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India

If You Thought The West Had Banking Troubles…

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There are so many things that defy logic and explanation in India that I’ve virtually given up writing about them on this blog but I feel motivated enough to write about yet another absurd Indian practice that angers me while at the same time amuses me. It’s labeled as being more efficient and yet you end up with multiple dormant bank accounts that never get used again.

When I arrived in India in January 2008 I had to open a bank account to receive my salary. Nothing unusual about that, the company brought in the representative from Standard Chartered (a British bank which rather oddly doesn’t operate in Britain), I filled out some documents, gave 10 million forms of ID along with a blood sample, and then, just to make sure I really was who I said I was, they made me copy out my signature 10 times to ensure it matched EXACTLY each time.

Apparently in India no one can forge a signature and it’s the most secure method against someone stealing your identity – according to my boss, anyway.

So I got a Standard Chartered account and I was happy, they even upgraded me to a Priority Customer because they reckoned they could make some cash out of me. As far as I could tell, being a Priority Customer meant you could flash a little black credit card around and pay 2,000 rupees (about 26 pounds) a year for the privilege of proving to the lowly shop assistant that you were far superior to them. (or in the immortal words of Harry Enfield: “I’m considerably richer, than yowse“)

But then disaster struck. My company decided that Standard Chartered was the most evil, money grabbing, greedy bank in existence (and since it’s British, they are almost correct in that allegation, but I think surely RBS must take that crown) and effective immediately, no further dealings would be done with them.

So how does that affect me?

Well, *deep breath* in India (the country that basically developed the software that powers the modern global financial system and built all the websites what we use for our online banking to send payments at a click of a button and who provides all the telephone banking support to the westerners), all businesses, big and small, are unable to process staff salaries to different bank accounts because I suspect they lack the technological means to do so. I mean, entering an account number and sort code for each employee is pretty high tech, right?

The inability to enter an account number and sort code in to the salary processing software means that a company will do a tie up with a bank and make all their employees open a salary account with that one bank and only pay salary to accounts with that bank – banks here apparently DO have the ability to send payments to their own customers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re currently paying your mortgage or loan with another bank, if you switch jobs or your company decides to use another bank for salary processing you are forced to have the additional headache of making sure there are always enough funds in the old account to meet the monthly repayments.

I had my Standard Chartered account, I was expected to feel special with my little black card, and to all extents and purposes, I was quite happy to bank with an English bank.

But the relationship didn’t last, the company decided that all 200+ employees must open new accounts with a bank called Axis Bank who promised lower fees, better service and the deal clincher: a free pen worth 500 rupees. They do love their freebies in India.

For an entire week the representative was in the office assisting the staff fill out the reams of paperwork and helpfully pointing out that their signatures were out by as much as 3 mm and it absolutely had to be exactly the same otherwise they might not be who they said they were.

Filling Out Paperwork Becomes Part Of Your Life In India

Filling Out Paperwork Becomes Part Of Your Life In India

Being a foreigner in a country that prides itself on inefficient bureaucracy I obviously had even more paperwork than everyone else because I could easily be here on false pretenses and actually trying to subvert this glorious country back to the dark colonial times. This meant I needed passport copies, residential agreements, visa documents, tax documents and loads of passport photos which had to each be attested by two different people that it was a good likeness of me.

Two weeks later I got all the paperwork back because the signatures on two of the documents didn’t match exactly and they were worried that I might not be who I said I was – I sometimes do the ‘g’ part of Claridge a bit different and that was the problem here, a quick glance and you couldn’t tell the difference, but closer inspection would reveal that the loop on the g wasn’t as big as on the other signatures. This Is India where your identity is determined by a signature 🙂

The fact that the account representative sat there and watched as I duly signed each document infront of him was apparently meaningless – “but sir, if your signatures don’t match exactly, you could be anyone!” “yes, this is true, when I put my new glasses on, some people do mistake me for Gandhi” – but he didn’t get the joke “no sir, Gandhi is Indian only”.

Eventually, after much practice, and with the account representative getting more and more agitated that this stupid foreigner couldn’t even make his signature match up, I managed to get 10 signatures to match so perfectly even the eagle eyed desk wallas couldn’t notice any difference.

Yay! I now had a new, entirely pointless, bank account with Axis Bank. No more money went in to Standard Chartered, but Axis Bank decided that I could continue feeling superior and gave me a new platinum card (which was actually black) for a better price of 1,500 rupees a year and came with numerous advantages and benefits such as being able to use it in any ATM in India* (*you may be charged for withdrawals from non-Axis Bank ATMs) and swipe it to pay for my shopping in at least 10 stores all over India. What’s more is that it comes with built in anti-fraud measures such as having your signature on the back which is totally unique to only you. Oh yeah. Living the dream!

Quite soon, with my new ultra cool, signature-secure Axis Bank account I forgot all about Standard Chartered and started making fixed deposits and building a nice little nest egg, but it wasn’t to last. This is India. And in India expect not just the unexpected but something to blow you away so completely that defies all logic and reasoning in the real world.

