Karma India

Today was a long, crazy day.  The highlights:

It was a gorgeous day today, so we were working on the outdoor terrace this morning before heading to our first meetings, and I saw the following painted on the entryway to the hotel.

Part of ancient Indian culture (long before the Austrian whackjob hijacked the symbol), you see swastikas all over India... even as a Westerner who knows the history of the symbology, it is still a bit jolting every time I see it.  The word "Aryan" actually refers to a vaguely-understood ancient common language from which North Indian languages originated.  There also is a linkage to Persian... the most obvious being the phonetic similarity to "Iran" (I wonder what Hitler would think about Ahmadinejad?).  Anyway, the history seems to be very murky, but at some point, the myth arose that the Aryans were actually a people who came from eastern Europe and Persia who expanded and conquered, including most of modern-day India.

I don't think there is any dispute that the ancient inhabitants of the area that includes modern North India had a very distinct culture, of which the swastika was a prominent symbol that had nothing to do with little-man Adolf and his demented ideas.  All of the real science definitively disproves any sort of notion that they were a superior race, and it seems the consensus is that there was no Aryan conquering, either.

Anyway, the point of all this is that the Aryans and the swastika were part of a benign ancient culture that has heavily influenced modern Indian culture.  In modern India, it appears to be a symbol of good luck and general religiosity (our driver here has a new SUV, inside of which he has a big orange swastika that was painted during a new car blessing at this temple).

I found my answer to my question about where all the food comes from today, twice.  I asked how it was possible to feed everybody without seeing the roads clogged with trucks delivering produce (about half of the population is vegetarian).  It's a pretty simple answer - the roads are clogged enough during the days, so trucks are only allowed to run at night.

The second answer was a glimpse into the food manufacturing sector.  Today we met with a major supplier of fortified food staples (e.g. dal, rice, porridge mixes) for the World Food Program and state government's feeding programs.  They only feed a very small portion of the state's population that is most vulnerable, but still, their factory dedicated to Rajisthan (the state we're in and assessing) produces 200 tons of wheat flour a day.  And that's just for Rajasthan - other states have their own dedicated factories for different products.  Rajasthan's population is just over 50 million people - only 23 countries have larger populations than that, and Rajasthan isn't even near the top of the list in India.  India's biggest state is Uttar Pradesh (they refer to it as UP, though it's nothing like Michigan), which has over 165 million people.  Only China, the US, Indonesia, and Brazil have more people than that one state.

Speaking of trucks, I absolutely love the trucks here.  There are all intricately painted with a rainbow of colors and adorned with all kinds of tacky junk like silver Christmas tinsel (Christmas is a major holiday here, just like in the US, including all the trees and lights in homes, shopping malls, etc.... they're obviously not predominantly Christian, but they like the excuse to give / get presents since there is no analog in Hinduism... I'm sure having the British here for a couple hundred years helped as well).

And some pictures of the trucks:

Objectively, they are so tacky.  They are covered in the corniest rhyming sayings, like on a fuel tank you may find "This is my queen.  She only drinks the water from Iran." (Or something like that... obviously that doesn't rhyme in English, but it does in Hindi.)  But for some reason, I absolutely love seeing these things, especially at night when they're lit up with different colors of lights.  I think they really embody this country.  Everything is rich and colorful - the food, art, clothing, personalities, traditions, wisdom, colloqualisms, etc.  My impressions of India reminded me of China, but the two couldn't be further apart - I felt like China had no soul, and I feel like India is the Earthly embodiment of the collective souls cycling through samsara, with all the implications inherent in being so, good and bad.

On a much less karmic level, I also learned that those crazy Indian mustaches you sometimes see (below) are an exclusive tradition of Rajasthan.  I'm so going to grow one for Halloween next year.

After our last meeting wrapped up tonight, we headed to Chokhi Dhani - a five star resort that is a recreation of a traditional Rajasthan village.  (En route we passed a traditional Indian wedding dancing down the street with lit chandelers... I have some awesome video, but I'll have to post it later.)  Chokhi was really cool - I got a red dot painted on my forehead, we ate a bunch of traditional street food, watched a magician, a traditional puppet show, dancing, music, a couple of people dressed up in traditional garb for what was the equivalent of a Six Flags photo, and had an amazing dinner.

There were two events of high drama though.  The first was some punk little guy who was screaming at his wife, throwing her around, and then punched her in the face, making a loud smack, in front of 50 people or so.  Resort employees grabbed the guy, who started yelling at them in English to back off because, "She's my wife!  I can beat her!"  (I was fighting the instinct to punch the twerp, but I realized I would probably need the assistance of the US consul in talking my way out of the Jaipur jail.)  The employees tried staying between him and his wife, but not very successfully.  Commotion ensued for about 10 minutes... I thought they were trying to keep some order while they called the cops.

Nope, they just wanted to get him out of the resort, and had no intention of calling the cops.  While hitting your wife is not legal in India, apparently nobody would report it because it's still such a male-dominated society, and the wife would never agree to press charges.  I couldn't believe all those people were willing to just stand around and let them leave, god knowing what was going to happen to the woman once they left.

If that wasn't enough to ruin the night, one of our Indian colleagues realized she'd been pick-pocketed in the resort, to the tune of 40,000 rupees (only $800, but a small fortune here).  Her first reaction was understandably shock, but her second action was a total surprise.  She told me that in India, losing money was a blessing in disguise because, "That means something bad was about to happen to you, but by losing the money, you basically bought your way out of it with God."  I wonder if that applies to trips to Las Vegas as well?

When she was frantically looking through her purse, one of the very attentive waiters came over and kept cryptically asking if she needed help.  It turns out she had left the envelope of cash at the entrance, and the staff had somehow figured she was probably the owner.  Two waiters escorted us to the administrative offices, where after a brief conversation confirming the money was hers, they handed it back to her in its entirety.

That was probably six months salary for one of those guys and anybody could have easily pocketed it without a chance of anyone ever finding out, but they not only turned it in, they went out of their way to find the rightful owner (think about how many Six Flags staffs would just hope the owner never returned looking for the wad of cash). 

Going back to my comments about India's soul - yes, people get pick-pocketed every day, but still, I think this incident is another reflection of the character of this country and its people.  (The incidence of domestic violence aside... I was assured those sorts of things are rare, but I have a feeling it's much more prevalent behind closed doors.  While India is making great strides in erasing the vestiges of the caste system and institutional sexism, they still have a long way to go... so does the US though.)

Which reminds me of one other fact I learned today.  Meeting with UNICEF, I asked if part of the solution to getting field staff compliant with the execution of nutrition and health programs is "top-ups" (basically paying government workers extra money to actually do what they're supposed to do in the first place... it's backwards, but the only way to get things done in some developing countries).  She looked at me with a puzzled gaze - "Why would we do that?  It has nothing to do with money."  From what I've seen, in every other developing country, the attitudes are, "How can I get rich off these people?"  Instead, India seems to have the cohesion as a people and society that has been so badly tattered by the Western development model.