Perspectives from Pune (Part 1): Impressions of India and other random rants
Published:Saturday | October 23, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Luis Jimenez, Contributor
I arrived in India at 3 a.m. on Sunday night after leaving Canada at noon on Saturday.
I have been fortunate enough to have visited and perhaps lived in more countries than most people, and this has exposed me to ethnic, cultural and wealth diversity on several different levels.
In addition to my personal experiences, I have read books, narratives, seen movies, pictures, and spoken to people from diverse parts of the world, and I consider myself fairly well exposed.
I could not have been more wrong because nothing I have seen, heard or read could have prepared me for what I encountered walking out of the airport in Mumbai: from the stench of raw sewage swirling in the run-off created by the unending monsoon rains, to the sheer press of humanity as the crushing mass of people, cars, bicycles, motorcycles, three-wheeled taxis, hand-drawn carts, stray dogs, goats, pigs and sacred cows all fought for the same congested strip of roadway.
Before I get too deeply into this narrative, please understand that the scenes, sounds and pictures described are not meant to be a representation of India or life as a whole; it's just what I see every day.
The rains
I remember reading about the monsoon rains in Kipling's books and other works, and for some strange reason, writers tend to underplay it to the point where it almost seems like a quaint and long, but tolerable and somewhat romanticised tropical shower.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been here for a week now and it has not stopped raining yet. Actually, I am lying: it has stopped a few times for about an hour or so, but by and large, it is always raining. I mean it just has not stopped. Everything is waterlogged, and the simplest of journeys results in getting wet.
If they get wet, then they get wet.
We went to a restaurant for lunch and the waiter nonchalantly said to us, "Good morning, sirs. Please go upstairs, downstairs floods during monsoon." By the time we got upstairs, the musty damp smell created by a constantly flooding ground floor drove the point home.
The organised flow of traffic that I take for granted in North America is completely non-existent here. The laws of lane usage are largely lacking. My lane is wherever I happen to be, or where I am forced to be, and driving as a passenger here is nerve-wracking at the very least.
Lanes are where people make them, and a road can go from one lane heading east with three heading west, to one lane heading each way, and then three where there was one, and vice versa.
psychological brake pedal
There is a permanent indentation in the carpet on the floor that was created by me stepping on my imaginary and very psychologically necessary brake pedal.
Trucks proudly display signs on their rear bumpers that read 'Horn OK Please'. The message is honk if you want to pass or if you want me to get out of your way, otherwise the road is mine and the lane is where I make it. This signage is painted on the back of almost every large vehicle.
As such, the streets are filled with an unending symphony of horns as drivers and riders warn off each other, and try to manoeuvre their way through the spaghetti-like entanglement of traffic. It would be foolhardy, if not impossible, to drive here if your vehicle did not have a working horn.
Exiting your vehicle is very simple: Exit on the pavement side regardless of where you are sitting. Trying to exit on the traffic side will cost you your life unless, of course, there's a cow in proximity to your door. Then you are safe. Cows have special privileges, which I will tell you about later.
As I sit and watch women in brightly coloured saris ride side saddle on the backs of scooters that race through the never-ending rain, splashing water on the roadside food vendors, I am amazed at how matter of factly people just seems to go about their life while surrounded and immersed in what we would condemn as abject and unacceptable poverty and filth.
On the way to work one morning, I saw a woman washing clothing in an open drain that was fed by run-off water from the street. Less than 20 feet away, a man was washing himself at the side of his truck which was parked, while another man, just feet away, urinated openly on the sidewalk, all this happening between street food vendors and people trying to make their way to wherever they were heading on this wet and rainy monsoon morning.
On another day, I saw an old woman, dressed in tattered rags that were once a sari, standing on the road. Balanced on her head was a large bundle of something wrapped and tied up in a heavily soiled piece of cloth. I took these to be her worldly possessions. In her left hand she held a clear plastic bag which contained water that she scooped out with her cupped right hand and used to rinse her mouth, wash her face, hair and her feet. The plastic bag was clear, and the water in it was brown - very, very brown. Sights like these are sobering, disturbing and indicting when viewed from the comfort of an air-conditioned SUV.
It has become a regular sight to see people, mostly children, simply squatting at the side of the road and relieving themselves. No one turns a head or bats an eye. They simply assume the position, off-load, pull back up their shorts, and carry on. Life is that simple, and all this happens in the middle of the monsoon rains that wash everything into a slurry that drains wherever the slope and elevation allow it to, because drains and gutters are not a salient feature of Indian civil engineering -
One day, we were passing a tent city which bore a close resemblance to a refugee camp. The dwellings were made of frames from whatever the occupants could gather or salvage and put together to support colourful patchworks of tarpaulins and assorted pieces of plastic sheeting and plastic bags which are held in place by stones, wooden wedges and
Interestingly and amusingly, two of these tent structures had satellite dishes attached to them.
Tent cities
I am still working on reconciling this incongruity.
I believe that the human spirit seeks companionship and a sense of belonging, hence these small tent communities that dot the way to work not only serve as dwellings but, more important, they provide a source of communal support, identity, refuge and a social structure for the disenfranchised.
Anyhow, as we drove by, the appalling conditions were evident.
The humbling and indicting realisation here is the resiliency of the spirit of these people and how hardy and determined they are. They survive and are still able to celebrate and find love, joy and laughter in conditions that would overwhelm and crush you and me.
