Only three weeks left...
More than one week after the bomb blasts that killed 200 and disrupted the city’s rapid pace, life is back to normal as it has been since just one day after the bombing. Mumbai’s people have since expressed pride in how resilient they are, showcasing in their local paper what the scene was like in London, New York, and other cities on the day after their respective terrorist attacks.
Although the city was quick to resume it’s regular hustle and bustle, I had already lost most faith in the ability of India to conduct efficienct businsess (Mumbai represents ~70% of the Country’s GDP so an economically inefficient Mumbia equates to an inefficienct India). While I have a few very intelligent, genuine and helpful people at the 20 or so companies I have visited over the last 50 days, I have also seen such incompetence, poor communication skills and poor customer service, that it is a wonder that anything actually gets done here. Perhaps every office has once dunce, and as an unlikely potential for large revenues, I am consistently assigned to that one guy. The communications problems are to be expected when business is conducted in someone’s non-native language, however, this is only marginally improved when business is conducted in Hindi directly between two native Hindi speakers.
One manufacturer agreed to make a sample of a part for me, and said it would be delivered on June 17th. At least ten reminder calls—after each of which the sample was promised to be sent “tomorrow”—and one month later, I have not recieved it. This is among the extreeme examples, but is not uncharacteristic of the service I have recieved. So much time must be spent reminding others to do what they are supposed to do, that there is barely any time left what you need to do for yourself.
Another meeting sticks out as particularly frustrating, but for another reason. A conversation with a potential supplier of stickers wandered from adhesive options on PVC stickers, to corruption present in India and America, and the imporatance of God in our respective countries. I explained that the role of God was a particularly important among Christians in the South, to which he responded, “I think Christians are good people. I’d say maybe 60-70% of the Christians in India are good. ...but 100% of Muslims are bad.” Needless to say, this guy was Hindu, and looked like quite the character.
Mr .Shah had a borderline mullet, died reddish with the henna dye that is ever-popular amoung greying men and younger men alike, shirt unbottened to expose his chest hair and his excessive collection of gold jewelery, including a gold arrowhead and a pendant with “S”, for his initial. It is easy to picture him in some sleezy, dimly lit night club. I proceeded to try to reason with him, wishing my oversimplified innocence could be shared and his hatred forgotten. It is a prejudice that has been solidified through generations of conflicts, and countless riots. I suspect that many men just like this that must have taken part in the murders and arson during the riots late last century. I wonder if he ever killed anyone. Somehow, it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. I left the meeting with a sense of sadness and hopelessness, knowing that this type of hatred is not unique to Mumbai, but is found in varying degrees in nearly every culture across the globe, as it has for all of recorded history, and is not likely to dissapear...
In addition to now having a broken computer, I discovered some other things which are not Mumbai-proof. The first of which is anything clean, including clothes or even you. Rimless glasses are also to be added to the list, as they do not hold on to ones head well enough to stay on while you are thrusted off of a train, nor do they fair well after being trampled by the stompede that follows. Fortunately I only get angered by ridiculous, minute things, and actually found the whole event pretty humorous.
OK, so enough negativity. Things have not all been bad recently. On Sunday I took a solo train ride to Lonavla, a “hill station” about 160 km outside of Mumbai. I stook by the door for the two hour ride to enjoy the breeze, and see a part of India which is more green and less crowded. The last 30 minutes of the journey were amazing. Large, green mountains surrounded the train, laced with slender waterfalls which cascaded into the valleys below. The grasses were long and soft looking, inviting me to just hop off the train and take in the scenery from a stationary viewpoint. Instead, I waited for the train to reach my destination, which was nice, but no as spectacular as the journey would have led me to believe.
