Snapshots pt.2

For the next week or two, I shall be heading north to the Himalayas to shake off the dust of Delhi in fresh air and cool breeze. Meanwhile, it is time for another set of scenes from the everyday of a delhiwallah,
as life in the ever so vibrant city goes on and my photo-album expands.

This man had decided to park his vehicle of choice right in front of our hostel.

Life in the International Students House is rarely boring. The hostel hosts a cavalcade of characters that keep things interesting even on the rainiest of days. The man in blue is Babatou (not his real name), a Vietnamese half monk half journalist and a true living legend, whose somewhat brusque demeanor sometimes resembles that of a vietcong guerrilla interrogator. The man speaks about 200 words per minute with a vietnamese accent, which makes him most of the time a bit hard to follow. Having heard that Vicki and Dan were British, he practically ordered them to teach English to him and his friends in exchange for kung-fu lessons.

The monks insisted to know about life in England so obviously the lesson turned into the topic of religion. Of course, vocabulary-wise it's good to start with something simple and useful, such as "big", "faith" and "secularization".

The view from my room offers many kinds of entertainment. Channel 79 usually shows football every night and junior league cricket every morning...

...unless the monsoon has hijacked the network and has decided to run "Swamp Show" instead. 

India being heavy on the service sector, all kinds of services are also available around the hostel. This hair salon is conveniently located right next to the entrance gate. If you're in a rush in the morning, and the stubble's still on, he's your man.

India is apparently also all about dogs, they're ubiquitous. This one is always sleeping in my hallway and  if you even accidentally happen to show any attention towards her, she'll follow you anywhere.

Also hippie nazis are the latest fad in India. 

Majnu Ka Tilla - the Tibetan colony of Delhi, is a strange haven of tranquility amongst the constant noise of the surrounding city. Here, you will not get pestered by touts and hustlers. Instead, you are greeted by the Buddhist elders spending an afternoon at the main square sipping tea.

A Buddhist monk watching the Dalai Lama show.

Cigarette vendor, or paan-wallah, as they are called here. Paan is a kind of Indian chewing tobacco wrapped in a betel leaf.  One peculiar feature of it is, that it colours your teeth red, which explains why all auto-rickshaw drivers look like they have a severe gum infection. 

Offence nr. 63: Travelling on roof of train. A serious problem in the Indian metro.

A girl studying on the street. Children like this can be seen all around the busier areas. The meaning of the scale is still unclear.

Monsoon turns the boring walk home into instant Adventureland!

The drivers trapped in their cars, the kids outside frolicking: grown ups 0 - kids 1.

Learning the Hindi language under the tutelage of a great man, Dr. Vimlesh Kanti Verma. 

Street cleaners were getting busy right before the beginning of the Commonwealth Games.

"Kumar, i'm telling you, those monkeys are getting cheekier and cheekier every day. That ones scratching his..." "Please Sandeep, i'm eating here!"

As the Kashmiris had been very active on the campus, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's hindu nationalist party, decided to counter attack with an agressive campaign heralding the recognition of Kashmir as a part of India, not as an independent state.

The demagogues got the crowd into a craze of slogan chanting.

The irony speaks for itself.

Cigarette vendor behind the law faculty canteen. Here's where all the students get their smokes.

Religion is an inseparable part of India and its influence is all pervasive. Even the university copy shop has its own shrine dedicated to lord Shiva - the creator and the destroyer (of photocopies).

The sun sets in the west (where Mecca is) behind Jama Masjid - the main mosque of Delhi.

The future of muslim boy bands - the Qur'an Brothers!

This gentleman insisted to be photographed in this setting. Unfortunately my Hindi/Urdu is not yet fluent enough to understand his explanation.

The Muslim elders lounge around on a Saturday afternoon - exchanging the latest gossip.

Self portrait.

Choose your ride.

School Day

Having stayed in Delhi for over two months now, my daily life has started to develop a routine. Everyday life in the city is still a series of micro-adventures and even though my life has started to develop some daily recurrent patterns, it is still far from humdrum.

