Aaaaand we're done....

As the title suggests, our project here is over.  The client company has elected to not continue with the project, so we have begun our process to cycle back home.  Saturday we leave for good.  For obvious reasons, I don't/won't talk here about what's gone on with this situation, but if you'd like to hear about it some time, buy me a beer and prepare to be amazed.

Things I'll miss about being here:

• The food:  I've been exposed to so many different things here that I've enjoyed, and will continue to seek them out or make them myself when I get home
• The friends I've made
• Learning about the culture
• Tea/coffee/snacks delivered to me while in the office:  this is sort of a common thing here, as most offices of any size seem to have someone that does this all day.
• Grocery service.  Seriously, WHY DON'T WE HAVE THIS???  I can get on the store's website, choose the things I want, pick a 2 hour delivery window, and a guy brings it all to me, for FREE.  They even text me when the delivery person leaves the store with my stuff. 

Who wants a cookie?

Rickshaw madness!

Things I WON'T miss about being here:

• The weather.  Hot/humid is not for me, and it is consistently both of those things here.
• The soul-crushing poverty
• Getting sick from unsafe food/water.  I've had 4 stomach infections in as many months, the last of which set me back pretty good, and required that I see a doctor.  This is unpleasant.
• The traffic and associated noise
• All of my friends and loved ones back at home
• Being STARED at by strangers.  

This guy stared at us like that for several minutes

 It's been interesting being a minority here.  For the most part you can just ignore it, until you get the situation pictured above.  If you ever took an intro level psych class in college, they may have had you do these silly exercises that challenged social norms, like riding in an elevator while facing the other passengers.  Well, that has happened to me here. Several times I've been on an elevator, and I've looked up to see that others that live here have turned to face me and are just staring, the entire time, and not saying anything.  It's weird.  It also gives me a new appreciation for people that come to my country, or are in the minority, although in the back of my mind the whole time I know that my situation is still far better than most, especially considering that I have the ability to just pick up and leave.  

 As far as the poverty here goes, I've talked about it some on this blog, but I purposefully haven't posted many pictures that depict it.  It just seems disrespectful to people that have it hard enough without having some comparatively wealthy person doing a poverty tour, taking pictures.  The above picture is a pretty accurate representation of what you see everywhere here. As far as I can tell, that's literally all that person has in the entire world.  She's actually better off than some, considering that she has shoes.  A lot of them don't.  

 Meanwhile there's been a lot of celebrations, holidays, and festivals here lately.  At the end of August they celebrated Raksha Bandhan which celebrates brother/sister relationships.  Shops poped up all over to sell the string and bead bracelets (Rakhi) that they give each other.  I bought a bunch to give out when I get home, even though that's really not how they're intended to be gifted.  

Last week was the Krishna Janmashtami, otherwise known as the celebration of the birth of the god Krishna.  In this state the most notable event during this celebration is called Dahi Handi.  It's basically a contest, where teams of young men build human pyramids to try to reach and break an earthen pot that is suspended in the air.

Throughout the day leading up to this, we'd see big trucks full of the team members driving around, and throughout the night they were running all over the neighborhood acting like rowdy boys, yelling and cheering.  As you can imagine, people sometimes get injured when these things don't work out as intended, to the point where the courts got involved this year to try to limit the height to which they'd try to reach.  This caused major consternation amongst the populace, with some teams electing not to participate at all as a result.

We're just going to miss the Ganesh Chaturthi, which is the festival held in honor of the god Ganesha.  In preparation vendors have popped up that sell all sizes of Ganesh idols, which people either take into their homes to worship, or build public shrines of various sizes for this purpose, called Pandals.  They're building this one near where my tabla instructor lives:

Part of the festival involves carrying these idols into the sea/lakes/rivers, representing the cycle of creation and dissolution in nature.  The idols used to be made of plaster of paris, but this practice was causing enough pollution in the waterways that they mostly make them of clay now.  

Other random tidbits:

I was able to attend a small performance that my tabla instructor gave last weekend.  She brought over a Sitar player from Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), and set up a small stage in her parent's apartment not far from where I live. It was a real privilege to be able to see this.  Here's a short clip of them playing:

I was finally able to catch one of the BEST buses on the street.  As I think I've said before, they have these horns that are just the squeeze bulb kind that they operate with their hands, which they seem to do continuously.  You always know when one of these things is nearby, and the horns always crack me up.  They're really loud...enough so that I can hear them all the way up here on the 10th floor in my apartment. They remind me of a honking goose:

The rest of our time here is going to be spent packing up all our things, and tying up the loose ends, closing our bank accounts, and filling out random paperwork.  Next week will be a whirlwind, since we'll be closing on a house, moving into it, and returning to my old job.  I also have to buy a car, since I sold mine before coming over here.  

