A Visit to Paradise

Monday, June 11, 2012, Hyderabad, India.

We started our day by going to the NCR office with Phil and getting a quick tour.  Apart from seeing what an Indian development office and lab looks like (seeing an ATM cracked open is always fun!), they have a cafeteria on site that seemed to have a very interesting juice offering about half way down the menu:

Unfortunately Aaron was feeling a bit under the weather so he rested for a few hours while the rest of us headed towards the center of old Hyderabad to the Salar Jung Museum.  The Salar Jung was the Prime Minister of the rulers (or Nizzams) of Hyderabad, at one time the wealthiest people on the planet.  Consider that the Koh-i-Noor diamond and many others were mined locally and safeguarded in the Golconda Fort for many years. 

The Salar Jung museum is the largest museum of just one person’s collection and includes a vast variety of arms, ivory, jade, toys, furniture, wood carvings, paintings, etc., etc.   The building was nothing special, but the artifacts were fascinating.  Perhaps my favorite was a full sized intricately carved ivory sword. The level of craftsmanship was amazing.  Unfortunately no photography was allowed.

We would have liked to have stayed a bit longer, but needed to leave to meet Phil and Laura for lunch, so we grabbed a Tuk Tuk for the 15KM ride and had a more visceral experience of Hyderabadi street life. You get to see some crazy stuff on the streets, like people transporting car windscreens on a scooter. 

Paradise restaurant is famous throughout India for its biryanis (rice dishes) and is supposedly the largest restaurant in the country.  It is huge and has multiple levels and hundreds of clients at any one time.  The took the orders on smart phones to transmit them to the kitchen.

Post lunch Laura took us to a few of her favorite stores and Kelly and I each bought Kurtas (long shirts), then we headed to the mall to pick up the Ventimiglia kids who went to the movies for their last day of school to see Men In Black III. 

First time trying Hash

Sunday June 10, 2012.  Hyderabad.

Today Kelly and I spent about day cooking with Hamsa

Our menu included dhosas (Indian crepes) with potato tilling and lentil sambar (stew) with a coconut chutney for lunch.  Everyone seemed to enjoy these.  The dhosas are made from left over rice, raw soaked rice, and raw soaked lentils made into a batter and rested overnight  Just before cooking some baking soda and salt get added and then the process is very similar to making French crepes.

After lunch the boys went swimming with the Ventimiglias while Kelly and I made a few more recipes:

• Hyderabad Chicken – a baked spicy dish.
• Chicken with Sweet Corn – a mild curry that was a hit with everyone.
• Palak koftas – Spinach balls. Loved the spicy sauce, the spinach balls themselves were very hard.
• Aloo Paratha – bread stuffed with potato filling.
• Spiced rice

Hamsa uses a couple of Indian cuisine cookbooks, but the main one with 1,000 different recipes I was able to find for a bargain on Amazon.com and so it should be waiting for us when we return.

The Hash House Harriers is an international running/walking and social club and in Hyderabad they meet each Sunday.  Phil and Laura invited us to join them for a Hash (what the club calls their walks and runs) and we had a chance to get a little exercise and meet some other Hyderabad residents – both ex pats and locals.  Kelly decided to stay at the house and finish cooking, so the boys and I went along and I got to learn a little about local politics and received a strong recommendation to visit the Salar Jung museum from one of the locals.  The local landscape has some interesting granite boulders as can be seen from this traffic circle.

We came back to the house to eat all the great food Kelly and Hamsa made.  Even something as simple as rice is special here.  We’ve spiced our rice water with some cardamom or cloves before, but here they use cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and bay leaves.  Add a little turmeric and you have super tasty yellow rice.  By the way, a huge bag of bay leaves, at one of the most expensive stores in town was RP5 or about 10 US cents.  Looking forward to buying a bunch of spices before we leave Delhi in a few weeks.

