indermezzo

Today was Diwali, the higlight of the Indian festival season, the festival of lights where people lit there houses with everything from traditional oil lamps to sophisticated multi-colored Chinese party lights with 120 different blinking modes.
We put nice little oil lamps in every dark corner of the house to chase away the forces of darkness. Then we headed to Delhi and I couldn’t stop thinking that these millions of oil lamps everywhere might be more dangerous than the demons themselves.

Compared to the holidays I knew Diwali has the cozy family and eating aspect of Christmas paired with the fireworks of New Year’s Eve.
The amount of firecrackers outnumbers everything I have seen (and heard) so far, everyone seems to have his own little “Festival de Cannes”. It also seems we don’t have the same quality of fire crackers in Europe, possibly EU defense regulations.
The smell of gunpowder in the air made me feel dizzy, the walls were shaking every second minute and to make the scenario complete I spent the evening in the Delhi Army headquarters.

Below some pictures of our office, from our office and our office’s altar with the deities Lakshmi and Ganesh who are worshipped on Diwali. Lakshmi is the responsable goddess of wealth and as such in charge of our office matters as well. We took great care with the decoration, hopefully she liked it.
HAPPY DIWALI !

Miracles occur almost every other day in India or as the Times of India titled today: Another Day, Another Miracle. When celebrations of past miracles are on hold, new ones are there to fill the gap.

For ignorant me one of the biggest miracles and my personal object of praise is our air conditioning. As with all loving relationships, the AC is most appreciated during its absence. These little breaks in electricity supply vary a lot in frequency and duration. Short waves of 10s breaks turned our home into a discotheque, the lights flickering, the fans rotating or not and some dozen other devices that try to signal their discontent with the situation.

The longest break so far lasted for 48 hours or 12 decently long Bollywood movies. This same week-end hundreds of thousands spread out to the beaches of Bombay where the ocean water had turned sweet all of a sudden. While scientists warned of the filthy water, television was showing pictures of crowds gathering on a waste-covered beach, filling bladders and plastic bottles with the miraculous liquid.
The same week several Indian states banned Coca-Cola and Pepsi soft drinks partly or completely after a study of an environmental group revealed a very high level of pesticides in their drinks.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi cleverly argued that milk contains the same high level of pesticides, thereby making the cow the scapegoat. Government institutions countered in defense of the cows that milk has nutritional value as well.
A recent poll suggests that two thirds of Indians are in favor of prohibition - I fear that my choice might be soon between plain water and miraculous water.

A good day, one of the few days we skipped work and headed for a sightseeing daytrip. We picked up Senor Rastrilla and Eli at the train station who just arrived in Delhi to start their adventurous journey through India. They were well prepared and not afraid of minor intoxications as they had started their day with a sandwich and an orange juice at the train station. Unluckily I cannot present a picture of the train station here but I would like to mention that it’s the one place on earth I would not like to eat anything.

We visited first a Hindu temple whose name I can’t remember and afterwards the Lotus temple, allegedly the most visited edifice in the world with 50 million annual visitors. The temple belongs to the Bahá’í faith, in my opinion a very hippie-style religion with about 5 million followers around the world. It’s not even two hundred years old and is quite unusual in other ways as well I guess.

The inside of the Lotus temple is probably the most silent place in Delhi and I can understand that Delhiites love to visit it.
We ended the day with a dinner with Poonam’s sister Sheeva and her husband in a more or less posh Chinese place. Eli and Andres had to catch their train to the Himalayas early next morning so we said good-bye at midnight and went back to Gurgaon.

Tushar a good friend who made us go out a lot during my first two weeks in Delhi had left us alone with our work.
He now faces life on an oil tanker, navigating it throught the South Pacific for the next six months.
Hopefully we’ll have something to celebrate by the time he comes back to the mainland.

Before Tushar left he handed us three tickets for the Montreal Grand Prix party at the Canadian embassy. Another friend Amit organises a lot of those embassy events and other parties in Delhi. I was lucky to watch football in those places but I have never been particularly interested in Formula 1.
The Grand Prix party was extremely boring, but the beer was paid for by the Canadian tax-payer. I got a new one whenever possible, overwhelmed by such generosity. Judging my beer consumption one of the journalists probably concluded that there was no way I could pursue a regular job. That’s how I found myself on the celebrity gossip page of Hindustan Times just two weeks after my arrival in India.

