Weekend In Pune

Last weekend, before the flood disaster, we drove to Pune with my co-worker. Pune is about 100 miles from Mumbai and there's a three-lane express highway. Still, it took three hours to get there and four hours to get back, due to heavy rain and insane traffic on the way out of and back into Mumbai. But it was worth the trip.

When we drove there, it was dark, and we didn't see much of the landscape. What we did see where heavy trucks crawling up the Ghats mountain range at the speed of snails - except we didn't actually see them, because hardly any of them had any rear lights, and a lot didn't have any front lights either. Of course, that didn't stop them from using the middle lane or pulling over to pass an even slower truck without much notice. Add to that a good amount of wind an rain and an "express highway" that, while in surprisingly good shape can have curves like Marilyn Monroe only more dangerous, and one can say it was an exciting trip.

Apart from the truly insane truck drivers, there was also a number of people parking their cars right in the middle of a blind spot after a curve, where there is no emergency lane or anything, so basically on the middle of the highway. Why? Well, because they were in the mood to get out of the car for a piss or maybe to take some pictures.

Anyways, we got to Pune at 11pm or so and checked into a little hotel with the obligatory Barista on the grounds, right next to the Osho Ashram. One of the first things I noticed in Pune was the number of hipsters walking around, sitting at Barista, and standing around in front of some modern movie theater/mall. The term hipster of course simply denotes college kids in jeans and t-shirt, as Pune is actually also known as the Oxford of India, due to the number of IT colleges and universities here, so don't think East Village, as the dress code is rather unimaginative, and labels win over originality any time.

Now, we are anything but hippies, but the Osho Ashram promises to be a very quiet green space where one can relax and meditate. Osho, of course, is the guru that at some point got deported from the US for tax evasion, and whom Western tabloids used to refer to as the sex guru, because he had pretty liberal views on sex. But really, it is just big business, and a pretty weird place. I had somehow expected that we would only find Westerners there, but there were about 30% Indians as well.

The first thing that happens when one gets there is you need to pay Rs1200, fill out a bunch of forms, show your visa, have a picture taken, and get an HIV test done. No, you don't see anybody having sex or anything, but basically, it's part of the belief that sex is natural and shouldn't be discouraged, and besides Osho apparently was pretty paranoid about hygiene, so there's also big signs everywhere about how not to handle the food, where not to go if you have a cold, and where to wear socks instead of bare feet.

Then, during the day, everyone has to wear a maroon robe, no exceptions. In the evening, they have a huge two and a half hour evening meeting, where white robes are mandatory. At the swimming pool, maroon swim suits only. It's all quite cultish and rather unenlightened, and of course they want you to buy these things on the premises for inflated prices. On the other hand, the pool is very nice, and they have a sauna and a tennis court (for extra cash). Oh, and taking pictures on the premises wasn't allowed either.

We also went to a couple of meditation sessions, which are basically a mix of dance therapy and Osho philosophy brainwash. An interesting experience maybe, but why anyone would want to devote his or her life to this sort of thing is a bit beyond me. Add to that the obvious big business mentality - Osho's Rolls Royce is exhibited right next to his ashes in the "Silent Meditation Area" - and one could easily get pissed off by all of it. Or one could travel thousands of miles from Europe or elsewhere, just to spend a few weeks here, as many people do.

The big evening meeting was in a gorgeous auditorium - a huge square space with a black marble floor and a huge triangular ceiling. Absolutely no coughing allowed for two and a half hours. There were 200 or 300 people there, and the thing starts with some music and "meditative" dancing, which in our case ended with some freak woman hysterically crying out for Krishna, untill she got escorted out. Maybe she was a real freak, or maybe the whole thing was staged, either by her or by the Osho Ashram head of marketing, who knows.

Then there is an hour long or so video of Osho giving a speech. I kind of fell asleep at some point, but basically he was saying that Western religions have been created by the poor and for the poor, with Jesus having been a carpenter and Islam promising 72 virgins after death, Christianity promising heavenly paradise, etc. while Indian religions were created by kings, who had everything materially, and desired nothing but solitude and nothingness. No wonder than that Indian religions have found such a large following among the spoiled and sated Western population, while Hinduism has nothing to offer for the poor in India, he said.

Well, I don't know, it sounded like an odd mix of half-truths and bullshit, but it certainly seemed to show that Osho knew his target group and built a pretty successful marketing and product line around it, because Westerners are coming in droves. Besides, he probably had trouble getting laid, so what better idea to help him out on that account than coming up with a sexually liberal cult targeted at rich Westerners? I had thought this was a cliche, and maybe it is, but we definitely saw a number of single older Western ladies hanging around with young Indian boys.

In the immediate vicinity of the Osho Ashram is a "German Bakery", which was crowded with Indians, hippies, and regular travellers, and, as Ksenia observed, the atmosphere was a pretty much like they took everything stereotypical Indian, digested it in California, and spat it back out here in Pune. Somewhat interesting, and somewhat revolting, just like the Osho Ashram itself, which would make a fine relaxed place to go to, as it is clean and green and has nice facilities, if it weren't for the cultish freaks and the many strings firmly attached to visitors' wallets.

Anyways, bottom line: I am still not enlightened, despite having walked around in a maroon robe all weekend, looking like I don't know what.

The Maid

In NYC, we used to have a cleaning woman, who'd come in every two weeks and clean everything in three hours. She is from Chile and does a great job. Now, having a cleaning woman in NYC was strange enough for me, at least at the beginning. It's not like I grew up on Beverly Hills or Windsor Castle, quite the contrary. But living in Mumbai, it is pretty clear pretty quickly that spoiled Westerners that we are, we need a maid on a daily basis, at least part time. First of all, this place is dirty and our apartment would get covered in dust very very quickly. Also, we have no idea what to buy in terms of groceries etc., where to buy it, and what it should cost. And even if we did, we'd have a hell of a time communicating with the shop owners. So we were recommended a maid and hired her.

She came with a number of references and spoke English quite well. She said she would clean, do the shopping (or rather order the stuff for delivery, since everything can get delivered), do the laundry and cook a couple of times a week. Unfortunately, we were not prepared for the fact that having a maid is basically a full-time job. We were naively thinking that you could just have her come in, and she would know what to do without much prompting. Instead, Ksenia tried for a week to show her how to clean, to convince her to do the shopping, but basically nothing got done.

