Bangalore and Final Reflections

Following a 24 hour delay and an interesting overnight in Dubai, we’re on the flight to O’Hare with six hours left to go. So far, I’ve had two naps, eaten second breakfast and lunch, read some of the newspaper and the beginning of The Immortal Life Henrietta Lacks, and watched both The Big Short and The Idol (about a Palestinian who won Arab Idol.) Meanwhile, I’ve listened to a lot of world music. I have a middle seat and it hasn’t been awful. The somewhat elderly man next to me is quite flexible. He’s spent most of the trip with his bare feet off the floor, either pulled up on his seat, crossed under him, or folded over the top of his tray table. He seems to sleep quite comfortably while classic Arab movies play on his screen. I suppose that in addition to flexible, he must also be tiny. I haven’t seen him standing.

I was nearly the last person on the plane, if not literally the last person on the plane. We’ve had mixed experiences with the Emirates staff during this delay. The woman who started off reluctantly helping us yesterday and hugging us in the end advised us to go to the counter at the gate this morning to make sure all of our bags were transferred. We decided to check at the ticketing counter/bag drop prior to going through security. A woman there spent almost a full hour completing a multi-step process to individually update the baggage information for all 27 of us. We were thankful, and headed to the gate with enough time to grab breakfast. When boarding began, we learned that most of us didn’t have our bags properly checked to this flight. The gate agents began fixing it, stating “We’re not supposed to do this here.” So much for the advice from the woman yesterday – although apparently it didn’t help us much to ignore her advice, because the woman this morning wasted our time for an hour! Apparently she put some note in our records about putting the bags on the flight, but she didn’t actually complete the steps necessary to get the bags on the flight. The gate agents were very helpful in straightening everything out, but we have no idea if they were able to get all the bags from storage and onto the plane before we took off. Time will tell if all the bags, or any of the bags make it to Chicago with us.

I haven’t blogged about India since the end of our first day in Bangalore, so I will recap the last three days here. I made some notes in my phone about some things I wanted to remember and write about, but the notes app I have used for two years (and which stopped syncing with my Outlook sometime months ago) seems to have lost all of my notes data yesterday. Not just my notes from this trip, but every note I’ve made in the past two years. I really wish Android had built-in note functionality. How hard can that be? I’ll write plenty, but I’m disappointed and worried that there may be some interesting bits I forget to throw in.

Monday morning started with a business visit to EnAbleIndia, a NGO which works to help persons with disabilities become integrated into society through employment. Traffic was terrible on the way there, and it took much longer than our guide Amrit had anticipated. He began hearing about it from Nandini about 10 minute before 10:00, our scheduled visit time. He assured us we were “very close,” but we knew we would be late. Nandini predicted we would be half an hour late and Amrit was reluctant to believe her, but she was right. I was following our progress on Google Maps, and all of us were fretting out loud about the situation. We think Amrit was pretty embarrassed about misjudging the travel time. The visit was good; we heard from two speakers, watched a couple of videos, and saw demonstrations of some pretty cool technology. The young woman who presented about their new online collaborative was good and answered questions with great information in a conversational way. The older man who was the main presenter talked somewhat patronizingly from a 10,000 ft level and didn’t answer questions directly – missing some questions altogether. He was so indirect that I was processing his style in my head. He used some storytelling, which Nandini later said was typical for people from Kashmir, and I chuckled to myself, thinking he answered every question with poetry. Shortly after thinking this, I nearly had to stifle a laugh when he literally quoted Invictus.

