Archive for the 'ahmedabad' Category
“The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.”
~Richard Feynman, adventurous nobel prize winning physicist and prankster (nobel was for physics, unfortunately)… seems like he was an awesome guy all around.
I haven’t posted any real news for over a month, and for no good reason (not much has happenned, but that never stopped me before…). I’ve been meaning to post this for the past week or so, but just finally got around to it, and some of the thanks goes to my friend Shaila, who’s post inspired this one.
It’s (finally) monsoon season in Gujarat. The monsoon is a rainy season, caused by some crazy pressure system that you can read about here, that lasts for a couple months during which it rains almost every day here (sometimes for almost the whole day). One thing that is sort of great here compared to home is that it almost never rains except during monsoon season (someone correct me if I’m wrong), so it would be easier to plan picnics and the like if I was doing that (really missing American summers, especially dining al fresco). On the flipside, the summer here was unbearably hot - temps generally in the 100’s for the past couple of months, so it was really too hot to do much of anything outside. Last week, we finally got our first (heavy) rains of the year, and it was awesome, but it seriously screws everything up because it is raining most of the time. It’s kind of funny, it feels cold now, but the reality is that the highs are still in the 90’s every day (it’s just much cooler than before, no sun and 10-15 degree lower temps in one week). I don’t have an AC anywhere I roam except for my family’s place in Ahmedabad, which I go to every couple of weeks. During the summer, I had a lot of trouble sleeping at night, often opting for the roof of our apartment building because it was a bit colder there. However, that is only good for about 5.5 hours a night… its too noisy at the beginning of the night, and the sun starts rising at about 6.
Here’s what Shaila had to say about the rains:
The weather in Ahmedabad had gradually been getting more and more humid for the past month. Generally the heat here is arid & dry but this past month was different. It would rain and sprinkle a bit here and there, but no proper, drenching, floodworthy monsoon rains like there should be. Two weeks back the humidity hit a peak and it was totally unbearable - the kind of humidity that makes you sweat even in the middle of your cold shower. Then in an instant, God answered the prayer of 5 million people and it poured. Children shed their clothes and ran out into the streets to dance. Old people raised their hands to the sky and thanked the heavens. Rickshaw drives got out of their autos and stood in the rain with their faces upwards. Every time the thunder clapped, people whooped and hollered like we were at a cricket match.
And I did what I had been dying to do since the summer started. I left my phone, wallet and everything else at home and got on my cycle. The rain was coming down in buckets and I wanted to be in it. Sometimes straight. Sometimes slanted. Sometimes horizontal. The wind blew cyclists over, the streets flooded, scooters got stuck and trees fell in the wind. But Ahmedabad, and Shaila, were all celebration and smiles for the first rains of the season.
I cycled around the old city for a couple of hours and watched kids play in flooded streets. Then I picked up Sheel and we rode around together for a bit in the old city and took some pictures. It was incredibly fantastic. The idea of warm torrential rains is completely foreign to most people in the west, but it is an amazing feeling to be in this weather and there is something extra special about the first rains of the season.
Riding our bikes throughout the city was pretty awesome. Here’s a picture of me and Shaila (I put my camera in a clear plastic bag, which is why it looks hazy):
We are actually much more soaked than it looks. As Shaila says, it is exactly as if we had jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed.
The rains feel really good in contrast with the ridiculous heat and humidity that we had during the past month, but they also help you realize how shoddy the infrastructure is in this city (and most other Indian cities). The roads fill up with water because the sewer infrastructure is really bad, and in a lot of rain the sewers back up and pour out dirty stuff rather than drain it away. The slum areas are typically low-lying and the first to get flooded… a waterfront location is a bad thing here. There are often casualties, but moreso there is a lot of disease and garbage floating around… and there are kids swimming in it:
The kids were definitely having a blast.
Mango Mania!
On the dietary side of things, I’ve been eating mangos every day for the past couple of months. I usually get the totapuri mangoes for 20rs/kilo, which works out to about 5 rupees (12.5 cents) each. My relatives buy crates of 10kilos each (50 mangos) every 3 days. (they also have 12 members in their family). They are absolutely delicious and much cheaper than what we get in the US. For a while, I was also having Mango rus (juice) everyday, but I got sick of that after a while. The sad news is that the beginning of monsoon season spells the end of mango season, so I just have one more week or so to enjoy the mangoes! Here’s an relevant and interesting article from the NYT last year: Mango Mania in India
Double Savari
Last bit - direct copy from Shaila:
Sheel and I ride around “double savari” (double passenger) quite often. It’s common in India - I once saw 4 people on a cycle! Sheel is much better at balancing the cycle with two people on it than I am so he usually rides the cycle (I tried a couple of times and we just ended up falling over). He and I will go double savari if we are going out to lunch, for a snack or some tea when I don’t bring my cycle into the NGO office. It’s a ton of fun!
