2009-2010 Second Edition

The 2009-2010 edition of the Bengaluru Babbler is late.  Originally conceived and nurtured during the Winter months, it has been delayed by several months of serious travel and rethinking of content.  So, belatedly, please enjoy an enhanced and extended edition:

The Thorne’s in India have completed twenty months living in India. In past years, we have typically used our annual letter to discuss travels and to forward pictures to friends and family.  As we attempt to chronicle our adventures in karnatakatabbies.blogspot.com (complete with pictures), we will not boor you by regaling past travels.  Rather, we have chosen this edition of Bengaluru Babbler to discuss how living in India is changing us. 

First a few words about change.  Life cannot exist without change, and change is more evident in ones daily awareness in India than in the US.  Nothing is ever the same, with maybe the exception that the electricity cannot seem to be consistently delivered.  In order to survive without growing hateful or cynical, one adapts to the way it is, and the better one adapts, the more successful one will be living in India because you will not change it; rather, it changes you  We live in India, but we have yet to be in India.  To be is a whole different proposition to life’s encounter than living it.

The Weather

The weather rarely changes.  It’s Groundhog Day here as at some time of every day of the year, it is 70 and generally peaks in the 80's.  The windows in the house are open 24x7x365, unless we are on a trip somewhere. April and May are hot (upper 90’s, low 100’s).  December 2009 was cold, wet, and cloudy – rather dreary, actually.  India had a more normal monsoon activity in 2009 as compared to 2008, but it was still insufficient for the agricultural community, and it was insufficient to recharge the growing depletion of ground water that occurs daily in India.

The first 12 months in India our bodies had not adjusted to this climate, and we were all too hot - we were negatively affected by the weather.  In late 2009, we began to notice how our bodies were adapting to the climate, and we have been quite chilly at times – still negatively affected by the weather.  Even though it will be nice to have four seasons again, we dread the experience of a Minnesota winter upon our return. 

Larrie and Jessie returned to USA in May 2009 where they enjoyed 40-50 degree weather.  Larrie, ever the Neanderthal, enjoyed the opportunity to cool down immensely; Jessie was cold.  Larrie again had an opportunity in Feb 2010 to feel the cool of the Wintery West, and as of this writing, wishes he had bottled some for Indian Summer, which is quite hot.  Adaptation in progess.

Quotidian Cycles

Daily life is comprised of routines extrapolated from the chaotic vibe that is India.  We do not utilize an alarm clock as we did in MN to raise the dead.  Since the windows are always open, the street noise begins at day break with ravens announcing a new day, which raises the dad, and he in turn raises the dead. 

Next to break the silence are the walkers who always rigorously debate something or another – in native tongue with the debate reverberating off the closely placed stone houses, and the throngs of domestic help walking in from the surrounding villages, each with a tale to tell to anyone within shouting distance who pretends to listen.  Indians are a noisy lot.  Following the walkers and the domestic help are parents getting offspring to the school bus, and then the swarm of vehicles getting the employed off to the days toil. It is not peaceful here.  At 10am, and 10pm it is fairly quiet, but for all other times –not! MN had similar noises, but they were a distant hum creeping into one’s awareness from the horizon; in India, the noise is immediate, inescapable, and it permeates your immediate being.

Weekday mornings are spent getting Alli & Jessie off to work and school, respectively.  Usually by 9:30, the house is quiet for about an hour until the maid shows up – unless the cable guy, the paper guy, the internet guy, the grounds keeper’s quality guy, the rodent control guy, or the mosquito abatement guy, want to be paid.  The maid is in the house until 3pm.  The cook generally shows up around noon and is here until about 3pm.  The gardener comes at 6:30 each morning for 15-20 minutes.  Alli’s driver shows up at 8am requiring the day’s program and fresh water. The house is fluidic and echoes with cast off noises of action.

Larrie spends his days hunting and gathering the stuff of life, keeping the ever growing list of guys paid, and providing guidance to the domestic staff.  Jessie returns from school at 4pm requiring immediate nutrition, and Alli returns from work around 7pm in the same condition - hungry.  Most days, Alli has phone calls to the US to make once she returns, hoping to spend a half hour with Jessie at bedtime.  Dinner, showers (providing someone turned on the geyser), a little TV, and then bedtime stories and sleep – the house is quiet again by 10:30ish awaiting the 6am raven to announce the next iteration.

