Off traveling

For the first time since I arrived in Ahmedabad I'll actually have more than two days off from school, providing me with some time to travel and discover other parts of India. So early tomorrow morning new-found friend Thomas and I will take a ricksha to the airport. We fly to Indias IT hub numero uno Bengaluru (Bangalore), where we'll spend the afternoon and evening. From there we take a sleeper coach to Hampi, an old village with many ruins. It's a world heritage and something we both have been wanting to see. We stay there for two days, upon which we catch a second sleeper to old Portuguese colony Goa. Having been to Macau earlier, I wonder to what extent the Portuguese heritage can still be experienced. Goa only gets one day, as we must hurry back to Ahmedabad for classes that start on Thursday. Update and pictures to come!

As I run through the valley of the shadow (not really...) of death

Today saw the IIMA 5 kilometer run. Anybody could participate and so they did. By the gates at the New Campus a masse of people had assembled at 5 o'clock, as stipulated. As always in India, the actual thing didn't start until at least 20 minute later. I'm not judging here; I just say things don't start on time.

Five kilometres is a relatively short distance, I think most people would agree. When temperatures have well exceeded 30 degrees Celsius, it doesn't seem so short. It was warm. It was sweaty. It was long. It was sometimes absolutely horrid. And in the end, it was over. I'm proud to say that the exchange students dominated and took places 1 through 4 among the males and 2 and 3 among the females, despite being the visiting team on the ground.

And I shall dwell in dorm 15 room 24 forever.

Pictured are happy contestants Hubert (France), Thomas (Switzerland), Ole (Norway), me and Pierre (France).

Nothing to fear but fear itself

I've lived in Moscow, Shanghai and Ahmedabad. I've flown Soviet-era Tupolevs. I've gone by car through the pitch black nights of Kyrgyzstan highways. I've had coffee with the Baku police force. I was even once followed by the Belorussian KGB, while sightseeing in Minsk. Despite these experiences, nothing has ever been able to compete with the level of fear I've had to encounter when engulfing in one particular activity, regardless of which foreign city it took place in: getting a hair cut.

At home I feel very comfortable at the hairdressers. I look forward to the visits, even though I tend to postpone them for as long as possible for Filofax-related reasons. I admit I enjoy the sensation of having somebody else stick their fingers in my hair. Above all, I usually prefer the way I look when I leave, as compared to when I came. This is where the hick-up shows up.

I know (or at least I used to know) all the moving and quite a few static parts of a tank in Russian. I can spot a leutenant-colonel of the motorised rifle infantry from a hundred meter. I can make the distinction between an active and a passive hydrophone on a Russian nuclear submarine, at least when it comes to terminology. In short, I'm very capable in some areas, many of them quite useless. What I don't know is how to say "short on the back and sides" to a Moscow coiffeur. And did you ever try to avoid having your hair dyed in Mandarine ("wo bu xiang ni ran wo de toufa", you all yell, and yes, that's very true, but you also have to get all the tones right; otherwise he'll just stare at you with the puzzled look I find so frequent among Shanghainese hairdressers/waiters/taxi drivers/most people.)?

I don't know how to communicate the way I want my hair to look in most languages. In India many people have an advanced command of English, but far from everybody. They usually know numbers, so they can charge you money (even if today the difference between 120 and 170 rupees wasn't all clear). Really, today's hairdresser didn't even speak to me about my hair. He just cut it, and that he did at warp 9 for all you Star Trek lovers out there. (For all you other people, it means he was really fast.) Happily enough, he was also not entirely unskilled, as can be seen in this newly taken photograph of pretty me.

NB: I've changed the security settings for this blog, so now everybody who so wishes will be able to post comments. I've been unaware of the problem until now, but they were pointed out to me by my very good friend Lars. He has promised that from now on he'll comment on every entry. It wasn't exactly put that way, but it was in between the lines.

(Here I'd like to pause for a moment and convey to you that I believe I just heard an elephant.)

Navrati

This week has seen the celebration of Sharad Navrati. It is a nine-day celebration with, I believe, dancing taking place every night. It's a huge hit in Gujarat. I believe it's a celebration of the feminine side of creational divinity, but as my knowledge of Hindu traditions mostly rests upon a foundation of Wikipedia browsing, I just might be incorrect. Indian readers must here feel free to correct or complement this interpretation in the commentaries. Anyway, this Friday saw the IIMA campus invaded by people from all around Ahmedabad campuses to perform garba, a ritual dance. Exchange students happily contributed, often wearing Indian traditional outfits, as can be seen in the picture with Stéphane (France), Hadrien (Belgium) and an unidentified bloke. For some reason, the video previously uploaded video didn't work very well, so it has been deleted.

