Nothing New Under the Sun

Actually, there isn't much sun in Bangalore at the moment. It is strange to watch Wimbledon and realize that they are hotter in England than we are here in India. We haven't had much rain lately - just heavy winds and a constant layer of clouds.

We have been seeing old friends all week. On Thursday we had dinner at Ivan's house - he is a Swiss computer scientist - and saw our Indian friends Harish and Yadvinder, along with the French teachers, Julie and Anne-Julie (another naming idea for twins!). Then on Friday Harish invited us out with some Macromedia folks to a bar called Purple Haze. The music selection was hilarious - lots of Queen, some Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen and basically anything you could think of from the early 80s. The best part was there was a tv showing music videos. The Indians got quite a kick out of Freddie Mercury (they thought he looked gay). Th taught us how to count to ten in Hindi, and now they keep trying to get us to order things in restaurants.

Saturday we had dinner at Mainland China and then Lauren invited us back to her place for drinks. We stayed until the wee hours, which made it difficult to wake up early to go to the Nandi Hills. We had never been to the hills before, and it was a nice change from Bangalore - it's quite green and quiet, and there are interesting sights, like a place where Tipu Sultan used to drop people to their death.

Anyway, it's sad to see many of our friends getting ready to leave India. Anne-Julie is leaving on Saturday for a trip to the north, and then she's off to France. We have been talking about meeting up in Chandigarh it's a possibility, because we do want to go up there and our friend Yad is getting engaged. Supposedly people in Punjab really know how to party!

Bad Karma

We arrived back home at around 6 am on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday night I took a bus from Pune to Mumbai - it was a special airport bus that was supposed to pick me up at my hotel and take me directly to the airport. They arranged to pick me up at 6, and when I boarded there was only one other passenger - he had started his trip at 5, he said, but the bus was stalled for 45 minutes because the AC wasn't working. (An AC malfunction is always reason to stop a bus in India, because if they don't provide air conditioning they have to refund the difference between a deluxe ticket and a regular ticket, which is probably 90% of the ticket price). He told me we had to pick up another four passengers around Pune. We picked up one elderly couple, which took a while because the bus was too big to fit down the residential alleys. Then, at around 7, the other passenger asked me, "Did you forget anything at your hotel?" It turns out we had just driven in a circle and we were in front of my hotel again. I thought that was bad planning, but I didn't have the worst of it. When we were about to get on the highway we picked up enough passengers to fill the bus. They explained that they had been dropped off some time ago - the bus they boarded had collected all the passengers before the driver realized he didn't have any fuel. He left to find some and told the passengers to board the next bus.

The trip to the airport took around 5 hours in the end. I didn't mind because I was meeting Gilles at 12:30 am or so. The only problem was a strange man from the Osho Ashram in Pune. He looked a lot like Rasputin. He insisted on sitting next to me and then proceeded to tell me how he had had a lot of relationships with western women. I had heard from my friends in Pune that this ashram taught good meditation techniques but that the long-term residents were rumored to practice free love. I was not disappointed when this guy changed seats - I preferred his suitcases to him.

We arrived back home, admired our dead plants, and promptly went to sleep. We woke up around 1 PM and started breakfast, and then at 2:30 Ramakrishna showed up with his friend from Mumbai, Jyoti. Ramakrishna is quite excited about producing a play in sign language. Later the guru Anantadev arrived, and told us about Michele's visit. He and Ramakrishna were quite amazed at how much she seemed to like India - Anantadev said it must be karma, and she must have been Indian in a past life. This got me thinking how I was certainly not Indian in a past life - heck, I don't even believe in past lives. I have been trying to figure out why it is that I don't feel at home in India. I think I never will. A lot of western people tell me how they love it here, how they want to come back again and again or stay for a long time, and the thought doesn't appeal to me at all. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, and as someone who can adapt easily to new environments. Maybe I am just getting older and it is not as easy as it used to be. But on the other hand, maybe India and I just don't get along. It's not that I dislike India - it's just that I can't imagine living here forever. I tried to think of reasons as I walked down Sampige Road today - the best I can come up with is that this is a country of a billion people who never seem to look where they're going.

Goodbye to Pune

We went to the police station again today on the off-chance that the officer had my registration ready, and - surprisingly - he did. He chatted with Nupur a bit and handed us the letter without asking for any money, despite the fact that other people seemed to be required to give him cash before getting their stamps. I think he liked that she is cute and speaks Marathi. He told her that he isn't the one asking for bribes, it's his superior. I'm sure that's always the way.

Two days ago we went to Osho, a big ashram with a lot of foreign clients. It seems to promote general positivity and free love. Supposedly the meditation techniques are very good, but a lot of people take the opportunity to go a little wild. We stopped by a German bakery and had a very good mango crumble. I had my first disappointing meal today - I ordered a tomato omelette at breakfast, not realizing that the restaurant of my hotel is pure veg and doesn't serve eggs. It was the strangest thing I've ever had in India - some sort of yellow bread.

One thing I've realized by hanging out with Indian young people is that I don't feel very integrated at all in Bangalore. We have friends, but they are mostly French, American, deaf, or from other parts of India. It's kind of fun to go around with someone who speaks the local language. It's actually not her native language, but since she grew up in Bombay she speaks it well. Her friends from Pune make fun of her language, Gujarati, but no one will tell me what the joke is. I guess it must be somewhat racy. Anyway, we've been having a good time talking about love, marriage, kids, etc. She is only 20 but she is pretty mature for her age - not at all like an American college student.

