Making Change

One of the unique aspects of living in a cash based society like India is the value that is placed on change. Not change in "let's make society better," but change in "do you have change for a dollar." There is a strange attachment to smaller denomination bills, like a 10 Rupee note (roughly $0.20) and getting a storekeeper to part with one is sometimes more complicated than the US tax code.

In the United States, if you go into a store and buy something for $2.75 and hand the cashier a ten dollar bill, the cashier, without hesitation, reaches in, counts the change and off you go. In Delhi, if you had the same purchase, the processes takes on a very different tone.  Firs, the cashier will slowly look at the bill and then, as if you have somehow annoyed them by making the purchase, ask if you have change. When you respond "no," the cashier will then stare down at the register for about 30 seconds as if waiting for Lakhshimi herself to make the change for him. When the God of Prosperity does not appear, he will let out of series of sighing breaths culminated with finally reaching into the register and pulling out your change.  Painfully, as if giving over his own flesh, he will hand the change to you.  This all take approximately 3-5 minutes. 

Even Indians find this "dance" to be a little absurd and when Indians finding something absurd, you know you are in a hole different league of strange. 

Thanksgiving with the Wrong Indians

It is Thanksgiving again and like the Pilgrims, we, too got to share our Thanksgiving dinner with Indians.  Dining with Indians always brings its unique challenges, but in a buffet situation during an American holiday, in an American setting, things are downright bizarre.

The American Club tried to host events to celebrate the major American holidays.  It is, after all, the American Citizens Support Association.  The 4th of July is a huge outdoor BBQ, while Easter and Thanksgiving tend to be buffets.  In theory, this should be good as the main foods for these celebrations, hamburgers, ham and Turkey respectively, are not readily available in Delhi and is suppose to serve as a slice of home.  In reality, since the Club is managed and staffed by Indians (with loose Embassy oversight), it usually digresses into weird interpretation of what Indians think the holiday should be.  Feature in the Easter brunch, for example was a large plate of, not ham, but ham fat.  Who eats ham fat and what book explained this as an American Easter delicacy?  Anyway, you get the picture - not always executed well. 

This Thanksgiving, the team down at the club actually got the food correct.  The Turkey meat was good, the stuffing, albeit bland and institutional, was passable and they actually had cranberry jelly - you know the kind that comes out of a can with the ridges.  Having spent half my life eating institutional food (let me clarify - boarding school, college, Navy), this type of grub is a walk down memory lane. I had no complaints and woofed down two plate-loads in the tradition of Thanksgiving! 

There were issues though.  The first is the ubiquitous presents of the American passport-holding Indian.  Regardless of the event, these Indians, usually extremely wealthy and with a sense of entitlement that would shame a middle-east dictator, show up in force.  They bring their non-American passport holding Indian friends to show them how American they are.   This means that when they show up there are usually about 20 of them.  The burst through the door and expect the entire restaurant staff to drop what they are doing and accommodate them.  As well, they treat any buffet like a black Friday 70% off event at Wal-mart and jump the buffet like with the alacrity of a pack of pumas.  They are rude, ill mannered and generally disruptive and I am thinking about getting some pepper-spray to keep my place in the next line.  

To give some perspective, I saw an article in the Indian newspaper explaining Thanksgiving.  I am paraphrasing, but it basically said that this the day that we, Americans, give thanks for all our material wealth - nothing about family, health, or friends, just the money.  This is how Indians understand all things and it is why simply working 10 years in the United States and returning to India does not make you an American. It makes you an American passport holder - nothing more.

The second issue with the event was that through the entire meal, we were loudly serenaded by a live Indian band whose lack of talent was only eclipsed by the lack of taste in music.  For hours, we were tortured by the Indian scalping (excuse the pun) of hits from ABBA and Crystal Gayle, to name a few, in harsh Indian accents.  The real musical equivalent of water-boarding, though, came when the duo broke out into their rendition of the Grammy Award-winning Roberta Flack's "Killing me Softly with His Song."  Yep, everything you need to drive your average American ex-pat to the brink of insanity on this day of Thanks.

So, as I write this, four days later, the memory of turkey and stuffing has faded from my mind, the sweet taste of cranberry jelly has faded from my lips, but the haunting sound of Indians singing  "Killing Me Softly" continues to ring in my head!