My company decided that Axis Bank were greedy, money grabbing, thieving robbing bastards[1] and they’d rather rot in hell than have anything else to do with them. Turns out that the low-rollers, those that didn’t get signature-secure little black credit cards, were not treated in the same way that ‘privileged’ customers such as myself were dealt with. Because many people earn such small amounts, Axis Bank decided that they needed to be charged a monthly ‘low usage fee’ so that the bank could make more money out of them and ensure that the poor and downtrodden stay poor and downtrodden. Whatever next? Signature-secure debit cards for the housekeeping staff? Perish the thought!

Anyway, can you see what’s coming?

I have to open another new bank account because Indian companies are unable to pay salary to people who have accounts with different banks. Emerging super-power indeed!

The hunt for a new bank began, the management looked at HDFC, SBI, Barclays (yay! British!), Citibank and more. Then along came a Standard Chartered rep who asked if the company would be interested in switching to them, “Hah! No way!” was the company reply “but we’ll give you a free pen worth 1,000 rupees for switching to us” “Ooo, where do we sign?”.

Back full circle, the company is again signing up 200+ employees to get Standard Chartered accounts so that they can be paid their salary.

Me: Ah hah! I already have a Standard Chartered account, here are my details.
Them: Ah hah! Your signatures don’t match, you could be ANYONE! You must go to your local branch 15km away and prove that you are Peter Claridge and then they will make a final decision on whether you are actually Peter Claridge or not. And oh, because you haven’t used your account in over 12 months you have incurred a banking fee of Rs 2,500, would you like to write us a cheque or would you like us to deduct it from your next salary credit?
Me: You still use cheques here?
Them: Yes, it’s very secure because it has your signature on it

The Red Tape And Bureaucracy Is Incredible

The Red Tape And Bureaucracy Is Incredible

We’ve now reached a bit of an impasse because the finance director is screaming at me to get my Standard Chartered account sorted so the company can pay me, I’m saying hell no, pay me to my Axis account here is my account number and sort code and the Standard Chartered account rep is begging me to make my signatures match.

I asked why on Earth companies in India are unable to pay people to the bank account of their choice and I got a tirade of abuse back from my boss on how I think the West does everything so much better and that it is easier and more efficient for companies to pay everyone in the same bank.

Easier for companies maybe, but at the current rate if I stay in India for another 3 years I’ll end up with 6 different bank accounts – and according to my boss that’s far more efficient! TII 😀

1 Phrase borrowed with permission from my father

India

Well Done, India!

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I thought I would hold off making any public comments about the Commonwealth Games until after the actual event, mostly because being a British expat in India if you criticise anything about India the general population will jump on you and accuse you of being a bloody westerner who is always trying to put India down.

Another, albeit smaller, reason was that I had this sneaky suspicion at the back of my mind that actually everything might work out in the end. It’s just the way things are in India; everything just has a magical, borderline spooky, way of working out – I can see why India is so spiritual and the home of Yoga and other meditation practices.

I don’t really know how to tackle the Commonwealth Games, so I think I’m just going to have to split it up in to sections…err and hope that it some how turns out alright in the end.

The Indian Athletes

Just one word: unbelievable. India has always been a nation that has underachieved in world sports. Their Olympic medal tally to date stands at 20 medals in the last 108 years and by contrast Jamaica have won 55 medals in the last 60 years.

There are too many reasons why this is the case, but if I had to put my finger on it, I would start by looking at the fact that 42% of people live on less than $1.25 a day, the immense pressure on young middle class adults to get a job in a multi-national company and study rather than playing sports and the total domination of cricket in the local sporting scene at the expense of other sports.

But wow. How these games have changed all that. The hosting nation always gets a medal boost as they invest more in to the sports to raise the profile of the games within the country, but India managed to exceed even the wildest expectations of sports commentators around the world – although inside the country they were open about the fact that they wanted to come second before the games even started, but I’m sure even they felt that they had gone above and beyond what they thought possible.

It seems that India concentrated on a few areas, there was the total domination in the shooting, archery and wrestling, but they also had individual stars in other events like tennis and badminton. On the track and field side of things there is still a lot of work to do, however the women won gold in the 4×400 relay and the men took bronze in the 4×100 event.

I think to put it simply: the performance of the Indian athletes eclipsed all the negativity in the build up to the event and you can’t take anything away from them.

Some critics might point that over 25 top athletes pulled out of the events which surely made an impact on the quality of the competition. However, over 100 Commonwealth Games records were set in Delhi, compared to just 33 in Melbourne 2006 – not exactly an indication of weakened competition!

Part of the reason for the excellent performances of so many athletes could be attributed to the $100,000 that India gave to all countries (which was fully disclosed in 2003 and definitely NOT a bribe in the under-the-table-brown-envelope sense) to help fund training, transport and lodging costs – something that enabled every country to compete, like the 4 man team from St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic so remote that Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled there by the British!

OK, I think that’s enough to write about for now, I still want to look at the corruption and building controversy that surrounded the build up to event in another blog post.

India

The Wisdom Tooth Extraction

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I guess like most guys if we ever find a problem with our body we have a remarkable superhuman ability to put it to the back of our mind and lose it amongst all the anniversary dates and birthdays – we know technically these things should happen but they never make it far enough up to our conscious that it registers as something to think about or to act upon.

