What a 'hotel' can mean in India

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the English word hotel was first recorded in the 1640s and denoted a 'public official residence'. The modern sense of the word as 'an inn of the better sort' (i.e. 'a place offering lodging, food and other services to travellers') was first recorded in 1765. The word comes from the French hôtel, which itself is derived from the Medieval Latin hospitale via Old French hostel.

In French, hôtel was used to refer mainly to public official buildings that frequently received visitors, but this has been largely replaced by the meaning of 'place offering lodging and food to travellers', as used in contemporary English. However, you can still see traces of this old usage in words like hôtel de ville 'town hall' and hôtel des impôts 'tax office' and hôtel de police 'police headquarters'.

In India, the term hotel has taken on a slightly different meaning (and pronunciation, with stress on the first syllable, not the second.) Visitors to India are likely to find that big modern buildings offering lodging are called 'hotels', but they might be slightly shocked to see signs for hotels that do not provide lodging at all.

Take for instance this hotel located right next to the Dimapur Railway Station. As you can see, the hotel only offers 'fooding', a very common term in Indian English meaning 'the provision of food' - this can include the catering at an event or simply selling food at a restaurant.

I'm not entirely certain how the term 'hotel' has come to be used to refer to (what I would call) a 'restaurant', where only food and no lodging is provided. I doubt that this use derives from the original French meaning of a public building that frequently receives visitors. Incidentally, there are also hotels in India that advertise 'only lodging' with no 'fooding'.

My guess is that the term did originally designate a place frequented by travellers and provided both food and lodging - I imagine that travellers were the most likely people to frequent places offering food since most people would have taken their meals at home or packed their own food. Over time, some establishments may have stopped providing one service or the other for whatever reason (e.g. greater profits from selling food), but the label 'hotel' remained. Consequently, the term 'hotel' no longer denoted a place of lodging, but simply a place frequented by travellers. Someone else starting a restaurant near a train station or along a highway may then choose to call their business a 'hotel', even though they have no intention of providing lodging, as long as their expected clientele are likely to be travellers stopping in for a meal.

Whatever the history of the word may be, don't be shocked if you rock up to a hotel in India and can't get a room - some of them simply don't have any for guests!

Happy New Year(s) on the Indian subcontinent

India and its immediate neighbours celebrate not one, not two but... a bewildering number of New Year's Days (not even counting the one in the Gregorian calendar, the Islamic New Year and Tibetan New Year). In fact, this week alone will see the start of a new year for a number of different communities across South Asia - and they don't all fall on the same day or signal the start of the same year!

If you are Kannadiga or Telugu living in Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh, you would have celebrated Udagi on 11 April, and the start of the year 1935, according to the Saka Calendar. But in Nepal, 14 April 2013 will mark the start of the year 2070, following the Bikram Sambat calendar (which is not to be confused with the Nepal Sambat calendar where the current year, 1133, started last November). If you are Meitei / Manipuri you would have just celebrated Sajibu Cheiraoba on the same day as Udagi, but I have no idea what year you are in.

Also, if you are Tamil, Puthandu falls on 14 April this year, marking the start of the year 2013. If you're Bengali, that's also the date for Pôhela Boishakh, but you will now find yourself in the year 1420. In Assam, Rongali Bihu (or Bohag Bihu) also starts on 14 April. However, the festival starts on the last day of the previous year, a day known as Goru Bihu 'cow bihu', while it is the second day of the festival that marks the first day of the new year, a day known as Manuh Bihu 'human bihu'.

Finally, just to add to the confusion, don't forget that these Indic calendars also left their mark in South-east Asia: New Year celebrations are also taking place this week in Burma (Thingyan), Laos (Pbeemai / Songkan) and Thailand (Songkran) starting today (13 April).

So whoever and wherever you are, Happy New Year!

Happy Diwali 2012

Happy Deepavali / Dipaboli / Diwali to all who celebrate it (and happy Tihar if you're in Nepal).

I'm actually currently in Zunheboto, Nagaland for the Ahunah festival - Ahunah lokivi peitha tsü ani! (but more on that when I find the time and internet to post later during the week.)

In honour of Diwali, here are some photos I took last Monday as I was walking past Dighalipukhuri in Guwahati. I saw the entire pond lined with lit clay lamps (dīpa in Sanskrit, but saki in Assamese).

I mistakenly thought it was an early Diwali celebration, but my students told me later (and I should have realised it myself) that it was actually to mark the death anniversary of Bhupen Hazarika, who passed away a year ago on the 5th of November.

It really was an impressive sight to see the whole lake lined with lamps that had to be lit individually. I wonder if they're doing something similar for Diwali itself today.

Gender agreement in Hindi

I was telling the story that I blogged about in my previous post to someone in Guwahati. When I got to the part where I was saying 'I don't understand Hindi', I told her I'd said:

मुझ को हिन्दि नहिँ आती है।
mujh ko hindi nahiin aatii hai.
(lit. 'To me Hindi does not come').

She burst into laughter and exclaimed, "But you're not a woman!"

