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India is a very resourceful country. I understand they have to be considering the sheer number of inhabitants – imagine the trash problem if the population of India took on the wasteful, disposable United States way of living. This resourcefulness is apparent in everything – from the miniature single ply tissues on my bathroom vanity (most natives use handkerchiefs) to the fact that my coworker is getting a new keyboard installed in his laptop because a few keys have stopped working. In the states, we’d have lived with the key problem until it became troublesome and then tossed the machine as the cost to replace it would be less expensive than the trouble one would go to replacing the keyboard of the machine. Can’t wait to see the frankenstein laptop after the keyboard surgery.

I’m in the office right now. Unlike my Yodlee Bangalore office, this one is in an industrial part of town, but by that they mean it is mixed in with factories. On our commute to and from the area we pass mechanics working on autorickshaws, bays of bicycles and the occasional Samsung or Intel service center. By Service Center, I expect that means call center, as that used to be much of the tech business, here, until development shops tired of the rat race in Bangalore. In contrast to Bangalore which seems to have very first world offices for their first world investors, the Samsung building, here, blends in. I’ve been looking for proper factories – large first world warehouses – but this is just an example of why I find India so amazing – of course, factories, here, will not be large warehouses.

The office is a strange mix of colors – flesh, canary yellow, toothpaste turquoise, orange, with burgundy accents. The floor is orange tile. The office furnishings look just as you’d expect a start-up’s in the states to be – older, second generation furnishings. Though these are covered in drippings and dirt. Everything here is covered in dirt. Even the paved roads have split open revealing puddles of dirt. I wonder if the aesthetics of the furnishings is simply a reflection of the fact that the nightly cleaning staff – if there is nightly cleaning staff – lives in dirt floored shacks and has very different expectations of cleanliness, or if the state of cleanliness, here, is simply a result of use. As I mentioned with the laptop keyboard – I suspect everything, here, is on at least a second or third life.
Writing that I wonder if recycling, here, really is resourcefulness or if it is a reflection of their belief in reincarnation. And our wastefulness in the states is just a reflection of our belief in an afterlife beyond the body.

Dealing with pollution, all vehicles here are Propelled Be Clean Fuel. Some are Be Clean Fuee.

Imagine taking this bus to work:

Our office front door:

Our office is off a not-recently paved road, across from what appears to be impromptu tent shops, but are more likely just well established tent shops. (Unfathomable to my western brain that one could keep shop in a tent for YEARS!) The outside is covered in glass. Behind the door above, one climbs what in the states would be a service stairwell into the office. This one is marbled like I might marble it – with no beveling or particular attention to grout aesthetics. The tile walls are splashed with what I assume is the red stain of betelnut. Last night we left after dark and had to descend the stairs in complete darkness. For good measure, they draped some hoses across the steps, making the descent even more treacherous. We’ll be leaving earlier today.