Comesum Restaurant’s business model

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-17

At the railway station in Agra we ate at Comesum, which is a restaurant chain at railway stations. They offer Western-style fast-food service with both Indian and Western food. Also they advertise that anyone on a long train journey can call their central phone line and order food delivered to them on the train when they arrive at the next station with a restaurant.

The restaurants look a lot like a Western-style fast food restaurant, which a visible service counter with a kitchen area behind that. There is seating and the advertising and decor match what it is common for junk food places in America, but this is uncommon in India. The food here is well-presented and their meals are traditional and there are the same healthy dining options here as at many Indian restaurants, but this place is organized more like a chain dining experience ought to be.

I ordered an espresso and the guy at the counter told me that the machine was being cleaned but that I should return in 30 minutes. Nandan ordered a dosa and the guy said that dosa is not served for lunch and that he should return after 4 o’clock. This is secret Indian code for “These things are never available,” and I can understand why so many Western people get frustrated when someone tells them in English to return at a later time when what they honestly are saying in a way that is forthright to them that the product or service is undeliverable, perpetually.

While we were here I wanted to visit the restaurant’s restroom, as I expected it to be less busy than the railway restroom. There was an unoccupied women’s restroom which from my doorway view seemed to be tidy and in order. In the male restroom there was a mother with two shirt-wearing toddlers who were bathing in the fountain of the bidet within the toilet. Typically Indian toilets are squat style with a tap nearby which can fill a cup to be used for cleaning. This much fancier Western style toilet had a continuously running fountain which aimed to clean anyone seated.

I waited for them to finish and then the mother left with the children behind her. The kids were giggling with play and covering themselves in shyness about their lack of pants.

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salesmen in Agra, marble as an example

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-17

Nandan and I took a taxi in Agra and the driver wanted me to visit some shop. I asked Nandan what he thought and he said let’s check customer service in a tourist capitol. In the front of this shop there were marble workers toiling on the floor with all kinds of complicated equipment. I was trying to follow what each one was doing, but found that I could not differentiate between meaningful labor and just playing with rocks to give the appearance of looking busy. I doubt that any serious craftsman could do precision work with a string of tourists continually approaching an open workspace to gawk and maybe interfere, and certainly fake labor would be cheaper than real labor, so I cannot say what I was seeing. The salesman assured me that all of the “craftsmen” in front of me were descended from centuries of family lines who do semi-precious stone inlay on marble.

I went inside with this guy to an overfull gallery of marble stuff. Store inventory was in many cases not visible because it was behind piles of marble plates. Most space consuming and easy to see were large marble tables in the room. The designs almost all had the same pattern theme, which I might describe as an multicolor floral motif with some simple geometric shapes. To me the designs were all unattractive and besides that I do not think it suits the tastes of many Western people to purchase furniture displaying the entire rainbow of colors. I asked the salesman if the designs were copied from historical sources and he told me that they were as old as India, but when I asked him if he had any pictures or information about the monuments or art sources from which they were taken he did not understand why I should care. I always ask this to people selling ancient designs here because I have an idea that most or all of the designs are entirely modern, despite the fact that the monuments here all have beautiful traditional carved patterns. The salesman pulled out some smaller pieces and told me that one could be used as a cutting board, but I personally do not like the idea of dulling my sharp knives on stone. Another one he told me could be a cheese plate, and I suppose it could have been that but typically I would expect a cheese plate to have a cover, and this one neither had a cover nor a groove into which a cover might fit. We were sitting at one of the tables and he flipped some switches to turn off the lights around us. Then he turned on the lights in the enormous dining table at which we were sitting. The white stone was translucent and lights blinking underneath made it flash red, green, yellow, and blue. I suppose a person could train himself to salivate when this happens. There is a certain fabulous clientele who might be interested in this, have the money to buy it, and be able to make it look good in a room, but at this point I had seen enough.

After I left I explained the concept of white trash to Nandan, and he asked me if this subculture also liked plastic flowers. Obviously he understood.

