All the above! I loved in India, did several stints there but never more than 6 weeks at a time, and was working for a local franchise of an international company and did not encounter the frustrations and the daily merry-go-rounds mentioned as my work was administrative and marketing.
Here are a few notes I made on one of my first trips. I never finished it but for what it's worth ... enjoy :
INDIA
My first impression on arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi was of incredible heat, even at one o’clock in the morning, dust, and bustle. This I soon got used to, but the feeling that took many days to go away was of being surrounded by thousands of people doing non-stop impersonations of Peter Sellers. I kept wondering when they were going to start talking ‘normally’.
There was no sign of the driver who was supposed to meet me with a placard bearing my name, but half an hour later and after many increasingly irritating approaches from taxi touts, I went to the driver who was holding the sign with the name least unlike mine : Mr. Christiansen. I had ruled out ‘Dieter Albrechts’, ‘Mr. & Mrs. Stevens’, and ‘Vladislav Fedovski’ as totally impossible, even in a country where anything seemed possible. My intuition was correct. The driver greeted me like a long lost friend and began the usual totally uninhibited Indian Inquisition as we set off for my luxury hotel, where the price of a beer would feed a family of four for a day. After pretending not to know the hotel, the Imperial, one of Delhi’s landmarks, he informed me that it had cancelled all reservations due to the arrival of a group from the United Nations, but offered to take me to a hotel of equal, if not superior, standard, where a friend of his worked, and which would cost me only a few pounds a night. I assured him that I had reconfirmed my reservation and that my room was held. He insisted that it wasn’t. I solved the problem by telling him that if we arrived to find my room unavailable I would give him 2000 rupees (the average monthly earning for an Indian taxi driver) and allow him to take me to his friend’s hotel. This shut him up for a while until I heard the ominous words, ‘Indian girls very pretty sir, very hot …..’ From this point I had to spend the rest of the journey declining the offer of various services, of which I should add he would have been the facilitator, not the actual provider.
We were travelling in one of India’s ubiquitous Hindustan Ambassadors, a 1930’s design which has barely changed over the years, and which, to misquote Henry Ford, is available in any shade of grey. The horn never stopped blaring as we wove our way past, or rather, through, the whirling maelstroms of ancient cars, rickshaws, unlit but garishly decorated lorries looming out of the dust and belching evil smelling smoke blacker than the surrounding night, cows, and suicidal pedestrians. The rule of the road is driving on the left. What this means is 'drive on any part of the roadway which is left free'. The only order to Indian driving is chaos, the closest I have experienced being the dodgem cars at the funfair. Most vehicles have a sign on the back, the commonest being ‘Horn Please’, and ‘Keep Distance’. The constant hooting is not aggression, but a reflex more natural to Indian drivers than breathing. The miracle is that there are so few accidents – sadly those that do occur are usually serious. Overtaking, or just getting into any vehicle on the overcrowded roads, is simply an act of faith in God – there is no other way to explain it in a country where a two lane road contains four or five lanes of jousting traffic. Skill and judgement do not enter the equation. So few vehicles have tyres with visible tread that I wonder if somewhere there is a factory producing slicks for the Indian market. Lights are a rare luxury, the most important piece of equipment on any vehicle being a powerful and strident horn. When I once needed a really vicious horn for my car in Europe, I made a point of buying it in India.
In the large cities, most of the modern vehicles are locally produced versions of popular small Japanese models, but one sees the occasional Mercedes, usually with diplomatic numberplates, cruising serenely through the chaotically gyrating streams of traffic without a scratch on its immaculate gleaming paintwork. This proves that there is some divine force at work protecting the innocent and the foolish.
The first time I saw three people on a motor scooter, I gave a second glance. They looked happy and comfortable. Then I saw four. Not long after that I started counting. Up to now, I have seen three adults, two children, and a baby all perched, balanced, or hanging on to a scooter. I still look, but somehow can’t visualise this record of six being broken. No doubt, somewhere, not far away, there are seven people on a two wheeler. In the meantime, five doesn’t merit a turn of the head.
