kedeng kedeng, oehoeoeoe
15 Oktober 2012 | India, Secunderabad
Coming to you live from the Mumbai Expresssssss…. A 15 hours train ride from Hyderabad to Pune, where I will spend the next couple of days at one of Dastkar’s so-called exhibitions: a fair where we will be selling DAMA fabrics and DARAM clothes. And I figured it had been a long time since I last wrote about my adventures here, so prepare for a long piece of life writing about the last 3 weeks or so.
At this very moment I am sitting opposite of this man who is, like many Indians, completely captivated by his mobile phone. My seat is next to the door to the “hall”/entry of the train, so there are quite some people walking in and out. I have the upper bed, where right now lie 2 sheets and 2 pillows for when we put up the beds and go to ‘sleep’. The latter is rather inconvenient, but more about that later.
I saw that my latest blog had already been somewhere in September, and that I had spoken about the trip to one of the tallest Ganesha statues, but not yet about the other, tallest statue or the submersions of all those idols in the Sagar Hussein Lake.
The Ganesha festival lasted for 10 days. It was accompanied by many, many big and small celebrations in the streets of Secunderabad. (I still have not seen much of Hyderabad :/). Some of these festivities came with hour-long drum sessions; one of which lasted untill well after 1.30am. Before I forget I would hereby like to wholeheartedly thank the inventor of customized earplugs. Without those my time here would probably have been even more deprived of sleep. Also in these trains they are an absolute convenience.
But back to the festival.
The days here go by rather fast, no matter where or on what I spend my time. At some point all the Ganesha statues had become part of the ordinary scenery on the streets, until the 29th of September, when they were all drowned – for good luck. Me and my flatmate were at first really excited about going to have a look at the submersions, but on that day itself I was not too energized. Yet we still went, despite the ‘warnings’ of some of my colleagues that it would be too crowded near the lakeside to actually see any of the submersions or even to move around freely, and that the crowd would not always be cheerful but could also turn against us obvious foreigners.
But we still went, and when we got home after a good 2 hours we both felt quite exhausted but also that It had been fun. It was very crowded, and once you allow one person to make a picture of you an entire crowd will gather in front of you that won’t stop making pictures untill you walk away. So, yeah, that is what I did a couple of times. And also just to say no to people, especially to those who were hanging on my arms or won’t let my hands go. But other than those things (ok, and one incident where a guy grabbed me around the waist and then ran off – which did piss me off for a second) were very cheerful. People would throw orange flowers at/on us, which is a blessing. And altogether both we and the crowd were entertained I guess.
The week after that was pretty much themed by the outsourcing of online sales to this one e-commerce start-up. They required us to select stock, which they then would check and of course have comments upon. Then they had to do photoshoots to get visuals of all our products and then to put them online. After having ‘served’ them for a couple of afternoons (resulting in quite some hours of overwork also), me and a colleague had a look at their photoshoot. This was not too impressive by itself, but it did take another entire afternoon. And in that way an entire week was spent doing all sorts of bigger and smaller jobs of many kinds. It was almost like work ;)
Then I was supposed to leave with quite some colleagues for a fieldtrip to the East Godavari district on the 2nd of October, but due to the heavy rains in the regions this trip was postponed to Saturday the 6th. We took a nighttrain from Secunderabad to a village I already lost the name from, where we arrived around 6.30 in the morning. It was brilliant to see the dawn in those lush green ricefields and palmtrees, small sheds, many cows and awakening people.
But the train, well, was just not that comfy. Right now, because I am travelling alone, I sit in a fancy class section of the train, with red curtains for each set of seats and bedsheets and pillow provided by the railways. It was not like that yesterday, where there were no curtains, or air conditioning, but where one actually does not want to smell the seat one is sitting/sleeping on. Nor does one want to sniff the air from outside when riding slow or pass stations or tunnels. Simply because it stinks, big time. But hey, we got without too much of a delay at our destination from where we took an autorickshaw – all nicely packed together – to our lodge. This was again nothing fancy, but I guess one can hardly avoid the entrance of bugs and other small creatures in a building like that. At least there was a running shower (albeit without warm water) and a mirror and a bed that was actually quite comfy to my Indian standards.
