A few months ago, at a point in the monsoon so wet that Fotherington-Thomas would point at it and laugh, I was squeezed in the back of a car with a renowned British poet and her charming ageing academic Indian host. On an empty road late at night in one of the posher parts of town, we bumped around like on the whirling waltzers at Braintree carnival; but on peeking out of the window it was obvious that this road with more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire had only recently been resurfaced.
Obviously this merited deeper investigation, but since my companions were professional vocabularians I realised I’d need to draw deeply on my reserves of Wildean wit and eloquence if I was fully to engage them.
“Ugh?”
“Well it’s simple”, explained the academic, his glasses almost falling off the end of his nose. “If you’re one of the local government’s “approved vendors”, there’s nice work to be had resurfacing roads before the monsoo n. But you don’t want to do it too well or you won’t get called back for more after the rains end.”
“But surely the noble representatives of the people at City Hall won’t call back a company that did it so badly the first time? Why on earth would they do such a thing?”. My naïve act was probably starting to weary by this point, so the academic just rubbed his thumb and index finger together and arched an eyebrow.
“Oh”, I said, making one vowel sound last about three seconds. The rupee had dropped.
I was reminded of this resignation to ubiquitous corruption, and the widespread maladministration it causes, as the hullabaloo over the farce of the Delhi Commonwealth Games (or CWG as they were universally known in this abbreviation-obsessed country) reached dengue pitch. None of the pathetic failings that disfigured the event were remotely a surprise to anyone who’s lived in India for half a second: but I did think they’d cover it up a bit better, and possibly not be so blatant about the waste of thousands of crores of public funds in a country with 800 million hungry people – many of whom were moved out of the city in October so as not to spoil the view. (The view for whom? The international tourists who came for Games? They didn’t seem too bothered, and I know – I met both of them. Boom boom.)
The strange thing about Delhi during the Games was the incredible sense of eery quiet: it felt a bit like the impregnation day in The Midwich Cuckoos. All the schools had closed and most people were inspired by six months of relentlessly negative media coverage to sod off away from the city for a fortnight. Result: security forces everywhere pointing guns at nothing in particular; reserved ‘CWG lanes’ on the roads proving unnecessary since there wasn’t any traffic anyway; lots of spanking new stadia and metro trains with nobody in them.
Of course, the stadia were also empty because buying tickets was so insanely difficult. I queued up for half an hour at one of the outlets near the centre of town, before being told I was in the wrong queue. As I had a white face, I was then rushed to the front of the right queue, because brown people’s time is apparently less valuable. I then came round behind the desk of the one guy with a box office computer, because he kept going to the wrong events on the wrong dates, so I thought it would be easier if I stood behind him and pointed. Most events were ‘sold out’, a phenomenon I’d previously experienced at a theatre festival, where half-empty halls could be ‘sold out’ because of the masses of free tickets distributed to government officials, none of whom can actually be bothered to turn up. When it came to printing the tickets for the few things that were still available, we had to wait for several minutes while he tried to open the plastic wrapper to get a new packet of tickets. Someone was dispatched to find someone with a pen to break into the polythene.
Hooray! Saturday night at the athletics! A chance to cheer on the plucky Brits as they finish seventh behind the Kenyans and Aussies at everything! Arriving bang on time and getting dropped off right outside the stadium, we then had to walk for three miles – no exaggeration, in shocking heat – to get to the entrance. When we finally got in it was almost impossible to find a drink of water, which of course you weren’t allowed to bring in yourself. On the track, needless to say, the Kenyans won everything.
To be fair, the next day at the hockey was smooth as you like, the only stupid planning errors being made by us, forgetting our sun cream and burning in the afternoon for two hours. The small local crowd were mostly supporting South Africa against England, on the grounds that (a) Nelson Mandela was South African, (b) South Africa had nice green shirts, and (c) South Africa hadn’t ruled India oppressively for two hundred years. But it was all good-natured and when England won, they decided we weren’t that bad and demanded photos with us anyway.
So what to make of these Games, which finally made India wash its filthy linen in public like a Mahalaxmi dhobiwallah? There’s a strong argument, most forcefully put by the ever-rebarbative Vir Sanghvi, that the mess represents the last hurrah of the gerontocracy that runs this country: undoubtedly, I’ve often noticed that the difference in outlook, attitude and approach between, say, 30-year-olds and 60-year-olds in India is huge, and far greater than in the West. It feels a bit like Britain probably did in about 1963. So perhaps it’s time for the septuagenarians in charge to board the great gravy train in the sky; perhaps it is like the Midwich Cuckoos, except that the dangerous force subverting society from within isn’t a bunch of toddlers with funny eyes, it’s elderly men hectoring us through ropy sound systems and putting garlands on one another.
But then I’m not so sure that the solution is just to blame it on the doddery: in Britain, by contrast, we suffer from a TV-inspired emphasis on youth, the guys in charge in their early forties, being mostly advised by sharp-suited tory boys in their twenties and early thirties. I’ve met a few of these and they seem to know even less about the world than I do, which is not very much.
No, I think it’s simpler than that. Cards on the table time: India has got far too comfortable with people being on the take.
When you put on an event, especially outdoors, and you work for a ‘respectable organisation’, you have to make sure you have a ‘production partner’ whose role, among other things, is to pay off any cops who wander along and find some spurious excuse to threaten to close you down.
When decent well-meaning people get rich, or more likely are born into rich families, they will happily fund their own hospitals and schools and welfare projects, but still try their best to avoid paying taxes because they think – they know – that so much of the money will disappear.