In Agra, the spectacularly filthy town closest to the Taj Mahal, one of the world’s greatest monuments to love and architecture, I met the only truly unpleasant and dishonest Indian I have ever encountered inside India. This ‘gentleman’ was the owner of a shop where I asked the price of the various boxed teas on display. He quoted me a figure, my mind calculated this back into real money, recalculated, started again, and ground to a halt. Not being the world’s greatest mathematician, I asked for a calculator, and proved that my mental assessment of the value of this tea being just a little less than the price of gold was correct. I asked for a new quote and he came down by about 10%, assuring me that his family would starve, bringing the price into line with 18 carat gold rather than pure 24 carat. “This tea”, I told him (it was Orange Pekoe), “is sold in England for a fraction of your price”. “Ah, but mine is export quality”, he explained. I replied that I would have expected the Indian tea sold in London to be export quality too. He ushered me out uttering curses which, had they come true, would have ensured that these lines would never have been written, and closed the shop.
It was also in Agra, teeming with low budget travellers ‘doing’ India, that I met a young Scotsman who was suffering from some a skin complaint probably caused by self-inflicted malnutrition, and who could have been the model for the unkind and untrue jibes about the Scots being ‘cautious’ with their money. He was staying, he told me, in a hostel that ‘had the ******* temerity to charge 30 rupees a night for a single ******* room and breakfast – no’ a cooked ******* breakfast mind, just some ******* Indian ****e and sour ******* milk’. India, he told me, was the biggest ripoff in the world and he was sick and tired of the ‘grasping’ Indians. In the Taj Mahal, where at one point you have to remove your shoes, the attendant who keeps them for you expects a small tip. I gave him 10 rupees and he was perfectly happy. ”How much do yae want” asked the Scot. “I am happy with whatever you like to give me Sir”, was the Indian’s humble reply. Walking off in shame and despair I heard, “Just tell me the ******* price will ye ….”
I went to an ATM in Delhi one afternoon and drew Rs. 6000 (about £90) in crisp new 500 Rupee notes. I then went to the counter and asked the cashier to change one of the 500's for 100's. He was quite hesitant about this, and I waited for the inevitable Indian style form, with dozens of badly printed columns and squares, to be produced, completed, countersigned and stamped a few times before the operation could be performed. In fact the problem was not a bureaucratic one. He examined the banknote for about five minutes, microscopically, as only Indians can, consulted various bits of paper and colleagues, took it out the back, and came back shaking his head and saying it was a forgery. So I produced the other 11, all still in order and consecutively numbered, and asked him about those. At that point he began to have some doubts - I still hadn't told him they'd just come from their own ATM.
He took them and said they were also forgeries and, with that side to side motion of the head that is unique to the Indian subcontinent, added that ‘’it is very unwise to be changing money with street money changers - all are rascals, Sir, I am telling you!”
Then I produced the ATM slip, revealing the source of the money, and asked if this bank was in the habit of stocking their ATM's with forged banknotes. To say he was embarrassed would be an understatement!
Many such day to day transactions which at home are simple, in India become epics due to the Indian love of bureaucracy, the intense competition, and the natural entrepeneur in every Indian. I enquired about a taxi from my hotel to the airport and of course was assured it was no problem. I requested the price and was told 'fixed price'. I pressed for further details of the fixed price but it could not be quantified. Eventually the best answer I could elicit was : "price is being fixed by driver, sir."
I went to buy a railway ticket from the Pink City of Jaipur, home of the 'Palace of the Winds', or 'The Palace of Wind' as it was unfortunately described in one publication, to the serene and beautiful city of Udaipur, on Lake Pichola. Indian trains do not comprise merely first class and second class, but three classes and a myriad of further subdivisions such as 'chair' class, all of which is further divided by types of train, categorised as air conditioned or non-air-conditioned. Being a rabid hater of air conditioning, I selected first class non airconditioned and was issued with a computer printed ticket showing seat number, time, date, fare paid, reservation number, and no doubt, somewhere, my passport number and the identity number of the man who made the reservation. My seat was a comfortable swivel chair which I could turn to enjoy the cooling breeze from the open window. Whilst we were moving it was perfect. Every time we stopped the stench from the toilets became unbearable.
I was roundly ticked off and given a long but friendly lecture by a wealthy and educated Indian family after I gave a couple of rupees to a beggar woman on one of the stations. Giving them money, they said, encourages begging and they then do nothing to help themselves. True, but the class system in India does not allow these people to help themselves in any other way than begging, so they are caught in a vicious spiral. The wealthy cannot accept that the same system that made them wealthy keeps millions with no hope of ever rising above the abject poverty which condemns them to be born, live, and die with no roof over their heads. The luckiest are those who live in railway stations. I found this stonehearted refusal by the privileged to even acknowledge the terrible plight of the poor one of the hardest things to accept about this country and its people, who in other ways are amongst the most gentle and generous in the world.
