Key Duplication, Bucket Showers, and Overnight Trains: Jan 10-Jan 13

Written Jan 14, 2017

As usual, there is much more I want to write than I have the time to post here. I think if I were to write everything that I experience and think about in India, I would have to take half of every day just to post on the blog. I am recording the day-to-day happenings of my life here in a separate journal, so in the future I will use this blog as more of a place to share anecdotes and stories rather than what I do every day. If you have any questions or if there is anything you specifically want to hear about India, send me an email and I will try to include it in the next post!

First a couple stories from last week: When I first arrived in my room, I noticed under my dresser a large orange plastic bucket with a smaller pink measuring cup-sized pourer inside. It being early in the morning when I arrived, I did not think anything of it. Prior to taking my first shower on campus, I saw many people walk in and out of the communal bathrooms with their buckets and towels. I thought “why would anyone take a bucket shower when they could just use the overhead shower, which I had seen in the bathroom. I had also been asked by a student helping me get settled, “You have a bucket in your room? Good, that is necessary.” I still did not understand why. When I turned on the water later that day for a shower, the water that came from overhead was cold. Surprisingly, the answer to my pondering of bucket showers still did not click for me. I wondered if I could sustain taking only cold showers for four months, then decided I could do it if that is what all the other students do.

The next day, something about the hot water tank came up in conversation, and I deduced that a bucket can be filled with hot water from the hot water tap in the bathroom, located between the sinks and the shower stalls, prior to bathing. Who is the ignorant American now? I have quickly converted to bucket showers. Having not grown up with a bucket shower and only having used them in less-developed countries than the US, it was in my mind a somewhat primitive form of bathing. After a week and a half of using a bucket to shower, it is surprising learning how little water I actually need to shower. In theory in the US I could multiply the time I spend showering by the flow rate of the showerhead, but I have not bothered to consistently do that, so I don’t have a good visual representation of how much water I use for an average shower in the US. My bucket here holds less than 5 gallons, but it has been more than enough water every time. If I can shower with that much water here by pouring it over my head, a low-flow shower head in the US should allow me to shower using even less water—I will validate this on my return.

Here is another story that exemplifies some classic aspects of Indian culture. Professor Sardesphande gave me a key to his office on my second day and told another Masters student who I will be working with, Shilpa, to help me make a copy of the key so that I could give one back to the CTARA office. After he left, I asked Shilpa if she had any idea where to make a key near campus, so which she replied she had no idea. I asked around among a few other people I know and no one seemed to know definitively. The best answer I got was “try near the YP gate.” The YP gate is one of three gates to enter campus and is located about half a kilometer north of the main gate. The next day I decided that the best way to find a key duplication shop was to just go outside campus and ask someone in a shop. On a whim, I asked a guard on the way out, pointing to my key. He told me to go out and turn right. I followed his instructions and ran smack into a key and lock stand less than one hundred feet from the campus gate. The man there was young, not much older than me. He quickly searched in a medium-sized briefcase full of differently sized blanks and found a key that matched mine. Using a small machine, he imitated the divots and bumps in my key, finishing it with a hand file. All this for 80 Rupees, just more than $1. I was very impressed with the skill with which he copied the key until I went back to the office to try it out and found that it did not work. I need to go back sometime soon and get him to fix the key. Hopefully he will not charge me another 80 Rupees.

Even though the key did not work, it exemplified a key aspect of Indian culture and business that is absent from the US: almost every industry is a collection of small, independently-run businesses rather than a few industry giants with many large stores. As Professor Sardeshpande told me and I have seen in action before in India, “There are so many people here that if you state your need, someone will know how to make it happen.” For finding a business or service in the US, the internet is a necessity; any business without a website should probably not bother opening its door in the morning because they will almost surely lose money. In India, I would venture to guess that the number of stores and stands without a website is much greater than the number of stores with websites. Person-to-person communication is still the most reliable way to find information.

                                                    

Tuesday morning (Jan. 10) I spent running errands preceding my trip to Kolhapur for a visit to a turmeric processing plant. Most notably, I bought some dried fruit and nut mixture (mostly dried dates, though not the sweetened kind you often find in the US) from a shop just outside campus. Now that I have it in my room, I cannot stop snacking on it! The timing of meals here leaves a large gap in between lunch and dinner (lunch is 12:30-2:30 and dinner is 7:30-9:45), so I have often been eating this dried fruit during that time period.

In the afternoon Shilpa and I took the local train down to the main station in Mumbai from where we would catch our train to Kolhapur to visit the turmeric processing plant. The train ride from Mumbai to Kolhapur was about 12 hours, an overnight journey. The bunks are staked three high on one side of the aisle and two high on the other side. There are two sets of three bunks that face each other in each section, for a total of eight bunks per section (see picture). We left Tuesday night, arriving early in the morning in Kolhapur. We rode in AC Sleeper class, meaning we were provided a pillow, sheets, and a thick blanket. I slept on the top bunk. Believe it or not, the train gets cold at night—it is cold at night in India and when moving at over 100 km per hour, the imperfectly-closing windows allow lots of cold air in. To make a long story short, I got a few hours of sleep but was nice and warm most of the night. I’ll post separately a description of the turmeric plant we visited.

On the way back to Mumbai, we rode overnight in the Sleeper class. Here, there are no pillows, sheets, or blankets provided. I brought one blanket with me, but it was not enough, so I woke up at around 3:30 or 4:00 and tried to keep sleeping the rest of the night, somewhat successfully. Riding in Sleeper class has been described to me as more of the “real” India, and I agree. I am glad that I got the experience of both train cars in one visit. The only train car I have ridden in India before is first class, which is incredibly luxurious compared to the cars I rode in this week. Traveling in first class this summer was great, but the service and amenities made it feel more like a spacious airplane; Sleeper class definitely felt like a train and it was fun.

In spite of my mom’s advice to get some sleep this weekend, I am planning to wake up at 3:00 am tomorrow (Sunday morning) to watch the Seahawks game. I’ll go back to bed once we are blowing the Falcons out of the water.

AC Sleeper Class (two opposing sets of three bunks on the left side of the picture, double bunk on the right)

Sleeper Class, my bunk was the top of the two pictured bunks