A Resturant Experience

Fiona and I went to an Italian restaurant for lunch today. It is expensive but the food is actually Italian not Indian/Italian like every other ‘Western’ restaurant we have tried. Mid way through our meal a very well dressed man and his toddler son arrived and sat at a table opposite to us. He was on his phone and soon after his wife arrived and sat down. I stopped paying any attention until the family started rearranging themselves around the table so that the parents were on one side and the child on the other. This was so a maid who had until then been waiting outside the restaurant, could make sure the child ate his food and behaved. Meanwhile both parents were playing with their mobile phones. There are these type of people all over the world however, what really shocked me was that the maid did not take the seat next to the child but stood for the entire meal at the end of the table. This looked so strange in a restaurant full of seated people.

Factory visits/the day I thought I was going to die.

This is the blog version of this day, not the official documentation which I will link to my portfolio page.

In usual fashion the excursion with the ceramics department was delayed one week and then another week. Finally the date was set for a Monday and we were to meet outside the Hostel gate at 4am. In true Aussie style Fiona and I decided that it would be a good idea if we stayed up all night, drunk some of the vodka that we were saving for my birthday, and that way we’d be able to sleep on the bus. Our plan went surprisingly well and we actually did manage to sleep until about 8am when we were almost there. The excursion was for the UG and PG students to visit a town called Morpi which is renowned for its red terracotta tile industry and later it’s ceramic sanitary products.

So please don’t take this little post as another rant and rave on my behalf because after surviving this day I can now say “bring it on!” It can’t get worse than that, I can survive anything.

Call it cost cutting or whatever, but NID had hired a bus that made the Indian public buses feel like a limousine! Broken seats, half open windows, cramped positions, this little number had it all. So thank god for our sleepless vodka fueled previous night that allowed us to sleep for the initial leg of the journey. At 9 am the heat was intense and as we desended from the bus for our first stop I was already feeling faint and quite queesy. The breakfast we had been promised was delayed and delayed and I started to feel quite sick. The day continued in this fashion, each factory extreamly interesting but unable to be appreciated due to the intense conditions. It was the hottest temperature that I have ever experienced and was of course intensified inside the bus and factories. I almost couldn’t bear to look the factory workers in the eye out of shame. Here was I, so uncomfortable I was on the verge of tears, and these people worked in the factories in the height of summer.

By the third factory the initial swelling of my legs had become so bad that other people were starting to comment. The elastic was cutting off the circulation and there was nothing I could do about it. I started having terrible visions of developing deep vein thrombosis and them all exploding from the pressure. Our final stop was a festival in a small town that was almost impossible to reach because the road was so terrible, followed by a quick visit to a temple and carnival. By this stage I was ready to find the nearest taxi and pay for a direct route back to NID.

Diner was a drawn out stopover around 10.30pm and the gates od NID finally came into sight close to 2am. Fiona’s stomach was causing her agony and we both flew back to our room ready to scream with relief and frustration. I went to sleep that night with my legs raised by pillows and under a wet towel. The swelling took almost 4 days to go down. Needless to say the experience toughened me up and I have a renewed respect for the NID students. Imagine the complaing that would occur if you subjected the RMIT students to a 22 hour excursion!

It reminds me of another resent incident when Praveen told us with quite a bit of pride in his voice that there is a visiting Product Design faculty who is conducting classes until 4.30 am in the morning! The students are too scared of missing anything so they are surviving on a couple of hours sleep every night. Isn’t that like totally illegal I was tempted to say.

While I’m on the topic of medical issues, which in my case have been quite minor really – a scratched eye, 1 serious bought of food poisoning, hay fever and swollen legs- a really bizarre one has suddenly occurred, and I would appreciate anyone’s help if they have any idea what it could be. Last night while I was at the cultural event or during diner I seem to have contracted a cluster of freckles on my chest. There are 7 of them in varying sizes all grouped together and another one about 5 cms away. They have the exact appearance of freckles, are brown, flat against the skin and do not look like any rash or insect bite that I have ever seen. I’m really quite perplexed and a little worried as they really do look hideous and could well be some horrible infectious disease. I mean who has heard of freckles appearing over the diner table?

8/10/07

I’m kinda embarrassed to admit this but the ‘freckles’ actually washed off in the shower a few days later………haha must have just been some kind of dye. Anyway now my hair is falling out – I’ve been told it’s the water. You can never win.

 

Anna Karenina

What can I say……..? I never get a chance to read this stuff back home.

More Trivial Observations

I always know when it is not Fiona approaching our front door by the shuffle of the feet. Most of the students around NID seem to have a distinctive shuffle of their feet where they don’t lift them off the ground. Both men and women do this and I wonder if this style of walking has been learnt from the mother who is often forced to walk in this way due to the restrictive nature of the sari. Or perhaps it is simply because they are trying to minimise movement as much as possible in the heat.