This raised a rather interesting linguistic question for me. The issue here was that I had used the feminine participle of the verb 'to come': आती aatii where she had expected the masculine singular form आता aataa.

Now, what I'd learnt in my few weeks of Hindi lessons from a tutor from Lucknow was that in Hindi, all nouns have grammatical gender (like other Indo-European languages such as French and Russian) and that verbs agree with their subject in gender and number. In French, for instance, some verbs agree with their subject for number and gender in the passé composé 'compound past tense', e.g. Le jour de gloire est arrivé. 'The day of glory has come', but Les pluies sont arrivées. 'The rains have come' because jour 'day' is masculine and singular while pluies 'rains' is feminine and plural. (Note that the difference is only visible in the written language.)

In a clause like mujh ko hindi nahiin aatii hai, the grammatical subject is actually hindi, which I am told is a feminine noun. The form of the 1st person singular mujh ko has an oblique case, which translates to something like 'to me'. Therefore, what I was doing was making the verb agree in gender with the noun in subject position. However, I've been told that outside the main Hindi speaking regions of Uttar Pradesh (including Lucknow where my  tutor was from), and outside what is prescribed as 'grammatically correct' Hindi, subject-verb agreement is not as strict as how I'd applied it.

It's also obvious from my friend's reaction that the verb needed to agree with the 1st person singular mujh ko (who is male), even though morphologically it was marked for the oblique case.

This is not to say that what I had said was wrong, or that my friend was wrong, it's just that there are various varieties (and registers) of Hindi that are spoken across India. In some varieties, agreement of the kind I used is expected, but in others, it sounds either pretentious or just plain silly!

Responsibility, Racism and Recharging a prepaid SIM card

As you can guess from the title, this post is about responsibility, racism and trying to recharge a prepaid SIM card (with a phone company whose name starts with 'R' incidentally).

It happened about 2 weeks ago at a little shop in Paltan Bazar. The credit on the SIM card that I use for my 3G mobile internet had expired after just one month and I needed to buy more credit. Now, this wasn't the first time I've had to recharge a SIM card - it's something I have to do constantly when I'm here, especially since I'm only ever here for a few months at a time and don't have a fixed address in India.

The shop I had gone to previously wasn't opened, since it was still 9am, so when I walked past an open shop, I asked the guy there (in Assamese and English) if he could recharge my SIM. He said he could, so I thought, why not. As is common practice here, I gave him the number to recharge, he paid the phone company using the credit on his phone as a dealer, and he got a reply message saying the amount I'd asked for had been credited. So I handed over the Rs 1,099/- (which is not a small sum for monthly internet) plus his service charge / fee.

The only problem: I didn't get a confirmation message immediately, and couldn't get connected to the internet. I told the guy, and he said it would take 15 minutes, which in my experience, shouldn't have been the case. I sat there next to the shop and waited 15 minutes, and still nothing. He then said it was a 'system error' and would take half an hour.

Yeah right, I thought. But I needed breakfast, so I went to get something to eat.

Half an hour later, still nothing. So I went back.

I told him I still hadn't received a message and that my internet still wasn't reconnected. He checked the number of the SIM on my computer, and the number I had given him was correct.

He said he'd done the top-up and that "This is not my problem". I told him that he needed to call customer care to find out what went wrong, but he kept repeating that this was no longer his problem. I told him in my best Assamese (with bits of English thrown in) that I was supposed to receive a message, and that I didn't. I'd given him my money, but received nothing. He insisted that he had done the top-up, then started speaking to me in Hindi.

At this point, I raised my voice and said in broken Hindi that I didn't understand Hindi, which is true - I'd only done a few classes of Hindi with tutor about 4 years ago. He grumbled, saying something about how I could speak Assamese, but not Hindi.

Eventually, I dialed the customer care service number and got him to speak to them. He started speaking to the lady on the phone in Hindi. I heard the word 'tribal', followed by 'doesn't understand Hindi', said in Hindi, which ironically I could understand, because that's one of the first phrases I learn in any language. He hung up shortly after, with absolutely nothing resolved.

This of course led to more yelling on my part. I was furious. He said I had to go to the customer office myself. I told him I didn't have time for that - I was going to be late for a meeting at the university. I started to blame him - I mean, I've given him all that money and got nothing in return. It was his job to top up my credit, and that job hadn't been done. What's worse, as a foreigner here, it's much harder for me to locate offices and other addresses here (given the lack of a proper address system) and there's the language barrier to consider when I'm trying to ask people on the street for directions.

Eventually, I left the guy and made it to the customer service office, which was in the opposite direction from where I was meant to be heading, but at least I knew where it was because I had previously spent half a day looking for it a month and a half before. When I got there, I explained that the top-up had been successful. The problem was that the first shop where I'd purchased the SIM card out in Adabari hadn't submitted my documents to the main office. I told them I'd already managed to recharge the card successfully at another shop in Paltan Bazar a month before, and didn't see why it should fail now. They said that it sometimes happened when the documentation wasn't submitted.

I didn't quite see the logic, but after a second trip to the office they managed to get me reconnected within two days. Given the amount of time I had to spend at the office (which only opened at 10am), and the distance to the university, I pretty much had to write off those two days.


