Bhang'ed Up In India
The other day I was sitting in a hotel room thinking about what each of the countries in Asia had taught me over the last six years. I came up with a short list:
I could write an essay on each of the above and someday I might. Asia is a vast continent and spans so many cultures that the possibilities for learning are limitless. Probably the most important thing that Asia has taught me is patience and no country has taught that better than India. In my six years in the region, I have probably been to India more than thirty times. I have been lost, gridlocked, delayed, scared witless, exhausted and frustrated on numerous occasions - normally not at the same time and never all the time. I can also say that I was never more welcomed than on my visits to India. As well, those hard times sure make you appreciate the good ones. India functions despite herself and the Indians are a tough, proud bunch. Looking back it took me about six trips before I was able to see past the traffic, the poverty and the dirt of the major cities (they call them Metros). The Metros are not the most pleasant places in the world and my Western mind had a particularly tough time. Your senses are totally bombarded and it is not until you get a bit numbed that you are able to start seeing past some things that are just plain disturbing (slums, street kids and insane drivers mainly). Some people never get past the first shock. That is a shame because, even from my limited time there, India has a lot to teach us. On to my story... if you bear with me then the title will make sense eventually. The reason for my last trip was to attend Shareholder and Board Meetings of a public company, Blue Dart. After careful consultation with all the board members and reviewing the calendar, we had scheduled these meetings over six months in advance. The meetings were being held in Mumbai. Mumbai used to be known as Bombay - they changed the name a little while ago. Locals have told me that you know when the government is under pressure as they start doing nationalist actions like dumping colonial names - or blowing up nuclear bombs, which BTW was a huge success locally. You see many Indians feel that the world doesn't take them seriously. As a large and proud country, I sense that this really bothers the man in the street. Indians are big on respect and status - left from the Brits? Whenever a head of state comes to visit, it gets huge coverage. I sense that many people see visits as an affirmation of India's global status. For similar reasons, woe to any Indian who visits from abroad and doesn't drop in on his family. Back to the meeting. After all that consultation, we were a little disappointed when the government decided to move a festival one day later to the date of our Annual General Meeting (AGM). Most of the holidays in India are religious in nature and the religions run off the Lunar calendar. As a result, things can move around. Makes it a little tough to plan but I seemed to be the only one who thought it was strange. Indians are very used to dealing with inefficiencies. The festival was for the Elephant God, Ganesh. Ganesh is a great God. Kind hearted, prosperous and good-looking. I was told that there would be "a few processions" so we would have to leave early to get to the meeting venue - two and a half hours early! I settled in for a long drive. I shared a car with Air Marshall Ramdas, retired. Blue Dart is an express delivery company and the Air Marshall has excellent contacts in the aviation world. Air Marshall (that's the right way to address him) started to explain the reason for the concern. The festival involves processions of people bringing statues of Ganesh to the water's edge and throwing them into the sea. Mumbai is a bit like Manhattan in that it is an island (I think!) that runs north to south. The East Coast is mainly ports so everybody heads west with their Gods. The catch was that our meeting was being held on the southern most tip of the island (i.e. we had to drive through every single procession). Heading down wasn't too bad. The processions, and the participants, were just warming up. Probably only a few thousand people on the streets and we were only caught once. The streets were eerily empty of cars - everyone was staying away. Perhaps they knew something I didn't. What eventually caught us was a thirty-foot statue of Ganesh. He was trying to turn off the boardwalk for a run down the boat ramp when some overhead lines caught him. Sideways across the road, everything was stopped. He was a fine God. Spray painted gold from head to toe. He had an axe and a quiver full of arrows and I asked the guys in the car about the weapons. Nobody really knew why he was armed. After sitting in silence for fifteen minutes watching them try to move the lines, Air Marshall summed up the situation quite well... "Faulty Reconnaissance". Ever the military man, that gave us a laugh. Eventually, one brave soul shimmied up a telephone pole and lifted the wires by hand. Ganesh was freed, started his final run for the sea and traffic started flowing again. Our journey only took 90 minutes so we had an hour to kill. We went to a very nice hotel - India has some great hotels - and had coffees (I had water). It was an Italian restaurant and the guys ordered a mix of cappuccinos and expressos. I learned something else. In India, a cappuccino is an expresso and an expresso is a cappuccino. Given that we were in an Italian restaurant, we had a debate as to whether an order for a cappuccino would result in a cappuccino or an expresso. Kind of like Abbott meets Costello in Mumbai. After the guys decided what they wanted, we had a further debate as to whether to order what they really wanted or order the opposite to hope that they got what they wanted. A very Indian conversation. In the end, the orders were made and it turned out that you actually received what you asked for. One guy who