And so it has been about many things related to my body which I only decided to correct after the pain and suffering can not be ignored any longer. It took me a decade to finally admit that there was a slight possibility I might need to wear glasses while using a computer (having said that I’m not wearing them now) – that happened after several days of brain pounding headaches forced me to meekly book an appointment with the opticians (and this being in England they could only see me by the following week at the earliest).

The other health problem I’ve been ignoring over the years is that of my wisdom teeth. I dare not think about how many painkillers I’ve taken in the name of wisdom tooth pain. My upper ones finally pushed through a few years ago but my bottom ones decided to be difficult and kind of got stuck half way through.

11 months of the year I could get on with my life without a (dental) care in the world but like clockwork the lower teeth would flare up and reduce me to a pill popping ibuprofen junkie. Which actually isn’t nearly as interesting as being labelled as a crack addict. Hi, my name is Peter and I flirt dangerously with the recommended daily dosage limits on ‘profen with a reckless disregard to my own well being.

Earlier this month my teeth started to play up again. Out came the ibuprofen and we* carried on as normal. However after the 2nd week and still in pain it began to dawn on me that professional medical advice might need to be sought.

Not An NHS Dentistry

Very fortunately my office happens to be opposite Chennai’s best dental practice and so my trip across the road was made a lot sooner than if the nearest dentists was miles away. I reckon I could have easily ignored the problem for another week otherwise. A better man than I probably would have anyway.

Now since this is India and the dental practices are not run under a British pseudo-NHS (ie. where you have to save up for 3 months just to be able to afford to have the dentist peer in to your mouth and count your teeth for 60 seconds – but that’s ok because there is a 3 month waiting list just to have your teeth counted anyway) I walked in to the building, told the receptionist that I had some kind of discomfort with my wisdom teeth and I was sitting in the dentist’s chair 10 seconds later and informed that I would need an x-ray to see what’s going on.

“Come this way, Mr. Claridge” and I got set up in the x-ray machine which wouldn’t look out of place in a George Lucas space opera. Now I don’t want to advertise how long it’s been since I last went to a dentists but I don’t remember the x-ray machines being hooked up to Windows and the digital image being immediately available onscreen – tooth fillings being highlighted in all their shameful glory. Does the NHS have that? Or is that extra?

“Right then, Mr. Claridge”, the dentist boomed, “you have an impaction on your lower teeth”, pointing at what looked, in my medical opinion**, like two perfectly formed, perfectly straight teeth. “see how this tooth is at an angle, it’s going to have to come out” indicating that a tooth which was inclined by as much as 0.1 degrees from the vertical is cause for urgent attention “and since we have to take the bottom teeth out we might as well take out the top ones while we’re there.” I didn’t like the jolly sound of his voice.

This is the x-ray of my teeth, on the left you can see a lighter shade between the bone and the tooth, this is apparently where infections have 'eaten' away at the bone - reason enough to get your wisdom teeth checked! The solid white mark in the top row of teeth is a filling :(

This is the x-ray of my teeth, on the lower left you can see a lighter shade between the bone and the wisdom tooth, this is apparently where infections have 'eaten' away at the bone - reason enough to get your wisdom teeth checked! The solid white mark in the top row of teeth is a filling 🙁 (for the record, my skull doesn't have a 'peterclaridge.com' watermark imprinted on it!)

“OK, right” I said, “when can we get these buggers out?” making a mental note that I had 4 more days of ibuprofen left before I had to buy some more.

“How about tomorrow afternoon” he replied. This definitely isn’t dentistry on the NHS. “You won’t be able to eat for three days, cold liquids only, shall I book you in to get the first two removed? We’ll do the other two the following week”

Ugh. OK.

I was loaded up with a prescription for a concoction of pills which elevated my junkie pill-popping status somewhat. I think anyone addicted to painkillers should make a beeline to India because not only do prescription-only painkillers cost about £2.00 for a 2 week supply but the pharmacist also gives you back your prescription paper so you can go to another pharmacy to get even more! This is India! Hmm, I wonder if they do co-proxamol here.

The Day of Extraction

My final meal before extraction was an Italian BMT Subway on honey-oat bread, delivered hot and fresh to my office. At 5pm I walked the lonely road (well, across the lonely road) to the dentist. At 5:10pm I was in the dentist’s chair in a very vulnerable position staring up at the ceiling.

Now I want to get the opinion of others here that have recently had local anesthetic injected in to the roof of your mouth and gums. Do you cry a bit? I don’t know what it is but the sharp sting always seems to force out a couple of tears, which is frankly hugely embarrassing when you are a tough macho guy like myself. Do any other equally tough men here have this problem? There is something about the insertion of the needle that seems to literally force water in to the eye. Who knows.

Anyway. If you are squeamish and afraid of blood you might want to skip to the end where everything turns out alright in the end. My blog is kind of like a Hollywood movie really.

I’m always a little nervous about local anesthetic, what if it’s not enough for my superhuman body, what if I need more than the regular person and they go for a scalpel incision and the anesthetic hasn’t worked? Yeah, I have far to much of an overactive imagination. But it could happen, right? Bad batch of anesthetic. What if it didn’t go deep enough and as he starts drilling it goes in to some flesh which isn’t numbed. Shudder. Nightmares. Moving on.

