In an attempt to escape the unrelenting heat of our apartment during the day, I've started visiting Allen's school early in the morning and hiding in one of the (mercifully) air conditioned and empty classrooms. Thankfully both the teachers and the students put up with me scurrying about trying hard not to be noticed (and hence, not disturbing their studies) ... while I play video games, read Google Reader, and make movies about cooking.... (ahem) amongst other important things I do on this magic electric box that is attached to my fingers all day.
But taking a cycle rickshaw every day to school - as opposed to zipping around on my scooter (sniff) - has given me the chance to see our neighborhood in a whole different light.... a slower, slightly more laborious light.* I pass all manner of life in the streets that can include, but is not limited to:
Butterflies. I've seen at least one every day for the past two weeks and have had the pleasure of of a couple following me for a time on my journey.
The subzi-wallas (vegetable sellers) setting up their carts in the shade.
Morning puja.
Well-fed and clean children in school uniforms in giggling groups going to school.
Street children, in a completely different type of uniform of dirty clothes and unkempt hair, in groups trolling the streets to fill their large white plastic bags with trash they collect in the gutters.
Empty stores with shuttered windows (because they don't open until 11am).
Large scale construction projects, with bamboo scaffolding, almost on every corner.
Men using shovels and sticks to muck out the sewers.
Burning garbage (sometimes the piles grow, sometimes they shrink, but they never disappear).
Cows, usually laying out majestically as if rousing themselves from sleep ... or eating the burning garbage heaps.
Morning bathing at the local wells.
Chai stalls getting deliveries of milk by bicycle.
The refreshing shade of some trees on the side of the road.
________________________________________ * I don't really believe I will ever get completely comfortable with someone else to lug my weight around town on the back of a bicycle. It really makes you think about just how cheap labor is here that the "foreigner" price to haul two able bodied Americans approximately 3km costs a dollar.
*First, apologies for disappearing for a little bit --- so many things have been happening that it has been hard finding time to keep all the updates coming in a timely fashion. Long story short: Allen is still plugging away at his Urdu, tabla-playing, and tabla-making classes ... Nikki is studying Hindi, is almost 90% sure she's moving to Bangalore for an internship in the spring, and last week visited several farming villages near Lucknow - and is full of stories (if you can imagine).... but enough about all that - hopefully I'll be able to put up posts with more details on each in the coming week, before we head to Hyderabad for Thanksgiving.
So, the point of this post is to continue with this series of posts I started to showsome of the huge dichotomies that are everywhere visible when you're living in India ... I'm not trying to put too much judgment into these posts - but just point out differences that, I feel, in the States we take for granted.
It shouldn't be a big surprise to most of you that it is fairly typical to have hired-help when you live in this country.... I mean, there is a grammatical construction for the presence of servants built into the language for crying out loud (more on that later)! Given the available labor force (huge!) people will take work to pay bills - period. Just for some perspective - at my office we were hiring a gender specialist and a monitoring and evaluation specialist ... and we were getting applications from people with PhDs in management and sales (unrelated fields) because they need the work ... it doesn't matter what the job is...
I digress... it is not uncommon to have a maid and a cook. So we, and the other American students in our building chipped in to split the services of a maid and a cook. Every Sunday through Thursday we go to bed content with full bellies from Love's cooking - yes, our cook's name means Love. I've always said that food made with love is the best - but I didn't know how true that was until I started eating food made BY Love. Needless to say, we're all very very fond of him. He's always so respectful, earnest, helpful and generally pleasant to be around. We laugh because he calls us the bare bacche (the big children) because he has to correct us on what vegetables go best together and what spices to buy --- but always in a friendly, sort of fatherly way.
