Day 14

Day 14
New Delhi (Thursday)

Now, they had given me access to the club lounge here at the Shangri-la, but I don’t think they realized that by doing this, I was going to wipe them out of donuts, danishes and fruit when I hit the breakfast buffet, which I did at 730 that morning. A quick shower and shave after that and then I hoped a cab to the BrainLAB office in Delhi. The drive was actually beautiful as we passed by parliament buildings that are absolutely gorgeous red stone with perfectly manicured green sprawling lawns. Then we hit the outskirts. Oh my god, is all I can say. If you have never experience fast flowing traffic in India, I doubt there is anything I can write to do it justice. Let’s just say, it’s as if there are no traffic rules whatsoever and cars, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, 18 wheelers, dump trucks and any other kind of motorized vehicle you can think of share the same road going in opposite directions and weaving their way around each other constantly. If you go more than five seconds without hearing someone blast their horn at the person in front of them, then I think you’ve set a record. It’s really more like two large groups of insects moving in opposite directions in fast random motion. By some miracle they never run into each other, but they come as close as you could possibly imagine.

Two things along the road also stuck me as unique to India. One, is the amount of cattle that roam freely throughout the city. When I say freely, I mean in the middle of the fucking road! Now, Rubin and I cam across this in farm country in Costa Rica, but right now I’m in the largest city in India with 14 million people and we are routinely stopping to let grazing cows finish eating and make their way across the road. Can you imagine this scene in NYC, which is even small than Delhi? The second thing is that people ride scooters like they are surrounded by an indestructible force field and could never get injured. They don’t wear helmets, they ride through congestion at 50 miles an hour, between cars, around cars, on the wrong side of the road, and best of all, with their children and babies in tow; also with no helmets. Again, you really have to see this shit to believe it.

Ok, so we arrive at the BrainLAB office in Delhi, which could best be described as a 3-bedroom apartment on the second level of a multi-family home. The living room has been converted to the main office area with four people working at individual desks. Oh, it’s also 90 degrees out and humid and there is no AC. There is a chai valet, just like in Slumdog Millionaire and he continues to bring me full cups of tea, even though I really don’t want to drink it for fear of acquiring a stomach bug that will keep my in the toilet for the rest of the trip. To be fair, the tea is actually quite good, and I could get used to having a chai valet in my apartment when I work from home. I’m just not sure where I would keep him? So, here I am in India, being waited on hand and foot, sweating my “you know what” off, looking at pictures of BrainSUITE, VectorVision and Novalis Tx on the walls (BL insiders). Quite an experience.

I set off with Manish Jaiswal (BrainLAB’s director of India) to our first meeting, which was at the Artemis Hospital nearby. BrainLAB has a drive that takes Manish and other employees everywhere. He basically just sits in his car outside the office constantly on call waiting for Manish to come out and tell him where to take us. This is so much better than driving yourself, I have to say, but seemed a little weird to me. It’s not like we were riding in luxury either. The AC barely worked and I was pretty much afraid for my life at all times on the road for reasons mentioned earlier. Ok, meeting #1 was with a radiation oncologist at this private hospital, which was actually really nice and clean. The meeting went well, I went through my typical presentation for the 3,000th time and she seemed to be impressed. We asked a few questions about when she might be thinking to buy and if there anything else she needed and then we left. Pretty basic.

Meeting #2, not so basic. Manish was taking me to the All India Institute of Medicine, the largest hospital in India, the largest research facility in India and the largest school of medicine in India. This is pretty much the Harvard Medical School of India. The do about 4,000 brain surgeries per year. For those, non-BL people reading this, that is a fucking lot! I thought this was going to be a low key meeting with the chairman of the department, who is the most well know oncologist in India. However, upon arrival, Manish informed me that I would be presenting to the entire department, about 50 people. Sure, no problem, I’ve done this many time. The hospital is not exactly the kind of place where most Americans would feel comfortable being treated. There are flies everywhere, it smells pretty bad (mixture of BO and sewer) and there are so many people you can hardly move. Amidst all this, they lead me into a small amphitheatre with a podium setup with a microphone for my presentation. I get my laptop synched up with their projector and all of the sudden I look up and there are 50 people waiting for me to speak. No sooner could I open my mouth did an Indian gentleman come to the front of the room to introduce me! Come on, I have never been introduced in my life, and it’s happening in India!?!? “This is Mr. Aaron Buwrwick, and he is here to present his expertise on Novalis Tx. He is the Director of Novalis Tx in the US (not true, of course) and he has come all the way from Boston to share his knowledge with us.” First of all, I never told this guy I was from Boston, so how he knew is beyond me. Second, I didn’t speak to him at all, so how he knew anything about it is just something I don’t understand. Anyway, feeling like some kind of expert on something (maybe I should have been speaking on eating donuts or something I truly have expertise on) I proceeded with my talk. Everything went well. They were exceedingly thoughtful and asked many appropriate questions, most of which I could not answer and either made up a response that could not be challenged or just said I’d have Manish get back to them on that one. At the end of the presentation one of the younger oncologists came up to me and said that he liked my presentation a lot and that he really enjoyed how I deflected questions that I did not feel were important. He told me I should be a politician. Man, what a compliment!

