Vacationing in Kerala

I’m going to Kerala for a week’s vacation. There is an overwhelming likelihood of interesting stuff to write about when I get back. See you then!

Cricket in the maidāna

Come celebrate India’s victory over Australia yesterday! And play cricket with us in the maidāna afterwards. We started playing last week with boys and other men in the neighborhood. It’s a pretty complicated game (I’m glad I learned Quidditch and baseball first), but I’m starting to get the hang of it now, thanks to patient explanations by experts John and Bharath.

India’s national sport is the benign remnant of the British Empire (rampant bureaucracy being the malign one). It’s enjoyed by young and old: the youngest player to join us is 7, the oldest, 47.

Our boss is an avid fan and plans around games, despite that they last hours and hours. A typical winning score reaches into the 200s. In that way it’s similar to baseball. Californians tell me they go to games more for social reasons than for sports.

We office athletes just play to have fun. That, and to meet the pressing need for programmers to get off our butts and outside for fresh air.

At the chai stand

When Bharath invited me to join him for some masala chai, I welcomed the break from analyzing undocumented vaccination databases and hurried out. The tea stand, or chai dukāna, is only a few minutes’ pleasant stroll from the office and an ubiquitous part of the day here. I bought some masala chai for three rupees and a biscuit for one rupee (2.5 ¢), which is less than I have paid for anything in my life. Afterward we headed to the egg-roll stand.

This is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, and everyone certainly has seen Europeans before, if perhaps only on TV. Yet it seems to be rare enough that my white face gets more than its share of stares as I walk down the street. Not that it bothers me – I rather like the attention, to be honest!

A couple of teenage boys bet on whether I was Indian or not and tried talking to me in Hindi. I was a bit mystified, but Bharath explained that Kashmiris indeed can be quite light-skinned. I guess having black hair is fortuitous – you get taken for a native anywhere in the world!

Namastē, Bhārat!

So here I am, in India. Delhi is alive and intimate, a megacity with 12 million inhabitants and almost as many lifestyles. It is pulled between a longing for the Western life and a strong attachment to a culture four thousand years old. You could call it an experiment in order and chaos. For a few fleeting months it is my home.

There are many McDonald’s restaurants, but when I walk in, the hamburgers are primarily vegetarian and never contain red meat. (Hindus won’t eat beef and Muslims won’t eat pork.) There are shopping malls with seven stories, but you walk out of one of them and right into a market run by Tibetan refugees.

I was brought here for the prosaic goal of a case study on data integration for my master’s studies (see the About page) and a desire for something totally new. Three months seem like an eternity to be away from blizzards and prepackaged ice coffee. (Yes, that is what I think of when I think of Norway.) And it’s far too brief to get to know this country.

The incredible traffic, the sumptuous food, the fantastic monuments and – not least – 23 unknown languages, all will make this the longest and most exotic trip in my life. Maybe this blog (and your feedback) can make me just a little bit wiser her on this freshest subcontinent in my life.