The Maharaja

Kovi and I are staying at the Raj Palace in Jaipur. It was recommended by my friend Laura who stayed here a couple of years ago. I’d grown tired of living like a real Indian and wanted to spend a few days in a place where I knew I wouldn’t be poisoned.

Jaipur is in the state of Rajasthan, a dry, dusty, desert area in the west of India. It is known for it’s forts and the Pink Palace. The Pink Palace has been used in around 400 movies, so you might recognize it. Actually everywhere I go in Jaipur I feel like I’m in an Indiana Jones movie.

http://www.google.co.in/images?hl=en&q=pink+palace+jaipur&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=nbEYTI_2DoKVrAeUn8DjAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=5&ved=0CCUQsAQwBA

About 150 years ago, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, visited Jaipur and the Maharaja told everyone on the main drag to paint their houses pink with white trim. It works around here, what with all the desert, and so now it is a law.

The Raj Palace was the palace of a Maharaja years ago and has been converted into a Heritage Hotel. Heritage Hotels are a special breed of hotel that were once something else, like a palace, and are high end places.

The palace is about the size of a football field, has 40 suites, seven courtyards, tons of hallways, and a staff of 105. In their top suite the furniture is silver and the trimming 24 karat gold leaf. They have a dessert here for $500 that includes a checkup by a doctor and gold leaf sprinkled on top. The place is exotic and beautiful. It has won an award for the best Heritage Hotel in the WORLD for the last three years running. Check out the pictures, especially number nine of the expensive suite.

http://www.rajpalace.com/photo-gallery.html

So why am I giving such a big send up of the Raj Palace? Because we are the only people here. We have it all to ourselves. Why? Because it is off season and approximately one hundred and fourteen thousand fucking degrees outside. During the tourist season this place gets packed with Russian oligarchs and Dubai sheiks, but today it is ruled by two middle class ne’er-do-wells who just want a bed. They now call me the Maharaja of the Raj Palace, because I’m paying, so I have 105 retainers at by beck and call.

The staff has nothing else to do except hover around us, wanting to make our every moment special. They place all new flowers around the hotel every day, just for us. They put out the croquet set as well, just in case we decide we feel like we have to have a game. They bow constantly as we pass. Sometimes I have to count each of my return bows to make sure I got everybody. My back is killing me.

At dinner last night we had to shoo them away. Now instead of beggars looking at us trying to figure out what we could give them, the staff examines our every move, trying to figure out what they could give us. I am highly aware that in the midst of all this poverty and hunger (including my own sometimes) they need to keep every item on this luxurious menu fresh and on hand in case we order it. This is highly uncomfortable for a middle class guy who normally eats leftovers alone watching reruns of ‘Friends’.

We sat alone in a large dining hall decked with the largest crystal chandelier in India. There were sixteen of them made, fifteen of them ended up with the Sultan of Brunei (of course he added emeralds and rubies to his) and the last one is here. Silver and gold leaf decks everything. A teenaged boy sat outside playing a local instrument serenading us. It would have been quite romantic if I’d been with Inga and her heavenly lotions instead of Kovi.

When it came time for dessert Kovi ordered ice cream with mint sauce and chocolate sauce mixed together. The gold leaf dessert was not good enough for him. They did not have mint sauce, only pure mint. He sat and lectured them on how they should get the mint sauce and then they’d have a really good dessert. They listened enthusiastically, after all this was a close friend of the Maharaja talking, and said they would consider it, they are always willing to change for the better. I sincerely hope they don’t take our petty bourgeois ideas seriously.

I found out the top suite goes for $13,000 for two days. If I’d known it was that cheap I would have booked it. I’m also told that next year they are creating another suite that will go for $70,000 for two days. That’s only $35,000 per night. Cheap, if you’re a Russian Oligarch.

The honeymoon’s over, I’ve just returned from a stroll around my palace grounds and found a pigeon nest above an entranceway, had the groundskeeper flogged. It’s tough love, but I will not tolerate laxity if we are to maintain our status as the best Heritage Hotel in the world. We’re not dropping the ball on my watch, we can’t let up for a minute. A guy could get used to being Maharaja.

So I can hear you all wondering, ‘How much did you pay for a Maharaja’s Palace, the best Heritage Hotel on Earth?’ Well on Expedia it was $215 a night, plus tax. So if you ever want an entire Maharaja’s Palace to yourself I recommend you wait until the off season and book a room at the Raj Palace in Jaipur. You have my guarantee as a Maharaja it will be worth it.

Driving in India

Obstacle Course of Dogs. The one in the front has a broken leg already. They never learn.


Overloaded is just right.


