Winter in Pune

On Tuesday I finally got to try the “Olympic size” pool at the gym. When I first joined the gym, I was told that the pool was only open between 6:00 am and 11:00 am and then again from 4:00 pm until 9:00 pm. My gym schedule was dictated by the apartment cleaning crews’ scheduling whims, which never started before 11:00 am but was always over by 4:00 pm. Given the regimentation which the gym seemed to thrive on, I assumed I would never get to try out the pool.

So it was quite surprising the day before when I was changing in the locker room and an Indian guy almost as tall as me said “The pool is open for you!” Taken somewhat aback and thinking maybe he was just joking I replied that the pool was only open from x to y. He said “No, now it’s open all day just for you.” I still didn’t know what to make of this. The guy had a certain sense of authority about him, and I suspected he was probably an official at the club, but it seemed just as likely that he was trying to have some fun with a foreigner who doesn’t really get it. I decided to try to play both angles at once, so I good naturedly replied that I didn’t have my swimming stuff with me, but I would bring it the next day. He reiterated that the pool was open just for me.

When I ventured out of the locker room I immediately went to the cute receptionist and asked her if the pool was open. Her English isn’t the greatest so at first I thought she said that the pool hours were the same as always. But I persisted and finally came to the understanding that the pool was now open during the day because it was too cold to swim in the morning. Too cold was a hilarious idea to me, but whatever.

And so I found myself on Tuesday all by myself in a pool that measures 50 meters long by 25 meters wide. The notion that this thing was “Olympic sized” was disabused, however, when it became evident that the depth never exceeded 4 feet. I winced when I thought of Olympic swimmers diving into such a shallow pool.

I’m a terrible swimmer. Even though I’m lousy at it, I found it to be an incredible workout, and 30 minutes of thrashing through the water left me feeling pretty wiped out.

Winter has arrived here in Pune. I can tell because I see many locals dressed in jackets or coats in the morning, and more than a few men sport ear muffs against the chill. Highs near 85 each day are still the norm, but it does get into the 50s at night and stays “chilly” until later in the morning. Neither of us has felt the need to wear any type of wrap outdoors - the coldest moments we’ve spent here have always been brought on by A/C.

The “cold” weather is having its effects in another way, however. Every morning, and for a good part of most days, the air is very smoky, by virtue of the large number of wood and kerosene fires that are used throughout the city for heating and cooking. Ashraf has a hand-pumped kerosene stove for cooking and it is also put to use at night to keep the house warm.

Even though it’s apparently beginning to look a lot like winter, it’s definitely not looking much like Christmas. Christmas is celebrated here, but given that very few inhabitants are Christian, the slavishness with which we celebrate Christmas is not the rule in India. We do see a few signs of it here and there, a few decorations thrown up and an occasional mention on TV or in the newspaper, but it’s a holiday much like Labor Day has become for us – a day off but nothing to get all worked up about. We’ve heard Christmas music exactly twice – both times emanating from automobiles. But these were not examples of sub-woofers-gone-wild but rather electronic carols that replace the incessant beep-beep-beep when a car backs up. Many automobiles here have audible backup warnings similar to those used by trucks in the US. In the same way that customized ring tones are all the rage in the US (and here), custom backup tones that can be downloaded into your car’s backup sound system seem to be popular here. Jarring though it was to hear “Deck the Halls” coming from a car in reverse, it may be the only Christmas music we hear in India so we reveled in it.

Even if Christmas does not get the locals’ juices flowing, something that does cause excitement is the secession of one part of a state from another. I had heard rumblings about problems down in Hyderabad, but I had no idea of the gravity of the situation until I read a few days ago in the newspaper that a section calling itself Telangana was going to separate from Andhra Pradesh and create a brand new state. That would be similar to part of Virginia declaring itself a separate state. Oops, that actually did happen back in 1863 when West Virginia was carved out of a western chunk of Virginia. But we’re now in the 21st century and we’re talking about a democracy that is more than 60 years old. Even so, enough political brinksmanship has been played out in Andhra Pradesh (AP) to bring about this surprising result.

The English language newspapers here are incredibly idiomatic and inferential, so it’s not completely clear from reading them exactly what has happened or why, but it seems that the agitation has been going on for some time, and the Congress party, the political party that rules India and has for most of its 60+ years of democracy, has been waffling, essentially saying “whatever the people want we’ll agree with.” Well there is no consensus on this issue – it’s a very raw matter that has resulted in dueling suicides and other craziness meant to try to force the political parties to act for or against secession. The tipping point came when the leader of the major secessionist party, K Chandrashekhar Rao went on a hunger strike, and after 11 days became so weak that his demise was a very real possibility. Violence had already reared its ugly head in AP, but the level was expected to multiply exponentially should KCR (as the papers call him) expire from his fast. And so Sonia Ghandi, the head of the Congress party, capitulated and decreed that Congress would not oppose the creation of the new state.