I watched Sania Mirza play tennis on TV yesterday. She is a girl from Hyderabad and was the first Indian woman to make it to the fourth round of the Australian Open last year. This year she was apparently the first Indian woman to win a match at Wimbledon. She is all over the media here even though she is ranked in the 70s. Anyway it's nice that India supports its female athlete(s).

Gilles is arriving tonight, after finally getting his visa. He spent the weekend with his parents and also took the opportunity to see friends. I am taking a special bus to the airport to meet him tonight. I'll probably end up waiting around for a long time, but I've always kind of enjoyed airports so I don't mind. I am looking forward to getting back to Bangalore - friends are starting to ask when we are getting back, and I am looking forward to seeing them again. We'll see how heavy the monsoon is there. It is really nice when it rains in Pune - everything cools off and the trees turn a nice dark color. The only problem is that the drivers like to race through the puddles - once our own rickshaw driver did it and I had to wash my hair for the second time that day.

Back in Line

So, I arrived back in India on June 15th. Things did not go smoothly right away. I was supposed to have an airport pickup, but when I walked out of the airport I could not find my name on any of the many hotel signs waving around. I finally went to the hotel desk and they supposedly called my hotel for me, but reported back that my room had been booked for the previous night and now the hotel was full! There had been some confusion about the date of my arrival at the Fulbright office in Mumbai, so I thought there may have been a misunderstanding. I decided to go to the hotel anyway, since they were holding an air ticket for me, so I booked a prepaid taxi. When I got into the taxi I realized the prepaid people had ripped me off - I had prepaid about three times what I should have. Anyway, when I did arrive at the hotel they told me they had a room for me and asked why I didn't come in their car. Don't know where that airport pickup guy was. Maybe he had the wrong name on his sign.

I flew to Pune on Wednesday. The flight is really funny - it's about ten minutes of actual flight time. They take off, and then ten minutes later they say "Please prepare for landing." The guy next to me wouldn't stop talking on his cellphone as we were taking off and the man across the aisle got into an argument with him over it.

My facilitator in Pune is a law student named Nupur. She took me to my hotel, then to a cafe, then to a friend's 21st birthday party. There was quite a funny assortment of people there: another lawyer, a woman who works in graphic design but wants to become a chef, an engineer who's about to get married to a man in Jacksonville, FL, a man who soups up cars for a living and left early because he's a "serious gamer" and had just bought a new game. This computer programmer guy pulled me aside and said he had a question for me: it was "Indians think Americans are dumb. Why is that?" Couldn't really answer that.

After dinner the birthday boy drove us home in his souped up car. It's a compact car that has a very, very loud engine and neon lights everywhere. He doesn't need to honk - he says it's because of the lights, but I realized later, once he had dropped me off, that you can hear the engine from a block away, so maybe that serves as a horn and a threat at the same time.

Meanwhile, Gilles has been trapped in Paris waiting for his research visa. We should have known, right? Anyway, there was good news yesterday - the ministry in Delhi came through and he is allowed to get his visa today. So hopefully he will arrive next week. I have been going through my own bureaucratic nightmares - Nupur took me to the Police Registration Office, but they said they couldn't register me without a proof of residence. I tried to add my two cents' worth but the ugly and annoying man at the counter told me "Either she talks to me, or you talk to me. Which one of you will talk to me?" Nupur thought he was hoping for a bribe. Anyway, we'll see if they give it to me tomorrow.

I Left My Heart (and Passport) in San Francisco

So, my latest adventure with the government of India was last Friday. I arrived with all of my precious paperwork in hand, waited in line, turned in my passport, and - lo and behold! - six hours later was told that I couldn't have a visa after all because I didn't have enough pages in my passport. The people at the window were phenomenonally rude and just generally unhelpful, and most of them had put far too much henna in their hair. Perhaps it has some religious significance I am unaware of? Do they think it looks normal?

Over the weekend, of course, my brother got married, so that was a good time. The wedding was really wonderful - very simple, secular, elegant. And then the reception at Mecca was great. Our only complaint is that it ended too early. It was over at eleven o'clock. Gilles was only just beginning to get liquored up. So Greg, Jeff, Burcin, Gilles and I had to go wander from bar to bar until we found a place that wasn't too trendy, too expensive, too seedy, or too smelly in Union Square.

My friend Michele is staying at our apartment in Bangalore and meeting all of my friends there, which seems to be fun. I wish we were there at the same time! Anyway, reading about her adventures is making me warm up to the idea of going back. Not that I don't want to go back, I'm just tired of the administration. They are also not ready to give Gilles his visa because they didn't like the letter he had from the Government of India. And in order to verify it they will need 6 weeks, apparently. Do they not know about an invention known as the telephone? The British authorities can be tough, but if you have a phone number when you arrive at Heathrow they just call and check up on you. I'm sure we would be willing to pay the long-distance charges for the Indian Embassy in Paris to call the Ministry of Human Resources in Delhi. Heck, they can call their mothers for all we care. I think that India has to do some serious thinking about how it wants to collaborate with Europe and the US. I have to say that if anyone were to ask me about doing a Fulbright in India I would advise them to go to some other country. It's not so much that their paperwork takes so long as that they can't say when it will come through, and all along the way they are unhelpful and often just plain rude. Their "Incredible India" campaign is honest in more ways than one. They should call it "Unbelievable India" to make it less ambiguous.