India, March 2004

Days 1 through 3: Travel and Arrival (yes, it took THAT long!)

The flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt was rather uneventful with the exception of a few screaming children. I mean, who could blame them? 9 hours on a plane makes anyone want to scream. Children are just young enough to get away with it with a few glares from nearby impatient passengers. If it were socially acceptable, I probably would have joined them around hour 7 as the only person seated next to me was a Turkish woman without even the slightest understanding of the English language. We managed to get a basic comprehension of our travel destination but as my Turkish is as perfectly null as her English, we politely agreed through modified hand movements to just sit in silence for the remaining 9 1/2 hours of the flight.

Unfortunately, I had another 10 hours to go once arriving in Frankfurt. As I sat waiting for my Chennai flight to depart, I watched the different cultures interacting amongst themselves. A majority of the travelers appeared to be Indian, not surprising as we were heading to India, so I had the opportunity of studying their culture prior to actually leaving the Western world. The Indian culture surprised me already. As we waited, the various Indian couples approached the waiting area. The men walked up to the first open seat and sat down, leaving their wivs to find a chair on their own. The first couple I watched through this process I assumed were just in the middle of some sort of marital conflict. As I continued to watch the arrival of more Indians, I realized this was not an isolated behavior. One couple arrived, the woman pregnant, and proceeded through this same process. As more and more couples arrived with the men taking the first seat and the women left to look for another on their own, even if it was on the other side of the waiting area, I began to realize that I was about to venture into 2 weeks of culture shock that may completely negate everything I believed about chivalry and common expectations between men and women thus far.

The 10-hour flight to Chennai was actually quite pleasant. Seated in a row with 3 seats entirely to myself, I was able to stretch out and actually get some pretty comfortable sleep, which I desperately needed after the Frankfurt flight. Lufthansa showed a series of excellent Bollywood movies and shows, including the famous Baghban well known by all of my Indian friends, and likely one of the biggest hopes among the younger Indian generations and one of the biggest fears among the older Indian generations. The plot was of the struggle of two parents who find that their four children would rather pursue their own American-influenced pursuits than take care of their aging parents - likely a very real problem today as globalization continues to seep its way into ancient Indian cultures and customs. As most of my Indian friends are Indian-born and currently living in The States, my guess is that it is a personal favorite of theirs as it possibly represents their own realities as leaving to pursue jobs and educations in the US means leaving culture, customs, traditions, and family behind in India and becoming Westernized, just as portrayed in the movie.

We also passed over very fascinating views of the Middle East landscape including Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan, at least according to the plane computer. Most of the terrain was completely barren and the towns looked more like primitive campsites. The roads were obviously not paved and seemed to wind somewhat aimlessly at times (definitely not US DOT designs). There were very few large towns - most small villages placed all over the country side - with very rough and almost scary looking topography. The lakes, on the other hand, looked brilliantly blue/teal colored, perhaps due to their high salt content? Once night arrived, there were absolutely NO lights on the ground except when we passed over a larger city. Unlike America, electricity doesn't seem to span across the countryside. It was pitch black outside.

I arrived in Chennai around midnight, but had I not seen the time, I would have guessed it was around evening rush hour based on the number of people outside and the amount of traffic on the streets. I have been in American cities coined as Cities That Never Sleep, but after seeing Chennai at midnight, I believe these cities do not accurately deserve this title as much as Chennai (and quite possibly most other larger Indian cities as well as most extremely large Asian cities). I would also highly recommend having a car and driver set up prior to arriving anywhere in India as the plethora of options solicited to you outside the airport are overwhelming and uncertain as to reliability. One could very well be quickly pushed into an unfortunate situation very quickly without much notice. Indians are extremely persistent salespeople, as I will elaborate on later.

While my eyes were wide open during the drive between the airport and the hotel, I didn't stay awake very long after getting into my room as I remember only awaking at 11am Indian time the next morning, resting my eyes for a few more minutes, and then seeing my room clock display 1:12pm. I checked out the grounds of my hotel, the Taj Connemara, which were absolutely stunning and undisputably stood up to 5-star standards in The States (Taj Hotels are known for this in India and, in 2004, were also known for fairly reasonable rates at around $99/night - today the rates are around $200-300/night for the same accommodations).

We had lunch at the hotel restaurant, The Verandah, with a colleague from the software outsourcing firm Object Frontier for which we were there. They had a huge buffet of phenomenal Indian cuisine, not too spicy and extremely flavorful. But not seeing naan bread in the food trough, I asked the waiter if they had any available, just as I would in an American restaurant fully expecting that if the kitchen had none he would reply 'no'. He nodded and said he would return with bread. Thirty minutes later, Naan bread came to our table, piping hot and freshly buttered. Not having naan available in their own kitchen, one of the staff went to a nearby restaurant and asked to have some made, especially for me. Now, that's service! And this was only the beginning. Indians are extremely hospitable as well as very hard workers. Apparently, in India it is almost a competition to be hostpitable to their guests. This was just the beginning of my experience with the best and friendliest service I have ever had as well as the first and only time I have ever experienced what it must be like to be someone of royalty, or a very rich person anyways. Considering that I am American, my Indian standards I guess I am extremely wealthy. Amazing how the value of one's currency can change one's status of wealth so drastically in a different country.