Bangalore — Life in the hutch

Tag: Bangalore

Independence Day in Bangalore

August

Yesterday marked Independence Day here, the sixty-fifth anniversary of India’s birth as a self-governing nation, free from British rule. It is one of three official holidays celebrated nationally in India, along with Republic day which commemorates the date that the constitution of India came in to force (January 26, 1950) and Ghandi Jayanti (celebrating Mahatma Ghandi, born October 2, 1869). In our short time in India I have come to realize that there are MANY holidays here, most with some amount of religious significance and festival associated.

We were here for Republic day in January, and observed that it is celebrated much like Canada Day, in some respects. There was a festive atmosphere and many fireworks, but I remember remarking that there did not seem to be the public display of national pride that I would have expected. “Just wait until Independence Day”, we were told, “it is a much bigger deal.”

Indian patriotism was much more evident yesterday. There were banners, flags flown on cars, little children waving flags, and painted faces.

On the whole, I found the day to be much more subdued than I expected. In the morning we attended a flag raising ceremony in our community, listened to the national anthem, and snacked with our neighbours, then went out to brunch with a group of friends.

There despite the somewhat festive atmosphere, there was no real boisterousness, and shockingly, no fireworks! We had a great day, and the lils were very happy to celebrate India, but I found it a bit surprising.

The cutest part of the day for me was brought to me by Goose. We had given all of our helpers the day off, although our gardener came to tend to our yard as usual. He doesn’t speak English, and I hadn’t been able to connect with him when one of the other helpers was around to translate. I had tried to tell him not to come, but failed. I am not sure that he would have taken the day regardless, given that he has worked every other holiday, even those where he was clearly told he could and should take the day off. This distressed Goose the most. She has taken a shine to our gardener, who plays with her, cuts flowers for her, and most recently created a garden for her sunflowers. She chatters on to him and he just smiles. When she saw him yesterday she ran out and tried to tell him that he should go and take his holiday. He just smiled at her and carried on with his work.

I did also learn some interesting facts that I learned about India on Independence Day:

India has both a Prime Minister and a President. From what I can tell, the President is the head of State, and the Prime Minister is the head of the government.
India’s current President was elected last month (ok I knew that), but that he was selected by the members of Parliament and the state legislatures, where as the Prime Minister is the leader of the victorious party in a general elections, which last occurred in 2009.
India is the world’s largest democracy. I really should have known that.
India has never invaded another country.
The peacock is the national bird of India. I always thought it was the kingfisher

Comment » | India, life

Power`s off… power`s on…

July

The past two days have been marked by two significant power outages in India. The first occurred in the very early morning on Monday, and knocked out power to 370 million people across seven states, including Delhi, in northern India. Power to most, but not all, of those affected had been restored by the time the second outage occurred this afternoon. This outage was more widespread, and affected over 600 million people across 22 states. Both outages are blamed on several states having overdrawn from the grid. The grids in the North, East and North East are interconnected, so once the grid started to collapse, it cascaded across the regions.

These outages remind me very much of the great power outage of 2003 that affected almost 60 million people in the northeastern US and eastern Canada. It too came as the result of a station failure in a time of high demand, and led to a cascading failure across the continent. There are two differences, as far as I can see. The first is that this affected ten times the number of people. The population of North America is roughly 530 million people, and this affected more people, many of them twice. The second is that the power situation is far from what you would call stable in India. Hell, I’d wager that on any given day a large percentage of the population in India will have faced some kind of power interruption at least once.

I have received many messages from family and friends, concerned that we are without power. Thankfully, Bangalore has not been affected, as it is on the Southern grid, which is unaffected, and perhaps more importantly, unconnected to the other grids that serve the affected areas. The truth is that I likely would not have noticed at all, as our community is served by a back-up generator that cuts over within minutes of the power going out, and we have UPS coverage for things like the TV and the computers/routers. Our inconvenience, at first, would be just that, an inconvenience.
Each time that the power goes out, and it goes out EVERY day, I think of the people who don’t have generators, don’t have power line conditioners, and don’t have UPSs. They aren’t so lucky, and if they live near me, there are days where the power is off all day, or cuts out a dozen or more times. We have had a number of things fail because they were not protected, including the power supply on our brand new TV, our induction cooktop, and our water purifier (three times). Shockingly, these were all fixed under warranty.