Speaks for itself.



Notice the guy doesn't move as the car passes. Easier to lose a foot that way.


My Gluteus Maximus is strong as steel now. No, I haven’t been exercising, or climbing the Himalayas, it comes from clenching and unclenching my butt cheeks as a car in the opposite lane passes or we pass as well. To top it off, no matter how much space and time you have, it is a law that you can only miss the other car by half a millimeter. The long drives produce about forty heart stopping, sphincter locking, incidents an hour.

Oddly enough all this tension sometimes knocks me unconscious. The constant adrenaline charge overtaxes my system and I pass out after an hour or so. That’s really quite amazing when you think about it, sleeping through the danger. But the human body can only take so much.

I’ve been in India now for 20 days and been in two car accidents. You realize of course that if I stay here a year that’s 36 accidents a year. The first occurred when we were driving from Agra to Delhi. We went screaming through an intersection, there were no lights, stop signs, roundabouts, or anything, and a motorcycle wasn’t paying attention. Hell, nobody pays attention. We came through so fast he hit our rear wheel and broke our hubcap. Of course we only saw that later when we stopped for gas.

We were already 30 meters on before we had a chance to look around and see if the motorcyclist was okay. I’d seen him coming and crouched for impact, the crunch was right next to me. I couldn’t tell who was who in the mangle left behind, but everyone assured me there was no problem, he was okay.

‘No problem’, that’s what everybody here tells me. It basically means, ‘If I have to actually look at the situation objectively then I might come to a conclusion that does not profit me. Therefore I merely assure you there is no problem, do not engage you, and hope you passively accept that I’m telling the truth. This benefits you because if I am wrong you can blame me rather than yourself for being so stupid to believe me.’

In this case I was a little relieved we didn’t stop. If we had returned and they’d seen a Westerner, everybody within a hundred feet would have fallen to the ground and claimed we’d hit them and I’d spend the rest of my life handing out Rupees.

There’s only one thing that prevents the entire country from being wiped out in traffic accidents and that is the underpowered vehicles do not allow for high speeds. It takes about 3 hours to go 60 miles so you can see we don’t get up to speed that often. That said, four people were killed in front of the office last week. Four out of 1.2 billion, nobody cares.

Do the police say, “We’re sick and tired of picking up dead bodies?” Do the relatives say, “We want something done, we don’t want this happening to somebody else?” Nope, there’s plenty more people where they came from.

People here regard driving as a joy ride instead of the dangerous occupation it is. Everybody is casually oblivious that anybody else shares the road with them. No matter how many lanes a road may have all of them are used by a driver. If somebody else really wants to pass they will honk.

Honking in the U.S. means, ‘Get out of the way you stupid moron or I’ll mow you down!’, in India it means, ‘I’m coming up on your right, please don’t kill me.’ India still hasn’t thrown off British Colonialism, they still drive on the wrong side of the road, so when I say right side I mean passing lane to Americans.

And you don’t dare pass on the left side. We came upon a truck in the passing lane of a four lane road. The slow lane was empty. Rather than pass in the slow lane Gopi moved into oncoming traffic and passed that way, honking his horn the whole time to warn everybody.

“What are you doing! Why don’t you use the slow lane, it’s empty!” I screamed.

“In India it’s better to not do something people don’t expect!” he yelled back.

People expect you to do crazy things here.

Personally I think everyone smokes a joint before they get on the road. We’ll be on a four lane road (two in either direction) and the person in front of you cannot figure out for the life of them why they built such a wide road and feel it is their duty to weave all over it in order to use it all. You come up behind them and blow your horn to ask them to stop riding the white line in the center.

And it’s not like lanes are not marked, they are, with invisible paint. It is visible only to Westerners. I don’t know why they bother. But this is quite useful when there is traffic as you can create as many lanes as necessary to get by.

We were on a two lane road once and hit a traffic snarl of about a hundred vehicles at a one lane bridge. Yes, a one lane bridge, quite a debacle. On our side there were now four lanes, and four coming from the opposite direction, all trying to get in front of the other guy. To top it off, everyone is honking because they were frustrated they could not get through. Our driver somehow made a fifth lane, that’s right, a fifth lane on a two lane road in a town, and we zipped in front of everyone and across the bridge. I was amazed.

Wealthier people employ driver’s here, especially for their families. Driving is a skill that takes years to hone. Gopi’s friend gave him one of his drivers.. It turned out the guy was pretty good. But then he just stopped showing up, which is why the friend dumped him on Gopi to begin with, he was unreliable.

