Last Night In India

Once again tipsy on cheap whiskey. Ahhh, India. Today I did my much anticipated book reading at the literature class of Prof Harish Narang at Jawarlahal Nehru University. Many thanks to Prof Narang and his students for making the experience truly a wonderful one.

I was veritably overwhelmed by the students' interest in what I had to say, their diversity and impressive ability to quickly access some challenging concepts. In fact, I was impressed by J. Nehru University on the whole, as it represents the trend I've been alluding to throughout this travelblog: the rebirth of a powerful, youthful, optimistic and brilliant India.

It helped my mood that there was a strong anti-Bush sentiment on campus. One impressive sign: "When Bush comes to shove, shove back." It reminded me of the sole positive influence George Bush has had on the world-- as a polarizing figure, he has managed to unite the otherwise fractious Left.

To top off the day, my hosts and I decided to see the movie I've been mentioning often, Rang De Basanti. With my eight words of Hindi, I was nonetheless able to follow the minimal plot. The film is beautifully shot and well acted, but the story is predictable and thin. But it is nevertheless an important achievement in Indian cinema.

See, it's about the modern urban youth of India awakening to the corruption in their country and doing something about it. Though it stars 42-year old Aamir Khan as a college kid, the film succeeds in conveying many of the same themes I've been expounding in this space, specifically that there is something new, youthful and exciting happening here, and it has everything to do with the enormous bulk of Indians under the age of 25.

The film is worth seeing if only for its wondrous images of India's diversity. Mind you, it is suspiciously lacking the stray dogs, touts, street dwellers and pretty much anyone who isn't seemingly middle or upper class.

Perhaps more important was the experience of being in the theatre. Recall that India is a nation in love with its film industry, more so than I've seen in any other country. Families are encouraged to attend, and indeed the theatre was filled with ancient grandmothers and howling abbies, and no one seemed to mind. It was also an audience that interacted with the film, in a very positive manner. Film is India's most important artistic medium, as it touchs everyone and is taken seriously by all.

Well, the whiskey is pushing me to my bed. This has been an excellent day in India, starting with an inspiring experience at JNU, and ending with a poignant viewing of India's biggest film. Tomorrow is my final day, ending with a trip to the airport.

Well Hello Delhi

One thing I forgot to mention was that coinciding with Bush's visit to India is the Indian launch of "mecca cola", an Iranian brand designed to be an alcohol- and caffeine-free alternative to imperialist American colas. Seriously. I will attempt to abscond with a bottle.

I know I'm ready to come home because the old ultra-violence is percolating in my blood. It began when I foolishly opted to fly cheap-ass Air Deccan to Delhi. This airline is so inefficient that when the flight was an hour late in departing, no announcements were made, and indeed no airline officials could be found anywhere in the airport. The same thing happened when I arrived in Delhi: no signs, no announcements indicating where the bags were to emerge. And again, no airline officials anywhere in sight.

Speaking of bags, mine were 8 kg overweight. But instead of paying the 560 rupee fine, I instead bribed the Air Deccan official with 300 rupees (which is all I had). Consider what happened: my 8kg were no longer accounted for. If there were more rupee-challenged, dishonest and overweight travellers like me, the plane might have been hundreds of kilograms overweight, and no one would have registered that fact. Corruption truly can kill.

Arriving at Delhi, I was accosted by someone dressed as an official who led me to one of the standard pre-paid taxi booths, which is the only way to avoid being scammed-- or so I thought.

Turns out it was a front for an expensive livery company and the "official" was a fake. I was conned out of a chunk of cash for what should have been a cheap ride. I knew I had been conned the second I handed over my money, but by then it was too late.

But here's the best part. The fake official had the nerve to ask me for a tip after he'd just conned me! So I explained to him in great detail all the delicious ways that I was going to beat the shit out of him.

He didn't stick around very long.

What? A Tolerable Rickshaw Driver?

This is what I have learned from more than 12 years of blogging: the online world is filled with illiterates and fools, none of whom realize they are illiterates and fools.

India has been graced of late with visits from two, um, luminaries. Actor Wil Smith is making many friends with his over-the-top praise of Bollywood actors and music. And George Bush is being feted like a returning white Raj. You think Canadians are pathetic with their fawning appreciation for any scrap of American praise? The Indian papers are downright embarrassing as they trip over themselves to report --as front page news, mind you-- that Bush "approves of Indian democracy".

What they don't report is that Bush has been careful to praise Pakistan, as well, with each official statement. Bush is here to smooth the way for a US-India civil nuclear partnership, and has given implicit approval, so the papers say, of India's (and presumably Pakistan's) military nuclear programmes.

What is encouraging is that Bush has inserted himself into the Kashmir peace process. Heck, nothing else has worked, so the dude can't make things much worse --can he?

Other big news here is that avian flu panic has gripped the nation, as a few cases have been identified. The predictable result is that people are afraid to eat chicken and eggs, even though you can only get the disease from contact with a live bird.

To quell concerns, in cities all over the country, the so-called "Poultry Welfare Association" is giving away hundreds of kilograms of cooked chicken and boiled eggs. It makes for good newspaper photos! Though I have to wonder how it's in poultry's welfare to kill them and eat them.

Today was my last full day in Hyderabad, and it was a relaxing one. I overpaid a rickshaw driver to take me to some tourist locations: the Golconda Fort --India's Masada, where a local king staved off the Mughal imperial army-- and a series of majestic Islamic tombs.

Now, I hate rickshaw drivers. They are guaranteed to make a stressful day worse. After an uncomfortable flight, when you're lugging big bags around, having newly arrived in a new and scary place, you can always count on the rickshaw driver to try to take you somewhere other than the hotel you reserved, and to try to make unscheduled stops at vendors where he gets a commission. I've come very close, in many nations, to physically assaulting taxi and rickshaw drivers when they have refused to take me directly to my stated destination.

But today's dude was surprisingly tolerable. He proved knowledgable about his city and quite pleasant, and even brought his 5 year old son along for the ride. I now know that my Hindi truly sucks because I can't even communicate with a child. But of course I had in my possession the ultimate child communication device: the digital camera. Kids with cameras have a way of making language moot. (The price being scores of useless photos of the backs of hands and feet.)

But the highlight of my day was when the soda vendor, a young man of 24, wanted to know my exercise routine, since he wanted to become as "muscular" as me. Hey, I'm just reporting what he said! Maybe he was trying to pick me up, pick my pocket or sell me something --I don't care. I'll take a compliment however it comes!

Tonight I head back to Delhi. Tomorrow I read for Nehru University. And the day after, I fly back to Ottawa via New York. Can't believe it's almost over.

Indo-Babes

As I enter the last 4 days of my stay in India, it's useful to look about and realize where I am. I'm in Hyderabad, the Muslim cultural capital of South India. Tomorrow I head back to Delhi. A couple of hundred miles east of Delhi is China. A little further away in the Northwest direction is Pakistan. Two hundred miles beyond that border lies Afghanistan. By Canadian standards, a couple of hundred miles is nothing. This is where the history of the early 21st century is being played out. And this is where the future of this century will be written. All rather exciting, really.

JJ send us this link about the present Miss India contestants. No, I've not seen them wandering about. But it brings up a topic I've been deftly avoiding: women in India.

Despite my base persona as a hetero perv, I have in fact been very careful not even to look at the women here. You just never know what cultural lines you might be crossing and what jealous boyfriend you might be pissing off --a good rule for travelling in any foreign country. The women I have dealth with have been: customer service people, fellow travellers, quasi-relatives, Aurovillians or friends with whom I've had prior contact. And even with those women, I've been careful not to show any public displays of affection.

See, in India it's not typical to see men and women showing affection in public. Men will hold hands with other men, but to many it is unseemly to do so with a woman. Of course, this, like everything else, is changing. In Delhi, I once saw a couple kissing in the darkened shade of the Lok Sabha buildings at night time. In Bangalore, there was the occasional tender brush of finger against hand among couples shopping in the more upscale malls.

Like everything else I have discussed in my exploration of the new urban India, the appropriate behaviours between men and women are confounded by education and class: what is newly permissable among the educated and wealthier classes many still not be permitted among the rest. I'm sure I'm going to be buried beneath a mountain of emails from middle-upper class Indian women telling me that they feel perfectly free to smooch in public. But before you write to me, please ask yourselves if you can reliably speak for the other classes of women who co-exist in this enormous nation.

