Dearest Rachel -
I wouldn't blame you if, at this point, you'd be wondering why I haven't put together a recap of my first day in Mumbai, at least. I've been prompt enough with all the other places, now, haven't I? Yeah, well… about that…
It's not that I don't have the material, I promise you. They were in fairly short bursts, compared to, say, Goa (although at least it wasn't in a single long video, like in Busan). I even managed to get them put together before dinner last night (since, as you'll recall, we got back pretty early in the day, and I found myself having no desire to bother with either the heat or the bureaucracy – I honestly don't know which is worse – to wander around a port area that's only half-open at best on the weekend); all six of them. At the same time, while I only put together a few paragraphs before heading out in the first place, I did get enough of the rest of the day fleshed out such that I've got pictures added to it, as well as slots for the various filmed experiences (I've concluded that – and probably said so in a previous letter, but it bears repeating – that if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more is a moving picture worth?).
So, you may reasonably ask, where is it – or are they, depending on if you're asking after the letter or the videos?
I kind of wish I had the answer for this, honey. When we were having difficulties making connections while in Hong Kong or Beijing, I thought I could chalk it up to the effects of the Great Firewall. And while that wasn't the whole story – evidently, while in port, the ship often has to rely on local providers rather than the satellite hookup provided by Starlink – it was a plausibly approximate answer.
However, this is India; it may not be the "land of the free" (although, compared to China, almost any nation would look like it), but this is the home of tech support. It may be a stereotype to say so, but when it's a positive thing, why should it be objectionable? Moreover, this is the largest city in the country; the place should be absolutely bursting with internet providers, all competing for people's business; you would think that, fiscal constraints aside, this would be the place to get bang for your buck (rev for your rupee?) in terms of internet access.
And yet… I uploaded the first of my videos just before heading down to dinner last night; when I returned, only ten or eleven percent had been completed. This wasn't a half-hour video, either; just six minutes long or so. It shouldn't be taking this long, especially given where we are and what this town and country is theoretically teeming with (and I should point out, I didn't have these kinds of issues in Goa or Kochi, either). After leaving it to upload overnight, it still hadn't gotten halfway along. I actually assumed I might have to do with the upload itself, and started the process over. Nope; three hours in, and only fifteen percent is done. Talk about a step backward!
Now, one could reasonably argue that, with twenty million plus people in the city clamoring for bandwidth, it might pose a strain on the capacity of the local infrastructure. Of course, with my American mindset, I would simply expect some entrepreneur to take advantage of that need, and simply build more infrastructure, to take advantage of that need, and the demand caused by that need, in order to make a tidy little profit for himself. So where, I ask, are the IT guys here? They're all over when we have a problem back home; aren't they on top of the needs of their own city (especially seeing that, in order to connect with us in the States, they need a serviceable connection)?
What I'll admit to not knowing, of course, is how much bureaucratic red tape there might be behind setting anything up here. Certainly, given the hoops we have to jump through in order to just get off the ship and into town, I shouldn't be surprised that it isn't as simple as that to set up a business, even one as in-demand as a better, faster, more robust internet here in town.
Likewise, it's possible that it's orders of magnitude more lucrative to set stuff up for paying customers overseas. They pay in dollars, or euro, and spend so much more on their connection than an IT guy could reasonably expect to collect from the average Vijay-in-the-street. Why bother to work for peanuts locally, when it's the foreigners that pay the big bucks? Especially if they don't have to compete with better outside competitors like Starlink or the like; the locals don't know they're worse off in comparison to the outside world, as they generally have no basis of comparison.
But I do. And I'm not particularly thrilled about it. Hence, this letter, as a sort of "sorry for the delay, but I am working on it." I promise I'll have these up at some point, but probably not until we're on our way to Abu Dhabi. Until then, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I'm going to need it.
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