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, and enjoying my favorite season in Ohio.  I'll see you soon!

It's about that time

The countdown is on for my first visit home in mid-September.  By the time I get back I will have been gone more than 130 days.  Unfortunately it's only a 2 week visit, which I'm sure will fly by.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone.

India continues to be full of contradictions.  Recently the Indian government decided to crack down on pornography, by blocking just under 900 websites.  This has the populace crying foul, as expected.  The puritan values here are strange, given that we're talking about the society that is responsible for the Kama Sutra.  For the most part they don't even let TV or movies show people kissing, as they censor it all out.  All this makes the product advertisement below even more confusing:

Seems pretty suggestive, yeah? That ad has been in the paper for weeks. All of this suppression of sexuality has the predictable effect of causing people to be really uneducated about sexual health.  For instance, the local paper has a daily column where people write in and ask sex related questions to an advice columnist.  At least one of the questions every day is "my girlfriend and I rubbed our parts together but we had all our clothes on, is it possible she is pregnant?" Homosexuality is literally punishable by law, but transgenderism is both common and widely accepted.  One thing that I found strange when I first arrived is that it's common for platonic friends of the same gender to show what looks like a lot more affection than you'd see in the USA.  You'll see a couple mid-50's business men walking down the street, just holding hands like a couple.  

All of this is from religious beliefs, of course, and is the same as the ban on beef that I've written about here previously.  There's a constant struggle that seems to take place between the traditional religious values and the desire to become more enlightened about how the rest of the world works.  I guess that's not too different from home, now that I think about it.  

There is a crazy mix of religion here, the major ones being: Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Parsi, Jain.  The Jains are probably the one that is the most intriguing, as they seem to be REALLY strict in their beliefs.  They practice non-violence toward all things, and are therefore almost exclusively vegan.  They even go so far as to not kill insects, and won't eat certain kinds of vegetables if harvesting them kills the plant.  Haven't seen an overweight Jain yet, as you can probably imagine. I hope to visit their temple here at some point.  The thing that surprised me the most about them is they clearly display a swastika as a symbol:

Evidently that symbol means different things to different people.  For the Jains, it means:

"the four arms of the swastika symbolize the four destinies: demon, animal, human and divine being. It represents the perpetual nature of the universe in the material world, where a creature is destined to one of those states based on their karma. It also represents the four columns of the Jain Sangha: sadhus, sadhvis, shravakas and shravikas - monks, nuns, female and male laymen. It also represents the four characteristics of the soul: infinite knowledge, infinite perception, infinite happiness and infinite energy."

We took a day this weekend to drive over to a neighboring city a couple hours from here, called Pune (pronounced poon-uh).  It's just another big city, but it involved a nice drive through the countryside.  I've not been out of the city for months, so it was nice to see something green for a change.  The drive takes you through/over a feature called the Western Ghats, which is a north/south mountain range that is just outside of Mumbai to the East.  I took several pictures, but due to the rains we were basically in the clouds for most of it, so they didn't turn out.  Here are a couple off the internet though:

It really is that green up there, and as you can see in the first picture there are waterfalls that flow over the cliffs during the monsoon.  It was really something.  It would be nice to spend some more time up there.

Once we arrived in Pune, we visited the Aga Khan palace.  

This is where Gandhi, his wife, and his secretary were imprisoned in the late 1940's during the Indian rebellion against British rule.  Both his wife and secretary died while imprisoned there.  As such, the site holds a lot of significance to the people here.  I was surprised to see that some of Gandhi's ashes are actually kept there:

From there we went down to Shaniwar Wada, a 16th century fort:

The metal spikes on that door were installed up there because they would have been the same level of an elephant that an attacking army would have used to try to ram them open.  The vertical slots above the door opening were used to pour boiling oil on anyone standing down there.  That's our driver Khalid in the foreground, giving me the "WTF are you doing" look. From here we went back to Mumbai, which took 90 minutes longer than the GPS said it should, because thank you Mumbai traffic.  

A couple more random tidbits:

Every morning as we approach our entry point to the airport grounds, we drive down a street that is just filled with walking commuters going to work/school/whatever.  I've been meaning to get a video of it, and I finally got one.

