Life in Chennai #20: Jumbled Thoughts & Experiences

I am not sleeping well. My room is stuffy and thick, the heat of the afternoon still trapped in its walls, the fan just swirling warmth onto my face. I get up and do a pooja of sorts on my bed, vigorously shaking droplets of poured water out of my cupped hand onto my sheets, floor and pillow and lie back down. Momentarily cooled, I drift back to troubled dreams and sweat once more.

But I have so many thoughts jumbled and swirling in my head that I cannot sleep.

Crowded bus rides through humid air. I love that. Not having a plan. The friendliness and helpfulness of Indians. Feeling the local expert. Laughing at how far off that is. Girls. New friends and old. Reconnections. Walking darkened streets. Quitting my job for good reasons. The excitement, fear, relief and anxiety of that decision. The poetry of my friends, in person and in print. The joys of Indian food, but also of Domino’s pizza. A bar called Pirates. India beats Pakistan in the Twenty20 match. The annoyance 2 nights of power outages in the last 4. Being seriously sleep deprived. Dancing. Monsoon thunderstorms. Fitting in. The smiles and laughs of bright-eyed children. Never taking enough pictures. New ideas. Home? Home. Girls. Unexpected changes. People I care for. Frustrated tears. Giving up. Trying again. Yoga and Swimming and Motorcycles (not at the same time). Ganesh Jayanthi in clay and blinking neon. The Mylapore Temple. Hare Krishnas. Having 6 missed calls on a Saturday evening. Meeting friends randomly in the street. Beginnings. Endings. Transitions. Possibilities.

Culture #11: The Wine Shop Revisited

See my earlier post on learning the value of things at the wine shop the hard way. Here is an update on a recent purchase.

I am buying 2 Kingfisher beer. I give him Rs 500.

He gives me Rs 270 back. I look at it briefly, call him back over and point out it isn’t enough change.

He tells me the price is Rs 220.

Of course 500 minus 220 is not actually 270, but I let that one go and focus on the bigger problem: that the beers are in fact only Rs 60 each so the price is only Rs 120.

He nods OK, OK. Takes the money and remakes change.

This time he gives me back Rs 290 with a smile. We're getting closer, but still short.

I patiently do the math for him one more time: 60 Rupee (pointing at one), 60 Rupee (at the other). 120 Rupee vilai. Rs 380 michapanam kudunga Boss ("change please give") I say smiling, but firmly, looking at him . We’re both pretending it is simply a mistake of math.

He takes the money one more time, does some fancy money swapping at his till box and proffers Rs 380 this time. Finally!

So an updated warning: you really have to keep your eye on what you should get back because in the speed of the exchange, the busy counter and their hope you don't know the cost, they will definitely screw you. But they’re not usually bothered if you call them on it. Funny guys.

Life in Chennai #13: Beating the Heat

When I discovered that it was now impossible to get cold or even room-temperature water out of the taps (even the “cold” tap only gives very warm water) I realised that India’s summer, is an entirely unique animal. With temperatures rising weekly well into the 40’s, the summer heat, like everything in India, is not something to be fought and overcome; instead you adapt yourself to it, surrender to it.

Which makes the title actually a bit of a misnomer: because, in truth, there is no way to actually beat the heat in Chennai. It is like the Star Trek Borg: Resistance is Futile. Even the refrigerators have given up and are claiming rights under the Geneva Convention. The only option is to adjust to it and find a way to learn to love it, or at least grin and bear it. And failing, that, make light of it all, ‘cause it ain’t gonna change.

It is a bunch of little changes, new rules of life you have to get used to, that make it funny. Like for example having now to plan to get chocolate – you can no longer just pick one up any ol’ where. If you want to get a chocolate bar to eat at home, you now have to arrange to get it from a store within a few blocks of your house or else it will literally melt into a puddle before you get home and you really have to buy it from a proper supermarket with a/c to even get one that is still solid enough to eat without a straw at all. It is accepting new inconveniences like that the power goes out twice as often these days and that you can really no longer get or buy anything “cold”. The best refrigerators can do is “cool” and with the frequent power cuts, you cannot rely on even that (a major consideration for buying anything perishable). So your chocolate is goo, your juice warm and your shower hot. I don’t even want to talk about ice cream…

So with these funny little things in mind, I’ve been pulling together a list of how to adapt, how you have to adapt to the summer heat in India. Enjoy!

• Have 3 showers a day. Enjoy your free hot water. I haven’t used the water heater since I’ve been back and don’t expect to for months. On the down side, after a day of work, sweaty and grimy, a solar-heated hot shower isn’t exactly what you were looking for, but that’s just the way it is.


• Be one with the fishes. The hardest I think to get used to, but the most important to mentally deal with, is that you are wet and dripping with sweat all the time. Day, night, at work, at home. It is truly amazing how much water can come out of your skin with so little work. You’re never dry. I’m about to grow gills. Hopefully it’ll help. I’ll report back.


• Walk slower. I understand fully now why people move slower in the tropics.
  Drink lots of water. Lots and lots and lots of water. My God! I can’t believe how much water I’m drinking. We’re thirsty all the time, putting back glasses like we’re doing shots.


• The IV drip backpack. That is the perfect solution to the water and salt intake challenge – just carry around your own personal, portable IV plugged into your arm. This is my grand idea, admittedly potentially born of fever, but I’m convinced it could make me millions on the convenience factor!


• Get well acquainted with your pharmacist. Talcum powder, prickly heat, fungal cream, rashes, antiseptic ointment, skin care, and things you never had or needed before become everyday occurrences.


• Dance in the afternoon thunderstorms.