I don’t pretend to be an engineer, or an expert on what ails the power supply chain in India. I do believe that the problems are equally split between management and maintenance of the grid. The fact that the difficulties are so clearly widespread leads me to the conclusion that there is widespread mismanagement, from the Power Ministry down. The fact that I see scenes like this everywhere I go? Tells me that maintenance/security/installation is also to blame.

Most nights, Goose goes to bed with a story, and then quietly sings to herself in the dark. Whenever the power cuts in this time, she always pauses, then sings out, “power’s off…” if she is still awake when it cuts back again, she follows up with “power’s on…” It’s just the normal around here.

1 comment » | India, life

That funny stuff going on

July

The lils have become increasingly curious about the facts of life, and how they came to be. While they haven’t actually come out and asked the hard questions, I know that they are coming. Most of their curiosity is actually evident in their conversations with each other, as they explore where they came from. We mostly listen in amusement, occasionally correcting gross misconceptions (like the idea that Goose was in “mommy’s stomach” with Woo, she just waited an extra year and a half before deciding to be born).

I sense that we dodged a bit of a bullet this weekend. We were walking to the local mall, and Woo wanted to talk about the stray dogs. Bangalore has a lot of stray dogs. They seem to be everywhere you go, except in gated communities, where the staff does a decent job of keeping the out. They tend to ignore people, and seem to coexist peacefully with the other strays, although there are the occasional turf wars that result in much barking and the offending dog getting chased away.

Woo wanted to talk about the dogs because the females are easily identified by the fact that their teats essentially drag on the ground. We figure that they are breeding so often that their bodies never recover, and explained this to him. He was more intrigued by the notion that dogs could breastfeed than he was curious about the constant breeding (phew). We answered all of his questions, and the matter dropped when we arrived at the mall.

On our trip home, it became apparent to me that Woo got the gist of what we were explaining. We used the appropriate terms, words he’d certainly heard before, and he seemed comfortable with them. His interpretation, however, was coloured by the fact that he is five. “Mom,” he said, “that’s a female dog. She feeds her puppies with all that funny stuff she has going on under her.”

Ah, the simplicity of youth.

Comment » | India, life, Lils

Wordless Wednesday – Praying Mantises

June

6 comments » | India, Photography, Wordless wednesday

Six months

April

Today marks the six month anniversary of our arrival as a family in India. We are halfway through the year that we committed to, and a big part of me says I can’t believe that we have been here this long, and a much smaller part says that it can’t possibly have been just six months, it must have been so much longer! India, so far, has been a wonderful but chaotic experience, filled with many great experiences, learning many new things, meeting fabulous people and making truly great friends, but also a great deal of stress, many tears, and some pretty lonely times, especially for me. That being said, I would not change a minute of it. It has really been a great six months.

A little while after we arrived, a lady that Willy met told him that she would never recommend Bangalore as a first ex-pat posting, it’s too remote, too isolating, and too hard to settle in. He nodded and smiled and then relayed the comment to me later. I initially agreed, but then later came to realize that it’s not true in our case. If we hadn’t come here first, we might never have come. This might be our only posting abroad, and I would not have wanted to miss the last six months that we have enjoyed in India.

The people here are truly the nicest people that I have ever met. We have learned so much about the mesh of cultures that make up this vast nation, yet we have only barely touched the surface. We have travelled, together and apart, to places that most Indians never get to see, yet there are so many more places I want to get to. The food here is enough of a draw, and I haven’t yet perfected the dishes that we knew we love, and have learned to love. I have taken many photographs, yet I don’t feel that I have done the people and this beautiful country justice.

There are things that bother me about this city, life in India. The traffic, the pollution, the waste, the garbage everywhere, the poverty, and the fact that there seems to be little value placed on such a large segment of the population. There are also annoyances that affect me personally, like the fact that is takes weeks to have a simple thing fixed, that nothing ever happens as it should, where it should or when it should, and little things that become symbolic and big, like the fact that I can’t get a bank account or credit card here. We’ve tried several times, and failed at each turn, so we’ve given up. It’s their loss really, given that I am the spender in the family. I am also somewhat frustrated by what I have failed to accomplish in my time here. I had big goals, and I have barely progressed on any of them. This is partially a result of some of the struggles that we have had to face, but mostly because of the struggles that I have had with settling in.

