The International Writers Magazine: Rich India

---

Delhi Billions • Nathan Bell "Another shirt, Nathan," Angali said in Tamil as she approached me, an outraged look on her face. She grabbed my arm in a firm pinch and repeated, "Another shirt? You've bought more than ten shirts and nothing for me? Nothing for your friends?"

I had just then returned from the tailor with another two-dollar button down shirt, feeling pleased with my thriftiness. I was hurt, surprised, and confused, for I considered Angali one of my best friends. She owned a neighborhood dosai shop, where she worked by herself eighteen hours a day, from four thirty in the morning until eleven at night. She treated me as family. Every holiday was spent overeating in her family's one roomed hut and, after eating in her shop, I, unlike everyone else, washed my own dishes. She even taught me how to cook her special chutney. As I passed by on the street every morning, her wave and radiant smile started my day off right.

I had been in southern India all year, in the small, vibrant city of Madurai, nestled comfortably on the Vaigai River halfway between the Western Ghats and the Bay of Bengal. Throughout my yearlong study abroad program I learned Tamil, drank too much tea, sat around, and spent most of the blistering afternoons shooting the shit with neighborhood shopkeepers such as Angali. These friends of mine were generally a happy bunch and, though they were without exception extremely poor, they contented themselves with their meager subsistence and a new shirt on Diwali. Everyone’s marriages were arranged (usually to a first cousin), every family had a "swami closet" in their no-more-than-two-room homes, and everyone worked unthinkable hours to make ends meet.

I was confronted daily with extreme poverty, from the maimed beggars in front of Meenakshi Amman Temple whose infected, pussy stumps fed swarms of flies, to the family of seven living in a one roomed hut across the lane from my apartment. This was the India I knew.

My two best friends Shane and Emiliano flew out to India before I left so as to share in my experience. We had never traveled around India. The naive notion that we could move from place to place sleeping solely on overnight bus rides was extinguished on our first sweaty, cramped, overnight trip. Two weeks of this rapid movement left us exhausted and, upon arriving in Delhi the morning of June 16th, we were on the verge of collapse.

Shane's friend Sarah Alderfer lived in Delhi and, upon getting word from Shane, invited us to stay in her house. She was in New York. The rickshaw ride to the Alderfer's house was short. After only a couple of minutes and a few sharp turns, we found ourselves in a place unlike any other that we had ever seen in India. Until that point in our trip, the sights had some distinct similarities regardless of location, be it urban Bombay or a village in the heart of the Rajastani desert. Streets were always overflowing with bicycles, auto-rickshaws, buses, cars and cows, while idlers and pedestrians competed with the traffic for space on the road's fringes. Poverty was inescapable, space a precious commodity, and 120 degree heat merely average. Yet here, less than a hundred meters from an encampment of the homeless and closer still to the cacophony of the highway, was a serene shaded neighborhood with towering houses.

The lane on which the Alderfers lived was a loop off of the bigger road in a massive development. In the middle of the loop was a pristinely manicured grassy park, at that time being tended to by three professional gardeners. This was one of the first times I had seen grass in India. Each of the approximately twenty houses had three stories and a small yard, and attached to the gate at each house was a security shack with armed security guards.
"This must be where the richest people in India live," I said to Emiliano and Shane, as if imparting some knowledge that only I had. "People like the Congress members and the industrialists."

The auto-rickshaw dumped us unceremoniously and sped off, leaving us standing in the middle of the lane, surrounded with luggage. We were awed by the magnificence of the neighborhood. Usually this amazement would have rejuvenated us, or at least perked us up, but by this time we were so depleted that we could only manage a widening of the eyes and a fatigued drag of our bags towards the next stop in our journey.

We were received and shown our rooms by Suzy, the Alderfer's maid. We slept soundly until the early evening, at which point we cleaned up, called Ravi (a friend of Sarah's whose number had been given to us), and each put on our one decent shirt.

At ten o'clock on the dot we heard a honking outside. We strolled out the door into the still steamy night. A sleek black Lexus awaited us.

"Holy shit" I whispered under my breath as we walked towards the mysterious vehicle. I distinctly remember walking down the street in Madurai earlier in the year and upon seeing a rusted out 1994 Honda Civic, thinking to myself, "This man must be baller." Cars were rarely seen, Western cars rarer still, and Western luxury cars, never. India is by and large a poor country, but it also has a one hundred percent tariff on all foreign cars. This means that if you wanted to buy a $30,000 Lexus, you would also have to pay $30,000 to the government.

Emiliano opened the door and entered. Shane and I followed him into the bright interior. Sitting in the front passenger seat was a short, moderately attractive guy of about our age. He was wearing an Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt and a baseball cap. He introduced himself as Ravi. Driving the car was a serious looking middle-aged man dressed all in white, Indian work clothes. He was Ravi's personal driver. He was not introduced.