Since I'm a hopeless night owl, I usually tend to sleep late. The day starts somewhere between 10 o'clock and noon by sparking up the caffeine binge to get the system in operation again. Before finding a coffee maker, waking up was even more of a chore, now at least I have the equipment to prepare the daily fix of my drug of choice. After system is restored, I trod down from my room past the yawning and napping guards to the streets. Here's where the day starts rolling.

Near the hostel is a rickshaw stand where all the rickshaw-wallahs loiter around gossiping, smoking beedis and touting customers by aggressively patting the rickshaw seat whenever a potential one walks by. Although I prefer walking, sometimes laziness prevails. Before climbing into a rickshaw, one has to always go through the usual ordeal of bargaining with the wallah, who is usually tempted to test his chances in overpricing an unsuspecting gora, which is usually double the amount an Indian person would need to pay. After the negotiation,which usually ends with a frown combined with the trademark Indian head wobble, the wallah jumps on his seat and steers the rickshaw to the chaos that is Indian traffic.

As I mentioned in my first post of this blog, moving around in Indian traffic is an art of crafty dodging of all manner of vehicles and creatures. The rickshaw-wallahs seems to have mastered this skill into near perfection. Rolling down the street towards my college, a series of encounters challenge the wallah's hierarchical position in the pecking order of traffic. Size determines where you stand. A pack of street dogs run along the rickshaw barking wildly as it has seemed to intrude their turf. A gigantic truck that looks like a prop from a Mad Max movie honks with a somewhat unfittingly chipper and melodious horn and speeds past our rickshaw nearly sending it to the gutter. Nearing the college, the intersection is blocked as among the cars, mopeds and auto-rickshaws, an elephant is standing with a banner wrapped around to it advertising an anti-smoking campaign that Delhi University is promoting to stop smoking on the campus area. Thinking nothing of it, our rider steers his vehicle nonchanantly through the disarray to the college gates. I wipe the cold sweat off my forehead, jump off and reward a dauntless rider with 20 rupees (0,34 euros) and a "dhan'yavād"!

The guard at the college gate looks at me suspiciously and asks for identification. I give him my student card, reminding him that I was here also yesterday and the before that and that I also then showed my ID card. However, it seems that to him all white people look alike.

Right now I'm studying at the Ramjas College of Delhi university, where i'm taking some classes in economics. Although I'm a linguist, mostly interested in the global spread and variety of the English language, I figured I could avail the university's opportunities to raise my awareness on global affairs while killing time trying to come up with a potential PhD topic and studying Hindi. Furthermore, spending a semester with Indian undergraduate economics students gives me an excellent grass roots perspective on the present and future of the Indian society. The classroom serves as a kind of a microcosm.

The lecturer enters the classroom and almost even before putting his backback on the table starts spraying the blackboard with graphs, equations and economic jargon while swinging from side to side trying to catch the half empty classroom's attention. Meanwhile the students are slowly drifting to their seats. Most of them do not seem too interested in the teacher's ramblings, some stare out the window with their iPods on, others are reading John Grisham and Ken Follett novels or chatting with their classmates, the few in the front row are actually listening. To many, the classes seem to be more like a forum to meet friends than an actual place of learning. This was confirmed by one classmate, who said that nobody really listens to the teacher, everybody studies at home and just comes to class to get attendance marks.

The teacher disrupts his monologue every now and then and catches some of the students by surprise by asking a question, to which the students usually answer surprisingly effortlessly, but their answers are always almost by default disregarded as inadequate or completely wrong by the teacher. "First of all, you're completely wrong..." "I don't know what your problem is but what you just said makes no sense whatsoever...", yet the ones that are listening persevere and keep trying.

This goes on for a while. At some point comes the daily power cut, ceiling fans stop rotating and the room becomes a sauna within minutes. The teacher opens the windows, exposing the classroom to the noise of the students loitering in the hallway playing the latest Bollywood hits and ringtones from their mobiles. Rivalled by the noise coming from the hall, the teacher raises his voice and picks up the pace and is now firing the class room with 200 words a minute on the wonders of the Hecksher-Olin theory and comparative advantage on free market economies. He keeps running between the blackboard drawing new graphs and the hallway telling the kids to get lost, while the students in the front row keep following his movements back and forth, making the classroom look like a tennis game audience.

