tl;dr; paper planes
I heard this on the way home from work last night.
In 2007 and 2008, I spent a total of two months in India for business. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. The first trip, in 2007, was two weeks long; a week of business and a week of personal travel.
When I was 12 years old, my parents took me on a cross country camping trip trough Canada and the USA. It took us the entire summer: from the day school let out until Labor Day weekend. Forty plus years later, I still think of some part of that trip at least once a week. I had always hoped to do that for my kids but the fact of the matter was that I couldn’t just take three months off from work to do it. My father was able to do it because he was a railroad worker with 30 years in the union. So when I was afforded the opportunity to go to India for work, I decided to take my kids, John and Kate. This was an opportunity that wasn’t going to otherwise present itself, so I took full advantage.
I think it’s safe to say we were all victims of culture shock. For instance, my boss, Andy, and I took a chauffeured ride to work every day while Kate and John took an auto rickshaw around the city choking on the exhaust from the tuk-tuk, while we sat in comfort of air conditioning. The first night we were there, the four of us went out to dinner. On the menu were all these dishes that were the equivalent of $2.50 – $3.50 USD. We all thought it was an à la carte menu so we each ordered 2 or 3 of the dishes. When they served us, there were 6 – 8 dishes on the table, each with a heaping bowl of rice. Andy and I had 2 – 3 drinks a piece. This entire meal cost about $70 USD and we left a shameful amount of food. We begged the restaurant to give it to someone.
I have more India stories, but they will have to come later.
The short story is I went back for seven weeks in 2008, and this time, Kate came with me. Living as a native for that long was interesting. I’ve typed “interesting” three times and deleted it now. I don’t know what it was. It was different. India is SO different from the United States that I can’t even begin to describe it. You can be walking along and smelling the night jasmine in bloom, the scent filling your head, and in another four steps be smelling raw sewage. How do you describe/explain that?
I was originally scheduled for six weeks, but my trip got extended because other people were coming from the USA for that last week.
India is wonderful if you accept India on India’s terms. It’s FULL of history. It’s full of culture. It’s full of art. It’s full of spirituality. It’s full of amazing affluence juxtaposed with abject poverty. I took a whole series of photographs out my bedroom window on that second trip that captured the character of the neighborhood.
Later in 2008, Slumdog Millionaire was released. Kate and I went to see it. India is always of interest to us now. I thought it was a good movie. I thought is showed the classism that exists in India quite well. And M.I.A.’s Paper Planes was on the soundtrack of the movie.
The song “grabbed me”. If you watched the video, you’ll see an attractive young woman talking about how she’s trying to scam the system. “No one on the corner has swagger like us”.
I think the whole song is summed up with:
Some, some, some I want to murder.
Some, some, some I let go.All I want to do…
<bang>, <bang>, <bang>, <bang>,
and a <ka-ching>
and take your money!
Enjoy!
wondering aloud 