You can see the mass of people walking down the left side in the video.  There are cows in there sometimes as well.  If you look closely, you'll see some red mass transit buses operated by a company called BEST.  They have these manual squeeze-bulb horns that the driver honks, instead of a car horn.  They're surprisingly loud, and they sound like a goose honking.  I've been trying unsuccessfully to get one on video, as they crack me up all the time.  You always know when one of those is around.

We have these little guys all over the front of our building, especially at night:

This is Frank.  He likes mosquitos. 

Some of these are bigger than my hand.  I'm happy to have them around, because it likely means fewer insects, which I'm a fan of.

One of my favorite things to do here is spot ridiculous signs that they put up about various things.  Here are a couple that made me laugh recently:

All right then

Makes you wonder what was going on before they put the sign up....

Thanks for reading, everybody!

The strange, the bad, and the interesting

So I walked over to the mall next door last week, and found this on display:

If it is the first, doesn't that automatically make it the largest?

That's right, it's the world's first and largest butter Krishna.  If I know India at all, there's a bureaucrat in a dusty office somewhere that certifies such a claim, but only after 20 forms are filled out.  In general the marketing here seems so transparent and silly compared to home, but I think that owes largely to the cultural differences. The television and print advertisements all seem kind of ridiculous, with the guys in them all striving to pass off this super macho BS.  I've spoken to the locals here that have gone to the USA, and they mention feeling the same way there, so I guess it's not just me.

The monsoon rains have abated considerably, which is a welcome change, but the humidity is still just as oppressive as ever.  There are days that the 30' walk from my apartment door to the elevator is all it takes to start sweating.  Occasionally there's a nice breeze, but the relief it brings is largely dependent on the direction it's coming from, as a wind out of the south brings the smell of this:

Don't bother bringing your fishing pole

That's a nice canal a few blocks from our place, full of fetid water, effluent, and trash. I typically refer to it as the "river of discontent" or simply "shit river." It's a nice landmark for directions, as in "yeah it's about a 5 minute walk past shit river, then you turn left." I was on a bridge at the time I took this, and luckily the wind was at my back.  The smell is really almost something you can see.  This is a real problem for India.  There are just too many people to deal with all the sewage, combined with a general lack of trustworthy governmental officials, or willpower to deal with it.  This particular canal got within about 8" of flowing over those banks when the monsoon rains were really going a couple weeks ago.  Thinking about it coming over the top is just too awful to contemplate, particularly if you want to have an appetite any time soon.  It's even more difficult to understand given what looks like such criminally misplaced priorities in this country.  They recently announced an initiative here to ensure all the citizens of India have access to digital infrastructure in the next 4 years.  This is the sort of thing that makes me just want to shake people.  The newspaper reported recently that 48% of the citizens of this country still just poop on the ground outside, largely due to proper infrastructure for them to do otherwise.  Makes perfect sense to give everyone internet access though.

On a happier note, we took some time this weekend to go to Sanjay Gandhi national park.

We can actually see the hills in this park from our apartment, when the skies are reasonably clear.  It's really quite something to be in the middle of this sprawling city one moment, and then in what is basically a jungle.  There's a surprising amount of wildlife in the park, including 35 leopards, which just blows my mind.  Top level predators living that close to so many people leads to the sort of problems that don't take a lot of imagination to deduce, such as the type of encounter shown here, which makes me giggle more than it probably should.  If you know me at all I often feel like we kind of get what we deserve for the impact we have on wildlife.

We also ran across these guys:

They're fun to look at for a while, but it turns out they're kind of dicks.  There's a concession stand at where we parked, which seems to exist solely to sell unsuspecting park visitors tasty treats for these jerks to steal.  One of the guys with me had a bag of potato chips about 30 seconds before one of these sneaked up from behind to snatch it right out of his hands.

At any rate, we stopped here to visit Kanheri Caves.  This was really a fascinating place to visit, and I'd likely go back.  It's not often you live 30 minutes from a World Heritage site.  I won't attempt to explain these as the link above does a much better job, but these were basically caves carved out of solid basalt that served as Buddhist monasteries and living quarters from 2400 years ago.  They're really nicely preserved, although there's another site nearby that I hope to visit that is supposed to be even better. You could walk right into most of the rooms, and see where people lived and prayed.  It really was something to see just how clever the people who created these were.  As you can see below, being carved into the hillside would mean that during the monsoon rains, there'd be water pouring into the cave. Instead they cleverly carved rain gutters above the overhang, routing them down the side of the cave, even around corners and into cisterns so they'd have water to use.  These cisterns were at least five or six feet deep, and every one of them was full of water.  The gutters still work centuries later.  You can see one of those below as well.

