Merigoesaround

I am spending my days trying to track future wealth of loan customers in this remote rural surroundings. Not an easy task. Think about wealth using the largest definition you can imagine: from income increase to one more child sent to school. If I have been thinking about something during my time at Harvard and my previous jobs is about the question of impact. How do we know or do we measure the impact per $ invested in x,y,z project or lent to Mr. or Ms. Gupta? Yes, you might be reading me and know as well (probably better) as I do about all those quantitative and qualitative techniques to track impact. Yes, impact evaluations help. But, again and again my postings have more and more "Buts", the reality is that when you submerge yourself in implementation...all these techniques have too many shortcomings (not feasible, too expensive, to time consuming, absence of skilled staff). More importantly, people lie. We all do. Who hasn't under or overestimate his/her wealth at s...

The newly-found eastern part in me wants to control my shopping impulses in this country. "Dress in white plain cotton and eat rice puffs with salt and turmenic" my zen side says. "You came here to work with the rural poor". However, the old consuMERIst dark side of me still dominates many of my actions, specially when I visit a place where you can actually buy pretty nice stuff. Clothing is one of the things that is lovely over here. Silks, pure cotton...even the least girly of the girls would fall for these fabrics. The other day I tried to wear a sari for the first time in my life and it felt surprisingly comfortable and easy. Indeed, it is like walking with a thin towel all over you and very light on underwear or something that holds your under-sari body. The ladies working as representative officers for my job here are going to wear saris when they visit clients in rural remote areas. It is a must. Apparently, the other typical outfit worn by Indian women, kurt...

Some of you have written wondering if I am doing fine, aware of the amount of blasts occurred in India the lasts days. Main cities are all under alert. Thanjavur is very safe, so no worries. The current violence has made me realized that I should read the Indian newspaper every day. I almost heard before about the Spanish victory (ole!) in the Tour de France than about the Ahmedabad outburst. So, I started checking The Hindu and the Times of India. Quality of information does not seem very good, journalists delve into minor details and I feel exaggerate facts. Sensationalizing content might get you more customers...probably the wrong ones. This reminded me of newspapers in Benin or other African countries...which are really poor in content and format. Current violence made me also think that I need more than a summer to understand the complex multicultural, multicaste, multi nation-state divisions of this country, it is going to take me more time and effort than reading empty newspaper...

There is no pillow as soft as clear conscience

Back from Bangalore. I experienced Indian rainstorms for the first time in my life. They are as beautiful as depicted in pictures and books. Specially if you watch them through a window. They have a poetic touch, a smell of refreshment and paralyzed traffic. Indians react to the rain peacefully, I feel they slowly walk to shelter themselves. Same rain in Europe would have masses of people stomping through the streets. Bangalore feels too westernized for my taste. Huge malls and acute consumerism. I fled these injection of cosmo areas and found a refuge in South Indian crowded restos and tasting Pani Puri the real way: in the street. Pani Puri is a kind of snack very common all over India. It is basically crispy bread stuffed with potato and vegetables seasoned with mint sauce. Beautiful simplicity. You are supposed to put the whole mix bread+sauce all into your mouth. I can't, which implies a lot of spilling and foreign-tourist embarrassment. Back in Thanjavur I am out of sleep. Wh...

I am going to Bangalore tonight to visit the city (apparently the Indian California) and the palaces of Mysore. All good news. All good news until a colleague from IBM came to the office and said: "7 blasts in Bangalore, 1 person has been killed". A sudden reminiscence to ETA bombings in Spain came to mind. I did not feel the profound sadness and impotence though. My immediate thought was: should I go to Bangalore or not? Minor, almost 0 risk of going to Bangalore or boredom of Thanjavur? Many of my colleagues are ex-military. They talk in terms of probabilities. "This is a Friday blast, most important praying day for Muslims, blasts happened between 1 and 3pm. Go there. No problem. All probabilities indicate that nothing will happen to you. It is safer indeed than any other time". Other tech-savvy colleagues, the IBM guys, were more conservative in their advice. "Let me make a call and see what people there say". I think I am going to follow military comm...

Some people come randomly into your life and make you happy. So many others cross your path and teach you the beauty of what before seemed irrelevant or unimportant to you. I am really fortunate to know many people like that. Some of my Indian angels are far from Thanjavur right now and the memories of good moments the last weeks (compare to the total boredom of this immediate moment) make me write about them. Number 1: Shumit Loves long distance running more than women. Relationships should be light and simple (like a Sunday morning). From Chennai. I love when he says that word. Dreamer. Changes plans very quickly but this is just because his brain is full of ideas and projects. Single now. In a sudden relationship with God and a new job. Bad dancer (shoulder shaking is not dancing). Fabulous discussions and intellectual conversation. Gets really excited when he talks. Nicest eyes of Asia. Vegetarian. Not even egg. He'll turn carnivore for a women though...he says. Sometimes wears...