Everything I’ve seen in the last 20 months tells me that the culture of corruption pervades public administration in this wonderful, warm-hearted country, and is the single biggest factor that lets down and holds back the ordinary people of India from building a decent future in their so-called glorious new century. Nobody knows how to solve this problem. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to solve this problem. I can only hope that the sheer public insanity of the Commonwealth Games will shine a little light on the problem and lead, somehow, to a culture of zero tolerance of corruption. Until that happens, the potholes in the roads in the posh parts of town, and even the thousands of crores spent on pointless empty stadia in Delhi, are the least of our worries.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Elephant in the room
When you first get onto the beach after fighting your way through from Charni Road station, it could be any other balmy evening at Girgaum Chowpatty, if an absurdly busy one. People queue up (im)patiently for vada pav; kids hurl glo-in-the-dark toys twenty feet in the air; chaiwallahs pour five rupees’ worth of tea into a tiny plastic cup, so full you can’t hold it without scalding your fingers.
The first visible sign that something’s different is that the beach seems to extend much further than usual, the crowds stretching out a long way into the distance. Except the masses of people furthest away aren’t actually on the beach at all: they’re in the sea, they’re slowly, almost imperceptibly getting deeper and deeper in to gradually immerse their idols, and they’re bringing a week and a half of festival to a close in a way that makes “taking down the Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night” seem pretty lame.
Yesterday saw the end of Ganeshotsav, which is essentially an epic annual birthday party for Lord Ganesha, the god of prosperity, good fortune and moral support for anybody who’s concerned that they might look like an elephant. It’s been an entertaining eleven days, with Mumbai jumping to the sound of endless tiny mobile parties. These normally involve a small van, the back doors open with a Ganesha idol looking out, garlanded with flowers; in front there are about twenty or thirty people, a few bashing rhythms on drums, the rest dancing with a delirious, spaced out expression that might be what your parents looked like the first time they took weed in 1965. Up in the cabin, next to the driver maintaining a steady 200 yards an hour, is a guy playing unchained melodies on a tiny Casio keyboard, hooked up to a loudhailer that’s got stuck on the thousand-decibel setting.
And it all ends with the enormous Visarjan or immersion day, when everyone has to find a body of water to dunk old Ganesha. Hence a few lakh people on the beach, and rather a long queue. In many areas of the city people come together with enormous collective community idols, hundreds of the Ganeshas arriving for the immersions on massive trucks and dressed up to the nines, one appearing under a giant frilly orange parasol, another being carried in what looks like a rickety wooden sedan with a large blancmange on top. Apparently the whole process takes till about four in the morning, but in sharp contrast to ordinary Mumbai life it’s bizarrely well-organised and nobody seems to mind taking their turn.
Walking the five miles home (it’s quicker than a cab) you encounter the famous Trance Ganesha inching its way up the road: four flashing coloured lights, one DJ, some massive speaker stacks, three hundred kids off their heads in a slowly-moving outdoor nightclub protected from the traffic by a couple of guys with a rope, and one happy, trippy, elephant-headed god. What a dude.
The first visible sign that something’s different is that the beach seems to extend much further than usual, the crowds stretching out a long way into the distance. Except the masses of people furthest away aren’t actually on the beach at all: they’re in the sea, they’re slowly, almost imperceptibly getting deeper and deeper in to gradually immerse their idols, and they’re bringing a week and a half of festival to a close in a way that makes “taking down the Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night” seem pretty lame.
Yesterday saw the end of Ganeshotsav, which is essentially an epic annual birthday party for Lord Ganesha, the god of prosperity, good fortune and moral support for anybody who’s concerned that they might look like an elephant. It’s been an entertaining eleven days, with Mumbai jumping to the sound of endless tiny mobile parties. These normally involve a small van, the back doors open with a Ganesha idol looking out, garlanded with flowers; in front there are about twenty or thirty people, a few bashing rhythms on drums, the rest dancing with a delirious, spaced out expression that might be what your parents looked like the first time they took weed in 1965. Up in the cabin, next to the driver maintaining a steady 200 yards an hour, is a guy playing unchained melodies on a tiny Casio keyboard, hooked up to a loudhailer that’s got stuck on the thousand-decibel setting.
And it all ends with the enormous Visarjan or immersion day, when everyone has to find a body of water to dunk old Ganesha. Hence a few lakh people on the beach, and rather a long queue. In many areas of the city people come together with enormous collective community idols, hundreds of the Ganeshas arriving for the immersions on massive trucks and dressed up to the nines, one appearing under a giant frilly orange parasol, another being carried in what looks like a rickety wooden sedan with a large blancmange on top. Apparently the whole process takes till about four in the morning, but in sharp contrast to ordinary Mumbai life it’s bizarrely well-organised and nobody seems to mind taking their turn.
Walking the five miles home (it’s quicker than a cab) you encounter the famous Trance Ganesha inching its way up the road: four flashing coloured lights, one DJ, some massive speaker stacks, three hundred kids off their heads in a slowly-moving outdoor nightclub protected from the traffic by a couple of guys with a rope, and one happy, trippy, elephant-headed god. What a dude.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Hair apparent
Fort Cochin – outside tourist season – offers a much-needed break from the chaos and cacophony. It’s the kind of place you can wander around aimlessly, avoiding the goats and the puddles from the intermittent drizzle, the only hassles coming from the ageing hippies in colourful trousers and the small children whose English vernacular consists entirely of ‘One Photo!’.
A couple of miles from the legendary Chinese nets and the stallholders merrily pointing out thirty different types of fresh fish lies Jew Town, the gaggle of shops and cafes that surrounds the Paradesi Synagogue, the oldest in the Commonwealth. The synagogue’s got an excellent blue and white tiled floor, where the tiles appear only to feature three different basic pictures, until you realise that all several hundred of them are unique thanks to tiny, subtle differences: a different tree shading here, a full moon on the horizon rather than a crescent there.
There’s a little display with the history of the Cochin Jews, some of whom came to India about two thousand years ago, not long after another Jew was causing all manner of discombobulation elsewhere. It occurs to me that all my stereotypes and perceptions of Jewishness are just the Europeans, the Yiddish, the Ashkenazim, my grandparents. Surely these guys – who, while everyone else was meandering all over Europe for centuries, were just pottering around in Kerala all the time – are completely different?
