Pirated Software

Monday, 25 January 2010, 11 AM Coimbatore

The Internet cafes here charge 20 rupees per hour (that's about 40 cents).  I had been ruminating over how they could pay for the computers and software when charging such low rates, and I guessed that the Windows XP and MS Office Suite must be pirated.  Reinforcing my conclusion is the fact that most of the computer clocks in most of the Internet cafes are set back to some date in the past, thereby defeating some trial license.  When we were on the train a couple of days ago, I asked a young professional who worked for Dell in Bangalore if he thought that this was so, and he replied, "Oh yes, you can get the pirated software anywhere, anything you want, Windows, Office, anything.  The software license protection gets defeated in China and then the pirated software gets imported to India.  The Chinese are very good at getting around any license protections that anybody can think up."

Then I asked him, "But what about the hardware?  When I have seen new computers for sale in India, they are even more expensive than in the United States, though the general cost of living is much much lower in India.  How does anyone afford a computer?"  He replied that very few people buy a complete computer.  They buy the parts and build it themselves.  The parts are relatively inexpensive.  You can build your own computer for maybe $300.  There's a street in Chennai named "Richi" street crowded with about 300 shops selling computer parts, chassis, accessories and pirated software. 

Yesterday Catherine and I were sitting on the patio of a sidewalk cafe having a latte and a masala tea ("masala" tea is the term they use for the spicy tea we call "chai" back home) and a couple of ponies ambled by, doubtless on their way to some haircut or manicure appointment.  These ponies had no harnesses, no brands, nothing.  Just out for a leisurely stroll in the crazy, busy traffic of Coimbatore, filled with autorickshaws, cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, etc.  I couldn't help but contrast this with the panic that accompanied the times when my sister's horse would escape from her pen in our relatively quiet Southern California neighborhood when I was a teenager.  It was "call out the National Guard" time.  It certainly points to a cultural difference.  Exactly what that cultural difference is, I'm not quite sure.  Perhaps here in India the feeling is that, if the ponies get stolen or run over, it's God's will, so why get excited about it?

Many of the road names here in Coimbatore seemed to have been changed recently.  I was standing this morning at one street corner that had a sign on a pole listing the name of the street and another stone indicator near the ground indicating another name for the same street.  Yesterday we were looking for (and finally found) a restaurant that had advertised its location as "Arogya Sami Road", yet our map showed it to be on a road of another name.  An autorickshaw driver pointed us to Arogya Sami Road, that's the only way we found it.  Presumably it is our map that is out of date.  It's hard to know because street name signs are very rare here.

We can usually understand the English of well-educated Indians, but often have difficulty understanding waiters at restaurants.  There often are no menus, so we have to just order (somehow) and then accept what we get.  It's kind of a crap shoot.  We go to vegetarian restaurants, so that narrows things down a bit.  So far it has worked itself out. 

We found a drugstore called Nilgiris, where I bought some Ayurvedic powder that you dissolve in water and drink, for cough, bronchitis and such.  I had a bad cough that only manifests itself in the evening as I lie down to sleep.  This stuff worked wonders, so I went back today and bought a bunch to bring home.

We leave for home in a couple of days.  It will be good to be back.