Two types of people

In India, there are people who walk into a a restaurant and wait to be seated. They look around for a waiter to direct them and, in the absence of said waiter, they wait a little and then sit at a seat that pleases them. Then there are people who walk into a restaurant and just plonk down into whatever seat they like, without even breaking their stride. Whether they are alone or dragging a less obnoxious friend with them, or worse, a girlfriend.

The first kind waits for the waiter to arrive, the second kind calls the waiter over. The first diligently looks at the menu and orders something from the menu. The second doesn't bother looking at the menu and starts off by asking about the food he wants to eat - it doesn't matter if he's in a Punjabi restaurant and he wants to eat a pizza. "You know the 100g packet of Amul butter? Get one of those and put that in the dish I just ordered ... what do you mean you don't have that in the restaurant? Just pick it up from a nearby store ... come on dude, I'm sure the store across the street sells it, just send out someone and pick it up ... just put it on my bill, but go pick it up."

The first is probably reading a book by himself, or if with a friend, talks quietly. The second talks louder than the rest of the patrons of the restaurant and you can easily hear his opinion on his boss, his family, the latest movies and the food.

The first eats his food quietly without complaining (unless it's terrible). The second constantly calls the waiter over to comment on the food, tell him the rotis are not cooked properly and that the curry could do with more salt.

And then in the end, the first looks at the second and wonders what's wrong with that person, if he was hugged too little or too much as a child, if he beats his wife at home, if he is hated at work, if the waiter is going to spit in his food but in the end, wanting to become the second person. And then goes home to blog about him.

A TV and a Dish

There's a TV in my apt now. It's an LG Flatron. I also have my own satellite dish that streams a bunch of programs right into my living room without any pesky cables that get stolen, or cable company that claims not to be able to do anything about the sudden loss of service. The installation was quite efficient. Two guys showed up with a dish and some cables and proceeded to drill holes on the walls of my roof and laid out the cable. The service was activated and soon I had Sonali Bendre talking to me about the services provided by my Tata Sky dish. I get 100+ channels in this package but not enough S. Indian Channels. I might need to modify the package. I miss Sun Music and would like to keep myself up to date with the Tamil music. But more importantly, the junk that's on TV these days is horrible. Every channel has four to five tickers with news on them. And the rest is just loud music. I watched four actors in some movie dance to a version of "Rock the Casbah". I need (all) my Telugu Channels so I can atleast watch some movies.

My TV itself is quite cool. At first it looked like the remote didn't work and that I had a patch of color on the TV, but I got the remote exchanged and the color patch disappeared after a "reboot". The TV even has a game built into it!!! It's a modified form of Space Invaders.

On the satellite I get CNN International and can probably get ESPN if I sprung for it, but I'll hold off on it - after all, I doubt I'll get NFL on it. There are a lot of interactive channels on it. For example I can look at Matrimonial ads (Active Matrimonial) and if I like a match, I can send an SMS and get contacted by the other party. There are also some channels called Active Stories and Active Learning. In the absence of my laptop, I think these will do finely.

Ridin' dirty

A little glimpse at my road experiences so far.

This is what I looked like the first few days I went to work. Protection for my hair, eyes and nose/mouth.

And this is me with my helmet. Better or worse? Frankly the helmet gets the edge because in addition to protecting my skull, it actually doesn't mess up my hair too much.

This is my scooter.

Awaiting real license plates. (If I name my scooter Sasha and no one gets the reference, is it still funny?

This is an extremely common sight on the roads here. Women cover their faces almost completely, and in some cases even wear shades to protect their eyes while on the road. It's not limited to drivers or even passengers of two wheelers. Even pedestrians and bus passengers do this. In case I haven't mentioned it before, the non-nose/mouth covering is to protect their hair. And that's a sign that women are beginning to put effort into how they look. A good sign.