And… the year is coming to a close… but I have so much yet to do, so it doesn’t really seem like it’s almost over yet.
And regarding my laptop… I’m back up and running, but for some reason both of my batteries don’t work anymore, and Dell won’t do anything about it because they are over a year old… so I just have my laptop plugged in all the time.
My life is my message
~MK Gandhi
(Picture from the Gandhi Ashram, pre-cleanup)
So after the trip in the North, I came back to Ahmedabad for the Indicorps workshop. This is a time for all of the fellows get back together, to reconnect and learn from others experiences. It was really really great to see all of the other fellows. The theme for the workshop was “Challenges to Excellence.” What keeps us from being great at what we do? The workshop was held at the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram, which is where Gandhi lived from 1919 to 1930. At this workshop, we broke off into teams and worked on projects for the Ashram. My team’s(Me, Ashish(blog) and Shaila(blog)) project was to create a virtual tour for the Gandhi Ashram (or a template for one) that could later be incorporated into the website. Here’s what we came up with in a few days: http://www.sheelm.com/gandhi
I know it takes forever to load the 360’s on the website… they were optimized for display on my laptop rather than the web, so they are a little bigger than they should be.
At first, we were all pretty daunted by the tasks in front of us… I didn’t think we’d be able to accomplish much in 3 days. In the end, I think we got a decent amount done and if we had 1 more day, it would’ve been a lot better. The other groups tasks were
- to create and take a survey of visitors asking questions that would help the Ashram plan for future visitors, and to create a guestbook for visitors to write their thoughts
- to create a map (that will be displayed at the Ashram) and brochure of the Ashram to be given out to visitors and could be taken home as a keepsake
here’s what they came up with in a couple of days (the current version looks even better!)
- to fix a lot of panels that have quotes by Gandhi, pictures, etc. that were made in the late 60’s and haven’t been properly cared for, and to clean up others (hence Sheela in the “my life is my message” quote above)
- to come up with a project to do in the library. The group ended up creating new panels and signage and also translating Gandhi’s letters that were displayed in the library (of 35,000 in their collection, all on which he wrote the back sides of used paper)… I guess it was actually more transcribing… from Gandhi’s poor handwriting english into typewritten legible English… I thought this was much needed, as I can’t understand his writing at all
- our project - create a virtual tour of the place.
http://www.sheelm.com/gandhi
Every group came up with something stellar at the end of 3 days, and I think the Gandhi Ashram really appreciated it. In next years group of fellows, there is going to be one person whos job it is to re-energize the Gandhi Ashram. Here is the full description:
http://apply.indicorps.org/ProjectInformation.php?prjId=66It seems like a pretty cool project.
Here are some other shots of the ashram:
Gandhi picture - I really like the way the picture looks when lit up
3 monkeys (Hear no evil, See no evil, Speak no evil)… these 3 monkeys were always on Gandhi’s desk.
Entrance area:
Hridaykunj: Gandhi’s actual home… It’s REALLY basic…
here’s Gandhiji’s office inside of Hridaykunj
Gandhi statue - really peaceful place, right by the river
We tried to get everyone (22 people) in the Indicorps jeep at once… we did it but then the driver balked at driving with such a ridiculously stuffed vehicle. We totally could’ve been fine… anyway, here’s a picture of the folks in the rear getting out… I like it in Sepia:
That act reminded me a bit of an old picture of a competition in the 60’s to get as many people stuffed into a VW bug as possible… I found it online - they got 31 in the veedub…
In the US we have to have competitions for these sort of things, but in India it’s sort of just a part of life, as the bus in Jodhpur shows…
I’m sure that someone has packed in atleast 40 in an Ambassador or Maruti Van
I’ve been in Ahmedabad since the workshop, and nothing terribly exciting has gone on… just the daily grind, in the office.
My friend Manasee (btw, how I met Manasee is an interesting story… My first week in A’bad, with no non-Indicorps friends, I went to Sewa bank for a meeting and I heard someone speaking American English, so I just went up to her and said something like “hello, are you American?, figuring that it couldnt hurt, seeing as how I didn’t have any friends in the city. It worked!)
anyway Manasee let me borrow a few of her DVD’s, which I’ve been watching every couple of days… My favorite of the ones I’ve seen so far is Water (IMDB link). Great Oscar-nominated Deepa Mehta movie about widows in India. The cinematography was absolutely brilliant… the acting was great, but Lisa Ray’s Hindi sucked (though I think she was otherwise perfect for the part). the film was actually shot both in English and Hindi - they shot every scene twice, once in each language (I saw the Hindi version). Interestingly, this film was being shot in India in 2000, but the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu Fundamentalist organizations, affiliated with BJP political party in India) wouldn’t allow her to shoot it because they claimed that the script “smacks of a conspiracy by the votaries of western culture to tarnish the image of widowhood in India.” Anyway, the film was shot a few years later in Sri Lanka, and all of their hard work to get this film made was worth it in my mind - the film is stunningly beautiful…
It’s starting to get unbearably hot in Ahmedabad. Highs this week from 104 to 107 Farenheit!(40 to 42 Celcius, I’m still not used to this scale). I don’t really have any good way to deal with it - no A/C in my apartment or in the office. Any suggestions, besides drinking copious amounts of water (which I do)?
