Merry Christmas

It's Christmas Eve and I'm in an Internet cafe in Ahmedabad, Gujurat. Yesterday I saw a man wearing standard-issue Indian clothes (pants and a long-sleeved shirt, both adorned with random English words and brand names) and a Santa hat. He was selling the Santa hats to the passing cars.

India's Patriot Act (And Then Some)

Oh, also, I thought I should mention a new bill that both houses of India's Congress have passed (only a presidential signature is required to make it law).

The anti-terror bill would, among other things, allow defendants to be presumed guilty until proven otherwise and would set up special fast-track courts for terror-related matters.
Amnesty International has come out against it and I'm appalled that it even stands a real chance at being passed.

Maybe it would be easier to count the people who aren't related to me...

My attempts at a blog post have been thwarted by nearly every force imaginable. (Weather, electricity, the Internet itself, family, my intestines.) Sorry.

My parents and I have spent most of the past two weeks either here in Bhavnagar or in nearby Rajkot lounging around and visiting friends and family, so it's not like there's much to have been blogged about anyway. I personally broke two records last Sunday in Rajkot, though: most sets of relatives visited in one day (3) and most independent Abhishek references in one day: (6). (Abhishek count now up to: 14.)

Visiting relatives in India can be a trying experience. Everyone insists that you have at least one meal at their house, which they then proceed to shove down your throat. My dad refused a sweet citing his diabetes and his sister (only half-joking) said they don't have diabetes here. My uncle who also lives in Connecticut and is also here right now told me that when his son was young he was on his own at a relative's house and apparently failed to say no enough times (at least six seems to be the minimum) and so he ate too much and promptly vomited.

Anyway, after the unending carnival of food, we took a bus back to Bhavnagar. The ride was bumpy and I had just gotten sick that morning (two other people on the bus vomitted, both thankfully outside). They were blaring a Bollywood movie that was apparently too long for the four-hour bus ride.

The gist of the movie: Rich fortunate son goes on Australian vacation with friends. Randomly enters and wins bike race to impress girl. Runs down bus (jumps from bridge to land on bus) to ask her out. Man falls in love with girl after one date. Man and girl dance. Dance some more with aborigines (exploitation). Girl gets hit by truck because she's an idiot and didn't look both ways. Man's uncle has time machine. Man travels to future (2050) and finds girl's look alike. Falls in love, again. Dances more, but the dancing is thwarted by a creepy alien overlord.

In two days, we leave for Ahmadabad, the last leg of the second phase of my trip to India (visiting family). We'll be there for about five days and then my parents will fly home and I'll fly on to Delhi for the last phase (vacationing with my friends Ted and Emma), for which I can't wait.

Adventures in Gujurati

Here's an approximation of a Gujurati conversation I attempted to have with some guy who works at the local library in Bhavnagar:

Me: Hi! Do you have English books? [I didn't translate "English" or "books," hoping that he would know at least that much English.]
Male Librarian: Fiction?
Me: Sure. Where?
ML: Well, there are some fees. The first is 40 rupees, that's for some word you've never heard before in your life. The second is some unidentifiable amount. The third is the subscription fee. That's 100 rupees for 12,000 months.
Me: Oh. [...] So, where are the English books?
ML: Downstairs.
Me: Can the books look at me?
ML: [Understanding what I meant] Sure. [Points at a bookshelf in the corner.]
Me: Okay.
Me: [After exploring the entire area around the bookshelf for a flight of stairs and finding nothing] Where?
ML: Over there. [Pointing at the same place.]
Me: [...]
ML: Pant-a-chuck?
Me: [...]
Me: Thanks.

Apparently The Barton Library in Bhavnagar, Gujurat, has English books through the bookshelf in the corner of the main floor.

I wish I had paid a little more attention as a kid when my parents spoke to me in Gujurati.

(Sort of) Safe at Last

Well, our ten-day vacation is over.

After we got rid of the taxi driver from hell, our pre-family vacation improved exponentially. We spent our last two days in Ooty, a formerly British hill station, where many films are shot and where they grow lots of tea (including Chocolate Chai). I'll upload photos (a lot) as soon as I find an internet cafe with a card reader.

After three domestic, post-Mumbai-terror-attack flights, my parents and I have finally safely landed at my grandparent's house in Bhavnagar, in the state of Gujurat. I was only asked for ID on one of the three flights and I was allowed to carry my leatherman (with two sharp knives, pliers and a screwdriver attached) onto the first flight we took, just days after the attacks. At least I was well-equipped to defend myself.

We arrived the day before yesterday and were met by my Aunt who lives in Albany but comes to India with my uncle in the winter.

My grandmother was with my grandfather in the hospital where he was staying because of complicatiosn that arose from the eye surgery he had a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure what to make of his hospital. One wall in his room had stars-and-smiling-suns-moons-and-planets wallpaper and the window had Pokemon curtains. (They couldn't have given him a room for adults?) The room itself was also pretty spartan, as was his bed, with it's one-inch thin mattress. And, they were dealing with his stomach problems by giving him liter after liter of sesame seed oil. (Maybe they were just saying it was oil to keep things simple?) Regardless, they released him yesterday and he's home, but bed-ridden with a catheter and a long list of prescriptions. On the bright side, he looks really cool with the sunglasses he has to wear, and the solid white goatee he's grown.