Using tools which probably wouldn’t look out of place in a secret CIA rendition chamber in some 3rd world country the surgeon got to work on my troublesome lower teeth. 30 minutes later the tools had been replaced by some truly frightening equipment dreamed up by Hollywoods finest sci-fi/horror writers as he tried to wrestle the tooth out of the socket. There was twisting, turning, pulling and all sorts but it turned out that I was actually rather attached to my tooth.

Another 20 minutes later and we were back to good old human brute force as he stood up, clamped pliers around my tooth, carefully placed his right foot on my chest and heaved upwards. My world suddenly became a more frightening place.

Eventually though there was a sickening cracking sound which isn’t the tooth being crushed but rather the jaw bone giving up its hold and going for a quiet smoke around the back.

I kid you not, the surgeon was massaging his arm after that extraction and sweat was running down the sides of his head.

“Difficult extraction?” I tried to ask, but thanks to the numbed cheek, tongue and lips it came out as “niffilt extakta”. Fortunately the surgeon spoke numb tongue and he silently nodded his head. “Ready for the top one?” I asked in my stupid lisp. He didn’t look at me, he was instead staring intently at the array of very expensive tools that had been defeated by my tooth, but he nodded his head slightly.

Luckily for the surgeon, the top wisdom tooth was far easier to remove, although he did take a very deep breath before he started 🙂

The Extraction: Part Two

If you are a member of public reading this because you are about to have your wisdom teeth extracted, let me remove any doubts and put your mind at rest right now. It frickin’ hurts. See? Don’t you feel better now that you know what’s going to happen afterwards?

You will relive the moments as the surgeon levers out your tooth, you will dream about the cracking noise as the bone gives way, you will remember how the surgeon was twisting your head off trying to get the tooth out, your jaw will ache like hell, you can’t eat a thing, blood will fill your mouth for hours after the operation.

But after a few days it will be fine. And if you are lucky you can milk the sympathy for all it’s worth because you will look like blowfish with your cheeks swollen out to double the size of your face. Anyone who looks like that must have gone through a lot of suffering.

The following week I had to go back to get my stitches out (did I forget that you’ll be left with some bloody great big holes that need to be stitched up?) and confirm that I wanted to go through the entire ordeal again. I must have a deep seated masochistic side I never knew about.

Now I’m not saying that the surgeon wasn’t looking forward to removing the other wisdom teeth but the original appointment was scheduled for 4pm, then pushed to 5pm before finally being told that they’ll call me once he’s finished his weight training preparations.

After the drama of the other extractions these ones were quite easy, the foot on the chest technique wasn’t required this time and to make sure I got extra sympathy I brought my girlfriend along to watch – it was worth several fruit smoothies over the course of the next few days! However I think she took more delight in peering in to my mouth and demonstrating with her thumb and index finger just how large the holes were and how much blood was gushing out!

Wisdom Teeth Sans Jaw - Bottom Tooth On The Right

Wisdom Teeth Sans Jaw - Bottom Tooth On The Right

Being a veteran of tooth extractions now, I went home and barely moved my mouth for the next three days as the dentist ordered. It very nearly worked too because I was in much less pain except on the 4th day when I tried to make myself an omelette and I opened my mouth to put the food in, except my mouth didn’t open. Which was far more odd than alarming.

So I tried it again, but with similar results, I couldn’t open my mouth to put food in. (I realize that there is a joke in here about getting egg on my face, but I’ve chosen to purposely avoid it to maintain the high caliber of writing regular readers have come to expect from me.)

Fearing that I would be resigned to drinking fruit smoothies for the rest of my life (which can quickly get boring after 3 days) and being known by the neighbourhood kids as the man who can’t open his mouth I rushed to the dentists and pointed frantically at my locked jaw.

Oh boy, did I feel stupid. Apparently if you don’t open or move your mouth for several days your jaw muscles lock and seize up – resulting in the condition I had – Lock Jaw Pete.

The medically prescribed solution to locked jaw, as I was informed, is to get two wooden sticks, insert them in to your mouth and lever your jaw open slowly over the course of the day. Oh, and you really do look as retarded as it sounds!

As I’m writing this I’ve been diligently levering open my mouth and managed to get more movement in my jaw – I’ve now got a window of about 1cm to post very small pieces of food through and it’s getting better by the hour.

The Hollywood Ending

My stitches will come out tomorrow and everything seems to be healing very well.

On a more serious note I want to thank Dr. Satish and his team for fixing me up. Esthetic Smile is certainly the best Chennai dentist so if you are an expat living in Chennai and you’ve got some tooth trouble definitely head over to these guys, I was really impressed with the setup and felt very comfortable with the staff and the expertise. If you are British it would probably be cheaper to fly to Chennai, get your teeth done here and then go back to England rather than relying on the NHS to do it in 6 months from now!

* ‘we’?! Do I have some kind of semi-dormant schizophrenic disorder with multiple personalities?

** Mostly learned from WrongDiagnosis and WebMD with a smattering of Wikipedia articles

India

I Still Find Stuff Like This Funny

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You know, after two and a half years (flipping heck!) in India, I really shouldn’t be finding the hodgepodge approach to the English language funny anymore, but every now and then I feel compelled to photo and share some of the unique ways English is being used here in India.