Other people confirmed then confirmed that getting a good maid is very very difficult, and that one basically needs to spend a few months explaining to them exactly what they need to do. Our maid basically refused to do the shopping, because she said there are no shops around (there are, besides, then she made a big long face when Ksenia asked her to call somebody for delivery). After a week of her cleaning our living room, our telephone was still covered in dust, because she didn't know that we wanted her to clean the telephone, too.

We still don't really have any idea about how this works, but we sort of thought that if our cleaning woman in NYC can figure out without being told that dusting the living room includes the telephone, then it should not be too much of a problem here. Well, apparently it was, plus at the end of the week we think that we are missing a number of Rs500 bills from a locked drawer, and although we cannot be 100% certain what happened to it, we figured it would be better to let her go.

Our landlord told us that you basically cannot trust any maid and that they will all rob you and need very strict supervision. Another expat told us that in her Indian friend's family, the maid is basically locked up in the kitchen, where she sleeps on the floor. So what do you do? We obviously want to treat our maid like responsible adults, but it turns out that this may be easier said than done.

Anyways, so we have now hired a different maid, who was also recommended to us with all sorts of references. Her English is not quite as good, but so far, she's quite a bit more thorough. She was cooking a tasty chicken dish today, and while she didn't do the vegetable dish that she said she would do, nor cleaned the kitchen cabinets that she said she would clean, she did call the grocery to get the chicken and vegetables delivered.

Speaking of which: at this point, we have slowly lost any concept of believing what anyone says. The cable guy said he would stop by in the afternoon to get us digital cable; he never did. The dry cleaner said he would stop by in half an hour to pick up some shirts; he never did. The furniture shop said they would come at 2pm to deliver the furniture; they never did. We then drove to the shop ourselves, and then the story was that the furniture was actually made in a different store outside of town and that it can't get delivered until Tuesday because of the floods. The travel desk at work told me they'd come by in 10 minutes to give me Ksenia's tickets to NYC; they never did. When I went there myself, it turned out that the tickets were double booked and that the real ticket will be an electronic ticket. I guess we have yet to learn how to get this sort of information on the phone, without actually having to show up in person. There's countless stories like this, and maybe even more so than the heat and the rain and the traffic and the pollution, it makes India quite an exhausting place to live.

In any event, I guess it'll be interesting how things will go once Ksenia is off to NYC for two months, and I will only have half an hour or so in the morning to tell the maid what to do. I think I might be bitching about my maid and become a Desperate Housewife myself. Of course, Ksenia thinks I will spoil her and let her get away with doing nothing, and then she will have to fire her, when she gets back, because her tolerance for questionable work ethics is a bit lower than mine, but we'll see. I am already calling Ksenia My Good Colonialist, but really, we have no idea what people were talking about when Indians in the US say: "Oh, you are going to India on US salary - you are going to live like a King, you'll have a maid and a driver, and everything is going to get delivered!" Yeah, right, but I'll have to quit my job first, so I have time to manage my maid and my driver.

The Flood Recap

So far, the monsoon season has been very nice and pleasant to us. Temperatures are in the high 20's celsius, as opposed to mid or high 30's, and although it is very humid, the air feels better and fresher than before the monsoon started. It rains every couple of days for a few hours, but that is that.

But then last Tuesday, all hell broke lose, and as our luck would have it, we had the pleasure to experience the heaviest rainfall in Mumbai's history. As of today, over 450 people died in the State of Maharashtra, and about 60 in Mumbai. Some parts of Mumbai got 90cm of rainfall, that's three feet.

The rain started sometime in the early afternoon, when I was at work and Ksenia at her yoga class. Around 5pm we were told we could leave the office early. I took off with Manish from work in his Tata Sierra, a fairly heavy SUV. The rain was absolutely incredible, stronger than anything I have ever seen. It soon became clear that it'll take a while to get home. The traffic was crawling, but still moving, sort of. Eventually, cars started to use both lanes in both directions. Initially, the water on the streets was only a few inches, but soon it reached about half a foot, and in some spots a foot or more.

So by 7pm, we had gone through one particularly deep spot, we were maybe 3km away from the office and we were stuck. The water was too deep, and besides, people had started abandoning their cars in the middle of the streets. By now it was dark, and the traffic lights were out; there was no electricity anywhere. For some reason, I managed to call Ksenia on her mobile, and she said that she is walking home. Our car was flooded, she was knee deep in the water, and our driver was walking her home.

Luckily, Manish's aunt lived nearby where we were stuck, so we turned around and managed to park the car in a better spot. But both of us wanted to get home, so we started walking. We were about 7km (5 miles) from home, and, well, it took us five hours. The water reached our hips very quickly, and in some spots our chests. Now, of course, I am using the term water quite liberally - think sewage. Luckily, it was dark, so we couldn't really see what's floating by, but it wasn't pretty.

At one spot, the current was so strong that it kept pulling us back and I couldn't get a firm hold with my feet. Of course, I was still wearing my office shoes and, actually, my best suit pants, not to mention my tie. Anyways, somehow we managed to get cross that particular spot and kept wading through the floods. There were abandoned flooded cars and city busses everywhere. People were resting in the busses or waiting for God knows what, plus there was a good amount of thunder an lightening, so the whole scene had a bit of an apocalyptic touch.

The street lights were out, but the lightening then and again made them go on, which didn't really add to my general feeling of discomfort. Wading through hip deep sewage for a few kilometers is not exactly my idea of fun, especially when you know that it's quite possible that you make a wrong step and get stuck in a pothole, or worse, end up in a manhole. The people around us seemed to have a blast though. First of all, they had no problems touching the traffic light posts, thunder and lightening or not. But apart from that, they were generally laughing, a few were singing to the rain God, Ganesh, and they were all holding hands to help each other through the sewage, so that was nice.

Some overdid the fun part a little, I guess: Ksenia told me later that where she was, there were rats swimming around all over the place, trying to huddle up on top of the gas tank of a motor bike, which was just above water level - and if that's not enough, there were a bunch of teenage boys with sticks picking up the rats and throwing them towards the people passing by. Thankfully, no-one was hit, so the little pricks weren't very good at it, and I didn't see any of that - I just met a whole lot of people greeting me with "Hello foreigner, how do you like India?"

Eventually, Manish and I reached a higher spot in Juhu where there was no flooding, just by the JW Mariott Hotel, which was bizarrely lit up like a Christmas tree. I guess it pays to have your own generator. An hour or so later, I reached home. Our street also was not flooded, but I had to restrain myself not to strangle the woman who asked me, her cell phone in hand: "Excuse me, but why is there so much traffic on Linking Road?"

