Of Streets and Soul

Continuing from the last post, it must be mentioned how riding a moped or any other two-wheeled vehicle, even riding in a auto-rickshaw for that matter, is almost a 'near death experience' in Indian traffic, making it even more thrilling. To those unacquainted with the streets of India, here is how traffic would flow at a typical junction, and if you're on your feet, here's how to keep them while crossing the road (forget zebra crossings for they are seldom seen outside the capital city.)

The funny part is not how order exists among chaos or how Indian drivers manage to turn three lanes into six, but the fact that the very culprits who drive recklessly (trucks and auto-rickshaws) try to educate other drivers into 'driving with care'.

Almost every single truck / lorry in India has the slogan 'Horn OK Please' painted decoratively at the rear of the lorry as part of the entire truck's decoration. It is so ubiquitous that it is now used in popart reflecting the soul of India, rightly so. The origins of the slogan are unknown, but my guess is that phrase is 'Horn Please, OK!' (since the OK is always in another font), instructing the driver behind to sound the horn as he / she overtakes the lorry, with an encouraging 'OK'. This way the lorry driver knows to give way. On a 2-lane road I have usually seen them riding with the lane divider right in the middle of the vehicle, though this may finally be changing slowly.

The slogan may also accompanied by another one in smaller size and italics, 'Use dipper at night'. Yet everyone uses their headlamps on straight beams at night, and the flashing of lights during daytime usually means 'get out of my way' rather than the 'thanks' or 'you go ahead' it communicates in the UK. To top it off, they may also have one of many classic Hindi phrases, the most common of them being: बुरी नज़र वाले , तेरा मुंह काला (translation would't do it justice, but roughly it is: 'You of the evil eye, may your face be blackened!').

Auto-rickshaws may have similar rears, but not so commonly. An instruction to downright 'STOP' is more likely to be seen at the corner, as opposed to the central aligned messages on trucks.

Generally these vehicles combine to make traffic from hell, especially in Delhi. Drivers in Mumbai seems to have a better traffic sense. To finish off this post, I urge you to watch a short animation jointly created by Irish and Indian animators, accurately depicting many aspects of the life of a Mumbai taxi driver.

Things I miss about India # 2

Riding mopeds! Note: a scooter / scooterette is cannot be called a moped. The word moped comes from the combination of the words 'motor' and 'pedal', hence you can use them like a bicycle too, in case you run out of petrol. The mother of all mopeds is of course, the Luna.

The whole process of starting the vehicle makes a kick start look boring, never mind push button starts. The greatness of the vehicle can only be imagined by thinking of the endless numbers of people it has liberated in the context of transport - especially working women, people in lower and middle income groups in both rural and urban areas. 

Heck it was even exported to the US under the name Kinetic TFR!

More English

Lets clarify yet more confusion caused by the great English language! This can also happen to non-Indians.

Indian English. UK English. Notes.

• Cellotape. Sellotape (brand). Adhesive tape derived from cellulose.
  
• Duct tape. Duck tape (brand). Apparently duck came first due to its waterproof nature, and then came duct as it was beginning to be used in ducts around the house.
• Vacuum cleaner. Hoover (brand).
• Pen. Biro (brand).
• Brinjal. Aubergine. Or eggplant in North America.
• Lady's finger. Okra.
• Rubber band. Elastic band.
• Scale. Ruler.
• Rubber. Eraser.
• Copy. Notebook.
• Purse. Wallet. Yes, I'm talking about males here.
• Gum. Glue.
• Orange. Satsuma / Clementine.
• Private school. Public School. Meaning a school independent of the government.

Be at ease - outsource your life!

Before the word Bangalore comes into your head (it probably has by this point, anyway..) I'd like to mention Esquire magazine, which features another comical article I've become fond of. If you really want to know the extent of outsourcing, save yourself from reading through a few hundred pages of Tom Friedman's The World is Flat, and read this article instead. You won't be dissappointed.

