What is Delhi really like?

Delhi has many faces; my evening today probably would give you a fairly good understanding of what it feels like to be here. Vivek, a colleague of mine from work who rides in my carpool, and I decided to go after work for a beer and “galgappes”. We got out of the rickshaw in front of Kamaal Cinema market, which is quite close to both of our places, while a larger than average water buffalo, which means about the size of a small car, stood on the median separating the road’s lanes, starring straight ahead into space.

This small market isn’t too big by anyone’s standards. A few coffee shops, small restaurants, a couple stores selling different computer products or services, a furnature store, a beer and wine shop. We walk through the parking lot that is filled about 2/3 with small cars and 1/3 with motorcycles. Vivek walks up the two steps of the beer and wine shop to by our two cans of Kingfisher beer. Next, we order four small potato patties from the vender down the steps, which we will eat drenched in sweet chutney and raw onions. We then take our food and beers back behind the first line of shops to a park that sits between that first line and the second line of stops. To get there, we walk through a small, unlit walkway, where puddles from last night’s monsoon and flies from its aftermath buzz around, making designs in the thick smell of garbage that fills the air.

With our bags from work piled on top of each other on the dirty stone wall and bags of food and chutney lying next to them. I realize that a whole army of ants is hard at work, about three feet away from our food, scurrying up and down the wall and the tree that has grown adjacent to it. A small gecko quickly races up the tree trunk. The small fenced-in park is full of garbage though. Vivek realizes that they only gave us one bag of chutney, not two, so he walks back to retrieve the second bag. Meanwhile, I call my Italian friend Marta to figure out plans for the night. Once Vivek comes back, we talk about our frustrations with work and his ambitions to start his own tourism company, while he tosses his chutney bag onto what is left of grass in the park. I realize the sweet chutney is also a little spicy and the cold beer is not as cold as it was ten minutes ago when we bought it. The tasty, tasty food and warm beer fills me right up though. Behind us three dirty dogs lay on the top step next to one man also laying on his back and a second sitting in raggedy clothes on the steps of a business that has already closed for the day. As we finish two young boys come over to ask for our empty beer cans, as they will turn them in, along with other glass bottles they have collected, later on to collect a small sum of rupees. As we begin to leave, Vivek starts to also throw our paper plates over the wall into the park, but I stop him before he does and tell him, “Let’s throw them in the garbage can out front.”

We walk back to the front through the same alleyway to eat our “galgappes”, a very unique Indian food that consists of small balls made of a thin, fried flour exterior (about the size of a golf ball) with a little hole where sweet water with a few cut vegetables are poured inside the ball. As we wait to order, Vivek and I stand facing each other, talking about where our careers might be taking us, while beads of sweat from the intense humidity multiply on his forehead and mine slide down my back. I can feel all of my clothes sticking to me and I realize once again that there is no point in complaining about something like the humidity here. You just have to let it be and find a way to be at peace with this reality. I look around and tell Vivek to try and count how many women he sees in this market right now. We only can see two amongst 40-60 men working, eating, walking, talking to each other. These golgappes are messy and eaten in one swift toss into the mouth – you don’t exactly gulp them, but there is little chewing involved. I’m stuffed after three. Vivek has at least five. We pay about fifty cents for our post potato and beer treat as an unusually small man with crooked legs (possibly a little person) walks by us. As we get ready to walk home, Vivek tells me to wait while he indulges himself and buys a cigarette. In India, you can buy cigarettes one at a time. He lights it with an electric lighter hanging from the roof by a cord (kind of like a small electric stove on a rope), of which I tell him I’ve never seen before. Walking towards home now, a man tosses a small plastic box out of his car window, probably from food, out onto the parking lot near us and Vivek and I joke about the “incredible” technology that I’m learning about in India that I couldn’t find in the US.

Below are pictures from last weekend's Festival of San Fermin. This is the famous festival celebrated in Pamplona every year, which also includes many days of "the running of the bulls". We decided to be crazy and celebrated San Fermin and our friend Carla's birthday all in one :)

The (at least) Half Way Point

(On the Bay of Bengal in Mamallapuram, south India)

I am now starting month number seven over here in India. I’m half way done with my original commitment of one year to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII – http://www.cii.in/ – check out the new website (Let me know if you think it’s a little less like a busy Indian street now, Tina)). I know that to this point I have not really talked about my job on the blog at all. That is largely because, honestly, after working I don’t ever think I want to spend an evening writing about it. I think that could probably sound fairly like a negative sign of how my job is going, but that’s not it all. My job is going well. Originally, I was working on creating a sustainable development plan for CII’s own Social Development Initiatives. Currently, CII has about 10 very different social development programs in place and they each receive fairly limited resources from CII (remember, CII is still a non-profit and doesn’t have excess funds either). So these programs have not grown much over the past years and my first 2-3 months were spent developing a plan to make these more sustainable and scalable.

