Air India Disaster &Cetera

Wow. Where do I begin? Here's an overview of my experience in getting to India.

Day 1: Arrive at Dulles airport with optimism, a spring in my step, ready to roll. 6 hours later (3 hrs. in line with United customer service) my flight is cancelled. By about 10 pm I got a room voucher for the Dulles Hyatt and decided to start over in the AM.

Day 2: The AM. Arrive at Dulles at about 8, check my bag, and get on a flight to Newark. My plane for Bombay was to leave at 9 that evening. 11 hours to kill. What to do? Answer: Nothing. There is officially nothing to do at Newark int'l. I rode the skytrain around, took about 5 naps in various uncomfortable positions on chairs designed precisely not to nap in, and eventaully on the carpeted floor of the departure lounge, hidden in a corner. Time somehow passed, and I was ready to board Air India flight 144. Here is where India begins in earnest. Before boarding, an Indian gentleman tells me there is "second round of check-in" before we could proceed onto the jetway. Everybody lined up and they wheeled in an X-ray machine to look at all carry-on items, already screened by TSA. Eventually, we get on the 747.

When flying intercontinentally, people usually imagine glamor, comfort and style. This had none of these these things, except for the intercontinental bit. The 747 was not equipped with those little conical air blowers over your head. It smelled like those Royal Pine Magic Trees, and was cramped with people of all ages; a disproportionate number of children and luggage. All of the formalities of flying an american carrier were out the window by the time we started taxiing. No one buckled their seatbelts. People kept walking around right until the moment of take off. Kids were screaming, climbing over the seats, throwing pillows, demanding things, I mean, jeez. I had a window seat and a bottle of melatonin. Things proceeded feverishly, with the slow chaos that pervades life here. We had a stopover at Charles de Gaulle where we sat sweltering on the tarmac while French people cleaned up the mess in the aisles, and loaded new trays of Biryani, Vindaloo or whatever. The flight proceeded from there. We flew over the Alps, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and finally India itself. The scenery was stunning, with a red sunset highlighting the endless desert below. It faded to specks of light and thunderstorms over Pakistan. Two hours later, we were landing in Bombay. A total of 17 hours on the 747, one pee break, two times out of my seat to stretch, 4 interesting meals, one big bottle of water, and about 7 melatonin pills.

The 747 itself:

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Day 3: Bombay airport. We had about 25 minutes between connections on to Bangalore. They rushed us through a further series of metal detectors, looked us over with scrutiny, and packed us onto a hot bus to drive to our plane out in the airfield. We sat there waiting for busloads from about three other connections from obscure parts of the world. 3:30 AM-- Bangalore airport. I clear passport control fairly easily and get to baggage claim. Swatting mosquitoes, I waited and waited for my luggage, no dice. So I leave. My sponsor here in Bangalore had sent a driver with a plackard in a sea of plackards with my name on it: "Mr. Ethan Charles". So they are very nice, and they drive me through the crazy, busy winding roads of Bangalore in the early morning hours, and drop me at my place by about 5. It's a ministry of health seminar center, right next to the leprosy hospital, down a dirt road, not far from the center of town.

Day 4: Melatonin stupor. I dare not leave my room. Water bottle running dry, I sleep through most of the day. One of those vivid sleeps, where dreams fall withing dreams, all the content somehow seeming relevant to my waking life, but not really. I found ways to embaress myself with all culturally wrong methodologies. Finding myself naked in front of a bunch of women in saris, etc. Never sure if it was real or not. Periodically I actually awoke and reminded myself that I hadn't even left my room. The dreams spiralled into further craze, and somehow I slept through the whole day, leaving once for a piece of bread and a litre of Aquafina water.

Day 5: Today. A driver met me at 10, and took me to meet Dr. Sudarshan. He is the first person with whom I've been able to understand 90+% of what is said since I've gotten here. I explain the situation with my bags, and he sends his assistant, the head state constable with me to the airport. We play pinball between 6 or 7 offices, 10 or 12 authority figures before finding the office with all the bags stacked up. Thank god for the constable. I'd have been screwwwed otherwise. I go back and meet the Lokayukta (translated as Ombudsman), who is interrupted every 5 seconds by phone calls, and has the only air conditioned room I've been in since arrival. Dr Sudarshan says we'll start work tomorrow, so here I am today. I've just had my first meal since the 747 and am relaxing in an internet cafe.

General thoughts: I have never been anywhere as chaotic as where I am now. Even simple things like getting a meal, making a phone call, or taking a walk are incredibly complicated here. Everything requires intermediaries. Nowhere in the city is moving at a slow pace at any time on the 24 hour clock. It is dizzying and overwhelming. It makes you just have to take things as they come, keep focused, busy, directed, assertive, all those alert-type things. Poverty is found in all corners of the place. With so much government, how can there be so much anarchy? This question will probably puzzle me for years. From where I stand, alone, isolated, the only white person I've seen in days, this will all take some adjustment. I am trying to maintain quiet in my head as best as possible, learn the basic rules of getting around, and get to know locals wherever possible. It's far more crazy than I had anticipated, but all in all this will be a very formative, positive experience. Next post will probably be more interesting as I settle.

Owning up to our role

A Quiet Transformation

By David Ignatius

Wednesday, May 18, 2005; Page A1

This article makes us confront some of the burdens that we'll likely have to take on over this new century. I am grudgingly coming to the belief that the United States is by far the biggest stabilizing force in a politically fractious, high-stakes game. Iraq was tough to swallow. They rushed in there on shady pretenses, and they really didn't know what they were getting into. But the way they're talking about the future of the mideast, and increasingly elsewhere, is in many ways inspiring.