Amrit hired some cars to shuttle us back to the bus, in the interest of time, considering the streets were too narrow for the bus to navigate to EnAble India and we had walked the last several hundred meters on the way there. It had been a really interesting walk through moving traffic, past shops, and among the hustle and bustle of daily street life. Following EnAble India we made a very quick stop at a nearby mall for McDonald’s take away, which we ate on the bus while traveling to the next stop – the Central Silk Board. Here we had a lecture and tour. We had been unsure of what to expect, but it turned out to be a pretty good visit. They were scientists and not the world’s greatest presenters, but we learned a lot. Bangalore had suffered significant flooding on Saturday, and the Silk Board was affected. Staff were sweeping the dirt and debris-covered parking lot, and we were unable to see the silk-making process in action because their equipment had flooded and could not be turned on until it dries out. On the tour we learned, as best as we could understand, how the silk from the cocoons is twisted and combined into thread, then we saw the looms, and then we went into a lab where they remove a gum-like byproduct from the threads and they work on various dying techniques. While he showed us the contents of one display case, we watched the poor scientist lift the lid of the case all the way, where there was nothing to hold it, and – as if in slow motion – it flipped over the back, ripped out the hinges, and hit the floor where the glass shattered with a horrible crash. Other staffers came running to investigate the commotion, while he continued with the presentation. Next we walked through an interesting design showroom full of wonderful products made entirely of silk before heading back to the bus. As we boarded, we watched some type of construction project happening on the ground which, unfortunately, seemed to involve at least two young boys doing some of the labor.

That night we had a group dinner and debrief in the hotel. The service at the dinner was almost over-the-top, as is to be expected from the Oberoi, and the food was really outstanding. I’m sure I ate way too much, but the staff obviously wanted to make sure we didn’t go hungry. I facilitated most of the discussion, and we wrapped it up just in time for me to make it downstairs to the spa for my one-hour massage. The massage service in the spa was, of course, great and the massage was decent. I was only mildly distracted and annoyed by the woman’s fingernails, and I was so worn out I practically fell asleep. Following the massage they served me tea and I spent a little time in the steam room.

Tuesday was another long day. Having been late on Monday, and having received the loud and clear message that this was not ok, Amrit had us leave the hotel at 8:00 am for our 10:30 visit with Tata Elxsi, the innovation and design company of Tata Group. Well, traffic wasn’t horrible and we arrived at the gate to Tata at 9:30. We couldn’t go in early (and Nandini made it very clear to Amrit that he was not to call and ask to come in early). We would have enjoyed waiting at the Café Coffee Day inside, but instead we had to drive around and sit by the side of the road until the appointed time. The Tata visit was interesting; we had an overview of the company followed by a demonstration of their autonomous car prototype and a visit to their design lab where they work on everything from product packaging to water filtration systems and automobile design.

Our second visit was with Deloitte Consulting U.S. India, which was very corporate and probably pretty interesting to our students. This was in a very large and growing office park, and Deloitte employs literally thousands of people at this location. They pulled out all of the stops, with at one point 13 employees in the presentation room. We heard from the director and another high level partner as well as a woman from HR and a number of recent MBA hires. The presentation room had chips and biscuits (just like the last time I visited, at their previous office), but we moved from there to a cafeteria where we had carrot cake, tea, and coffee while we mingled with the employees for about 10 minutes longer than necessary. Then we toured various floors of their newest building before returning to the hotel.

That evening we had dinner on our own, and I walked over to the mall where I ran into a large group of our students wrapping up their meal at the Mexican food restaurant. I joined them and enjoyed talking with them informally as I ate my fairly spicy fajitas. When I finished I returned to the hotel and waited for my friend Rajeev who came and joined me for a drink on the patio at the hotel bar. Rajeev earned an MBA at the Kelley School, and while in Bloomington he held a graduate assistantship in our office. I was surprised at how long he’s been away from IU. He asked about some of the people he knew in Bloomington, and we had a great conversation about our lives before he had to head home.

