The Assignment
I was on a start-up in Wisconsin when my boss e-mailed me and asked if I would like to spend time in India—another start-up—leaving over the Thanksgiving weekend. I thought about it for a short while and then said "yes" to the no-pressure offer. Though I'd been curious about India for many years, several books I've read about the country convinced me I didn't want to spend my own money and time to go there, so I thought this work trip would be the perfect opportunity to see the second most populous country in the world and earth's largest democracy. I was also hoping that India might surprise me the way South Africa did this past August, when I spent three weeks at the bottom of the Dark Continent on still another start-up and came away determined to return for a vacation in 2016. Having short notice I scrambled to get a visa, a quickie called an eTV, or electronic tourist visa, off an Indian government website that was appropriate for a two-week visit. Less than two days and sixty-three dollars later I had the visa that would allow me to enter Chennai, India, before Christmas Eve.
About a week before I was scheduled to leave I received an e-mail at work from International SOS, "the world's leading medical and travel security assistance company." It cautioned travelers bound for several points in India, including Tamil Nadu, the southeast state for which Chennai is the capital, that the local government had uncovered several credible threats of terrorism throughout the state and the country. While I didn't shrug this warning off, I didn't think too much about it, given what the world has become, with terrorist threats a possibility anywhere at any time. They're being extra-careful, I thought, using inflated language to make things sound worse than they are. But then the next day another e-mail from the same company urged no travel to Tamil Nadu because the once-in-a-century flooding that had started earlier in November hadn't let up and the city of Chennai, especially, was suffering from relentless rain. I searched the internet and found this second e-mail not to be hyperbolic at all. Over four feet of rain had fallen in that part of India and it was still pouring. The airport had not yet closed, so technically I could still get there, but after thinking about it overnight I decided to postpone the trip—or at least my participation in it—for a couple of weeks, until the rain stopped and the region's normal December weather of sunshine and warm air took over. Our local office in Bangalore and the customer were understanding, so I changed my departure date to 15 December, which I found out later was the right decision.
I was on a start-up in Wisconsin when my boss e-mailed me and asked if I would like to spend time in India—another start-up—leaving over the Thanksgiving weekend. I thought about it for a short while and then said "yes" to the no-pressure offer. Though I'd been curious about India for many years, several books I've read about the country convinced me I didn't want to spend my own money and time to go there, so I thought this work trip would be the perfect opportunity to see the second most populous country in the world and earth's largest democracy. I was also hoping that India might surprise me the way South Africa did this past August, when I spent three weeks at the bottom of the Dark Continent on still another start-up and came away determined to return for a vacation in 2016. Having short notice I scrambled to get a visa, a quickie called an eTV, or electronic tourist visa, off an Indian government website that was appropriate for a two-week visit. Less than two days and sixty-three dollars later I had the visa that would allow me to enter Chennai, India, before Christmas Eve.
About a week before I was scheduled to leave I received an e-mail at work from International SOS, "the world's leading medical and travel security assistance company." It cautioned travelers bound for several points in India, including Tamil Nadu, the southeast state for which Chennai is the capital, that the local government had uncovered several credible threats of terrorism throughout the state and the country. While I didn't shrug this warning off, I didn't think too much about it, given what the world has become, with terrorist threats a possibility anywhere at any time. They're being extra-careful, I thought, using inflated language to make things sound worse than they are. But then the next day another e-mail from the same company urged no travel to Tamil Nadu because the once-in-a-century flooding that had started earlier in November hadn't let up and the city of Chennai, especially, was suffering from relentless rain. I searched the internet and found this second e-mail not to be hyperbolic at all. Over four feet of rain had fallen in that part of India and it was still pouring. The airport had not yet closed, so technically I could still get there, but after thinking about it overnight I decided to postpone the trip—or at least my participation in it—for a couple of weeks, until the rain stopped and the region's normal December weather of sunshine and warm air took over. Our local office in Bangalore and the customer were understanding, so I changed my departure date to 15 December, which I found out later was the right decision.
