daddy's girl

Poor E is sick again, so we didn't get much done yesterday (don't ask me why M and I couldn't get work done...India has really sapped my sense of urgency for getting things done). But the good news is that E is doing much better, and as of this morning our survey is finished! Yay! Now if I could only get my flash drive to work on a computer that also has its internet working, we could email it to our advisor. This internet place is starting to drive me nuts, because the internet is always going out, and some of the computers have old operating systems that won't do what you want them to. But it's cheap, it's air conditioned, it's nearby, and I have no reason to believe any other internet places are more reliable, so oh well.

I had sort of an interesting cultural experience two days ago. E and I wanted to get Indian sim cards for our cell phones so that we can use them here cheaply, so one of the office helpers at OI, this very nice older Indian guy, took us to the Airtel store to buy them. We were getting prepaid sim cards, so we pay for the cards and then pay for the minutes before we use them. So in theory, they should require that we provide little or no information to them. But hey, maybe India wants to keep tabs on who has a phone. No problem. So at the Airtel store, they took copies of our passports, the Indian visas in our passports, and a receipt from Broadlands Lodge to prove that that's where we're staying. Then we filled out forms. Then the woman at the Airtel place called in the information to someone. I thought we were all set, but then I discovered that the woman wouldn't activate our cards until we provided a passport-sized photo to attach to our applications.

I like to think that normally I'm fairly patient and tolerant of bureaucracy and hassles and such. After all, I was once a bureaucrat myself. But for some reason I just sort of snapped, and I started channeling my dearly departed father, who had little tolerance for anything that he felt was pointless or illogical. I asked the Airtel woman why she needed a photo of me. "For proof," she said. "Proof of what?" I asked. I can't remember her exact response, but it was some sort of circular non-answer like, "Of your identity" or something. "But I'm standing right here, and there's my passport," I said.

So E dragged me out of the office, fuming, and the helper from OI took us on a sweaty 10 minute walk to a place where they take photos. On the way, I tried to find out from him why the picture was necessary. "For proof," he said. "Proof of WHAT?" I said. We went back and forth a bit, and finally he said, "Because this is how it is done in India." Ah, the truth comes out. He asked, "They don't require a picture in US?" and like the smug, obnoxious American that I apparently am, I told him that no, in the US they don't ask for a bunch of unnecessary information when you're getting a prepaid cell phone, and they NEVER ask for a picture.

Anyway, we got to the photo place, where I discovered that we had to buy a minimum of 8 passport-sized photos. "Why?" I asked, knowing that there is no meaningful answer. Besides, at that point I was just being petty, because to have my picture taken and 8 photos printed cost Rs. 80, which is less than US$2. I resigned myself to my fate and placated myself by refusing to smile in my photo. And E cheered me up a little by saying "Well, it's good that we have extra photos, we might need one later if we want to buy an ice cream cone." We walked back to the Airtel office and procured our Indian sim cards, only to discover that they won't work in our phones because we need some kind of software upgrade. "You need to go to the Motorola store," the Airtel woman tells me, but despite the fact that I ask, she can't be bothered to find out where the Motorola store is. They are not all about the customer service in India. In fact, I'm starting to feel as though the Indians that are nice to me are doing so because they know I am a rich white person and they want something from me, and if they don't want anything they aren't particularly nice to me. This is, of course, an overgeneralization, and it's also a reaction to being a comparatively rich minority in a country that's culturally very different. But I do find myself feeling more annoyed and jaded. Hopefully that feeling will pass soon.

The epilogue to this story is that it turns out that we can buy an Indian cell phone for Rs. 500 (US$11), so we're just going to do that instead of going through the hassle of making our phones compatible. When I get my cell phone (probably today) I will email the number to y'all.