ordered an expresso, hoping for an Indian expresso (i.e. a cappuccino) received an expresso and was disappointed. Other than that, it was a successful round of coffees. Note: If it takes this long to order coffees, you can imagine how long it might take to build a factory! A lesson if you are an MNC thinking about going it alone. Off to the site for the AGM of the shareholders. We arrived a little early and were ushered into a very, very nice waiting room. Somebody mentioned "bhang" and I asked what it was. One of the directors said "it's like tabacco", they brew it up and mix it with milk. People drink it for religious ceremonies and they sell it at the temple. Another director interjected that it was really a hashish derivative and after a little more debate it was agreed that it was essentially Hash Tea. I thought back to when I was 15 in Vancouver, that would have been one popular temple in my neighbourhood - just ask the Canadian snowboarding team! By now, the noise was building on the street below us as processions of people cruised up the main street with their Gods. The variety of Gods was truly impressive. Big, small, thin, fat, every colour of the rainbow. Clearly a lot of work had gone into their creation. I learned later that they are made out of plaster of Paris. The AGM was uneventful but I was really impressed when the CEO continued to answer questions through what sounded like quarter sticks of dynamite being exploded on the street below. I could barely listen to what was being said and he didn't miss a beat. Truly impressive. When I asked him later, he just shrugged and said, "This is India that happens all the time." Soon it was time to head back north. By now, the festival was in full swing and I had a great view when we left the office building. Picture the most colourful dump truck you have ever seen. Streamers, reflectors, etc... Put about fifty people on the truck along with a fifteen foot statue of the Elephant God. Put fifty more people out front of the truck and fifty more out the back. Give thirty of them drums, ten a bag of cherry bombs, cover the rest with red dye and make sure that everyone under the age of thirty has had a dozen glasses of hash tea. Now multiply that scene by 500 and you are starting to get an idea of what was happening in THIS neighbourhood. The scene was being played out all over the city and the guys told me that by the evening there would be close to one million people on the western coast. That's a lot of Bhang! People were totally smoked and having a blast. A couple of the younger kids had clearly overdone it and were being helped by their buddies. Heaps of police were on hand with big canes. You don't want to step out of line in India. The police just kick the crap out of you and ask questions later. They are not brutal and I didn't see anyhow step out of line but it is exactly like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. One million revelers and twenty thousand police. You have to make sure that people "respect yah authoritah" - otherwise chaos will rein. Getting back home wasn't as easy as getting into town. We were caught several times. The longest of which was thirty minutes. Still, there were plenty of stoned people to check out as well as lots of Gods being tossed in the sea. The whole thing was surreal and I enjoyed the visual spectacle. Sitting in the longest wait, I asked why the Gods are thrown in the sea. Nobody knew! That really summed up a lot of things about India for me. Everyone accepting the way things are and no one really questioning why. The Tao of India. Do by not doing. Chinese philosophy applied on the sub-continent. So are you wondering if I got fed up, hoped out of the car, scored myself a pitcher of Bhang and joined the party? Well, the thought crossed my mind but I decided that it was enough fun to live vicariously through the participants. Don't really like being stoned anyhow. Eventually we cleared the festival and were speeding back to the hotel. I always wonder why drivers in the developing world drive so fast. We were flying down the road. Pedestrians, children, families, cyclists - all passing within a foot of our car. A couple of times I had to close my eyes and pray we didn't kill anyone. We didn't, thank God, and soon I was back at the hotel. Dinner, a short nap and then a shower before catching the red-eye back to Hong Kong via Singapore. Look at a map and you will see that is another quirk about India - it's not even efficient to get there! At check out, I asked again about throwing the Gods into the sea. They were equally baffled but one young lady offered, "So we can make more next year!" That's the best explanation I heard the whole time. Off to the airport. Waiting in the lounge a large American rolled in. He looked like India had been pretty tough on him. A waiter approached for his drinks order. He asked for a beer and the waiter looked apologetic as he explained that unfortunately today was a dry day in the State due to the holiday. Two hundred and fifty thousand people stoned out of their heads on the beach and it is a dry day if you want a beer! I had a little chuckle to myself. He settled for a Coke but you could tell this was a distant second place. Boarding the aircraft, I reflected on the times that I had walked down the ramp and joked to myself that leaving was the best part of my trip. I won't lie, sometimes that was the case. However, this time was different. This trip I had just accepted India for what she is. Don't ask me to explain. I have no idea but I realised that I would actually miss her, probably more the people than the place. A country of a billion people is bound to have a few characters and the guys with whom I have been lucky enough to do business are fantastic. I settled into my seat, put on my eyeshades and prepared for my four hours of sleep. Reclining my seat, I realised once again how lucky I am. gordo - 17 September 2000 |