This is a nation of sexual segregation. There are necessarily women-only train compartments and hostels, because the rate of harrassment against unaccompanied women is so great. Less convincingly, there are separate women's and men's lines for airport security and at liquor stores. Like America prior to the 90s, every disco has a cover charge for men only; women are universally allowed in for free. The flipside to this is that there is an unabashed sexist remuneration policy in the workplace. Ten years ago, a businessman once told me that it's his policy to pay women less than men for the same work, because "men have to support a family, women don't".

You would think that these sentiments would also be reflected in the public treatment of women, perhaps in something resembling deference. But I regularly see women, both old and young, jostled and bullied by larger men in crowds, on buses and airports. And thanks in part to media depictions of scantily-clad film stars and skanky Western women, and in part to a failure of this society to teach its men appropriate behaviour, some cities (particularly Delhi) are known for their poor treatment of unaccompanied women. Stories abound of groping, cat-calls and even of actual sexual assault against single women, both Indian and foreign. I'm told that Delhi is the worst for this. I'm also told that Bombay, Chennai and Bangalore are perfectly safe, in comparison.

Even in Auroville, a friend said she once happened upon a man on the side of the road, masturbating to the sight of her. At one of the Auroville beaches, buses arrive regularly from Chennai, jam-packed with Indian men desperate for a glimpse of white flesh in a bathing suit.

Hidden from the eyes of travellers is an on-going epidemic of domestic violence, fuelled by the parallel epidemic of alcoholism. I am further told that a particular plight of the educated class of women is that they are bred to lead and excel, but ultimately must subvert these skills in favour of becoming housewives. In fact, A. and I met one such woman from Bombay who had moved to Auroville specifically because it was one of the few places in India where she, as a married educated woman, was able to own and run her own business without community disapproval.

Having said all this, I must comment on the physical beauty of the Indian woman. This is a culture that has produced the ultimate sex manual, the Kama Sutra, and one that once elevated the station of courtesan to the level of artist. The woman Roger Ebert calls the most beautiful in the world, Ashwairya Rai, is of course a Bollywood goddess. And indeed, the pantheon of Bollywood beauties is remarkably one of sheer physical perfection. But I am reminded of what a non-Indian friend once said to me: "Your women come in two categories: either they are perfect goddesses or they have mono-brows." I offer no comment on that assertion.

But I will say this: out of all the women I've tried not to look at during my journey, the most purely beautiful tend to be of the lower classes: the beggars, street urchins, sweepers, etc. In India, class is genetically correlated, since class is linked to caste which has traditionally determined marriage and reproductive patterns; so it is in fact scientifically defensible to say that, here, a certain class can share certain genetic characteristics. These women are typically darker skinned, have high cheekbones, strong lean bodies, brilliant eyes and dazzling smiles. Perhaps the roughness of their lives instills in my naive eyes a sense of inaccessible purity that is largely undeserved, I don't know. But it is a surprising observation nonetheless.

Furthermore, the most intriguing women are the burqa-clad Muslim women of the bigger, wealthier cities. It's true: slinky black burqas draped across statuesque and dignified forms, with only a slit for piercing bright eyes is a surprisingly alluring vision. In many ways, less is more.

It really does make one wonder why all the Indian men trip over each other to get a glimpse of the fat German chick wobbling to the post office, while their own goddesses saunter all about them.

Hi From Hyderabad

In classic Indian style, I sat down last night and wrote a long blog post, only to have the power go down in the internet cafe, thus causing me to lose all that I had written. You have to sigh and walk on. Frustration will be the end of you here.

Chai T. Latte sends us this good article about Oscar fever in India, today and in the past.

And I just discovered Eric Margolis's post on the Danish cartoons. Unsurprisingly, he and I are of similar minds.

I have arrived in Hyderabad, the southern capital of Muslim India, though there are strong Hindi and Buddhist influences here. The city is built upon the Deccan plateau, supposedly the oldest geological formation in India, and is clean, bustling and seemingly well organized. It is yet another example of urban India successfully straddling the old and new worlds. The city's centre is a giant new statue of Buddha in the middle of the lake, much like the Statue of Liberty. Apparently, the thing to do here is to parasail around the statue. I'll see if I can swing that.

But Hyderabad is also called Cyberabad because it competes with Bangalore to be India's computer capital. Yet, unlike in Bangalore, I've had to struggle to find an internet cafe, and so far hardware stores are nowhere in sight.

Another strange thing about Hyderabad: it doesn't seem to wake up until about 11:AM. I had yet another unplanned fast forced upon me when I fell asleep last night after a day of imbibing only breakfast and, um, whiskey, then waking up to find a city devoid of open restaurants! It's a surreal thing, really, suffling past street kids defecating on the sidewalk as I, in my calory-deficient state, must have looked like a drunkard with expensive sunglasses. After about 20 hours without food, I finally found a place selling "vegetarian sandwiches", which are esentially two slices of bread with raging hot chillis pressed between them. But it was food, dammit!

Some initial impressions of Hyderabad: it doesn't have a tourism focus, since travellers' services are much more sparse than I've seen in other cities, and indeed I've yet to see a single white person here. And it seems to take the traffic thing seriously! There are actually traffic police at all the major intersections, controlling the flow of cars and allowing pedestrians to cross!

This is no small thing, as urban India seems to be at constant war with pedestrians. First, traffic jams and the flood of vehicles makes crossing streets nearly impossible; I risk my life hourly, it seems. Part of the reason for this is the plethora of motorcycles, scooters and rickshaws, all of which fill any space on the road that opens up, thus preventing cars from shifting lanes. The constant lateral movement of vehicles makes it very problematic for a pedestrian to find an opening to cross.

Second, there is a constant rejection of the ethic of the sidewalk. Wherever public planners have built footpaths or sidewalks, you will instead find sleeping families, sleeping dogs, parked motorcycles or rickshaws, vending stalls, feces of questionable origin, or just some fellow standing in your way. As frustrating as this is, I remind myself to shrug and deal with it. This is their country, not mine. They are entitled to run it as they please.

As I've stumbled about this town, I often see scrawled on the walls: "Don't pass urine here." Then, along one of Hyderabad's busiest roads, I found a series of public urinals. And sure enough, businessmen were stopping to drain the dragon then shuffling off. So civilized! If not for the odour, and the penchant for attracting pervs, I'd recommend the same for Canadian cities.

Well, I have two and half days to spend in this metropolis. I'm so drained and calory deficient that all I want to do is lie in bed and read Harry Potter. But hey, it's my vacation, so I'll spend it how I choose!

Buggery Makes Baby Jesus Cry

(Note: Before reading this post, please consult the very serious Deonandan.com disclaimer.)

Sigh. Finally finished writing a short story I started weeks ago. It is officially a month past the due date, but what the fuck.

I told myself that while I'm in India, I would not blog about anything unrelated to my trip. That meant that my traditional topics --war, terrorism, the fool in the White House, etc-- were supposed to be off limits. However, my time here has overlapped with an important global crisis: those dang Danish cartoons. As I mentioned, there were riots in Bangalore just before I got here, all in response to the cartoons.

For those not in the know, Darth Vadum proudly reproduces the cartoons here. As you can see, some of them are innocent and innocuous by Western standards, while a handful really are racist swill. Whatever. I'm not here to critique the quality of the cartoons. Rather, let us look at how the debate has been framed by the Right, as a battle between "freedom of speech" and "intolerant islamofascism".

Right wing bloggers and pundits have been quick to jump on this issue as an example of how Muslims are intent on curtailing everyone's civil rights, especially that most cherished right, the one of free speech. This is a disingenuos argument. For one thing, there is a common misperception of what "freedom of speech" really entails.

Some of you may recall the mentally deficient poster to this blog who caused me to temporarily suspend commenting functions. He continued to email me, insisting that I was being censorious and "Rumsfeldian" by not permitting him to post. See, people, "freedom of speech" means that each of us can say whatever the fuck we want (with some caveats, which I will discuss below). It does not compel anyone else to publish what we say. I, as the blog publisher, was in my right to allow or prevent content on my site as I saw fit; I was in no way curtailing stalker boy's right to wail away elsewhere, or his right to get his own blog. (This analysis gets more complicated at the national level where media becomes consolidated and the number of publication opportunities diminishes; but that's a topic for another time.) In short, only governments can truly censor, because only governments have the power of criminal law at their disposal.