• Get used to living your entire indoor life under a fan. Sleep under it, eat under it, work under it; it becomes your little column of relative comfort. What is really funny is that I finally understand what paperweights and all those stupid corporate desk objects are actually for and finally find them useful. Everyone at out office needs 3 or 4 or risks losing any paper you inadvertently set down to a jumble throughout the room.


• Half the expiry date. I don’t care if the milk says “best before” a month from now. Expect that it has been un-refrigerated without power at some point and play it safe. Buy fresh and finish everything in your fridge within the week. It is actually a healthier lifestyle anyway.


• Wear as little as possible. This is where the Indian custom of modesty and working in an office gets in the way, but at least you can sleep naked.
  Be thankful they don’t report the humidex “with the humidity, it actually feels like…” here. It feels like soup, that is what it feels like. Hot mulligatawny soup. ;-)


• Be pre-emptive about your body getting worn down. Understand that living and processing is taking more energy than before so minimize how much you stress it. It means being more careful again, considering avoiding street food, juice vendors, tap water and snacks from the wallahs again because the chance of them making you sick is just so much higher these days. I hate this one. I’ve never been good with my own advice and still break this regularly, if perhaps not quite with as much abandon as before.


• Accept that no matter what you do, you will get sick at some point. It doesn’t matter if you have an iron gut, super immune system or take acidophilus. You are not Superman. The bugs here are stronger and come in so many nice varieties. So accept your mortality.


• Sit up straight. Seats make your back sticky and wet.


• Remember that people pay a lot of money at gyms and spas for thing you experience by just going outside. Steam bath, sauna, hot rocks...you name it. I’ll even buy you a cucumber from the stall down the street to wear on your eyes.
  As it is said in the movie Dogma, “No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air.” I hate a/c, but it is a very necessary evil.


• Go on vacation. This is why the British and Moghuls before them built the hill stations. They were onto something. Join the masses of anyone who has the means to get their ass up some elevation. Sadly, I had accomplished this for April, but stupidly came back. Damn do-gooding... ;-)


• Pray for the cooling monsoon rains to come. Oh, that’s right. Tamil Nadu doesn’t get the summer monsoons. It’ll stay hot through Aug. Oh well. For everyone else in the country, monsoon just started in Kerala. Enjoy the cool…and the floods. Whoever said you could win?

But in all seriousness, know that everyone goes through it with you. Everyone looks a little wilted on those really hot days, everyone crowds around the fans at the restaurant, everyone is damp. So stop whining and learn to love it, or at least laugh at how many silly situations this presents.

For those others that have or are living here, post your tips and your own observations of the silly ridiculous things you have to do to deal. ;-)

Life in Chennai #12: Mango Season

I am in Heaven. The fruit season has changed once again and it is now mango season. Mmmnn, mangos.

Part of the streetscape here is fruit carts lining the roads with whatever is in season. First it was sweet, mini bananas on every corner. You can still get them, but their best days are past. In March it was watermelons, plump green piles and red wedges suddenly everywhere. Sadly, those have passed too, but now,in fully compensation, it is the yellow, green and red-tinge of mangos that colour the carts and shop displays.

I love mangos and am eating as much as I can – so good and so much better than anything you can get in North America. I am also discovering the many types of mangos. There is actually a mango tree just outside my window. I am conspiring on how to get through the bars and reach out far enough to grab some. There is actually a jackfruit tree down the street. I had never seen jackfruit actually on the tree before. They really are giant fruits. I wonder when their season is?

Yum!

Travelling #5: Leaving for Nepal

I've got my backpack on full of hiking gear, a long sleeve layer on against the chill of the airplane aircon and my Tibetan cowboy hat, all foreign items to my daily life: my gear has sat unpacked under my bed, I haven't worn long-sleeves against the cold since I arrive in India. So I feel a bit odd with it all. But good weird, because it means I'm moving.

Goodbye sticky Chennai. Nepal here I come!

People seem to really like my cowboy hat. Both security check personnel in Chennai and my connection in Delhi specifically ask me about it and where I got it, saying they like it. A fellow traveller strikes up a conversation from it as it apparently looks like it is from Australia. Funny! I should wear it more often except it is far too hot to wear in south India.

It is super early. I was up at 4am and hadn't slept well, but the Chennai airport is quite small and pretty painless to get through. I nap on the plane.

Killing my stop-over in Delhi over lunch, my last meal in India is Subway. I feel a little about it, like such a lazy foreigner, but after 5 months nearly completely healthy, I actually came down with a stomach bug of some sort on the weekend and am feeling pretty tender, my appetite is gone and strong tasting food makes me feel somewhat ill. So simple, comforting food is the order of the day unfortunately. It doesn't really matter of course as I'm not exactly picky, I barely eat 1 western-style meal a month, if that and of course airport food of any nationality will be universally poor and unauthentic (although the dim sum at the Hong Kong airport restaurant was surprisingly excellent). And of course, I'm coming back, so it isn't a last meal really.

But it funny what little guilts strike you. You can feel not Christian enough, not Jewish or Hindu enough, you can feel not Indian or not Canadian enough, not patriotic, loyal or pious enough. For some reason, sometimes I worry about not being integrated enough, giving enough, hard core enough. Plight of the development worker I suppose. Most of us will fall prey to guilt over meeting some imagined or real standard or other I suppose in our work, personal and community lives. So there you go, eating Subway in India, even once in a blue moon is mine. Of course it also stems from a deep pleasure in eating diverse and interesting, rich foods such that I am disappointed when I miss an opportunity.

The exception to my non-Western food rule though is bakery. Travelling to Pondicherry with my mom and sister I rediscovered the joys of good croissants and buns filled with yummy stuff and really good breads. There are several in Chennai too so I think I will have to add a bakery run to my weekly schedule. No guilt for tasty things.

