August 2003
I’ve spent about a year preparing for this trip on and off and the one thing that sticks out is that everyone seems to laugh when they talk about India. From the nurse who gave me my jabs saying I WOULD get sick when I was away, to George telling me that somebody WOULD get one over on me and even the know-it-all charity workers I sat next to on the flight into Delhi. “They like blondes in India you know”, “. . . I’m not blonde”, “You are to them, hahahaha”.
So the plane drops out of the clouds and as excited as I was about the prospect of entering the sub-continent for the first time the swarming lights of Delhi finally bring it all to reality and I’ll admit I was scared. An Indian behind me compounds it by tapping me on the shoulder as I finished the immigration form and intimidates me with “Did you know you are about to enter God’s own country?” followed by another laugh.
I took a short stopover in Delhi before flying to Bangalore in southern India for a weeks work. The ride to my hotel in the taxi was awesome; the driver (who called me his boss?) sped through the streets of the streets of the capital past bikes, rickshaws and cows! in a gleaming Mercedes – this is what it’s like to be a superstar I guess as motorbikes pulled up next to the car and peer through the tinted glass.
The HP office is just like the others I’ve visited, a vision of wealth with its glass front and immaculate gardens but in Bangalore there was also a cow just leaning against the HP sign outside looking calm as only a Hindu cow can. The cow is all Hindu’s mother my driver tells me, so I’m careful in stepping around her.
I spent Friday night having dinner at Shefali’s, whom I’m working with, and her husband’s, a weapon researcher in the Indian army – a completely unplanned night at a military base in a Bangalore suburb. Shefali’s husband knows a warden at a jungle nature reserve a few hours away and is hopefully organising me a backdoor, monsoon season safari trip for next week, too short notice to grow a decent handlebar moustache, but apparently there’s a good chance of seeing Elephants and Tigers.
They apparently don’t waste any longer teaching taxi drivers road etiquette in Bangalore than Delhi either; there is near death on every street. Why people risk the streets on bikes and motorcycles is nothing short of a mystery. On the way to the office Nayim, my ‘driver’ for the week, swerved to avoid a breaking van and a motorcyclist just slams into the side of our car. The bike’s shaping to fall nastily when they in turn bounce off a guy on another motorbike and between them they stabilise each other. We’re probably doing around 30 mph and how nobody is hurt is a miracle of right place right time. I can only stare between the driver and the motorcyclists and gape as nobody does or says anything. No shaking fists, no shouts, not even an acknowledgement that the incident has taken place, the bikes just carry on next to us as if we pose no further risk. Nayim saw me conceal a laugh at the lack of action and with a wry grin confirms ‘Yes, Bangalore girls veerry pretty sir’. Only then I see that the motorcyclist is a young girl and now I laugh properly, that to Nayim, this is the most significant thing about the incident.
The barrage of south Indian curries finally won the battle with my stomach on day 3 and I spent Saturday on my back grimacing with cramps. It pains me that scouring the hotel mini-bar and room service menu the most appealing motherly bosom I could find to rest my stomach in was a can of Pepsi followed by a trip to Pizza Hut.
Labour is dirt cheap here, people are expendable it seems, there’s nothing you can’t pay for and if it’s somebody else’s time it’s probably going to be very discounted. There’s a guy who sits outside the toilets at work and goes in after every visit to clean the bowls, wipe the seats and dry the sinks, there are people in shops who’s only job is to open and close the front door, the plane to Bangalore hadn’t even stopped taxiing and about 20 people pushed some steps up to the door and when I went to Pizza Hut tonight a waiter came scurrying over every time I finished a slice to move a new one on my plate from the dish next to me before I’d finished the last mouthful.
The most alarming one so far was at work when I finished putting our new server together and needed to take it to the air cooled computer room. You need to appreciate that this machine took over 5 months to get delivery to India at about twice European prices. It sat in a customs office in Delhi for weeks and took even longer to travel down from the capital with various parts going missing and appearing again in different parts of the country. Anyway, naturally given the trauma to get this far I was feeling protective of it and when I told the guy I’m working with it was ready and asked if he’d help me carry it he assured me “no, no, I will organise for it”. You need to realise these things weigh about 4 stone and you don’t lift one alone unless you want to break all kind of EU health and safety rules. So he returns 2 minutes later, not with any wheels, lifting gear or even an army of workers but a small boy about 14 or 15 years old in a uniform and points at the computer. He struggles to lift the machine and trying to help him I’m ushered away as if it’s very uncool. So I follow, rushing to open doors and warn people as it’s so big the kid can barely see around it. Two flights up the stairs (couldn’t he use the lift?) and he’s starting to struggle and keeps changing grip as it slips, then in the computer room I have to cover my eyes as he clambers over knee high power cables and ducks past broken light fixtures. If somebody is prepared to do a job for any cost then that seems good enough here. There is no thought of exploitation or whether people should really be doing work beneath a living wage in what’s ostensibly a democracy. I feel like I’m living a lie being chauffeured around and staying and eating in what are clearly the very best places in the city. Initially it just didn’t feel like it was deserved but I think I may have made the mistake of believing it was based around anything else than the exchange of money, at whatever level that best occurs? They’ve embraced capitalism in their own way here, its just more about personal service and labour than goods and products at the moment. Please tell me I’m not a missionary for that?
Anyway, the place is crazy, far too big and busy to comprehend and the people are just nuts in a very endearing way, its seems they’ll worship anything that stands still long enough and happily bless their vehicles for safe travel but drive them with a death wish, build the most exquisite, vividly coloured temples and mosques then go stand in them and scream and cry, spend over forty thousand dollars on a computer system then hand it to a child on a greasy obstacle course. It’s not all making a lot of sense but it’s real and it’s exciting and apart from the stomach thing it’s a lot of fun.
The photos are a bit bland but I only got out for a few hours on the weekend due to that bug and some of the stuff that catches your eye I literally just couldn’t photograph like 5 year old kid with no legs on a skateboard, women screaming in temples or the dead, rabid horse I saw rotting in the street on Sunday.