Love Thy Commute

Now I’ve been here in Mumbai for 9 days and, due to some difficulties, haven’t started doing any actual work yet. Mainly, I had a job at a great Indian company, Reliance Industries, lined up and ready to go once I got here and I knew it was going to be a 4 hour daily commute to work from where I was living. I honestly should’ve known better than to work there without making some better living arrangements because 4 hours in Mumbai certainly isn’t 4 hours in Cincinnati, but it sure felt good to hear the “More power to ya brother” from everyone I told. On this date, I’m still living at my grandpa’s and still have had no internet for the past 10 days, from which I am also going insane. But all in all, that’s the least of my concerns while I’m here.

Every time I’ve ever been in India, it’s always been in the most sheltered of lifestyles, where I only see my family and stay at their places. This time I had come here with two major goals; to get some good work experience and to get to see the other side of India which I don’t get to by staying in my grandpa’s 6th floor flat. While my work plans were on hold, at least I was going to focus on achieving the latter. As a result, I’ve gotten to go around Mumbai these past 5 days and really gotten to see how difficult it is to make it in this city. Some basic observations from my travels…

1) There are dogs… lots of dogs. Coming to India, I quickly realized that dogs most certainly have the easiest life in America. Nobody keeps and loves pets like we do. 95% of the dogs I’ve seen since I’ve been here are strays. They sleep under cars at night and dig through trash cans like raccoons during the day. Being fearful of American dogs to begin with, it’s really tough to love a dog with razor sharp teeth and saliva dripping off its tongue when it’s got the rabies look in its eye. I really feel for the dogs here, but throwing a piece of meat on the road would only make someone here look as cold-hearted as Michael Vick for forcing them to fight each other to eat. If you think the dog situation is bad, it’s actually not uncommon to see buffalo roaming some streets.
2) There are lots of dogs, but there are a hell of a lot more people. I should’ve seen this one coming also. A city with 14 million people in almost the same space as greater Cincinnati is a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done seeing as India’s population density is 9 times larger than America’s. (3x the people and 1/3 the land) Top that off with a poverty rate of 27.5% and the streets get filled with people who just can’t make ends meet without begging on the street. The best part about the population problem is when you talk to somebody who gripes that there are too many people but says that all his neighbors need to move out to make space in the city. Naturally his neighbors say the same thing.
3) A 10 minute trip in Cincinnati is guaranteed to last you a half hour in Mumbai, and that’s on a good day. I took out a map of Mumbai to see exactly how far my grandpa’s place was from the Reliance office where I was supposed to work and it measured out to exactly 50 kilometers (31.25 miles). There aren’t any highways. To get to the city, you have to travel on the same roads that everyone else travels on every day. The roads aren’t always paved roads either. Along with observations #1 and #2, traffic is at a constant standstill. This is all starting to sound like a continuous rant now, but it really shouldn’t take anyone in a motor vehicle 2 hours to travel 31.25 miles on a regular basis.

We read about it all the time. India is on the forefront of becoming a major economic player in the world and has the labor potential to outdo everybody. The quality of education is increasing rapidly as I see that my average 3 year old cousin is learning to read and write in Hindi… AT THE AGE OF 3. The whole country is a technology hub for the world and is showing no signs of slowing down. And here I sit on a bus in Mumbai, the business capital of India, waiting for 2 hours to travel 31.25 miles to get to the other side of the city. India is on the right path to establishing some sort of infrastructure as they have begun plans to build highways that link all the major cities in India together. Mumbai is in the process of developing an underground subway system to connect the northern suburbs to its downtown on the southern side. It’s going to be a long and drawn out path but establishing infrastructure is one of the key things that will allow India to progress. Man, I should’ve taken human geography in high school.

Moral of the story: Being raised in America really makes us brats when we travel to other less developed countries in the world. However, it should really make us appreciate how lucky we are to have so many things that we take for granted. When’s the last time your car was halted on the road because wild buffalo were crossing?

On a personal note, because of the 2 hour commute in the 95° heat (which really feels like 105), right now I’m looking for a better internship opportunity closer to home. I’m pretty close to having something lined up with Bayer and that would be a pretty good job for the summer (along with its 10 minute walking commute from my house) and I just recently found out that my grandpa’s friend owns an apartment that’s right next to the Reliance office downtown which I could possibly snag for the summer. Nothing has been 100% finalized yet, but by the time I post something next week, there will definitely be a full plan in place. I’m writing this right now without having any access to the internet and I was about to ask someone who reads this to send me NBA updates but once I get internet, I won’t need any of you to do that.

See ya next week.

Jitters

For all the things about human behavior that I don't know, I do know that most of the time we make our decisions based on our fears and our ability to not have to face our fears at a given time. If you can prolong having to talk to the gorgeous girl you have a huge crush on or you're able to delay having to stand up to someone who's giving you a hard time, you more than likely will wait as long as possible simply because some moron coined the phrase, "its better to be safe than sorry." At the young ripe age of 21, I carry the philosophy that you can take however many risks you want because, no matter what anyone says, you have a hell of a lot less responsibility right now than you will later on in life. It sure is depressing to think about, but one day all of us are going to leave college, get jobs in the real world, have families, and get caught in the "circle of life" machine. Not to say its a bad thing, but good luck trying to be young then.

With all this said, I am sitting in my room getting ready to leave for Mumbai tomorrow. For those who need a refresher course on Mumbai, I wikipedia'ed it for ya. My trip to Mumbai isn't purely sightseeing as I will be working at Reliance Industries this summer getting some experience in a whole lot of accounting mumbo-jumbo I'm sure you don't want to hear about. To make that opening thought relevant at all, I'll come right out and admit that I'm scared. Sometimes, I sure wish I was just in the good old Midwest all summer and I've thought about what I'd be doing if I had been. Last year, for the first semester of my Junior Year, I went to Luxembourg and even that wasn't as bad because I was doing it with 130 other kids that I went to college with. Sure I speak the language in India and I'm not making the 3 month trek alone (I'll be living with family there), but a summer in Mumbai is going to be nothing but an adventure for me. As scared as I am, at the age of 21, when else am I ever going to get an opportunity to go do something like this though?

We will all be making a big decision of some sort this summer, some bigger than others of course. Nonetheless, most tough choices can be categorized as either safe or dicey. My decision to go to India for this job is safe in the thought that I'm doing whatever necessary to get quality real world experience but dicey in the thought that I'm outside of my comfort zone and have no idea what I'm getting into. I honestly do not know what to expect when I get there. When I went to Luxembourg for the fall semester earlier, I didn't know what to expect then either, but I came out beliving that it was one of the best decisions I have made in college. I can only hope that this voyage is going to be the same way.

I purposely titled the blog "Mumbai Fantasy" because of the mystery surrounding my summer. Not only am I going to do what is expected of me at work and live my day-to-day life, but I'm planning on branching out a little bit and seeing more of India. I plan on living my summer to the fullest and I hope this blog will be my vehicle of reporting my observations in India as well as remembering the summer for the rest of my life.

Before I end this post, I know that my last attempt at writing a blog about my experiences in a foreign place was, to say the least, pathetic. I came up with 2 posts, one of them being an unfinished two-parter. I hope to be a little more successful in maintaining my blog this time and I ask all of you to pressure me to keep writing despite my shear laziness.