The food thoughts, stomach tenderness and exploration continues through my first few days in Kathmandu. I eat Nepalese momos on rooftop patios. Most the restaurants serve the eclectic mix familiar to backpackers the world over - global favorites of pizza, European soups, Chinese noodles, "sizzlers", pepper steaks, chicken cordon bleu, the Indian standards of butter chicken, tikka and tandoori. You can get muesli for breakfast nearly anywhere in the world despite no one I've ever met eating it at home. They have some good bakery here too. I'm totally on a bakery kick. I drink a lot of Nepalese (milk, masala) chai and banana lassis.

The tourist district of Thamel in Kathmandu has a strong familiarity to it: its twisting maze of streets cramped with signs and advertising stretching up 3 stories, the wall-to-wall traveler-oriented shops, the global "fusion" cuisine restaurants, competing music every dozen feet and of course all the kitch. It suggests a half-dozen other major backpacker meccas worldwide where travelers linger, socialize and put down temporary roots rather than just pass through. And as such has evolved that peculiar, foreign-yet-familiar mix of shops and services: craft and curios stalls and shops that spill out onto every street, clothing shops that are not representative of any original culture, but more the global "backpacker chic" and hawkers and touts trying to strike up conversations with "just look Sir". Restaurants that cater to global cuisine and always seem to sell muesli, sit shoulder with nightclubs, moneychangers, CD shops and Internet cafes. Bicycle rickshaws and taxis slowly weave the narrow, clogged streets hoping for custom (it is actually much faster to walk given the crowds). With a few differences, it could be Khao San Rd in Bangkok or much of Goa to name just two other stops. But its familiarity and pace is comforting and enjoyable right now as I too linger on my way through.

What have I been doing? Not much actually: wandering the narrow streets, dodging the bike rickshaws, soaking in the atmosphere, reading on rooftops, drinking lots of Nepalese chai. I've spend a morning standing in line at the Indian Consulate - getting a visa requires 2 all-morning waits, one to drop off the telex, another to pick it up and submit the visa, then a shorter, 3rd visit that afternoon to pick it up. I go back tomorrow. At least I'll know most of the line to chat with, half the line from Tues meeting back again to collect. I've spend a couple afternoons getting plans laid for my trek and mountaineering excursion. I haven't been inspired really visit the sites of Kathmandu. I should, but have been really enjoying the slow pace and a chance to consider "ambitious" plans to be buying route maps and browsing for trinkets to bring back to my housemates in between a long lunch and lazy dinner.

Funny enough, my cowboy hat is going over well here too. Here is a pic from when I was in Tibet. I just spent 15 minutes chatting with an Indian expat shop-owner on the street about what we each are doing here after he asked to try on my hat to see how it looked with his jeans and boots (good look actually, I recommended he request a hat from any guide friends heading to Lhasa). It gives the hawkers one more way to get me to stop and talk to them (about their wares), but I'm happier being distinctive and enjoying random conversations at the cost of a little more bother.

So welcome to Kathmandu, if you spot me in my cowboy hat on the patio, join me for a beer or a chai...

Culture # 9: Now They Tell Me…Tips on Getting Ripped Off

It is part of the charm of the place that prices and sales are interactions and conversations between people, not just transactions. I talk all about it of course in the Personal Touch.

But talking about buying stuff in India could not be complete without a story of getting ripped off. Getting beaten in bargaining, over-charged or generally ripped off is a rite of passage for India (and most travel destinations) and part of the experience.

Before I delve into the story though, I would like to stake out my stance briefly that despite Western ire and distaste at such practices, getting taken in when paying for something isn’t really a question of honesty or goodwill on the part of the salesperson. It comes from a different value and perspective on the transaction of selling stuff and one that takes the “buyer beware” caveat and the global economic principles of “what the market will bear” to its natural conclusion. If they can get away with a price or sell you something lower quality, they can, and it is just as much your responsibility as it was theirs. If you are willing to pay the price, then that was fair market value at that moment. The idea of being “ripped off” is based on the idea that you are a victim rather than a full player, which is not really valid here. You are expected to hold up your end by knowing what you want and asking questions. It is a consistent system that just goes against you if you don’t know all the rules.

A simple example of the consistency of the system that might be easiest to visualize is actually from the shoulder-to-shoulder diversity found in Vancouver and other major North American cities. If you shop in Chinatown on Main Street in Vancouver, the produce shops are known for selling produce cheaply. But, in a departure from the glitzier supermarket stores a few streets over, the quality of the produce will also vary more widely. Sure enough, in concert with this, is the common stereotype sight of the old Chinese women poring intently (and slowly) over every cantaloupe and tomato, picking out the good ones one by one. Next door, other shopkeepers loudly hawk their wares and services and the same old women fire questions (also loudly) of where this comes from or the quality of that, pushing the hawkers back on exactly what they are offering. Taken together the system is consistent and works and patterns how much of the world shops. Conversely, North American standard has become the (dare I say lazy) want of being able to grab a basket full of tomatoes (or whatever) without looking and without asking questions and therefore demanding the store quality is good and consistent enough to support this convenience of not needing to pay attention. See, again consistent.

The problem with travellers and expats is that the systems don’t match up. We get charged more and ripped off because we can be and because we don’t know the price and worth of things or how to ask. We get hassled and pushed by aggressive touts more because we don’t have a strong understanding of the area and value and lack understanding of the language and/or cultural differences to ask the right questions. It is made worse that in most Western cultures we are not used to asking a dozen of questions before buying anything. Here we are expected to be sophisticated in bargaining – it is just what is expected – and since we aren’t, we lose sometimes (OK, a lot of the time). It is admittedly somewhat taking advantage our ignorance for gain and it can be galling when you, yourself, get taken, but it really isn’t personal. In the end, it is a simply a scaled-up version of what goes on with everyone and exaggerated because we can afford it and like annoying advertising or spam, perpetuates because, like it or not, it must works enough of the time.

