Nine.5 Hours Ahead

This has nothing to do with India, Sorry

2009-08-01T06:21:00.002+09:30

Little Papi

Baseball has remained the great American past-time long after it was passed in popularity on TV and in backyards because of its uncanny tendency to mirror society, a point that seems to be reaffirmed by today's uproar over revelations that "Ortiz, David" was one of the names on "The List."
The mourning for the loss of Ortiz' innocence seems to once again mirror the national zeitgeist. Big Papi is, of course, just the latest member of the All-Asterisk team, but because he was seen as the heart and soul of the Red Sox and as the Nation's de-facto ambassador to America, his fall from grace has hit Boston fans particularly hard (Shaughnessy: "It’s horrible. No more innocence. No more fairy tales").
But Papi's public disrobing yesterday isn't tragic, shocking or "horrible," so much as it is timely. Papi’s innocence is just the latest in a string of Emperor's-New-Clothes-like illusions that have marked the past decade and which have been steadily, albeit sometimes painfully, revealed with varying degrees of feigned and genuine surprise.

I became a baseball fan at a peculiar time. Too young to care about baseball before the strike in 1994, my earliest memories come from the record-breaking power surge of the late 90s. Like every fan my age and older, I remember the summer of 1998 for the moments spent scurrying to the nearest TV whenever Sosa or McGwire threatened the records of Ruth and Maris.
Those hardball fireworks coincided with a brief hiccup that served as nothing more than a semicolon in a decade long, run-on sentence of previously unimaginable financial growth. While I was certainly a precocious 10 year old (just ask my mom, I'm sure she'll vouch for me), it would be a stretch to claim that I was aware of the market's rise that summer (whatever interest I could afford to the news was gobbled up by Ms. Lewinsky). But with hindsight, the boom-times of the 1990s seem perfectly captured by that record-shattering season.
Of course, today McGwire and Sosa are personae non gratae in Cooperstown and 1998 stands as a glaring reminder of what now appears so obvious: that the good-times of the late '90s were built on something other than Big Mac's hard-scrabble Mid-Western work ethic or the Caribbean, Garcia-Marquez-esque, mythical mastery of Slammin' Sammy. Rather, they were fueled by the toxic cocktail of steroids and willful ignorance.
Likening steroids and other performance enhancing drugs to the exotic derivatives and over-leveraging of the 1990s and 2000s may be a too-convenient conceit. Nevertheless, there are startling similarities that once again reaffirm baseball's unique position in American society as a pitch-perfect mimic of the economic and political climate.
The Roaring Twenties had its “live-ball” era, which saw over-sized sluggers like Ruth and Gehrig belt home runs at previously unimaginable rates as the country experienced the climax of its first Gilded Age. The 1940s saw Americans invest in “total war,” which came to include even baseball’s brightest stars, including Ted Williams who volunteered for active duty. The post war period, as has been noted and honored with such frequency as to become perfunctory and cliché, saw the integration of baseball and with it, the opening of the door to greater integration in society. Roberto Clemente's death in 1972 served as an explosive punctuation mark at the close of the "60s" and ushered in the era of what-do-we-do-now malaise, stagflation, oil shocks and Nixon’s demise. Finally, the economic boom of the 1990s and early 2000s had its home-run kings, whose singular ability to hit balls farther and more frequently than any players before captured the hearts and minds of fans and, while the balls kept flying, obscured the underlying instability of the boom.
Steroids did not give McGwire, Sosa, Bonds or any other pariahs the ability to hit major-league pitching. All but the most ardent moralists and car-radio screamers would grant that most of the now-tarnished stars of baseball's Juiced Era were skilled ballplayers even without the aid of chemical enhancement. PEDs let great athletes leverage their skills to even higher, previously unimaginable levels. They enabled marginal athletes to make massive sums of money playing a kids game. And they allowed baseball to return to the glory it had lost in the 1994 strike.
Similarly, the boom times of the late 1990s and 2000s - first the tech bubble and then the real estate bubble - were fueled by a cocktail of over-leveraging and willful ignorance. Like PEDs of baseball's elite, the acronyms of the financial world - CDOs, CDSs, LBOs, etc. – were not skills or products in and of themselves. Rather, like PEDs, they were once-exotic, unregulated or lightly-regulated tools that allowed really smart people to make a ton of money and marginally smart people to come along for the ride, eventually becoming common-place and insidiously far-reaching. And like steroids, the financial tools of the current era were almost all condoned by the relevant governing bodies. Similar, too, is the extent to which the central figures in the drama and the supposed powers-that-be profess total ignorance as the bubble bursts. Ortiz’s statement, “Based on the way I have lived my life, I am surprised to learn I tested positive,” echoes the defenses put forth by financial executives and regulators hiding behind “unforeseeable circumstances.”
Today’s era of society-wide de-leveraging calls out for a baseball figure to serve as its diamond representative. Big Papi may not be the perfect choice. Perhaps A-Rod, with his particular blend of hubris and insecurity, his enormous paycheck, and Manhattan address more closely mirrors the era’s Wall-Street-fueled excesses.
But the public naming of Big Papi has been lamented because of the unique stature Papi had as a beloved, jovial, larger-than-life figure; a Dominican Santa Claus with a hitting prowess sui generis. For a team that serves as the “heart and soul” of a region to a degree unmatched anywhere else in the country, David Ortiz carried the mantle of “heart-and-soul” for the Red Sox with greater gusto than almost any player in the league (perhaps Pujols, Jeter or Ichiro surpasses him in this metric). His oversized smile and swing thus held a special place in the hearts of baseball’s most avid fans.

