I heard San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, say that 75 percent of the world’s population lives within five hours flight from Bangalore. I have a suspicion he is right.

Last week I traveled to Malaysia, leaving  the familiarity and comfort of India for the first time in six months.My first stop was Singapore, which in spite of its large Indian population is the antithesis of all things Indian.

In Singapore I had one of the best sushi meals of my life (thanks, Mike), but on the whole, I found the place boring and soulless–not unlike walking through downtown Seattle. Between bouts of exhaustion I found myself  comparing Singapore’s oppressive logic to the exuberance, noise, foul smells unimaginable chaos of India and feeling proud of having lived in Bangalore and adjusted over time. Walking around (and around, and around) Raffles Place, I saw a small pile of trash bags and  instantly seized on the opportunity to snap a photo, almost as though I had uncovered some hidden flaw in Singapore’s grand plan.

The next stop was Kuala Lumpur, for some Saturday night revelry. Tired and smelly, I arrived in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur’s backpacker epicenter, an hour after sundown.  Choc-a-block full of hostels, bars and restaurants, Bukit Bintang was perfectly insulated island of travelers from across Europe and South America. Here I met Italians, Belgians, Argentines and a study abroad student from Tanzania.  With so many tourists shuffling from one watering hole to another, we could have been in Beijing, New Orleans or New York.

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The stars have aligned for 2010 to be a bangup year!  On Monday Andrew Sullivan from The Atlantic linked to my video ‘The Philly Beard Project’ on his blog, ‘The Daily Dish.’ The video went viral and in the past three days it has clocked more than 200,000 views.

It’s impossible not to notice the beards when you visit Philadelphia and I thought the story had to be told. In New York it doesn’t happen, nor is it common in D.C. or Boston, but Philadelphia is the city of ferocious facial hair. Why? As an inquisitive journalist, I knew I had to get to the root of the issue. I learned a lot, but I feel like I know less than when I started.

Filming in Philadelphia exposed me to some wonderful people and delicious hoagies and I’m convinced there are many more beard stories left to tell. I hope I can return to Philadelphia soon to continue the important work soon. If you haven’t already, for your enjoyment I present the first installment of the The Philly Beard Project: The Sunni Beard.

Happy New Year folks. As you can see from the none-too-subtle photo, I’m very excited about this year’s world cup, which is now just six months away.

2009 and the decade it capped was tremendous by any metric and the years to come promise to be even more full. TechTrotter will be marking its first full year as an entity in just a matter of days. In the weeks and months to come, expect to see some changes and new features rolling out.

Also, I apologize for the slow pace of new material coming up on the site. I’ve been hard at work launching my career as a proper freelance journo and it is a time consuming endeavor. Many of you have also received handwritten letters with my name at the bottom. If you’re still waiting on yours, please make sure to mention it in the comments and I will be sure to remedy the situation.

Tomorrow I head back to Hyderabad aboard the TATA Jagriti Yatra train. Updates are soon to follow, along with reflections from a week in Jaipur. (Photos already on Flickr)

Thank you for making me a part of your life . I hope to return the favor with interest.

Wishing you and yours a bountiful 2010.

Sincerely,

Chikodi Chima

My favorite locale in Bangalore is the approach road in front of my apartment. I don’t know for certain whether the road has a name, but it has a permanent place in my heart. Though I have derided the road as bomb-scarred, and joke to friends that driving on it is like taking a trip 20 years into the past, I still love the road because it is here I go to see the real India.

Sploosh! Sploosh! A black cloud of flies erupts each time the  Muslim fishmonger dumps out a cup of water  to cool his decomposing wares. These rivulets trickle over the bodies of big, beautiful fish trucked in each morning, only to be passed over by value-conscious shoppers on the hunt for small fry. Too bad. I want to see any small business owner succeed, but I fear he misjudged his potential market locating among Hindu non-meat eaters.

As the fish slime coalesces on the concrete below, it mingles with the brackish fluid that flows through the open sewers and past a small slum of some 15-odd tarpulin hutches. Here, mothers bathe their children from buckets, youngsters tell each other stories atop a pile of felled trees and smoke wafts from scattered cooking fires. Each time I pass, the sewer stench, wood smoke and scent of frying onions simultaneously uplifts and appalls me, but this is my India.