On a daily basis you require the readiness of plan B and sometimes plan C.  Nothing is construed as consistent.  For example, one week Food Zone (a nearby store) will have tomato paste, and the next six weeks they will not; so, you go elsewhere, or you don’t have spaghetti for six weeks.  There are periods when certain products are just not available.  You adapt.  The police and various construction events reshape traffic daily without warning or notice.  You adapt.  The maid gives you 12 hour notice that she is taking a 10 day holiday.  I know what you’re thinking here, but your house has a dishwasher, and you do not need to sweep and mop 2400 sqft of stone each day in order to keep your feet from tracking the soot of humanity everywhere.  You adapt.

Ups and Downs.

Everyday favorites: music – both Bollywood and Carnatic, availability of fresh fruit (sapota, jack fruit, custard apple, papaya, guava, mango) and fresh vegetables, weather (Alli likes Groundhog Day), airlines (inexpensive, nice, clean, they feed you), beautiful fabrics adorning the women are like art in motion, flowers and greenery - especially bougainvillea, function halls decorated for weddings, animals everywhere - like being on safari (monkeys, goats, sheep, water buffalo, occasionally a camel, cows, horses, oxen), wearing open toed sandals to work.

Everyday dislikes: traffic, bad roads, traffic, cleanliness of the surroundings, public urination, public transportation buses and lorries (road hogs and toads), the noise, weather (Larrie likes seasonal change), smoke and smog, Google knows where you are, being stared at (it is not considered rude), oh did we mention traffic…

Jessie’s favorites: school, riding bike around the neighborhood, having friends in the neighborhood, mango lassi.

Jessie’s dislikes: smell, squatty potties, lack of decent ham, sausage and bacon, having to go anywhere in the car (she really dislikes the down time due to traffic).

The unfortunate: lack of sidewalks (lack of city planning, how poorly constructed and maintained, pedestrian laws - you are a target, motorcycle raceways - two wheelers rule the road), potato chips are everywhere which is a negative impact of Westernization (fresh food readily available),  lack of forethought for parks - everything must be developed, decimation of forest, wonderful hundreds of years old trees, advertising for skin lighteners - why do marketers need to make a billion more people dislike their bodies?

Domicile

Our lives run according to societal practices, by necessity not choice.  Recycling happens not because you have a blue or green box to fill up every week, but because the lower classes, who comprise the majority of domestic staff, sift through the garbage and glean profitable items. The remnants are left to the next layer down until the dogs, cows, rats, and bugs have completed their respective responsibilities.  In our home, recycling starts with our maid who picks the good stuff (cardboard, newspaper, bottles, cans, old clothing, etc.), and the leftovers go to the garbage people who sift it yet again.  It is not uncommon to see people at the tailgate of the garbage vehicle sifting garbage before it is loaded onto the vehicle, whose only income is from reclaiming the discarded but useful.

Conservation

Even though Bengaluru is tropical (13 degrees North of Equator) it is also arid, and water conservation is a huge effort as the monsoons are the big water supply, and they happen twice yearly.  The newspaper reported that a bore well 20 years ago hit aquifer water at 80 feet, but now bore wells are going down 800 feet to reach water, and many older wells are dry, while many new wells are salty with dissolved salts.  Note: dry wells are not plugged or caped, and at least 2-3 children a month get trapped in them.  When you live in the density of people comprising India, and you realize the importance of water to human existence, and you realize that you have a choice to discipline your use of water - you use less water.  The shower gets turned off during lather cycles – it is possible to shower in less than 5 gallons.  Our experiences in our waterless cabin are paying off well as they have taught us to use less water.

Similar principles apply to electricity consumption.  Everyday, several (10-20) electrical power outages occur due to insufficient electrical supply to keep the country running.  Within Palm Meadows, a backup electrical generator supplies power after a few minutes of outage.  So we are rarely totally without electricity.  However, the outages remind us just that electricity is a gift rather than a right, as we view it in the US. As a result of these realities, we practice turning off electrical devices conscientiously in the hope that those less fortunate will have electricity when it is most needed.

Geysers, the microwave, the oven and the dryer all use three phase electricity, which is not supplied during time of backup power generation.  So, those days when the government takes away the power for several hours and Palm Meadows runs on generator power, there is no hot water, nor can you use the microwave or cook in the oven.  While that seems like a minor inconvenience, it can be a major problem as most of our food requires heating prior to eating.  The cook does not serve our meals to the table.  All cooked food goes into the fridge until we have a meal – we always have leftovers. So, there are cold meals and cold showers on occasion.  You adapt.