We found Love through our Landlords -- we had mentioned to them (back before our relationship with them had soured) that we were in need of a cook and they quickly mentioned Love, he was the best because he was their cook. Timing wasn't an issue because he was their Alfred (re: Batman reference) ... a 'butler', but that word doesn't seem right for India, but calling him a man-servant sounds derogatory ... Love is their go-to guy... he was with their family 24/7, but was "rented" out to another family in the mornings to cook their lunches (to bring to work), he was "rented" to us around 6-ish for our dinner, then he came back to the Landlord's around 9pm to make them dinner.* *Side note: Most Indian's eat absurdly late, around 9pm to 11pm because many of them don't get off work until 8pm. Sounds nuts right! Then you consider that most offices don't open their doors until 10am and most business don't open until 11am and it all starts to make (crazy) sense.
Note, that I said Love was "rented," that's important and comes up later.
So the end of our first month came and we were happy to hand Love his agreed to wages (not much by US standards, but a solid month's work here) ... when we tried to hand him the money he said "no" that it had to go through the Landlords. We had been told that, but we didn't see the harm in giving him the money directly. I don't know who/how it was asked, but we subsequently found out that Love was only given 1/4 of the salary we had agreed to pay HIM, the other 3/4 went to the Landlords for the use of Love's time.
We were stunned. We're really angry at our Landlords for cheating Love out of money we intended to pay HIM and also at a class system that can justify this type of treatment of other humans. Love is not a self-employed man who happens to help out the Landlord's family: he is their man and they decide how he spends his time and who he works for. While we were all initially very angry about the reality of this situation we'd entered into there was a split amongst our group as to how to deal with this new knowledge. On one side, it was suggested that the best way to respond would be to openly acknowledge our disapproval of how Love was being treated and demand that the entirety of the money that was intended for him be given to him. Essentially, turn the culture clash into an actual clash. The other side (which was echoed by the advice given to us by the Director of the Institute) was of temperance: fighting for his right to the money might only get him in trouble with the Landlords - and while our time in India was less than a year, this was his life and his livelihood we were meddling in. My biggest fear was that they would just tell him not to come to us anymore and just tell us that "he left" ... while he was working for us and seeing us on a regular basis, we could always give him his proper wages through gifts for his five-year old son, through our respect for him as a person, and for our very voluble appreciation for his skills... if they told him not to come, there would be no way for us to find him again and help him (modestly) in these ways.
It has been a while since this first came up - but it is hard to know whether we're doing the right thing. We think we are, that our motives aren't too selfish, that maybe... just maybe we are making a positive impact on his life. But we don't really know: Love is too much of the consummate professional to gossip or share his complaints about his lot in life... "His lot in life" ... that is such a trope in the US, but we really do take for granted how mobile our society is. Yes, too many people still feel the sting of racism and class is a large determining factor in terms of what types of opportunities you have available to you .... but living in India, a greater percentage of the population here (than in the States) doesn't have any choice about what strata of society they live in. There is no mobility.
Love, by every indication seems like a literate, neat, well-fed man --- not properly middle-class, but doing very well for himself, from what I can tell. But what about the street children? Or the rickshaw-wallahs? Or the road workers wearing only plastic sandals? Or people without proper shelter at night? How can they "make-it"? What chance at upward mobility do they have? What is preventing all the Landlords of India from taking 3/4 of their wages? What social pressure is stopping this from happening, from people being taken advantage of? When labor is a dime (literally) a dozen - why will anyone fight back, when the Landlords of India will just find someone to work for them for cheaper and with less complaints? What can one do when this is the norm?
This is the view from our apartment window now that "winter" has set in in earnest (highs are in the 80/90 degrees, and lows in the 60s). With the "winter" comes the "fog". It isn't like any fog I've experienced at other times of my life --- it seems to hang around regardless of how hot it is or whether the sun is out (see the above picture which was taken near noon). This fog isn't wet (there hasn't been rain here for a while). This fog isn't cold (although, I imagine locals think it is cold, relatively speaking). This fog also does not hang near the ground - it seems to be hanging in just over our heads.... which leads me, and several other Americans staying here - I might add, to believe that this is not fog.
