Outlook magazine, an Indian news magazine similar to Time or Newsweek has just published a very in depth article by Arundhati Roy about the Naxals/Maoists in this part of India and the Government's (and Corporations... not that there's much difference) war against them.

A few words from the article:

Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal have signed hundreds of MoUs with corporate houses, worth several billion dollars, all of them secret, for steel plants, sponge-iron factories, power plants, aluminium refineries, dams and mines. In order for the MoUs to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved.
 
...

We passed the house of the Superintendent of Police (SP), which I recognised from my last visit. He was a candid man, the SP: “See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy, there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out.”

Walking with the Comrades

This post is more for people who may be googling "Kenstar" appliances or refrigerators than for people who may normally read this blog.  I am hoping that maybe I can save someone the trouble of buying one of Kenstar's poor-quality products.

We bought a Kenstar refrigerator in October, buying based on price.  We only needed the refrigerator to last a year or two (actually, it turns out we needed it for a much shorter amount of time), so we didn't concern ourselves too much with durability.  However, this Kenstar refrigerator broke in about 2 months, and it took a month to get someone to come and finally fix it.  Actually to get it fixed, we had to haul it to a repair center ourselves, even though someone was supposed to come.

The Kenstar customer service line was useless, all they could do was take a ticket and tell us that a ticket had already been taken.  Kenstar took no interest or responsibility in getting it fixed.

It broke twice more after that, the first time taking another week to get it fixed, and we've currently been waiting a month, though we've kind of slacked off on harassing the repairmen, since I'll be leaving and Dolly is unsure of her plans.

We suspect that part of the difficulty is that Kenstar is sexist (ok, its actually the local repairmen, but now google has the words "Kenstar" and "sexist" next to each other... twice!), with the repair center not taking Dolly seriously as she is a woman.  I don't speak Hindi, so I can't help much.

So... if anyone is India is thinking of buying a Kenstar appliance, don't!

... its only March and the temperatures are already hitting 100 degrees.  I've started waking up sticky and sweaty, I sweat through  my clothes on the way to and from work (especially the evening ride home), and our *^&^%$ refrigerator doesn't work - we've been trying to 2/3 weeks to get the repairman to show up and fix the compressor.

These lists apply mostly to Bilaspur, a place I am not too fond of.  India is a big place, and the conditions aren't the same everywhere.  Taking "I don't like Bilaspur" to mean "I don't like India" is the same as taking "I don't like Camden" to mean "I don't like America." I hope to return someday as a tourist, and I'm sure I will have a wonderful time.

Things I won't miss
Moquitos:  every night I kill around 30 of them as they fly around and try to bite me.  They fly low and stay out of sight and then get your feet.  Since the buildings don't have climate control, there is no reason to have insulation or even windows that close.  So the mosquitos can jusy fly right in and bite.

Buses:  Bus drivers drive like they don't get paid unless they're maniacs, so they're always barrelling down the road at too high a speed and passing in inappropriate places.  Unless they are picking up/dropping off passenegers, and they'll stop wherever they want, traffic be damned.

Horns:  Horns here aren't "push the button for the beep", they're "flip the switch for the cacaphony".  They are used all the time.

My celebrity status:  I stand out everywhere.  If someone wants to say hello or snap a quick picture, thats fine.  Sometimes they try to drag me into long conversations or take me over somewhere else to meet their family.  Thats not so fine.

The heat:  Last summer the high was 48 degrees C.  I refuse to convert that into Fahrenheit, but I think thats the temperature for slow-cooking BBQ pork.

Sanitation: Open sewers that overflow daily in monsoon.  Eww.  Also, people doing their business (both one and two) everywhere, and in plain sight.  This may be a cultural thing, but my cultural programming says "eww".  I have no plans on reprogramming.

Festivals:  There are more festival days than non-festival days.  There are so many that most half the time no one can tell us what the festival actually is.  I suspect its part of some kind of prank, and/or an excuse to get drunk and make noise all night. 

