Folks in India

Its certainly true that I have had trouble and frustrations in dealing with folks here. However there is something about this place - it takes the aggression out of you. Partly because people are really nice, partly because people don't really indulge in precise communication and partly because it gets little results. Bangaloreans are really laid back. I am convinced that on the scale of laidback-ness, Bangalore is at the top (or bottom - depending on your point of view). In my building people have been smiling and asking if they can help. I knocked on my neighbour's door yesterday to ask something and ended up staying for dinner. In my 5 weeks in Bangalore I have been invited to homes (of folks I hardly know) about 10 times for meals. Even my maid brought me a home cooked meal one evening. This would not happen in too many other countries.

I had to fire my house help unfortunately, after one week - too unreliable. I found that my life was becoming about waiting for her to show up while she waltzed in and out at her convenience. I tried several times to execute this action but my guts would fail me as she is sooo pleasant and ALWAYS agrees to do what I asked her to do (no delivery guaranteed). And she has a daughter on whom she spends 20% of her family income to send to an English medium school. So I gently explained to her that I had to ask her to stop coming as our timings were not working out. This is how it went:
Me: "Sudha - I think this job is not convenient for you" (By the way she speaks English quite well)
Sudha: "Why you say Madame? I am coming only when you want me to Madame"
Me: "But Sudha you don't show up when you say you will. I waited for you this morning and yesterday evening"
Sudha: "you want me coming tomorrow morning? i coming tomorrow morning"
Me: But you did not show up about 5 times so far when you were supposed to"
Sudha: " One day madam I am very sick only - I go doctor - he give big injection"
Me: " Are you OK now"
Sudha: "yes madam I am fine now. I coming tomorrow morning?"
Me: "Let's take a break and if i want you in two weeks or so I will call you"
Sudha: "No madam its Ok - I coming tomorrow only."
Me: "Here, this is what I owe you for the week"
Sudha: " its OK madam - you pay me later only"
Me: " No Sudha I want you to stop working here for some time. We can talk again after a couple of weeks"
Sudha:"Ok Madame"
her one last attempt as she leaves " I coming tomorrow morning madam?"
Me : "NOOOO NOT TOMORROW".

Someone keeps tabs. Over the next 2 days I had 5 or 6 women knock on my door and ask to work. So I start on my second maid tomorrow. This process seems to be more about training me in the ways of things here than in getting myself set up the way I want to. I am still hoping for an efficient set up - or else I may have to give up my job as most women in India do and just take care of house. I would be one starving housewife.

For those of you outside India - you are probably wondering - what's the big deal - why cant you clean house yourself? The house has to be cleaned almost everyday - there is too much dust - once a week will not do and if the floors are not mopped everyday they become streaky by the second day. But actually I agree - its no big deal. I can easily clean house myself and I plan to.

Moved into my own place

While I had been trying to find a suitable place to rent, I became louder and louder about my complaints about the condition of the guest apartment, so by Christmas I was moved into their nicer guest rooms in the Inst. building. See the pictures posted. This is where I had been put up during my visit in 2004 and had found it very pleasant. I guess that was recruitment mode then. No need to waste resources on an already hired faculty :-)!!!

Around Jan 1, I had decided on the 2 bedroom place in nearby Malleshwaram. All parties involved liked all the other parties. The next step was getting it painted and cleaned. Once again I slipped up and expected the painting and cleaning to be done once the job was started. After the stipulated 3 days I went to check. Two rooms and two bathrooms had been painted. That left 2 bedrooms and 4 balconies as well as all the cleaning and one day to go before delivery of my stuff. The place had been locked up for a year. I let my temper fly. This acted like an amazing catalyst. More people showed up out of the woodwork, paint was splashed around faster, ruining all the built in wooden fixtures, in the living and dining room. When I pointed this out the head painter who spoke a smattering of Hindi repeated "Koi parwah nahi" .. translating into "I don't care" *&^%&^*()*. I discovered soon that the only Hindi he spoke was when he repeated what I said. I tested this out. I said "you have to finish by the end of today" .. he repeated it. Then I said " you have not done a good job" - it came back to me like an echo. I threw up my hand in frustration. This made him laugh out real loud.

My landlord lives in Dallas. As is wont to happen to many Indians who migrate to the west, they forget how it was to live back home. So the lease signing process was rather tumultuous. TIFR is leasing this apt for me to stay in. So I am not in the picture as a tenant...but I am the only one here who understood the landlords style of communication. Being a government dinosaur, the Inst. worked in robotic fashion- taking a lease that was used in the Bombay center and replicating it for Bangalore. Half the laws do not apply and it gives the tenant the right to do all kinds of things, including altering wall structures, subleasing - basically anything short of selling. :-$
Anyway the landlord was nice enough to let me move in without his John Hancock, and they battled it out over the next week.

