January 24, 2001 - The Tremendous Pressure of Life in Indian.
January 24, 2001 - The Tremendous Pressure of Life in Indian. |
Here is a child's toy which I saw in the government housing project. By evening, little was left of this toy. Yes, that is a real dead rat. The kids just tied a string around it as a play toy, pulling it around everywhere. Normally rats are about the size of a small house cat in India. The rat above is totally different breed of rat from the India rats. After 11 pm, you will see Indian rats animals waddling down the streets of Triplicane in the shadows. |
Going Crazy in India Probably the greatest hazard of traveling to India is going crazy. Don't laugh. I did my first trip. When the British ruled India, many novels and plays were written about the brother or uncle from England who went to India in the British service. For 20 years, he wrote home about his wonderful exploits in India. However, when he finally returned home, they found he had gone completely mad. These stories are based on the summer heat of Delhi which will drive anyone crazy. Over 120 degrees. Never, never, never visit India in the summer. But there are other pressures in India which can cause you to go mad just as quickly. Be careful! Note: The comments below refer only to part of India called Tamil Nadu which is populated by people called Tamils who are completely different from the many other races in India. Tamils are probably the same people who traveled to Australia 30,000 years ago. |
The Indian Family Unit One unique institution of India is the idea that a family owns everything together as a unit. There is no private ownership of anything. Everyone in a family shares everything. Therefore, each member of the family helps each other for the common good of the family. At least, that is the way it is supposed to work. When this concept breaks down, it is a disaster. For Vela, it has been a nightmare. Instead of everyone sharing the family possessions, Vela's family uses this concept as a way of stealing everything that Vela has. If I buy Vela a belt for her new pants, the next day, her brother will be wearing it. It is his right to take it because he owns everything that Vela has. Therefore, I must cut all of Vela's belts so they are too small for her brothers. Therefore, if Vela's father wants to go drinking, he can take the rent deposit money and spend it... putting three generations of the family on the streets. That is how they lost their house by St Thomas' church. |
Vela's evil brother, Alexander, is now employed as an unlicensed rickshaw driver which is illegal. |
Triplicane is an agricultural area... even if it does not look like it from the main street. In rural areas, cows and goats are fed the garbage which they thrive on. It solves two problems nicely. But now government corruption is ending this. The government in India is legendary. Remember that government "red tape" was invented in India to bind the law books. This is like modern Russia where civil servants are paid below a living wage. Therefore, the only income people have is by corruption... which is considered legal in India. Policemen are not paid minimal wages so they can use their influence to extract money. If you do anything wrong, be prepared to pay. |
Now the city has installed garbage collection bins under a private contract where animals cannot access. So as you can see below, things the animals would have eaten must now be hauled away on a government contract.
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Tell Me A Story In the section called "Little Monsters", I talk about young boys who tell stories which are complete fabrication. They do it to make themselves feel important. When these simpletons grow up, they continue to tell stories. The only difference is they now use this talent to line their pockets. In some countries, this is considered a crime... but in India, it is considered a human right to do so. Some of the stories take on epic proportion. A man will approach you in Mumbai and tell you that an accident occurred last night and many people died. They are now burning the bodies at the cemetery. He will take you to the cemetery for free where he and his friends will try to rob you by forcing you to sign a guest book at the back of the cemetery listing your voluntary contribution. (Solution: them them an even bigger story and then, in the confusion, run like hell.) Sudhakar is a waiter at Maharaja restaurant. Because he speaks reasonably good English with an British (not India English) accent, you will probably meet him. He is an excellent example of someone who tells stories which are not true. He will tell you about his sister who needs help getting a job. Some jobs require a security deposit and new clothes. However, it turns out he has no sister. Also, if you give him money for a passport, he will spend the money on his mother's funeral. I think his mother has had more than her share of funerals over the years... specially for someone Sudhakar has not seen in years. Nothing Sudhakar tells you is true if it has anything to do with money. |
Privacy Probably the most annoying aspect of India is the total lack of privacy. It seems to be everyone's right not just to learn about what others are doing but to interfere in other people's lives... often violently. I have heard that people prefer to live in Mumbai (Bombay) because there you can have privacy. This is not possible in Tamil Nadu (southern India). I have lived in the Middle East so I am used to men staring at women. I have traveled in Italy and seen little boys surrounding foreign girls watching them on the beach. Little boys will sit quietly watch a girl all day long. But in India, people do it with a viciousness I have not seen anywhere else. In Japan, each person lives inside a tiny bubble of total isolation. No one enters someone else's space. Even when packed into the subway trains shoulder to shoulder, stomach to stomach, everyone in Japan remains inside themselves... in total privacy. In India, people sense when you do not want your space invaded... and then they invade that space for the pleasure of hurting you. Your discomfort seems to provide them with great deal of pleasure. Your attempts to suffer politely gives them even greater joy. In India, this can take grave proportion where missionaries are still burned alive in rural areas by people who do not believe that anyone should help lepers. It is not that there is something wrong with helping lepers but rather that the people who do the killing in India believe that it is your fault for helping the lepers more than them. For that, they will kill you. |
