Raag gets used to India

I sent this as an email to some of my friends on March 27th 2006 when I went to India on a business trip.

I took a day off from work to see my parents in Delhi over the weekend where I met some classmates of mine from Delhi College of Engineering (Friday). It was nice after 3 years to meet them all again. This time we met at Sandeep's house. He is a DIG!! (Observe how well I drop names and my relationship to important people). Well he lives in a decent area near Delhi University and has a huge flat with 3 servants, couple of drivers, and 2 person security detachment!! It is all very impressive. Anyway my friend has this house servant, medium height but looked rather ferocious with a mustache big enough to hang on!! But when he talked to you it was obvious he was a meek man, someone who would not say boo to a mouse. After a while I heard my friend's wife call out to him, guess what his name was; Ghabbar Singh!! I kid you not. Poor man saddled with a name like that. Later Sandeep was kind enough to lend me a cell for the day and told me that since the airports come under his supervision, he would have one of his men come and escort me around and then take the cell phone back. He used hindi to say this "Mere aadmi tumse airport mein milenge", I could not resist asking him, if he was going to add "Tum mujhe woh phone vapis de do nahin to mein Ghabbar ko tumhari ghar bejh doonga"!!

It is astonishing how quickly acclimatized I am becoming to India; not just getting used to more obvious things like hot weather and dirt, but to the roads and the driving habits. In fact I have now become inordinately proud of my driver's skills. On the way to the office there is a place where the road goes from 4 lanes to 2, actually it really does not, but the drivers merely go over the yellow line and drive on the other 2 lanes. Did you not know that lanes don't matter? Then very logically there is an extremely narrow bridge, that allows only 1 lane in each direction. In this stretch, my driver was playing chicken with a bus to our left as to who could get ahead. Earlier I would have cringed, but now I found myself rooting for my driver and thinking, if he could only shift a little faster after each stop he could really get ahead.

When he finally put our nose ahead and won the race, I almost put my hands up. YES! You have no idea how happy I felt at my driver's achievement. But in India I have learned that managers and bosses (addressed as Sir) do not behave in this undignified manner. Observe again how used to India I have become. Note the repeated use of the phrase My Driver.

Last week I asked the my driver to turn into Brigade Road to see what is it that people are raving about. It is extremely crowded but I suppose it is the place to hangout. As we were stopped at another of the traffic jams, (I will no longer explain that I was stuck in a traffic jam, the only reason traffic stops is for a jam), I saw a couple of young guys riding on a motor cycle. The guy in the back had his hand on the shoulder of the driver and in his left hand he had a paper bag with something to eat. Periodically he would put his hand in the bag and eat something from it. Then he did something that surprised me, he took another piece and lovingly fed the driver!! I tried to picture Ravi's reaction to this, but failed!! (Let us say, Ravi is allergic to men touching other men and leave it at that).

We had interviews yesterday during the day at the hotel where I am staying. We invited about 95 candidates and only 55 came for it and we made offers to 3 of them of which I am happy with maybe 2. It is hard.

Later in the evening I went to a mall since everyone talks a lot about them. This one is called Garuda Mall off of MG Road on a road called Commissariat Rd. It is hard to imagine the crush of people, the beleaguered air conditioning was working hard but it was still so warm inside. As far as the mall itself, it is nothing to write home about. 6 to 7 floors tall with a food court on one floor, theatres on the top floor and shops everywhere with mostly over-priced items.