Two Steps Forward...

Things change rapidly in India.  Often, the change is for the better, but sometimes, it's not.  I never thought my walk to work would be a microcosm of a changing country...

When I first moved here, and for who knows how many months before that, my typical walk from my neighborhood to that of our office transited past the neighborhood garbage dump, through a dirt road along side a building falling apart, through a trash strewn area ringed by barbed wire, to a lush, green pathway by a nice park and into a very luxurious neighborhood.  Elements of the walk point to the many dichotomies that are readily apparent here.

Each morning, a heard of cattle can be found at the garbage dump, rifling through the trash for any leftover morsels of goodness.  They are accompanied by a number of barking dogs that also search for scraps, and generally run the neighborhood.  The big building alongside the path appears to be the epicenter of something terrible that happened - but is likely a result of neglect.  The building has no walls.  The upper floors have fallen like trap doors, with concrete slabs swinging on still attached steel bars.  A number of families call the building home.  At night you can see their cook fires.  During the day, you can hear the screams of the children playing.  The trash strewn walkway is the border between two neighborhoods, one of the poshest in Delhi and one of a lower middle class.  The trash of both neighborhoods fills the walkway, even with the garbage dump 500 feet away.  Pigs often roost in the mud, dirt and trash in and along the path.  And then, in a two foot segment, the trash disappears in favor of a neatly laid path, with trees growing on either side that runs along a manicured park where morning walkers get their exercise.
There are lots of generalizations that can be drawn from this quarter mile stretch; from lack of sanitation or housing, the possible ease with which disease can spread, the vastly different degrees of wealth on either side of a fence, or respect for the environment.

But my focus is the dirt path.  A few months ago, a large pile of stone tiles appeared out of nowhere.  The stones were orange, red and white, and were triangular in nature with rounded, interlocking edges.  Within a few weeks of the neatly laid pile appearing, almost overnight, half of the dirt path became neatly covered in stone tiles, starting at the garbage dump and neatly laid until the stones ran out - about a third of what was necessary to pave.  That first walk along the path... was .... luxurious.  It was neat, it was clean, it was pretty - for the 200 or so feet until it returned to dirt.  I was anxious to see if the path would be finished.  But after a few days, after a few weeks, the newness of the path receded.  Piles of cow poop would appear in the morning.  A layer of grime, consistent with most of the streets, began to make the path, although still much nicer than the dirt path, 'fit' in.

Then, after an absence of about a month, I was shocked to see the path dug up.  A pipe was laid and covered over with a mound of dirt.  The path was worse off than it was before - when it was just a neat dirt road.  Now it was haphazard rocks and tiles, smeared with dirt.  It struck me - the lack of planning, waste of effort to lay the tile on the path, waste of resources in the tile.  Its apparent that the path has resumed its normal 'fit', as the well trodden trails have found their way up the mound and around large rocks.

After a few more months, the tiles along the path were repaired.  Following that, concrete was poured at the end of the path to form a parking lot, which is now full of parked cars and kids playing cricket in the morning.  Still, one section of dirt remains.  I would call it charming, if it weren't between two barbed wire fences, uneven and rocky, often covered in animal poop and trash.  What will the next step be here?  Dig it up again for another pipe?  Another expansion or addition?  Of fix the path - which is heavily trodden, but lies directly between the oversight of the two neighborhoods.

Is it a microcosm of a country and an economy that is unpredictable?  With constantly changing regulations and an ability for those at the top to change directions instantly?  A plethora of resources, but disagreement on how to apply them?  A lack of overall plan?

Its probably none of these - and just another day in India.  Two steps forward, one step back.  Two steps forward, one step back.

Want a massage? Get a haircut.

One of the many local barbers in Vasant Gaon, New Delhi.

There is something special about getting a haircut in India.  It doesn't much matter whether its a barber shop with 4 walls, or if its a chair facing a mirror dangling from a nail on a tree.  Both are prevalent in India, and the service you will get at both leaves most Western shops looking like mechanized sweatshops in comparison.  It helps that the average Indian male cares an awful lot about his appearance - his hair, his mustache, his armpit hair.  The barbershop becomes the place to sit, gossip and sip chai on weekends.  Its the place to hear the latest Bollywood tunes blaring from the mobile phone of the barber.  This is the Indian equivalent to the woman's day spa - but all male, all the time.

Want a face massage?  How about a scalp rub?  No - just a quick drop in for a mustache trim?  Take a seat.

There are typically a few paintings of Hindu deities hanging from the walls.  There is hair dye in case you want to give a little uplift to your beard.  Wires dangle precariously from electrical sockets - but hey, what did you expect?  There are a few hairs from the last few customers, but once you take a seat in a barber chair from the 1950s, all the atmospheric noise dissipates.  The barber, or rather, hair 'artist', will pay immaculate care to each hair on your head.  No electrical clippers here, thank you, just old fashion comb, scissors and straight edge razor.

There is a method to the madness.  First, always, is the trim to the sideburns.  Gradually, the scissors, comb and fingers work their way around the rest of the head.  A sprinkle of water later, and the cut moves up the head.  Don't forget the bangs.  Then out combs the straight edge razor.  This is broken in half.  The first half is used to shave the hair around the ears to make an unbelievably trim, straight, clean line of hair.  There is a constant eighth of an inch of clean skin between ear and hairline.  This line follows the back of the head, and finishes off phase one - the haircut.  Then the talcom powder.  Then the brush of the talcom powder off of the shaved areas.

