The Killer Elephant

For a really interesting blog about India, that is more pithy and less boring than this one, try

http://labeladhesiveremover.blogspot.com/2009/12/indian-connection.html

One of the cool things here in India is the way the common man packs his lunch for work. Most laborers use a system called tiffin boxes for this purpose. Tiffin boxes are small ( 4.5” diameter by 2” tall ), round, aluminum containers that latch on the sides and can be stacked and snapped together to make a cylindrical lunch box with a handle at the top. Each small container is packed with one course for the day’s lunch. These stacks can be as small as two layers and as tall as 5 or 6.

In Pune you see workers carrying these tins, or you’ll see them dangling from handlebars or rear racks on two wheelers. In Mumbai, however, there is an incredible Just-In-Time lunch service that can deliver home made meals in tiffin boxes to downtown workers. The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust (NMTSCT), whose workers are called dabbawallahs, collects tiffin boxes full of home made goodies from all over the greater Mumbai area in the morning, then takes them to the nearest train station where they are sorted and put in charge of another dabbawallah who delivers them to the “last mile” dabbawallahs in Mumbai who then run them to the appropriate office buildings for delivery. The system of collecting, sorting, bundling, transporting and resorting is similar to what UPS and Fedex do every day, but the dabbawallahs don’t use computers or bar codes, but rather rely on colored stickers, experience, intuition and a “neither rain nor sleet…” attitude to make sure Mumbai workers do not go hungry. Almost all of the dabbawallahs come from a small village near Pune and most are related. For more information about this system, which delivers in the neighborhood of 200,000 lunches every day with almost no errors, go to http://www.dabbawalla.com/ .

Tuesday was Ashraf’s 34th birthday! Which he claims came as a surprise to him. He showed up with a tiffin box of sweet mush his wife had prepared for his birthday and he wanted to share it with us. It was pretty good, but compared to the Enstrom’s toffee that Kim had sent us a few days before it just did not have a chance. We sang “Happy Birthday” to Ashraf and gave him an extra birthday bonus so he could take his wife to his favorite restaurant, “Blue Nile”, where they gorged on mutton curry.

Startling news on Thursday from the Pune newspaper. A man had been killed when he was pushed into the path of an oncoming bus by an elephant in the old section of Pune. This report hit home because the pictures they showed of the elephant involved made it clear it was the same one who had nuzzled my foot with her trunk the very first week of our stay in Pune. And the same one that Jody posed beside for pictures just a few weeks ago. There is some dispute about what happened, but the mahout (elephant jockey) claims the man tried to pass under the elephant who in turn became distressed and bumped the man, causing him to fall in front of the oncoming bus. Having witnessed first hand how out of control most busses in India are, it’s not hard to believe the Mahout’s claims that the bus driver was speeding and driving recklessly. Having experienced the seeming gentleness of this animal up close a few times, it’s hard to believe she is a rogue or anything more or less than a domesticated animal who was startled by an unexpected interaction and who reacted instinctively without any serious intent to harm. It will come as no surprise to learn that elephants, camels, and all forms of “wild” animals are banned from the streets of Pune, but are often found there anyway. Whoever said “laws were meant to be broken” had probably just recently visited India.

Peggy arranged a wonderful treat Saturday night – a “continental cuisine” dining experience at Exotica, on the 7th floor of the IBM building. I knew it was going to be a great evening when they ushered us to a table with a CLEAN tablecloth! The terrace of the restaurant is completely exposed to the open air, but it seemed totally removed from India, like an oasis, really, in the midst of a place that has become almost unbearable to us. Our Nepalese waiter took great care of us and the margaritas tasted great – just like the ones back home. Even so, despite the incredible hankering I had for a steak, my memories of how awful the only beef we’d had on this trip was made me very wary of taking a chance on the tenderloin steak listed on the menu. I gently asked the waiter if he ate meat, and he assured me he did. So I asked his recommendation of steak vs. duck breast. Although the duck breast was more expensive, he suggested I try the steak, promising to whisk it away and bring me another entrée if I didn’t like it.

The steak was great, as were all of the dishes we tried. I was very impressed with the chef, because his creations were original, but stayed true to continental tastes rather than trying to meld in Indian spices to pander to the Indian palate.

We spent nearly three hours luxuriating in the calm and disciplined confines of our little sanctuary. When I mentioned my continuing fascination with the formerly living god known as Sai Baba, an ascetic to whom is ascribed many miracles, another one took place right in front of us. Without any prompting, coaxing or signal from me, just as the words “Sai Baba” fell out of my mouth, our Nepalese waiter appeared with a plateful of complimentary chocolates, as powerful a sign of spiritual wonder as I could have imagined at that point.

As soon as we descended back to the real India at ground level, the pandemonium of a Saturday night was in full cry. We were treated to a Chinese fire drill on a moving motorcycle – the passenger and driver on the bike just in front of us traded places without slowing down or wobbling in the least. Ashraf thought they must have been drunk, but drunk or sober it was an impressive feat.

On Sunday night I did a double-take when we saw an elephant lumbering up Hadapsar Road. Ashraf had been arguing ever since Thursday that the killer elephant was not “our” elephant, but when looking at the photos of the bad jumbo (as they call them here) in the paper, the Om markings on its forehead convinced me it was the same one we had played with over the past weeks. But the mahout on the elephant we saw Sunday looked an awful lot like the guy we always see on “our” elephant, so I took a harder look at the photos in the paper, and when comparing them to our own photos, I was finally able to see that there were subtle differences in the chalk drawn Om symbols on the foreheads of the two beasts, and I breathed a sigh of relief to conclude that “our” elephant was not implicated after all. Still, it was shocking to see this beast on city streets. I assumed that with the recent bad publicity and what I thought would be a new emphasis on enforcing the “no big animals” city ordinance, we would not be seeing elephants in Pune again.

So it was even more surprising when a few days later the paper showed a picture of the real “killer” elephant, also back on Pune’s streets! In the article, the forestry department, the animal welfare board, the police and the courts were all pointing fingers at everyone else, claiming there is nothing they can do to actually enforce the law. India.

On Monday I went into the “we would really rather not have you shop here, and we sure as heck hope you don’t actually want to buy something from us” store in the local Destination Center. The store’s name was written only in Hindi and I’m guessing that was not the official name of the store, but I bet I’m not too far off. The young male attendant immediately positioned himself about two feet from me, stared at my every action, said something in Hindi every time I moved closer to an object to look at it and succeeded in creating such negative vibes that I left shaking my head. I’m trying to not be too paranoid, but maybe after nearly decimating the entire downtown area by dropping a bottle of tonic in Dorabjee’s a few weeks ago, I’m starting to think there really might be an alert out about me.

We’re off to try to see tigers in the wild. There are only a few left and they are being poached mercilessly so Chinese men don’t have to resort to Viagra. It would give me great comfort if this world we live in could somehow come up with a plan to keep the tigers from becoming yet another victim of insatiable human demand.