Poor Ksenia had gotten home quite a bit earlier, just to find our apartment flooded in two inch deep water. The drains on our terrace were clogged, so the water was overflowing into our apartment, despite all doors being shut. Of course, these drains are a joke to begin with - there's only two of them, each maybe an inch and a half in diameter, and our terrace is pretty large. Needless to say, our upstairs neighbors throwing plastic bags and newspapers onto our terrace on a regular basis didn't help.

So she and the driver spent hours getting rid of the water, and of course the driver had no place to go, so he slept in our second bedroom. Ksenia wouldn't have found her way home without him, so we were very lucky to have him. On the plus side, Ksenia was able to take a few shots with her camera.

We had no electricity and eventually also no water, nevermind no landline phone, so the next day and night were a bit of a challenge. Electricity and water came back Thursday morning, but of course still no phone. One would think that the telephone is a fairly proven technology, but not around here. Strangely, mobile phone service was working for the most part, except for a relatively short disruption for a few hours and heavy congestion.

Also quite striking was the complete lack of any police, fire department, ambulance or any other kind of public service. Rail and airport service were of course completely shut down for almost 40 hours, but people were generally completely left to their own devices. One would think that in an area where heavy rains are an annual fact of life, there would maybe exist some kind of emergency plan, maybe even inflatable boats, but I guess not, which maybe isn't surprising, given that the sewage system is such a joke, i.e. in large parts non-existent and otherwise completely useless.

So today everything is pretty much back to normal, except still no phone and conflicting reports on whether there's any flights going out of Mumbai. Ksenia was supposed to leave for NYC tonight, so we will see. We are still planning to go to a dance performance in the evening, and her flight is scheduled for 2am. At least I have now found a Barista cafe with WiFi access and it actually works, with a good speed to boot. But Ksenia is taking her laptop with her, so my fun was limited to today. On the bright site, on TV they said that I can now worry a bit about getting leprotosis from the rat piss that no doubt was plenty in the sewage that I had been walking around in - yummy!

After The Flood

Well, we survived. 500 or so in Maharashtra, 80 or so in Mumbai did not. Three feet of rain within a few hours are no joke. As of this morning, we have water and electricity again, but of course no phone. I love my Blackberry though, which strangely seemed to work most of the time, and I am writing this from the Blackberry browser.

More on this little adventure in a few days, but it was quite something. I ended up walking home through 7km/5miles/5hours of knee to hip deep (and sometimes chest deep) sewage floods, at one spot with quite a strong current.

There were no street lights, it was dark evening, there were thousands of laughing people and hundreds of abandoned flooded cars and busses everywhere - and the intermittent thunder of lightening gave the whole scene a bizarrely apocalyptic touch.

When Ksenia reached home, a few hours before me, our apartment was in two inch deep waters from the overflowing terrace. The two miniature drains proved useless and our upstair neighbors having a penchant for throwing newspapers, plastic bags and sometimes even food from their balconies didn't help matters.

Anyways, so much for today. I might try getting to work tomorrow, provided our driver can come up with a new car, because the one he had he had got flooded. He ended up abandoning the car and walking Ksenia home - he really was priceless. Not to mention that this morning he thought it was necessary to come to our door after a one hour rikshah ride, just to apologize for not being able to drive me to work, because he doesn't have a new car yet...

Incredible India indeed.

Not Quite DSL Ready

Well, it looks like our apartment is not quite DSL ready. Why? Beacuse our phone lines don't work when it rains, or when it has rained, or maybe when it is about to rain. So, basically: never, with being monsoon season and all that, except, of course, when the landlord is over to convince himself that the phone is not working, so that he can call MTNL, who would then have to certify the line as being faulty, so that the landlord can ask an electrician to fix it. Needless to say, nothing has been fixed yet.

Too bad, because there's lot's of things to talk about, but for now, just this: We spent the weekend at the Osho Ashram in Pune, we fired our maid, and, oh, yes, our phone still isn't working. More on that when we are back online; it could take a while, or it could be tomorrow, noone can say for sure.

Shopping for Furniture and DSL

Our apartment has nice modern furniture and a big terrace with a little roof to sit under in the rain, but no terrace furniture. But what better place than India to buy this sort of stuff? Mumbai is full of little woodcarving furniture shops, mostly owned by Muslims. There are also many shops that make furniture from bamboo cane, but the woodcarving stuff is really quite something. So last weekend we went from one to the next, trying to figure out the different types and prices. We are probably deluding ourselves, but we start thinking that we are getting a better idea about whether people are giving us a totally inflated tourist price or only a medium inflated price. But basically, we kind of go by what we like and, almost equally important, which of the sales guys we like. Eventually, we end up at one shop where the people are very relaxed and laid back and seem to have prices that are not obviously completely out of line.
Of course, even the outrageous quotes are probably a quarter or less of what this stuff would be anywhere in the West, but we don't really want to be taken for complete idiots either, and I am slowly beginning to take a liking in the bargaining and haggling game. Anyways, so we get a bunch of lounge type chairs and small tables, with carvings to Ksenia's specification, made of rosewood and with some inlays on the table tops. They supposedly will get made to order in 10 days. The people were really quite nice. We went back there three or four times, were forced to have a cold Pepsi, and apparently were a bit of a sensation in that neighborhood. We also got a rocking chair, at some other place, which just got delivered.

Also last weekend, we went out for drinks and dinner with another expat from work and some expat friends of his. Before we came here, we didn't really think about whether we'd make Indian friends or hang out with expats, but I guess we also have reached a point where we realize it's nice to have a bitch and moan and vent session with expats then and again, where you can just sit down and commiserate about the general insanity and craziness of this country. Indians might get defensive or offended by this sort of stuff, just like I have been asked on more than one occasion why the fuck I came to the US, if I have to bitch about this or that, so when Indians asks me how I like India, which they do very often, I don't particularly feel, tempting as it might be, to say exactly all the things that might be on my mind. It would take too much time anyways.

