Life and Death in India

Unlike the U.S. where one rarely encounters death on a personal basis, and if one does, then we discuss it for the next 3 months or even a year later, one encounters death all the time as soon as one moves to India. Both life and death! Indian cities and the countryside teem with life – in the cities its people, in the countryside its insects, in the towns and villages its flies, in the monsoons it’s the grasses and shrubs – but always there is a bursting forth of life. Impossible to maintain any semblance of restraint – life just pours out, just like in a tropical jungle.

A lot of children are born, there is a great deal of activity and crowding, and people also die more often. Not just the old – the young die of road accidents, sickness and weird diseases with even weirder symptoms – even the doctors have no clue what happened, or sometimes they just keep mum because the disease is so obscure it makes no sense telling the parents or relatives. Busses fall into ravines every year on the treacherous roads to pilgrimage places like Badrinath, Kedarnath and Gangotri. In the West, among the NRI community, people are shaken up by a single death. I remember when a friend’s wife died of cancer. We were all shook up – knew her so well, our families had met on and off. Here in India, people sail into your lives and sail out – sometimes they sail out because someone died an unexpected death. People are philosophical about it – they know life must go on, and do whatever they can to quickly encourage the nearest and dearest to forget and move on. Its fate – it’s a remerging of the spirits, the individual spirit with the Brahman. In the west the loss is personal – much harder to accept death. One revisits the sickness – could anything have been done to prevent death?

Since I have returned to India, I have closely witnessed two deaths. One was a friend’s father. I saw my friend’s father succumb to his illness, saw the grieving of the family, and their acceptance of death as something that ends our relationships with this world for ever for each one of us. It is a natural progression. I went to the crematorium and saw the last rites. During the next 24 hours we all feel the vacuum left by a person we have seen so recently. The vacuum is felt longer by the close family and even longer by the spouse, perhaps forever. And then life resumes – if you have ever seen a pride of lions attack a huge herd of wildbeest or deer – there is panic, then mourning, and then life resumes for the wildebeests, as if nothing had really happened, as the lions gather for their meal. I also saw my bright, bubbly 18-year old niece succumb to disease in less than a month. It will take my cousin and her husband, a long time to overcome their grief at the loss of their only child. They will probably dive deeply into a religious life – that might bring some solace and understanding, or they might become very active with social work and they might gain comfort from helping others. But they never question the existence of a fair and just God!

In India, it’s the person’s destiny.

Old Age and NRIs

NRIs face a question that few voice, but every NRI knows that each one is thinking about it. At least it has occurred to everyone, and the younger one is, the easier it is to push the question aside, but the question nags periodically. Where should one spend the last stage or old age of one’s life – back in the mother country or in the new land with sons, daughters and a sprinkling of relatives scattered about the country? Some, perhaps many, want to get old in the old country, but one’s nearest and dearest all live in the new country. To many who have lived abroad for 20, 30 or 40 years, the new country is still alien – one is very comfortable, but it is just not the same as being an Indian in India, where you relate instantly to other brown people. Where others relate instantly to you. Where there is no question of being slighted for being different – nothing overt, mind you, just not getting the best table in a restaurant, just being ignored until someone else who came into the store at the same time as you is first taken care of as you walk up to the counter. Of course, most Westerners are too polite to ignore you if you were obviously first! The list goes on – the policeman who asks the local person his version of what happened before he asks you, if you were involved in a minor fender-bender. Very rarely (particularly as you grow older and more affluent), you will hear someone say "Go back to your own country!", and when you do its generally from a frustrated member of the so-called "white trash" community!

Never mind all of that, that is just the result of conditioning we are not even aware of. But where should one spend the last stage of one’s life? The isolation one feels in the West as one grows old is scary – the next couple of generations is living life head-on and really has no time for your isolation and loneliness. They want you to get over the fears. They love you, but have so many demands on their time! Their own children are constantly demanding of their time! It isn’t that there is no isolation and loneliness in India – the only constant company you might get is that of the house cleaner who comes every day to sweep the floors and the “bai” who does the utensils. And the milkman and sabjiwala who shows up at the doorstep every day. The talkative neighbour who stops by every day to share her gossip. The kids from the apartment complex who shout and play cricket and won’t let you take your afternoon nap. And soon your day is full – from morning to evening. Perhaps there is something to be said about growing old in your own country!