The pace here is slow. This visit's no different than any other (our last was in August, 2001). I spend my days reading, walking around town and doing minor household chores (I get to feed the cows outside our leftovers!) and visiting friends and relatives. It's nice, but I may have to duck out early when it gets to be too claustrophobic. The biggest plans I have are to visit Lothal, a 4,500-year-old city (from the time of Mohenjodaro and Harrappa) not far from here. I'm also hoping that a relative who works at the shipbreaknig yard near here will be able to get me in to check it out.

The shipbreaking yard is the largest in the world, but it has apparently been hard to get in since Greenpeace exposed their shitty work conditions a few years ago. Also, the pawn shops in the area apparently can have some amazing stuff pulled from the ships prior to their destruction.

As I said, expect photos soon and more frequent posts.

Taxi Driver

What would a blog be without at least one super-livid post?
There's a very angry rant coming about the cab driver we hired for five days but who was so evil (perhaps the least pleasant person I've ever met) that we got rid of him after one. But first, briefly, what I've been up to for the past few days:
We spent half of Monday and all of Tuesday in Bangalore. The highlights: the rickshaw driver who managed to find us every day and harassed us to pay him 300 rupees (6 dollars) for a city tour by rickshaw; the really beautiful 240-acre garden in the middle of the (highly polluted) city. Our hotel in Bangalore was nice, if you like camping indoors. The pipe that supplied the toilet with water broke on our first night and was never fixed, so we had to "flush" by pouring buckets of water into the bowl. I wore my jeans to bed.
In Bangalore and Mysore (where I am now), we've seen a bunch of palaces, temples, etc., but nothing really worth sharing here. Today we went to a temple on a hill outside Mysore. Pilgrims come to climb the 1,000 steps up to the Chowmundi temple. Climbing up would have taken too long, so I climbed down, barefoot (to have my prayers answered). Anyway, we're taking things slowly today, after having yesterday ruined by our cab driver.
Which leads me to my rant. I needed to write this, but feel free to ignore it:
We hired a cab driver to drive us around from Wednesday to Sunday. He was far and away the most terrifying driver I've ever met. And, considering my high-speed driving and the fact that we're in India, this is saying a lot. He nearly killed more than a handful of pedestrians (and I mean inches from hitting them at high speeds) and yelled at every one of them.
He tried to rip us off in three ways in the first few hours of our trip. When my dad called him on asking us for 50 rupees for a 20 rupee parking fee, he whined about it. (This wasn't about money. My dad happily bought him lunch and was prepared to pay for all his meals and give the guy a tip, but no one likes being taken advantage of.) He told us at least five times that we should/would spend only one day in Mysore and spend the other three in Ooty, our final destination (our plans were to spend two days each). When we decided we wanted to switch up the schedule and find a hotel first, he argued. When we told him we wanted to check out more than the one hotel he showed us he actually yelled at us and bitched for 20 minutes. We ended up picking a shitty hotel so we could just stop the madness. (We could hear him complaining about us for hours to the receptionist after we went to bed.) At one point, he actually told us he needed 3,000 rupees for a new tire (it was obvious that the tire was fine). My dad, justifiably told him there was no way we'd pay for it. The driver yelled for a while and threatened to drop us off on the side of the road (which I was perfectly okay with) or switch with another driver for the rest of the trip. I don't think I've ever wanted to punch someone so badly or felt so threatened by someone I was paying money to.
This morning we told him that my mom was feeling sick and that we would pay him more than half the money for the five days to basically go home. He accepted that. I think we were too nice, but I guess there's little else we could have done. (I would have liked to have refused to pay him or left without paying him a penny more -- we'd already paid for about a third of the trip.) My parents muttered something about doing the right thing and taking the high road, so I decided I finally stopped arguing with them. Anyway, I will be sticking to group tours or traveling on my own while in India.
Oh, and number of times I've been compared to Abhishek Bhachan: 4.

It's Hot and There's a Cockroach On the Wall

I'm surrounded by mustachioed men. Every other person in the south seems to be sporting one. Also, I've been sort of surprised to find that a lot of younger girls here have short haircuts. Not a big deal, but it's not what one would expect in India (where public hand-holding among couples is still taboo and feminism has a ways to go).
Anyway, I don't have much time, but a really short blog post is better than none at all, so here goes.
Ramoji Film City (the biggest film studio complex in the world) yesterday was okay. It was like a watered-down Universal Studios theme park (I was hoping for a more behind-the-scenes experience). The best part was a ride in which an act of God destroys the park.
This morning we woke up in Hyderabad at 4:30 to make an early flight. Around 5:30, a muezzin called Muslims in the city to prayer, which, in the silence of dawn, is a pretty amazing thing to here echoing throughout a city.
The Hyderabad airport, Indigo airline plane and Bangalore airport were among the cleanest, most modern I've ever been in. I don't think I've ever been in such a clean plane (it looked like it was the maiden voyage). We arrived in Bangalore around 9:00 and found a hotel by around 11:00. The outskirts of the city are beautiful and spread out (unlike the cities we've been in so far), but the traffic is awful.
We're going shopping in a few minutes (Bangalore is known for its sarees).
We're hear for today and tomorrow and then we head to Mysore, then Ooty, a former British hill station. From there we go to my grandparents house, where I'll hopefully have time to write better posts and post more photos. I have to go shopping with my parents.