So I’m not immune of course and have many examples of “now they tell me...” I recall for example getting caught by the common “art student scam” in Beijing the first day, much to my later embarrassment. I recall getting great prices for bracelets in Lhasa, but marked up prices for sandals in Bangkok. But being in India, I thought I’d share a recent story from here. It is amusing and even has a lesson at the end.

So having been here 4 months now and, having been travelling before, I have actually done quite well with avoiding getting taken by unscrupulous vendors. Sure, there may be an occasional foreigner mark-up (being charged an extra 10 or 20 rupees for something), but I don’t totally disagree with that as long as it is not unreasonable, the foreign currency buying power being so dramatic. And whether I agree with it or not, if you are not a local and speak Tamil (meaning from-away Indians also get similar treatment) it is nearly impossible to bargain down to the local price for auto rickshaws, even if you know what that price should be. Those are just the rules of the game. But generally I have done well in holding my own and holding onto my cash.

But I ruined my whole streak in one fell swoop in one a bad day last week.

I got out of the auto coming home after work, picked up some rum at the wine shop (what they call all liquor stores) and then picked up some new razor blades and shaving cream at another shop. Nothing unusual.

At the checkout for the shaving stuff, the computer tallies everything, I go to pay and then realise I don’t have enough cash. A little embarrassing, but I’m only a couple blocks from home so it isn’t really that big a deal. I drop home and back to get some. But what the problem is, is that I should have had enough cash. I know I should have had two Rs 500 notes in there, one of which I just used at the wine shop. I was sure of that.

I knew then what I had done: I had given the wrong bill to the auto driver, who pocketed it without batting an eye, losing Rs 400 in the process. That is what I had done. I had had a tough day at work, was distracted by that, traffic had been heavy and I was antsy to get home. It is dark when I get out & I inadvertently handed him a Rs 500 note rather than a Rs 100, which is my standard fare. In my defence, it isn’t that impossible to do. Some of the Rs 500 notes are a bluish colour similar to the Rs 100 notes. In the dark, like it always is on the unlit street where I get off at home, it is possible to mix them up if you don’t look too closely (they are slightly different lengths too. Yes, I know). I usually hold the bill to a light to be sure, paranoid of this very mistake, but obviously I hadn’t today. I had whipped it out and handed it to him. It is about like giving a cab driver a $20 by mistake for a $5 fare. I actually thought I had done it a couple times before, which is why I usually check, but those other times, upon balancing my expenses, I found that no, I had just spent it; that slightly disheartening discovery we are all familiar with when we find we’ve dripped away cash a bit here or there on coffee or snacks or drinks or whatever. So this was bound to happen eventually. I still felt like an idiot and a rube though, especially after being here for so long. Oh well, I don’t blame the driver for not telling me. Call it a nice, if unintentional, tip for him and his family and a Rs 400 loss for me.

After running back to the store, I then got home properly, a bit disgruntled, groceries and toiletries in hand, and sat down with my housemate John for a drink of my rum. This is where I discovered my luck was indeed poor today. In telling the story about the auto and how I knew how I had lost the Rs 500 note, John stopped me, “how much did you pay for the rum?” … “Why?” I ask... Shit.

Back at the wine shop I had asked for Old Monk rum, “full size” (meaning 0.75L, they use the terms “full”, “half” here to denote a 26-er vs a mickey). The guy hands it to me and asks for Rs 521. It didn’t occur to me to question this. I knew it was premium liquor and I knew liquors have a ridiculous tax on them in Chennai. And the specific price of twenty-one rupees gave it an air of legitimacy. But apparently this wasn’t the price. It wasn’t close to the price. I can normally spot a scam, but this guy was quick.

It apparently should have been Rs 219, perhaps Rs 10 more. So I paid more than double. Whoops. What is even more remarkable was that John then tells me that all products sold in India are required to have the sale price marked on them. Sure enough the Rs 219 is printed right there on the side of the label. (BTW, Old Monk rum is one of the IMFL – Indian Made Foreign Liquors – available here, true foreign made imported is horrendously expensive, but usually higher quality).

Now they tell me.

Why didn’t someone point this out before? Why didn’t I notice before? Somehow it simply didn’t come up. Anything bought in bulk is either negotiated or only costs small change, but packaged products usually have set prices and I obviously came to trust those prices. For one, I realise that when I’ve bought the occasional odds and ends at the grocery store, the stuff goes through the register so the prices are regulated. For two, I long ago learned the prices of the basics from the shops, like pop, chocolate and snacks...although, you know...now that I think about it, maybe I should check those chocolate bar wrappers next time I buy one...

It can also be tough because prices for things are skewed in different ratios than I am used to in North America. So a 0.75L of alcohol may be an incredibly cheap $5 to $6 (Rs 200-240) but the 2L of pop you are using for mix will still be $1.50 to $2 (Rs 60-80), the same as it is in Canada. And then the half chicken take-out you pick up might cost that same $1.50. So it can be hard to guess what one product should be based on other products. Hence being ripe for being taken.

Oh well. One ill-luck evening and I’m down Rs 700, which is rather a lot here. Chalk it up to being distracted and not paying attention. So I got fleeced. And all I had wanted was a quiet end to a tough day. Oh well, I could pretend my drink was some super-premium, special-stock liquor and be thankful I can still mostly use the exchange rate to soften the blow to my ego. No real harm done. I’ve lost more on stupid stuff. ;-)

So here is my lesson to anyone ready: in India all packaged goods are marked with the price printed directly on the packaging, even a bottle of alcohol, so it is easy to check that before forking over cash. It has to have it and the price will always be close to that so don’t let the shop person tell you otherwise.