The Flights
If there were such a thing as a non-stop flight from Minneapolis to Chennai, then the straight-line distance of 8400 miles would have taken about sixteen hours of flying time to reach South Asia. But because there is no such air route and because I was hoping to accrue enough Delta miles to renew my Platinum status, I had to fly from the Twin Cities to Amsterdam to New Delhi to my destination, Chennai, a whopping twenty air hours, with one two-hour- and one five-hour layover. It was, you can imagine, exhausting. (The intra-India flight was on their national carrier, Air India.) My coach-class seats were on the aisle, and I passed the time reading, sleeping—however lightly—and watching a movie whose title and story I can't remember.
The last leg of the journey landed in Chennai at 09:10 on Thursday. A driver was there to meet me and I was off on this new adventure, one that started with a two-hour car ride to Sri City, location of the company I'd be helping and of the serviced apartment at which I'd be staying.
If there were such a thing as a non-stop flight from Minneapolis to Chennai, then the straight-line distance of 8400 miles would have taken about sixteen hours of flying time to reach South Asia. But because there is no such air route and because I was hoping to accrue enough Delta miles to renew my Platinum status, I had to fly from the Twin Cities to Amsterdam to New Delhi to my destination, Chennai, a whopping twenty air hours, with one two-hour- and one five-hour layover. It was, you can imagine, exhausting. (The intra-India flight was on their national carrier, Air India.) My coach-class seats were on the aisle, and I passed the time reading, sleeping—however lightly—and watching a movie whose title and story I can't remember.
The last leg of the journey landed in Chennai at 09:10 on Thursday. A driver was there to meet me and I was off on this new adventure, one that started with a two-hour car ride to Sri City, location of the company I'd be helping and of the serviced apartment at which I'd be staying.
Accommodations
Let me preface this section by saying Sri City isn't really a city—it's a giant industrial complex, home to manufacturing facilities of over a dozen companies, known and not-well-known: Isuzu, Hunter Douglas, Mondelez, and so on. I think the "town" outside the border of Sri City is Tada, but I'm still not certain. Anyway...
The first six nights I lodged at a relatively new serviced apartment complex called Big Stay. From the outside it looked nice and though it was clean on the inside the small rooms were spartan, or less. A bed, a little desk, a television playing Indian-language stations only, unreliable internet. And the bathroom. Well, it, too, was clean but it smelled like naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene—mothballs. Apparently it's not uncommon in India to put them in the drains of sinks and showers for obvious or not obvious reasons. Whatever those might be they are a health hazards—not just to moths but to humans because the vapor emanating from them is toxic. I kept the bathroom door closed whenever possible. The restaurant at the complex served a narrow range of Indian food for breakfast starting at seven o'clock and a narrow range of Indian and Chinese food for dinner twelve hours later. My first goal on this or any international trip is to stay healthy, and the cuisine at this modest restaurant was not going to agree with my stomach. No way. So I played it safe and walked to a tiny store and bought a variety of familiar packaged food and juices. Simple, yes, but no gastrointestinal upsets. Plus, I'm anything but a food connoisseur and eat to not feel hungry and to get nutrition. Still, I could have put up with all of this and spent my entire trip at Big Stay if only there were something, anything, to do in the area. After all, it was a quick fifteen-minute car ride to the plant (I had a driver), leaving me more time to explore the environs. But there was nothing to explore. Aye carumba. On 23 December, when I found out we were going to have Christmas and the day after off, I seized the opportunity and changed my accommodations to a Marriott Courtyard in Chennai-proper, a difficult two-hour drive away and where the U.S. representative of the customer I was visiting was staying. You think I'm crazy for spending the next week commuting four hours a day? Take the Big Stay Challenge and let me know how long you last. And please note that the entire staff at the factory I was working all live in Chennai. Why, the customer provides its employees with a courtesy bus for the commute. No joke.
