romancing the monsoons (the Mumbai edition)

The monsoons in Mumbai are in their final stages and so is my second internship this summer. Blatantly oblivious to the bloodbath in the financial markets and with ruminations on a delayed graduation, I have been on an experiential journey to find glee and cheer in Mumbai.

(Pardon the anachronism in this para) Right from the time I land in Mumbai, the drive home promises to be memorable. The monsoons are supposed to end, but it has been raining heavily for the last few days. As I come out of the airport, I can sense the certainly dusky yet earthy smell in the air. Everywhere, I see lush green because of the rains. Its as if Mumbai is attempting to show its botoxed bliss. As my parents drive me home from the airport, I adapt myself quickly to the constant honking, to the small cars adeptly whizzing past mine missing it by inches. I cringe a bit in my car seat. I become indifferent to stopping our car midway allowing the bovine crowd to cross the street. I breathe the seemingly sinister air as we drive by the Dharavi hutments (Mumbai’s version of Cabrini Green) . Soon after, I am on the highway and after awe-ing at a million things, commenting how they still have/have-not changed in Mumbai, we arrive at our apartment complex. The doorman opens the apartment gate and willfully carries my luggage four floors up to my apartment knowing that I will hand him a fat tip that will cater to his tippling needs for the week.

Labor, it seems, has a flat supply curve in India. There is a maid that comes in to do our household chores, but she won’t clean the bathrooms for which there is another maid that comes in during an allotted time. My parents hired a car driver for me who will drive me to my workplace, but he will not wash the car every morning. Those rights are simply reserved for the building watchman/doorman (there are at least three doormen and they have divided the cars of the apartment complex amongst themselves). The garbage collector is yet another entity who gives her attendance just about when we have our morning cup of tea. The local grocery store, at a stone’s throw from the apartment, has a few helpers who will get our (limited) groceries all the way delivered to the apartment at the behest of a phone call – free of charge. Wonder what Keynes would have to say about such a ‘labor’ market.

From day one of my arrival, I have indulged in tons of junk food. If you are in Mumbai, you are in the mecca of junk food. If you haven’t eaten either the bhelpuri, vadapav or the frankie, then you haven’t experienced the Mumbai culture. Usually the market for such foods has low barriers to entry, and the owners have full pricing power. Junk-onomics apart, you will be drawn to whichever place makes the best dish, regardless of the price you have to pay. If you are a liberal germo-phobe like me, then the irresistibly sweet and tangy, ironically therapeutic, yet outright unhygienic pani-puri is strictly off-limits unless your body has been granted auto-immunity after about a months stay or so. The bhel-puri is the motherlode within the junk food trinity. The puri’s are made from semolina and flour. The complementary ingredients are chillies, coriander and mint, and sauces made from tamarind, jaggery, cumin powder and dried ginger powder. Then there are shards of raw mango with coriander, raw onions, green chillies with a whiff of lime. (Some say that this dish is actually a metaphor for the cultural diversity of Mumbai, what with all those ingredients). Much of the pleasure of eating bhel comes from the sapid crackling noise made by the puri inside the mouth and from the gush of saliva trying to further stoke the contents inside. As you manipulate and destroy the bhel-puri helping inside your mouth, you have to simultaneously cast an eye at the visual texture, appearance and color of the dish to get a hedonistic thrill.
That… ladies and gentlemen, that… is the moment, if you were ever in search of one, to denounce all your worldly and carnal pleasures alike and become one with this so-called trigeminal truth; thats when you know that the dish has hit THE spot.

Of course, apart from the monsoons and the bhelpuri-like fast-food, a visit to Mumbai is not complete without traveling in the local trains. But that is a treatise in itself and deserves a creative mention another time, another day.

Care to differ ..Mumbaikar’s ?