The photo below was taken from a nice little vegetarian restaurant around the corner from my apartment that I went to last night. I can’t believe I’ve not been before because it was really cheap and the food was good. My whole meal, which included a dessert and coffee (I know, I really went crazy) came to Rs 155 – about £2.20.

thank-you-come-agin

As a sidenote, I’ve been here so long and seen first hand just how expensive things can come when you have double digit inflation. Two years ago the meal would have probably cost about £1.80 – so nearly a 25% increase. You know things are getting bad when the middle classes start to complain about how expensive things are getting.

India Videos

The Petrol Got Over

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The wonderful thing about living in India is how many unexpected, weird, cool and bizarre things that can happen to you at any moment and any time. Sometimes it can be particularly special and they happen all at once. For this reason I always have my camera on me where ever I go because you never know when the unexpected is going to happen – although having said that, I guess I’ve got to the point where I’m expecting something unexpected to happen, India has trained me to do so!

So a little bit of background on this one. Every morning I take a tuk-tuk to the office, I’ve previously written at length about these contraptions. Since coming to India 2 1/2 years ago (bloody hell!) I’ve seen a 40% increase in auto prices, but that’s a blog post for another day.

Like clockwork the auto’s will break down every 2-3 months leaving me stranded at a point half way between home and the office. It’s become such a regular occurrence that I now accept it as part of the risks of my journey. Also without fail 3 or 4 times a month the driver will swing in to a petrol station to fill up – the driver will never tell you before hand that they need to fill up, so if you are ever in an auto in India and you suddenly find yourself on a petrol forecourt, worry not, it’s quite normal.

Getting back to the story behind the video below…about 5 minutes in to journey the engine spluttered and failed. I wasn’t too concerned because this happens all the time and after a bit of f-ing and jeff-ing (Tamil style) they get the bugger to work again. However this time it seemed a bit more serious and after checking the engine at the back, the guy poked his head in to the passenger compartment and replied, “petrol got over, boss”.

The normal procedure when the auto breaks down is to get out and let the driver hail another auto for you, they do the negotiating based on what price you had agreed, you then give a portion to the first driver and the rest goes to the new driver. This was done as usual, but then as we set off, the new driver stuck out his right foot and with the strength of 10 men, started to push the other auto down the road. At first I thought they were just going to the end of the road since it was just a back street, but got increasingly alarmed as we got to the busier junctions which had cars, tuk-tuks, pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes and cows pulling carts – not a place you want to be ‘towing’ an auto.

Anyway, my description doesn’t do it justice, so just have a look at the video. Road safety? That’s for weiners!

(Incase you are wondering about the confusing title of this blog post, if you want to say something has finished or you have run out of something in India, you say it “got over”. The auto ran out of petrol, so the driver turned to me and said “petrol got over, boss”).

India

Ya Wee Beastie

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Warning: this blog post is not for the squeamish! I’ve become somewhat numbed to the shock of seeing so many bugs and animals in the house since coming to India, but the I thought the bug that I saw the other day deserves a special mention.

I’m quite used to seeing ant super-highways snake their way round the kitchen wall, I’ve killed more cockroaches than Rentokill and peacefully shared my living space with lizards but this beast of a bug that I discovered on my bedroom wall the other day…I don’t know what the hell it is but it was fricking massive!

The following morning my housemate proceeded to kill it. By accidentally stepping on it with their oafish feet. Incredibly they claimed that they didn’t even notice this giant size bug!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Dunno, but it's a bloody big!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Dunno, but it's a bloody big!

And while I’m writing a topic about bugs, who knew that cockroaches could fly!

India

Turtle Beach

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Regular readers to my blog will know that Saturday evenings have turned in to my day of discovery as I stumble across various cultural and exotic goings on. A few weeks back I found myself in an art gallery watching a famous artist draw a picture of a cat (and buying art, who knew?), then it was the youth cultural exchange program that was taking place outside a big temple by the sea.

This Saturday just gone was no different. Myself and my friends had actually planned to go to a place called the Theosophical Society, not that we were particularly interested in Theosophy but they have some really nice gardens (God, yes I’m getting old) and when you live in a dusty, polluted city like Chennai you start to yearn for a bit of greenery and fresh air.

The Theosophical Society in Chennai occupies a large area near to a moving pile of ooze, sometimes referred to as the Adyar river and is the nearest greenest space to where I live.

Since the mercury is steadily rising and we’re starting to hit 34-35 degrees we tend to wait until gone 4pm until we venture out, our pale white skin being fried to a crisp otherwise. We arrived at the main gates at 4:30pm and were promptly denied entry since they only open the place between 2 and 4 – conveniently at the time when it’s hottest and no one wants to come. OK, we thought, this is India, lets try the side entrance and go in looking confident and aloof and make out as if we were meant to be there.

Yeah, that didn’t work either and we were stopped shortly after parking the car.

Cue the scene from Disney’s Jungle Book with the vultures sitting on a tree.

“So, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t mind, what ever you want to do is fine.”

“Eee, now don’t start that again”

(apologies if you had a terrible childhood and never watched Disney movies)

In the absence of anyone making an executive decision, I said let’s go down to the beach since it was just around the corner and we were close to a place called Broken Bridge which I’ve heard about in the folklore of Chennai, so named because there is a bridge. And it’s broken. An unimaginative folklore you could say.