Having said that, the Danish editors were within their rights to publish whatever the heck they wanted to publish. However, do recall the basic axiom of ethical behaviour: we are ultimately ethically responsible for the reasonably forseeable consequences of our actions. To cite a cliche, if you shout "fire!" in a crowded theatre, it is reasonably forseeable that the consequences will be panic and maybe injury or death. It is your right to scream "fire!" or whatever else you want, but you are legally and ethically responsible for the consequences. (In most places, the law goes further and criminalizes this act, with the assumption that it will almost always lead to injury.) And if your free speech includes lies about a person, be prepared to face the litigation which is a reasonably forseeable consequence of your speech.

The editors who published these cartoons are ethically responsible for the consequences of their decision, since any fool should have guessed what was going to happen. It was also within the rights of the cartoonists to make the cartoons, however offensive some of us might find them, and to submit them to the editors. Responsibility falls upon the editors for ultimately publishing them. So I will always defend someone's right to say whatever fool thing occurs to him, and I will also defend the right of a publisher to grant or deny the publication of any material provided by a contributor; but I will also insist that the speaker face the consequences of his speech, and that the publisher face the consequences of his decision. And yes, that means that I am opposed to so-called "hate speech" laws, since we are either free to spout our thoughts or we are not; I err on the "are" side.

So the poor Danish editors are scared now? Well, what did they expect? Boohoo. It was all reasonably forseeable.

Given that dire consequences were pretty much inevitable, let us examine why the editors woud have chosen this path. Many suggest that their choice is a reflection of the growing rightist, anti-immigration sentiment in Denmark. When Europeans talk of anti-immigration, they really mean anti-Muslim, since the European underclass is made up in large part by North Africans who are mostly Muslim. They are like Mexicans in the US, arriving to do the low-class jobs the locals don't want to do. Denmark, in particular, is experiencing a wave of anti-immigration, anti-dark skin intolerance, led from the top down by its fire-breathing rightist government, and supported by its echo chamber media.

A popular past time among the right wing media in both Denmark and the USA is Muslim-baiting. They publish extremely insulting content generalized to an entire race, culture, religion and civilization, that they would never reproduce for a more powerful or influential group. Examples from the USA: Mark Steyn writing that the Islamic world is "economically, militarily, scientifically and artistically irrelevant" or Ann Coulter calling for the mass conversion to Christianity of entire Muslim nations, or Coulter again using the offensive term, "raghead" to describe Muslims. Do you think these kinds of characterizations would be tolerated in Western media of any other group, race, religion or civilization? Keep in mind that Steyn and Coulter still maintain influential positions in the media world, despite their clear racist tendencies.

In a childish response, an Iranian paper is soliciting entries for the best Holocaust denial cartoon, which they will publish. As stupid as this sounds, maybe it's a good test of the Rightist claim to simply be defending free speech. Let's see how many of them print the Holocaust denial cartoons without disclaimers, irony or opposing commentary (as was done for the anti-Muslim cartoons).

But here's the thing. Many of you will secretly say to yourselves, "what's the big deal?" Terrorism perpetrated in the name of Allah is a real thing, after all, which makes it fair game for political lampooning. Okay. I'm a fan of lampooning everything and everyone, so I guess I agree. But remember when Catholic priests were being prosecuted left and right for molesting youths under their charge? Remember that? Why weren't the Danish cartoonists drawing pictures of Jesus buggering little boys?

Oh, I can hear the gasps out there already. Well, think about. As much as Islamist terrorism is real, so was buggery in the name of Christ. Let's say that an Iranian decided to draw a picture of Jesus ingling little Bobby, halo and all, and that the pic was picked up by hundreds of newspapers around the world and reproduced on thousands of blogs, how do you think the so-called Christian world would have responded? More to the point, would these Danish editors have published them, being, after all, the great defenders of free speech that they are?

Of course, as I said above, the editors are free to pick and choose what they wish to publish and censor. So what is my point? It is simply this: claims that these editors are heroes of free speech are bullshit. They would likely choose not to publish Jesus buggery cartoons for fear of offending one group, but clearly delighted in publishing anti-Mohammed cartoons because it would offend another group. Their motivations have nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with a racist compulsion to insult Muslims and to incite their predictable violent response.

And, right on schedule, the Muslim street gave them what they wanted. Stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, these riots play right into the hands of the neocon set. I will never condone such pointless, random rage. But, really, what else can they do? Protest? Write to their politicians? What a laugh.

So, Danish cartoonists and editors, what the fuck did you expect?

A Shitty Day

Email continues to arrive about my earlier post about young Indians' sexuality and relationship experience. This time, much of it is supportive of my position. (Post a comment already!) But I give up. It was only a theory. If you think I'm wrong, so be it. It wouldn't be the first time.

I am still in Bangalore, though I think i will head to Hyderabad tomorrow. I was supposed to visit the scenic Nandi Hills today, which is a 2 hour bus ride away. But I am reluctant to board a bus due to the, um, first twinges of "Bangalore Belly"; interestingly, having experienced its polar opposite earlier this week, I think this condition is preferable.

Yesterday, I wandered away from the hyper-modern shopping core of the new Bangalore and ventured into the demesnes of the city's labour class. Ahhh, that's more like it: the grime, chaos and shit are what I recall of this place from 10 years ago; change has not been universal. Indeed, it's the ubiquitous feces that first berates the senses. One side of a particularly long street is caked in fresh and dried turds, clearly human in origin (as best as my non-expert eyes can conclude). As one traveller in Bombay told me, "Indians have a unique relationship with feces."

Indeed, feces is an issue in urban India. Mehta writes that in Bombay, the number of people who must shit on the streets numbers in the millions; this in a place known for its water shortages. Ultra-orthodox Jains must deposit their waste in an open area where it must dry quickly (it's a religion thing). And, of course, this nation is also known for its digestive disorders and diarrheal diseases, even among the locals. For the underclass, shitting at your leisure is a luxury; line-ups at the pay toilets are commonplace, with people banging on the door for you to hurry up, seconds after you get comfortable. So to truly experience urban India in all its horrors and glories, one must be prepared to deal with a little shit, either one's own or that of others.

I quickly tired of all the shit. (It occurred to me, as I wandered past one particularly caked sidewalk, that I was breathing in flakes of turd as they dried under the berating sun. Quite an image, no?) So I made my way to Lalbagh, quite literally "red garden".

Lalbagh is a very large natural park at the centre of this busy, noisy and polluted city. I sat on a bench, drank some grape juice and had a nap. I was awakened by a very large raven next to my left shoulder. "I'm not dead yet," I told him, and he flew away. Above me, falcons chased smaller birds who raced for protection among the branches of an enormous, arching banyan tree. It occurred to me then that I was taking India for granted. In Canada, in any urban park, a single falcon or a single raven that close up would prove the highlight of a day. Here, I just shrug it off.

It also occurred to me then that I had been here before, in this very spot, 10 years ago. Some unacknowledged memory had led me to this slice of shade beneath the banyan, where I once snapped a photo of me and 14 friends.

It's not good to go back to places. Things change. Always go somewhere new. Hence, tomorrow I will try to fly to Hyderabad, a new place for me.

ps. JJ, I have yet to see any potholes!

Lactating Cows, Detection Bias and CNBC

Oh, I'm embarrassed. I just crouched down to take a photo of 1912, a famous night club here in Bangalore, when I was spooked by the appearance of yet another sunglass tout. This time I snapped at him. "Look," I said, indicating my face. "I've already got a pair!" Now, I said it with a smile on my face, and the fellow sheepishly walked on, but I feel like crap. Really, the dude is just doing his job. But why try to sell milk to a lactating cow? (Geez, the Indian penchant for metaphors is rubbing off on me!) Thirty seconds later, of course, I was beset by three other fellows also trying to sell me sunglasses.

Then another weird thing happened. I was accosted by CNBC television to talk about euthanasia in India, which I did. The interviewer seemed a bit shocked that I was able to lecture on for 6-7 minutes on a topic that was just dropped into my lap. But therein lies the advantage of having a blog: you tend to have ready-made and verbose opinions on everything. But consider what has happened. In small-fry Canada, I struggle to get PR for my various careers. But here in a land of a billion people, in less than a month and without even trying, I've been on television twice. And next week I will speak at the enormous Nehru University in Delhi. Yes, I'm scared.

