I've been busy

Last week marked the end of my field assignment in Madhya Pradesh and I flew back to Delhi to to take the weekend off and be a tourist for a couple of days.  Returning to an urban environment after almost three weeks in the interior was somewhat of a shock.  Dirt roads, cows and pigs were replaced by shiny displays and flushing toilets.  Within an hour of my return to his Delhi guest house, Vasant whisked me off to a large international contemporary art expo full of not only interesting art, but smartly dressed people speaking English, French, Serbian, Japanese, and who knows what other language.  The contrast between brushing my teeth in the dark with no mirror (power outage, very simple bathroom) in the morning and "bon jour, mademoiselle" in the afternoon was quite powerful.

M.P.

Delhi

After a busy half-day in Delhi, Vasant and I woke up before dawn and left to spend the weekend in Jaipur, Rajasthan.  Located in the historical desert of king's palaces, rich in food and culture, Jaipur is a true tourist pleasure.  We spent our first day visiting the major attractions, my favorite of which was the Amber Fort, just outside the city.

View from Amber Fort

Situated on hill, surrounded by a version of the Great Wall of China, the fort is giant, fantastic and breathtaking.  It is my sincere hope that everyone I know will get to visit the place - it alone is worth a trip to India.

The king's entrance to the fort's palace

Having finished our day of sightseeing, we headed to Choki Dhani, a well-simulated Rajasthani ethnic village.  There we wondered around huts, listened to local music, got 20 rupee head and neck-cracking massages and attended a traditional Rajasthani feast.  The food was quite different, abundant, and delicious. 

Me, Vasant and our new friend waiting for food

On our second day in Jaipur we went to an international literary festival, attended by all the leading Indian authors (as well as authors from abroad.)  We listened to presentations, shopped for books and souvenirs, and headed back to Delhi.  My flight for Ranchi, the site of my second field project, left the next morning.

Small Discoveries

Guava is the local fruit and is currently in season.  People cut it into pieces and sprinkle it with salt before eating.  I love it.


To deal with uncommonly cold weather, women wear socks with their flip flops.  I originally found the practice appalling, but have recently found myself doing it (in informal settings, of course.)


People will gladly exclude sugar from your masala chai if you ask nicely.


The average number of light switches next to an Indian door is six.  The average number of light bulbs in an Indian room is one.  This makes for a lot of unnecessary switch-flipping.


Leftover food, even bread, is generally not consumed.  It is used as a religious offering to the cows that freely roam the streets.

Amarkantak

At 5:30 this morning Sandeep and I left Jabalpur and set out on a six-hour drive to Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh to attend an industry event on financial inclusion and to visit the home of Sandeep's parents.  On the way there we stopped in Amarkantak, a popular pilgrimage destination at the head of the Narmada river.  There, we visited a large temple, walked to the head of a small waterfall, and took in the sights.

 Pilgrims on the temple grounds

Amarkantak is located in a hilly tropical area populated by monkeys.  The monkeys are everywhere you look - on the side of the road into town, on the rocks in the river, visiting the local attractions.  Although regulations prohibit the feeding of monkeys, monkey feeding seems to be one of the top tourist activities in the area.  Due to the general absence of waste baskets, I happened to be carrying some banana peel on one of our walks.  Smelling the delicious peel, a monkey approached me, hissing, ready to pounce.  Sandeep yelled at me to throw the peel, and the happy monkey quickly devoured it.  Later that day I decided to pose for a picture with the monkey below.  After this photo was taken, I foolishly attempted to get closer.  The monkey interpreted my approach as an attempt to take the seeds it was eating and chased me away scowling and swatting at my calves as I squealed and made a spectacle of myself.

Scary monkey

Mornings

Morning is my favorite time of day in Jabalpur.  I wake up sometime after dawn and linger in bed, reading.  There's no use getting up before 8:30 because of scheduled power outages between 6:30 and 8:30, which is fine by me.  After taking a quick bath and getting dressed, I drag a chair onto the balcony overlooking the street.  There, in perfect morning sunshine, I watch the neighborhood wake up.  Women in saris hang laundry on clotheslines.  Mustached men sweep patios and bring in the newspaper.  Vendors wheel giant carts down the street crying "sabji!" (for vegetables) and "guava!" (for guava).  The young girl next door comes onto her balcony and makes small talk with me in English.  Her mother follows and smiles shyly, unable to find a common language with me.


After a while Vishal (the "office boy") brings me a cup of steaming milky coffee, and later a plate with breakfast.  I consume both with my nose buried in a book and continue to read until Sandeep (the local manager and my guesthouse co-habitant) finally calls out from downstairs, ready to depart for a day at the office or a trip to the villages.  We rarely leave before ten.


