Mysore – 9th July

It was the second week-end in a row that I was travelling. This time I went together with Rebecca, Carolin, Reinier, Ricardo and Viola to Mysore, a small town with about 500.000 inhabitants, located approximately 180 km away from Bangalore. Early in the morning, at 6a.m. we woke up and at 6.30a.m. we took a rickshaw to the central bus station of Bangalore, called Majestic. As we arrived there we could see busses wherever we looked, incredible. It must have been about 500 busses, I bet. Travelling by bus was easier than assumed. You only have to choose one of these busses, sit in and wait till someone asks you for money. In India exist several bus companies. The busses of the state are in the worst shape. For a trip to Mysore you would only pay about 56 Rupees (1 Euro). We decided to take a more comfortable bus of one of the private bus companies. The bus driver was crying “Mysore”, “Mysore”, “Mysore” all the time so that we couldn't refuse his offer. For the trip to Mysore we then paid the enormous amount of 110 Rupees. The bus was very well furnished. There was even a TV on board, but it wasn’t working. But we didn’t care about that, coz we wanted to sleep and as for Ricardo and Viola, they managed to sleep, but not the others and me except for some minutes perhaps. After a journey of 3,5 hours we arrived in Mysore. And at the first view, I immediately saw, that Mysore is a really beautiful city. Moreover, it is an architectural vaudeville of fine buildings and monuments. Once we took off the bus we were surrounded by some citizens. At the beginning I didn’t know what they wanted. Are they only friendly or do they want to sell something, that’s always the question. Indians always introduce themselves and then ask for your name and offer you a friendship and that after 2 minutes, ridiculous, isn’t it. We wanted to go the Devaraja Fruit & Vegetable Market first. So at least 2 guides showed us how to go there and even accompanied us. The Market was really very interesting. Fruits wherever you looked and a lot of other different things. If we had arrived in the early morning we could have seen the trucks delivering all the fruits. It must have been a dozen of trucks. At the market I bought 10 little bananas. I have never seen such little bananas before, they aren’t available in Germany I think. In fact, they were really tasty. One of the guides then showed us a shop, where incentives are made. Well, and now the question is answered. His task was to show us this little shop. And in case we buy something, he would get a provision, for sure. An old woman demonstrated how to make incentives. In one working day, the shop owner explained, the women make about 6.000 incentives, what is really a huge number. After that we went to the Chamundi Hills, where we paid a visit to the Sri Chamundeswari Temple. It is a nice temple, but nothing more. We went there by bus and paid 6 Rupees. As we arrived at the summit, there was already waiting a huge crowd of Indians for the bus. As soon as they have seen the bus arriving the conquered the bus. I thought, I was dreaming, but it was like a stampede. You couldn`t leave the bus, unimaginable. After a while, I had enough of this stupid game and started to offend them. But they didn’t care. Everything what counted for them is to get a seat and that’s it. But why I am to complain, that’s Indian culture. They are used to crowded buses and so they edged their ways through. The Sri Chamundeswari Temple was nothing special. We went inside, but before could enter, we had to take off our shoes again. Actually, it has already become a habit to me. But this time I found it a little bit disgusting, coz there were cows, muttons as well as some little monkeys around and you could see them urinating in the streets. But, so what, when you are in India, things like that shouldn’t disturb you. In the temple I put a red point on my forehead again. For, it is something special and I like it. It gives you the feeling to be adapted to Indian culture. For the way down to Mysore we decided to descend on foot, also in order to see the 5m-high Nandi, a bull made of stone. In fact it was probably the best decision, especially in face of what we were experiencing when we arrived on the Chamundi Hills. The Nandi was adorned with flowers and actually, it was very nice. While we were having a break around the bull, some little monkeys came and requested for some food, coz they have seen my little bananas, which I bought at the market. One of the monkeys came very close. Ricardo then took the bananas, held them in the air and the monkey jumped in the air, seized them and then went away for lunch – great!
Once we arrived in Mysore again, this fucking bargaining with the rickshaw drivers started at once. They always try to cheat us. Usually, you don’t pay more than 30 Rupees to Mysore center but they wanted 130 Rupees! Probably, they thought that don’t know the prices, but we did J. So finally, we drove to Mysore center for 50 Rupees, but with 4 persons in one rickshaw, so it was ok. Im Mysore then, before we went to the Maharaja’s Temple we paid a visit to St. Philomena´s Cathedral, which is a Roman Catholic Church. In India you don’t find so many Christians. Most of the Indians are Hindis of course, followed by the Moslems. Then the highland of the day was approaching, seeing the brightly lighted Temple of Mysore.
