Contrasting and Relaxing

I fully realize that much has been written about the fact that India is the land of contrast, but I’d like to give you just a couple of examples that I have seen in the past few weeks that speak to the truth of that sentiment.

So, here goes:

Front Window vs. Back Window

If I look out of the front window of my apartment, it looks like I am at a resort in Florida. There are palm trees,

nice grass, swimming pools, and even a tennis court. The only thing slightly out of place is the guy seven floors below who is, “mowing the lawn” with a pair of sheers. I don’t know how he does it but, I must say, he displays very impressive perseverance.

Then, out my back window it looks like I am in one of those cities that Jason Borne is always jumping around in. You know, he steels a motor cycle, ramps up onto one of those roofs out there and chases the bad guy through people’s living rooms… but I digress. The point here is that if you just look at these two views, you

start to get an idea of how this country can offer you vastly different points of view in a space as small as a living room.

Garbage vs. Luxury

There are a herd of cows that like to hang out right outside to the gates of the pleasant little community described above. For the most part they don’t bother anybody, except for the occasional rampage such as my colleague experienced on his way to work the other day.

These cows hang out in this particular spot because they are eating from a reasonably sized garbage pile on the side of the road. Mind you, this is the same road the runs just outside my resort-looking apartment complex. This garbage pile is anecdotal evidence of a problem that India is facing, namely that there are a billion people here and even though they, on average, probably produce a 10^th of the garbage we individually produce in the US, that is still a lot of garbage. On top of that, India’s infrastructure is lagging a bit behind it's growth, making it difficult to meet the garbage picking needs of the people. As a recent New York Times article points out, they are looking at some interesting approaches to solving the problem: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/asia/20iht-letter20.html?ref=world

About the same time that article was posted I saw this report: (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/21/indian.design/index.html?hpt=C2)

Again, the contrast struck me. Here we have two major news sources publishing articles, days apart, about the same country. One of the articles is about how India being filled with garbage and the other about how India is expected to consume a large portion of the worlds luxury items over the next 10 years -- pretty amazing if you think about it.

Justin vs. Chair

The last example I have for you is a contrast of size. I will let the picture speak for itself, but let’s just say Justin had a nice tea party J

Have a great week everyone and, remember, when you see a rampaging bull, get out of the way.