See, now we’ve both learned something. ;-)

Culture #7: The personal touch

While business and particularly government here is excessively bureaucratic, the flipside of it is the personal touch. I’ve come to really value the relationship that having a real person to deal with brings and notice how much it is often missing back home, traded for efficiency and consistency.

Each morning my commute starts by heading around the corner to the nearest auto stand, a spot, unmarked, where a group of auto-rickshaws will congregate. I always go to this one. As usual, my regular auto drivers are lounging in the backs of one, shooting the shit. One reads the paper. They grin and wave as I approach. I really like that they do that, but sometimes have to remember in my morning fuzziness to not get distracted by their jovialness that like following sirens I cross the street without watching for traffic. I have on occasion gotten my elbows brushed over-optimistic motorcyclists. I smile and offer a “good morning” back and hop in the back of the auto they indicate. I do really like have a group of regular guys for my morning commute. I don’t have to bargain with them or explain where I’m going. They’re happy for the regular business and are waiting there for me every morning. Not being a morning person, I appreciate anything that makes my day a little easier before the morning chai has shaken the cobwebs from my head. There are 5 or 6 of them. Each morning they’ll usher me into one auto or another although I cannot figure out how they decide amongst themselves who it will be. Given the usual struggle of avoiding getting taken advantage of and the general pain in the ass of most auto drivers, you can’t imagine just how much a treat this is to have. If only I could find a way to get the same thing home, but the auto stand nearest my work are ridiculously over-priced so none of us use them.

The best example of the personal touch though and a mainstay of Indian life is undoubtedly the Wallah (or sometimes “Walla”). A wallah is basically business-person without a permanent address, a peddler – service that comes to you! Some may have semi-permanent counters erected on sidewalks and street corners (one of the many reasons pedestrians are forced on the streets), many have mobile carts or simply bikes they push around the streets singing their wares in a variety of distinctive cries. There are wallahs for everything. You need your knives sharpened, wait for the Knife Sharpening Wallah to come by. There are Soup Wallahs. There are Flower Wallahs. There are Nut Wallahs who tine their spoons against their roasting woks. There are Snack Wallahs. There are Ironing Wallahs (a particular joy). Of course, the pre-eminent of all are the Chai Wallahs, available at nearly every corner serving sweet, milky tea or coffee. Also of note are the Sweet Wallahs and Betel Nut Wallahs, who create handed-down recipes for concoctions that have people loyally travelling for miles to frequent, and the Mumbai Tiffin Wallahs, who have actually received a 6-Sigma Quality rating for providing meals to Mumbai workers for moving 175,000 of packaged meals cooked at home in the suburbs to their owner’s urban offices each day (while only misplacing one in 6 million, astounding considering the vast majority are illiterate).

The wallah forms part of a rich streetscape of small-scale shops, stands, carts and counters forming a tapestry of formal and informal commerce. Their prevalence and messiness along most any street without 4 lanes of traffic (and even most of the ones with) is one of the most distinctive things you see when you arrive here, but also one of those that most quick fades in the background of normalcy. You get used to the idea that if you want it, it is available from a host of tiny places nearby or if you’re a homemaker, you can usually simply wait for it to come to your door. It strongly contrasts to the Mall and Big Box direction we’ve gone and convinced the rest of the world to follow: the convenience of getting everything in one place…once you drive the 45 minutes to get there of course.

Of course there are many parallels between cultures too, similar ideas just simply wrapped a little different in the West. I am of course used to already being able to get my coffee on any street corner in Vancouver (and about a dozen placed between ‘cause God forbid we have to walk all the way to a corner!). I have pangs of loss for what I could call Vancouver’s “Sushi Wallahs”. There are roast chestnut vendors at Christmas and the venerable hot dog vendors famously revered in New York. And of course we’re all familiar from childhood with that hallowed of wallah: the ice cream vendor, whose tinkling song beckons like the Pied Piper from down the street. Mmmnn, ice cream…

Extending the concept of the Wallah even further and a shade of the current class struggle, is the ability to send people on errands to accomplish those things you can’t get at your doorstep. It is very common and completely acceptable to grab your neighbourhood wallah, a kid loitering about, the building watchman, an auto driver, or most anyone and send them on an errand for some small fee. And they will reliably return with the item and your change. You have to pay your cell phone bill? You ran out of milk and are in the middle of preparing for a dinner party? You have to mail something? You want train tickets, but don’t want to wait in the hours-long queue? Send someone on the errand in your place. No one thinks twice about it. The ironing wallahs pick up and drop off our clothes to the door. A young man from the chai wallah down the street gets, fills and returns a thermos of tea for the office twice a day. My housemate had a 10kg bag of rice delivered to the door of our flat late yesterday (Sunday) night.

The concept of service is deeply ingrained in the culture and going the extra mile for the customer, of the personal commitment and connection, pervades everything. The psychology of it is very complicated as it is wrapped up in the ideas of negotiation and flexibility – that anything here is available at a price; of class dominance and the historical acceptance of servitude; of the vast supply of people needing jobs – any job – and of the concepts of extended family and community which although in flux, are still stronger than in most Western regions. It can also blur into the spectre of corruption. But at the heart, leaving aside the tricky corruption issue for the moment, it is really refreshing to have business and commerce be human interactions again. Every service and transaction has a face, a person and a chain of people being supported. It is about the relationship. And it is about service. It is about business meeting your needs, your actual, real needs, not those they project on you, rather than the other way around. What a novel concept! It is at times shockingly inefficient. But it is shockingly refreshing.