The "Average" Indian

That India is booming is obvious to everone – especially to those living here. Assets of Indian industries are still cheap. Foreign companies are buying up Indian assets everyday (called FDI for Foreign Direct Investment), as a result of which the Sensex is climbing back to its high of 12000+, from a low of 8900. Indian banks are in everyone's sights, but the govt. still won't let that happen except in small amounts (upto 10 %). A very high speed rail link is being planned to tie Pune, Nashik and Mumbai together – half an hour commute time from Pune to Mumbai! The new International airport in Vashi has now obtained official approval and work is starting – that will enhance Pune's position as a major city since it is at the other end of the Expressway. Some of the price rises in real estate on the Western side of the city are due to this – the going price for a modest 5000 to 8000 sq. ft. lot in Sindh, National, Abhimanshri societies is about Rs.2.5 Cr to Rs. 4 Cr. ($500K to $900K) - comparable to Silicon Valley, in a land where the per capita income is only $300 per annum!

Everyone believes, there is still room for price growth once the developments actually take place. Of course in exclusive Koregaon park, it is almost impossible to get a bungalow below Rs. 4 cr ($900K), and most of them are in the 5 cr. Range ($1M+). While there are lots of people with that kind of money to throw around (in Mumbai they are building flats with a starting price of Rs. 21 cr and upto Rs. 27 cr, and you can only buy these by invitation!), there are millions making the minimum wage of Rs. 3500 per month, and perhaps many millions more making less than the minimum wage. These people are generally in perpetual debt. The gap is widening as the Govt spends more money in the cities and banks lend in the cities, while the hinterland is neglected. Farmers still commit suicide during the summer months, when they realize they have been wiped out by a monsoon which is a few weeks late. In the meantime, the govt plans massive infrastructure projects in Mumbai worth 10,000 crores each, in order to make driving easier from Bandra to Marine drive, and does nothing to address the plight of the farmers except for occasional helicopter tours (reminds one of Bush flying over New Orleans). Indians love development – love shopping malls, love the whole concept of "fast develop ho raha hai".

Anyway, you get the picture – I have no doubt in my mind that in 5 year's time, the major metropolitan areas will be as expensive to live in as Tokyo, Taiwan or Seoul – the army of work people who support this lifestyle will be living in adjacent townships or suburbs, eating, buying and living completely different life styles from the city folks. Already, the IT folks, businessmen, etc (the high income "average" Indian) are only shopping at malls, where shoes cost Rs. 2500+, trousers cost the same, groceries are bought off shelves, green groceries come wrapped in plastic, etc, while the "other" "average" Indian buys chappals for Rs. 100, can get a a pair of pants stitched for Rs. 250 and goes to the mandi and buys green groceries for less than Rs. 100 per day (Rs. 5 for a bunch of kothmiri, alu and onions for Rs. 20 or so) etc.

Is there a "real" average Indian who lives in between the two averages? I doubt it.

Puneites and Mumbaikars

Pune in the monsoons is a hell-hole – the pot-holes are legendary. The Pune Municipal Corporation fills them witha mixture of mud and bricks, and the resulting slush is awful. Each year, Puneites complain, the local papers are full of pictures each day about the worst pot-holed streets in Pune, and yet Puneites take it as their lot in life! Puneites are too tolerant and seem to take anything dished out to them, unlike Mumbaikars who are very vocal – as a result Mumbai has become very clean with excellent wide roads most places and they have now started fines of upto Rs.1000 for littering and Rs. 500 for spitting. Peeing on the roads is not acceptable either and if you do attempt it, you are likely to get stopped by a plainclothes lady police-officer who will fine you, as my driver found out to his chagrin.

The mayor made a farce of threatening to resign within 4 days if the roads were not fixed, and to save her job at the end of 4 days declared that the PMC had indeed made a valiant effort and that most roads were fixed! A month later the roads were the same or much worse, but of course people had forgotten the mayor's promise, and the local papers are too polite to remind anyone!