During the fieldtrip we visited four different villages where we tried to speak with various members of the community, irrespective of their background. Our mission was to collect both qualitative and quantitative data on their daily activities, the output of their labour and any issues that they may raise. I guess that at the end that mission has been sort of accomplished, but as with all surveys one discovers gaps only after having left the area. While I would hardly understand a word of the conversations, I was somewhat able to discern the different sentiments in the group and I therefore made mainly ethnographic observations on expressions, movements, (sudden) changes and things like that. Hopefully this data will be helpful to the ones doing the overall analyses to recapture what happened during the sessions.
Also, I have laid my eyes on one of the prettiest men I have seen in real life. But I also have to admit he did not really have an ‘indian’ appearance but was instead fairly pale and western looking. But, yeah, no communication because of many things. Which is of course a bit of a sad thing.
And then right now I am once again sitting in a train, but now on my way almost to the west coast, to the large city of Pune. After having arrived back home this morning around 7 I did my laundry and went to work untill the early afternoon. Then I had lunch with my colleague and 2 of his cousins and after that I had some time to chill, watch another episode of Revenge (my new entertainment series) and pack my bag for the upcoming 4,5 days. Which apparently are going to be one crazy whirl of helping customers, completing sales and trying to keep the place tidy all at the same time.. We’ll see how that works out :P
It is now 22.07 and I am quite exhausted. Around me people are also putting up their beds. Mine is already complete because it is aligned with the carriage. So lets see if I can make myself comfy and get some sleep.
Lots of love, from a dark place somewhere between Hyderabad and Pune
p.s.
Pune was Awesome!!
We made our sales target, and it was exhausting but it was especially nice to meet a different kind of people than I found find most often in Hyderabad.
To be honest.. Pune was more or less a relief. It is full of young people who seem to have a fairly 'western' lifestyle, which shows itself in the way they dress, the places they go to to eat or have a snack, the stores.. and there is much, much less rubble on the street and not the smell of piss at every corner. Even traffic appears more 'disciplined': people actually make (somewhat) use of the lines on the road! And the autorickshaws are pretty much all equipped with a meter that works and the driver won't make a fuss about turning it on. What a drawback it was again this morning at 5.30 when I got out of the train with some colleagues and the first thing we had to do was fight with the drivers about the fee.... bleeeh.
But anyways. Yesterday we had a day off in Pune. Saturday evening I got pretty wasted with a colleague and her friends drinking old dark rum-coke untill pretty deep into the night... ^^ And then on sunday ("the best thing about Old Monk rum is that you never wake with a hangover" is indeed true.. :D) I visited the Aga Khan palace in Pune, where Mahatma Gandhi, his wife and his secretary were imprisoned for a long time and where only Gandhi himself left alive. I went relatively early in the morning, which meant that is was not too hot, nor very crowded. When I arrived there was a Chinese man who had been living in India for 15 years got completely upset that he had to pay the 'foreigners fee' (100 INR) instead of the Indian fee (5 INR)... but while he was making a statement I pretty much just walked past him, got myself a foreigners ticket with a smile, and went inside.. :P
But anyways.. it was pretty small and the photoexhibition was closed, but the gardens were very pretty and I got to visit the place where Gandhi's ashes are kept.