Then, when the driver needs money he just calls up and begs for his job back. Actually he doesn’t beg, he accuses Gopi of not calling for him. There’s never a credible explanation why he didn’t show up. But again, everyone is at the mercy of the lower classes. If they don’t show up then we don’t go anywhere.

Last night Gopi was backing out of a parking space, now don’t think there are parking space lines or anything, even if there are, they are ignored, and at the same time a Sikh guy was backing out of his space. So we’re all backing out at odd angles.

Neither of them were paying attention. I was the one who noticed the other guy and told Gopi. He honked his horn, but the other guy is used to hearing horns, it can’t be for him, I watch him as he continues to look forward, not behind him, or in his mirror, and continues backing out.

The truly amazing part of this was I observed the entire event from start to finish. I saw the guy get in his car, I knew we were backing out, I saw him put his car in reverse, but it never occurred to me that both drivers were oblivious to their surroundings. In the U.S. you presume somebody is paying a modicum of attention, at least the guy with the most expensive car. It wouldn’t have taken much to have avoided it. But these guys were lost in their own reefer haze.

He hit us in the left rear bumper and side. Then he pulled forward, we pulled forward, and discussed the issue. He denied it was him that hit Gopi. Brother Sikh, I’m so disappointed, I thought you guys were better than that. You are lying right through your teeth. It couldn’t be more obvious. I watched you. Oh, I forgot, everybody smokes a joint before getting in a car, you were probably spaced out and didn’t even notice. You couldn’t understand why your car wouldn’t go any further. I guess I should be surprised you didn’t give it more gas, “Gee, what am I stuck on?”

(Postscript: After returning to America I saw an Indian girl in a Driver’s Training car in my neighborhood and her instructor was and old Sikh guy. My heart skipped a beat.)

Gopi didn’t put up a fuss as there was no point, the guy would call three of his friends, Gopi would call three of his friends, tons of time and effort would be wasted over the next two years, all to no avail. I had half a mind to kick a huge dent in the guy’s door and say, “No, it wasn’t me”.

This is where the Second Amendment comes in handy. Knowing the other guy may be packing heat on the road definitely keeps you on your toes in the U.S. Road rage has its advantages. Just cutting someone off means you’re possibly taking your life in your hands, so you think twice. Nobody would think about doing these stupid things in America, if the accident didn’t kill you, the other driver would.

Of course the best one is when entire families will load up on a motorcycle, father driving, kid between, mother on back with baby on her lap and one kid clinging to the handle bars. The youngest I’ve seen is three years old, sitting in front of his dad, oblivious that death is only a small pothole away. Gopi says that he used to think that was normal, now he would never ride with his child like that.

Some of the girls drape one arm over their boyfriend’s shoulder in a manner that assures if she goes down she brings him down with her. There’s nothing like true love.

As far as motorcycle helmet laws go, freedom of religion kicks in. Sikh men wear turbans. Technically there’s nothing I’ve heard of, and I asked, that they HAVE to wear a turban, it’s just that with all that hair it looks better and is a cultural thing. Similar to the veil for Muslim women, Muhammad’s wife didn’t wear a veil, it became a cultural symbol later.

So with a turban they cannot wear a helmet. This got the Sikh men exempted through freedom of religion. But somehow the Sikh women said it was part of their religion too, so they got exempted. Except you cannot tell a Sikh woman from a Hindu woman from her appearance, they don’t wear turbans. So basically no women get stopped for not wearing a helmet, so none do. The only ones that have to wear a helmet are Hindu men. Darwinism is alive and well on the Indian roads.

In America I always presume everybody out on the road is trying to kill me, this keeps me on my guard. But while I presume somebody may not be paying attention, I also presume they don’t want to die. This is the advantage of being raised Christian, we think we only get one life so we’d better be careful with it.

But in India, with all those people believing in reincarnation it is obvious people really aren’t too concerned about this life. This is made crystal clear when I see motorcycles going the wrong way in a roundabout. When you know you’re coming back again, why put forth a lot of effort into safe driving? Besides, in the next life you might upgrade to a car instead of a motorcycle.

In Chandighar they decided to tell people how long it would be until the light turned green. There is a digital second clock that counts down the seconds to green. Of course this just means ‘GENTLEMEN START YOUR ENGINES!’. Everybody then takes off with about six seconds to go. After all, it will be green in six seconds, why waste time?

There’s only one traffic law, ‘Might makes Right’. Bikes give way to motorcycles to autorickshaws (three wheeled vehicles) to cars to trucks. The key is to only pull out in front of someone weaker than you.

One time in Delhi our driver decides to whip a U-turn in the middle of a busy downtown street.

