More lessons learned

as an add on to my last post

8) I am nothing without a man. Or so they keep telling me. Everything you do here requires females to give their husband's or father's name. Some of you may remember that I had a match of wits with a policemen who pulled me over a few years ago for NOT running a red light on my scooter. He asked "husband's name?", I said "none", he asked "father's name", "none", "husband's name"... you get the picture. 15 minutes later he finally asked my name and I considered this an overwhelming success.

Here though I wasn't sure I'd get away with saying "n/a". All these official documents ( tax forms, lease, residency card, etc) require the name of the man responsible for you. I finally gave in and decided to make one up - I used my grandfather's name. I thought I was just making my life easier to get cable TV but now I see that all my documents have "Mr. Robert O. Hess" written on them. I may have won the battle with the officer but clearly they've won the war.

In other news - bird flu is here. All the papers can write about (seriously like 40 out of 45 pages yesterday) is the flu and how bad it is for business and that you can't get butter chicken at any area restaurants. I couldn't find an article that told me how to avoid it though. Although the did say TamiFlu doesn't work, and since butchers use the same knives and cutting boards for mutton, that's not okay either. Now, from previous experience I know about safety measures to avoid bird flu but that's not very useful.

Let's see how good my hindi/tibetan is to explain all this to my cook!

Lessons Learned in India

India strikes me as so normal it's weird.. so here's my list of lessons learned so far

1) always specify a delivery date in writing. I bought a dining room table and chairs on Feb 3, and they said 10 days to make it. 15 days later they still wouldn't specify an exact date. I had Satender, my driver, call them - because they never understand me - and he said that the only way to get them to pay attention was to go in person. I went, acted very disappointed, told them I wouldn't recommend the place to all my rich friends and then created a contract where if they are one day later than promised I get 5% off, 2 days = 10% etc.

2) People really don't expect you to be able to do anything yourself. And soon you can't. I've been taking my cat to the vet for routine immunizations and she threw up in the back of my car so I got home and went to wash it. Immediately someone's servent was called to help me (maybe my landlord's?). Since my housekeeper doesn't work on weekends, I have found myself almost unable to wash dishes and just pile them up for her. Silly - I was able to do them until now, I doubt I've forgotten how.

3) It's weird seeing white people. I went this weekend to Khan Market, which is essentially the expat market so it's overpriced and full of white people. I usually avoid it. I remember when I first got to India and lived in an Indian neighborhood, I saw a white guy one day and we waved, y'know 'cuz we're white. Turns out he was a religious converter guy who wanted me to join some Christian prayer group. Maybe that's why I avoid white people now.

4) I can get away with anything here, because people always assume I'm insane. Everything we white people do is so strange to most people here that there's no difference if you're actually weird. So with the vet appointments I've been shuttling my cat around in errands, to the ATM, grocery store, chemist (drug store). I can carry her into shops and around markets with no more weird stares than usual:)

5) Americans and Indians do not have the same taste in food. I'm getting much better about liking Indian food (maybe it's just because I don't eat it). One day a few years ago I offered the office driver some iced tea after helping me carry stuff on a very hot day. It was brewed iced tea with no sugar. He still tells people about this awful stuff I make. This weekend I made apple streusal muffins for a picnic and the picnic was cancelled, so I gave many away to the beggars. I think they reacted better than the driver, after all there is sugar but I think they were still disappointed. On the flip side, my Indian friends who have all spent plenty of time abroad, do appreciate the weird things I make, like cornbread.

6) I suck at hindi. I don't know why I can't seem to learn this language. I can talk enough to get around but not to hold actual conversations. I've started up lessons again but the teacher is average at best. I guess I'll keep plugging away - it eventually just has to seep into my brain, right?

7) India is changing - rapidly. It's amazing to see the changes just in the past year and a half since I was gone. Friday's newspaper said that all these Oscar-nominated films are coming, including Brokeback Mountain. I NEVER thought a gay western would open here. I saw a pirated version from Thailand over the weekend - makes me want to go camping in Montana (even though it's in Wyoming).

3 months in Delhi

Just realized that today is my three month "anniversary" of moving here. Weird.

So Rachel Goldstein, whom many of you probably know, is coming to visit in a few weeks and as I was driving (read: being driven) to work this morning a few things dawned on me that I should probably warn her about that I thought you all might benefit from:

1) Swastikas don't have the same meaning here. The swastika, like the "om" symbol, is omni present. It's painted on walls, doors, cars, etc. This took me quite a while to adjust to because I had this visceral reaction to the symbol. In Hinduism it represents good luck and fortune so to paint it on your front door or the rear window of your car brings good luck. I understand that the direction of the symbol was reversed by the Nazis so it's not exactly the same. But for untrained eyes like mine, they look the same.

