Punished by Rewards

Today I took another round at the city of Bangalore. The goal this time was to see more of MG Road/Brigade road and to actually see where these IT campuses are.  Having been here for almost a month now, I thought it would be a shame if I didn’t at least see them once.

The day started off at 9am and quickly hit a snag.  In my rush out the door, I completely forgot to grab the battery to my camera from the charger.  Smart enough to charge it but forgetful enough to leave it.  Strike one.

On the way to Electronic City I only realized this as we approach what initially looked like an overpass but was quickly informed that it was a dedicated highway. Apparently, Infosys and a bunch of the other companies (although apparently mostly Infosys) has built the road and is paying for 60% of the construction costs (no word on the maintenance cost but I figure they’re probably on the hook for that too).  It’s this huge dedicated highway in the sky.  No real onramps since it only seems to have two entry points at either end.  I suppose that is to completely discourage people that are NOT going to the Electronic City (the name of the large IT campus out here) to use it.

It’s like the gardner in Toronto except it instead of being used by everyone, it’s used only for people that want to go to the Skydome.  Here’s a picture of a section being built.

A piece of an ENORMOUS highway being built by Infosys for the Electronic City campus

As we toured the Electronic city, I finally got to see what Mr Friedman saw when he wrote about how the world was flat.  I finally saw the kingdom.  And, to be honest, it was very like I expected it would be.  Busy with new construction, that’s for sure.  Everywhere you looked there were buildings going up.  Of course, sitting directly in front of those buildings, just on the outside of the campus were slums that, I’m sure, they would love to demolish and shove under the carpet.  Pesky poverty ruining a good news story.  Shame on you.

I’m not entirely sure what I felt going through it.  It certainly wasn’t envy although it is a shame you don’t feel that kind of excitement in Canada.  It wasn’t awe since the place wasn’t that impressive.  It wasn’t sadness at the poverty that surrounded me while moving along the roads.  I think it was a sense of disconnected isolationism.  Everything about the place spoke about trying to pretend like you weren’t in India.  The highway designed to move you directly to the city without having to bother using the main roads; the busses that only drop off Electronic City employees.  The fenses that enclose each building and then ultimately the outer shell of a fense that wrap them all up in this blanket of security.  It was isolationism.  This place is designed to forget India, not to embrace it.  It’s build despite India, not because of it.  And it’s built only by those that could in order to exclude those that couldn’t.

Of course, I would do the same thing if faced with the surroundings that are prevalent in Bangalore.

But it got me thinking more and more about how the world has evolved over the last 25 years (note that I’m only 31 here so this is really stretching it from a credibility point of view).  Over that time, real incomes in Canada – on average – have fallen behind inflation.  Which means they have really fallen behind since the official numbers are hurendously understated to cover up the truth.  And if all that wealth we were so called creating over the past 25 years was an illusion of great proportions (note that I don’t think all of it was but perhaps a good share of it), then this Electronic City might be the prime jewel in a false crown worn by Lady Liberty back home in the USA.  It indeed the US has only been able to fuel growth through borrowing and companies like Infosys have grown by providing for the needs of such growth, then Electronic city is in for a real shock.  While I could beleive the Chinese when they say that their economy may soon grow to support it’s own goods production levels, I don’t see India needing all that much software.  I just don’t see it.

But i’ve been wrong before.

After Electronic city, we returned to the apartment to pick up the battery and headed off to another remote campus.  This one was nearly as large or well developed.  Nor did it have its own dedicated highway.  In fact, you couldn’t go inside the gates so I was left with a shot of the outside.

A picture of the outside of the other major IT campus

We headed back along the roads of Bangalore which were much busier that last time we did such a tour.  I wanted to see the fabled MG road – home of western shopping and elite stores.  So we pulled up for 45 minutes for a quick tour.