Snippets from a weekend

As Friday evening was approaching , and I didn't get any invitations to any wild parties, I figured I should plan on hitting a movie. A little online search showed me a list of movies playing in the city and since there weren't any decent English ones, I tried looking for a Telugu movie. (As if! No Hindi movies if I can avoid them!) There was one called "Shouryam" (Courage) playing at a multiplex near home. I have been to a multiplex before but this would be my first solo effort. The show starts at 10:30pm. This is what is called a "Second Show". The traditional timings for movies in India are - "Morning Show", "Matinee", "Evening Show", "First Show" and "Second Show". The times are approximately - 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 8pm and 11pm. I found the multiplex and my first pleasant surprise was that the seats were numbered. This meant that there would be none of the "Excuse me, would you mind sitting in a desolate corner of the theater since you are alone and obviously not worthy of a good seat?" As it turned out, I did get asked to switch seats, but to a better seat, to accommodate someone's friend. I didn't mind, but the friend didn't want to switch.

I had to walk through a metal detector when I got into the theater. (It was the same at a mall earlier. Somehow I got the feeling that the security at malls is better than the security at airports!) When I walked into the hall 10 minutes before the show, it was empty! I was surprised because the guy at the booking counter said that it was a full show. I think it's because it's considered "uncool" to sit in the hall before the movie starts; within minutes people started pouring in and the hall was full. There were no previews of movies, but they sang the national anthem before the movie began and everyone stood. They took it relatively seriously in that I couldn't hear any whispering going on or people refusing to stand up.

The movie itself was pretty crappy - when will directors realize that you need to be able to tell a good story before you can put it on film - but the experience was sort of fun. There was a lot of whistling and howling at the heroine, at the hero as he beat up the villains and at the comedy scenes. There weren't many (any?) single girls and very few married women. Perhaps it was because it was a second show. As the show ended and I took my vehicle (I'm going to refer to it as as a scooter) on the road, it felt oddly comforting. It was the first time in ages that I was on Indian roads that late (1:30 am). But I was on my own vehicle and was free to just do whatever I wanted. I didn't have to rush home. I could go into the city and get wild. But that's the kind of freedom you relish when you're 15 or 20. At my age I just wanted to get home and curl into my blanket and pass out. Which is exactly what I did.

On Saturday I applied for a land line. And spent the rest of the day driving around my new city. It was a very nice day and the traffic wasn't terrible. I visited a National War Memorial. I say "a" because it seems there are many such memorials in the country. And then I tried to visit a mall but felt too cheap to pay for the parking. I went to a book store instead and got myself a big book of Sudoku! There's a lot of new Indian authors writing about a whole lot of crappy topics that the new generation is supposed to care about (books of fiction about call centers, career-oriented single women,romance in college etc) . I sincerely hope this fad dies a quick death so we can get some real literature.

It looks pretty unlikely that I'll be getting broadband at home. So it'll be either dial-up or some sort of a wireless card. I almost certainly won't get the Vonage phone to work. So no US number for me. (If you really love me you'll pay for the long distance call, man!)

What kind of money do you make?

What? That's not an improper question. Is it? I dunno, I'm getting asked that so frequently that I am beginning to think it's acceptable.

The first time was my landlord. He was asking a few questions about my work and my company, presumably to ascertain if I would be able to pay his rent every month. At one point he asked me (in Hindi), "How much do you make?" I tried to evade it by saying "Well, I just got here, they're trying to finalize the amount etc" He insisted, "You must have an idea right?" I gave him a reduced figure. He seemed satisfied by it.

The second time was by a cop. I spent a few hours at a bookstore and as I was leaving the parking lot and entered the main road, I got pulled over by a cop - well flagged over. He asked for my driving license, which, bless my dad, I had brought with me to Pune on a last second impulse. His impulse. He told me that I had just driven in the wrong direction on a one-way.

(Let me express my outrage for a second here - at any given point in time half of Pune is driving on the wrong side. They're driving on highways, on small streets, in parking lots in the direction that gets them to where they want to go the fastest. The direction of the road has nothing to do with it.)

I tried to argue that there was no sign. The constable was quite polite actually, he walked with me to the sign. There apparently was a sign (it was written on the inside of the building's parking lot, not on the road) but I really didn't see it. I tried to explain that I was new to the city and that it was my first offense but it was pointless. He took me to the big guy who told me that I would be getting fined for driving in the wrong direction. Again, I tried to talk my way out of it but he took it to mean that I was asking for a reduced fine - read BRIBE. I didn't get that he was asking for a bribe till he said "two hundred rupees," and then pocketed the money without giving me a receipt.

