This isn't just about Cricket

Note the CBC: it’s cricketers, not cricket-eers. And Suhanna Meharchand should know better.

I’ve said before that people in North America don’t understand what cricket means to the Subcontinent. Today’s attack in Lahore on the Sri Lankan cricket team will bring home to the Indian subcontinent the seriousness and immediacy of the turmoil in Pakistan as little else would have. Cricket isn’t just a sport – even a national sport – in a place like India. It’s a national religion, the only one that brings together followers of various other religions who otherwise see themselves as altogether different from each other. I’d say that it’s pretty similarly looked on in Pakistan and Sri Lanka too but there I admit to hypothesizing from the Indian context. Perhaps this latest attack was a reaction to the political upheavals in Punjab province or merely planned to coincide with popular feelings about the Pakistani Supreme Court’s ruling about Nawaz Sharif and his brother (former Prime Minister has been banned from holding elected office again and his brother has been removed as Governor of Punjab). Whatever the political backstory to this, the headline is the attack itself.

I was in India when the Australians and the British cricket boards cancelled their tours of Pakistan; and almost universally, they were seen as somehow being neglectful of the “spirit of cricket” because no one believed that a sport of such standing could ever be targeted. I was in London when the British team fled India in the aftermath of the terrorism in Bombay in November 2008, they were accused of being “not quite cricket” since they had clearly not been targeted. Indeed, when they returned to play out the rest of the matches in India, it was seen as something of a dramatic declaration of faith that love of cricket in the Subcontinent would overcome all other disputes. Pundit after pundit went on the TV to announce that Pakistani or Pakistani-trained “terrorists” have never attacked a match or foreign or domestic cricketers and that they never would because that would mean losing any popular support the hoped to achieve by attacking more ambiguous figures. Bombs might be flung at embassies and mosques and Parliaments but cricket stadia were sacred to all. But in the aftermath of today’s bloody attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team, if that sentiment is taken at face value, the end goal of the attackers ain’t popularity so much as spreading terror and fear.

And by targeting an international cricket team – indeed, the only team that had dared to come to Pakistan to play cricket in the last couple of years – they succeeded in further destabilizing Pakistan’s image in the eyes of its neighbours. By attacking cricket, the terrorists have signalled that nothing is off-limits; that there are no more sacred symbols left in Pakistan.

The British media understand how serious this is and what it means to the millions who live in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. On a day when their own Prime Minister Gordon Brown was meeting with President Obama for the first time – and no doubt hoping to generate some positive headlines back home – headlines about this attack trump even his visit. There’s big-name politicians talking global politics and then there’s world news being made.

A Novella and a Novel

So here’s the novella: it’s called All Along, This was What was Supposed to Happen. Here’s an extract that ought to intrigue you enough to least give it a whirl:

“Which is how she found herself sitting alone in her apartment at 10:15 at night looking at penises. Actual penises! And these were under the "m4w" heading, not even the more complicated headings that she had to pause to decipher, like "t4mw." No, in the "men for women" section, you could click on a headline as innocuous-sounding as "Looking for Fun" and find yourself gazing at a disembodied, erect male member. Were there women out there who'd be tempted by this explicit greeting? Presumably so. The world we live in, Patrice thought wonderingly, half-appalled at the seediness and half-impressed at the gumption of the individuals who'd so brazenly go after what they wanted. Patrice's own forays into online dating, which had been of the decidedly more PG-rated variety, had mostly served to remind her of the pleasures of her own company: In the last eight years, she'd been told by three separate men—two were white, and one was black—that she reminded them of Condoleezza Rice, an observation to which she'd been tempted to respond, at least to the white men, by saying they reminded her of George W. Bush.”

Interesting, pithy, and with the lightest touch of sentimentality – which no one can deny Obama’s election calls for.

That I liked Curtis Sittenfield’s novella can’t be a surprise to many of you. But no one can be more surprised than I am about how much I liked Sittenfield’s American Wife. Who’d ‘ave thunk that a “work of fiction loosely inspired by the life of an American first lady” – Laura Bush – would appeal to me? But as much as I loathed everything the Bush era epitomized, I was carried away by the 550 page saga of Alice Blackwell’s quiet reflections on life. I suppose the test of literature is that it gets one to show sympathy – perhaps even empathy – for someone incredibly different to oneself; in that respect, American Wife does all that can be asked of it.

The book can – and probably should be – read as a response to this kind of perception of Laura Bush. Alice boils down her complicated response to being called out in such terms: “All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power.” But this response in itself does not explain the charm of the book. That comes from the book’s ability to follow the often contradictory and (for me, at least) the often enraging rationalizations that Alice offers for her own actions (or lack thereof) with regard to her husband.

Alice’s all encompassing conceit is that it is possible to be in love with and to remain married to a man to whom she is superior in knowledge, temperament, discipline, and understanding... and I find it fascinating that this is signaled by her reading constantly because we will all recognize that anyone who reads as voraciously, as intellectually, as she does cannot possibly be an idiot Republican right-wing nutter. Alice disagrees with much of Charlie's (Dubya's) world-view but other than occasionally broaching these issues with him, never signals such disagreement and then wonders why she is being held accountable for his actions and thoughts. The answer – because she offers up none of her own and in deed, if not in thought, mirrors his – brings up the essential question of being: is it possible to think certain things, to feel a certain way, and while not expressing these thoughts or feelings in any way, still be? In other words, is silent disagreement, expressionless independent thought, resistance on the inside, ever possible?

I am a creature of the world; to me, the answer is no – there is no mere being, there is only being in the world. One is – or should be – accountable for the perception one creates or does not object to being created for one. In the end, for Alice Blackwell, wife of the Republican President of the United States, to claim that she is unjustly held accountable for his actions, is nothing more than delusional. In one of the purest moments of resolute opposition to her own reasoning that Alice encounters, a old woman doctor who had once performed an abortion for her calls her out on her indifference and the consequences this has: Gladys Wycombe accuses Alice of “having the power to change history but not caring.” I would too. But Sittenfield’s novel is phenomenal for how it captures Alice’s delusion about this lack of responsibility, for how it reveals the incremental pressures on a political wife as an explanation but never makes it a convincing excuse for Alice’s actions and inactions. A delicate line for any writer to walk and Sittenfield does it well.

American Wife isn’t all delusion and politics, though. It is funny and poignant about the mundane as it lays bare the anatomy of a marriage; it reminds us once again that only those inside a relationship – any relationship, not just a marriage to a POTUS – really know what its interior fabric is made of – from the outside, we can speculate but cannot know its warp and weft.

Like the novella, a good read.

