I'm currently sitting in the San Francisco International airport terminal drinking a 22 ounce blue moon and eating a pile of french fries and an aoili-slathered vegetarian panini. One of the great things about traveling to India is that I don't care about calories at all, because I'll be so invested in not getting food poisoning while I'm there that I'll take whatever safe calories I can get. Somehow that makes everything test better! Step one of India reminding me to appreciate the little things that I take for granted - safe food and water (I'm sure this will come back as a theme in the next couple weeks, hopefully as a philosophical and political topic, not as a personal topic...).
This is an extra interesting trip for me. I spent 6 months in India in 2007 and went back in 2008 and 2009 for business trips; the amount of development between 2007 and 2009 was staggering. My first time in Hyderabad it was a fledgling former sultanate with two official languages that were totally unrelated spoken natively within the city's borders (urdu or "hyderabadi hindi" for the muslims at the city core and Telugu for the Hindus living everywhere else). The only tall buildings were being quickly slapped up on the edge of town in a marketing-centric area optimistically named "Hi-Tec City" which had an amusing welcome sign that announced that "Hi-Tec City is the most Beauty full place in India."
I spent six months without access to a western grocery store and with airport security who pretended that the broken metal detector was working as a deterrence measure (a very common alternative to actual law enforcement in India). The chaos was addictive and freeing - for the first time I realized that society can in fact function without extensive law and order. The lack of law and order meant there were more bombings and riots (among other events), but in a city of 6 million people, even with those things happening (two different sets of bombings and ensuing riots occurred in the city while I was there), most people don't ever see those events. People go about their daily lives with a far more acute risk of terrorism and personal harm than such in America or Western Europe, yet, they don't live in deep fear - staying inside to avoid the dangers beyond their doors.
People go about their lives, depending on their strong and extensive family and community structures to protect them. In many ways they exhibit acute signs of happiness and contentment far stronger than most people I know in the US. I think that I have some idea of why it is, that in a place that is riskier and harder with shorter life expectancy, that people seem to be far less stressed out about everyday life than they are in the West. Yet, every moment in India reminds me of the deep contrast that exists in the world's largest democracy with the world's oldest continuous cultures, and it would be absolute arrogance to assume that I really understand what keeps the country and the people running in such relative peace and prosperity.
Not everyone lives in that peace and prosperity, and the deep contrast between the top and bottom is also part of the mystery, even while massive tech buildings are popping up in cities across the country, hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean water and extreme cultural and religious disparities display themselves everywhere, everyday. I like to think of what would happen in the US if every state and every city within each state had their own language, own system of writing, and if 1/3 of the country's population was one distinct devout religion, while 2/3 were another distinct devout religion (the current political crisis underscores this point greatly). The US runs into crises over differences between different forms of protestant christianity, yet the city of Hyderabad serves as a historical and ancient center of Islam and the capital of a mostly Hindu state that speaks a different language. In my opinion, India is remarkably peaceful given these circumstances.
Now it's been another 4 years since I was there and I will, for the first time, be there without the institution of Google caring for my every need - from drivers picking me up at the airport to my housing, food and the maids cleaning my room everyday. The ex-pat life then was interesting - probably the closest an American can get to Downton Abbey (replace the rigid dining dress code and spired stone house with a loosey goosey dinner schedule consumed on the couch with fellow expats and a recently-built white-washed cement house in a guarded complex).
I must now depart on my Cathay Pacific flight to India via Hong Kong. In a mere 22 hours I'll be in India!
This is an extra interesting trip for me. I spent 6 months in India in 2007 and went back in 2008 and 2009 for business trips; the amount of development between 2007 and 2009 was staggering. My first time in Hyderabad it was a fledgling former sultanate with two official languages that were totally unrelated spoken natively within the city's borders (urdu or "hyderabadi hindi" for the muslims at the city core and Telugu for the Hindus living everywhere else). The only tall buildings were being quickly slapped up on the edge of town in a marketing-centric area optimistically named "Hi-Tec City" which had an amusing welcome sign that announced that "Hi-Tec City is the most Beauty full place in India."
I spent six months without access to a western grocery store and with airport security who pretended that the broken metal detector was working as a deterrence measure (a very common alternative to actual law enforcement in India). The chaos was addictive and freeing - for the first time I realized that society can in fact function without extensive law and order. The lack of law and order meant there were more bombings and riots (among other events), but in a city of 6 million people, even with those things happening (two different sets of bombings and ensuing riots occurred in the city while I was there), most people don't ever see those events. People go about their daily lives with a far more acute risk of terrorism and personal harm than such in America or Western Europe, yet, they don't live in deep fear - staying inside to avoid the dangers beyond their doors.
People go about their lives, depending on their strong and extensive family and community structures to protect them. In many ways they exhibit acute signs of happiness and contentment far stronger than most people I know in the US. I think that I have some idea of why it is, that in a place that is riskier and harder with shorter life expectancy, that people seem to be far less stressed out about everyday life than they are in the West. Yet, every moment in India reminds me of the deep contrast that exists in the world's largest democracy with the world's oldest continuous cultures, and it would be absolute arrogance to assume that I really understand what keeps the country and the people running in such relative peace and prosperity.
Not everyone lives in that peace and prosperity, and the deep contrast between the top and bottom is also part of the mystery, even while massive tech buildings are popping up in cities across the country, hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean water and extreme cultural and religious disparities display themselves everywhere, everyday. I like to think of what would happen in the US if every state and every city within each state had their own language, own system of writing, and if 1/3 of the country's population was one distinct devout religion, while 2/3 were another distinct devout religion (the current political crisis underscores this point greatly). The US runs into crises over differences between different forms of protestant christianity, yet the city of Hyderabad serves as a historical and ancient center of Islam and the capital of a mostly Hindu state that speaks a different language. In my opinion, India is remarkably peaceful given these circumstances.
Now it's been another 4 years since I was there and I will, for the first time, be there without the institution of Google caring for my every need - from drivers picking me up at the airport to my housing, food and the maids cleaning my room everyday. The ex-pat life then was interesting - probably the closest an American can get to Downton Abbey (replace the rigid dining dress code and spired stone house with a loosey goosey dinner schedule consumed on the couch with fellow expats and a recently-built white-washed cement house in a guarded complex).
I must now depart on my Cathay Pacific flight to India via Hong Kong. In a mere 22 hours I'll be in India!
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