Happy Thanksgiving!

New York in November

As I said in the last blog, one of the upsides to the new gig is that I will be visiting the US more often.  A couple weeks ago, I had the chance to go the New York for a week of strategy meetings.  A very long week of very intense strategy meetings!

Meetings aside, it was great to be back in the Big Apple.  The last time I was back in NYC was about 10 years ago when Olga and I decided to visit over Easter weekend.  Before that, the last time I was in the city was roughly 1984 during parents weekend at Avon Old Farms School. 

I took my usual flight from Delhi to Newark which arrives at 4:00am.  Usually, I have to sit in the Newark airport for a few hours, but this time, I was whisked away to the city in a comfortable black Lincoln to start my day off adventure.  We arrived at the hotel, a trendy little boutique hotel called the Eventi, around 5:30am and since I slept a good 5 hours on the flight (thanks to seats that completely lay flat and are actually comfortable), I was ready to see the sights.  I unpacked and headed out to a dinner around the corner for a wickedly greasy diner breakfast – it was awesome!

A very good friend of mine from Chautauqua, Roland, who I had not seen in 20+ years, was coming into the city to meet me for lunch, so I had to combine our reunion with some important shopping tasks.  About 10:30am, I headed uptown to Columbus Circle to meeting Roland. 

I jumped into a taxi outside the hotel and was quickly acquainted with a talkative Bangladeshi.  For the 15 minute taxi ride, we covered all the usual sub continent topics including corruption, politicians and the future of Bangladesh.   I paid the driver, jumped out, walked across the street and realized my phone had fallen out of my pocket in the taxi.  Shit!  I scanned the landscape for the yellow, non-descript car I had just exited and, if it were still on the circle, it blended pretty well with the 500 other yellow, non-descript cabs driven by Bangladeshis. Double Shit! Maybe I was too tired or just simply realized it was completely out of my hands, but I actually did not really care and wondered over to the statue by which I was meeting Roland.

I often joke that no matter where I am or what language is spoken there, strangers always approach me when they need something. From Moscow to Krakow to Delhi, people are always asking me for directions.  Olga tells me it is because I have a kind face, but I think it is the same laws of metaphysics that drive cats to people who do not like cats.  Anyway, there I was minding my own business, when an elderly man approached me and asked me in Russian if I would take a photo.  Now, this guy spoke no English, so the fact that he picked me out of a crowd of 1000 people on a Monday morning in the middle of New York was, well, astonishing.  I had some time, so he and I conducted our own little photo shoot.  When Roland arrived, he was mystified.

He was mystified for two reasons.  Not only had I managed to become a photographer for an old Russian, but a few minutes earlier he had called to say he was almost there and a Bangladeshi answered my phone.  The cab driver was on his way back to Columbus Circle to return the phone.  No shit!  This is New York, for Christ sake.  I guess there is something to Karma.  The elderly Russian man got a few great pictures of himself in Columbus Circle and I got my phone back.  Well, there you have it!

Roland and I had a great time.  He helped me shop for the critical items and then we went to lunch where I gorged on a huge hamburger.  We then walked over to Central Park where Roland once worked as educator and I got the insiders tour.  It was 70 degrees, sunny and I had a great time.  Thank you, Roland. 

The week, after that, went by in a flash - meetings from the early morning that ran into long dinners.  One dinner that was memorable, though, was Thursday night when we dined at the Four Seasons Pool Room (which is not actually in the Four Seasons Hotel). This is New York dinning at its finest and really captures the quintessential New York restaurant experience - not a place for the 99%, if you will.   The dinner culminated with a huge pile of cotton candy placed in the middle of the table.  You can't beat a large, pink pile of sugar for impact!

Saturday arrived and it was time to go.  My flight did not leave until 8:00pm, so at 7:30am, I hailed a cab to take me to the Manhattan Target to finish my shopping.  The Target is located in Harlem, so I had to be strategic on when I wanted to go.  Calculating for traffic, I figured, I wanted to be there and back as early as possible. At 8:00am on a Saturday, New Yorkers are not really up and about, so the cab ride was short and cheap.  The opposite side of that is that since no one is up, there are very few taxis roaming about that far up town.  This looked like it was going to be a problem.   After my shopping, I meandered about moving towards the more active streets until finally an off-duty limo stopped.  For a few bucks more than the cab, he was willing to take me back to the hotel.  It was a great find.  I ended my New York experience cruising back downtown in the back of a limo enjoying the sunny autumn morning.   

