BANG Galore

You've heard of Bangalore; it's hip.

Thomas Friedman's got a man-crush on Bangalore. And who doesn't respect whatever Thomas Friedman thinks?

But it's not so happening. Bangalore might well be an important "concept" and a quite livable city, i'm here to tell you that Hyderabad is the much better place for a visit. Bangalore, simply put, must be the most boring city in India.

The great course of history that has speckled Indian cities and countryside with the most amazing palaces, forts and temples in the world somehow skipped over Bangalore. Zilch. Nothing to see. Nada. The historical capital of Mysore has the palaces. Srirangapatnam has the fort. And Bangalore's temples are nothing of note compared to the rest of the Karnataka cities.

For two days, Elvin and I wandered the city, expecting untold glories, but finding -- in short -- "pleasant but less than satisfying." a leafy city with broad lanes and wonderfully temperate daytime highs. a green but less than great rose garden. a disappointingly short main commercial street. a few welcoming pubs. a relaxed ex-pat community of software/business professionals, very much more european than american. a pleasant 13th-story restaurant with good views of...a vaguely suburban city with not much of note. sure, you could see the height of the Electronic City off in the distance, but little else of note.

Through Sunday evening, we were a little low on the city. That all changed when we navigated our way to the closer of the city's two Taco Bells. The only two Taco Bells in India, new in 2010. Now, I've only been to Taco Bell twice in my entire life, but when the nearest Chipotle is in London, England, you take what you can get.

And the getting, in all honesty, was phenomenal. A delicious burrito meal. One of the best $3 purchases I've ever made. We grinned in delight, savoring each bite, certainly a site to see. The Indians were suspicious. We asked the manager when they'd open a restaurant in Hyderabad. First, he said, Mumbai. Then Delhi. Then Calcutta. Finally Hyderabad, only before Chennai. We weren't satisfied with the answer, and while eating our second burrito, we filed out comment cards demanding immediate franchising to HYD.

And later that same evening, Bangalore's second redeeming quality: Opus. We got a recommendation from a party planner, and debated not trekking half way across the city after she called to say she wasn't planning on going any more. More than glad we did, though, as the Sunday night sing-along kareoke dance party was the happiest thing i've seen on this subcontinent.

An industrial cum retro venue, ala any of Budapests fun new bars, tucked in a random pocket of the city. a great line-up of well-selected and familiar kareoke songs, sung by a variety of ages -- from 7 to 70! and a better gender ratio than any place i've seen in india. and cheaper-than-average beer! and more ghoras than they'd see anywhere outside of a consulate staff meeting! The only downside at all? Karnataka's state-wide 11:30pm shut-down time. Sucks.

Elvin and I had no choice but to continue the kareokeing the next morning in the hotel lobby.

Night Training

(For your listening enjoyment while reading this post.)

Rickshaws carry a certain catchet in these parts, but no mode of transportation has moved as many people for so long a time on the subcontinent as trains. India and overloaded trains, the images are almost cliché, people half-falling out of every door, brimming over the traintop, even.

It’s something but you’ve to do while you’re here...riding an Indian train.

But it’s harder than it seems. Trains are often sold out a month or more ahead of time. There are literally a billion people that you’re competing with for train seats. And this time of year – april and may – is the busiest, as students and families are traveling. I’m used to Hungary, where you could hop on to almost any train at the last minute. Just show up at little Heves station and buy your cardboard ticket. you could even buy the ticket once onboard.

After a month of search, finally a lead: some trains have a “foreign tourist” reservation. 2-6 seats reserved for foreigners only, even if it comes at a slightly higher price. Elvin and I wisely brought Raghu with us to pre-purchase two tickets from Hyderabad to Bangalore. Even with a local pointing us in the right direction, the process still took 30 minutes. The highlight?

Jeremy: Hi, we would like two “foreign tourist” tickets to Bangalore.

Clerk: I’m sorry. Students can’t get the foreign tourist reservation.

Jeremy: Aaaaaaaaactually, I’m a diplomat.

Friday after work, Raghu dropped us off at the Secunderabad station with a “good luck.” The station, as to expected, was packed with thousands of travelers. Entire family groups, huddled around mounds of luggage. Entire villages, it seemed, en route from somewhere to somewhere else. We were a bit conspicuous, dragging our rolling suitcases. There were no other ghoras involved in this activity.

We found our names on the reservation list, along with our berth numbers. The first time I’ve ever seen my named written by someone else in either Hindi or telugu. The pronunciation they chose? Jah-reh-me. My name worked better in Hindi script than Elvin’s though, strangely enough.

