Novels

Freedom at Midnight (would not have understood India without this book; excellent story of independence)
India Unbound — Gurcharan Das
Business Maharajas – Gita Piramal (outlines Indian businesspeople who overcame significant odds)
Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts (my husband’s favorite; apparantly being made into a movie)
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
White Mughals – William Dalrymple

Films

Monsoon Wedding – A must-see if only for the music and vibrant colors

Gandhi – Another must-see that is worth every one of it’s 180 minutes

Om Shanti Om – The lastest Bollywood hit; it’s on my list as well

Hyderabad Blues – Haven’t caught it but an authentic Bollywood classic

Websites Stolen from Lonely Plant or Found Elsewhere

www.makemytrip.com – The Orbitz of India; allows you to check the many airlines for the best deal

www.incredibleindia.org

www.mapsofindia.com

www.bestindiansites.com

I also wanted to create a number of new pages that provide some business insights into the companies my class visited while in India. Each of the students was expected to present topical information about the company to the class and then facilitate discussion with the executives.  I included the author of each overview along with the briefing in some of the newest pages of the blog.

My last day in India. Or should I say my last endless night. David and I have a horrifically timed 3:30 a.m. flight from Delhi and, with nowhere else to go, assumed we could just get to the airport early and hang out, nap, etc. So at 10 p.m. after touring Delhi’s monuments (a highlight being the Gandhi Memorial) and feasting on a final Chicken Tikka Masala, we hauled our travel-weary selves and even travel-wearier wardrobe to the airport only to be told we had to wait outside until midnight for the British Airways office to open.

Mind you it’s about 50 degrees and we have five bags of luggage, so were forced to fast talk our way past one last Indian official (note: spare rupees always help) only then to marinate in the fluorescent lighting of an overheated visitor’s lounge for 2 hours until we are actually allowed to approach the airport itself.

So I am trying to find some solace in eating the last of the M&Ms out of the 5 lbs of Trader Joe’s trail mix imported from home and drafting one of the last Daily Naan blog entries of my fateful trip. It’s a bittersweet time, really as I will very much miss this country despite my burning desire to sleep in my pillow top bed on Alvarado Street. A snapshot of my thoughts about leaving India: 

• What I won’t be missing: Bathrooms with flies and without toiler paper; being hawked by every single solitary person on the street—young, old, girl, boy, man, woman—and no one ever taking “no” for an answer; cab drivers never knowing where things are, seriously; everyone pretending not to have change; entire slum cities on the side of the room in Mumbai; fearing for my life every time I cross the street; honking horns—so much that I dream about them; Indian men mistaking the street for a urinal-slash-spittoon.
  
• What I will be missing: Cows; Chinese food on every Indian menu; Indian carbs-a-la-carte in the form of naan, roti, parantha, all of it; the intricate architecture and exotic history of the Munghal empire; masala chai tea; beers for $0.50; being a shopkeeper’s first sale of the day; taking photos of little Indian kids and seeing them smile; driving in auto-richshaws; talking cricket smack with every able-bodied Indian male in the universe;  having time to actually think and read; a rainbow’s richness in saris, turbans and spices; not having a cell phone (sorry Howard!).  

In all, it’s as hard to wrap up a trip like this as it is to say good-bye to good friends and family. I learned more than I ever expected—much about religious tensions, class differences and the fine balance between order and chaos—all contradictions that define India both on the surface and on the layer just beneath.  Writing this blog was actually a very cathartic way to digest what was happening as it happened, and while I never was able to write as much as I liked, I found myself thinking about what I wanted to capture in words for myself and for my close to 2,000 visitors back home (mom and Carol’s high click volume not withstanding) as I stood within the walls of a 15^th century harem, basked in the rays of a setting sun on the Goan coast, or beheld the sky-scraping minarets of the first mosque even built in India.

