Incredible India!

Sometimes India can intrigue and beguile. And sometimes it can be just plain annoying. Here's a little scene that I was a part of recently. You need to imagine me in the restaurant in a very good hotel in one of the larger cities in India. After finally getting the waiter's attention I ordered a curry and some naan bread. Our conversation then went like this:

Waiter: You can't have naan bread.

Me: Why not?

Waiter: Because plain rice would be good for you.

Me: Thank you, but I would like naan please.

Waiter: No, you should have rice with this curry.

Me: Please, I would like to eat naan.

Waiter: Ok mam, I will bring you rice.

Me: No, please bring me naan.

Waiter: Yes, rice for you.

Me: Excuse me, but please bring me naan not rice.

Waiter: Yes mam.

Twenty minutes then elapsed (which is way too long, but that's a whole other issue). The waiter then brings out curry and rice. Once the rice was on the table I asked if he was also bringing naan and he responded 'but you did not order it Mam'. In the words of India's Tourism Board: Incredible India!

India's Cows Strike Again!

The front page of one of Delhi's leading newspapers, The Indian Express, carried a tongue-in-cheek (I hope) article reporting comments made at the Cow Protection and Conservation Board's inaugural national workshop in Madhya Pradesh. Here are some of the gems:

• Only those inside houses coated with cow dung escaped the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy
• There are only two ways to remain insulated from nuclear radiation, and one of them is the application of cow dung [to people and property, just in case you were wondering]
• Using cow dung can ensure normal birth instead of a c-section
• Those who drink the milk of jersey cows and buffaloes commit more crimes than those who drink only Desi [Indian] cow's milk
• Foreign cow breeds give only poisoned milk which causes autism and heart attacks
• 10 grams of cow's milk ghee [essentially clarified butter] is equal to 100 tonnes of oxygen
• Children become more obedient if they drink cow's milk [presumably only Desi milk though].

The conference finished with the announcement that the state of Madhya Pradesh will strictly enforce new anti-cow slaughter legislation (it's already illegal to buy and sell beef in India). Special designated officers will now roam the streets of Madhya Pradesh monitoring cow activity. Those accused (not guilty of) an offence under the new legislation could serve up to seven years in prison. The legislation also authorises officers to raid a person's house on suspicion of crimes under the act.  All I have been able to think about all day is how much I'd kill for a steak sandwich.  I'm just not sure that it's worth seven years in prison!

Covert Acts of Independence

It's 2012 and I'm back after a (or is it an?) hiatus induced from a combination of ridiculous amounts of work and writer's block arising from the discovery that there were rather a lot of people reading my blog. You see, when I was a kid at school, I used to go to pieces in exams. Not because I didn't work hard (I did!), but because I hated the thought of my work actually being judged. But I'm all grown up now, and am going to proceed on the assumption that only my Mum will be reading this. So how is life in India you ask, Mum? Brilliant actually, except that I seem to have lost my independence.

An Aussie in their late twenties is considered to be a reasonably independent and functioning member of society. Most of us have managed to join the adult world of secure employment. We have to live somewhere and generally we have managed to hoodwink real estate agents into renting us apartments. Though, some of us have sold our souls to merchant banks and law firms and have consequently joined the property classes (but can only afford shoebox proportioned apartments - see there is some justice). Yes, we occasionally require emergency “loans” from Dad for absolutely essential purchases – such as shoes - and I have been known to ring up Mum for a dose of self esteem. But by this point in our lives we are expected to be able to get up in the morning, make our own beds, assemble vaguely healthy food for ourselves, pay our taxes and generally go about our days contributing to society and the economy (see Dad, the shoes were essential - it's holding back the tide of recession that is threatening to crash upon us).

But not anymore! Independence now means doing shocking things like making my own cups of tea. Actually, it turns out making tea involves a remarkable amount of effort on my part. First I have to find the cups. Don't look at me like that, it's harder than it sounds. I have a housekeeper (she's sort of like having a Mum except I have to remember to pay her at the end of each month). My housekeeper is so incredibly bored (because I don't have 10 screaming children, I live in a pretty small apartment and I still like doing most of my own cooking) so she has taken to rearranging the contents of my kitchen cupboards every week. Therefore, all my acts of culinary independence must now start with a treasure hunt. Once the equipment and ingredients have been found there's the water that has to be boiled obsessively to kill the various bugs that would prefer to see me dead, and don't even get me started on milk (I've just given it up, it just got too hard). It's quite exhausting actually. When I've managed to get myself a cuppa I seem to have acquired contagious dementia and I tend to leave it places and my housekeeper (who is overly attentive) will have it washed up and put back in a secret cupboard before I can locate it again. It's a start I guess.