Slumdog: The Review

So I must have had a dozen conversations this month that began with "So what did you think of Slumdog Millionaire" and continued thus: "Oh, I haven't seen it...." Well, thanks to a DVD-proferring pal, I've seen it, talked about it with a couple of peeps and now have a review. If you've not seen it and intend to, you might want to skip this post, alright?
Mmmm... how do I say that the movie didn't blow me away without saying exactly that? As flicks go, it was fine, and better than many I've seen but it boggles me mind that it's getting these rave reviews and is raking in the awards. Really? BAFTA? Oscars? Is this the best that the film establishment can produce? You know what, I'm going to take that back... this is probably as good as any schmaltzy "Oscar-contendah" film is likely to be.
I gather that los Indios are offended by the title and the representation of the slums of Bombay but I'm not bothered by those things -- it's a catchy title and the slums of Bombay have been legendary for centuries (if you don't believe me, get yourself a Flora Annie Steele to read...) but does the representation of the slums and slum-life have to be quite so predictable and melodramatic at the same time? I mean, after Salaam Bombay!? Witness: police brutality, corruption, the oft-told tale of the beggar-kids being "run" by a minor mobster, who also brutally disfigures them so as to make them more sympathetic and let's not forget the whore with the heart of gold. Actually, I suppose she's a separate topic altogether, but again such a predictable one. And then there's the question of Bollywood -- as genre -- to consider. And here's where I think Boyle fell down on the job badly.
We tend to think of Bollywood as a supremely melodramatic genre and it is certainly that but that very melodrama means that the kinds of binary conflicts between good and bad that Slumdog Millionaire posits form the most common plots in Bollywood flicks. Amitabh, referenced slyly (in one of the few clever moments in Slumdog) made his reputation in the "angry young man" movies of the early 1970s in movies that pitted the corrupt and brutal against the poor but good. Slums and the mobs who run slums feature frequently and equally melodramatically in dozens of Bollywood flicks every year. Oh, and most of them have beautiful but dumb and wronged heroines, too, including many who have to be rescued from brothels and bordellos. The brother who goes bad? One of the commonest tropes of Bollywood, dating at least as far back as Mother India (1957). Not to mention Ganga Jamuna and Deewar.
Given the wealth of this history, and given that Slumdog is the coincidence-driven melodrama that it is, Boyle could have done something really interesting by cleverly alluding to the tradition that he is drawing on; instead, we have this film that doesn't seem at all plausible by the standards of realism (someone tell me where the brothers learn English, please?) and also doesn't do anything to acknowledge the genre that it draws on and belongs within.
So my somewhat dismal conclusion is that the film is designed to attract a liberal white middle-class audience, and that it succeeds at that. I've no problems with that -- Hollywood is famous for its not-quite-radical "liberalism," right? But let's be honest: that's pretty much the only reason it's getting the hype it's getting. And because Boyle, a liberal white middle class dude, make it. If Slumdog Millionaire was a Bollywood production, which it ought to have been, given its plot and genre, it wouldn't have generated any kind of buzz outside India.
Two last points -- I didn't actually dislike the film -- yes, I disliked bits of it but I thought it a slightly above average movie. I particularly liked how the film was shot: the aerial shots of the slum are stunning and do suggest the aesthetic appeal of distancing; the nod to the call-centre industry was interesting and could have been developed more; and Boyle proves something that I've always suspected (that Indians and the British share a scatalogical humour).
And finally, that there is much more interesting cinema coming out to India, certainly, "parallel cinema" within India and recent diasporic films offer some really fascinating takes on life in India (and in the diaspora). Increasingly, too, there are also Bollywood flicks that offer up food for thought and not just escape. With that said, here's my own totally idiosyncratic list of India-related movies to watch in no particular order:

1. Life... in a Metro
   
2. Monsoon Wedding
3. Roti, Kapada aur Makaan (I misidentified this in the post on Dhaal)
4. Rock On!!! (I reviewed this when I was in India...)
5. Hyderabd Blues
   
6. Haare Rama, Haare Krishna (someday I'm going to write on this one...)
7. Lagaan (yes, it's long. and about cricket. deal with it.)
8. Bhopal Express
9. Bazaar (Naseeruddin Shah in early days... in a film about the real horrors of prostitution.)
   
10. Mughal-E-Azaam
11. Saawariya (reviewed that too...)
12. Rang De Basaanti (India's official entry for the Oscars in 2006, I think.)
13. Phir Milenge (melodrama about an AIDS victim)
14. Bombay (from the 80s.)
15. Kal Ho Naa Ho
16. Pardesi
    

On Dhal: Taste, Memory and Place

A couple of friends and I were in Little India -- now known as Gerrard India Bazaar, apparently -- for dinner last night and also stopped in at an Indian grocery store. And all three of us decided to make my version of dhal today.... since I've now promised that recipe to half a dozen of you, I thought I'd just post it here. We bought bags of that little yellow dhal that is traditionally used in South India to make savoury pongal so that's what we're using but really, you could use pretty much any kind of dhal (and in a pinch, even a can of lentils) to make this. So, the core recipe for Archana's lazy-day dhal follows and then there are some variations and comments. Every woman -- and quite a few men too! -- will have their own version so this isn't authoritative in any way:

1 cup of dhal
salt
1 tomato, chopped (nice but not absolutely necessary)

1 tbsp oil (corn or canola or peanut oil -- don't use anything highly flavoured like olive)
2 chillies (dried red ones or fresh green ones; substitute 1/2 tsp chillie flakes if you have neither)
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
small handful of curry leaves (fresh is wonderful; but it's not easily available in small batches so I tend to buy a large bag, use it fresh for a week and then strip the remaining leaves off the stalks and stick them in the freezer -- and they're fine in this)
small handful of coriander leaves
1/2 tsp of dhania-jeera powder (if you want to make this yourself, toast 2 tbsps of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns and grind them in a coffee mill: smells great as it toasts)
juice from 1/2 a lime (or a lemon or 1 tbsp concentrate from a bottle)
1 tsp butter

optional stuff

1 small onion, chopped or sliced
1 cup chopped vegetables (carrots, taters, sweet potatoes, kholrabi, long white radishes, little round eggplants or the long green ones; some people use okra or green beans but I'm not a fan)
OR
1 cup of chopped spinach (a small package of the frozen chopped spinach will also do just fine)

Wash the dhal thoroughly -- it's often coloured artificially and you should wash it in running hot water until the water runs clear. If I'm making dhal, I'll probably make rice too so I tend to do them both at the same time: run hot water into one, swish it around and let it sit till I've done the other, then go back to it. An old-wives tale says that if you can't wash dhal and rice without loosing a lot of grains down the drain, you'll have to look for a rich man to marry!
Anyway, start cooking the dhal in 3 cups of hot water. Add some salt -- but go easy on this: it's easier to add more at the end than to take it out! If you're going to add root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, get the dhal boiling and then chop and toss them in. My dhal today has a mix of carrots and potatoes.
You might need to add more hot water to the dhal as it cooks -- check on it every 5 to 10 mins; it should take about 20 mins. I like my dhal all mushed together and the veggies in it should be melting -- you won't see any of the sharp edges they started off with in my version! If you're using tomatoes, toss them in once the dhal has started to loose shape. I had half a leftover roma so in that went. That's the best thing about dhal -- you can pretty much make it what you want. It's a bit like tomato sauce in Italian cooking: there's a basic recipe and everyone modifies it according to taste or need.
I'd stick the rice on when you toss the tomatoes, if indeed you are using them.
When the dhal and the rice are both done, heat the oil in a small frying pan. As soon as the oil is really hot, add the chilles, mustard seeds, cumin and garlic. If the oil is truly hot, the seeds will go "pop" and splutter all over; that's when you add the onion, if using. Stir for a minute or so: as soon as the onion and garlic start to brown at the edges, add the curry leaves and the dhania-jeera powder. The smell is incredible. Stir through, add the coriander leaves and turn off the burner. My grandmother would sometimes do this -- especially when she wasn't using onions -- in a steel ladle but I think we're all safer sticking with our smallest frying pans!
Add the seasoning mix to to the hot dhal, stir in the butter and lime juice. If you're using chopped or frozen spinach, stir it in -- it will wilt or melt into the dhal in a few minutes.

If you can't be bothered with a pot and a pan, you can cook it all in one pot: start by heating the oil and following the above till you get to the dhania-jeera powder. At this point, add the uncooked dhal and the 3 cups of water plus or minus the veggies and let it all cook till done. Add the butter and the lime juice and some extra coriander (the earlier addition won't be green any longer.) If you're using that can of lentils, add that instead of the dry dhal. Stir in 1 cup of hot water and pulse through it with a hand blender.