With the car parked and a payment of 10 rupees (about 16p) given to a guy who promised to tell us upon our return if our car had been stolen we made our way through a fishing township towards broken bridge. I’d have loved to get some pictures of the fishing village but I feel like the intruding foreigner if I get my camera out to take pictures of people, I feel like they think I’m judging them some how because I want to take pictures of the way they live. The other reason was that the smell was so bad with the open sewers, I didn’t particularly want to stop!

As we walked towards the broken bridge, we came across a fenced off enclosure and the curiosity got the better of us so we went over and found a guy sitting inside surrounded by upside down wicker baskets. Fortunately we were with a guy who could speak Tamil (obviously I can speak Tamil as well, but only to tell people that I’m hungry or that I can only say a very small amount of Tamil!) and we found out that the enclosure was to protect the eggs of sea turtles.

Basically volunteers stay on the beach over night and wait for the turtles to lay their eggs, then the eggs are relocated to within the fenced off enclosure otherwise the feral dogs that populate the city and beaches will come along and dig them up for dinner. Even if the dogs didn’t manage to find all the eggs, the crows would eat the baby turtles shortly after hatching, and if the crows didn’t get them the line of crabs waiting in the surf would have a go. Even if the new born turtles managed to negotiate all of that, a million and one dangers still lie within the sea.

It must suck to be a turtle.

Anyway, we were allowed to come in to the enclosure, a real lucky experience because my friend went back the following evening and there were more people and no one was allowed inside.

Once in the enclosure we were able to watch newly hatched turtles make their way to the surface (with a little help from a human hand) and then attempt to make their way towards the sea. However, since there were crows and dogs stalking around the fence the turtles were kept under the upside down wicker baskets we’d seen earlier, then around dusk time they are all transported down to the sea where they had to make the final 10 metre perilous journey by themselves.

Even as we watched, swarms of crabs were stalking the baby turtles, but they didn’t seem to do too much other than getting close, poking them and then running off.

As I mentioned above, my friend went the following evening as well where there were not only more people, but maybe one hundred plus turtles being released, the beach was literally full of them, she said. However, the people watching didn’t get to go in to the enclosure and handle them, so I count myself very lucky that I got this pretty rare opportunity!

Baby Sea Turtles

Baby Sea Turtles

Baby Sea Turtles

Hand included for scale reference!

Baby Sea Turtles

Two of the turtles try to make a bid for freedom when they think no one is looking!

Baby Sea Turtles

Freshly hatched turtles making their way to the surface

Baby Sea Turtles

The baby turtles got a helping hand to get closer to the sea!

Baby Sea Turtles

And off one of them goes to freedom, or maybe the jaws of death

Baby Sea Turtles

The crabs gang up on one of the turtles, but they didn't seem to do much harm

Baby Sea Turtles

I really wasn't sure what the crabs were doing, it's not like they actually attacked any of the turtles, just got very close before scampering off

Baby Sea Turtles

I stole this photo from a friend because it's so awesome!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and video! It was a really unique experience, you see this kind of thing in nature documentaries, but to see it up close and actually touch the turtles (even though you really shouldn’t, but we were being supervised!) is just amazing.

I thought I’d wrap up this post with a news report I came across where a Sea Turtle is accused of abandoning her eggs, the report comes from The Onion 😉

India

Probably The Best Housemates In The World

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Sunday morning, 8:17am. I have been asleep for approximately 5 hours. There is a knock at my door. I ignore it, what sort of cretin knocks on the door this early on a Sunday? The door bell goes again. I continue to ignore.

It can’t be the maid because she has come to learn that no recognizably human life can be found before 10am, so it can’t be her coming to clean.

It rings again. I turn over and cover my head with my blanket. People need to learn that the person who lives in this house doesn’t rise till midday. However something gets lost in the translation as they decide to really try and get my attention. The bell rings and rings and rings.

OK, fine, I admit defeat. I crawl out of bed, check my modesty, open the door a few inches and attempt to focus on the person on the other side.

It’s my landlords. And they’ve come with backup.

Apparently they have become convinced that I am sharing my apartment with others, which was news to me because I’m sure I’d have noticed something like that in a small two bedroom apartment.

But no, they are absolutely determined to evict these lodgers and the backup comes in the form of an elderly priest, here to help remove evil spirits that have been getting a free ride at my expense.

Yes. You read right. I apparently had evil spirits in my apartment.

I tried to explain to them that I really didn’t mind these extra lodgers as if they were here, that they have been quiet, didn’t steal my food from the fridge and generally kept the house tidy, what more could you possibly ask for? But no, it was time for them to move on.

The Hindu ceremony that was conducted in my front room is called a Pooja, and I guess you could say it’s similar to an exorcism in Catholicism, except the spirits are being evicted from a building rather than a person.

It involves a lot of prayer and chanting from the priest to bless the house and politely, but firmly, tell the evil spirits to move on. Oh, it also involves making a fire in your house and ensuring that by the end of the ceremony your eyes are streaming and absolutely everything smells of smoke and ash. Frankly I don’t blame the evil spirits for wanting to leave after the Pooja!