So, yes, seeing Papi's name on "The List" does rattle a particular sense of innocence. But Ortiz is hardly the first figure of national or regional significance to be revealed as a fraud, a cheat or an artificially enhanced Frankenstein. Like the housing and stock markets in which so many Americans invested much more than their hearts and souls, the brand of baseball that captured Americans’ attentions over the past decade has been revealed for what it was: an inflated, bizarro version of the real thing, based on unsustainable principles of over-leveraging of natural talent for ever greater returns.
We’ve lost an innocence bred from willful ignorance, which blinded Americans to the steroid-fueled excesses of the Juiced Era and the debt-fueled excesses of our economies latest Gilded Age. If from now on we must live with slower growth, fewer home runs, and the genuine, Little Papi, so be it.

Burgers

2009-07-19T21:57:00.004+09:30

I just took the last pill in a 3 day cycle of Cipro. For those of you who don't know what that means, read on.

I went on Wednesday night to Blue Frog, a restaurant/music club that's the coolest place I've seen in Mumbai. At home, I usually don't seek out live concerts of any kind, and I especially avoid acapella. I'd never been confronted with the prospect of Austrian hip-hop acapella, but I don't think I would have sought that out at home, either. But in Mumbai, Bauchklang, an Austrian, hip-hop inspired-acapella group that does a lot of cool beatboxing (difficult to explain this one to my parents) has a following that still doesn't really make much sense to me. A bunch of friends were planning on going, so I tagged along. Much to my surprise, they were awesome. The place was packed, the music was great and they put on a really cool show, including some guest appearances by audience members, who were incredible.

I'd been there twice before (most recently for the poetry jam) and both times I'd eaten an awesome lamb-risotto-figs dish, so I not only trusted but really respected the food. I somehow convinced myself that a burger would fit perfectly in this setting, probably because they didn't have any wienerschnitzel tika masala. The burger wasn't awesome, but eating a burger, drinking a beer and wathching this cool concert in such a surprising setting was.

The next morning, I woke up doubled over with stomach pains. I spent the rest of the day in a peripatetic commute between my bed and the bathroom, waiting until the U.S. East Coast would wake up, so I could get my mom to call my doctor. My mom has done a remarkable job of pretending to be ok with me living 5000 miles away, but when I called to tell her I had food poisoning, she dropped the b.s. and went into full mom-mode. We spoke about 20 times over the next 3 days. She pressed me repeatedly to call up distant aquaintances for hospital recommendations.

Being sick definitely has its silver linings. Like being on an airplane, being sick is one of the few excuses for doing absolutely nothing and watching whatever movies TV can offer up. Among the gems I devoured: Happy Gilmore, The Rock, Holes, Remember the Titans. As my brother noted, it's also a great weightloss plan. This didn't appeal to me (I've lost about 15 pounds since getting here) nearly as much as it did to him.

That night, I got started on Cipro (which became famous as the drug prescribed to people who had been mailed anthrax. No idea how it also fights food poisoning), which is a miracle drug and much more effective than the cocktail of Pepto and Advil I'd been working with. My roommate, Arjun (see the earlier posts) called up a doctor friend, who prescribed some other meds. (You don't really need a prescription here. You just go to the drugstore and ask for what you want. And drugs are really cheap because they're all generics. While potentially interesting from a healthcare-policy standpoint, these facts were not reassuring for my mother. Obviously, I didn't end up taking those meds). Just having someone there to keep an eye on me was a big relief.

It took two more days for me to be back to strength, but now I'm doing fine. No plans to try any more burgers until I'm back in the U.S.A.

Indian Hospitality

2009-07-14T23:21:00.005+09:30

A couple nights ago I ran into my roommate, Arjun, as I was walking home. He invited me to join him and his daughter to see his son perform stand-up comedy. Arjun, like nearly every other person I've met here, has been unbelievably welcoming, friendly, and helpful. He's taken a serious interest in teaching me about Indian culture and he's offered to let me sit in on his daily yoga lessons. Hope to do that soon. I immediately accepted his offer, excited to see what stand-up would look like in Mumbai.