Et voila! Ladle over rice and eat with mango pickle. Leftovers are great spooned over rice mixed with yoghurt. But I'm no purist when it comes to food: today, my lunch was rice and this dhal with a little bit of leftover fish in black bean sauce from a chinese resto down the street. When I was a kid, I'd eat rice and yellow dhal with mango pickle and BBQ flavoured potato chips! I remember my dad bribing me to finish the rice and dhal on my plate with a large wodge of mango pickle: I'd eat up the rice with the spicy pickled stuffs adhering to the chunk of sour green mango and then spend the afternoon sucking on it for its sour-saltiness. Beyond those memories, I'm told that as a toddler, I was fed on a mush of rice, plain boiled dhal, salt and ghee, as many children are. These days, it's winter comfort food of the first order! And my friends have been known to get a bowlful as soup.... but who knows if the dhal that I've come to make is anything like the stuff my mother or grandmother made. Food like this is all about trying to recapture memories and to visit times and places that are past.

Dhal is probably the most Indian of Indian foods and the one of the easiest things to make, if you've a few ingredients on hand and some time. A potful of dhal can be stretched out with water and some extra seasonings to feed a dozen people; it's eaten with rice and rotis across the country and it probably tastes different in every household. It can be fancied up with shredded coconut, tamarind, jaggery, ground up peanuts, herbs like dill and is even made into a casserole of sorts with leftover rotis or chapattis. My mother makes a mean and lean rasam, which is mostly tangy tomatoes and just a handful of the lentils with most of the same flavourings I use. My dad has spent decades railing against that for being "empty" -- no proteins or carbs but for my brother and me, that's probably the epitome of home-cooking; and no matter what, mine just doesn't taste like my mother's. The meanest resto in India, whether it caters to travelers and tourists or rickshaw drivers will have a version of dhal-chawal or dhal-roti on offer: I have a lasting memory of a little guest house (in Varanasi, I think) that proudly advertised "Dal Flied" on its menu. Dhal is also the metaphor for food across India -- the universally understood version of "our daily bread" in India is "dhal-roti ka bath hai" (it's a matter of dhal and roti understood as the basics of food. Another fave is "dhal, kapada aur makhan" (food, clothes and shelter); I have a vague memory of either a bollywood film or a song with that title. It's a powerful metaphor that reaches across so many years and so many experiences to so many people.

The Proof of the Pudding

is in the eating, or so I'm told. It's another one of those old English proverbs that just make me want to laugh but it does capture my own hopes and trepidations over the election of Obama. I'm a political junkie: I freely admit to watching the inauguration today and being moved by the great masses of people who've come out to mark this day in American history. And as moving as I found it, I doubt that anyone who is not American can understand the depth of feeling this particular election and inauguration has engendered for Americans. I think of it as a singular event and a most welcome one because whatever else it may mean, it means the end of the Bushes and the era of fear, terror and sheer stupidity. Today is encapsulated for me by a number of signs that various TV cameras panned in on: "Dream Come True"; "Cowboys against War"; "Free Palestine"; "Black + White = United at Last"; and "The World is Watching".
Even with only a rudimentary understanding of race in America, I'm as astonished by this election as are those who have lived under the yoke of the peculiarly American binary of black and white. The week I spent in Philadelphia a couple of years ago is seared into my memory. The divide between black and white, and where they live, how they travel, what they eat... all of these seemed to me to be almost caricatured in their exaggeratedness. But it's not a caricature at all: the racialization of poverty in the US is something that underlies so many other racialized distinctions between Americans. If you are poor and black (or Latino), you are likely to live in a dump, in a dangerous neighbourhood, take public transit and eat badly. Read Mike Marqusee's article on race in America here. That on top of the historical injustices may go some way to explaining the mood of the country on this day.
I hope some at least of the hopes that Obama is now carrying come to pass. For me, it's all about how he will change America's arrogant behaviour toward the outside world. He said all the right things today but we will simply have to wait and see. Perhaps most immediately, we who are not American are watching to see what he will do about Guantanamo and the Israel-Palestine crisis. I thought I saw the slightest of winces when Bono (who hasn't met a lost cause he won't take up) worked in a very deliberate reference to the "Palestinian dream" during his performance. But that could just have been indigestion from all the adulation in the air. We shall have to wait and see if Obama is anything more than symbolism.
That said, the symbolism is potent indeed. To watch a black man walk into the presidential house built by slave labour, watched by a million people standing in what was once Washington's Slave Market, referencing Lincoln in his speeches (and surely aware that Lincoln, who Americans like to think of as the Great Emancipator gave two inaugural addresses, one defending slavery that now is not brought up in polite company, and another where he broke with it)... well, this is the kind of symbolism that keeps cultural critics like me employed on cold January evenings.

2009!

I know it's a bit late to be celebrating the arrival of 2009 but it's mostly because I've been too busy celebrating this year in person to do any blogebration about it. 2008 hasn't been one of my best years so I'm really hoping for better things from 2009. In the meantime, here are a few updates: after that wonderful month in London, I'm back in Toronto -- which is snowy, cold, slushy and slippery (I've already landed on my butt once). So delightful to look at after a fresh snowfall but so unpleasant if you actually have to wade through it. Given that I was in India at this time last year, it's hard not to go down the "I'd rather be..." road. I'd love to be in India right now but I think I'd be just as happy to be somewhere else: Egypt really appeals (though perhpas it's not the best place to go to right now). But the plan is to stick around here and do some writing and reading. I went to a huge rally for the people of Palestine yesterday -- ah, to be at a demo in 20 below weather makes me feel truly at home in Toronto again!

Naomi Klein has an article in the Guardian calling for a boycott of Israel: and it makes for an interesting read whether you agree with it or not. For the record, I do agree with her -- this has gone on long enough. And I don't buy the propaganda about it being retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks -- there are other and better ways of dealing with Hamas than through launching a war against the civilian population of Gaza. The morality of defending Israeli citizens against rocket attacks palls against the grim visions of the hundreds of Palestinian civilians being killed in cold-blood by Israeli forces. Also, I don't understand how or why the Israeli government thinks it can displace the elected Hamas government in Gaza by targeting it militarily: surely this is the kind of thing that strengthens rather than weakens it as a political force??? By all means launch a battle "for the hearts and minds" of the people of Gaza and explain to them why you think Hamas is a terrorist organization that should not be elected but to attack them is this is just to make them look persecuted and align them with the people of Gaza (who must, at the very least, be feeling persecuted). To my mind, this war is the definition of insanity and I can only see one reason for it: the Israelis decided that for all of Obama's hand on heart support of Zionism, they would be better off acting now when they still had "Israel can do no wrong" man in the White House. Bluergh.

In other news, not as important to the world at large but still critical, my friends at York (CUPE 3903) are still on strike and it's not pretty: as of Friday, the University has asked the Ministry of Labour to hold a supervised vote. What that means is that the Administration has decided to bypass the elected bargaining committee and take their proposal to a vote of the entire membership: under Ontario law, employers can do this once in a round of bargaining and it's usually a sign of an unusually poisonous relationship between the sides. It means that the employer thinks that the barg team isn't where the membership is -- historically, employers usually lose such forced votes (Ottawa transit workers just went through this and roundly rejected the offer). But I guess we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out a few of these videos from CUPE 3903 on Youtube. There's at least 8 of them and some of them are quite funny. And then there is some really unfunny stuff out there on the same topic too -- this is one that is not just offensive but racist.

On that happy note, I'm going to leave y'all. Will be back in the next few days with posts about travel-writing, though. If I can't actually be somewhere warm, I can still read about it and then write about it!