Ask yourself: you’re busy, you’re working, you want an electrician or a TV cable install or a new account at the bank and what do you want, to sit around all day, taking a half-day, then a full-day off work to wait for the person to show up? No of course not. What you clearly and obviously want is for someone to come to you and arrive when you want. Here they do. If you need a service or product, people will come to your home or your office and drop it off. They will meet you after hours at your home at 10pm or come to your office at 2pm.

And what is even more remarkable is that it is not just the little independent contractors who will do it. The concept is ingrained right up the chain. The bank manager was over at the office the other day to talk about my boss’s business accounts rather than demanding to be met at the branch. When I bought my cell phone, the sales guy came to my house after (on a Sunday night) on his way home to take a digital photo of me for the connection to be set up the next morning. He then came by my office the next day for me to sign the final papers. And he gave me his cell phone number so when Airtel inevitably screwed up my account, I could call him to fight that battle for me and “just fix it”. This of course is also a necessity born of India’s other remarkable ability to build the most phenomenally inefficient, complex and mind-bogglingly impersonal bureaucracies yet invented. So you need the counter balance of an array of helpers, runners and queue-ers to possibly make it through.

The burning question for India now is will it lose this vibrant street-level personal experience as they drive to modernize and adopt Western culture of malls and glitzy stores with large advertising budgets? Can they afford to given their vast population? Will India be the same without remaining a little messy and colourful? That remains a very interesting question.

Awww, our office chai wallah, just came up with a bag of fresh banana chips back from Kerala for my colleague Hema, just to be nice because she once talked about liking them. Fuck McDonald’s. Now that’s service with a smile.

Life in Chennai #7: "The Usual"

"The Usual" for lunch: masala dosa. Mmnnn...

I've put a whole bunch of new stuff up today. What can I say, it's a slow day at work so I'm getting articles cleaned up and posted...

Food #3: The cup overfloweth…

“Ow!” I curse as I burn my fingers and spill some of my coffee. This is harder than it looks. As it is in many places here, my coffee has been served in 2 little stainless steel cups, a small thinner one and a wide, low one. The method is to pour one into the other in quick succession to cool it. I have two problems with this: 1) it is something of an art doing this without spilling, especially pouring from the wide into the narrow and 2) the metal quickly gets hot so doing this burns my fingers. Hence the occasional dropping. I think everyone here must have long ago burned all feeling from their fingertips. I know they have their mouths as, to a person, everyone here drinks their coffee and tea blistering hot. I have on more than one occasion come close to offending hosts worried I didn’t like the coffee simply because I wasn’t (couldn’t) pouring it back like a bar shot like the rest of them. Oh well, I still spill occasionally and sometimes circumspectly blow on it to speed the cooling process. Can’t be tough all the time. ;-)

The other local trick to drinking I’m learning is pouring water into your mouth without touching the lip. It isn’t done universally, but for any container to be shared or if you are suspect of the cleanliness of the kitchen, Indians pour the water into their mouths rather than sip, swig or slosh. Like the coffee pouring, it takes a little practice to not a) miss or b) pour more than you can gulp. Unsurprisingly early on this got a few friendly laughs as I fumbled at things any 5 year old can do. I wish I had practiced more drinking out of the slurpie machine as a kid. Standard water bottles are easiest & pretty much universally drunk that way. The technique makes a lot of sense actually. In a region with a higher incidence of transmittable diseases, it is far safer than each person slobbering over the rim and as a foreigner you don’t have to horde your own water bottle against your friends and colleagues.

You can see where this is going, but the problematic intersection of these is when you need to use this new technique to pour the awkwardly hot stainless-steel-cupped coffee into your mouth. Oh the horror. After a couple less than stellar attempts I usually just put the coffee cups to my lips (burning them, of course, but lesser of the several evils in this process). Thankfully most people do drink it that way so it is not socially unacceptable. And beside, I figure that any microbes that can survive the inferno temperatures of the damn coffee deserve to kill me. Thank goodness the coffee and chai are good enough to make them worth the trouble... :-)

Food #2: A day in the life...

So as I write this, I am eating dinner. Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to work at the table, but I’m not at the table. Of course you’re not supposed to eat in your room either. But my hosts have retired to watch TV in their room with their meals, so house rules and I can do what I want. :-)

I thought you might be interested in what a typical day of meals is here:

In the morning, after showering and dressing, I sit down at the table. The cook has already set out breakfast. Today we are having Iddli, which is basically steamed rice flour cakes served with sambar (a dhal-type lentil stew if you recall) and a coconut chutney.

With my breakfast is traditional Indian tea, which is black tea, often with some spices, half milk, half-water and plenty of sugar. I rather like it, preferring it over English tea style any day. Coffee is made the same way, which again, I rather like better than the bitter dark Starbucks style.

Lunch today I order masala dosa, which is basically dosa (recall, a thin crispy rice-crepe) with stuff inside it (the masala), in this case a saffron potato filling. It comes, as all South Indian dishes do, with a variety of condiments, including sambar, a spicy red paste, a white paste and a green paste. The white paste is a different variation of the coconut chutney I had for breakfast. The red I don’t know the name of & the green I can’t identify. They’re all good. My colleague is taking a call on his cell and I forget to ask what they are by the time he gets off.

That has been one of my early little challenges. I had to explain to my housemates that I was asking what everything was not because my eating of the yellow mixed stuff or the red mixed stuff was dependent on the answer, but because I really wanted to know what things were called. I’ve learned it is simpler to wait until I had eaten half before asking...

