A day in the life

Seeing as my posts are now apparently becoming ‘too cynical’ again, I’ve decided to post something that I’ve seen done by others- a montage of photos from a typical day in my life. Of course I have chosen the most romantic of my current work to do this- well, I guess if you call building a road on a rural Indian property romantic.

Nevertheless, here it is. Most of these photos don’t need comments, but as you know I can’t often resist making them.

Couple of strays on the walk to work

Another stray out for a walk after an early-morning ‘tonic’

Flattening the land before sowing. This involves the family standing on a heavy length of wood.

The infamous (in these parts) ‘Indian fence’: dead branches of spiny trees to keep out livestock.

The road leading into our new property before work begun.

The road being worked on. Work mainly involves rock picking and raking the rocks to make the road as level as possible. It sounds bad (‘rock picking’ = chain gang) but it’s not that bad really.

Watering the sand to enable tractors to drive on it.

A delivery of gravel for making cement.

These will be an everyday occurrence once we have the new office building complete.

Praying for rain

I have always wondered how, ahem, “professional” bloggers stay at it on a continual basis. Blogging is a pretty thankless task- you never know if people are reading them, and it takes discipline to sit down at the keyboard at the end of a tiring day and write something you hope will read as interesting when you look back on it 5 years from now.

I know, for example, that the blogs I have been writing have been suffering from being overly descriptive and not emotive enough (at least compared to some of the first emails I wrote when I was in Guatemala). But that’s probably simply because they are being written while trying to squeeze in interesting experiences around a very hectic work schedule, rather than being consciously developed while having a few hours in an air-conditioned internet café.

Today a couple of firsts for me: I turned up to work in my new kurta (a traditional Indian men’s outfit- the closest comparison I could make would be of a pyjama-like-top and a ‘one size fits all’ drawstring pants), which drew comments ranging from giggles from our female labour, to high/low praise (“you look very smart- like an Indian politician”) to derision (“you look like a young Indian college student”). In the very least I feel a little bit more appropriate now- even if I might attract even more stares now than when I was wearing shorts to and from the site. I’m still trying to judge whether the clothes will serve the purpose they were bought for though- which was to try and make working in the heat of the day a little more bearable while providing some sort of modesty and sun protection. I’m yet to fully appreciate the supposed breathing/cooling effects of cotton. Photos soon?

Second on today’s schedule was a visit to the local temple celebration that’s currently on in Samode. For a month now there’s been a poster up of some extremely holy looking dude announcing that something was going to happen, and a few weeks ago a temporary temple (same stem word, dictionary nerds?) sprang up in the line of sight from our second compost site, announcing that whatever was going to happen was about to. It just so happens that our production manager also announced to us a few days before that he was intending to take 10 days of leave to celebrate a holy festival. All this culminates then at this temple to […], patronised by the maharaja (the holy-looking dude on the posters), where the “rain, weather, environmental and general luck” festival/celebration will be going on for the next 9 days. Today was the first day, and seeing as I had turned up to work in my regal/college boy outfit, I guess it was inevitable that everyone would think I wanted to head to the celebrations.

It wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be- especially for an Indian temple celebration there were relatively few people there. Most were under the bamboo temple that I mentioned earlier, all seated around fire-places which had numbers on them. These it turned out were family allocated plots that the families had purchased at a minimum of Rs 20,000 (close to 4 months wages for the average labourer). Our production manager had apparently paid Rs 50,000 for his (which is about 2.5 month’s salary for him)- basically it seemed like this was a bit of a “who’s who” of Samode- the more important people got a fire a bit closer to the main one, and I suppose got to be seen. I probably shouldn’t be so cynical- the whole thing requires a bit of a commitment- you need to be there throughout the day, mainly listening but occasionally joining in with the chanting to Rahm, his wife (Sitar?) and Hanuman Ji (and probably lots of others as well). In addition, you have to make a daily walk around this circle of chanting- a number of times. And the number of circles increases as the celebration goes on- 11 on the first day (that’s what we did), 21 the second, up to 91 on the last day. One circle would be in the realm of 200 metres, so you’re talking maybe 15km on the last day, not the lightest of walks… Now that we actually did the first day, my colleagues are urging me to come back every day, telling me it would be too much of a lost opportunity not to do so. Not only that, but they have also assessed that if we do it after we finish our work days we will be getting the maximum benefit from a day’s chanting and offering by the guys who are sitting inside the circle working hard to ensure good monsoon rains and a healthy environment for us all. That’s the point of the circling, to absorb the good vibes and aura radiating out from the holy offerings and fires in the middle. So they do the work, and we get the benefits. Not a bad system.