Another fact of life here is geyser planning.  Dwellings do not have central air, heat, or hot water distribution.  If you want hot water you must turn the geyser on – providing the room has a geyser.  The geyser is a 1-5 gallon electric hot water heater supplying hot water to a point of need, and when you are done needing hot water, you turn the geyser off to preserve electricity. 

Handyman

India uses European based electrical wiring standards, which means that everything has a switch, including the outlets.  In and of itself, this housing attribute is manageable once you learn what all the switches power.  The real issue of the system is when the systemic plastic failure occurred June, 2009.  Larrie replaced literally every outlet and switch in the house as the plastic utilized during the manufacture of the system components failed, presumably to age.  And, due to the wiring standards utilized here, the banks of switches and outlets are wired using a bus like approach (single wire threaded through many switches).  Therefore, you cannot just replace the broken switch or outlet, you must unwire the whole plate, replace the necessary, and thread all the wires back through the bus. Mostly, this is done with live electricity because none of the circuit breakers are labeled, and since India uses 220v electricity, getting an electrical bite really knocks your socks off.  Larrie has great appreciation for the insulative qualities of Crocs.

Also, Larrie spent June-July repainting the interior of the house – much to the amusement of the staff.  We did hire two groups of painters to do some high ladder work, but Larrie did the bulk of all other painting. 

You might ask why Larrie performs manual labors when it is easy to hire another.  The simple answer is that it will get done, and Larrie highly values independence.  Hiring someone does not mean they will do the task within your time and quality constraints – it means they agree to do the task within their time and tool constraints.  If they do not have the right tool, they expect you to supply it.  And regardless of the agreed to price for the service, the doer expects a little extra for his inconvenience.  Simply put, it is too much, which is why Larrie does the thing – it’s just simpler, and it gets done.

Working in India

Allison’s position is much more ceremonial, and she plays a larger role requiring more impromptu speaking, which is a bit stressful for the introvert side of her.

Communication frustrations abound: accents, different meanings of words, not being understood, for example the meaning of the word necklace – mangalsutra - like wedding ring.  Communication is enhanced by using ones hands a lot and by using facilitators such as taking digital pictures and bringing the camera to the dealer and showing specifically what is required.  Common encountered terms are:

cabin = office or cubicle intimate = inform hotel = small restaurant revert = reply diversion = detour

lakh = 100,000 crore = 100 lakh or 10,000,000 backside = the back of the object opposite = the other side (of the street) mobile = cell phone

Interesting differences in communication: There is virtually no voice mail use, which had been replaced by lot's of text messaging.  Everyone has a cell phone, which is not that different than the USA.  However, in the US, Larrie's cell phone was just that, and he rarely used his minutes and he never texted.  In India, you are bound to the phone as a vital link.  The protocol goes something like:

• One call,no answer, try again sometime later (the unimportant can wait)
• 2nd call, must be important, no answer must truly be busy (the important to be communicated)
• 3rd step, send it via text (important, and I need to reach you, and I know you're in a meeting)

Entertainment

Some of the movies viewed this past year that have changed us are:

Slumdog Millionaire

Allie: “This movie is stereotypical and does not represent the diversity and beauty of India.  The movie may represent truth somewhere in India, but I have not yet witnessed it.”

Larrie: “What I saw in the movie is the raw that affects 80% of the population of India.  When I ride on Sunday mornings through the villages east of Bengaluru, and when we have traveled about India I see the poor and oppressed.  This movie attempts to illustrate the poverty that affects a great number of Indians and to illustrate the fact that it is incredibly hard to escape it.”

Jodha Akbar

Allie: “A great love story and historical reference to the architectural functionality of Northern India forts and palaces.”

Larrie: “After having just visited the forts and palaces in Northern India, I found the movie to be enlightening about the life that begat those monuments.  True, just a movie, but I suspect there is some fact about the way people is those times actually lived.  Oh, and as one who enjoys a good love story, it was so-so as a chick flick.”

Outsourced

Allie: “I thought the movie funny and fairly realistic about the interaction of culture and working in India.”

Larrie: “There were some contrived scenes, but overall I agree with Alli.  It’s even more humorous when you live here and can get it.”