We wander into a few of the shops, but as the Rough Guide points out, in spite of the stars of David and menorahs everywhere they’re all run by Kashmiris now. Being Kashmiri they also try to sell a lot of pashminas, which seems strange in a place where it never falls below 25°C. Anyway, there’s one that’s clearly a bit different: a quiet, poky little embroidery shop with entirely different patterns and styles. And just inside, sitting in a tatty wicker chair by the front door, there’s a little old light-skinned lady with my Booba’s hair.
Encouragingly, what she lacks in youth and mobility she makes up for in her sharp tongue and Jewish granny wit. “You’ll have to speak Malayalam!” she barks, before I’ve said a word. The newspaper cuttings on the wall tell us she’s called Sarah Cohen and she’s run the embroidery shop here for decades: suddenly I feel like I’m not in India at all but in Golders Green in the 1950s. But it is India, of course, and it’s as Indian as anything else in this ultimate collage country. Gandhiji would definitely have approved.
I keep looking at her hair, the wispy grey curls bringing all manner of memories from the old house in Muswell Hill flooding back. It almost tempts me to start growing back my jewfro, until I’m reminded that my hair is receding so I’d just look like a weird geography teacher. She tells me this is the last Jewish shop in Jew Town: everyone else left for Israel long ago, and there are only a handful of very elderly people even left living here. Before too long the synagogue will be kept open just for tourists at five rupees a pop, and a little part of the embroidery on India’s patchwork quilt will be no more.
A couple of miles from the legendary Chinese nets and the stallholders merrily pointing out thirty different types of fresh fish lies Jew Town, the gaggle of shops and cafes that surrounds the Paradesi Synagogue, the oldest in the Commonwealth. The synagogue’s got an excellent blue and white tiled floor, where the tiles appear only to feature three different basic pictures, until you realise that all several hundred of them are unique thanks to tiny, subtle differences: a different tree shading here, a full moon on the horizon rather than a crescent there.
There’s a little display with the history of the Cochin Jews, some of whom came to India about two thousand years ago, not long after another Jew was causing all manner of discombobulation elsewhere. It occurs to me that all my stereotypes and perceptions of Jewishness are just the Europeans, the Yiddish, the Ashkenazim, my grandparents. Surely these guys – who, while everyone else was meandering all over Europe for centuries, were just pottering around in Kerala all the time – are completely different?
We wander into a few of the shops, but as the Rough Guide points out, in spite of the stars of David and menorahs everywhere they’re all run by Kashmiris now. Being Kashmiri they also try to sell a lot of pashminas, which seems strange in a place where it never falls below 25°C. Anyway, there’s one that’s clearly a bit different: a quiet, poky little embroidery shop with entirely different patterns and styles. And just inside, sitting in a tatty wicker chair by the front door, there’s a little old light-skinned lady with my Booba’s hair.
Encouragingly, what she lacks in youth and mobility she makes up for in her sharp tongue and Jewish granny wit. “You’ll have to speak Malayalam!” she barks, before I’ve said a word. The newspaper cuttings on the wall tell us she’s called Sarah Cohen and she’s run the embroidery shop here for decades: suddenly I feel like I’m not in India at all but in Golders Green in the 1950s. But it is India, of course, and it’s as Indian as anything else in this ultimate collage country. Gandhiji would definitely have approved.
I keep looking at her hair, the wispy grey curls bringing all manner of memories from the old house in Muswell Hill flooding back. It almost tempts me to start growing back my jewfro, until I’m reminded that my hair is receding so I’d just look like a weird geography teacher. She tells me this is the last Jewish shop in Jew Town: everyone else left for Israel long ago, and there are only a handful of very elderly people even left living here. Before too long the synagogue will be kept open just for tourists at five rupees a pop, and a little part of the embroidery on India’s patchwork quilt will be no more.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Biscuits with the Brothers
A short trip to Hyderabad, a city with lots of bright and shiny new roads and buildings and other accoutrements of India’s IT revolution. The bright and shiny new airport proudly announces “Voted First Place in International Airport Awards - 5 to 15 million passengers category”. Undoubtedly it is high-quality, in a 21st century consumerist way, i.e. the quality mainly comes in the form of many lovely opportunities to buy stuff that you don’t need or even really want but which help to fill the ever-increasing amounts of time you have to spend there.
(Who votes for these things anyway? Perhaps you have to descend to the level of voting in an International Airport Award before you can recognise the gaping chasm where your soul was supposed to be – about which more in a moment…)
Excitingly, among all the bright and shiny things are squillions of enormous boulders, dotting the landscape and looking like an early 1980s Doctor Who episode that was supposed to be set on the planet Flomp but was actually filmed in a quarry outside Middlesbrough.
We meet the Brothers from Brahma Kumaris, who have opened an enormous new centre here. We are supposed to just say hello but they invite us in for tea and biscuits and a discussion about spiritual growth, which it would be rude not to accept. I quickly pick up that as long as you say ‘Om Shanti’ regularly and with great solemnity, and call everyone ‘Brother’, you can’t go far wrong. There are lots of people on the internet who think that Brahma Kumaris is a dangerous cult etc, but as far as I could tell their only interests are peace and biscuits. Now there’s a recruitment slogan if ever I heard one.
My host asks me what I’m doing in the evening, and if I’d like him to take me to Paradise? Since two religious experiences in one day would be at least one and a half too many, I’m instinctively wary; but it turns out to be a legendary – and huge – local restaurant, specialising in the famous Hyderabadi Biryani. They also have a local pudding called khubani ka meetha (basically, stewed apricots), which is absurdly sweet and frankly excessive after you’ve eaten a tempoload of rice. I leave from Hyderabad having grown, in so many ways.
(Who votes for these things anyway? Perhaps you have to descend to the level of voting in an International Airport Award before you can recognise the gaping chasm where your soul was supposed to be – about which more in a moment…)
Excitingly, among all the bright and shiny things are squillions of enormous boulders, dotting the landscape and looking like an early 1980s Doctor Who episode that was supposed to be set on the planet Flomp but was actually filmed in a quarry outside Middlesbrough.