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I am home! I suddenly realized. On Old Airport Road,  watching traffic careen through a chaotic intersection, I felt for the first time that everything was exactly as it should be. What a glorious mess! But  it had become my mess.  I was beginning to think like an Indian.

After three months in Bangalore I’m much more comfortable in a country known for overwhelming all five senses. The bright colors, spicy foods, heat and rain complemented by a distinct urban potpourri are unmistakable qualities of the Indian experience, but while they assault, ambush, and assail the body and mind, I know I will miss them when I’m gone.

In a country as large and diverse and diverse as India, there are few things that link Hindu, Muslims, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Jew alike in this psychedelic tapestry. Anyone who spends enough time here realizes that they too have an inner Indian and, in a country that wholly embraces reincarnation, this isn’t hard to believe.

The following are some tricks I have picked up to help me think like an Indian and learn to love this country along the way.

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Every journey in Bangalore begins the same miserable way. I leave the apartment and walk down our bomb-scarred approach road to the auto stand where a pack of flea-bitten rickshaw drivers try daily to extract every last paise from my pockets. A short ride to the “sig-nill,” 2 km away on Wind Tunnel Road, costs 20 rupees and anywhere beyond this natural boundary, the price jumps to 100 rupees, an arbitrary amount they know the can get from me. The current dollar rupee to dollar exchange rate is 47 to one, so why get in a tizzy about two measly bucks? After a while in India, it’s necessary to stop thinking like an American and behave like a local.

I don’t mind paying a little extra, but I abhor the feeling of being scammed. When I get a driver who seems nice and charges the metered rate, I don’t mind throwing in a little tip, which I’m told is a big no no!

When I told my roommate how much I dislike being overcharged for rides by rickshaw drivers, he told me it was my own fault and then fault of every Western bleeding heart who comes to Bangalore. It seems there is blame aplenty. Could the fault lie with multinational corporations, whose giant campuses have caused property values to soar and kickstarted neighborhoods overnight? Is it the flood of expats and Non-resident Indians who brought their Western customs and hard currency to the local market? What about the tourists who cling to Bangalore’s scant cultural offerings for out-of-towners? Why not call it a little bit of everything. After all, this is India.

The pyschology of tipping has many layers. As an American in India, I’m happy to pay the same off meter price I consider extortion, if I get to feel it is given as a tip instead of an overcharge. The notion of a choice, however, is crucial. In the U.S., we’re expected to tip enthusiastically and often. It’s not a choice; it’s a hard and fast social convention with little or no escape. Cab drivers, barbers, waiters, mechanics, bar tenders, florists, and delivery boys are just a few of the folks who expect tips for their work, in New York, arguably America’s most expensive city. With already high sticker prices, people in service industries earn meager wages in exchange for generous tips–the adage goes–in order to survive. In Bangalore, says my other roommate, a tip of five percent is considered acceptable, depending on the nature of the service, but there is no hard and fast rule.

A gratuity or a “tip” is a word of mysterious origin, but the meaning is clear. A tip of some amount is given to the servicer on top of any standard charges as a gesture of appreciation for outstanding service and a measure of goodwill.

According to Straight Dope columnist, Cecil Adams, the practice of tipping may have Latin origins, in which case it was a “stips” or gift, but tipping as we know it today has its origin in Great Britain. Adams writes,

Tipping spread from England to colonial America, but after the revolution it was frowned upon (temporarily) as a hangover from the British class system. One only tipped one’s social inferiors, which, lest we forget, did not exist in the brave new world. Unfortunately, the working class eventually got around to swallowing its pride, and tipping returned with all the fervor it possesses today.

As an American, the very idea of being someone’s “social better” makes me as squeamish as paying. From that point of view, its easy to see how a display of largesse is not about altruism at all, but instead reinforces the class standing of the server and the served. In India, with its outlawed though well-reinforced caste system, the idea of different social classes doesn’t strike anyone as a big deal from my personal observations.

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