The Sanity Tax

Friday, June 8th, 2012 Mumbai – Hyderabad

Since we are leaving Mumbai this evening, we wanted to see a few other places before we go.  After we checked out and stored our bags at the hotel, we dealt with the taxi hassle yet again.  This time we walked over to the nearby taxi rank, got in a taxi and said we wanted to go to Mani Bhavan, which is the Ghandi library/museum, an important site in Mumbai.  The driver didn’t turn on the meter, but I also think he didn’t know where we were going, because he pulled into the Mumbai Central Train Station, which was next door and started talking to the other drivers there.  Can’t figure out why these drivers might be more knowledgeable than the ones at the taxi rank, but after a few minutes there seemed to be an invite to go to another taxi that could take us there for a fixed fee that I knew had to be way over the odds.  Bottom line was that none of the drivers here would do the journey on the meter and wanted RP300 to RP200 to drive us.  I figured this has to be at least 4 times what it should cost.  They didn’t want to budge, so we voted with our feet and walked out of the station and found another taxi.  He charged us RP100 for the same trip, which I knew was still more than it would be on the meter, but in the end, saving the last 50 cents to $1 on a cab ride just grinds it out of you.  I call this the “sanity tax” – at some point our time (and mental health) is worth more than a few rupees.

As it turns out, I got a rare opportunity to figure out what it should really have cost us, since later in the day we had a driver take us back to the hotel to get our bags on the meter, which rang up around RP50.  So as you can see, the initial drivers actually wanted 4-6X the meter rate.  It is rarely in your best interest to go off meter with a taxi. Of course the drivers all want to do it because they make more money.  The best bet is to ask a local (e.g. at your hotel) what the taxi ride should cost and use that information.  Of course, that’s great if you can get a taxi driver to take you for it, but often times, they will simply refuse to use the meter and their fixed rate will be a multiple of what you should pay.  At that point it is time to decide whether to pay the sanity tax or get out and find another cab.

Mani Bhavan is the home where Ghandi stayed whenever he was in Mumbai.  Today it is a Ghandi research library and has a number of displays about the man, his work, and his life.  It is free and definitely worth a look in you are in Mumbai.  Amongst the various photos on display, I liked seeing one of him sitting with Charlie Chaplin.

The room where Ghandi slept has a display of some of his few personal belongings and artifacts. Scattered throughout the whole building are panels with some of his quotes on various topics.

Perhaps my favorite part was the dioramas that depict important junctures in Ghandi’s life.  As you can see from the photo below, these have a folksy charm, and are actually quite informative once you read the accompanying panels.  Someone took a lot of time to make these.  Of course if this was created today, we’ve expect LCD panels with fancy graphics and information, but for some reason, I think these dioramas are more engaging.

Leaving Mani Bhavan, which is in the Malabar Hill area of town - the “Beverly Hills” of Mumbai and resident to many Bollywood Film Stars - we walked past the Tower of Silence and up to the Hanging Gardens.  The Tower of Silence is a Parsi funeral tower and can only be glimpsed from the road.  Parsis are another small Indian religious group – they are direct descendants of Persian (Iranian) Zoroastrians.  They believe that bodies should not pollute the ground and practice air burial – putting bodes in these towers and allowing vultures to pick the bones clean.  Seemingly Mumbai has had a decrease in their vulture population which is of great concern to this community.

The Hanging Gardens are a pleasant park located on one of the highest parts of Mumbai and actually built over water tanks that are the main water supply for the city below. 

The view is pretty interesting and includes a unique private residence.  Aaron’s friend had told him a little about this place – it is apparently the home of a very wealthy guy known as the Wall Street Nostradamus and is rumored to have 100 servants, but he doesn’t actually live there.  Who knows?

We walked down the hill I the heat and had a late lunch at a restaurant called Soam which serves Gujurati vegetarian food.  I found the place using Google Places on my smart phone, which is really great when you are traveling and don’t otherwise know where to find a good local restaurant.  We had a fabulous lunch with several different dishes, which mostly consisted of some form of tasty bread and accompanying curry or sauce.

