Thomas Wilson

On Tuesday night if finally rained in Mumbai for the first time since I arrived on February 1.  Since then it rained Wednesday night and tonight.  For the last few weeks it has been getting more humid, windy and cloudy.  The winds of change were evident and it was only a matter of time before the skies would finally open up.

The rain represents the start of Monsoon season.  It will now rain almost every day for the next 4 months.  At that point Winter will set in and it will rarely rain until the next Monsoon 8 months later.  Here is a graph of the average rainfall from weather.com.  It is a incredible annual cycle of feast or famine.  Based on soil samples, scientists have traced the beginning of this weather pattern to 15-20 million years ago.

The most infamous Monsoon day in Mumbai is July 26, 2005.  It rained 37 inches in one day.  I find this almost impossible to comprehend.  Over 3 feet of rain in one day.  On average the Minneapolis, Minnesota receives 29.5 inches of precipitation for an entire year.  The most tragic aspect of this event was that more than 400 Mumbaikers died as a result of the rain.

Social engineering presents itself in many forms.  You might see it in government sponsored public messages.  You and your children participate in it first hand during primary and secondary school .  This includes how to treat one another, stand in lines, ask questions and give honor to your country by signing the national anthem.  In a country that is changing as fast as India, sometimes everyone needs some extra guidance to keep up.  Here is a list of rules posted to the inside of the bathroom stalls at an IT office.

• Please flush the toilet after use.
• Please use dustbins for disposal of tissues.
• Please do not step on the western commode.
• Please do not litter.
• Please help us to keep the surrounding neat, clean and healthy.
• Please spare a thought for the next person using it.

The bathroom posting has all the right intentions.  And I only wish that US office bathrooms were kept as clean and tidy as in India.  In the case of the Accenture office, almost every time I enter there is a member of the cleaning staff present in the bathroom running through their duties and checking-off the completion of each step on a log sheet.  With that noted, I can't help but share my reaction and questions.

• Please flush the toilet after use. (Is it common in India to not flush the toilet?)
• Please use dustbins for disposal of tissues. (The only tissue I saw was the toilet paper.  I'm sorry but no sign is going to stop me from flushing my used tp.)
• Please do not step on the western commode. (I still have yet to find a small set of drawers in a stall.  I will keep looking and report.)
• Please do not litter. (I have made sure to not leave any shoes, clothes or coins behind.)
• Please help us to keep the surrounding neat, clean and healthy. (Makes sense, no problem.  I can flush an extra time if that helps.)
• Please spare a thought for the next person using it.  (Like in the US I was going to scratch a phone number and a message about it.   Unfortunately, I do not know many Indian phone numbers and I do not want to accidentally putting down a real one.)

This year is the first year for the professional cricket league IPL 20Twenty.  It has been very successful, but it has also spawned a The Times of India front-page grabbing controversy.  This controversy is not about the organization's front office corruption.  It is not about performance enhancing drugs.  It is not about umpires betting on and fixing games.  It is about the cheer leading squads.

First I want to be clear that popular sports in India are not the same as in the US.  Watching ESPN Asia has opened my mind to an entirely new set of sports (Here is one expat's point-of-view about ESPN Asia).  Most of which do not conjure an image of a scantily clad cheering section.  Try to picture the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders on the court side of the following ESPN Asia sporting events:
     Badminton
     Field Hockey
     Formula 1
     Golf
     Table Tennis

Second, the IPL cheerleaders are not what you might expect to see at an Indian sporting event.  They are not young sari-wearing Indian women showing off their Mohiniyattam dance moves.  Most of the IPL cheerleaders are actually from the NFL.  Yes, you read the correctly.  There are a bunch of scantily dressed athletic, large-busted Caucasian, African and East Asian women entertaining the hordes of Indian men (and a few women) that attend the matches.

This is the root of the controversy, and like any controversial topic during the India campaign season, it has been picked up by the politicians.  They have proposed banning the other teams cheerleaders at the Mumbai Indian matches.  Below is the Bangalore Royal Challengers cheerleading team.

 

Here is the Mumbai Indian cheerleading team.


Next to the image of the Mumbai Indian cheerleaders was an article tying this controversy to our 43rd President.  You have done it again George; your past will always be a source for lively commentary.
 

