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?

Chaos Ensues

A friend on a recent visit to Delhi pointed out that traffic and people flow through the streets here like water.  The teeming mass of cars, small and large, bicycles, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, cows, goats, motorcycles and humans find their way to fill every possible niche the roadway has to offer.  Its amazing.  Sometimes, however, this leads to disastrous consequences.  Allow me to illustrate.

a) A simple railway crossing, two cars approach from opposite directions. The gate for the approaching train descends.  The cars kindly slow, stop, and patiently wait for the train to pass.

b) More cars approach as the train (this one happens to be either really, really long, or really, really slow passes). Cars in the back of the waiting line of cars, a little less patiently, decide that they might be able to squeeze ahead of the entire queue if they saddle up next to the front most car.

c) Cars even further back don't know what is causing the traffic, don't see traffic on the other side of the road, and decide to approach the intersection on the wrong side of the road, only to find that they too, have to patiently wait for the train to pass.

d) The train passes.  The gates rise, and the drivers are stuck, staring at each other, scratching their heads.

e) My favorite part: Chaos ensues.

(insert your own picture of chaos on the streets of India here)

Ah, and this was just with cars!  Imagine trucks, buses, cows, motorcycles and bikes thrown in the mix.  Real chaos!  Gotta love it.

(India) Pale Ale

Its not often that I've been called a snob.  The thought of even dawning the cape of 'beer snob' was even more unthinkable.  I have known a few self-proclaimed beer snobs in my day, and I can assure you, that I never thought I was one, nor did I think I ever could be.

However, I think everything, even being a snob, rests in context.

Here, in India, I have fallen prey to the lack of bitters, sours, darks, malts, porters, stouts, wheat beers and, well, generally, decent beer.  Options in most stores and bars involve Kingfisher Light, Kingfisher Strong, and recently, Kingfisher Blue (labeled with a fancy blue metallic sheen that proves its quality).  These beers are 'different' from each other, but primarily only in terms of alcohol content.  Higher end establishments will carry a few run of the mill 'premium' beers, like the Danish Carlsberg or lesser known Tuborg, the Dutch Heineken, the American Budweiser, the Australian Fosters - and on special pricey occasions, the Mexican Corona.  Taste the great beers of the world!  With that selection, its no wonder people stick to the Kingfisher!  There is something called a 'Godfather' and a 'Thunderbolt', but they fall into the same category as Kingfisher Strong; they feel more like malt liquor than anything else.  These cover 99.9% of the beer options available in India.  If you were to pour these beers into beautiful pint glasses and line them all up to each other, the would NOT look like this:

Yet, after a rant like that, how could I not be called a beer snob?  As many friends of past can affirm, with my affinity to PBR (before it became annoyingly hipsterish), and probably more relevant, my penchant to save money, forever relegated me to the legions of beer appreciators - but not beer snobs.

Yesterday, while I was delightfully enjoying a Kingfisher, a thought crossed my mind that at first got me curious, then a little riled up, and now mildly incensed.  Why can't I find India Pale Ale in India?

A friend always used to tell the story of England putting extra hops into beer to make the journey by ship from London to Bombay.  Turns out this is false, but that large quantities of the beer were shipped to India to satiate the thirst of the East India Company.  There are lots of left overs from British occupation, but this isn't one of them.  Fine, how about just Pale Ale then?  

On Parade!

There I was, sitting on a train, minding my own business.  I was admiring the passing Indian countryside between typing notes on my computer - taking advantage of the smooth, slow train ride to squeeze in some work time.  A young Indian teenager suddenly took the seat across from me.  He looks at me, and then looks at the newspaper he is holding.  Back to me.  Back to the paper.  Then he points at an article in the paper.  To be precise, this article:

'Foreigners join Republic Day Festivities'. 

Turns out it's pretty hard to be a foreigner in a small town and not attract quite a bit of attention.  Depending on the location in India, you are either unnoticed or bombarded with attention.  Such was the case the morning of Republic Day.  We got a special invite to join some local friends and watch a small town parade.  As we approached the parade grounds, tractors pulling floats filtered in from farms and side streets. 

We past the parking at the open air-stadium, and continued straight into the stadium; there were foreigners in the car!  The car pulled up right next to the floats.  We got out, and angry looks melted into inquisitive ones.  Dragged by the arm away from the floats, we went straight through the middle of the field.  Through the ranks of soldiers lined up in formation with guns, in full regalia.  The ranks parted, not with angry faces.  The soldiers all got out their cell phones and started taking pictures.  Some even posed with us! 

In a whirlwind, we had been through the ranks, introduced to this person and that, met journalists, and were suddenly, in the parade.  Behind the tractor with the education float, aside the girls riding bicycles in formation, we walked slowly around the stadium precisely once, starting after the soldiers also performed precisely one round of the stadium in front of the large, enthusiastic crowd.

Ah yes… on parade!