Bangalore, India

It’s hard to describe how different India is from America. The first thing I noticed was the poverty. America’s GDP per capita is seventy times India’s. Beggars are everywhere, and instead of raising their hand and passively pleading for a couple bucks, these guys do everything short of attacking you. I realize our family sticks out from the crowd, but eventually you tire of having dozens of beggars shrieking “bakh!” (I have no idea what that means) as they stick their hands in your face. What these people are essentially doing is blackmailing you into paying them to leave- and they get furious when you won’t cough up a few rupees (the national currency). Even worse are the droves of people that swarm tour groups, each one of them trying to sell the exact same hat that has been offered to you for the past week. I understand that these people are desperate, but this form of “begging”, harassment really, is at best inconvenient and at worst dangerous. This poverty, combined with the country’s crumbling infrastructure and the ineffective and aloof government, makes India seem like it’s falling apart. We actually decided to leave India a bit early- I guess my pasty, Western family just couldn’t cut it..

General

Here’s the Iyengar bakery- you can kind of see the sign in the middle. Thanks to Kalpana for helping me find it.

Traffic in India is a mess, as nobody uses turn signals, side view mirrors or even stays in their lanes. Instead, everybody uses their horns to make sure people know where they are. Pollution on Bangalore’s roads is also horrible. Because few people can afford the four-cycle engines used in cars from the US, thousands of cars are polluting the air with loud, dirty, but cheap, two-cycle engines. I got to experience these chaotic roads from the back of an open-air, three-wheeled auto-rickshaw, and by the end of the trip my eyes burned and I was half-deaf. The poor driver didn’t look much better- he had driven us half-way across the city and the fare was the equivalent of about 20 cents (He did look pretty pleased when we tipped him 900%). I’d bet that he was suffering from a crippling lung illness from all of the smog, too.

Sports

Cricket is huge in India. While we were here, India and Pakistan were playing against each other in a “friendship series”. The whole country was frozen during these games, as more than half of India’s billion people probably watched. The two countries, both with nuclear bombs, have been close to war several times in the past decade, so I guess this series represents a high point in their relationship.

Religion

The temple you guys told me to go to was part of a giant complex filled with all kinds of Hindu shrines. The part I saw was mainly devoted to Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu. Supposedly the whole temple was built by the “Society for Krishna-Consciousness”.

India’s religions
84% Hindu
10% Muslim
6% Christians, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists

Government Building

The Vidhana Souda is like many Indian government buildings built in the British colonial style. Since it was built in 1954, it looks like it has been renovated, and a gate (not really a wall) has been put around it. Many of India’s upper classes seem to act aloof and detached from the masses of the impoverished on the streets, and while there are notable exceptions, I guess the gates are just a logical part of India’s stratified society. India’s government is also notoriously slow and bureaucratic, and it has done little to help the disintegrating roads and immense poverty in India.

Clothing

I guess you guys get some sick pleasure from ordering James to dress… um... “oddly”. India is extremely conservative- one of the things I’ve realized on this trip is that the US is one of the least restrictive countries in the world. I’m not about to walk into some shop and give some poor clerk a heart attack, so the sari thing is not gonna happen. Maybe I could try on my sister’s sari, but that would require a few bribes.

Food

Supposedly, Bangalore’s name originates from when a poor old woman served a bowl of beans to a prince who was lost- I guess “Bangalore” means “bowl of beans” somehow. Indian food is hugely popular around the world, known for its spices and exotic flavors. However, most of the produce in the supermarkets isn’t refrigerated, and livestock is often underfed (India has little grazing land). More than half my family was sick in one way or another during the two and a half weeks we were here, so that kind of ruined the experience. Also, since cows are sacred in Hinduism, killing them is illegal, and beef has to either be imported (and be subject to huge taxes), or ripped off of an already-dead cow. James can’t live without his cow-meat, so India was tough like that.

Nightclub

For some reason, all of Bangalore’s clubs are required to close at 11:00 PM. The city likes it peace I guess, and like I said, India is hugely conservative. This means that certain… “forms of dancing” are prohibited. Put this all together and I didn’t even try to search out a club. Nice try, Dylan.

