Law, Partially

I wandered the old streets of Panjim last night. I was trying to decide what the city felt like, and I thought about all the old cities I’ve been to. It wasn’t grand enough to be Budapest. It felt similar to Savannah, but Panjim is more run down. Lisbon is grander and cleaner. St. Petersburg, Russia, has a similar feel with the formerly grand buildings now in disrepair. But Panjim feels more like a village than a city. There are far more bars and liquor stores in Goa than in Mumbai. These Catholics, I guess, take a looser attitude toward drinking than do the Hindus. I saw so many dark holes in the wall populated by men, only men. The streets were mostly deserted on a Friday night, and my part of town was darkened by power cuts. Panjim has less than 100,000 people and is one of India’s smallest and sleepiest capitals (the state capitals in the tribal northeast are probably small and sleepy too). I went to a restaurant called Viva Panjim recommended by Lonely Planet. A sign near the rest...

I’m feeling rather tired from my huge journeys today and my two evening Kingfisher beers. (Kinfisher bottles by the way are almost twice as big as 12oz beers. Kingfishers are .65 liters. Wine is .75 liters.) My hotel, the Panjim Inn, is almost too charming, and it’s definitely too charming for a single man. It’s a restored mansion, and each room has four poster beds. The desk and armoire are either antiques or made to look like antiques. There is trellised wood decoration on them and wood shapes inlaid on the surfaces. There’s a restaurant on the second story terrace overlooking a front courtyard. This could be a bed and breakfast in Savannah, Georgia. And these owners must be doing well because they’ve already opened two more restored buildings as hotels on this same block, and with the restoration in progress next door, the Panjim Inn looks like it’s about ready to double in size. It is the low season here, and my hotel is under $23 a night, and I think I’ll get the price knocked dow...

People always say, “From where?” or “From which country?” and like a badge of pride I say, “U.S.” People usually smile when I say it. They usually say, “Ah, U.S.” Indians are always wanting to go there to work and so often have family or relatives working there. Even the Goan guy trying to sell me a taxi ride earlier today said his son was working in Georgia, although he didn’t know in which town or for which company.

I’d been taking these small, rickety busses all day. I thought my bus would terminate in Calangute, which is where I wanted to go. Calangute is where the hippies first landed in the 60s, and it is also where the modern Goa package beach resorts started business in the 90s. The ticket wallah told me I’d missed my stop. He used his whistle, and the bus stopped and dropped me off somewhere north of Calangute. I was dropped off right in front of a wholesale cashew store, so I went directly into there upon exiting the bus. Then I walked by myself down the narrow road back toward Calangute. I walked into and through Calangute. In Calangute I saw numerous Kashmiri shops, selling carpets, clothes, and jewelry. One was a government emporium. Supposedly these government emporiums can be trusted – meaning the stuff really is Kashmiri and the price is nearly reasonable. I’d like to buy a rug, but I don’t have a house, and everything I keep in a home has to be moved at least once a year, so I won’t...

The medicine from Dr. Schimpi has made me feel much better. I’m happy again, and I am enjoying Indian food once more. Still, I would prefer less oil. And although I lost my strong black coffee craving during my week of Delhi Belly, now I want European cheese and El Maguey (Mexican food). It rained all night and all morning. I’m going to the Indian state of Goa today. Goa was Portugal’s home base for its huge spice trade business back in the day ( click here ). There are still a lot of Catholics down there and Portuguese architectural ruins. It's a one hour plane ride south of Mumbai. (My landlord family is staunchly Catholic, and they’re from Goa. This is why the glow in the dark Jesus stares down at me in my bedroom. Last weekend he got blown off the wall during the storms. He lost his head and broke his arm. I hung the headless Jesus back on the wall.) Goa is famous for the hippies that have been coming there since the 60s. Ravers came in the '90s, and a style of electronic G...

I had to run an errand after work today in South Mumbai. Not all the way South, just four stations down the suburban railway. The monsoon may have come on slow, but it is definitely upon us now. Two or three storms roll through every night, and usually some in the day too. I’ve always been able to time the walk from my apartment to my office and back during periods where it’s not raining. It rained all day today. The day I had to run my errand. Cars driving through puddles only once splashed me today, and I’m thinking that the brown stains won’t show up on the grey pants. Keeping my work clothes clean is a major goal of mine. I gave my umbrella last weekend to Jingyi and Christine, I think, and I didn’t have an umbrella today. I borrowed one from Mritunjay. His umbrella would not survive the trip. I didn’t need the umbrella anyway. Even though it poured rain for a large part of the day, by 6pm, when I set off on my journey, it was just drizzling. Trying to walk with all the people in t...