The Monumental

A couple of days ago, MathWhiz (who's visiting) and I wandered past the British Museum late at night: the gates still stood open so we wandered in and were invited to wander further since the Great Court apparently stays open all night. I can't even begin to describe what it's like to walk into the Museum courtyard at night when there aren't crowds of people all around.... and then to walk around the cool marble floors on the Great Court and look up at the reading room... again, all in silence, with no chattering masses around you, no din from zillions of school-kids on tours and parents bringing with reluctant children attached to their feet. It is something else to see this place when it is not in its normal state of chaos.

I've always had a special spot for the Reading Room here: given its storied history of Marx and Lenin, Gandhi and Kipling, it's hard not to feel that it is space steeped in the history of the 20th century. But the British Museum itself is one of those institutions that I can only ever be ambivalent about; like the Victoria & Albert -- perhaps even more so -- it can only ever have been a product of an empire and that it was so manifestly the product of an empire that I have a familial connection to makes it so much harder to single-mindedly appreciate. It is without doubt one of the world's great institutions, it has a collection without peer and yet it is somehow -- in my mind, anyway -- horribly flawed by its (metaphorical) foundations. And seeing it in this light -- cold, silent, empty -- where its sheer monumentality can't possibly be missed.

moreish

This is the word I'm going to import into my vocabulary from this trip. It means exactly what it sounds like it means - it's a descriptor for something (generally food but not always) so good that you want more of it. So: this past weekend, I discovered that hot Indian food you can pick up on the go at supermarket chains such as Sainbury's can actually be moreish (and trust me, no one is more surprised by this than I am!). I got caught in a cold December rain and was tempted by the Vegetable Makhani Masala with Pulao Rice: it was steaming hot and the thought of going home and having to cook dinner was not appealing. It was moreish - and it was surprisingly spicy, for something that is sold at a mainline supermarket.

It made me think that I should have gone to see the Dandy Warhols play at the Astoria (which has to be one of most written about music venues ever). I was minding my own business, clutching the books I'd bought on Charing Cross Road when I was accosted by a guy who was desperate to sell me a ticket 'to see the Dandies for the last time....' That caught my attention but it turned out to be the last time 'for this year, yah' so I decided to take my chances in the years to come and went home instead. But hey, if I enjoyed a plastic ready-meal in London, maybe I'd have enjoyed the Dandies too. Ah well, I'll never know. Speaking of music, the only conversation I've had on the tube comes to mind: there was a lot of confusion this weekend because a number of the Underground lines were shut down for maintainence. So after being completely unable to figure out how I was supposed to get to where I was supposed to go, I finally asked a guy who was standing next to me studying the large-scale map of the underground on the wall at Leicester Square if he was from London. He was, and after assuring himself that I wasn't a maniac ('cos of course only maniacs talk to strangers on the Tube in London), he helped me figure how to get to Liverpool Street without using the Circle line. Anyway, in the process we established that I was from Canada. 'Oright, Canada. Nickelback.' It turns out that Nickelback has a new album out - or maybe it's just out here now... whatever... and there is a massive amount of advertising for this album all over London's Underground. Not moreish, I'm afraid.

Sunday, I went on a Harry Potter walk, or, to be precise, a 'The London that Inspired Harry Potter' walk organized by London Walks. I know, I know, not the kind of thing you'd go to without some trepidation but it turned out to be moreish. For a cold Sunday evening in December, there were a lot of people there and that they were all adults too made me feel less ridiculous. But we were led down the tiniest of alleyways in the heart of London, places that I'd never have guessed existed - and it must be said, places that remind you of Knockturn Alley and of Diagon Alley; we got to see the red telephone box that will let you into the Ministry of Magic but only if you know the right number to dial, and sadly, none of us did... and so on. All good fun and a nice way to spend a couple of hours in London.

Experiment in 19th century design!

I don't actually dislike the V&A, despite my comments below! There are things about it that I do really like - here's an example. This is a typical of the 19th century 'design' that I created on one of their little hands-on machines. I have to admit that I'm quite taken with the pattern! But again, it kinda makes my point about the lack of adequate historicization offered by many of the exhibits. In the South Asia rooms, for instance, there are a number of dresses made up in various parts of Europe that use cotton or silk materials with designs like this one that came from India and which were one widely imported ito Europe. But you'd have to know about why and how this appears in the South Asia rooms yourself - there's no explanation offered alongside the exhibit. While I was there, there was a school group in there, mostly made up of girls who looked like they were 9 or 10. And I swear I overheard one brown - ie, presumably British-Asian - kid say to another, 'Lookit the dresses people in India used to wear.' I don't know that she realized that the only people in India who wore dresses like the ones displayed in the cases were the British....

So, what would an 19th century lady have made of my little design for Indian cotton?

The Victoria & Albert Museum

Somehome calling this the V&A makes it sounds mildly lewd and while there are many things you could say about this particular museum, mildly lewd is not one of them! One of my fave musuem pieces in the world is here - Tipoo's Tiger - as they call it. There's a whole history to this mechanized tiger and to Tipu Sultan and you can read it all here so I won't repeat it all. Suffice it to say that every time I go to Mysore, I get myself to Srirangapatnam - what the British called Ser-ringa-patam - and visit Tipu's summer palace, the 'Daria Daulat.' As far as I know that translated into the 'riches from the sea' which is an odd name for a place that is landlocked but whatever. It's a low building with a wrap-around verandah, full of carved archways and the most intricate paintings all over it. The paintings are mostly of Tipu and his court but the most famous ones are of his victory over the British in the late 18th century. The tiger, I imagine, comes from the same time period and telegraphs his feelings about the British quite clearly! And yet... and yet... the intriguing thing about the Tiger is that it is an automata, such as were hugely popular in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and France. There's an irony in Tipu's Redcoat-eating tiger being a creature that could only have come about in the interaction between colonial margin and imperial centre; an irony that sadly isn't explored in the rather poorly curated exhibit in which it now lives.

Ahem, right, back to the Victoria & Albert. I went in particular to see a small display on 40 years of the Booker prize they have up but got distracted by all the colonial bric-a-brac that fills up that space. Truly, I wonder what the British would exhibit in it if it weren't for their colonial history! The rooms just off the lobby - usually reserved for the most popular exhibits - have been the Islamic art, South Asia and East Asia collections for as I've been coming here. And it doesn't end there: wander upstairs to their 'Europe' collections and you can't help but be struck by how much of it is influenced - if not directly brought 'home' from - British expeditions to distinctly non-European parts of the world. Take the stunning silver collection - two of the most interesting pieces in there are a solid silver South Indian temple (vaguely reminiscient of the famous Madurai Meenakshi temple, with its carved and layered pagoda-style top) and a massive table decoration of an Arab tribesman on his camel under desert palms - made respectively in Madras and Cairo and 'presented' to colonial officers by various collectives of 'natives.' Collectibles like this abound here: don't even get me started on the jewellery collection! And I have to say, the curating is disappointing in that it doesn't seem to draw attention to this deep colonial history. This museum really exists because the Victorian era was the great age of empire; its exhibits are vital momentos of the (sometimes forcible) globalization of British culture that really started in that age though it may only have culminated in the post-war period.

Even the Booker exhibit should have excavated Britain's colonial history: for one thing, there is a reason that the Booker prize goes to the best British or Commonwealth novel every year; more immediately, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things are prominently displayed. The best bit of the exhibit were the four or five books that are shown with their 'bespoke' bindings. I didn't know this but apparently books shortlisted for the Booker are handbound by selected master bookbinder from the Designer Bookbinder association for presentation to the authors. The result is a set of unique - and fascinating - bindings that try to reflect the form and content of the books. Check out the bookbindings from 2005 to 2008 here. Aren't they gorgeous? Looking at these bindings makes me want to run and read the books - which I suppose is the intent. But it's interesting that the bookbinders - for both Midnight's Children and The God of Small Things - chose to include the colonial connection in their concepts. Perhaps the V&A at large could learn something about the concept of acknowledging the hybridity at the heart of empire from this tiny - but oh-so-interesting - little exhibit.

