Temple!!!

Ever since I've been here, mum has been trying to convince me to visit a temple and I've been resisting it. For some reason I just don't feel like visiting temples this time around and I was trying to stay true to my stand where I refused an opportunity to go to a temple as recent as yesterday . But she has been very persistent in her requests so I finally gave in and the plan was to visit a local temple this morning. It was an interesting experience again as the temple we went to was small and not as big {and thus not as commercial} as Kankadurga Temple - the main temple in Vijayawada. Climbing the stairs to the temple was a journey through various kinds of smells ranging from the pungent to the aromatic and everything in between. The best part of the trip was the top down view of Vijayawada and I got some cool shots. If you compare the cityscape of Hong Kong and Vijayawada you can see that Vijayawada's cityscape reflects the chaos within the order while it is the exact opposite for HK.

Tractor load of people

Chaos within order

Street vendor selling Custard apple fruit

Walking away

A local sweets and delicacies workshop & kitchen

Crumbling houses and rising apartments

Household chores on the roof

A maze of wires

Sleeping on the roof

Vijayawada cityscape

2 kids flying a kite

Dwellings

A cow trying to eat some furniture

Vijayawada into the horizon

Empty streets in the morning

Guy selling flowers - they were cheap - 30 nz cents for 2

Walking on the flyover

I might be wrong but there seems to be an increased obsession with religion in India now. It was there to some extent even when I was here till 2003 but it seems to have accelerated so much more in the last couple of years. I don't know the reasons for it but it is pretty weird seeing how deep the influence of religion has become across all social classes. Another random observation is that people in Andhra {it might apply to India as a whole but I can't generalize as most of this trip has been in Andhra Pradesh} don't listen properly. You'll say something, they'll nod their head in agreement and they'll go ahead and do something completely different. When you tell them that's not what was asked for or said, they'll finally come around to doing what you originally wanted after you repeat your instructions a couple more times. And I am saying this not from one incident but from multiple incidents - big and small. It's like people choose to do what they think you want them to do without even listening to what you just said. No wonder getting any kind of work done here is a major hassle.

Trying to watch a Hindi movie on tele is like running a marathon. I was flicking across the channels and found a movie that I had heard good things about and decided to watch it but it was an exhausting experience. As it is Bollywood movies run between 2.5-3 hours and when you have 15 minute commercial breaks after every 20 minutes of the movie, you soon loose track of the story and subsequently the interest in watching the movie dies. I left the movie when it still had another hour or so to go as I was tired from the effort. DVD's or watching it in a cinema theater is the way to go for any Indian movies. The broadcasters here need to learn that the advertisers won't be getting value for their money if the target audience is lost because of too much advertising in a broadcasters eternal quest to maximize their advertising revenues.

The 4.45 AM wake up call because of the temple visit combined with the last couple of nights where I couldn't sleep properly as the mosquitoes were enamored with me, is killing me and I think I'll go and have my late morning nap now.

Till later,
Amit

TV in Rural India

A couple of days back I went and visited the village that I've visited since childhood because grandma's sister {'amma'} and her husband ['tatha'] have their house their, and it was a very different experience. What was noticeable was the distinct lack of children playing around on the streets and the stillness of the place. From childhood memories as well as from the 2005 trip, I know that in the evenings there is a lot of hustle/bustle on the main village road with kids playing and people doing household chores and socializing. This time around it was quiet - there were only 2 or 3 kids playing and they were curious enough to come looking for me as I was carrying my digital camera around trying to see if I could take any snaps.

2 kids and a chicken

Looks like the outreach of satellite TV into rural India has had a huge impact on the village lifestyle. The set-top box and subscription to 100+ channels in rural villages costs about Rs.70 odd a month {from the information I overheard} - that's NZ$2 per month. I guess the reason they can provide it so cheap is that they earn money through advertising revenue generated from reaching a bigger percentage of the population. When we were kids, if there was a major TV event like a cricket match or something, almost the entire village would gather at tatha's house in order to watch it as that was the only television in the village. Now every hut has it's own TV - so no more sense of an event or sense of community. I guess the good thing is that means there is development in rural India and the bad thing is that they are now watching crappy daily soap operas and forming an unrealistic view of what a city life is.