Benefits are also available from the free foods on offer (known as “prasads”- literally offerings), which anyone can sit down and indulge in. Once again, the idea is to make the absolute most of these holy gifts to the gods. I simply thought that my colleagues were being polite when they got me to try and eat my 10^th special-ghee soaked bread or puri, but now I realise that eating more of these prasads means that I could get more of their godly benefits, and that you need to take advantage of them when they’re offered to you- even if you think it would be impossible for a human to actually eat and benefit from that much food. It’s not hard to continually eat either- one of the boons of Indian efficiency is the constant stream of helpers who arrive with a bucket of one of the four types of food every 2 seconds to encourage you to have more. It’s a strange sensation having people eager to give you as much free food as you can eat- the idea seems to be that everyone receives a little of the blessings if more is eaten.

Anyway, suffice to say I am sufficiently “lucked-up” for the day (dirty minds beware) and that I have done my bit for the future of the environment in India or at least in the vicinity of Samode.

Hanuman Temple, Samode

Indians who take Hinduism seriously spend a lot of time at it. I guess one of the reasons might be because there are few set times to visit temples, few rituals in which one is guided, and well, spending time at whatever activity is just something Indians like to do. Buying something from a shop is rarely a simple experience, if the shopkeeper sees you as a customer as having any potential worth whatsoever tea will be ordered and drunk together, and everything from your family to (of course) cricket will be discussed.

Visiting a Hindu temple is not entirely different, although there are subtle differences. The first would be the time taken to actually reach the temple, particularly in rural areas. In the hills surrounding Samode, temples are located at the top of ridges where no roads have ever been built, and no people have ever lived. You can arrive at these temples by taking any of 3-4 paths which start from villages at the bottom of the hills, and there isn’t any other way up but to walk. The walk isn’t taken as an inconvenience, rather it is part of the journey of preparing yourself to enter the temple. In Rajasthan, walking will start early to avoid the killer sun, which is at its most intense on top of those mountains, and will start making you heat up after about 8 am.

On our visit to Hanuman (the monkey god, sorry for the crude representation this word conveys) Temple, probably the most visited in the surrounds of Samode, we started out at about 5:30am from stairs located near Samode Palace (probably the reason most tourists end up here, a luxury hotel built into the ancient walls of the city- which receives coaches of package tourists each week at the moment, and is apparently full in the high season). As is becoming the norm somewhat here in India, I had heard some kind of rumour that either I misinterpreted or was simply false- that you had to climb 1200 stairs to reach the temple. At least this would be bearable when it was still cool in the morning. It didn’t take that long though- and we found out later that it was a much more modest 376. The real delight in reaching Hanuman for me though, was the walk across the top of the hills which separate Samode valley from the surrounding plains. The path stays on top of the mountains for the whole way, only dipping into a few valleys where rivers run in the monsoons. Legend has it that the path (which is constructed of stones of varying hues of red from the mountains themselves) was built by a devoted pilgrim who vowed not to set foot inside the temple until this path was complete. This is a recent legend, by the way, the wife of Dhananjay my work colleague claiming to have seen this man when she was young. He apparently lived on donations given by people who walked to the temple, and he died before the path was completed.

Pilgrims construct models of houses out of rocks on the path so that their future building projects might be blessed 

Today the few choice trees that are on the mountain tops are located next to the path, and there are bird feeders and water hung in bowls from its branches. That means that especially early in the morning your walk is accompanied by the amazing variety of birds that frequent the hills of Samode at their most active and tuneful. The air is also very still, there being no one else around and little noise carrying up from the early-rising tractor drivers in the valley below. Add to that the changing colours of the rocks as the sun brightens and you have the perfect combination for preparing yourself to enter a religious temple and begin some self-contemplation.

The arrival at the temple itself gets you immediately familiar with its mascots- a few hundred Langoor monkeys which are hanging out on the rock face which is on the other side of the valley from the temple, plus some of the braver/hungrier ones swinging over the crevasse via the telephone wires.

The entrance into the temple takes you past a few small shops mainly selling Prashads (gifts for the gods- mainly Indian sweets and flowers) and a few breakfast and tea stalls. The normal practice is you bring something with you into the temple, leave some and hand the surplus over to your friends after your visit (Most of them are far too rich in sugar, and inedible by humans anyway ;-) The inside of temple itself is nothing extraordinary in terms of Hindu temples- a large idol of Hanuman- bright orange, and brightly coloured walls with shiny mirrors and reflective colours along with paintings from the life of Hanuman and the current gurus responsible for ensuring his honouring. Notable is a split-level that enables you to sit and contemplate Hanuman without being in the thoroughfare of people doing the same.

