Miscellaneous India thoughts

Whenever I travel to a new country, I kinda run through all the things I know about it (which are generally pretty limited). Here's what I came up with for India:

Gandhi
Mother Theresa
Caste system/great poverty
Kashmir
Tibet/Dali Lama
British rule

That's about it. And the little I do know is pretty much from skimming newspapers and news weeklies (oh yeah, and the movie Lagaan, which was very good by the way). So, I get here and I go for a little walk yesterday. I'm staying in a fancy schmancy American style (Sheraton) hotel and the neighborhood around here appears to be pretty middle class (if there is such a thing here - there may not be. I think it's mostly that you either have money or you don't - no middle ground).

None of the zillions of folks working at the hotel tried to stop me as I walked off the property so I figured it had to be relatively safe. I was doing my NYC attitude - you know, walk confidently, have a good hand on your bag, etc. However, I was looking at people and smiling, which is not very NYC, but I thought a good move under the circumstances. I think that men have it much easier when traveling internationally - they don't have to be scared nearly as often. As a woman, you just don't know how people are going to react towards you when you're in a foreign land. Are they going to harass you? Try to steal your bag and/or jewelry? Assault you? That stuff definitely goes through my mind -- but isn't enough to keep me hiding in my hotel room (yet).

It turns out that I was definitely an anomaly (no one else on the street looked like me), but folks mostly stared and/or ignored me. There was one woman outside of a construction site wearing a hardhat looking at me. I gave her a smile and she gave me a beautiful huge smile in return. That made the whole walk worth it.

When I got back from the walk, I read through the Bangalore Times newspaper. I was interested in the news, but also in the ads. I figured I could learn a lot about the area from the advertisements. Lots of ads for schools and preparation for standardized tests. Speaking English is a big deal here - looks like it's the only way for people to get a decent job.

I was listening to an audiobook by a guy who was NPR's China correspondent for the last 20 years. The book is about a trip he took across China before he left there last year. He talks about the recent past and future of the country. One of the points he makes is that he feels that the peasants in China have a brighter future than the lower castes in India. Because of their inability to learn English, they are prevented from moving to a more prosperous future, but he feels that the peasants in China do (or will) have opportunities to change their lives.

Oh yeah, I woke up around 5am and started channel surfing. Lots of Bollywood movies (of course), MTV India (Indian women in scarce clothing -- who woulda thought?), a Dodger's game (live. seriously!), cricket, news and evangelists. I ended up watching Animal Planet until it was a decent time to order up an omelette.