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eating out with Nandan

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-16

Chandan, Nandan’s tour guide brother, recommended that Nandan and I go to a certain restaurant to eat. The food was great. Nandan was supposed to tell the staff that he worked with Chandan. He told them this and they gave something like a 20% discount on the bill.

Later that night Nandan called Chandan to get advice about some travel issue. Chandan asked about the restaurant and Nandan told him what he paid. By now it was past midnight and we were at our hotel. Chandan called the restaurant and a representative called Nandan asking which hotel we were at. A courier came within 20 minutes and refunded all the money we paid, including the tip we left. Nandan said he felt dirty for being in the industry and I have to say that it was strange to have the owner send a person to apologize while giving a refund for excellent food and service.

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Kalakriti – Indian stage show in Agra

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-16

Nandan and I went to a stage show in Agra.  It was Kalakriti.

The show gives a biography of Shah Jahan and the building of the Taj Mahal.  It is a melodramatic performance of the historical facts with no character development.  The scenes change with simple props and there are lip synced songs with dance performances interspersed with the story.

It is billed as the first stage show of this sort in India so I am happy that this art is developing and I hope that everyone involved finds a lot of success and that this show ignites the industry.  But I have to say that aside from the curiosity of what it is the script, presentation, and performance all are sub-par compared to what is expected in America.  The dialogue is unnaturally plain and no character gets personality.  The costumes are nice but it bothered me a little that backup dancers who performed together almost but did not quite dress in the same way, and that some royal advisers who were differentiated by name did dress in the same way.  The entirety of the music was recorded and all songs and spoken dialogue were lip-synced, and many of the scenes of the play were shown on a video screen at the back of the stage.  Tickets were USD $20-55 and there were about 100 people in attendance on the night I went, and the theatre had been showing only this play for at least a few years so I think the actors could have delivered a live performance.  I suppose part of the issue was making pre-recorded translation available via headset in more than 15 languages and timing everything properly, but if I had directorial power I would try to have the actors time their scenes live and then queue translated audio at the beginning of each scene so that the worst thing that could happen is that one scene could become off-cue.  Live theatre loses a lot when it becomes less live.

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visit to Taj Mahal

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-16

On February 13 Nandan and I visited the Taj Mahal. The architecture and the building’s history are very interesting and many people have produced media about these things. I want to write about four problems I saw during that visit:

  • Monument entry
  • Boy beating
  • Queue control
  • Filthy grounds

I want to preface my stories by saying that for some reason, there happened to be a lot of people visiting the monument on the day I went. I have talked with other people who said that it is unusual for so many people to visit that there is a long queue to get inside.

Monument Entry

There was a very long line to get inside the monument grounds. Nandan and I watched the line for a few minutes then started walking to the end of it. It was moving slowly and after walking for about two minutes without coming to the end of the line we estimated that it would take us a minimum of thirty minutes to get inside. We had already bought tickets and we both knew that if we did not get inside, then when the monument closed for the day everyone in line would be turned away. We did not have time to visit another time. I felt pressured because it would not be easy for me to return to this city during this trip to India, or perhaps any other trip to India. I wanted to get in, but this also made me think about whether my ticket was refundable and I just knew that even though the ticket was only good on the day of purchase if anyone failed to gain entry after buying a ticket then I knew that the purchase price would not be returned.

Some boys had been bothering us saying that they worked with the police and that they could get us in. I had no idea what this meant, but it seemed like our only sure option for entry. My ticket cost Rs 750 and their price to get us to the front of the line was Rs 200. We agreed. The boy we hired went near the front of the line then jumped in line in front of an old lady who could not argue. After he was in line, he called us to get in line in front of him. Then he got out of line and asked for Rs 200. The police were watching. Nandan told me that he would give Rs 100 to the police. So that is how that works.

Boy beating

After getting inside the monument grounds we found that there was a line to get to the top tier of the monument. The layout is that there is a garden surrounding the building, then there is a lower base which one reaches by climbing a staircase from the garden. One may circle the monument by walking around the lower base, but to enter the building one must climb another staircase and enter from the top platform.