With all my shopping done, I packed up the huge suitcase … barely…, had lunch and troddled off to the Newark Airport for my flight back to India.  I look forward to next year!

Promotion – Congratulations or Condolences?

There is a story about a bird that got a late start flying south for the winter.  Along the way, it got so cold, that it could not longer fly.  Cold and exhausted, it landed in a farmer’s field where he was unable to go any further.  As the cold began to drain the life from the little bird, a cow walked by and, seeing the cold bird, pooped on the bird.

The warm, fresh pooped began to heat the bird and after a few hours the bird had enough strength to fly again.  The problem was that the bird was stuck in the huge pile of cow dung and was unable to free himself.

The bird began to sing hoping that someone, anyone, would come to his aid and pull him out of the cow patty.  Just as his hope was waning, a cat came along.  Seeing the helpless bird, the cat gently reached into the pile of dung and pulled the bird to freedom.  The cat attentively cleaned the shit off the bird. The bird was so grateful that he would finally be able to finish his journey south, that he belted out a jubilant thank-you song for the cat … and then the cat ate the bird!

The moral of the story is that not everyone that shits on you is doing you harm and not everyone who pulls you out of the shit has your best interest!

This promotion for me is a bit like the bird story.  At the beginning of the month, my company asked me to take on the role of Regional for the Middle East and Indian Sub-Continent.  It is a huge promotion in both position and responsibility, but as they were enthusiastically giving it to me, they slipped in that this would mean staying in India a bit longer and, oh, much more travel.  Ah, the cat had arrived. 

The scope of the job is large and a little intimidating.  I will be responsible for all operations and teams in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey.  My country list reads like an itinerary for a Jihad recruiting trip.  As of now, I cannot travel to Pakistan and, depending on the elections in Egypt, I may never see my team in Cairo which although reduces the travel, makes remote managing even more difficult – again with the cat!

The one bright spot is that Turkey is now within my responsibilities and Olga and I love to go to Turkey.  I see many extended holidays on my quarterly trips to Istanbul and eating great Turkish food.  To this, I have no complaints, but I am not sure it offsets such garden spots as Bangladesh and Egypt. 

The other upside is that I will travel back to the US more often.  At my level now, I am included in organizations strategy meetings, as well as many of the corporate leadership meetings.  This is good, as the more time I get in the US, the more goodies I get to bring back for my patient and understanding wife, as she continues to weather through life in Delhi. 

The other upside is that for those of you that are tired of hearing about life in Delhi, the blog is bound to get more interesting.  I mean, seriously, do you have any idea what Dhaka, Bangladesh is like? So, like all good stories, my pain is your entertainment.  

Congratulations or condolences?  Time will tell.

Luck

Luck is an interesting thing. Some people are simply born with good luck, while others are destined to live out their lives watching others win. Me, I have tons of luck … it just happens to be all bad. My wife, on the other hand, is the queen of luck.

Over the years, she has had great streaks – Once in Vegas, after I had blown almost all our designated money on the craps table, she stepped up and won it all back and then some. At one point I refused to even touch the table for fear of my bad luck offsetting her good. When we moved to Oregon, my wife returned from the grocery store one day with a DVD player given to her for, well, being there. Finally, and most poignantly, she got me which make her the luckiest woman in the world … or not. Perspective may be more important than luck on that last one.

Anyway, the other day, my wife attended a charity event held at the Australian Embassy around the Melbourne Cup. The Melbourne cup, for the uninitiated, is a massive horse race in Australia on the magnitude of the Kentucky Derby, but with a much larger following and much larger hats. One of the benefits of being an expat is you get to experience a lot of different cultures. One of the downsides is that you usually experience them at strange hours. This being an Australian event, the party started at 8:30am.

Olga arrived in style and immediately upon stepping into the party, her entrance ticket won her an iPod. This was awesome, since I had just left mine in the Maldives and I am sure by now, Muhammad the security guy had converted my collection of Earth, Wind and Fire to the “Greatest Hits of Ramadan.”