The first cave that you come to

The front of the largest temple

Inside of the temple pictured above.  The square holes about halfway up the walls were where rafters were installed to create a second floor.

The rainwater collection system, and cistern

Anyone speak Sanskrit?

Stairs carved into the rock

This one was about 30 feet tall

At one point I was able to climb to the top of this rock formation.  It was an overcast day, but there was a really great breeze blowing.  It was nice to be up there and just feel that wind, not hear any horns, and smell the fresh air.  It was like being home again, for just a moment.  I was thankful it was cloudy, as the dark color of the rocks would probably radiate some serious heat if the sun was shining.

That's probably as far from other people as I've been in months

I'll leave you with the latest traffic ridiculousness.  You often see this here, but I finally managed to get a shot of it:

Wife riding side saddle? Check...

Child riding in front of the driver? Check...

Nobody wearing helmets?  Check...

At least he wasn't on a cell phone, although that's probably only because nobody had called him, as that seems to be a generally accepted practice here. 

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer.  I miss you all!

What's for dinner?

Many of you have asked about the food here, so I'll attempt to shed some light on the subject.  As I have mentioned before, we get lunch every day in the office.  The manager asked us when we arrived what kind of food we'd like, and we said to bring us Indian food, so he's been obliging us.  He's been doing a great job of keeping it interesting, going so far as to bring a different chicken curry every day for about a week that was from a different region of India.  This has been really helpful, as it's somewhat bewildering to figure out what everything is sometimes. For example, here's the menu for a restaurant that is right across the street.  If I didn't sit here and google everything prior to going, I'd have no idea what the hell it was.  We've not been to that place yet, because it's mostly a lot of snacks, or things you'd find as street food, plus it's strictly vegetarian, or "veg" as they'd say here.  We'll try it eventually.

Speaking of work food, we got these last week:

Those are called Vada Pav.  They're essentially fried balls of mashed potato, but there's more to it. There's turmeric and spices mashed in with the potato.  The bread seemed unnecessary at first, but it was all nice and warm, and was really tasty.  The idea is to sprinkle some of the red powder over it, then add one or more of those chili peppers, which had been salted.  Those peppers were initially not too hot, but 15 minutes later we'd all finished a bottle of water, and were sniffling and wiping our eyes.

Speaking of spices, I'm often asked if the food is spicy.  For the most part, nothing has been ridiculously hot.  That being said, there are a lot of spices in the food (it's science!).  One of my favorite Indian foods is Biryani, which is a rice dish that can either be veg or non-veg (that's seriously what they say). There are two main ways to make it, but the most common in restaurants is "dum ki biryani" which is common to central India.  It's made by marinating the meat (if included) in spices, cooking the rice in more spices, then cooking the chicken a bit, adding the cooked rice on top of it, then a layer of caramelized onions and herbs, then another layer of rice and onions, and finally adding saffron flavored milk over the whole thing.  It's then sealed up and cooked through.  When you first open up a good Biryani it smells like perfume from all those spices and flavors.  I hope I'm able to make that when I get home.

We get a lot of curries here, which most of you probably know is just chunks of meat/vegetables in a sauce, or what they refer to as the gravy.  These dishes are a staple here, and it's been a bit of an adjustment for me, as I'm not used to such a soupy kind of dish as a main course.  They normally serve them with a bread of some sort, normally naan, paratha, or roti to mop up the tasty sauce.  The breads are a whole other category that we've only just began to experience.  The favorites of these that I've had so far are (links to recipes for each):

Chicken Tikka Makhani (also known as butter chicken)
Kolhapuri chicken
Palak chicken
Matar paneer

Yes, you're right, that's a lot of chicken.  We're getting sort of sick of it, quite honestly.  I'm thinking I'll be eating a lot of steak when I get home.  We do also visit places that have foods we're used to at home, but we often find that something gets lost in translation.  A dish that sounds good because it is something you'd get at home comes out with something just not right about it.  I do have a tradition that I was able to maintain this year.  Everyone has a food that if they could eat it every day with no consequences, they would.  For me that food is donuts.  Because eating donuts all the time is obviously counter to longevity, I only allow myself to eat donuts one day per year, on my birthday.  Last Friday was my birthday, and thankfully there's a Krispy Kreme in the neighborhood just south of mine.

I could eat all of those.  Watch me.  

We got those on our way to the office, and proceeded to get a nice sugar high.  It was nice to be able to have something that felt like home, and they were exactly right, probably due to being an established chain despite being all the way over here.

