It is 4:30pm, I’m just awake from my afternoon nap, and sipping on a cup of tea. I hear Indian music and chanting in the distance outside my window. Today is the birthday of Krishna (a Hindu deity)?

Figure 1: Krishna playing the flute.

It has been over 24 hours now that I have been in India, and I am quite enjoying it – despite a strong case of jet-lag.

The hotel where I am staying is quite fantastic – a paradise of peace right in the middle of a bustling city. Despite its luxury it does not feel overwhelming or pretentious like so many fancy western hotels do. People working here are just pleasant and helpful.

Figure 2: A bowl of floating petals greets us at the entrance of the hotel.

Figure 3: Like a maestro, the orchestrator keeps the flow of taxis in and out of the front area in order and timing.

Figure 4: A column at the entrance of the hotel. I am not sure what these animals are doing.

Figure 5: The door opener greets us with a smile and opens up the hotel lobby to us.

A lot of time has been spent in a hired car in traffic. The roads are incessantly bustling with traffic. Everyone is going in a different direction , and the whole thing is like a flow seemingly following some law of self-coordinated chaos.

Figure 6: Srinivas and I ride in the back and laugh at the crazy scenes we witness.

Figure 7: A cow sits in protest in front of a McDonalds.

Figure 8: Everyone is very focused on going in their own direction, yet never seem to collide.

Srinivas explains to me that in India, you can expect anything to happen. The population embraces this by becoming expert at adaptability – figuring a way to keep going. Soon we face a roadblock: a cow is in the middle of the highway, and won’t move. She looks quite relaxed comfortable there, and couldn’t care less about holding up the cars. After a few seconds of hesitation an traffic jam building up, the stream of cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, and bicycles reconfigures itself to flow around the cow. Nobody seems to find it problematic.

Figure 9: Stein in front of the Qualcomm office.

Figure 10: The new Qualcomm building, to be officially opened in less than 2 weeks.

That evening, in our way back from the office, Srinivas explains to me that to get things working, people build and run their own systems such that they rely the least possible on anything outside of their control. The company Unisys, which has a large office in Bangalore, has a huge campus with not only their own food service, but also their own bank, and even their own power plant. Smaller businesses rely on family and extended family members, of which they can control the reliability. Other than that, if you don’t have control over certain elements of your life or business, you just have to accept that thos elements will occasionally fail and you will have to adapt to it.

Figure 11: The moon goes up and all the small stores turn on their lights.

I watch the sidewalks bustling with night pedestrian traffic, and see a beautiful white firework a little bit ahead. The whole neighborhood goes dark and only the cars are left to light up the street. We pass where the firework was, and it is a large amalgam of wires on a pole jury-rigged to a stripped power line. The smaller stores are all stealing power off of the city power main and the wrong wires touched, blowing the power for the entire neighborhood. Nobody seems alerted. One by one, the store keepers go in the back and fetch low-power electric lights and hang them up.

My guess is the power probably won’t be fixed for a day or two, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone. They obviously have a system, and were prepared to adapt.

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