My other acts of spontaneous independence are equally banal though slightly more fraught. I've taken to driving myself (oh yes), in my own car to various destinations in Delhi. I know, radical! Assuming that you're not actually my Mum (it's possible), I must let you know that I love cars. I love cars as much as I love sparkly shoes - and that's saying something. So I couldn't imagine living here and not spending at least some of my time driving. But there are a few issues. Firstly, I'm a bit embarrassed by my car. I wish I had an Aston Martin! I could hold my head up high in a BMW. Hey, at this point I'd even settle for a Mazda. However, practicality, availability and obviously price demanded that I purchase a Toyota. Not just any Toyota, a diesel (oh yes, it gets worse) people mover. And it's beige. Oh my goodness, I could die from the public humiliation. When I'm a B-list celebrity and appearing on Top Gear I'm going to lose all my street cred when I mention the three years where I drove a diesel Toyota Innova. I'll need to buy something outlandish and likely without a roof to make up for this when I return to Australia!

The second issue is the judgement that comes with me wanting to drive. When I want to use my car I must first ask for my keys from the security guard at my apartment. He normally looks at me with shock and wants to know why. I have enough Hindi to say: because I want to. Which makes me sound like a petulant 3 year old demanding ice cream for breakfast. After I've managed to stare down Mr Security Guard I have to take a big breath and go and knock on my landlords door and ask him to please move his car. He normally asks why (see the theme here). His English is better so I have taken to randomly flattering him as a method of distraction. His wife is probably going to knit me one of his beige cardigans for Christmas next year because I appear to be obsessed with his.  Once I have got everyone's permission and all the physical obstacles have been removed from my driveway I am finally able to get in my car. By now I have normally drawn a crowd on the street (usually because I'm inappropriately dressed in something that reveals my ankles, or, shock horror, my collar bones). Then I must reverse out of my driveway without stalling/running over stray dogs/hitting cows – my independence is quite stressful.

Then I'm free to turn into an aggressive, horn honking and impatient Delhi driver. Thankfully, everything happens on Delhi's roads at low speed (I rarely make it to fourth gear, I have never made it to fifth). You have to keep an eye out for motorbikes, rickshaws, people, buses and of course cows. Nobody ever gives way – that would be losing face and we can't have that. Though traffic lights are (mostly) respected and generally speaking Indians do drive on the left hand side of the road. It's all worth it though! I do get a somewhat perverse sense of satisfaction from going somewhere under my own steam. When I get to the limited number of destinations that I feel comfortable driving to, I feel like I can take as long as I like wandering through the shops, or sitting in a cafe simply staring into space. I can see a movie without feeling guilty about my poor driver being bored out of his brain waiting for me. And then when I return to my car there is no one waiting to judge me for the number of bags that I have. It's quite liberating actually. Even if I am freaking out rather a lot of people in the process.

And just for the curious or the grammaphiles in our midst, google tells me that the a/an debate is superfluous because it is actually proper to say 'on hiatus'. Who knew?

Driving, A Lesson In Karma

The first thing to note about transport in India is that the majority of Indians believe in reincarnation. This is critical to understanding road rules in India and must be kept front of mind for those of us who have only a single incarnation to get our bucket list completed. Seems that it's easier to be reckless when your soul is immortal and your body is just superfluous packaging seeking moksha. I spend the majority of my time on India's roads with my eyes firmly shut, but here are a few of the things I have learnt so far.

Like a good Indian village, there is a complex social system that orders India's roads which simply can't be questioned. As far as I can tell the order of precedence is something like this: buses come before cars; which come before taxis; which come before motorbikes (though they may possibly be the road's untouchables and defy categorisation); which come before scooters; which come before auto rickshaws; which come before non-auto rickshaws; which come before bicycles; which come before people. But cows, well they come before everything. Even ambulances.

India is a chaotic ride, and it seems that this makes you incapable of forward planning. Which is evident in the signalling practices of Delhi's drivers. Indicators simply take the spontaneity out of life. Why would you need to provide advanced warning of your intentions? That's what your horn is for anyway. And if you indicated what your car might be doing next it denies you the opportunity to roll your eyes and teach Caitlin new Hindi swear words. And really, we can't miss an opportunity like that. If you feel like turning right across four lanes of traffic on a read light – no problems! All that is necessary is to proceed and honk your horn loudly. Do it with enough gusto and it's possible to stop buses. And that's saying something! This is usually the point where I start holding my breath (strange reaction, I know).