Indian English

This is the funniest wikipedia article (starting from around the middle of it) I've ever read. Its funny because its true, and because I've innocently made many of the grammatical, phonological and idiomatic 'errors' mentioned in the article myself. Call it an obsession with perfectionist language; I don't care. Here are my favourites:

• Not differentiating between sounds of 'v' and 'w'. I got made fun of in high school because of this. When that happens, you really don't want it to happen again. So here I was a few days ago, trying tirelessly to explain to my friend the difference in pronunciation between 'vet', 'wet', and 'whet'....urgh! what a huge waste of everyone's time!
  
• Lack of 'dental fricatives', e.g. the sound of 'th' in 'thin'. High school again - back then it was being asked to say 'thirty three and a third'. Fun.
• Words borrowed from French being pronounced using English rules. My French is decent enough to have proper boo-kets (bouquets) but it would be fun to have a ren-dez-wus (rendezvous) sometime.
• Progressive tense in stative verbs: "I am knowing it" or "She is knowing the answer". This one caused a massive misunderstanding and subsequent outrage in our student union; luckily I don't have the ability for such usage.
• Word order: "My all friends are waiting". My Hindi is decent but perhaps not strong enough to influence my English to such an extent!
• Agreeting to form of question rather than content. "You didn't go?" Yes, I didn't. I was going to prove the whole world wrong with this one middle school.
• Another classic: use of 'only' as an intensifier. "It was she only who cooked the rice." Though I cannot remember, I must have done this a few times.
• Yet another classic: "Open your shirt" for "take off your shirt", "off the light" for "turn off the light."
• Pronouncing 'h' as 'ech' instead of 'eych'. My grade 5 colleagues couldn't stand this.
• Use of the Latin word 'cum' to mean 'with'. Nothing wrong with that!
• Skipping verbs: "What I did?" instead of "What did I do?". I have some class, thank you.
• Invented words: While 'postpaid' does not seem sensible, (how can it be paid if one is still to pay for it?), 'prepone' should be given an award for completing the English language. I'll happily enforce it on my non-Indian colleagues. Not only does it make sense, it shows how hard working we Indians can be, doing things ahead of schedule! UPDATE (18 May 2008): A new word I saw in the Indian press today: 'degrowth'. I assume it means 'decline in growth'.

Indian Achievement

Being a typical die hard Indian, I shall in this post, start a series of posts on Indian achievement, at risk of contributing to the bombardment of such material you may already face. If its any consolation, I shall aim to expose the lesser known aspects.

My starting point is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. Born in Mumbai, he has been the longest holder of the post of Music Director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I am talking of course about Zubin Mehta. He had originally started studying medicine (surprise surprise) but dropped after two semesters to move to the Academy of Music in Vienna (unofficial capital of classical music). Apart from conducting in Europe and North America, formidable achievements of his include peace-making and improving diplomatic between the likes of the US and the Soviet Union; India and Israel.

Some more trivia: his first wife divorced him and married his brother Zarin Mehta, who has held the post of Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. Yep, you guessed it, their father Mehli Mehta was also a keen conductor, founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935.

Healthcare in India

If you follow the Indian media closely, you've heard of the advances made by Indian pharmaceuticals companies globally and and rise of India as a major 'medical tourism' destination, offering world-class medical facilities at a fraction of the price one would pay in the west. Great. But what about the common man?

It is well known that the situation is rural India is bad enough with absent doctors and poor infrastructure. The situation in urban India can only be called slightly better.

The average person living in India comes across fake doctors, fake medicines, genuine doctors giving un-necessary treatment, or 'their own' tablets (given in small paper bags) which are accepted because the common man knows of all of this, and chooses the safety that comes with getting it straight from the doc, be it without any indication of what it is. Then you have centres offering hundreds of alternative therapies, some of which are not therapies at all but more bizarre displays. Of course, all of this is when the person has access to 'healthcare'.

A recent article by the Economist quotes a senior Delhi Medical Council official claiming that fake doctors outnumber genuine doctors in India. They cater mostly to lower income groups (which form a large part of India's population). But with telecom operators, retailers, insurers, builders aiming precisely for such high volume markets, can a business model be worked out to provide them with decent healthcare too in a similar fashion? To me this seems to be the only way out of the vicious circle which is formed between population growth and declining health care availability. [More research needed].