Apart from yet another elephant that we saw walking down the street today (with the guy riding it asking for money, of course), we also saw a Hindustan Motors Ambassador Avigo. Now, we had already given Rs15,000 to the Tata showroom to book a Tata Sumo, and we even had already a certified check for another Rs85,000 in our hands, ready to be turned over to Tata, but when I saw that HM Ambassador Avigo, I just couldn't help it and completely changed my mind. This car is an absolute beauty. I don't care what Indians tell me, which is usually that it's a shit piece of junk and that I should buy a Mahindra Scorpio or some such US style SUV, I think this car is absolutely gorgeous. I admit, the regular HM Ambassador Grand leaves a bit to be desired in terms of interior styling, but the Avigo looks great, is cheap for a car its size, and is made for Indian roads. So I reversed my Tata Sumo booking and ordered an HM Amby Avigo.

The only downside is that it'll probably take four or five weeks, and that the paperwork is not any less than for any other car. Apart from a copy of my passport, my permanent residency permit, my landlord's phone bill, they also want the original copy of my apartment lease agreement, and a letter from my employer on company letterhead, which confirms my status and confirms that I moved from the hotel to an apartment and basically begs the vehicle registration office to please register my car, Yours Faithfully etc. blah blah... Apparently, at least that was the HM car dealer's explanation, the vehicle registration office has a real problem with people faking their proof of residence documents, which, given the amount of paperwork these bureaucrats require doesn't really surprise me, especially since the permanent residence permit, for example, is basically printed on toilet paper, so easy to fake that my grandmother could do it, and she is dead.

At least when you go to the post and telegraph office, which we did to order a DSL broadband connection, you know to expect the worst, and our expectations were sort of satisfied. The PTO is now actually run by a semi-government entity called MTNL, and when you go there, it is a bit like entering the twighlight zone. The MTNL workers, many of them, none with much of anything to do, sit behind large schoolroom desks of plastic wood veneer, hand you an application form that we had to have our landlord signed, since our phone line is on his name. Fair enough. When we get back, they read the form very carefully, slam three official stamps on it with full gusto, rip off a little bit off it at the bottom and say "OK, two to four days". We couldn't quite believe what we heard, so then they clarified that in two to four days they will forward the application. "And then what?" our inquiring minds wanted to know. Then they clarified that the service guy will come to our apartment. But nobody knew what day exactly, let alone what time.

So when we argued that we'd like to know the day and, if possible, have a rough idea about the time, they said "I don't know". Well, honesty is always a good policy. But when we asked, what if we are not home, the woman taking our application gave a fantastic shy smile and just said "Oh." I am not sure exactly what that meant, but I can only assume that she assumed that we have a maid (which we now do, but only part-time). Or is it really possible that it never occurred to her that people might not be home?

Anyways, so she sent us to the second floor to talk to the field manager, I guess. The building is old, smelly, and from the looks on people's faces, no Westerner has ever set foot into the place, at least not onto the second floor. There's huge metal drawers on the walls, ca. 1930. The field manager now says one week. Then we kind of lie and say that downstairs they said two to three days. The brief answer: "No, impossible!" But then, I don't know what happened, her colleague started wiggling his head, and all of a sudden it was no problem and he promises Thursday, in three days. Exact time? "After 12." Well, looks like we are starting to figure stuff out here, so we are already very happy. For now. Who knows what will happen Thursday, but the poster of Mahatma Gandhi on the field office was promising. It had his portrait and underneath, the following, paraphrased from memory:

The customer is not an interruption of your work; he is your reason for being.
The customer should not be thankful that you serve him; you should be thankful for getting to serve him.

It went on a bit more in that vein, and I don't remember the exact words, but seeing this faded black and white poster in this five by five feet field office was truly worth getting the visitor's pass that we needed to go to the second floor. About as worthwhile as the hand-painted sign above the elevator: "This lift is not available for going down."

One thing we haven't quite figured out yet are our 70 or so switches. The other day, I accidentally switched off the power plug for the fridge and didn't notice for a good while, and we also had somehow managed to switch off the door bell, so the poor woman that came for an interview as a maid was waiting outside for half an hour, because we also didn't hear her knocking, as we were in the kitchen, and the ventilator, stove exhaust, and washing machine combined are a bit too noisy to hear much of anything. Not to mention our melodic water filter. The electrical outlets are also a bit of a challenge. They come in two different shapes, but each seems to be able to actually fit a variety of plug types, except of course our US types, and in any event, a few of our appliances require 120V, not the standard 220V in use in India (give or take 20V I guess, with the power supply being said to be a bit shaky here). I never understood the US system either, where it seems to be preferred to have poster size warning labels on every goddamned power cable, as opposed to manufacturing plugs that are actually safe and don't bend like straws at the slightest touch, but I guess that's where the German in me comes out, because there's something to be said for proper DIN norms.

Anyways, we had to make two trips to an electrical supplies shop, and the 13 year old kid there was fantastic. He seemed to know everything and anything about electrical supplies, Watts and Volts and amperes, and whipped out his calculator to figure out the power needs of all sorts of things. Try that at Radio Shack and you'll risk an unexpected death. Anyways, we hooked up our PC, and are now DSL ready, the MTNL and Gandhi willing.

Moving Day

So our move sort of went smoothly. Deepak, our driver, had his day
off, the first in four weeks. I am not sure how that works, really,
but we had a different driver on the day of the move. Ksenia pretty
quickly stated the obvious: "I don't think he knows how to drive".
Well, he really didn't. He had no clue where he was going, when to
stop at the green light, or when to go at the red light, and, best of
all, he spent more time honking than I would have ever thought
possible. Deepak honks the horn quite often as well, but at least one
can sort of see the reasoning. This guy seemed to use the horn for no
reason whatsoever. I guess it's true, as it says on the back of every
truck in this country, and I am not making this up: "Horn OK Please".
Well, sometimes it says "Horn OK Pliese".

Anyways, we ended up being half an hour late for the handover of the
apartment, but it was OK. I had not noticed when I had looked at the
apartment, but of course, Ksenia noticed right away: Whenever the
elevator door is open, it plays an atrocious midi melody, kind of like
an ice cream truck in NYC. But that was not enough. The kitchen has a
water filter that also plays music. The filter is some mysterious
contraption with an electric switch, and whenever it's ready for use,
and in fact for the whole time thereafter, it plays an even more
annoying midi melody. Maybe it's designed to help scare off the germs
in the water, but in any event that's what we have in our kitchen.