Random signature gathering: the other day I went to use the ATM, and as I was walking out the security guard pointed to the register to have me enter my name, bank, celll phone number and signature.  It was the first time this had happened... why do they need these records?  Can't they electronically track who's sticking cards into the machine?  There is also a habit of when a meeting is announced (work, or in the apartment building) of someone coming around to get signatures.  They are rather instant, and I'm not sure if they just want confirmation that you were notified, or if it indicates you will attend.  Also, sometimes shopkeepers want you to sign YOUR copy of the receipt.  Makes no sense.

Things I'll Miss
Cheap prices: The other day I went to the market and bought rice and vegetables.  Three dinners worth of veggies for 2 people was under $1.50, and the rice was $2.50 for 6.5 pounds, enough to last about 3 weeks.  Haircuts are under 50 cents, and as I've mentioned we have a woman who cooks/does dishes/sweeps and wipes the floor for about $20/month.

Monkeys: They haven't been around in awhile, but they sometimes hang around the neighborhood.  I was trying to think of good things about Bilaspur.  The best I could come up with was "they have some monkeys". (Second place was "the mosquitos don't carry malaria")


Both ways:
The food:  Indian food is very good.  I like Indian food.  However, I am not eating "Indian Food," I am eating a narrow regional cuisine. I am sick of white rice and potato curry and the same 5 or 6 vegetables.  I still haven't figured out breakfast.  (Idlis and dosas are good, but I don't make them at home).  A lot of the culture, including the food culture, seems dependent on having a woman to wake up early and do a bunch of housework.

Customer Service:  Customer service is personalized and attentive.   When shopping for clothes/fabrics, you sit and they'll bring you dozens of options.  The success of this depends how on-the-ball the shopkeeper is.  Sometimes they will listen to what you are looking for an expertly guide your selection.  Sometimes they will bring you things randomly in desparate effort to please.  If you are unlucky, your feedback will actually result in the opposite of what should happen - "I don't like the flowers... do you have plain patterns?" and they bring more flowers, or "I don't like the the purple, what do you have in yellow?" and they bring every hue of purple you could imagine.

What I have learned about India is that whatever you are trying to do it will be much more difficult and involve many more steps and days than you expected.  It took us 2 months to get a bank account open.  Our refrigerator has been broken more days than it worked.  So of course getting a plane ticket home proved to be more involved than expected.

Calling a travel agent in the US is difficult because of the time difference and international calling, so after a few attempts through an intermediary (my mom), Dolly talked me into talking to a local travel agent, on the grounds that whenever she or her friends have travelled to/from India, travel agents always got the best price.

The first travel agent I talked to seemed reasonable, but was from out of town.  She is located in Raipur, the nearest "big" city, and the city I will be flying out of.  She found a decent itinerary at a good price, but then when it came time to pay, it turned out that you can't just give a credit card number over the phone.  They needed a photocopy (or imprint) of the card and of the card-holders gov't issued ID... so basically you need to visit them in person.  The other option was to make a deposit to their account in the local branch of their bank and then mail them confirmation of payment.  Both options were way too much work, so we found a local agent.

Dolly talked to them for me because they are Hindi speakers, and I am not, and they had a little trouble answering basic questions: "What time does the flight leave Raipur?" "You land in Chicago at 10:50" "No, what time does the plane LEAVE from RAIPUR?"  "The connection is though Bombay".  So we went into visit them this morning to clear it up, and they guy we had talked to was gone for most of the day for an exam of some kind, even though we had talked to him earlier in the morning, and told him we were coming in.  You think he would have mentioned that he wouldn't be there.

We setup a flight plan with the other guy in the office, and then agreed to come back later that evening to pay.  In retrospect, I'm not sure why we didn't just pay then, but maybe the guy we were working with wasn't authorized to collect payments or something. 

I rode my bike there in the evening, and it was a festival day.  The second of nine nights of Navatri (basically translates to "9 nights"), where every day they worship one of Krisha's (or is it Shiva's) nine forms.  I smiled at a man who noticed that he was standing across from a mandir (temple), and at a rickshaw driver with his hair and bushy mustache dyed a ridculous red with henna.  I was in a good mood, happy to be on my way to obtaining my ticket home, and not bothered by the congestion and noise and chaos that is part of the culture with more gods to celebrate than days on the calendar. 