But let me to turn to helmets, just for a minute. Before arriving I would have been reasonably confident of being able to pick a helmet in a police line-up. Turns out I was woefully ignorant. In India (if you're a man) it is compulsory to wear a helmet. Haven't got a helmet. Not to worry. Got a colander? Perfect! Did your cousin-brother steal your colander this morning when he left early for work? That's ok, use a metal-working visor instead. What! You've leant your metal-working visor to your brother-in-law not to worry, simply tape a piece of plastic (you know the bendy stuff) to your forehead. When I was coming home from work last night I swear I saw a man on a bike with a mixing bowl on his head. Necessity it turns out, really is the mother of invention. But if you are rich enough to be able to afford a full face helmet, then you simply must use it to protect your favoured elbow. You'll have to prioritise one arm over the other though, so think carefully about which arm your prefer to use for fist-waving and gesture making at buses attempting to bring you one life closer to enlightenment.

And finally, the Indian government decided that guttering was for whimps and that the flooding from Delhi's monsoon really a test of fortitude and the survival skills necessary for living in India. The resulting pot holes/craters/black holes are designed to test your reflexes, eliminate the weak and keep everybody on their toes.

Torts, Indian Style

When I was at university studying law, one of my favourite subjects was torts. I'm a self confessed nerd, but I loved doing my readings for class because they were so out of the realms of possibility. I loved that you would start the story with a man walking down the street – pretty normal really. Then you learn that the man was walking down a street in a little English town called X which was sparsely populated but had three main buildings that were (unusually for town's in X's county) set at exactly 37 degree angles from each other. And this English inhabitant was wearing a pair of shoes manufactured at a nondescript factory in Surrey. The judgement probably gave you a very detailed summary of the factory. After reading those five pages you knew what colour the factory was, what the foreman's wife liked to cook for dinner on the third Thursday of each month. And how the glue that they imported from South Africa smelt funny when there was a north wind. And on one particular Thursdays (the third Thursday of that month) there was an extra savage north wind. So the foreman rushed his plebs to make their daily quota of glued shoes extra quickly because the fumes from the South African glue gave him a headache and he wanted to get home to his extra special dinner. And at this point your thinking to yourself, where is this going? Rather like this post I imagine!

Then the case would go off on a tangent and you'd learn all about the weather patterns of North England and that once every thousand years there is a weather inversion. And that isn't a problem unless you are in a sparsely populated town where there are three buildings that are angled at exactly 37 degrees from each other. Oh my goodness you think, what are the odds of that? And you read on fascinated. Then you discover that when there is a weather inversion and buildings are 37 degrees from each other that if you use a particular gravel to make your footpaths they become extra slippery. And if you just happened to be wearing a pair of shoes that were glued together at a grey factory in Surry on the third Thursday of the month when there was a north wind then you will probably fall down and break your leg because the glue will come unstuck. And you think, how strange. Could life get any worse for Mr poor shoe decision maker?

At that point fate takes over and Mr Shoes gets run over by a rogue bullock dray that was hurtling through the country town and he ends up in hospital where he catches a strange tropical disease that is normally only present in monkeys and dies. And I always saw torts as a variation of science fiction. Until I moved to India.

This afternoon I watched one of India's random tort cases unfold right before my eyes. My apartment is on the road behind a local market. It's definitely not uninhabited, but rather the complete opposite. Especially in the evening. So while I was munching on my chicken tikka I saw a mango-wallah wheel his hand cart down the road. Pretty standard fair for an evening in South Delhi. Then around the corner hurtled a rouge motorbike driver who was distracted by the racy sight of a lady's shoulder 100 metres on the other side of the market so he didn't notice that there were a pack of spy-cows making their daily surveillance round. So Mr scary motorbike rider had to mount India's almost-footpath which had giant puddles from today's monsoon rain. And he splashed a family who were waiting to buy their milk from the milk stand at the back of the market which had ice creams today. And their little son slipped out of Mum's hand and ran into the street where a taxi had to swerve so as not to hit him (or the cows) but ploughed into the mango cart. Well, mangoes went everywhere (which is particularly sad because it's the end of Mango season!) and the cows got excited and called all their mates and the traffic went a bit mad and there was lots of yelling. And I thought, wow, I couldn't have made this stuff up!