Now looking back at the situation, I knew it wasn't the guy at the shop's fault - the amount I'd paid him had been deducted from his phone and he received the confirmation message from the company. But what else could I do? And let''s not forget that he just kept making stupid excuses at the start, then chose to shirk all responsibility afterwards, while referring to me as a 'tribal'.

And that's the first thing I want to examine: responsibility. So many things are mired in bureaucracy here, that it's so easy to push the responsibility to someone else. From his perspective of the shopkeeper, he'd done his job - it was now the phone company's problem. From my perspective, it's like I've paid a waiter to take my order to the cook, who is supposed to deliver the food to a window where I can collect it myself, but fails to deliver the order. The waiter says he's done his job, but I'm still waiting hungrily by the window. The only way I can get my food, is to go straight into kitchen. So what's the point of having the waiter in the first place?

And it's so easy to shirk responsibility, the more layers of bureaucracy you have, and the more middlemen you have. It's one reason why so much public funding can get siphoned off here to personal accounts. It's one reason why security forces here are so ineffectual. To take a slightly different example, I told my brother that I found it ridiculous that at Kathmandu Airport, they would do a baggage scan at the entrance, then before the departure gate, and finally on the runway just before you board the plane (for Jet Airways flights at least). He pointed out that that was a terrible security set-up, because the guards at the start would feel like they could slack off, since they think the guards after them will catch whatever they miss. But then the guards at the end would also feel like they could slack off since they think that the guards before them would have caught anything worth catching.

But moving on from the issue of responsibility (or lack thereof) there's the use of the word 'tribal' here. Some might argue that terms like 'tribal' and 'backward caste' are simply appellations for different groups of people, but this context, it was absolutely derogatory.

Most people assume I'm from this area, but I can see the change in the way I'm treated once they realise I'm actually a foreigner. Suddenly, I'm judged on a whole different set of criteria, whether justifiably or not.

The other day, this article by Walter Fernandes, former director of the North Eastern Social Research Centre in Guwahati, appeared in the Seven Sisters Post: The Idea of India. One quote that stuck out was:

"A major cause of division is the feeling in much of India that the Northeast is different from the “mainstream” and should merge with the “mainland” on the terms of the “mainstream”."

There's a sense of cultural superiority here, with the 'tribals' still needing to be civilised by the 'mainstream', which is an Aryan-Dravidian culture that I would say is primarily Hindu.

The irony here is that back home, a lot of 'mainstream' Hindu culture is seen as antiquated, like women needing to be accompanied by a male companion when they travel, or at best, 'quaint' or 'charming', when looking at the constant stream of religious festivals. In comparison, a lot more of my 'tribal' friends are much more well-versed (for better or worse) in Western culture.

In the end, I was furious at the shopkeer. But at least at the end of the day I can assert my foreigner status when I'm here. Most of my 'tribal' friends in other parts of India have to deal with this sort of racism for as long as they have to live there.

'X cum Y' construction

Many English speakers would be familiar with the construction 'X cum Y' (where X and Y are nouns) to designate something or someone with two different attributes that are combined , e.g. model-cum-actor or restaurant-cum-dining room. The word cum here comes from the Latin preposition meaning 'with' or 'together with'. In writing, the words are often joined by a hyphen.

In spoken English, it's not something I hear that often (at least outside South Asia), even if people know the construction. Few people I know would talk about an actor-cum-model, and would probably say something like actor slash model slash waiter (effectively spelling out the punctuation marks used to divide up the different categories) or just actor model waiter. It's also no surprise that when I was doing the crossword in one of the local papers here the other day, I was puzzled by the clue: sofa-___-bed (3). You guessed it, the answer was 'cum', but most people I know would just call it a 'sofa-bed'.

In South Asia, the 'X cum Y' construction is used much more ubiquitously than back home, and usually without the hyphens in writing. It's almost as if people here really want to emphasise that something has multiple functions - maybe it suggests you get more value for your money? Or perhaps it makes an event sound more impressive?

Here we have the sign at the Bamboo Pavilion (sic)at Kisama in  Nagaland, where the Hornbill Festival is held. There was an exhibition cum sale last year, and I imagine there'll be another one this year.



The other weekend in Guwahati there was an awareness-cum-sensitization programme (here with the hyphens).

At the university, we also have a library cum seminar room.

Update: two more examples from around Guwahati

This is fine and good, but most English speakers are probably giggling just a little bit at the above examples, because unfortunately, cum is homophonous with a noun that means 'semen' and verb meaning 'to ejaculate'! This often leads to some unfortunate but highly amusing examples (which is probably why most English speakers outside of South Asia avoid using the construction altogether!)

For instance, a month ago I saw this sign for a mega loan cum exchange mela (a mela is a kind of fair here), with only the words mega loan in bold.

The other day my friend L. mentioned that she was walking through Diphu, she saw a sign for fast food cum restaurant. This is probably based on the use of fast food as the short form of 'fast food eatery / outlet'. (Update: I've seen a few of them around Guwahati as well.)