After that I had a look at the Osho Ashram (google is your friend). But I arrived around their lunchtime, so I did not get to hang around much. But it was a funny sight to see all those westerners walking around in groups, all in their maroon robes, totally finding their inner peace.. I guess :P
And then from the Ashram I went back to the old city centre, roaming through the small shopping streets and enjoying some of the local specialties. And then, after some chaos at the train station, I found myself sitting in the train back to Hyderabad. Slightly sad, I have to admit. If I am ever to return to India (which I most likely will, but then hopefully by motorbike) Pune will definately be on my places-to-visit list :)
At this very moment I am sitting opposite of this man who is, like many Indians, completely captivated by his mobile phone. My seat is next to the door to the “hall”/entry of the train, so there are quite some people walking in and out. I have the upper bed, where right now lie 2 sheets and 2 pillows for when we put up the beds and go to ‘sleep’. The latter is rather inconvenient, but more about that later.
I saw that my latest blog had already been somewhere in September, and that I had spoken about the trip to one of the tallest Ganesha statues, but not yet about the other, tallest statue or the submersions of all those idols in the Sagar Hussein Lake.
The Ganesha festival lasted for 10 days. It was accompanied by many, many big and small celebrations in the streets of Secunderabad. (I still have not seen much of Hyderabad :/). Some of these festivities came with hour-long drum sessions; one of which lasted untill well after 1.30am. Before I forget I would hereby like to wholeheartedly thank the inventor of customized earplugs. Without those my time here would probably have been even more deprived of sleep. Also in these trains they are an absolute convenience.
But back to the festival.
The days here go by rather fast, no matter where or on what I spend my time. At some point all the Ganesha statues had become part of the ordinary scenery on the streets, until the 29th of September, when they were all drowned – for good luck. Me and my flatmate were at first really excited about going to have a look at the submersions, but on that day itself I was not too energized. Yet we still went, despite the ‘warnings’ of some of my colleagues that it would be too crowded near the lakeside to actually see any of the submersions or even to move around freely, and that the crowd would not always be cheerful but could also turn against us obvious foreigners.
But we still went, and when we got home after a good 2 hours we both felt quite exhausted but also that It had been fun. It was very crowded, and once you allow one person to make a picture of you an entire crowd will gather in front of you that won’t stop making pictures untill you walk away. So, yeah, that is what I did a couple of times. And also just to say no to people, especially to those who were hanging on my arms or won’t let my hands go. But other than those things (ok, and one incident where a guy grabbed me around the waist and then ran off – which did piss me off for a second) were very cheerful. People would throw orange flowers at/on us, which is a blessing. And altogether both we and the crowd were entertained I guess.
The week after that was pretty much themed by the outsourcing of online sales to this one e-commerce start-up. They required us to select stock, which they then would check and of course have comments upon. Then they had to do photoshoots to get visuals of all our products and then to put them online. After having ‘served’ them for a couple of afternoons (resulting in quite some hours of overwork also), me and a colleague had a look at their photoshoot. This was not too impressive by itself, but it did take another entire afternoon. And in that way an entire week was spent doing all sorts of bigger and smaller jobs of many kinds. It was almost like work ;)
Then I was supposed to leave with quite some colleagues for a fieldtrip to the East Godavari district on the 2nd of October, but due to the heavy rains in the regions this trip was postponed to Saturday the 6th. We took a nighttrain from Secunderabad to a village I already lost the name from, where we arrived around 6.30 in the morning. It was brilliant to see the dawn in those lush green ricefields and palmtrees, small sheds, many cows and awakening people.
But the train, well, was just not that comfy. Right now, because I am travelling alone, I sit in a fancy class section of the train, with red curtains for each set of seats and bedsheets and pillow provided by the railways. It was not like that yesterday, where there were no curtains, or air conditioning, but where one actually does not want to smell the seat one is sitting/sleeping on. Nor does one want to sniff the air from outside when riding slow or pass stations or tunnels. Simply because it stinks, big time. But hey, we got without too much of a delay at our destination from where we took an autorickshaw – all nicely packed together – to our lodge. This was again nothing fancy, but I guess one can hardly avoid the entrance of bugs and other small creatures in a building like that. At least there was a running shower (albeit without warm water) and a mirror and a bed that was actually quite comfy to my Indian standards.