2) Never tell a taxi driver to go fast. I was picking up my friend Lu from the airport last weekend and didn't want to get lost so took a taxi instead of driving. Well the taxi was late (because the guy went to lunch before picking me up!!!) so I was worried that she'd be waiting and wouldn't know that I was coming - last minute change of plans. So I get in the taxi and tell him to go fast ("jaldi jaldi"). Oh.....my.....god. This is why I have jaw problems. Every muscle in my body was tense as we flew down the road in this old jeep honking constantely. Finally we hit a market area where I knew we'd hit a person so I told him to slow down.

For all of you who are in the snow storm, it's getting really hot here. It was 90 yesterday (cooler today) and getting light earlier so that when I leave the house at 6:30 to play squash it's still dark, but light by 7pm. You can laugh at me in a month when I can't bear the heat!

Proud new cat owner

Okay - so I did something really silly yesterday and adopted a cat. I haven't named her yet (any ideas)? She meows constantly, is a good cuddler but no one seems to have taught her how to be a cat....... There's one adoption place in Delhi that in most places would look like a hell hole but here looks like heaven for animals. And there was only one cat - it's mostly for dogs and horses?? Her breed was marked as "indian". Maybe indian cats meow a lot?

Sorry for the blurry picture - I was trying to take one quickly before I left the house this morning

Proud new car owner

I bought a car today. It doesn't make it any easier to do this in a country where I never understand what is going on. I decided I didn't trust anyone so bought a used car from the only dealer who does the "certified used" concept. So I bought a Maruti Sazuki Zen. Or at least put a down payment and they'll work on fixing all the little things we negotiated and hopefully I will pick up the car tomorrow. I already have a driver. My friend/colleague Meg is leaving India to go back and work at PSI's DC office after almost 3 years here (she's the one I initially stayed with when I moved here in 2003). So I'm inheriting her wonderful driver Setender. Now my guard will have something to guard:) I brought Setender, the office driver DP, and another person from work, Rajat, to look at the car and tell me which one to buy. We (Setender driving me sitting in the backseat) test drove a bunch and they recommended this one, so I bought it! Rajat negotiated new tires (or tyres as they are spelled here), Setender said they needed to realign the wheels and DP and I joined forces to negotiate the price (we didn't get far as these are non-negotiable).

It has also been brought to my attention by Cheinan that I have failed to mention the India v Pakistan Cricket match. That would be because I have totally ignored it. Apparently Pak beat India by 341 runs. What kind of sport allows someone to win by 341??? And takes 4 days? A bunch of my colleagues are visiting our Pakistan project now so it will be great to hear how it was to be in Pakistan during the win. The matches do seem to have helped relations between the countries.

To be honest. I was paying more attention to the airport staff strikes that are causing all sorts of havoc.

PS. Saw my first monkey gang since I've been back. When we were test driving the car they were on the side of the road, like 40 of them! I locked the doors and laughed.

Chennai in a few days

Let's start with the weekend. Saturday I told my housekeeper that I would take her mother to an asthma specialist recommended by a doctor I work with. The spinal (?!?) hospital that he was working out of that day was pretty far so we all packed into a taxi. Turns out Tenzing is from India and has never been to Tibet - her mother moved her about 36 years ago. The hospital was not bad (although it's always weird to see patients on stretchers hanging out in the waiting room). I had to push the doctor to detail side effects of drugs and how to properly take the inhaler but overall I thought he was pretty good. Tenzing's mom doesn't speak english but it was nice to spend some time with them. While it was very cheap in my world (like $20 for the visit and meds), there is no way they could have afforded it. Then hung out with friends the rest of the day and watched movies.

Just returned from a two day trip to Chennai (aka Madras), the capital of the Southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. It was crazy to see how much it's changed in the past 2 and half years. It's a huge city with no big center or buildings! The beach is totally empty now but I was glad to see that it didn't reduce in size after the tsunami. About a hundred people died in the city, the number is low mostly because the beach is so big that the nearest building are a half a mile off shore.

I went down to present some research findings to the team and see what their activities look like. We have a franchise of clinics, condom sales and communication activities like street theater shows and condom demonstrations. A few things I love about southern India:
1) the coffee, while Cafe Coffee Day has improved Delhi immenslely, south india still wins with actual filter coffee.
2) the food, the traditional meal is thali which is like a personal buffet - on a palm leaf. All these tiny bowls of various local flavors that you put on the rice in the center of the leaf. They also have amazing fruit, not the least of which is the tiny bananas and pineapple. The bananas are often sold right off the vine (which is no longer connected to the tree).
3) the weather, it is always hot in the south - but not that unbearable kind.
4) the men wearing skirts. Okay, they aren't actually skirts - they are lungis, one piece of cloth wrapped at the waist and maybe folded up to make walking easier. The picture here is of men watching our street theater. Most were barefoot working in a huge fruit market and I looked down and saw one guy with six toes!!


The first street theater performance we saw (oh, the purpose of these performances is to get people talking about STI and getting treatment from our clinics) was in a flower market. Just beautiful and one of the few places here that is both crowded and smells good!