From there, we got a metered taxi back to the hotel.  He had wanted to charge me RP150 (“very good price, sir”), but relented and went on the meter, which as previously stated, rang up as RP50.  He actually spoke some English and since we were headed to the airport, I converted our trip into a fixed price trip that was within the guidelines of what the hotel had told me the journey should cost.

We arrived early at the airport, which was fine as we had heard that it can be a very slow process.  In the end we actually got through check in and security pretty quickly. At the domestic terminal, in addition to the typical waiting seats, they had a good number of loungers, which I think is a great idea in an airport.  They also had a few booths with tables and electrical power, so the boys were able to plug in the netbook and watch some programs they had brought with them for just such an opportunity.

Our Jet Airways flight to Hyderabad lasted about 80 minutes and was uneventful.  After getting our bags, we left the new, very modern airport and were met by Frances, our friends’ driver.  Outside, on the airport grounds they had a shooting gallery and a go kart track as well as some other things that looked like much more fun than I’ve seen at any other airports.

We took a fantastic new road and about 20 minutes later arrived at Phil and Laura’s house and were greeted by them and two of their kids,  Benjamin, Abigail.  Their youngest Aidan was already asleep.

Phil and I used to work together a long while back at Dell.  When Phil and Laura moved with Dell to Singapore, I was actually their cross cultural trainer. Since then, Phil moved to NCR Corp. and runs their Hyderabad operation.

Cooking up a storm in Hyderabad

Saturday, June 9th, 2012.  Hyderabad, India.

This is actually a picture of the Mango tart Hamsa made, but it was the only food shot I took.  The tart was very yummy.  If you are on a diet, you don’t want to know the ingredients!

It is the start of monsoon season, so heavy rains are on their way.  We’ve seen no more than a sprinkle, but will surely soon hit some rainfall.  That should cool it down a little, but also increase the humidity.  Right now it is in the high 90s here in Hyderabad.  In Punjab (our next stop), it may be twenty degrees warmer.  Yikes!

Our friends have a cook named Hamsa who comes in several times a week to make meals for the family. She is a lovely woman (as Laura said, think Indian grandmother) and a very good cook.  As the Ventimiglias are not big fans of Indian cuisine, she mostly does western cooking, but we spent two days with her learning a variety of Indian recipes and basic cooking techniques.  We made some very tasty dishes (most of the Ventimiglias even enjoyed them) and look forward to getting home to make more.  We’ll likely make some adjustments to make some of the recipes fit the healthier eating style Kelly and I are following at home.

Today we made some plain paratha bread and dal (lentils) for lunch which was very tasty.  Once we figured out a few more recipes we had to go to two stores to get all the ingredients, which took more than an hour.   Eventually we got to make Chicken Curry, Chicken Biryani, and Eggplant Curry with nuts which we all enjoyed for dinner.

Afterwards, we left the kids and Kelly and I joined Phil and Laurra at the Westin hotel for some drinks.  I decided to skip the alcohol and had a lovely drink of coconut juice, banana, apple, and mint.  Very refreshing.  Looking forward to more cooking tomorrow.

Connecting Cultures

Thursday, June 7, Mumbai, India

We started today at the former Prince of Wales Museum, which is in a beautiful colonial era building and houses a variety of artifacts related to India and some other countries and cultures from antiquity to modern times.

For some reason that I really haven’t figured out, taxi drivers seem to have no clue about where the major sites of interest to a visitor are located, such as the largest and best known museum in Mumbai.  Showing a map doesn’t seem to help much.  The best I’ve figured out is to find some other important local building such as the Police Headquarters and ask for that.  Eventually once enough data has been shared (or the driver has consulted half a dozen of his colleagues) the car takes off and so far, we’ve always ended up in the right place.

Just as yesterday, there was a wide disparity between the entrance fees for foreigners and locals, BUT if you have a student ID (Ben remembered his), you essentially get the local rate.  One nice thing about paying more as a foreigner is that they included an excellent free audio guide.

