Monday morning we flew from Udaipur to Mumbai (Bombay) and headed directly to Pune where our friends Nalini and Shekar live. We will be headquartered here until next Tuesday when we move on to Cochi (Cochin). The road between Mumbai and Pune was a genuine freeway going at freeway speeds with no animals wandering into traffic. Lanes were treated a bit lightly but it was quite a change from what we had seen before.
Nalini and Shekar live in a very nice 4 bedroom, 3 bath appartment will all marble floors and a pleasant balcony overlooking a grassy area. They have a part-time maid and guards at the gates. We are very comfortable here. There is a great deal of construction going on. One new appartment building is nearly complete to the east of us while the foundations for another are being layed to the west.
Soon after arriving in Pune we decided to go shopping at stores that might actually have something we would want to buy. Pune is much more of a real city than we have seen before. The other places had large elements of tourism while Pune is for business (high tech and manufacturing) and living life. Here we can wander around areas with hundreds of interesting little shops without being accosted (much) to buy things while before we saw mostly tourist stores and handicraft shops or shops with few things we would be interested in.
Nalini took us to a couple of clothes stores where Shawne bought several tops to round out her wardrobe for the trip. The next morning was also spent shopping for clothes. Prices were very reasonable unlike the pricey, hand-craft things at the tourist stores. Shawne bought some more tops and I got several long sleeve shirts to protect from sun and bugs on the southern swing. We then went to a couple of shops selling “salwar kameez” which are full outfits for Indian women. They sell just the cloth but there are tailors nearby who cut and sew the complete outfit in a few hours. The cloth, tailoring, everything is only about $15. Shawne bought three of them to be ready by late afternoon. One of the tailors wanted fervently to get to America. I think he was hoping I could sponsor him somehow so he gave me his card and asked about the need for tailors in America. His work was excellent so I am sure he could make a living there.
Now here is the really strange part. We went to a sari store just to watch, not buy. We sat next to a couple who were looking at saris and struck up a conversation with them. They had just moved back to India after spending 10 years in America... in California... in San Jose... 6 blocks from our house. They recognized me as the guy in the brilliant yellow windbreaker who used to walk the three little daschunds past their house from time to time. They even remembered that I bought lemonade from their kids’ lemonade stand during their garage sale. How many people out of the 1.3 billion in India would recognize me and what are the chances that we would sit down next to them in a sari store and strike up a conversation? It is downright spooky.
Tuesday afternoon we drove to the remnants of a fort on top of a mountain ridge about an hour and a half outside of Pune. The view of the valleys on either side was very nice but there was not much fort left. At the top was an odd little vacation camping village with scrubby little tent restaurants and tarp covered camp accommodations. The big come on at one of the restaurants was that they had chairs.
Overall I am struck by how similar life is for upper middle class++ in India and America. I think they have more in common with each other than with the poor folk in their respective countries. India actually has a few more well-to-do people than does America since its population is four times larger. It is in the poor that we differ. While we have a relatively few that are very, very poor, India has vast numbers of them everywhere.
When we got back to Pune, the outfits were ready and fit Shawne perfectly.
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