The monsoon, long awaited, brings relief from the high temperatures, it also brings sudden deluges, health hazards, and power cuts. The solid matter (I do mean what you think I mean) which is to be found on the streets when they are dry, now floats. Being splashed by a passing vehicle takes on a new meaning. It is an unpleasant time of the year in India's cities, most of all for homeless millions.
The scale of the poverty in India is almost beyond belief. The country has 100 million homeless children. In case you think you read wrong, I repeat, the number of homeless children in India is more than double the entire population of Africa south of the Limpopo, or almost double the population of the UK. A horrifying statistic. And yet despite the poverty, it is a country with very little crime and one in which it is safe to walk around day or night - perhaps a little intimidating - but not dangerous.
India is a country of contrasts, from opulent Maharajah's palaces beyond the dreams of most people, to the abject poverty which condemns millions to live their entire lives without ever having shelter over their heads. A fascinating country with a rich and varied civilisation and a tradition of giving and hospitality which puts Western values to shame. It is perhaps a country to experience and appreciate rather than to enjoy.
Something I did enjoy was an Indian wine called Riviera which I tried out of politeness and curiosity when it was offered to me at a cocktail party at the magnificiently renovated Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, an establishment which makes most hotels in the West look tatty. It was a fruity, off-dry and very pleasant wine with low acidity, produce of the coastal area near Bombay.
The newspapers provide beautifully anachronistic and eccentric usage of the English language. The quality newspapers are written in the English of the 1940’s referring to ‘outrage at the dastardly acts of these bounders’, in articles about the frequently occurring minor frauds and scams. Although the standard of writing is high, there are many factual errors and amusing misprints, such as the man who appeared with a ‘two day growth of bread on his chin’, or the man so incensed about his wife’s continual chatting that he returned home one evening with ‘stout stick in hand and proceeded to eat her with self same stick’. Until reading this, I had no idea that cannibalism was alive and well in India. These errors, or for a further example, a two-wheeler becoming a ‘two willer’, will not be corrected by conventional spell checkers.
In personal correspondence too, this 'Jeeves' style of English is used by the more educated, or this wishing to appear so. After a business trip to India, I received a letter, typed on a machine that had clearly seen better days, probably in a civil servant's office, in which I was asked to convey 'humble gratitude' to a colleague, who amongst other things, was 'a jolly good fellow'.
Arranged, rather than forced, marriages are frequent and acceptable. Sunday newspapers carry pages of ‘Matrimonials’ - adverts placed by parents, categorised by caste, religion, profession, and educational qualifications, or even ‘green card holders’. These really are advertisements in the true sense of the word, extolling the virtues of their offspring, all of whom are ‘extremely handsome’, ‘beautiful’, ‘fair and graceful’, ‘wheatish slim’, ‘talented and charming’, or at the very least ‘smart in appearance and well qualified’. One assumes that the less favoured find their own partners. A major selling point is a US visa, the exact type and validity of this being specified in the announcement.
The most frequently requested characteristics are : ‘clean habits’, ‘cultured family’, ‘graduated’, ‘proper height’, ‘fair’, whilst education and profession are other criteria. Most ask for ‘bio-data and horoscope’, some even request ‘recent full and close-up photos of professional quality’. As always in India, highly cryptic abbreviations abound along with phrases such as ‘lofty personal traits in spouse are solicited’.
Some of the signs seen in the streets are remarkable too. Some are hard to understand, others merely amusing, and one wonders just what is behind some of them. A few examples:
Rajeet Helth Products : Concreet and Marbel Division
Foreign monies and t/c’s changed here. Service optional.
Free water sold here.
Hotel : All luxurious rooms have lock with key, running water and other enemetics.
Bum Chums (this is a make of mens’ underwear!) : A man’s best friend.
SCAM : School for Accounting and Marketing.
Cheap Womens Clothing Store
Cars from Outside or Inside are not allowed Inside
The love for abbreviations and acronyms which abounds in newspapers articles, advertisements, and signboards does not facilitate understanding. Airports and railway stations are the places to look for signs such as :
A/P Psgr. If IO conduct not satisfactory pls. to ctc. C.I.O.O.D on ext. 431.
This love for abbreviations probably dates back to the military days and at my office we used to receive telex messages addressed to ‘Staff On Duty’, unfortunately abbreviated to : “ATTN SOD” (why waste full stops!), and continuing to say ‘please do the needful to rectify situation in shortest time frame and revert.’ These phrases cropped up so frequently that one has to assume that they are taught in schools.
To be continued ................