Capturing the teacher in action was difficult, as he was constantly on the move.

Class is disrupted again by a random student who marches in with a couple of guys who seem to be his homeboys to promote himself as a candidate for the upcoming student elections. He spits out a fervent five minute manifesto on how excellent a candidate he'd make and how he is going to shape the future of student politics. The students seem even less interested in him than the teacher. The guy disappears with his posse as quickly as he appeared, targeting the next classroom for similar treatment.

The class continues and the teacher loads another clip of economic theory for his listeners while at the same time running back and forth in the room, as if trying to catch everybody's attention by addressing everybody personally. While doing this he almost stumbles on a sleeping street dog coiled in the classroom corner. For a few passing seconds he stares blankly at the dog, who is now staring back with apparent indignation that someone dared to disturb its nap. "A dog...", mutters the teacher, and gets back to explaining the intricacies of the ricardian model.

The dog didn't seem too enthusiastic about my photographing.

The class ends and the teacher calls out the student's names, to which everybody answers with a "Yes, Sir!".
Outside the classroom I am stopped by two girls who tell me they are doing a survey for the Hindustani Times  on beauty ideals. Thus I am coerced to answer questions about shaving chest hair, using hair gel and bleaching one's skin, which apparently is rather common among Indian girls, as a fairer complexion is highly desired and seen as more beautiful. By being short and diplomatic in my answers, I try to squirm out of the rather awkward situation.

Making my way out of the college gate to the street, I am once again greeted by an army of rickshaw-wallahs with their mantra-like sales pitch "Yes, Sir? Hello, Sir! Metro Metro?!"

Babus

One of the most profound legacies that the British rule left in the Indian subcontinent after their departure since India's independence, was the full blown bureaucratic network, that laid the basis of Indian public administration up to this day. Over the course of years the system has mutated into a strange Chimera of archaic, rigid bureaucratic conventions in the rapidly changing Indian society. This framework has permeated itself to all levels of administrative work in India evoking pure dread in anyone who may have to take care of any formal matters. I had heard warning tales on how hours of queuing, obtaining certificates, signatures, stamps and other obscure documents, depending on the moods of the clerk responsible, put your patience into an ultimate test. However, I had always thought of these anecdotes to be slightly exaggerated. Unfortunately they did not fall short in accuracy.

The machinery is run by an armada of clerks, sometimes called babus, which is a formerly derogatory term referring to Indian civil servants working for the British Empire, and would later to be used to refer to any Indian administrator buried behind his/her mountains of papers and office supplies. These are men and women equipped with an unflappable sense of authority and self-importance. Having passed the highly competitive civil service examination and granted a job for life in a government office, they have terminally entered a world where reality and validity of things are determined by certificates, stamps, signatures, fee slips and other obscure documents. It seems that to these people, things do not exist if they haven't been validated through emblems and stamps from other authorities first.

The army of babus is a perfect reflection of the idiosyncratic nature of the Indian society. These people may work with machine-like precision and meticulousness, but at the same time the whole system itself seems to be a heavy burden for the society to run smoothly. Despite the leaps and bounds of progress India has made since its economic liberalisation in the 90's, the vast public sector, with all its somewhat outdated intricacies and complexities may be one of the key reasons, why India still has some of the economic and social issues it has today.  The legacy of colonial public administration combined with socialist economic policies right after India's independence created a trundling behemoth of bureaucracy that still leaves its stamps and signatures to the Indian society. The concept of a babu is a product of this.

Dealing with babus is, unfortunately, a necessary evil, if one wishes to become regarded as a proper resident of Delhi. One ordeal that a student has to go through is to apply for accommodation in a student hostel, which of course involves dealing with the hostel office - a haven of babudom.