The next thing we notice, because the owner of the apartment gives us
a tour of it, is that this 2 bedroom apartment must have about 70
light and other switches. It seems like each individual light bulb
and electric outlet has its own dedicated switch, and none of the
rooms has one main light, but instead a whole assortment of light
sources that one can switch on or off in endless variations. Of
course, since none of the light bulbs appears to be more than 10W,
it's nevertheless a little dark, or maybe let's say there is always a
nice ambience. Anyways, the sheer number of light switches is
dizzying. We had wondered about the TV commercials for Euroswitches,
which we had seen a few times, but whatever those really are, people
seem to have a real love for light switches here.

Unfortunately, Ksenia also developed a serious case of toothache, so
we took the opportunity to ask the apartment owner about a good
dentist. Back in the hotel, where we picked up our second load of
luggage, we also asked the front desk, but when we called the dentist
they recommended, we were told that he was already gone for the day.
That was at 11:00am. The apartment owner's dentist seemed to be a
better bet. He also had already gone, but he'd be back at 4:30pm, and
so we went there in the afternoon. We had the dental office give our
driver directions over the phone, but he still had to ask two people
on the street and call the dental office back some more. Maybe we
aren't the only ones who can't make much sense of addresses in this
town. The dental office, proudly going by the name "Only Smiles",
turned out to be a good find. There was hardly a wait, the prescribed
anti-biotica were $1.20, and the x-rays were done the next day.
Unfortunately, Ksenia needs a root-canal, so that's not so great, but
she's scheduled for next week, and on the plus side, we no longer have
the shits. We both had a mild to not so mild case of the shits, but
that's over for now.

Before we went to the dentist, we spent the afternoon hunting for
kitchen and cleaning supplies. But first we had yet another fantastic
meal at a restaurant. The waiter recommended to go to KNB or to
Shopper's Shop for kitchen and cleaning supplies. He must have been
confused, because both places featured women's dresses and a very
small selection of tea pots and such. Shopper's Shop is kind of a mall
and not exactly what we needed. When we asked a sales woman there
about kitchen and cleaning supplies, like mops and spunges etc., she
tried to steer us to her water boilers, apologized for not having any
mops for sale and recommended another store around the corner. Now,
that store was a little closer to what we needed, at least they sold
ashtrays, right next to the women's dresses and men's shoes. So we
bought an ashtray (with the usual ceremony of one guy selling, one guy
wrapping, one guy taking the money, and a fourth guy handing over the
ashtray), and walked out of there. Luckily, Ksenia then remembered a
store somewhere near a Barista (the Indian Starbucks), which should
have everything we wanted, so after a few futile inquiries about the
location of that Barista, we eventually found it. And, indeed, Rs2,200
later we were loaded up on spunges, a mop, toilet paper, and mosquito
repellent - just the sort of stuff one needs to get started.
Interestingly, toilet paper really does seem like a luxury item here.
At $5 for six measly rolls, I was tempted to look for the golden
prints and silk embroidery, but they were just plain white and
expensive.

Our moving day ended with the discovery of a very cute pink Lizard in
the living room, and of a less cute but thumb-sized cockroach in the
kitchen. There wasn't much in terms of pots or pans or anything in the
apartment, but a big can of anti-cockroach spray there was, and it
came very handy. Ksenia went after it with full gusto, and that was
the end of it. Our pots and pans etc. arrived the next day, yesterday.
Ksenia is still in pain with her teeth, and we have interviewed a
maid. Tomorrow, we'll go to a dance festival and continue the car
buying saga. We still need to get DSL, but at least there is something
called instant internet here. It's dead slow, but works from any phone
line on demand, so I am writing this via e-mail from Ksenia's G4,
since I haven't set up my computer yet either. The weather is quite
nice these days, and Ksenia sways back and forth from "If it weren't
for the food, I'd hate this country" to being quite taken with the
various fabrics she has found, as well as with her Indian dance and
the yoga classes she is taking. So, all in all, we are already on our
way to a normal life. And, still, I can't wait to get a car, so we can
get out of town, for a totally different India altogether, I am sure.

Kanheri Caves

So today we went back to Sanjay Gandhi National Park, which was very nice. It's green, it's less than an hour from the city, and given that there are 16 million people in this town, there were surprisingly few people in the park. There were a bunch of rather loud teens in party mood (including beer and whiskey bottles), but most were families on a picnic. Even the trash was quite a bit less obvious, although we did see a monkey playing with an empty bag of junk food. Yes, there's monkeys there; they like to hang around people, who usually feed them, unless they are as scared as Ksenia, who was very much afraid that they'll jump onto her head and bite her.

We didn't really see much of the park though. There's a lion and tiger safari to see, but we went straight to the Kanheri Caves, which are over 2000 year old, and later became a center of Buddhist teaching and meditation. Most of the over 100 caves were quite simple, but a few were very impressive. There was a rather large church-like one with very high ceilings and huge statues. Even the simpler ones had some pretty interesting details, and were bigger and seemed more sophisticated than the Maya caves we had seen in Mexico.

Apart from the teens and families taking a plunge in the little river that ran through the area, we heard some people sing Hare Krishna. I was a bit surprised when we later saw them, because none of them had the Hare Krishna clothes I had expected, nor did they look like the Buddhists we had seen earlier. Instead, they were all dressed in regular clothes, and there were no women.

Strangely, there was also a temple in ruins that looked like it had been built with Soviet white marble. It didn't really make any sense to us, but there it was, with an odd little public bathroom size construction next to it, a statue that was cut off at its hips, and someone was kind enough to put some fresh red flowers on the steps.

Anyways, it was a nice little excursion. Good to know there's a place this close where one can actually breathe some fresh air (even though it was very humid). We didn't have time for the tiger or lion safari, but we'll definitely be back.

H2O

So last night we went to H2O. It will be the closest lounge bar to our apartment when we move there next week. The place is Rs500 per person for drink/food tickets, and it's a bar/restaurant on two floors, with a terrace on the upper floor. When we got there, at around 9:00pm, we were about the only people, except for two Western women. The place has a whole army of neatly uniformed waiters, one of them jumping the very second I reached out to touch one of the movable A/C fans that they have on the terrace. Then there's a few head waiters, and everyone is very friendly and professional, and we don't even get stared at for a change. The cocktails are expensive, but way less than NYC, and the food is actually fantastic.

For some reason, the music is unfortunately quite atrocious 80s stuff, but ah well. I guess we've reached the point where we can do with a little escape from the noise and dirt and stares of the street, so we don't mind too much. By around 11:00pm, the place is quite crowded with the modern jeans and t-shirt crowd. I think Ksenia is the only woman wearing a saree. The CDs aren't skipping like they did at The Myst last weekend, and as the evening goes on, either the music got better or we got drunk. We waited in vain to see whether people are going to start dancing, but then again, we were too beat to wait around. Apparently, the place closes at 12:30am, maybe later, if there are no cops around, but we went home, thinking, ok, we can deal with a place like that in walking distance from our apartment.