I fought the urge to self-edit, wanting to be fair to the feelings and experiences I had from a big picture perspective, even at the risk of causing a stir back on the home front. I’m proud of that effort despite the mighty maelstrom that has indeed reared its head back in the great First State and can only hope that what I felt, saw, and heard will help others back home understand even a little piece of a place like India. Taking a step back from that, I hope too the Daily Naan was a good reminder that the world of riches as we know it back home, surrounded by the creature comforts of fancy cars, brand name handbags and Bluetooth enabled consumer electronics is far more than what most people even dream of.

There is a whole world out there on the other side of the tourist-bus window. But going back home I think will be just as much of a shock as stepping off the plane in Bangalore. Already in London, where I am now, everything just seems so civil and so quiet. I don’t know how else to explain it, but the chaos that reigns even the New Delhi Airport is already a lifetime away. Am I prepared for the weekly structure of work, school and family obligations that come with my real life? It’s a different kind of chaos, isn’t it…. In India I was almost the eye of the storm around me, at home, I admit to creating the storm itself.

Still, 2008 will be a big year, a good year. Graduation is approaching after three very very long years, attempting to finally work on the house, old friends’ new babies, praying for our families’ health, perhaps the Lake Tahoe Century ride in June, and so many marriages—Francl, Ashley, Andrew Novak, McDonald, Nina, Idil — all so exciting! I am ready to go back home. As for India, I do not know if I will ever return but I hope to someday.

And as for The Daily Naan? Fear not, readers. It will reign somehow.

  

David and I always forget the names of the places we liked when we travel, so this is a cheat sheet I made while driving 6 hours to Delhi.   

Hotels

• Bangalore – Stayed in the Taj Residency; not bad. Cheap massage, plentiful pubs nearby, rock-star free breakfast. Vinod is the best room service boy in the history of hotels.
• Mumbai – David was lucky enough to camp out in the Taj President; great location in Colaba, beautiful pool, hip atmosphere. I unfortunately was stuck in the boonies at the Orchid Hotel near the domestic airport. The only benefit was Shiv Sagar fast food restaurant nearby. Not recommended.  
• North Goa/Baga Beach – Cavala Resort; fabulous Portuguese architectures, charming poolside huts; free breakfast at any time of the day and all for a cheap price. Do not try Alidia Resorts—that’s the crow place.
• Udaipur — Tiger Hotel. Very hip and stylish; one of the most boutique-like hotel I’ve seen since arrival. Rating: 5 Naans for location and views from the rooftop bar. Sadly, this is not the place we stayed, that was the New Jaheel Guest House. Nice owner, nothing else nice about it unless a view of the most polluted part of the lake excites you.
• Jaipur – Hotel Trident. What you’d expect from an American chain. Nice, much quieter, Likely no drum circles outside the window in the middle of the night.
• Agra – Taj View. Treated David like a king on his birthday with floral lei, cake, wine in the room and a bouquet of flowers from the staff. 90 minute massages for $40, great restaurant and a rather clairvoyant astrologist.
• Delhi – Metropolitan Hotel. Upmarket, super pricey, fab breakfast with sugar donuts until 1030, but at this point I’m not risking filthy showers, bugs and fluorescent lighting.  