I continue to get irate emails about my earlier post about India's youthfulness manifesting as inexperience in romance. All the emails are from educated middle-upper class Indians who have moved to the West, and who insist that young Indians are as, if not more, sexually and romanticlly active as their Western counterparts. They might be right. I'm certainly not an expert in this, but merely proposing some theories. However, consider what I just wrote: all the emails are from educated middle-upper class Indians.

One thing that is clear here is a gaping disconnect between the educated middle-upper classes and the ocean of the labour class beneath them. India is one of the few rapidly modernizing nations whose population is still mostly rural, despite her enormous and growing cities. The values, behaviours and lifestyles of the urbane, educated middle-upper class set are not those of the village class, nor of the enormous urban underclass who keep the cities running. Do you think the chaiwallah's daughter is freely dating and exploring her sexuality with her peers? Or the hundreds of millions of teens in the villages? How about the young touts selling maps and sunglasses 14 hours a day, do they have time, let alone the familial tolerance, for such a lifestyle?

Yet all go to the movies and all help define the totality of Indian values. It is thus inaccurate to claim that one group --urbanite or underclass-- defines the geist in isolation. But the latter group is certainly more populous.

Do keep in mind that everything we of the West learn of the new, emerging India is provided by a specific class of people: middle or upper class, English-speaking, Hindi- or Tamil-speaking, and largely Hindu --and almost always men. India's exported publications, diplomats, intellectuals, celebrities, business leaders, etc, are mostly of this type. Who speaks for the rest?

I once interviewed a Delhi publishing company, Kali For Women. Their entire mandate was to give voice to this enormous, unrepresented underclass. Sadly, after decades of producing excellent books, they have folded. But they were adamant in convincing me of one thing: the India we of the world are presented with is not the India of the masses, but of a minority ruling class who probably don't even realize they are a minority ruling class. Certainly, haunting the wealthy and asset-strewn streets of Bangalore, it would be easy for me to conclude that 99% of India is shopping malls and IT millionaires; their attitudes and values are shouted most loudly. But clearly that would be a mistake. In epidemiology, we call this "detection bias", the tendency to make conclusions based solely on the factors most easily accessed, which may or may not be a representative sample of all actual factors.

So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the subcontinent is a hotbed of teen dating, sex, revolving door relationships and the like. Or maybe I'm right, and those who insist that India's teen-romance conservatism is a thing of the past are really just accessing their own peer groups, who tend to be of the upper-middle class and thus not truly representative of the whole. Remember this axiom, it is the key to all science: the plural of anecdote is not data.

Please, if you have an opinion on this matter, leave it in the comments below.

The Selling And Buying of Crap

I knew that that last post would piss somebody off. Please read the comments to get a more clear handle of what I was trying to say. Hell, I am Indian. I would never suggest that Indians are "dumb" or "unsophisticated". Rather, due to the increasingly dominant youth ethic here, some cultural miens are reflecting youthful ideals and attitudes. And in my way of thinking, youthful can be both good and bad. The good is manifested as confidence, energy and optimism. The bad is aggression, confrontationalism, hormonalism, and simplistic ideas about the roles of men and women and their relationship with one another.

Enough on that topic.

My time in India has seen a marked decrease in my fitness level. Due to a lack of gym, my upper body has lost 20-30% of its muscle mass. (Though my enormous head remains its mutant size.) The good part of this is that my clothes size now matches the typical Indian's. In fact, one of the great joys of this place, for me, is that the clothing industry caters to my bodily dimensions, which are, now that I am muscle-free, standard Indian! (Though I, a dwarf of a man in North America, am on the tall and stocky side in South India!)

This morning alone I spent $300 on clothes which would have cost me over $1000 in Canada. This is the tourist pull of India: the fundamentally unfair consequences of global monetary policy, which sees the rupee devalued against Western currencies. One rupee is worth about 2.6 Canadian cents, and you can get a very good meal here for under 30 rupees. Due to this fact, peons from the West are treated like kings here. It is seductive, but deeply unjust. The average Indian works 10 times harder than the average North American, with no social safety net, and receives a tiny fraction in remuneration for the true value of his labour. Let us not forget that this devaluing of labour is the reason we in the West/North can afford our daily items: they are all manufactured using cheap Southern labour.

But who am I to preach? I'm just another fat, monied tourist sustaining this bloated industry of exploitation and excess. Yes, I have given money to some beggars, but like most people here, I avert my eyes and ignore most of them. There is a practical aspect to this behaviour, since to open your wallet to one means being inundated by a sea of others. The same logic applies t the various touts who accost you as soon as you step onto the street. Which brings me to my observation for the day: the Indian man on the street really needs to learn some basic marketing and sales theory.

Yesterday I walked into a swanky store and purchased an expensive pair of high quality sunglasses, which I wore as I walked back onto the street. Immediately, I was beset by five young men, each trying to sell me cheap knock-off sunglasses. The foolishness is innate: first, why would I want to buy cheap sunglasses when I'm already wearing a pair of expensive ones? Second, if I say no to the first, second, third and fourth fellow, why would the fifth fellow waste his time trying to sell me the same unneeded item?

I don't mean to belittle their plight. Far from it. I fully understand these men, as I have relatives in similar situations. Most of them are key breadwinners in extended families; the few rupees they bring home feed dozens, might send younger brother to school, might pay for sister's wedding. Some work so hard that they sleep on the same sidewalks on which they tout, rarely seeing the families they support. They work 10-15 hour days slogging this crap on the hot city streets, and they don't even get to keep the money they make from the sale, since more than half goes to the fellow they work for, the uber-dude who pushes the knock-off sunglasses onto them.

For this uber-dude, of course it makes sense to blanket the city with a thousand men all selling the same crap; he has nothing to lose, no labour overhead. But for the young sellers, it's a losing proposition; no salesman will ever get rich in this line of work. I doubt he'll even break even. But at least sunglasses are somewhat useful. Sadder still are the men selling enormous maps of India; I can't imagine a single tourist buying one of those monstrous things, yet tourists are beset by mobs of men selling maps at every turn. The children try to sell meaningless items, like safety pins and ball-point pens --items we get for free and toss away without thinking.

I can imagine a young man deciding that he needs to start selling. But sell what? He is approached by several of the uber-dudes, or sees his friends selling crap. What possesses him to choose big honking maps to sell? What further possesses him to hang around the other map sellers, knowing that in the unlikely event that a buyer approaches, only one of them could make the sale?

I think a business professor could do a lot of good by giving a couple of free seminars to the wandering vendors. Simple concepts like choosing a territory (ie, one where no one else is selling), recognizing a customer (ie, not touting sunglasses to a guy wearing sunglasses) and selecting an appropriate product (ie, what traveller has room in his backpack for a gi-normous map of India?) would do a lot of good for these fellows.

I think, as a result of this environment, those Indians who have evolved a shrewd and calculating business mind quickly rise to the top. Is this why, despite the ocean of seemingly hopeless salesman, there are also numerous very wealthy merchants who also deal in crap? The Indian streets as a Darwinian laboratory for business: there's a thesis there for somebody, methinks.

Banged Up In Bangalore

(Well, not "banged up" exactly. More like "beaten down" by low calories and a bumpy flight.)

Arrrgh. Last night in Chennai I wrote a long blog post, then my internet time ran out just as I pressed the upload button. And so the post was lost. Arrrgh.

Today I am in Bangalore. A funny thing happens when I travel alone: I sometimes forget to eat. So once again, I engaged in a 30 hour fast, though this time unplanned, and this time the fast included a lack of water. So by the time I managed to get some food and fluids into me, a few hours ago, I had developed a raging migraine. Two codeine pills later and I'm flying high.

In this weakened and stoned condition, I set out at 2:AM into the Bangalorean night to meet my friend Kelli F. who is in town from Kenya and is heading back right away. It's quite a surreal experience, being pharmacologically affected in the wee hours of the morning on the abandoned streets of a completely unfamiliar Indian city.

So far I can report the following: Bangalore is the most Western and organized of all Indian cities, due mostly to its great IT wealth. I've read that this wealth has yet to "trickle down" to the underclass, but so far the underclass is being kept well hidden from me in this city, unlike in Bombay and Delhi. This wealth also manifests as increased cost, and indeed I have chosen to splurge on a very comfortable Western-style hotel room for $30 per night --exorbitant by Indian standards. It's such an accesible city, by Western standards, that my American uncle and aunt have charged me with the task of investigating condos to purchase here.

Despite this Westernization, Bangalore is without a doubt an Indian city. In fact Kelli informs me that I just missed a large riot --a very Indian thing-- by Muslims against the famous Danish cartoons. Damn, I wish I could have seen that.

