Chris Ihidero Unedited: Voyage to India

By Chris Ihidero

Every time I travel out of Nigeria, I make a conscious effort not to compare wherever I have travelled to with my home country. If I have travelled to a first world country, of course it is always very hard not to do so. So, when I had to travel to India recently, I was happy that I was going to a place that wouldn’t sadden me when compared with Nigeria. Of course I knew about the strides India had taken in recent times towards development, but I assumed that they would still be struggling with a lot of things that are already being taken for granted in many western societies. How wrong I was.

Whenever one talks about the reason why, even after fifty years of independence, Nigeria is still battling with the basics, one is quickly reminded that Nigeria is a country of 160 million people, bedevilled by corrupt and incompetent leaders. Well, India is home to over a billion people, and corruption is rife, from politicians to the guy on the street who wants to sell something at ten times the true price.

So how did they get the basics right then? Here what I saw:

Getting the Visa: I have never had a smoother experience getting a visa. Got to the Indian embassy by 7 am, an official comes out at about 8am to check documents and ensure they are in order. 9 am and the doors are open. It took not more than five minutes for the consular officer to make up her mind. After she had written on our forms the duration of our visas, she started selling India to us. She had noticed on our forms that wifey and I had something to do with the media, and she started talking about media schools in India, in case we wanted more knowledge; she talked about Indo-Nigerian conferences/seminars and Bollywood/Nollywood collaborations. She asked us to leave our details with her secretary so she could put us on the embassy’ s mailing list. 48 hours later, we picked up our visas. THAT’S how to sell your country.

Getting into India: We landed at the Indira Ghandi International Airport at about 7am on a Thursday morning. It took about twenty minutes from the plane to immigration and another twenty minutes on the queue. Once we were in front of the immigration officer, it took less than five minutes for him to send us on our way.

Food/Clothing: It is often said that you measure a nation’s development by how well it can provide the basics for its citizenry. Well, in this regard, India has sorted out the basics. I haven’t eaten good food at such affordable prices in a while. It felt as if no matter your situation, you could always find good food at a price you could afford. The same goes for clothing. I’ve never seen a country where people wore their own traditional attire like India. And if you look through the market and malls, you’ll find that the traditional materials have been made into ready to wear outfits, which were largely affordable, whatever the size of your pocket. Make no mistake about it; there’s extreme poverty in India, and this is the case in other developed countries, but the strides towards a measure of affordability of basic necessities cannot be ignored.

Transportation: Everything is used for transportation in India, including human beings. That’s my interpretation of the Rickshaw; why a man is still peddling other humans around in the year of our lord 2012 beats me! But it works for them! Auto rickshaws (Keke Marwa), camels, cattle, mini-vans, buses, cabs, trains; all do their best to move people from one place to the other, at what I believe are very affordable prices. We took an air-conditioned taxi from Gurgaon, Delhi to Agra, a ride of about 4 hours, to see the Taj Mahal, a place I have always wanted to see. The cab waited for us for about 2 hours while we toured the Taj and took us back to Gurgaon, another 4 hours. For this we paid about 5000 rupees, which is about N16, 000. That’s like taking a cab to Benin or Akure for an ‘Owambe’ and the cab waits for you and brings you back to Lagos. I don’t even want to think about how much the cab will ask for!

Literacy: I hate it when people say stuff like ‘Nigerians don’ t read’ and cannot see why Nigerians can’ t read. Apart from the fact that there are no libraries to help grow a reading culture, books are just too damn expensive! The opposite is the case in India. Magazines cost 50 rupees (N142), newspapers are 4 rupees. I bought seven books on Bollywood, the most popular Indian film industry, for a total of about 4000 rules (N11,400). Some of these books cost as much as $35 each on Amazon. On my way out I bought Teju Cole‘s Open City for 350 rupees (N1000). The same book sells for N4,200 in Lagos. I remain convinced that if people don’ t read in Nigeria, it is because books are too expensive.

Indian Titbits:

*If an Indian says ‘Okay‘ after you have been the typical Nigerian and harassed the living daylight out of him/her, it doesn t mean he/she understands and agrees with you. It simply means ‘Leave me the hell alone!‘

*It was really funny when someone said we shouldn’t go to a hotel, because at 5000 rupees (N16,000) it was too expensive. This fee included breakfast, internet, and a double bed in a fully air-conditioned room with satellite television. We went there anyway, and ended up paying 3000 rupees (N9,600) for all that. Try that in Lagos.

*If I enjoyed anything on this trip, the food and the experience at the mall would top the list. Indian malls are built without the kind of waste of space you find at Shoprite here. They are 4 or 5 levels high and tightly knitted, and each mall we went to had a cinema. The Select city mall was the most impressive, with many known brands having stores there. The food court had anything you wanted (Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Indian, Kebabs, Pizzas and Ice cream) at alarmingly affordable prices. For 300 rupees I had better spaghetti than I have had at Chocolat Royale or Eko Hotel at more than triple the price. At McDonalds, 2 large cokes, 2 burgers and fries and chicken nuggets cost less than 350 rupees (N1200).  One wonders why the case is always different in Naija; it can’t just be because they run on generators, can it?

*If food was affordable, the cinema was even more so.  We saw The Avengers and Men in Black 3, both in 3D. The price of our tickets, 2 large Pepsis and 2 large popcorns was less than 1000 rupees (N3300). And you cannot compare the ambience with any cinema in Nigeria.

In the end, India is still a very rural country. It is dusty and dirty. It is certainly no Paris, Dubai or London. It is not shiny in anyway. But even with that, it has made an attempt to sort out its issues within the confines of its reality. It hasn’t pretended to be what it is not and that, I suspect, is the reason for its success.