On our way to the Palace some kids wanted to sell me a piece of fabric. I said them that I am not interested in buying such useless stuff but they didn’t stop offering it to me and calling “10 Rupees”. Then I had a really good idea. I seized in my pocket and then raised a piece of toilet paper in the air and called loudly “20 Rupees”. The kids started to laugh and after a short while, I got rid of them. So keep this trick in mind when you are in India the next time ;-).
What we were seeing when we arrived at the Maharaja’s Temple then is, believe me, impossible to express in words. As far as I can remember, I have never seen something beautiful like that. The Maharaja Palace was completely lighted by more then 5.000 lights fixed at the Palace. I had the feeling to be in fairy tale. The only thing what was missing, were a prince and a princess. But the next time when I go there, I will arrange a prince and a princess. After about half an hour we went back to the bus station. On the way to the bus station, an Indian asked me for a pen. First, I didn’t understand for what reason he wants to have a pen. But ok, I had still such a cheap commercial pen from the city of Giessen in my bag and so I gave it to him. You can’t imagine how he was beaming. Maybe, now he can boast off with it and pretend that he has already been to Germany, I don’t know. Fortunately we found a bus to Bangalore immediately. We paid again 110 Rupees and arrived at Majestic at 11p.m., so that we even made the World Cup final.

First impressions from work

On Monday, the 19th of June was my first day at work. Ujjvala, the vice president of Aiesec Bangalore came for me and brought me to work. The company is located in Whitefield, a complete new area in Bangalore. It is completely different to the rest of the city. You find here a lot of construction areas, coz a lot of companies discovered the Indian market and want it to conquer from Bangalore. Probably all of the most famous IT companies in the world like Oracle, Dell, IBM, Igate, Infosys, or SAP settled in Whitefield, Bangalore. Well, and my company, HCL Capital Market Services settled there as well. HCL Capital Market Services is a subsidiary of HCL Technologies, which is Indias´ biggest IT company. In former days it was called DSL Software. But when it was bought by HCL Technologies and merged completely to HCL it was renamed. When you enter HCL, nothing reminds you that you are in India. All is absolutely western oriented and sophisticated. Air conditioned and well furnished rooms with the newest equipments and cleaners wherever you look. Each department has even its own office boys, some unlearnt employees who support us. Hence, for example they make copies for us, having a look at the equipments and so on. Labour force in India is so cheap that the company can afford to employ quite a good many of them. In the HR department we have 5 for example. A cleaner, to whom I have talked, said to me that he draws a salary of 2.400 Rupees per month, which would be about 45 Euro! So you can imagine, that I am living here like a king with my salary of 17.000 Rupees per month. I earn even more than some of my colleagues. What I forgot, by the way, the cleaners are really necessary, coz just in front of the company area, there are still dusty streets and some small “shops” on wheels. I would never buy there anything, coz you never know how hygienicly it was prepared and if it is fresh or not. So whenever a customer or employee enters the company, his shoes are dusty in any case, you can't avoid it. Unfortunately, my boss, Mr. Vadiraja, wasn’t there at my first days. But I will get acquainted with him in two weeks they said. Then he will be back from his journey. I was introduced to all the others like Rashmi, who will sit next to me for the next 6 months. Furthermore, the training team is completed by Ammeta, Dakshyani and Prathibha. In detail, my tasks for the next 6 months will be to teach employees in German language. All together, I was planed that I hold lesions for three different levels – absolute Beginners, advanced speakers and Business speakers. But due to the fact that for level 3, the Business speakers, only 3 people enrolled, this level was cancelled. Furthermore, I will help to develop a German learning software as well as to coach the staff and attend to recruitment meetings in order to judge the applicants German skills. Lunchtime is usually at about 2 p.m.. The reason is, that we don’t start working at 8 a.m. like in Germany. Working time is from 9.30 a.m. to 18.30 p.m.. You need more than one hour to go to work. Usually I am picked up at 8.20 a.m. by the company owned transport system. Well and then due to the traffic it takes more than one hour. The traffic, especially in the morning is unimaginable. Cars and motorbikes wherever you look. Therefore, the air pollution is very high. You don’t even see the road any more. And there are no traffic rules, everybody does as he pleases. But it works, so what. The cafeteria is on the roof, which is then the fifth flour. Thus, it is very windy sometimes but nevertheless very convenient. But what can you eat there? Well, rice of course. Actually, it is part of each meal, except you choose sandwiches. All summed up, you can choose between non-vegetarian and vegetarian. But