Zen and the Art of Indian Living

Today I thought I’d spend a little time trying to convey some of the differences and unique challenges of day-to-day living in India. To start with, the scenery in my neighborhood is a little different than what you’d find around a typical upscale apartment building in Minneapolis or any other American city.
This is Artillery Road. My apartment building is about 100 yards up the road on the left.
Artillery Rd is very busy with both pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Typical of Bangalore roads, it is very narrow with no, or very poorly maintained sidewalks. As a result, people generally have to walk in the streets as this kid is doing (and as I was doing when I took the picture).
Interestingly, although the daily paper I get, The Times of India, carries articles virtually every day about what must be done to fix traffic congestion, I have not yet seen anyone suggest building decent sidewalks so pedestrians don’t consume 25% of the limited street space available.

You won’t find some of my Artillery Road neighbors in most Minneapolis neighborhoods (these were all taken on Artillery Rd in one day)






How many cows can you find in this picture (double-clicking should open a larger version of the photo)? I’ll give you hint, it’s 4. There is one in the shadows right behind the lady in the blue saree. The one in the foreground is just standing in the middle of a 3-way intersection. I watched her for a few minutes as cars turned around her. It didn’t bother her in the least.


Some of the road signs may be a little unfamiliar to the typical American as well. I’ve been told that 50-75% of the land area in Bangalore is owned by the military and there are 600,000 reserve troops here in the city. I don’t know if I believe this as it would mean 10% of the population is in the reserves. Regardless, there are a lot of military installations and you always know when you are by one. As a friend here said “The all have the same wall with the same bricks and the same trees growing perfectly straight that were all planted at the same time 30 yrs ago.” The military is also very concerned about, how should I put this, people defiling their property…




Yes, they run a tight operation here. And just in case you think this sign is just a fun anomaly, look at the entire wall… I’m not sure what happens if you are caught parking or urinating but I bet it isn’t good

This next sign has to be one of my favorite on Artillery Road.


Public urination is obviously a big concern here. The signs don’t actually do anything as it is very common place – for men anyway, I haven’t seen any women flaunting the public urination laws. To truly appreciate this sign however you need to step back and see the whole area


It is sad in that the amount of litter is very common but the irony is priceless – I expect MasterCard to use it in a commercial soon.

Once I get on the grounds of Zen Gardens it looks much more like a typical American apartment complex




Even here some signs are obviously foreign but you can usually understand them.


Obviously, this means Don’t Pick the Flowers. And the next is showing the location of a rainwater collection cistern.



There are some however that I don’t think I will ever understand….


Sometimes it feels like everything is upside down but I just can’t figure out what this is trying to tell me. My best guess is it has something to do with the electrical lines buried below. Maybe there is a Ground / Earth Wire buried here but that still doesn’t explain why the arrow points up.
Even the elevator has an interesting sign.

I’m sure this is intended to make me feel safe but just the fact that it is needed is a little disconcerting

My apartment itself is really nice. Marble floors throughout and the bathrooms have great tile work.T he furniture and art came with the apartment. When I get back after Christmas I think I will start to decorate a little.

I have provided one bit of Midwestern Culture as you can see on my living room chair.












There are a couple unique things to learn about living in an Indian apartment. For example, hot water is a luxury. To take a warm shower (note I did not say “hot”), you need to switch this guy on about 20 minutes in advance.

This is a hot water Geyser. Essentially a mini-hot water heater. Each bathroom comes with an individual geyser. This fabulous little guy allows me to take a 6 minute moderately warm shower. Before anyone thinks I am complaining consider how much better this is for the environment. You only heat the water you absolutely need, you don’t waste water, and you are only using energy to heat water when you need it. All-in-all the pros offset the cons pretty well




Doing laundry is also a little different. Dryers are a recent introduction to India hence the homes are not really designed for them yet. I need to do a little set-up when I dry clothes.

This could also explain why my laundry room only has one outlet. I can wash, dry or iron at any given time.


Lastly, the sheer number of switches is incredible. I have a panel like this in every room. In case you are wondering, starting in the upper left corner these are for:
A wall light, another wall light, the hallway light, a ceiling fan, speed dial for the fan, a ceiling light, a second ceiling fan and a second speed dial. The last two are not switches.