Brave New World

Ha ha I am being rather high brow reading this book aren’t I?  Oh well when the urge takes me I mustn’t resist, and we’ll wait to pass comment after I’ve reviewed it I do think it is rather ironic that I happened to pick this book from the classics section at the local book store. For those who haven’t read it, it is set in the future some 600 years where we have become a race born from test tubes, living only to consume and conditioned into caste groups provided to serve that purpose.

Today we went on an excursion to visit ceramic factories (more on that later) and while we were walking through an area of a particular factory that was full of workers in quite a horrible environment it brought to mind a scene in Brave New World where a character of the upper caste is demanding haste and more efficient labour from the a member of the lower caste. He feels uncomfortable speaking to this man and needs to raise his voice and demand what he requires. The lower caste has been conditioned not to ever want to ‘be’ a part of the upper caste however, this character thinks that the disrespectful feeling he is shown is because the other man is sizing him up, thinking that he is no better off physically than a person of the lower caste.

This thought popped into my head when the owner of the factory demand that one of his workers bring a sample for us to be shown, and the man hesitated and almost purposefully took his time. This is something we have come across before, for example a particular man in the mess will not respond to our requests unless we harshen and raise our voice towards him, something I find very uncomfortable to do.

The second parallel that I drew today was from observing how the NID students moved through the factory room either ignorning or simply unaware of all the workers. They were simply interested in the machines. In Brave New World you must not acknowledge another caste unless something is required from it.

Anyway I’m only a couple of chapters in, so more musings to come at a later date.

Speculating on Indian Idiosyncrasies

 

Why is it that a travel agent requires “at least” two days to make two phone calls and refund my cancelled ticket? Or that NID administration requires 24hrs to print out a receipt that is clearly sitting right there on the system?  I think the culprit of these beyond reasonable delays is the Indian population itself. In a country of over a billion people it must be necessary to stretch out a task to the maximum time length possible to ensure that the maximum amount of people are involved and therefore employed. Much like the fact that no part time student jobs exist as there is always someone willing to put in full time hours for half the pay, I imagine that prolonging simple tasks serves the purpose of creating more employment and employees required to get the jobs done. Is this just bogus speculation spurred by my frustration or is there some truth to my theory?

‘THE DIRTY THREE’

Fiona and I are playing pass the parcel with what we have coined ‘THE BUG’. I spent our lovely little weekend getaway to Mt Abu stuck in a hotel room unable to venture more than a few meters from the toilet, and Fi currently looks like she is at death’s door. ‘THE BUG’ is accompanied by ‘THE SMELL’, that nauseatingly permeates our room after it has been raining or whenever it feels like it, and prompts us to run around spraying perfume and lighting incense. These two are accompanied by ‘THE MEN’ and put together they make up ‘THE DIRTY THREE’.Which is worse, we can’t decide.

How does it feel to be stared at for 7 straight hours with no escape while trying to sleep on a bus? I know.

How does it feel to be flashed by a weedy thing with a very small *#@**! Who then proceeds to chase you around the mall while security pretends not to understand? I know.

There are certain looks and expressions that will come over and Indian mans face when he looks at me, and I have become surprisingly good at determining exactly what they mean. This can have two effects on me; one, I crawl back inside myself and avoid all eye contact at all costs and two, I glare and make ugly faces back at them. Neither one seems to produce the desired outcome, so it just depends on my mood as to which way I act.

How does it feel to finally venture away from your hotel death bed for a nice leisurely paddle on the lake in a white swan boat (which I admit screamed white people) only to be chased around the lake by a convoy of 6 other boats and their video cameras? I know.

I wonder why all paparazzi aren’t Indian men? I think they’d be the best at it. What would India be like without ‘THE DIRTY THREE’? Friendly women and a few well meaning men, excitement, activity, beautiful colours and scenery, incredibly rich culture and tradition, etc, etc. It’s a shame, but no body is perfect.

Now excuse me while I go and remove Fi’s head from the toilet bowl to feed her flat lemonade and drugs.

The Indians – Portrait of a People

By Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar.

This book has been incredibly insightful and I find myself explaining away bizarre actions I witness based on cultural concepts I have read about. I especially enjoyed the chapter on sexuality which attempts to explain or should I say justify, Indian men’s perverse actions based solely on culture, religion and their mothers. I particularly liked the statement that a new bride should not show more affection for her husband than her mother in law or she will be deemed a slut! Although the one about justifying homosexuality as one man having been a woman in the past life and therefore the couple have unfinished business to conduct, was pretty good too. Oh and how about how the act of fellatio will damn a person not to hell, but to a land of semen. Where he will have to eat, drink, live in and breathe sperm forever and ever after. So many pearls of wisdom.

Highly recommended *****

My creative streak coming alive in Nainital

What have we become……….

The gorgeous Fi just trying to fit in amongst all the other Gujarati fashion victims.

Posting this photo makes me feel a little better