Wandering the collections of art, collectibles, and natural history we were able to learn more about various aspects of Indian culture as well as see some incredible art.  Their miniature picture gallery, an art form associated with the Murghals was particularly impressive.  Amongst their collection of arms were some frightening looking knives and swords, but perhaps the most interesting to me was what appeared to be a deadly frisbee, called a Chakra, which was a unique Indian weapon that was used by twirling it around your finger before it got flung and its razor sharp outer edge injured your foe.  Maybe this was the origin of Odd Job’s hat weapon in the James Bond movies.

Also in the armory was a suit of armor and weapons that had been on display for more than seventy years before they figured out that they were the Emperor Akbar’s personal armor. 

In a gallery devoted to new acquisitions I found a game board on cloth for something called Gyana Bazi, which was the forerunner of snakes and ladders (or chutes and ladders depending on what side of the Atlantic you are from!).  In an of itself, that did not surprise me, but I found out that this is a game played by the Jains especially during one of their festivals and it is meant to help teach the concept of karma, thus something that in the west is purely a form of entertainment is yet another example of something with deep symbolic meaning here in India.

The Jains are a relatively small but influential religious group in Indian, less than 1% of the population, but very influential in business and other endeavors.  Their religion pre dates Hinduism and significantly influenced its concepts and ideas.  Jains are totally against violence and strict vegetarians.  Ghandi’s approach of peaceful disobedience was heavily influenced by Jain concepts.

The strictest Jains will not even eat any root vegetables such as garlic, onions, carrots or potatoes because it requires destroying the plant in order to harvest the food.

Coincidentally we ended up spending a delightful evening with a Jain family.  One of Aaron’s friends from Georgia Tech is from Mumbai and Aaron sent him a message asking if he would like to get together while we are in the city.  Very quickly a response came back insisting that we come to dinner at their home on the beach in one of Mumbai’s suburbs.  Getting there took about an hour in the taxi and we went over the toll causeway that was the best road we’ve seen so far and the only one comparable to a US or European highway.  Even with practically no other cars on the road, our taxi driver still straddled two lanes as he drove.

Until very recently when the great grandmother passed away at age 103, four generations of the family lived under one roof.  Right now they are redeveloping one of their homes about 15 minutes away and when finished there will be nine floors of apartments for everyone to be able to live under the same roof. Family is very important here.

While waiting for the parents, we got to visit with Aaron’s friend and his sister who is a rising senior at the University of Southern California. In retrospect, we probably made the mistake of coming at the time we were requested, but should have been fashionably late.  Dad is an industrialist and clearly a very successful one at that.  We have a marvelous evening of good pure vegetarian food, champagne, and very pleasant company.

I also got to find out at least one theory about the “Horn OK Please” sign on the back of trucks from our host.  He believes it dates back to when the British were here and the idea was that when you were caught behind a large truck on the road you would honk to let them know you wanted to pass.  During the war the trucks ran on kerosene, so the some say that “OK” stood for “On Kerosene”.

Over time this has morphed into its own little bit of cultural identity and when people get a truck here they sort of tattoo a decorative version of this message on the back of the vehicle.  Clearly it has no real purpose within the city – everyone honks their horn at anything anyhow.  If you want to see some other interesting theories, the hyperlink above is worth a click.

Taking the Wrong Boat

Wednesday, June 6, Mumbai, India.

Today’s major activity was a trip to Elephanta Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site about a 45 minute boat ride from Gateway of India.  We had no problems purchasing tickets (RP150/US$3 each) and then hopping on the ferry, which left a few minutes later.