Intermission.  Massage time.  A series of claps, hand bangs and fingers massage your scalp after the haircut.  This serves to one, feel great, and two, to get all the loose hair off your head (pet peeve...).  Relax and enjoy it.

Have a mustache?  If you are Indian, the answer is yes.  Beard?  Clean shaven?  Fine.  Sprinkle a little water on your face, then a bit of shaving cream gets foamed up in a dish with a brush before application to the face.  The other half of the straight edge razor now comes out, for a close, clean shave.  Then a trim of the beard/mustache/facial hair - with scissors, comb and fingers.  There is a reason that Indians are known for their mustaches - and it all has to do with the care and loving attention of their barbers.  Talcom powder.  Brush.  Second sprinkle of water and then the towel.

Anil is the man.

Intermission number two.  Yes, this might be where Bollywood got the mandatory intermission idea.  Face massage.  The fingers behind the towel hit the cheeks, the lips, the eye sockets.  Your temples.  You are a wet noodle.

Chiropractor?  Unnecessary.  The barber can do that too.  At this point, you are a piece of clay.  Your arms get bent in directions you didn't think possible, your back cracked, your neck massaged, all from the comfort of the barber chair.

Time for the final touches.  Face cream?  Hair gel?  Need five minutes before you can talk again?  No problem, have this chai and relax.

Price tag?  $2.

Thanks Anil.

The end of the Monsoon

When the rains come to India.

As the monsoon comes to an end in Northern India, so does my tenure here.  The deluge last week caught many off guard, although the growing, grey clouds were visible atop the skyline of New Delhi.  The rain lasted in spurts most of the afternoon and evening; at times coming down at an outright downpour.  The streets flooded.  Remnants of the water and its effects were visible the next day.  This is nothing new, as the monsoon, sporadic in its yearly intensity, is a comfort to much of India and very common occurrence.  It indicates the beginning of a planting season, the availability of mouth-watering mangos, and gives life to the rivers of India.  And yet, despite its predictable inevitability, common sense approaches to deal with the negative consequences – flooding of open sewers, roads turning into impassable waterways, open water breeding of mosquitoes leading to outbreaks of malaria and dengue – are consistently overlooked. 

I can’t help but wonder about the many things that appear common sense to my foreign eyes – even after nearly a few years here, which merit little notice or attention to others.  

To my amazement, annual monsoon preparation entails an army of workers, armed with shovels, sent out to tackle the sewers.  Workers are hired to manually ‘desilt’ the drains and sewers of the country.  These men user their shovels to excavate the trash, sludge, mud and excrement that has been accumulating for the last 9 months.  A ‘desilted’ drain usually has a stinky, black, tarry line of goo abutting the length of the drain piled neatly alongside.  The first rain usually washes half of it back into the drains and the other half back onto the streets.  This is one of the many things I find mind boggling.  Is it still a surprise when the monsoon brings flooding – leading to damage and havoc? 

Its a Small World After All

"Hey man, 'dis is Kashmir".  Our taxi-mate we met at the airport yells down from the roof rack of a land cruiser, perched upon the ski bags, as we negotiate the rate with a new taxi driver in broken English with a thick Russian accent.  Monkeys jump from branch to branch in the pine tree behind us, with snow-clad hills in the background.  The snow on the street has melted into a muddy soup.  After about 15 minutes more of bargaining, after a spending the entire day in transit, my patients runs thin, especially considering that we are bargaining over 100 rupees, or about $2.  I've long learned my lesson bargaining in India between the fine balance of saving a few dollars versus saving a few minutes.

Soon another land cruiser comes careening down the street, pulling right up to the first one.  We finalize a price, pass the ski bags from one roof rack to another, pile in, and off we go.  The car has a chain on one tire (which is about as bald as all the rest), and a driver who immediately puts on a pair of pink aviator sunglasses - which go oddly well with his neatly parted hair in a Bollywood sort of way.  Ricocheting up a partially plowed road to Gulmarg, the main ski resort in India, my mind gets blown.

My flatmate from Delhi and I are sharing the 4x4 taxi with two Russians we met at the airport.  We start chatting, and it turns out one is from the Kamchatka peninsula (if you don't know where that is, google it right now...).  I nonchalantly mention that I happen to have spent some time skiing there as well.  He seems surprised, and asks where.  Most people couldn't place his home on a map, let alone have set foot there.  I mention a few stories from our trip there, including squeezing into a bus with skis and getting dropped off at a random kilometer post in the wild.  It turns out he is a heli-ski guide in Kamchatka, on a bit of a vacation before the season back home picks up spending the next month skiing in Kashmir.  When I mention a backcountry ski race in Avacha pass...  and he asks the year I was there...  and we realize that we were in the same competition....  and that he remembers me as the only telemarker in the race....  an odd, serendipitous moment passes, where we both feel awkwardly close and amazed at as stars, planets and moons align.

The world gets a little smaller.

Is this just odd chance, coincidence or serendipity?  Or has the world become a narrowing of self-selecting groups of people who share similar interests, a passion for travel, and the means to do so - who will naturally run into each other or unwittingly pass a friend of a friend of a distant acquaintance?  Or have our social circles grown to intersect similar circles from distant lands, merging into one and the same?

Does six degrees of Kevin Bacon now apply to... anyone?