Ninjineer

a Nerd with Delusions of Wonder

Watching Slumdog Millionaire recently on DVD dredged up memories of my trip to India …

Back in 2004, my buddy and I convinced our respective employers to send us to New Delhi to attend a certification boot camp. The particular training plan I chose allowed me to earn both the MCSE and the CCNA in just 26 class days. I also opted for the one-on-one instructor upgrade. The overall cost of this package was significantly cheaper than similar yet shorter-term camps in the States.

The pace was grueling despite the fact that I had a fair amount of experience with the topics. A typical day would see me up at 3am, study for five hours before heading over to the training center for lectures and labs all day. Then I’d return to the hotel for more study until I went to bed at 9pm. (Note: I found it easier to keep odd hours than to adjust to the time difference.) Every few days I’d sit for an exam and then immediately start preparing for the next one.

In all, I had to pass eight exams. Each one lasted two or three hours and covered a significant swath of technical minutia. I passed each on my first sitting which was fortunate. Retaking an exam cost $100 a pop. Further, if I had come away with any un-passed exams, I would have had to reimburse my employer for the entire cost of the training.

To be honest, though, it wasn’t all work. The training center was not open on Sundays, which gave us an opportunity to do a little site seeing. Also, my buddy and I pushed ourselves to finish up a day ahead of schedule. For our unencumbered day we made a trek to the Taj Mahal.

The Mother of Invention [The India Trip - 2 of 6] — (Photo taken 2004-06-16)

My hotel room’s only window looked out into a light-less shaft. From a study perspective, that feature was an advantage. It kept me isolated from the street noise. The lack of a desk, however, worked against me. Eventually I worked out a reconfiguration the furniture that did the job, even if it was mightily uncomfortable.

The photo also shows my old iBook laptop. I had it configured to dual boot into either OS9 or OSX. The former was necessary to run Virtual PC, which was the only Mac virtualization software of that era. My virtual machine, in turn, hosted the Transcender practice exams that were a key component of my study regimen. Also at one point I managed to install Windows 2000 Server into a Virtual PC instance. Running it brought the iBook to its knees.

• Whilst on the Air India flight inbound, I asked for water with my meal. The attendant asked if I’d like ice. I said please, so he plopped in a single cube. That would prove the last ice I’d consume for a month.

• Emerging outside the terminal at the New Delhi airport, we had to navigate our pulled luggage around a steaming pile of cow shit. We drove past the likely source of the welcoming gift a few minutes later. It was grazing on the median grass just outside the airport parking.

• It took me a week to figure out that if I want my tea to arrive without cream and sugar already mixed in, I had to order black tea. That struck me as odd since I’ve always considered tea brown.

• I managed to go ten days before succumbing to “Delhi Belly.” After some experimentation, my buddy and I discovered the best meal to alleviate the discomfort was Dominos cheese pizza with a side of garlic breadstix. I have no idea why, but it helped.

• Most of the other students hailed from England. That, coupled with the Indian’s command of the Queen’s English, meant I had to adjust to a few vocabulary nuances:

  • Some I knew already such as queue meaning line and fags meaning cigarettes.
  • A new one was revise meaning study. (e.g. “I spent the whole bloody night revising the latest book.”)
  • When the instructor asked how I did on the paper, he was referring to the test.
  • All the signs advertising chemists were referring to pharmacists.
  • One of the English blokes taught me a new phrase: mutton dressed as lamb. It’s derogitorily used to describe an older lady wearing clothes meant for a much younger woman and not pulling it off.

• The power switches went the wrong way. Whereas I expect to turn on a light by flipping the switch up, there I had to flip down.

• For some reason, piles of rubble consisting of bricks, concrete bits, and dirt seem plentiful. My guess is that the piles were assembled during building construction and then left as a permanent feature. They’re easier to maintain than grass.

• Meal times were askew to my sensibilities. Lunch was from 1 to 2. Dinner started after 8.

• Little things cost extra. For instance, toast at my hotel’s restaurant was 20 rupees, buttered toast was 25 rupees, and toast with butter and jam was 30 rupees. Purchasing bottled water in most restaurants cost something like 15 rupees for the bottle and then another 15-25 rupees for the service charge.

• If you need directions, ask a woman. The guys always feign ignorance. To confirm this theory, my buddy went up to a street vendor and asked where a particular bank was. The man did not have a clue despite having his stand set up in front of the bank in question.

• Horn honking is a vital driving skill.
• Lanes are more like guidelines rather than rules.
• A motorcycle is a family conveyance. On the drive from the airport alone, I spotted several motorcycles burdened with families of four and even one with a family of five.
• The bigger the vehicle the more right of way it possesses. Buses rule the road.
• Women do not seem to drive the motorcycles or mopeds. They do ride them, but all of them sit side-saddle.
• A guide to driving through an intersection in Delhi:
  1. Enter the intersection.
  2. Spare a glance to see if this maneuver is about to lead to a catastrophic event with someone coming from another direction.
  3. If so, apply horn and continue on in the desired direction.
  4. If the horn blasts did not alleviate the problem, adjust your vehicle’s direction to avoid the impending impact, but continue moving forward (feel free to use the oncoming lane as necessary)
  5. Brake only if vehicles from the side direction are more successful in completing the above steps than you
• The above does not apply if the intersection you’re crossing is dense with traffic. In this case, slowly edge your way into the intersection until the oncoming side traffic is forced to stop to avoid plowing into you. Then you can complete your maneuver. The bigger your vehicle, the better this works.
• Crossing an intersection as a pedestrian works much the same except you don’t have a horn. Instead, you must rely on your greater agility to avoid collisions.