The island doc is on the end of a fairly long causeway and they have a narrow gauge railroad that can be ridden to the bottom of the 120 steps that lead to the caves.  Or you can hire porters to carry you up on a sedan chair, but for any reasonably fit person, the trip from the dock to the caves is a gentle walk and climb that takes maybe twenty minutes.  Along the way everyone pays a RP5 tax, walks past the ubiquitous stands of souvenirs and at the main entrance at the top you pay your entry fee, which is  RP250/$5 each for foreigner’s ticket, but just RP10 for Indians. However, the foreigners’ tickets include a guide service so we were glad we didn’t hire one of the locals trying to pigeon hole us off the boat

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Our guide Ramanandan was amazing.  He spoke perfect English, was very knowledgeable and clearly had educational experience (we later found out that he taught at the Waldorf School).  He not only gave us information about the site, but by finding out a little about our backgrounds, was able to  tailor his presentation to our knowledge level and experience, e.g. he made a lot of engineering references knowing that this is the boys’ area of expertise and interest.  He told us so much about Indian culture and philosophy, especially how it relates to mysticism.  One example is the Hindu idea of god is that of Generator, Operator, and Destroyer.  Sometimes this is the Trimurtha - three principal deities (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) and sometimes it is the different aspects of the same god, e.g. the three headed version of Shiva.  The cave is a temple to Shiva and essentially is a series of spaces arranged around a central inner sanctum.  The inner sanctum contains a Shiva lingam or large stone thallus that is the center of veneration.  In the spaces around this are galleries containing amazing carved panels depicting various scenes from the life of Shiva.  Decorated columns seem to support the entire space.

The amazing thing about this temple is that is it all one piece of rock – the entire temple was excavated and carved from the solid rock under the mountain approximately 1,500 years ago. All the detail work, all the columns, etc. are one interconnected piece of rock.

We walked back to the dock just as a boat was leaving and were hurried on to it.  As far as we knew all boats came and departed from the Gateway of India, but when we docked, we found ourselves at a different port in Mumbai and the boat was not going on to Gateway of India, so we got off and tried to figure out where we were  Even when presented with a city map, none of the locals (inc. the policemen) could point out where they thought we were.  So we took a taxi to a restaurant (the Copper Chimney) which we had read about in our guide.   Lots of confusion ensued as policemen and locals all tried to help the taxi driver figure out where we were going.  In the end he got us to the general area and we walked a ways until we eventually found the place, about 20 minutes before they closed the kitchen, but this was enough time for them to serve us up a very nice lunch.

Nearby was the local Rolls Royce showroom and in fact, on our way back to the hotel, we say a shiny new white Rolls Royce.  I would think that you’d have to be crazy to try and drive a car like that here – one scratch from a taxi and the repair would probably cost more than the taxi is worth.  About 80% of the cars on the road appear to be taxis and the other 19.99% appear to be what in the US would be middle class or economy cars – Hyundais, Toyotas, etc.  Haven’t seen any Mercedes, BMWs, etc. – just the one Rolls Royce on the road (plus 3 in the showroom).  We later found out that cars here typically end up costing about 3X the US with import duties etc.  In the paper I saw an ad for a used 2011 Prius with 8,000 KM (5,000 miles) on it with an asking price of RP23 lakh, or about US$50,000. The Indian counting system is interesting,  rather than use millions or billions, for large numbers they use lakh, with is 10^5, or 1/10th million, and crore, which are 10^7 or 10 million or 100 lakhs, so you sometimes see numbers like 23,00,000 (23 lakh) which is a correct representation in India, but looks very confusing.  We would expect to see 2,300,000.

After lunch we came back to the hotel and got the 3G data plan working on the phones, so now we have internet access. Dinner was a tasty  but simple affair provided by our hotel and included in the tariff.  We ate with the Welsh couple we met yesterday, then hung out with them on the rooftop terrace watching the traffic go by in the evening. Then it was time to try to get some sleep before facing the onslaught of Mumbai again tomorrow.

Survival: Mumbai Edition

Well, we’ve made it through 24 hours here and are still alive, which is a good sign.

Traffic here can only be described as crazy with pedestrians dodging cars at almost every turn, and frequently between them as well.  As a passenger in a taxi, you wish that you could find some way to get in on the horn business, because if you could, you’d end up a millionaire.  On the other hand, being a pedestrian reminded me of the old video game Frogger where cars try to run you over at every point and you have to hop across the road in cadence with the traffic.  Except in this game you only have one life, unless you happen to be a Hindu, in which case you might think differently,  Amazingly we witnessed no vehicle on vehicle or vehicle on person accidents.