After about an hour of chanting and once the significant fire hazard had been put out, I was left with a great deal of mess in my living room and an apartment that smelt like a bonfire, however, the landlords were sufficiently satisfied that any evil spirits had packed their bags and moved out. I did try to explain that they could probably have had the same affect by allowing a couple of students to move in for a few weeks and not had to run the risk of burning down the house, but I don’t think they understood.

So this being India, who had to clean up all the mess that was left on the floor? The landlord? The priest? Me? No, none of the above of course. The maid was summoned by a phone call at 9:30am on a Sunday to come immediately and clean everything up.

To give the Pooja ceremony some context on why it’s conducted, it’s usually done when you have a streak of bad luck, it is said that evil spirits are not allowing good things to happen. This is actually very welcome news to me and I feel vindicated because it means that it’s not my own stupidity for constantly losing mobile phones and wallets or breaking numerous gadgets and gizmos; infact, I’m blameless in the matter because my house has been occupied by evil spirits and they were causing this to happen.

This is a really awesome piece of Indian culture to know about, it means that while in India, I no longer have to take responsibility when I next do something ridiculously stupid!

Fire, in my house!

Fire, in my house!

He seemed to quite like having his photo taken!

He seemed to quite like having his photo taken!

Lots of chanting and doing things with rice

Lots of chanting and doing things with rice

With the thing in the centre lit, the ceremony is well under way

With the thing in the centre lit, the ceremony is well under way

Yes, it really was this smokey in the house!

Yes, it really was this smokey in the house!

Even my bedroom didn't escape and made everything smell of smoke

Even my bedroom didn't escape and everything ended up smelling of smoke

With the ceremony over, all that's left is to burn the house down with an unattended fire

With the ceremony over, all that's left is to burn the house down with an unattended fire

Ceremony over, all that's left is for the maid to be summoned to clean up the mess

Ceremony over, the maid has to be summoned to clean up the mess

**
Note: The Pooja ceremony forms a very important part of South Indian culture and is practiced even by those who don’t follow the Hindu faith. This version of events which happened to me is in no way meant to belittle or mock the ceremony which I’m sure would have been very interesting to observe. If held in the afternoon. In someone else’s house. This entry is simply my take on what happened to me on this particular Sunday morning.

India

A Patron of the Arts?!

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In keeping with the Saturday evenings of culture and learning (like the traditional Indian dances I saw the other week when we came across the cultural exchange show), and in a rather depressing sign that my youth and partying days are drawing to a close, I got invited to an art exhibition inauguration event by my friend who had some of her pieces featured.

The exhibition showcased work from the final year fine arts students from the Stella Maris College for Girls – and before you jump to any conclusions I would like to lay to rest any vicious rumours that the only reason I went was to mingle with exceptionally pretty young 20-something girls…that was just an added bonus 😀 (note to mother: I really AM trying!).

Indian art gallery

Indian art gallery

Art...really!

Art...really!

Now this is art that even I can appreciate!

Now this is art that even I can appreciate!

Now first and foremost I should say that I am by no means an art critic (ha! Imagine!) and I think a lot of the art scene is so far up its own arse they’ve lost touch with reality.

With that said and out of the way, I was really taken aback by just how good exceptional a lot of the work was. I don’t know my Classic from Renaissance (private ‘in’ joke there, wonder if they’ll get it), but I do know what I like when I see it. To me, what I like is waaaaay more important than what some pompous art/design critic says.

Infact, I liked what I saw so much, I’ve decided to actually go ahead and buy some (yeah, it came as a complete surprise to me too!), the problem is, I can’t decide which pieces to buy because I’d happily take them all, so I’m going the ask the audience and see what you think. Take a look at the photos, and let me know if you have any opinions!

I really like this one

I really like this one

I love the green and black on this one

I love the green and black on this one

I have no idea why, but it's great!

I have no idea why, but it's great!

This is actually my personal favourite...but I couldn't tell you why

This is actually my personal favourite...but I couldn't tell you why

i love the colours and the style of hair

i love the colours and the style of hair

It's quite an ethnic feel to it

It's quite an ethnic feel to it

I want to be very clear on this, I don’t want to be mistaken! I’m not turning arty farty, I’m not buying them as an investment, I just genuinely like them, and at the price they are being sold at, they are a bargain!

I’m usually very harsh about the creativity of Indians because in my line of work it’s incredibly hard to find good graphic designers (my old work colleague, Vel might be an exception here), but these pieces show me that there are very talented artists…if only I could convince them to come and try their hand at web design!

The highlight of the inauguration was a live painting by an artist called R.B. Bhaskaran who regularly sells his art work across the globe for thousands of pounds. He literally stood there in the gallery while everyone was watching and painted this – although on a personal note, in this case I prefer the students work to the one he knocked up in 30 minutes.

R.B. Bhaskaran painted this in 30 minutes!

R.B. Bhaskaran painted this in 30 minutes!

India

No Room At The Inn!

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The population of London is thought to be hovering around the 7m mark, although obviously if all the Aussie contingent suddenly got bored of rain, cold and snow, this would take a drastic dip to 6.5m and Walkabout bars across the city would go out of business.

By comparison Chennai is thought to have a population of around 8.2m, but like London, this figure varies widely depending on how you define the city limits and even who you talk to.