The Shopping Experience [The India Trip - 5 of 6] — (Photo taken 2004-06-26)

One Saturday, we finished up at the training center early and decided we should get some souvenirs for our loved ones back home. After a quick stop at the hotel to drop off our books, my buddy and I and student from England went downstairs to catch a rickshaw. Our “regular” rickshaw guy wasn’t hanging around out front, but another driver was. We had some suspicions about him, but went ahead and asked him to take us to Coughout Place, which is a huge shopping area. Half way there, he diverted to a consignment shop. He said, “We stop five minutes. You go inside. You no have to buy, just look. Maybe you find a nice carpet, yeah?”

This sort of thing happens frequently. Supposedly the shops pay the drivers for every “customer” they get inside. We simply refused to get out. Eventually the guy gave up trying to convince us and took us the rest of the way.

We disembarked in front of a market area full of tiny shops and street vendors. With every step through that place, we had someone at our elbow asking if we wanted wallets or postcards or toy snakes or hankies or shoe shines. That did not include the actual shopkeepers who were just as insistent that we stop and peruse their wares.

Eventually we found the underground walkway to take us to the mall proper. Just as we started to ascend the stairs back up, an adult shoe shiner stopped me and pointed out that I had “bad monkey shit” on my shoe. I looked down. Sure enough there was a big messy glob atop my sneaker. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t there earlier and had passed no monkeys in the tunnel. I figured he or an accomplice had tagged me.

Before I could protest, he wiped it away and moved on to polishing my sneakers. I quickly extracted my foot and walked away. He then demanded 150 rupees. I said something to the effect of, “Hell, no.” I continued on my way and the price suddenly dropped to 10 rupees. I’d have given him that, but I only had 100 rupee notes on me. I couldn’t see him making change. I ended up leaving him grumbling on the stairs.

Once we reached the mall, the constant hawking slowed. We only had to deal with someone every 100 feet or so. The one exception was another shoe shine boy. He kept after me for the next hour, reappearing after every shop we visited.

When we were finally ready to leave, the new rickshaw driver wanted nearly triple the amount that it took to get us to the mall. We managed to bargain him down to only double. Even then we had to forcibly convince him that we did not need a nice rug.

The Taj Mahal Experience [The India Trip - 6 of 6] — (Photo taken 2004-07-01)

We got started for Agra around 5:30am. It’s a four hour drive from Delhi. Along the way …

• Besides the run-of-the-mill horse-drawn, donkey-drawn, and cattle-drawn carts, we saw examples of water buffalo-drawn and camel-drawn ones too. No elephants though.
• The road we were on was a divided, two-lanes-each-way highway. At one point, oncoming traffic started barreling down on us using our fast lane. Their side of the highway apparently was closed and they had been routed to our side., There had been no signs or cones or any other warning to inform cars moving in our direction.
• At one point, I saw a whole line of ladies walking with water urns on their heads just like at the end of Disney’s Jungle Book, except they were doing it down the median of the highway.
• There were several points along the way where tolls had to be paid. At one such point, our driver parked and went off to pay the tolls. Near us were three or four monkeys and two bears. All were on ropes with handlers. My buddy got out to pet a monkey and take a couple pictures. The guy had him stand astride the bear, and one of them took a picture with his camera. When it was time to get back in the car, the guy demanded 1000 rupees for the privilege. My buddy managed to get away for only 100 rupees.

As soon as we parked near the Taj Mahal, hawkers and “official” guides mobbed the car. We managed to make our way clear of most of them, though a couple of the guides insisted on pacing us for the half-mile stroll to the entrance. During the walk they repeatedly tried to convince us that our driver was only going to rip us off and that we should avail ourselves of their services. Our driver was one of the school’s regular drivers. We knew he was a stand-up guy. My buddy got fed up with the insults and told them to bugger off in less than friendly terms. That seemed to get through to them, and they finally wandered off.

>Ticket price to enter Taj Mahal was 20 rupees for Indians. For non-Indians, the rate was 700 rupees.

We cleared the first guard point and were on our way through the second when one of the guards realized that my buddy was carrying a Palm Pilot. As far as the guard was concerned, that device fell under the same category as cell phones, which are forbidden. We tromped back through the first check point, found a locker where he could leave the Pilot, and then passed through the screening again.

Just after the first check point is a wide courtyard. It was home to a dozen or so photographers. Like the other hawkers, they quickly descended on us. One of them had the sense to hit us with a soft sell, and we agreed to his pitch. He took us to the spot where the geometry works out such that one looks like they’re touching the tip of the dome. On our way out, we picked up our prints.

We had to remove our shoes before approaching the Taj Mahal proper. It was around 1:00PM on 100+°F day, so the temperature was not entirely pleasant on bare feet. Surprisingly, it was more bearable walking on the marble than on the burlap carpets.

Going inside the building, another “official” guide glommed onto us. This one was actually pleasant. He explained to us where all the different inlay materials came from and demonstrated how several of them were translucent when exposed to light. He also rattled off the site’s history and showed us about. Amusingly, he would move aside unguided persons, so we could stand in each of the tomb’s significant spots. After the tour, the guide merely asked for a tip if we felt like it. We were happy to provide one.

Leaving the site, we were once again mobbed with hawkers. We managed to wade past them, only to encounter the original group of hawkers at the parking lot. They continued pressing us even after we’d slipped back into the car.