As prescribed by Hinduism, most of them are vegetarians, and even that very basic fare they probably get very little of. Rice is the staple of every meal, and from the look of it, meals are small and sometimes few and far between.
The Western extravagance of a full meal that we take for granted is not the norm here.
These people work very hard in brutally harsh conditions for the little they get while we squander what we have with total disregard for anything and anyone else. Needless to say, obesity does not seem to be an issue here.
The entire experience is amazingly sobering, and forces me to question everything.
Meanwhile, in the streets dogs, pigs, sheep and billy goats of the genus 'gruff' roam and rummage through the openly strewn garbage with impunity, while sacred cows stroll with unconcerned majesty and reverence through the streets, on the sidewalks, and pretty much anywhere it pleases them to go.
The bovines have free rein, and from the look of it, they know it.
If a cow is in the way, you wait. They know it, and so do you.
The reverence for the cow is so great that the pack of beef jerky that my colleague Jeff brought from Canada is still hidden in the depths of his knapsack because despite our mutual love of beef jerky, neither of us is brave enough to eat it in front of any of the Indians, who venerate the cow.
The more I think about it, the stranger it seems and I chalk it up to my dim-witted ignorance, but by now someone should have realised that the cow's godly powers are strangely absent if it ends up jerked in a plastic bag and sitting on the grocery shelf. It would seem that North American cows and others the world over were not gifted with the godly powers so freely wielded by their bovine brethren in India.
Anyhow, it is not uncommon to see cows with brightly painted orange horns and votive beads festively draped around their necks majestically strolling through the crush of traffic and humanity with nary a care.
Sturdy beasts
There are also numerous heavily muscled water buffalo to be seen. These are the work horses of the agrarian-based economy, and they can be seen on the streets as readily as one can see cows. However, they seem to always be herded to and from wherever they are being worked.
They don't appear to have the leisurely strolls that the cows enjoy. Of course, no one is going to hit them either, but that's only because these things will in all likelihood wreck a small vehicle and then turn on it to finish the job. These are very sturdy beasts and don't appear to have much of a sense of humour.
Actually, if the truth be told, I think that the buffalo have become pretty much fed up with the charades of the cows. I can see it in their eyes. Insurrection is nigh.
Staying on the topic of animals, I was on my way from work to the hotel, in what can only be described as a tangled snarl of traffic that consisted of cars, motorbikes, the persistently annoying and dangerously piloted three-wheel taxis, and a herd of about 50 goats whose shepherd decided to show his utter disdain for fast-moving metal by making the herd cross the road regardless of what else was on it, and how fast it was moving.
Goats are not extremely intelligent, but they are smart enough to move quickly. I believe that this is probably because, unlike the cows, getting hit is a real possibility for them.
After getting over the shocking amusement of seeing the herd of goats defy common sense and vehicular traffic, we turned on to another street and ran into an elephant and its rider slowly making its way down the middle of the road.
Now, there is something you must know. Elephants are significantly larger than cars and SUVs. To put it plainly: they are freakin' huge. To see the pesky little three-wheel taxis motorbike manoeuvre around the giant of a beast as it slowly and patiently made its way through the streets was mind-numbing. This was simply another user of the road and no one seemed to mind or care as they wove and cajoled their tiny vehicles around the behemoth.
As if the surprise of encountering an elephant on a main street was not enough to help me understand that life here is different, the next morning we passed a man leading two heavily laden camels down the middle of the street. I am not sure what comes next.
intestinal instability
Well, on a personal and somewhat painful note, I have been crafting and editing this piece over the past several days, and tonight I find myself continuing to do so from my new confines in the washroom.
Yes, despite my attempts to avoid intestinal instability, I was defeated by a meal of satay chicken and chilli chicken I had for lunch. It was cooked well and came from a relatively clean establishment and was very cheap. It is now extracting its price.
I failed to account for the effect of the chillis ... yes, I did.
For those of you who may not know, regardless of what happens in the intestinal tract, chillis remain hot.
But I digress.
It is clearly evident that the history and culture of this country is rich beyond what we are accustomed to in the West.
Statues of deities along with temples and shrines abound. The streets are awash with the eye-catching and contrasting colours of the colourful saris that the women wear. The crush of the people as they move through the streets creates a sea of sound and colour that inflames the senses.
Every so often I am able to see a wandering holy man in his robes with his staff traversing the roadways. Some of them are garishly attired while others are poorly clothed and in apparent need of an immediate IV.
Just this morning, I saw a little holy man in white robes and a stunning orange headwrap walking the road. This guy was a little on the plump side and had a jaunty gait, which is not the norm based on what I have seen.
The city of Pune, formerly called Poona, and before that, Poonah, is the undisputed capital of yoga, so there are many foreigners who come here for the opportunity to understudy or be certified by the masters.
There are also several ascetic sects here. Their adherents - mostly Europeans caught up in mysticism, self-discipline, self-denial, hallucinogenics and tantric sex, which I like to call Cultism 101 - can be seen walking the streets in their robes and sandals. There's got to be a huge market for Prozac with these nutcases.
All of these people, diverse, strange and as twisted as some of them are, all make up the fabric of the life that you see in the streets every day. From the poor, barefooted children and beggars to the Europeans in search of enlightenment, they all bring a unique blend of colour and flavour to life here.
This is definitely an amazing experience.
Look for Part Two next week.
Luis Jimenez is a Trinidad-born Canadian who is currently on an extended work assignment in Pune, India.