We meet the Brothers from Brahma Kumaris, who have opened an enormous new centre here. We are supposed to just say hello but they invite us in for tea and biscuits and a discussion about spiritual growth, which it would be rude not to accept. I quickly pick up that as long as you say ‘Om Shanti’ regularly and with great solemnity, and call everyone ‘Brother’, you can’t go far wrong. There are lots of people on the internet who think that Brahma Kumaris is a dangerous cult etc, but as far as I could tell their only interests are peace and biscuits. Now there’s a recruitment slogan if ever I heard one.
My host asks me what I’m doing in the evening, and if I’d like him to take me to Paradise? Since two religious experiences in one day would be at least one and a half too many, I’m instinctively wary; but it turns out to be a legendary – and huge – local restaurant, specialising in the famous Hyderabadi Biryani. They also have a local pudding called khubani ka meetha (basically, stewed apricots), which is absurdly sweet and frankly excessive after you’ve eaten a tempoload of rice. I leave from Hyderabad having grown, in so many ways.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Gecko roamin’
We used to have insects. Mini beetles would scuttle across the work surface; flies would divebomb my head; the occasional cockroach would taunt me knowingly from the wall. Once I wandered into the living room to find a trail of hundreds of ants marching single file into the kitchen, an invasion apparently prompted by a scout’s discovery of a solitary unbinned mango stone.
But no more. A few days after I got back to India four weeks ago, I opened a cupboard and a tiny startled lizard scampered back to the safety of the darkness, behind all the tins of stuff that I bought a year ago and I’ve forgotten about. Since then there's just been the occasional glimpse when I’ve suddenly turned on the light. I think he probably has a whale of a time when I’m not around: I’ve pondered coming home unexpectedly one afternoon, just to see if I can catch him unawares, probably drinking my brandy and having it away with my wife on the settee.
Anyway, exciting news yesterday: there’s another one. A little one, slightly lighter in colour, and he seems like a bit of a loveable rogue, poking his nose out from the under the cupboard doors and looking like he fancies getting up to no good. Meanwhile the original fella has grown to a massive two inches long, and taken on a more gecko-ish shape. Or maybe that’s a different one altogether. I forgot to attach electronic tags to them so I can’t be sure. They’re probably breeding, which is an exciting thought except it does conjure up nightmarish visions that sound like the plot of a 1950s B movie.
And the insects? Well I don’t want to tempt fate (particularly not in India, where the fickle finger of fate is all that keeps you from a sticky end under the wheels of a Dhak Dhak Go Hero Honda) but I’ve not seen many of them around recently. My new friend seems to have the situation under control.
PS I hate Google. Just when you think you’ve invented the ultimate original bad pun for your blog post title, so appalling that surely noone can have thought of it before… turns out there’s a bloody art gallery in Florida that got there first. D’oh! Perhaps we should settle the argument with, erm, a wrestling match?
But no more. A few days after I got back to India four weeks ago, I opened a cupboard and a tiny startled lizard scampered back to the safety of the darkness, behind all the tins of stuff that I bought a year ago and I’ve forgotten about. Since then there's just been the occasional glimpse when I’ve suddenly turned on the light. I think he probably has a whale of a time when I’m not around: I’ve pondered coming home unexpectedly one afternoon, just to see if I can catch him unawares, probably drinking my brandy and having it away with my wife on the settee.
Anyway, exciting news yesterday: there’s another one. A little one, slightly lighter in colour, and he seems like a bit of a loveable rogue, poking his nose out from the under the cupboard doors and looking like he fancies getting up to no good. Meanwhile the original fella has grown to a massive two inches long, and taken on a more gecko-ish shape. Or maybe that’s a different one altogether. I forgot to attach electronic tags to them so I can’t be sure. They’re probably breeding, which is an exciting thought except it does conjure up nightmarish visions that sound like the plot of a 1950s B movie.
And the insects? Well I don’t want to tempt fate (particularly not in India, where the fickle finger of fate is all that keeps you from a sticky end under the wheels of a Dhak Dhak Go Hero Honda) but I’ve not seen many of them around recently. My new friend seems to have the situation under control.
PS I hate Google. Just when you think you’ve invented the ultimate original bad pun for your blog post title, so appalling that surely noone can have thought of it before… turns out there’s a bloody art gallery in Florida that got there first. D’oh! Perhaps we should settle the argument with, erm, a wrestling match?
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Long to rain over us
Sorry. I am a crap blogger.
It’s been raining. Not in the year-round Mancunian sense, but in the Indian, bloody hell I can’t see more than six feet because the air is full of water sense. When we were kids and it rained, we used to say it was God having a wee: two weeks ago, when the rains broke in Bombay, I think God must have had chronic dystentery.
I got back from work to find water all over the floor. This wasn’t an enormous surprise, as the balcony in the flat was clearly designed by someone who thought that flats really need a nice covering of water every once in a while. Perhaps it helps with growing cress. Either that or, more likely, it was designed by an idiot. Anyway, three hours of kneeling in an inch of water and squeezing a towel into a bucket later, everything was ok, if a little filthy. Hooray for the sensible person who noticed this design flaw and suggested I move all the electronics off the floor during the monsoon season. You know who you are.
Today there was another mega storm and within a couple of hours, the roads had all turned into small lakes and rivers. We drove through some really deep water in Worli: there were kids swimming right next to the car door. Astonishingly, my crappy little motor made it home.
It’s been raining. Not in the year-round Mancunian sense, but in the Indian, bloody hell I can’t see more than six feet because the air is full of water sense. When we were kids and it rained, we used to say it was God having a wee: two weeks ago, when the rains broke in Bombay, I think God must have had chronic dystentery.
I got back from work to find water all over the floor. This wasn’t an enormous surprise, as the balcony in the flat was clearly designed by someone who thought that flats really need a nice covering of water every once in a while. Perhaps it helps with growing cress. Either that or, more likely, it was designed by an idiot. Anyway, three hours of kneeling in an inch of water and squeezing a towel into a bucket later, everything was ok, if a little filthy. Hooray for the sensible person who noticed this design flaw and suggested I move all the electronics off the floor during the monsoon season. You know who you are.