Nandan and I were on the lower base in queue to climb the staircase to reach the top level. There was a large queue on this day and we stood near a group of foreign people led by a guide. The guide cut the line near the front then moved all the foreign tourists and me and Nandan into a section which would soon be allowed the staircase.

The police were allowing groups of people to use the staircase. A certain number of people were already on the top level, and when they decided that enough people had descended by another staircase only for exiting, then they allowed a group of people to proceed up the entry stairs. So the line to get to the building was usually not moving.

It happened that everyone was in a cheerful mood because they were all about to get to visit India’s most famous monument. Someone started a crowd wave, wherein someone would cheer and maybe raise their hands, then the person in front of them would do the same, then the person in front of them would do the same, so that there was a wave of cheering and movement. I saw nothing wrong with this and I also participated in cheering. The people below in the garden could see this activity and the people above on the Taj level could look down on the crowd if they chose to do so, and in fact many people did to see the crowd and beautiful gardens below.

There were cops with machine guns everywhere. One of them did not like the cheering and started yelling that the crowd was being dangerous, and that there were women and children and old people present who could be trampled if the crowd began to run. I saw no danger of the crowd beginning to run. Several hundred people had participated in the cheering, but after yelling a bit the cop chose one boy who seemed the same as anyone else who cheered. This boy happened to be standing near me, and I think that if he had been doing anything unusual I would have noticed it because I had been looking in his general direction since before the cop was yelling.

It seemed to me that the policeman arbitrarily picked that boy from the crowd to set an example for everyone. This boy was about 23 years old, well-dressed in slacks and a button shirt, and seemed nice enough. The policeman started punching the boy until he fell on the ground and when he was on the ground he started kicking him. The boy tried to block the kicks with his hands but otherwise did not resist. After landing some good kicks the cop told the boy to stand up and the boy was cowering and making apologetic, trembling gestures. The cop then grabbed the boy roughly and took him away from the now silent crowd. The people around me were saying that after the police took all his money they would fine him more, beat him at the police station, then put him in jail.

India seems so proud of their Taj Mahal, and with tourism being such an important industry, how the Ministry of Tourism allow the police to openly exhibit such behavior in front of crowds of tourists? It is my opinion that the police officer probably thought that the crowd would be grateful for this or any other display of police power, as if foreign tourists traveled from far away to see what control the Indian government has over its people.

Queue control
In India people typically do not queue in line. If there is some point of interest which a large number of people must singly access, then rather than get in line and use the point on a first-come, first-served basis the dominant Indian instinct is that there is some amount of pushing and closeness to the point of interest which signifies being next in turn, and people who do not participate in the huddling face being cut in line.

Inside the Taj Mahal itself there are doorways which are intended for use by one person at a time, either entering or exiting. As typical in Indian crowds, the crowd favored the use of the door for simultaneous slow and stressful entry and exit by two people at once. At the same time that the door is being used at double capacity, the members of crowds on both sides of the door were jostling to become the next person to be able to use the door. Some old American ladies in a tour group were standing at the door totally confused about how to walk through it.

Lane Rasberry looking used next to an overused trashcan at Taj Majal

Their thought, as well as mine, was that if there was some kind of line control where a group of people was allowed to freely exit, then another group allowed to freely enter, then the line would move much more quickly plus everyone who visited the rooms could retain some dignity and not have to push for space like pigs fighting for position at a slop trough. One lady said, “The management here should learn about line control from Disneyland!”

Some place in India are to me a lot like a Disneyland where the visitors are allowed entry for the amusement of sociopathic cartoon characters.

Filthy grounds

Labor is cheap in India and a lot of people pay a lot of money to visit the Taj Mahal. Would it be so difficult to arrange for the restrooms to be cleaned once a month? Has this restroom been cleaned ever?

I am exaggerating. I am sure parts of the restroom have been cleaned at some point, but most of it was disgusting. It is representative of the management style at Indian monuments.