I will report more on Bangalore tomorrow. Right now, though, I'd like to mention something about the Indian film industry. I don't know a lot about Bollywood, and even less about its Tamil counterpart, "Kollywood" (in Chennai). Mehta's masterpiece and valuable travel resource, Maximum City has a lot to offer on this topic, showing how much the Bombay film industry is tied to sex, death and crime, but I personally have no access to such a world. But, to be clear, I really know nothing about it.

I do know, however, that it's big news here that Bollywood icon Salman Khan has just been sentenced to one year in prison for poaching a deer. (Yet I still see Salman on TV commercials literally, hilariously and unironically showing his ass.) And I know that Sanjay Dutt spent two years in prison for his role in the Bombay terror bombings, which had to do with Dutt's seemingly puerile obsession with guns.

In short, I know that the Indian film sensibility is linked to the diktat of youth I discussed earlier, in which values are increasingly being filtered through an adolescent prism. Thus it's not surprising that the adolescent trappings of American culture (its sexuality and machismo) have been embraced by Indians, but not its more subtle and valuable aspects (freedom, growth, etc). As a result, the upcoming Indian version of "Fight Club" is just about some guys who join a club to fight, with none of the societal and psychological depth of the American original: Bollywood has missed the point. Or maybe the increasingly young Bollywood audience is incapable of getting the point.

Now, India does produce many deep and thoughtful works of art, including great "art house" films. But they are drowned out by the noise of shallow, self-obsessed Bollywood gods who dominate the media to an extent even lifelong LA residents would find surprising. In a 10 minute spread of time on TV, for example, you will see 6 commercials, all featuring the same 3 actors. I've never seen their films, nor would I want to, but I now know a great deal about Bollywood stars John Abraham and Karishma Kapoor, simply by having their faces and innocuous opinions thrust upon me from every TV screen, newspaper, radio and magazine. But back to the youth diktat thing...

It is, as I think I've said earlier, as if the predominant goal of the Indian male is to channel Sylvester Stallone circa 1983: a strictly simplistic and juvenile interpretation of manliness.

This juvenility is further expressed (I gather from much of South Asian film, poetry and conversations I've had with locals) in attitudes toward love and relationships. The "pie in the sky" version of love, as is typically understood by teenagers, is the prevailing version, reinforced by films. Missing are the complications of personalities, subtleties in communication and so forth. Of course, this also has to do with the lack of (romantic) relationship experience most Indians have, relative to their Western counterparts in the same age groups. As so-called love matches (as opposed to arranged marriages) and Western style dating are becoming more common, my observation takes on greater import.

The diktat of youth is manifesting across many social spectra, it seems. Ironic in a nation known for its ancientness, no?

No Cuddling In Cuddlore

Aside: Darth Vadum has a fascinating link here.

Coded message for my Uganda co-voyagers: Business is good, though cash flow remains, um, fluid.

A link: Brother Hrab points us to a ridiculous story in Australia where a conservative lawmaker is concerned that abortion will create an entirely Muslim Australia!

Some announcements (Good news all):

• As mentioned, I'll be doing a book reading at Nehru University in New Delhi on Feb 28th. I'll also be giving a workshop on research methods in international health at Queens University on March 4th.
• I may give a talk on the epidemiology of TB in Massachusetts on March 24, though that is by no means confirmed.
• A paper on childhood psychiatric epidemiology has been accepted for presentation in Trinidad in May! Whoohoo!

Back to the India travelogue...

In this edition of The Amazing Race, A. and Ray must travel to the town of Cuddlore in Tamil Nadu, some miles north of Pondicherry, and find a tsunami reconstruction project without a map, a name, a word of Tamil or a clue.

They arrive directionless at the Cuddlore bus station and, in a stroke of brilliance, ask a rickshaw to head to the beach, since that's where the tsunami would have struck! There, they find remarkable scenic beaches stretching a couple of kilometres north-south, while local fisherman cower beneath a tarpaulin tent to fix their nets. Nearby, there is a semi-constructed building with the words, "Tsunami Reconstruction Office" emblazoned upon it. Clearly A. and Ray are too early... or too late?

They are directed, after much hand-waving, to a Hindi speaker nearby. He is the manager of the construction project, sent by the government of Rajasthan to help rebuild Cuddlore. It seems, though, that he doesn't speak a word of Tamil, either, yet he is mandated to use only local labour. How does he manage? No idea.

Near the project site, A. and Ray discover three puppies, only weeks old, struggling alone beneath the oppressive sun. They are yelping for their mother who is nowhere in sight. So our racers give them water and try to feed them crumbled biscuits (didn't work). Alas, what more can they do?

Our racers return for a final whiskey-infused evening in lovely Pondicherry, where Ray is once more denied a meal of channa (it seems all of India is out of chick peas!) And the next day, they return to the metropolis of Chennai (not channa), where --alas!-- the pair make their final parting. A.'s parents have arrived, and she will travel with them from this point on. Ray settles into the Hotel Pandian, armed with whiskey and a local internet cafe.

Next time on The Amazing Race: does the modern city of Bangalore beckon? Will A. and her family meet Ray in the scenic hillstation called "Ooty"?

Aside: Wired correspondent and Chennai resident, Lakshmi S. tells Ray and A. that the reason male Tamil film stars look like Ron Jeremy is the same reason that Ron Jeremy looks like Ron Jeremy: because the common man needs someone he can relate to on-screen. The common woman is out of luck.

The Aura Of Auroville

10:30 AM - We have arrived in Auroville. There is no cell signal here, and internet cafes don't appear to be conveniently located, so I am presently blogging off-line and will upload this post at first opportunity, probably a couple of days hence.

The philosophy of Auroville is an attractive one: community living, devoid of the interference of states and their agendas. Of course, in the absence of an organized economy, life here depends on an external infusion of cash. I'm not sure how this is achieved, but I suspect the residents (seemingly mostly Westerners) come with their savings and live off of that. The stay is certainly affordable. Our guest house charges us 500 rupees each (about $12 CDN), which includes 3 meals a day, free laundry, a private toilet and a free bicycle.

From what I've seen so far, this place has traits that are paradisical, at least for the casual tourist like me. I like it here, and am so far strongly considering returning to spend my final week in solitude here.

We are far from the bustle of urban India. The air is fresh, there is greenery everywhere. And my old friend Paula has just arrived. Gotta go...

10pm - 12 hours later. Hmm. Auroville was founded 37 years ago with the cooperation of people from 124 countries. Today, I'm told Indians make up the majority, with the French and Germans not far behind. What is it with the French and their penchant for wacky cult-like communities? (Raelians, anyone?)

Originally, Auroville was settled by architects and engineers. It is indeed an architectural playground to behold, with each culture/nation providing its own pavillion. (The Canadian and US ones are presently being built). According to Paula's fella, though, the science types have given way to the New Age types, and man does it show!

Self-proclaimed "healers" now populate the place, and almost everyone wears smock-like garments that I know are actually traditional Indian garb, but here looks more like a funny uniform. ("Movementarians" anyone?) I don't mean to mock these people, because their intentions are good and Auroville really is a fascinating and pleasant place. But I am constantly reminded of that 1960s show, "The Prisoner", and of a particular Simpsons episode: "The leader is good. We all love the leader."

Indeed, photos of "The Mother", Aurovile's late founder, beam down from everywhere. I am looking at one now in my room. It's more than a little Stalinesque. And the economics of the place continue to baffle me. I suspect that the place can only continue to run on the backs of the underpaid labour class, Indians from local villages.

Despite all this, there is no denying that Auroville is a special place for people sharing a unique mindset. And I am indeed considering coming back next week for a few days to do a book reading and soak in all the freaky goodness.

Indeed, this is an excellent place for kids to grow up. There is natural beauty aplenty and lots of physical and mental stimulation. And like the rest of India, here kids can be kids. Today I met three 2-year olds, each of whom stole my heart in turn.

We also managed to gain access to the central temple's "inner chamber", an erie room of blinding white silence centred about an enormous crystal ball which is kept constantly lit throughout the day via direct sunlight reflected by sun-tracking mirrors. The chamber is magnificent, a place of frigid sensationless desolation whose silence was so complete that I found the ticking of my (recently won) watch to be deafening.

Instead of focusing on inner peace, however, I found myself observing the assembled meditators (mostly white folks). And it occurred to me: what would happen if one of them were to suddenly drop dead? So I spent the rest of the time concocting an improbable murder mystery scenario.