After a month in Gwyer Hall, the international office had promised us affordable student accommodation in the campus area from the International Student House. The only catch was that we had to take care of the application ourselves. Thus, as my contract in Gwyer Hall was expiring, I had to take the bull by its horns and sharpen my pencils for another stack of forms to fill. Outside the office, I was greeted by a huddled mass of international and Indian students with their own stacks of passport copies, letters of admission and passport size photos. Indian bureaucrats seem to have an obsession on passport-sized photos, as every single document must be equipped with one. It's not valid if it does not have your face on it. 

I knew I had already been admitted to the hostel and now all I needed to do was to pay the deposit and a the rent for the first two months. Pushing my way through the crowd, I entered from the heat of the sweaty noon to a freeze of the air-conditioned bureau. Two men were hunched over their desks with enormous piles of files, forms, notebooks, stamps and other apparel. A young boy was serving chai to the clerks, carefully trying to place the cups to the clerks' desks without touching the papers. The men acknowledged the boy's gestures with a chorus of grunts. Without knowing whom to turn to, I randomly picked one desk on the corner where the other was meticulously studying a ledger about the size of the clerk himself - a small man with massive eyebrows,a greasy combover, face frozen in a constant frown, chest hair bursting from his shirt collar. After standing in front of the man's desk for a few minutes, without him paying the slightest attention to me, I finally opened my mouth and asked whether I could pay the deposit and the rent for the first two months. As I was clearly disrupting the clerk's routine, his eyebrow started twitching:

Me: I would like to pay the deposit and the rent...

Clerk: Aff....Affidavit?!

Me: Umm....No, I wanted to pay the deposit...

Clerk: You have the Affidavit?!

Me: No..?

Clerk: You come back, one hour! (pointing to his colleague's desk)

The man turned back to his ledger. Confused by what had just happened, I decided that it might be best to come back later. An hour later I returned to the office and went to the desk I had been pointed towards. The man behind was going through the applicants' papers with robotic precision. As I had already been admitted to the hostel, I thought that the rest of the application process was only about paying the required fees. It soon became clear to me that I was assuming too much. The clerk handed me a stack of papers, all of which had to be filled out duly and attached with the proper signatures, stamps and of course, passport size photographs. After submitting them my application, a letter of admission from the university, a student exchange certificate from my home university, a copy of my passport, a copy of my visa and three passport-size photos, they still demanded me to fill out and submit:

- A hostel membership card 

- A membership application to a health center nearby

- An affidavit stating that I will not engage in an act of ragging

- An affidavit from a parent/guardian/embassy stating that I will not engage in an act of ragging, stamped and    signed by an official from the Finnish embassy

- Three passport-size photos

The affidavits were apparently part of Delhi University's anti-ragging campaign (see the post "Snapshots"), which for the locals may be a serious thing, but obviously I was not going to go all the way to the other side of Delhi to pay a fee to obtain a signature for a paper that confirms that I will not bully my fellow residents in the hostel, that was out of the question. Instead, me and Dan, who was with me in the office, decided to circumvent the trouble by taking advantage of the vague definition of "guardian". Hence, my official guardian in India became Mr.Daniel Gregson from England. I handed the filled out forms to the clerk, who studied them for a good while thus increasing the suspense whether my scam was going to backfire. He stared at Dan's smudgy signature for a while, and asked who he was, to which I innocently replied "my guardian". The man looked at me askingly, shrugged and moved on the next application, which was Dan's. It did not seem to bother him that he had just read Dan's name in my application as the guardian and was now studying an application of a person of the exact same name and nationality. Either western names and faces look all the same to him, or the clerk could have not cared less what was in the papers. Finally, the clerk closed our applications to a folder and told us to go buy a lock for the room door and then come back to show it to him.

This was merely a tip of the iceberg of the bureaucratic ordeals one has to go through to get things sorted here. Most of the formal matters I have had to take care of here have involved endless form filling, signatures on every side of paper, stamps of all colours, shapes and sizes, certificates, passport copies, visa copies, affidavits, fee slips, dodgy signatures and vague information given and, of course, an indefinite number of passport-sized photos.