We’ve come across a number of strange, pseudo English signs like “Horn OK please” which seems to be painted on the back of almost all trucks.  Have yet to figure out what this means – kind of sounds like they are asking you to beep them.  Then there was this sign which I think is meant in the sense of suction and blowing machine, but sounds a bit like a scary prop from an adult movie:

The way the taxi drivers drive here, you could be forgiven for assuming that the city had been colonized by the Italians, but in fact it was the British and Portuguese who put their stamps here.  In fact, one theory for the name of the city comes from the Portuguese Bom Bahia (good harbor), and Bombay was acquired by the British as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganca in her marriage to Charles II in 1661 (or there abouts).  Last year Kelly and I traveled through Spain and Portugal and spend some time in Braganca, which is a tiny town in the remote north east of Portugal.  By contrast, modern Mumbai is a bustling city of officially 22 million people, but clearly many more, and is India’s largest.  Think “Indian New York” – the largest populated city, the financial capital, and an expensive place to live.  Except New York is a bit better kept.

Staying at the same place is a Welsh couple from Porthcawl, which is the next town over from where Nigel and Mo live, so it’s a small world.  The wife, Janice, works for the Y and is here to setup a program of babysitting for the children of prostitutes if I understood correctly, and will be here through September.  The aim is to keep the kids off the streets.

We went with Janice and her husband Martin for all of us to get SIM cards for our phones, but they did know that they needed to have their phones unlocked to take a different carrier’s SIM card and so ended up having to buy a basic local phone (only about US$10).  I had taken care to get Aaron and my phones unlocked before we left, which will allow us to stay in touch and also hopefully have internet access when we need it.

Now, what is simple in the US or the UK is not necessarily so in India.  Just to get prepaid SIM cards we had to take our passports for them to copy, submit a photo, sign the forms and photos and generally wait around,  but we did get them in the end.  I think they actually wanted a letter of introduction from our hotel, but we managed to skip that one.

We then headed to the Gateway of India which is a local landmark ceremonial gate built to commemorate the 1911 visit of George and Mary and was the departure point for the last British solders of the Raj.  In fact what George and Mary went under was a cardboard facsimile, as the read gateway wasn’t built until 1924. Across the street, we stopped in a looked around the swanky Taj Mahal hotel which is apparently THE place to stay here.  Unfortunately it was also one of THE places targeted in the vicious attacks a few years ago, along with the Chabad House and other Jewish sites.

On our way to lunch we made a stop at the Knesseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, a very old facility that was build by the Sassoon family, who were Persian Jews that emigrated here.

This being our first real meal in India, we splurged a bit and had lunch at Khyber, an award winning fairly upmarket restaurant specializing in NW Indian cuisine.  I tried a drink called Jaljeera, which is intended as an aperitif.  The best I can describe it was like drinking the brine from the eggs at Passover, but with cumin and mint mixed in.  Very salty and not really to my taste.  The rest of the meal was very good though.

From the restaurant we walked to Victoria Terminal (also called CST), a Victorian gem of a railway station, beautifully crafted and full of details, the interior of which was modeled after London’s St. Pancras Station.  If you can believe it, this station is used by more than two million people each day!

Another 1KM or so along the road brought us to the Crawford Market, one of the larger local markets with everything from food to animals for sale.  This was perhaps the most extreme olfactory experience of the day, but only slightly more intense than walking down any other street in the city.

To me the city is like playing scent roulette – smells of perfume, flowers, fruit, and other sweet aromas waft past you as you walk, and then get replaced by something very malodorous that often cannot be identified.

We had planned on stopping by the Chabad House to make a donation and when I called earlier in the day Rabbi Mendie extended an invitation for dinner that we ultimately took up.  The food was simple, but the company was nice and we even had a little Gematria study and ma’ariv thrown in.

It was then time to go back to our hotel and sleep. 

Day 1 survived!