Give Me Money One of the most unusual features of India is the method by which people beg for money. For some reason unknown to me, all Indians believe that they deserve your money. It is their right to have your money. You are expected to give them money because of who they are, not what they do. As an extreme example, I have never seen prostitution in India. In other countries, women will sell they bodies for money. Money in exchange for a service. In India, there is no such concept. Women who beg expect you to give them money automatically. The Indians who beg are extremely shocked when you do not give them money. They are offended if you ask them to do something for their money, refusing to do anything that might seem like work. Some beggars try to use sympathy to get you to give them money. Well feed women will carry a well fed baby and demand money from you. To make it seem real, they will pinch the baby to make it cry. Then they will pull your cloths and pinch you very hard to get your attention until you give them money. Surprisingly, the amount does not matter. It is only an act to show that they are more worthy than you. Totally strange! An extreme form of using sympathy is when parents break their children's limbs to get them to be more prosperous beggars. (The childrens' limbs are not reset making them flop uselessly) While this practice has stopped, you can still see the remains of this... even in kids less than 15 years old. Beggars come in all shapes and sizes. This includes autorickshaw drivers who will change the price 5 times before they arrive at your destination or even change the destination, dropping you off in the middle of nowhere because they want their money now. You can easily get in life threatening situations with autorickshaw drivers specially in Hyderabad. This is why I never take an autorickshaw without the kids. |
Social Experiment If you to experiment, here is something to try. Give two street kids different amounts. That is give one boy 15 rupees and the other 20 rupees. Instantly you have a fight... but not always for the reason you think. The kid who receives less money is naturally upset and will immediately begin to pout and demand the same amount as the other kid received. What is surprising in India is the kid who received more money is very upset because it is obvious that he is the more important person (because you gave him the most money) so you should have given him all of the money. Because you did not give him all the money, he will be very angry with you... even though you just gave him money. |
Simplify Things To Death Another annoying feature of India is the continual quest to find the simplest way to do things... no matter what the consequence. That is why the quality of products made in India are usually the lowest possible quality... This is done, not by necessity, but by choice. You will see people taking things apart, removing parts, and putting them back together to see if it still runs. The goal seems to be to have the fewest parts and still work. Therefore, do not expect anything to work... specially under pressure. See "Innocent Bystander" below. Another place you will see this is the theater. If you buy the most expensive ticket, you will be assigned a seat. Since it is easier and simpler to assign seats from right to left and from back to front, if you are the first person in line, you will be given the worst seat in the house. And you will be required to sit there even though better seats remain empty. Absolutely crazy. It is only after you see this over and over again, from Indian cooking stoves to Indian faucet valves, you begin to realize the Bhopal disaster was deliberate. It no accident that the valve failed. Someone was just trying to improve on the valve to make it simpler. They workmen knew that the disaster would kill thousands of people but they did it anyway. |
Innocent Bystander The most dangerous thing to do in India is to be an innocent bystander. Every day the newspapers are full of stories of people dying because they were innocent bystanders. Indians are not able to do anything without killing a dozen innocent bystanders. The Indian Air Force looses more planes to faulty parts than to all their wars with Pakastan. Over 100 planes have crashed because the replacement parts were made in India. Most all of the pilots are killed in these crashes as well as many innocent bystanders on the ground. People complain about this in the newspaper but no one is willing to do anything about it. Train fires are another way for innocent bystanders to die. Late at night, when students are drinking (totally against Hindu and Moslem beliefs) and spilling alcohol on wooden floors while smoking, someone will drop a match and at 20 people will be injured or die because none of the emergency cords are working. Riot are also a good place for innocent people to die. Students love riots. One excuse to riot is when the government tries to prevent the male students to molest the women students in public (called "Eve Teasing".) Male university students in Madras will riot violetnly a few blocks from Broadlands if any boy is arrested for molesting a woman in public even with dozens of witnesses. Also rioters enjoy killing a bus load of women students by lighting the bus on fire and keeping the occupants inside the bus until they burn to death. (Women sould not be students so it is their fault.) Anything which will reduce the population is considered a blessing in India. Eventually India and Pakistan will fight a nuclear war. The purpose of the war will be to kill people on both side, the enemy's and their own. No one cares which. Building a huge dam on a earth quake fault is another example of the ideal way to kill innocent bystanders. India is building a huge dam on a fault... not because they do not understand what will happen. Rather, they are building the dam because if the gods want it, a huge number of poor people can be eliminated in just a few minutes time. |
Thinking with the Heart All the examples above show the major difference between southern India and countries in the West. In India, people react from the heart. In the west, people react with the brain. This is why you can go to India and experience wonderful acts of friendship which have no logic reason. But it is also why you can experience unpleasant things you cannot possibly comprehend. In talking to people from the west who have lived in India, one man explains that that India is the WOMAN while western countries are the MAN. That is, in India, people react with emotion, never with logic. Therefore, you cannot never use logic to explain what people will do in India. You cannot use logic to survive in India. You must relax and feel the correct solution. You cannot think it through. (Not easy!) |
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Feeling British Therefore, most westerner who go and live in India will scream the first month and punch strangers the next two months. (I was no exception.) Nothing in India makes any sense. Everything is totally illogical. In India, there are rules against everything. Everything is illegal in India. And none of the rules seem to have any rhyme or reason. Example :Some hotels have been know to poison foreigners to obtain kickbacks from hospitals. (two kids from Europe died last year). |
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Corruption and
Garbage
