Some photos

Chanana (our housekeeper) in the kitchen with Amnon

Jesse chillin' in his room

Amnon after preparing our first Iraqi-style brunch for guests

Jordan and me

Jesse at the animal kennel where we (prematurely) bought puppy toys and pet food

Jordan, at the kennel

With some "natives" at the Kingdom of Dreams site in Gurgaon

A local grocery in our neighborhood...note how densely packed!

Scammed, delayed, missing - - Why??

We seem to be targets for poor “customer service.” This might be typical, but we only have our own experiences to impart. We ordered “custom made furniture” from one of the markets. We were *supposed* to have a dining room table, chairs, and some other pieces within a couple of weeks. The carpenter came to our apartment 3 weeks later - - he had had dengue fever, his grandmother had died, his daughter had a baby, and he hadn’t prepared any of the furniture. Our driver of the first couple of months left for his hometown in Himachal Pradesh for a week, and then never returned. (He spoke to us after 2 weeks saying that his wife was ill. No word from him after that.) Any number of workers and craftsman make appointments to come to our apartment to fix something or other and then never show. Adam has arranged multiple meetings with breeders about getting a new puppy. They make promises and don’t return calls, or they return calls and say that the puppy they had planned to bring has some genetic disease and isn’t suitable.

We muse about what might be going on. With respect to the puppies, Adam was concerned that Amnon had done too good a job negotiating down the prices, and that the breeders were dis-incented to work with us. (But why agree to a price, and then become scarce?) Another theory, not unrelated: They have a puppy for us, but then get a higher offer from someone else, and so need a fast excuse to back out at the last moment. (2 puppies we were about to get “fell ill” and were therefore not delivered.) With respect to the missing driver (and our missing first housekeeper), Amnon opined that I was at fault for making them feel too important to us and too much like family; they then conclude that they can “go missing” for a month or so and we will be eagerly awaiting them whenever they return. We have heard that erratic appearances for drivers, housekeepers, workmen are not uncommon. But that also begs the question - - isn’t this a community eager for employment? Why treat these business opportunities so cavalierly?  

FRRO Registration

I have earlier described the onerous process of getting visas for India. Once you arrive in India with the visas that we have (work, and dependent visas), you have 2 weeks to register at the FRRO bureau. (Foreign Regional Registration Office). You need a number of documents for this registration process, such as your passports, and the lease to your apartment on special “stamp paper.” (Official documents in India need to be printed on this special paper with an image of an Indian 100 rupee note at the header.) We couldn’t find our lease on stamp paper, if we ever had one, and Jesse needs to register in the FRRO Bureau. I did have a lease on standard paper, signed by the landlady and me. No no no - - the FRRO bureau requires only a lease on stamp paper. So we requested that another copy of the lease be drawn up; I scanned it, sent it to our landlady in Europe, she signed it, scanned the signed versions, sent it back to me, etc….I also notified our overseas assignment liaison that I would prefer to wait for another 4 weeks before Jesse goes to the FFRO Bureau to register, since he and Jordan had signed up to volunteer to teach English to kids in slum schools. No no no, I was told by our overseas assignment liaison; they cannot volunteer unless they have a *work* visa. I said that they would be volunteering for only 3-4 weeks; but ok, we can convert the visas if that would be required. How should we proceed? They said that the boys would have to fly back to the US to apply for work visas. Clearly an absurd suggestion for 4 weeks of volunteering in a slum school.

(Here is an image of the lease on "stamp paper" - -)

I shared my frustration with a few colleagues and other associates in India. They mused about how bureaucratic these visa-provisioning entities can be, in any country. They shared stories about how they had wanted to go to the US for a conference, and they were denied visas on some technicality. But I see a few glaring differences. First, many many people are eager to immigrate to the US, and so the visa provisioning authorities are cautious if they think that the person requesting entry is in fact interested in remaining in the US illegally. As a result, they might end up ”over-filtering” and not allowing people in with legitimate interests in doing something in the US. But does India suffer that same problem, with millions of outsiders trying to enter India illegally and remain here? Also, people coming to the US to attend a conference are generally doing this for their own betterment. In our case, we have kids that have put their own life plans on hold to come to India, and to do something good for the country. Seems to me there should be a streamlining process for people that opt to leave the “good life” in America to volunteer in the developing world….rather than additional bureaucratic obstacles.