Each morning when I wake up, I think that today will be the day that my Delhi Belly will be gone. And breakfast doesn’t upset it, and I think, yes, today is the day. But then I eat more, and sometimes during the meal, or sometimes after, I began getting shooting pains and pressure through my gut. I hunker down for a minute, and they go away and return in a few minutes. This usually goes on for an hour or so and returns numerous times throughout the day. So yesterday evening I went to a doctor at Lilavati Hospital. It’s right across the street from my office and, I am told, a famous hospital. My visit was Rs. 600, $15.00. My smiling and rotund doctor’s name was Dr. Schimpi. He said he had taken his family on vacation to the U.S. last month and had driven from Buffalo to Orlando. That sounds nice about now. Dr. Schimpi also told me I just had a stomach virus. He prescribed some medicines with names I’ve never heard (Satrogyl-O, Drotin-DS, Pacimol, and Vizylac) and told me to skip work. I...

The Bombay High Court is an incredible looking building from the outside ( click here ). The inside is sort of ancient fortress-like. The courtrooms all lie along the front of the building, and along the back is a corridor open to the outside. From this corridor all the courtrooms can be accessed. None of the courts are air conditioned expect for the Chief Justice’s Court, and all the rooms have 30ft. ceilings. I sat in the Chief’s Court and listened to a case. The cases in the High Court are open to the public. The advocates argue into amplified microphones, and the justices could use microphones too but choose not to. So I could only pick up what the advocate was saying, and even that was difficult through the heavy accent. Plus cases are pushed in and out quickly, and there is no background introduction given before cases are heard. So I don’t really know what the case was about, although I did hear legal words like “rights.” (and sorry, no photos allowed in the High Court) I was at...

A recurring theme of this blog has been the bourgeois wave washing over India. Indians are learning how to spend money on things they didn’t use to spend on. And Indians are now learning to drink wine. Nasik, a town about 180km from Mumbai, is nearby India’s most famous winery, Sula. Sula has been making wines for about ten years. Nasik itself is a holy pilgrimage town for Hindus. Jingyi, Christine, Alvin, and I made the pilgrimage to Sula Vineyards last weekend. During our long and arduous journey to the foreign land of Nasik my fellow pilgrims and I were hindered by pestilence, catastrophic weather, death-defying mountain passages, numerous incidences of stranding, filth, and greasy food, only to make it to Nasik where I, the white man, was worshiped as a god. Advice given to me in Mumbai was to take the Mumbai suburban railroad as far as possible, and then catch a bus to Nasik from there. There is a stunted mountain range that separates Nasik from Mumbai, and the road that passe...

You may be surprised that you can study Hindi at the University of Iowa. There's actually a department of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies . Quality institutions these Big 10 schools, eh? I ran across this just because this Dr. Lutgendorf guy was quoted in a law article I read. He looks like he's probably Anglo-Indian. Anglo-Indians are (or are descended from) Britishers who stayed over when the British abandoned ship in 1947.

The cheesiness of Bollywood films is pretty easy to make fun of. Bollywood films are in Hindi, India’s unifying language (English only unifies the educated). There is also Kollywood, films from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, the Indian state in India’s extreme southwest. These films are in Tamil, a language not even in the same family of languages as Hindi (did you know Hindi is in the same language family as English, French, German, and Spanish? Well, it is.). Based upon my rudimentary understanding… Bollywood Hindi films are heavy into singing and dancing numbers strewn throughout the film, often for no reason other than because such numbers appeal to the masses. Kollywood Tamil films are heavy into action, and the actor who plays Sivaji, the Boss , is the undisputed bad ass king of the Tamil-speaking world. He is actually, literally worshipped as a god in Tamil Nadu. Because he is a god, he can only play the good guy, and in his films, the good guy always wins. My lawyer collea...

As much as I don’t want to admit it, I think that drinking Rs. 1 (2.5cent) chai with Amand three days in a row has re-inflicted me with Delhi Belly. It’s not as bad as the first time. I skipped a day of work then. I also threw up. This time I haven’t skipped work or thrown up – although I felt like it at lunch today. For lunch I went to a typically South Indian restaurant with my colleagues, told them my stomach was better – and it usually is better, until I eat – and they proceeded to get their usual enjoyment from (1.) shoveling piles and varieties of Indian food at me, (2.) from me thinking the Indian food delicious and (3.) then everyone telling me I’m Indian. Back at the office this afternoon, however, I didn’t see any of my Indian dining companions abandoning their desk for 40 minutes. I abandoned. Twice.

This is a short anecdote about how foreigners like me are ignorant enough of custom to experience what natives won’t. One time I rode an overnight Amtrak train from Toledo, Ohio, to Penn Station, New York. Sitting next to me on the train was a guy about my age from Estonia. I’ve been to Estonia, so we had a jumping off point for conversation. He had been touring the U.S. on an Amtrak rail pass, similar to a Eurail Pass – a certain number of rides taken within a certain number of days. Our train left from Toledo after midnight. He told me he had spent the earlier part of the day walking around Midtown Detroit. Midtown Detroit? Around the train station? Are you serious? I volunteered at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Midtown Detroit. The ten blocks or so of the Cultural District and Wayne State University were passable by Detroit standards, but the train station neighborhood? I didn’t even like driving through there. This is one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods. There are bloc...