The Library

What one reads influences understanding and establishes filters to ones perception of being human.  Allie and I have different reading lists, although on occasion, we read the same book.  Our selected reading lists for the year:

Alli	Larrie
White Tiger, Aravind Adiga The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho The Witch of Portobello, Paulo Coelho Brida, Paulo Coelho The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle
Generally, Alli likes thrillers with favorite authors being JD Robb, and she had read many business related texts.	The Elephant, The Tiger, And the Cell Phone: Reflections on India - the Emerging 21st-Century Power, Shashi Tharoor The Case for God, Karen Armstrong Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh How The Mighty Fall, Jim Collins The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen

Eulogies

The 2008 edition of the Babbler reported that the girls (Xander and Max) were living large with Alli’s parents in Butte, MT.  Last summer saw the passing of both of the girls.  Xander lived a long life, and when she needed a tenth, she was called home.  Just before we left Minnesota, Max had surgery for a mass in her chest.  We thought the mass was excised, but within months it had grown back.  Again we had the mass excised, and Max began chemo.  During his visit to the US in May 2009, Larrie visited with the vet in Butte, and it was decided that the chemo was not retarding the growth; so, treatment was stopped, and Max lived out her days at Alli’s folks.  Summer 2009 was hard on Alli’s folks as their dog, Rollie, also succumbed to old age.  We are eternally grateful to Alli’s folks for being the kind souls they are and seeing to it that two old cats lived well in their last days in the clear sunshine of the Big Sky.

Living in the shadow of Talibanistan

Asia is a dangerous place; there is no denying that fact.  However, having said that, we do not feel any more threatened here than we did in MN.  Yes, we encounter increased security everywhere we go; however, if that is what it takes to keep terrorists and Maoists in their own backyard, so be it.  Americans take security for granted.  9/11 changed that for awhile, but security complacency has returned to everyday life in the USA.  Here, we always take note of any differences, watch for change, and we are aware of that; our driver is constantly aware of threats, and he moves quickly to change our direction of travel.  It is a fact of life here, and that is a change.  You adapt.

Affect of Change

This time of year [originally written Christmas time, 2009] is about hope – about bringing light to the darkness.  In our lives here, we hope that all our friends and family who go about their daily grind in very trying times also feel hope.  As you can see from our reading list, we bring light to the darkness by reading about the human condition - both how it is, and how it could be.

You cannot live in India without being changed by it.  The systemic traditions governing action and reaction have existed for thousands of years and permeate India’s very being.  As such, the traditions are entrenched, not easily mutable, and are the very weights oppressing India from becoming more than it is today.

Traditions use fear to assure compliance while proselytizing to overcome fear itself.  In India, due to integration of tradition into everyday life, neighborhood life survives in and  lives with fear.  Superstition and not seeking to understand natural phenomena are utilized to drum fear into people to assure compliance in societal norms.  As an example, recently a solar eclipse closed schools and business because the event was seen as inauspicious. Rather that use the event to overcome fear, the fear mongers used it to close the very institutions whereby light is brought to the darkness.

Traditions oppress people and disenfranchise them.  Rural women in India have virtually no rights, and whatever rights are granted by law are not enforced within the tribal / feudal system existing in rural villages.  India continues the caste system, even though it is outlawed in its constitution and was recently criticized by the United Nations.  Dowry, abuse, rape, mutilation, and suicide are the markers of rural women who do not have effective social program opportunity to escape the cycle. Yet, they live in hope of a better tomorrow.

Living in India profoundly helped us to understand the courage, conviction, and freedom afforded American citizenry.  Most Americans fail to realize the gift of American citizenry as they are mired by their ego driven life.  As a country, we have lost sight of the importance of the USA to the world.  The USA experiment has proven to the world that when you study the old world traditions, cull out the nuggets of truth hidden within, and apply them into a new context, that humanity will grow and prosper.

However, all systems require diligent thought and maintenance to assure that the very ideals are upheld from the morality of human emotions, and to assure traditions are brought into the context of the current generations.  Humankind has many ancient texts extolling the many truths and learning of our ancestors.  We are not born with that knowledge, we must re-learn it.  We do not teach our children the ancient truths in a language they will accept, adapt, and understand; therefore, our young are left to re-learn by reliving experience, and the cycles of life iterate negatively.

India is the birthplace of the Buddha.  In his book The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh (a Buddhist monk from Viet Nam) discusses the Buddhist perspective on the effect of human emotion and ego upon our ability to rationally think.  Eckhart Tolle extols similar thoughts in A New Earth. These authors are examples of ancient knowledge being recontexualized to a new age and audience. 

Perhaps if more people take the time to cull the nuggets of truth from the recorded knowledge of humanity, and honor each others traditions while sharing self experiences rather than judging by them, we could all get along a bit more easily.  That is the hope for 2010 from the Thorne’s in India.