The last thing I will mention is the kitchen. Two unique things; first, tap water is not drinkable so every kitchen has a water purfication system. It really adds to the asthetic of the room. Also note the hot water geyser in the upper right corner.



Second, ovens are not used in Indian cooking hence the kitchen is only equipped with a cooktop. I brought a pizze oven (the black thing) with me in case I want to bake something. The microwave came with the apartment.


I’ll leave you with some of my views.


Construction everywhere – Bangalore is adding 700 people per day. Most are from rural areas hoping to get in on the technology boom.



Palm trees and color everywhere.






In the background are some of the modern hotels. In the foreground you can see the traditional way of drying clothes


No matter how strange things may seem at times, at the end of the day you can always find a friendly, familiar face when you know where to look...

Russell Market

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On Saturday I had to run an errand to Commercial Street; one of the main shopping areas in Bangalore. After finishing my driver wanted to show me a market nearby. We walked to Russell Market. At Russell Market you can get all types of fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh meat. Really fresh meat. The following photos show Russell Market. Warning: The photos show the really fresh meat. Don't say I didn't warn you...

A typical clothing booth on the way to Russell Market

The Bascilica of St. Mary - The largest church in Bangalore





A typical street scene


Vegetables
Fresh Mutton
Fish - Bangalore is 150 mi from the ocean so not sure how fresh it is

If you want "decent poultry" this is the place to go

If you want to step up to "excellent poultry" you just need to go next door.

If you want to go all out you can move up to "famous chicken"

Here is what they are all trying to sell you - very very frest poultry

This photo I just love because it captures one of the things that makes Bangalore so interesting; the old and the new side-by-side. The guy in the foreground is wearing an i-pod, you can see the ear buds, while his friend is delivering a tray of sweets the old-fashioned way
The last stop is the beef building
Don't let all the birds of prey bother you. I don't know if they are hawks or eagles but they are big.


Only the beef building has these birds. I guess that means the beef is the most fresh...
And here is the fresh beef

One last photo of a few of the thousands of auto-rickshaws in town

The Computer is Dead - Long Live the Computer

After one month in transit, my air freight shipment finally arrived on Nov. 21. It was only supposed to take 2 weeks so I packed enough bathroom supplies for about 3 weeks thinking this would be plenty and put the rest of my stock in the shipment. Needless to say, this plan didn't work out exactly as I'd envisioned. Did you know there are 17,691 types of body spray deodorant (and a store called Big Bazaar sells them all) here but not a single Speed Stick or any other type of roll on deodorant? I just found this interesting.

How does all this relate to computers you may be wondering. My 4 month old HP desktop computer was also in the shipment. Because I hadn't seen if for a month, I was pretty excited to get it set-up and have a home PC again.

Before going on I need to mention that the outlets & plugs here are much different than in the US and the electricity supply is 240 volts vs 120 in the US. This basically means that anything electrical needs two things: an adapter for the plug so it fits the Indian socket and a voltage converter. Without a voltage converter, in technical terms, you will fry whatever you plug in. Unless...unless the device has been built to take both 120 & 240 volt inputs. Computer manufacturers have gotten pretty smart, particularly with laptops since people tend to take them all over the world, and build them to do just that.

So before plugging anything in I checked to ensure all my components accepted 240v input:
Computer - 240 check
Monitor - 240 check
Printer - 240 check
External Hard Drive - 240 check
Camera Power Cord - 240 check
New Computer Speakers - 240 not check

Excellent, 5 out of 6 devices don't need a converter. This is good news since I only brought one with me.

All cables connected - check... power switches: printer on - looks good check, monitor, external hard drive, camera all on and looking good check. Hard drive on - a loud Snap, Crackle, and Pop and things are no longer looking good. Evidently after ensuring the computer was capable of accepting 240v I didn't actually flip the little switch on the back to let it know 240 volts would soon be coming right at it. This was bad.

