More from my India trip –
– After just a week here, I have realized that it is virtually impossible to watch live TV in India. The greed with respect to ads is just unbelievable. Thanks to owning a DVR, my dad actually figured out the content/ad ratio. It is an incredible 8/22 for every 30minutes of viewing time. Isn’t there some kind of FCC-like organization in India that regulates that? Even live cricket isn’t spared; since the game can’t actually be interrupted, the ads frame the play, something akin to the old days of cable television where ads would bounce and ripple their way along the bottom, top, and occasionally the middle while movies were being screened.
– The corollary to that is that viewers in India (especially those not owning a DVR) have incredibly low levels of patience. After all, every TV watching experience is fraught with the desire to escape the ads, so you click, click, click the remote all the time, trying desperately to find a channel that has some actual programming. My sample is admittedly pretty low, statistically speaking, but across two cities and several relatives, I noticed that this lack of patience spread to other walks of life as well. Turns out this American citizen, used to things working when and how they are supposed to, actually could deal much better with drivers not showing up, traffic at a standstill, and the generally slower pace of life much better than the Indian residents. (To be fair, it could have been that my family was unhappy at the impression India was making on me and that translated to stress on their part.)
– Enough has been written about the chaos of Indian traffic and I won’t repeat it here, except to say that I have to believe a force field a few millimeters thick exists around all objects on the road. How else to explain the innumerable number of narrow misses? I saw helmet-less children riding pillion on scooters in a hyper aware state; their legs in a constant dance to keep out of harm’s way.
– Which leads to the conclusion that driving in India is not for the reflex-challenged. And sure enough, the average age of a motorist on Indian roads appears to be in the 30s. The few grey-haired uncles I saw were keeping cautiously to the edges of the road; not engaging in the typical competitive machismo that defines Indian traffic.
– That machismo is particularly visible in drivers of two-wheelers (gender be damned). Motorists in India have internalized the adage of being like sugar in milk; they will be rush to fill any empty spots between the larger molecules represented by cars and trucks. I found it particularly inexplicable. After all, the aggressiveness doesn’t mean more than a minute or two saved in the total travel time, but the risk of serious bodily injury (in Chennai the helmet rule is almost universally flouted) is disproportionately high. When I mentioned this to a friend who recently relocated to India, she had an interesting take on this. “Ask anyone of these crazy drivers what they do professionally and you will find that their career choices are almost comically risk-averse. Why don’t they channel their need for risk-taking into their careers instead?” There is a sociology thesis in here somewhere.
Picture courtesy foxypar4 via Creative Commons attribution license
You know you’re in Chennai when the pocket of the passenger in front of you starts blaring “Palaniappa, Swami Palaniappa.” The heavy set gentleman on the seat in front of me could have been straight out of central casting for the role of the villain in a Tamil movie (or hero, in Tollywood you can’t often tell the difference). His wards were a gaggle of elderly ladies, diamonds dripping from noses and ears, though if you had met the bunch on a Chennai street sans their jewelry, you might have compassionately pressed 20-rupee notes into their palms. Hey, I was pretty scruffy too, after 20-odd hours on the plane!
Like millions of Americans, it has been a tough year for our family during this prolonged economic downturn. It has been particularly tough in the last couple of months due to family health issues ( hence the absence from blogging) so as I was musing over Thanksgiving traditions yesterday, this line from an old couplet by Kabir popped into my head;
I remember being blown away by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage. At that point in my life, it seemed to perfectly capture the cross-generational conflicts that were swirling around people my age. After that it became a ritual to grab a copy of her newest book at the library or bookstore.
India Currents is pleased to announce a new initiative with San Jose Beez, an online collaboration of ethnic media organizations featuring hyper-local news content covering the San Jose area.
Now that President Obama has declared swine flu a national emergency, I thought it made sense to put up these simple tips to help protect you. These are courtesy a chain mail from a friend via India, not the best of sources, I know, but the advice seems to make a lot of common sense, so here goes –
The camera lovingly follows the contours of an underwater paradise. Incurious fish gently swim away from the light as the camera glides over sting rays, around coral and through populous grottos. As the credits roll, Shreya Ghoshal’s powerhouse voice begins the opening notes of the Bondesque song “Rehnuma.” It is a promising start for an underwater adventure, but when Shreya crescendos to “Katilana Adaaa” and it is not accompanied by a similar visual crescendo on screen, you first get the stirring of doubts about the competence of the filmmaker.
There’s a new serial on ABC called Flash Forward where the entire world blacks out for a little over 2 minutes. During the black out they all have a flash-forward of what they will be doing on April 29, 2101. When those crucial moments pass, the world is a state of chaos, of course, but slowly survivors realize there now they have something in common with every other human being in the world. “What did you see,” becomes the new ice-breaker.
This past week, torrential rains in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh caused flooding, rendering hundreds of people homeless and thousands of others unable to travel or find food. The local governments approached Akshaya Patra and asked the organization to provide meals to displaced victims of the natural disaster.
Water, No Ice 