11:AM the next day - Hmm. Back in Pondicherry. Auroville was quite an experience. Even our cab ride back featured an icon of "the Mother" on the cabbie's dashboard. Our guesthouse in Pondy is owned by the Aurovillians, too, and the Mother peers out from a giant portrait in the lobby.

Last night, we went to an outdoor guitar concert performed by a white Canadian Aurovillian who has adopted an Indian name (you know the type). The setting was magnificent. The amphitheatre is mind-blowing in its futuristic design, with the geodesic dome of the mandir behind the performer, and of course the incandescent full moon and brilliant stars beaming down upon us from above. I counted two shooting stars. The performer was one of those white fellows who has immersed himself in the superficial trappings of Indianness; his white daughter came up to play beside him, and she too had been given an Indian name. And his songs were modified sitar raags played on Western acoustic guitar. Not sure what to think... except that that, too, was an excellent setting for a murder mystery!

Hurried India Blogging...

My internet time expires in 15 minutes, so I've got to make this fast...

Pondicherry continues to please me. The French colonial style is soothing, as are the tree-lined streets, the constant crash of waves against rock, and that brilliant reddish moon that hovers over this quiet berg every night. And at night the town comes alive.

This is one aspect of Indian life of which I really approve: everyone --entire families-- is out until 11:pm. The heat of the day is so overpowering that the cool of night is reserved for social family time. Couples straggle along the giant statue of Gandhi by the beach. Little boys clean their after-dinner dishes in the alleyways under moonlight, giggling and scurrying all the way. Some old men take to drinking.

Speaking of the surf, today I met the owner of our hotel. He's a 30-something local who has been working for Nortel in Paris and Ottawa, and so is a successful young professional --the new generation of Indians. He tells us that in his youth, there was more beach. Global warming has pushed the water up against the city walls. By some miracle, this city was saved the ravages of the 2004 tsunami. But the fear of water, I gather, lingers in all of coastal Tamil Nadu. In fact, in Chennai we saw a little boy pulling a home-made sledge of some kind, muttering to himself, "tsunami, tsunami!" We don't know what he was doing, but we're pretty sure the word did not exist in the local lexicon until that fateful day in 2004.

Tomorrow morning we head to Auroville. Google it to know what I'm talking about. It's sure to be fascinating.

Oui, Oui, Pondicherry

Ahh, the magic of pharmacological science. I popped a gravol pill and survived a four hour bus ride (on an Indian intra-state bus!) from Chennai to Pondicherry. And I'm glad I did. So far, Pondicherry is the closest thing to a Utopian city in India I've yet seen.

The city is completely booked up, so we frantically called around town and managed to secure a high-priced room in the Hotel de Pondicherry, a magnificiently cozy chalet-style inn complete with tropical garden. No TV here, so I won't be able to keep up with my Bollywood music videos...

....which brings me to the uniqueness of this city. Therer are no movie posters about. Minimal traffic and pollution. The people are friendly, yet the touts and rickshaw drivers leave you alone. There is nothing in this city that says "Indian city".

Most importantly, this is a coastal town with a ravishing seaside. This evening, A. and I took a walk along the beach road and were stunned to see the full mon rising over the ocean horizon. It was touched with red, incandescent, and hung in the sky like a dangling jewel. It was truly a breathtaking sight, and we struggled for words to describe it.

Pondicherry is a former French colony, and French influence can be seen in the place names, architecture, the few Catholic cathedrals and the city plan in general. Again, my French is proving useful here as we encounter several French-speaking tourists and locals.

Soon I will visit Auroville, a planned community of state-less individuals. That promises to be quite a story...

If This Is Sunday, It Must Be Madras

Huddled in an internet cafe, I see the Westerners finally emerging in their tie-dyed palor. Really, I have a hard time telling them apart.

Chennai/Madras is the Bombay of the south in some ways, most importantly in that this city is home to a Tamil-language film industry as big as Bollywood, but without the same level of Western penetration. As I do not undestand a word of Tamil, I can't really follow the films well, but I gather they are similar in plot and feel to those of the North. Even elements of Western dance are creeping in here, as they have in Bollywood. One strange observation: the women in Tamil film are, like in Bollywood, unbelievably gorgeous. The men, however, are block-faced, hirsute, uni-browed and often sport drooping bellies, even the heroes. This does not reflect the Tamil male norm, as there are many handsome young men about; rather, the film ideal appears to be one in which Ron Jeremy could be a heart throb.

Speaking of throbbing hearts, Valentine's Day approaches and India has noticed. Today, A. and I came across a crowd watching a fellow from Hutch (a mobile phone company) attempt feats of street entertainment; his entire show appeared to be broadcast on TV. Suddenly, he went into the audience and plucked A. and I into the centre! He explained to me that if I, holding a rose that he provided, were to propose marriage to A., we would win a prize.

Of course, we explained that we are just friends. (Seriously, everyone reading this, to be clear, A. and I have zero interest in each other!) But I gather in the Indian context, men and women are "just friends" until they decide to get married. It's a source of great confusion. The host asked me how many times I'd done this before. I hammed it up, lied through my teeth and said, "Three times. Never been rejected!"

To which he replied, "Yes, I believe you. I can now see the gray in your hair!" OUCH! BURN!

Anyway, I dropped to my knee with the rose in my mouth, took A's hand in mine, and said, "A., you are my friend. Would you please.... continue to just be my friend?" This was greeted with much applause from the assembled onlookers. But we weren't done yet! To win our prize, we had to say the words, "I love hutch" in five languages!

This is the interesting part. In a country where literally hundreds of languages are spoken, it's commonplace for each person to speak at least 2 and usually 3 languages. The host didn't think twice about asking us how many languages we both spoke. A. speaks passable Hindi and pretty good Spanish. I speak passable English and pretty good French. (My Japanese in is 13 years old and I don't know the words for "love.") To make 5, I made up some words in Italian. He accepted them. Our prize: two nice watches emblazoned with the Hutch logo.

So, in Chennai today, A. and I were briefly TV stars.

Saturday In Chennai

Six weeks of intense Hindi classes now cease to have any value, as I enter the cultural capital of South India, Chennai (formerly Madras), a place where Tamil is the language of record. Delicious thoughts of hot Madrasi curry, coconut, sugar cane, hot beaches, beautiful darker skinned people and a more traditional lifestyle fill my head.

Not so long ago, I loved a Tamil woman. Her face, hair, physique, stature, voice and style are everywhere here. It weirds me out, but how can I help but love the place, as a result?

Chennai is a serious, non-touristy, functional city filled with hard workers, simply beautiful people and the sense of ocean nearby. Tonight, we strolled along Marina beach, where the locals all gather to touch their feet to the sea, chase crabs, and buy the standard trinkets from the beachside stalls. It is spectacularly powerful, the waves crashing down upon the shore; thoughts of the 2004 tsunami are hard to avoid. What sells the experience, though, is the sense of so many families gathered here nightly to play, socialize and transact. It is nice to see in an Indian city a complete disregard for the presence or needs of travellers.

Part of this magic comes from travelling with A. We are both racially Indian and appear to outsiders like a couple from Bombay come to spend the weekend in the south. We have the skin-colour passport into the inner life of the city.

We walked toward distant lights and found the state fair in its closing hours. We even had fake pictures taken of us alongside cardboard cut-outs of Tamil film stars. A. was instantly embraced by the local women, who, through a combination of broken Hindi and English, wanted to know all about her education, family and relationship with me. (The whole "only friends" bit was met with a few raised eyebrows.) The best part was that they were convinced we had come from Canada solely to see the state fair!

But Chennai suffers from one thing Bombay seemingly has under control: garbage. The beach is layered with it. While strolling there, I saw a man walk up and dump his entire gabage can right onto my path. This is an example of what Suketu Mehta calls a lack of civic perspective: Indians keep their homes and persons fastidiously clean, but the commons are fair game for spitting, shitting and dumping.

Tomorrow I visit my new Tamil relatives in suburban Chennai. (My sister recently married a man from Chennai, so her in-laws are my new relations.) Kind of cool, no?

Last Mambo In Mumbai

Once again drunk off my ass. Today I finally met up with A., my travelling companion for the rest of the trip. I also ended yet another impromptu experiment.

Due to both the lingering effects of Bombay Belly and my secret desire to reclaim my flat stomach by any means necessary, I chose to embark on a 30 hour fast. This had the added benefit of reminding me what hunger really is, something we tend to forget as we get older and more flush with cash.