Fun Things

• Mumbai
  • Shiv Sagar Absolutely amazing Indian veg fast food near domestic airport
  • Mahesh Lunch Home. Excellent seafood. For dinner.
  • Leopolds & Café Mondregards. The ex-pat/backpacker scene; good for the homesick and tikka belly sick. Sometimes you just want to order some garlic bread.
  • Tea at the Taj Gateway. For the hell of it.  
  • Karaoke Options (never went but these were from Swastik’s pal) Not Just Jazz By The Bay; Club Synergy; Banana Bar; Destiny/ What’s Your Poison
• Goa
  • Britto’s. Because Dave Francl loves it. Just about any beach shack for sunset beers and spring rolls. There are thousands.
  • San Francisco Café, Anjuna . Had to go just for the name. Great grilled cheese.
  • Anjuna Beach Market. Every Wednesday it is a shopper’s paradise. Literally everything under the sun for sale except the Kingfisher t-shirt I want!
  • Calangute in general is not great. Very overwhelming.
  • Breakfast on the terrace overlooking the sea at Taj Fort Aguda.  
• Udaipur
  • Tiger Hotel rooftop bar at sunset—they actually have a beer that is not Kingfisher! And free pappadam.
  • Had a bad meal at Lotus Café. Had a great pot of chai at the Edelweiss Café in the morning. 
  • The Natural View.  A three-tier rooftop bar and restaurant. Had a lovely lunch overlooking the city; glad it was a sunny day because they had no electricity when we were there. It happens.  
• Jaipur
  • Raj Mandir Theatre. In theory, super fun.
  • X?.  Pretty good veg restaurant near the theatre. Will fill in. No Kingfisher though.  
  • Mediterrano’s. My first pizza in India! It was thrilling! And they wash all vegetables in boiled water so we had bruscetta which was great. And beer in a teapot since they didn’t have a license.  
• Agra/Delhi
  • The Taj View had a great restaurant; very civilized but excellent food (Agra).
  • Dinner at Saravana Bhaven – A dosa place that is actually in New York and Sunnyvale too! The choco-sundae was fab.  

 Despite the shaky beginnings to David’s 36^th, it certainly ended with positive India karma.

So, to hell with endless sightseeing — we decided to soak up being tourists the old fashioned way and stayed within the romantic grandeur of the hotel walls for the rest of the afternoon—massages, cocktails at the hotel bar, dinner in the restaurant. It was all quite lovely; we even had a bottle of the Sula Merlot, an Indian wine, for dinner and all in it couldn’t have been nicer. The coolest part was our visit to the hotel’s astrologer who had truly an uncanny knack for reading palms and our star charts. Sounds completely corny but the things he told us about ourselves was completely spot on. I actually have been thinking a lot about what he said today about myself, about David, about our families. Has given me quite a pause I must admit.

Then today—the Taj. What a sight to behold. I’m not even sure how to describe it except to say it is all that it is hyped up to be. Link to Seven Wonders of the World.  Marvelous, semi-translucent marble scraping the blue sky—unbelievable. And while not as beautiful, the Agra Fort in its red sandstone grandeur was a sight to see as well. We had a great guide who helped explain the differences between Muslim (lines, symmetry) and Hindu (flowers, animals) architecture and the human Parchesi games the king would play with his servants.

Tonight we got to Delhi—last 2 nights in India although we nearly did not thanks to our car breaking down in the middle of an Indian highway. If you have never been on an Indian highway, you have no sense of what this means, but essentially getting out to push requires dodging cows, bikes, motorcyles, people, trucks and cars driving both ways with no street lights.

Anyway, I think I am ready to go home I think but not quite sure about the facing of reality part.

Time to sleep now.

On the road to Agra, home of the magnificent Taj Mahal.

Our driver is vaguely surly but we’re not sure why. Seemed happier earlier this morning when we tried to talk to him about his family but English is a bit of a barrier. I do know though he is 34 years old and already has a 13 year old daughter and a 10 year old son, something that is hard to imagine given that David is two years older and we’ve only been married 2.5 years. In general I continue to puzzle over the concept of arranged marriages but it is still very common here and even with some of my Indian friends in the U.S.

But back to the road. “Road” is a bit of a strong word. It’s actually the beginnings of a four line highway linking two of the major cities in India’s Golden Triangle of Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. But a few years into the construction, much of the road is unfinished, forcing cars to switch sides of the road—almost as if driving straight into oncoming traffic—with great frequency. Instead of finishing one whole side of the road driving to Agra, for example, someone decided to work on alternating side. And drive into oncoming traffic we do—the lane switching we do to get around the overburdened tractors groaning with animal feed can get extremely scary when dogs, people, camels and motorcycles are heading straight at you. Some of the unlicensed trucks are absolutely heaped in cargo, causing us to see many overturned trucks throughout the trip. Also, I now understand the warnings my friend Swastik shared with me about driving at night — there are no lights on the roads so driving in the dark is extremely dangerous. Hence our 7 a.m. departure today.  

