Joys of business travel: Indian Headlines

I covered a lot of ground in my current trip to India. A visit to a new project site took me to Kolkata and then a 5 hr drive west, only to return the following day. Fortunately the roads were good and only the final hour was on the more typical roads that consist of pot holes, cows and bicycles. The only point of interest on the Kolkata visit was the near death experience (I exaggerate a bit).

As we were leaving the Kolkata hotel to go to the airport at 5 am in the morning, we had a very old driver. I noticed that his legs were shaking a bit as he took my bag from me to put it in the trunk and was a bit surprised to see that he was getting behind the wheel. The car was small and there were three of us plus the driver and only our Indian host was familiar with the area. Shortly after leaving the hotel the driver started to cross a main road and I gave warning shout to the driver as he started to pull out in front of speeding car. (It is I think the only time I have ever shouted to warn a driver). He did stop in time but he had not seen the car at all. Unfortunately it had us shook up a bit and it was only 15 minutes later that our host noticed that the driver was not going to the airport. A little embarrassed he turned around and a short time later we passed our hotel again, arriving at the airport a little late but still with enough time to catch the plane.

Friday was a bit much on the travel side. It consisted of a late start at 9am and a 3hr drive to another plant. After a quick lunch I did a 3 hr walking tour in 45°c and then a 2hr drive to the airport. The 8pm plane was then late so that by the time landed it was after midnight. My seat mate on the plane from Raipur to Mumbai was a big guy and we continually fought for the arm rest. He didn’t seem bothered by constant contact with my arm. However he was an improvement on the fellow I had to sit next to on the flight from Mumbai to Kolkata. He at first pretended to have my seat and informed me that I was to sit in the window seat. I asked him to move and he moved to the window seat. A few minutes later he tried to convince the fellow with the actual window seat ticket that he should sit in the middle. It didn’t work. When the flight attendants came by they serve mainly preordered meals and when she ignored him he became quite upset. He asked for her name and took out the customer satisfaction card and proceeded to write a lengthy letter (over the text of questions). Being curious I read what he had written out of the corner of my eye. I thought the letter accurately reflected that he was a moron and was confident they would throw out the complaint. In his letter rather than high lighting the fact that he was not served well, he choose to inform them that she was ugly and they should not hire ugly flight attendants.

One evening I was being driven back to the guest house after dinner out by one of the young engineers on the project. I had heard that he was just recently married and I asked about his wife. He explained it was a “traditional” marriage and not a marriage of “love”. Meaning that his parents has selected the bride, but they did have to present to him 15 to 20 women before he found one he liked. Boy that certainly takes the hassle out of finding a wife.

Guest house

guest house

My room

Electrical blow out in the cables along the ceiling

With Saturday free, I did the now "regular" tour with my colleague who had never seen the tourist sites in Mumbai. I did get to see some new sites, but after a few hours of the heat and traffic , I had enough and it was good to get back to the peace and quiet of the Hyatt.

Headlines in the Times of India on saturday morning were interesting;

“Dentist tries to extract 20 teeth at one go, kills patient” I suggest that you stay away from Dr. Patel in New York. Of all the international stories to choose from, they thought that one was important.

The local stories included: “man falls off train, dies”, “train runs over man” “Deaf-mute girl raped”. With the new government in the Times listed some of the main challenges ahead. I thought this one pretty much summed up the issues: "Rid cities of filth, free roads of jams, fix civic bodies".