An American In Bangalore

ChiBus Editor Spends the Summer Discovering Globalization and Bollywood Films

By: Jason Rosenthal

Posted: 10/13/05

I decided to mix things up and take an internship a little bit out of the ordinary. When I stumbled on a chance to spend two months in Bangalore, India, I could not pass up an opportunity to check out one of the world's hottest economies for myself. Along the way, I had the pleasure of immersing myself in a culture much different than my own. For those interested, here is my story....

Day One
At the end of June, the day finally came for me to begin my journey across the globe. I left Regents North (A.K.A. the Doral) with two large bags and hopped into a cab, not really sure what I was getting myself into. Ironically, the cab driver was Indian. As we got close to the airport, the cab driver asked what airline I was taking.

Let me say that it is an amazing moment when you ask an Indian cab driver in the US to drop you off at the "Air India" terminal. I honestly thought he was going to drive off the road due to the shock. "You??... are going to .. India???" Even he could not believe it.

Yes, I flew Air India. And no, it is not as bad everything thinks. There is not that much difference between it and other airlines, except of course for the Indian flight attendants, Indian food, and Indian movies. The main issue was more the 24 hour, 2 stop flight I had to endure. And what was the in-flight programming for my enjoyment? Well, on the positive side I did not have to worry about watching "Monster-In-Law" again.

An obnoxious, ignorant American account of India would not be complete without mentioning the dance happy and ridiculously cheesy entertainment known as the "Bollywood film". For those not in the know, "Bollywood" refers to the Indian movie industry, which is actually the largest film industry in the world. My first real exposure was during the leg from London to Bombay (now officially referred to by its original Indian moniker "Mumbai" - I was already starting to learn something!).
Here is how a typical "Bollywood" film goes: A middle-aged Indian guy walks around and starts to sing. Then we see a young, attractive female also start to sing, and her voice is at an octave about 3 times higher than humanly possible. Next a bunch of the middle-aged guy's friends come out of nowhere and start dancing around him. Eventually the guy and girl meet, and they break into a scene of intense passion.

In "Bollywood" terms, this means a long hug and no kissing. That about sums it up.

First Impressions
When I arrived in Bangalore, it was pretty clear I was not in Kansas anymore. A big white oaf like me sticks out like a sore thumb among the sea of South Asians. Luckily there was a driver waiting to pick me up. He even had a big sign with my name on it! After one year in business school, I forgot what it was it like to have people provide service to you. I was already feeling welcome in what would be my new home for two months.

As I rode in the taxi to the corporate campus, I had a moment of enlightenment. I saw firsthand where Indian NYC taxi drivers had developed their aggressive nature. If there is one thing I learned about India it is this: if you can drive in India, you can drive anywhere in the world! We are talking barely paved roads, pot holes galore, cars weaving in and out, and what seemed to be a complete lack of traffic laws.

Let me be clear that I came in with low expectations on city infrastructure in India. I was warned by many Indian classmates of mine, even one who went as far as to say "India is a giant shit hole... especially Bangalore because it is growing so fast." Well I am here to say that these low expectations were met. The country, in particular Bangalore, has a long way to go infrastructure-wise. Although the local companies are very eager to throw their money down to improve it (and already have to some extent) the work is progressing slowly due to government corruption. Or so I was told. Upgrading the infrastructure is going to be a challenging but critical component for the county in the coming years.

An obnoxious, ignorant American account of India would not be complete without mentioning the cows. In particular, cows on the road, cows stopping traffic, cows sleeping wherever they feel like it, and my personal favorite, cows eating garbage. I am sure Indians are tired of hearing foreigners talk about this, but it really is something you can never get used to as an out-of-towner. They may be the only animal in the world that can do whatever the hell they want, wherever they want, when they want. If reincarnation does exist, I would like to come back as a cow in India.

The Internship
The company I worked at (Note: Because this article is a poor attempt at humor, I decided to remove the name of the company so they do not have to be associated with the filth that is my writing) really took care of its interns. We stayed at the corporate campus outside of Bangalore, which is really quite beautiful, a stark constrast to the decrepit road leading up to it. They put all 60+ interns in a brand new hostel on the campus. This was great because this diverse collection of people from all over the wrold really got to know each other. Living there was like living in a hotel, complete with daily maid service and little shampoo bottles. Also, because this building was next to my work building, I think I had the shortest commute I will ever have without living at home.
All interns were issued "rupons," which is a clever combination of the word "rupee," the Indian form of currency, and "coupon." They were good for food on campus, which ranged from 25 rupee (50 cents) traditional South Indian lunches at the cafeteria to 300 rupee (6 dollar) Western dinner dishes at the high end restaurant in our hostel, which was run by a French chef (Side note: India is of course very cheap. At one point I got a haircut for the equivalent of 50 cents in the US. 50 cents! He even threw in a free head massage). I ate Indian food about 90% of the time and really enjoyed it. Being in South India, I ate mostly spicy food, yet managed to not have any stomach problems. Some of the other interns did not have such good luck, a few even had to go to the hospital. While they were gone, I swiped their rupons.
The best perk though was having our own personal drivers. This meant that whenever we would go out to the bars and clubs, not only did we have a free ride there but we also had someone that would sit in their car and wait for us to finish. And they probably were costing the company a daily fee less than the price of a panini at the BizCafe.
Oh yeah, we did do work as well! An obnoxious, ignorant American account of India would not be complete without mentioning how surprised I was about the similarities between the company's work environment and the "Western" companies I am used to. Once inside the campus, you felt like you could have been in California. The work week, work dress, buildings, cubicles all were the same as back home. The company is a pioneer in global delivery models, and it was impressive to see this in action. The quality of the "off-shored" work, I can tell you from first hand observations, is very impressive.

