Back to Delhi, Back to Jaipur: The Change Game and the Timeless Art of Rickshaw Wrangling

Hello all.

It’s been about a week since my last blog posting, and there have been things that have occurred, some momentous and some not so memorable. So, let me take the liberty of rambling on about them for a while.

I took a bus back to Delhi last Friday, to meet up with the incoming students at the AIIS guesthouse. When I came into the city on Friday night, there was considerably more activity than when I last left the AIIS environs, and students were arriving from all points West and East. The guesthouse was jammed that particular evening, so we called a friend of the Institute that was willing to put me up at his house for the night. I took a cycle rickshaw, a young boy of 13 or 14 pumping his legs furiously, dragging myself and my bags through the evening humidity in Delhi. The ride ended with me having to assert my male presence over another, smaller, male, which I guess evolutionarily is a neutral thing but which doesn’t lead to such good vibes in the humanitarian wing of daily affairs. The story in a moment. First, a word about the Change Game.

Playing the Change Game here in India can be a bit trying at points. In order to do much of anything you need a steady supply of smaller bills than the usual whitey is walking around with. The chaiwallah, a rickshaw ride, a Thums Up attack on a hot street corner, any of these and you’re going to need between 4 and 20 rupees, but all you’ve got is a 500 rupee bill. What’s a privileged First-Worlder to do when the whole country can at points be simultaneously out of small change? This leads to major problems with the goods and services exchange, and the last thing you want is to be forced to buy 5 bottles of water instead of 1 because the counterwallah is unwilling to part with the money you know he has in his shop somewhere. And this will happen, often, even to the detriment of his income if you leave because he won’t give you change. So, you play the Change Game, or CG for short. Here’s how the parameters are set, but each plays to the best of his or her ability.

The CG consists of being in the constant habit of surveying your surroundings for opportunities to break large bills, and it requires a little strategy and subtlety on your part. It’s all about knowing your odds, like in Vegas or Russian Roulette or something. First rule, always try to break the largest thing you have, even if you have the smaller bills to pay for it. So if you get something that costs 40 rupees, try to cash the 500 first, all they can say is “no,” right? Second rule, know your surroundings and be aware of the pros and cons of every location. A place that has air-conditioning is much more likely to have the back-up cash to break big bills, so always try to break the biggest thing you have, even if it’s on the smallest thing they’ve got in the place. So what if the guy looks at you like you were the one who shot Gandhi, they have to give you the change even if they know it’s gonna cause them an extra trip to get their own change later. Upscale joints (i.e. AC places) are much more likely to make this happen. And don’t be shy about it, just look them in the eye and say “Aapke paas change hai?”, and they will be obliged to handle your request. Jeez, at those type of places, shopping malls and the like, take liberal advantage of the situation and break everything you can on the smallest thing you can buy. And, you get bonus points if you can get somebody to break a bill for you without you even buying anything, this is rare even for expensive places and is to be commended if you can pull it off. Now, downscale joints (also known as places where real people eat and shop), like the places I like to go, are the ones that are trickier and thus require more of a gentle touch. I would say, go with the above strategy of trying to break larger bills whenever possible, but if you’re in a group this becomes harder to do because invariably everyone is playing the CG whether they like it or not, so you have to beat them to the punch. Sure, you want to be loyal to your compatriots and all, but at the end of the day if you don’t move fast you’re the one left holding the bag. An example: Say you’re eating lunch at a little roadside dhaba with three of your friends. You all get similarly-priced items; 20 rupees here, 30 rupees there, and you’re nearing the end of your meal. Now, you’ve got the inside line that all of your buddies have hit the bank that same day, and are only holding big bills. So you take the initiative and before the bill comes, you flag down a worker and break the largest bill you have. This is to the detriment of those eating with you, as you may cash out the small bill reserve on hand at the restaurant. But so be it, it’s dog eat dog out there and everyone plays the game whether they like it or not, and those that play it well are going to get along better than those who don’t. You have to know your odds of scoring change in the CG; it’s critical to not getting stuck paying for everyone’s meal and going through the pain in the ass of having to square up later on, and so on and so on.

