India, abridged

As I write this the ongoing fireworks in celebration of the Spring Festival have created a scene of what seems to be guerilla tactics combined with call and response explosions. If you’re wondering, “then what the hell are you doing inside writing?”, please allay your concerns; these displays will not be stopping anytime soon. In fact, they have been a nightly affair that began while I was wandering about India, and they will be going until the end of this week. Enough about China, this one is about India.

As I briefly intimated last week, India is a country unlike anywhere I have been. I’ve been living in China for five months now, and I thought going into India – against the better advice of friends that had been there - that it couldn’t be that much more intense than China. Oh, how I was proven wrong. It is a full on assault on ones senses. As my friends’ advice/warnings couldn’t fully prepare me for the experience, I do not expect my stories to give any real sense of what this country is like. However, I will still share a couple. There were three distinct periods to my time in India, so that is how I will present it to you here. Onwards.

I began my trip in Mumbai. I had the pleasure of staying with family friends there that work in the American Schools system; they were both as accommodating and welcoming as possible. They have an apartment that is like a little haven of sanity and amenity in a sea of chaos; outside their door, all bets are off.

Mumbai comes at you like a rabid dog: crazy-eyed, dirty, a bit smelly, and initially intimidating. However, if you hold your ground, it is possible to walk away unscathed.  One of my favorite things to do in a new city is just head to the center and start walking. So I hopped a taxi into town, which is an adventure unto itself. You’ve heard me vent my seething frustrations with the Chinese driving before; much to my confusion and angst, somehow Indian roads are more cutthroat and lawless. Sit back and take it all in. It can take well over an hour to go a handful of kilometers, so it was lucky that I had a cabby that wanted to tell me about nearly every building we pasted. Most were unexceptional, but one stand out was the ‘home’ of Mr. Ambani, one of the wealthiest men in the world. It is a 27-story tower that is the most costly residence in the world. It is also within sight of extreme poverty.

I have had glimpses of what poverty looks like in Central America and here in China, but nothing compares to what I witnessed in India. This poverty isn’t tucked away on the outskirts of the city either. You can find mega-slums replete with mountains of trash, open sewers, and destitute inhabitants all across the city. I won’t comment more on it here as I would be out of my depth on that topic, but it leaves an indelible impression when you see how nearly innumerable amounts of people live in unimaginable conditions. I also saw things there that bordered on the slapstick due to their madness. If I were to us another symbol to describe Mumbai besides the dog, it would probably be the comedy and tragedy masks.

As I was saying, I wandered Mumbai with my eyes wide open. Outside of standard laziness, I rarely find myself feeling overly fatigued. After wrestling with the rabid dog that is Mumbai for one full day, I was shattered that first night. I spent the next two days doing much of the same, seeing the sights of the city, and slowly acclimating to this relentless environment. There are more stories there, but in the interest of brevity I’ll keep moving. Buy me a beer next summer and I’ll share some other takeaways from Mumbai. I should mention, however, that I don’t want you leave you with the notion that I left Mumbai with negative impression or that I had a terrible time: quite the opposite. In my eyes, it was invaluable. However, I could have done without the six hour train delay that kept me from sitting on the beach in Goa. General infrastructure and basic efficiencies leave so much to be desired in India.

But I did make it to the beach, and it was all that I had hoped for. As I mentioned before I left on this trip, the reason I chose to go to Goa was that I never see the sun or breathe fresh air; any place that could provide me with these two basic needs, I was fully into. Goa gave me this and much, much more. I stayed on a serene beach in a beach hut run by a local fisherman who was about the nicest guy you’d want to meet. Agonda Beach is a 2km stretch of beach that is quite, beautiful, and precisely what I needed. I saw stars and the moon, which may sound quite mundane, but go a few months without seeing these heavenly bodies, and you’d be surprised how much you miss them.

Besides that I ran, read, acquired a crimson hue, drank beer, ate the freshest seafood one can have, and lazed. Hard. Near the end of my time there a group of Norwegian architecture grad students showed up, and they were a great laugh. I had fully relaxed by that point, and the company was welcome. I spent a few days with them as they were quick to bring me into their group of 10 or so. Two of my favorite parts of hanging out with them are as follows: one night all the girls took off for a ‘girls night out’. Myself and the lads stayed behind at our spot, we had a brief cultural exchange, which in this case was drinking games from our respective countries, and chopped it up for a few hours. At one point one of the guys was commanding one of the myriad beach dogs to “Sit!”, and I told him the dog only spoke Norwegian, at which another one of his friends turned to me with a bemused look and said, “that is Norwegian.” The other was an insult that shall not be reprinted here lest certain family members or future employers don’t quite appreciate the humor. But for the stout of heart, shoot me an email and I’ll pass it on. It is strong, hilarious, and somehow sounded even better when spoken in Norwegian. That’s all for Goa. Again, there are plenty more stories there, but for another time.

The next and final stop was visiting friends in Bangalore. Again, these three experiences in Mumbai, Goa, and Bangalore were unique and equally cherished, but having the chance to hang out with some American friends who are one year veterans of the India game was just fantastic. It was a great mix of feeling like I was back home when we were at their house (which could have been a nice, quiet subdivision in San Diego), and then having them take me around Bangalore and out into the countryside on a tour of some ancient and remarkable sites. Like my friends’ home in Mumbai, once you walk out the neighborhood gates, it is India in your face. One of the most enjoyable and enlightening aspects of my visit was the opportunity to share and compare experiences with friends who live as expats in another massive Asian country, and though there were certainly similarities, the differences were stark. They were hosts beyond what I could have expected, and my time in Bangalore was highlighted simply by spending time with friends.

This is getting on in length, and I am growing tired, however, I want to add a few parting thoughts. As I stated in my New Year post encouraging travel and expressing what it means to me, this belief was further fixed in me by my trip to India. Just as China has given me a whole new perspective on the US, India gave me a fresh look at China. Please understand this is not an attempt to denigrate the country of India, a place I truly hope to see again, but it seems unfathomable that anything gets done there. I was not oblivious to the fact that hundreds of millions of Indians live in poverty and the cities were not as pristine as Minneapolis (one of the most beautiful cities in the world, all hyperbole aside), but there are unavoidable truths about India that shock the first time visitor; truths that I cannot do justice to through my writing. The fact that it is considered to be one of the rising world powers is hard to imagine when one sees the ubiquitous inefficiencies and disheartening poverty, and also hears the tales of endemic corruption that are widespread amongst the media, expats, and, most tellingly, the Indians themselves. I’m not saying China has it all figured out; far from it. The problems here are often less obvious, but at the same time they are as often more troubling. However, in comparison with India, China seems like it seriously has its house in order. Not a difficult thing to do.

Right, there is an hour of writing. I’m going to go back to the fireworks. Oh, you thought they stopped? Ha! Act like you’ve been here before.

P.S. I write these posts in one shot, sans editing. So if the flow isn’t always the best, or there are a few typos in the mix, please excuse them. Also, you get what you pay for.