I frequently get asked about what I miss the most from home. For me, the answer is simple. I miss the people that mean so much to us, our family and friends. We are very connected to them, yet we are almost as far away from home as we can get. If there was just one thing that I could somehow bring with me, it would be them. We have been so fortunate to have friends and family come to visit, and this has eased this ache quite a bit, but we now face six months with no planned visits, nothing concrete or booked. I know that is in all likelihood going to change, that we will have some visitors, but I can’t get my hopes up. Sure, I also miss wine, cheese, Greek food, great breads and baked goods, stable electricity, clean water, diversity in climate and a few other things, but those I really can live without.

We are at a crossroads, and now is the time when we start to think seriously about what we do in October. We can either ask to stay in Bangalore, or we can go home. We’re both on the fence, but one of us is leaning towards Bangalore, and one is learning towards Ottawa. I am feeling like home is where I want to go, and Willy can see us living here for a while longer. We don’t have to make a decision today, but we really do have to make one soon. Regardless of what that decision is, we have six more months to fill with learning and exploring. We want to see more of Bangalore, more of India, and more of the south Pacific. This is our focus for the next six months.

6 comments » | India, life, Uncategorized

Wordless wednesday – Fly like an eagle

April

Comment » | India, Photography, Wordless wednesday

So poor

March

There has been a lot of talk in the local media this week about the poverty rates in India. The poverty is one of the hardest things that I have faced since moving to India. Almost 40 percent of the population is believed to live below the poverty line and many of those live in slums in the larger cities. Cities like Bangalore.

When Willy and I first arrived here, we were informed that the “poverty line” for India was set at approximately 35 rupees per day for urban areas, and 25 rupees for rural areas. These amounts translate into roughly 70¢ and 50¢ Canadian. Those numbers continue to shock us both, as we can’t fathom being able to live on $15 – $20 A MONTH. Yes, the cost of living is much lower, but not that much lower. We see it daily, from the moment we step outside of our community, our little bubble.

There are small and large areas of slum dwellings pretty much everywhere you go, everywhere you look. There are a number of families that squat in an open lot between the parking lot of the lils’ school and the lane that we walk down to the school building. They live in shacks that have no electricity, no running water, but they have the luxury of a few feet between their house and their neighbour`s, something that this not seen in the large and packed slums that we also see in our travels. Official estimates say that approximately 10% of Bangalore’s population lives in slums, but I can see that the numbers are higher, much higher (by our definition). It is generally accepted that 30-40% of the population live in slums. Bangalore is a city of 9.5 million people, which means that at least 3 million people live in slums. That is more than three times the population of Ottawa. It`s sobering. I know too that we have been protected, that we haven’t seen the worst of it. We catch glimpses of it when we travel to the poorest states, like Uttar Pradesh, where Agra and the Taj Mahal are located. Or travel to other large cities like Delhi and Mumbai, where 50 – 60 % of the population lives in slums.

Poverty has been in the national news this week, as the latest figures on the percentage of the population deemed to be poor have been released. It seems that the numbers have dramatically dropped over the last five years, and officials state there has been a decrease of almost 7 per cent in the national poverty rate. In five years. This decline is more significant in my state, Karnataka, where the drop is said to be closer to 10 per cent. This appears to be a substantial development at first glance. When one delves just a little bit further, they see that this reported drop is tied to a similar drop in the figures used to determine the “poverty line”, a move away from the anecdotal figures that we have been told, and away from the UN determination for poverty. The new current figures use a rate of 28 rs (urban) and 22 rs (rural).

I don’t see how this arbitrary lowering helps the poor in India, other than telling almost 100 million people that they are no longer poor, and that they very likely will lose the meagre subsidies and coupons that they received when they were “poor”. There is also little that I can do in my time here, poverty India is systemic, is generational, is structural. It hurts in ways that I never anticipated.