During the day, the office has a few half-cups of tea or sometimes coffee and usually a snack mid-morning or mid-afternoon of nuts, snack mix, sweets or samosas. The samosas remind me of summer Ultimate where we used to buy them from a local lady between games Monday nights. These are probably better, but those were gold at the time. ;-)

Dinner tonight is rice with a dish of some pickled mini okra-shaped green vegetable. It probably is a type of okra. It’s tasty, regardless, kind of tangy, a bit spicy. For the rice there is this lip-tingling hot oil concoction and some curd, a watery yoghurt. Wryly I note that even the curd has chillies in it. The South Indians love their spice and use it liberally in everything, even apparently in the yoghurt traditionally meant as an offset...

To the meal I’ve added two pieces of KFC chicken strips Sonya picked up for me on her way home. I feel like it is cheating, but they were left for me and you know guilty pleasures… As I munch on the greasy finger I try to think of the last time I had KFC. I remember why I don’t tend to eat it. It just isn’t good. I hope the chain doesn’t get as big here as they did in China.

I put the leftovers in the fridge and the dishes in the sink and start to think about the tasty things we’ll have tomorrow...

Food #1: It’s like being a kid all over again...Or Eating With One's Hands

Today we’ve gone for a “meals” lunch and this seems like a perfect opportunity to introduce you to the joys of food here. As many of you know, much of my travel stories from China read like a food guide and I expect that India will no different, especially once I get on the road. Just as customs and dress and language varies considerably across the continent, so apparently does the food. Yum.

A “Meals” lunch is a particular type of meal, but one that is quite representative of South Indian (or more so Tamil Nadu) cuisine. At a Meals place you sit down in a general mess and get a palm-leaf placemat put in front of you. Rice is slopped down in the centre and the waiters continuously rotate around with a variety of curries, chutneys and dhals. Each saucy dish is summarily dumped on the rice and mixed about with ones fingers. The goal appears to be a consistency ideal for matting into a sticky ball capable of popping into one’s mouth. It seems to be a subtle thing that comes from experience. I don’t think I’ve quite gotten it yet but the learning curve appears quicker than mastering chopsticks. ;-) So you cycle through these various sauces and dishes, and they keep slopping more onto your plate until you firmly signal no, usually 1 or more helpings past what you really needed. You’ll get a papudam, some pickled vegetables and maybe some fried banana chips on the side. When done, you simple fold the palm placemat in half, leaving it easy to clear and dispose of by the staff. No fuss, no muss, no dishes.

This style of food is typical of South Indian food, generally simple, but tasty and well spiced. Even at home or in standard menu-type restaurants, the food almost always comes in separate little dishes that you then add to one pile on your plate and mix into a multi-hued mess. It is not a place for those who like their foods in separate places TV-dinner style or those averse to keeping one’s hands clean. Food in India is an inherently messy, tactile affair, but a well enjoyable one.

Now, eating with one’s hands, let me tell you, is not as hard as the guidebooks lead on. I had some trepidation pre-arrival about eating with my hands, having read warnings and complex descriptions about how one is supposed to eat, what one should and shouldn’t do and how hard it is to master. Perhaps other parts or other strata of Indian culture have more rules – quite probably as the upper class have been know in all cultures to invent ways of differentiating themselves and excluding others via complex customs – but where I’ve been so far, it was not a big deal. First, eating with only one’s right hand is the only firm and golden rule. The left hand is considered impure and therefore rude to use. You quickly notice that most Indians eat with their left arm across in front of them, elbow on the table, or tucked in their lap. It is like a guard against temptation, and it works. If you lean on it, you quickly remove any chance of inadvertently and embarrassingly bringing your left hand into play. The other method, again often used, is simply to use your left hand to talk with. :-)

The real lessons useful for 99% of us are simple ones: dive in with relish, use only your right hand and watch what the locals do. It is fun and not that hard – after all, we’ve all done it, if not recently (and really, you should from time to time) certainly as kids. So my simplified travel guide can be reduced as follows: channel your inner kid, pull off or wad up bite sized pieces and don’t be shy to get your hands a little dirty.

Of course where things seem a bit more blurry is which hand to grab the spoon to scoop further helpings of food, to pass food or to hold your glass. I have read that for similar “unclean/impure” reasons, the left hand is also be mostly out for these activities, but then you’ve got food all over your right hand, so that doesn’t work either. From a purely non-greasy perspective, I use my left to hold most anything other than food, but can’t say if that is correct. It seems one of those little things you discover with time. So my report is that eating with ones hands took 10 seconds to pick up on arrival, but like any new activity, will take some time before I’m wadding rice mixtures like the locals.

In terms of what is on the menus here, many people are vegetarian and as such most restaurants advertise whether they are “veg” or non-veg” and often will not serve both. Personally, I’m happy with both. Most Indians being Hindu do not eat beef, but of course the Muslims and Christians will so it is readily available. Most South Indian dishes are served with rice, although Northern chapattis and rotis are also popular. The quintessential South India and in particular Tamil Nadu starch though is the dosa. Dosa is basically a big rice flour crepe, served with 2 or 3 chutneys and sambar, which is a soupier version of dhal (lentils) favoured in the South.

I should note some terminology. It doesn’t seem to be standard or even in the application of English translations of Indian dishes, but for my purposes, the following definitions can be used. “Curry” is an anglicize term and there is no actual “curry” spice in India. However, “curry” has come to generally mean any saucy, gravy-type dish of meat or vegetables. So it is a category or type of dish, not a specific dish. A similar English term might be a casserole. There is not one casserole and your mom’s might be as different from my mom’s as chicken is from cabbage. So you get the idea. Now “chutney” seems to be an equally hazily defined term, but seems to be used to describe any side or dipping sauce, or again matching the American similarity, a condiment. It can be coconut or tamarind, spicy, sweet, red or green. Ketchup could be called chutney in the right context. Next, a “dhal” or “sambar” is any lentil soup/stew/sauce side dish. Finally, “masala” is any mix of spice and also interestingly and conveniently is also used in conversation here to mean adding anything “interesting” into the mix, as in “you write the key points of the letter and give it to me and I’ll add some masala to it before sending to the Minister.” And that is the basics of Indian cooking, and Indian business actually, which share more than a passing similarity.

