For the second time in about two weeks we had an official “Homesick Day” on Tuesday. Peggy had talked to her father, her aunt, her sisters and Elizabeth and Alex, our precocious niece and nephew, and the loneliness she felt by being apart from them took its toll on Tuesday. I tried my best to cheer her up by reminding her of all the war, pestilence, poverty and unfairness in the world, but that tactic didn’t seem to work nearly as well as I thought it would.
Although my homesickness level was somewhat less than Peggy’s, I climbed on the “I wanna go home” bus on Wednesday when I performed an incredible gaffe at Dorabjee’s resulting in some type of scarlet letter apparently tattooed all over my being for the duration of my stay there. Here is what happened. I was reaching down for a small bottle of tonic water that I wanted to buy, but those items were tucked at the back of a shelf and when I withdrew my hand with the bottle clenched in my fist, my arm bumped the shelf above sharply enough to knock the bottle out of my hand whereupon it flew to the floor at about a billion miles per hour and exploded in a crash that not only was probably heard in Dubai, but also most likely rose a mushroom cloud over the entire city of Pune.
In slow motion, everyone in the entire store, along with people as far away as Delhi and Beijing, turned to stare at the person who was clumsy and unthoughtful enough to have caused this catastrophe – an event that apparently ranked just behind the 40 day flood in terms of its inclement effects on human civilization.
I turned to the nearest store worker and apologized profusely, then asked if he could find something to clean the mess up. He just shrugged and turned back to his stocking duties.
I then sought out the two female store workers whom I’ve seen in the store every time I’ve been in there and who appear to be inseparable because they are ALWAYS side by side. When I tried to explain that I had accidentally dropped a bottle and cleanup was necessary, they shrugged and went back to their subtle impression of aimless Siamese Twins. By now a guard had arrived on the scene, and I once again implored him to please find someone to clean up my mess. As a trained professional, he immediately sized up the situation and took definitive action. Which was to carefully pick up the bottle’s label from the shards of glass on the floor, then follow me around for the remaining 10 minutes of my shopping spree so he could present the label to the checkout clerk thereby assuring that I would pay the 30 Rs due for the accidentally destroyed tonic water.
After paying my bill I beat a hasty retreat, but couldn’t resist sneaking a glance down the aisle that I had besmirched with the unholy tonic water. Still no one there on cleaning duty! I almost expected to see police tape and Peter Falk, but those fears had not yet been realized. I imagine there is now another India Wide Alert circulating throughout the country warning of the American vandal who ruins grocery stores by throwing bottled tonic on the floor. If I ever get enough nerve to go back to Dorabjee’s I’m afraid there’ll be a big wanted-dead-or-alive picture of me on the front door.
When I finally made it back to the gym after our Karnataka foray, I got the usual you-look-weird staring act from all the indigenous folks. Maybe feeling more sensitive than usual, I decided on Thursday to take a long walk around Magarpatta instead of repairing to the gym when the cleaning wallahs showed up to gussy up the apartment.
The long walk gave me a chance to ponder the building activity that is still going strong, at least in our little corner of India. There are many high rises under construction here, along with any number of upscale single-family homes. Given what is happening to construction in most parts of the world, and especially in nearby Dubai, I was expecting there to be strong signs of the same type of serious slowdown here. But there are lots of people here, and there is truly a sense of upward mobility amongst a certain portion of those people. GDP continues to grow at a very impressive 7%+ per year as well. Furthermore, I have read some estimates that claim as many as 400 million Indians do not have electricity in their homes. All these factoids add up to the very real need for lots of new houses as India continues to prosper and its citizenry slowly pulls itself up to higher living standards.
I wonder, though, if the eye-popping GDP growth figures are really true. Is it possible that corruption extends to the dissemination of raw and analyzed data and that some economist at the Fed Bank of India is being paid off to claim GDP of 7.5% when in fact it is really -20%? For that matter, maybe even the bold claim that India contains well over a billion people is bogus. I personally have laid eyes on fewer than 2 million native Indians. It could be that those same 2 million residents get shuffled around the country to congregate wherever foreigners are to give the impression that the country is really crowded. If a foreigner’s not in the village, are there really residents there?
On Saturday we went souvenir shopping on MG Road where we visited a store run by two Muslim brothers. Peggy figured out right away that they were Muslims – no red smudges on any of the clerk’s foreheads was one clue, but the huge picture of Mecca in the office was a dead giveaway. Their father has done the Haj twice, but the two brothers were remarkably sanguine about sending their Muslim kids to Christian schools in a strongly Hindu country.
One of the brothers took charge of showing me the sandalwood carving section. Sandalwood was the common carving medium of choice in India for thousands of years, but mankind being mankind, so much carving was visited on the sandalwood forests that the trees became endangered species. Today only a very modest amount of sandalwood is allowed to be harvested for any purpose and the government strictly controls the access to same.
