skip's blog

notes from india

India, So Far

I've been in India now for a week, which means two cities. The flight here is unremarkable except that Chicago to New Delhi is the second longest continuous flight there is (the one to Singapore is slightly longer). Any plane bound for India is prone to be full of Indians (yes, the India kind). Those who have travelled will tell you as follows: The best way to learn about a people is to be stuck in a flying tube with them for twenty hours.

The best advocacy for India is the Indian people. They are realistic about the drawbacks of their country -- more about this later -- but they are quick to say something wonderful about any region you may mention, usually something to do with food or a temple. India has temples like Nashville has bible stores. It is unthinkable that an Indian would ask your plans without asking if you feel assured. To be hospitable is an enormous part of their culture. To a one, every Indian I encountered on the plane introduced himself, then asked if it was my first time to India.

I slept about seven hours during a sixteen hour flight, so I was in okay shape getting off the plane in Delhi. Tracy was to meet me at the airport with a driver from the US Embassy (she gets some hightone gigs), so I wasn' t too worried. I got off the plane in Delhi, and every sign was in English, and it would seem everyone who works in the airport speaks better English than most Americans. The minute you're through the jetway and off the plane, it's like an entire plane full of people have been shot through a cannon. Everyone is suddenly speaking hurried Hindi and flying like bullets to...

Customs. A long slow line that diverges into five short slow lines, and suddenly there are hardly any signs to follow in any language. You hope you're in the right line. Thirty minutes later, you're out of there and on your way to baggage. Miraculously, my bags met me promptly and untrashed.

Coming out of the the international bag claim to the ground transit door was insane. There seems to be only one door to for international arrivals, and it is here that you first see the local statistics in action.

Now, my arrival was about 10 pm on a Saturday night. Big traffic time in any major city, and Delhi is certainly that. I'm used to the twenty or so drivers who hold up signs that say "SMITH" or "HUNTER" or "FELDSHUH" in the baggage claim.

I am not exaggerating to say there was a row on either side of the ramp out the airport, roughly 125 feet in length, and 150 drivers -- all male -- and each with a placard with a Western name written on it. Nearsighted as I am, I was unnerved as I started to walk up the row, because I couldn't really read the signs. Then I heard Tracy call out to me, and she and the driver ran up. Soon enough, we were at the car.

Tracy said that every American who comes to India puts 37 Indians to work. To meet me, Tracy had with her a concierge from the hotel and a driver. That's two guys already and I hadn't even had a coffee or bought a t-shirt.

She brought me up to speed on the day's events leading up to my arrival. Her assistant, Tobie Roach, was on her way back to the states, and had left just two hours before I got in. I'm New Tobie.

Traffic in New Delhi is un-credible. I had asked Teller (of Penn &) for any India travel tips (P&T did part if of a TV special here), and he said, "Travel in big vehicles. Life is cheap on the roads there."

For a guy who doesn't talk, he sure says accurate stuff. The traffic in New Delhi is fast and loose, and there's lots of it. Tons of small motorcycles -- 150 to 350 cc bikes are the norm -- have three and four passengers on 'em, and the girls generally ride sidesaddle. In a situation there's merging, the right of way goes to the merging driver. Lanes are largely theoretical. Traffic lights are often enough less a rule than a guideline.

Commercial transit vehicles are painted green and yellow (the colors of the Indian flag), and government vehicles are white. A professional driver in India is a stoic. Has to be. These roads are not for the nervous.

A very common way for visitors to get around on short hops is the took-took, which is really just a three-wheel golf cart with handlebars up front where the steering wheel would usually go. The canope is dark green (with a little window in the back), the body yellow, and there's room for two Americans (or approx 40 Indians) in the backseat. The driver sits up front, generally alone, but there's room with him for another body if needed. Took-tooks aren't fast. It's your basic two-stroke motor on three golf cart tires. Originally, Harley-Davidson was the only company that makes these things. Nowadays, that's not the case. India's cities are dotted with these things. They cost about $5000 new., which is steep by India standards. Commercial vehicles carry a higher pricetag in India.

Our hotel in New Delhi was the Claridges, which is an old hotel, and is very beautiful. There I ate several of the best meals I will likely ever eat. The grounds were beautiful, and the attendant staff was frighteningly efficient. Our room, though small, was elegant.

We spent the first part of Sunday afternoon at a local Indian market, which seemed to be equal parts Western and Indian. It was definitely not a tourist trap. When we decided to go out for the day, we grabbed a took-took and told our driver -- who called himself "Mr Singh" -- to take us to this market. I forget its name, but it was the only big one open on Sunday. Mr Singh said yes, but insisted he take us first to an Indian arts bazaar on the way. He insisted the quality was blah blah blah and okay we'll check it out. My theory on this is that the took-took guys get a cut of anything they bring in, and I might bet the cut is even bigger now that tourism is down.

It turned out to be a kind of Indian Olvera Street. The older Indian woman who sold saris was high-pressure but artful enough to sell Tracy a few items. I got out of that line of fire. You don't boss Tracy, and Skip walks away from that kind of situation before he's embroiled. Or so he thinks...

There was a younger Indian guy who worked in the store, about thirty, a graduate with an engineer's degree. Really handsome guy, and his English was spotless. He should be an anchorman. We started talking about women and their shopping habits. Then politics.