So anyhow, the cycle rickshaw-wallah. I asked the kid point blank if he had change for a 100 before I got in (I had been sick and therefore cashed out on the CG), he said he had it. So I hopped in the ricky and he cycled us through the quiet green neighborhoods of Defence Colony for about 5 minutes. We had agreed on 20 rupees for the trip—steep but in the neighborhood of a fair price. We get to our destination, and I get out and present my 100 note, which the kid slyly pulls the “Mere paas change nahiin hai” routine, which he probably did have it but was playing the field to see if he could get more money out of me by saying he didn’t. No dice. I got back in the cart, much to his chagrin, and told him to take me somewhere where I could get change (see, don’t get caught SOL on the CG). So he proceeds to pedal us right into oncoming traffic in the Delhi evening rush hour (heart-palpitation inducing stuff), and we went to a paan-wallah, but he was holding and not giving it up. So we went further down the street, and I finally scored change at a little road-side stall. Now the kid tries to tell me to pay up and walk back to the hotel, which I could have done, but no way I’m doing that because it’s not my fault we got into this mess in the first place. So I get back into the rickshaw AGAIN and have the kid ride me back across the street through the traffic to the guesthouse steps. When I get out, I had a humanitarian crisis in my heart for two seconds, I mean the kid is no more than 14 and working the streets pulling people around on a bicycle all day. So I gave him 10 more rupees than we had agreed on (the equivalent of 20 cents), and told him it was for the extra trouble. But he grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go, saying he wanted more money to buy water. Well, the price we agreed on was already high, and I had given him a tip, so I wasn’t having any of it. I tried to pull my hand away, but he gripped it a little tighter, imploring me to give him more money, and then I snapped. I yanked my hand away and got into the kids face, practicing my Hindi by telling the kid what was what, and the he should split before I got really pissed. He called me a dog, I called him a thief, and then he left, cursing me still. And that’s why, my friends, don’t get caught on the tail end of the CG when you’re cruising across South Asia.

I arrived back in Jaipur on Monday afternoon, more hydrated and definitely in better spirits than when I left last week. My stomach has returned to normal and my appetite has returned somewhat, though I remain cautious about sustenance choices at the moment. The food at the Institute is good for what ails you, and I’m taking as much as I can get. More soon, kiddos.

Namaste Jaipur, or, The Continuing Saga of Whiskey in South Asia

Hello all.

So, things have happened since my last post, and I now intend to divulge them, to the best of my ability. First a disclaimer: when traveling in a country still known worldwide for its high instances of waterborne pathogens, do try and take care when accepting glasses of the stuff from strangers, even if you are at an upscale joint such as a country club, officer's club, rotary club, bridge club, or otherwise. Make sure it comes from a bottle, or from a filter, and you can rest assured that you may just avoid spending 24 hours layed up in bed nursing fever, chills, and other such un-pleasantries. But that's jumping ahead, so let's start at the beginning.

I took the bus out of Delhi last Monday morning early; there was some mix-up with the tickets, and as such I was redirected to a second bus which appeared as if we just might have to get out and push at some point along the 6 hour stretch, with a motor in it that sounded eerily similar to a dentist's drill running haywire, located somewhere, by all probability, directly under my feet by the sound of it. However, due was made by me, and I popped in my headphones and read the paper and watched the parched Rajasthani countryside come into view. And it is parched right now, I saw two rather large dust cyclones as we drove into the desert, possibly 100 feet high or more; I was reminded of pictures I had seen of the Oklahoma and Kansas dustbowl during the Depression years in the states. This part of India is still hanging on the last precipice of time before the monsoon rolls in, which I have been assured by many people is due to arrive in the next week or two. As such, Jaipur is dustier even than I remember it, and sitting and having chai in the morning in the cool of a roadside stall there was one instance in which myself and a number other well-to-do Indian men have had to take shelter behind trees and whatnot as the wind stirred up a dust-storm that threatened the integrity of our milk and sugar water (with a little tea added in for flavor). But as Shukla has written elsewhere, most Indian chai demands a certain percentage of dirt in the mix to make it authentic as such, so it was really ok in the long run.

I arrived, and Raja Park is pretty much exactly how I remember it. Same people, same shops (excepting that Spencer's closed down), same dogs, livestock, etc. I was very happy to see all the trappings of South Jaipur firmly in their place: the roaming bands of garbage-consuming pigs running wild and free as they wish, the genital scratching monkeys on most every corner, the obligatory cows standing idly in the middle of the roads here, making for even more horn honking and whatnot. Gandhinagar looks as if it's been completely finished (there were bets being made on whether this would occur last summer), and the same rickshaw-wallahs are still having the same chai in the same stalls or under the same trees. To my surprise, I was recognized by quite a few people quickly off the bat, and it made me feel as if I had truly had a home here last summer, and will again this year.

