Picto Diary - 13 April 2024 - Jayant Parikh, Vadodara
Above: Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited) Milk Processing Plant. Anand, Gujarat. 13 April 2024.
Amul PR guide, TIMDT, and Raj, our TravelScope, India escort, in the image.
Amul, founded in 1946, is an India wide dairy cooperative, headquartered in Anand, Gujarat, controlled by 3.6 million milk producers. Amul spurred India's White Revolution which made India the world's largest producer of milk and milk products. The company has recently ventured overseas. Amul sells over 500 thousand liters of ultra-high temperature (UHT) processing milk per day.
This Amul headquarters high-tech production facility was spotless inside and out. The headquarters has a 2000 seat auditorium and successive story boards which explain the milk production process.
There are two Indias. One state of the art tech at scale. You can see it here. The other, close to 300 million illiterate citizens. Fortunately, the first India is gaining solid ground, and the second India is slowly diminishing.
Note: The Anand processing plant, located adjacent to coop headquarters, is one of several dozen throughout the country.
Above: Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited) Milk Processing Plant. Anand, Gujarat. 13 April 2024.
Amul Butter Girl, used for the last fifty years in Amul promotions. Like a Bollywood star or a cricket star, the Amul Butter Girl, is known to more humans than all but a handful of non-Indian world celebrities.
Above: Amul (Anand Milk Union Limited) Milk Processing Plant. Anand, Gujarat. 13 April 2024.
Employee parking lot. I took a similar image at a tech company in Bangalore circa 2017. I've motorcycled in India... 2007 on an Indian made Royal Enfield 500cc thumper. I rode 350 miles from Siliguri, WB, north to Darjeeling and then east, through Bhutan to Guwahati, Assam. There is method to the seeming driver craziness. Rules of the road: Size matters. Go for the open space. See other vehicles sans acknowledgement... and after that, it's basically a game of chicken. Crossing the Brahmaputra River bridge amongst animal carts, motorcycles, stray cows, busses, trucks, and pedestrians through a true Indian cacophony, into Guwahati was the highlight of the ride. Average American drivers, on current low skill base, could not ride/drive in India.
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 withing 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.
Above: Lakshmi Vilas Palace. Vadodara, Gujarat. 13 April 2024.
Constructed in 1890 by Maharaja of Baroda (the Gaekwad family, prominent Marathas). At the time of its completion, it was reputed to be the world's largest private dwelling. It was 4x Buckingham Palace. It boasted modern amenities such as elevators. It continues to be the residence of the royal family who remain revered in Vadodara (new name for Baroda).
TIMDT, in red skirt, can be seen with Raj, at left.
Above: Jayant Parikh and TIMDT. Vadodara, Gujarat. 13 April 2024.
The lower painting above, showing three Indian village women walking through a field, was purchased by TIMDT at Cottage Industries, New Delhi, in 1972. It was our first art purchase as a married couple. We liked the colors. It seemed impressionistically representative of India, and it has looked nice on our walls, in our residences throughout the world, for the last fifty-two years. The artist is Jayant Parikh. The painting is signed on the front by the artist. On the back is the wording, "Jayant Parikh, Vadodara."
When TIMDT realized that Vadodara was to be a waypoint on our way to see The Statue of Unity, she asked Raj, our TravelScope escort, to track Jayant Parikh down. Raj found him and a visit to his home was scheduled. I'm guessing that we paid $100 or less for the 1972 Cottage Industries painting. Come to find out, Parikh has become a renowned Indian painter having won a number of prizes and with works hanging in august venues, including the presidential suite at the famed, flagship Taj Hotel in Mumbai. Our 1972 painting today is, no doubt, worth more than $100. Parikh, who had received an email copy from Raj of our 1972 purchase, said he recognized the painting and noted that he had painted it in 1971.
The above image shows TIMDT and Parikh with some contemporary art purchased by TIMDT. Parikh also gifted TIMDT with one of his works. Present at the Parikh home, in addition to TIMDT, Raj, and Mwah (sic), were Parikh's wife and son. The son took a number of photos and walked us through many contemporary Parikh works at the home. This was one of those "nothing ventured, nothing gained," serendipity moments. The coincidence of traveling to Vadodara and having it be the location of the residence of an artist whose art piece we purchased fifty-two years ago, and then meeting the artist, who over the intervening years had accomplished fame, was one of those experiences in life that will be hard to forget.
Addendum:
Congratulations Caleb!!
Nathans,
Orlando, FL