My next course of action is to get a really short haircut and shave my almost 3 week old beard… which you can see a little bit below.
This is my flat… not too impressive, but it serves its purpose. It would be nicer if there was a wireless signal somewhere so I could communicate with people in the US at normal hours. Actually the crappy thing is that there IS a wireless signal, just at 1 bar and I haven’t gotten anything useful out of it, but I have spent many fruitless hours walking around with my laptop trying to find the source of the signal.
Every time I wear a kurta and I’m unshaven, my cousins tell me that I finally look the part of an NGO-walla… reading In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati. Next on the reading list is Games Indians Play by N. Raghunathan. I haven’t read nearly as much as I had planned to read this year.
Til next time…
I’m going to see Namesake today and will go to a speech by India Finance Minister P. Chidambaram (speaking at IIM-A’s convocation tomorrow… interestingly, the last speech I went to at IIM was Director Bakul Dholakia criticizing PC for a horrible budget… I wonder what he’ll say to him in person)
Prem, you owe me one for no public humiliation about the moustache.
Arrogance and self awareness seldom go hand in hand
~M in Casino Royale, which I loved, incidentally
Babysteps…
I’m so far behind in blogging that I’m going to break this up into 2 posts, one about 2 weeks ago and one about this past week, which I’ll post in a couple of days.
March 4th was Holi (click for wikipedia article)…
The day before, we’d bought some holi powder from some street vendors:
I figured that the best celebrations would be in the old-city side of Ahmedabad, so we trekked out there looking for masti to be had. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any, so we had to make our own. We ended up chancing upon a group that was attacking random people with color, so we joined in their fun for a bit. It was fun, but I have to admit that it was nowhere near as fun as the Holi played at Carnegie Mellon Holi, a tradition that we started when I was on campus. I think it has more to do with being in a space where everyone is playing holi and you know a lot more people and can do whatever you want (pick people up and dunk them in a huge barrel full of water, etc)… It’s hard to play with strangers.
Anyway, Me, Shaila, and Bidisha had a good time:
I love this shot for some reason:
Even the puppy got in on a little holi action:
Right after holi, I went on another trip, this time in the north, to Delhi, Dehradun, Lucknow & Kanpur, visiting MFI’s, telling them about Kiva.
In Delhi, I spent all of my time in Noida (a suburb), working in the offces of Drishtee, an organization I’ve blogged about before. They put Internet Kiosks in rural areas, allowing the villagers to get access to a ton of services they didn’t have before. It’s going to be great to partner up with them.
It was pretty lovely all in all… The North of India is still freezing cold (high 40’s Farenheit, but there is no heating, so that’s pretty cold), whereas it’s been 100 farenheit here in Ahmedabad (and I have no aircon).
Dehradun is a hill-station area that is the capital of the newly formed Uttarakhand state. It’s a pretty beautiful place but I didn’t really get to explore any of it. At the recommendation of the MFI I was visiting and some other people who heard about it from Lonely Planet, I decided to check out the Forest Research Institute. It’s this 1200 acre property that does forest research in India… I don’t understand what they do at all. I went to a museum that I thought would explain it, and even got a guide, but it was a very typical developing world museum, with weird stuff and no explanations. The entrance had 2 sample villages that looked like grade school projects - one had a village without trees and the villagers were all working hard and they had terrible housing. The other village had trees and all of a sudden the village was very developed and had perfectly made homes. The guide explained that life is much better when you have trees. OK… a little overly simplistic maybe? He also kept on telling about how trees are good because you can cut them down and use them for paper and firewood… a little odd to me. I was also a little spooked by the number of dead animals in the place - they probably have a taxidermist on hand full-time.
The main building is an impressive greco-roman work of architecture - it looks like a college - in fact, it would feel right at home on Harvard’s campus. When it was built 80 years ago - it cost 40lacs rupees (Lac is 100,000, current exchange rate is 45, no idea what it was then)… Now it costs over 50lacs ($111,000) a year just to maintain the place:
I read somewhere last week that repetition makes for great pictures, and I promised myself I’d try it out:
I saw interesting signs all over the campus - among them - “Pedh Lagaye, Garibi Hataye,” loosely translated into, “Plant Trees, Remove Poverty.” A little simplistic for me. Another one:
If they said Trees are Life, I’d be fine with that. I can even go along with the 1st and 3rd lines. But how does water mean bread? Seems like there are some logic/English issues at play here.