Mother and son

At the mango farm

Local farm hand bringing a vegetable

Local farm hand and his wife

Dragonflies

One of the best things about visiting 'thota' [literal translation: farm] is the awesome food the amma cooks up. Her chicken fry dish has been the best chicken dish I've had since coming to India this time. It was unbelievably awesome. A distant second is 'Ulavacharu Chicken Biryani' from DV Manor in Vijayawada. It is always a strange feeling seeing the faces of people you've known since childhood, every passing year. For some reason I always imagine people with the same faces as I remembered them when I was younger and the toll that age takes on the face and the body seems unreal. You don't want to believe your eyes but the reality is that everyone ages and that is a fact of life.

Tatha

Amma cooking a traditional sweet delicacy {crunchy on the outside and sweet on the inside}

Time spares no body but the mind and spirit still rules - Great Grandma

Amma whipping up the delicacies

The matrimonial thing isn't going too well for me. Gyanender uncle is of the view that I should find my own life partner because in terms of arranged marriage to someone from India, the relationship most probably won't work out because of the unusual profession I am in and I can totally see his point. Besides that the arranged marriage thing on surface sounds so simple as a concept but it is so incredibly complicated and twister. In that aspect there are several things that work against me: a) hair {or lack of}; b) country {people only want US or UK}; c) profession {only a docotor or an engineer or a IT professional would do}; d) age {under 30 only thank you very much}. So all in all pretty much everything about me is not acceptable to the Indian society at large and I find it highly amusing on one hand and very angry on the other. Who knows what's gonna happen on that front? I don't. Looks like I'll be doing my own finding once I get back to NZ. :-)

I love the home cooked food that Lakshmi aunty is serving up and the pearls of wisdom and company of Gyanender uncle that the stay in Vijayawada has been extended till end of this week. There are no more relatives to meet and no more marriage bureaus to go to, so I'll be spending some quality time with them {even though I skipped going to a temple visit this morning}. I might buy a pair of shorts and t-shirt later this evening and I might even get some much needed exercise over the next few days.

That's me for now.
Later,
Amit

Hot!!!!

1.5 KG in 20 days - that's my achievement so far. I'm loving home cooked food and I guess I'll just have to hit the gym extra hard as soon as I get back to Auckland. :-)

Vijayawada is hot. It is 35 degrees right now and that's been the consistent temperature ever since I've been here and it is end of October when it is getting cooler. It's hard going out during the day and the best time to check out the city is in the evenings but then it is just traffic and chaos as usual. Traffic is not as bad as Hyderabad because Vijayawada is a smaller city but the driving across the country still remains the same. Being a smaller city also means that things are more affordable - like a pair of jandals costs about NZ$2 instead of NZ$12 and upwards like in Auckland.

Getting on with life

Driver and driver's assistant in an auto-rickshaw

Selling wares

Rusting

Walking the main bridge

Yesterday all of us went to visit the small factory unit that my aunt is setting up and it was a fascinating trip - not just because of the factory unit. There was so much about rural India that I started noticing just now, it is true that when you are within a system you don't notice anything or see anything different since you are living it. But once you are away from something for a while - things start standing out. Like one of the things I noticed was the slabs in front of houses in rural areas - it is an odd design for a house but it serves a very functional purpose - people sit in front of their houses to see the world go by and it becomes their social interaction point. We live privileged lives in cities while the 'real country' lives in villages and that balance has been changing rapidly everywhere - not necessarily for the good. The imbalance is going to hit us all sooner rather than later.

Rural Andhra

A farmer transporting some hay

A bicycle :-)

Spokes

Of buffaloes and sitting on the roof

A guy fixing a machine

Sunset over the factory unit

A boat sailing across Krishna river

Nothing much going on right now except the marriage thing as usual and it is a fascinating experience just going through it. Lots of fodder for analysis of the Indian society and social systems but that'll be some other time. Oh and I managed to bruise my right thumb pretty bad when I slipped and fell while rushing across a few stairs. It should come right soon.