And then he began asking me questions.
"What do you do?"
"I'm an engineer."
"Software?"
"No."
"What company do you work for?"
"Halliburton"
"What sort of work do they do?"
At this point there was a combination of accidental and purposeful miscommunication.
"We dig holes in the ground"
"Oh, you're a Civil engineer?"
"Yes." (Under normal circumstances I would never be caught dead calling myself a Civil Engineer.)

and then -

"What do you make?"
I pretended to not hear the question. He asked again.
"Twenty thousand rupees a month."
That seemed to impress them a bit. In a bad sort of way. He turned to another person nearby and told him, "I am nearing the end of my service and I just get Twelve thousand. This guy is making twenty thousand already."

He let me go. I had the feeling the fine (bribe) I was going to pay was sort of dependent on the number I told him, which is why I tried to give a figure that was low and yet realistic. I wonder what he would have said if I told him what I really make.

No, don't ask!

Lazy Hindi

I speak a LOT of Hindi these days. (Waiting for the giggling and guffawing to stop.) I do. I walk into a store and I don't even try to speak English, even into relatively big stores. The only time I remember speaking in English was in a Raymonds store and that too because the store keeper initiated the conversation in English.

The transformation into a Hindi speaker has taken even me by surprise. I lived in Hyderabad for a significant part of my life, so speaking Hindi itself is not new to me. What is surprising is the fluency that has returned. I am using idioms, slang and bargaining effortlessly. Of course, I don't think I am fooling a lot of people, but instead of thinking, "Wow, an NRI sucka!" they are atleast thinking "Wow, a non-Pune sucka!" which is good enough.

What isn't good enough is the Hindi that I speak. It's good enough to communicate but it's such a bastardized version that I cringe when I hear myself speak. Hindi is not native to Maharashtra. So, much like Hyderabad, they speak a functional version of it, instead of a pure version. (Sort of like High School Americans speaking English - technically it's English, but the Queen would faint upon hearing it.) It's a lazy version of the language with insufficient matching of subject and verb. Sometimes even the names are pronounced improperly, with the softer versions of the consonants replacing the real versions. Oh and the almost universal infiltration of English. I once heard two students speak absolutely beautifully pure Hindi on a bus in Austin once (they weren't trying hard, it was clearly how they normally spoke). So beautiful that I wanted to just get off the bus and follow them and keep listening to them. I hope to hear Hindi like that spoken again one day.

Mind you, it's not like the Telugu spoken in Hyderabad is any better. For that matter you hardly hear any Telugu spoken in the city in business transactions. A person I know in fact tried to speak exclusively in Telugu with the auto drivers to make a point. And that's sad. I only hope that there are still some people who still cringe when improper Hindi/Telugu is spoken, much like I cringe when improper English is spoken.

The Philosophy of Driving

Drivers in India are not that different from those in the US. I used to think, and still do, that there are fundamentally some things that are different about Americans and Indians. Overall courtesy, attitude toward hard work, attitude toward more vague concepts like freedom and justice etc. One difference I assumed existed was in driving attitude. In the US, people don't cut across lanes in a traffic jam, they don't honk incessantly just to express annoyance. But basically they're in a hurry and will anything they can to get to their destination faster. That's what Indians do too.

As I was driving last night (before the bug incident), I was squeezed in between a group of vehicles but a gap opened up between two autos which, if I could navigate through, I would hit daylight and be in the clear. At that very moment, the guy on the two wheeler on my right saw that gap too, and even though basically his front wheel was a few inches my front wheel, he accelerated through and cut in front of me. I managed to avoid hitting him but before I could shout at him, he had squeezed through the gap and was gone.

The thing is, this sort of a thing happened to me a lot in Houston - I am in my lane and I have left a decent gap between my car and the car in front of me. This gap is "mine", it comes from my discretion and it gives me the luxury of a few extra milliseconds to respond in case the car in front of decides to stop all of a sudden. But the guy in the lane to me feels that the gap is big enough to squeeze in and does so. Now I am forced to brake and move back to create the same gap here.

It's the same selfish principles at play. The difference of course is the level at which they actually affect you - ranging from annoying to even more annoying. The difference comes from things like the cost of a collision. In the US because of the prices of the cars and speeds of driving, it's much higher.

In spite of that I'll take the US any day.