Yesterday we managed to enjoy Jaipur despite the incident on Sunday, although admittedly with a little trepidation. After a late start thanks to a comfortable, temperature-controlled and quiet room, we headed up to the forts in the hills north of the city. Amber Fort was my favorite, the residence of the former Rajput commander of Akbar’s army in the 1500s that was later extended by the Jai Singhs before they moved to the City Palace in Jaipur (learned incidentally that the name Singh was a title given to rulers meaning lion). This fort was not meant for fighting but rather pleasure and comfort for the Singh’s 12 wives and 350 concubines. Our guide was a rather old Indian chap who actually created a very colorful picture of what those royal compounds looked like, decorated in sumptuous hand-woven carpets, precious jewels, exotic perfumes and flowers in part to inspire “programs of romance” as our guide explained it. I’ve been reading some historical fiction since arriving here – one book called Beneath a Marble Sky and another The White Munghals – and before those novels never really understood the Rajput era’s indulgence in women, both concubines and multiple wives, although it is said that the more concubines you had the more powerful you are. Of course that no longer exists today, although the descriptions of that amorous way of life seems rather romanticized and lacks the drama one would expect from 300+ women fighting over the same man.  

We then took our rickety rickshaw to the Jaigarh Fort, a stern looking compound above the Amber meant to protect its inhabitants. The fort was never captured, probably thanks to its housing of the world’s largest wheeled cannon that even gets its own name, the Jaya Vana. This thing had a range of 22 miles, can you imagine? My other favorite part of this fort was that the Indian government ransacked the fort in recent years due to the rumor that the Singh family royal treasure was buried in the thick walls. No luck, though.  

The last fort before our shopping adventures began was the Nahagrarh. It’s a little unclear why this one was in the guidebooks although the Indo-European architecture and murals were beautiful. Nonetheless, we were overtaken with men actually starting to give a tour and then demanding money even though you never asked for their halting English version of Munghal royal history.

After that we tried our luck at shopping again – still no sign of decent Kingfisher t-shirts for my Haas crew, and definitely very few high quality gifting options for the parents/grandparents set in the local bazaars although plenty of hawkers trying to convince you otherwise. Honestly, the volume of “Please, ma’am, pashmina shawl”, “ma’am please come in”, “ma’am see my shop”, “looking is free, ma’am” plaints is just too much sometimes, you have to say no 5 times minimum for someone to leave you alone and by that time someone new approached you. In Goa, I took up the practice of sprinting away from the shocked teenage boys pushing jangly ankle bracelets at me. Which was entertaining in itself.

The only other activity of note in Jaipur was our failed attempt to enjoy a 3-hour Bollywood movie at India’s most famous Hindi movie theatre, the Raj Mandir Cinema, established in 1976. God even knows what movie we got “Diamond Box” tickets for—even the Indians don’t really know, they just go because they love Bollywood so much – but it was pretty awful. No singing, no dancing, just some movie about an actor who witnesses a murder and then gets a little crazy about it. And entirely in Hindi except for a few random English phrases, so after 30 minutes we snuck out the back, past all of the Indian girls videotaping the movie on their mobile phones and the dudes talking on their cell phones in the back.  One bonus: finding out Bollywood movies aren’t complete without popcorn and candy bars too. No Snowcaps but some faux Kit Kats called King Tuts.

