Oh man. What I DAY I had yesterday. Like most things in India (that I’ve found so far), yesterday was a juxtaposition of wonderful and frustrating.
I was very excited to do my first field visit at Hippocampus Learning Centers— one of Unitus Seed Fund’s investees. The great people at HLC set me up to go with another girl who was interested in seeing their work. She set up the cab to get us there and I coordinated with the field manager, Paramesh. We aimed to leave at 7am to miss traffic leaving Bangalore. All is well and good, right?
Well then the cab was TWO hours late. I repeat: TWO hours. He apparently got lost getting to the other girl’s place and decided to give up and go home (WHAT!?). Instead of flying through Bangalore at 7am we crawled through the city at 9am. Not only that, but this cabby had the audacity to take the route around the city because it “had less traffic”. Listen buddy, this whole city is just one crazy parking lot, it’s best to go the most direct route. All in all it took us about 4 hrs to get there instead of two and a half. UGH.
Once we got there, everything changed. It was really fun to spend time in the classroom with the kids. The teachers were all super great and engaging and I was SO impressed by how much these little suckers knew. They were counting to 50, deciphering odd and even numbers, spittin’ some English vocab words, and singing some pretty adorable songs. More than anything, they were all super stoked to be there and to be learning. Seems HCL has a good thing goin’.
Promptly after leaving the wonderfulness of cute kids at HCL, our cab saga continued. He got two flat tires, stop about a million times and hit a motorcyclist (who was okay). When we finally arrived back in Bangalore he thought it would be a good idea to try to rip us off. We had agreed to pay rs 2,200 for the day and he was trying to charge us rs 3,500, because he went 90kms over. Oh, was that while you were getting lost and going home? Or when you took a tour of Bangalore traffic at 9am? Yea right dude. We handed him is rs 2,200 and walked away. Of course he followed, arguing continued and he decided to lodge an “official complaint” against us. Good luck fella. Oh cab driver, why must you be such an asshole? I need ice cream.
I got my “cream and cookies” and sadly walked down Brigade Road. By the time I reached my flat I was feeling much better about life, cab drivers and the prospect of getting a beer with friends. What a day. But it was nothing that a little ice cream couldn’t solve.