Bookhunt!

Today I decided to wander with a real purpose: look for books that I couldn't find in Toronto. So started my day with a quick tramp through storied Brick Lane (yes, I saw the church that is now a mosque) and Spitalfields Markets - these London markets are quite unlike anything I've seen in other places, mostly because they mash so much crap next to so many cool things I couldn't afford (in this case, the offerings on Brick Lane, other than the fruit & veg were the crap and the hand-made organic products in the new but christened 'Old Spitalfields' market were of the too-cool-for-school and way beyond my means variety). Still, it was a fun place to begin - and the fact that most people seemed to be walking through Brick Lane market to get to Spitalfields again suggested that quality of forced live-togetherness that cities foist upon their citizens.

In keeping with the looking in markets theme, my next stop was the Riverside Book market. South of the river, literally underneath the rising sweeps of London Bridge is a small - and truth be told, a generic -- lot of long tables upon which books are displayed and sold every weekend. It's the location that makes it special, not the books themselves or the prices. And as with any set of used books, you have to have the patience to dig if you want to find something worth the effort! My haul from there today included Eric Newby's On the Shores of the Mediterranean and Anthony Capella's The Food of Love. Having accidentally picked up Newby's biography, A Traveller's Life, a few weeks ago in Toronto, I'm now a fan. But I only bought the Capella book because the Hagrid-lite man who was looking after the table where I found the Newby recommended it so highly: he asked if I was looking for travel books on the Med in particular since he had one that he'd loved... and one thing led to another until I found myself saying, 'Go on then, I'll give you two quid for it.' Done, he said, and so I'm now the owner of a books whose blurbs include one from Hugh Laurie that goes like this: 'a splendid linen suit, panama hat, distant lawn-mower kind of a book; guaranteed to whisk you far fro this drizzly island, soothe you, warm you and return you home again without losing any of your luggage.' How could I resist? I'll report back.

Fortified with hot chocolate - 'special Christmas recipe with rum and cinnamon,' - I wandered through the heart of tourist London -- across Waterloo Bridge, up Charing Cross to Trafalgar Sqaure, past the National Gallery, along Oxford Street, up Marylebone Lane - until I hit my last serious bookstop for the day: the Oxfam Book and Music store and Daunt's on Marylebone High Street. I found the Oxfam last year one wet summery day when I dashed into it to escape for a rainshower and left two hours and many pounds later. It's truly a tiny little gem of a bookshop - and it's very close to Daunt's, which is quite possibly my favourite bookshop in all of London. My practice now is to go to the Oxfam store first and go through the little travel writing section they have there before heading to Daunt's and spending too much money on books that - strictly speaking - I don't need.

Today's haul from Oxfam include:
Mary Taylor Simeti's On Persephone's Island
Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons
Clive James' Falling Toward England
and Michael Sanders' From here, you can't see Paris

And last but not least, from Daunt's, I emerged with Adam Clapham's Beware Falling Coconuts (you've got to see where this link takes you!) and Robyn Davidson's Tracks. Not a bad haul, and (other than at Daunt's) all bought from used bookshops so I still have a few quid left for food and cider!

Yes, there is a clearly a theme to my book purchases: it's December and cold here and I'm heading back to Toronto where it will only be colder. So travel narratives about far-away places, mostly warm ones, seem to be calling out to me. So I'll leave y'all with a thought from St. Augustine (I know, I know!) : 'The world is a book and those who do not travel, they read but a page.'

On the Other Side of Town

I wandered around Chelsea yesterday, a deliberate attempt to see another London. And I couldn't help but think of Tourism, a novel by a 'British Asian' man called Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. I'd never heard of it but saw it on one of the bulging bookcases in the room I'm occupying and couldn't resist it. Have I ever mentioned the first requirement for house-sitting? Packed bookshelves! Preferably packed with books you want to read! Part of the reason I'm loving my stay in London so much are the bookshelves here.... my cool-Britannia cousins (and I don't mean that in a snarky way -- they embody the best things about Brits of a certain generation) have these wonderfully laden bookshelves that I get to come home to everyday! Ahem... Tourism then caught my eye: I'm not sure I like the novel but it's acutely observed. And it prompted me to visit Chelsea and Sloane Square and the King's Road, all such popular haunts of 'posh birds' that they are mocked in British novel after British novel... to quote almost at random, from the last novel I read: 'That night he became enamoured of the upper classes. ...heading back toward the studio on King's Road her father had impulsively bought for her one weekend, he fell in love with Chelsea's solemn Georgian terraces and resposeful, well-fed squares. Here, Doug could see, life was lived on the grand scale.' (This is from The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe but that's almost irrelevant). But this mocking is particularly charged in Tourism which at least takes a stab at racism in the upper echelons of British society, even the supposedly post-everything millenial one.

You'd be amazed by the number of dessicated old ladies wandering into stores along the King's Road and Knightsbridge. Or perhaps not. I mean, that's where one expects the rich to shop in London, isn't it? But to have that expectation so very obviously met means that it can't be mocked all that easily. All that is left to say is that there are clearly very rich people living (or at least shopping) in London; that the vast majority of them are white and that I truly did feel like a tourist in that neighbourhood, in a way that I haven't felt in any other part of London that I've wandered around in. I saw a couple of Filipino women, obviously nannies pushing kids along in prams, some cabs being driven by Asian men (but not many since this is not the land of cheap mini-cabs: this is where customers are chauffered in style or have Black Cabs hailed for them by doormen) and there were a black construction workers working on the endless repairs being made to 'London's Victorian Water Mains'; other than that, there was yours truly wandering along. It's an odd feeling to be so consciousness of my browness; I suppose it's a necessary reminder that not all of London is as approachable as the places I've been hanging around in.

Tomorrow, I'm checking out a couple of the markets here in the East End! Something tells me that will be less... segregated.

In the East End... (part the first)

One of the things that I've found most amusing about this sojourn in somewhere in the middle of Bethnal Green & Bow, Mile End and Hackney is that its residents constantly surprise you. There are rows and rows of two, three and for storey brick row houses, all with names such as Twig Folly Close, Digby Knottisford, Oystercatcher Close and Gawber Street. For your amusement, I should mention that I've also seen street signs for Sugar Loaf Walk, Dug on Street (though my A to Z tells me that should be Duggon), Poultry, Gerund Rd, Railway Children Walk, Old Jewry, Garlick Hill, and Ribbon Dance Main. (I've been keeping a list!). Oh, and have I mentioned that I'm staying in Gunmaker's Lane, off of Gun Wharf?

Just for fun, I thought it would be interesting to see how far the colonial connection goes: I wasn't surprised to find Madras Place or even Bombay St -- it's near Canada Water, for those of you who know this city; there's also a Bangalore St in Richmond, a Hyderabad Way in West Ham, and even a Mysore Road, near Clapham Junction. If I can manage it, I want to go and take a picture of the street sign for Mysore Rd. But seriously, I think it would be very interesting to see just how many colonial villages, towns and cities have lent their names in this way -- we're so familiar with the metropole-to-outpost flow of names, especially in North America with its plethora of 'New something' names but this other routing is just as interesting I think.

