Kalkutta
Mittlerweilen ist mein Gaststudium am Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kalkutta im zweiten Jahr des postgraduate programs abgeschlossen
Ich war dort Aug-Dez 2002 und hatte eine großartige, wenngleich zeitweie herausforderungsvolle Zeit.
Im Folgenden nun meine Newsletter, mit denen ich zum einen Euch an meinen
Erlebnissen teil haben ließ, zum anderen mir half, Gesehenes zu
verarbeiten und in Worte zu packen. Entschuldigung an alle, die des Englischen
nicht so mächtig sind, habe zum Übersetzen keine Zeit.
Viel Spass!
Dear friend -
this is a newsletter due to my semester in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta. You may unsubscribe by simply answering this e-mail with a remark. English has been chosen as means of conversation since I guess that all recipients will be apt to understand it.
I hope you're well on - Be it with starting, continuing or taking on again your studies in St. Gallen, Milano, Helsinki, Marburg, Jena (?), Chemnitz, Dresden, Washington, Yale; be it with having an exchange semester yourself in Singapore, Seoul, Paris, Rotterdam, Redhill/California; be it with exploring your creative and academic potential in a Master's or Ph.D. thesis (SG, Seoul); be it with taking on an exciting job with JP Morgan, P&G, McKinsey (BLN, LON), DaimlerChrysler, Volkswagen, AmeriCorps (?) or in your own company; be it with managing Hotel at Zurichsee or having a baby. Enjoy your life, live! (for those who don't find themselves mentioned: I don't know what you're on right now - please let me know)
It was big luck that I made it to Kolkata, and the main reason admittedly is simply because an application letter did not arrive Guanghua School of Management Peking, my former aim. However - loaded with tons of Traveller's Cheques, Vaccinations, some presents and clothes which took a lot of time to imagine whether they would be appropriate, I arrived on Sep 9.
Priority will be the courses I'm going to take at the Indian Institute of Management - Mergers & Acquisitions, Globalization and Ethics, and Knowledge Management of course :-) I'm going to visit Sikkim and Darjeeling (light trekking), Bangalore if possible. I will spend a lot of time to intensively exploring the 14m town itself and to making my handikap. German Consulate announces a party for Oct, 3.
First lectures:
- showers with cold water can be pleasant in this hot climate, detergent
cleans you anyway
- birthday is not a happy rather than awful day: boys are kicked and bumped,
girls get cake and sirup into face and hair (i.e. good opportunity for
revenges)
- filthiness of the houses and spiciness of the food aren't as bad as
feared of - when expectations are low, surprise can only be positively
- fellow students are so nice and help me with anything
- Hindi uses English 10% - so you somehow get out what others are talking
about
Take Care
- maple.
Dear friend-
hope you are well on. - I am happy to telling you that I am. Mosquito bites here and there, disappointments about how long laundry needs to dry, dealers trying to part me from my money, severe & demanding Professors - but nothing I couldn't easily deal with. No culture shock, no homesickness, no overtime on toilet, and the average spiciness is no problem to me no more.
Some new insights I'm going to share with you:
- fans are noisy, create headache but are the only way to face these temperatures
and not to sweat through your clothes in shortest time
- IIM Campus has many beautiful lakes and lawns. Any road is shaded by
high trees. The probability to being "bombed" by bird droppings is 0.3
per way.
- Indian bureaucracy is as bad as its reputation. I applied for a Tourist
visa, paid a tourist visa, have the duration of residence permit for a
tourist; but a small "S" (for Student visa) made me to visiting 5 offices
in 3 buildings. A quadruplicate form, 6 photographs and an HIV test have
to be handed in
- Indian children are sent to nursury school in the age of two. They start
writing aged three. Primary education is mandatory what doesn't mean that
any child attends it.
- Marihuana can be bought anywhere (although illegal), (Pils) beer is
quite expensive and the foam (Krone) you have to imagine yourself
- even if you go to a high-end western shop like "Westend", best (west
style) clothes are still 20% under Prager Strasse(Dresden) prices. Books
are sold at "developing country discount" which makes it still a good
bargain for me to buy and ship it.
- IIM students usually have four hours sleep per night, be it with extracurricular
projects, ambitiously reading the professors' reading lists, watching
a ripped film on the computer screen, or hanging around with friends.
This behavior may be due to the weather, I also don't need more than 6
hours as soon as I arrived here.
- communication with normal people can become very difficult. Take for
example a taxidriver who just drives anywhere without understanding where
you actually want to be driven to.
- picture postcards are very lousy, considering motive and quality. Still,
I'm going to send some around - I promised it.
- Indian academic enthusiasm and brilliance is motivated through the creation
of archrivals. I enjoyed quizzes and debating competitions of Eastindian
Business Schools
I saw lots of beggars whom I didn't give anything. But until now I certainly have not met the poorest.
On a sightseeing tour, I visited Victoria Memorial (tourist fare 15000% of the resident fare), the Botanical Gardens (there is a 250 years old Banyan tree which has the 2nd largest canopy in the world with 400m circumference), and Kali Temple (I fortunately missed the goat sacrifice).
For Puja (national vacation week 14-18.10) a trip with 3 other exchange students is already planned to the Himalayas - my big dream. Train tickets weren't available without bribery, but still they were.