Animals

I know Izzy isn’t going to like this, but India’s parks are in a pretty sorry state. Our family didn’t go to Namdapha, but we did check out Rathambore Park in Rajasthan. It wasn’t really a game park, just a dusty dirt road through a few square miles of trees. Human encroachment is ruining these parks; farmers were herding their livestock into their park, the only grassy area for miles. Some women were even carrying firewood, chopped from the park’s trees. 80% of the world’s dwindling tiger population lives in cramped “parks” like these, and recently a scandal was uncovered where the park rangers were actually poaching tigers and selling them for Chinese herbal medicine. It’s sad that several endangered species are doomed simply because they live in parks subject to so much human pressure. Needless to say, the only animals I saw were a couple deer, maybe a peacock or two, and a group of monkeys, which were actually pretty cute.

About the Indian elephant- It’s smaller and more docile than the ones in Africa. Here, the elephant is practically domesticated, and the beasts are often used to haul lumber or fat American tourists.

School…

It’s unfortunate that a school which promotes “diversity” and “cultural understanding” so fiercely doesn’t sponsor trips like this more openly. There’s so much that I’ve seen in just the first third of my journey that I never would have experienced if I had followed the daily Lakeside routine. Americans seem to forget that you can’t suddenly understand other cultures simply because some stranger in an assembly tells everybody to. I hope y’all back home can get a better understanding of the world from me than from an assembly speaker who has been traveling Europe and says he knows “foreign culture”.
The most important realization I’ve had while on this trip is how lucky we Lakesiders are. Not only did we happen to be born as Americans, the 5% of the world’s population with 28% of the wealth and a great deal of the power, but many of us are the richer Americans. We don’t have to worry about a military coup destroying our government. We don’t have to worry about our father getting murdered by gangsters as he brings his $20 paycheck back to his two-room home in a township. We don’t have to worry about dropping out of middle school to get a job to help feed our 8-person family. There is so much suffering in the world that we never get to see, and as a result I don’t think the majority of Lakesiders can appreciate just how fortunate we are.
I’ve also realized that you can’t understand a society until you’ve seen both its good points and its flaws. If you watched a show about Indian culture, you’d see opulent palaces, people throwing colored powder on Holi, or an IT complex where India’s new upper-middle class is earning its wealth. But since people typically don’t enjoy watching an angry man beat his wife’s head against the street*, these shows don’t allow people to experience the other half of the yin-yang circle. Only by actually going to these places, and taking a walk on the streets and also seeing the chaotic traffic, the crumbling roads, the hordes of beggars, and the circle of people watching, but not stopping the crazy man beating his wife, can you begin to form a complete picture of the mix of good and evil that we call culture.

*I’m not kidding; I actually saw this as we traveled in India by bus. I was so shocked that at first I kind of froze, and by the time I realized I should have done something, we were several blocks away. It’s a shame; I could have taken that guy too…

Humor/Comics

On a lighter note… Anant Pai was considered the father of Indian comics, and became the first syndicated cartoonist in India. Most of his work was based off of various Hindu legends. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any of his work, and I didn’t even figure out which newspaper Loki is in. I did look…

Indian music videos…

The first Indian music video I saw kind of… terrified me. Here was this fat little business guy, not like “Big Joe” fat, but pudgy in a “he hasn’t worked out in years” kind of way, and he’s sitting in his office, drifting to sleep, and bam! He’s up on his desk, dancing worse than most Lakeside guys, with this Indian girl who sings eight octaves higher than most dogs can hear (it’s supposedly attractive, but to me, it’s painful). The back-up dancers look like they’re doing the cha-cha slide while intoxicated, and somehow this video reached the top of the charts. In another, an Indian girl is being chased around by somebody who looks suspiciously like Michael Jackson, and then these rappers come on, and it goes downhill from there. While at first these videos were kind of scary, I got used to them, and I’ll admit they’re much more amusing (I’m not sure they’re supposed to be) than American videos.

Tea Questions

1. If you look at the column “Yield (kg/hec)” it shows how much more efficient Indian tea agriculture has become. On average, by how much does efficiency improve percentage-wise every five years? If it continued to improve at that rate, what should the yield be for 2000, 2050, and 2200?

2. Indian tea has skyrocketed in “U.P.”- Rupees per kg. How valuable will a kg of Indian tea be in 2050 if this trend continues?

3. 1969 was a low point in the number of people employed in the tea industry. How much (%) has employment increased from ’69 to ’98? If this trend continues, when will 5 million people be employed?

By the way, thanks to Lauren, and Colleen for the e-mails. I need something to brighten my day… and yes, I am a marvel. (Ask Colleen)