Something that's been an adjustment here that was totally unexpected is the milk they sell here.  Evidently this is common in Europe as well, but none of it is refrigerated.  It's what they call "ultra high temperature" pasteurized, and combined with an aseptic (sterile) container, it's shelf stable at room temperature for up to 6 months until it's opened.  You also find something called "toned" milk, which I don't like at all.  It all tastes sort of funky compared to what I'm used to.  Even weirder, they sell a lot of it in these sealed plastic bags, and I have no idea what you do with them once you open them to keep them from spilling all over the place.  To tie in with what I said in my last post, about the bikes, there are guys that ride around with these canisters attached to their bikes, and they deliver these bags of milk to people/businesses that purchase them.  This is done even in the torrential downpours of the monsoon, or when it's 110 degrees outside:

Get your weird milk here!

That's it for now...it's time to go eat!

Rainy days

The monsoon rains are finally upon us.  They started a couple days ago, which was a little later than anticipated, due to a tropical storm out in the Arabian Sea.  It's been raining non-stop now for about 16 hours as I write this.  It should end some time in September.  As much as I'm sure I am going to tire of all the rain, it hasn't been bad so far.  The first round of showers cleared up the air, and we had what I can say is probably the first "nice" day we've had since I have arrived, weather-wise.  I was able to see mountains in the distance that I hadn't seen yet, and the sky was nice and blue like I'm used to seeing at home.  It didn't last though, as the steady rains weren't far behind a couple days later.  All this came just in time for India.  It was reported in the paper that the reservoirs serving Mumbai had 60 days of water left.  That's pretty alarming to think of 20 million people that close to having no water at all.  The livelihoods and economy here are directly tied to the rains, which is unlike anything I've experienced previously.  The stock market here recently fell quite significantly on the heels of a forecast for a weak monsoon this year.  Less rain means less crops, and less spending in the economy.  Unfortunately, it's the farmers who feel it the most, as a reduction in crop yields can ruin many of those with smaller farms.  My annoyance with the humidity after the sun comes out after the rain seems insignificant by comparison.

Things have changed subtly since the rains started.  It obviously makes much of the activity we're used to seeing take place outdoors diminish somewhat.  Take these fellows, for instance:

I've been trying to catch a picture of those guys seated on the crates for some time now, and finally got this one.  Every day they were sitting out there getting a shave from some man that offers the service. No enclosure, chairs, or running water needed.  Just a guy, a bucket of water, and some crates to sit on. He had at least 2 or 3 guys out there every day I looked.  I imagine he's done for now though.

I also expected to see some differences in the plant and animal life here, but being in the city it doesn't really seem to obvious.  I did see this guy come out after a shower though:

The rains haven't changed our activities much.  Before the rain it was too hot outside to do anything but scurry to/from where you needed to go, unless it was early in the morning, so it's not like we're missing anything now.  We did go see a movie this weekend though.  The theaters here differ from home in that there are tiers of seating.  Here you see a couple of my co-workers enjoying their top-tier "gold" seats, with the big cushy recliners:

Transportation, as I've mentioned previously, is still an enormous pain in the ass.  I was asked prior to leaving if I'd be bringing my bicycle over with me, considering how much I ride when I'm home.  The traffic quickly makes such an activity extremely hazardous.  It's bad enough people are driving on a different side of the road, but when you add in the suggestive nature of the traffic control devices, pedestrians, meager attempts at traffic lanes, and the occasional cow, I'm sure I'd last a matter of minutes out there.  The locals, however, make pretty good use of their bikes.  I'd say that about 99% of them ride this mass produced steel bike here.  If I had to guess there's probably close to a million of them in the city.  They use them for transportation, of course, but they're also often used to move cargo around.  I've seen sheets of plywood being moved with them (balanced mid-point on the offside pedal, while the guy walks beside the bike), old air conditioning units, and big canisters of milk being carted about.

Check out that sweet front suspension!

It's not uncommon to see several people riding one bike at once.  The ladies almost always ride side saddle (on the motorcycles here as well), and I've yet to see anyone come close to falling off, save the two morons that were riding one yesterday, against traffic, while they both talked on their cell phones.

As an added bonus, I fell ill this week, and wound up missing a day of work after spending the previous night awake, coughing and sneezing.  I neglected to bring any cold medicine with me, so I was left to negotiate that process for the first time here.  Unlike home, you can't just go into the grocery store and head over to the medicines to pick from the 1000 different ones available. They simply don't sell any at all.  For such things you have to visit the "chemist."  There seem to be plenty of them around, and you can always spot them  by the lighted green cross sign they have out front somewhere.  The first attempt was done on the fly, walking back from lunch, when I noticed a chemist shop.  The language barrier left the poor guy behind the counter trying to make sense of the pantomimes I was doing to describe the symptoms I was experiencing.  From there he presented me with what he thought I was looking for, ranging from a nasal spray, an allergy pill, and an antibiotic.

