My Old Blog

Tonight it rained in Delhi. In the US we take so much for granted that is a luxury in other places…..like drainage, like a constant supply of electricity….like paved roads….like traffic laws. Wow, that’s crazy. The power just went out as I was writing this……ok. It just came back on.

So the town flooded. My feet were wet in the front seat on the way home as water came up through the floorboard. People were everywhere…wet, dirty. I saw someone’s bed actually on the side of the road. There were three of them and people were just lying there….they weren’t even beds..they were like chairs you could lie in. George in the back seat said he saw a dead person today.

From the 6th floor of my swanky office building I can see a migrant worker camp maybe 50 yards away behind a dull cement wall. Its like a concentration camp. Low square huts of baked clay brick with rusted tin corrugated roofs….bricks on top to keep the roofs from blowing away. People, all dirty and skinny, moving about, carrying buckets of water from a dirty pool.

Even from the 6th floor you can see rats muddling about behind the huts, scavenging through the trash. The rats look in better shape than the people to be honest with you. I’m sipping a cappucino and discussing cross-cultural business challenges while I’ve got a virtual time warp going on outside. They are living some 2000 years in the past….minus the rusted tin roofs…and hopefully the rats aren’t carrying the plague.

And now I’m back at my 5 star hotel eating a 10 dollar hamburger in a country where cows are sacred. Its a damn good hamburger too….room service rocks.

There are cows all over the roads in India. They are usually white, with humps on the back like camels. In Atlanta, there are always traffic jams because of car wrecks or construction. In India, its a herd of cows blocking traffic….and everyone just goes around them.

And the cows just sit there….unphazed by the 1500 pound cars barreling at them at 50 miles an hour. They don’t even move. Maybe they ARE gods and know something we don’t. If you are a cow, why lounge on the cement road when you could lounge on the side of the road….which is probably nearer to grass and less likely to get you killed??

So, actually, all the cows are a problem. The city is overrun by cattle. There is a reward of approximately 50 dollars for rounding up a cow in south Delhi.

I really wanted to go do it for kicks…but everyone from the office thought I was nuts….and I’ve been sort of sick anyway. I mean really….how priceless would a check be from the Indian govt paid for rounding up cattle in the city???? Talk about a great bar story!!!

So India is crazy anyway. I saw a guy washing a plant in my office on Friday. Is there really so little to do?? There are three people who loiter in the coffee station….I assume one is paid to make coffee and tend the supplies. But what the hell do the other two do? Stand there…..that’s all I can work out.

There is a person on my floor at work whose sole job is tend office supplies. That’s all anyone can figure out he does. So I asked him for some stuff, including post-it notes and some highlighters. I worked for a whole week and got nothing. The dude gives me like one pen (which I immediately lose) and a notebook. I could’ve borrowed that off the person that sits beside me.

I’ve joked that I came to India to outsource my own job. So I was helping this guy…who has exactly the same job as me (and they know it)…..so 30 minutes later I solved his problem and said, “Wow….that was really tiring. I think I’m going to go get a cup of coffee now.”

No shit….the dude goes, “Please sir, let me get that coffee for you. How do you take it…cream, sugar???” I told him to fucking sit down and do his work.

I’ll go ahead and tell you…….I’m not fucking getting coffee for anyone at the office….even if the Pope visits. That dude has lost his mind.

I admit I’m having some flashbacks to Taiwan. The irreality of it all got to me after my year was up. Of course, in this case I will not have to live in an apartment with a crazy person like I did there so I think I will survive.

But it is so weird sometimes…..everything….like the whole day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 1:15 pm and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.