24 march-ABCD

After this post, I'll finally be caught up to the present day!

Yesterday one of the men on the Grants Team told me he lives an hour away from work in the other direction, traveling daily from Vijayanagar. His advice was to leave early and arrive at work around 8:30 AM to beat traffic. I woke up easily, having knocked out the day before, and my uncle called the cab driver we've been using, Chini, to come. He got to the apartment around 8:05 and incredibly, I reached work in only twenty minutes. I was the first one in the office save the guard and the bayi (maidservant). They must have thought I was crazy for coming in that early- I just hadn't anticipated the total lack of traffic.

Where I work, the office culture is much more relaxed than what I'm used to. People stroll in anywhere between 9 and 10 and leave any time between 5:30 pm and 7 pm. Interestingly, there is no variation beyond these ranges. To leave at 5 pm or arrive at 8:15 am is decidedly odd.

Lunchtime is (surprise) proving to be my favourite time of the day. But not because of the respite from work, which I actually love, but because of the conversation. Most of the team brings food from home and all gathers around a small table to eat (I think I mentioned this in my previous post). There is a great mix of people from all over India, and that of course means many different languages, accents, experiences and foods.

The beautiful part of lunchtime is how all of these come together for funny little interactions and exchanges. Everyone swaps tastes of food so today for lunch I sampled groundnut chutney (a Bangalore special), idli (South Indian), ridged gourd (for which several different names were provided...but the bringer was Tamilian), roti (North Indian) and more. People jest with each other good-naturedly about their home states and ask what this word or that is in this or that language.

Today lunchtime conversation touched on alcohol, America, gun control , Indian food, prices, conversions, cricket and who knows what else.

One of the men on the team is very Christian and has never touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Another man was enjoying regaling him with tales of alcoholics and their doings. Apparently Indians love to eat very spicy food/snacks with their alcohol and I was informed that this is because of the oil and fat in spicy snacks that allows alcohol to digest faster. I was warned that sweet foods with alcohol would make one feel the effects very strongly.

Working class men, tired after a day of hard labour, may go into bars and without even sitting down they will "throw back a 90", hold out their hand for some nuts, rub down their muscles with a bit of the alcohol and go back out to work. I was a little confused by this image. A 90 refers to 90 mLs, and is an Indian (or at least a modern Bangalore) way to refer to the typical amount of alcohol consumed in one setting. A 60 corresponds to 60 mLs, a large, and a 30 to a small. Nuts, of course, are typical bar food. And the muscles?

Well this gets even more complicated. In Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state in India, liquor laws completely forbid the sale of out-of-state liquor. This means all liquor is state-produced and consequentially, really terrible stuff. In fact it apparently so nears the consistency of oil that it can certainly be used to rub down sore muscles...

So from alcohol we started on American drinking culture. They were amazed that there is drinking on college campuses - this is unheard of in India, where students are much more serious. This same Christian man in my office has an image of America as a dangerous place, where everyone owns a gun and alcoholism is rampant. So I was asked about gun control, and we talked a little about school shootings, and how Bowling for Columbine depicts the accessibility of weapons.

Income is another area where India and America differ considerably. A comfortable income in India might be lower middle-class in America, but of course prices are different as well...

Perhaps the most defining feature of today was the talk of cricket and then the match. It is currently the Cricket World Cup, being hosted in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. If you're interested, it is streaming live at

http://www.espnstar.com/cwclive/

The quarterfinals match (India v Australia) was today, and I entirely underestimated the importance of such an event. I knew India loved cricket, but to what extent, I had no idea...

My colleagues were distraught at my total lack of cricket knowledge and confession that I have never in fact seen an entire cricket match. "Live??" "No...ever..." I then mentioned that I am vaguely related to Sachin Tendulkar (the David Beckham of cricket) and people went wild. With such a cricket legend in my family, how could I not know the first thing about the sport? I was labelled a total "ABCD", Indian slang for "American-born Confused Desi" something I've always prided myself on NOT being! I was after all, Indian-born. But apparently you can become ABCD. Hopefully you can un-become it too.

The game began at 2:30 PM and the office pretty much shut down after that. "Welcome to India" I was told, and everyone from CEO to cook went downstairs to the conference room where one guy had projected the game from his laptop to watch and cheer. My boss gave me a crash course in Indian cricket, gaping and tutting at my naive questions. Snacks were put out and coffee and tea brought around. Cricket matches go on for hours, so people came in and out or just brought their laptops down and worked while watching. There is a true obsession in Indian culture for cricket. Every Indian seems to know all the intricacies of the game in the way the English know their football.

Today was sweltering hot and after the excitement of the cricket match and a couple more hours of work, the cab came to take me home. This was my first true encounter with Indian rush hour traffic and boy, is it something. I cannot explain to you how I made it home in one piece but miraculously I did. Cars - no, not even cars, just moving THINGS were flying from five directions at once. There is no 'right-of-way', just free usage of horns and a shared overwhelming desire to creep into the smallest gaps ever to worm one's way forward.

The best part of this whole thing is that in the midst of this awful mess was a little white car just as obnoxious as the rest with a sign on the back:

For rash negligent driving or violation of traffic rules please call.

There was no number on the sign to call. A perfect representation of traffic in India.

I made it home so frustrated! I had had a great day, but one hour in that terrible traffic and I was moody as can be. And I'm certainly no fun when moody. But I settled down to more old family albums my grandmother showed me (yesterday she showed me all these old letters and cards I had written to her...so funny!) and wonderful conversation with my uncle who is full of stories to share.

We were talking about the development, corruption and government issues raised by the work I am doing at my internship. He told me how he was posted in Bihar and used to see mutilated bodies be carted away on the coal truck- likely people who had refused to participate in the intricate system of bribery on which the state runs. We talked about how Indians have so much intelligence, and so little organization, that things are never accomplished without unnecessary waste. German software engineers on the other hand, according to my uncle, are outstandingly meticulous, something that seems to be innate to their culture the way IST (Indian Standard Time) is to ours. IST in both the literal and metaphorical sense- India's time zone is actually Indian Standard Time and the phrase also refers to how Indians accomplish things at their own pace. If you want something by 8, you might very well get it by 9.

So that's about all today! There always seems to be too much to write but I guess the posts will get shorter as I get used to things and tire of commenting on the mundane...until then please bear with the length!