Notes on India

Position: 28° 33′ 22″N 77° 5′ 59″E

This week’s blog dates from May 09, 2008. It recalls some impressions of my last business trip to India. I’ve posted some of my favorite photos from that trip. Finding this piece was itself an adventure. More on that at another time.

Notes on India

“In my experience people are not equivocal about India. They either love it or hate it.” – Mike Northcott

Stepping off the airplane I was a little disoriented. My memory must have been failing me. Delhi’s looked like every other goddamn modern airport on the planet. Then as I made my way downstairs towards immigration things started becoming more familiar. Large signs promised shorter queues and improved airport facilities. The ceilings in the waiting area had been ripped out and netting slung to catch the shards of renovation, and prevent electrical cables from falling on the tourists. Now this was more like it. There was no way of telling how long things had been like that, but if past experience was anything to go by, both the signs and the netting had been around for a while. And that’s how it is.

Complex

India is a complex patchwork of contrasts where the destitute rub shoulders with the rich, where sacred cows roam freely, and people live in grass huts with electricity and television. India’s in your face 24×7 humanity isn’t for everyone. If you have a problem with ambiguity, India isn’t for you. Those given to high degrees of moral certainty, or crusading armchair quarterbacks with a solution for every societal ill, can keep away. If you come to India with a tut-tut on your tongue and are in a hurry for change, you will quickly find that she doesn’t care. And that can be frustrating.

This was my fifth visit and the first in a decade. I was lucky. During my first trip 20 years ago, I was graciously hosted by my company’s regional sales manager. He took me, metaphorically, by the hand and showed me how to go with the flow. When in India, do as the Indians: don’t encourage the beggars, don’t get weird about people living in the streets cooking dinner over dung fires, do appreciate it’s vast history and wondrously rich culture, accept that feeding the poor comes ahead of building roads and that those trade-offs are difficult decisions that discourage her politicians who’d like to do both. If you really want to get on learn the rules of cricket and the delights of Indian cooking.

Change

Yet, things had changed. Gone almost entirely were the ubiquitous Ambassador cars, the model T of the Indian car industry. Replaced by a variety of locally built Toyotas, Hyundai’s and Mahindra’s. There were fewer beggars than I remembered. I saw only two the entire trip. Remaining was the choking dust that blows across the plains towards Delhi, the heat, the bureaucracy, and the welcoming smiles of practically everyone. I’d taken my new camera, a hot shot Canon digital SLR with an image stabilized zoom lens. Let’s face it, I’m 6’ 3” tall, white as rice, and stick out like a sore thumb all over Asia.

As I gained my confidence, though, I found my conspicuousness drew smiles and waves from people having first seen me, then my camera. Obligingly I snapped away and that only made them happier. There were parents with obvious pride in their kids, street vendors with pride in their wares, and quick shots of children that caught their shyness and somehow the simplicity of their lives. Now, people may have been laughing at me, but it seems a generous quid pro quo if they were. It proved to me once again one can go far in life with a polite word and a smile. And it reminded me how much I loved India.