The rest of the trip wasn’t all that eventful - saw a great MFI called NEED in Lucknow, and a few others. I think things are going well from a project standpoint - it’ll be great to have Indian businesses up on Kiva.
Anyway, I’m back in Ahmedabad for a bit, after a crazy last month that included 15 trips on the Indian Railways!
Info about last week coming up in the next post - it was great!
Thought for the post is actually a short story… one of my favorites. It’s almost 50 years old but it holds up incredibly well… It is about Mongol 482’s life. Mongol 482 is an Eberhard Faber (now Faber-Castell, atleast in the US) pencil. Mongol talks about the complexity of his components and the numerous people required to make him. It’s actually a really good introduction to economics.
Read it: I, Pencil. My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read
Ravivari Bazaar (Chor Bazaar)
This occurred a couple of months ago (pre-typhoid and first trip to Bombay)… I went to help my friend look for a used bike at this place called Ravivari Bazaar (Sunday market) or alternately, Chor Bazaar (Thieves’ market), under Ellisbridge on the old city side of Ahmedabad… I think every city in India has a Chor Bazaar (like Flea Markets). The Bombay one has gotten really famous and is now quite a tourist destination… some vendors even accept credit cards there. No such thing in Ahmedabad, but it’s a place where you can get ANYTHING… OK, not anything but you can come out of there with a totally random grouping of crap, and you have to bargain hard, or you will be fleeced (it’s called the thieves market for a reason).
It reminded me a lot of the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China, which is a place to buy anything and everything made in China (Cars, large machinery, every kind of electronic item you can imagine, etc), but only if you can purchase it by the container-load… Here’s a picture of 1/2 of the Canton Fair Buildings… they are building more - it’s absolutely ridiculous:
Here’s the interior of probably 1% of ONE of the buildings.
You might not get the sense that Chor Bazaar and the Canton Fair are similar based on these pictures, but having been at Canton last year, I totally felt like Chor Bazaar was a scaled down poor consumer version of Canton.
So at Ravivari Bazaar, you can purchase a bunch of odd things as well, like used antiques, slippers, scooter parts, old cellphones (Zack Morris style) used bikes, old magazines, new pushcarts, new bike parts, and GOATS:
There are a LOT of people, and there is a narrow entrance, and people are bringing all of their new belongings out… so it’s a little tough to get in, but well worth it
Here’s an overview shot of the place (this is near the end of the day, so a lot of the vendors had already left)
Pushcarts cost 2200 ($48) rupees each for a new one, and about half that for a used one… I wonder how long it takes the typical pushcart vendor (larri-wallah) to recoup that investment… There are all sorts of things that are sold on these - vegetables, Pirated DVD’s, half of the food that I eat, watches, pani-puri, toys, etc.
Thinking about the pushcart… The market for goods is just so large here… Just a few minutes ago I was eating a Dabeli (what I eat is in this previous post, including a Dabeli picture) made on one of the pushcarts. Incidentally, if you want to make your own Dabeli, you can learn how to at Bawarchi. The Dabeli was 6 rupees (15 cents)… When I ordered it the guy had 15 ready on the grille… By the time I finished eating it 5 minutes later, all of them were gone and he was starting a new batch… he did 90 rupees ($2) of business in 5 minutes. Some of these roadside guys do really well. I read an article in the Times of India (so reliability is questionable) that the Lucky Tea Stall (not roadside but hole-in-the-wall) in Lal Darwaja has a turnover of 40,000 rupees ($900) per day. I’ve been there… tea costs a few rupees, and they sell Tea with Muska bun (Bun and a lot of butter, GROSS) for 10 rupees if I remember correctly. They have an MF Husain painting hanging in their shop - apparently MF loves their Tea and gave it to them as a gift… I guess what I’m thinking about is that margins can be pretty low here when you have a ridiculous turnover.
Incidentally, I’ve also started cooking pretty frequently. My ingredients are pretty limited, I’m generally alone in the flat and I don’t cook that often so I can’t buy anything that I can’t either use all at once or won’t spoil if I don’t touch it again for a week. I’ve burned rajma in the pressure cooker 3 times now… It’s such a pain to clean! Anyway, I always burn the Rajma (I know, I know, more water) but I usually already have the chonk (the mix of spices and stuff) ready, so I end up making pulao, and I’ve actually become quite good at the Pulao (well I like it anyway). I also have made mung daal and poha. Bawarchi.com is a good site for recipes (but I just use the same chonk for everything so far, I don’t need recipes). I understand why we use frozen veggies in the US… Life would be so easy for me if I had some. Also life would be easy for me if I had some peanut butter and jelly.
Next week, I’m headed south, to Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore (and villages in between). Let me know if you know of any Microfinance Institutions or any other people/places I should visit down there.