(Jose and I at CII's National Summit on CSR in Chennai)

Over the past three or so months I have been focusing much more on CII’s proposed Centre of Excellence for Responsive Corporate Citizenship. Now you might ask, “What the heck is a Centre of Excellence (COE)?” or maybe instead you’re asking “What is Responsive Corporate Citizenship?” Well, to answer your first question, CII has 5-6 Centres of Excellence which specialize in providing certain consultancy services and resources in specific areas such as logistics, quality management, sustainable development, competitiveness and “green business solutions”. Our COE is the most recently proposed center. This part of my job has been challenging as up until now I haven’t had a lot of experience looking at corporate social responsibility (CSR) or social development from a business standpoint.

(This is Shimla, a mountain town that was home and office to the Viceroy (the head of the British government when they ruled India) during the six or seven months of summer)

My work at the American Red Cross provided me with great experience at looking at the relationship between civil society organizations (CSO) (a preferred term to NGO or non-profit) and businesses, but from the CSO perspective. So to say the least, I’ve been learning quickly, reading a lot on the subject from the McKinsey Quarterly, Harvard Business Review and other similar publications. We are now, hopefully, at the doorstep of beginning to take tangible steps towards making this thing a reality.

(During the concert of Shimla's International Summer Festival - we were definitely the most international part of the festival)

Two weeks ago, I traveled down to Chennai with some work colleagues to help run our National Summit on CSR. Jose Luis talked the Basque government and his boss at the commercial office of the Spanish Embassy to approve his attending the conference, which was cool. To top it off, CII didn’t charge him the registration fee (I think because my boss thought of him as a diplomat of some kind – which he is - kind of). Starbucks made an appearance as one of the event’s main sponsors. If you didn’t already know, Starbucks is trying valiantly to get into India’s growing coffee-drinking market but continues to face new hurdles with their application. One of their marketing strategies was to sponsor this event and talk about their social responsibility initiatives through their C.A.F.E. program. Instead of sending Sandra Taylor, Senior VP of CSR, next time, I want them to send out Josh Terlouw.

(Last Sunday, a bunch of work friends and I rode Delhi's new metro (commuter train) to a theme park on the outskirts of Delhi. Left to right: Michael, Ankit, Shipra, Richa and Amit)

India continues to be such an incredible learning lab. And I could go on and on about each thing, but just to give you a little bit of an idea. The caste system continues to be a fully integrated part of society from a macro level and interpersonal human interaction. The government has categories of “scheduled castes”, “scheduled tribes” and “other backward castes” that determine levels of government assistance and new affirmative action policies. It’s not just a rural reality either. It’s everywhere in the city also. Nearly all Indians I know can tell you what caste a person is after only a couple of minutes. They can tell from a number of indicators such as their last name, mannerisms and language use.

Next, there is such a huge canyon between law and enforcement. It’s illegal to make kids beg, let cows roam the roads, ask for bribes, ask for a dowry in a marriage, run a red light, and on and on. However, there is little, if any, enforcement of any of these things.

(One thing about India is when it rains, IT RAINS. Rain is almost always accompanied by a storm that includes thunder and lightning.)

There are also so many things that just don’t have any kind of logical answer and if you are trying to find one, you are going to waste your time (I know). For example, no one has “change” in Delhi. You go to stores, use rickshaws, go to the modern cinemas. No one has change for your rupees! Sometimes it’s understandable. Often times the rickshaw drivers have it though but don’t want to give it to you. Heck, Lauren went to the bank the other day and they didn’t have change! Next, in six months, I have yet to see one turn lane in all of India. Thus, you have roads with a big medium in the middle with places to take a u-turn every so often. The lines to make these u-turns can back up as you might imagine, to say nothing of that fact that you often have to drive quite out of the way to just go to the other side of the street. Every Indian city I have seen is like this. My last example is highways with no shoulders on them. The problem is that when a car breaks down, it just stops in the middle of the lane and has no where to go until someone comes to tow it away. You can imagine how unsafe this is and how fast traffic backs up trying to merge around it. The funniest part of all this is that if you ask any Indian, even incredibly bright, traveled, "logically thinking" Indians why any of these things are the way they are, I swear, you cannot get any kind of coherent answer. They just are and it’s really no use in trying to advocate for a change in the present reality because there’s not really a problem in their view.

(When the power goes out, we often have no other option but to sit in the living room, sweat...and take photos and make faces. However, I've found that if I can get past how sweaty I am, the darkness and humidity can actually be quite peaceful and meditative.)

Six months in the book. At least six more to go. It’s great to hear from all of you and even though India is on the other side of the world for most of you, I would love for you to come visit!