Anil Gupta

Wow!  Get a load of that rapid-fire English - did it set your teeth on edge, or just sound like gibberish?  Could you understand it?  It gets easier with time.  It makes me homesick to hear it.

Anyway, this Honeybee Network sounds wonderful; a very grass-roots information exchange system.  There are many micro economic non-profit projects in India; usually helped out or started by expatriates.  Some of them are very successful.  Mr. Gupta is right; India is a hotbed of invention, led by necessity.  What he doesn't discuss so much is that because necessity leads this invention, a lot of things that are used in India are outdated or useless in more developed countries.  Case in point:

One Woman's Antiques are Another's Treasure

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 2:03:36 PM

A lesson in cultural paradigms

People often ask, or comment upon, what it's like to live in such a poverty-stricken country and experience the economic disparities. It's hard. It's hard from all sides - to be the suddenly elite rich, having not been groomed for that role; and on the other hand, to see such poverty and not be able to fix it. As a friend remarked, India really shows you your character.

My latest experience with this paradigm has been with an old sewing machine that the movers took out of its cabinet (which I use as a nightstand) and packed up in a box, along with all its assorted bits and bobs. I got the machine from my sister, who had refinished the cabinet, and it sat in my house, hidden by the cabinet, for a good ten years. I never gave it a thought unless I had to pry little hands out of its drawers. As far as I knew, the machine didn't work and was too old to be useful anyway.

When we got here I put the box in the garage and forgot about it again. Recently, though, my driver's wife began to take sewing lessons, and he asked if he could have the machine. Since I never intended to use it, I willingly gave it to him.

Today his wife, her sewing instructor, the director of the sewing program, and my driver stopped by on a trip to Mahaballipuram. They raved about the machine. Apparently it is an electric machine, and it works. She is so happy to have this machine - something that was entirely an afterthought to me.

This isn't the first time that something that I've considered antique, so old it's useless, or decorative, has been put to use on a daily basis by the Indian people. In Austria, it was a cast-iron iron designed to be filled with charcoal and used - I saw it being sold as an antique in the flea market. I have a picture of a man using one exactly like it here in India for his streetside ironing business. In my kitchen, there is a decorative coal-oil lamp which my maids keep asking me to buy oil for, to use when there are power outages. Not to mention the treadle sewing machines which are all over the city, complete with wooden cabinets - just like the two antique cabinets that I own.

It's a very humbling experience to see these items and realize that this is all people have; this is the end game for them. There is no thought of getting a more modern appliance, because electricity is too iffy and the item is too expensive. Truly, what I consider to be useless in the modern world is still a highly prized possession in India.

And that's what it's like to move from the first-world to the third-world economic system.