The scarry part is whose mouth it's coming from. I mean, guys like John Negroponte were definitely in a don't ask, don't tell relationship with paramilitary deathsquads. There was a real "gotta break some eggs to make an omelet" mentality in the years where the CIA became entrenched in guerrilla groups, political parties, and governemnts throughout the world. But then again, there are a lot of thoughtful people who've become swept up in this. Guys like Paul Wolfowitz, who was ambassador to Indonesia during Suharto and all that. He is a good guy, and never intended to kill anyone until recently.

Think of how Thomas Friedman sees things, and you can picture an alternative ethos to this Nixon-era thug turned born-again thing that's currently going on.

This means that moderates, or at least people with view-points, allegiences, and hand-up-puppet's-ass-type relationships that are at least different to these guys have simply must get involved in this effort. I remember having lunch with a college roommate back in 1999. He was going to Officer Candidate School to become a Marine. I'd had a lot of good talks with him about a range of issues. I got to thinking about what the future role of our influences (military, diplomatic...) and it occured to me that with all that labor, management know-how, can-do attitudes, we could do a lot of good too. We could dig irrigation ditches, give kids vaccinations, get them in school... My friend completely agreed. Though I lost touch with him, I'm glad that he's an officer now, probably a higher-up serving in Iraq. He's a real humanitarian.

All I know is that there is something to this "neo-colonial" approach. We don't go into places with pith helmets, intent on all the natives learning to drink high tea, and casting aside their false idols. We go in there as advisors and helpers, not as overseers. The sense that "what's good for the world is good for us" needs to supplant the age-old premise that, "what's good for us is good for the world."

Gayness: Who cares, anyway?

Just How Gay Is the Right?

By FRANK RICH

This column from the NYTimes caught my eye this morning. It sort of lays bare a lot of the rabid bigotry that's still alive and well in America. This particular batch of vitriol is distilled from the acrid mash of a fine blend of well-cultivated social poisons.

The set of beliefs comes from people who don't like anyone who isn't exactly like themselves. To people like that, something like homosexuality is especially threatening. It's something that can crop up anywhere, even among their own children. What a nightmare to have that motivating your deep-set beliefs. Imagine such a fearful, angry way to live.

These days, there are fears all over the place. Two fears are at work here, among the anti-gay, and the pro-gay alike .

• It's either being afraid of our own co-workers, role models, and loved ones.
  
• Or it's being afraid of all of those people who are afraid, especially when they yell and get aggressive about it.

This anti-gay stuff makes up many of today's hottest topics on TV, radio and at the highest levels of government. There's talk of a constitutional amendment to restrict rights instead of grant them. The senate may undergo a radical overhaul over a fight for the anti-gay's own set of sanctimonious judges. And the president stays wisely mum on the matter.

Anti-gays (for lack of a better word) are isolating themselves on this. They're showing just how radical, ideologically driven, and anti-scientific they really are, no more song and dance. And it's about a lot more than just gay stuff.

Let's call them the anti-American bigots and homophobes that they are. They would show us no quarter, so let's repay the favor. We can't tolerate this brand of tripe and still call ourselves a free, civil society of forward-thinking Americans. There should be no argument, no countenancing these type of thinking.

We also have real debates to be made that are just sitting on the shelf collecting dust. I sure hope that progressives get up and make an agenda. Their whole political machine is starting to squeak, shake and squeal. We need to be there with the solutions now, and damned if we have nothing to lose at this point.

India

This is the first in what I hope to be a series of posts on my summer field experience in India. The purpose of this trip is to gather some formative research on how people in the rural areas of Karnataka State, India experience and perceive the informal payments for otherwise free health care. This is a form of petty corruption that has been dealt with in the past through things like sting operations, whistleblower statutes, and other "top-down" strategies.

The long term goal of this work is to develop some "bottom-up" approaches, where users of these services change the way they think about these services, that rather than being a pawn in a big game, they can play a role in ensuring that their care is delivered fairly, and in accordance with the law. The first step in developing an approach is to determine whether they see this as a problem at all, and if so, what their feelings and attitudes are about it. This will help to develop a language for discussion of these issues with those who are most affected by the phenomenon of informal payments.

I'll be working with Dr. H. Sudarshan, who is Vigilance Director for the Karnataka Ministry of Justice. Aside from his position with the civil service, he has been working for over 20 years on empowering people, especially the rural poor, to stand up for their rights. He has his own NGO, Karuna Trust, that has provided health care and skillbuilding activities in the rural areas of Karnataka State since the early 80s. http://www.karunatrust.org/

From what I gather, Sudarshan should be an interesting character. A weekly googling of his name reveals an ongoing stream of his efforts to uncover large-scale corruption rings in Bangalore and the surrounding areas. He seems like a pretty well-known and respected figure in India and elsewhere. Aside from my own research, it should be a real experience shadowing a man like that for a month or so.

For most of the time I'll be living in Bangalore, above the India Literacy Project in the city center. I'll be spending a lot of time traveling to rural areas to conduct my research. This should be an unbelieveable lesson in the contrasts of modern life with the ways that people have lived since antiquity, compounded with the industrial squalor unique to our time. It'll be a little of everything.