That's me for now. Time to enjoy some more awesome food.
Amit

Hello Vijayawada

It is a strange feeling going to social events and noticing people judging you based on how you look. And in my specific case - people looking at you weird because I don't have much hair on my head. You see, in India, everyone is very particular about their hair - it doesn't matter if you are fat,unhealthy, arrogant, stupid or anything like that, as long as you have a full head of hair you are part of the crowd. And if you don't fit in the crowd then you are marked to be judged whenever you step into the public. 7 years back I would've been embarrassed by such social situations but now I can't really give a shit about Indians preoccupation with appearances and superficiality.

A trip to India is incomplete without a journey on Indian railways and that wish was fulfilled earlier this morning when mum and me took an overnight train from Hyderabad to Vijayawada. I must say that it has been an exhausting train ride and I've never felt this tired throughout this current trip - even if you include the 12.5 hour flight from Auckland to Hong Kong. We got berths in 3rd AC car so we could sleep on the overnight journey but the AC in our compartment was switched off for most of the journey in order to save money or something. What that meant was that the compartment was stuffy as hell and hot - which in turn meant that I only got 4 hours sleep in total - which is why I felt so tired after the journey. I've slept for the better part of the day and I am now feeling refreshed.

Vijayawada brings back memories and I have a love-hate relationship with the place. I love everything about it except the weather as I tend to fall sick when I am here and this goes back to when I was a kid - it might have to do something with the combination of the heat and the humidity. My first impressions about Vijayawada at 4.30AM were that the roads were heaps better than Hyderabad but that it was quite hot even for that time of the morning.

Kids playing on the road

Stroll through the local market

At Vijayawada club

The best part about coming to Vijayawada is visiting the family. I love spending time with my uncle and aunt over here and they've always been supporting me ever since I can remember. They took me under their wings for an entire year when I was in 6th Class and got admission into a school in Vijayawada. It was my detoriating health due to the weather in Vijayawada that pushed my parents to take me back to Delhi and go through the tricky process of getting me admitted into a school mid-way through the year in Delhi {because of the different school systems in different parts of the country}. Besides that my uncle is the one who supported my independent film making efforts and I wouldn't be working on my third project without his initial support.

Veni and me*

My guardian angel

So far it has been a quiet day in Vijayawada - I caught up with my grand dad during the day ; went to a marriage bureau on insistence from one of our relatives after being woken up from an afternoon nap where I had a dream in which I found someone of my own {maybe this marriage thing is playing on my mind - more than I would give it credit for}; visited Vijayawada club to have a look around - courtesy of my uncle; and enjoyed some awesome home cooked food - some of the dishes that I haven't had in ages.

Grand dad, Grand mom and me

Grand dad now

Nothing major planned for rest of the time and will see how the rest of the trip pans out.
Later,
Amit

* Mom's youngest brother, Raja uncle, got this photo of Veni and me taken when we were in Guntur {a city 1 hour drive from Vijayawada} - just before I was put into the boarding school over there -{I am guessing this must be around 1985 or something}. Apparently he got scolded for it because he took us to the studio on an impromptu plan and we never got dressed in 'proper' clothes. :-) I used to love Raja uncle's impromptu outings as it kept things interesting and a real surprise. When I was later in Vijayawada -he was the one who used to take us to heaps of movies and one of the earliest movies I remember seeing with him are Jackie Chan movies like Police Story, Project-A and also movies like Herbie goes to Monte Carlo and heaps more.

The state of things

Yesterday I spent the day with one of my cousins and her family and it was an awesome day. Her and her family have recently shifted from USA to India and it was insightful getting their views on settling back into the Indian society. My cousin has given me a couple of low budget telugu movies that I intend to watch sometime this week to catch up on the local film industry scene. I loved spending time socializing with her and her family and it made me wonder if I should actually spend more time socializing when I am back in New Zealand. Over the past few years I've cut down on my socializing heaps so that I have more time on my hands to focus on movies but that leaves a social void and I guess I need to find a balance between work and social life.