After some research and advice from a co-worker, I learned that a lot of drugs here are just given out at the customer request, no prescription required.  I was advised that the best approach is to first have a picture of the medicine you'd buy back home to show them, and if that doesn't work, then a list of the main active ingredients.  Using this approach later in the day, I went into another chemist armed with a list of the ingredients from the cold meds I'd usually take, and wound up with something that seems to work. I think in the future I'll go into one with a list of some of the craziest shit I can think of, just to see how far they'll let someone go.  Benzodiazepine? Why not??  Hydrocodone? Sure!!

All of this leads to the feeling I have here a lot.  Simple interactions you'd take for granted at home wind up being hopelessly confusing.  I'll often enter into some transaction with a person that doesn't speak English, and while I can get through it eventually it becomes painfully obvious that there's some nuance to it that I'm totally missing which leaves the person I'm interacting with feeling every bit as confused or frustrated as I am.  For example, sometimes I go into the grocery store nearby, put my items down on the counter to check out, get everything bagged up, hand over the method of payment...and then...something.  There's some sort of expectation that is there that I'm not sure about, and we both wind up just looking at each other, before I shrug my shoulders and move on. Couple this with the confusing methodology applied to almost every simple action that takes place here, and I'm sure there's plenty of "what the hell is that guy's problem" being said in Hindi as I walk away.

Sorry again for the delay in posting. I've fallen into a bit more of a routine over here, especially during the week.  I try to wait until I've got a few new things to show you or talk about, rather than bore you with the banality of my every day life.

I'd love to hear from more of you. Drop me a message on Facebook, or send me a text message from time to time.  I miss home all the time, and I'd love to hear what things you've all been up to, even if it seems boring or uninteresting to you.

Now if only I'd thought to bring some rain boots....

Today was not a good day

I'd always wondered how with all this crazy traffic around that I didn't ever see any accidents.  Well, today I got to see my first one.

I was in the van with our driver today, headed to an errand, and about a mile from my apartment we hit a guy on a motorcycle in the middle of an intersection while going about 30 mph.  I saw the whole thing coming, and yelled three times for him to watch out, but between the language barrier and the closure rate, it didn't help.  We basically t-boned the guy, and he flew up and hit the windshield right in front of me, from which he then flew about 15 feet. I always thought it was hyperbole when people say someone looked "like a rag doll" but that's exactly what it looked like.  Remarkably after he landed he got up and limped over to the median.  He didn't have any visible injuries, but his leg was obviously hurt, and he was holding the back of his head, which I'm sure he hit on the car, as he wasn't wearing a helmet.

A little background info here.  Street justice is a thing in this country, and it happens a lot.  The events in that link happened just last week.  Often crowds can get violent when there is a perceived injustice, and there's little the police can do about it.

So, after the impact of the collision, my driver got out to see if the guy was ok, at which point a large crowd began to gather.  It wasn't long before they had basically surrounded the van that I was sitting in, yelling at me.  I wasn't driving, of course, but the guy in the car with the phone that costs more than they make in 6 months was an easy outlet for them, I guess.

At this point, the driver got back in to move our van out of the flow of traffic, whereupon he gave me the most unnecessary bit of advice I've ever received, stating "stay in the car, sir."  Once again it wasn't long before the van was surrounded by the mob, and it was starting to look like it was going to escalate. I got on the phone with one of my teammates at that point, to give him the details of where we were, and what was going on, just in case things got worse.  Thankfully, a police officer showed up, and he prudently jumped into the back of our van and we got the hell out of there.  We got to the police station so my driver could go through the formalities and reports, and I found a rickshaw to take me back to my apartment.  We later found out that the guy on the motorcycle was at fault (basically he ran the light), and his only major injury was a broken arm.  I honestly thought he was going to be dead.

Can't say I ever want to go through this again.

On a lighter note, they're redoing the sidewalk in front of our building with these interlocking paver bricks that are EVERYWHERE here, so they've brought in this big metal box thing and filled it with water.  I guess they'll use it to mix mortar with.  Anyway, it wasn't even there 12 hours before this happened:

Well, the sign does say "green Mumbai clean Mumbai..."

