Diwali

Diwali, the festival of light, is a Hindu holiday that occurs on (I think) the first new moon in November. There are many stories in Hindu history that are said to be celebrated by this festival – the one I’ve heard the most is the homecoming of the god Rama after he was exiled for 14 years for killing the demon Ravana. The “lights” of Diwali (fire, firecrackers, Christmas-like lights on houses, candles) are supposed to represent the triumph of good over evil, and the inner light that symbolizes the force which is larger than our physical beings (does it sound like I learned that from Wikipedia? Because I did).

I was really excited to get a chance to celebrate Diwali this year. My roommate, Santhi, took me to her extended family’s house in a village not far from Chennai for a traditional Indian experience. Many of you may recall the episode of The Office, called “Diwali,” when Michael invites the office to Kelly’s family’s Diwali celebration and thinks it’s a costume party. So, there was no Diwali party exactly like that this time, but it was still an occasion to dress up. As must happen in India though, we started off the trip with a bit of a mishap: we hit two hours of (easily foreseeable but not avoidable) holiday traffic on the way out of Chennai, and got a flat tire on the way to Tindivanam, so we didn’t arrive there until 12:30 am and went to bed even later. Santhi’s cousin joked that they would be waking us up at 5 am to light firecrackers. He wasn’t joking. We were, in fact, woken up at 5:30 am, when it was still dark out, and given new clothes (a traditional Diwali gift), which we went to go and get blessed at another relative’s house. Then it was time for firecrackers! Unfortunately, by this time the sun had already risen so it wasn’t much of a light show but more of a sound spectacular. Santhi lit the first firecracker, which was actually a string of hundreds of little firecrackers, and almost lost a limb in the process! Needless to say, after that experience we entertained ourselves with sparklers that were quiet and could be held at a comfortable distance from our bodies.

It was really great to get a chance to visit a temple with a Hindu family. Usually, most of the more famous temples in India are off-limits to non-Hindus, so it was special to get to go inside one (actually, I got to go to two). I was surprised that there was no service, but rather you go into a small room and are blessed by the priest with flowers, incense, and oils. The whole visit takes about ten minutes! At the second temple we went to, there were very many gods, and Santhi’s cousins prayed very quickly to each one. One was a god who was in meditation, and you have to clap and say your name so he knows you’re there! I find Hinduism and the mythological history of the gods really interesting, and I feel like if I just read up on it more I would understand the Indian psyche better. It’s interesting because I feel like India developed on this whole other cultural and philosophical plane that’s so different than what we (in the boring western world) know almost instinctively, and I think that may be the reason why so many things seem to not make sense here!

Santhi and I rested (because of our short night’s sleep) for most of the day – well, as much as we could with the firecrackers outside! We arose for the nighttime festivities (more fireworks, temple, and visiting relatives) and dressed in our saris, which was a highlight for me. I’d never worn one before, and the previous weekend I had purchased my first, a piece of clothing I have never been so excited about! I’m not sure why I love saris so much, but I just feel like they automatically bring such beauty and regality to their wearer, no matter what. And no doubt, while wearing a sari, I felt as beautiful as I ever have.

The highlight of Diwali weekend was returning to Chennai the following night and watching the fireworks light up the city from the rooftop of a hotel. It was like the fourth of July, except an endless show, and in 360 degrees. Though spectacular up close, I have to say that I much prefer to watch the fireworks from afar, with a cold beer in hand.

In need of ET

This article from the New York Times last week perfectly sums up the reason why I say "huh?" when people say that India is developing so quickly. It's not hard to believe that the development is only really seen in certain places (like, say Bangalore where all the IT parks are being built, and south Delhi), but this article provides an alternative reason for why: you can't "develop" a country if you don't have infrastructure.

This also brought me to wonder, what should I consider "development?" Why am I fighting for development if, when I visit these villages, I marvel at the simplicity of how they live and sort of wish I could stay with them in their quiet paradise for a week? Part of it is that I can't really presume to know the issues they face. So maybe I would consider "development" to be increasing reliability - reliability in employment, but also reliability on the things (like electricity and water) that one needs to be a productive individual.

But agriculture is not a reliable employment. Rain doesn't come, too much rain comes, seeds are inferior, cows die so fertilizer is unavailable. So why, then, am I doing work that concentrates only on making a farmer more productive in agriculture? One of my co-workers brought this up last week - when asking farmers in the field what they would do with with a 40,000 rupee loan (about $1000), they say "open a shop." They don't say "buy more land so I can farm more crops." So, instead of making more productive farmers, how about making more productive people who are able to move out of farming? After all, agriculture is a very small portion of most "developed" economies. Thoughts?