We spent the last days shopping, computer shopping to be more precise. We bought computer parts, computer books and other computer-related items. It was nearly as much fun as it sounds.

It took us one day to buy a computer, the drive back from Delhi in rush hour included. Several near-death experiences during the drive completed the journey. I imagined driving on the left side of the road could be a problem for me but it turned out this is just an optional rule, as all other traffic rules.

We went to Nehru Place, supposedly Asia’s biggest computer market. There are literally thousands of vendors but none of them has a shop bigger than your local grocer.

While we were waiting one guy assembled my computer in a tiny booth above the shop which was cramped with computer parts. When the lights went off due to a power cut he put his Nokia phone between his teeth and continued the assembly process.
If you wonder why your computer behaves strangely at times - it might have been one of those assembled in the dark.

A day later we went to buy books. This was my first excursion to the outskirts of Old Delhi where the real crowd waits.
All of a sudden I understood why westerners often enough go nuts in India, the explosion of visual input, the smell of spices and smog and the sound of all those participating in street life hammer constantly on the mind of the unpracticed.

Our shopping trip made me experience more facets of the transportation system as well while we were carried from one shop to another by richshaw, auto-rickshaw and taxi.

At the end of a long day we still managed to visit India Gate, the Indian pendant of Champs d’Elysee.

My first days in Gurgaon. On my arrival at 1 am we went straight to a night club to watch the Germany-Poland world-cup match.
This fun-loving world cup where Germany made a serious attempt to show the world we have a sense of humour. Shockingly enough it really was a surprise to most commentators.

When I arrived Indian TV had just broadcast something about humour schools in Germany and consequently I was asked on different occasions if I went to humour school as well. For the record: I did not attend any humour school but occasionally laughed in primary school.

I was surprised to see how interested Indians were in the world-cup, in a country where otherwise cricket seems to be a synonym for sport. Cricket takes place all the time even though there is only one team, the national team. But this team plays every day against one of the other countries England invaded to spread the word of cricket. The appeal of this sport remains a mystery to me, maybe an invention of British humour schools.

After all the world-cup was a good excuse for opportunistic me to lure my colleagues to a bar once in a while.

Next day I stepped on the balcony because I wanted a breeze of fresh air not knowing the fresh air was inside not outside.
42 degrees Celsius, very much like holding a hair-dryer in power-mode close to your face. Don’t try at home.

My last days in France before leaving for India. Paris had already waited for me and warmed up to a boiling 35 C. I felt honored of the city’s effort to prepare myself for the heights of summer in Delhi.
After weeks of saying good-bye quite some people doubted if was ever going to leave.
When the plane took off I felt relieved to finally take the next step but at the same time I felt insecure about the whole project for the first time, not sure whether leaving girl-friend, friends and the Mediterranean behind was really worth the cause.
I suddenly realised I was going to move to India and I had no idea how it looked over there only that there were a lot of cows but that’s not to different from my hometown. Except for a glimpse at the Bosporus I had never even been in Asia.

Arriving at Paris airport I had no cash to pay the airport shuttle but the driver was willing to wait for me to purchase a ticket.
After five years of struggle with Cote d’Azur bus drivers I found this gesture incredibly human. Unluckily the entrance to the terminal was blocked buy three MP-armed military men who waited for the arrival of Monsieur le Presiden. I had to convince them that I was not dangerous in any way - it didn’t take very long.

Thanks to the invention of Carte Bleue I was now on my way to Paris to meet Joce who I was happy to see after a long time even the more since she provided me with a roof during my stay.
I also met Shalu in Paris who I hadn’t seen for even longer. Under normal circonstances I would have been happy to hear she was trying to move back to France. But at this stage, like all people I knew in India, she was about to leave the country when I was desperately trying to get there. Later on I would learn that nevertheless the country was still well-populated.

Most of the time in Paris I spent at the Indian embassy, a wonderful blend of French and Indian bureaucracy.
The French “fonctionnaire” style to randomly come up with new rules mixed with Indian noisiness and the wide-spread rejection of queues.
In two days I spent 10 hours queuing for a business visa. In order to look more professional I had the great idea to wear a suit and to carry my laptop with me in the midst of summer.

After all I liked Paris, everything went faster and more smoothly than I initially expected. I even had the time to visit the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
On Wednesday June 13, I gathered the last seat in the plane to Delhi at 6am from CDG. And there I went. [cliffhanger]