The stand-up comedy turned out to be a poetry slam, with Arjun's son the only one offering up any comedy. The rest of the poets were a mixed bag, but definitely as good if not better than anything Cafe Gato Rojo has served up at Harvard. Most of the poems were in English, so I could follow along pretty well. Arjun's son's first poem was hilarious and earned him a spot in the second round of the competition. The host clearly favored some of the other, more serious poets and Arjun's son wasn't able to overcome the anti-humor bias. Nevertheless, he put up an excellent showing.
Varanchi, another person who's given me a lot of help here, explained that for Indians, a guest is like a god. What that meant wasn't immediately clear to me, but I think I'm beginning to understand.

I've got a more-than-healthy cynical streak, which serves me pretty well on the mean streets of Newton, but I've had to put it away here to appreciate just how kind and welcoming everyone has been.

The sense of welcoming extends across social and economic lines. On the train ride from hell (described earlier), we were all terrified of being robbed. But now, looking back on it, there was really never a single occasion where we had any reason to be afraid of that (maybe, the fact that we were sleeping on the floor made us seem like pretty poor targets for a robbery, but I think we were much more wary than we needed to be). Similarly, walking around the streets of Mumbai at any time of night, I've felt safer than on a late-night walk from Lamont to Dunster. Rich and poor live right up against each other in this city, but violent crime just doesn't seem to be a part of the co-existence.

5 sunrises in 8 days

2009-07-11T19:49:00.005+09:30

I spent about 8 days traveling around the north of India with my cousin Will and four friends. The pictures of our trip are in the post below. What follows is a description of our whirlwind travels.

I flew to Delhi and met Will in the airport there. We then headed into the city in search of a bar where Nimay, Devin and Santi were reported to be. After stopping several times for directions, we found them and then headed to Santi's brother's place in Delhi for the night. Will and I got up early the next morning, found a rickshaw in the rain, and convinced the rickshaw-walla to take us to the train station. We then boarded the 6 am train to Agra.

Will and I tackled Agra and Jaipur in a whirlwind 48 hours. We arrived in Agra around 8 am and made it to the Taj before the crowds. Agra, the town it's in, is a total hell-hole, and the approach to the Taj involves ancient taxis, painfully slow bike-rickshaws that feel abusive, and a walk down a tiny, dirty alley. The juxtaposition of this decrepit town and the majestic Taj made it all the more incredible. It really does live up to the hype.

We left Agra that same afternoon on a train to Jaipur. We shared a first class cabin with a British couple backpacking through Asia. They were not the most enlightened travelers of all time but they provided some entertainment for Will and me. In Jaipur, we found a hotel and got some much needed sleep. Jaipur was really hot and kind of underwhelming, but there were some cool forts and a great temple with a ton of monkeys. We hired a rickshaw to take us around the city and the surrounding area for the entire day (Rs 300, aka $6). The driver insisted on dragging us to textile stores (Jaipur is supposedly famous for its textiles, but so is every city with tourists). We went to two and I bought a beautiful silk duvet cover (sounds pretty feminine in recounting) at one.

That night, we boarded a 1am train to Delhi. When we got there, we took a long rickshaw ride (several bumps almost concussed Will and me. I think we got lost 12 separate times) to Nimay's "aunt's" house, where we had an amazing Indian breakfast and an even better nap. That night, Nimay, Devin, Will and I went to the home of a friend of Devin and Nimay, whose mother runs an NGO in Delhi. Really nice to spend some time in the home of a local.

The next day, Nimay, Devin, Nan, Santi, Will and I flew to Varanasi. Varanasi is the dirtiest place on earth. Will stepped in a massive pile of cowshit, which was probably not the dirtiest experience of the day. Human bodies burning on the banks of the river, human bodies being dumped into the river. Totally overwhelming. One cow (the city is totally dominated by cows), with a broken horn serving as evidence of a history of attacking tourists, didn't like the looks of me and tried to ram me against the stone wall of a house. He missed.

We took sunset and dawn boat-rides along the Ganges. We watched a Hindu ceremony on the banks of the river. We visited one of the holiest Buddhist sites, the place where the Budha first taught the dharma (much cooler in theory. Today it's a field with a giant stupa. Not that cool). We saw the process by which Benares Silk is made (again, every town with tourists is famous for its textiles). And then we got suckered into buying obscene amounts of silk. For dinner, we went to the one restaurant in town with a TV and watched the 5th set of Roddick-Federrer while fighting off Indians trying to watch cricket and praying that the power wouldn't cut out during key points. It did.