So the Marriott was home for the remainder of the trip. And what a breath of fresh air it was, more like a Renaissance than a Courtyard, but either would have been a palace compared to Big Stay. Ten stories, two restaurants including one that served Western food—Oatmeal never tasted so good!—large rooms, a way-above-average fitness center, spa (I got a world-class massage on Christmas afternoon), gift shop, room service, and no mothballs. Ah, it was good. It didn't matter to me at all that I had to walk through a metal detector and have my backpack inspected before entering the hotel. I had convenient access to the city, which was especially important to me, an urban person, on my two days off. And I could get beef at a nearby TGI Friday's. Had I not left Big Stay, then all I'd have seen of this country that's the size of a combined Alaska, Texas, and California would have been an industrial park and an apartment building, hardly worth the trip.
Many of the images have captions; hover your cursor over the image to read it.
Let me preface this section by saying Sri City isn't really a city—it's a giant industrial complex, home to manufacturing facilities of over a dozen companies, known and not-well-known: Isuzu, Hunter Douglas, Mondelez, and so on. I think the "town" outside the border of Sri City is Tada, but I'm still not certain. Anyway...
The first six nights I lodged at a relatively new serviced apartment complex called Big Stay. From the outside it looked nice and though it was clean on the inside the small rooms were spartan, or less. A bed, a little desk, a television playing Indian-language stations only, unreliable internet. And the bathroom. Well, it, too, was clean but it smelled like naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene—mothballs. Apparently it's not uncommon in India to put them in the drains of sinks and showers for obvious or not obvious reasons. Whatever those might be they are a health hazards—not just to moths but to humans because the vapor emanating from them is toxic. I kept the bathroom door closed whenever possible. The restaurant at the complex served a narrow range of Indian food for breakfast starting at seven o'clock and a narrow range of Indian and Chinese food for dinner twelve hours later. My first goal on this or any international trip is to stay healthy, and the cuisine at this modest restaurant was not going to agree with my stomach. No way. So I played it safe and walked to a tiny store and bought a variety of familiar packaged food and juices. Simple, yes, but no gastrointestinal upsets. Plus, I'm anything but a food connoisseur and eat to not feel hungry and to get nutrition. Still, I could have put up with all of this and spent my entire trip at Big Stay if only there were something, anything, to do in the area. After all, it was a quick fifteen-minute car ride to the plant (I had a driver), leaving me more time to explore the environs. But there was nothing to explore. Aye carumba. On 23 December, when I found out we were going to have Christmas and the day after off, I seized the opportunity and changed my accommodations to a Marriott Courtyard in Chennai-proper, a difficult two-hour drive away and where the U.S. representative of the customer I was visiting was staying. You think I'm crazy for spending the next week commuting four hours a day? Take the Big Stay Challenge and let me know how long you last. And please note that the entire staff at the factory I was working all live in Chennai. Why, the customer provides its employees with a courtesy bus for the commute. No joke.
So the Marriott was home for the remainder of the trip. And what a breath of fresh air it was, more like a Renaissance than a Courtyard, but either would have been a palace compared to Big Stay. Ten stories, two restaurants including one that served Western food—Oatmeal never tasted so good!—large rooms, a way-above-average fitness center, spa (I got a world-class massage on Christmas afternoon), gift shop, room service, and no mothballs. Ah, it was good. It didn't matter to me at all that I had to walk through a metal detector and have my backpack inspected before entering the hotel. I had convenient access to the city, which was especially important to me, an urban person, on my two days off. And I could get beef at a nearby TGI Friday's. Had I not left Big Stay, then all I'd have seen of this country that's the size of a combined Alaska, Texas, and California would have been an industrial park and an apartment building, hardly worth the trip.
Many of the images have captions; hover your cursor over the image to read it.