you will have a spicy meal in any case, you can’t escape it. Then usually you get Chabati, a kind of bread, curd, which is very similiar to German butter milk and actually tastes like that. Normally, I don't like butter milk, but due to the fact that it isn't spicy, I began to like it. The range of prizes is from 5 Rupees for a plate of rice till 35 Rupees for a non-vegetarian meal. The Indian food is really tasty, but I’m afraid, in my opinion, it is a little bit too spicy. My colleagues usually take their own food with them and share it among themselves. If I want, I can always taste their food. Some of the food looks really strange. One meal Rashmi offered me looked like a dead insect which was then boiled afterwards. Fortunately, it was no insect, and besides it was tasty. In the meanwhile, by the way, I am rid of my upset stomach which I had for the first 2 weeks. I have no problems with Indian food any more, doesn´t matter how spicy it is. A funny story occurs in the cafeteria when you want to get a drink. Coz there was a self service machine for drinks displayed. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work. So what did they make? They have engaged a person, who is now in charge for the drinks instead of repairing the machine. Crazy, isn’t it. And now, for all who got sick of German banks, here is a great story coming up next - real customer service as it supposed to be. The company wanted me to open a bank account here. In my judgement, it would not have been necessary, coz I will only stay here for half a year, so it is not worth the trouble. But ok, if they want to, I will open a bank account, I thought. The next day then, a bank consultant of ICICI Bank came to the company. Then I had to fill out a form and sign here and there and that was it! He didn´t want to see an identity card or something like that. Incredible, isn´t it? But my astonishment was going on, as he gave me a starter kit which included a Mastercard, PIN, some cheques and so on. So, my bank account was already opened, it just had to be matched with a person! Indian way of living is so easy. I dare say that I am rather content with my colleagues, my tasks and so on. They are all very nice and the tasks are very challenging. So, it was definitely the right decision to go to India instead of China.

Sravanabelangola, Hassan, Halebid and Belur – 1st + 2nd July 2006

On Saturday, the 1th of July at 7.30 a.m. Rebecca, Maria, Gaya, Carolin, Karolina, Jaap and me started on our trip to Sravanabelangola, Halebid and Belur. All these towns are located very close to Bangalore. So we decided to go there by car, what meant, that we hired a driver for two days. Due to the enormous supply of car transporting, we only had to pay 150 Rupees for the driver per day and 6,50 Rupees per kilometre. All together, a very cheep trip in my opinion. It was the first time that I left Bangalore. And it was a very impressive trip, that’s what I can already say without having already told too much. The area among Bangalore is really rural. Once you have left Bangalore you are in the middle of agriculture. Very poor people live here, although only some kilometres from the “Silicon Valley” of India away. Here, probably some of the farmers haven’t seen any white men before. So, as we made a break to get some air for the tires, we were surrounded by some citizens of this small village. It was so incredible to see in the eyes of one of these little boys who seemed to ask himself what kind of thing these white men are holding in their hands. You can´t imagine, how he looked then when he recognized himself in this little thing called camera. He was wondering, how on earth he could come inside of this thing. The citizens here wash their clothes in lakes and then know the clothing on stones. Exactly how the Europeans did it centuries ago. And wherever you look, you see cows and sheeps eating close to the streets. The farmers use oxen to cultivate their fields, no machines or anything comparable to it. In a nutshell, the people here live very simple, some of them can’t read or write, for sure.
Our fist stop then was Sravanabelangola. Here we paid a visit to the famous Gomateshvara, a Jain deity. It´s a completely naked statue of 17,5 meter height and is supposed to be the world´s tallest monolithic statue. From this it follows that the monolith was carved out of stone. Incredible, isn't it? I don't want to know how much time it took to finish it. It must have taken decades. It stands on a hill called Vindhyagiri Hill. We had to take off our shoes before we could start climbing the 615 steps upstairs. The reason is that shoes are very dirty in the Indians thinking and in order to keep the place pure we had to do that. But it was no problem, although it was raining a little bit and thus not completely free of danger. On our way to the top we had a great view over the landscape.
India is a really beautiful country, trust me. We came unfortunately four month to late, coz in March there was a festival held only every 12 years on which blossoms, milk and paint were poured above the Gomateshvara´s head. Because of that, its colour has changed from grey into red. Gaja even took part of a prayer with some Hindus in front of the Monolith. Afterwards we went down to continue our fantastic trip.