The following day, we took the train ride from hell. I'm not sure that I'll be able to fully capture how miserable these 20 hours of our lives were.

We were supposed to have seats in an AC car, but we were on the wait-list (which is supposedly pretty normal, according to Devin and Nan, who had the most experience traveling in India). But our wait-list was the on-line wait-list, aka the wait-list for white people, which doesn't actually mean anything. So, with 5 minutes to spare before our train was scheduled to depart, we found ourselves without any seats. We scrambled and bought seats (for $3) in the lowest class car, which was the only thing available. But we decided to try to go in the AC car as stowaways. The first train we got on turned out to be the wrong one, so we bolted and ran to the right train (think: the opening scene of Darjeeling Limited). There, we hid out near the bathrooms, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible (failing, obviously, since we were the only Americans and we had tons of bags and Nan was wearing a tank-top that every Indian found very interesting). We eventually found a few seats and managed to squeeze six people and our bags into them. But, we were across the aisle from the ticket collector. Effff. We launched into negotiations with him and his cronies. Nimay tried, failed. Nan tried, cried, failed. Santi tried, thought he had succeeded, failed. At one point, we thought we had convinced the ticket collector (who acted so erratically and irrationally that he could have easily been institutionalized or at least heavily medicated if he was living in the U.S.) to let us stay on. But in one of the most painful moment of the trip, he changed his mind without any explanation. Eventually, he decided to kick us off at Patna Junction (sidenote: this is one of the worst written wikipedia articles I've ever read), which seemed like a totally arbitrary decision. Patna is the capital of Bihar, a state known for its petty crime and generally a miserable place to be stranded. Shortly after our sentencing, we were granted something of a reprieve: the train promptly broke down and we were stranded for 3 hours at the station before Patna Junction. Upside: we weren't kicked off. Downside: we weren't moving and the AC wasn't working while the train was broken down. Probably a net negative.

When we got to Patna at 2am, the crazy guy kicked us off just as he'd promised. We then ran down the platform, found a car outside his jurisdiction, and hopped on as the train was moving away( Darjeelign Limited part deaux). We were now in the dreaded Sleeper Class. No AC. Totally decrepit. Amazing smells. Zillions of Indians. Twilight Zone. Our tickets in this class didn't actually correspond to any seats. We tried to find somewhere to sit and failed, so we sat down on our bags on the floor of this nasty car and tried to sleep without getting robbed. At 4:30 am, the Chai-wallas started walking through the aisles (and all over us, sitting there) carrying steaming hot pots of sloshing chai and calling out "Chaiiiiii, coffee, chaiiiii" in a haunting, warbling scream that was not the funnest thing to wake up to. We managed to find beds at that time (some of us more quickly than others) and all got some sleep for a few hours. While we were sleeping, Santi was attacked by a transvestite, who woke Santi up by sticking his hand in Santi's mouth and then tried to demand payment to stop harassing him. A man walked down the aisle of the car selling a 3-foot long electronic Casio keyboard, oblivious to the market he was catering to. Casio pianos were about 250,000th on my list of needs at that point.

We eventually reached our destination around 2:30 pm (6 hours late). The dude sitting next to me, a philosophy student on hour 40 of a 48 hour journey from Delhi to home, told me, "Actually, basically, India is a nation of sufferers. We are sufferers. " This was not as helpful as he intended it.

At the train station, we hired drivers and Jeeps to take us the 3 hours up into the hills to Darjeeling, which was beautiful (We missed the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, which was just as well because 7 more hours on a train would have probably led to serious mental breakdowns) The road climbs from Siliguri (eleavation: 400 ft) to Darjeeling (elevation: 7000 ft) in 90 km. It's steep, windy and gorgeous. The hills are covered with the famous tea bushes and the view extends out to the flood plains of West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Darjeelig would have been really amazing in a different season. The town is poised a few miles from Kanchanjunga, the world's third highest mountain. We saw some very dramatic clouds, but no mountains. Thank monsoon.

During our day there, we explored the tea plantations, visited the zoo (Bengali tigers, red pandas), ate some awesome Nepali food, and feigned expertise at a tea tasting. The next morning, we got up at 3:45 in an attempt to see sunrise over Everest. Saw the Everest of Fog instead. Then, we went back down the hills by Jeep (we had to take a different, longer, route because of political protests blocking the main route. West Bengal is a hotbed of Maoist political parties and terrorist groups. Detour > fighting off communist terrorists.) and flew back to Delhi. Nan and Will went on to Bangkok and Angkor Wat and I flew back to Mumbai.

All in all, a pretty amazing 8 days or so. I'm not sure I'd ever want to travel like that again (and I'd definitely never repeat the train ride) but seeing the Taj, the ghats of Varanasi and the hills of Darjeeling was unforgettable.