Today there was another mega storm and within a couple of hours, the roads had all turned into small lakes and rivers. We drove through some really deep water in Worli: there were kids swimming right next to the car door. Astonishingly, my crappy little motor made it home.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Unwanted southern comfort
The first thing I notice about Chennai is that I can’t see any Hindi anywhere. They don’t really do Hindi down here: it’s nasty northern nonsense. Instead there’s much more English on the streets than in Mumbai or Delhi, and the lovely loopy curvaceous script of Tamil, the world’s only surviving classical language, according to the Tamils at any rate.
I meet an amazing man who invented a whole new form of notation for Carnatic music, the classical sound of South India. It’s quickly apparent why the Western notation that I learnt as a kid won’t quite cut the mustard: with all the complex tonal swirls, weird scales tuned to different frequencies and crazy rhythms (seven- and five-time simultaneously is what I think was going on), any attempt to write it down in treble clef on a five-bar stave would be foolhardy.
His new system is brilliant and I learn to read the simpler parts of it pretty quickly, although since it’s designed for small children to be able to cope with I probably shouldn’t feel that pleased with myself. Strangely it looks a little like Tamil script, all fluid loops and curves. The Western system is properly Teutonic, such straight lines and sharply defined logic. I can feel a cultural theory coming on.
That evening I’m supposed to catch an overnight train to Thiruvananthapuram, a small city with a big name. This means I’m looking forward to the prospect of a good sleep to the Johnny Cash rhythm of the train, followed by four hours of daylight in the morning dawdling through the Keralan forests – i.e. bliss all round. My ticket is ‘waitlisted #1’ from two days beforehand, which local experience suggests should be fine – someone’s bound to drop out, they always do. Sadly, experience is a fool and nobody gives up a berth, so eventually I have to admit defeat and take the depressing posh hotel and morning flight option. My colleagues think I'm weird.
I ask them about fun things to do in Chennai on a Friday night. Blank faces all round: there’s literally nothing going on at this time of year. One describes it as a sleepy village with ten million people living in it. It seems there are downsides to classical civilization.
Over in Thiruvananthapuram, it’s India but it’s slightly different. Where are all the poor people? Ok it’s not quite Chalfont St Giles, but on first sight it looks like the poor here are nowhere near as poor as those in most of the rest of the country. I’m told that Kerala has no heavy industry to speak of, but it’s got universal electricity as well as the famous high literacy rates. If this is what decades of sleepy leftism brings, it seems to work. Can someone tell the IMF?
I meet an amazing man who invented a whole new form of notation for Carnatic music, the classical sound of South India. It’s quickly apparent why the Western notation that I learnt as a kid won’t quite cut the mustard: with all the complex tonal swirls, weird scales tuned to different frequencies and crazy rhythms (seven- and five-time simultaneously is what I think was going on), any attempt to write it down in treble clef on a five-bar stave would be foolhardy.
His new system is brilliant and I learn to read the simpler parts of it pretty quickly, although since it’s designed for small children to be able to cope with I probably shouldn’t feel that pleased with myself. Strangely it looks a little like Tamil script, all fluid loops and curves. The Western system is properly Teutonic, such straight lines and sharply defined logic. I can feel a cultural theory coming on.
That evening I’m supposed to catch an overnight train to Thiruvananthapuram, a small city with a big name. This means I’m looking forward to the prospect of a good sleep to the Johnny Cash rhythm of the train, followed by four hours of daylight in the morning dawdling through the Keralan forests – i.e. bliss all round. My ticket is ‘waitlisted #1’ from two days beforehand, which local experience suggests should be fine – someone’s bound to drop out, they always do. Sadly, experience is a fool and nobody gives up a berth, so eventually I have to admit defeat and take the depressing posh hotel and morning flight option. My colleagues think I'm weird.
I ask them about fun things to do in Chennai on a Friday night. Blank faces all round: there’s literally nothing going on at this time of year. One describes it as a sleepy village with ten million people living in it. It seems there are downsides to classical civilization.
Over in Thiruvananthapuram, it’s India but it’s slightly different. Where are all the poor people? Ok it’s not quite Chalfont St Giles, but on first sight it looks like the poor here are nowhere near as poor as those in most of the rest of the country. I’m told that Kerala has no heavy industry to speak of, but it’s got universal electricity as well as the famous high literacy rates. If this is what decades of sleepy leftism brings, it seems to work. Can someone tell the IMF?
Friday, April 02, 2010
Domino dancing
The only moment of quiet came at about ten o’clock, when God shimmied forward a few steps in the way he’s being doing since before time itself, swung his arms and launched the little white pill high up in the air. Initially this was greeted by yet another chorus of hooting, hollering and standing on plastic seats from at least 20,000 devotees in the temple, until they started to realised that a shady character in red – and possibly a forked tail – was standing exactly at the point where the thing was set to come down. Heaven forfend. Sachin was out.
Like I said, it really was the only moment of quiet on Tuesday night, at the Indian Premier League game between Mumbai and Punjab. The fans don’t seem to need much encouragement to make vast amounts of noise but they get it anyway, with endless nonsense on the PA of the “are you ready?!?!” variety. After every four, or six, or a wicket, or the end of the over, the alarmingly thin Eastern European-looking dancing girls come on and gyrate with pompoms and a really bored expression on their faces for about 20 seconds, which also encourages the (mostly male) crowd to do some more whooping. And of course every couple of minutes something happens on the pitch to make it essential to blow into your rolled-up paper horn, like a good shot, or a fine piece of bowling, or Sachin moving one of his fingers.