Staying in this part of London though is also teaching me about immigration here and the ways in which it is different from immigration into North America. One of the things that struck me almost immediately is how South Asian -- specifically Bangladeshi -- this neighbourhood is and how that identity is obvious in the clothes people wear and the ethnic enclave within which much of their lives seem to be lived in. I'm two kms away from the infamous Brick Lane (and I can't recommend the books Brick Lane (Monica Ali's novel) and Tarquin Hall's lived ethnography Salaam Brick Lane enough!) and it is obvious in between Brick Lane and here that there is a large and unintegrated community here. I don't know that this is either good or bad but even Mississauga and Brampton haven't prepared me for the large numbers of women in salwar-kameezes, hijabs, and burkas and men in a combination of long thobe, wolly socks and sneakers who walk around doing their shopping in little shops that wouldn't look out of place in working-class Bombay or Karachi or Lahore. (I will admit too that nothing prepares you to have them open their mouths and sound as though they've walked off the set of Eastenders but that's another story...).

The disturbing thing about this phenomenon -- or perhaps I should say the potentially disturbing thing -- is that I don't know that this isolation is by choice. I take the No 8 bus on my trips into Central London and could wax lyrical about how wonderful it is: it goes all the way from here past Brick Lane and Liverpool Street and the City to Oxford Circus and then onto Victoria. But while it is full of people from the Bangladeshi community when I get on and for a little while after, by the time the bus gets to Liverpool Street, it's mostly white folks heading off for work and shopping.... and I'm not sure that that's because they choose not to leave the East End or because they can't....

The City

So I've spent the last week or so thinking about cities... the attacks on Bombay and being here in London and reading the New York Times online somehow made me think of The City as an entity much greater than the sum of its parts. I've thought of myself as a Torontonian for quite a while now -- perhaps more so after the disasterous year in Halifax than before! -- but watching and reading the attacks on Bombay in real time, as it were, I've realized again how much we owe to the idea of a city. There was all the usual stuff about how the city responded to the crisis as no other city had -- promptly debunked by the NYT comparing it to 9/11 (and the Guardian here comparing it to the attacks on London transit in July 2007; known here as 7/7). The thing is though that there is both greater impact (and tragedy) because this happend in a city and such a city and greater redemption.

I love cities: the noise of traffic, the crowds, the sense of never being alone because you can just choose to be anonymous in the crowd, the public transit, the sense that you are part of a community, will you or nill you, that is always moving, always growing, always embracing differences that you can't even imagine -- these are the things that cities have going for them. And there is something about how they are always space-conscious even as they are ever-growing that makes it impossible for any scar(e) to be permanent. The Twin Towers came down but New York will build something in that space because it has to; so also here in London, those Tube stations that were bombed are up and running again and in Bombay, too, Leopold's Cafe is already open and crowded where four days ago people lay bleeding. It's not that cities can't stand still and mourn, it's that they don't memorialize a space. We could concieve of leaving behind a blighted village and just building anew over the hill, but who can imagine a great city doing that. Where would the great cities go, anyway?

I'm living in the East End of London for this month and it's an area of this city that I've never really explored before. So I'm reading about it now as I'm walking its streets trying to orient myself: it is the part of the city that I like to think I'd live in if I had the choice because it is the raw pumping heart of London, with a history of radical politics, it has seen waves of immigration (think Kensignton Market spread over a vast area), and has been through numerous incarnations. This is the only riding that has sent a Communist to the British Parliament, right after the Second World War, when it was pulverized during the Blitz. Bethnal Green and Bow is now one of the poorest and most heterogenous ridings in the country and yet it nestles up to Westminister Palace and central London.

A place of contradiction, of despair and of hope -- kinda like the east end of Toronto, of so many slums in Bombay and of Queens in NYC. I suppose when you live in a city you have to live in close proximity to other lives and that in itself is a hopeful process.

The Two Indias

John Edwards may have spent the last few years talking about the "two Americas" but I can't help feeling that the notion of two divergent nations yoked together for all eternity is as true of India as it is anywhere else in the world. There is what is often termed "India Inc" here (that miniscule Westernized and wealthy elite -- the "aam admi" (man on the street, literally) but generally meaning the rest of the nation, where most everyone is a farmer or farm labourer and lives at or below the poverty line.

The nuclear deal that the Indian government and the US was pushing for has come through and India has been granted an exemption (though I don't understand on what grounds) for the purposes of trading in civilian nuclear energy supplies though it will not sign either the non-proliferation treaty or the CTBT. And there is a large part of India that is ecstatic about this news. Again, I don't quite understand how this obscure piece of legislation affects the average Indian but so many of its younger citizens seem to have overdosed on nationalism and patriotism that they signify any kind of national event with such sentiments.

The interest in this is seen as a part of globalization and also, contradictorily, as a rallying point for those from the left (and far right) who would reject mass-produced commercial and corporate globalization but it's just kinda weird to see. And I'm opposed to the deal anyway. What's even weirder is that the Communist led "Left" parties who broke with the ruling Congress party over this issue are also casting their refusal to condone the deal as a macho, nationalist thing. They don't object to this deal on the grounds that India should be focussing on developing safer sources of alternative energy (or if they do, this is at the tail end of their platform). The main point that Prakash Karatand his buddies in the Left have been making is that this deal is a loss of Indian sovereignity, where this is solely determined by India's right (and ability) to keep testing nuclear weapons without suffering any international consequences. Am I just not getting something here or is this simply bad politics, for a so-called "progressive" party?

The contradictions are endless -- the world's largest democracy, which actually regularly elects a number of Communists to federal government is going ga-ga over the legalization of nuclear energy trading. This, in a place wherein the federal government has just mandated that anyone standing for any village or panchayat (rural) election must own a toilet! Yes, you read that right -- you don't need to be educated to any particular level or not have criminal convictions or anything like that in order to qualify to run for these small-time positions but you do need to have a built lav. This in an effort to promote sanitation in the vast swathes of rural India wherein it has not yet caught on or is beyond the reach of the people. What price nuclear energy there?

In other news, that Tata Nano project I wrote about is more or less going to go ahead although there are negotiations and negotiations-about-negotiations going on.

The aftermath of the floods in Bihar (and surrounding areas) are still devastating. As I watch saturation coverage of Hurricane Ike, I can't help thinking of the 2-3 million who have been left homeless (no accurate number of dead can yet be reported though eye-witness accounts say it will be in the tens of thousands) by the Kosi River's catastrophic flooding. There are those who make the news and those who will never merit a mention. Globalization doesn't mean a damn thing here.

The Nano, the Nuclear Deal and the Floods

I've been so obsessed with myself and my family that I haven't said much about what's going on in the rest of India these days, but life for the millions is part of the background to everyday here. The big news stories of the time are about the cataclysmic floods that are affecting Bihar (in East-Central India); the India government's attempt, backed by the US, to secure an exemption that would allow it to trade in nuclear energy; a politically framed agitation in Singur in West Bengal that has halted work on the October rollout of the Nano (aka as the world's cheapest car, one that the Tata Corporation unveiled last year); a deal signed a coupled a days ago on Hindu pilgrims right to use certain government lands in Kashmir that caused another flare-up between Islamic separatists and the national Army and and and..... hmmm.... those are the big ones, I guess. There's a lot about about cricket and local corruption and a court suggesting that women in sarees ought to be banned from riding pillion on motorcycles and scooters and other such fun stories. But.... and in no particular order, here are some editorializations:

The central government in India nearly fell a couple of months ago when the "left" parties in the coalition -- ie, the communists in name and their smaller regional allies -- pulled out when the Congress party insisted on going ahead with a nuclear deal with the US. The details are incomprehensible but essentially, the deal allows for India to buy supplies to produce nuclear energy from the US. In return for such business, the US is attempting to get the world's elite nations who are part of the nuclear cartel -- aka as the Nuclear Suppliers Group -- to allow India an exemption to buy these materials legally. I'm not a fan of either the US and India (playing its regional superpower card) bullying this permission through or of the idea that a handful of nations can decide who trades in cheap sources of power legally. This country needs to find alternative sources of energy and it needs to do so yesterday!!! I do think that there are safer and greener sources of energy out there that India should be aggressively developing.