The rest of the day was spent walking towards mountains and hiking in search of simliar views, up through a small slum, and eventually onto a cattle-grazing area. It’s strange how much more pleasant the slums seem when surrounded by nature. It is how I would have expected it before coming to Mumbai. I can somehow justify living in a slum-type community in middle of the woods. It seems like the kind of adventure that you might pay to endure over a summer. The walls of the shacks were made of some thin bamboo stalks, filled in with a muddy paste; roofs coated with tarps of assorted colors to keep the monsoon outside. I’m sure the surrounding flora even included some banana trees, or coconuts. In my own niaive, romanticised way, their modest lives seems pleasant, but perhaps only as a result of the contrast to the slums of the city which posess all of the bad and none of the good, apart from the good-natured residents. All in all, it was a great day. This weekend the group is flying to Arvind’s home state (in South India) where we will enjoy great scenery, beaches and lakes, tasty food, and a brief escape from Mumbai! Due to lack of flight availablity, I’ll have to wait for some other time to see what Singapore is all about...too bad.
My Hindi skills are getting better day by day (not much better, but better none-the-less), as I recently learned how to conjugate verbs in the past and future tense. Unfortunately, my vocabulary is still pretty pathetic, so I’m defintely far from able to hold a conversation. In other newly developed skills, I have started playing Erin’s banjo. I think the only skill involved there is the ability to annoy those around, but I haven’t lost my ear for music and can quickly fumble through single-note (non-chord) versions various classics.
Just yesterday I had a meeting with a different, non-racist sticker manufacturer at his home. As he doesn’t speak English, his daughter, Sheetal, was there to translate for us. I was surprise at how cute she was, as I had spoken to her many times on the phone and had expected her to be a much older secretary. She told me that she and her friends go out to clubs most nights, and invited me to join them at “Polly Esther’s”, so I was pretty excited to go with her and all of her other cute firends to this club. The club was nicer than the others that I’d seen here, but the boyfriend she brought was less than stellar, but it still made for a good night out. For those of you eager to come to India for it’s inexpensive club scene, I’ll give you an example of what you could expect to pay. Last night it cost Rs. 600 ($14) to get in, which then entiteled me to Rs. 600 worth of drinks. Unfortunatley the western music was accompnaied by western prices, which meant I could only get one Jack and “Thumbs Up” (a version of Coca cola) at a cost of Rs. 500. In a city where you can eat at a restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner for under $2/day, it is crazy that others pay over $11 for a single drink.
Well, that’s enough writing for now. Time to head home and pack for the beach!!
Although the city was quick to resume it’s regular hustle and bustle, I had already lost most faith in the ability of India to conduct efficienct businsess (Mumbai represents ~70% of the Country’s GDP so an economically inefficient Mumbia equates to an inefficienct India). While I have a few very intelligent, genuine and helpful people at the 20 or so companies I have visited over the last 50 days, I have also seen such incompetence, poor communication skills and poor customer service, that it is a wonder that anything actually gets done here. Perhaps every office has once dunce, and as an unlikely potential for large revenues, I am consistently assigned to that one guy. The communications problems are to be expected when business is conducted in someone’s non-native language, however, this is only marginally improved when business is conducted in Hindi directly between two native Hindi speakers.
One manufacturer agreed to make a sample of a part for me, and said it would be delivered on June 17th. At least ten reminder calls—after each of which the sample was promised to be sent “tomorrow”—and one month later, I have not recieved it. This is among the extreeme examples, but is not uncharacteristic of the service I have recieved. So much time must be spent reminding others to do what they are supposed to do, that there is barely any time left what you need to do for yourself.
Another meeting sticks out as particularly frustrating, but for another reason. A conversation with a potential supplier of stickers wandered from adhesive options on PVC stickers, to corruption present in India and America, and the imporatance of God in our respective countries. I explained that the role of God was a particularly important among Christians in the South, to which he responded, “I think Christians are good people. I’d say maybe 60-70% of the Christians in India are good. ...but 100% of Muslims are bad.” Needless to say, this guy was Hindu, and looked like quite the character.