“Go up to the next roundabout! It’s only 30 meters away!” I yell. After all, roundabouts are built-in U-turns right? I try not to yell at the driver, but even one percent of the near misses is a lot of yelling. One time I grabbed the wheel and that didn’t go down well, but this time I’m in the back seat.

“It’s not dangerous”, says Kovi, and the driver pulls the U-turn risking life and limb in order to avoid a safer method which would take another forty seconds.

“Krishna save me”, I mumble.

Kovi’s right though, driving in India is not dangerous, it’s only dangerous if somebody kills you.

Forget those Indy race car games, someone should come up with a 3-D Indian driving video game. I guarantee a great adrenaline rush!

Doing Business in India

We went to Ludhiana for a small conference at a hotel. About 400 people were expected to show up. Gopi had done a deal with the sponsor to pay for some of it in return for booth space.

Once there we were told that another ‘Digger Guy’ had asked for space too, been told there was none, so he’d booked a room downstairs for his stuff and aimed to leach off of our advertising and poach our potential customers.

I noticed after a while that lots of people were coming in to the hotel, but not a lot made it upstairs to us. I sat in the lobby and saw that the Digger Guy had taken one of his employees and strategically placed him to hand out flyers and direct them to his room.

I was furious, only half those exiting his room realized there was something going on upstairs despite the signs, half were leaving. I ran upstairs and grabbed some brochures and came back down and stood in front of Digger Guy’s guy, handed out brochures, and directed them upstairs. I told Gopi and his sponsor to send people downstairs, this was war.

If Digger Guy wants to steal customers I’ll show him that American’s can’t be pushed around. I planned on an arms race, we’ll post two people to his one. It’s a cold war, American’s are good at arms races.

But the people they sent downstairs were so passive they just stood off to the side hoping nobody would notice them instead of attracting attention and handing out brochures and directing people upstairs.

Gandhi is portrayed as some sort of genius saint in the West for his successful policy of passive resistance to British rule. But it’s obvious to me now he was just working with what he had. Indians excel in passive aggressive. They don’t react to anything hardly and just push their way around without any respect for anybody else. The British just got fed up with all the rude people and left.

At the airline counter in Delhi there was your standard line that weaves around and then you take the next available clerk. I was next in line and some Indian lady just steps right up behind a guy already talking to a clerk.

I stare right at her trying to give her dagger eyes, but she looks at me without a care in the world. She’s pressed right up to the guy to ensure she gets next service at the counter. When that guy leaves she steps up, and of course the service person doesn’t even care, and I call out to her, “Excuse me, I’m next”. She pretends she had no idea there was a line and pretends to apologize. But her face said it all, ‘Fuck you’.

With people posted downstairs I go back up and I’m checking out the conference. One of the hotel staff sidles up to me and starts asking me questions. He wants something. In my entire time in India, only one person, a little girl in Rishikesh came up to me and said, “Hallooo” and shook my hand without wanting something, everybody else wants something from me in this country, usually money, they just come up with their hands out and don’t go away, ever, nobody just wants to talk to me to be nice. Finally he gets to the point.

“It is my dream to go to America. Take me to America and I will help you in your life.”

Sorry buddy, the only person who can help me in my life is a six foot Icelandic blonde named Inga and her heavenly lotions.

I go back downstairs and realize our folks are gone or doing nothing. I take up my place and grab Kovi as well. I step in front of the little guy Digger Guy has and direct people upstairs. Digger Guy comes out and sees what I’m doing, I ignore him as I’m winning. I can play passive aggressive too, you don’t exist buddy.

He goes back and gets a second person, but I’m larger than your average Indian and I’m aggressive-aggressive, blocking the traffic flow, shoving brochures into people’s hands, and directing them upstairs.

I was trying to figure out why Gopi’s employee we sent downstairs wasn’t there. He pays her big money for India because she has an M.B.A. He had a hard time finding good people and was forced to pay up. But in India an M.B.A. is a dime a dozen now. They churn them out in M.B.A. mills because Americans are stupid enough to believe that an M.B.A. is a big deal. You should see the signs for M.B.A. schools, there’s more of them than Pepsi signs.

Gopi says that there were two Universities within 100 Kilometers twenty years ago, now there are fifty. Anybody can open a University, they do not take accreditation seriously here. And American’s don’t know if an Indian school is good or not, all they see on the resume is M.B.A. Oh, and don’t forget that I know some very smart Indians who have admitted they bribed their instructors for good grades.

I’ve always joked with my Indian friends that I’m going to write a book about Indians in America as they are the first ethnic group to come in at the top. They’re doctors, software engineers, professionals, etc. Everybody else, my ancestors included, started at the bottom and worked their way up. Their children have nowhere to go but down.