And just the other day I was rather slightly when I got a text message from a student saying she couldn't come to class because she had to attend a freshers' cum picnic! Amazingly (especially for a text message here), she used an apostrophe, probably to point out that  freshers' was simply short for 'freshers' day', i.e. an orientation day for freshmen / first years.

It's a rather popular construction in Indian English, that really doesn't seem to be going out of fashion anything time soon. So in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy the humour-cum-amusement I get out of seeing these signs everywhere,

A short trip to Varanasi

Apologies if posting hasn't been very frequent. I just spent the week in the Varanasi attending the 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium which was hosted by Banaras Hindu University.



 And here are some obligatory shots of the Ganges.

And more photos from the obligatory boat ride on the Ganges.




Popping over to Varanasi from Assam presented a mild cultural shock to me. While in Assam, I can usually go about my day-to-day activities generally unnoticed (people do look at me, but they just assume I'm from somewhere in NE India like Nagaland), the instant I arrived in Varanasi, I was instantly given the 'foreigner treatment'. Everywhere I went, people would say, "Hello!" or  "How are you?" or "Where are you from?" as I walked past them, and I'd get touts and beggars coming up to me.

The other thing I had to get used to, was that when I'm in Assam and show any trouble understanding Assamese, almost everyone immediately swaps to Hindi, which other people from India are more likely to understand, but which I have even more difficulty understanding because I've had more exposure to Assamese. It's similar to how Sumi speakers often switch to Nagamese when I look like I'm having trouble, even though I understand more Sumi than Nagamese. Of course, in Varanasi, people usually just spoke to me in English from the outset (if they could), since they assumed that as a foreigner I would know English.

Now,  if I was actually from NE India, this sort of treatment would be supremely annoying and probably insulting, being treated -and charged prices- like a foreigner in my own country. It's no wonder everyone here calls the rest of India 'the mainland'.

Social Bondage

I was reading one of the local papers here in Guwahati the other day, and this headline caught my eye.

Most English speakers outside of India (and quite a few in India) would probably be wondering what on earth 'social bondage' refers to, and why on earth some students would even want it.

I think the word they're actually looking for here is 'bonding' and not 'bondage'. In standard English, bondage refers to 'slavery', or 'the act of being tied up'. On the other hand, bonding refers to 'the establishment and development of a close friendship / relationship'. The related verbs are also somewhat different: you bind someone by tying them up, but you bond with someone by develop a relationship with them.

Now the reason I thought this was something to write about wasn't to poke fun at the writer, though I can imagine a few of you gagging over the picture. It reminded me of one time I was proofreading a report written by a non-native English speaker. While her written expression was good, in my mind it seemed like she was overusing gerunds, those non-finite verb forms like swimming that also behave somewhat like nouns. For example, she would write something like "their investigating of the causes ...", where it would sound more natural for me to say "their investigation of the causes ...". Similarly, she'd write something like "the failing of the report to demonstrate ..." where I would say "the failure of the report to demonstrate ...".

She wanted to know why I had suggested these changes. To be honest, I should have just said, "I don't know. It just sounds better." Instead, I made up some grammatical rule (based on this handful of examples) that it was better to avoid the gerund forms (those -ing forms) if there was already a noun that had been derived from the verb. I mean, would you say "the starting of the race" or "my loving of dogs"?

But of course the rule doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. Gerunds and other nominals can co-exist quite happily in some contexts, e.g. the ending of the novel and the end of the novel are pretty much the same thing. And non-finite verb forms can also be lexicalised, e.g. beginning and opening - these are the words you'd find listed as their own entries in a dictionary, unlike words like fainting which would be treated as an entry under the verb faint.

In the end, I guess the choice between 'gerund' and 'other lexical nominal' just depends on what is used more frequently in that context or in an analogous context.

Of course, looking at the headline above, I can't help but think that someone had been told something similar, and was just trying to avoid the gerund without realising the full effect of their final word choosing. Um, choice.

Assam Conflict: Not Against Muslims

Just saw this making the rounds on Facebook.

As I mentioned in my last post, the current conflict between Bodos and Bengalis isn't about religion, but it's being perceived by Muslims in other parts of the country as that. (Note that I'm not a supporter of xenophobia or the discourse that's currently surrounding Bengalis, but I do understand the anxieties people in this state have and continue to have about immigrants, and that little is being done by the government to manage those anxieties.) 

4,000 people returning to NE India?

Assam's been making the news for the past few weeks, and I suppose I should add my two cents.

It's not unusual to see conflict in this restive part of India (I might have to dedicate another post to my penchant for choosing 'restive' parts of the world to visit.). This time, it's a conflict between Bodos (pronounced 'Boros') and Muslim Bengalis in the district of Kokrajhar, to the west of Guwahati. The BBC gives an explanation for the violence here: What lies behind Assam violence?

The Bodos themselves have been fighting for a separate state, called 'Bodoland' which includes Kokrajhar district and a few neighbouring districts. One of my Bodo friends said that some people feel the need for statehood because to give them greater autonomy to protect their language and culture from such 'invaders'. The problem is, while there are many recent migrants coming from Bangladesh, there are also many of these so-called 'invaders' are actually Bengalis who've lived for generations in Assam. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there are any official figures.