On The Streets

It's no secret that very large numbers of Indians are dirt poor, literally. While the middle class is growing in numbers by 10% or so per year, hundreds of millions are very poor. Most Indians still depend on a good Monsoon season - if it rains well, there will be food on the table, if it doesn't, then maybe not. So millions of them try to get out of the rural areas and migrate to the cities, where they will most likely live in shanty towns, under bridges, right next to sewage and traffic lines. As we get driven around in our car, we see these shanties everywhere. Many families seem to have absolutely nothing, except the dirty shoddy clothes that they are wearing. Many families have miniscule tents made up of plastic wrap and cardboard, with no protection whatsoever against the sometimes heavy rains. Many have slightly less improvised tents or shacks made of plywood or sheet metals. Finally, there's many families in miniscule brick housing, maybe 10 by 10 feet. As we drive by, these families live literally a few feet away from the traffic, and we can see them sitting on the floors of their homes, eating with their hands. Sometimes they wash outside on the street with a plastic bowl of brown water. There are no toilets anywhere it seems, so business is taken care of on the streets.

Kids are playing around everywhere. The dirt and garbage that makes up their playgrounds is often unbelievable. The kids don't seem to care, they just laugh and play. At other times, some of them run around between cars at intersections, begging for money, often with their parents sitting around at the corner. I had expected to find a lot more beggars in India, but while there are many, it is not quite as bad as I thought. Around The Gateway of India and other tourist spots, there's quite few, although most of them are actually hawkers, who can be quite persistent and aggressive. Road junctions and, even more so, churches are pretty much the only places where they will come to ask for money. Any Indian volunteer social services group tells people, especially foreigners, not to give any money, especially not to kids, and we never do, so when we saw some Western tourist hand a kid Rs5 without even stopping or looking much at the kid, we were quite pissed off.

On the other hand, I am also not sure it's such a great idea to take a picture of them, but I have somehow convinced myself that they probably think it's fun, so there's no harm done. Given all the constant staring and mostly very friendly, but still quite annoying, attention that we are receiving just walking around minding our own business, I very much doubt that the Western concept of privacy has a lot ov value here. Obviously, I would take a picture of a muslim woman, but I guess a kid is ok, begging or not.

More Car Shopping

The car shopping saga continues. We started our day by driving around for over an hour trying to find the location of a 12 hour dance festival that was posted in TimeOut Mumbai. The listing had an address and a phone number, and the map promised a vague idea of where the venue might be. Well, either the map or the listing were wrong, most likely both. Even our driver laughed about it, he said the address doesn't make any sense, because it mentioned both Andheri and Oshiwara, which are quite far apart from each other. Of course, calling the phone number was equally useless, because no-one picked up, and not even the driver was able to understand the brief message one would hear upon calling the number.

So that was that. Next stop was a Bajaj/Tempo showroom in the Eastern outskirts of Mumbai, in Bhandup. Their sales guy had actually visited me in my hotel two weeks ago, to show me some brochures that were trying to be glossy. Back then, he said no problem, I can show you car Wednesday. He never called again. I called him last weekend, he said definitely, I can show car tomorrow. That didn't happen either. I called him again last Wednesday, he said Saturday, no problem, we have car in showroom. Ok, so we drive to Bhandup from the westside of the suburbs, and it turned out to be a fairly nice drive through the Sanjay Ghandi National Park, a real park with lots of birds, and trees and flowers, and, yes, real tigers. Because residential areas are shooting up everywhere around the park, it happens then and again that some little kids get in too close, and unpleasant, contact with the tigers.

Anyways, the park looks nice, it has two lakes, and we'll definitely come back here sometime. When we finally find the Bajaj/Tempo, there's a lot of commotion, we get tea and water and coffee offered, and the sales guy greets us very excitedly. But, of course, he has no car to show. He has a number of autorikshaws standing around, and the Tempo Traveller that he tried to interest me in, but that's a 15 or 20 seat bus. So now he says maybe Tuesday or Wednesday he can show me the car I was interested in, if not, he says, maybe I should go and buy a Mahindra, i.e. the competition. The Mahindra Scorpio appears to be the strongest Indian SUV in town, but at $19,000 or so, it's more than I want to spend, and I really don't need an SUV with 110 or so hp; I'd like a simple one that's safe in a potential crash, gets over the incredible potholes, lets us go into the rural areas on weekends, and can easily get repaired at every corner.

After that, we needed some lunch. We go to a place nearby, where we were immediately sent into the airconditioned room on the upper floor. That A/C is a bit too cold, so we go back to where we came from, and started ordering from the sticky menu. The whole place is staring at us, especially Ksenia, who generally gets stared at wherever she goes, it is sometimes getting a bit annoying. But the food is great, the chai is good, and we manage not to use our left hands. Behind us are two utterly drunk guys in their late teens, who eventually stumble out of the place. To our side is a few teenage boys shoveling in the food like it's going out of fashion. We are the only ones with a fork and spoon. The boys constantly look over to us and hardly even pretend they aren't looking.

Next stop is Chembur, back towards home. Rumor has it that there's a Tata showroom that actually has cars to show and that would accept credit cards for the initial deposit. When we get there, they do indeed have the Tata Sumo that I had in mind. It comes without any bells and whistles, but has an A/C, even in the base version. One version up has power steering. The top model also has central locking and electric windows, neither of which we need. At around $14,000 it's not exactly cheap in my book (who has never owned a car in his life), but it'll do. So then the commotions and negotiations begin. They didn't like my Indian government issued Foreigners Regional Registration Office ID. They had probably never seen one of those. They said it's only valid for a year, normally they'd require a passport, which would be valid for 15 years or so. We said, we are very sorry, but we will probably not stay for 15 years, and this is an official document, with an official stamp, issued by the Indian government. It even has our address in there. Unfortunately, it's the address of our hotel. Don't we have a phone bill, they ask. I wonder out loud how a phonebill could be more official that this Indian government issued document with my address and a bunch of stamps in it.