If you've made it this far, congratulations and thank you. You've read a truly epic blog post. Now, go do something more useful.

Photos

2009-07-11T01:14:00.001+09:30

Just got back from a week of traveling around the north of India. I'll have a lot more to say soon, but here are some photos to whet your appetites.

Travels in the North

After Hours

2009-07-01T00:07:00.003+09:30

It's difficult to figure out how much of America to stay tapped into while 9.5 hours and 7000 miles away. I've been keeping up with NYT.com and espn.com, but not a whole lot else and no American television. I decided, however, that the USA v. Brazil Confederation Cup final was of sufficiently global significance to warrant watching. I called a bar in my neighborhood that has a big projection screen and convinced them to show the match. When I walked in at 11:30 Sunday night, they were showing cricket. Since the only thing I know about cricket is that mathces last days, I was worried that the soccer would not be coming on any time soon. Angering everyone else in the bar, I cited the arrangement we had agreed to on the phone and asked the bartender to change it, which he did.
Bars in Mumbai close at 1:30. Officially, prohibition is still in effect, but no one actually adheres to that at all. The 1:30 closing time is a nod to the law, I guess. Some places stay open later by bribing the local cops, but this bar on this night was not interested in any funny business. So, in the 60th minute of what was then a 2-1 game, the lights came on, the liquor bottles went away, the music went off, and everyone else got up to leave. I started to walk out and then stopped to talk to the manager. I told him how frustrating it was to have to leave the game with 30 minutes to go. And he offered to let me stay. The staff of the bar were all crowding around the projection screen, so I settled in with them. For reasons that I didn't fully understand, they were all rooting for Brazil, which made the final 30 minutes kind of excrutiating.

When I went back the next night to meet a friend, I got a concilliatory handshake from the host.

The Characters

2009-06-29T21:06:00.002+09:30

I ended up renting a room from a man named Arjun who owns a hotel and two restaurants in the neighborhood. He's got his choice of places to stay, but he's been living with me for the past week or so. He says he's taking some time away from his family to write a book. It's nonfiction, "but no one will believe it," he told me. I haven't gotten any more information out of him. Mostly, he seems to do yoga. He and I share a living room and a kitchen, which is the domain of a young guy who speaks 0 words of English. Actually, that's not true. He can say, "Sir? Mango?" and "Sir? Tea?" and he says those two things all day long, which is amazing. Since I don't know his name, I call him "sir," too.
Sir has one annoying habit. On weekends, when I like to sleep in, he comes into my room, throws the Times of India (a pretty good paper, by the way and it costs 4.50 rupees, aka 9 cents) on my face, and turns on the lights. Since I don't speak Hindi and he doesn't speak English, I haven't been able to communicate that, No, I don't want to be woken up and, even if I did, a newspaper on my face would not be my preferred method. So, Sir and I are at a bit of a standstill on this one.

Rickhaws Suck

2009-06-26T02:37:00.002+09:30

The trendy, global-citizen, with a "I can sleep anywhere, eat anything" patch on his backpack says, "I love rickshaws. They're so cheap. And cute."

Well, f*$@ that. I spent four hours today in various rickshaws, traveling around the streets of Mumbai. I feel confident in my verdict: rickshaws suck.

Among their many problems:
They don't have a suspension. None. And they have tiny wheels. The seats are steel covered in vinyl. So, every loose paving stone, pothole, and random rumble strip in the road goes straight into your back. It's a combination of low-level pouding punctuated by jaw-rattling shocks.

They don't have seatbelts, doors or windows. This is fun and a little exciting for a while. But on the highway, with a water truck an inch from your face, it's terrifying. Also, Mumbai drivers really, really love using their horns. These horns are loud. They are particularly loud without doors and windows.
The other fun thing about not having doors or windows is that there is no door to close and no window to roll up when you're stuck in traffic. Inhaling the dirty, diesel exhaust of every truck, car and Socialist-era taxi can give you a massive headache over the course of a few hours.

It rained today. There's been a lot of hype about the delayed and weakened monsoon here because of El Niño, but that doesn't mean it can't still rain really hard. When it rains, the rickshaws' gaping holes where doors should be let in splashes of filthy water with every bounce and torrents of grime with the passing of every truck.

Today's four hour joyride was like being inside a locker-room washing machine after a particularly muddy practice, but a lot louder and without any detergent.

