Random notes on India

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been pretty busy with work because my research team has been going out to the field everyday for surveys and data collection. We’ve been traveling 1-2 hours on bumpy dirt roads to get out to the really rural, tribal areas in the forests of Jharkhand, and the experience has been amazing so far – but more will come on this in a later blog post. For now, I want to catch up on some of the more random things that have characterized our visit as quite…unique.

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·      Noise: Everything and everyone in India is noisy (well maybe except for the cows that are on the streets). Amongst the colorful stimuli that will cloud your senses here, it’s the noise that is truly deafening. People are loud (usually in a happy and joyous way), cars are loud (they all honk, ALL the time, because there aren’t any traffic signs here), and music is even louder (Indians LOVE their music). So when you’re in a car that’s rattling because of the bumpy road full of potholes, you will hear endless honking, and the music will be playing loudly to drown out the honking, and the people in the car will be yelling at each other so they can hear one another over the music and honking.

·      Driving: Indians drive on the left side of the road (just like South Africans – from last year’s blog). Thankfully I don’t have to drive around here though. [Note: Frommer’s actually tells travelers to hire drivers because tourist driving = inevitable accidents.] There aren’t any traffic signs or rules here really, not unless you’re in the big cities like Delhi. But even then, not all drivers follow the rules. I’ve found that everyone on the road here is in a hurry –big vehicles always try to pass smaller ones (as well as rickshaws) whenever possible. And of course, they honk loudly to signal that they’re passing. But 80% of the time, these passes are dangerous because there’s an oncoming car or truck in the same lane. So last-minute swerving happens often…and unfortunately, many overloaded trucks fall over as a result. The roads are full of these giant utility trucks, usually filled with rocks or dirt or building materials. I’ve seen four giant trucks spilled over across the roadsides over the past week; in fact, one of these accidents happened literally five minutes before we crossed paths with a truck that tipped. Thank goodness we were running late that day, because we were safe.

·      Starch and fried foods: The north Indian diet has three staples from what I can see so far: rice (bhat or chawal), potatoes (aloo), and lentils (dal). From there, meals are made up of pretty much two food groups: starch and fried foods. Obviously the starch group is made up of the white rice and potatoes – which are served at practically every meal. Hence the many big bellies you tend to see in the Indian culture are usually starch bellies if not beer bellies. (Dal is served at every meal too because it’s the main source of protein for their commonly vegetarian diet.) The other group is made up of fried foods: roti or chapatti stuffed with potatoes and fried, chapatti that’s fried, veg potato and onion balls that are fried, samosas that are stuffed with potato mixes and fried, dosas that are fried and sometimes stuffed with potatoes, and even dessert like gulab-jamon that are dough balls of super condensed milk that are fried and soaked in sugar water. It’s quite an interesting diet – of course where people can afford it, you’ll find there’s a better variety of foods which will include: green vegetables (like spinach and okra), gourds (like white pumpkin), meat (mostly chicken), eggs, paneer (cheese), chickpeas, and fruits. So it's no surprise that nutrition indicators here are commonly void of essential vitamins.

·      Monsoon season: The monsoon rains have begun…hallelujah! The roaring thunder, lightning (which apparently our town, the “Steel City”, attracts much of), and pouring rains have begun to douse the state with cooling temperatures. One of my favorite things to do is just sit and listen to the simple beauty of a tropical rain (especially when there's a brownout). It’s the sound of an end and a new beginning, one of tranquility and rejuvenation at the same time.

    Brownouts: India is one of the top countries in the world that suffers from persistent brownouts (which severely hinders productivity and economic progress). So for at least 15 minutes everyday, we are without electricity. Yesterday we lost power for 8+ hours.

o   Being in the dark: When you have brownouts in the middle of the summer, it gets pretty hot, sticky and boring. And sometimes it gets dark – which is fine until you accidentally step on a cricket while barefoot and on your way to the bathroom.

The ubiquitous head wobble

June 9, 2010

Before coming to India, many of my friends told me that within the first couple of days, I would notice the “head wobble” and before leaving Delhi, I would pick it up. Well it’s the funniest thing to me, but it’s a cultural mannerism used all throughout India…so I think I finally got it down.

The Indian head wobble is meant to connote a non-verbal sign of understanding or thinking. It isn’t a nod, nor is it a shake of the head. The motion actually reminds me of a bobblehead – if you lightly touch it on the very top of it’s head and give it a side-to-side push, it starts to wobble a bit from right to left. So the wobble doesn’t always mean “yes”, and it doesn’t always mean “no”…it doesn’t even always mean “maybe.” From what I gather, since it’s kind of a side-to-frontish-side-back-side-to-side, it mostly seems to mean, “I heard you.” So you always have to follow up your wobble with a confirmation question or statement of some sort if you want to clarify something. It’s one of the funniest things.

So if you were to ask me right now, “How’s India?” Here’s my answer:

The Mess Hall

June 9, 2010

Here in Jamshedpur, we don’t have very many commercial plazas or restaurants to go to that are within walking distance. In fact, there aren’t any real food establishments outside our Tata quarters for kilometers. We have to travel by rickshaw to get to the nearest full market (meaning one with at least one reputable café or restaurant or retail outlet) which is at least 20 minutes away in the humid heat on unmarked streets, so we usually just don’t venture out. Instead, our group takes part in the meal plan we’ve been given.

So it’s just like we’re back at college, living in a large dormitory with a pre-purchased meal plan. The only difference is that with this meal plan, each meal that is served is pre-planned (so that you only have 2 choices) and set at company-dictated times. Breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner are all scheduled by Tata, so we have 2.5 hour windows in which we can avail of the dish(es) that are available for a meal…however, we don’t really get to choose what we want to eat from the menu; instead, we serve ourselves from the giant bowls that they place in front of us at the tables.

This isn’t a bad thing considering the fact that we get a pretty assorted menu of meals throughout the week – however, most of the foods we eat consist of a combination of rice, potatoes, chapatti (or roti), and dal (lentils which can be cooked a zillion different ways). And sometimes these 4 things are the only things served for dinner. There aren’t very many vegetables included, hardly anything fresh, there’s lots of fried snacks, and I think I’ve only seen one fruit – mango made into a chutney – since getting here over a week ago. The dishes are pretty tasty once you get used to the spices, but my low-carb, weight loss diet is now somewhat out the window.

It’s customary to eat with your hands here. However, you really only eat with your right hand, as your left hand is considered dirty. So to “blend in” as much as we can, our group of women clad in colorful American clothing, in a mess hall of usually 30+ men uniformed in blue Tata attire, eat with our right hands. It’s a pretty funny sight to see…four foreign ladies in a mess hall of mostly men; men who have (thus far) been too shy (or disinterested) to talk to us. So at every meal, we talk amongst ourselves. We’re like the random roadblock that gets in the way of worker ants, so they just carry on by going around us, not noticing that the roadblock is even there – although one ant gets curious from time to time and crawls over. But then he learns that we aren’t as interesting as he thought, so he folds back into the flow.

We have made a few women friends here in the hostel through the mess hall though, so it’s been an interestingly central part of our experience so far. We’ve learned that although pretty much everyone in this hall is single, both genders hardly interact with each other because it just isn’t the norm or custom here. [No wonder they aren't allowed to televise kissing.]