I watched 1 and half bollywood movies over the past couple of days and I enjoyed the one I actually finished completely but didn't really care much for the one I left half way. The one I liked was 'Taare Jamein Par' and I would've loved it if there were no song and dance sequences plus for the better part of the movie the acting was understated. The other movie I tried watching was a remake of an old hindi movie called 'Don' and the new one looked slick but the acting was over the top and there was no cohesiveness to the storytelling and I couldn't really see any point in the remake since there was no unique point of view.

One of the things I've noticed here is that most people tend to go on huge diversions/detours while talking. You'll be having a conversation and mid-sentence the topic would change randomly to something not even closely related and after sometime the conversation would again veer back to the original conversation, somehow. And during the entire period, you are expected to know exactly what everyone is talking about. It can be slightly disorienting and my coping mechanism is that I phase out of the conversation till it comes back to the one I was following. :-) The other thing is people don't like introducing themselves when they call up. They expect you to recognize their voice and again it is very disorienting - especially when you can't recognize their phone numbers. It is fine if it is someone you've been talking to on a regular basis or someone you've talked to recently but calling up after ages and then expecting to just know who you are talking to is rather presumptuous.

Andhra Pradesh is a strange state in the sense that the government is promising unsustainable welfare schemes for the masses like offering rice for Rs.2 a KG {about NZ$0.05 per KG} with a limit of 20 KG's per person - for people living under the poverty line. Mind boggles when you think that at retail the rice goes upwards of Rs.25 per KG in India and in New Zealand - it is more like NZ$2-NZ$3 a KG. The price differential is borne by the state government and the burden of which ultimately falls on the middle class - which gets taxed more to cover the financial shortfalls. As it is there is global food scarcity and with populist and unsustainable schemes like this you have to wonder how much lower can the politicians scoop to stay in power.

A different aspect of the state is that the work ethic in general is poorer than other Indian states - people like to make a quick buck and don't even want to work for it. Hyderabad boasts of major multi-national software firms having their offices in the city but that does nothing to change the imbalance of work culture leaning towards inaction. Once you scratch the surface there are so many things you see that you don't like and in general the Indian intelligentsia doesn't like those faults either but the system is too big and too flawed for anyone to even try and fix it. Small steps can change the course of things but I am not sure if that'll ever happen in India - even in a global economy as the balance of trade is shifting towards emerging markets like China and India where whoever enters the market gets assimilated into the local way of thinking and functioning in order to make profits.

I might be sounding negative about the way things are in India - I am not - I am perplexed, surprised and at times outraged at the state of things but this is not my fight. Sometimes I wonder if New Zealand had a similar population explosion and scarcity of resources would people be the same as people are here in India - good natured despite all their flaws or would we see an uglier face of humanity? I wonder.

Amit

Unaccustomed Earth

Unaccustomed Earth

Shaving can be such a hard task when the spordaic bursting of crackers and fireworks - far and close by, startles you. Thankfully I didn't cut myself. I finally had a chance to catch up on some reading that I'd been putting off for a while because of time constraints I always run into and the book I started reading is 'Unaccustomed Earth' by Jhumpa Lahiri even though mum handed me a book called 'The 3 mistakes of my life' by Chetan Bhagat. My first thought on seeing the title of that book was 'oh, not a self-help book I hope' and when I read the prologue it turned out to be fiction. The prologue of the book was interesting but after reading the first chapter I skipped right through to the epilogue since I didn't like the author's writing style. And I managed to figure out everything that happened in the story by reading the epilogue, so I guess that's one book done with. :-)

Having finished off '3 mistakes' I started 'Unaccustomed earth' and the difference between the 2 books is night and day. The prose in 'unaccustomed' is poetic and it is hard to put down the book because each of the short stories manages to connect with a different part of you so empathatically. I finished half the book since yesterday and the book really got me thinking. Jhumpa Lahiri's stories deal with expatriate Indians who have settled in USA and their lives and struggles and thoughts and joys but the thing that differentiates her stories from similar topics is that the characters she creates are very human. There is no effort by the author to preach what's right or wrong or the way things should be instead she explores the human condition in all it's glory and fallings. Even though the stories deal with expatriate Indians - it could be replaced by any race, ethnicity, person that has settled in a new country - that's how universal the condition of the human stories within the book are.