Not-the-World's Fastest Indian
The New Commute and Traffic
On 24, 26, 27, and 28 December I had two nominal two-hour commutes a day. Nominal because although twice the ride was a mere hour-forty-five, a couple of times it was two-and-a-half hours. Just to travel forty miles. But those forty miles were in traffic I'm certain has no earthly equal. Locals told me such was traffic in India anywhere near a city, be it Mumbai, New Dehli, Bangalore, or Chennai, with its 4.7 million residents. I've been to Turkey, Brazil, Japan, several times to Vietnam, even more to China, and as heavy as the traffic is in those countries, it is insignificant compared to India. And while traffic laws are loose, to say the least, in China and Vietnam, they are non-existent in South Asia, where everybody has the right-of-way. Two official lanes become at least four and the chorus of honking horns does not stop from the time you enter a street until you're off the road entirely. Drivers, whether in cars, trucks, tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws), motorcycles, or five-passenger scooters tailgate and cut each other off without blinking, or thinking. And the amazing thing is, during my time there I never saw an accident. I'm happy we had a driver because to negotiate those thoroughfares would have been impossible on my own. Heck, just finding my way out of downtown Chennai, traffic or not, would have taken me the better part of a day. But if I go back, which I might in February, I'll do it all again so I can stay in the city, the real one, not Sri City.
My Two Days Off
On Christmas Day I joined a guided walking tour through Mylapore, in the south part of Chennai. The tour ended up being private with a delightful Indian woman named Lakshmi as my host. A wife and mother of at least one, Lakshmi had a personality the size of India itself, and her knowledge of local history, religion, and mythology were preternatural. We got on well, like old friends who hadn't seen each other for a long time. We spent most of the two and a half hours at Kapalesvara Shiva Temple, with Lakshmi, a natural storyteller, giving detailed descriptions of the buildings and sculptures as we strolled. The six pictures below are from the grounds of the temple, which was being refurbished.
On 24, 26, 27, and 28 December I had two nominal two-hour commutes a day. Nominal because although twice the ride was a mere hour-forty-five, a couple of times it was two-and-a-half hours. Just to travel forty miles. But those forty miles were in traffic I'm certain has no earthly equal. Locals told me such was traffic in India anywhere near a city, be it Mumbai, New Dehli, Bangalore, or Chennai, with its 4.7 million residents. I've been to Turkey, Brazil, Japan, several times to Vietnam, even more to China, and as heavy as the traffic is in those countries, it is insignificant compared to India. And while traffic laws are loose, to say the least, in China and Vietnam, they are non-existent in South Asia, where everybody has the right-of-way. Two official lanes become at least four and the chorus of honking horns does not stop from the time you enter a street until you're off the road entirely. Drivers, whether in cars, trucks, tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws), motorcycles, or five-passenger scooters tailgate and cut each other off without blinking, or thinking. And the amazing thing is, during my time there I never saw an accident. I'm happy we had a driver because to negotiate those thoroughfares would have been impossible on my own. Heck, just finding my way out of downtown Chennai, traffic or not, would have taken me the better part of a day. But if I go back, which I might in February, I'll do it all again so I can stay in the city, the real one, not Sri City.
My Two Days Off
On Christmas Day I joined a guided walking tour through Mylapore, in the south part of Chennai. The tour ended up being private with a delightful Indian woman named Lakshmi as my host. A wife and mother of at least one, Lakshmi had a personality the size of India itself, and her knowledge of local history, religion, and mythology were preternatural. We got on well, like old friends who hadn't seen each other for a long time. We spent most of the two and a half hours at Kapalesvara Shiva Temple, with Lakshmi, a natural storyteller, giving detailed descriptions of the buildings and sculptures as we strolled. The six pictures below are from the grounds of the temple, which was being refurbished.