Today my colleague Chandrachudan was reading an email aloud (he has this not so pleasant, but at the same time sweet custom) and the email had something to do with a prize for which developing countries could apply. "Is India a developing country?" he said out loud. And he smiled. I took the provocation. I normally do. The academic Meri could have given him 20 reasons of why we should include India in the developing countries's bag. However, being in the office surrounded by other 10 Indian colleagues...I thought, who am I to tell them what they already know (from experience) and not from books (like myself)? This people, they do not need any Harvard lecture from me telling them their HD, GDP indicators! "Chandra, development is relative to a reference point, right?. Is India developed for you? Yes. And to others? Not." I simply did not know how to make a comment without sounding as the typical foreigner coming to India to tell them what's wrong here. Chandr...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfr5q5fJgM4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBIVsYzLEdc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvW4HOKcnPs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cjiesza0tQ If I stay in India longer, I MUST learn Tamil. I want to know what the Tamil Britney has to say. Aama.

Today I was advised by one lady in Thanjavur to wear a kurta from head to toe. I do that most days but today I am wearing a very discrete and loose shirt. Seriously, it is asexually discrete. There is nothing I could wear here that I always feel I am semi-naked. I've noticed an annoying overconsciousness of Indian women towards how I dress or behave. I am talking about mature rural women with poor levels of education. I think some women like to perpetuate the image that men are obsessed with boobs or sex. That, or they are scared I came here on a sexual tourism tour to pervert and steal 'their' men. I was pissed off because it seems to me that men here like my paleness, my bookish vision glasses and my ridiculous look in Indian clothes but are friendly and behave very well...whereas some women seem quite annoyed by my presence. The girls at the local store where I get cold water, mangoes and awful coffee are very nice to me. As soon as I enter the shop I have one of the gir...

Yesterday I received the nicest compliment I have ever received: "You are a smile catalyst". I think making people smile can achieve a lot. Concretely, making people smile and think can change the world. This is the new philosophy of Lola’s world. Don’t even try to understand this. Since my India adventure started I am trying to get more into the Eastern way of living faith. I have taken the following concrete steps: - Fortuneteller services in Chennai - Visit to Osho International in Pune Step 1. Fortune telling is part of daily life it seems. Parents go to fortunetellers to ask whether a girl or a boy would be a good match for their kid. Lovers would run to a fortuneteller to see if their love would materialize into marriage. Parents would get this service to find out if a future baby is healthy…and so on. I was by the beach in Chennai with the biggest poet in town, looking at the moon timidly hiding away behind the clouds when a guy with a cage approached me. The cage cont...

Indian weddings. I did not imagine there were so big until I attended Shailesh's this last weekend. Shailesh was totally unreasonable with his advice on the dressing code "just wear whatever you feel like wearing". Tip number 1: never ever ask a guy (the groom) for dressing code if you go to a wedding, even less if the wedding is Indian. Cotton kurtas with trousers are clearly not enough. You need some viscose and shiny stuff. Love, friendship and great people ruled. Luxury and glamour spiced it up. Indian weddings are a mix of rituals very difficult to understand by foreigners, temple visits, sangeets (dancing parties), tons of (mostly vegetarian) food, more dancing and loads of family and extended family wearing amazingly beautiful clothes. I could not stop checking the ladies' silk saris, the men's fine kurtas (hot look), the golden jewelry adorning big-eyed Indian beauties. I felt like coming from Mars a couple of times. But I also felt an immense joy for Shai...

Today I have decided to change the name of my blog. I was first txelly, then meritirana and after that merigringa.blogspot.com. I was doubting between iamlola.blogspot.com and merigoesaround.blogspot.com Why Lola now? I am Lola because I want to. Full stop. I am sometimes Lola when I look at the world, when I observe what I like and dislike. After 4 years blogging I know that my opinionated alter ego sees the world from an unique and witty perspective. Lola's. This is not a pseudonym it is one part of Meritxell. We all have a part of us that would like to be different and speak out and loud, that's my Lola. In practical terms, I have used the name Lola in many occasions in many different settings so it feels a little bit like myself. The conversation goes like this: -What would you like to have today? -A tall no foam non-fat vanilla soy latte -Can I have your name? -Meritxell -Sorry, Marychef? -Meri -Maaary? -Nop, just M-e-r-i -Ok, Maary. -Wait a sec, Lola, my name is Lola. Or ...

Once upon a time a couple wanted to explain to the world the secret of long distance relationships. They were aware that many years of intermittent long distance was an achievement. She was a blogger so she decided to share with the world some of the ways her significant other kept the spark of the relationship. Technology definitely helps. Sometimes he would send her flowers from his garden, they were always fresh and essence-full: Some other times (her) spark will be ignited by indecent pictures with potential flirts that he would call 'roommates': All in all, technology, some tension, patience, a virtual house, friends all over, a big phone bill and imagination was part of the secret. A book might follow.