The thought process it started off in me was leaving me wondering if I was a coward running away from responsibilities and family duties here in India in the name of ambition, progress and sanity. I am my parent's only child and to settle in a country that's a convenient 21 odd hours flight away {if you count the stop-over since there are no direct flights as yet} seems a little too extreme. In Indian culture, kids always take care of their parents - especially when they are older just as the parents take care of their kids till they are able to stand on their own 2 feet while in most of the western cultures, kids are happy to escape the constant gaze and protection of their parents as soon as they can {and I think parents over there prefer that} and then there is no obligation for the kids to look after their parents when they are older. Both the systems have their flaws and advantages but the point I am trying to make is that I am my parent's only support especially now as they are getting older and I feel helpless as I am not earning bucketloads of money {which is one of the primary reasons people move to a different country} to support them financially and if I come over to India to support them emotionally and physically then I can't support anyone - not even myself, in any meaningful financial way since the work ethic and culture in India is not something that pays good money to good workers. And I probably won't survive the haphazard and hazardous way of working over in India - i'll probably go insane pretty quick which means that I won't be of much help to anyone.

Crossing the street

Waiting around

Light but chaotic traffic

I've always belonged to 2 worlds - when I was in India I belonged to North India and South India while now that I am in New Zealand I belong to both New Zealand and India. And being of 2 worlds always throws up so many questions and dilemas as evidenced by the conflict I am having right now. I hate thinking about the future because it is so uncertain and out of one's hands but I guess I do need to acknowledge certain facts of life and start taking them into account while planning for things.

More immediate concern of mine is making sure that my throat comes right. I had some indian snacks from the corner stall on the road couple of days back and the oil obviously didn't suit me because my throat seized up as soon as I ate the snacks. It has been a constant case of sucking on 'strepsils' and lots of hot salt water gargling. Hopefully it'll come right within a day or so. I went to get some milk from the grocery shop across the road and then to get some sweets since it's festival time and I must say it is an interesting experience because it is just chaos. Everyone is out festival shopping and no one wants to wait and everyone wants to be served first, so you have to forget all niceties and push people around a bit to get served at all. I don't like it one bit and the thing is that if there is some sembelance of order people will get served faster and there wouldn't be as much tension shopping but I guess this is the way of life in India and people like it that way. Besides the throat seizing up - my nose is dripping because of the amount of air pollution generated by people burning fireworks on the occasion of Diwali.

Gods & Goddesses

Diwali - the festival of lights

I don't like the commercial form of diwali where everyone is out buying and burning crackers. Andhra Pradesh has been hit by floods recently and certain districts are still coping with the loss but over in cities a good majority doesn't seem to acknowledge that. If people donated even half of what they spent on fireworks for flood relief it would alleviate the sufferings of the flood ravaged considerably but who am I to speak about such things. The thing I do enjoy about Diwali is the family get together part of things. We went to a family friend's house for dinner {it is hard to explain relationships in English, so easier to just categorize some relations as either relatives or family friends} and it was a nice evening especially since it was the first time I celebrated the festival with my family and friends in 7 years. The best part was seeing the kids enjoy the fireworks and the meal after wards but the pollution still really bothers me.

Igniting fireworks on the road

Blazing into the sky

Nebula

Everyone looking at the crackers burning

Shower of fire

Dad with Ashima

People celebrating Diwali

On a parting note - I learnt 2 interesting things about myself today:
a) I compartmentalize my past and then leave it behind and don't really rack up the past in order to live in the present {my point of view: I learn from my past and then I do tend to leave the incidents and stuff behind as it helps free up my my small brain in dealing with the present}
b) I have slowed down from what I was like as a person a few years back - apparently I was super-ambitious and would follow on my impulses without paying proper thought but now it seems that I am not as ambitious and have this demeanor of acceptance of whatever life is throwing at me {my point of view - I am still as ambitious as before but I do take a more measured approach to any challenge/opportunity - maybe because I'm tired of constant rejections and heart aches when I leap blindly without looking}.

Thats me for now.
Amit