Photos!

I've had some time to post some photos. I'll continue to post over the next two months at the link below:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nirajc

I'll write a new blog post soon.

Hyderabad: Day 1

The ten-hour sleeper train from Aurangabad to Hyderabad was a bad idea. (I know, I know. Big surprise.) But not for the reasons one would expect.
The cot was comfortable (short, but one can't blame the Lilliputians) and the train was quiet and relatively smooth. The problem was the air conditioner.
In India, as I'm sure is the case in other developing countries, air conditioning is as much a comfort as it is a sign of luxury. So, it's often blasted (the less you can feel your extremities, the more luxurious you are). The logic of blasting the air conditioning when the "winter" has driven every local to wear hats and/or ski masks (seriously) is beyond me, but India isn't always a logical place. Another example of the country's impeccable logic: the museum we visited today (home to 1 million wide-ranging objects previously under the ownership of a former local sovereign ruler) banned cameras but had its own food court and snack bars throughout.
Also, the pillows and sheets provided by on the train were definitely not clean, but that comes with the territory. One thing I really like about the trains (normal and sleeper ones) is that each train has a handful of guys who patrol the cars (in the morning on sleeper cars) offering hot chai, coffee and snacks. There's nothing better than waking up to hot chai after a night of being frozen stiff and pissed off by the guy with the "Hari Ram, Hari Ram, Hari Krishna, Hari Ram" sing-song cell ring.
Anyway, after we arrived and went to our hotel, we visited the aforementioned museum, which is home to the largest one-man collection of antiques in the world. (If you believe Wikipedia. And I know you do.) The items in the collection ranged from tea sets from around the world to dozens of clocks to impressionist paintings and renaissance-style sculptures of ancient Roman gods. It's amazing that any one person could own so much stuff.
We also visited Chowmahalla Palace, where the line of Nazims (the local sovereign leaders) lived until India gained its independence in the mid-1900's. I can't post the photos now, but they had a room with 19 chandeliers and owned a line of cars including an early-1900's Rolls Royce. Extravagant.
The last place we visited was Charminar Bazaar, a 400-year-old masjid around which a huge shopping area has sprouted. Here are some photos (click the above link to see the masjid itself):




I'm being kicked out of this Internet Cafe, so that's it for now.. Tomorrow, we visit Ramoji Film City, the world's largest film studio complex (where a bunch of movies are made in Hindi and some local dialects).
To my Bates friends: I saw some monkeys yesterday. I did not touch them.
To everyone: I'm introducing two recurring counters to this blog.
Times I've been compared to Abhishek Bachan: 2. (I really don't see it.)
Days in India without having yet found myself or my spirituality: 5.

Well, That Was Close

My parents and I left the Mumbai train station the day before yesterday, about eight hours before the shooting there began. We're all fine, just sad and disappointed.

This first blog post is going to have to be pretty short and crappy, I leave on an overnight "sleeper" train to Hyderabad -- a big tech and film center -- in three hours. Also, these first few posts will be pretty chronological since I haven't been here long enough to have any insight and since all I'm doing is the tourist stuff (rapid-fire tours, etc.) with my parents.

I landed in Mumbai on Tuesday The flight was broken into two approximately nine-hour legs (San Francisco to London and London to Mumbai) with a seven-hour wait in London. It sucked, of course, but I did meet a cool Portuguese couple who spent four months in Mumbai in 2006 and were on their way back. In the interim two years they rented out two houses, one of which they built. (Random aside: the guys who run the Internet cafe where I'm writing this are blasting "Lean Back.")

I bought a cell phone the night that I landed (e-mail me for the number). I was also reacquainted with Indian traffic. Everyone walks on the road (and highway) and they're always just inches from the cars. Also, there are no rules, except honk your horn a whole lot. If a car horn in the U.S. is a rare slap on the head, a horn here is an "excuse me, I'm about to run into you."

On Wednesday, we traveled to Aurangabad in Central(ish) India. It was home to the last Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, so there's a fort, mausoleum, etc. Also, nearby are some 2,000 year old religious caves (carved out of mountains), which I will write more about in my next post. One temple I visited today was built about a thousand years ago over a span of 150 years with something like 700 workers.

I've met some interesting people, including a man who owns a factory in Aurangabad (he makes carbide and high-speed tools for the auto industry). He purchased his land here at about 50 cents per square meter in 1992 and now it's worth about 10 dollars. His English was great, but he's never left India. I also met a Spanish camerawoman who works on a TV news program for Spain's public access channel and a pair of retired geologists who worked for India's official geological survey.

Oh, and globalization is in full swing. They now have Jethro Tull out here:



I'll post real photos in my next post (which, I promise, won't be so awful).