Workers with narrow job descriptions

We are struck by how many people are employed to do narrow and limited tasks, tasks that could be aggregated and handled by fewer people. When you walk into a store, there can be a guard at the door, another person opening the door for you, and another person greeting you. It is a good thing to create more employment opportunities for more people. But there seems to be “real” work that could be done, leveraging the same number of people or even more. The same store with multiple people opening doors and greeting you might also have broken front steps and animal waste, right outside. It seems that some of the people employed unnecessarily inside the store can do more for the aesthetics outside the store. Someone at work commented that Indians place a high value on keeping the insides of their home scrupulously clean, but there is less concern about what is outside. I see that when I go on walks as well. Our relatively affluent neighborhood has debris strewn everywhere. Often it appears that people dump their household trash in neighborhood parks. And there is always a lot of the day-to-day debris too, such as bags from snack food. Jordan has commented that packaged goods (with all of their associated waste) arrived in India before the country had developed a well-planned sanitation system. I have asked people here why they don’t have trash bins in public places (which could at least eliminate the snack bag wrappers in the park). I was told that they have tried making trash bins available, but people end up stealing the trash bins.

(photos below of the park right outside our apartment; and a photo that shows some of the trash around the periphery)

Ecology in India

I have never been a stellar conservationist; I confess to not doing my part to preserve the planet’s resources. I use and probably waste lots of “stuff.” I note that in India I have become much better at preserving, re-suing, and not wasting. But a lot of this new-found sensitivity comes from my fear that once I use up item x,y, or z, I have no idea how to replace it; of if I do have an idea, I will need to travel to some distant place to do so. As I have mentioned, we don’t have Target, Staples, Costco – these big box stores where you can replenish everything. Jordan was toying with a small retractable tape measure that I brought with me….I requested that he not fool with it lest he break it, and I don’t have a clue where to buy such a thing. I still have a lot of supermarket plastic bags from NY here that I used for packing….I use them judiciously since many stores don’t provide plastic bags when you shop. My showers are brief and water-conserving; lest the hot water tank gets depleted. (There is a hot water tank associated with each of our four bathrooms; they guarantee short showers unless you don't mind cool water.)

India policy appears in general to be much more ecology-savvy than we are in the US. Public transportation runs on “compressed natural gas.” I see schools with signs outside saying that they are PVC-bag-free zones. I tried to get a bottle of water at Adam’s school; they said they don’t sell plastic bottles and that they are a plastic-bottle-free-zone. This was interesting during the really hot weeks in summer, when I wanted to grab some bottled water from the school to take on the road as I left the school on my way to work. It was over 100 degrees, and you cannot drink water here that isn’t filtered, and so if you don’t have a bottle with while you are commuting, you are sort of stuck. The ecological sensitivity is lovely, and I guess with the size of the population in India, failure to respect the environment can have awful consequences. But it also seems like it might be a bit early for some of these dramatic moves. Amnon said it was like declaring the top of an erupting volcano as a “no smoking zone.”  The pollution issue here is dire with unclean air and an unclean and undrinkable water supply. So it might still be premature to ban plastic bottles of filtered water. But I suppose you have to start somewhere...