Next there was a raffle drawing in which my lovely wife purchased two tickets. Half way through the drawing, one of her numbers hit and she was the proud new owner of a beautiful necklace. Her whole table was jealous… but they had yet to experience the full power of Olga’s luckiness.

A short time later, the big prizes came up. There were trips to Bali and weekends in Dubai, along with a few excursions around India. A few days prior, Olga and I had discussed a trip to Singapore as neither of us had been there and, yep, you guessed it, she won several nights at the Singapore Intercontinental in one of their luxury suites. I believe at this point, the rest of her table simply got up and walked away.

She called me on the way home and the both of us basked in the warmth of good luck that comes her way every now and again. If only they would raffle off new places to live, life would be perfect!

Running With Scissors

Last week was Diwali.  As you may remember from last year’s explanation, Diwali is the ultimate holiday in India along the lines of Christmas and New Years combined into one night of celebration.  It is quite the spectacle.  You may also remember from last year’s blog entry, I was awash with newness and naiveté when it came to India, so in my description of the holiday, I may have missed out on a couple points that I now find salient.

Diwali is the quintessential Indian Holiday.  Being an absolutely materialist driven society, Diwali fits perfectly as it is entirely geared for gaining prosperity for the individuals and families of India.  Unlike Christmas, which has roots in charity and giving, Diwali makes no pretense about this.  In true Indian fashion, it is simply about greed!

The idea behind the holiday is that the god of wealth, Lakshami, visits your house on the night of Diwali and bestows upon you prosperity for the upcoming year.  Not peace for all mankind; not food for the poor; not even prosperity for the general population - she grants it to you and you alone.  Now obviously, she cannot give everyone this gift, so you spend the few days leading up to Diwali doing things that will gain you favor with this god.

Firstly, you must buy gold and silver.  Luckily, to facilitate this, there is a day designated as auspicious to buy these metals.  During this selected day, the population floods the jewelers like sailors to free booze spending a large percentage of their savings on gaudy gold bangles, necklaces and other assorted pieces of jewelry.  The markets are clogged with consumers and traffic around the most popular shopping areas is completely gridlocked.  I actually believe that, for Jewelers, this day is their actual Diwali, because they are able to make on one day what they make the rest of the year.  Now that is prosperity delivered with a bow!

Secondly, you must decorate your house.  This consists of stringing huge quantities of lights up and down the façade of your home, apartment building, etc, again not unlike Christmas.  They must be bright and bold, but unlike Christmas, there is no color coordination, so the overall effect feels less like a festival and more like someone recreated your neighborhood on a light-bright!  Just to add to the confusion, the need for Indians to display their wealth causes them to over-decorate their homes to show their neighbors how important they are.  This turns the more affluent neighborhoods from quiet, conservative places into looking like a huge, outdoor Philippino strip bar.  What could be more festive than that!

Lastly, and most importantly, you must light off fireworks.  This, apparently, is essential to attracting the favor of the gods.  The rockets take to the air with screams, bangs and booms even before it gets darks sending loud burst into the sky.  But this is not like New Years or the 4^th of July in which coordinated firework shows are punctuated with a few homegrown launches. This is 1.5 billion people armed to the teeth with every type of firework made in Asia randomly setting them off throughout the entire night.  These are people who walk out into a highway never acknowledging the danger of being hit by a 2–ton truck lighting off explosives and, worst yet, encouraging their small children to do the same. It is truly like running with scissors – eventually someone will get hurt … and they do.

As with any Chinese-made, $1.00 item, there are bound to be some misfires and, in this case, these misfires take off people’s hands and blind them, but what the heck, it is a holiday!  As well, with fireworks streaking up, down and sideways, the person launching is not the only potential victim.  You are regaled the next day with stories of starbursts being shot into washing machines (many people have their appliance on their back porch) and exploding, garbage surrounding homes being set ablaze and people getting shot with roman candles and other high-velocity fireworks.  In a country in which personal accountability is low and strategic thinking is virtually non-existent, it is truly remarkable that entire cities are not wiped out on this night. 

In the end, my wife and I barricaded ourselves in our apartment and listened to the booms and screeches until finally drifting off into a shallow sleep – always keeping one ear open for the fire alarm.