The morning after I arrived, I was walking the lanes of Adarsh Nagar when I ran into my friend Rohit. Rohit is an interesting guy; he sold me a phone last year, and in true Indian fashion, before you could say hospitality we had had chai and biscuits together, and I met his wife and his son, and went to his house (if only the Verizon guys at home were this amicable). Rohit speaks very good English, and so we were able to communicate easily, which adds to the experience of course. I mean, I can speak an Anglicized version of caveman Hindi at this point, but not enough to ask you about your life story or anything. So when I saw Rohit I suggested chai, and we took his car to a place not far away. We talked for a while, and within about 5 minutes he had suggested that I accompany him to Punjab to see the Golden Temple and the Atari ceremony at the Indian/Pakistani border. I thought about it for a while, as he seems legit, but in the end I declined. Maybe next time.

Still, I took him up on an offer that evening to accompany him to the Indian equivalent of a country club, the Jai Club in a prestigious area of Jaipur. This turned out to be a good time, but was probably the reason that I fell ill--I assumed, country club = filtered water, but perhaps not so, turns out. Anyhow, the World Series of Cricket is going on right now, and so after a while spent lounging by the pool, we took a seat out on a vast lawn and watched a match, though I can't remember exactly who it was (I'm not the world's biggest fan of sports, but I try to be accomodating). Anyhow, Rohit had managed to smuggle in about three quarters of a bottle of cheap whiskey that he had stolen from his father's room earlier in the evening (the irony is that Rohit is 35 years old, a commentary on communal living I suppose), and proceeded to order a plate of food and some water and ice, and began mixing his own drinks unceremoniously at the table while the sullen faced waiters in white looked on disapprovingly. I would assume, though I could be wrong, that this type of thing is frowned upon in country clubs the world over. After a few polite "no's" I finally broke down and had a drink, which quickly turned into somewhere between 7 and 10--Rohit is a pretty persuasive guy when he wants to be. And he was doubling me for every drink--he can really put it away it seems. Then it gets sunnier. At some point, he decided that it would be a good idea to call his dad, who as it turns out, was drinking in the gambling hall upstairs, and so his dad came down and of course looked at his drunken son and his disheveled American friend with some distaste. But he joined us for a drink anyhow, and went on to ask me what was so great about America anyhow, and if Gatlinburg Tennessee would be a good place to vacation, and why it was that Indians were better at math and science than Americans were, and so on and so on. He also, in a fine display of his Indian-ness, drunkenly quoted some poetry at length (a piece by Amitabh's father, Medushala, which I knew), and sang a few bars of some quaint Bollywood film track from the early 1970's.

So, needless to say, we split the scene, as it was getting late and Rohit and his father were beginning to show some of the biological tendency towards competition inherent in all father/son relationships. As we left, Rohit shouted something at the waiter, to which the waiter responded despondently "Ok Sahab..". Rohit later told me that he had ordered the waiter to put all of our food and drinks on his father's club tab, which he found to be roaringly funny. I did too, turns out.

I was getting tired at this point, but Rohit was up for more action, and when I got out of the club the hot night air woke me up a bit, so we went drunkenly tearing around Jaipur in Rohit's car, thank Bhagwan for the lack of traffic. Rohit, turns out, has friends in high places, and a good friend of his is married to the princess of Jaipur. So we decided it would be a good idea to make a quick visit to Raj Plaza, a heritage hotel nearly 200 years old owned by the King of Jaipur at which Rohit's friend is the head manager (positions of privilege and nepotism exist everywhere it seems). The hotel is huge and beautiful, an old converted estate with massive lawns and stables in the heart of the city. Due to Rohit's influence, he didn't see fit to stop for the security guard at the gate (it's 2 AM now, remember), who cursed us as we passed at 40 miles and hour, and we roared into the driveway in a flash of dust. Rohit beamingly and grandly walked me up the steps to the heritage palace, commenting on this architecture and that, and entered the palace with much noise and commotion. Another security guard stopped us, and Rohit sent him away boomingly, so the guy told us to at least keep it down, this is a hotel for gods sake (well, he might not have said exactly that, my Hindi isn't that good). So we looked at the old pictures and artifacts and polo trophies and etc, etc, etc, which Rohit explained each of them to me in meticulous detail (an example: "This picture, yes it is very old, and the people in it are from long time ago").

