Merry Christmas, or Happy Enlightenment

This morning (Christmas Eve, no less), I headed off from my place in Bokaro to visit Bodhgaya. Bodhgaya is, as far as symbolism goes, about as far away from christianity and Christmas as you get. It is the place where Buddha found enlightenment under a Bodhi Tree, the decendant of which is still standing.

My first impressions, entering into this place from the main road from Gaya (the non-holy sister city), is that of a buddhist Disney Land… I felt like an Alice, who, once entering from the main road and passing that holy bodhi-tree had fallen down into the rabbit hole and find myself, no longer in India, but in a saffron-coloured Wonderland.

I guess I’ll happily camp down here for a few days, read my book and snack on Tibetan food in the Tibetan Om Cafe. My Laxmi hotel (named after the Hindu goddess of wealth, just to make the religious references a bit mixed up…) has a room with a wonderful view that I negotiated after being shown a horrible little hole.

So, merry christmas to all of you in red & white and happy search for enlightenment to all of you in saffron!

Photo by Nir Nussbaum

On the road again

After about a week spent in Delhi, I'm heading out to the our field site in Bokaro again. Somehow it almost feels more home than Delhi (probably because I spent about three times as much time there than in Delhi so far).

I've written about it before, but it can easily be said again – the Rajdhani express is a great train! Not only are there nice air conditioned seats, but there's also a meal service, free newspapers in the morning and electricity plugs!

Traveling in such conditions makes the 14 hour commute to work quite acceptable.

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Daily fika – Indian style

Even in India one can find a daily work fika*.

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On power cuts

Having a computer operated by battery is not just a convenience here – it is a necessity. With power cuts about every 3-4 hours or so, I have got used to keep my laptop plugged in constantly, so that it has enough juice to last me through the next power cut. And in the nights, it won’t be nightmares waking you up, but rather the fans turning off leaving you sweating intensely.

At first I got quite excited by the power cuts (in the way that you’d get in say, Sweden ;)), but I realized most people here just simply didn’t noticed and just got on with their business as if nothing happened, so I started to hide my amusement. I guess in a while, I won’t need to hide it any more as I’ll be as accustomed as the natives to them.

A pretty ordinary Indian city

Bokaro is a pretty ordinary place, with the main exception being it’s large, nay huge(!), steel plant around which the city was built. Most of the city seems to be constructed in the 60s and 70s in parallel with the steel plant. It’s located in the province of Jharkhand, a province recently forcibly separated from northern Bihar. It proved to be a boon for Jharkhand which in the process also got rid of a corrupt chief minister and is now enjoying a much needed period of safety, order and improved business climate. In the region there is still a low-level Naxalite (maoist) insurgency, however I’m told that beyond the odd kidnapping and skirmishes in the eastern forests, things are generally safe.

In the city people seem to be living in either 60s or 70s four-storey apartment blocks, in smaller villas/2 floor apartment houses, or in various degrees of more informal accommodations (ranging from shack by the road to mud-bricked buildings). There’s a cinema (which I’ve as of yet not had the chance to check out), a fun fair (open 13:30-20:30 in case you fancy a visit), several “exercise grounds” and a forlorn, but still quite beautiful city park – apparently (according to one of my local colleagues) the place for couples to meet as it lies just in between the boy’s and girl’s colleges – a fact I could quite easily verify given the amount of youngish couples in the lakeside restaurant (another forlorn place – with red curtains kept closed at all times).

Unless you’re a big fan of 60s architecture or steel plants, it’s probably not the place to visit, but for the complete “travelogue” listing – there’s a daily train from Delhi (Rajdhani express) taking approximately 14 hours and a train from Kolkata (Shatabdi express) taking (5 hours). I believe there’s at least one local hotel and more than a couple “hostels” (girls or boys).

PS. A small side-note for the Swedes reading this, some of the pictures is quite reminiscent of that old Skatteverket advertisement “This is how it’ll be in Sweden if you don’t pay tax”… Well, most people don’t pay tax here so maybe Skatteverket is right…

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Indian’s sure now how to make train travel comfortable

The menu on the Rajdhani and Shatabdi express certainly won’t leave you getting off the train hungry. All included in the fare, which on the 5 hour trip from Bokaro to Kolkata was around 500 Rs.

Indian timezone

In India we go by Indian Standard Time, which means GMT+5.5.

