Surrendered

I've been working at Bamko for almost three years now, and I've been working with our coding department at least part time for nearly as long.  I have resisted being a part of the IT world, letting people know that I work with a team of 20 programmers because, well, I left that world after three semesters of engineering and ran in the other direction ... communications.  But today, I finally accepted that I was officially there.  I may not know much, or anything really, about writing script or setting up networks, but at one point today I was remotely connected to three different computers in the Los Angeles office through three different programs resetting passwords and connecting people to our data server.  All I could do was sit back and laugh.  Ugh.  What have I gotten myself into?

India Through the Visitor's Eyes

I have been in India for two months and I still feel like the foreigner.  Whenever I leave my apartment, people are staring at me - and they are not shy about staring, so I know I'm not imagining it.  I still don't know what the names of all the dishes I'm eating or how public transportation works.  There is still a lot about India for me to learn. But last week I had one of my colleagues staying with me.  Sheila spent several days in China before coming to India.  Her first few days she spent in Delhi and Agra with our colleagues, but then she came to Dehradun and we spent the next five days working together, visiting nearby places, and hanging out. It was during this time that I realized, maybe I have adjusted to living in India.

Driving to Rishikesh - selling chickens and drinks

First, driving.  Driving in general in India is notorious for it's chaos - the scenes in movies are actually pretty accurate.  The lane marking, if there are any, is only along the center and is really there just to show the middle of the road.  Even if you are the only car on the road, your driver may be playing Pacman with the lane markings, eating up every dash.  However, being the only car on the road only happens in the rarest of circumstances and doesn't last long.  More often than not, you are negotiating motorcycles, trucks, auto-rickshaws (three wheeled taxis), bicycles, cows, dogs, monkeys, and people all while trying to get to your destination as quickly as possible.  This means a lot of weaving in and out and sudden start and stops.  Apparently, I had gotten used to this constant game to chicken and slalom, because I was just enjoying the drive while Sheila was wide-eyed and constantly telling Namit or Sachin to slow down or watch out.  We quickly decided that Sheila should not have a direct line of sight to the road - no shotgun and no middle in the back.

Once we got to our destinations we would park the car then just walk around.  When walking in India, at least where I have been, you don't walk against traffic.  This goes against everything that I have been taught since I started walking to school in kindergarten.  When I first got here, I started walking against traffic (which was challenging enough since they drive on the opposite side of the road), but I felt out of place.  I realized I was not only walking against the flow of traffic, but against the flow of people.  As soon as I switch sides of the road, I no longer had to dodge people.  Now this is habit for me as I walk to work or to get snacks on the weekend.  But walking around Mussorie and Rishikesh, I was reminded of how awkward I found this at first as Sheila started off walking against traffic and we had to constantly steer her to the other side of the road.

My coders - wide awake at 4:00am

Working at night.  Don't get me wrong, working the night shift is hard, and I don't think I would ever want to do it full time, but I have definitely adjusted to it.  The night shift hours are 8:30pm to 5:30am. The question then is when do you sleep?  Some people go home and sleep right away and get up mid-afternoon, others stay up and go for a drive to maggi point, hang out for a while before returning home to sleep or watch a movie then sleep.   Personally, I stay up, finish some work, surf the internet, watch some tv and sleep from 11:00am or noon to about 7:00pm.  Whenever you decide to sleep, we all make it through the night awake, more or less.  Some nights are more difficult than others, but most often, we make it to at least 5:30am awake and coherent.  By 3:00am, Sheila was a walking zombie.  She was wandering through the office, drinking chai or coffee, just trying to stay awake for another two and a half hours.  As soon as the clock hit 5:30am, Sheila was out of the office and on her way to bed.  I remember the first few weeks of the night shift.  I was constantly exhausted, I couldn't seem to get enough sleep.  Some days I would sleep right away and I would sleep all day, other days I would have insomnia, if you can call it insomnia staying awake until mid-afternoon instead of sleeping.