This is one of those things that you do not want to do...and when you actually go for it you enjoy it. There are so many of those situations in life. We took this booth piccies while we visited San Francisco more than a month ago. I slightly knew about SFs Asian influence, great cuisine (thanks to Seb's recommendation we had the most excellent -and yet expensive- Japanese dinner ever). I keep wonderful moments from the pictures, the dinner and Hugo's grimace-less face paying the bill...but I can not forget either that there I learnt about Japanese internment camps in the US during Second World War.

Last weekend a visit to Pondicherry gave me the opportunity to feel a little bit of Europe in India. In the rural area I am staying I am afraid there is very little or no British influence. Pondi is like the Indian version of Cuba, but with far less dancing. It is remarkably French, with Quartier Francais and Alliance Francaise included. Restaurants were so so but I still managed to eat something close to creme caramel that tasted like heaven, specially after all those Indian deserts that make my teeth ache due to the high content of sugar and nuts. Phi, my coworker, insisted in visiting Pizza Hut. Well, the truth is that Phi never insists but after seeing him eating only plain rice for a couple of weeks I felt I should compromise and gave him the pleasure of devouring a Hawai pizza. In Pondicherry we had a lively Saturday night. Drinking a beer is a lively night compared to our days in Thanjavur. We were quite surprised by meeting tourists, Westerners!! we almost felt like saying hell...

Remittances have a strong impact on transient poverty (vs. chronic one). They help receivers to fill those daily cash gaps: repair that wall, buy a fan or cement the house floor. Sometimes the money earnt by Indians abroad and sent home through a variety of formal and informal channels make big dreams come true too: send your brother to university or pay for your dad's diabetes treatment. Some in the development community are adopting a new motto: 'migration not aid', migration remittances , differently to donors' money, go from household to household, it could be one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty, so, why not making those wires easier and cheaper? IFMR Trust, the place I am working for this summer, will find an answer soon and I am part of the team who is supposed to do so! India is the world's largest remittance country. The money that Non-Resident Indians send home is on the rise. We are currently evaluating how to offer a remittance product to the...

Before coming I knew about India's linguistic diversity...but only when you have to decode a survey from Tamil to English you understand the language intricacies of this big chunk of the world. A quick wiki visit tells me that India has more than 150 languages. In Spain we have four official languages and we argue, here you might not be able to communicate with your neighbor and still harmony seems to rule. Tamil sounds to me very peaceful. Some languages have guttural sounds that are rather unpleasant. I only know five words by now: "Ile" = No "Nanri" = Thank you "Wanabe" = Hello "Kunjum Kunjum" = A little bit "Poni" = I am full, or enough. Carnatic songs in Tamil, I believe it is like traditional folk songs, make me feel goosebumps from head to toe. Work is pretty slow at the moment, lots of people at the office traveling from Thanjavur to Chennai and other places. My remittances project looks like a unreceived wire from Dubai ri...

Sad moments are very inspirational. I don’t have many so I am going to try to write something while it lasts. I am in my room without electric power. Darkness makes my mood even darker. I am running a fight against the dancing mosquitoes attracted by my laptop’s screenlight. I feel a tremendous sadness for three friends going into love trouble. Despite my short stay in India I’ve already heard about probably the two most painful love stories I’ve ever heard. Right in the plane that brought me here I saw a movie titled “In the Metro”, it is all about infidelities and promiscuity in urban India. There is a touch of traditional arranged love in there too. The idea of having people cheating on each other does not depend on GDP per capita or Gini coefficient. Poor and rich, we all live and like drama and unfaithfulness very similarly. Most of my coworkers but two are men in marriageable ages. According to a Guardian article I read the other day, in India it is easier to get a wife than to g...

A buffalo or a TV? What would I buy were I an Indian living in a poor remote area? The TV is going to keep me entertained and away from taking care of the buffalo. The buffalo is going to feed my kids and give me some extra income. The TV is going to probably have a smaller maintenance cost than the buffalo. If I do well, I can produce cheese, sell it and get a TV with the revenue. For this I'll have to work a lot though, with no time for TV watching. And so it goes until the local politician decides to give 700 TV sets for free to an area with poor electricity network. Now they have a TV and people dream of working in Singapore. The buffalo dies and the TV gets rotten in a corner of a dusty room. Buffalo or TV? pleasure or work. My friend Phe gave me the idea to use the Buffalo or TV example as a paradox of what life is. Shall I work hard now and enjoy later or enjoy what I have now and see what the future leads me to? Yes, my dear readers, the answer is both, you can balance both...