Day 15

     As long as I can remember my mom has remembered important dates better than anyone I know. Whether it’s my sister’s birthday or her brother-in-law’s wedding anniversary she’ll be the first one to send out an e-card wishing them. Imagine a society full of people like that and you have my current situation. Everyone here remembers the most obscure things you tell them, even if it’s weeks later. I consider my memory pretty above average but even I was taken aback by the recollection power present in my friends here. The Friday before last I told my friend that I was going to meet a friend in ISRO layout and whether she knew how I could get there. Today she asked me (more than a week later) if I had managed to meet my friend that day. When I said no she pulled out a Google maps printout detailing how to get from Singasandra to ISRO layout. It didn’t help much because it didn’t show me which bus I should take to get there but the initiative she took at no urging from me was astounding.  
     Although people seem to remember important things about you, you’re also allowed to announce your accomplishments – as long as the announcement is accompanied by sweets. My lab has two chai breaks – one at 10:30 and one at 4:30. The first one is basically the Indian equivalent of a chat by the water cooler. Everyone stops work for a half hour or so and someone or the other will be celebrating something (yesterday one of my friends brought soan papdi because she found out she had gotten first rank for the previous semester). The concept of ‘tooting your own horn’ doesn’t seem to have entered the population with people freely asking each other about their GPAs and the other answering proudly about their high scores. In a nation where the most selective universities have a <1%, rather than <20%, admittance rate everyone wants to stand out for their achievements and making them known is perfectly acceptable.          
 
     Yesterday I called my friend Rajeev to see if he wanted to get dinner. His friend picked up the phone and told me they were at the hospital because Rajeev had been in an accident. Luckily he was alright and hadn’t broken any bones but when I saw him the next day he looked pretty scratched up and his toenails looked like they were about to pop out anytime.  He explained that he had been in an auto and it had overturned when a dog ran across the street and the driver swerved.  Many people prefer to take autos to avoid the crowded buses I mentioned earlier. The amount of people in India is overwhelming to put it lightly and its equally hard to squeeze past the bodies on a bus to get off as it is to rise above the tide academically. The combination of a large population combined with a currently shoddy infrastructure cause accidents such as that of Rajeev’s. He was lucky and came back to work the next day but had things gone just a bit differently, only his friends’ extensively detailed memories of him would have survived.