While I understand Americans are not always embraced abroad, I do my best to show respect for other faiths, cultures and lifestyles as I firmly believe that our differences are what make our world a richer, more interesting place. And while I always try to be practical and keep myself from dangerous situations, I also want to be a part of the action—seeing the cities and towns I visit from a local perspective by staying in guest houses, eating at authentic restaurants and talking to the rickshaw drivers, shop keepers and waiters like human beings, not as less intelligent “natives” if you will. In fact, I am quite passionate about it, almost scoffing at the people dining in the sheltered bubble of the Holiday Inn Hotel restaurant or seeing but not feeling the place they are visiting by peering at it from the safety of their air-con tour buses. But I was reminded today that there are places I am not invited to, or welcome at, despite my genuine curiosity. And that as a white woman especially, I may stand out and invite intimidation.

We arrived in the Pink City, Jaipur, today, exhausted from travel and another set of sleepless nights at a hole in the wall hotel in Udaipur. As a result of our bad hotel karma thus far, David and I actually decided to channel our worst American tourist tendencies – especially ironic given my aforementioned stereotype – and stay in the Trident Hilton chain outside of the city to escape the incessant horns, sleep in clean sheets that don’t require make-shift t-shirt pillowcases, and a place that actually has toilet paper and towels in the bathroom.

We didn’t set out until late thanks to the 5:30 am wakeup call in Udaipur, but visited the City Palace (lovely) and the nearby Govind Devji Hindu temple, escorted by a random guy on a motorcycle whose acquaintance happened to own the News Café in Miami Beach—a spot at which I’ve dined with David, Carol, Lew, Martha and Sy. He took us to the temple and explained the ceremony that was taking place; very beautiful and peaceful, despite the monkeys hanging out on the walls outside. (TMI—one started peeing on one of the guards from his perch above).

At that point, we left him to be a part of what we imagined to be some authentic local color —the parade marking the festival of Muharram, or the Islamic New Year – as we had noticed the effort put into decorating the main street in the Old City here as well as in Udaipur. But not without a warning—as our Miami Beach buddy as well as our City Palace guide told us to stay away from the Muslim event, or at least to view the action from afar.

Here’s where it gets tricky— the Islamic religion is in itself something I can’t help but to have an unease about in terms of the extremist violence that rears itself in war-torn countries and what I perceive to be its treatment of women. In particular, it has been hard for me on this trip to accept the oppression of women by the very nature of what they are forced to wear in this heat—a woman wearing a burqua that covers everything but her eyes while men walk freely in Western-style clothing seems by its very nature an insult to the relative freedom and independence American women like me are given and take for granted. But I very much have kept an open mind in India and at home, despite the subtle and not so subtle anti-Islamic commentary expressed by some of the Hindu guides and shopkeepers we’ve met. I’ve been lucky enough to visit several beautiful mosques on this trip, befriend some wonderful Muslim people and have read extensively about the expression of the religion, and its co-existence with the Hindu faith in Indian history. So the Muharram Festival seemed a natural thing to take part in, even from the sidelines.

For the first few minutes, it was enthralling, almost Mardi Gras-like. There was a float-less parade lining the main boulevard as thousands men, young and old, marched. There was music and drums and food of every kind lining the streets, with the women and children pressed up against the shop fronts. And then it got ugly somehow—crowds pushing inward, staring, jeering, intimidating. Suddenly we were the only foreigners in sight, and I the only white woman, and the ominous mood was palpable. Then a group of men got close, leering at me, and one of them reached out to grab my backside. I panicked inwardly, disgusted, but was too numb and too outnumbered at that point to say anything. David reacted—grabbing one of the mena, screaming at him to get his hands off and all I could think was that this was one of those things you read about in the newspapers, two Americans in the wrong place at the wrong time and something goes horribly wrong. 

Somehow the moment passed without incident but the worst part was, we couldn’t get away from the parade. There was no way to escape as the men were everywhere and the crowds were growing more intense as darkness prevailed, but at one point, a young guy ran up to us and asked us to follow him, he would help us but why did we ever come to see this festival? Did we not know it was for Muharram? He was a Hindu shopkeeper on that street, he said, and it was dangerous for us, for me, to be there. He wanted to show us a back route out of the area (although in retrospect, even he tried to sell me some pashmina shawls on the way out… ah, India).