After we crossed over all 10 tracks, we sat down in the long-distance train terminal, a much more comfortable sitting place than the other half of the train station. Ten minutes later, including of course a stray dog pooping in the middle of the terminal, our train – the Bangalore Rajdhani Express – pulled into the station. Every day, a train starts the two-night journey from Delhi to Bangalore, and vice versa, carrying a thousand passengers all or part of the way between the middle of North India and the middle of South India.

After figuring out the right door, we hopped aboard our car. This was not the train I’d remembered from Hungary. A whole nother narrow row of bunks cramped the skinny walkway. Brown faces of all ages peeked out from behind thin curtains with curiosity, I smiled back.

We shimmied our way to our seat. Or what I thought was our seat. But here I was confused. Why were there already four people sitting in our berth? I rechecked the number, confirmed it, through my suitcase on the top and walked away, assuming that the problem would resolve itself – as they so often do if you just give it time.

A minute later, I came back. Elvin was sitting between two burly men. “They said they’ll move,” he said with a shrug. I sat on the hard bench, pulling my knees into my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible. I wasn’t so sure anymore about the whole night train thing.

Five minute later, as the engine horned an about-to-leave warning, the men stood up. One reached next to him, one reached under the bench. Nonchalantly, they pulled machine guns out of dark corners and walked out without a sound. I gawked in shock. They turned the corner, I looked at elvin, that’s just happened?

(You probably need a new song for the soundtrack by this point, don’t you?)

We settled in as the train jerked out of the station. One berthmate, headed back to his aeronautic engineer job in Bangalore read on the top bunk. The other, on his way back to school, shared episode after episode of How I Met Your Mother with us on his laptop. Both had boarded the train, a full day earlier in Delhi and were set for night two aboard the same train without debarking.

Highlight: free on-board meal was quite palatable...with no adverse consequences!

Lowlight: it was almost dark by the time we pulled out of the station, no countryside sightseeing.

Highlight: “Western” and “Indian” bathroom facilities!!

Lowlight: No foreigner reservations in First Class.

Highlight: Air-condition was almost too cold!

two-hundred-and-nine years later

But it's not like i'm the first to struggle to find myself adjusting to Hyderabad. Borrowing from William Dalrymple's "White Mughals," the best book about Hyderabad's princely mughal history:

"Since I came to this country, I cannot begin to recount all that has happened to me by way of suffering, deception and diseases, with no one intelligent to talk to...Alas, how could I know that matters would come to this present sorry state - broken and stuck in the hellish climate of Hyderabad!"

-- Abdul Lateef (1802)

And it will certainly improve over due course, as my mom has confessed that she is praying to St. Anthony, the patron saint of matchmaking, on my behalf. He's also, of course, the patron saint of lost things. Hopefully not lost causes.

...And The Other.

So those ups and those downs, those extremes? Tough. (even though our hardship differential just went down from 25% to 20%.) And apparently, I'm not doing a very good job of masking the difficulties and celebrating the successes, based on recent unsolicated feedback from a variety of friends watching from afar:

"I feel an agitation and restlessness in your words, but at the same time maybe a subtle frustration and confusion? Like you were so sure of everything and you are for the most part happy, so you don't know why you are feeling a little down? that could be way off - I just feel like the enthusiasm for things isn't here today - and it's a much more apathetic tone."

"I have to admit, i'm a little worried about you over there in india....I wonder why you keep jumping around from country to country if doing so is leaving you unfulfilled. You always seemed content with it before, but now it seems as if all these people that you meet and all the amazing places you see aren't filling your deepest need...What is it you hope to discover?"

"I think I liked it better when you were in the US and not in India. I say this not for selfish reasons but because I felt that were happier, more your totally fabulous self stateside."

"You sound different....less upbeat than the usual."

"I have a question: are you enjoying India?"

oops. i'm probably happier than I let on, even if i am starting to wonder if i'm some sort of perma-malcontent, which would be odd to anyone who has known me at my happiest. maybe it's just that it's easy to complain in india: it's loud, it's hot, it's crowded, it's noisy, it's chaotic, it's slow, it's smelly, it's hectic. it's dirty. in short, it's incredible... there are less than diplomatic admissions, but sometimes it feels like one of the more difficult place on the planet to live. maybe that's what makes it so interesting? fascinating? amazing? i'm looking forward to travelling more, exploring more, even if travelling here is fairly difficult.

as for the job? grinding, but occasionally good. i'm less content in total than imagined i would be...after all it's my dream job in a long-held dream location. part of that's the institution. part of that's the circumstances. part of that might just be me? only time will tell.