The car swam smoothly through the packed roads, the driver stoic behind the wheel. It became quite clear that Ravi was rich beyond all belief, for he had mentioned offhand that he was starting up a cruise liner business with money borrowed from his father, who happened to be the CEO of The Times of India. The Times of India is the most widely read newspaper in the country.

The car slowed to a stop in front of a large, recently built structure. The building was surrounded by a parking lot brimming with expensive cars. The four of us jumped out. Ravi spoke something in Hindi to the driver before he sped off. A line of well-dressed young men and women stretched from the entrance. The young men were wearing expensive Western slacks; the women sported midriffs, showed legs, and were drunk. Throughout my year in Madurai, only a couple of times did I see a female ankle and the few times that a female wasn't wearing a shawl over her fully covering shalwar kameez (think maternity outfit), I noticed.

We hopped on the back of the line. I looked back towards the darkly lit main road and saw the India which I knew well; tired men pulling heavy loads, swarming traffic, a one-legged beggar on crutches. Though a mere fifty meters away, it might as well have been another country.
"Shit" Ravi said. "I forgot about the dress code. No shorts or sandals are allowed." He was wearing camouflage shorts, while I had on worn down leather sandals, my only footwear. The entire building was covered in massive photos of models and athletes.
"Wait, this is the club?" Shane asked Ravi, tapping him on the shoulder.
"No, this is the mall that the club is in. To get into the mall you have to meet the dress code."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah."

Stunned, Emiliano, Shane and I watched as Raj approached the humungous security guard. We heard Raj ask the man to let us in, saying that we were his friends from the United States and that he wanted to show us a good time. The security guard was unmoved. Ravi tried a couple more excuses to no avail. Finally, in frustration, he blurted, "I'm Ravi A****." Within three seconds we were whisked through the door and into the empty mall. We took an elevator up and found ourselves outside The Flamingo, the club where we were to meet his friend Asha.

Ravi approached the hostess and, instead of going through the whole rigmarole again, stated his name. We proceeded inside unimpeded. I had never been to such a fancy place in my life. The bar stood in the middle of the large room, covered on all sides by marble slabs. Chandeliers covered the ceiling. Nearly every female was beautiful enough to have starred in Bollywood, and every guy looked wealthy enough to marry them.

We followed Ravi to the far wall, where I could make out the fuzzy outline of a sizable table hidden behind opaque sliding glass doors. As we neared, a Flamingo employee, dressed fully in maroon, slid the door open, revealing three overweight young women at a table that would have been suitable for the board meetings at Microsoft. This was the VIP room.
"Hey guys!" the girl furthest away yelled at us over the din of rap music. "You guys made it! Ravi told me he had trouble getting in! Here, sit down! Which one of you is Shane!?" We shuffled around to the other side of the table and sat down.
"I'm Asha by the way," she yelled at the top of her lungs once again. "Hey, want anything to drink?" Asha had a round, pretty face, large eyes, and a very light complexion. She was heavy, but her vibrant personality and twinkling eyes provided her with a distinct attractiveness. She handed us a maroon, heavily bound menu. Shane opened it. The first page was wines. Emiliano and I leaned over the menu and went mute. We were not intently browsing; we were dumbfounded by the first wine listing. Pinot Grigio de Palermo- has aromas and flavors of pears, melons and peaches, which are balanced nicely by a tart, refreshing acidity... 5000 Rs.

"Oh. My. God." we said in unison, thankful for the racket which covered our simultaneous exclamations. At that time it was about forty rupees to the dollar, meaning that the bottle cost about $110 dollars. Expensive, yes, but even more so when you consider that every single meal that we had eaten in India had cost us less than a dollar, Angali's dosai stand filling me up daily all year for under a quarter.
"No wait," Shane started, "there's another zero. That says 50,000 Rs. Yo that's over a thousand dollars." Shane frantically flipped to the other pages, hoping to find something, anything else that we could possibly fit into our shoestring budget. He shut the menu, looked up at Emiliano and me and said glumly, "Guess we're going for the water."
"No that won't work," Emiliano responded. "We have to get something. Here, let's share a shot of Johnnie Walker three ways. We have to play the part."

We ordered the single shot, but upon doing so we realized that we had misread the situation, for no sooner had Emiliano ordered when Asha asked for the Pinot Grigio de Palermo and three of their most expensive entrees.
"I don't think we're paying for anything," I mused quietly. Asha was one of those people who know how to make someone feel welcome immediately. She appeared to have a real interest in our travels, what we thought about India, our lives. She was particularly engaged by our descriptions of buses and trains, for she had never been on either.