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Mathura and Vrindavan – playground of Krishna

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-15

From Noida we went to Mathura to visit the birthplace of Krishna. I was surprised when Nandan told me that the temple had been partially demolished by Muslims to replace it with a mosque. This means that all of the three favorite sites of the most popular gods – Shiv’s Kashi Vishwanath, Ram’s birthplace in Ayodhya, and Krishna’s birthplace in Mathura all have been destroyed and replaced with mosques. It is astounding how details like this escape anyone outside of the society. I have read more than most interested Western people about both the Ayodhya issue and the Vishwanath temple so I knew those issues well enough. The court ruling about Ayodhya just came a few months ago so I read about it all over again. But never had I read about the mosque on Krishna’s holy place.

There is indeed a mosque there and military with guns everywhere. During the visit one goes into a tunnel intended to give feelings of containment, and then the Krishna place of devotion is in a room to invoke the sense of being in jail just as Krishna and his parents were during his birth. I knew that Krishna escaped from the jail and was pursued by demons sent by his jailor, his evil uncle. But what I did not know from the stories was that the places of Krishna’s miracles were mostly within walking distance of his birthplace. I had assumed that Krishna and his family went into hiding after the jailbreak, but it seems that they stayed in the very neighborhood.

We went to nearby Vrindavan and stayed at the private guesthouse of the mahant of some temple. Nandan had warned me that this city was a place whose inhabitants make both of us unhappy – widows, ISKCON followers, monkeys, and pickpockets. It really is sad to see so many widows in one place, but there are some ashrams here which give them some support. Nandan’s research with Irene found them living unfairly difficult lives, and definitely they seemed to have a hard lot in life. Neither Nandan nor I care much for ISKCON people. We went to their major temple, called the “Angrej” (English) temple by locals who know quite well that ISKCON is not Indian, and it was full of out-of-towners both from Delhi and Western countries. I do not like hippies and it bothers me to have much to do with them. This was the only Hindu temple I have ever seen with a dance area but it was half-hearted non-aggressive hippie jigs. I suppose the temple has some curious features but I do not want to say anything nice about it because of my bias. Also they sell cow urine in bottles.

When we first were taking the rickshaw into the city we were near these two girls both around age 12 and I saw them pass a corner and look into an alley. One of the girls said in an exasperated tone, “Oh God, bundar! (monkey!)” There was a monkey in the middle of the alley and the girls would do well to choose another route. This was just a fleeting incident I heard during a pause while in a vehicle, but that was the first monkey I saw in town. Since the girls were in school uniforms then I assumed they must be local, and if local people voice being upset with monkeys then I assumed that monkeys must be more uncommon than Nandan had described them to be. I was wrong. Everyone in the entire city is a prisoner everywhere they go. Every window is covered in bars, every patio is enclosed within a grate, and no one carries anything small in their hands or wears glasses. Nandan had told me outlandish stories of monkeys flying into peoples faces to grab their glasses, which they would then proceed to wear while they escaped to a high place and howled at you. He told me this happened to him when he was last here. On that same rickshaw ride we were stopped from traffic and I saw a guy with glasses and it came to my mind that Nandan was exaggerating about locals not being able to wear glasses. No sooner had the thought entered my mind but from out of nowhere a monkey started charging toward the guy. The man instinctively snapped to remove his glasses and seemed freaked, then everyone nearby started laughing at him because all the prisoners here know the wardens’ rules. He was lucky only because he was in the middle of the road, in the middle of traffic, and because he had eyeglass removal reflexes. Later that night Nandan and I were at a restaurant which was also a caged fortress. It seemed so secure. During our meal there was a monkey screech in the food prep area, then a horrific set of crashes lasting longer than a set of crashes with a single initiation, then people screaming. Was this a rare occurrence or just part of life here? When we left the restaurant there I noticed a man walking down the street feeling his way around. We were walking the same way and we saw him take his glasses from his pocket, use them to look ahead, then remove and hide his glasses. People here have vision problems and their condition is caused by monkey oppression.