Mussoorie

As the teacher strikes in the university started become more frequent by the day, vacating my weeks from classes, and the sweltering heat of Indian August began to test my patience, me and my friends decided to flee further north for a cooler climate and to have a break from the hectic everyday of the metropolis.The north of India, with its lush green mountains, cool breezes and clear springwater trickling from the Himalayas had fascinated me for a while already. Thus without much contemplation, our Finnish-British-Scottish expedition decided to head to the small town of Mussoorie in the state of Uttarkhand on the foothills of the Himalayas.

Mussoorie, located some 300km north from Delhi and about 1800m above sealevel, is a town of about 26,000 people laid along the strips of the green mountains of Uttarkhand, where the Himalayan mountain range starts to dominate the horizon and the dusty and smoggy plains of Delhi make way for mist and clouds passing through slowly crumbling colonial era habitations. During the Raj, the town used to be a bustling hill station founded by the British for passing expeditions. Nowadays it serves as a conveniently located weekend retreat for heat-fleeing Delhiites and a romantically secluded haven for honeymooners.

Leaving from Delhi at around 9pm, we reached the town after a harrowing 9-hour bus ride and an equally bumpy taxi ride along the snakey roads up the green hills. After a calming cup of chai we took a first glimpse of the town. The main promenade of Mussoorie, the Mall, with its numerous establishments from Hindu temples to Adidas outlets and its motley people from Kashmiri carpet merchants to Hindu pilgrims carrying Ganges water, serves as an illustrative example of how populous and vast India actually is; even relatively remote corners like this feature vibrant microcosms where history exists seamlessly with the present. 

On the way to Mussoorie. At times, the mist prevented us
from seeing anything but the road.

India's iconic Ambassador cars against a scenic view from the Mussorie promenade.The small blue car  has the text "Knight Rider" written to its windshield - quite admirable confidence amongst the regal Ambassadors.

Near where the taxi left us was a humble, yet homely chai shop run by
 a burly man with equally impressive moustache to match, who mainly
communicated with loud grunts and wheezes.

The taxi stand in the Masonic Lodge building with some political graffiti - AISF stands for All India Students Foundation which is a student union associated with the Communist Party of India. Subtle traces of British history intertwine with modern India.

The bustling streets in this relatively secluded part of the world are unfortunately not solely a result of Indian entrepreneurship. The Mussorie Mall seemed to be mainly a product of the British Raj and thus bears memories from an era of blatant segregation and imperialism. Consider the following piece of Wikipedia trivia:

During the British Raj, signs on the Mall expressly stated: "Indians and Dogs Not Allowed"; racist signs of this type were commonplace in hill stations, which were founded 'by and for' the British.Motilal Nehru, the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, deliberately broke this rule every day whenever he was in Mussoorie, and would pay the fine. 

After settling in a cosy budget hotel and waiting for the seemingly endless rain to stop, we decided to pay a visit to one of the sights of the area, Cloud End, a colonial hunting lodge turned hotel with an allegedly breathtaking view. After another somewhat nauseating taxi ride, we eventually ended up to a quiet wooden bungalow tucked in the thick foresty hills filled with handsome Deodar trees. Due to the low season caused by the monsoon the place seemed virtually deserted with only a handful of labourers working in the garden, someone who seemed to be the manager sitting on the porch and a dog napping in the yard. During our ride up, the mist had again gathered around the hilltops giving the place somewhat of an eerie atmosphere. The interior with its moth-eaten stuffed deer heads and Raj-era photography set on display as if as a sign of subtle veneration only amplified the whispers from the past. If Bollywood would ever decide to film its own Twin Peaks, this would be the setting for it.

A view from the bungalow.

The bungalow hotel was surrounded by impressive
and somewhat haunting forests.

Photos from the early 20th century.
Carriers with early rickshaws and palanquins.