As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of issues with people's access to clean water here, and these kids were taking full advantage of this opportunity.  They were having a blast, laughing and splashing around, but they'd also thought to bring/find some soap with them, and you can see the guy in the t-shirt washing some clothes.  They later washed themselves with it too, and dunked back into the water to rinse off.  There's no way to know how long they'd been able to clean up like that, but from the way they acted it seemed like it had been a while.  I think the bricklayers are going to be in for a surprise when they try to mix mortar with that soapy water.  

We also finally got clear of another of the last couple remaining requirements for documentation for our residency here.  As I'm told other countries do as well, even though you have a visa allowing you to be in the country you still have to obtain a residency authorization.  I won't bore you here with the labyrinthine process, but just know that it was an enormous pain in the ass, even though we'd hired a specialist to help us through the process.  I don't think it would even be possible otherwise.  We had to visit this dank office on the 4th floor of a British era building, which was staffed by people along the lines of what you'd find at the local BMV attitude-wise, but adding in the language barrier.  We managed to get through it without causing an international incident, which was about as well as we could have hoped.  

The one good thing about it was that we had to go to south Mumbai, where you can actually see some interesting architecture.  We were driving, so I wasn't able to get many pictures but this one came out ok:

Try to imagine it without the taxi in the foreground

That is the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the largest train station in the city.  Two of the three local train lines terminate here, as well as trains to/from other cities, so as you can imagine it sees an alarming number of people every day.  I'll try to get more pictures of the interesting buildings the next time I'm in that area.

I'll leave you with this:

Number of people I've seen actively shitting outdoors, in broad daylight, while living in Columbus:  0

Number of people I've seen actively shitting outdoors, in broad daylight, the month that I've been here:  2

I hope to not need to update this statistic, but the trend is not promising.

There is no why...

We've officially given up on asking any question that starts with the word "why."  There either is no answer, or the only one available just makes your head hurt.  For example, you might find yourself walking down the street on a Sunday afternoon, and notice a little boy about 8 months old, sitting by himself in the middle of the sidewalk, screaming for some sort of attention as everyone walks past him. Being a reasonable person, you might start to say "why is there a baby...." before you remember where you are.

Last weekend I went to the mall that's a little bit up the road from here, so I could watch a movie.  They do things a little different here (obviously). First of all they start off with a rousing group rendition of the Indian national anthem "Jana Gana Mana" (Thout art the ruler of the minds of all people), carried out with the same sort of enthusiasm you get from such compulsory patriotism at home.  The movie also has an intermission about halfway through, which occurs without fanfare or announcement.  One moment you're sitting there watching a chase scene...the camera zooms in on the protagonist, as he steadies his aim to shoot at the bad guys, and then BAM the screen goes black, and the lights come up.  

We saw our first funeral procession this week.  We were driving in bumper to bumper traffic on an 8 lane highway during morning rush hour when we saw a large group of people walking mostly on the shoulder, walking against traffic.  They carried the body out in the open, on a stretcher, being carried on the shoulders of 4 men.  It was covered in all sorts of flowers, save the feet and the face. It was strange more for the location than anything.  It was the last thing I expected to see, but from what my driver told us, it's pretty common. 

I've been slowly getting introduced to other unique things about India as well.  The client company here has daily flights to a city called Jamnagar to the north of here.  The pilots told us that they were known for their peanut plantations up there, so they were kind enough to bring us some.  They were really, really good.  I may try to bring some home at some point, but I worry that the agriculture folks in the USA will confiscate them.  

Delicious!

We also got treated to some extremely fresh cashews from Goa, along the coast to our south.  I'm hoping to take a weekend trip down there at some point in the time that I'm here.  Not only do they grow cashews, but they also have plantations where they grow a large number of the spices that you find in your grocery stores.  That would be fun to go check out.

There does seem to be an abundance of fruit and vegetables available, and it's pretty easy to just find them for sale right out on the street.  We went to a neighborhood near mine to the south called Bandra last weekend, and I got this picture of one of the street vendors:

The drive to/from work almost always affords the ability to get a glimpse of the lives of the people here.  As I've mentioned in a previous post, there really is no water distribution infrastructure here, so they rely on trucks to bring the water from reservoirs that then fill up the holding tanks in people's buildings.  Because so many people live in such terrible poverty here, access to clean water is a major issue.  Often on the way to work the trucks haven't began their rounds yet, and opportunists go crack the taps on the back to gain access to water for drinking, or just to clean up a bit.  The drivers don't lock the taps, so I guess they just have some kind of agreement about it.

