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There is no way to take a bad photograph of kids in India. They are gorgeous, mischievous, bold and charming, and they know exactly what to do when they see a camera. No matter how many are cramming together for a photo, they know just how to fit in the frame. The camera adores them.
Pam took this particularly lovely photo of a kid near the temple stage at an Ugadi celebration using the Canon 5D.
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Today is Ugadi, which ushers in the New Year, but only for Hindus in two of the thirty-two Indian states: Karnataka and Utter Pradesh. There are more than 30 different versions of the New Year in this country – I’m not sure that even Indians can keep track of them all. All week we’ve been trying to gauge the importance of the holiday through our filter of Christmas? Easter? Thanksgiving? Presidents Day? But like most of India, it falls outside any familiar reference point.
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We got up this morning and the front of house was decorated with flower garlands and colorful chalk drawings. Our maid/cook/helper/nanny, Rathnama, brought me into her quarters to show me the sweet bread she was cooking for the celebration.
This was the first time I’d seen her living space. It was smaller than any of the other rooms in this obscene villa we’re renting here in Bangalore, including most of the bathrooms.
Normally when the guilt of good fortune kicks up I can quell it quite easily with a stiff dose of gallows humor, but there in that tiny room with Rathnama, her husband, her niece, nephew, and their baby all sitting on the floor preparing for the festivities, there wasn’t room for anything, least of all the bad jokes that would usually be darting though my head.
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I smiled and kissed babies and tasted the treats, and wished them all a happy Ugadi; then, despondent, I climbed three floors to my air conditioned bedroom, slipped back into bed and spent the next two hours trying to sleep off my white guilt.
To be here as an American it is impossible not to feel the accident of your fortune. Technically, I have nothing, but I was lucky enough to be born in a place where my nothing is worth a lot more than their nothing. I’m guessing that in Ugadi, as in most significant celebrations, there is an element of reflection involved; and today I did little else.
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After meals it is common to have a bit of fennel seed mixed with various other items. Sometimes it is candy-coated fennel, others it is for you to mix yourself. Crystallized sugar is common: take a spoonful of fennel into your palm, then a spoonful of sugar crystals, pop it all in your mouth, and… mmm :)
In this case, we have a tray with toothpicks, fennel seeds, and jaggery, served at the Punjabi Times restaraunt on Bannerghatta Road. Best combo yet :)
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We sat on these ants. After a hot crazy night of tuk-tuk errands, we stopped for a Coke along Bannerghatta Road; exhausted, we sat on this cement bench surrounding some kind of tree. After we sat for a minute, Pam leaped up, grabbed her purse, and yanked me up as well. These little buggers were everywhere. We spent the rest of the night brushing off itchy creatures, real and imagined alike.
By the way, the Canon 5D Mark II does indeed open up a lot of possibility in low light…
They say that Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India, and I might be tempted to believe the hype if it weren’t for the fact that no one appears to have a computer, and the ones who do, have no idea how to work them, or the internet.
After six weeks, countless hotel rooms, and two stabs at having wireless set up at our house I’ve dealt with probably a dozen “engineers” or “technicians,” none of who had the vaguest idea of what they were doing.
The language barrier doesn’t help.
“Mam, vhere do you hab exploder? Exploder mam, were is exploder?
“No explorer,” I say. “Safari. Safari same same.” I find it helps to repeat things. Unfortunately I can’t help repeating them at a higher and higher volume the longer the discourse goes on.
“Yes, yes. Exploder.” He pokes at a few keys on the keyboard with a vacant look on his face.
“Safari” I say, and move him out of the way before he breaks my machine. The fact that Phil and I roll with Mac’s makes the problem just that much worse.
Right now in India, innocence, tradition and history far outweigh techno savvy, and while it can be infuriating when you’re waiting for the little man to fill out the recei-PT for your purchase by hand and in triplicate with carbon paper pressed neatly between the sheets of paper, there is also something charming about it. It makes you slow down and remember things from the past, like penmanship, and math. It makes you realize that the world doesn’t come to an end if you have to spend another three minutes at the checkout counter.
If the Indians are able to meld their bureaucratic mindset, that is the lasting legacy of the British, with the efficiency technology can provide, they will eventually be a global force to be reckoned with. But that is still a ways off.
I grew up in Silicon Valley when it was still just beautiful California farmland, and there are similarities between the 1970’s Santa Clara Valley, and 2009 Bangalore. In Bangalore cows and camels and monkeys roam the streets, along with packs of wild dogs that we assume are rabid. In pre-boom Silicon Valley we rode horses and ponies, there were chickens and dogs, and we were chased by wild boar. Here, fruit sellers push wooden cards down the streets hawking their wares. At home there were apricot trees, strawberry fields, and walnut orchards everywhere and fruit stands dotted the sides of the road.
I’m guessing that in another 30 years or so carbon paper will fall into extinction in India as it has in the US, and nearly everyone will know the difference between dial-up and wi fi, Safari and Explorer.
“Would you pleash shtay on the line for just annatto turdy years sir, while I check with my superwiser to be connepting you with da footure.”
They arrived at midnight and fired up the machinery. It was deafening, and the smoke was toxic. This was the view from our front porch.
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And just for giggles, here is the same photo, “in miniature,” after using some post-production tilt-shift trickery:
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