For one, it feels like we’ve been working night and day for about six months now. That’s one thing I noticed fairly quickly: people don’t think twice about staying in the office until 10 or 11 o’clock at night, regularly. If they’re not at the office, they are online at home. I’ve been telling my team to shut down and go to bed if I see them online past 9 pm but don’t make exactly a great role model. Part of this is Globalization. Projects that span the globe tend to generate questions, powerpoint slides and meetings around the clock. But part of it is also discipline: the courage to say No, and the skill, constant vigilance and focus to manage your time wisely. So planning week-end getaways, let alone a major vacation, has been tough.

We did finally make it out of town, though. Our radius is still mostly limited to Western Karnataka but you have to start somewhere. Of course we have not yet seen the famous Bull Temple or even Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore but that’s just like a Parisian and the Louvre, or a Londoner and Big Ben: the sights in your backyard will always be there. Now, driving is an altogether different experience here. I will try not to repeat too many of Ted’s rants, that gets boring after a while. But it is quite amusing to me to look back to my early beginnings behind the wheel in India, and compare them against my feelings now.

It all started with the drive to the coast. Most people get a driver, if not their own, a rental car will come with them. But that doesn’t suit our independent style, we want to follow our nose, come and go as we please, and not be accountable to anyone. And of course we are a newly married couple and very much into ourselves and our privacy (who would have thought). But I was a little nervous… signage in India isn’t the greatest. And once you get out of the bigger cities, finding English speakers becomes more of a problem, aside from the fact that even those that do speak it, tend to explain things in a rather peculiar way. Although you get used to cutting out the articles and prepositions, and bringing it down to the lowest common denominator after a while. Second, I wasn’t so sure we would even find our way out of town – a lot of the roads look identical, either because they’re bordered by various walled army, navy or airforce compounds, or because they look like one hustling and bustling open air market – carts, vendors, all manners of goods spread on the sidewalk, and people everywhere. And simple intersections on the map are usually traffic “circles” of one form or another, so you’re really not sure which turn you just took. So we did a trial run one Sunday afternoon, and promptly got pulled over for “obstructing traffic” while we accidentally stopped on the wrong side of the street at a red light which we saw only at the last minute. In hindsight, we got a good laugh out of that one – obstruction of traffic cannot possibly be in the rule book in India. But the best part of it was the boldness that overcame me in the moment: When asked for our “native place” I shouted out Bangalore! Indira Nagar! And Ted, with his oft-commented North Indian looks, took out his Karnataka State driver’s license. It was bound to confuse the cop at least somewhat – he let us off with a 100 rupee fine instead of the initially quoted 500 – the money of course went straight to the guy’s pocket since we never actually got a ticket.

Once we actually got on the road through the country side west of Bangalore, past big boulders strewn randomly in the arid landscape, lush green Gardenia-adorned gardens in Coorg, and finally the winding mountain roads in the Western Ghats, other challenges awaited us. Truck and bus drivers don’t think twice to overtake on blind curves, in full light of oncoming traffic, or while another vehicle is already in the process of passing. On the outbound route, I was able to endure the tension and increasing flow of invectives from Ted this produced with a smile. After all, we were on the road to a great adventure. Even when we got stuck in the midday heat on a narrow road for about an hour, along with hundreds of truckers, tour buses, mini vans overloaded with large Indian families, and the odd passenger car like ours, we did not lose faith – although I was glad for the A/C in the meantime! The source of the delay turned out to be an overturned tanker truck; we made our way past it through deep mud furrows, not entirley sure we wouldn’t get stuck ourselves and wondering if the tanker contents might not have leaked already and would ignite a fire at any moment.

The return journey was another story. We knew what awaited us for the next 7 hours, and were not looking forward to it. It started comfortably enough, we made good progress through the mountains and enjoyed the sights along the way (one of them the elephant being carted up the hill, one of our most-loved pictures. The other loads we’re still hoping to photograph one day were the hundreds of people crammed in an open-bed truck, on the road to who-knows-where, and huge outward-leaning piles of sacks which we’ve encountered many times since, even on city streets). We stopped on a diverted road about two thirds of the way home, stretched our legs and climbed a tree for the fun of it. After that, it was all downhill, in every sense of the word. The same pattern of dangerous passing, the same reckless behaviour all around us, growing more ludicrous as we got closer to the city. Our impatience growing, too. Ted was driving, but I was driving every inch of the road with him, mentally judging the speed of the oncoming traffic in our lane, swerving to make room for three vehicles on the same stretch of road, squinting to see around the bend, and trying to stay focused despite the obnoxious horn honks of trucks and especially buses. Finally, when Ted was passing behind a truck with very little visibility himself, and another car was coming up on our right to pass us in the passing lane, Ted had rather nerve-wrecking experience steering us out of trouble.

The whole episode, that whole long drive to the Coast and back, left a sour taste in my mouth. So much for all the caring, consideration and putting others first I had been told about. It reminded me of the flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore when the guy behind me kept getting into my face and demanding I stretch my legs in front of me instead of crossing them under my seat. Another case of growing context and insight over time.

It must have been around then that I decided Indian society is Darwinistic above all else. Another way of expressing the 1 billion people syndrome. Much later, during a visit to the US when I was able to share some of our experiences with an Indian friend who had chosen to remain there, I finally found an explanation, or at least an affirmation of this dichotomomy: The caring does exist but is limited to family and friends. Never mind the guy who was patiently waiting in line before you, your job is to muscle in and get the best possible advantage (I am told this line-jumping even happens at temples while waiting for darshan or pujas, and in my early days at the office I was so incensed one time that I actually told someone off in front of about 15 people, quite uncharacteristic for me). It does not extend to society at large, however, whereas in the US we frequently have the opposite: a lot of concern for the community and issues that affect us all, like the environment, while inside the home we may not pay that much attention to the needs of those closest to us. The perfect society just doesn’t exist.