We took about a 7-hour drive from Tamil Nadu to Kerala, another state in Southern India, with our lovely and capable driver, Arumugam. It was amazing to see the countryside this way and to truly experience the agrarian culture of bucolic Southern India. Of course there also cities that dot the drive with populations larger than Boston. (BTW, did you know Kolkota (Calcutta) has 60 million people living there? Crazy!) We were in lots of lush valleys and then climbed up the Western Ghats, the mountain range that borders Kerala. The Arabian sea is Kerala’s other border (we stuck our feet in the Arabian sea yesterday when we go to Cochin).
Driving up and down the mountain was a dizzying experience, winding around super scary twists and turns with cows, motorcycles, buses and trucks. All the while, we were surrounded by beautiful tea fields and spice gardens, rice fields, sugar cane, mango grooves, cashews trees, you name it. There were lots of little huts with thatched roofs, but also beautiful houses brightly painted and one government home complex (free houses).
The things we have seen being transported by bike, oxen, small truck, necks! Sometimes it seems we are visiting the distant past. So much of the way things are done here is by manual labor- transporting bricks by stacking them on a plate and carrying them on the top of your head for example. In fact, lots of really huge bundles are being balanced on people’s tiny but obviously strong necks. Crops are being sorted and dried and collected on the road, scaffolding is made of bamboo, clothes are washed by hand. It’s just so different. I keep thinking, isn’t there an easier way of doing that? Then I realize that the easier way eliminates jobs and also may not be necessary. Even the little huts, as an Indian bartender explained, makes some sense- they are cooler and use less energy than bigger, brick, tiled-roof houses. He was also of the opinion that IT is not what India needs more of; the country needs people to learn other trades, engineering, construction, etc. to better the country, he asserted. IT is for the world, he explained. I guess it does bring the money that the country needs to build a middle class that can pay taxes and help the government make capital and educational improvements though.
Yesterday a business owner in Cochin underscored the bartender's contention about the sensibility of huts. He told us that India uses a 1000 watts of energy per person and that the U.S. uses 12,000 per person. Clearly a country of a billion plus can’t adopt our world-resource-guzzling methods. He did say though that in India the average is made up of some people using 30 watts and others using 900, so that has to change and they are trying. i don’t know, i'm just speculating with pieces of information that Indians have shared with me. A little information is dangerous. I have to admit that seeing small huts sitting next to enormously gorgeous temples and palaces that speak of engineering feats accomplished centuries ago, is hard to make sense of.
Anyway, Kerala is beautiful and rich in people and natural resources- but I guess that describes all of India.
PS. Super random unrelated observation: I was thinking that India has mastered the concept of the "corner store" (this only makes sense to folks who grew up in the city, I think). There are these little shacks selling sodas, stale crackers, chips, water, phone cards, a few fast food items, etc. everywhere! like every 5 steps! even on the lake. It cracks me up. I guess though when you have a billion plus folks, everyone can be an entrepreneur.
No comments:
Post a Comment