We are accustomed at home to separating our waste products – paper, plastic, glass, and general waste. There is no such separation of household waste in India, at least not in our community. At work, there are separate trash bins for “wet waste” and “dry waste.” I don’t quite know how to interpret that…if a napkin has some moisture around the edge, is it “wet waste” or “dry waste”? Is “wet waste” supposed to be liquids that you are discarding?  One of my colleagues has advised me not to fret too much. He used to be concerned as well, but then noticed that the maintenance people that remove the garbage ultimately throw it all into a single bin. On the other hand, I see people on the roads cycling with big bales of paper, or plastic waste. So it looks like poor people are sorting through disposed trash, and identifying components that they can re-sell. It appears that India does have disposal separation, ultimately. In the US, we do it on the front end, as we sort our disposable products. In India, the sorting occurs on the back end, as people filter out the disposables that have already been discarded and extract items that have resale value.

Employing people with disabilities

I have worked for years and years in the area of accessibility; it has remained an area of focus and passion for me even when I have been formally assigned to different areas at IBM.  I am familiar with all of the arguments about why accessibility makes good business sense. We have moved beyond humanitarian arguments that suggest “it’s the right thing to do,” and we have pointed out that it is in fact important for businesses to be accessible and therefore attract talented employees that happen to have a disability. We point out that there is a talent war, and that we don’t know where the next “big ideas” will come from; we don’t want to block out large portions of potential talent and genius. We point out that we have an aging workforce, and that we need to have an accessible environment so that aging workers that have incipient “disabilities” (reduced hearing, vision, mobility) can still work productively. We point out the expense for the rest of society, if large sectors of the population are on public welfare.

A country like India turns all of these arguments upside down. It is a young country - -this from Wikipedia:

In India, more than 50% of its population is below the age of 25 and more than 65% hovers below the age of 35….It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan

So discussions about accommodating an aging workforce here clearly don’t resonate. Also, arguments about “it’s a talent war for people” don’t resonate as well as they do in the US; the population is huge, as is the population of unemployed individuals. I don’t know if the “public welfare” issues resonate either; I don’t know how much (or whether)  the government (and therefore the taxpayers) are supporting individuals that don’t work because of disability. Since we do pay social security/welfare to individuals in the US, the argument can be brought back to taxpayers….it is in their self interest to keep as many people employed and employable as possible.

So maybe, in India, the argument needs to come back to humane concerns, and “it’s the right thing to do.” But then “accessibility” needs to stand in line with a long list of social ills in India - - illiteracy, poverty, homelessness….

Perspective on population density

The press of people in India can be intense. You see it on the roads, and on the streets. Some of this might be an artifact of Delhi….people leave their villages (where poverty is even more extreme) to become laborers of some sort in Delhi, perceived as an area with more opportunity.

Some perspective on population density here…India has roughly 4 times the population of the US, and 1/3 of the land size.

India: 3,287,263 sq km           Population India: 1,139,964,932

US: 9,826,675 sq km              Population US:  310,445,000

People with disabilities

Jesse commented that he hasn’t seen anyone here with Down’s Syndrome. This launched a deeper discussion, about the fact that kids with Down’s Syndrome weren’t generally in the community when I was growing up, either. Society needs more sophistication, and money, in order to empower kids with disabilities and create an infrastructure that mainstreams them whenever possible. What happens to kids with disabilities in the many many slums, where everyone in the family is scraping to make a living? Who is there to provide special services to kids that require them? And so what happens to these kids, after all? Where are they?

Visit to village in Haryana

Click here to view these pictures larger

Household Help - reprise

We hired a new maid a few weeks ago (Chanana) – and she has been terrific. She is a wonderful and diverse cook, preparing multiple types of cuisine (Indian, Chinese, Italian). Her husband will be our driver, as soon as we get a car. (Amnon is looking at used Toyata Innovas; one of the very few vans that are sold here.) (In the interim, we are still getting around with taxis.)

Chanana works 6 days of week, which is the norm. We had some friends over for brunch last week, and we asked Chanana if she could come over for a few hours on Sunday, as overtime. She readily agreed. When I mentioned this to colleagues on Monday, they commented in return that their household help works on Sundays, too. It’s pretty amazing to me; the “bottom of the pyramid” workers not only earn a pittance; they have what most of us would consider unacceptable working conditions.