So, eventually, they give up. Ok, so what's next? They'd like a Rs100,000 deposit, and yes, they take credit cards for that. No problem. Well, I guess I should have known, but of course neither the American Express card, nor a regular Visa card is accepted. Indian bank issued Visa/MC cards only. So, after some back and forth, it turns out they will accept Rs15,000 in cash for now, and with that, they will get the car from the factory. Then, next week, I need to come back with the remaining Rs85,000 to give them the balance of the Rs100,000 deposit. Preferably as a DD, i.e. a certified check. Ok, from taht point on, it'll be another 10-12 business days to have them get the car registered. Finally, the car would be ready for me to pick up, if and when we pay the remaining balance of the Rs600,000 total. Needless to say, the last points took us over an hour to negotiate. The sales guy kept changing his story about what money is due when and for what item of the list of things that need to be done to have the car and keys in your hand. He kept going back to saying Sir, can you give me six lakhs now, by check (six lakhs = Rs600,000)? I kept saying, no I can't, besides, I won't give you the full amount untill I have the keys to the car in my hand.

So this went back and forth for a while, the General Manager of the place got involved (or, rather, we were summoned to his office), who tried to tell me that he's taking a big risk by letting me not give him the full amount now. As he was sort of insinuating that I should be very thankful for his service, he kept saying You know, Sir, I take one lakh now, but then you might change your mind and not want the car. I guess the logic escaped me and I tried asking him, wouldn't it be rather stupid of me to hand you one lakh ($2300), and then change my mind? So then he tried to explain to me the ways of doing business in India (well, in India, you see, Sir, we have certain rules and regulations...), and at that point I slowly started to sense that he was beginning to feel insulted by my arguing with him (after all, he was probably twice my age), so I left it at that. I think we have a deal, I guess we'll see next weekend, when I hand them the rest of the deposit.

High-Tech India

My driver was an hour late this morning. He was very sorry, I was half an hour late to a meeting, but I think the reason was because he got us a new car. Well, it's not a new car, it's a different car. The same little Maruti (I think), about the size of a Mini Morris but not quite as sexy. At least the left backdoor is now working again. The A/C is just as crap as before; it's either below freezing or just as hot an humid as outside. I am rather annoyed that I have to pay $800 a month for this, just to get around and to work at all. That's when you start missing the $70 NYC subway monthly. Of course, this town doesn't have a subway. 16 million people, but only two suburbian train lines, and a big bus network, that's it. Everybody suggests to stay away from the trains and busses, way too crowded, way too unreliable, always late, and a little dangerous. Not to mention the fact that neither have any windows or any doors that would close, so if there's a nice monsoon shower, you are bound to get soaking wet. I have no idea what they will do in this town if and when in a few years half the population has its own car and they are all going to try to get to work in it. There's just no way anyone will have a commute of less than an hour or two, not to mention the pollution, which is already incredible. But a subway or a mono-rail in the largest and most important city in India? Not happening.

On the way to work we passed a huge crowd of people blocking the entire traffic on a two-lane street, because they had to take a very close look at the motorbike that was just being pulled out from under a big truck. No idea what happened to the guy on the bike (or maybe it was a guy and a woman, her sitting sideways behind him, as they usually do here), but, basically, anyone cruising around on a bike in this town has to be seriously suicidal. Not only are there regular speedbumps everywhere, but there's potholes everywhere, huge crowds of people left and right and crossing the streets without any notice whatsoever, plus the autorikshaws are always going zig zag, plenty of rich boys in SUVs driving like complete assholes, and of course busses and trucks literally do not stop for anything. Still, helmets are optional, and there's quite a few bikes with dad and mom and two kids scrambling not to fall off and onto the road. It is quite amazing.

Later today news came out that there was a terrorist attack in London. A couple of days ago, some militant muslims tried to bomb a Hindu temple in northern India, basically to take it back from the hindus, who a decade ago or so had destroyed a mosque that was located at the same place and replaced it with a hindu temple. That time, 2000 people died in the resulting riots. Of course, way back, the place had been hindu to start with, so when the muslims originally came into the area, they replaced the hindu temple with a mosque. And so I guess it'll go back and forth for the next 1500 years. What's strange is that some parts of the opposition party BJP called for a strike to protest the terrorist attack. The logic somehow escapes me, and I am trying to imagine the Democrats call for a strike after 9/11. Anyways, the BJP is apparently basically running under the banner of Hinduism and Nationalism, and they are always happy to use religion as a way to get votes, in quite the same appaling way as the Republicans. Not sure what platform the other main party is running on, but since they've ruled the country for almost the entire time since independence, with abrief exception, it's probably safe to assume that they are corrupt buerocrats to the bone.

Corruption is by the way pretty much a given. Students openly say that they got placed at prestigious colleges because they had some family friends. Doctors may refuse treatment unless there's some upfront cash (and, yes, people die). There's big signs in the airport telling travellers to report any airport staff who attempt to get a bribe. Not to mention the real estate market, which is full of illegal constructions, demolitions, etc., all courtesy of greased palms.

Closer to home, I am being told that the reason SMS isn't working on any of our two pre-paid SIM cards is that you have to actually call the mobile phone company to activate your SMS services. Except that the phone number you need to call is always busy, so a nice voice tells you to call later. Today I have actually received the post-paid, i.e. subscriber SIM card. No SMS either though. Now, in the case of a subscriber SIM card, one can actually call to activate SMS. Except, it takes a minimum of seven days untill that activation actually happens. Needless to say, voicemail does not come standard with mobile phone service, pre-paid or post-paid, and noone seems to have it. So much for high-tech India.

On a different front, it now looks like we will move to our apartment next Monday or Tuesday. So the last thing we'd still need around here would be a car. We are still waiting to be able to get some money wired over here, it's taken three weeks to get that Indian bank account fully setup, meaning: the netbanking password is still in the mail. The easiest thing of course would have been to pay with a credit card, but that's not an option. The car dealers don't seem to have credit card machines, or if they do, they insist that the customer pays the 2% extra that VISA/MC/AMEX gets out of every deal. So at this rate, we might have a car in three weeks or so.

Luckily, the weather is actually not so bad. It's very muggy and quite warm, but not too hot. It was quite a bit worse when I was here in April, and the smells in some of the crowded residential areas were dizzying. Anything from the wildest spices and incenses (often to be found on the little dashboards of cabs and autorikshaws), not to mention the thousands of street food vendors, and of course plenty of piss and shit and molding buildings and god knows what infested puddles of old water. Now I kind of miss them, although I do think of Central Park sometimes. Or maybe I've just gotten used to it already. I guess I'll have to go back to Crawford Market, and this time I should shoot some pictures.