This morning Sandeep decided to get me out of bed by blasting Bollywood music videos at full volume on the television downstairs.  Hearing the infectious music made me want to get up and dance, which I did briefly, sort of, in the empty living room.

Food

This isn't at all surprising, but the only food really available in India outside of metropolitan places like Delhi is Indian.  For the past week I have lived on a diet consisting almost exclusively of roti and spicy vegetable stews, favoring potatoes, peas and cauliflower.  Snacks have consisted of deep-fried lentil dough balls and various local sweets, to which I prefer the abundant fresh fruit sold by street vendors.  The breakfast fare varies.  Coffee shops tend to serve combinations of lentil-dough balls or donuts and yogurt or spicy vegetable mixtures.  Vishal's (the "office boy" who tends to the guesthouse) idea of breakfast sits better with me.  For a couple of days in a row he brought me plates of cold, but delicious biryani-style rice, which may have been cooked by his mother the night before.  This morning he brought a plate of droopy curry-flavored ramen noodles, which were a welcome alternative to all the spicy vegetable stews I have been eating for lunch and dinner.

Roti

I am staying in a guesthouse inhabited by Sandeep, the head of Udyogini in MP, Kumar, a new Udyogini employee, and Vishal, the cook.  Last night Vishal showed me how to make roti, which is Indian flat bread.  Sandeep got in on the action too, but was unwilling to touch the rolling pin, frying the roti instead.  Kumar, purportedly the best cook, abstained.

Vishal makes roti, Sandeep looks on (freezing) 

I try my hand at rolling the dough

Marble Rock

The area surrounding Jabalpur, the city where I am staying, is beautiful.  It is covered in forested hills with rivers and water reservoirs.  Unfortunately, the land is not very fertile, which contributes to the poverty experienced by its rural inhabitants.

Villagers in a remote part of MP

There are, however, some distractions.  The University of Illinois team brought me along on a visit to Marble Rock, a large local multi-colored marble formation that can only be seen from the river that it surrounds.  The students and I all piled into a motorboat piloted by a boisterous driver and marveled at the marble as the sun set behind it.

View of Marble Rock at dusk

Madhya Pradesh

The state of Madhya Pradesh (MP) is located in the dead center of India and is home to some very poor remote tribal communities.  I had the pleasure of spending two days touring around the villages with MBA students from the University of Illinois and meeting some of the women that work with Udyogini. 

 A micro-entrepreneur in her shop

To participate in Udyogini’s development program, the poorly educated and frequently illiterate women must attend a two to three month management training program and make a working capital investment of five thousand rupees ($111, quite a significant sum.)  In return they receive a micro-franchise, which provides them with an income of one to two thousand rupees per month.  The franchises consist of small retail stores that sell an array of goods and procure local commodities.  The women franchise-owners sell the commodities to Udyogini-run regional centers at a profit.  The retail stores are often the only providers of goods in the remote villages, which are only accessible via dirt roads too rough for any vehicle other than a horse-drawn carriage or a rugged SUV.

A group of new recruits receiving training

The micro-franchise development program, while effective, is not self-sustaining due to the lack of scale and scope.  My work here in MP will focus on addressing the scope issue by analyzing various products and services that may be added to the micro-franchise value chain.

Delhi

I have officially completed my first day in Delhi and am now back in the airport, waiting for my flight to Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, where I will spend the next three weeks.  My one-day introduction to urban India was a whirlwind.  Vasant was very kind and hired a car and take us on a tour of Delhi.  We saw Hindu and Muslim temples, shopped, walked in gardens and had a delicious Indian dinner.  I had to twist his arm to dine at an Indian restaurant - he attempted to take me to Ruby Tuesday.  Below is a photo of the two of us at Humayun's Tomb.

By the way, I purchased a cell phone yesterday and can now be easily reached.  Let me know if you'd like to call me for any reason, and I'll email you the number.

Hello, India

I hereby declare that I have safely made it to Delhi.  So far my impressions are few as it is late and very dark outside, and I have not yet had a chance to face the purportedly dangerous food and water.  I do have a couple of quick observations:

1. The Delhi airport is not nearly as chaotic as people say.  Security is everywhere and people are very helpful.  A nice young man waiting to pick up a different traveler offered me his services, including the use of his telephone.  It was not creepy.

2.  Drivers in Delhi are crazy.  I know that this is a commonly stated fact, but one must experience the roads here to fully understand.  Lane dividers, if present, are ignored completely.  People drive like fish in a stream, weaving around each other, all at different speeds, within millimeters of touching at all times.  Cars zoom around auto rickshaws (pictured below), old huffing diesel trucks and mopeds carrying families of up to four (not an exaggeration.)  Horns are used liberally.  It is surprising that I didn't see a single accident on these adrenaline-driven roads.