Last week, I was fortunate enough to travel to Bangalore, India for work. The trip was the culmination of several weeks of extensive phone interviewing, as my boss had made the decision to staff a group of folks in our Bangalore office. The whole experience was interesting. Trying to wade through a 13.5 hour time difference, let alone cultural and linguistic differences, proved unexpectedly challenging over the phone. Whether it was spotty phone connections, fatigue, lack of clarity on my part or the candidates' part, or some combination of all of it, I had to muster a great deal of patience and thought to communicate my questions and receive answers that I was sure I understood. Various other members of my team joined me in this cycle: phone interviews early in the morning, then work all day, then phone screens at night. By the end of it, everybody was thoroughly sick of interviewing. With this subtext, I departed last friday for the 24 hour trip to Bangalore with a mixture of dread, excitement, and resignation.
Unfortunately, I was only told about the trip about 1 month beforehand, which was too late insofar as Eric and Kristin had already arranged to fly up the following Thursday night and stay with us for the weekend. So, my week-long trip in India, hopefully including a site-seeing excursion to the coast or a hill station, turned into a hectic 2 days of flying and 3 days of work. Although the interviewing didn't actually start until Monday, I departed Seattle Friday afternoon so that I would arrive Sunday morning and have all of Sunday to relax. It was a good move. The two colleagues that joined me on the trip delayed their departure by a day and were totally wiped out by Monday evening. meanwhile, I had all day Sunday to enjoy the accoutrements of the Sheraton's (across the street from our office, where we stayed) pool, club lounge with free snacks, eager waitstaff, and to window shop at the mall just down the street. With the exception of my final night in country, when my coworker Soni took pity on me and piled me into an auto-rickshaw for a drive across town and some authentic Southern Indian food at a good restaurant, the hotel & mall were the extent of my 'indian experience'.
Nevertheless, it was a fascinating glimpse of a country that I'd long been intrigued by, and I'm really looking forward to another opportunity to explore it further.
Some impressions:
I had a layover at Dubai on both legs of the journey, and the Dubai airport is super interesting from a sociological perspective. There are probably few other places where one can see so many cultural differences packed together under one roof - from very traditional Muslim women in full burkah, to American backpackers in flipflops, to European retirees in sensible shoes and sweaters around their shoulders, to Chinese duty-free attendants, and more, it was really crazy to just walk around and look and listen. It also neatly illustrated some of fundamental truths of humankind: everybody likes a deal (duty free) and convenience (mickie Ds).
Upon arrival at Bangalore at 3am local time, I was confronted by a few stereotypes that looked to be true: 1)lack of personal space, as in the woman behind me in the customs line bumped into my back after every single step forward. Not that she minded. 2) excessive layers of useless security, as evidenced by the cop dozing off in the chair while keeping an eye on us passengers. 3) lots of chaotic traffic. even at 3am and relatively empty roads, my taxi driver made sure to honk at every car that we passed, just in case they couldn't see him coming. In fact, the sound of the horn seemed to be what was necessary to encourage the drivers ahead of us to remember that there were traffic lanes separating the road, and that they should be in one or the other instead of both.
I was disappointed by the lack of wildlife. I've come to understand that not every Indian city is like this, but the only animals I saw were fleabitten dogs and birds. No elephants, no cows in the road, no monkeys stealing tourists cameras. Hollywood lies! The birds at least, were in abundance. I've never seen such a concentration of hawks as there were around our hotel. They seemed to have all the pigeon they could eat, so no wonder!
More security than I anticipated. Given Bengalore's relatively modern image (the 'silicon valley' of India), I was surprised at just how often I had to go through a metal detector or get my backpack scanned. Better safe than sorry though.
The city itself (as little I saw of it) was underwhelming. Perhaps similar to Silicon valley in that respect too. It looked pretty much like any bustling developing city: pockets of walled-off opulence, serviced by fancy malls with lots of glass and grass, upwardly mobile youth trying their darndest to embody the global citizen via gadgets and consumer goods, everything more expensive than one wishes or expects, but on the whole, somewhat pleasantly uninteresting. The weather was very mild, which surprised me, hovering between 60-80F. Life seemed pretty good for most people, particularly those that worked for tech companies, and the race was on between their individual respective salaries and the rapidly-climbing cost of living. Although I was admittedly removed from any kind of authentic experience, this idea that I had of a bustling mass of beggars, merchants and thieves was nowhere in evidence. Perhaps I'll find that next time I go, or in another city.
A few photos from the trip...
View of hotel and skyline from office conf room
In rickshaw with colleague Soni
After a successful dinner
Back in the rickshaw to head home, clinging on for dear life. The blur accurately captures the terror and thrill of the journey