Co-Existing

2009-06-21T14:40:00.000+09:30

I had my first day of work at Swadhaar on Thursday (more on that soon). The head office, in the neighborhood of Santacruz, is about 20 minutes by rickshaw from Mike Delf’s apartment in Bandra. I’m starting to get used to the amazingly cheap prices for rickshaws and I’ve been carrying small bills – Rs 10, 20, 50 – in my pocket for rickshaw rides. When I arrived in front of my building in Bandra yesterday evening, the rickshaw meter read Rs 33. I reached into my pocket and found one Rs 10 bill and a couple nearly worthless coins. Uhoh. I opened my wallet to find some bigger bills. I pulled out a Rs 500 and showed it to the auto-wallah. He shook his head. Uhoh x 2.
Now I’m at something of a moral crossroads. Do I give the auto-wallah the Rs. 13 in my pocket, or the Rs 500 in my wallet? (For those of you following along at home without your T.I. 89s, Rs 500 is about $10. Rs 30 is about 60 cents). Actually, this was the easiest moral crossroads in the history of moral crossroads. I spent $15 on a hung-over cab ride from NYU to the Upper East Side the day I flew to India (thanks for the credit card, pops); in the grand scheme of things, $10 could not have meant less to me. The Rs 20 difference between the fare on the meter and what my front pocket had to offer, however, would make a noticeable difference in the life of the rickshaw driver that day. When I gave him the Rs 500 bill, he almost fell off of his perch in the front of the car. “Thank you, thank you,” I think he said. He reached out and shook my hand with both of his and nodded his head frantically.
His white eyes looking up at me from the rickshaw stayed in my mind as I went up to my apartment, showered, and then called Nadir Padamsee. Nadir is a friend of Ed, who recently married my fake-cousin Charlotte. Nadir invited me over to his place, which happened to be a block away from Mike Delfs’. No Rs 500 rickshaw ride necessary.
The elevator opened onto a 1970s-Bond-villain-esque, teal-silver-and-glass-themed apartment with views of the sun setting over the Arabian Sea. Woah. We went up the stairs and out onto a grassy roof-deck. Then, up another flight of stairs, past a sauna (“Come over and use it anytime you like,” Nadir said, not realizing that the very last thing a visitor to the hottest, most humid place on earth would want is a sauna. A nice offer, nonetheless), to an indoor pool with views of the sea. I told Nadir, “I would have asked to interview you for my research on the middle class, but I think your pool is too nice.” He loved my joke, so you don’t have to.
If you ever get a chance to visit Nadir’s place (and you really should), look a few hundred feet below the sun, setting into the sea, and you’ll see the slums of the fishermen’s families of Khar. One- and two-story homes surround a football-field-sized dirt-patch, which, during the summer months (April-June in Mumbai (I don’t really get it, either)) the fisherman use to dry thousands and thousands of fish. The smell, I’m told, is painful, even 100 feet above. If you have the option, don’t visit Nadir’s place in the summer.
“The amazing thing about Mumbai,” Nadir said, as we stood there, “Is that everyone, all different kinds of people, can co-exist.”
Co-exist sounded like a bullshit euphemism to me, but he was providing the Cokes and the view, so I didn’t say anything.