The haggling

Yesterday evening we frequented the absolutely wonderful Barbecue Nation restaurant, which is I believe the only place where you can eat excessive amounts of meat in this highly vegetarian city. (The school mess serves meat only three dinners a week; one of those days the meat is usually eggs...) I'm a fairly enthusiastic carnivore back home, but since I arrived here there has been very little of the kind obviously.Today my stomach has been suffering from somewhat of an unexpected protein shock, which will under no circumstances prevent me from reliving the experience in the future. Luckily, today was spent mostly by the poolside at the Gateway Hotel and their Sunday brunch. It was an incredibly peaceful experience, which I hope will be repeated sometime in the immediate future.

Both these happenings indeed provided me with an immense amount of pleasure and joy. There is, though, in these and all similar instances a part to it that can quickly turn into a true fly in the ointment moment. Ahmedabad really wasn't made for walking, so wherever you go an auto rickshaw will normally take you there. Quite often the driver will try to rip you off if you're a Westerner. It's perfectly understandable, since 20 rupees are indeed less to me than they are to him. Still, pride makes one want to avoid it and then the matter of 20, or even 10, rupees too much can matter a great deal.

The rickshaw system works like this: Either you decide on a price beforehand or you go by the meter. The meter is a small round machine that spits out numbers nobody really seems to comprehend, but the driver usually has a laminated sheet of paper that transcribes these highly confusing numbers into spans of 5 rupees, giving a rough indication of the proper amount to pay. The asked for sum can often drop 10 rupees the moment you request to see this sheet, so it's a good thing it's there. Sometimes it's claimed the sheet doesn't exist, an occurrence which is usually correlated with a suspiciously high tariff of the day. When the address is a place where I've been before, meaning I know roughly the amount the driver is trying to overcharge me, I sometimes give him 10 rupees less than what would in fact be the proper price and then make a run for it, simply to make a point. I can be a bit moody, so sometimes I don't care enough to risk my life and go for the debating option instead, even though it can often be a less than joyful and sometimes truly annoying experience.

What surprises me, though, is that the haggling skills sometimes really don't even meet even the lowest rickshaw driver standards. Consider the following example, which is based on a true story:

Driver: To where you want to go?

Me: IIM.

Driver: IIM, ok. 40 rupees.

Me: No, by meter.

Driver: By meter it's 35 rupees.

Me: So why should I pay 40?

Driver: Stunned silence, upon which I turn to another man, who is happy to accommodate me. The price in the end? 30 rupees.

And there was humming and singing.

Temperatures: indoors, outdoors and bodily

Winter hasn't come to Ahmedabad yet. It was supposed to, but cooler weather was instead put off for some time. Only time will tell when weather and calendar will again function not as separate entities but in harmony with one another. To answer your question here and now: it's 36 degrees centigrade. This, however, is only outdoors. In the classrooms the ACs are working on all thrusters, creating an artificial climate that is incapable of reaching anything above 21 degrees. That's a 15 degree temperature difference that I'm exposed to several times daily and which certainly has health repercussions. One really wouldn't expect to catch colds here this frequently, causing annoying disruptions to my several-times-weekly football games, but here we are.

Luckily, my room is only equipped with a gentle ceiling fan, which provides a little bit of relief from the murderous coolers in other parts of the campus. The only trade off is the constant dilemma of which humming level to set it on in order for it not to wake you at night but still drown out the sounds of the campus dogs trying to kill one another, or fighting the campus monkeys - actually quite possible judging from the sounds sometimes emitted. Decisions, decisions...

The illusion of normality

India is different in many aspects. It's poorer, more chaotic, friendlier, often happier, warmer, more humid, spicier and in desperate need of small change. I come to think about my Moscow days, when, with pockets full of nothing but 1,000 ruble bills thanks to the well-to-do target clientele of the Radisson SAS teller machin, I desperately tried to stuff my shopping basket full of biscuits, crisps, expensive Belgian chocolates and other sweets simply to avoid the social stigma of asking for more than 100 rubles in change at my local grocery store. The local chemist here once awarded me some rupees worth of Mentos, as their local balance sheet didn't have enough cash at hand to support operations, at least not of the appropriate very small values.

There are, though, places of conceived normality (from a Western person's perspective). These are the Ahmedabad malls, which look fairly similar to their distant Western cousins. Their supermarkets at first sight should leave nobody disappointed. They're huge and well stocked, with everything from clothes to groceries, kitchenware, sports equipment and electronics on display. Now this might all seem well enough and like a place to discreetly run away to when the need to experience something home-like (at least if you squint somewhat) sets in. An illusion, indeed. The bubble first bursts at about the time when you have successfully acquired a bottle of shampoo, then asks for some body wash to go with it. "I'm sorry, we're out of it." 16 different kinds of shampoo and not a single bottle of body wash spell supply chain management 101 utter failure like nothing else. Disregarding the sudden disappointment you then quickly try to pull the illusion back together again, however the project almost instantly fails beyond recovery with the following short dialogue: "Excuse me, do you have toilet paper?" "No."

Bought an electric kettle, though. And there was much rejoicing.