Mr .Shah had a borderline mullet, died reddish with the henna dye that is ever-popular amoung greying men and younger men alike, shirt unbottened to expose his chest hair and his excessive collection of gold jewelery, including a gold arrowhead and a pendant with “S”, for his initial. It is easy to picture him in some sleezy, dimly lit night club. I proceeded to try to reason with him, wishing my oversimplified innocence could be shared and his hatred forgotten. It is a prejudice that has been solidified through generations of conflicts, and countless riots. I suspect that many men just like this that must have taken part in the murders and arson during the riots late last century. I wonder if he ever killed anyone. Somehow, it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. I left the meeting with a sense of sadness and hopelessness, knowing that this type of hatred is not unique to Mumbai, but is found in varying degrees in nearly every culture across the globe, as it has for all of recorded history, and is not likely to dissapear...
In addition to now having a broken computer, I discovered some other things which are not Mumbai-proof. The first of which is anything clean, including clothes or even you. Rimless glasses are also to be added to the list, as they do not hold on to ones head well enough to stay on while you are thrusted off of a train, nor do they fair well after being trampled by the stompede that follows. Fortunately I only get angered by ridiculous, minute things, and actually found the whole event pretty humorous.
OK, so enough negativity. Things have not all been bad recently. On Sunday I took a solo train ride to Lonavla, a “hill station” about 160 km outside of Mumbai. I stook by the door for the two hour ride to enjoy the breeze, and see a part of India which is more green and less crowded. The last 30 minutes of the journey were amazing. Large, green mountains surrounded the train, laced with slender waterfalls which cascaded into the valleys below. The grasses were long and soft looking, inviting me to just hop off the train and take in the scenery from a stationary viewpoint. Instead, I waited for the train to reach my destination, which was nice, but no as spectacular as the journey would have led me to believe.
The rest of the day was spent walking towards mountains and hiking in search of simliar views, up through a small slum, and eventually onto a cattle-grazing area. It’s strange how much more pleasant the slums seem when surrounded by nature. It is how I would have expected it before coming to Mumbai. I can somehow justify living in a slum-type community in middle of the woods. It seems like the kind of adventure that you might pay to endure over a summer. The walls of the shacks were made of some thin bamboo stalks, filled in with a muddy paste; roofs coated with tarps of assorted colors to keep the monsoon outside. I’m sure the surrounding flora even included some banana trees, or coconuts. In my own niaive, romanticised way, their modest lives seems pleasant, but perhaps only as a result of the contrast to the slums of the city which posess all of the bad and none of the good, apart from the good-natured residents. All in all, it was a great day. This weekend the group is flying to Arvind’s home state (in South India) where we will enjoy great scenery, beaches and lakes, tasty food, and a brief escape from Mumbai! Due to lack of flight availablity, I’ll have to wait for some other time to see what Singapore is all about...too bad.
My Hindi skills are getting better day by day (not much better, but better none-the-less), as I recently learned how to conjugate verbs in the past and future tense. Unfortunately, my vocabulary is still pretty pathetic, so I’m defintely far from able to hold a conversation. In other newly developed skills, I have started playing Erin’s banjo. I think the only skill involved there is the ability to annoy those around, but I haven’t lost my ear for music and can quickly fumble through single-note (non-chord) versions various classics.
Just yesterday I had a meeting with a different, non-racist sticker manufacturer at his home. As he doesn’t speak English, his daughter, Sheetal, was there to translate for us. I was surprise at how cute she was, as I had spoken to her many times on the phone and had expected her to be a much older secretary. She told me that she and her friends go out to clubs most nights, and invited me to join them at “Polly Esther’s”, so I was pretty excited to go with her and all of her other cute firends to this club. The club was nicer than the others that I’d seen here, but the boyfriend she brought was less than stellar, but it still made for a good night out. For those of you eager to come to India for it’s inexpensive club scene, I’ll give you an example of what you could expect to pay. Last night it cost Rs. 600 ($14) to get in, which then entiteled me to Rs. 600 worth of drinks. Unfortunatley the western music was accompnaied by western prices, which meant I could only get one Jack and “Thumbs Up” (a version of Coca cola) at a cost of Rs. 500. In a city where you can eat at a restaurant for breakfast, lunch and dinner for under $2/day, it is crazy that others pay over $11 for a single drink.
Well, that’s enough writing for now. Time to head home and pack for the beach!!
posted by Adam at 2:22 PM
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