After having admired the views enough, and since we had told our driver that we'd be back in three hours, we decided to kill the remaining time with a trek along the road down the hills, which gave us our first glimpses of rural India. We passed the hotel towards the road and started descending the hills candidly following a couple of schoolboys on their way home. What we thought to be a light stroll with through scenic route ended up being a seemingly endless hike through the misty outskirts. Walking the road, we were met by few passers by every now and then; a woman with shopping bags talking to a mobile phone, a young couple riding a scooter and a northeast-Indian looking family huddled under a large pine tree waiting for the rain to stop. All this made me think of the distances these people must travel on a daily basis. Walking behind the two boys with their backpacks and school uniforms through the pouring bursts of monsoon that kept interrupting our walk made me think how I at their age used to bemoan my 1 km walk to school. Needless to say, I felt slightly embarrassed.

The hills sloping down from the bungalow were spotted with the occasional country house with cornfields and cows. Coming from the constant traffic of Delhi, the surrounding silence broken only by the silent hum of the distant Kemptey falls seemed soothing yet overwhelming at the same time.

A girl with her cows. Some of the pictures of people may be a bit blurry because I have so far taken the photos more or less secretly. I am still a bit unsure how people here react to photos taken from them. I will try to make a habit of asking first, when possible.

People in Delhi keep reminding me that Delhi is not India and that one should try to get out of the city as soon and often as possible to experience the real India, whatever that means. In any case, Mussoorie, albeit somewhat of a random choice for a first stretch outside Delhi, was a true breath of fresh air and gave the needed break from the chaos and heat among which I spend most of my days here while at the same time evoking a thirst for more explorations on the subcontinent.

Snapshots

Dear readers,

First and foremost, apologies for the lazy posting. I have recently moved from ever so lively Gwyer Hall to another hostel, the International Student House, which has caused some extra inconvenience, thus preventing me from updating the journal.While waiting for another proper entry, here's the last month in pictures.

Here's where it all begins, my home metro station. The name Vishwa Vidyalaya means "university" in Hindi, or if translated literally, "the universal house of knowledge", a prime example of the superfluity that's embedded in  the fabric of Indian everyday.

The concrete jungle is indeed overwhelming for a green Delhiite and naivigating during the first few days proved to be a challenge. Fortunately, Dan, our adept geographer, equipped himself with a map and was able to locate us again (almost, at least).

The lush entrance to the Gwyer Hall hostel, my former residence.

The pouring monsoon caused serious flooding in the hostel inner yard, emphasizing its tropical atmosphere. Unfortunately, the humidity was fruitful breeding ground for mosquitoes as well.

A view from the rooftop.

My humble (former) room. Described in more detail in the first post.

The backyard pet monkey, which I decided to name Barry, as it did not seem to have a name. Judging by the look on Barry's face, he did not seem too happy to be photographed while having lunch.

 Barry spends most of his time observing hostel life from his tree.

My everyday meal for the last month: roti bread, raw onions, cucumbers and curry potatoes with okra served with dal (lentil soup) and rice. Simple, yet nourishing and delicious.

Someone is clearly not happy with the way Nelson treats the hostel computers.

A sleepy monkey starts his daily grind of primate shenanigans in the early hours, as the city awakes.

The kiosk at the metro station. The bearded man in the back is sitting on a pedestal legs crossed in a lotus position holding a huge stack of money he gives to the cashiers whenever they need change.

Old and new meet seamlessly in the daily traffic. The placard in the background is advertising anti-ragging affidavits, which is a document that certifies that the student will not engage in an act of ragging, which apparently has become a severe issue in the Delhi University campus as the senior students have shamelessly abused freshmen.

Delhi University has also launched a fervent anti-smoking campaign supported by some rather vivid artwork.

The animal loving people Indians are, the university surroundings are teaming with all sorts of wildlife. Dogs are particularly common and they are allowed to roam free in the campus area.

Nappy Puppy & Bike

The streets of Delhi are also filled with all manner of two to eight legged creatures. This cow decided to express his frank opinion on private automobiles in a more subtle way. Hopefully the owner was not in a hurry.

Similarly, this dog decided to use public space creatively.

Delhi is a huge city, especially for a street dog. Unfortunately the auto-rickshaw driver did not budge from his no-canines policy.

Delhi is a rough place for a foreigner with all sorts of dangers lurking on every street corner. Luckily, the local homeboys got our back.