Our visit was a little inauspicious as it coincided with the day after one of the ‘lucky days’ to get married in the Hindu calendar, which meant that we had a constant procession of newlyweds accompanied by various groups (some of singing women) entering the temple. I tried to get rid of some of my super-sweet “gifts to the gods” but it was refused on the grounds that the groom was fasting (or at least that’s the excuse he came up with).

Our visit was followed by a breakfast of Cachori (sp?) in a spicy soup and some chai, and then we said good-bye to all the new Langoor mothers (almost every one had a newborn- there must be *something* good going on around the temple) and headed back before the day started heating up (i.e. before 8am ;-)

Some friendly donkeys on our trip back down

Photos from Jaipur


Gernot and I spent an afternoon taking a whirlwind trip through some of the sights of Jaipur, Rajasthan. Here is a selection of the best photos.

In front of Janta Manta (Indian observatory)

Near the lucky Elephant- City Palace

Detail of doors from City Palace

 Spring door- City Palace

 Pink City Markets

 Haba Mahal

 Jal Mahal (Water Palace)

Block dying 

 Birla Temple

 Sari shop

 Jaipur Markets

Exercise Book maker

Hindu Gods

I’m sure you have at least heard of the religion of Hindu before, so you’ve probably also heard the standard lines thrown along with it: 350 million different gods, reincarnation, gurus, etc. Most people who know only that much treat it as a bit of a novelty- cows, monkeys, elephants and rats as holy creatures; elephant-man, monkey-man, seven armed women as gods. It does prepare you a little for my interpretation of Hindu: That it’s extremely bloody confusing.

I read a little of the background of Hindu before I came, so at least I had heard of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. And I’m Catholic, so I had an idea of the different incarnations of God, depending on what was attempting to be represented. So I appreciated that these gods come in different incarnations, those incarnations revealing a little about their personality and therefore about man’s personality (As I have had explained to me by my boss, the gods are simply different incarnations of man and his virtues and vices).

So now I’ve had the chance to visit a couple of temples, each dedicated to one god or another (I think I’ve seen two of Shiva (or two different incarnations of), 1 Ganesha and perhaps 1 Brahm. The temples have been wildly different: one is next to our current fertilizer production site, with a big Ganesh on entry, who isn’t the real Ganesh- he’s around the corner; one was in Jaipur, where they were preparing an amazing amount of food for a festival in the afternoon- the idol was removed, which is why I can’t be sure who it was for- is it rude to ask them to repeat it more than once?; one was a huge marble structure for the “Shiva family”? built by wealthy industrialists (can I still say that in 2011?) and adorned by statues of the apostles, Mohammed, Buddha and Einstein; and the last was what I visited today, a complex of temples all dedicated to different Gods, but the main one being to the goddess riding the lion (again, an incarnation of Shiva?) and off to the corner a black version of Shiva carrying her trident.

Now I have had these temples and the purpose of the bells and offerings explained to my enquiring brain several times, but it still hasn’t stuck. I think I struggle with ANY terms of reference for these religious practices; but they really aren’t that different to other forms of devotion I had seen; prostration on the ground; prayers to the gods; ringing of bells and drums; and offerings (some of which are blessed and taken back to the family to eat). I guess perhaps the thought of having to remember which of the gods to pray for at which time I think I would find extremely confusing- and surely there’s some grey areas… When you are hoping for success- is that lucky Ganesh or the powerful Shiva?- for example. And then you need to choose which of the local Ganesh temples to go to- which one is more in touch with the gentle elephant? I don’t even want to think about remembering which of these temples have which gods in them (perhaps they’re signposted in Hindi).

I’m learning little by little- I got the story of why Ganesh receives the first wedding invitation of every couple the other day- but this might be something I can only reach a basic level of ignorance in after a year in India.

A conveyor or a winch?

Before I get into today’s trivia question, just one thing I feel needs to be addressed. I’m currently sitting in the lobby (to use a flattering word for what is basically the entrance door) of the Maharaja Hotel here in Samod watching what apparently passes for cricket nowadays, the Indian Premier League. So here’s my confusion- I’ve seen approximately 20 people that are obviously of European origin during my time here in India. That’s 20 out of 1.2 billion people- a pretty small percentage. However, apparently this percentage makes up 100% of the available cheerleading stock in India- given that the only cheerleaders you ever see at the IPL games are quite obviously not of- well let’s just say Indian ancestry, at least.