So many hours of household work are now completely removed from us. I feel like I should be swimming in free time, but somehow I am not. It occurs to me that India relieves us of daily household labor on the one hand, but adds all of this extra time to other activities. Shopping, for example, is a much more time-consuming activity; I have not seen any 24 hour supermarkets where you can swoop in and do your shopping on the way home from work. All of this is exacerbated by not having a couple of cars available to us.  And so the chores and errands that do remain for us seem to take a lot longer.

A new multinationaal Basson puppy on the horizon

We have been talking about whether we are ready to get a new puppy….acknowledging that our beloved Bibi is irreplaceable…Adam has been discussing the value of getting a puppy within the next couple of years, so that he can do the early puppy training before going off to college. We discussed getting a puppy when we get back to the US. Then we discussed getting a puppy this year, in India, which would give the boys more time with it. Then the discussions turned to what kind of puppy. Adam did deep research as to what “fits” our family style….and what emerged as the “best fit” was a white shepherd. (Is this what fits us? Is it that Bibi molded us, so that white shepherds have the most appeal? In any case…we have promised one another that we will not expect puppy #2 to be a “clone.”)  Next challenge….white shepherds aren’t bred in India. So Adam has researched breeders that import them to India. So far, we have had a couple of these “breeder reps” make promises, and then disappoint us - - not returning calls, etc. As of last promise, we are supposed to get the puppy this week. This one is a “quasi rescue” – someone in Bangalore who needs to return to Canada and can’t take his 14 week old white shepherd. So this feels a little less decadent…we are getting the breed that we want, but also giving a home to a doggie that needs one…

Tikun Olam – volunteering

Tomorrow Jesse and Jordan will begin one of their volunteer initiatives, teaching English to underprivileged children. It looks like a promising program, and it starts with a spate of tours around New Delhi. Should be interesting. One of my Indian colleagues commented that the Indian population doesn’t seem to be as immersed in volunteer initiatives as the foreigners are, and this set me wondering. It could be that the Indian middle class population is so inured to the poverty that they see around them that it seems “normal” rather than jarring; it’s just the way things are and have always been. Or perhaps life is more of a struggle even for the Indian middle class, and so they don’t have enough “spare cycles” of cash, or time, to get more involved. (I doubt this latter option even as I write it….time seems to be a gift that you get more of here, with all of the low cost options available to every middle class Indian to hire household staff and handle many of the mundane and time-consuming aspects of living.)

Wallet stolen

Alas, foreigners are supposed to be prepared for wallet snatchings in many countries, and India is pretty high on the list. I have never developed street-savvy pocketbook-holding strategies, even though I’m a NYC kid…and I have been fortunate never to have suffered penalties for my lax and trusting ways… But last weekend, Jordan had stomach cramps, and we took another trip to Fortis hospital. (Jordan is feeling much better now. He commented that if we make another trip to Fortis in the near term, they will have to put us on the payroll….) We went to a few departments (reception, radiology, etc.) I had my bag with me except for a few seconds when I got Jordan some water and left my bag on a chair outside. Really, just a few seconds. But when I went to the front desk to “check out” and make payments, my wallet wasn’t in my bag. I don’t have a clue who or how it happened. And I definitely had my wallet when I entered the hospital, as I had just paid the taxi driver. And as we all know, the issue with lost wallets is not usually the money, but the “stuff” - - my driver’s license, social security card (why on earth was I carrying THAT around, anyway?) credit cards, credit cards, credit cards…

Amnon wanted to call the police and file a police report, and New Delhi police were, once again, wonderful. They came to the hospital within minutes after we called, spoke to security, and then brought us to the police station to file a formal report.  They were professional and conscientious and once again a pleasure to deal with. The constable pre-paid the auto rickshaw that then drove us home. Really going above and beyond in their customer service. They just happen to offer a “service” that you hope you won’t need again anytime soon…