Crisis avoided – for now. KCR dropped his fast and jubilation (amongst secession supporters) broke out. But the troubles are not over. Many state legislators have resigned in protest, the state assembly may not have a quorum to act, new elections may have to be called and whoever wins may not approve the split after all so we may need to see a few more rounds of hunger strikes and protest suicides before the future of Telangana is truly settled. If I were betting, I’d bet that the new state eventually comes about, and within the next 20 years at least one other new state is carved from an existing one in India. Like everywhere else in the world, Indians only want to live with people who are just like them. It’s the old “you and I are the only reasonable people in the world and I’m not that sure about you” mentality.

In talking to natives about this startling story, most are resigned to political shenanigans of this sort. They blame it mostly on higher level politicians who are expert at playing the caste/religion/tribe angles to get their supporters riled up for their cause. Given the incredible benefits that can accrue to a political leader who becomes the Chief Minister (CM) of a state, it’s probably worth going on a hunger strike to force the creation of a new state if you have a good chance of being that state’s CM. The CM is roughly similar to Governor in the US but with modes of corruption available that would have made even Rod Blagojevich blush.

On Saturday night we stopped for ice cream at Naturals, purportedly the best ice cream shop in Pune. I bought Ashraf a coconut scoop to go along with our treats, so the three of us sat in the car slurping on ice cream for a few minutes. While sitting there a mini-drama played out in front of us. A man with his wife and small child drove up on a scooter, parted out front and went inside for ice cream. Within seconds, two young guys ran up to the scooter, wheeled it into the street then hoisted it into a waiting truck whereupon the truck started heading down the street. I yelled at Ashraf that they were stealing the guy’s scooter and asked him to call the cops while I tried to make out the truck’s license plate number. Ashraf calmly kept eating his ice cream and simply said “No parking.”

He was explaining to me that the scooter had parked illegally and the guys who grabbed it were the “police” or “parking patrol” or some other quasi-official dudes. And sure enough, the two guys came back and stood outside the ice cream parlor until the scofflaw emerged. The two dudes said something to him, he looked at the spot where his scooter was supposed to be, did a double-take, then handed his ice cream to his wife and walked with the parking guys down to the truck where his scooter was sequestered. I asked Ashraf what would happen and he said the scooter jockey would have to pay 200 Rs and he would get his ride back. I then asked Ashraf if these guys worked for the police and he just shrugged. Whoever they work for, they’re at least 200 Rupees richer now.

Onto the 3-second rule which we have been scrupulous in avoiding here. If food falls on the floor, no matter how quickly we can get to it, we never consider putting it into our mouths. Unlike in the US where many of us are complacent about snatching up food that has hit the ground for only a few seconds, we have such fear of the bad cooties we assume are lying on the floor just waiting to attack us that we have consigned even the most delectable morsels to the dustbin once they touch the tiles.

Over the weekend we had lunch with two of Peggy’s employees (and their families), so we got an opportunity to learn more about India, local customs and the Hindu religion. I have to admit that every time a local tells me that Hinduism is easy to understand and then launches into an explanation of some portion of the 3+ million gods, my eyes roll back into my head and I end up more confused than before. I’ve now heard three different stories as to why Brahma is the least worshipped of the 3 main Hindu gods. But when I asked why anyone would worship Shiva, called the Destroyer, I was gently reminded that destruction of evil is actually good, and that with destruction comes renewal and growth. In some ways Shiva is like a forest fire – cleaning out the deadwood and dry underbrush so new growth can take over and maintain the vitality of the entire forest.

A number of Peggy’s engineers have visited Colorado in the past, and I was surprised to hear one of them say how hot he thought it was there in the summertime. When I marveled at how hot it is here, even in the purported wintertime, he claimed that the heat in Denver was much harder to bear because it was so much dryer there! Have we gotten it wrong all this time? Is it possible that the dry heat in Arizona is actually much hotter than the humid heat in Houston? I’m not buying it.

It’s possible that I’ve been pretty hard on India in my ruminations over the past few months. But Jody found a blog that makes mine seem like a puff piece from the Indian Chamber of Commerce. Check it out here: http://0at.org/blog/india_vacation

I finally figured out why I’ve been a bit testy lately. When we left the US I thought it would be a good opportunity to get away from my frustration with the problems we have in our country, one of the biggest being the incredible sway that big money has over every decision made by our political leaders and how this mindless devotion to those with big bucks makes for a pretty unfair existence for many people. But trying to isolate myself from the goings on back home is not reasonable and I now realize I’ve gotten absorbed by the corruption and political shenanigans here in India so I now have TWO countries to stew over. Although the corruption here is at a mind-bogglingly different level than back home, in some ways India is nothing more than a window on our own American dysfunction.

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26545681@N07/sets/72157622910670823/