References: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

bouquets and brickbats

My stint in Mumbai continues. Some bouquets and brickbats:

• While I try hard to refrain in expressing any of my predilections, this is one for which I could not stop myself lauding. Kudos to the Indian central government for strictly enforcing a ban on smoking in public places, including railway stations, canteens and coffee houses, private and public work places. Only places where one can smoke is on roads and inside homes !! The ban does not take place until Oct 2 2008, but even now a big furore is being made for it and celebrities seen smoking in such places are censured in the media to set a precedent. Kudos again on the first foot forward.
• Good to see the Indian Tourism Ministry’s mantra of Atithi Devo Bhava (The guest is God) being put in practice. This is a nationwide campaign to promote tourism but mainly endeavors to ensure that the foreigners do not get cheated/grossly overcharged/’held to ransom’ by the local rikshawallahs, taxi drivers, airport luggage porters etc. by training and educating the masses and asking them to interject if they see such a thing happening. Profusely touched.
• I am enjoying my work but whats up with SOME of the ’superiors’ at the place I am interning? They seem to be coming right out of a Kafkaesque chapter, mired in a labyrinth of unnecessary red-tape that does not sit well with the company values. Arrey bhai, is anyone listening?

post-hiatus post

Its been nearly 3 months since I have posted anything. I wrapped up my long internship and after a twenty hour long journey arrived in Mumbai to squeeze in yet another short stint in an investment bank for the next 5 weeks. Not much break between the two. Thanks to all who have written in with their comments, and for those with queries, I apologize I haven’t written back though I will do so ..slowly but surely. There’s something sinister about this summer. I just can’t get myself together to write. I scribbled and scratched over these months to write about something but it was a very superficial effort and so is this. Its only after I reached Mumbai that I had time to reflect. I was not able to crystallize the reasons as to why I did not want to write during these last couple months during my internship; it just felt good not doing so. Without giving away much details about the work that I did (just because I signed so many documents promising not to do so), I have written something for the sake of writing and by not belaboring on the more commonplace takeaways of an internship.

The internship felt like an escapist resort, not adhering to any day-to-day rules that I usually would, during any regular quarter at school. There wasn’t the regular stress of any assignments or projects in the academic sense or even exams. There was no pressure to regurgitate the course material in three hours of a final exam or in a project. Sure, the pressure was there to perform, but it was a different kind of pressure. The mindset was that of unadulterated learning. The mindset was that of juxtaposing what I had learnt during the course of the year with how things were going on in real world. The mindset was that of a corporate groupie mingling with anyone and everyone. The internship could not have been done at a better time especially when the deepened sub-prime is part of prime time. (i know..that’s cliched but I had to use it anyway). You get to hear everyone’s views including the company’s chief economists’.

My goal during the internship was not just business as usual, but also some networking. I tried hard to network. This is one opportunity when you can talk to anyone in any department. Sure, if you are crossing the chinese wall, then its better to do so during the end of the internship so that ‘Compliance’ is okay with it. Still a skeptic in this networking mantra, I prefer to not just go out and blatantly smooth-talk with people just because the school has drilled you with the importance of networking or just because of the feel-good factor. I have learned that networking is really a game of marksmanship; its akin to throwing wet paper towels on the wall trying to see which one sticks, while at the same time, taking care not to make a big mess on the wall.

As an intern, I also learnt that besides ‘Attention to Detail’, ‘Availability’ is a big factor in gaining visibility. They don’t call it face-time for nothing. An intern really has to be the first one to come in and the last one to leave. There were at least a couple meaty side-assignments I got only because I was hanging around late night and because I was known for soliciting work even though my plate was full.

During my internship, this company laid off a bunch of people. I ought to graduate by next summer if I ever want to join this company full time. Although doable, this will be a bit tough, since I took only two courses last quarter and was working full time midway through the quarter. This company is no Soldman Gachs for which I feel imperative to hasten my graduation. In fact, given the current economy and the rather not-so-upbeat feeling on recruitment for next year, I feel its best to delay my graduation a bit. This is probably the biggest advantage of a part time MBA where you can time the market (to an extent) and tweak your shelf life. The full-time students have no choice in this one. They have to graduate next summer.

Either ways, with just 4 weeks to go in Mumbai before I head back to Chicago (and I am not looking forward to Chicago yet), this summer has signs of giving me a baptism-by-fire experience.