Vid's post about surviving Hubli is spot on. The city is relatively small from a geographical standpoint and conservative in nature (especially compared to western-like Bangalore). Getting around is easy once you get through the routine of haggling over the price of the auto rickshaw or finding the right bus route. But there's still one problem...I still don't know where to go to get anything! Locals tell us that the best (and only) place to go shopping is Koppikar Road, a street at least 5 blocks long with many different shapes and styles of stores. This problem is, there's no real order to the place, which makes it hard when all you want is to buy a couple of new pillows to enhance our capability to sleep in our super noisy guest house (post to come later with audio of the horns outside our window). Here's a quick synopsis of the sequence of events involved in purchasing a couple of $5 pillows...
1. Get on the bus near Deshpande Foundation - tell conductor that we want to go down to the 'old bus stand.' We pay our 4 rupees (~8 cents) each and hang on for the ride.
2. Bus stops short of the old bus stand stop. Because we cannot see the old bus stand, we just assume it is not our stop and stay on the bus.
3. 30 seconds later, bus goes by the old bus stand and we ask driver to stop the bus. He shakes his head and we continue on through the city for another 10 minutes until the bus finally stops again. We've since gone well past where we need to go, so hop off and decide to just walk back.
4. We finally get back to the head of Koppikar Road, around 730pm. As we turn to walk down the street...boom...the power on the entire street goes out!
5. We soon hear the sound of the diesel generators being cranked up and lights start to flicker on in the various storefronts. Scenes like this are quite typical in India, especially because the monsoon rains have been less than normal, thus limiting the amount of hydro power that can be produced this time of year.
6. We continue down the street, and suddenly, "Squish!" Uh-oh, I just stepped into something nice and fresh from some animal or another. Thankfully it will be tracked out before we get home.
7. A few blocks down, we find a home accessory store. It is relatively well lit and full of customers. It looks positive, and luckily for them, the place requires that we remove our footwear before stepping inside.
8. We go up to one of the counters and ask if they have any pillows. To our delight they have a half dozen varieties. We settle on one that is large and not too soft and pay for two of them.
9. Continuing with our luck for the evening, they only have one in the showroom and need to go into the back to get another one. Of course, because the lights are out, they are back there for what seems to be 30 minutes searching for one (I don't think it was really that long), randomly emerging with other-types of pillows that are not the same model (or price).
10. The store manager/owner finally realizes that we have been standing at the counter for what seems to be forever waiting for this pillow and grabs us a couple of chairs. "I rang up another store to get the pillow brought over here via cycle. It should only be another 5 minutes."
11. 15 minutes later, the clerk that sold us the rogue pillow is outside in the dark staring down the street trying to sight the deliveryman. Soon after, she comes back in with a smile, "It's here."
12. The clerk and store owner lead us aside with several apologies. "No problem," we say, "all is forgotten." In the end, we are happy to have what we sought out earlier that evening to find.
13. We leave the store, large pillows in hand, hail down a couple of auto drivers and finally settle on a reasonable price back home for what will no doubt be a great night's sleep. "Hey Vid, I am all about having an adventure," I say,
"but tonight all I wanted was to hop in my car and go to Target!" Never a dull time in Hubli!
At first I was very confused why anybody would react this way over the death of an actor, especially one that was only well known in his own state. I mean it's not like the President died or anybody was assassinated. This guy had a heart attack. But then Vidya pointed out that movies are huge in India, and often the primary source of escape from reality for most of the people that live here. The top actors are highly revered, often more than the country's key politicians. Plus, it is hard to criticize people for acting irrationally when I experienced similar antics in Columbus after Ohio State's big win over Michigan in 2002 that eventually resulted in a national championship. Perhaps the moral of this story is that wherever we are in the world there's likely to be people that act like idiots!?!!