So today’s trivia question is one that I’m sure has baffled many a Business Strategy Manager across this little blue planet of ours- what is the most efficient way to get 300kg of harvested worming compost from the harvesting field to a sieve that separates saleable material from rubbish or bulk material?

Firstly you may well be asking- what the hell has that question got to do with Business Strategy anyway? Well, I hopefully can put it this way- part of the strategy in this business involves producing fertilizer, and that means that someone has to answer these questions. Given the current lack of availability of fertilizer production consultants- the responsibility then has to fall on someone. That someone basically means, to a large extent, me.

Here’s your basic sieve (lovingly drawn for your appreciation in Office Impress). It takes raw harvested composted material, shakes around a bit and only passes the finer material through a metal sheet with ½ cm holes cut into it. Larger material slides along the screen and falls off the end. The sieve weighs a ton (literally) and needs the input to flow onto the highest point. We don’t know at the moment how fast we can pour material onto the sieve for to work at its most efficient, but we’re estimating something like 20kg every 2 minutes.

The problem, then, is that raw input is being harvested at a site anything from 20-150m away from where the sieve is located. The output of the sieve needs to be packed into wondrous bags of Miracle fertilizer, and that packing area needs to be static, so moving the sieve really isn’t an option. The challenge then, quite simply, is to get the material from a harvesting site that can vary to the sieve. And a constant flow of material at that to keep the sieve working at maximum capacity.

A few things had to change then. We solved the varying location by getting a little motorized tuk-tuk that can be loaded at the harvesting site before driving to the sieve. Now you might be able to see the issue- we need to get the 300kg of material from a height of about 50cm into the sieve (at a constant rate) at a height of 1.5m. Simple problem, right? So we came up with several ideas.

A ramp seems like the simplest and cheapest solution, but tuk-tuks are normally not built to take 300kg, and trying to drive one to 1.5m off the ground would mean either an infinitely long ramp ;-) or a more powerful tuk-tuk, i.e. there were serious doubts if the tuk-tuk would make it.

A conveyor would allow us to unload the tuk-tuk a little bit away from the sieve (at a point more central to where we were harvesting) and with a decent enough design would allow us to unload the harvested material by just pushing it out of the tuk-tuk and having it “flow” onto the input of the conveyor. They’re not too expensive (about $400 for 8m) and would mean a constant input flow to the sieve. The most expensive solution (intuitively) and the least flexible- although the input we can tinker with a bit.

Then it was time for the creative solution- some kind of “bin” that the tuk-tuk can easily dump material into, but that we could easily then lift up to the height of the sieve and shovel the material in. Our solution was a joint creative effort- we have a “catcher at ground height or at least with sides no higher than the tuk-tuk floor, and then we find a way of lifting it up (either by a winch system or counterweights) and then the material is pushed out or slides out when it’s at 1.5m off the ground.

Pretty cool, huh? Of course there is a little problem contained in that simple word “lifting”. How do you lift almost half a tonne of material 1.5m off the ground? Using the best of my mechanical engineering memory (i.e. practically none) we came up with a few ideas. Didn’t I learn something about pulley systems that allowed you to lift lots of weights even if you were a bit of a weakling? Couldn’t we use a balance system and a counter-weight? What about a winch- they can do pretty amazing things with relatively little engineering right?

So after trying to conceptualise how this would work in our heads, we decided we didn’t want too many 300kg counter-weights jumping up and down around where people would be constantly working with the sieve- might result in some nasty stubbed toes. The winch seemed like the natural choice- basically doing a similar ratio transfer of a pulley, but stronger and simpler to operate (those wires were going to have to be fairly large through the pulleys- probably?) But who knew about making winches to lift a half tonne “bin” off the ground? Someone in Chomu apparently, who showed us a nice little system with a simple two cog pulley driving a steel wire reel to go up, with a safety catch to stop the thing from freewheeling back down, and a brake for when the bin had been unloaded. Almost perfect. Of course then we asked him the price he wanted for this thing- which turned out to be about 3x that that we were quote for the conveyor… :-/ So all this design work, a system that wasn’t quite as good as the conveyor, but I was pretty proud of how close we got… all for the bargain price of $1200.

Back to the… well, back to the conveyor manufacturer.

“Market” research

Another perfect mild night in Samod, Rajasthan, the lightest of breezes blowing as we debate whether the big lizards catching insects under the lights qualify as authentic geckos or not.