Apparently Punjab’s most iconic player, Yuvraj Singh, has previous with the Mumbai crowd, and they don’t let him forget it with a relentless chant of ‘Yuvi sucks’ whenever there’s nothing else to do. Handily enough he gets out for a miserable 2 with a pathetically bad shot, which cheers up Mumbai no end. It’s a strange experience witnessing this crude partisanship: it seems mostly inspired by watching English football on ESPN, but the IPL teams have only existed for two years and the players are almost all just bought at auction, sold to the highest bidder. So while there’s enthusiastic bias in the stands, it’s all ultimately good-natured because no-one actually cares that much who wins. The ribald abuse is just part of what the evening’s really about, which is a good night out.
Funnily enough, the most interesting moment comes at the instant of inevitable victory for Mumbai (Punjab are the most rubbish team in the IPL), when for a brief second I fear that all my friends are about to die. It’s a pretty basic terrace, with each row of plastic chairs held together with a bamboo cane under the legs: and when Mumbai win, some people a few rows back who’ve been standing on their chairs jump up and accidentally push them forward into the ones in front. You then get a few rows of chaotic but still effective dominos, with plastic chairs and people all falling over at once, and from my vantage point (I’ve taken to sitting on a low wall by now) I have visions of one of those news items you occasionally read about a temple stampede in Uttar Pradesh where 116 people die. Luckily my chums hold firm against the tide of plastic (that’s the British stiff upper lip for you), and disaster is narrowly averted. Health and safety, India-style.
Like I said, it really was the only moment of quiet on Tuesday night, at the Indian Premier League game between Mumbai and Punjab. The fans don’t seem to need much encouragement to make vast amounts of noise but they get it anyway, with endless nonsense on the PA of the “are you ready?!?!” variety. After every four, or six, or a wicket, or the end of the over, the alarmingly thin Eastern European-looking dancing girls come on and gyrate with pompoms and a really bored expression on their faces for about 20 seconds, which also encourages the (mostly male) crowd to do some more whooping. And of course every couple of minutes something happens on the pitch to make it essential to blow into your rolled-up paper horn, like a good shot, or a fine piece of bowling, or Sachin moving one of his fingers.
Apparently Punjab’s most iconic player, Yuvraj Singh, has previous with the Mumbai crowd, and they don’t let him forget it with a relentless chant of ‘Yuvi sucks’ whenever there’s nothing else to do. Handily enough he gets out for a miserable 2 with a pathetically bad shot, which cheers up Mumbai no end. It’s a strange experience witnessing this crude partisanship: it seems mostly inspired by watching English football on ESPN, but the IPL teams have only existed for two years and the players are almost all just bought at auction, sold to the highest bidder. So while there’s enthusiastic bias in the stands, it’s all ultimately good-natured because no-one actually cares that much who wins. The ribald abuse is just part of what the evening’s really about, which is a good night out.
Funnily enough, the most interesting moment comes at the instant of inevitable victory for Mumbai (Punjab are the most rubbish team in the IPL), when for a brief second I fear that all my friends are about to die. It’s a pretty basic terrace, with each row of plastic chairs held together with a bamboo cane under the legs: and when Mumbai win, some people a few rows back who’ve been standing on their chairs jump up and accidentally push them forward into the ones in front. You then get a few rows of chaotic but still effective dominos, with plastic chairs and people all falling over at once, and from my vantage point (I’ve taken to sitting on a low wall by now) I have visions of one of those news items you occasionally read about a temple stampede in Uttar Pradesh where 116 people die. Luckily my chums hold firm against the tide of plastic (that’s the British stiff upper lip for you), and disaster is narrowly averted. Health and safety, India-style.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Seeger Master System
A few months ago we had some minor celebration or other at work. We feasted on so-called strawberry cake (no actual strawberries were harmed in the making of this cake) and then everyone started singing a song. After about three seconds I said “hang on, isn’t that We Shall Overcome, classic of the American civil rights movement and all-purpose earnest,-stirring-but-essentially-meaningless protest song?”
It turns out that every Indian child is taught Hum Honge Kamyaab, the Hindi translation of We Shall Overcome, as a staple diet of primary education here: not only that, but through it they understand its origin, its context, its purpose. And thinking back to primary school, we all remember the songs we were taught, long after the other stuff we learnt has disappeared through the smoke rings of our minds. Which leads one to conclude that your average Indian probably knows more about protest in general, and the civil rights movement in particular, than your average Brit.
I was reminded of this by the hilariously preposterous last hour of My Name Is Khan, the latest blockbuster vehicle for Bollywood gigastar Shah Rukh Khan. MNIK, as it’s universally known here, caused a right rumpus when it was released after SRK, as he’s universally known here, mentioned something about Pakistan that was less belligerent than ‘let’s just nuke em’. Our local nutters brigade (see two posts ago for more on them) didn’t take kindly to this and tried to stop the film being released. They gave up after about 24 hours, as there’s only so long that you can hang around outside a cinema burning effigies and threatening the manager with unspecified acts of violence before you get bored and want to go home for tiffin.
In MNIK, SRK’s character is meandering in a slough of despond until he realises that the song being sung in a black church in Georgia is the same one he was taught at school. They bond through music and, within about half an hour or so, he’s been commended by President Obama, there’s no more racism in America, and all is well with the world. It’s complete bobbins, of course, but as a not-too-subtle political message in India it’s probably worthwhile bobbins.
Next week: a treatise on the fundamental role in Indian culture of The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.
It turns out that every Indian child is taught Hum Honge Kamyaab, the Hindi translation of We Shall Overcome, as a staple diet of primary education here: not only that, but through it they understand its origin, its context, its purpose. And thinking back to primary school, we all remember the songs we were taught, long after the other stuff we learnt has disappeared through the smoke rings of our minds. Which leads one to conclude that your average Indian probably knows more about protest in general, and the civil rights movement in particular, than your average Brit.
