Hello From Hindustan: Pune, Bombay's Great Rains and The Deadhead's Love of a random Ohio Governor

Arvind, Gaurav, Naval and me after enjoying some milkshakes

A Visit to Pune

Before I discuss anything else, I must thank Anand Gupta and his family for being fantastic hosts during my visit to Pune. In the midst of preparing for an engagement party (Anand’s older sister got engaged last week) and hosting a number of out of town guests, they made sure I was well fed and rested, tried teaching me Hindi and provided excellent advice for my future travels in India.

Spending a few days with an Indian family reinforced my belief that underneath the surface differences between cultures such as language, dress and geography humans have the same fundamental tendencies. Anand’s mother and aunts spoke to me in Hindi hoping I would decipher the meaning of the sentence, the same way my grandfather hopes I will understand his requests in Yiddish. His grandfather sat quietly among his chattering children and grandchildren, with the same calm smile and watchful eye my grandmother has during large family gatherings. Like any good family gathering, the engagement party festivities went late into the night. Me, Anand, his cousin and uncles finally plopped down on mattresses in his living room at about 1:00 a.m.

After the party, Anand, his sister and his cousins did the ceremonies of Raksha Bandhan, because Anand was in the United States when the festival happened.

Anand's grandfather, Anand and his aunt before the party

Anand's sister wraps a bracelet around his arm as part of marking the Raksha Bandhan Festival

Another highlight of the trip was meeting up Arvind, Gaurav and Naval, three friends who I met when I came here in December and the first picture of the post. Watch out for all of them. They are all impressive guys who will make an impact in their respective fields of linguistics (Arvind), medicine and nonprofits (Naval) and business and politics (Gaurav).

Bombay's Great Rains

A public bus floats in a flooded street as walkers wade across the road

I was warned of Bombay’s great rains. Minutes after I landed in Bombay, my advisor’s husband told me that during monsoon season the rains can be so heavy that people have to wade through the streets in waist high water. I hoped that would never happen to me.

When I arrived at school this afternoon, it was raining steadily. By the time I left, it was pouring. I planned to wait out the storm and hitch a ride with a friend from the hostel. But another friend convinced me to walk home with him.

Within two minutes, our feet were drenched in ankle deep puddles. Cars sprayed water as they drove past our school. Two blocks away from our school, the entrance to a train station was submerged under water. The street leading to my school, usually ruled by flower hawkers, fruit sellers, clothing vendors, and howling cars and motorcycles, was now the domain of walkers fleeing from the rain. The journey had a romantic charm. The pavement of the street, under a constant assault from tires and feet, could renew itself in the warm rain.

Soldiering through the flooded streets

The second half of the journey was Mumbai at its best-a symphony of chaos. When we hit the halfway mark, we entered a stretch where water was waist high. As scores of commuters trudged through the brown water, the scent of trash and storm water wafted through the air. As we waded down the sidewalks, we passed waterlogged city buses and taxis and people crossing the water filled streets to escape to areas with lower water levels. Eventually I crossed the street onto a bridge closed to traffic. On one side, the bridge was filled with walkers, while the other was clogged with buses, trucks and cars headed toward South Bombay. Drivers knew they were going nowhere and stood outside their cars underneath umbrellas, enjoying a moment of calm and relative stillness in city marked by constant struggle and noise.

Nice and wet after a walk through the flooded streets

My shoes aren't usually this dark.

I never understood Indians fascination with the monsoon rains until today. For me, the monsoon cut my summer short and was the source of too many grey days in an already disorienting and challenging environment. But as I walked through the water, climbed over street barriers and cleaned off in the shower, I began to understand the love of the rain. It provides a sense of relief and calm, a reason to slow down, relief for crops and a moment to be thankful for having a room, a warm meal and a home to go back to every night.

James A. Rhode’s Biggest Fan

If you were to ask an average Ohioan who James A. Rhodes was, most would probably have no idea that he served four terms as a governor. The only reason I know who he was, is because LeBron James played most of his high school games at the University of Akron’s James A. Rhodes Arena and I drive on the James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway on my way to Ohio University.

But to my international business professor, The Deadhead, Rhodes is a rock-star. A group presented a case study about Honda’s operations in North America, specifically their manufacturing plants in Ohio. Rhodes engineered the deal during the 1970s.

“James A. Rhodes is the smartest cookie in the world,” he said during class today. “He went to Japan in a private jet and knocked on every businessman’s door asking if they wanted to come to Ohio. He took a cactus-infested state and said it has to be turned into a green area. He made an area with nothing and that was part of the rust belt into something.”

Ok, he may have embellished a bit here. Cacti are not native to Ohio and Honda’s manufacturing plants have not made the state an economic heavyweight. But The Deadhead’s praise of Rhodes definitely drove home the point to the class that American states, just like states in India, are willing to lure companies to their state with generous subsidies.

The Deadhead ended our final lecture with some final nuggets of advice, analysis and predictions about the future of the country.

He told students who are thinking of settling in Bombay and in the state of Maharashtra to pack up now before they get settled because of the ineffective state government.

“My advices if you want to settle here- run away.”

India may be a country on the rise, but he predicted a rough future ahead for the women in my class.

“Girls will always be at a disadvantage. If a guy comes back at 4 in the morning, his parents will ask questions. His father might even be proud of him. But if a girl comes back that late people will say things.”

He concluded by returning to a theme he addressed in one of our first lectures, Indian culture’s strong family bonds and children’s lifelong attachment to their parents.

“We aren’t independent. We stick with our parents all our lives and we’re proud of it. My father didn’t tell me to f*** off at 18. He paid for my college, but I had to pay for MBA. We might talk about how progressive we are but if you go home and say I got a job and I’m moving in with my live in girlfriend....” He stopped talking and mimicked getting slapped.

The Deadhead’s lectures were some of my favorite classes. To me they were more of anthropology class, Anthropology 200-Introduction to Indian Culture, than a business class. My mind trailed off when he got into the minutiae of negotiating an export deal. I was captivated though when he launched into a sermon about his encounters with the Russian mob or how he felt uncomfortable rearing his children in Germany. It provided one of the most direct windows into the thought process and cultural background of Indians that I have gotten here.

Random pictures