India Notes - January 2009

I flew into India at 1:30 AM on Jan 3rd. I will be flying out of India, back to the US, on Saturday night, technically Sunday morning, at 2:30 AM on Jan 25th. Woke up this morning (Friday) with an overwhelming sense of impending loneliness, of more days and months to be spent away from family and friends. I have been flying in and out of India so many times since April 2000, and in all these years, I have never felt this way. Strange that I should feel it now.

During this trip, more than at any other time, I really felt the value and goodness of being close to family and friends. This is perhaps because my life in the US has been lonelier than ever, off late.

The new international airport at Bengaluru cannot hold a candle to most domestic airports in the US in terms of size and facilities offered to passengers/visitors. It has been built with an extremely poor vision (read NO vision) of the current and future demands for air travel in and out of Bengaluru. The sky bridges through which people board flights have been built so close together that if a medium-sized international flight lands, the two bridges on its either side cannot be used by other aircraft due to space issues.

Having said that, the new airport is so much better than the old one. Despite the longer distance of this airport from most city locations, getting out of the airport after landing and getting into the airport to board are a breeze. After I landed, I had cleared immigration, picked up my baggage and was out of the airport in under 45 minutes! That is the fastest I have ever gotten out of the airport in Bengaluru.

The display terminals at Hong Kong airport and the boarding passes all spelled the name of my home city as Bengaluru. In the city itself, road signs and name boards have slowly started to appear which spell the name of the city as Bengaluru. It is not too long from now when all signs and boards will say Bengaluru. Most of us old-timers, of course, continue to refer to the city as Bangalore when we talk in English and as Bengaluru when we talk in an Indian language, as we always did.

I used the local public transport BMTC buses several times during this visit. I am impressed by the frequency and connectivity of the buses. They have done a good job on this front. The constructions of the metro rail tracks is plodding its way slowly and we still don't know when it will become operational (not any time soon!). But when the metro train does start running, things will be even better in Bengaluru.

The value of Indian rupee is much lower, compared to the cost of many goods and services. Combined with the fact that most small businesses still don't accept debit or credit cards, you end up having to carry a lot of cash in hand, especially when you are travelling.

Having said that, India is a great place for young people with higher income levels (such as the software professionals) to enjoy life. A lot of goods and services, which would have been considered luxuries for the upper middle-classes some 15 years ago, are well within their purchasing power. In fact, the gap between the truly rich and the truly poor is being fast filled up with a sufficiently well-off middle class whose numbers are swelling everyday. This is in sharp contrast to the US where the gap between the rich and poor has been steadily increasing in recent years, with a gradual decrease in the numbers of the middle class. Hopefully, the new administration in the US, under the new president Barack Obama will be able to reverse this trend.

Watched the inauguration of the new US president Barack Obama (including the fumbled oath!) live on a couple of Indian news channels. The inaugural speech was impressive. Obama has an appearance and a presence which inspires confidence in Americans from coast to coast, and even non-Americans around the world. Wish India could have a leader like that. The only person in India right now who could inspire that kind of confidence and who could deliver the results, is the current chief minister of Gujarat, Mr Narendra Modi. Unfortunately, the political setup in India is somewhat different from the US. Mr Modi will not be able to become the prime minister of India based on purely personal merit and outstanding track record (which is much better than even Obama's), the way Obama was able to become the president of the US. In fact, this comparison of the obstacles in Mr Modi's path in India and the path that Obama took to the highest office in the US, is a classic representation of the challenges faced by any talented person who wants to become successful in India compared to the challenges in the US for a similar endeavor.

Indian national cable news channels have horrible presentation. Most of them have two or three rows of constantly scrolling text at the bottom, and sometimes even a side-bar. These distracting elements often show news headlines which are not truly 'breaking'. And when they are not showing news headlines, they scroll text ads! It is extremely annoying and spoils the whole experience of watching the news. A row of scrolling text at the bottom should be used only for truly important, high-priority breaking news. Hasn't anybody told them that? Don't they realize how bad their current design is?

The other annoying thing about Indian news is the way the media people are allowed to mob any newsworthy individual who has been arrested, whenever he or she is transported from one place to another (like say from the holding cell to the court). The media personnel are not allowed to mob and surround politicians, movie stars or any other celebrities who have not been arrested. They are kept at a reasonable distance and the newsworthy subject has sufficient personal space to move around. But when it comes to people who have been arrested, there is a chaotic mob if police security personnel, camera men, reporters and interviewers jostling like crazy. The latest person to star in this mob drama on TV is Satyam's ex-CEO, Mr Ramalinga Raju who confessed to high fraud.

On the personal front, it was very nice to meet my 4-month old niece. She is such a cute and smiling baby, already big for some of the clothes I bought, which are supposed to fit 6-month old babies. Good thing I also got a few bigger clothes. The baby is too young to be afraid of anyone. So, she lets pretty much anybody hold her and make her smile. We had her naming ceremony on Jan 21st, and we finalized on a name only on the day before the ceremony, when the decorator for the event pressed us for a name because he had to put it up on the wall of the party hall. Apparently short, sweet, satisfactory female Indian names starting with 'B' (due to astrological requirements!) are much harder to come by, than those starting with 'R' or 'S'. My sister, the baby's mother, finally chose the name Bhavyasri. Bhavya means 'grand' in Sanskrit.

Visited Goa for the first time. Had a real good, fun trip with a few friends. We went on a day trip to the church of St Francis of Assisi and the popular sea-side fort, and a popular beach on the first day. In the evening, we went on a typical Indian hour-long cruise - over crowded, people dancing helter-skelter all over the place. On the second day, we went on a boat trip to a small isolated cove, where we did some swimming and snorkeling. Except for one other party of foreigners, we pretty much had the cove to ourselves. After that, we went parasailing, rode a water scooter (they don't let us ride it on our own) and went on a ride called the banana ride. The 'banana' is an inflatable boat which is shaped like a long tube (hence the name 'banana'). You just sit on the tube one behind the other and the tube is towed out to the sea by a motor boat. Once you are in the middle of the sea, the boat driver turns the boat so that the tube on which you are sitting is flipped and you are all thrown into the sea! It was so much fun being dunked into the sea many miles from the shore! On the third day, we rented a couple of motorbikes and went on a long ride across half of Goa. On the last day, we spent over three hours playing in the water at Sernabatim beach, which is very pretty and has very less crowd.

Getting BSNL broadband connection was a relatively quick and painless process. But the Internet service itself is not very stable and dependable. There are occasional intermittent outages of several seconds to several minutes. Can be a very frustrating experience when this happens in the middle of using the Internet.

Managed to sell my beloved 1984 model class motorcycle Bullet. Well, the transaction will be completed in early February, but the buyer and the terms are finalized. I never got to fully enjoy that bike - having been sent to the US within a few months after buying it in August 2000. Tried to hang on to it all these years, getting relatives and friends to look after it. But it didn't work out as well as I'd have liked. So, had to let it go with much reluctance. Had a nice license plate number too... CKD 3690. Vehicles in Karnataka (and most parts of India) don't even have such numbers any more!

After returning to the US, missed family, friends and my country a lot. It felt so good to be the part of my country and its people, to experience that lifestyle for the past few days. Missing India can sometimes be as deeply intense as missing a woman you love. Felt totally out of touch with classes and studies after returning. Still playing catch up. But got back into the loner lifestyle surprisingly quickly... Nevertheless, I don't want to be here. Want to be there.