Our evening coming to a close, we split and went for coffee, but the place was long closed and some poor bastard was inside washing up and Rohit spent like 10 minutes yelling back and forth, asking him what we could get at that hour, and the guy of course said we could get nothing, so we had just that and left.

So then Rohit dropped me off at my hotel, and I woke up the next morning and felt strangely ill, and by noon I was in the bathroom for 30 minutes at a stretch, and the other times I was sleeping or trying to sleep. I got about 20 hours sleep in the past 24 hours, no joke, and ate nothing, but my spirit isn't dampened, and today I feel a bit better, so much so that I had some chai and biscuits this morning and now am contemplating lunch if I can manage to get my ass up out of this internet cafe and walk somewhere in the heat, which I can do surely. So long kiddos, I head back to Delhi tomorrow and then look forward to April being here on Saturday night. If it's not readily apparent, I need her to keep me in check, and I love her dearly for it. More soon.

Capitalism, Scientology, and Black Metal in Delhi

Hello all.

So I touched down after a 15 hour flight in Delhi, India a couple of nights ago. It's largely as I remember it. The smog is bad, the traffic is worse, and even at night when walking around out of doors it feels as if someone left the oven door open at full blast just as you happened to walk into range. Plus there's many different species of large and dangerous looking bugs, a stray dog population larger than that of the city in which I live back in the states, and the commonplace rolling blackout that threatens this blog post even as I write it. That being noted, there is something positive to be said for a city of millions that collectively believes the best way to dispose of sewage is that it be put it into large open canals that run straight through major residential areas, and in many ways, I very much like this place, although there are constant affronts to my (admittedly debilitatingly) Western sensibilities. However, I have found that what doesn't kill me in fact does make me stronger (or maybe ill for two or three days at most), and a nice extended stay in India is a sure fire way to go back home and wonder to yourself if we haven't been living in the adult equivalent of a daycare center, that has completely rid us of any sort of humanity on the level that delivered us, after thousands upon thousands of years of development, into the shopping malls in which we live our lives back in the states.

First off, I enjoy the fact that despite the fact that the city seems at any moment ready to implode, it hangs together with an insane energy that is omnipresent; you can feel it in the air. Just crossing through the constant whizzing, honking traffic while on foot here is an ubiquitous adventure that never lets one slip into the dreamy sense of separationism that we experience at home. Back there, the freeways and the residential areas are fairly neatly separated, and one never really gets the satistfaction of having a routine trip to the market become a game of Frogger with rather dire consequences stemming from showing timidity or accomodation; you simply have to know where you're going all the time and beeline it there, and always, always act like you know what you're doing. In this way, traffic in India seems to breed agency in the pedestrian, and consequently the drivers appear much less likely to run anyone over, as the foot traffic doesn't freeze up as soon as they see a truck carrying plywood and other random building materials speeding towards them at 50 miles an hour. Rather, you stick your hand out like it would be possible to stop the truck dead cold using nothing but the palm of your hand, and somehow you get the right of way. Try that back in the States; I did last year after an extended stay here and damn near got killed by some idiot who would rather hit me than make a split second decision. And that's just one of many ways that the chaos of this place, I think, engenders a sense of self confidence that we don't get with our sterilized little crosswalks and traffic lights at home. Plus, people here know how to use the car horn properly: rather than it being a "hey, fuck you asshole!" type of thing it's more of a friendly "I'm here so don't hit me, I'm about to pass you by driving into oncoming traffic". Where I'm from, in Texas, half the drivers would have brandished shotguns and blown themselves to hell by now with the amount of honking and crazy yet singlemindedly brilliant driving here. These people are the best (and worst) drivers in the world, I'm sure of it. And they're cool as shit about it; I never see anyone getting road rage, even in the craziest traffic situations (as in the routine event of driving the wrong way into oncoming traffic on a freeway, as my rickshaw driver did this morning when he realized he had missed his turnoff). Add to it the fact that no other country on earth has to dodge as much livestock on their way to work in the morning, and you've got a special situation on your hands. Let's hope the Indians never come up with their own version of Nascar; not only will they blow any southern-fried hillbilly speed junkie right back to Tallahassee with his tail between his legs, but they'll make the whole thing interesting to watch, and then god help us all; there's enough spectator sports in our lives as it is.