I come from a lower middle class, working class background. While I never personally felt hunger due to economic duress, thanks to my parents' vow that their children would never suffer from the ailments of their experience, I am constantly reminded of true hunger by my parents's stories of their tragic youths in the struggling Guyana of the 1940s and 50s. This becomes all the more important in a place like India, where real poverty is thrust in your face at every turn.

I've gone to extreme lengths to talk about the new India, where wealth, youth and Westernness abound. But the old India is still here. Bombay may resemble New York, but you can't forget it's in India because of the prevalence of whole families, clothed only in rags, sleeping on the filthy streets.

One quickly develops a hard heart, or at least a strategy for ignoring anf avoiding the beggars, because to open your wallet to one means being buried beneath a horde of similar applicants. It's easy to let oneself forget the sheer sensation of going without.

And thus my lame personal experiment. Clearly, it is not comparable to true hunger, since I was aware that a belly-filling meal awaited me at the end of my 30 hours. But I felt the pangs. Combined with the oppressive heat, the need to walk for miles, subsequent dehydration, and being surrounded by both face-stuffing friends and skinny mendicants, this was not a pleasant experience. I encourage you all to try it.

In contrast, I spent the evening in a local bar in the Fiaryas hotel (which I like to call "fairy ass") watching college-age Indian kids suck back 100 rupee drinks (quite expensive for many) while singing along to Brian Adams and Abba. Yes, they can be that lame.

Rang De Basmati Rice

Okay, I am very upset right now. I just spent half an hour writing an enormous blog post, and Blogger.com ate it!! I must now take a deep breath and try to recreate most of it...

First, happy birthday to Ceri M., who I'm sure is reading this.

Second, thanks to Cousin Ajay for telling us about blognomics, because blogging has become that geeky. Ajay also lets us know about chess boxing, 'cause we need to know. No, it hasn't caught on in India yet, but Bollywood is pushing this ridiculous looking movie called Fight Club, which appears to be a direct rip-off of the Hollywood version.

Speaking of Bollywood, the big film here is Rang De Basanti, starring Amir Khan. They are pushing this thing to the moon. What I find interesting is that the music videos spun off from this film are Westernized in the sense that they feature snippets from the film accompanied by the song; whereas, traditional Bollywood music videos are the song and dance numbers from the films, featuring the impossibly good-looking actors lip-synching while the (presumably less attractive) studio musicians do the actual work. I intend to see Rang De Basanti before I leave India, but so far the theatre down the street is only showing Narnia!

Today was a day of experiments. First, there was the battle of Western pharmacology vs intestinal bacteria vs Indian Ayurvedic medicine. This morning saw the first appearance of the dreaded Bombay Belly (you know what I'm talking about). I wasted little time in popping loperamide pills because I had to make my 1pm appointment to have an Indian Ayurvedic massage. This was quite an adventure, since the massage involved undue vigorous focus on the lower abdomen. I am pleased to report that loperamide reigns supreme... so far.

I was so content with its performance that I immediately set out on my second experiment, to see how much I can reasonably blend in. So leaving my bag at home, I set out in (locally bought) jeans, running shoes, a t-shirt, dark glasses and a cell phone clipped to my belt --just like every other Indian man here. And you know what? No one noticed me! In fact, I just concluded a commercial transaction entirely in Hindi, with my mouth to my face to slur my accent, and I don't think the vendor realized he was dealing with a foreigner. Or maybe he did and didn't care. Who knows?

But for my part, I hapily conclude that much of what distinguishes me --racially an Indian-- from the local Indians is my damned bag, a thing clinged to by tourists worldwide. Of course, my haircut, gait, body language and physique are all decidedly Western, so my stealth act is only so deep. Whatever; this is what you do without TV.

To celebrate, I broke out the visa card and spent $100 on clothes. This might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that last night I bought dinner for three people for less than $6 total!

I leave you with this discovery. Weird. The article is 6 years old, but it's presented as if it's brand new.

Yoga Leads To Sandal Wearing, And There's No Call For That

7:20 am - Got up this morning before dawn to trundle down to the docks and watch Bombay begin a new day. This busiest of places is remarkably calm in the early hours. The street sweepers, bent-backed and draped in dusty saris, nonethless succeed in sustaining some dignity.

The thin patch of greenery in front of the Gateway To India (a magnificent monument erected by the British) serves as an outdoor gym where the Mumbaiyya gather and do all manner of morning calisthenics. There's a fellow in front of me right now doing the dreaded "Hindu pushups" while his, um, boys threaten to fall out of his overly loose lungi.

But the real reason I'm here this morning is to watch a class of "laughter yoga", a style of yoga invented by and for septagenarians, and which includes some basic callisthenics punctuated by episodes of hearty forced belly laughs.

Now, I've been a student of various styles of yoga for over 20 years. But the Madonnafication of this most prized of my people's physical arts has turned me away from formal classes in recent years.

I had intended to join today's class, but the first stirrings of "Bombay belly" have me a tad insecure. All the better, since today's class has been taken over by a veritable gaggle of teenaged Japanese tourists. And let me tell you, there are few things in the world more ridiculous than large groups of teenage Japanese tourists, not the least of which being their annoying and bombastic tour guide and leader.

They form a wide circle on the grass and do their thing. But a dog has chosen to occupy the centre of the circle. He spends the entire half hour licking his anus. I can't think of a more fitting visual metaphor.

The Self Hating Indian

There's a flipside to being an Indian travelling in India. On the one hand, the touts do seem to leave me alone moreso than the white travellers. On the other hand, I am susceptible to the disdain the Indian establishment often shows its own. A white woman I met who lives here in Bombay was bedecked in seemingly Indian garb. She went to a restaurant to use the toilet, and was blocked by the guard until he realized she was white, then she was allowed to enter. Toilet access determined by skin colour. Think about it.

It is worth pointing out that this woman suffers from many of the same unfortunate choices I have earlier attributed to hippies, though she is not one. Specifically, the clothing ensemble she has opted to wear resembles that of street people, or more precisely, members of the city's lowest classes. Clearly race is confounded with class here, as it is elsewhere in the world. But that does not discount the tendency for Indians to dimiss their own.

As a proud metrosexual, I went to arrange a massage at a salon where two white friends were having pedicures. (Hey, no snickering; if you've never had a pedicure, go try it!) The white tourists were greeted with smiles and warmth. I was greeted with businesslike coldness. I can only assume this was a response to my race: they took me to be Indian, therefore unworthy of their best social/commercial efforts. I'm having the massage tomorrow and will report back when I'm supple and oiled.

After a few hours spent at Elephanta island (where 1500 year old Hindu temples and sculptures adorn huge caves infested with aggressive monkeys), I returned to the mainland and sucked back a litre of Kingfisher beer. I am now drunk off my ass and desperately desiring my bed.

And yes, I am way overdue on all my tasks!

Rich Wallah, Poor Wallah

Today is an important day in Bombay. The Sensex, the city's stock exchange index, broke 10,000. This is big news and cause for celebration among India's money types.

Speaking of money, today I had high tea at the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Here's the story of the Taj: legend has it that its founder was himself denied entry into Bombay's swankiest hotel, due either to his low social status or indeed of his race; so when he became rich, he constructed the city's grandest hotel. It was quite an experience. And every Asian traveller knows that the first thing you do in swanky hotel is use the bathroom, because a clean, Western-style flush toilet is a gift from the gods. It's the mandatory bathroom attendant that's off-putting. It seems that to truly revel in one's wealth, one must have a poor person standing by to hear and smell your farts.

Later, a lovely sunset stroll on Marine Drive was illuminating for one reason. Again, the locals tended to ignore me, and were busy playing with their mobiles and PDAs, some of which were superior to my glorious Treo! But this is India, after all, and the occasional begging urchin is never too far behind. One adorable beggar girl looked at me and said, "Sir, you look Indian!" and immediately asked me something in Hindi. I responded in Hindi, and she asked me something else, this time too fast for me to understand. She then launched into French, and we had a brief conversation in that language. She claimed to speak seven languages, including four European ones. Of course, I gave her money; she earned it.