Our next destination then was Hassan. Here we wanted to stay for the night. We found a hotel for 213 Rupees per night and person. But nevertheless, this was quite expensive. Rebecca told me that on a former trip they paid only 40 Rupees per night and person. Well, but Rebecca had to admit that the room wasn´t as good furnished as our room. Anyhow, it is incredible, isn’t it? 4 Euros per night and person. In Hassan itself, there is nothing worth visiting.
Thus, we decided to go to the pictures to watch the movie “Honeymoon Express”, an Indian movie. We paid each 25 Rupees (40 Cents). Of course, we haven´t understood any word, coz the movie was spoken completely in Kannada, the language of Karnataka. But nevertheless it was real entertainment, for us as well as for the others, coz it was very strange for the citizens to see white men in their cinema. The movie was very funny and of course with a lot of songs in it. I have to admit, that I start liking Hindi music more and more. After the break of the movie we decided to go for a walk in the city. But in advance, we first bought some popcorn. It was tasty and I wouldn´t have expected that, spicy. Indians seem to add spice to every food. The walk in the city was unbelievable. For that evening, we seemed to be celebrities. We were surrounded by the citizens and of course, lots of beggars, as everywhere. They wanted to know our names, funny, isn’t it? But that´s the Indian way of starting a conversation. They want to know your name, so that they can claim later then having talked to you and even knowing you! The streets in Hassan were unbearable. We walked in mud and nothing else, especially in the side roads. I don´t understand why it is so difficult to build acceptable streets.
After having had a dinner in the hotel, which cost 409 Rupees (8 Euros) for 7 persons, we all together watched the match England vs. Portugal and later then went immediately to bed.
In the early morning then we left Hassan for Halebid which is only 35 kilometres away from Hassan. But nevertheless, to go there you need nearly one hour. Why that, you ask now. Well, the answer is very simple. Although the roads between two more or less big cities are in good shape, it is impossible to drive more than 80 km/h. And of course, every now and then the road is crossed by cattles. As we finally arrived in Halebid, at once, we were surrounded by several vendors who wanted to sell postcards, little elephants made of stone and so on. But first, we wanted to pay a visit to the Hoysaleswara Temple. It is a really nice temple. It was impressive to see all the figures of stone which must have been made with a lot of patience, coz otherwise it wouldn´t have been possible to sculpture the statues so detailed. Here, we had to take off our shoes as well. Actually it´s really strange, coz the Indians are used to throw their garbage in the streets, but if garbage is related with Hinduism, they are very severe. On our way back to the car we were again surrounded by vendors. I was interested in such a little statue made of stone. At the beginning, I should pay 50 Rupees, but at the end then, I only paid 15 Rupees for a little elephant made of stone. It is quite nice. When we meet each other one day I will show you, I promise. After having seen Halebid, we went to Belur to visit the Channekeshava Temple there. This temple is even more impressive as the temple of Halebid. Around the temple, there is a big court with about 100 of 100 metres and in its middle you find the temple. The two temples have a lot in common, but the one in Belur is bigger and there are several other little temples joining the big one in the middle. As I was in one of the other smaller temple with our driver, I had a prayer with some other Hindis. At the end of the prayer I became a little red stain on my forehead. I was so proud of it, that I left it on my forehead for the rest of the day. As we left the temple it was already past 1 p.m.. So we decided to go back to Bangalore. But first we had a lunch in Hassan again, in the Southern Star Hotel exactly. It was very tasty and we all had continental food, no Indian food. Afterwards, we took-off for Bangalore. We had 180 kilometres to go to Bangalore, which lasted nearly four hours. At 6.30 p.m. we arrived in Bangalore, at Robertson House. We had to pay the trip at once. Altogether we paid 4.200 Rupees, 3.900 Rupees for the car and 300 Rupees for the driver. But due to the fact, that we were very content with our driver, we gave him a tip of 140 Rupees. All summed up, I can recommend you to do such little trips when you are doing a traineeship in India one day. It is really interesting, especially the trip itself is nothing but fun. On such trips you can experience the true India, coz about 40% of the Indians live close or even under the poverty limit. For that reason, India is still a developing country, definitely. Everybody who claims the contrary is lying or has a completely different judgment concerning valuing the facts. Due to the fact that down to this week-end, I had only seen Bangalore, it was a good contrast to the life in Bangalore. And the mood among us was also good. Let me loose one personal remark to you, Maria. I will never forget as you lost your temper when the guy in the hotel was preparing your bed on the floor and as you asked the boy in the streets of Hassan, what else would be worth visiting here. Hey, you six! Thanks for this great trip and the fun we had. I hope we will go on a trip again in the near future. As for me, I would be a party to that, definitely! And all you at home in Germany, be anxious what’s coming up next.