Now, the next thing that happened was out of this World. Presentation is over, I’m packing up my bag when Manish comes back in the room and tells me I need to follow him. Ok. He brings me out in the hallway and there are about 75 people jammed into one small room adjacent to the lecture hall and they are all waiving for me to join them. Manish is not following. I look back at him and he just shoos me forward saying “go in, go in!” People are actually grabbing me by the arms and shoulders now and lightly pulling me into the room. I’m think one of two things here: (1) they are going to honor me in some way or (2) they are going to sit me down in front of a video camera, bind my hands behind my back, cut my head off and then send the tape to Al-Jazeera. I decide that either way, I’m fine with it. I am pushed into the center of the room and I notice that they have a table setup with many cups of soda poured and boxes of sweets. The chairman looks at me and says: “in India we have a custom. We believe in four Gods. Mother, Father, Teacher and Guest. Today, you are our guest, so you are also a God. None of us will drink or eat until you have so please, have some.” I must have had a blank stare on my face for 30 seconds before I could even think of a response. I was also kind of thinking that today, I was both teacher and guest, which should make me twice as powerful a God, but I did not press on this point as I assumed it might be considered rude and I did not want option #2 I had thought about before entering the room to play out in reality. I simply told them I was honored to be their guest today and that I hoped they found my talk useful in some way. I raised a glass of mountain dew to the crowd, downed it in one gulp and then crushed the empty cup by slamming it in the middle of my forehead! Just kidding, I took a small sip and everyone followed my lead. We stood and talked for about 10 minutes while eating the sweets and then out of the blue, the chairman shakes my hand and says (very abruptly): “ok, thanks for coming, we have another meeting now, safe travels.” What happened to me being a God? Aren’t I calling the shots here? Since when are Gods kicked to the curb like this? Well, not wanting to fake eating the sweets anymore, I was happy they were kicking us out, so we collected our bags and left.

Back to the office for some long overdue work and then we headed to our last meeting of the day, which was a brief dinner at the grand hyatt. Here, I actually did partake in some tradition Indian food, which was really good. I can’t tell you what it was, but I really enjoyed it, though it was a little spicy. Since no one at the table knew much about wine they handed the list to me and I selected a Grenache from France. No one commented on whether or not they liked it, but everyone finished their glasses in about 10 minutes, so I assumed it went over well. We talked about business for a while, but then the conversation again turned to me being from America. The doctor was fascinated to know why, exactly, did I like the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”? Somehow, I didn’t think the standard response of “it was really entertaining” was going to suffice here. I told him that I thought it was basically a love story and that I’m a sucker for those types of movies. I loved that he went on the show, not to win money, but to find his true love through the television set. (Side not, as I’m writing this blog, the song from the movie by MIA just started playing on my iPod…coincidence? I think not). He thought my response was interesting, but he believed the reason the movie was so successful was because so many people are struggling financially that they were enthralled by a story of this rags to riches kid. I could see his point, but confessed I thought it was deeper than that. Then he asked me what I thought of Pakistan….Um, can I really be honest here? Ok, I said they are becoming an increasing problem since Pervez Musharef was ousted from office. He agreed and felt that Indian and Pakistan had major issues right now. I suggested the best course of action would be for India to “wipe Pakistan off the map” and absorb them into their country. He had a good laugh at that (thank God), and confessed he would love to see that happen, but knew that it never would. At this point, I’m thinking maybe I should be a diplomat instead of a medical sales rep…

Dinner is done and I’m back in my bed and all packed for the next day which promises to be the most challenging travel day (or two days) of my life. The plan was:

6:00AM wake up and travel to Airport
8:00 AM fly from Delhi to Trivandrum (4-hours)
2:00-3:00 meeting with famous neurosurgeon
5:30-6:30 Fly from Trivandrum to Chennai (1-hour flight)
4-hour layover in Chennai
11:15PM fly from Chennai to Singapore (5-hour flight) arrive 6AM the next day
2.5 hour layover
8:45AM fly from Singapore to Beijing (5-hour) arriving 3PM that afternoon.

Seriously.