I had no pickpocket experience and saw nothing of the sort, but Nandan assured me that cutpurses were everywhere and out to get filthy rich and richly filthy hippies from ISKCON. He said they even bother the poor widows. Some of the widows were quite young, and I asked him if he meant that they threaten them sexually. Nandan told me that the pickpockets sometimes steal what little money the widows have, but only the monkeys rape the widows.

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to Noida (Delhi) for a wedding

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-14

Nandan and I went to Delhi to attend Chandan’s wife’s wedding. She seems to think of many things relating to Varanasi as having the negative attributes associated with a rural place. The wedding had guns fired into the air as part of the celebration process. I talked with a lot of people there but did not find anyone who spoke much English, but still the people who knew a little could communicate much better than I could in Hindi.

The wedding was fun but it lasted about 10 hours the first night and the reception the next day was about 6, so the event was a bit long for my tastes. It seemed to me that for a great many attendees the event is mostly waiting while someone somewhere else is doing some ritual only with rotating select groups of attendees, but all Indian weddings seem like this to me.

After the wedding we visited the IAVI and PATH offices in Delhi. At IAVI we meet with the director who said that she would hear a request from us about a meetup in Mumbai which Nandan and I are planning. At PATH a worker gave us all their promotional materials and the contact of their director, who she said would be able to answer some questions about their projects which she could not.

We also visited Akshardham, which is a modern temple promoting Indian patriotism through the teachings of Swami Narayan. There is a set of shows in which some automatons act out the life of Swami Narayan, then there is a movie about the foundation, then there is this boat ride through the cave of Indian history. In the boat ride about 50 important characters from Indian history are depicted and named and I realized that I did not know many of them, so I plan to make a list of them and learn about them all.

Adam Sargent, Lane Rasberry, Ali Taqi at Zabaan

We visited Ali Taqi’s Zabaan school. He had been my Hindi teacher in Seattle in 2008-9 but moved to Delhi to start a school, and I was pleased to see that he had been so successful. The school looked great and he was overbooked for students. It was cool to meet up in Delhi with two people who I knew from Seattle.

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first time back to Benares

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-03

In Benares I met with Attila and Dora who have founded Chance India and Allen who is doing his PhD work on the means by which tabla are produced in Benares. They all seem like good people to me. I hope that I get to work with all of them. It is nice to be with Nandan’s family again.

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visit to Lucknow

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-02

Nandan and I left our Mumbai friends and flew to Lucknow. We visited Imam Bara and the residency and the haunted house as before but all this was just a backdrop for planning our next moves. At Imam Bara we paid for a tour and were charged triple the price we were supposed to pay, plus the tour guides were rude and had no information about the sites – they simply made up information. There was a strange tension at the site. The Indian Archaeological Society manages the palace complex but the ticketing and tour presentation is contracted out to some NGO. There are some IAS managers on the site who do not like this NGO as well they should not because of their incompetence. At the entrance to the complex some IAS officers asked me if I would return after the tour to give comments. After the tour they asked me to write a complaint to Lucknow’s district magistrate and make a notation for my letter to be copied to some other entities. I wrote a two page complaint and they seemed grateful for this. Imam Bara is a treasure and I hope that service there improves.

We went to the Residency and saw corruption again. The situation is that IAS prints tickets at a counter and after purchase these tickets are to be carried to the gate where a collector tears the ticket and keeps a stub. At the counter the collector sold me a ticket which had already been torn, which meant that he was keeping my admission fee and not reporting that I bought a ticket. Nandan was angry about this and we talked about taking some action, but then he said that he should not do anything because if he makes any trouble then it could happen that his tourist guide license would not be renewed.