During the fieldtrip we visited four different villages where we tried to speak with various members of the community, irrespective of their background. Our mission was to collect both qualitative and quantitative data on their daily activities, the output of their labour and any issues that they may raise. I guess that at the end that mission has been sort of accomplished, but as with all surveys one discovers gaps only after having left the area. While I would hardly understand a word of the conversations, I was somewhat able to discern the different sentiments in the group and I therefore made mainly ethnographic observations on expressions, movements, (sudden) changes and things like that. Hopefully this data will be helpful to the ones doing the overall analyses to recapture what happened during the sessions.
Also, I have laid my eyes on one of the prettiest men I have seen in real life. But I also have to admit he did not really have an ‘indian’ appearance but was instead fairly pale and western looking. But, yeah, no communication because of many things. Which is of course a bit of a sad thing.
And then right now I am once again sitting in a train, but now on my way almost to the west coast, to the large city of Pune. After having arrived back home this morning around 7 I did my laundry and went to work untill the early afternoon. Then I had lunch with my colleague and 2 of his cousins and after that I had some time to chill, watch another episode of Revenge (my new entertainment series) and pack my bag for the upcoming 4,5 days. Which apparently are going to be one crazy whirl of helping customers, completing sales and trying to keep the place tidy all at the same time.. We’ll see how that works out :P
It is now 22.07 and I am quite exhausted. Around me people are also putting up their beds. Mine is already complete because it is aligned with the carriage. So lets see if I can make myself comfy and get some sleep.
Lots of love, from a dark place somewhere between Hyderabad and Pune
p.s.
Pune was Awesome!!
We made our sales target, and it was exhausting but it was especially nice to meet a different kind of people than I found find most often in Hyderabad.
To be honest.. Pune was more or less a relief. It is full of young people who seem to have a fairly 'western' lifestyle, which shows itself in the way they dress, the places they go to to eat or have a snack, the stores.. and there is much, much less rubble on the street and not the smell of piss at every corner. Even traffic appears more 'disciplined': people actually make (somewhat) use of the lines on the road! And the autorickshaws are pretty much all equipped with a meter that works and the driver won't make a fuss about turning it on. What a drawback it was again this morning at 5.30 when I got out of the train with some colleagues and the first thing we had to do was fight with the drivers about the fee.... bleeeh.
But anyways. Yesterday we had a day off in Pune. Saturday evening I got pretty wasted with a colleague and her friends drinking old dark rum-coke untill pretty deep into the night... ^^ And then on sunday ("the best thing about Old Monk rum is that you never wake with a hangover" is indeed true.. :D) I visited the Aga Khan palace in Pune, where Mahatma Gandhi, his wife and his secretary were imprisoned for a long time and where only Gandhi himself left alive. I went relatively early in the morning, which meant that is was not too hot, nor very crowded. When I arrived there was a Chinese man who had been living in India for 15 years got completely upset that he had to pay the 'foreigners fee' (100 INR) instead of the Indian fee (5 INR)... but while he was making a statement I pretty much just walked past him, got myself a foreigners ticket with a smile, and went inside.. :P
But anyways.. it was pretty small and the photoexhibition was closed, but the gardens were very pretty and I got to visit the place where Gandhi's ashes are kept.
After that I had a look at the Osho Ashram (google is your friend). But I arrived around their lunchtime, so I did not get to hang around much. But it was a funny sight to see all those westerners walking around in groups, all in their maroon robes, totally finding their inner peace.. I guess :P
And then from the Ashram I went back to the old city centre, roaming through the small shopping streets and enjoying some of the local specialties. And then, after some chaos at the train station, I found myself sitting in the train back to Hyderabad. Slightly sad, I have to admit. If I am ever to return to India (which I most likely will, but then hopefully by motorbike) Pune will definately be on my places-to-visit list :)
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