I was reminded of this by the hilariously preposterous last hour of My Name Is Khan, the latest blockbuster vehicle for Bollywood gigastar Shah Rukh Khan. MNIK, as it’s universally known here, caused a right rumpus when it was released after SRK, as he’s universally known here, mentioned something about Pakistan that was less belligerent than ‘let’s just nuke em’. Our local nutters brigade (see two posts ago for more on them) didn’t take kindly to this and tried to stop the film being released. They gave up after about 24 hours, as there’s only so long that you can hang around outside a cinema burning effigies and threatening the manager with unspecified acts of violence before you get bored and want to go home for tiffin.
In MNIK, SRK’s character is meandering in a slough of despond until he realises that the song being sung in a black church in Georgia is the same one he was taught at school. They bond through music and, within about half an hour or so, he’s been commended by President Obama, there’s no more racism in America, and all is well with the world. It’s complete bobbins, of course, but as a not-too-subtle political message in India it’s probably worthwhile bobbins.
Next week: a treatise on the fundamental role in Indian culture of The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Big Rock Kandy Mountain
Oh dear my titles keep getting worse. Anyway, I had my best train ride ever the other day, which is saying something for someone who grew up near the Severn Valley Railway.
It’s three and a half hours up a very long hill from Colombo on the coast to Kandy, in the middle of Sri Lanka. It’s about a quid for the hundred-mile journey in second class. (First class didn’t exist on this train, and third-class looked like it might cramp my style so I paid the extra 40p. Because I’m worth it.)
The window opens pretty wide, so you get to stick your elbow on the sill and watch the countryside without any pesky glass getting in the way. The journey starts with gentle fields and hamlets, but soon starts to climb up, with every small station telling you how high above sea level it is. Then once you get into the hills, it’s a stunning view around every turn: strange-shaped mountains in the distance, weird trees in the foreground, a hundred shades of green everywhere you look.
There are lots of birds wandering around, including squillions of elegant-looking storks and regular flashes of electric blue from the ultra-cool White-Throated Kingfisher. We go past a handsome river, and a guy is sat on a rock in the water washing the hind legs of a slightly bored-looking elephant. (Though, to be fair, have you ever seen an elephant looking fascinated?)
This being hill-country, there are lots of tunnels, and each of them produces a caterwaul of hoots and yelps from the kids on the train; when you go through the longer tunnels the carriage soon fills up with the thick black diesel smoke that’s belching out from the front, since it’s got nowhere to go except back through all the open windows. But everyone just closes their eyes and tries not to breathe and waits for fresh air to return.
Kandy turns out to be lovely and attractive and thoroughly relaxing, but there’s a big part of me that just wants to get straight back on the train and do it all over again.
It’s three and a half hours up a very long hill from Colombo on the coast to Kandy, in the middle of Sri Lanka. It’s about a quid for the hundred-mile journey in second class. (First class didn’t exist on this train, and third-class looked like it might cramp my style so I paid the extra 40p. Because I’m worth it.)
The window opens pretty wide, so you get to stick your elbow on the sill and watch the countryside without any pesky glass getting in the way. The journey starts with gentle fields and hamlets, but soon starts to climb up, with every small station telling you how high above sea level it is. Then once you get into the hills, it’s a stunning view around every turn: strange-shaped mountains in the distance, weird trees in the foreground, a hundred shades of green everywhere you look.
There are lots of birds wandering around, including squillions of elegant-looking storks and regular flashes of electric blue from the ultra-cool White-Throated Kingfisher. We go past a handsome river, and a guy is sat on a rock in the water washing the hind legs of a slightly bored-looking elephant. (Though, to be fair, have you ever seen an elephant looking fascinated?)
This being hill-country, there are lots of tunnels, and each of them produces a caterwaul of hoots and yelps from the kids on the train; when you go through the longer tunnels the carriage soon fills up with the thick black diesel smoke that’s belching out from the front, since it’s got nowhere to go except back through all the open windows. But everyone just closes their eyes and tries not to breathe and waits for fresh air to return.
Kandy turns out to be lovely and attractive and thoroughly relaxing, but there’s a big part of me that just wants to get straight back on the train and do it all over again.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Beats International
Beat box
In Jaipur last weekend there’s about two or three thousand people in a big field, watching what’s basically a folk variety show. All sorts of marvellously colourful, bonkers acts, like the woman dancing with a grinning child sat on a tray on her head, or the men dressed as women doing whirling dervishy things. There’s even a male and female hosting duo emceeing the whole night, pretending to flirt with each other like on the Eurovision Song Contest.
A splendid collaboration between local musicians and a British beatboxer gets the kids really jumping: Rajasthani folk with a kick. Since there are only about five white people in the entire audience, I become an instant source of fascination, and the kids implore me to join in their crazy bouncing. I offer a brief half-hearted uncoordinated shake of an arm, at which point some official with a multicoloured rosette and a scowl comes over and rants at me in Hindi for causing trouble.
I try my old ‘but sir it wasn’t me they started it sir’ routine, but that hasn’t really worked since infant school. Still it’s not a problem: one conspiratorial wink to the youngsters later, and they’re back on my side.
Beat up
Back in Bombay on Sunday, and there’s a strange assembly under the flyover. About 200 young kids are sat in neat rows in school uniform, listening to a gaggle of grown ups on a stage. Some noble education cause, I presume – until I spot the billboard backdrop: a political poster with the familiar face of Bal Thackeray in the corner.
Old Bal, in case you’re not au fait with Bombay politics, is the founder of Shiv Sena, the thuggish hard-right Marathi nationalists who like to beat up immigrants – not actual foreigners, that is, but people from North India who come over here, take our jobs and our women, etc etc. They’re also the guys responsible for naming virtually everything in the city after Chhatrapati Shivaji and issuing random barely-disguised threats of violence against whoever annoys them this week.
My part of town is full of lovely, friendly people, so I was always surprised to hear from those in the know that it’s a Shiv Sena stronghold. But I guess if you give them the child at seven, they’ll give you the man.
Beat poet
Lovely literature tonight with Anne Waldman, a survivor from the Beat Poets, bezzy mate of Ginsberg no less, and fellow committed Buddhist and pricker of political pomposity. She’s magnificent, hilarious, astute, poignant at times, and mad as a chameleon who just discovered the kaleidoscope.