Even crazier are shopping malls, which are popping up all over Delhi, Mumbai, and other locales all over India by the day. These types of places are pretty fancy, even by Southern California standards, and they are wholly and completely out of place on the Indian landscape (or any landscape, for that matter, but that's another story). Catering to a growing middle class with newly exchanged dollars to rupees to blow on high-end consumer crap, the dichotomies exhibited by these malls are a capitalist's wet dream: Inside the air-conditioned and highly glossed (and advertised!) interiors, young and hip Indian couples stroll hand in hand (gasp), trying much too hard to imitate a Tommy Hilfiger advert while up and up families lug around bags and bags of consumer items while their screaming kids demand sweets and prattle endlessly on cell phones (sound familiar?). Outside, of course, you're right back in the thick of it, with stray dogs prowling the ramshackle parking lot, transients asleep on the sidewalks, and underpaid security guards eyeing the whole debacle with a thinnly veiled contempt that makes you want to get the hell out of there fast. The divide between rich and poor in a country such as this is so visible and so contrasting that it makes your head spin. I mean, I spend a lot of time in LA and things are just as bad there (in a relative sense: think Beverly Hills and then think Inglewood), but it's not nearly as visible, and the visbility makes one absolutely unable to ignore the fact that the wholesale capitalists are bending all of us over on a daily basis. Things are no different here. I think that anyone with a very high income in this country (including myself, unfortunately and relatively) has to walk a thin line convincing himself that he shouldn't have just died in his sleep for winding up so much more privileged than so many around him. Don't take me the wrong way here, I'm not up for devloving back to some turn of the century cry for proletariat revolution, but we need some real checks and balances and perhaps a good council of level-headed and non-wealth addicted individuals to lay it down about what is and what isn't necessary for the good of all humanity and then just run with what they say, luxury goods be damned. But hey, all of you unabashed capitalists, feel free to argue with me about the free market and survival of the fittest and what not, but don't do it where the cycle rickshaw-wallas can hear you: those guys will be pissed.

That being said, it's still really funny to take in the whole ultra-consumeristic spectacle, which I did for a while today just for kicks. I went to a place called Ansel Plaza and strolled around for a bit, taking in the scene, which was disorienting to say the least. As I may have let on a moment ago, shopping malls are not my thing, especially so in such a poor country, but that's not to say I can't take them with a post-modern voyeuristic grain of salt and enjoy the spectacle of late capitalism seducing otherwise normal people into a type of giddy myxamytosis. And this mall really had it all, all the usual trappings of shopping mall hell with a few fun twists of which I will divulge here. First, I ran into a kid wearing a Burzum t-shirt, dragging along his sari-clad girlfriend with an angry look on his face. I was taken aback, I mean, I have the same t-shirt in my bag but I'm the only other person I've seen wearing it in public, but before I could snap myself out of it and run back and ask him where he gets his black metal records in Delhi (a larger research interest of mine), I looked ahead and saw a large crowd of well to-do Indians being talked at by none other than an enthusiastic young devotee of the L. Ron Hubbard variety, i.e. a Scientologist for those out there not up on your New Age quackery vernacular. I stopped for a moment, taking it in; a family was being asked to take a free "stress-test" (or rather, fill out a book order form sating which of the 3000+ Hubbard titles you would like to purchase today, with an option to buy more whenever your kids can afford it), and daddy-ji was scratching his chin in absorbed concentration as the young neophyte bubbled on about happiness and love and whatnot. And this is in a country that has taken the nutty yet charismatic guru-type and elevated it into a high art form, so Hubbard should glad he's at least making inroads; without those guys paving the gilded steps Crowley would never have gotten his foot into the door of the Orientalist Black Magick party, as he himself took a thing or two from the streetcorner sadhu in his day. But back to the mall. The starry-eyed orator caught me looking on and was about to extend the invitation, but I ran for the nearest exit door, I'd had quite enough thanks. I thought, as I usually do with Scientologists, about asking them if they knew much more about the life and times of L. Ron the great and his wife-stealing, money embezzling, black magic dabbling ways, but then thought better of it: each person, while not an island, must still make their own choices and forge their own paths, and mine led me down the street towards a small roadside stall where a cheery old man in a dhoti sold me two ripe mangoes for 15 cents. When I ordered in Hindi, saying "Namaste sahab, mujhe do aam chahiye", he was delighted, replying to me "Bahut aacha! Hindi aati hai sahab!". And yes, it did come to me, and yes I am trying, and yes, I love this insane and throughly worldly place, so much so that I may never come home again. As long as I can avoid the shopping malls, I'll be doing just fine. More soon, kiddos.