According to Wikipedia, London has a greater metropolitan area of 659 sq mi whereas Chennai has an area of 459 sq mi, this is quite difficult to imagine, so using the power of Photoshop and Google Maps you can see visually how the two cities stack up against each other.

Comparison of London and Chennai

Update: So I got around to making this map and this just blurs the lines even more, because looking at this comparison map (and I took care to line up the scales) Chennai looks about 1/5th (sorry Tom!) the size of London…so what boundaries are they using for London to say it covers 659 square miles?!

So how is Chennai able to fit so many more people in to a space that is roughly 2/3rds the size of London?

Well, for one, unless you are in the upper echelons of the super wealthy (and I’m talking multi-millionaires in dollars and pounds) there is simply no way to afford a house on your own plot of land in Chennai. Ten years ago it might have been possible on the outskirts of the city, but not today unless you can afford to spend millions of pounds on a patch of land.

Where London is made up of low density terrace houses which are two or three stories, Chennai is made up of thousands of individual apartment blocks, 4 stories or more tall with two or more apartments per floor. This is the kind of place most of the middle classes live in in the city.

As fast as property developers can build these apartments, they are being snapped up by a desperate crowd, which is remarkable given that we’ve come off the back of the worst recession in living memory, mortgage rates are 9% and up and even getting a mortgage in the first place is hard enough thanks to the prudent nature of the banks here – something maybe the west would do well to remember next time!

Property prices here in Chennai go beyond the ridiculous, sail past the insane and end in the ether somewhere along with British ‘low’ budget airlines. If you compare property prices with the UK, then yes, it’s much cheaper, you can buy an apartment in Chennai for £100,000 which is cheaper than anywhere in London, however if we use my company for comparison you’ll understand how crazy it is.

The company I work for is your standard Indian outsourcing company, the stuff the Indian dream and western corporate downsizing is made of. We’re about 200 strong and considered a decent medium sized company. Since it’s IT we pay well above the average salary compared to other industries.

The average employee earns around Rs 300,000 per year (Rs = Rupees), which is about £4,230. And that’s before tax and deductions of course.

The small 2 bedroom apartment I’m living in at the moment cost Rs 6,000,000 (£84,700) when it was purchased brand new two years ago, in other words, it’s 20x the average salary of an IT worker. After two years, the property prices have gone up so much they reckon this place is now worth Rs 10,000,000 (£141,200)! Wow!

Now back to the population thing. I consider this apartment that I live in large enough for myself. If I was married it might just be big enough for two people. But incredibly there are entire families living in the other apartments; literally it’s Mum, Dad, the kids, granny and granddad. I have no idea how they manage it, there’s only two bedrooms! But you understand why they have no option when you see how stupid the property prices are here, the average person will find it very difficult to buy a place of their own – and we (that is England as a society) think we have problems with the younger generation getting on the property ladder!

Ah yes, now I remember what the point of this entry was. The family that lives opposite to me were renting the apartment from a landlord, because that’s the only thing they can afford to do. However, even the rental prices are prohibitively expensive in Chennai. The family opposite were paying around Rs 200,000 (£2,800) per year, which is 2/3rds of the average IT salary! So even to rent a small apartment it takes an entire family to live there and contribute to the rent costs.

Oh, and on top of this, where it’s custom to give a one month deposit in England for renting, in Chennai the deposit is a minimum of 10 months up front! How people actually manage to put a roof over their head I don’t know!

The family opposite have just moved out, and when I was talking to my friend they said it was because landlords here don’t like people staying in their place for too long, otherwise the tenants might start to think they own it and have more rights than they actually do. Since it’s so difficult to find reasonable cost housing here, moving is something people only choose to do as a last resort, and once you’ve found somewhere, unless you can afford to upgrade, there’s no way you want to move.

So the landlords will give the tenants one years notice because a) it takes the occupiers so long to find an alternative place and b) it’s seen as a reasonable amount of time to give some one. My friend said that even if the landlord tried to evict the tenants, they would have to deal with a lot of angry people who will take the occupiers side and the whole thing could get very messy.

Sorry, keep going off at tangents. The family opposite me, despite living there for just 1 year got their 1 year eviction notice 12 months ago, and the time just came for them to move out yesterday. According to my maid, they still haven’t been able to find anywhere to live after a year of looking (even during the recession when things should be slow!). Apparently the mother of the family got so desperate she asked my maid for the number of the person who owns my apartment to see if they would be willing to accept a higher price than what I am paying!

Yesterday morning the old family moved out – for no other reason than the landlord didn’t want them staying there too long – and by the evening a new family had moved in. That’s how much in demand residential space is. As far as I know, and according to the maid (she’s better than a secretary for the amount of gossip she gets!), the family moving out don’t have a place to call home now, staying at friends and relatives instead.

Although there is a big push from the Indian Government to try and build ‘affordable’ housing from what I can see and what the local papers are saying, it’s mostly been all words so far. Developers can earn huge mark-ups on grander projects than they can from affordable housing, so from a business point of view there is no logical reason or incentive to build cheap housing when they’ve got plenty of demand from people who are prepared to pay high prices and then cram every member of the family in to the apartment.

The scary part is that it’s just going to get worse and worse as the Indian economy grows at 8% year on year.