The shops on MG Road and Brigade road

Walking around with my camera, white skin reflecting in the Indian sun, I was to the local street vendors like a fat, injured water-buffalo struggling through mud – in short, I was an easy target.  But while that description was apt on my last trip out, this time, I was smarter.  I refused all attacks with wave after wave of my hand.  “Want a snake?”  (rubber one, not real).  No thank you. “Chess?”.  Nope.  “Trip around town?  Only 100Rs”.  Already have a driver.  Of course, the usual polite refusal is never enough.  You need to really drive the point.  Refuse sternly and after a couple of rejections, ignore them.  This gets tiring and so I quickly opted for the tactic my former university roommate suggested; answering in French.  Wrapping myself in a thick Teflon coat of French and feigned ignorance, I found that the vendor attacks glanced off my thick hide much easier.  With this tactic employed, I was able to defend against two, sometimes three of them at once.  While standing on the corner, one of them pressed me tough.

“Where are you from?”  he asked.

“Quoi?”  I replied.

“Where are you from?”

“‘From?’  Je viens du Canada?”

“Do you have any Candian coins?”

“Pardon”

“Coins?  Do you have any coins?”

“Je ne vous comprenez pas messier.”

“You don’t have any coins?  You don’t understand anything.”

Victory at last.  It worked like a charm.  All the credit is due to Alexis for this approach.  It often saved me frustration since a single drop of english blood often caused an economic predation to erupt.  And I wasn’t having any of that today.  My french teachers would all be proud that I remembered enough to dumbfound and defend against Indian street vendors.  Ontario education system, One.  Indian street vendors, zero.

The actual MG road was a big disappointment in many ways.  Walking around it wasn’t easy since overall, there really wasn’t far to walk.  The sun was hot and the ground dusty and  after 45 minutes, I was more than ready to go.

For lunch, I (although invited, Farooq denied repeatedly to join me) went to Sunny’s restaurant.  A generally upscale restaurant that features euro food and, more importantly, euro beer.  I had a Kingfisher before indulging in an Orval.  Had a chicken sandwich and, for my birthday cake, a slice of chocolate mouse cake.  The bartender was kind and didn’t seem offended when I asked him how long he had been in the country.  I completely forgot about the Tibetan region in the North East.  Obviously not South Indian, I figured he was a rare bread of Chinese of Thai import.  Nope.  He was from the North East.

So I sat there and ate my food and talked to the bartender for a bit. It was great to watch him perform his craft.  He was quite good and since I had not seen a bar in a while, nice to enjoy the atmosphere.  Also, and this is silly,but I noticed it anyway, it was great to see someone that cared about service and appearances.  All over India, appearances have been a let down.  Poverty has that effect but you can only see people dumping their trash on the ground and then setting it ablaze so often before some kind of decency inside you really begins to die.  That, and you remember just exactly why air pollution is a dangerous thing.

So watching the bartenders take pride in their work – cleaning away glasses, putting the garnish on just right, testing each bottle of water to make sure it was cold and refusing to serve the warm ones.  It was nice to see.  This is such Western coloured glasses that I’m seeing through of course and it’s all meaningless unless they are being paid for it.  But still, it was nice to see.  In contrast, at the start of the day, Farooq and I had had some Coconut juice from a street vendor.  He tried to push the unripe one off on me only to have Farooq correct him and chose another one.  Then, after we were done drinking the cup or so of juice, he took the straw out, cut it in half to offer the internal slime for eating (which I did).  At the end of it all, the whole thing was chucked over the shoulder.  Looking behind him, it was obvious we were not the first customers of the day.  It was like some kind of Coca Cola convention had just walked past and everyone brought their own tasting straw.  I’m sure he didn’t care about the growing plastic and coconut shell pile growing behind him.  Our 20Rs were more of the concern.  The comparison is certainly unfair but I make it anyway.  Pollution doesn’t cost a thing and India seems to have little concern for their common area.

On the way back from the day, i was speaking to Farooq and he indicated that he was getting married in August.  It was ‘arranged’ and he was to marry his cousin.  Apparently this is quite common and he told me that about 90-95% of marriages were likely arranged.  “Were you in an arranged marriage or a ‘love’ marriage?”.  I had never heard of such a thing as ‘Love marriage’ and wondered if they had ever contemplated allowing the gay’s to have ‘love marriages’.  Interesting.

The last point of the trip worth mentioning was that I noticed men more often than I would have expected with their arms around each other, arms locked one in the other or otherwise holding hands.  Not a sexual practice (their not all gay) but one I noticed a lot today.  Interesting.