The next morning, I traveled to one of Swadhaar’s field offices – in the Chembur area of Mumbai. I had planned to take a rickshaw, but Nadir insisted (he didn’t have to insist too hard) that his driver take me. After about 45 minutes of Mumbai traffic and 20 minutes of searching, we found the office. While I was slightly embarrassed to show up to a microfinance office in a chauffeured car, I would have been completely lost without the help.
My job with Swadhaar is to assess the implementation and efficacy of the “2-step evaluation model.” Under this new system, one person – the Loan Officer – is charged with evaluating the potential-clients’ willingness to pay (WTP), while another person – the Loan Analyst – evaluates the potential-clients’ capacity to pay (CTP) and oversees the Loan Officers. I had traveled to the Chembur field office to interview the Loan Analyst and his four Loan Officers. I had been told that the Loan Analyst would speak English and that, while the Loan Officers might not, the Loan Analyst could certainly translate. This, of course, was not the case. The Loan Officers spoke 0 English and the Loan Analyst spoke only a tiny bit; he seemed to understand much more than he could speak. Fortunately, there were two people there – training to become Area Managers, the next level in the hierarchy – who spoke perfectly competent English and offered to translate.
I sat down with the Loan Analyst (Satish), his four henchmen, two Loan Officer trainees, and my trusty translators. I had hoped I might get to speak to Satish separately and in private, but when I asked, he just motioned for me to speak, so I did. I asked them about their experiences and how the 2-step model made their jobs easier or harder. I’ll present my complete findings to you and the good people at Swadhaar at the end of the summer. You can back up from the edge of your seat now.
After the interviews, I went out into the field with Satish, the two Area Manager trainees, and the current Area Manager, Himanshu. Himanshu was a balding 30-year old man with a MBA from a university in the near-by city of Pune. He and I got to know each other pretty well over the next three hours (His father is a doctor in Bihar, one of the poorest areas in India. He’s lived in Delhi, Pune, and Mumbai and would like to leave Mumbai soon. He has uncles in New York, but he’s never been to the U.S. He travels to work by train and he has one of the sickest Nokias I’ve ever seen).
We visited three of Satish’s clients. The first was a newly married 50-year old man with a handicap that forces him to use a hand-powered cart to get around. He runs a very small snack and drink store that also offers short- and long-distance phone service. He was applying for his third round of funding to finance purchases of inventory for his store. I couldn’t understand a word he said, but he had a sheepish grin and a silly look in his face the entire time he was speaking to Satish. Once, everyone was laughing hard at something he said. I asked what it was and I didn’t understand it at all; but he seemed like the kind of guy who could tell excellent jokes. I bought a bottle of water and some massala-flavored potato chips from him.
The second client was also handicapped and also provided short- and long-distance phone service from a small storefront, where he sold sandals. He, too, was applying for his third round of funding. But it was unclear what he had spent his early funding on and why he needed more funding. There were no sandals to be seen in his store and he seemed to have all the phones he needed. He and I didn’t really hit it off. Himanshu explained that many clients use some or all of the money Swadhaar lends them for household consumption, which is against the terms of the loan. They were trying to determine whether that was the case with this client.
We then walked down a small alley into one of the many slums that together house 10 million Mumbaikers. I tried to avoid stepping into the open sewer that widened and filled with grayish-blue water as we walked further in. We visited a client who, with the help of his family, makes the sandals that are sold throughout Chembur and other parts of Mumbai. On the ground floor, two kids – about 16 years old – sat on either side of a small gas-powered stove (you might want to take your laptop into the nearest sauna right about now to approximate this. Put a dirty rubber shoe and some nasty heating oil into the cedar-enclosed radiator while you’re at it). One kid was melting the soles of the shoes so that they would stick to the uppers. This involved repeatedly reaching under, over and around the hot stove with his bare hands. The second kid then pounded the soles and the uppers together with a small mallet. Once, while I was watching, the two kids achieved some sort of victory – my Hindi is not nearly good enough (read: namaste and walla are my only two words) to tell you what they had accomplished. They both shouted and then slapped each other five over the open flame of the gas stove. For that moment, the two boys – smiling and slapping-five – seemed like kids.
I got a footlong and a strawberry-kiwi Snapple from Subway when I got back from the slum. It was incredible.

Bargaining

2009-06-17T16:15:00.002+09:30

My girl Pashmi (still waiting for that friend request, Pashmi!) was full of wise words. "It's fucking hot here," for instance. She also told me about a place to go looking for an apartment.

I had been planning on renting an apartment for the 7 weeks or so that I'm here. Labor and materials are both ridiculously cheap in Mumbai, but land is similarly ridiculously expensive (Mumbai is a tiny penninsula formed from 7 islands and a bunch of landfill - there just isn't much land to go around). My dad's student's friend, Dharmesh Joshi, was my main man on the apartment front. As of a couple weeks ago, I had an apartment all lined up - a nice one room place in "good society" (Dharmesh crafted some bomb sentences in his descriptions of my "roof to park under.") Then, on Sunday - 3 hours before I was heading off to JFK (see Daly, 2009 "Welcome to India) I got an email from Dharmesh telling me that, actually, I did not have an apartment. Oh. OK. Sweet. Thanks Dharmesh.

So, I scrambled. The cousin of a friend of mine lives in Bandra, the neighborhood I'd been targeting. I had been in contact with him and knew that he was in the U.S. until June 22. So, I called him up (from my seat on Air India 140 – re-defining last-minute) and asked him if I could stay in his apartment until he came back. I am now writing this blogpost from the air-conditioned comforts of Mike Delfs' two-bedroom Bandra apartment.

But this sweet (free - !) arrangement is up in a few days. So, back to square one. And back to Pashmi's suggestion. I went to the place she recommended and found a nice guy – we'll call him Suryakant, because that's his name – who showed me around a legitimately dope spot. View of the ocean, big bedroom, nice (shared) living room, laundry and breakfast included. 5980 rupees per night. Efff - that's about 120 bucks - not gonna happen. Without even asking, I was able to get that price down to Rs 4500. Better, but still a no-go. When I was clearly dragging my feet, he went down to 4000. If only the South Asia Initiative was balling like that.

He then offered me another place, a few minutes drive away, for Rs 3000. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. I went off in a rickshaw with his sidekick and checked out the other place. View of a parking lot, smaller room, nice (shared) living room, laundry and breakfast included. Solid.