One Extreme

the amazing thing about india is extremity. it's a land of extremes. not even close to any so-called extremes you've ever seen, unless you've actually been here. the lows are so low, the highs are so high. and they're right damn next to each other, temporally and spatially. the oscillation, honestly, is quite hard on the nerves.

tonight, a definite high: dinner at the Chowmahalla Palace. Dining where the Nizam used to dine, in the long shadows of Hyderabad's long princely persian history. a local shipping/customs company, celebrating its silver jubilee with a wedding-like dinner, concert and fireworks show. tied to the consulate through business contracts...and one of the local staff members happens to be the daughter of the owner.

a delicious catered dinner, serenaded by the vaguely enchanting wails of a sufi singer. palace wall aglow in a sea of colors and the flash of fireworks. folks of all sorts parading fancy wear. even a long string of flowergirls, somehow prettier than the average andhra girl. even a bar stocked with "foreigner beverages," although it was the locals who were falling over themselves to make the classy set-up look more like a frat party.

a perfect evening temperature, a breeze. a world away from the hustle bustle chaos outside the palace walls, just as its been for four hundred years. princely palatial living, right next door to harrowing slums, minutes removed from crumbling roads and collapsing buildings.


incredible india...

Mother's Day Special

I've been a largely uninspired blogger. Of late and in general. I'll take this Sunday morning to make amends, which will be appreciated the most by my most avid reader/reminder-that-i-don't-update-enough: my Mom! Happy Mother's Day!

Sometimes it's not easy to feel like a diplomat when you're sitting in Hyderabad working the visa line. We're a visa mill. A factory. A manufacturing plant. A conveyor belt. It seems like our only real goal is to get through as many visa interviews as possible. When you a slog through 100 a day, coupled with the ensuing paperwork, that gets tough. The hardest part every day is simply the disconnect between how much each interview means to the applicant...and how little it means to the interviewer personally. It's grueling to take that on our shoulder, if you're the type of person who cares about people. And it doesn't make help to have a growing stack of paperwork as the number of applicants continues to grow, even as we're not ready for it. The result is i come home tired, swim, play on the internet and go to bed.

Sometimes as I'm stirring a six-foot metal pole in a red-hot burn barrel, watching sensitive-but-unclassified information melt into toxic white smoke (HYD is, after all, too new/small/insignificant a post to warrant a heavy-duty paper shredder), i bemoan the here and now and wonder why exactly the United States has sent me on diplomatic assignment...to man a burning barrel...

But the past two weeks have felt far more interesting. Almost, gasp, like I've found myself in an exciting, dangerous, fanciful profession:

- planning and strategizing with the regional educational advising coordinator over dinner. battling through eggplant to get to the much tastier dal.

- giving a long-planned tourist visa presentation for 80 travel agents and travel industry professionals at one of the nicest hotels in town. battling through 2 hours of questions with helpful but calculated answers that come pretty easily after four months here. seeing self in newspaper.

- invitation to join in drinks and dinner and conversation at the Secunderabad Club, a ritzy country club i'd have no business visiting in the United States, but it feels right here.

- helping two first-time public speakers get prepared for -- and nail! -- a presentation in Medak, a town a few hours west of Hyderabad. Mission accomplished, except i learned that my training plan needs to expand a bit in at least one area. the local staffers fielded the ole "does the united states discriminate against muslims?" question and could only muster a "no comment." Of course we can comment, because there's an important (especially in these parts) answer to the question: No.

- the braised lamb at Ruchi and Idoni.

- an assassination attempt on a local politician in the Old City. possibility of violence, tempered many think because it was Mulsim on Muslim violence, not sectarian. he's transported to a hospital 150m down the road, which has been periodically blocked the past week now by marching mourners.

- a close 7-6 loss in tennis doubles.

- after ten years, the USG finds and eliminates the world's most dangerous terrorist. he'd been hiding in pakistan all along, closer to India than the Afghanistan. americans feel good about america and our president. indians feel justified in hating pakistan, discuss starting their own raids into pakistan territory to hunt terrorists. consulate security seriously strengthened.

- checking out a potential permanent apartment...and turning down the chance to request it because it doesn't meet the same standards as the rest of the housing pool. not feeling too bad about being picky.

- playing tourguide and friend to visiting DC-wallahs. patio dinner at Our Place, a nice new restaurant.

- meeting the foreign commercial service. flowcharts, but no chipotle. yet.

- tailgating with Miller Genuine Drafts in the middle of the dusty Deccan Plateau. first live cricket match, even if the Deccan Chargers went down in a blaze of glory.

- dinner with the Indian Foreign Service classes of 1983, 1984, 1985 at the Indian School of Business. hobnobbing amongst mid and senior-level diplomats at Hyderabad's ten-year-old business school, which already ranks #13 among all business schools in the world, partnering with peers like Wharton and Kellogg.

still

Sometimes, when I twist the q-tip just right, still pink.