From the perspective of the Bodos though, there is much anxiety over the loss of their own cultural identity. They feel like the Indian (and state) government has failed and continues to fail to provide adequate protection. This has then led to a call, certainly by more extreme separatists, for a state that is ethnically (and linguistically) 'pure'. Their attacks on Muslim Bangladeshis is seen simply asserting ownership over their own 'land'. This is not an uncommon phenomenon among ethnic groups in NE India, and inter-ethnic conflict abounds: just last January there were major clashes between Garos and Rabhas on the Assam-Meghalaya border.

The situation in Kokrajhar is still pretty tense, and my Bodo friends say there's still a curfew being imposed there. New clashes in Northeast India as tension mounts


However, what I find remarkable about this latest conflict is that the violence has 'spilled over' into other parts of India. But rather than an inter-ethnic conflict, it's been transformed into an inter-religious one. Last week in Mumbai, there were protests by Muslims who view the attacks as targeting Muslims. Unfortunately these protests turned violent, and 2 people died: 23 people booked for Mumbai violence

Now, there's reports of a mass exodus of North-easterners from Bangalore, with people receiving text messages saying that people from NE India (especially people who look more East Asian / 'Mongolian', although 'ethnic Assamese' look like most other mainland Indians to me) are being targeted and attacked.

Amid attack fears, people from NE flee Bangalore
Thousands flee violence threats in Indian city of Bangalore

One story that has emerged is that of a Tibetan student was attacked in Mysore, though it's unclear if this has anything to do with the violence in NE India. It just seems like madness right now, with 4,000 people just uprooting themselves from Bangalore to come back to Assam overnight.

I can understand people want to come back to their families, but I hope that the panic dies down soon and people are able to return to Bangalore and other parts of India, especially if they have friends and work to go back to.

(Disclaimer: This post is based on information I have read and heard, and is certainly imperfect as it is. Any other opinions and comments are more than welcome.)

Mongolian sweetheart

I'm used to certain labels like 'Asian', 'East Asian' or even 'Oriental' (when I'm in the UK) in contrast to 'South Asian'. But it was only when I first came to South Asia that I realised that I was actually Mongolian. In fact, 'Mongolians' are everywhere in East Asia. Chinese people are 'Mongolian'. Japanese people are 'Mongolian'. Tibetans are 'Mongolian'. Mongolians I can only assume, are also 'Mongolian'.

According to a friend in South Asia, 'Mongolians' are quite popular. One of the hosts on Indian Idol was a guy of Chinese origin, Chang Meiyang, who was born in India. The same friend even suggested I create an online profile and call myself 'Mongolian sweetheart' (hence the title of this post). As far as I can tell, what separates 'Mongolians' from 'Indian' people is the shape of their eyes (almond shaped) and their fair complexion. And given how many skin-lightening products there are here, there are many people in South Asia who want to look white.

But what fascinates me is the actual term 'Mongolian'. I'm no expert on the history of race theory, but it seems to correspond strongly with the idea of a 'Mongoloid race' which is now viewed as an obsolete racial classification label and really isn't mentioned anymore in popular discourse in the West. (There is also the historical use of the term 'Mongoloid' to designate people with Down's syndrome.) I'm also not sure if people here would use the term 'Mongolian' for Malay or Burmese people, i.e. people of darker complexion.

Of course one might argue that the term 'Mongolian' in South Asia is simply a substitute for 'East Asian' or 'Oriental'. What surprises me though is that many people who do identify as 'Mongolian' here do believe that their ancestors came from Mongolia. I was told that someone in Nagaland working on the genealogy of his tribe said that in order to get to the real origin of the tribe, they needed to go to Mongolia. Now, I'm not sure if he thought his ancestors came with the Mongol invasions of Burma or if they migrated south at an earlier stage.

For the moment, I suppose there's nothing much I can do but embrace the term. I do wonder how Mongolian neo-Nazis (yes, they do exist) would feel about Chinese people being called 'Mongolian'.

Other backward class

When I first heard the term other backward class, I thought it was a joke.

Then when I read about the creamy layer principle, I was sure it was a joke. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

On previous visits to India, I'd heard the term 'scheduled tribe' used to describe the many tribes / groups of Nagaland. I simply assumed it meant 'officially recognised tribe' (and I wasn't far off the mark with that). But the other day a friend here in Diphu was talking about how he was interviewing candidates for a job, but the job was only available to people from one of the 'other backward classes'. Then a few days later, he was talking about the upcoming local election (which has been postponed till next June) that he's working for and how 'other backward class' is an option on the form for people to state their caste. He was also saying how it was ironic that the former rulers of Assam, the Ahoms, are now considered an 'other backward class'.

After a bit of googling, I discovered that the term backward class is indeed a term used in India, along with scheduled tribe and scheduled caste, to contrast with the term forward class / forward caste. The list for each group is dynamic and calculated based on economic and social factors. However, I'm not 100% sure what factors these are, how they are measured, or even how a group is defined as being a group. The use of these groupings is supposed to be important towards 'positive discrimination' in India, whereby certain jobs and places in education are reserved for people from the 'non-forward classes' (even if these positions are usually not filled for other reasons).

