Indebted. To Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill owes 13 Rupees to the Bangalore Club. Churchill's entry is the 6th one from the bottom

I’ve spent the last 5 days in Bangalore staying at the Hotel Laika and the room that has become my home is now in the process of being ‘packed up’. I bought myself a new suitcase today (I bargained it down from 2500 to 2000 rupees to the pleasure of me and the guy selling it) so that I could fit in the clothing and wooden elephants I’ve bought for the kids and Paul.

Today is my last day in India, and the last day of my travels on this quest to understand more about collaboration. In two separate trips, I’ve visited Washington DC, Alexandria, Richmond Virginia, New Haven Connecticut, New York, Ottawa, Toronto, Santa Fe New Mexico and Albuquerque New Mexico, Arizona, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. I’ve been snowed on, rained on, and sweated, on two continents. I’ve stayed on friend’s floors, in 5* hotels, in a village hut, in a wood cabin, in lovely people’s spare rooms, in friendly guesthouses. I've eaten refritos, dahl, pancakes (& syrup), vegan pot pie, and I've drunk decaf lattes everywhere.

It was a very fitting day in so many ways. The sun shone brightly, and it poured with rain too. The variety of my interviews was large: government, non profit, social enterprise. I experienced fantastic hospitality from the owners of Hotel Laika. (Hospitality, generosity and connectedness have been constant themes of my 2 trips). And I got a brush with Winston Churchill too. (The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust have funded my trips to the USA, Canada and India.)

I saw a social enterprise this morning, Unnati, that gives vocational training to young adults. My interviewee was unfortunately ill, so I was given a tour instead. I unexpectedly found myself addressing classes of 20 people. “My name is Emily”, I’d say. “I work for the Home Office in the UK Government. We work on policing, immigration and counterterrorism. I have two children, my son is 7 and my daughter is 4.” 

They asked me questions.  “How does British culture compare to Indian culture?” (I said that our attitudes to women differed, and the 5 girls in the front row perked up.) 

“What do you think of Indian education?” (I said the universal education act was great, the next job was to get quality teachers in primary schools.)

Downpour in Bangalore. 

“Can you say anything in an Indian language” (Namaskar. And we all put our hands together and bowed and they giggled at me.). 

“Do you have terrorism in England?” (Yes. But we’ve also prevented lots too.)

“What do you like about India?” (The scale. The friendly people. The food. The entrepreneurship.)

“What are you giving to Unnati?” (I’m not giving anything. I’m learning about how you do things to take back to the UK. You’re giving things to me.)

The college teaches 70-day courses in cleaning, industrial paintwork, driving, ‘business process outsourcing’, and other things, and a core curriculum of spoken English and life skills - which included ‘managing strong emotions’ ‘goal setting’ and ‘managing conflict’. They generated money by renting out their assembly hall for weddings and parties, they got some government money for students of certain disadvantaged castes, and they also took donations. 

Bangalore Club

I asked the students, “What do you learn here” and almost everyone said “Punctuality” and “Life skills”

And then I asked them “What is hard about being here?” “Nothing!”, they said. One added, “Have you been to any Indian temples while you’ve been here? UNNATI is like a temple to me.” Such optimism and positive attitude. 

Then the owners of Hotel Laika took me to lunch in the Bangalore Club. I’d especially wanted to go there because two or three people in Bangalore, hearing that I was being funded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, had mentioned that Winston Churchill still owed 13 rupees to the Club, a debt he had left in 1896. (To give you a sense of how much that would be in today’s money, the exchange rate is currently around 70 rupees to the pound, 45 to the US dollar.) With inflation and interest, that amounts to quite a lot of money... But for only 40 rupees today, I had a delicious South Indian meal there and enjoyed the hospitality and friendship of my hosts. I managed to sneak a photo of Churchill’s entry in the ledger as well, even though cameras weren’t allowed inside the main club house.

This afternoon I interviewed a serious and helpful government official, and then I finished off with a trip to Akshaya Patra, the social enterprise that works in partnership with Government and the private sector to deliver 1.2 million school meals a day (hot!) to kids in Bangalore state schools and in 7 other states in India. They were ferocious in their attitude to efficiency and had invented all sorts of machines to cook rice faster, speed up chappati making, ensure that the 250 vans in Bangalore were swift and took efficient routes. Hearing this NGO talk about ‘Six Sigma’ interested me. I wasn’t sure how they were going to eke out more process efficiency. “Oh but we still need to do our accounts, we can improve the distribution network for the vans, and our marketing work.” Their meals have improved attendance at school, and reduced the number of undernourished children, and still they are hungry for improvement.

Sunset from Hare Krishna temple, the home of the school meals enterprise

Leaving India is not the same as finishing my project on collaboration. So I want to take all of those qualities of today with me. The sun, the rain. The optimism of the students. The hunger for improvement. The friendship. The quality of inquiry and insight. And making a difference. I’m feeling grateful to Winston Churchill. While he may owe a debt to Bangalore, I am indebted to him. The strapline of his Memorial Trust is ‘Travel to Make a Difference’. I hope I’m going to do just that.