Some Indian quirks

I've been collecting a small list of what I'm calling "Indian quirks" ie things that when they happen the first time you're like whaaaaaaaaaaat!? but then if it happens another time and another time it eventually becomes normal in some way.

It's funny actually looking at this list of things that I found so odd only a week or two ago!!

• Cows!!! they're everywhere and really stand their ground!

Where are the cars you may ask? The cows rule this town!

This one is just chilling by the side of the road

Cows munching on the scraps from the market

• How locals drink water out of water bottles - they never touch their lips to the bottle as they are always sharing pretty much everything, so this is their way of leaving the rest of the bottle available for someone else to drink without germs

• Milk in small plastic packets that once opened have to be used pretty much immediately. Again, makes sense if you don't have a fridge as you'd be using it all immediately anyway! Actually a lot of things are in small/ use once packages! I was amazed last time I was in India at this too  :)

7/11 Indian Style

• 'Rubbish' as a resource! When out at the communities, there is often a lot of rubbish all over the place. However when people are looking for something, e.g. binding wire to attach the solar light to their roof, they go to these 'rubbish piles' and find what they need!! 

Trash or treasure?

•  Small kids with strings around their waist and a key attached to it. We found out that the people in the community essentially use their kids as human keyrings as they can always find their children!! (innovation in action!)

• Diabetes-inducing tea making! As we were making chai out in the communities, we took tea and sugar with us in these small containers. When it came to adding the sugar, the spoon got left behind and the ladies making the tea literally poured the whole container in! The amount of sugar in their tea is pretty astounding and makes it no surprise that India has a very high rate of diabetes

•  The Pollinators being more at ease reading in English even though they may not have spoken a lot of English. This was because apparently English is much more likely to be the read language and Kanataka the spoken language! How bizarre but then again most signs etc are in English and Hindi as there are so many languages across India!!

A couple of other India-isms:

• A village really does raise a child!
• Signs!!! Sometimes they are just hilarious!!

  

  ??? Trust us...we'll make you look better without your eyes??

• More Western-style bars very overtly non-conservative in their sign usage!!

  

  A poster found in the ladies bathroom of one very popular, western-style bar

• Festivals!! - there are a lot of different festivals happening around Bangalore. There was the Festival of St. Mary while we were there and there are massive preparations for the Ganesha Festival that is happening later this week!! We went inside a Ganesha storeroom (masses of Ganeshas are made at this time so that they can be used during the festival...eventually they end up in a body of water...not great for pollution!) – it was amazing to see all of these Ganesha’s in one spot!

  

  Me, Sneha, Bel and Kat in a Ganesha storage room!

And a couple of things that did not really make more sense over time:

• Speed humps all over the "highways"... actually this one never really became that normal... there didn't seem to be any reason behind these speed bumps at all!! One suggestion was that they are the result of pipes being laid and the road not dug out properly... ? not sure but they're certainly not deliberately engineered (I hope!)

• The electronica discotheque associated with the College near our house. At around 7am we woke up to literally a community electronica party. Still not 100% sure what was going on, but was linked to the College down the road and some sort of sports day. So from 7am-5pm they blasted party music and had what sounded like karaoke (though perhaps was a special performance?). And this went on for 3 days!! Meanwhile, no noise is allowed in houses after 11pm!!

L :)