Now I'm all for positive discrimination this way if it is necessary to make up for inequalities in a society (even if people in the majority don't perceive these inequalities and protest against such positive discrimination). But 'backward'? I'm used to Indian English being peppered with colonial era terms and beliefs that now in the West would be considered racist and bigoted, but to designate a group / groups as 'backward'? One might argue that it is simply another term for what others might call 'disadvantaged', but I'm sure even in modern Indian English the term 'backward' carries much more negative connotations of intellectual or physical retardation. I've also heard people in Nepal and India talk about their caste / tribal group as being 'backward' with no hope of moving up in the social hierarchy. If what they're supposed to do is simply follow the 'forward classes', then it's going to be a never-ending game of 'catch-up'.

I suppose I'm more used to the term 'minority' or 'ethnic minority' (even for groups with considerably large memberships). But even in China, the term 少数民族 is used, referring to the 'small number' of members in a particular ethnic group. Over there, certain groups may work towards recognition as an ethnic minority in order to enjoy benefits, such as exemptions from the One Child policy. In India, I'm not quite sure I'd appreciate labeling myself as a member of an 'other backward class' to get a particular job as part of the reservation scheme, but more enlightened members of such 'classes' may be able to work the system.

But hang on, there's also a catch: the reservation scheme doesn't apply to you if you're a member of an 'other backward class' who's from a well-off or educated family. In that case, you're part of the creamy layer (not quite what you thought I was talking about, right?), and according to the 'creamy layer' principle, you "do not require the protection of reservation" (read an article from The Hindu here). However, it has been argued that this 'creamy layer' concept goes against the Indian Constitution.

I'm not quite sure if and how this 'creamy layer' principle is applied, but it's one of the things about India that as a foreigner, I can't help but find somewhat absurd.

Unhappy with the State Bank of India?

On a completely different topic from my last post, I saw this on the screen at the SBI (State Bank of India ) ATM here in Diphu.

I wonder if there's a person (or people) sitting in front of a computer screen monitoring the number of 'Unhappy' text messages being received every day. Goodness knows what they actually do with such 'information'.

(I'm going to need to find someone willing to text them - I'm hesitant to text them myself for fear of being spammed afterwards.)

Indian customs

If you thought this post was something about 'traditional Indian customs and practices', stop reading here. It's about my latest experience going through Indian customs at Delhi Airport.

Before I left Singapore, Mum had suggested I take with me some bakkwa, sweetened dried meat (usually pork) from the famous Bee Cheng Hiang franchise in Singapore. They're nicely packaged and would make nice gifts, given that most people I'm staying with are also huge pork eaters.

I didn't think India had any issues with meat imports. Then I saw the customs form. Through the sleepy haze of catching a 2am flight out of Changi Airport, I read at the bottom: Are you carrying any meat / meat products / dairy products ...

Years of travelling to Australia made my hand circle 'Yes' right away. I mean, it's all packaged. I'll show it to them, they'll just wave me through. I'm pretty sure they'd even wave this stuff through in Australia as long as you declare it. Nothing to worry about.

So I went to sleep. I was exhausted. When I woke a few hours later, my mind wandered back to the customs form, a nagging thought at the back of my mind. But it's India.

When I finally got through the immigration queue at Delhi Airport, I noticed that nothing special was written on the little customs slip I had. In Australia, the immigration officer generally asks you what you're declaring and makes a note on the form.

I picked up my luggage and started heading to the Green Channel. A rather bored looking man was going up to every second traveller asking them to put their bags through the X-ray machine next to him. Great. Before he could ask me to put my bags through the machine, I asked him instead where to go to declare things.

- What do you have?
- Some meat. Do I have to declare it?
- If you want to.
- So I don't have to declare it?
- It is better if you declare it.

He pointed me in the direction of three even more bored looking officers sitting on couches behind some empty counters with names like 'Currency Declaration' and 'Goods Declaration'. They didn't bother to get up when they saw me approach. I stood behind a counter and yelled at one of them that I had something to declare, feeling quite ridiculous as I waved the bag of bakkwa in the air.

- What do you have?
- Some meat!
- No meat allowed!
- But it's packaged!
- No meat allowed!
- So what am I supposed to do? Throw it away?

He then waved his hand in some general direction. I turned around but couldn't locate a bin that looked like it was designated for throwing away declared items. When I turned back, I saw the guy was still on the couch and had gone back to his conversation with the other two guys.

I walked towards to the Green Channel. The first guy I had spoken to was busy getting people to put their luggage through the X-ray machine. Just keep going. I headed straight for the door. There were two blank-faced guys there collecting customs slips.

I considered for a moment whipping out a pen and changing my answer to 'No'. Looking at the faces of the two men, I decided to take a gamble. The bag of 'illegal' goods still dangling from my arm, I walked towards the one on the left and thrust the customs slip in his hand..

He took the little piece of paper without so much as a glance. I kept walking. Freedom!