We gratefully, almost mutely, took the back alley he pointed to, but then were simply lost in a maze of muddy streets with the sound of drums everywhere, with our hearts pounding to match. I can’t think of a feeling more terffifying than helplessness and the sense of being a minority than that moment.

The intensity of the night never seemed to end. Eventually we found an auto-rickshaw driver to take us out of the old city, but each of the gates were blocked by the parade and we sat, immobile in our rickshaw for what seemed like hours in the horn-filled dark and cold. And suddenly it seemed like everyone was staring, looking into our unprotected, exposed rickshaw as our driver ran about chattering excitedly to the other drivers packed into the smelly streets like sardines. And again, I couldn’t help think of the headlines…. Is this how it happens? In the dark, it seemed like no one could be trusted.  

Clearly we eventually escaped the city walls, eating dinner in silence, not sure what to make of it all. But then the questions, what happened? What does this mean? How does one continue to live in the moment and enjoy an unknown city after being touched in such a way by strangers? All I wanted to do was hole up like the package-tourists and find my own bubble that prevents me from enjoying the India I’ve grown to love.  

I’m not sure how it is going to be tomorrow. Will I be able to bear the staring the same way as before? Walk down a street when there are no other foreigners in sight as I relished doing before? Hear the muezzin call and not think about the crush of the angry Muharram crowd?  I don’t know.

 Day 2 in Goa, home of the cliché beautiful beaches one only gets to write home about.

As we speak, I am perched outside our little Bali bungalow surrounded by palm trees, tropical flowers and a sparkling lap pool. But achieving this paradise was not as easy as it sounds. I should have known we were cursed to start out with, as David and I had very specific expectations about our beachside bungalow. I can only blame the incredible oceanside location of our Ko Phanang cottage in Thailand for this expectation and god knows we pored over every guide book and internet site to find it. No real luck, but thanks to Vasanth, we found something that seemed passable in Baga Beach. 

Showing up at Alidia Cottages after 13 days of international seminar-ing, next to no sleep and too much Indian food catching up to me, I was hopeful. When I saw the room, I lost a little enthusiasm. When I saw the live spider and the dead roach (at least that one was dead), and didn’t see the ocean as promised in the guidebook, I was close to a breakdown, but held back.

It was the crows that did me in.

David and I both woke up in the earliest of daylight hours to the sound of probably 500  cawing crows. I would guess that most of you have no idea what this sounds like but it was absolutely horrifying. I have never seen the movie The Crow or even Hitchcock’s The Birds, but I imagine the screenwriters for both of those movies got their inspiration in Goa. It is a crow playground. It is where crows must go to live and to die. They are everywhere. Not a seagull in sight. Why is this not in the guidebooks.

We had to get out. And so we did—leaving the cottage at 6:15 in the morning, pitch black, and started walking up the beach in the dark in search of our Goa paradise. Here is what we saw during our two hour trek:

• Hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of tiny beach shacks. Sam’s Beach Shack. Tom’s Beach Shack. Annie’s Beach Shack. It went on and on, for two hours as the sun rose. And they all serve the same exact things—Kingfisher, Goan Crab, Naan and random grilled cheese sandwiches – and during the day they put out lounge chairs for the hordes tourists we haven’t seen yet. .
• Dogs. Maybe even more dogs than beach shacks.
• Cows. Ok, they were really only on Anjuna Beach, but there was a herd of cows on Anjuna.
• Dudes still drinking from the night before.
• A grounded oil tanker, aptly placed near the luxury hotels on the south end of the beach. It was called the River Princess but she wasn’t a very pretty princess.
• Not a single cool place to stay.

We did appease ourselves with a very nice breakfast at the Taj Resort in Fort Aguada and hitched a ride back to Baga to check out of the Alidia with high hopes of finding something in the famed Anjuna Beach. While we found plenty of cheap tee-shirts and sun-leathered remnants of the hash-fueled days of Goa’s golden hippy years, we found no place to stay, two meals down and hours of wakefulness later.