Survivor: Survey Edition

My credit scoring project is at a point now where we've decided on a likely location, and we want to go to that location to get a sense of what the farmer financial situation is like (i.e., how much they spend on their crops, when they plant and harvest, what kind of loans are available to them, etc). So, to get some hard fact statistics (and I say that with all sarcasm intended, because you know by the title of this post that everything that can go wrong here will), I went out in the field to conduct a "mini-survey," or formalized questionnaire, designed to ask farmers these types of questions.

So, if someone gave you the instructions, "conduct a mini-survey," what would you do? I had to figure this out: Write survey. Revise survey. Format survey into perfect tables. Translate survey into Kannada (the language they speak in the state of Karnataka) and merge it with the English version. Print out a lot of copies of the survey. Go to Bangalore. Find and train a survey team. Find and train a translator. Decide where to go. Rent a van. Look over the surveyors shoulders every second and make sure they are filling out that survey correctly or else you are wasting an entire week and over $1,000 on meaningless data. Guard the surveys with your life and bring them back to Chennai intact and ready to be entered into neat little Excel columns.

First challenge: translation of survey. Who knew that my translator's computer would get attacked by a virus and she would be unable to send me the translation the next day? Also, who knew that this strange occurrence would happen the day before a Hindu religious holiday when there was a pooja (blessing) on her computer and she wasn't allowed to use it? I survived this only because she was extremely helpful and offered to print out the copies of the survey for me herself and give them to me when I arrived in Bangalore Monday morning. Unfortunately, she was so stressed that she messed up the translation in a pretty bad way. Lesson #1: Translate well in advance. Translate back into English. Retranslate. Make sure you have a really really good translation. THEN print out 150 copies.

Second challenge: surveyors. I should have been warned by the fact that it only took me two hours to go over the entire survey with them and that no one had any real questions. They messed it up the first day. I told them what they did wrong. I retrained, they continued to mess up. I told them how I wanted them to ask the questions, they asked them how they wanted to. They started to hate me, I threatened to fire one of them. They united against me, I united against them with my translator and tried to divide and conquer. None of these things really worked spectacularly, but Lesson #2 was: Hire your own surveyors who are at your mercy and yours only, and do not rely on a survey company that hires low quality people at the last minute.

Third challenge: accommodation. The day before I leave for Gulbarga, an overnight bus ride away, the hotel I'm staying at says my reservation is not confirmed (of course...a reservation that someone else was mistakenly relied on to make for me!). I call said person. He calls hotel. They say they are full. He tells me they are full. Hotel calls him, they say they actually have a reservation for me, but they can't confirm it unless they know what I'm doing there. An employment visa? Not sufficient. A letter from my company? Not sufficient either. A letter from the manager of the Gulbarga branch of ICICI bank, who I had never in my life met nor who had any clue who I was? Somehow, that was necessary and sufficient to book me a room in this hotel in the middle of nowhere, India. Lesson #3: Always carry every form of documentation about your origins, purpose, and identity with you while traveling. It will come in handy, and probably won't be enough. Also, Lesson #4: Don't apply logic to anything that doesn't make sense. You will fail.

Fourth challenge: sickness. I finally get on the bus to Gulbarga, an overnight sleeper bus in which I'm on a lurching top bunk, cuddled up next to my huge backpack and lying on top of my laptop and precious hard copies of my survey, when I start to feel ill. I start wondering if I can keep the nausea at bay for the next 13 hours. I start panicking. Will I do it out of the window? In front of the driver? Into my Nalgene? Luckily, we got off at a rest stop. I asked my translator what to do, he smiled and said he would buy me a fresh lime soda and a banana, and voila! my stomach was normal again. Lesson #5: Don't panic. Someone kind may take care of you. Also, India is literally like a rollercoaster, dipping you down until you feel like you're going to crash headfirst into the pavement, then miraculously lifting you up unharmed!

I finished the survey. It wasn't the most quality thing I've ever done, but I survived. I almost, but didn't, kick anyone off the island. I formed an alliance with my translator. I spent long nights with the surveys, carefully going over their inaccuracies and trying to fix them. I carried around 150 hard copies of the survey like precious gems for over a week, on and off buses and trains and autorickshaws. I fought for those surveys and I won! Please applaud now.

Update: photos

There's now a link in the sidebar to my Flickr account, which anyone should be able to view my photos on by creating a free username/password for.

I'm kind of embarrassed that it's been so long since I've updated the blog. I really do want to make it a more common thing though. Updates are coming, I promise...I'm just trying to construct something from my myriad journal entries that will entertain all of my friends, old colleagues, neighbors, and friends' parents at the same time!