Singur. Well, this one is interesting. Last year, Ratan Tata unveiled his "car for the masses" -- a 4 door that would be produced for $2500 or so. In theory, it's a great idea. One has only to see common the family-of-four-on-a-motorscooter phenomenon everywhere in India to understand that a cheap car is a social good. The environmentalists have been screaming -- and I get their point. But public transport is nowhere near good enough here and even when it gets better, who are we to say that the mass of Indians shouldn't have the option to access to what we who have the luxury of living in the West take for granted? That said, I was also impressed by the fact that the Nano production unit was set up in Singur in West Bengal, the only state in the world that has consistently and democratically elected communist governments for over 50 years.... and where the union movement is as strong as it gets in India. But there are now major problems -- a year after the plant was established, there are numbers of farmers who haven't accepted and don't want to accept the cheques they've been handed for the expropriation of their land. Enter an opportunist political party -- not the communists who are in power and are actually backing the Singur plant -- but an opposition party who supported the farmers with protests and road blockades and we have chaos. I'm not sure where I stand on this, since I've heard a number of farmers say that they don't want their now unarable land back.... they just want things to go back to how they were 2 years ago. And the plant is providing good union jobs to a lot of people. But it's a story that has gripped the nation. More on it as it develops.

The floods in Bihar are awful. To start with, this is a have-not state in a (mostly and still) have-not nation. The hundreds of thousands of people affected are mostly small farmers and farm labour, living in hundreds of tiny villages that are remote at the best of times. The Indian army is out rescuing them where it can and herding them into makeshift camps. Honestly, this makes the aftermath of Katerina look like a model operation. The scale of tragedy in such parts of the world is unimaginable: I look at TV coverage of the tens of thousands of deaths and think about how to calibrate my grief over losing my grandmother in the face of that kind of loss. And the truth is, I can't.

Not in Kansas Anymore

I know I promised y'all a post about funeral customs next but I'm going to write about everyday life in Mysore instead because I've had a couple of emails from people asking me about it. Besides, I thought it'd be a nice change for all concerned if I didn't write about death and my feelings of fragility -- so instead I'm going to switch back into cultural analyst mode.

Today, the big excitement is that we finally -- I hope -- have a maid again! I know how strange this will sound in Canada but it's impossible to manage in a place like this without someone to come in and do the chores for you. At least, it's impossible for me. And it's impossible for pretty much everyone I know -- of course, there's a class component to this: labour, especially women's labour is incredibly cheap here but it's also the everything-takes-more-effort setup of daily life here. Unbelievable amounts of dust come pouring into the house so it has to be swept at least once, but ideally twice, a day and the floors need to be swabbed to lay the dirt for a while. I haven't seen a dishwasher here, and there's no running hot water so imagine the quantity of dishes that pile up in a family household, with 4 or 6 or 8 people eating three meals a day and drinking numerous rounds of coffee and serving drinks and munchies to all the people who drop by. Also, there are generally no microwaves or ovens or even ranges so everything is cooked on two gas rings that run off calor gas cylinders. My family has the most antiquated washing machine you ever saw, that can only handle being run once a day (if that) because of how much power and water it sucks up -- water is "let out" by the city corporation between midnight and 3 or 4am and gets filled into a tank on top of the house. If your tank runs out during the day, oh well, too bad. I know lots of women who stay up till midnight to fill up additional buckets with water because their water tanks are too small or they're expecting guests who'll need extra water. Add things like bucket baths using hot water that's heated in an (electrified) copper water boiler, power outages at least twice a day, garbage that gets picked up only when the garbagemen feel like it, milk that needs to boiled and cooled before it can be used, and in our case, a family car that's older than ! am.... and is slowly falling apart (I kid you not -- yesterday, the rim on the inside of one door fell off!) and you get the idea of how ramshackle (my) life here is. Everything seems to be held together with string and cello-tape and I can't help worrying that the wheels are about the fall off altogether.

This isn't -- of course -- what everyone experiences in India or even in Mysore. It's possible to live here and at least inside your home or hotel room, not realize that you're not in Kansas anymore. Since the early 90s, a class that I'm going to call the New India has grown up around globalization and the tech and service industries in particular. This is a class that has access to the kinds of disposable income that my grandmother could never have imagined. They are for the most part young and English speaking and have grown into adulthood already entrenched in consumer culture. Apple's IPhone just launched in India, for instance, and it's certainly catering to this demographic. They have expensive (if usually bad) taste, drive new motorbikes or cars, eat out a lot and tend to live in the "Metros." A slightly older class of people who've benefited from globalization are those who've seen their property values go up -- increasingly, globalization has meant industrialization and the further movement of rural populations to urban centres and this new population needs accommodation. At the same time, the New India is reluctant to remain in joint-family living arrangements so there's more demand for smaller, single family living spaces. So apartment buildings -- unusual outside cities such an Bombay even as late as 15 years ago -- are going up everywhere, municipal facilities are failing to keep up with skyrocketing demand and property values in most urban locations have gone up exponentially.

Rest in Peace

So the end is here: my grandmother Kama died a few days ago. She was in a lot of pain and half unconscious for the last few days – and when she could speak, she’d said that she wanted to go – so there are no regrets from her perspective. It’s those of us who are left behind now who have to figure out ways of going on living. I’ve been lucky so far in that I’ve not had to deal with someone this close to me dying… but now I don’t know how to cope. Every morning when I wake up and remember that Kama is dead, that that’s the reason why I’m here in India – well, it hits me all over again. Right now, I can’t see how to reach “normal” (whatever that was) again. How does one cope with death anyway? Is there a route back from here?

It hasn’t helped that it has been chaotic here since, well, it was pretty chaotic when she was in the hospital, too. But death brings with it a frenzy of activity that momentarily takes your mind off the actual fact of having lost someone forever… and that’s what the last few days have been like. There’s the sheer physicality of having to deal with a body – suddenly transformed from a living breathing person with a personality into merely a thing – the minimum shastras (religious rites) that have to be performed, pictures selected for obits and a ceremonial lunch organized for next week to mark her passing.

I’m a heap of relief (that she is not in pain and that we don’t have to see her so), guilt (were we right to wish for a quick end for her?), sadness (because she’s not here anymore) and anger (I can’t explain this one… I just know that I’m angry with the world). You can imagine what it’s like living in close proximity with five other people who are as upset as I am: and the thing about India is that you get no space to yourself – everyone is with you all the time, they’re leaning on you and hanging onto you and touching you when all you want is to be left alone. This is bad enough when you’re on holiday but it’s a million times worse when you’re dealing to deal with emotions. I suppose people derive comfort from each other at times like this but it’s not my way to share my grief with people I don’t know intimately (and just because they happen to be relatives or have known my family for eons does not make them my intimates) – and I don’t know how to tell all the relatives and family friends who insist on visiting and calling and crying and hugging that all I want is some peace and quiet, preferably in a nice dark room somewhere far away from everyone here!

I can't bring myself to write about it yet but my next post will be on the funeral rites – I’ve never been to an Indian funeral before so I found it all fascinating. Maybe I’m truly an academic at heart but thinking about it in terms of how and why the customs are what they are was one way of distancing myself from what was going on.... I’m still not ready to deal with the fact that my grandmother doesn’t exist in any knowable form anymore.

Tragedy and Comedy on Independence Day

Yesterday was Independence Day and was it ever celebrated all over the place! I've got lots to say about nationalism in the New India but that'll have to keep till I can find the videos I want to link to on youtube!