I am recovering from learning about the definition of “cool and refreshing” to your average Indian. I purchased some “cool and refreshing” Jaljeera drink mixes at one of the single-cigarette vendor stalls; it looked like a “cool and refreshing” lemony kind of drink. The instructions also said you could add “more lemon” as required, so it sounded somewhat promising. It ended up, however, tasting like the equivalent of a curried egg dissolved in cold water, which was as difficult to finish as it sounds. I guess I should have been warned when I thought someone had farted after I opened the packet, but it was in fact just the smell of the spices that make up the concoction that is Jaljeera. Therefore the next 15 minutes that I spent trying to down said pickled egg also involved trying to decipher what this drink could possibly have to do with “cool and refreshing”. Certainly not much to do with my idea of refreshing which would have been the equivalent of the lemon thing I thought I was getting. It was some relief to learn that refreshing to an Indian means some sort of stomach refreshment rather than that to the palate…

Today falls under the category of why I love (and hopefully some would be bold enough to say ‘thrive’) working in a small, dynamic organisation so much: being in the position to do things you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to do. Of course it helps when that small organisation is based in a small town in Rajasthan, India, and the opportunity involves something that would probably only happen in a few select areas of the world.

GreenOil are currently attempting to step up their marketing of their (ahem) revolutionary nano-tech vermi-compost, and that means trying to get their product into the minds of the average farmer in the surrounding area. So how do you do that?

Well, farmers have different time-clocks to the rest of us. They start work early (most of them before the sun comes up), even when they are doing something that doesn’t require them doing that, like transporting their produce to sell in the main vegetable market. So how do you work out how best to communicate your message to them? Well, unfortunately for those of us with those different time-clocks responsible for working out *how* to communicate that message, it means getting up with them and going to the same place they go- the main vege market.

Unfortunately getting up at 4:15am meant also relying on our compatriots to do the same, and we didn’t get to the market until about 6:00am. Kind of luckily, however, it was the day after a full moon. Why was that lucky? Because (and this is either partially accurate or complete bullshit, depending on which of my colleagues you talk to) according to Rajasthani Hindu belief, a full moon marks the time when the ghosts of your ancestors decide to pay you a return visit, and they don’t want to see you conducting any type of business when they drop by. So it meant that the market was ‘closed’ or that only 20% of the normal business was being conducted inside it. So it gave us a chance to walk around and see how a farmer might be fed the GreenOil Karishma (it means ‘Miracle’!) message.

How do you feed a Rajasthani farmer a message about miracles? A damn good question, and one that we are attempting to answer thusly: You plaster is on as many unused spots inside the market as possible, putting up banners, posters and you paint any unused bits of concrete. You “sponsor” the Chai stall (although my idea of having the stall guy make free Chai for every farmer was overturned- apparently you don’t give anyone free stuff in India because then they don’t value it- sounds vaguely familiar?… ;-) I can recommend his Chai if you’re even in the neighbourhood though)

So that’s our strategy- we are offering to make free signs for the wholesalers who buy vegetables as long as that sign can include our logo (kind of like the way Coke sponsors small take-aways), sweetening the deal by putting a picture of the wholesaler on it (after all, who would lose interest in a poster with them on it right?). We will go banner-crazy and paint every blank or decrepit wall. My “market” research involved trying to identify all lines of sight that I could in the market to work out which wholesalers we needed to approach. Whenever those stray cows get out of the way- you’ll see a Greenoil Karishma logo subliminally changing your obsession with chemical fertilizers ;-P

An early start and our whole Marketing strategy was decided by about 2pm- I’ll let you know how it goes next week. I presume you can tell I’m still loving it here…

Oh and BTW, anyone with any ideas on how to promote a new, unproven (at least from the farmer’s point of view) composting fertilizer to relatively receptive (and by receptive I mean willing to try new methods that will improve their productivity) is more than welcome to leave a comment.

Chalo!

Images from Samod, Rajasthan

Lobby of our "Palace" Hotel in Samod

View from the top of the sand-mining setup in Samod. The sand is silica rich and used to produce glass. It's got this wonderful change of colour to it as the afternoon sun sets.

One of the local attractions at the Samod "potentially married women" festival

View from our "palace" Hotel in Samod over the surrounding hills. GreenOil's power plant is slated to be built to the left of that mountain on the ridge.

Religious (Hindi) colours of Samod. You but these to approach the temple.

A cow sneaks a snack. Don't let this picture fool you into thinking this is normally tolerated.

One of the no-doubt millions of photos I will take from eager lookers-on. This is from the market in Chamu.

Freshly squeezed sugar-cane mixed with mint and salt. Mmmmmm....

Concluding business at the market in Chamu.

The local water-dispenser. She kept waving to me every time I went past so I asked if I could take her photo. The water is free, those on the side of the can are "donations" worth about 2c each.