The apt is nice and airy and lots of light - also some noise unfortunately. Its painted an ivory colour which seems to be the favorite here - but is not very attractive - anyway I had no choice in the matter. What I want to know is - whats wrong with white? And everything leaks.

Did I tell you guys about my customs experience in Bangalore? Jan 9th I had to go all the way to Whitefield - an hour and half drive from Tata Inst where container corporation of India had delivered my shipment. I arrived at 10:30am thinking "early bird gets the worm". I waited and I waited and I waited. At 1:30 pm I went over to tell my driver to go eat lunch - no sense in us both suffering. In that split second, it seems that my turn for customs clearance came and went. I was saved by the shipping agent yelling for me for all of Bangalore to hear.

The customs inspector here hold a lot of sway. You can just spot them by their swagger and confidence. If you see such men (for some reason they are never women) swagger around in parts that you live in you can safely conclude he works for the customs in India. We entered the warehouse. The shipping agent suddenly had become diminutive in his 6 ft frame. And I did not quite know how to follow suit but somehow felt I was behaving incorrectly. They threw my boxes around - all the onces marked fragile. I ran around trying to get them to put them the right way up. "See the arrows?" I said. "Yeah, yeah" said the moving guys. It was futile , and soon I felt ridiculous. What was I asking these poor poor underfed guys to do? Then started the riping open of the boxes. They jabbed with knives or so it seemed- it reminded me of a movie I had seen, in which spies hidden in hay stacks were being hunted for.

Only electronic items (no matter how old) and new furniture is dutiable. All this was over in 10 minutes and I was asked to pay Rs 150 for duty. I was relieved and exhilarated (premature it turns out) at how soon I had cleared customs. I celebrated with a lunch of deep fried rotis. Back to waiting after lunch. I needed a signature indicating I had cleared customs, thats right one single signature. 4 pm came and went. Time crawled. I meditated myself into oblivion. At 6:30pm the signature arrived. Then I waited some more for a truck to come. Then I waited some more to get a truck pass. At 8:30 pm my stuff was loaded into a truck and it was delivered at 10 pm.

The same underfed looking men hauled my stuff in a flash into the truck. What had taken 2 hours in LA with a lift system and all kinds of fancy gear and 4 people to oversee, was done in 10 minutes flat by about 3 men. I have never seen anything like this. Guys who weighed maybe 70 kg or less tossed around boxes that weighed up to 50 kg like juggling balls in the air. They wore no belts, or shoes. I looked for signs of hernia. I wondered how long they last in a job like this.

Arriving in Bangalore

I arrived in Bangalore at 9:30 am on Dec 16th. I was picked up at the airport by a company car. If I get chauffered around much longer I think I will lose my motor control completely. I was dropped off at the guest apt in one of the housing buildings on campus. If anyone has been to the IISc campus knows how lush and heavily tree populated it is. In stark contrast these apts (which in the 70s may have been bright and shiny) easily come up short compared to some projects in Harlem. The shock put me into a comatose state for several hours, after which I collected myself and showed up at the Inst. building to find a bright and newly painted office ready for me.

Here began the reinitiation into the Indian culture. Here I was replete with westernised communication skills. And many things I said seemed to miss the mark and many things said to me I did not get. I got it - but not really as the subtlety was lost.

My first order of business was to find a place to stay in and get out of the mumbai style "chawl" I had been put into. Being shy to express my disappointment at the accomodations I kept mum. Wrong move!!! I had understood that there would be a few apts available from which I could chose. There were none available or selected for me to look at. In hind sight this was probably a good thing. But then it threw me into a panickkkk.

The first three weeks could be summarized pretty much as running after brokers, running with them and seeing place after place and crashing with depression of never finding a suitable place in the allowed budget. I had a car and driver available to me so that was nice. But there were many times in the interest of time I would jump on to the back seat of a broker's two wheeler and try to be relaxed as we missed other vehicles by a hairs breadth from my legs hanging over the edge. I am sure I lost some nerve endings by forcing myself to relax.

Of the 40 odd places I saw, there were three that fit the bill in basic ways - most basic being the style of toilet. Indian style toilets are very popular in this neck of the woods - apparently they are good for all types of movement. These are the ones you squat over a ceramic pan while you do your thing. If you have travelled to the middle east or Japan you may have seen these there too. One place I found was extremely cute and clean and bright - but the one Indian toilet became the sticking point.
As a compromise the landlord suggested he would "convert" it into a regular seat. This was 2 weeks into my search and by this time I was beginning to pick up on the nuances of communication.
Since I could not understand the structure of this conversion I opted out. A good thing too. As a friend of mine put it
"I have seen Indian style toilets where they build a wooden seat to convert. Not the best solution due to flying shrapnel upon impact with porcelain. :>)"

In typical fashion, the budget my work place was willing to spend on my accomodations was not revealed to me right up front. Strange given that the work place was going to lease the apt. The place I have finally moved into was suggested by my work place and then mysteriously withdrawn on grounds of lack of suitability. Then into the third week it was reproduced again as being highly suitable. Were they just waiting for me to waste all my time running around town instead of working? It turns out that I liked this place and decided to take it. But that was also not without its glitches. The paint and cleaning job which was supposed to take 2 to 3 days extended to on and on ..