One politicians argument is that the cheerleaders are turning the matches into a strip club and encouraging illegal gambling.  That is quite a conclusion-I am picking up on the use of a strawman conclusion.  Anyone else?

As you can see from the picture the cheerleading teams are trying to appease the call for their removal by adding leggings and more fabric to their shirts.  India has a great knack for adding its own flavor to all things imported.

My final thought on this topic is the cheerleaders are not dressed any less than the dancers in the Indian music videos I see on TV or the actresses in the Bollywood movies.  If you are going to point a critical finger at the IPL, I think there is a larger net that needs to be cast.

Laundry is a ritual of life.  A common thread of humanity.  My first memory relating to washing clothes is from my primary school days when my sister, who is six years older than I am, took an entire weekend to distress her new jeans, wash them over and over until the frayed threads were just right and the bleached areas were the right size, shape and shade.  My personal laundry story starts around the age of 15 when my dad was driving a long distance for work and my mom returned to college to get another degree.  It was either do my own laundry or loose my standing in the "Preppies" clique.  During this time I used my parents washer and dryer.  This was a supportive situation for a launderer-in-training because the costs were subsidized and I learned the ins and outs of laundry technique under some adult guidance.

In college while I lived at the dorms I used the coin machines along with almost everyone else.  On Sunday night the laundry room was a popular place on campus.  People chatting with friends, exchanging stories about the weekend parties and talking about upcoming tests and papers.  The college co-ed laundry room experience is kind of a birth rite for young adults and especially young adult males.  For many it is the first time that they have had to do their own laundry-although I do remember some of my friends going home every weekend to deliver their dirty laundry to their moms.  For me it opened up my mind to the diverse and sequenced world of female garments.  Of course I and all the other males were very casual about this during the course of a laundry evening.  But behind the cool facade it made a lasting impression on all of us. 

During my last three years of college I lived in an apartment and still used coin laundry machines.  The activity was no longer a social gathering but a necessity.  In my $250 a month apartment complex, the washing machines were constantly out-of-order and the the dryer venting system was in bad need of cleaning.  Of course there was always the Hollywood inspired hope that a beautiful woman in an old white tank top and pink athletic pants would be doing laundry at the same time.  You would find an item of hers in your dryer and this would be the subject of your opening line to break the ice.  Add in the heat of the room, the presence of intimate clothing strewn about and you have just the spark needed to start a long and beautiful relationship.  This Hollywood story may inspire hope and dreams of many young men but I have yet to come to know a couple who met in the middle of changing the whites to the dryer and loading the darks into the washer.

When I purchased my condo I finally had my own washer and dryer.  At first it was bliss, but the activity of doing laundry quickly became mundane and an obligation rather than a chance with fate.  I thought my interesting laundry stories over and I would live on a two week wash cycle the rest of my life.  Then I moved to Mumbai.  During my first use of my washing machine I had to spend as much time and energy as I did when I was 15 and staring at the dials on washing machine wondering what spin cycle meant.

In my apartment there is a small covered balcony on the outside wall of my alley kitchen.  In the balcony is a small LG washer.  I found the manual online to learn how to use it.  Please see the pictures in the Laundry photo album to see a visual explanation of a typical laundry day in Mumbai.

I spent this past weekend in Bangalore visiting my colleague Kai Hildebrandt.  Bangalore was recently renamed to the pre-British Raj name, Bangaluru.  He is from Germany and is part of the same program that I am.  He and I have used each other as sounding boards for living the life of an Avanade expatriate.  He speaks very good English.  He also speaks German and Russian.

One of the highlights of the trip was Friday night dinner at Hard Rock Cafe-Bangalore.  It was first time I have had red meat in three months.  The first bite into my hamburger transported me back to Minneapolis sitting at Maxwell's (RIP).  I forgot how much I love hamburgers.  The Indian touch that is an all imported foods is the pile of sautéed  red onions near the front of the plate.

Another highlight of the trip was attending the India Premiere League (IPL) cricket match between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Rajasthan Royals.  This is a new league this year and it has created a great amount of press and controversy (my next post will be about the cheerleading ban).  It is first large commercial cricket league.  Most games are played between countries representing their teams.  Now players from South Africa, Pakistan, UK, India, Bangladesh and other countries are all playing next to each other all in the name of capitalism.  I wish I had better pictures from the match but cameras are not allowed and they pat every one down before they can enter.