They laugh at first and then realize it’s a truism and get scared, “No! That’s not going to happen”. But look at your kids, they’re the spoiled Nintendo generation.

Indians had two things going for them in the modern world economy, first the British colonialism made English the default common language. India has dozens of recognized languages but since English was spoken everywhere it became the default. And second they had the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). IIT had an incorruptible test which weeded out all but the best and the brightest among one billion Indians. And when you start with a billion people and whittle them down to a few thousand, you’ve got a lot of smart Indians.

The first batches of these IIT grads started showing up in the 1980’s. The U.S. only allowed 16,000 H1-B (work) visas a year. This was doubled and then doubled again, and then doubled a third time when employers saw the quality they were getting.

H1-B visas are supposed to fill skilled positions that American companies can’t find skilled people for already in the U.S. They have to be able to prove this too.

What few people know is what a slavery racket it has become. An Indian guy named Balaji would open up a company, get one hundred H1-B’s allocated and import people. When asked by Immigration why they were needed he would refer them to his friend Alok who said he needed 100 Java programmers. At the same time, Alok was doing the same thing, he would refer Immigration to his friend Balaji and they’d get to import 200 people between them.

The imported Indians wanted to stay in America and applied for permanent residency. It was almost impossible to switch jobs once here without starting over on your green card application. It’s still difficult to do. Thus Balaji and Alok would contract out these employees at high rates, pay them nothing, and get rich. Quite a racket, H1-B slavery.

By the late 90’s there was a veritable flood coming in as the H1-B’s reached over 128,000 and quality was dropping fast.

One day my friend Harish said, “I’ve never met a stupid Indian in America”.

“I have”, I responded. I’d noticed that no longer were the top people coming in, everybody was bringing in his cousin’s brother-in-law as a high tech candidate because he could spell ‘software’. But by then American managers had been hornswoggled into believing all Indians were brilliant.

I sat in a meeting one time with an Indian project leader who could barely speak English, mumbled to make it worse, and had no idea what he was talking about. When I pointed this out to his bosses, they were uncomfortable with my accusations; after all, he was Indian, he must be brilliant. The fact they couldn’t understand him proved it.

A few days later Harish came in to my office, “I see what you mean”.

So Gopi’s M.B.A. wasn’t downstairs. Why? Because she felt uncomfortable doing such a menial task, after all she was an M.B.A. Gopi pointed out to her that I was down there and it was not beneath me, but like Gandhi, she could not be moved.

Gopi was super frustrated with her and his other M.B.A. as they couldn’t produce a thing. They expected to come to work late, do nothing except say ‘Yes, Boss’, and get paid; after all, that’s why they got an MBA, right? And these were the best candidates out of 25 he interviewed!

Digger Guy knows he’s licked, he sees I’m being successful and kind of declares a truce. His guys direct people in both directions as do we. I’m still pissed, but now he’s impressed with me and asks me to sit down with him.

“What software can you give me?” he asks. He doesn’t even want Gopi’s software, he wants something even more new and exotic and thinks I’m hiding it.

Oh good grief, everybody wants something from me here, and they don’t want to pay for it, and they want to make sure you don’t sell it to anybody else. Gopi has people trying to bargain him down on price for everything.

“Twenty dollars a month is too much”, they say.

“How much do you think it is worth”, he responds.

“Eighteen dollars”

Yes, that two dollars a month will break them. They don’t understand that he can’t keep track of a different negotiated payment plan for each customer. The price is the price. That goes against Indian tradition.

Most of them are still trying to game ways of stealing his software. It’s tradition in India, everybody’s got a friend who can hack any software available. Or they say this friend can create the same thing for $70, even though it has cost Gopi a thousand times that already. And the best one is when they get their software installed for a pittance and insist that he not sell this to anybody else. Yes, there’s a good business plan.

To make it worse, good customer service, calling the customer and being prompt and courteous is considered bad form. They think ‘he needs me more than I need him’ and don’t return his calls. Or he makes an appointment and they just don’t show up.

So poor Gopi’s taken to not answering anybody’s call until the third time they call him. The fact that he’s not returning their calls means he’s an important person. He puts people off and acts like he doesn’t care. Then they clamor for him.

When the day breaks off, Digger Guy comes up to the sponsor of the event and thanks him profusely in front of us for ‘allowing’ him to be part of the event. “I owe you so much”, “I thank you very much”. What a cad.

“Thank you for allowing me to fuck you. I really enjoyed fucking you. If given an opportunity again I will fuck you even harder”.

And that, my friends, is how you do business in India.