What wasted potential. Her charm, attractiveness, obvious intellect, initiative and communication skills would make her a guaranteed social and economic success in another setting. But here, at the tender age seemingly of 10 or 11, she is destined to be a beggar or a street person. Therein lies the foundation of the some of the more distasteful aspects of Hindu philosophy, in my opinion formulated largely to rationalize the brutish lives of so many undeserving of the fate. Want to keep the squalid masses from rising up? Convince them that they deserve their station because of misdeeds in past lives. Bullshit, I say. An amoral fool like George Bush rises to wealth and power, and a smart little girl is relegated to street life, not because of some immeasurable past life actions, but because of the inequalities of economics, power and economics in this life. Don't forget it.

I've just come from a series of artistic events as part of an open-air festival in the city. The David Sassoon library --a magnificent place in which I should have scheduled a book reading-- was host to a stand-up comic. And the courtyard outside the Jehangir Gallery saw a most pleasing circumstance: puppet shows, musicians and Bollywood-style dancers. As readers of this blog know, I'm a fan of athletic dance, but generally I dislike the Bollywood style. However, tonight I was mesmerized as several young men gyrated in muscular displays of stereotypically macho Bollywood dance. I saw the dancers afterward and was stunned to realize that they are all barely 15, shorter than me, and each weighing probably 140 lbs soaking wet.

The remarkable thing was that the festival was quite egalitarian. All classes were able to attend --a remarkable thing for class-conscious India. Street kids and Bombay elite alike gawked side-by-side at the puppet shows, but of course only one group was treated to McDonald's afterwards.

I am continuously amazed by how much Bombay looks and feels Western. During tonight's festival, I actually forgot I was in India. I could have been in Queens, NY, or Mississauga, Ontario. Then my reveries were burst when I saw security guards chasing street families away from the garbage bins.

Globalisation has produced unprecedented wealth in India, seen superficially as the Westernization of fashion, language, art and commodities. But it has seemingly failed to help those who were always at the end of the feeding trough. The poor have not disappeared, they're just harder to spot amongst the glitter and flash of all the new wealth.

Salaam, Mumbai

2pm-ish - Am on a flight from Delhi to Bombay (Mumbai) right now. My memories of India 10 years ago have not betrayed me. The domestic airport is still a disorganized, rude and chaotic place where thieves persevere, machines don't work and flights are inevitably delayed. One interesting new thing, though, is a special stand where travellers are invited to re-charge their cell phones for free. It is equipped with connectors for all the popular phone models and an AC outlet for the more exotic brands (like mine). The West can sure benefit from such a service.

I'm excited about Bombay. It's the first place I'll be visiting on this trip that I've never seen before. I'm busily trying to finish Suketu Mehta's masterpiece about the city, Maximum City and am looking forward to seeing some of the book's landmarks, like Malabar Hill.

No, it is not my intent to push a script onto a Bollywood studio. I don't "get" Bollywood and wouldn't know where to begin writing for a strictly Indian audience. So stop asking. The idea of meeting a few Bollywood babes, however...

Before I arrive, I do want to mention one thing: I hate hippies. Hate 'em. So many Indians have an unhealthy perception of Westerners, in part because the only white people (goras) they encounter are forlorn, misguided hippy types who have fled the West due to their own fucked-uppedness. They are, unfortunately, the true white ambassadors to India.

I and my host roll our eyes when a group of them pass us by. They are the same: lanky, young, unwashed, unshaven, pierced enough to be pin-cushions and -worst of all- bedecked in a hodge-podge of ill-fitting Indian garments which individually might have meaning and style, but as an ensemble serves only as a mockery of traditional Indian fashion. You just know they'll be wearing the same clothes at Hallowe'en a couple of years hence.

Am I being unfair? Perhaps. But I liken their behaviour to an Asian visiting Berlin and choosing to slog about in lederhosen and suspenders: it's a total misread, and ultimately a subtle and ignorant mockery, of the culture.

Yes, I realize I probably qualified as one of them when I took my first Asian journey 14 years ago at the tender age of 24. But if I can't be a hypocrite, what's the point of having a blog?

5pm-ish - Happily ensconced in my barely affordable hotel room in Bentley's Hotel in Colaba, Bombay. Colaba is the southern most portion of the city, which is essentially a collection of 7 reclaimed islands. It is quite warm and sub-tropical.

I had to upload this post now because GPRS access is sketchy in my area, and I may soon have to resort to -yecch!- internet cafes.

My impression of Bombay so far? Well, the taxi from the airport cost me 600 rupees, three times the cost in Delhi. Bombay is New york: looks like it, smells like it, behaves like it. No one here stares at me, no touts or beggars have yet to pester me. Each time I speak Hindi to a local, he answers in English.

That is Bombay.

Last Night In Delhi?

You know, this is supposed to be a vacation. Yet it is almost 2:AM here in Delhi and I am up: finishing a short story that is due to the editor last week; charting out a lecture on TB that I've suddenly agreed to give in late March; charting out another lecture on research methods I've agreed to give in early March; editing a document for work; charting out a film script I'm supposed to have written by the end of this month; and fretting over a hundred books I told myself I was going to start writing in India.

No wonder I've got high blood pressure!

Thank you, Manu, for pointing out that my electric sitar is indeed tres cool. I play it every night and it gives me great joy to do so. Sadly, I must leave it in Delhi as I visit other parts of the country, but we shall be reunited when I return for my book reading...

...Which will be on Tuesday Feb 28th from 11AM to 1pm at the literature class of Professor Harish Narang at Jawarlahal Nehru University. I'm not sure if it's open to the non-university community. But if it is, and any of you are in town, do come by! It will surely be entertaining to see me try to keep my pornographic personality in check in this most conservative of venues.

Today I sat mesmerized for hours by Indian TV. Again, I stress the diktat of youth; it permeates everything in media. The music videos are outrageously sexy and sensual, with the hardest bodies of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. I am told that this evolution is a very recent one, perhaps 3-4 years old. Almost overnight, sexual youth overtook traditional, conservative agedness.

But the stereotype of Delhi is not dead. While I am less assaulted by both touts and pollution than I was 10 yeard ago (maybe I look less naive and am more robust? Nah), there is nonetheless a presence of fatuous bazaars and blinding poverty --though the latter less so, as the government has reportedly been emptying the slums and forcing people to go...where?

Another Drunken Day In Delhi

Before I return to my travelogue, a few links: Pierre C. sends us this story about epidemiplogists using financial data to track outbreaks. Matt V. sends us a similar storyhere.

Brother Bhash sends us this excellent online database for finding Indian indentured labourers lost to history!

And my personal gift to you is this video of William Shatner channelling Elton John.

Today began with Assim warning me not to look back. Of course I did, and was greeted with a gaggle of hijras (transvestites/transsesxuals/eunuchs) checking me out. Welcome to India, land of complex sexuality. (I still maintain they were checking out Assim; he's the ex-model, after all.)

I continue to be fascinated by the newer Indian music videos, whose production quality equals and often exceeds that of the West, while the gyrating bodies onscreen are owned by some of the most beautiful people I've ever seen.

With these images in my head, I returned to Lodi Gardens, the Islamic tomb complex we used to frequent 10 years ago on my last visit. It's one of the only places in India where you'll find people jogging and dogs walked as beloved pets. The drive here revealed more changes that have taken place since my last visit: there are many fewer beggars (perhaps the government has done away with them somehow?), the roads are of immaculate quallity, and there is much more greenery. I predict that in 25 years, Delhi will be as clean as Toronto or New York or Paris... though it will be the poor who will pay the price for this cleanliness.

We were treated to the sounds of a theatre group rehearsing their songs while huddled in the corner of an outdoor amphitheatre. This, too, is the face of the new India, where young people gather in public in the evenings to explore their art in a melange of modern and traditional contexts.

The highlight of the day came as Assim took us to a holy Muslim place tucked away apart from the tourist road. It is a collection of ancient tombs (including the body of Shahjehan's daughter) and a living mosque; I was permitted to enter the inner sanctum and pray over what I think was a well covered dead body. All rather creepy and fascinating... and quite beautiful.

I have just returned from clubbing at a disco called Dublin, which apparently hosts only certain wealthy families in Delhi. Here is where the diktat of youth finds an exception: money rules, and the rich tend to be older. So the club is populated by a spattering of foreigners (me), the scions of wealthy families and, of course, their elder siblings. So the average age is bumped up into the 40s. In fact, there'sa 50-ish fellow dressed like Jerry Lewis who thinks he's the hottest thing around. I wish I had a photo.

One more drunken night in Delhi. Time to play my sitar and drift off to sleep...

UPDATE: I forgot to add that