your attention can often make you frustrated, unfocused. I would imagine the
job of a bank teller clerk would be an example of such a job profile. Many people
of diverse backgrounds, profiles and interests making demands, asking
questions, trying to eke a shekel extra here or there. On a humid hot day we were
witness to a bank officer at the SBI branch at Thane be the epitome of imperturbation.
She was quite being harassed at around closing time on a Saturday afternoon at
the bank. The air conditioning was off, the room was hot and sweaty. A novice
businessman kept demanding that she process a transaction which seemed poorly defined,
or detailed. Another rotund pan chewing hombre wanted his transfer of money
done before Diwali. I wanted an internet banking password reset. An elderly
gent needed his withdrawal approved. This lady seemed able to attend to
everyone, without losing her patience, in a Buddha like calm. It was as if the
travails of demonetization had given them the inner peace of being able to
dissociate the affective response from the work to be done. Within those few
moments I learnt a lot about how one can decide how much the environment around
them affect them negatively by making a conscious choice about how to react. Eventually
we will get from point A in time to point B. It is all about what state we are
in when we arrive at point B.
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| Sample of a menu from a vegetarian restaurant in Thane |
If it’s India trip you have to talk about food. Of course it
was Diwali, but still, I kid you not, in a street in Thane, which is less than
500 yds long, there are 11 pastry/sweet shops. Sugar has sweetened the tongue, fattened
the underbelly, raised the A1c, and expectations, enhanced the creativity and
the appetite of the Indian middle class. I would like to propose that like
hoarding gold, pigging on sugar can be called a defining characteristic of the
Indian middle class.
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| Meeting with friends at a barbeque style restaurant in Pune |
I had thought that I would run amok on treating myself to Indian
culinary treats this visit, but strangely found my appetite for Indian food lacking
and in need of some juice. Maybe it was the concern of calories or maybe my gastrointestinal
tract has become more blasé and unadventurous with age and lack of stimulation.
All said and done, I tasted everything I wanted to, but thankfully did not pillage
on the offerings.
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| Before Lonavla |
I had quaint memories of riding on the expressway from
Mumbai to Pune on the Shivneri buses from my days in Mumbai. I thought that
with the October rains, the wholesome weather, my ride through the ghats would
be memorable. I think I let my expectations rise too high.
The romance of the
ghats was lost on me. It was like an orgasm that did not come. There were signs
galore- ‘India’s biggest amazement park’, ‘ baghtoys kaay raagana, linen
ghatlay vaghana’. Big FM was playing on the car radio- “Jaadu hai nasha hai”.
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| After Lonavla |
The
clouds covered the mountain tops, the weather was misty, the mood languid and
peaceful. But the magic wasn’t there. I cannot explain it- maybe it is the same
idea- we get caught up in a frame of reference but the frame itself moves.
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| The road to Pune is littered with banners like this |
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| Ghats |
70 Mercedes cars booked on Dhanteras!. So the papers
screamed. There were Porsches, Range Rovers and Ford SUVs on the Pune roads.
However, there is no space for all these cars. The traffic exchanges are
torturous, especially in evenings when the vehicle traffic is heavy. There is a
heavy diesel odor which dries up your throat and makes you want to rinse and
gavage when you get home. People wearing surgical masks while driving solo on
their 2 wheelers is ironic! I will still drive and contribute to the pollution,
even if I have to wear a mask for it. It is like a fat man not cutting down on
intake and taking an obesity pill for weight loss.
Despite the pollution, the concept of an evening stroll is
something which I cherish and thoroughly miss in the United States At 9 PM I
can get out of the house and find people getting some tea at a local
amrutatulya shop, shopping at a grocery store or pharmacy or visiting the local
Ganesh temple, or just taking a stroll. Life shuts down on the streets in the
US after 8 PM, at least in the residential neighborhoods. The streets in India
are buzzing till late. The day begins late – 9 AM is when people saunter into
their offices, the senior staff afforded the luxury of arriving even later- and
ends late. I can put on my Hawaii chappals and go gallivanting around at 9 PM
and have a lot of post Sylvian stimulation. This is something I sorely miss and
will miss.
The biggest revolution IMO in India is of mobile telephony
and the deluge of mobile data. I get a puny 4.5GB per month and a Jio customer
in India pays a tenth of what I pay and gets 10 times more data. It was mind
blowing to be able to do video calls on the go, not being tethered to a Wi Fi
zone. Or to use Google maps to get around, Whatsapp to call/text/communicate.
Data lines have walked over voice telephony with heavy boots. You can call
anyone anywhere anyhow. You can be a vadari hanging on to a Local train door
bar, watching Bhojpuri hits on YouTube or keep your kids occupied on the
backseat while you drive with Netflix streaming on data. The whole concept of
limits has been blown to smithereens. It was unlike anything I expected. The
opportunities out of this data revolution are so infinite, that it is
benumbing.
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| Diwali killa |
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| Sinhagad on the way up |
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| Sinhagad on top |
All this packaged within 2 weeks was all I could ask for. I
was happy-sad to be back with family, but we live life based on the choices we
make. Being an immigrant is a hard one and every immigrant can relate to this.
There is a cognitive dissonance about where home is. People say the longer you
stay away from where you grew up, this ego-dystonicity dilutes into a hybridoma
you yourself evolve into. You cling to cultural things, glitzy Diwali/garba
functions locally, dressed in gaudy ethnic wear, cooking imitations of your
mother or grandmother’s best confections, that help you remind of what you grew
up with. The childhood friends age into their own routines of domestication , your
parents age into fading resemblences of what you remember them as- diffident,
with physical frailties, hoarding like they themselves want to cling to
memories of when you were with them, with opinions which seem strangely
extraneous to your priorities and values, though they helped shape some of
yours. There is a languorousness to the cold snowy Saturday afternoons which
were foreign to you but you have allowed to become part of our life, just as
you have allowed things you grew up with you drift away from your time and
space. That’s why such trips are refreshing, and you need to cling to them like
a warm hug and enjoy it while it lasts.