Trash disposal. This is the area that I'm still adjusting to.  I've definitely become accustomed to the trash disposal methods here - just throw it out the car window or toss it on the side of the street.  Don't get me wrong, there are dumpsters around to throw trash bags in but there aren't many around. Where there are dumpsters, they are often overflowing, surrounded my various animals (dogs, pigs, chickens), and there is trash on the ground outside the dumpster.  But more often than not, trash is just discarded on the side of the road while walking or driving along.  I've traveled a lot, to many different countries, but how to get rid of trash has been one of the hardest things to get used to here in India.  Sheila and I got a cup of coffee while walking around Mussorie.  We finished the coffee and kept walking with empty cups in our hands.  At some point we were going to want to get rid of these cups.  Thankfully, Harpreet finished her coffee and put her cup down on the side of the road.  I followed suit, feeling less awkward since I wasn't the first (although I had been wanting to do that for several minutes I just couldn't bring myself to do it).  Sheila still had issues with just putting her cup on the side of the road - thankfully we actually came across a rare trash can a few minutes later.

These are just a few things that came to me during the week that Sheila was here.  It was a great week sharing India with another foreigner, and seeing it all again through fresh foreign eyes.  I'm sure there are more difference that will come to me this weekend as my parents, aunt, and uncle are visiting. This is my life now, living and working in India.  I'm enjoying it, but will definitely be ready to return to Los Angeles.

Festival of Colors

Ankur came to pick Sheila and I up at 10:45am.  When he walked up to the door, Sheila didn't even recognize him.  Already he was covered in colors - pinks, greens, yellow, blue, silver.  I will give Sheila credit that she had only just met Ankur the night before for about 10 minutes, but still, she should have at least recognized him the next day.  This was the beginning of Holi.

Holi is the holiday I was most looking forward to when I came over.  It is celebrated by throwing colored powder or colored water on each other.  If you would like the whole history behind Holi, visit Wikipedia or The Holiday Spot.  They both provide the story back to Lord Vishnu and the burning of Holika who was supposed to be immune to fire.  The story of the colors comes from Lord Krishna (believed to be the eighth reincarnation of Lord Vishnu).  Depending on where you read, either Lord Krishna played pranks on the girls in his village by dumping water and colors on them or Lord Krishna complained to his mother of the difference in skin color between him and Radha (his divine love).  To remove the difference in color, his mother applied color to Radha's face.  This is why when we see pictures of the Holi celebrations, we see all the colors.

Now, Ankur had come to pick Sheila and I up.  He insisted that someone pick us up and that we not walk to the office.  I didn't quite understand this, but he was very clear in his insistence and so I assumed there must be a good reason.  The first thing I noticed when we got in his car was that all the windows in his car were up.  I don't think I had ever been in Ankur's car with all the windows up, and especially now that it is getting warm out.  I quickly found out the reason behind us not walking to the office and the windows being up.  In the short drive to the office, we passed at least a handful of people with squirt guns shooting colored water at cars as they passed by.  Welcome to Holi!

Once we arrived at the office, we walked into a wall of our colleagues all prepared with colors in their hands.  We didn't make it five feet before we were already unrecognizable.  Some of our colleagues had taken the powder and mixed it with water so it ended up more like a paint.  We both started out in white shirts and black shorts/pants - obviously that didn't last long.  The colors were continuously put on our faces, in our hair, thrown into the air, and shot out of water guns.

It didn't take long before Sheila and I learned you have to carefully protect your own bag of powder so you can get back whoever comes at you.  My pink bag lasted us well, we painted and colored many people pink.  Later I got my hands on a bag of yellow powder that I was able to hold on to for quite a while until I made the mistake of being nice to Sachin, and instead of taking just a handful he took the whole bag. 

Eventually, nearly everyone was there and everyone was covered.  We started running low on powder so we were a little more careful with using it.  Then the drinking, eating, and dancing started.  There were momos, fried sweet dumplings, pakora (seasoned french fries dipped in spicy sauce), and some other desserts.  Of course, like nearly all holidays, there was alcohol.  Fosters appeared to be the beer of choice in gigantic bottles. 

There was also a lot of music.  At the beginning there was four guys drumming.  It was really neat to watch, then Sachin took over at the DJ table and dance music started playing over the speakers set-up.  Whenever someone would trip on the cord and pull it out the drummers would start again.  So there was constant music for the first two hours.  Unfortunately then the drummers left, before the beer was spilled on the DJ equipment and ruined it.  Thankfully, someone was able to find another player so we were only without music for about 30 minutes. 

