On Business, Just Visiting
By Gustav Strand
14 Feb 2008
After a mind and rear-end numbing fifteen hour flight, I could see and smell that I was landing in New Delhi. There are nearly fourteen million people here. The whole country is a study in extremes - the weather (it was 120 degrees here last week,) the wealth and nearly everything else - even the food is either really bland or really spicy...
After the usual wait in the immigration queues and surprisingly familiar baggage claim, I wander through the airport - it's much cleaner than when I was here last, which happened to be during a service worker strike. I exchange my normal green dollars for more than forty times the number of much more colorful Rupee bills and head to the outside, meeting a man with my name on his sign and a uniform on the way - he won't let me pull my own rollerbags and keeps saying "yes, sir..." I just can't get used to that.
Once we're outside of the airport, it sinks in - I really am in Delhi again. It's my fourth visit to this city and second trip to India for work in six months. From the back seat of the car - a Toyota Camry, luxurious for these parts - I see the night streets that I remember - people huddled around small fires aside the streets, auto rickshaws whirring past, and motorcycles squeezing between places that make you nervous. Traffic is a phenomenon here. Imagine that cars are herd animals that you ride in and you get the feeling - rear view mirrors are folded in because they would get knocked off in the proximity. Horns and flicking high beams are the chosen method of automotive communication, and it's not too uncommon to see four people on a vespa type scooter. The vehicles perpetuate my comparative extremes - the typical passenger car is smaller than any car I see in my day to day life, a Tata Indica - Tata makes nearly all the vehicles in India - including the really big truck that is about eight inches from my window...
We weave through the crowded streets to the hotel for the next lesson in extremes - the hotel itself is surrounded by huge walls and berms and once you pass through the gate, you are in some other place - "exotic" seems too commonplace for this newly constructed tribute to nouveau biz-riche. There is a football field sized pool of water with flames accenting it in many places, licking off of the glassy surface to greet you, after which a doorman opens a glass door that is at least fifteen feet tall to let you in. The registration is done at the desk in your room.
All the while, less than a mile from you, there are families that live on less than $10 a month and under blue tarps.
I won't be able to sleep tonight for many, many reasons, but I made it. I am 8700 miles from my loved ones, in a place that is 180 degrees in all directions from home. Tomorow I work, but only after heading 1100 miles south.