Fortunately my neighbor, who also works for Target, knows quite a bit about computers. Todd, I've got a little problem with my computer, here's what I did...how bad is that? It took Todd 5-6 seconds to say "You blew out your power supply." Now this is sounding really bad. I don't know about a computer but I know if I blew out my personal "power supply" I wouldn't be happy. "Don't worry, in the US you can get a new one at any computer supply store for $30-$40." Things are looking up. If I was 12,000 miles away I could have this fixed in no time.

If it would take just a few hours in the US, it couldn't take more that 4-8 weeks here. So my computer went into surgery. 15 minutes later (with Todd's help) and I was holding a metal box about 3"x3"x1" with approximately 150 wires coming out of it. HP was kind enough to put a warning label on it saying that if it was removed the warranty would be void but I wasn't about the let The Man stop me at this point.

"So all I need to do is find one of these, huh?" So I got out the Bangalore Bible also known as the Overseas Women's Club Guide to Bangalore (don't laugh, those overseas women are a tough crowd and more importantly they really know what they are talking about). The OWC recommended a place called Excel Traders for electronics. If it is good enough for the OWC it is good enough for me.

Excel Traders is on Dispesery Road, a typical street near the heart of Bangalore.

Dispensery Rd on a Sat. Morning


Excel Traders

I brought my electrical octopus inside. The inside of Excel Traders is like a mini-Home Depot for electronics. A gentlman name Sayid asked if he could help me. I held up the power supply as if it had deliberately tricked me into burning it out. "I need a new one of these," I said. "Do you have anything like this?" Of course being a good Mid-Westerner I was thinking, 'There is no way he is going to have this. I'll end up paying $100 and waiting 8 weeks before finding out I they can't find one'. Instead he said "Come back in one hour."

Hmm, now this is interesting. If he has one, why do I have to wait an hour? Are they that busy? Will it take that long to find it in the aisles of components? If they don't have it in the shop how can they possibly find one in an hour? All good questions that I didn't ask or care how they were answered.

One hour and about $35 later, I had a new, living, electical octopus for my computer. I am firmly convinced Excel is the greatest electronics store in the world.

Now it was only a simple matter of reinstalling it.

"So Todd, how do I do this?" "Well, that wire goes there. That one powers the hard drive so it goes there. Those three are for the USB ports, they go like this." "Cool" I said. "How about this last one?" The perplexed look on Todd's face told me the computer repair express was close to jumping the tracks. "Hmm" he said. "It really looks like it should connect to somthing doesn't it. Well, not connecting it won't hurt anything. Something just won't work when you turn it on so you'll know where it should go then. That's a much better option than connecting it to the wrong thing and hearing Snap, Crackle, Pop again." This seemed like a reasonable deduction to me so with just a bit of hesitation I reassembled the patient, reconnected it, plugged it in, and turned on the power with a very quick jab of the power button. No explosions, smoke, or burning plastic. The computer was alive again.

You would think this experiece taught me a valuable lesson but later in the day I plugged my new speakers in to 240v. The still aren't working.

Shock and Awe in Bangalore

The three day festival of Diwali just ended. This is a HUGE celebration commemorating the return of Lord Ram to India after defeating the demon Ravana who had kidnapped his wife Sita. To celebrate the return of one of the most important Gods in the Hindu religion people have big family celebrations, exchange gifts, and enjoy fireworks.

Before I talk about the fireworks I just have to say how cool it was to celebrate this holiday at the house of several Target ex-pats and meet people from India, Canada, Serbia, Hong Kong, and England.

Fireworks. Exorcise any notion of the 4th of July fireworks from your mind (unless you are my family, the stuff we light off would fit right in as would the ceremonial burning of the Christmas trees). Fireworks in Bangalore, or ‘crackers’ are an entirely different experience. The best analogy, and I know it is good onebecause every ex-pat I’ve talked to has independently arrived at the same analogy, is the first night of the ‘shock and awe’ campaign over Baghdad. Constant flashes of light, explosions, skyrockets, and mortars erupted seemingly from every house, street corner, and roof top.