We also visited San Thome Basilica, named for one of the twelve apostles and where he, Thomas, is buried. The church is beautiful, as you can see in the photo below. In the basement is Thomas's crypt, with a tiny bone fragment of his on display. Built by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, San Thome is one of only four churches in the world built on the tomb of one of the apostles, the others being St. Peter's in Rome, the Church of Saint James the Great in Spain, and the Ghareh Keliseh Monastery in Iran. Marco Polo, in 1292, is among those who have visited the burial site.
The third part of the tour was walking nowhere in particular, riding in a tuk-tuk (below left), and stopping at a resident's house to see how most of the locals live. This was a great way to spend the morning, one I'd recommend to anyone visiting Chennai.
And speaking of walking one of my frustrations with Chennai was how difficult it was to go for a stroll. One of the problems is there aren't always sidewalks; when there are, however, they are more often than not buckled or blocked with parked motorcycles, scooters, or tuk-tuks. This means having to walk on the street, which is life-threatening because of the driving habits of those behind the wheel of motorized vehicles. Virtually all my non-scuba-diving vacations have been and will continue to be in big cities, usually in Asia, and I love spending a good part of the day on urban walkabouts, stopping in museums, galleries, and shops along the way, rubbing shoulders with the locals, having chance encounters when asking for directions or if I've piqued someone's curiosity by being a racial minority and traveling solo. It's not for everyone, I understand, but that's what I like. Unfortunately in Chennai, and I suspect India's other major cities, I couldn't do that in any comfortable emotional state, even though all the Indians I met were genuinely nice, because of the conditions of the walkways and roads. Another challenge with walking in India—and just being in India—is that it's dirty, with trash strewn everywhere, so if you don't want to walk through the ubiquitous garbage you have step around or over it. And the stereotype of animals in the street is true: cows, goats, pigs, and dogs roam with the bipeds, the first three less common in the big cities, but everywhere outside the immediate metro areas. I love dogs and normally being in a city with dozens of pooches on every block would be elysium for me, but these were street dogs who carried who-knows-what in their fur and slobber. I wanted to pet and play with all of them, but I wasn't sure about what diseases or precursors to disease they might be carrying, so I tried to be affectionate without touching them.
Now where was I? Oh, yes, my days off. After the tour and then on Saturday and the following Tuesday, before I left for home, I visited a couple of malls—Express Avenue and Phoenix Marketcity—and bookstores—Higginbotham's and Starmark. Inside, the shopping centers were spotless, and all the retailers were familiar names. At the two bookstores—Higginbotham's, opened in 1844, is India's oldest bookshop (it looked it)—I bought several books by Indian authors: novels, short story collections, poetry, and a cross-section of non-fiction. As of this writing, I have finished and enjoyed three of them, all helping me better understand this country.
I also bought blindly two DVDs of Indian movies and have since watched them at home: Lunchbox, which is a romantic-drama, is filmmaking of the highest order, and Aamir, a political thriller from 2008 that was also spectacular. Although I'm not new to Indian cinema, I'm not well-versed in it, having seen fewer than a dozen South Asian films, including four by Satyajit Ray, who's their John Ford. India is the largest producer of movies in the world, with an annual output exceeding a thousand; globally, Indian films outsell Hollywood movies by nearly a million tickets. Movie showtimes in the local newspapers are listed by language: Tamil, Hindi, English, Malayalam, and Telugu. During my stay theaters were playing four English-language movies: Creed, The Good Dinosaur, In the Heart of the Sea, and Star Wars. I'd already seen Creed and was indifferent to it and had no interest in the other three. A person at the hotel told me that the domestic movies were not subtitled in English, so I have no direct cinematic experience from India on which I can comment. Maybe next time.
A quick word about the spoken word. India has twenty-two official languages, and these have over a hundred dialects. Unofficially, there are over 1650 languages but only about 150 of these have a consequential number of speakers. In the last fifty years, 250 Indian languages have died out. These are incredible numbers. It's hard to imagine that a country could be a country with so many different mother tongues. And I thought Switzerland had it tough with its four official languages.