Wednesday morning we drove to the Akshara Foundation office, which had also moved since my last visit, and picked up two of their employees who rode with us about 35 km to the outskirts of Bangalore where we visited a primary school. This was an interesting experience, for sure. The school was better equipped than the one we visited in Ghana in 2008 – as were the students – but it was still nothing like what we expect to find in a school. The classrooms were dim and open-air, with rows of fairly primitive desks shared by multiple students. Some rooms had computers. The walls were covered with brightly-colored murals depicting lessons in English, science, geography, and math. The students wore uniform and left their shoes outside the classroom doors. The classrooms surrounded a large dirt field where children play, as well as a small temple of some sort. Very little English was spoken here, although the students were learning English. Our students split up into six different classrooms to interact with the children, and in the room where I spent most of my time we did some math problems, practiced English words, and sang songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” When I stepped into the other rooms I saw a reading demonstration, a dancing demonstration, and what seemed to be a dance party. Eventually everyone ended up outside on the dirt field playing games, and near-chaos reigned. I was pulled into an upper-level classroom which erupted into cheers as if they had accomplished a great victory. They tried to entice me upstairs but I refused to go. Our student Jack didn’t put up enough resistance and was taken upstairs where he was sure he was being kidnapped. I eventually had to go retrieve him. This all went on for about 10 minutes too long, but we finally boarded the bus and drove back to the Akshara office for a conversation with the Director.

We stopped for lunch on a nearby street with a McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Café Coffee Day. Nandini was skeptical, but she finally relented, and everything was fine. I chose McDonalds, and was invited along with a few of our students for a surprise tour of the kitchen. What a trip! We played along with it and learned some things about their food prep (kind of interesting, actually), then posed for photos with the employees. I was asked to complete a survey about the tour(!). As it turns out, this must be something they do on a semi-regular basis. What they were trying to do was demonstrate how they keep the veg and non-veg food prep processes completely separate, and solicit feedback about their performance so they can entice more vegetarians to choose dining at McDonalds. It was an unexpected but fun experience.

After lunch we drove across the city for our long-anticipated visit to the Lalbagh Botanical Garden. This was my third and favorite visit to the garden, as I finally saw most of the grounds, including a beautiful and absolutely huge Kapok, or silk-cotton tree. It was a beautiful day for a walk through the garden and workers were busy preparing for an upcoming flower show in honor of Independence Day. On the way out we climbed the large granite hill to take in the view of the ever-growing city. 

Leaving the garden en route to more souvenir shopping, we learned of the Emirates emergency landing at Dubai. I immediately started looking for information online and was foiled by poor connectivity and a rapidly dying phone. There was no new status information about our flight, and I started growing anxious about my inadequate technology and limited access to information. We went from shopping to our closing dinner and celebration at the Solitaire Hotel. Nandini was very disappointed in the venue and vowed we should never go back there, although it was passable as far as the food and service was concerned. My anxiety level continued to rise as my information-seeking remained hampered and the program went on for more than two hours, preventing us from having any meaningful discussion about the flight situation and last minute details I wanted to work out with the other facilitators. It was a good closing event which I simply could not fully enjoy. A cool yogi came to teach us and demonstrate some yoga, and most of the students got to practice some simple yoga. This was followed by some traditional dancing demonstrated by some lovely, talented, and expressive dancers who taught us about their art before teaching the students some moves. I was disappointed I couldn’t focus on the presenters and give them my 100% attention. Eventually this all came to a close and we returned to the Oberoi to pack and shower before the flight home. The original plan was to leave at Midnight, but due to the delay we didn’t leave until 2:00 am. The hotel unexpectedly supplied us with Lychee juice boxes and way too many bags of yummy Lays potato chips, because apparently that’s what you need at 2:00. From there, it was bus to the airport, one-by-one entry into the airport, waiting around near the gate, passing out from exhaustion, boarding late, sitting on the plane, and finally leaving India behind for the third time.

This was my favorite visit to India so far. Aside from their exhausting volume, it was a great group of students with whom to travel. The facilitators got along well and we had a lot of fun. I got to see a number of new things in spite of visiting all of the same cities. The hotels and meals were better than in the past. No one became ill. The weather in Bangalore was beautiful. I got to see Rajeev. Beyond all of this, I went in knowing what to expect and determined to take it all in, accepting everything as-is, simply taking in and enjoying all of the sights, sounds, and smells of the rich and complex country.

We land in 47 minutes, then it’s just a matter of getting through INS, waiting expectantly for the possibility of claiming luggage, and enduring the 4- or 5-hour bus ride home with a dwindling number of students. It will be great to see Barry and the dogs again soon.

Postscript: Made it home after 57 1/2 hours of travel. None of our 27 bags made the journey with us.