Hanging out in Bangalore
Bangalore is known as the "Silicon Valley" of India. There is a number of tech companies in the area, most have corporate headquarters outside of the city all connected on one road. But San Francisco does not need to get too worried just yet. The complete lack of infrastructure in a city growing at an incredible rate makes for a driving nightmare. Getting from one part of the city to the other can take 20 minutes with no traffic and two hours during traffic, which is pretty much any part of the day except for midnight when you are already passed out in a cab so it really does not matter anyway.

I do not mean to make out the city out as a complete dump. Other than the infrastructure issues, the city is quite nice! There is great shopping and restaurants all over, and of course the best part is that they are at a fraction of the cost of US prices. The nightlife is especially good in Banaglore as a result of the young population and large number of expats. Many of the clubs and bars seemed right out of the West Loop. The only down side was that Bangalore shut down its bars at 11 PM. Apparently this was because there are so many students in Bangalore and they hoped the curfew will encourage them to study more. I guess we will not be seeing Grade Non Disclosure there anytime soon.

I would say about 80% of the conversations I have with non-Indian guys about my experience in India goes something like this:

Guy: Dude, so how was India?
Me: Oh it was great.

Guy: So how were the chicks?

It really is quite a phenomenon, and I am proud to say further enforces my statistical thesis that has the null hypothesis "men are pigs". I have yet to see evidence to reject this hypothesis. To answer everybody, I could not speak from personal experience as I could not convince my girlfriend that the "12 hour time difference" rule should be in effect. However, I will say that other expats did get involved in local romance. Dating in Bangalore can be a challenge because the two prominent options are conservative Indian woman who are going to be suspicious of someone there for a short period, and the expat scene which had a girl to guy ratio that makes the GSB dating scene look good. However, many expats did manage to meet people and were able to date after meeting through the bar scene. I would share the details, but I would hate to tarnish the reputable image of this newspaper.

Traveling in India
A great part of the internship was the chance to do a lot of traveling around India. We had one trip for all interns sponsored by the company, and during the rest of the weekends we would generally go in groups of 4-6 in self organized trips. All in all, we pretty much covered all of South India. You could get around most of it by train or car, and it of course was incredibly cheap.

My favorite part was traveling by overnight trains. It was a nice way to see the country, and gave you a sense of adventure. Most importantly, the lack of potholes meant you could actually sleep. Often the trains were sold out and we were forced to hire our own cars or take the public buses. Probably the worst part of my stay is when I had to take a ten hour non-air conditioned bus trip back from Pondicherry to Bangalore.
It was pretty much a living hell.

When you are foreigner traveling in India, it means you see a lot of Hindu temples. This, in turn, means hearing the basics of Hinduism repeated over and over to us. Eventually you felt like grabbing the tour guide, shaking him and shouting "OK, OK! Vishnu is the Protector, Brahma is the Protector, and Shiva is the Destroyer. I GET IT"!
In all seriousness, as an ignorant American, before the trip I did not know much about the religious break up of the country, specifically that 80% of the population is Hindu, making it one of the largest global religions. Although strife between Hindus and Muslims is an unfortunate part of India-Bangladesh-Pakistan turmoil, India's Muslim minority is big enough that it makes it the second largest Muslim population in the world next to Indonesia. The additional significant presence of everything from Buddhism to Christianity to Judaism makes it an amazingly spiritual place.

An obnoxious, ignorant American account of India would not be complete without talking about elephants. Yes, India has a healthy amount of elephants that I often saw in my travels. But the company I worked for did not like us talking about elephants (or snake charmers for that matter) because India often gets stereotyped on such images. So I will stop talking about it. For the record though, I did not see any snake charmers.

Conclusion
So that's my story. Please remember, it is just my own obnoxious, ignorant American take on a culture very different then my own. I had a great time, and fell really fortunate to have had the opportunity. I even was on the cover of the business section of the New York Times! Please come by the ChiBus office to get your own autographed copy.