I had been warned -- both by people who know and in guidebooks -- not to introduce the subject of politics when speaking with Indians. But the Indians who I've been around have a lot of opinions about politics, and they're as informed as most Americans. Probably more informed. And the would-be anchorman started talking politics, and even some religion, and he let me know that even though he was Hindu, he was a man of science and didn't believe in Fate or the acceptance of a life of poverty and distress. He praised Obama and also Clinton. We spoke for ten minutes or more on how it would take best of science to wipe out the worst of religion.

While this is going on, Tracy has settled on a few items of clothing, has paid for them (in rupees), and the anchorman tells us, "You must come to the second floor and see the tribal rugs", and I don't want to and Tracy doesn't want to, but these guys have their pitch thing down, and next thing you know, we're up the steps, looking at a room or Indian and persian rugs that look like any rugs of the type you've seen in Glendale or Northeast Philly , and the anchorman has already determined which rug would be best for us and how he could ship it for free. These guys are high pressure brought to a high art form, even when they don't succeed.

We somehow managed to get out of there without buying a rug, and it was onto the local market. Mr Singh fired up the took-took and we were off into the torrential Delhi traffic, which we were told was light because it was Sunday. It still looked like NYC on a weekday afternoon.

I'm pretty sure this market was typical. The one Western brandname store I noticed was Reebok. There were a knockoff Addidas, Gucci, and whatever, a lot of fruit, package foods, nuts, cell phones, and all. Nothing here to really attract a tourist. The density of the crowds mixed with the intensity of the incoming traffic was mindboggling. An outdoor market in New Delhi is like somebody holding Saturday afternoon at the Reading Terminal Market in the middle of the Tri-Borough Bridge. Took-tooks and small motorcycles are seemingly always inches away from you, and as for the beggars...

The market is also where you get your first whiff of local poverty. Begging is not seen as an affront in this culture. Because the hindus accept fate as a godly thing, that some would be fated to be beggars is inevitable, and the culture accepts it.

The beggars definitely look for took-tooks, I guess because it's logical to assume that a guy with enough rupees for took-took fare will have enough to spare for ...

Well, these folks will basically stick a child or a limb with an open sore right up in your face. There are actual lepers here. Looking away is not an option. My tact was to just adopt the same look and posture as my took-took driver. I haven't seen anyone try and vibe a took-took driver. The took-took driver stoic thing isn't restricted to traffic.

Likely you've heard not to drink the water in India. This is sound advice. Also, on every bottle of drinking water here, they ask you to crush the bottle when your done drinking. Here's why: people in these markets refill the bottles with India's tap water and freeze them so the bottles pop back out new and shiny, and then sell them as clean water in the market. I asked Mr Singh about this, and he just shrugged and said, "Well, it happens..."

I was in the Gulf Coast a few short weeks after Katrina, and my trio was playing New Orleans and Baton Rouge, so we were having to detour a lot, and we saw some stuff along the backroads you should never have to see in your own country. I submit the following conclusion: true poverty is when you're stuck someplace where you can't even steal your way to decent subsistence. You live without resource. That's what Katrina taught me about poverty.

India's poverty is that for more people than you ever dared imagine. Chalking it up to fate.

A ride around Delhi -- not just from the market to the hotel and back, but an hour or so driving around in a car -- and the contours of the city take shape. You get that overall feeling of seeing the city assume its form, and with that comes all the corresponding impressions. New Delhi is certainly one of the great cities of our world. The architecture alone assures it that reputation. The new bus lines are all up-to-the-minute green powered (the 2010 Commonwealth Games have inspired all kinds of public works and upgrading projects, of which the transit system seems to be at the center), and the diversity of the local peoples is staggering. The air, although polluted horribly, smells sweetly of fruit and dust. I can't explain the scent, but it's gorgeous.

The city doesn't reveal itself in the grid system common to New York-style cities. Instead, it reveals itself block by block, layer by layer, 'round every corner. There are Hoovervilles, British style tenement flats, and gorgeous opulent mansion homes, often right next to each other. As the city spills out, so do different economic layers spill over each other. I'd love to offer some sort of ironic comment about New Delhi as the city of post-modern juxtaposition, but nobody planned this. Even George W. Bush in his most wildly oblivious moments would never have sanctioned a shack made of blue raincoat plastic and corrugated tin just a few blocks from the row of gorgeous provincial government embassies. Surely this will be sanitized from sight in time for the Commonwealth Games, but -- once those are over -- you can bet a new shack will pop up where the old one was. You can't stop poverty of this magnitude. Not for long, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. As much as I object to this poverty, New Delhi is one of the most incredibly beautiful places I've ever encountered. The weather there was pretty much like Kansas City in early June, and each of the temples that seem to be all over the city is more beautiful than the last. Americans have mistakenly dismissed the old Indian building styles as one thing, but it's actually a very diverse set of things. Hindu, Muslim, British elements are often fused in ways that directly reflect why the structure was built, or -- if it's a tomb -- something about the life of the man interred there. If any city can be said to have its religious history reflected in its buildings, New Delhi might well be it.

India Gate -- the famed world war memorial -- is staggering, both for its size (it is damn big) and for that it's on a main street. Perhaps the next major memorial of India will honor the dead who tried to cross that street to see the damn thing. I was nearly one.

posted by skip heller @ 7:48 AM