At this point I’ll end this story by saying we did find something pretty great. Not on the beach but no crows and free breakfast. We found it on our own with no thanks to the Lonely Planet which is letting us down this week but would recommend it to anyone, called the Cavala Inn  http://www.cavala.com/. Very cool Portuguese style estate. And we’re having fun—it’s so nice to have David here now and to not be on a schedule, although it was a little weird after two weeks in a tour bus with a herd of my new Haas friends who left 2 days ago.

On that note, I didn’t really say any good-byes to them as I am really not good at them, but for anyone reading this blog—it was a really incredible experience meeting you all. Swastik, I am expecting those quotable posts! Get ready for the reunion party in a few weeks!

More later.

Ps—Dave Francl, went to Britto’s. Had crab. Heading to Tito’s tonight!

Tried to resort to blogging on the bus and my computer but the darn thing died after a mere 20 minutes. But I can’t miss the chance to blog about Bollywood! For the uninitiated, Bollywood is basically MTV, VH1, karaoke, and a Broadway musical mish mashed into one and projected onto the silver screen, or more specifically, it is the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai – one that outpaces Hollywood in both the number of films and tickets sold per year. I would go so far as to rank Bollywood as India’s number one sport after cricket, and I think some of the star-struck MBAs among us (Ravi!) would agree.

We got the chance to see a (very small) scene of “Fashion,” Madhur Bhandrakar’s insights into the underbelly of the fashion industry, on one of the soundstages at Mehboob Studios, a compound that the owners rent out to other production houses to film movies, commercials and do photo shoots. While I was disappointed not to get asked to co-star, it was fascinating to see the hoards of backpackers waiting in the wings and dressed in Goodwill-esque sequined prom dresses willing to post as extras. The studios basically approach the pub-goers in ex-pat bars like Leopold’s and ask them to be on set for 12 hours/day in exchange for $40 and three square meals.  

For the Hollywood entertainment moguls in training out there (Kendall), the comparative stats on Bollywood vs. Hollywood are truly amazing. Bombay’s version of Tinseltown churns out 1,000 movies per year compared to Hollywood’s 739, and they do it quicker and more cheaply. Imagine a $50M Hollywood production cost (that’s probably low, actually) with almost another $30M going towards marketing the film. Now compare that with $1.5M production cost and $500,000 in marketing expenditures for a Bollywood film – with sets being constructed within weeks and entire films wrapping within a year or so. Of course, this is always changing as costs gets higher and international investors like Sony Pictures and Disney coming onto the scene, but for now, the glitz and glamour of films like “Om Shanti Om” remain a more cost-efficient form of entertainment.

The funniest part—two of my fellow classmates jumping off the bus hoping for a glimpse of one of the biggest Bollywood sensations Aishwarya Rai Bachchan http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=TSHA,TSHA:2005-13,TSHA:en&q=Aishwarya+Rai+Bachchan+&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

To the boys back home—hot or not?

   I am going to sum up my free weekend in Mumbai by giving you, my Daily Naan Readers, a comprehensive list of sites to see in this great city of 7? million people:

• Um…
• The Gateway of India. Sort of. Especially if you are into incessant hawking and little kids grabbing at your purse. 
• Still thinking…
• The inside of Leopold’s, the inside of the Taj Gateway Hotel (just not the stuffy Seaview Lounge) and the inside of Café Mondregar’s.
• There is nothing else.