I am learning to shrug off a lot of things here. There is too much poverty and too much contrast between the haves and the ones who do the work like painting and cleaning and anything requiring labour.

Like the guy who came to fix a leak in the kitchen sink drainage. He asked me for a cleaning cloth which he proceeded to tear into shredds to use the strips to tie around the leak and hence "fix" it. I was dumbfounded. Anyway he spoke only kannada so all I could say again and again was "alla" (meaning No) - he kept saying yes ( atleast thats what i gathered). He left with the leak intact.

Leaving CA

The months before I left LA were pretty crazy. Moving from the USA to India. Having lived half my life in the US of A and half in India. it seemed like a good time to tip (or right ?) the balance. Hence the homeword (did I say home?? haha ..) bound action. In hind sight its turning out that the task of sorting, packing to ship across the 7 seas, shutting down things in LA, teaching and doing research while doing all of this was much easier than what was to come later :-)

I decided to fly aeroflot as its flight timings and time enroute seemed the most convenient given my constraints on both ends. My friends Vicki and Mike dropped me off at LAX with tons of baggage in tow. I have never travelled this heavy in my life before. For me its usually a roll-on and a small backpack. But the list of things I "may not" get in India and the ensuing panicked purchase of things required successive upsizing of baggage till I was just at the generous weight limit of 32 Kg per bag. Departure from LA was too crazy for me to really take it all in.

LAX to Moscow leg was a normal flight in a normal looking airplane. No bench seats or standing room only as I had envisoned. Service was "to the point" ...but adequate.
I had 1.25 hours time to connect to my Delhi bound flight from Moscow. We landed an hour late. That certainty of expecting logical action and customer service (that is common practise in the US) led me to think that they would hold the flight another 20 minutes for me and other passengers to connect to.
Wrong - in fact dead wrong. I ran all the way to the counter accomplishing the inhuman task of carrying about 20 kg of onflight baggage (limit is 10kg :-( ) and as soon as I threw the words "Delhi flight" out of my mouth (preparing to be ushered past the counter at a continued clip) the response "Nyet" -"flight left" "we will gheeve you otel" - "Delhi flight tommorrrrrow" brought me to a skidding halt.
I asked "how long ago did the flight leave"?
Answer I got " Nyet - flight gone". We did this about three times and got no further so I gave up. Then I asked "Can I call my family in India to let them know about the missed flight"?
Answer I got " Nyet - flight gone". We did this about three times again and got no further so I gave up.

There is something about a smile even if there is no service. But here no smile or no service. Infact no language skills on either side!!

Later I learned from friends (who tracked the flights on the internet) that Delhi flight was showing as delayed by over an hour too!!!! Maybe the counters had no internet connection - how else would they have up to date information? #$@%*
Later I also learned that it is against IATA rules to have this super short connection time between 2 international flights. Whos says Aeroflot needs to follow any rules?

Anyway, so the few stranded passangers ( about 5 of us ) were marched thru the airport at top speed and put into a Van to go to a hotel. One official looking man came with us in the shuttle van and was dropped of at the front entrance while we were taken to the back entrance. Fortunately one passenger spoke russian, which might explain why we were not executed right away. Every step seemed a misstep.

We stayed in the drive way of the hotel for a good 30 minutes waiting like lamb before a slaughter. It was snowy and icy outside. It was hot and stuffy inside. So the only russian speaking passenger (who turned out to be a professional ballroom dancer) opened the door. The orders to close the door were barked out immediately and we returned to our stuffy state a bit shaken and more passive.

After another hour or so of waiting in the hotel lobby, we were marched up to our rooms, given phone cards with 2 min of call time and told that our dinner would be served in the room. I asked for vegetarian food. I got rice and potatoes and cole slaw. Someone was looking after my carb intake.

A guard stood outside the rooms at the end of the landing and if a door opened he stiffened. The phone which accepted the phone card was in the hall way and did not work properly. So I decided to use internet on my laptop. This is it went:
Hotel person: " You kan 'aave it for $20"
Me: "OK where do I pay the money?"
Hotel person: "You muzt go doooown to ze lobby?"
Me: " Ok thanks" and move to the elevator to go down.
Guard stiffens and Hotel person shouts "you are not allowed to go to ze lobby".
Me: " So how do I get the internet connection?"
Hotel person: " sorry zis I cannot help you wiz".

End of that story.
By lunch time the next day ham and salami had turned vegetarian!!!!

I arrived in Delhi a day late and missed my sisters wedding completely.