"GMT+5.5?!" You might be thinking. Yes, India, unlike most other places on earth, operates on a timezone that is not an even number of hours away from GMT. And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to quirkiness of India and time.

For the past week or so one of the most noticeable things have been the difference in the perception, and flow of time. First of all, most people that I'm working with here basically works all the time. They start early in the morning and end late at night. Saturdays? Absolutely. Sundays? Yes, often. However, the work is of a very different sort than I'm used to, it's a of a very different intensity. Maybe it's due to the heat and the monsoon, maybe it's just a cultural difference or maybe it's just the project we're working on,, but life and work here feels somehow slow at times. There are frequent breaks, waiting times, naps, discussions, long lunches punctuating the day so that the effective working time probably isn't more than your average 8 hour work day (if even that some days!).

Now, don't get me wrong, I think this might even be a better way of working than the nap-free, jam-packed work weeks that I'm used to. However, it certainly does take some getting used to.

An insight into the Indian psyche

An early-morning sight-seeing trip to cooling pond #1 of Bokaro steel plant gave me a direct channel into a part of the Indian psyche. The cooling pond is a raised, artificial pond constructed to provide clean, cooling water for the steel plant. It is surrounded by a large raised wall and wetlands, as well as green areas. The pond is huge, somewhere on the scale of 22 km around, and has a number of planted fish living inside it (which you can fish at a fee per hook).

As we traveled along the sides of the pond, we soon found ourselves surrounded by no-one, an event that so far been quite uncommon in my (limited, yes) Indian experience. We took the motorcycle all the way out to the edge of a small ridge jutting out into the lake. As we reached the end and got off the motorcycle to take some pictures, one of my colleagues proclaims "Not much people come here often, it's very, very lonely here" in a voice indicating this being a place that gave him the shudders (like an abandoned house or such).

His short statement left me thinking, "This would be exactly the place your average Swede would describe peaceful, beautiful, serene and, yes, even lonely". However, in the case of the average Swede standing there, lonely would indicate something positive, it would indicate a place where you could be left in peace with your thoughts. For my Indian friend there was nothing positive about his usage of the word lonel, rather he was clearly uncomfortable about not being surrounded by throngs of people.

When I explained that in Sweden, most places were like this (indeed, Sweden has a third as many inhabitants as small Jharkhand province and a tenth as many as neighboring Bihar), he shrugged and said Sweden must be a very lonely and sad place.

In a country as crowded in India, his attitude is quite appropriate, and has undoubtedly developed through living life surrounded by a massive amount of people at all times. Thinking of it, it seems quite obvious, but it reminds me of how very subtle the differences in how we perceive the world can be and how markedly they are shaped by our surroundings.

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Arrival in India + Bokaro Steel City

So, just about a week ago I arrived in India. Rather than being exposed to the rumoured poor Indian AIESEC reception service, I had an amazing one. I got picked up at the airport by one of the AIESECers in Delhi. She took me to one of the intern flats for the interns staying a shorter time and sure, that wasn't exactly an amazing place to be – but rather than react with disgust as I noted some of the other interns had, I felt that it was somehow within my frame of expectations.

Day after arriving I took a 3 hour detour to the office (via north Delhi, when my office was in south) and finally got to meet my manager for the next 6 months – Parag Gupta. A really down-to-earth,interesting guy. I am sure I'll pick up quite a lot of things from him. We spent some time looking through our new office (just rented that same day – this is really a start-up for sure) after which he introduced me to the close-by oasis: Select City Mall, an almost crucial place in case the crowded, hot and hectic Delhi life gets to you.

The very next day we headed out to Bokaro Steel City where our first project is to be located. After a 14 hour train ride, I find myself, within 3 days of arriving in India, working with Parag and a local NGO to create the plans and starting to build a 1-tonne organic compost plant!

Exciting times.

Places I’ve been – New York

In 2010 in June I traveled to New York. It was a slightly unplanned trip that I took from Boston/Cape Code where I was staying and I had no real plan coming there, but New York showed it’s best face and gave me a good time. I met a Tibetan monk, two french girls and a great friend. I had some interesting discussions and some great walks around the city. The best part of it all was that it gave me an energy and a buzz.

Btw. not to be missed: The High Line park, beautiful place a summer afternoon!

Here’s my trip on Google Maps & the pictures I took:

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