Coimbatore, a big, modern city

6 January 2010, 3:20 PM, Coimbatore: We took a taxi from our hotel in Thiruvannamali to the train station in Jolarpettai.  Our driver was much more reasonable than the last crazy man.  He drove relatively slow and didn't try to kill any livestock or dogs.  It was a couple of hours ride through some really nice country.  Lush vegetation, lots of farming, including coconut palms, sugar cane, orange trees, rice paddies and lots more.  There was very little litter, because in rural areas of India, all the trash is organic and biodegradable.  You don't have plastic water bottles and goods that come wrapped or bottled in glass, plastic, aluminum or paper.  However, wherever there was standing or running water, it looked polluted.  It seems to me that massive construction of water treatment and massive construction of sewage treatment plants would be something that would really benefit India.  Also massive public relations campaigns to try to instill an inhibition against littering in the population.  You see people unwrapping some food or other item and throwing the wrapping right on the street.

I would say that 90% of the people here wear sandals, even on motorcycles.  Perhaps 5% go barefoot and only about 5% wear shoes.  The weather would make shoes uncomfortable.  Catherine pointed out that women on motorcycles with saris seem in great danger of the sari getting caught in the wheels and dragging the woman off the bike to be killed in traffic.  At least in Coimbatore the vast majority of motorcyclers wear helmets, and there don't seem to be any mopeds.  Coimbatore doesn't have near as many cows and oxen roaming the street.  We only saw two so far, and they were pulling a cart, under the control of a human.  It seems a much more modern city than Pondicherry or even Chennai.

The weather has been nice during our trip, typically in the seventies, with a light breeze.

The trains seem pretty efficient, leaving and arriving on time.  We got a first class, non-air-conditioned cabin, which was pretty inexpensive.  The railway cars are old and showing their age, but they were clean and moderately comfortable.  Second class is crowded.  If you have luggage, you'll probably want to travel first class.

I forgot to tell you about when Catherine and I were walking around in Pondicherry one night, and stopped and listened to a singer with a couple backup musicians.  Indians have this habit of turning loudspeakers up so high that I am sure that it damages your eardrums.  Seriously, they turn it up louder than the loudest rock concert you've ever been to, crazy loud.  I wanted to stay and listen, but I didn't want to damage my hearing.

We went to the dentist today.  The dentist is a lady, ex-Captain in the army, I think, since her sign still said "Capt".  She's a Punjabi.  She manages to be motherly and professional at the same time.  She had two assistants and one younger lady (probably a trainee) just watching.  Where labor is cheap, you can afford lots of help.  Which got me thinking of an economic metric to quantify various economies: the ratio of the cost of labor to the cost of capital.  For instance, in India, how much would a dental x-ray machine cost in terms of man-hours of dentist time?  The ratio would be much lower in the USA... an hour of a dentist's time is expensive in the USA, and the cost of an x-ray machine is probably about the same in both countries.  When labor is cheap and capital is expensive, it gives rise to a totally different type of economy than if the opposite is true.  Therefore my dentist in India has 3 assistants and a 1960's vintage x-ray machine, and my dentist in the USA has one assistant and the newest, fanciest x-ray machine.  Oh, and by the way, my Indian crown is costing me 5,000 rupees (about $100).  It would probably cost 10 times that in the USA.

The dentist speaks 5 languages, including English, Punjabi, Hindi, and a couple of others.  Between her and her assistants, they can usually find a way to communicate sufficiently with their Indian patients of different ethnic origins.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I had purchased an unlocked GSM cell phone on E-Bay before I left the USA, then bought a SIM card for it in Chennai, so I have a Chennai phone number, which is definitely what you should do if you are going to be visiting India.  EVERYONE (except the very poor) has a cell phone here.

Catherine and I lunched in a cafe here, where the locals come in and sit down anywhere there was a free chair (two sat across from us).  The waiter slaps down a rectangular banana leaf (about the size of a placemat), then pours a little water on it.  The diner (using his right hand) wipes off the banana leaf, then the waiter puts a stainless steel bowl of rice by his left elbow and plops three different types of goop (thick sauces) in piles on the banana leaf.  The diner makes a big pile of rice in the middle, then mixes some of the goop in with the rice and eats it with his right hand.  Catherine was the only female in the dining room.  It was only as we were leaving that we discovered another room where women and families dined.  I think we were in a room where everybody got the same basic lunch and ate fast and cheap.  I think the other room might have been for more leisurely lunches, ordered from the menu.

The Indian people are almost always friendly, open and welcoming.  In Coimbatore we are staying at the Integral Yoga Institute.  We are doing hatha yoga twice a day and meditation in their hall in the morning.  I really liked the hatha yoga class this morning because it was a very traditional Integral Yoga class.