A Downtown Stroll

So today we actually got up at a decent time and took the car downtown at 11am. On weekends, traffic isn't all that bad really, so it only took 90 minutes or so. We've given up on trying to remind our driver to keep the A/C low, so we sit in the car with long sleeves or jacket. We let him drop us off where he had picked us up yesterday, which is right by The Prince of Wales Museum, now called the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastusangrahalaya (just like the Churchgate and Victoria terminals, the airport, and all the roads have been renamed a few years ago, but everyone still seems to call them by their colonial names).

First we needed a coffee. Even though that's probably the most touristy area there is in Mumbai and even though (or maybe because) Ksenia is wearing a saree, she definitely gets stared at. Not in a hostile way, it's more like a big what the fuck? Some women seem to apreciate it and talk about her smilingly (or maybe they make fun of that stupid blonde Westerner trying to look Indian). Anyways, the coffee is great, as always. Walking from there along the Gateway of India is not so great. It's a bit of a circus there and the hawkers are a little overeager.

Somehow I imagined walking down to Cuffe Parade, which is an office/business area around the World Trade Center might be nice, but it turned out to be boring highrises. On the way back we saw a number of sadly deteriorating villas, which seem to have seen better days and would look fantastic, if they got renovated. Some of them are actually locked up and seem to real estate speculation objects. Still, there were a few quite nice ones as well. Then we hit Colaba Causeway, which is pretty lively, and since we had heard of the Leopold Cafe, we went there to get some lunch. I guess we weren't the only ones who had heard of it, because the place was packed with Westerners, and even the Indian looking people had an American accent. Besides, we waited 15 minuts without anyone coming to our table, and by that time we had read the menu up and down and sideways and were still unable to find much else other than Italian, Chinese, and only the odd Indian item.

Well, that was that then, so we just left and went to a place accross the street, which turned out to be the real deal and had great food and fantastic fruit juices. Our doctor had told us to keep our hands off any drinks with ice in them, but we figure in small doses it's got to be just like vaccination, so we didn't worry about it too much. It's late evening now, and it seems we were right. We are still trying to get the hang of eating the bread with just the right hand and apparently we are making progress, because our forks remained untouched. For all the apparent inequalities that women face around here, one thing appears to be no problem, which is breast-feeding your child in a restaurant. Try that in the United States, and you might get arrested, here it's thankfully all good.

Finally, we went to the museum, which was actually quite nice although sorely missing some benches and air conditioners. Foreigners pay 300Rs instead of the regular 50Rs, which seems fair enough and includes an audio tour. Unlike a lot of museums in say Germany, which appear to get no visitors whatsoever, this one was bustling with Indians. So bustling in fact that Ksenia got her legs grabbed by some guy, but he really was just trying to get hold of his little kid, and it was actually quite funny.

So after all that walking, we were ready for a drink. We had walked by The Sports Bar and T.G.I. Fridays, but those were pretty much the last places on earth we had in mind. The TimeOut Mumbai Nightlife section came up empty, but today's Times of India had a brief mention of a place called The Myst in the suburbs (they are really not suburbs, but just streched out extensions of the city). Finding that place was a bit of a challenge, but it turned out to be near the mall that Ksenia had spent most of Friday afternoon. It was a kind of lounge bar/restaurant, playing Eminem followed by Enigma. That would be ok, but the CD unfortunately kept skipping on both songs and noone seemed to notice or care, so we ended up having to listen to each one for about half an hour, which was a bit too much, even though the cocktails were quite good and sitting outside was almost pleasant.

Saturday in Mumbai

Things are looking better. Of course, traffic is still an amazingly huge madness, and the two sports channels on television don't seem to tire of showing World Wide Wrestling or replays of last weeks Cricket, nor do the other channels seem to have anything better to offer than atrociously bad soap operas or American Idol style crap, but today was a good day nevertheless. We managed to find a very interesting store full of fantastic Indian designer clothes; we found a bunch of art galleries with a mixed bag of paintings and sculptures, some of them very nice; we had incredibly good dinner at some vegetarian place (at less than $2 for the two of us), and I got myself a long overdue haircut that wasn't any worse than anywhere else, except at a tenth of NYC prices. Well, ok, it was a little worse than usual. We also ordered two tailored shirts, and if they turn out well, I'll get some tailored suits. The choices and prices of fabrics are simply amazing and even though Ksenia insists that the fabrics aren't quite Italian quality, the tailors definitely seem to know what they are doing.

Ksenia definitely likes it here. Well, she keeps saying "Incredible India" is definitely the right choice of words. She already seems to have made up a long list of fabric and design stores that she wants to check out. We haven't even been to any museums yet, let alone ventured outside of the city, but next week there will be two fairly big dance festivals to go to, so we definitely won't be bored. The music scene seems to be very small, there's only about ten listings in all of TimeOut Mumbai (which covers two weeks) and five or seven of them appear to be Karaoke - not exactly our idea of live music. Also, clubs apparently close at 12:30am, unless they are in a hotel, in which case they close at 3am, but we really have no desire whatsoever to go to hotel bars or clubs. Lounge bars are also not really our thing, but Mumbai seems to have a lot of them, although they are not easy to find.

The other day, Ksenia ran into some Indian girls. One of them was an English teacher who told her that for a wife to call her husband by his first name would be rude; it should be the first name plus jaar or jah or something like that, i.e. the polite form. Ah well. In other news, a woman who got raped by her father-in-law got condemed by a fatwa to live separate from her husband, since her rapist would now be considered her husband, which would make her real husband her son. Also, a young couple that, elsewhere, dared to elope got condemend by their village to leave town. I guess the fact that these things are actually reported in the newspaper would mean that they are newsworthy and unusual or controversial, and in fact there is an organization of muslim women that very strongly condemned the fatwa as a gross misinterpretation of the Koran.

Still, the English teacher will have an arranged marriage and insists that every one of her friends that had an arranged marriage is very happy. The idea is that your parents would have only your best interests in mind and that they would pick someone with your culture, background, and caste. And maybe that's great, after all, people do want to marry someone that they have things in common with, but to have someone else, your parents, look for the commonalities and to have these commonalities be so narrowly defined by caste or clan or village seems rather ... well, a little difficult to comprehend, and to see the same girl be on a shopping spree at The Mall and running around in blue jeans listening to Indian hip-hop on her IPod, doesn't exactly make it easier.