I found out that the pool here in my apartment complex, while free, is not too great.  For one thing, there's about a million pigeons splashing around in it on the edges at any given time.  They've hilariously hired some chap to go around and shoo them off, but they just come right back once he's moved a bit away.  Furthermore, the Indian culture is pretty modest, and it's uncommon for them to just hang out at the pool in their swimsuits.  They pretty much get in with clothes on, splash around a bit, and leave.  We got clued into a better place, however, that's more in line with what we have back home.  We went last weekend, and it's really nice.  There were expats there from all over the place, and you can lay out in the sun without any disapproving looks.  It's right on the beach too, so you can listen to the waves instead of the car horns, and feel like a human again.  The beach is filthy, mind you, and the water is not something you'd want to dip your toes into, but the pool is nice at least.

This will be great until the monsoon starts.  The rains are forecast to begin next week, and start sporadically, building eventually to daily periods of rain, then slowly tapering off again in late September.  Last year Mumbai got 5 FEET of rain for that same period of time, which is just insane.  Different events are referred to in relationship to the monsoon, and you'll hear people say things like "by next monsoon."  Evidently during some of the heavier rains the roads just plain become impassable, which should be fun.  The businesses here can be seen preparing for the rain, which for many of them entails putting up a temporary thatched roof, that they make from bamboo:

They make good use of the bamboo here, even making construction scaffolding from it on the outside of buildings.  They do this to insane heights, often over 20 stories tall, and they don't appear to bother with tethering themselves to it as they work.  They must have been at this for some time though, as they go about it without much consternation, and they work really efficiently at it.  

This weekend's goal:  find an umbrella!

Home...is where I want to be

But I guess I'm already there.

Today is probably the most difficult I've had here.  Emily graduates from law school today, which was an event that I sincerely wish I was there for. She's been in law school since we met, and it just feels wrong not to be there.  I knew when I agreed to come on this journey that I'd be missing some things, like birthdays, or weddings, or such things, but this one hurts.  I guess I've had it pretty good considering that I work in the aviation industry.  A lot of people have it much worse than I do.

Work continues to be somewhat frustrating.  It's a combination of high level ambiguous concepts for goals, with no clearly defined tasks (up to us to just figure it out) combined with super high expectations for success. Awesome.  The last member of our team arrived today, so hopefully we can get things moving.

The food, water, or something finally caught up to me this week as well.  Let's just say I'm staying home a lot, and leave it at that.  I guess I'm lucky it took this long to happen.  Long car rides are certainly more exciting.

Several of my friends mentioned this week that they wanted to see my place a little better, so I made this video today:

Some also asked about what I've been cooking.  As you can see in the video above, the kitchen is definitely not set up for the kind of cooking I do when I'm at home.  This is further complicated by the fact that many of the ingredients that I normally use are not available here.  We get lunch served to us at work (almost always Indian food), and the client company is picking up our Monday-Friday dinners on an expense account, so during the week there's no reason to make anything. By the time the weekend comes around the idea of making more Indian food isn't too appealing.  I'm sure I'll get into more of a groove as time goes on. Chicken is the most widely available meat, followed by lamb. India has always been mostly against eating beef, but you could still find it. Hell, there's a TGI Friday's in the mall next door.  Wouldn't you know it then that two days before I got here, this happened. Simple possession of beef is now punishable by up to one year in jail, even if you didn't get it here in India.  That seems reasonable.  There are what looks like 3 year old kids living under the highway overpass that we go under every day, which is also the busiest intersection we encounter.  They are completely without any adults present, at least from what I've seen, and in some cases they're carrying around their infant (what I assume is) sibling, caring for it.  Better make sure those cows are ok though.  Those of you that know me enough to be familiar with religion imposing its views on everyone (especially by law) probably know how much this annoys me.

Another of the challenges I've been dealing with is how different my spare time is spent.  At home I didn't have much trouble staying busy, but here things are different, which I mostly anticipated.  I've mostly been exercising and getting to know the area, but I also decided to learn to play a classical Indian drum called the Tabla.  I searched around, and finally found an instructor that would answer my messages, and had my first lesson today.  I've never played a percussion instrument before, because they always seemed a little one-dimensional to me, but this one is pretty different, with many different sounds you can create depending on how and where you hit it.  I'm taking lessons from this lady, and her assistant:

She's been playing for YEARS to get this good at it, and performs regularly, so I'm hoping to pick up as much as I can in the year that I'm here.  The thing I hadn't realized before, and you can see if you look closely in the video, is your wrist isn't really involved in the striking motion on the drum. It's all in the fingers, and it's far from a natural motion for me.  I think this will be a good challenge for me, and I'm really looking forward to it.  The lessons are only $5 USD each, so what the hell.  

Guess I must be having fun

This must be the place.