Indians love to dance.  I believe these guys could have gone on dancing for hours.  I could barely make it through one song, it was hot outside and with all the colors on my face it just made it worse.  However, at the end, my colleagues decided it was time to dispense with the water guns and go for the buckets.  They started dumping full buckets of water on whomever they could sneak up on.  I was the "victim" many times and traded buckets of water with Sachin.

Overall, Holi was excellent.  Now the trick is how to get all the colors off.  I have been relatively successful but still have some green on me.  Hopefully by work tomorrow it will all be gone.

Small Town of 450,000 People

So I grew up in a small town - corn fields in the middle of town, farm fields surrounding town, school getting canceled because it was too cold for the rural kids to stand outside and wait for the bus.  Everyone and I mean everyone knew me, or at least it felt like it.  I went to the school with the same people since from kindergarten through twelfth grade, I played sports, my parents heard about events at school before I got home from practice, there was never more than two degrees separating me from knowing the person I was talking to.  But I can't imagine the two events that occurred this past week happening after only living there for two months.

First on Sunday, I wanted to get a few onions and tomatoes for cooking.  So on my way home from walking around on Sunday I stopped at the cart (I'll explain fresh fruit and vegetable shopping another time) and used sign language and fragmented English to get five small red onions and two tomatoes.  However, I only had a 500 Rupee note with me.  The guy standing behind the cart took one look at the note, laughed a little, shook his head, and said "Next time."  He then handed me the bag of onions and tomatoes.  This is the first time I have bought, talked, nodded, or really even looked at him or his cart and I'm walking away with the food I wanted to get with a promise to pay him next time.  Shocked to say the least.

Then, yesterday I was walking home from the office and I hear a car behind me honk.  No big deal, I'm used to car horns, I don't even flinch anymore.  It's like the white noise of Los Angeles traffic.  Except this time the car is slowing down and we're not near a house or another street.  Now I'm a little more aware.  Inside the car, a woman leans over and offers me a ride - "I'm your neighbor."  Okay ... don't ask me why, but I got in the car for the last two blocks to the house.  I passed up a ride on the back of some guy's motorcycle on the way to work (I'm pretty sure it's the second time he has offered), but I just hopped into her car.  I met Fareen.  She has great English and lives just across the street from me. 

So, in the span of three days, I walked away with onions and tomatoes after my first attempt to purchase them and was randomly offered a ride by my neighbor who I don't remember ever seeing.  All of a sudden the town is pretty small.  I may not recognize anyone, but everyone sure knows me.  Sometimes it pays to be the only foreigner among 450,000 people. 

Electricity is Fickle

On Monday around 3:25pm and the power had just come back on.  I was sitting in bed, watching a movie on my computer, and surfing the internet killing time before work when all of a sudden the light went off.  For about ten minutes I was sitting in the dark, watching my movie (The Jane Austen Book Club if you're curious) and continuing to wander around the internet.  About 30 minutes later, the power went out again for a few minutes.  This, bizarrely enough, has become normal to me.  At least it was the middle of the afternoon so I have the sunlight to see my way around the apartment.

At least once or twice a week this happens at work as well.  Only at work when the electricity goes at work it is 1:00am so the only light is from my computer, not the sunlight.  Three other people in the office have laptops (one of which the battery is so old it doesn't hold a charge), so the office is really dark.  I've got my computer so I can do some work but when the power goes, obviously so does the wireless so the primary communication with US is cut.  All forty of us in the office just sit at our desks while someone goes outside to start the generator.  The generator is so loud that I can barely carry on a conversation with Santosh who is sitting three feet from me.  Thankfully the power outages at night do not last for more than 10 or 20 minutes, so normal work can resume. 

I don't know what is going to happen when it really gets hot here if the power is going out when it's relatively cool out.  Hopefully the warmer weather won't bring more overheating and more power outages.  I just hope I'm not here during the rainy season, because that is the worst.  Sometimes the internet is down all "day".