So (and again, this may not be completely correct, in which case I will correct later) I will generally use curries and chutneys to refer to the type of dish for most all Indian meals regardless of content. Each will of course have a particular, unique name, as all things do, but I will probably not know it, can’t remember it, or can’t hope to spell it even if I did. But assume I find it tasty. Such is life here. So for example a few nights ago I had an excellent spicy prawn curry, yesterday was a spicy chicken curry – one was more like soup, quite similar to Thai green curry, the other more like chicken in gravy. Those advising me on the names of things generally refer to things in this way. The Indian food found in curry joints and restaurants in the West basically serve conglomerates of the most popular and exportable dishes from across India. So North American-style Indian dishes do certainly exist in reality here – you’ll find vindaloo in Goa, korma in Hyderabad and Tandoori (a Northern-inspired style), pretty much everywhere – but you certainly won’t find them anywhere in one place and there are many, many others never featured. So many meals, so few days...

So there you go, a quick and very dirty guide based not on any reputable source, but a workable system for one immersed in a culture.

Idle Thoughts #1: When different is not necessarily foreign

I am jotting this (shakily) in the back of an auto on my morning commute, Jack Johnson’s “Holes to Heaven” playing on my ipod. It keeps me occupied for the 45 minutes of bumping and weaving. I look up from my notebook to a truck 2 inches in front of the auto’s front wheel. As this driving tactic is more or less normal, I go back to what I was doing. I skip back and play the song again. I really like the song and not just because it is about driving around looking for surf. It is about being in a far away place, a place where “bulls are running wild, because they’re big and mean and sacred and the kids are playing cricket with no shoes.” I am in a far away place like that and those distinctive elements constantly make me smile.

That is quintessential India, its irrepressible spirit. I might see a young boy of 8 or 9 clearing tables at the restaurants where I am having lunch and struggle with the pervasiveness of child labour (which is supposed to be illegal now) but then see a gaggle of kids cheering as they play a game of cricket on the street – without shoes obviously (that is like clarifying that they are indeed also wearing pants). Perhaps I should teach them Ultimate Frisbee, assuming I can find some Frisbees. They might get a kick out of it and I would save a fortune on cleats.

They are mad about cricket here. When there is a game on, people will stack up 10 deep in front of any shop with a TV in the window to watch. And if you sell electronics, by social contract (and perhaps safety) you put the games on. For big games, the city grinds to a halt. It is like Commercial Drive when the World Cup was on this summer, but all the time. And perhaps that is another noticeable difference from home – it doesn’t take a major international sporting event or play-offs to get people out on the street en-mass. I’ve always admired people and places where they were not afraid to rub shoulders.

But back to the bulls, to answer a question I have been asked, yes, that is one of the mythologies of India that is true. Chennai may be a big city, but it is still normal to see cows wandering unattended along the street or lounging at the side of the road (or sometimes in the middle). In fact there is a bull pulling a cart of coconuts waiting at traffic light beside me. I nod at him and hope his commute is going well.

This morning’s breakfast was chapatti and a potato-onion masala (quite like a warm curried potato salad actually and equally tasty). The normal Indian way of eating this is to break off pieces of the flatbread (using one’s right hand) and scoop the sauce bite-by-bite. While I am fully integrated into eating with my hands by now (the subject of an upcoming entry, I promise), I temporarily forgo this method and dollop the potato into the centre, roll it and eat it like a tortilla. The maid looks at me a bit funny, but I just grin at her over my inventiveness and carry on. I’ll all into the “when in Rome...” concept, absorbing my host country’s customs, fitting in and all that, but I also feel that in today’s global world, it is not just products and labour that should cross borders. There are great and wonderful (and useful) ways to eat food the world over and so I share this one with the maid, despite the custom not even being my home country’s (originally at least, the profusion of burrito joints notwithstanding). I think the Mexicans (and their neighbours to the South) nailed the whole wrap thing, the Chinese really understand how to eat noodles (sorry to all the Italians) and the fork is an altogether useful invention. Everything has its place. And much of the time, I am satisfied to eat with my hands. :-)

On the whole cultural exchange idea, we introduced some new friends to crepes the other night. The girls had a few of us over for an early Christmas dinner...

Whoops, I need to back up – being behind with this blog, my stories are out of order. OK, a quick backtrack: there is a group of other Canadian Interns here in Chennai, 4 girls, living together, that I have met up with in the last week or so. One of them saw the posting for my position and thoughtfully got in touch. They are all on different projects although they have been sent from the same Canadian organisation through CIDA grants. They’ve been here ranging from 3 months to just longer than me. I’ll write more on that all later though. For now back to my story...

...Anyway, one of the girls is leaving for the North and will be gone until the New Year so this was the last evening they were all together before Christmas, hence the dinner. We made crepes for dissert (they did actually, I only managed to assist briefly, risking nail and knuckle, grating the coconut) with nutella, banana and coconut filling. The two boys (who are from Bangalore) bravely tried this Western concoction and deemed them like sweet Tamil Nadu dosas with Kerela-style filling (the neighbouring state of Kerela is a lush growing region and apparently heavily features banana and coconut in its cooking). So worlds are not so different after all. Perhaps we should set up a crepe shop here. It could be a big hit.