As I walked out, I couldn't help but feel a little glad that $80 worth of bakkwa didn't end up in a bin. I also realised that I would have felt a little guilty if I had just said 'No' on the form and walked out the door. I guess I'm so used to being truthful (or at least semi-truthful) whenever I clear customs in Australia. I usually have trouble lying straight to someone's face.

But it's India.

Farewell India

This afternoon I'm flying back to Delhi, where, with any luck, I'll catch my connecting flight to Singapore. I've given myself 6 hours between the two flights, but one never knows.

The last time I left India feeling completely traumatised. One of the reasons was that I'd spent a few days in Guwahati and was paranoid about bed bugs from below and mosquitoes from above, so I didn't get to sleep much for 2 days. Then I had to go to Kolkata for another night before flying back, and I really just wanted to get home by then.

In contrast I'm a little sad to leave this time, though I'm planning to be back later this year. In fact, part of me can't wait to come back to the NE next time to see all the friends I've made and to do all the projects I need to do. Even if it hasn't been completely smooth sailing, I've had an amazing last 3 months in India, and a fantastic month and a half in Nepal before that.

But I'm not going to jinx it too much, since a lot can still happen between now and my flight back to Singapore, like having to push a car on the highway, a delayed flight, a cancelled flight, or luggage getting cut (all of which have already happened on this trip!).

So farewell India for now.

Booking a hotel in India

I've had a rather mixed bag when booking hotels / guest houses in India.

My first time in Kolkata in 2009, I'd booked a room at a guest house via email but arrived to find it had been given away (I had been afraid of that, given that my flight was arriving in the evening but I'd given them my flight details). When I was in Delhi a few months ago, I contacted a hotel via email and was given the option of a 'standard' or 'deluxe' room, but did not hear from them when I told them I wanted the 'standard' room. They only replied when I wrote back saying I would 'take a look' at the deluxe room and see if I wanted it. Of course, when I arrived at the hotel, I found I only had the option of the deluxe room.

Yesterday (Friday) I was trying to book a hotel room in Guwahati for me and some visiting friends from Nagaland for Saturday and Sunday night or Sunday and Monday night, depending on when my friends were coming. I visited one hotel to ask about vacancies and they said they were fully booked for Saturday, but Sunday was fine. When I rang later to book for Sunday, there were suddenly no more vacancies (something about a wedding party booking the whole place). But when I dropped by in person this morning, there was once again a room available for Sunday.

Slightly more puzzling was this conversation I had when I rang another hotel:

Me: Do you have a vacancy on Sunday night?
Guy on phone: No sir, fully booked.
Me: Are you sure you are fully booked?
Him: Yes sir.
Me: Okay, I'm actually in Guwahati already. I have some friends coming on either Saturday or Sunday and need a room for two nights.
Him: We have vacancy for tomorrow (Saturday). I think it is better if you come tomorrow.
Me: Yes, but I need the room for two nights.
Him: Okay sir, you can have the room for two nights.

I considered it wise not to point out the obvious discrepancy between his initial response and his latest one. Later I called to push the reservation back one night, with no problems.

It's not the first time I've been first told by a hotel on the phone that they are fully booked, before later finding out - either by going in person, or in the same phone conversation - that a room is in fact available. Why on earth do hotels here feel the need to do this? It's almost as if they don't want full occupancy.

Connecting to the internet in South Asia

About a week ago in Nepal, I realised that I couldn't view Lauren's blog, except via an RSS reader. The reason was that Blogger had been blocked by the Nepalese government, or at least some sites with 'blogspot' in their URLs had come up on their new list of banned 'p0rn' sites, leading to a blanket ban on all our blogs with that domain name.

Weird and Funny World, a Nepal-based blog I've been following provided some coverage of this. Earlier there was also a suggestion that cybercafes in Nepal check their clients' ID in a bid to control 'cyber crime'.

India already does this sort of the control, though probably not on the same scale as China. At the cybercafes I've been to here, I'd had to present my passport (which some places photocopy) just so I can get online for 30 minutes. I am reminded of this level of control, because just to access the free wi-fi here at Delhi's new Indira Gandhi Airport domestic terminal, I had to log in with my new Airtel mobile number and then make a request to have another separate username and password via SMS (I remember a similar process at Bangalore airport last year) before finally being able to connect. Airtel also has a copy of my passport, visa and my photo, which you need to submit just to get a sim card.

Given that phones have been used in terrorist attacks to detonate bombs I suppose it's not an uncommon occurrence in most countries these days. You need some sort of ID to buy a prepaid mobile sim card in Singapore and Australia. I'm also sure there's some kind of registration to use Changi Airport's free wifi, though I suspect not quite as convoluted as the Indian system. I think I'm just too used to being able to connect to close to a dozen wi-fi networks in Kathmandu's Thamel district with just a network key.

Hmmm, my flight to Guwahati's been delayed by 40 minutes. More time on the internet for me.

Welcome to Delhi

My arrival at the new Delhi International Airport started out well enough. The new terminal is much better than the current Kolkata Airport which I flew in and out of last year. The only thing that bugged me was that it took forever to get from the gate to the immigration counter, and yet we still had to wait about 20 minutes for our baggage - I calculated about 45 minutes from the time of the plane's arrival.

