I'm sitting in a hotel bar in Delhi, watching England get themselves out with inevitable regularity, and making 330ml of Leffe last about two hours. I've a 2.30am flight back to Blighty, which I think constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment, and hence a lot of time to kill.
And frankly, in spite of the genuine lure of seeing lots of friends and loved ones, the thought of nearly four weeks away from India - mostly for work - isn't filling me with palpitations. It's not about the clubs and the theatres and the country walks: the contrivances that constitute 'life' in the West. No, it's everyday existence that's addictive.
Today I got in an auto-rickshaw from the office to an event I was attending. On the way, with the hot Delhi air blowing in our faces and that unique only-slightly-irrational fear of imminent sudden death that you get in every auto journey, we overtook an enormous elephant. Not some tourist trap either: this was a working elephant, with a man and a big load of what looked like reeds on his back. I then cheered as we got to a red light, which was great as it meant the elephant could catch us up and waddle past us, its vast backside about a foot away from me. Nobody other than me seemed remotely flustered.
Perhaps, when I'm in Edinburgh or Manchester or Birmingham or London over the next few weeks, I'll see an elephant meandering down the road nonchalantly going about its business. Until I do, that and the thousand other daily hilarities of life mean that I'll be counting the days till I get back to India.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
In the name of love
Yesterday saw the first Queer Azadi march since June’s landmark Delhi High Court decision, effectively decriminalising homosexuality in India. There were a good 2,000 people there, and it was a riot – of colours and sounds, not of the Stonewall variety. In fact the police were positively helpful, happily stopping the traffic to let the march through, which gave the activists a chance to assail the poor trapped car drivers, bus passengers and ox-cart pushers with their assorted paraphernalia. I saw an elderly Muslim taxi driver earnestly reading a queer political pamphlet, pausing only to give me a big cheerful smile.
As you’d imagine, all manner of humanity was represented: from the serious middle-aged academics to the go-go boys, from hundreds of hijras in their best saris to sloganeering lesbian activists. The swine flu outbreak didn’t dampen spirits either: in fact it was an opportunity, to create fabulous multi-coloured protective masks. A lot of people wear masks on the march anyway, because they don’t want their faces to end up plastered over flickr or the Times of India or anywhere else their families and employers might be looking.
Azadi means ‘liberty’, which is a nobler ambition than ‘pride’ I think. Pride used to be a Deadly Sin, of course (there’s an obvious cheap gag but even I’m not that sick. Not today, anyway).
But more than that, there’s an energy to the queer movement in India that disappeared long ago in the West: Pride in the UK is a bit about raising money for good causes and a lot about getting pissed or laid or both, with the politics understandably long forgotten. In India, however, there’s a fight to be won: and it feels – for the first time, I suspect – that the good guys might just be on the winning side.
As you’d imagine, all manner of humanity was represented: from the serious middle-aged academics to the go-go boys, from hundreds of hijras in their best saris to sloganeering lesbian activists. The swine flu outbreak didn’t dampen spirits either: in fact it was an opportunity, to create fabulous multi-coloured protective masks. A lot of people wear masks on the march anyway, because they don’t want their faces to end up plastered over flickr or the Times of India or anywhere else their families and employers might be looking.
Azadi means ‘liberty’, which is a nobler ambition than ‘pride’ I think. Pride used to be a Deadly Sin, of course (there’s an obvious cheap gag but even I’m not that sick. Not today, anyway).
But more than that, there’s an energy to the queer movement in India that disappeared long ago in the West: Pride in the UK is a bit about raising money for good causes and a lot about getting pissed or laid or both, with the politics understandably long forgotten. In India, however, there’s a fight to be won: and it feels – for the first time, I suspect – that the good guys might just be on the winning side.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The swines are at it again
Glorious colonial architecture abounds in Bombay, but I think my favourite is the BMC building, the Gothic classic right opposite the legendary Victoria Terminus. It’s one of those buildings that lifts the spirits every time you see it, another intricacy revealing itself on each inspection, a different random association coming to mind – yesterday it made me think of St Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, the finest building in a fine city.
And I love the name Bombay Municipal Corporation – it’s got that Chamberlain-esque late-Victorian can-do civic attitude ring to it. No nonsense. Does what it says on the tin. These are the guys that make the city tick: these guys work so that we can play.
Except, that is, when they get spooked by a single new addition to the thousands of other communicable diseases already swimming merrily in our city’s human swamp. Yes folks, swine flu’s hit town, mask-sellers are making a killing, and the BMC has decided to try and shut down Bombay. They closed cinemas and theatres over the long Janmashtami weekend, asked malls to shut and generally said everyone should stay indoors. I suppose the idea is that if nobody meets another human being for three days, then those that have it will stop being infectious and those that don’t won’t ever get it. Bravo.
Except that there are twenty million people here and half of them live practically on top of one another. And swine flu has already shown itself to be practically unstoppable in countries that have far better healthcare systems and far lower population density than here. And, as luck would have it, swine flu isn’t half as nasty as any one of the hundreds of other diseases you can already catch here. All in all, the BMC are spouting nonsense.
Thankfully, they underestimate the spirit of this city: a place that wasn’t cowed by the murderous riots in ’93, or the floods in ’05, or the bombs on the trains in ’06 – not to mention the events of 26 November last year – certainly isn’t going to worry about a new germ to add to all the ones we’ve already got. The malls have been overflowing and the city’s a-buzz. It seems that India, just like the West, is a country that greets authoritarian idiocy with the raised middle finger it deserves.