Back at the office with Suryakant, we went into full bargaining mode. "2500 rupees per night," I offered. "That's the best I can do."
" Hmm... Ok, I will check with my manager.....But no free breakfast!"

hit me on my celly

2009-06-17T02:58:00.002+09:30

You may have read cliche articles about cell phones in the developing world - saving people from poverty, forming a source of identity, allowing a leap-frogging of old technology, etc. Well, turns out that's only half the story. Actually, a cell-phone is ridiculously hard to come by in Mumbai. I started out my day with one goal - get a cheap cell phone with an Indian SIM card so I could keep in touch with all of my Indian friends. I asked the friendly fellow in need of orthodonture at the front desk, and he pointed me to a Vodafone store down the street. Ok, I've heard of vodafone, this sounds super legit. So I walk down the street and find that it's closed. it's about 9:45 (there you go jet-lag), so I decide to walk around the block and come back at 10. Still no dice. The friendly dry-cleaner next door tells me they open at 11. I take off, looking for more cell phones. Airtel - never heard of it, but sounds quasi-legit. After pointing at a phone, I learn that it's going to cost me 1800 rupees. While that sounded like a lot when it was the prize for the 3rd question on Slumdog Millionaire, it's actually about 40 bucks. I can handle that - I've got a grant from the South Asia Initiaitve! However, it turns out the old adage about money and hapiness also pertains to cell phones in India. The friendly cell-phone-walla told me I needed a proof of residence form. Haha. I'm not a resident. Some piece of paper from the hotel. Ok, I can do that. I'll be right back.

Back at the hotel... this piece of paper is very complicated. it requires me to sign in many places. It requires many different bootleg-wanna-be-official stamps. And it requires four levels of hotel staff to bring to fruition. 45 minutes later, a rickshaw is waiting to take me to a super-legit vodafone store a few miles away, which, the hotel staff repeatedly assure me, will be the answer to my prayers. There amidst a mob of other would-be-cell-phone-users, I pick out a Rs 1200 nokia (back of the net) and then get in line to pay for it (which takes absurdly long - I don't think they have ever seen a Visa card before - and requires 3 more pieces of paper). Then the fun starts. Turns out, the piece of paper from the Executive Enclave doesn't carry quite the cache that you might expect from the Enclave. After a phone call to the Enclave front desk, I find out that my efforts have been useless, and I hop on a return rickshaw. (which, by the way, are insanely cheap. A 10 minute ride was 15 rupees - about 30 cents). Back at the hotel, the staff has a new plan. They've mobilized a wandering-sim-card-wallah, who sells kinda-bootleg vodafone sim cards door-to-door. Back of the net, part deaux. After providing him a passport sized photo and 25 more signatures, I finally had the prepaid sim card of my dreams. Two hours, 500 rupees and 2 more hotel officials later, my phone was charged with minutes and ready to rock. Now, if only I had friends.

Welcome to India

2009-06-17T02:40:00.003+09:30

If anyone tells you not to fly Air India, don't listen to them. There is no better way to get into the spirit of being one of a few white people among 1 billion Indians than to be the only white person on a plane with 200 Indians. Plus, the stewardesses are all dressed in saris, and, while they don't look like Freida Pinto, they don't look like your average US Air flight attendant, either. My flight attendant kept trying to liquor me up - I let her give me two heinekens, whihc I enjoyed while watching The Bridge Over the River Kwai on my little personalized screen. Clutch.
At the end of the flight, the girl a row ahead of me and across from the aisle from me (aka the person who's little screen was most visible to me the entire flight (all hindi films for 15 hours) turned to me and started up a conversation. I have to credit her for only beginning the conversation at the end of the flight - nothing says awkward like a 14.9 hour period in between opening and closing pleasantries. Pashmi(sp?) was returning from 2 months traveling around the U.S. - Orange County, Miami, New York (think she might have been trying to get a part as the token Indian on Bromance or Keeping up with the Kardashians, but she claimed to be visiting friends). Before that, she had worked as a film editor on a Bollywood movie. She said she'd facebook me (no +1 yet, Pashmi!) so we'll see how that goes.

After the swine flu check, some paperwork (more on the insane amount of paperwork in this country later) and baggage claim, I became one of those insanely lucky people at the airport who everyone envies - I had someone waiting for me with my name (mispelled, duh) on a little white sign. Viranchi, the brother of my mom's student, Khyati (this is one of the 3 people I know best in the entire country of 1+ billion. sweet) was the friendly face waiting for me. My only introduction to Viranchi was this photo, so I thought he might be arriving by elephant. Instead, it was a deeply air-conditioned Honda Accord driven by a very dark-skinned Indian who didn't seem to speak any English. Viranchi is a recent college grad now in "daddy's business" - real estate.

He dropped me at my hotel (Executive Enclave, not quite as tight as it sounds) where I got some food and then tried to go to bed at about 3:00 pm East Coast Time. That went well.

SOOOO much more to come. Stay tuned.