Just dying to get here now, right?  Actually, it’s 100 percent completely worth coming here but not so much for the sites to see as much as a way to completely soak up India. I have to admit, I love it here. I love this place for its endless contradictions, the chaos, the food, the unexpected and the sheer wash of vibrant colors that defines India. Yesterday we were driving through the daily traffic crush through a tin shanty town. You can’t imagine what this looks like unless you see it—crushing poverty, often across the street from a shiny, fancy shopping mall, with thousands of people crammed into their one room structures yet still with a color tv set. Anyway, I was just watching, absorbing it from our hulking tour bus and noticed the hundreds of what looked like birds in the sky above the slum. But when I looked harder I saw they were actually kites, with hoards of little boys standing on the roofs of their homes flying their squares of fabric. It was actually quite beautiful to see and once again helped me understand a little more about this place from my protected, air-con bubble.

Oh, and the food—there is so much to say about the food. I had only eaten it a handful of times back home thanks to the infamously indigestible Duszak stomach but am now obsessed. From the dosas to the curries, paneers and daals, I have only Zara, Vasanth and Swastik to thank for introducing us to things I would have never tried otherwise. The typical faves— the spicier the better of course – palek paneer, kebobs (all), Gobi Manchuri, any dosa any time and of course Clayton’s “Chaat” which I will always associate with him. All served best with a very very very cold Kingfisher, or more recently a nice bottle of Sula Sauvignon Blanc. My biggest surprise was the double menus of Indian and … Chinese food. In fact, almost every restaurant has both and in retrospect, it doesn’t surprise me so much given the geography of the two countries and the similarity of the foods  

We’ve had some great meals at places I would die to have back home— Mehesh Lunch Home (for dinner), Shiv Sagar Veg Fast Food (best of all! Swastik!), and Chaat Zone. But we can’t also leave out the snacks—Masala Cheetos, mysterious rice puffs that look like jumbo Rice Krispies and taste like Goldfish, spicy-on-fire-peanuts, banana chips, and anything fried and in plastic baggies that list the first ingredient as “edible oil”.

Getting hungry now….

I’ve been negligent in Daily Naan-ing since arriving in Mumbai. It’s been too hard for me to just sit in a room and blog when India is happening outside, but today, Saturday, is the first day of rest since arriving on 2 Jan.

Since my 4 a.m. wake-up call, we’ve been to the Bajaj Motorbike Factory http://www.bajajauto.com/1024/index.asp and the National Stock Exchange of India, both very good but very different visits.

But I really wanted to write about Bajaj for my dad— see, he used to work on the General Motors assembly line in Delaware to help pay for his college tuition, something I always admired in him. He used to tell us stories about the guys and I’m sure chose to leave out some, probably most, of the more colorful details. Anyway, we visited this Indian factory and the positive picture the managers of the plant created actually seemed to be true—and a heck of a lot more ‘clean living’ than my pop’s GM stories.

Bajaj is one of the largest Indian auto manufacturers, producing motorcycles and auto rickshaws (and just put out a prototype for a cheap car to compete with Tata Motors’ Nano). While I have a ton of stats about the company, what I found most interesting was the HR component and the degree to which this plant differed than the stereotypical plant in the U.S. Most of their assembly workers at the Chakan Plant have college degrees—completely unexpected – and there is no union. The company tries to keep the average age of their mostly male employees in this plant at around 25 years old and provides them with plenty of diversions— breakfast in the morning followed by the singing of the national anthem and some calisthenics (I kid you not), as well as lunch, company trips to Goa, etc. The factory floor was decorated with clay pottery and flowers and the campus as a whole was quite plush, probably greener than anywhere else we’ve been in India. We got a chance to view these assembly workers in action and the whole process was extremely efficient, churning out a shiny, new bike every 14 seconds. Ask Sebastian, he got to ride one.

They also utilize the Japanese “Kaizen” manufacturing model, winning endless Six Sigma black belt awards, etc. I have to do more research on this later today but in short, my very simplified way of describing it is eliminating errors to become more efficient. Actually, hoping my Six Sigma guru Joe Burkhardt can add more here.

Anyway, despite the very long 7 hour round trip and a broken camera, it was a good day. Dad—check out my pictures of the assembly floor. Just like GM, right?

As they say like Bajaj, buy a Bajaj Motorcycle and “Feel like God.”