Notes from India (8) - Kai Asia Restaurant

Above: Kai Asia Restaurant. Vadodara, Gujarat. 13 April 2024.

We came to the unlikely tourist destination of Vadodara for two reasons. First as a way point to visit The Statue of Unity, some two hours further south. Second, to visit famed Indian artist, Jayant Parikh, a Vadodara denizen. In 1972, while living in New Delhi, we purchased one of Parikh's paintings at Cottage Industries. Parikh was not well known then. Fifty years later, he has had exhibits all over the world and has won a number of awards. One of his paintings hangs in the Presidential Suite of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai.

Lovers of Indian food though we be, we decided to try this Asian (Thai, Chinese, Japanese) restaurant, Kai Asia Restaurant, in our Vadodara hotel, Taj Vivanta Hotel, for lunch. I ordered Chinese: chicken soup, and Kung Pao Chicken. TIMDT had red snapper. We both agreed that the service was impeccable, and the food came out steaming hot and was authentic and delicious. I was, naively as it turns out, surprised at the excellence of this restaurant considering it being far away from India's better known Indian urban centers where five-star quality hospitality is now a given.

Fifty years ago, when we lived in India, it would have been inconceivable to find a restaurant like Kai Asia in any Indian major city, let alone in a lesser-known regional city like Vadodara (then Baroda). The growing number of top-quality hotels and restaurants like Kai Asia throughout India serves as a metaphor for India's progress over the last fifty years.

In my ignorance, before coming to Vadodara, I imagined the city as a back-water place of the princely state past. It's not. Vadodara has a population of 2.3 million. Major industries include chemicals, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, biotech, cotton textiles, machine tools, glass, engineering, tobacco, fisheries and dairy products. I saw a number of western business types coursing in and out of our hotel. Vadodara has attracted investment disproportionate to other Gujarati cities (Ahmedabad and Surat). Prior to independence (1948) Vadodara was the principal city of the Indian princely state of Baroda. Vadodor-ians (sic) are proud of their Marathan heritage and still revere the defrocked Maharaja, who lives in the ornate palace built by his great grandfather. The current Maharaja of Baroda has served in Parliament and is engaged in a number of charitable pursuits. Net... Vadodara is a forward-looking city, with a proud heritage, on the make, in the new, rapidly advancing India.

Living in the West as I do, it's hard to get my head wrapped around the size and direction of India's population. Vadodara is a very large city that, despite my considerable time spent in India over the years, was out of sight, out of mind. As I chip away at new discovery in India, there are still many other cities, like Vadodara, that I haven't seen. India has forty cities with a population over 1 million. By contrast, the US has only eight cities with a population exceeding 1 million. 35% of India's total population of 1.4 billion, or 490 million, is urban. An estimated fifty percent of that urban 490 million, or 245 million, is middle class and higher... that is, people who live in air-conditioned homes with plumbing, have refrigerators, tv's and motorized vehicles... people with college educations, bank accounts, people with travel and entertainment budgets... plenty of people to patronize restaurants like Kai Asia. Carve out India's middle class and you have a "hypothetical developed country" with a population larger than France, Germany, second only to the United States. China is further down the road than India with its larger middle-class cohort, but looming demographic decline in China portends slower economic growth rates in the decades to come with middle class size tapering off in growth. India's population grows with, unlike China, no demographic slowdown in sight. In terms of who wins the battle for economic supremacy between India and China, I like to think as China as the hare and India as the tortoise. You can make various assumptions as to when the GDP vectors cross. If I had to guess, I'd say India overpowers China economically within ten years.

I've referred in previous posts to India's village population, 65% or 910 million. No Kai Asia restaurant dining for them. That's another mind-boggling number for the mind to process. 210 million of the 910 million are illiterate. Still India grows at a seeming sustainable 5% GDP growth rate. Even the poor now have cell phones... there are one billion cell phones in India. With the Bharat Bill Payment system, 75% of India's financial transaction volume is electronic. On a recent trip to India, December 2023, while walking through Mumbai's Walkeshwar neighborhood, I was amazed to see a merchant with a cart full of bananas handling purchases with his smart phone using the Bharat payments system.

India is bedlam and dynamic at the same time. Where there is jumble, there is also a restaurant like Kai Asia. And, slowly as bedlam recedes, dynamism gains traction.

PS. There is another Indian population wow that I like to put forward. India has a population of 30 million Christians. Most Indian Christians are in South India and 90% of them are church going. There is a vibrant private Catholic School system in Kerala. So. If 90%, or 27 million, of Indian Christians are church going, and 10% (of 70 million), or 7 million French, nominally Catholic, are church going, which, India or France, is the largest Christian country? India's vast numbers play real tricks on the mind.