It was amazing in so many ways; amazingly beautiful, amazingly loud, amazingly fun and amazingly scary all at once. Beautiful because of the pure randomness and volume of fireworks. Loud because they don’t mess around here with the toys we call firecrackers. Here a firecracker is like an M-80 (these are illegal just about everywhere in the US). String a couple dozen M-80s together, ignite around 100,000 of these strings over the course of three days and you get the idea. My brother-in-law once procured a ¼ stick of dynamite (don’t know where and don’t care) one 4th of July. I thought this was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen on the 4th of July. I have a distinct pyro-streak in me. Dirt 20 feet and it actually left a small crater when it blew. Bear in mind that this is in rural WI where the nearest neighbor is ¼ mile away. Sorry to tell you this Aaron but your ¼ stick of dynamite would get its little explosive a-- kicked by the fireworks here. Which brings me to the scary part; there isn’t a quarter mile between houses here, more like 3 feet.

Many houses have roof top decks. That is where a lot of the fireworks are launched from. These fireworks, big, explosive, and loud are not made with the same quality control as you are used to. It is very common for one to shoot out the side of the launch tube as I found out first-hand. Whatever is in the way is going to be Baghdad to the firework’s F117A Stealth Fighter. This could be a house, tree, or you so on Diwali laugh with family, new and old friends, eat and drink until late into the night and don’t turn your back when the fireworks are being lit.

The Garbage Man

Although I’d visited my apartment several times before moving in it never occurred to me to ask about garbage. I’d asked about all the really important stuff; is the internet connection ready, where are the cable jacks, what do each of the 68 switches throughout the apartment do (this is not an exaggeration, I counted them), but I never asked about garbage.

This is not a trivial question as kitchen garbage disposals and dishwashers are unknown luxuries thus all food waste goes in the garbage cans. In a climate that stays above 70 degrees year round, food waste gets unpleasant very quickly and attracts a lot of room mates I don’t want.

So on the day I moved in, this question finally occurred to me. So as I was in the apartment with Stephen, my driver who speaks some English (primarily “Yes Paul” in answer to every question) and Ramesh, a person from the apartment who’s English is a good as my Hindi. So there we were, three people who could barely communicate. Me trying to find out where to take garbage and them trying to understand what the hell I was asking.

The puzzled looks on both their faces when I asked “What do I do with garbage?” told me I needed to try a different tactic. After dismissing the tried-and-true method of asking the same question louder I opted for the ‘how many similes can I think of’ method. “Garbage, trash, waste, refuse,” I tried accompanied by what I am sure are the international hand gestures for garbage, trash, waste, and refuse. When Stephen said “yes Paul,” then showed me how to turn on the microwave I know we weren’t quite connecting. Thus on to plan B.

Plan B consisted of me calling my contact in the Target relocation office as I know she speaks both English and Hindi very well. I explained to her my question, she translated to Stephen (even he seemed amused by showing me the microwave once he understood) who translated to Ramesh who replied to Stephen who translated for me the response of “come.” We went out to the hallway and he said ‘garbage here’. “No there is not garbage here,” I said. “Where does the garbage go?” I asked now that we all at least had the same definition of garbage. I was motioned to the elevator. The three of us proceeded to the underground parking garage (floor -1 in India). Ramesh pointed to an ominous looking, padlocked black door. OK I thought, that’s the garbage room, my question is answered even if it is locked. Worst case I could put the garbage bags outside the door. I went to bed happy having successfully employed all my resources to solve the garbage dilemma.

The next morning at 8:30 am, my door bell rang. Two ladies were in the hallway. When I opened the door that asked “garbage”? After 30 minutes of playing “where do I take my garbage?” the night before the answer was as simple as put it outside the door and it gets picked up each morning.

The story could end here with me being amused at the whole process but I told this story to a couple other Target ex-pats who have been in India for quite a while. They saw the humor in my perspective but then Tracy said something very interesting; “Think of how Ramesh and Stephen are telling the story.”

“So last night this American moved into A702. He asked what to do with litter but called it ‘garbage’. We told him but that wasn’t good enough so we showed him where to put it in the hallway so the garbage ladies can pick it up in the morning. That still wasn’t good enough. He made us take him to the basement and show him the room the garbage ladies throw it in. That seemed to satisfy him. These Americans are a strange people. I wonder if they are all obsessed with garbage? I just hope he isn’t as concerned about the toilets.”