Conversation flowed seamlessly and, as the drinks that we didn't order flooded the table, dialogue increased in volume.
Within no time it became apparent that Asha too, was from the highest class. After graduating from the international school attended by Sarah, her father made her attend a "finishing school" in Switzerland. Unbelievably, she devoted a year of her life to the learning of etiquette in many different lands, even being forced to walk around at all times with three textbooks balanced precariously on the top of her head to improve her posture. She was now attending the Embassy School, a prestigious college in London, studying fashion marketing. The hip-hop continued to thump loudly, the check fattened, three waiters hovered

The night wound down and Asha asked for the check. Shane, Emiliano, and I knew at this point that we wouldn't pay for a thing. Asha and another girl, Rani, literally fought over the bill, nearly ripping it in half.
"Ravi can drop you guys off tonight," Asha said to us as we exited the club. "And then tomorrow you simply must come to my farm house."
"We would love to, but we have a flight to Bangalore we have to catch tomorrow," I replied.
"That's no problem. I'll have my driver pick you up, bring you over, then drop you off at the airport."
"Great!" I responded maybe a little too excitedly, for I was sure that her house would be unlike anything I had ever seen before.

The next morning Asha arrived in a white Mercedes E-class, as grinning and bubbly as the previous day. We threw our luggage into the trunk and climbed in, ready to be amazed again. I remember that ride to her house being especially smooth. Looking back, I realize that the rides with her and Ravi in Delhi were the only times in my entire life that I rode in a luxury car. This was in a country where, to many, owning a bicycle is a symbol of wealth.

As we rode, Asha told us about how the Clintons are family friends. She said this, as she had everything else, not in a gloating or condescending way, but rather in the casual way that one might describe their typical day at college. She said that Hillary is far smarter than Bill, but that Bill has the most charisma of anyone she has ever met.
"My dad always has to pull my mom off of Bill," is how she put it.

We arrived at her house and as the gate swung open, Shane, Emiliano, and I let out a collective exhale. Standing before us was a white colossus, more similar to a hotel than to anything that could be described as a "house." Just like a hotel, there was an awning covering the entranceway, where Asha's driver dropped us off, before continuing on to the open seven car garage. From my position in front of the massive glass door, I could see that the garage was filled with six other Mercedes, drivers waxing their charges furiously.

We followed Asha in through the gaping doors, held open on either side by solemn servants, and found ourselves in a marble foyer that extended for over forty feet. As we walked down the open hall, I looked right and left deep into the cavernous, columned depths. On one side there was a living room bigger than my house, containing six couches and eight chandeliers. The other was a dining room with by far the largest table I have ever seen. I imagined the table full with dozens of industrialists, brimming with food, servants swarming. I quickly saw that I was laughably wrong about Sarah's neighborhood.

We walked straight through the house and arrived in the back yard. A massive pool twinkled next to a patio. Acres of bright green lawn were being manicured by, as far as I could see, at least six workers. We took a left at the patio and arrived at another wing of the house, where we hung out for the next two hours. This wing, consisting of a bedroom, a bathroom, and two living rooms, was devoted to Raj, Asha's older brother. Nearly every five minutes a servant entered with a different treat. First came brownies, then cake, then chips, and last, Tang.
"How many people do you have working here?" I asked in an offhand manner.
"Twenty three," was her response.

We left with Asha for the airport in a new car and different driver, reveling in the sights we had seen.
"I hope you guys all the best," Asha said, leaning back against her tinted window. She was sitting behind the driver. I was in the middle, between her and Shane. "Nate, if you decide to switch your flight earlier, the offer still stands." The car slowed to a stop at a light.
"I wish, but it's really not possible."
"Ok. Too bad. I hope you come to the next fundraiser then. Hillary is having a few more this year, I'm sure you'd enjoy meeting her." As Asha spoke, a tiny disheveled girl of no more than ten years wandered up to the car. I sat facing Asha, and watched as the beggar girl placed her petite hands on the window. They were dirty and her skin was cracked. She was wearing a single piece of brown fabric that had been stained black in parts by layers of dust and soot. Asha was turned towards me, oblivious to the girl standing mere inches away, behind the glass.
"And we definitely need to party in New York City. My friend is opening a new club."
The girl outside wiped her runny nose with her shirt. She leaned forward, flattening her face against the window. I could see her deep brown eyes clearly. She could only see her reflection.
"You have my email, right? Make sure you send me your information as soon as you get back to New York so that I can make plans." The little girl stood back, still looking at tint. As the car accelerated away towards the intersection, I caught one last glimpse of these two Indian females. Neither of them saw each other.
© Nathan Hitchcock Bell April 2008
nbell1@gmail.com

See also
A Love Arrangement
Nathan Bell
I spent my junior year abroad in the Indian city of Madurai, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

More Opinion

Home

© Hackwriters 1999-2008 all rights reserved - all comments are the writers' own responsibiltiy - no liability accepted by hackwriters.com or affiliates.