When I got to the agency, the price had gone up 7000 rupees (about $150)!  Though we were willing and able to pay in the morning, they decided that it wasn't important, and in the meantime, the price had increased 20%.  So I walked out, and rode back home, once again irriated by the traffic and the dust.

When I got back to the neighborhood and went to one of the doctors' houses, borrowed the Internet and booked online, like I should have done in the first place.  My mood was then restored.  If I had a working fridge, I would have bought a small bottle of vodka and a mixer, and chilled them for my not-to-much-later enjoyment.  I don't have a working fridge so I just went and got a popsicle.  I'm flying out of Raipur on the 7th, and will land in Chicago on the morning of the 8th.

When we were at Bahmni to see the clinic, we took a walk and came across this woman making brooms.

This was taken in January, just getting it up now.  The narrator is speaking Hindi,but isn't really saying anything important, and you get to see the layout of the mobile clinic and the activity within.

After much thought, I have decided to bring my trip to an end! I will be returning to the US next month (in April).

Though the plan was initially to stay for 2 years, it turned out being much harder living here than I expected.  Though I had been to Europe, both Western and Eastern, I was not prepared for how foreign a place I was coming to.  Not only is there a different language, there is a different set of ideas and values behind it, (as well as a new alphabet, and new sounds - there's 4 different t's and 4 different d's) and I didn't pick up as quickly as I had thought I would.

Beyond the broad differences in culture, the specific place in India in which we are living is a difficult place.  There are no young educated people here.  If they are lucky enough to be educated, they flee.  There are no supermarkets (there are places they CALL supermarkets, but they have only a little more variety than the small stores).  There is nothing to do, not even any parks or sidewalks for taking a walk.  It is hard to get anywhere as the roads inside and out of town are all small and of poor quality, and distances become magnified.  Going 200km isn't something you can do before breakfast - it takes all morning.

The result has been crushing isolation and boredom, and there is nothing I look forward to in my day to day life.  So in the interest of my happiness and mental health, I am coming back!

Last night our cook didn't show up, so we went out to dinner.  We walked to the main road, where there was only one auto (3-wheeler), which we took.  It had no shocks, and on the bumpy road out of our neighborhood, I hit my head twice on the metal crossbar.   After the second time, I told Dolly that if it happened one more time, I was getting out.  Thankfully, that didn't happen.

We went along, the decrepit auto struggling even to go downhill, and came to a busy intersection.  There was a rickshaw driver going in the same direction as us, pulling his vehicle across the road.  As we got to the middle of the street, we bumped into his back wheel with the front of our auto.  This was the first time I had ever been in an auto that hit something!  Then his handlebar got caught in the back opening of the auto, and we dragged his it the rest of the way across the intersection.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, until we got to the last stretch of road.  We told the driver to take a right, and he took the right and went down the wrong side of a divided road, and we drove against busy traffic for the half kilometer until we reached the restaurant.  He said we told him to go on wrong side, but by this point we couldn't take anything he said seriously.

Yesterday was Holi, the festival of colors.  Unlike Diwale and the autumn festivals, it does not have much religious significance.  It is a celebration of the winter harvest and the beginning of spring.  Basically, people buy a bunch of colored powders and throw them around.  The kids on our floor mixed them with water and shot them through squirt guns.  People were riding around on motorcycles throwing the powder as they drove by.  (Given how bright the colors are, it wouldn't surprise me if they contain lead or other heavy metals).  By noon, our apartment building was a colorful mess. 

The rest of the day seemed like any quiet, normal day... I guess my western expectation was that  the festival would be more evening based, especially since I was expecting more of a party atmosphere.  One of the traditional Holi drinks is supposedly a bhang (cannabis) based beverage, but aside from a few beers in the morning, there were no intoxicants of any kind (and supports my theory that they haven't figured out drinking here... starting drinking in the morning, and then stopping by lunch?  I just don't get it.)