The only real downside is that I was supposed to go to the theatre on Saturday, and sadly it was one of the venues that is more readily influenced by political pressure. So my play was cancelled. Gah. It would never have happened in Chamberlain’s day.
And I love the name Bombay Municipal Corporation – it’s got that Chamberlain-esque late-Victorian can-do civic attitude ring to it. No nonsense. Does what it says on the tin. These are the guys that make the city tick: these guys work so that we can play.
Except, that is, when they get spooked by a single new addition to the thousands of other communicable diseases already swimming merrily in our city’s human swamp. Yes folks, swine flu’s hit town, mask-sellers are making a killing, and the BMC has decided to try and shut down Bombay. They closed cinemas and theatres over the long Janmashtami weekend, asked malls to shut and generally said everyone should stay indoors. I suppose the idea is that if nobody meets another human being for three days, then those that have it will stop being infectious and those that don’t won’t ever get it. Bravo.
Except that there are twenty million people here and half of them live practically on top of one another. And swine flu has already shown itself to be practically unstoppable in countries that have far better healthcare systems and far lower population density than here. And, as luck would have it, swine flu isn’t half as nasty as any one of the hundreds of other diseases you can already catch here. All in all, the BMC are spouting nonsense.
Thankfully, they underestimate the spirit of this city: a place that wasn’t cowed by the murderous riots in ’93, or the floods in ’05, or the bombs on the trains in ’06 – not to mention the events of 26 November last year – certainly isn’t going to worry about a new germ to add to all the ones we’ve already got. The malls have been overflowing and the city’s a-buzz. It seems that India, just like the West, is a country that greets authoritarian idiocy with the raised middle finger it deserves.
The only real downside is that I was supposed to go to the theatre on Saturday, and sadly it was one of the venues that is more readily influenced by political pressure. So my play was cancelled. Gah. It would never have happened in Chamberlain’s day.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Size queen
I’ve been killing a lot of insects recently. Actually, that’s a lie: I’ve been trying to kill a lot of insects recently, with that pathetic routine where you follow it intently, then clap your hands like you’re happy and you know it. And the insect is happy too, since it can spot a rubbish human being a mile off and knows exactly when to dart out of the way of my flailing limbs.
Reason is, of course, there are a lot of little bug(ger)s in town, courtesy of the “monsoon”. (I use quotation marks since we’ve had about three proper storms, sporadic drizzle and lots of cloudy, dry days. I’d describe it as a damp squib, except it’s not been very damp. A lovely word, squib, almost never used without the word damp in front of it, unless you work in the pyrotechnics industry or some other explosive-related field such as, er, terrorism. Perhaps worth pointing out, for the record, that I don’t work in terrorism. I could have done, but I never had the Latin.)
Aaaaanyway, the point is that the monsoon brings insects, which bring diseases – not just malaria, but also that nasty dengue fever and the unpleasant-sounding leptospirosis. Everyone quite reasonably gets their knickers in a twist about all of these, the annual increase in hospital admissions proving the case for such thong contortions a posteriori. So I expend considerable effort flapping my arms around like I’m doing a comedy misogynistic imitation of girls trying to catch.
And this is where, dear reader (Hello Mum), I hear you cry ‘Hypocrite!’. Yes, just a couple of months ago on this very site I explained how in the land of Gandhiji, I didn’t want to kill my crickets. Mea culpa: but crickets don’t actually harm you, whereas the flies and mozzies are potential harbingers of doom.
But more importantly, the crickets are bigger. Which means I can sort of see their different bits and they look like real creatures with eyes and big wings and funny legs that they rub together really fast or whatever it is they do. The little flies and mozzies, meanwhile, are just specks, barely a pixel on my sightline: ipso facto, like the people on the ground from the top of the big ferris wheel in The Third Man, they’re so small that in my warped Limey philosophy I conclude that no-one will miss them when they’re gone. I guess I’m just a shameless size queen.
Reason is, of course, there are a lot of little bug(ger)s in town, courtesy of the “monsoon”. (I use quotation marks since we’ve had about three proper storms, sporadic drizzle and lots of cloudy, dry days. I’d describe it as a damp squib, except it’s not been very damp. A lovely word, squib, almost never used without the word damp in front of it, unless you work in the pyrotechnics industry or some other explosive-related field such as, er, terrorism. Perhaps worth pointing out, for the record, that I don’t work in terrorism. I could have done, but I never had the Latin.)
Aaaaanyway, the point is that the monsoon brings insects, which bring diseases – not just malaria, but also that nasty dengue fever and the unpleasant-sounding leptospirosis. Everyone quite reasonably gets their knickers in a twist about all of these, the annual increase in hospital admissions proving the case for such thong contortions a posteriori. So I expend considerable effort flapping my arms around like I’m doing a comedy misogynistic imitation of girls trying to catch.
And this is where, dear reader (Hello Mum), I hear you cry ‘Hypocrite!’. Yes, just a couple of months ago on this very site I explained how in the land of Gandhiji, I didn’t want to kill my crickets. Mea culpa: but crickets don’t actually harm you, whereas the flies and mozzies are potential harbingers of doom.
But more importantly, the crickets are bigger. Which means I can sort of see their different bits and they look like real creatures with eyes and big wings and funny legs that they rub together really fast or whatever it is they do. The little flies and mozzies, meanwhile, are just specks, barely a pixel on my sightline: ipso facto, like the people on the ground from the top of the big ferris wheel in The Third Man, they’re so small that in my warped Limey philosophy I conclude that no-one will miss them when they’re gone. I guess I’m just a shameless size queen.
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