8/18/05

Hend

My life in India, 2005-2006

8/24/05

It’s 6 pm in Bangalore right now, and 8:30 am back on the East Coast. Right now I’m sitting in a tiny barbershop on Cambridge Road waiting to get my hair cut, just having finished my work day. (Amazing how a couple years ago I was living close to Cambridge Street in Central Square, and now I’m on Cambridge Road in another hemisphere. The British really didn’t mess around when it came to colonialism). At this hour, people back home are eating their breakfast, just waking up, or perhaps still sleeping. For me, this morning made it a week since I left Boston; when I wake up tomorrow, it will have been a week since I arrived here.

The first couple of days were very tough, the culture shock bigger than anything I’ve ever faced. I had taken and old professor’s advice and “hyped” myself up before coming, but it was no use. Bangalore is overwhelmingly chaotic, and my senses were just overblown with information. You see cows walking in the streets, and people walking barefoot on roads so dirty it makes my old block in Southie look Stockholm. You hear this incessant cacophony of horns blowing from passing cars. You smell diesel exhaust, South Indian spices, BO, and incense.

There is so much for me to write about all the big surprises and little peculiarities that I’ve encountered. But first of all, let me say briefly how much I miss home. I miss simple food and the chance to cook for myself. I miss eating meat more than twice a week. I miss American TV and radio. I miss my neighborhood. I miss water pressure.

But most of all I miss people. It was not until I buckled my seatbelt before takeoff of my Boston-London flight that I realized that I wouldn’t see loved ones for a whole year (my sister’s the exception… I’ll see her when we go for pilgrimage to the Baha’i holy places in December). Originally it struck me like a dagger in the chest, and I choked back a what have I done? reaction. The shock has worn off, but the fact still lingers in my mind, especially when I lay myself down to sleep at night, and the loneliness lies down beside me. The challenge is to remember the place I’ve come from and where I’ll be returning, to remember who I am in a sense.

If it isn’t clear, I’m here working for an NGO called the Public Affairs Foundation. Here’s a summary… a bit more than a decade ago Dr. Samuel Paul, a distinguished professor or economics and management from South India, came to Bangalore to retire. This city has the reputation as a “retirement paradise,” but Dr. Paul discovered that this reputation was misleading. While people were flocking to the city for economic opportunities, the state of its public services was making life here unnecessarily troublesome for its residents, especially the poor. Corruption and inefficiency, basically, were what Dr. Paul and small group of individuals sought to tackle when they began the Public Affairs Center. At the forefront of this problem were the small bribes, commonly referred to as “speed money”, that generally poor people had to pay to get the supposedly free services that they depended on. PAC created a product called the Citizen Report Card, which serves as a way to expose public services problems and take a first step towards addressing them.

The Report Cards began in Bangalore but the process was replicated in a few different cities in India by other groups who used PAC’s model. But then the number of NGOs and civil society organizations who were interested started to grow (many outside of India), and that’s why PAC created the Public Affairs Foundation. It’s chaired by Dr. Gopakumar, and focuses mostly on helping other groups in foreign countries implement this Report Card model.

Now, if you look at PAC’s website, you’ll think it’s some small, humble NGO that’s going nowhere. I even had this fear until I arrived, that the work I’d be doing would be basically useless. But the work of the Center and the Foundation is well-respected and well-connected. Its employees, moreover, are uniquely talented. My two bosses are the best examples; Dr. Paul is a former World Bank director and head of the premier management school in India, and Dr. Gopakumar was the regional director of Transparency International in Asia.

So I’m trying to make the most of my time here. This year is my chance not only to discover what it means to live in a developing country, it’s also my shot to take a huge career leap by doing interesting work and, hopefully, earn some impressive recommendations.

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