Now where was I? Oh, yes, my days off. After the tour and then on Saturday and the following Tuesday, before I left for home, I visited a couple of malls—Express Avenue and Phoenix Marketcity—and bookstores—Higginbotham's and Starmark. Inside, the shopping centers were spotless, and all the retailers were familiar names. At the two bookstores—Higginbotham's, opened in 1844, is India's oldest bookshop (it looked it)—I bought several books by Indian authors: novels, short story collections, poetry, and a cross-section of non-fiction. As of this writing, I have finished and enjoyed three of them, all helping me better understand this country.
I also bought blindly two DVDs of Indian movies and have since watched them at home: Lunchbox, which is a romantic-drama, is filmmaking of the highest order, and Aamir, a political thriller from 2008 that was also spectacular. Although I'm not new to Indian cinema, I'm not well-versed in it, having seen fewer than a dozen South Asian films, including four by Satyajit Ray, who's their John Ford. India is the largest producer of movies in the world, with an annual output exceeding a thousand; globally, Indian films outsell Hollywood movies by nearly a million tickets. Movie showtimes in the local newspapers are listed by language: Tamil, Hindi, English, Malayalam, and Telugu. During my stay theaters were playing four English-language movies: Creed, The Good Dinosaur, In the Heart of the Sea, and Star Wars. I'd already seen Creed and was indifferent to it and had no interest in the other three. A person at the hotel told me that the domestic movies were not subtitled in English, so I have no direct cinematic experience from India on which I can comment. Maybe next time.
A quick word about the spoken word. India has twenty-two official languages, and these have over a hundred dialects. Unofficially, there are over 1650 languages but only about 150 of these have a consequential number of speakers. In the last fifty years, 250 Indian languages have died out. These are incredible numbers. It's hard to imagine that a country could be a country with so many different mother tongues. And I thought Switzerland had it tough with its four official languages.
On my last day in country I visited the Government Museum. Not much there to see, unfortunately, especially with the National Art Gallery closed for renovations. No captions on the next four photos.
At Phoenix Marketcity. Christmas is a minor holiday in India, except for the country's twenty-four million Christians—and, I suspect, the retailers, regardless of their religion.
Namaste
Well, folks, that was my trip. Most people who visit India for a first time describe it as overwhelming, and though not usually one to follow the crowd if I had to choose one adjective to describe it, then that'd be my selection, also. But of course you can't characterize a country in a single word, or in a single sentence, a single paragraph, or maybe not even in one book. All countries are complex, and I think India is more than most, maybe more than all. I absolutely loved the two weeks I spent there and I do hope I can return for a follow-up work visit next month. What boggles my mind more than anything related to the country is how it can be so chaotic, dirty, and disorganized with so many naturally smart and well-educated citizens, people like those in most of East Asia, who place such a high value on education. Is it the bureaucratic, socialist government? The corruption that is so rife? Something deep in their heritage, extending back centuries? I don't know. But I'll read the other books I bought there, watch more Indian movies, and talk with more people originally from this area.
I'll let you know what I come up with.
Well, folks, that was my trip. Most people who visit India for a first time describe it as overwhelming, and though not usually one to follow the crowd if I had to choose one adjective to describe it, then that'd be my selection, also. But of course you can't characterize a country in a single word, or in a single sentence, a single paragraph, or maybe not even in one book. All countries are complex, and I think India is more than most, maybe more than all. I absolutely loved the two weeks I spent there and I do hope I can return for a follow-up work visit next month. What boggles my mind more than anything related to the country is how it can be so chaotic, dirty, and disorganized with so many naturally smart and well-educated citizens, people like those in most of East Asia, who place such a high value on education. Is it the bureaucratic, socialist government? The corruption that is so rife? Something deep in their heritage, extending back centuries? I don't know. But I'll read the other books I bought there, watch more Indian movies, and talk with more people originally from this area.
I'll let you know what I come up with.