I had arranged an airport pick-up with my hotel (Rak International Hotel) - an exorbitant 600 Rs, considering it only takes about 250-300 Rs to get from the airport to the Paharganj, but I didn't really want the hassle of haggling with a taxi driver and having to pay additional tips and what not. Thankfully, my pick-up was there when I arrived, given that the plane was about an hour late in leaving Kathmandu. The driver seemed friendly enough and we chatted a little in my broken Hindi / Nepali (he understood ali ali) and English.

The first sign something was wrong was when I first saw the car. It looked ordinarily enough, apart from all the dents in the doors, the back and the front (basically everywhere). It was particularly obvious, given that all the surrounding SUVs looked brand new and spotless. But I still put my stuff in the back and got in.

The driver then pokes his head in the window and tells me I need to get out. To help him push he car. It seemed the car battery had been giving him some grief today and the car needed a push start. Eventually, he managed to get the security guard to help us as well, and we got the car all the way to the downward ramp, which gave the car the boost it needed.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I asked the driver if the battery would be a problem later. He unhesitatingly said, 'Yes'.

We were in the far right lane of a busy road in heavy traffic when the battery died again. Out we got to push the car to the side of the road. Never mind the big buses and trucks trying to run us down. A police officer directed us to a small turn-off and there we stopped the car. My driver did what he could to restart the battery but eventually decided to call for a taxi from the airport to pick me up.

We waited by the side of the road for another 20 minutes. In that time, my driver's mobile phone battery died too (I was sensing a pattern) and I told him my Nepali sim card didn't work in India. But the taxi came, and I got in, after being assured that the hotel would pay for the taxi.

As I got in, the driver reassuringly said that his taxi would run out of petrol in about 10 or 15 minutes. Great, I thought. But at least we stopped for petrol at a petrol kiosk, not on the side of the road. And at least he didn't ask for more money.

But when we got to Paharganj, he stopped the taxi about 10 minutes from the hotel (I had a pretty good idea where I was thanks to my GPS), and insisted that we couldn't drive any further and he'd have to take me on foot. It was a little suspicious. He then asked me for 'driver tips' and I pretended not to understand. I was little annoyed because I couldn't get any further without giving the guy some cash. I said 50 rupees, but he insisted on 100, and since I didn't have change and wasn't sure where the hotel was exactly, I relented.

So off we went down the main Bazaar Road in Paharganj where he deposited me at then Rak International Hotel, where I proceeded to check in, after complaining about the drive in (especially the having to push the stupid car). I had previously mentioned in my email to them that I wanted a regular room for 450 Rs/night, but was willing to look at the deluxe (750 Rs/night). (I had sent a few emails, but only got a reply after mentioning that I was willing to look at the deluxe.) Surprise surprise, they had me down for a deluxe, and no regular rooms were available.

I then mentioned the ride again and told the guy in English, with a few smatterings of Hindi, that he needed to lower the price. I wasn't paying 600 Rs, especially after the car broke down and I had to push it twice. He said he'd talk to the driver and we'd settle it later. (I then heard him on the phone yelling at someone about a gaDii 'car' that was kharab 'bad'.

When I next came down, the guy at reception said there was no way he could lower the price. After all, my driver had got me to the hotel. Of course, from my point of view, I'd paid the exorbitant 600 Rs (instead of 250 or 300 Rs) for a comfortable and reliable service - not something that required me to get out of a car and push. I also mentioned the fact that I had to pay the driver a 100 Rs tip, which the reception guy said I shouldn't have paid. Well duh, but how else was I going to reach the hotel?

In the end, we bargained it down to 500 Rs. I've got a deluxe room which looks like a cheap honeymoon suite (the bed is circular! - will need to post a picture at some point). I've also got an airport drop-off tomorrow for a more reasonable 250 Rs, but goodness knows if that car won't break down too.

Yup, welcome back to India.

Reserving an Indian Railways Ticket

For the past few days I've been trying to reserve an Indian Railways ticket for my train ride from Guwahati in Assam to Dimapur in Nagaland. I've tried using two credit / debit cards which have both worked when booking flights and buying stuff off the net.

So far, I have received a few copies of the following two error messages:

We deeply regret that this reservation (reference no.XXXXXXXXXX) requested by you did not materialize as the Communication Problem. Kindly retry the booking if you have not been able to complete your booking yet. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. If the amount was Debited from your Account,We shall be making the refund back to your account shortly and it will start reflecting in your bank statement in 3 to 4 working days.

Yes, the Communication Problem.

And in typical Indian bureaucratic fashion, the message essentially blames the client for the fault, before suggesting that the transaction might have actually taken place:

We regret that the booking of your ticket could not be processed at this time as the transaction with ref. No. XXXXXXXXXX was not authorised by your bankers. The failure may also be due to some sort of inadequacies in your card / bank account.
You may kindly try using another valid card / account.
However, before proceeding further, we suggest that you kindly check from your 'Booked tickets' history if transaction has already been booked by you.

Sigh.