What this means is that sandalwood knickknacks are much more expensive than they used to be and considerably more expensive than identical works made out of a more common white wood. The brother wanted to show me what a difference in price sandalwood makes, so he grabbed an item carved out of white wood, moved over to a locked cabinet that contained all the sandalwood souvenirs, unlocked it, reached in, grabbed a like item, tried to extract it whereupon his hand hit the top of the shelf above, and in a near repeat of the great Tonic fiasco at Dorabjee, he dropped the sandalwood carving on the floor, both of us watching in horror as it splintered into smithereens. Vishnu, I was glad that the last hand to touch that thing was not mine! He said to pay it no mind, but I sensed that ruining an artifact carrying a price tag of $300 was not his happiest moment of the day.
That night we went to an Avaya kick-off party that was great fun. Indians love their Bollywood movies and every Bollywood movie has at least one elaborate song and dance number. Alert friends will remember my fascination with the dance scene in that great Bollywood classic, Gumnaam. But I’m nothing when it comes to slavish infatuation with song and dance – every Indian at the party (which was probably 90% male) went crazy when selected co-workers came out to lip-synch and dance to the key musical sequences of some of the greatest Bollywood movies ever.
It was something to see and we almost got out of there alive. Almost, but not quite. On our way out of the party, one of Peggy’s co-workers grabbed us and forced us to join the thronging masses on the dance floor for one big Bollywood dance-a-thon. As already mentioned, almost all the attendees, and therefore almost all the dancers, were male. But a certain form of male/male intimacy is very prevalent in India. It is very common to see young men holding hands, or walking with arms over each others’ shoulders. I’m not talking gay guys, but rather red blooded heterosexuals. It is much less common to see a male/female couple holding hands than it is to see two men doing same.
At any rate, the party was great fun and I promised Peggy that we would be part of the entertainment next year should we for some strange reason find ourselves back in the friendly confines of Pune.
Pizza pangs peaked on Sunday, so we decided to see what a home delivery experience would be like. Although I couldn’t find a way to place an order online, I did manage to find the Pizza Hut Delivery (PHD) menu posted and was surprised to see pepperoni (subtitled “real 100% pork pepperoni”) on the menu. I ordered a large pepperoni with extra cheese and gave Peggy 2:1 odds that we would never see the thing. But an hour later our front bell buzzed and I swung it open, half-expecting to see firemen in hazmat suits carrying a hazmat box with our pizza inside (we are talking pork products here). But no, it was just a smiley PHD guy with our pizza in a stay-warm bag. It wasn’t as good as at home, but it was a mighty fine pizza and just to show how desperate we are I can report that we went to bed with smiles on our faces.
My grand plans to take my exile in India as an opportunity to wail away on my dobro, which I lugged all the way here, have not materialized. I have played it a few times, but there seem to be any number of tasks to consume my day and getting in some practice usually falls by the wayside. Despite the incredible love of song and dance here, music is not as prevalent as it is in the USA. Except for one hopeful, but very short-lived, moment in our first week here, there has been nothing remotely close to bluegrass to get my juices flowing. Except for a few days ago at the gym when a club-mix, thumping, clanking version of “You are my Sunshine” came over the sound system. Even though the format was clearly not old timey, the song was and it whetted my appetite for a return to the Lyons bluegrass jams on Tuesday nights. We’re both starting to count the days until we’re back home.
On Monday night I gained a fuller understanding of Ashraf’s love of Pangachi and his belief that the best Bollywood actor, bar none, is Aamir Khan. Ashraf brought a small photo album to show us that night and many of the pictures were at the hill station known as Pangachi and there were a few photos of Ashraf with none other than Aamir Khan! It seems that 5 years back Ashraf had spent 8 months on assignment to a Bollywood film company that was making a movie at Pangachi. The movie is called Mangal Pandey. It’s a story based on the 1857 Indian uprising against the British that seemed headed for success initially, but was ultimately quashed by the British even though they had far fewer troops to throw into the fray. The Uprising grew from a stewpot of grievances, but it finally burst into open revolt when the British began requiring the Sepoys (Indian soldiers in the British army) to use bullets coated in pig fat in their rifles. The pig fat was a type of grease that helped lubricate the bullet’s trip through the rifle barrel, but how the British could not have deduced what an incredible cultural faux pas that was is beyond me. Initially the Indians pushed the British out of Delhi and many other cities, but inevitable squabbling amongst the castes, tribes and religions doomed the revolt to failure when challenged by the incredible discipline of the British forces. India would have to wait another 90 years to finally make its break from England.
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622889205625/
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