Until now I didn't find an appropriate foto camera to buy. But please have a look at another exchange student's web site - some fotos of us will be shared there soon. http://werner.ekonomika.be/India
Wish you all the best
- maple
Dear friend -
This newsletter needed quite a while to be finished - please excuse that. To the main part, the delay is due to the immense workload local professors are assigning me with. That takes away any free space from me. But still we had one week Durga Puja vacation because of which I still can give you some extracurricular stories of my experiences in India.
I guess this newsletter is going to reflect a bit more negative impression on India. Let's call it realistic - it would be a lie to not calling it a developing country despite the few rich surrounding me at IIM, Park Street or Tollygunge Golf Club.
- when men touch each other or walk arm in arm, this is only a sign of
friendship, not homosexuality. I do not get used to this sight (and, admittedly,
it makes me envious).
- waiting for someone has to be taken into consideration, be it a meeting,
a request in an office etc. The only place when this rule does not work
is the lecture room.
- the bigger the mosquito the bigger the bite. Killing a mosquito during
the bite doesn't help anymore. Special crafty creatures aim at the sole
during your sleep.
- IIM has many employees. But I have to doubt their efficiency: when more
than 2 work in a group, one is there for supervising the others' work;
crows vandalized a dust bin and these guys just watch and clear up later
- clever strategy to justifying their employment I guess.
- painting gets a new definifion: bookshelves are painted as they hang,
when painting a window's frame it's no problem to also leaving paint on
the glass, in order to not having to re-writing doors' numbers, one just
paints around them
- sarees do not have pockets. That women can wear at least a bit of change
money they inevitably need for public transportation (e.g.), they either
wrap it into the saree at the hip or tie a knot of a tissue into the saree
- Durga is a goddess which, according to old epics, won over an evil demon
and afterwards went home to her parental home with all their four children.
Durga Puja, majorily celebrated in West Bengal, celebrates her homecoming
and leaves opportunity to the wives to visiting their home (some time
ago, this has been the only opportunity in the year). Pantels are big
sculptures of Durga and the children, and any neighborhood invests big
amounts of money to creating the best one. Locals' behavior interestingly
doesn't exceed a come-and-see-and go mentality: they don't remain longer
than two seconds in front of one of these pantels (Calcutta was supposed
to having 4500!), I hardly saw someone praying or otherwise practicing
this as a religion. I'd define this as temporary kitsch art - the pantels
are thrown into Hooghly, arm of Ganges, after the celebration; and the
big bamboo tents are taken down.
- I have been invited to the 3rd October Party by the German General Consulate
to the top-end Hotel Taj Bengal only with the initiative of a nice girl
working there. I happened to meet there several business people (Germans,
Europeans, Indians) and volunteers. It still is surprising to me that
none of the volunteers (physiotherapeuts, nurses, pharmacists) was male.
Maybe you must be female to choosing such a (thanks to Mother Theresa
notorious) even for India underdeveloped dirthole like Kolkata.
- Sexuality is either non-existing or taboo. Youth is happy and convenient
to letting their parents looking for a fitting partner to marry.
- Darjeeling is much more the city of joy rather than Kolkata. People
are smiling, it is amazingly quiet, the air is cool and fresh. A perfect
refuge for Kolkateans. We happend to see a buffalo sacrifice - the police
and some officials were doing that. Unfortunately, of reasons I couldn't
find out, the stabbed melon-like fruits instead of a buffalo...
- Japanese tourists were happy to take a foto with us - strange people
- Sikkim has a magnificent cuisine with major impacts from China. Incredible
variety I haven't dreamt of after five weeks Bengalese Rice&Chicken.
- Seven holes per ear are supposed to bring luck. The amount of silver
hanging from it represents the family's wealth. How this is going to look
like, I leave to your fantasy.
- I saw two funerals from distance in Sikkim. No tears no emotion. It
is Hindu belief to bringing all elements together to great events in Human
life. That's why the body is burned (fire) over a stream (water), air
blown to it, earth thrown into the fire and power conjured by the priest
- a bus with 30 seats easily can hold 55 passengers. What kind of adventure
six hours along a montaneous serpentine full of holes with anyone's ass
pressing towards your face is, you can imagine easily.
- quite any place in Sikkim is holy, be it a lake, a mountain, a spring.
They must be very happy to be under special military protaction due to
the proximity to China since this allows only little change in the country.
Kanchenjunga (3rd top mountain in the world, 8598m) can only climbed to
10m below the top since the top belongs to the mountain's ghost(s). What
happens with the mountaneers climbing the top from the Nepalese side I
didn't learn.
- Günter Grass' "Zunge zeigen" (showing tongue, referring to Kali's gesture
of shame when she killed - or better slaughtered - her husband) accompanies
me better than any traveller's guide through the culture. Interestingly,
most things still are appliccable, little has changed. He refers a lot
to Tagore, India's biggest author. I guess I'm going to continue with
him then.
You can find this and all previous newsletters on http://www.stud.unisg.ch/users/abihler/likalk.htm Werner is going to update his ekonomika webpage with new pictures of our journey soon.
OK. that for now.
I urgently have to go back to my paper on migration and cultural consequences (and book the IIM library could provide me is either very old (before 1940) or socialist crap - I'm very upset, seriously)
- maple.
