India Kaleidoscope

I could say that this Friday’s Note has been a year in the making, but it would more accurate to say this note has been more of year of putting it off.  This week is the one year anniversary of my trip to Bangalore India.  Since that trip, my friend Gopala has repeatedly inquired as to when my impressions of India would make their way into a Friday’s Note.  I was going to write a note just about the 18 and a half hours of air travel just to get there, but that story I think I’ll save for another day. 

I think my delay in writing about India has been my inability to focus on one aspect of the experience.  To attempt illustrate my collage interpretation of the Indian subcontinent, I’ll take a kaleidoscope approach to explaining the aspects of the trip.  Each piece of the adventure tumbling into place, forming a pattern that is uniquely Indian.

The Traffic

The first aspect of the trip to tell is the experience of riding through the city.  After the initial 4am airport to the hotel drive, where the driver tooted his horn as a means of carefully running red lights, my friend Chris looked at me and said, “I made a tactical error by sitting in the front seat”.  From that point forward the front seat was mine allowing me to take all the snapshots I could.  The word traffic doesn’t seem adequately explain the challenges of traversing the city.  Every means of land travel is fair game (cars, busses, motorcycles, ox, foot, bicycle, scooters) and the sweet molasses movement is orchestrated by friendly use of horns and a high beam flashes language.  Here is a typical front seat view of the traffic and the family of five making their way to school.

The other thing to convey isn’t just the vehicle traffic, but the sheer condensed nature of the city of 13+ million people.  The immediate proximity of 21^st Century office/shopping districts with areas of economic struggles was striking, at least to me it was.  My suburbia background didn’t prepare me for the differences.  With that said, I have never felt so guilty of taking a picture as I did with the following snapshot during one of our trips to the office.

 Truth be told, this picture could have been taken in any metropolitan city in the world.  The traffic of people passing by the needy made me think of the number of times I’ve walked past homeless in Dallas. 

The Food
The food during the trip was one of the many very pleasant surprises and made me feel silly for lugging a couple dozen Cliff Bars in my luggage across the planet.  There would be no need for that nutrition backup plan.  The morning started with a choice of a dozen different juice choices.  While a festive green color, I didn’t have the courage to try the Bitter Gourd juice.  For lunch the local work team brought in a ‘box lunch’.  The only similarity between the typical USA dry turkey sandwich box lunch and the meal served in India was that the food came in a box.  However the India version of the box lunch was much more of a suitcase lunch, with enough food to feed my entire family for a day.  All freshly baked, warm, flavorful and inviting.

The Colors

Another sensory explosion in India was that of the colors.  They are vibrant, alive and welcoming.  We were greeted our first day with a fresh flower petal design laid out for our visit. 

Later in the week, our colleagues escorted us to a shop famous for scarves and local attire.  The store was like being inside a rainbow.  The following snapshot is my friend Gopala behind the counter helping us sort through dozens and dozens and more dozens of the softest and most beautiful fabrics.   The shelves in every direction was a textured painting of potential.

The following picture is part of the arbor flower display at the hotel prepping for a wedding.

 

The Graciousness

While the colors, food and traffic certainly impacted me, it was the people who left the deepest impressions.  The first thing that stood out to me regarding our office environment was that I was the oldest individual in the building.  Second, the staff's energy and age reminded me of EDS of the early ‘90s with most people being under 30 with their future careers still at the incubator adventure stage of life.  More importantly than our staff’s youthfulness was their eagerness to be helpful in any way. 

It is very difficult to explain the continuous support we were afforded.  Politeness coupled with broad smiles is such an engaging way to go through the day.  It wasn’t just an occasional talk that was positive, but rather every interaction.   Every single experience. The hotel staff, our driver and our work teams all approached us with a desire to assist us at every turn.  At the close of the trip, Gopala and Hema invited us into their home ,where Hema had prepared the most wonderful meal and she smiled as she said 'I cut back on the spices for you.'  Always eager to make sure we where taken care of. 

Looking back, I shouldn’t have waited so long to share my experiences, but sometimes the memories need to fall around and collide until they form the right pattern.  I close this note with the following picture that I snapped while we were stuck in yet another traffic jam.  I imagine the girl was thinking, who is this guy taking my picture and I wonder where in the world he is from?