People try to put her generation down, but since mine has all the radical energy of a two-toed sloth doing work experience for an accountancy firm, it looks like we’re going to need them for a bit longer.
In Jaipur last weekend there’s about two or three thousand people in a big field, watching what’s basically a folk variety show. All sorts of marvellously colourful, bonkers acts, like the woman dancing with a grinning child sat on a tray on her head, or the men dressed as women doing whirling dervishy things. There’s even a male and female hosting duo emceeing the whole night, pretending to flirt with each other like on the Eurovision Song Contest.
A splendid collaboration between local musicians and a British beatboxer gets the kids really jumping: Rajasthani folk with a kick. Since there are only about five white people in the entire audience, I become an instant source of fascination, and the kids implore me to join in their crazy bouncing. I offer a brief half-hearted uncoordinated shake of an arm, at which point some official with a multicoloured rosette and a scowl comes over and rants at me in Hindi for causing trouble.
I try my old ‘but sir it wasn’t me they started it sir’ routine, but that hasn’t really worked since infant school. Still it’s not a problem: one conspiratorial wink to the youngsters later, and they’re back on my side.
Beat up
Back in Bombay on Sunday, and there’s a strange assembly under the flyover. About 200 young kids are sat in neat rows in school uniform, listening to a gaggle of grown ups on a stage. Some noble education cause, I presume – until I spot the billboard backdrop: a political poster with the familiar face of Bal Thackeray in the corner.
Old Bal, in case you’re not au fait with Bombay politics, is the founder of Shiv Sena, the thuggish hard-right Marathi nationalists who like to beat up immigrants – not actual foreigners, that is, but people from North India who come over here, take our jobs and our women, etc etc. They’re also the guys responsible for naming virtually everything in the city after Chhatrapati Shivaji and issuing random barely-disguised threats of violence against whoever annoys them this week.
My part of town is full of lovely, friendly people, so I was always surprised to hear from those in the know that it’s a Shiv Sena stronghold. But I guess if you give them the child at seven, they’ll give you the man.
Beat poet
Lovely literature tonight with Anne Waldman, a survivor from the Beat Poets, bezzy mate of Ginsberg no less, and fellow committed Buddhist and pricker of political pomposity. She’s magnificent, hilarious, astute, poignant at times, and mad as a chameleon who just discovered the kaleidoscope.
People try to put her generation down, but since mine has all the radical energy of a two-toed sloth doing work experience for an accountancy firm, it looks like we’re going to need them for a bit longer.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Tache in fashion
Anyone who knows me will attest that I’m a great student of beauty. Well, after ten months in India, the findings of my survey are in: and I’m pleased to be able to report that the men and women of this fine country are no more or less attractive than people anywhere else. (No shit, sherlock, thanks for the reseach grant, etc).
But there’s one aspect of Indian masculinity that’s frankly a little troubling. What’s with all the moustaches? They’re everywhere! (Especially on the men, boom boom). Is there a war on or something? Did Peter Mandelson come here in the 1980s and start a trend? Maybe there’s a national shortage of privet hedges and it’s all part of a cunning government scheme to replace them.
In the smash-hit Bollywood caper comedy 3 Idiots, featuring eternal cheeky chappy Aamir Khan, the beleaguered college principal finally reaches breaking point when – horror! – the scamsters shave off his moustache. Obviously this is the worst fate that can befall a man.
I don’t mind your proper honest Keith Flett–approved full-on face fuzz, à la Father Christmas or my new favourite, the splendid Hashim Amla. But I’ve never been able to understand moustaches, combining as they do (a) annoying hair on your face, and (b) still having to shave. The only decent reason for facial hair, as every student knows, is good old-fashioned idleness.
But there’s one aspect of Indian masculinity that’s frankly a little troubling. What’s with all the moustaches? They’re everywhere! (Especially on the men, boom boom). Is there a war on or something? Did Peter Mandelson come here in the 1980s and start a trend? Maybe there’s a national shortage of privet hedges and it’s all part of a cunning government scheme to replace them.
In the smash-hit Bollywood caper comedy 3 Idiots, featuring eternal cheeky chappy Aamir Khan, the beleaguered college principal finally reaches breaking point when – horror! – the scamsters shave off his moustache. Obviously this is the worst fate that can befall a man.
I don’t mind your proper honest Keith Flett–approved full-on face fuzz, à la Father Christmas or my new favourite, the splendid Hashim Amla. But I’ve never been able to understand moustaches, combining as they do (a) annoying hair on your face, and (b) still having to shave. The only decent reason for facial hair, as every student knows, is good old-fashioned idleness.
Monday, January 04, 2010
In which Ainsley Harriott grows an elephant's trunk
It was the first day in our new office today. There are bits of wire still coming out of the wall and I can’t fathom out how the taps in the bathroom work (though to be fair, those are still the case in my flat and I’ve been there eight months). But there are phones, computers, and comfy seats that aren’t that comfy so you don’t stay in them too long, so we’re ready for action.
We had a holy man come in to perform a puja. Ganesha was honoured, and there was a colourful offering featuring a pomegranate, a coconut, an apple and an onion. That would be a nightmare on Ready, Steady, Cook, but it’s a dream for the gods and it keeps you in their good books.
Then there was a Catholic prayer, a Muslim recitation, a sprinkling of Zoroastrianism, and an arch raised-eyebrow for the English atheist in the corner. All the gods were happy, even the ones who don't exist.
We had a holy man come in to perform a puja. Ganesha was honoured, and there was a colourful offering featuring a pomegranate, a coconut, an apple and an onion. That would be a nightmare on Ready, Steady, Cook, but it’s a dream for the gods and it keeps you in their good books.
Then there was a Catholic prayer, a Muslim recitation, a sprinkling of Zoroastrianism, and an arch raised-eyebrow for the English atheist in the corner. All the gods were happy, even the ones who don't exist.
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