We went to Mayawati’s Ambedkar park. All over Lucknow there are pictures of Mayawati and huge billboards listing her accomplishments. Her election is next year. At the Ambedkar park she has built statues of herself standing with Ambedkar. I asked Nandan if it was considered presumptuous to build a statue of oneself and inaugurate it oneself and he said of course it is. I asked him if he thought Mayawati knew this and he said that probably she does not. I asked him if he thought that Mayawati thought she was a good person and he said that he expected that she did. The park was entirely covered in marble and shoddy workmanship. She had purchased so much marble that none was available for other building projects and the state high court had to put a quota on this park’s marble consumption. To me the park seemed to have a bad design. It is a series of paths which intertwine. There is neither privacy nor shade nor comfortable places to sit; it seems that visitors are just supposed to walk for miles down twisting paths built in open areas, with nothing to see in particular. There are statues of elephants (her political party symbol) everywhere but they are all the same and are not artistically designed. There is also a colonnade of statues of famous Dalit leaders but these are lined against a road for cars so I think they can only be identified by people who are driving into the park. Much of the grouting on the stonework is half done and much of the concrete seems cheap also. Not everything was finished so I did not see the interior of the main building but something which struck me as especially unusual was that in this park complex there was no fairground or stage or any place designed for groups of people to meet together. There are no restrooms or places for people to get water or food or rest in the shade. There are a few trees but not many. There are electric lights everywhere but I got the impression that these were added to demonstrate the ability to display lights at night and not because the general public was welcome to visit the park at night. While we were there Nandan translated for me when he overheard some visitor saying, “This park looks like something from another country!” He was smiling because he knew my thought – there is no place on earth where something like this could be built except for India.

I met this boy on the street one morning when I was out for a walk. I generally wake up before Nandan does. He was shy and told me not to tell anyone his name, but he told me that he was under some stress for being gay. He is about 28 and lives with his family as most people do for their whole lives, but him explaining his family stress made me realize how hard it can be to make a lifestyle choice against societal and familial disapproval. I took him back to the hotel and introduced him to Nandan and I hope I can stay in touch with him.

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visit to Pune

By bluerasberry on 2011-02-01

Mantu told me that we were going to Lonovala, which is some kind of retreat town near Mumbai but of higher altitude. We took a train there and at some point in the train ride we were able to look outside the window and see the city below us. In Lonovala we visited cliffsides, some of which seemed to have friendly downward grades but there were no trails and there was no established hiking or camping culture that I could see. It seemed a shame to me because the air was fresh, there were dams around holding water that was clear and which seemed to be clean enough. None of our crew knew how to swim except me and I did not want to swim alone, so there was no swimming this time.

I was seeing signs near highway onramps which said Pune and Mumbai but I had no idea how far Pune was from Mumbai. Pune was in fact close to us and Mantu declared that we must visit Pune. The only thing I knew about Pune was that Osho’s ashram was there. We did visit the entrance to that ashram but were not allowed in because they require new visitors to come at a certain time to take an HIV test before being allowed to mingle with the other people doing meditation. What really impressed me was the infotech park, which was huge and alien. All of the major software companies have office complexes here and the architecture is modern and experimental. I know the Microsoft campus in Seattle and this place dwarfs that one. One of our crew was an application developer and he was telling me that most of the workers here do application only and not software development. I wonder when it will come to pass that one of these megacorporations decides to compete with Western interests and use their talented staff to make software instead of just complimentary programs for Western software. I think that when the work is able to be well-managed America will have insurmountable competition.

After visiting the infopark we went to Onkar’s family’s house. Mantu does film production work with this family. Onkar’s father produced the “gut” of a musk deer, and althought I had never seen one after I smelled it on his direction I immediately guessed what it was that I was holding. I asked him how he got it and he said that he got it 15 years ago and had been keeping it in his wardrobe to scent his clothes. I hope I never forget the smell; I wanted to keep breathing it. It was sweet and pleasant and not describable in any words which I know. He asked me what I thought such an object would cost today and I guessed USD 15,000. He told me that when he bought it he paid USD 1000. He rubbed it on my hand before I left and I smelled my hand throughout the car ride home. He also gave me some oily blood-red saffron and some “perspiration from rocks,” which is supposed to be some kind of ayurvedic aphrodesiac. Everyone present knew about this rock sweat but I had never heard of it.

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purpose of this blog

This is Lane Rasberry's personal blog. None of the information on this blog is private, but it is personal and I have not written it with the intent to make it of public general interest. Anyone visiting this site has my permission to use anything they find here for friendly, share-alike purposes.