I left India... I had to. My initial thought had been to travel to Delhi and see the Taj Majal but after having been traveling for almost 6 weeks straight and having spent the last 2+ in India, I had needed peace and quiet. I needed to escape the overpopulation, the excess of smog, the lack of consideration in public spaces... So I booked a flight to the Maldives, an island chain 2 hrs south west of India that have no cars, no smog, very few people and simply a serene calmness. What a contrst to India.
What then of my experience in India? Much like the Indian culture I am split. I loved the opportunity to go (especially for free) and I loved seeing a culture completely alien to me... The best part of travel is experiencing things you've never dreamed and India was definitely that. Everyday simply driving to the facility I was mesmorized by all that I saw and by the fact the country actually manages to function on a day to day basis. But what struck me most was the division in Indian society. The IT boom and the engineering sector in which we were working are full of ultra-competitive workhorses. The people at the facility would work 20hrs a day 6-7 days a week because they knew there were 1 billion people behind them that would gladly take their job. This mentality carried over into normal everyday life as well. Driving to the facility I experienced traffic like I never had before. Not because the roads were necessarily inadequate, but more because people (trucks, rickshaws, mopeds, what have you) would cut in front of each other with abandon because they perceived THEY could get a 1/2 inch ahead... Same mentality carried over to public tourist spaces. Seeing a palace in India is a mob scene. Despite the fact there was nothing to be gained, if you gave an inch in line, they took it... If you didn't give an inch, they pushed you out of the way. One 80 yr old woman even hit me with a bottle when I refused to let her push by. It is an ultra-competetive selfish "me first" mentality that is pushing the Indian technology boom. By contrast, there are the Shirinis (our driver) of India... The majority of India. The impoverished, the uneducated, those possessing few opportunities. Yet it is the that segment, the Shirini's of India, that are seemingly happy... The others have a glazed look of fear about them that they will lose their job at any second. Those that, and perhaps this is a bad example, remind me of classmates in law school... The ones that would rip out pages of library books to screw those that come next... The ones that would hid outlines or whisper sample test questions so that no one could over hear... That is the mentality of IT India and those we worked with. By contrast, there are the Shirni's... those with little to hope for in the future and yet, just one example, Shirini would say to me on nights I was tired from a rough day of auditting "sir, you are not smiling tonight, it is not so bad, life is good" and it would immeditately bring me out of my funk. In fact, Shirini made me a CD of local Indian music and asked that I not forget him because we were now friends. What a gesture. A man who had almost literally nothing gave ME a gift despite the fact he realized I had far more wealth than he could ever imagine. What a contrast... What a great perspective on life... A perspective that we in the big firm world are forced to deliberate over on a daily basis. I know my choice... I would choose a night with Shirni over the former anyday.