People talked so much hype on this monsoon. People made it sound like life was basically over once the monsoon started. Boats would have to be taken to work. Nights would have to be spent in the office. Travel would be out of the question. All there is to do on a monsoon weekend is stay in with a book – this is, if you’ve even made it home from the office. I know there was catastrophic flooding in 2005. I know that floods happen are not uncommon during the monsoon. But so far, it hasn’t rained very much. Maybe this is because the hurricane that hit Oman has just disrupted the weather that much. Maybe this is because it never rains any other time of the year, so when it starts raining daily, this is a shock. It didn’t rain today, but it did rain last night. I can hear thunder in the South, which is from where the monsoon comes. There was a short shower yesterday, but so far the only time it rained all day was on Sunday. Even Sunday had hours of dryness. Maybe things just take a while to...

I forgot to write about this, but this happened to me on Friday. I got hit by a car walking to work. It was a car’s driver side rear view mirror actually. The way I described it to Christine: plastic against solid rock, which do you think won? My arm, of course. It didn’t hurt. But there’s no sidewalks, and I have to walk on the road on the way to work, this was bound to happen.

Maybe the monsoon’s not here. It didn’t rain today, but I did go to a slum wedding. I bestowed a bunch of bananas on the two grooms who were riding through the market district on horses. The grooms were 19 and 17 years old. Yesterday in writing I called the box maker Babapul, but his name is actually Babalu. His younger brothers were getting married. Babalu said he would get married after the monsoon. There was a riotous party marching down the street. Young people filled the streets dancing, and the only music was some heavy, hard drum pounding. Prof. Rama told me at the Tamil wedding that the drums during the wedding keep out the bad spirits. This is the two brothers riding down the street on horseback. They raised their veils for me to take their picture. Their wives-to-be were waiting for them at home where later tonight they’ll walk around a fire seven times, and everyone will continue partying until 5a.m. I could have taken so many pictures here, and I hope the blurriness of thes...

I bought a box. It ended up being much more expensive than I planned. Amand showed up but Vicky didn’t. They may not really be brothers, but this is ok. Amand said Vicky met a guy from New Zealand here on holiday, and Vicky went with this guy out of town as a tour guide. I’m not completely sure of the facts, and I’m not sure where they went. Amand said Vicky thinks the guy will get him a box too. Amand said this has been a very lucky week for them, which is good because the monsoons have begun (it’s been raining all evening, I’m just going to go ahead and call this the official monsoon), and making money is harder. People in the rain out on Linking Rd. aren’t as likely to want their shoes cleaned or shined. However, with a box, a shoeshine boy can set up in a railway station. There’s a roof there, and people will want their shoes shined. I met up with Amand in the rain. We stood under an ATM awning. Usually there are guards at these ATMs to chase away street people, but there was no gu...

I was again mistaken. The monsoon still has not begun. Yesterday was just a series of pre-monsoon showers. But today at work I was promised, just as I have been promised for weeks now, the monsoon will probably come tomorrow. On Friday, the news lady said the monsoon would come within 24 hours. I guess you can't trust Indian meteorologists either.

I told my lawyer friend, Ganesh, this morning that I went to Dharavi. I told him that I didn’t think it was so bad. He said Dharavi is huge, and I was probably only taken to the best parts. This may be true. He said the Hindu part is not so bad, but the Muslim part is squalid. This is in line with what I know about India’s Muslims. They tend to be poorer and disadvantaged. (read at least the beginning of this article ) He said that because criminal enterprises are based in Dharavi, he’s had to go there before to scout out counterfeits of our company’s products (cooking and hair oil). He said in the Muslim area, people will be pooping and cooking in the same place, and there will be animals slaughtered in the middle of the street, the blood running down the middle of the street, which is an open sewer. It makes sense to me that the Muslim area would be worse, but Ganesh is a Hindu (a Brahmin at that), and Hindus tend to look down on Muslims. He said Muslims don’t get educated or work be...

Dharavi should be fairly famous in the U.S. because it was in National Geographic in May. I was rather gripped by this article , but I figured I would be too scared to venture into there by myself. (Check out the Geographic photos too ) Alvin found this tour group, Reality Tours , on the Internet that offered tours of Dharavi. He, I, Christine, and Jingyi went on the “Slum Tour” on Saturday. I told some lawyers at work I was planning to go, and they asked if I was crazy and said, “I hope you have life insurance.” Among their reasons for me to not go is that organized crime is based out of Dharavi. I think that organized crime is actually based all over the city (and in Dubai). At an Indian 25th wedding anniversary party last night, I told a group of Indian yuppies that I was going to Dharavi and jaws all around me dropped. One yuppie said, “Are you serious? It’s shit there, man.” But I think this kind of purposeful avoidance is symptomatic of how one lives in India. The middle classe...