Wikipedia, my go to source for general explanations, suggests that: "Fog formation requires all of the elements that normal cloud formation requires, the most important being condensation nuclei, in the form of dust, aerosols, pollutants, etc., for the water to condense upon. When there are exceptional amounts of condensation nuclei present, especially hygroscopic (water seeking) particles such as salt, then the water vapor may condense below 100% relative humidity." [emphasis added]
To me, this "fog" isn't fog in the sense that I've seen it most of my life, but rather is the (rather nasty) after affects of people burning garbage for warmth now that the weather has gotten colder.... yes, let that one sink in a little bit...
Some of you may remember our description of Delhi when we came in January, how we were totally overwhelmed by the pollution that everyone was calling "fog"... I just couldn't understand at the time where it was all coming from ... I didn't have the 100+ degree weather during September to force onto my understanding just how "cold" this 60 degree winter must be for people without decent shelters.
Shanty-town on Bulter Road
On my way to work everyday I pass by this pretty enormous shanty-town ... so un-PC of me, but I'm not sure what word to use. These are temporary structures to be sure, but I don't know what kinds of rights these people have to the land they are living on ... but similarly not 50 yards away there are several families that just sleep in the open air on the side of the road ... which is amazingly dangerous considering there are no proper sidewalks here (more on that some other time).
In the morning, I frequently see morning fires for breakfast and in the evening I see fires for dinner. In a big city, at first it is hard to imagine where they must be getting their fuel - there aren't really any trees around for firewood.... and then you just look around, and it becomes clear... sad, but clear.
Huge piles of garbage on the side of the road
I'm puttering on my little scooter and going to the nice part of town ... to work in buildings like this:
(Sadly) Typical Gomti Nagar view, palacial house next to hovel
I say scenes like this are typical - but it may be the case that as all the construction in Gomti Nagar starts dying down there will be less "mixing" of these classes ... as the construction laborers are moved out (have palaces built on the plots that once use to be their homes), so their homes will be moved to the fringes of these neighborhoods. I don't really know if this is true or what will really happen... I only know what we can see in the moment, which is just some pretty intense contrast between the haves and the have-nots.
But I don't want to leave you with the impression that it is just the underpriviledged who burn trash - I was stunned to see yesterday that the Taj Residency Hotel (Lucknow's fanciest hotel) burning garbage in the back on their grounds. So garbage burning is not solely done for warmth/cooking fires ... but also to just deal with trash.
Sad.
Reminds me of something Allen heard the other day .... India is a "free country" meaning, there are no rules to prevent you from doing anything you want - but that said, if you want something done properly you're going to have to do it yourself... no proper city sanitation and garbage disposal? No problem, just burn the waste in your back yard..... it is exhausting to be fighting against a world with no rules - so at some point, you just stop trying and just do what everyone else does.
[UPDATE: Allen wants to point out that he doesn't believe that people are cooking on garbage fires .... he thinks garbage fires are just for disposal and that during the summer, the rains clear the air and because it doesn't rain much in the winter we don't have that cleaning effect, so the smog builds up over time. COUNTERPOINT: I totally agree with his point about the rains. But I think there are more fires now than there were in the summer just because of the temperature drop. And while I'll concede that they might not use refuse for cooking fires, but they most definitely are using old newspaper and scrap tinder-material from the garbage piles -- I think.]
So with this post, I'm hoping to make more public the inner debate I've been having with myself about about how extreme some of the contrasts/contradiction are that you see here.
I really can only speak about Lucknow at the moment - I don't want to generalize too much about the rest of India ... but the general impression that I'm getting from some of my Indian friends (some who are from different parts of India) is that Lucknow is home to some of the greatest divergences.
Nothing better typifies this statement than the Mayawati Monuments (which you may have caught a glimpse of in the Speed Roda video). Here is some video of the alien landscape she has created in the Gomti Nagar neighborhood of Lucknow.
Not to mention that it seems most of the work is being done manually.
Keep in mind that Gomti Nagar is the new area of Lucknow --- the money that was spent on this arid, useless, wasteland is also being spent in the part of town that is least in need of any infrastructure projects.
There is great article about some of the backlash that is arising from these complexes that she's been building around the state of Uttar Pradesh --- really worth a read to just get a small taste of the conflict: megolamania, pride, waste, eyesores, etc, etc...