It’s been a week since we arrived in India and it feels like its been forever. Today’s the first day I’ve actually been home and had time to think since we arrived here: I’ve been home (cleaning up the disaster zone this place has become but still home alone and those of you who’ve followed my adventures in India last year know how rare that is!) all day and have realized that this is what purgatory must feel like. Waiting for someone you love to die is horrible but the tragedy of it all is undercut by the low comedy of “life must go on.” When a crisis lasts a day or two, you get by on adrenaline alone – and who cares if you’ve not changed. But this has been over a month and so there’s food to be procured or produced for six, not to mention clean underwear and beds for different people at different times.

We’ve only been here for a week but its been a critical week – I can’t believe how fast the cancer is eating away at her. I know she’d made a special effort to hold on till we got here and for a couple of days after that she didn’t seem to be in too much pain. She talked to us, haltingly perhaps, and certainly responded to us talking to her. In the last few days, though, she’s begun to sink markedly…. She seemed to spend longer and longer periods asleep, which we thought was a good sign but now the sleep is more like a stupor and I’m not sure she’s even aware of us. She’s certainly not responding to conversation or to touch – it’s heartbreaking to see her lying there more or less blankly, though this is, I suppose, better than seeing her restless from pain and in real distress. There were a couple of bad days in between when she was in pain and moaning out loud, which nearly drove me around the bend as I sat there holding her hand murmuring that it would alright when I bloody well knew that it wouldn’t ever be alright for her again.

Of course, it hasn’t all been tragedy though – I’ve been taken for a “real” doctor by one of the real doctors attending to her. Hospitals in India are quite informally run – and given that my mom’s medical standing in Mysore, we’re consulted as to my grandmother’s care to an unbelievable degree. So yesterday was when I became a “real” doctor: I was alone at the hospital and but had been left with instructions as to what to ask the consultant physician who was supposed to be doing his “rounds” that morning. Gramma is in a teaching hospital so consultants arrive for their rounds with a gaggle of respectful medical students and junior doctors in various stages of their careers. So in walks the great man. Nods all around. Then:

Great Man: “How has she been?”
Me: “She’s now asleep, sir, but she’s been in pain all morning and we’re wondering if she should be on medication for it?”
GM: “Yes, yes, what does your mother think?”
Moi: “Well, we talked about giving her Pethidine….” [
GM, nod, nod. “Yes, yes, terminal cancer patient. No point worrying about addiction. Pethdine, huh? Why not morphine?”
Me: “She’s allergic.”
GM: “Hmmm, I see, I see.”
Me: “Perhaps a 50mg dose, but only to be given when she’s actually awake and in pain?” [parroting my mother again].
GM: “Yes, yes, I’ll write it up for the nurses.”
Me: “Thank you, sir, we just want to make sure she doesn’t suffer.”
GM: “Quite right, terminal case but no need for distress. OK, doctor.”
I thought perhaps I’d misheard or that he’d just not realized what he’d said. Until… an hour later, he popped his head into the room (followed by heads of a few of the entourage) to say: “One more thing, doctor, make sure the dose is signed out from the Chief when he’s here – he handles all narcotics personally – so you can administer at night if you need to.”
Me: “Er, sir….”
GM: “That’s it, that’s all I came to say. OK doctor.”
And GM and entourage all back out while I stand there trying not to laugh.

Here and Now

Since there’s no positive change to report, I thought I’d amuse myself by recording a few of the things making the news in Mysore these days: this stuff is all gathered from The Times of India (major Indian newspaper – think Globe and Mail), the Deccan Herald (slightly more regional daily – Halifax Chronicle, perhaps), the Bangalore Mirror (sort of Metro meets Now) and the Star of Mysore (I can’t think of what to compare this to – it’s an earnest local evening paper)…. We seem to subscribe to all of them and these days, as I sit by my grandmother’s side for hours on end, reading a newspaper from cover to cover is one of the few things I can do. So:

India’s richest temple – in Tirupati, which is a famous pilgrimage site – owes back taxes to municipal, local, state and federal governments to the tune of $30 million. The best part about this is that $19 million of this is for “human hair sale.” Read all about the Tirupati temples here!
(I should add that people go to the temple and donate their hair as a penance or out of gratitude or whatever and the temple then sells this…though I’m not sure what all that hair is used for!)

“Indian Viagra” works on eves too.
(I’m not making this one up: it’s a headline from the Deccan Herald. I’m not sure whether to be amused or appalled but since we’re in India, I’ve settled on being annoyed. An eve?! Please.)

Unmarried couples will not be rented rooms in premier hotels in Bangalore, apparently because of “security” concerns in the wake of serial bomb blasts in the city. As a hotel manager put it: “we do not want hankying and pankying in our rooms.”
(There have been a couple of letters protesting this in the Bangalore Mirror, which ran a cartoon wherein a receptionist was admonishing a couple obviously in desperate need of a hotel room – “Yes, you each have your ID and marriage certificates but you need to be married to each other.” Also, I really want to know about the unpremier hotels - is "security" not a issue there?!)

Fusion cuisine has arrived in India – in the form of vodka panipuri and cheese-mango shakes.
(I might be tempted to try the vodka spiked panipuri if I had the chance but a mango shake that has sliver of Amul cheese shaved onto it – urgh! Amul is a local brand name and it makes this (in)famous plasticky cheddar-like cheese.)

And last, this headline comes from today’s Star of Mysore: “Bangalore to get Astrology Mall.”
(Apparently this mall, which is set to open in September, will offer one-stop shopping with soothsayers, astrologers, numerologists, tarot-card readers and palmists all under one roof. Moreover, this is clearly just the beginning – there are plans to open “satellite” malls in other parts of Bangalore shortly.)

That’s all for today. I’ll be back with more in a few days. Email is harder to respond to than to update the blog (because of the slowness of the connection and its frequent outages) but I promise, I’ll get respond to all of your emails soon.

Arrival

I know it’s only been 5 days since we left Toronto but I’m feeling as though several lifetimes have passed. For one thing, arriving in India always hits me like a physical shock – you travel for hours, you’re exhausted from the plane and the airports you’ve passed through, you’re finally there and India hits you in a combination of humidity and smell (exhaust fumes, perspiration, and dust). Not in a bad way, just in a very distinctive way. BUT this time, as we arrived in the brand new Bangalore International Airport, neither the mugginess nor the smell hit us! South India is in the mild throes of the winter monsoon and when we emerged out of the airport at 1:30am, it was into a beautifully cool evening. Even before that though, the airport is one of… the airports of the world: all glass and light, gleaming shiny floors and aircon, plants in tall pots, and for someone who’s been arriving at the old HAL airport in Bangalore for ages, it’s a real shock to the system!

Because this is India, which is only really held together by spiderwebs of friends and relatives, we were met by a family friend and my cousin. We emerged blinking to find my cousin waving his cellphone at us, since he was just on the phone to the hospital, where our arrival was being as carefully monitored as though it were a situation room! Since my darling grandma was awake and waiting, we drove straight there from the airport – this will possibly remain in my memory as one of the best rides I’ve had in India: speeding through the empty streets late late at night creates a certain drama of its own that sustains you through the exhaustion of the past few hours. And anyone who’s been anywhere in India will recognize the rarity of empty streets. Though there were signs even on that drive of the heightened state of tension that the South is in following the bombings in Bangalore a few days ago: our taxi was stopped by sweatered and scarved police officers (it’s 20 degrees – practically freezing, dontcha know?!) who wanted to know who we were and where we were going. The check was rudimentary, involving as it did the noting of the cab’s number and the driver’s name but still… the fact that it happened at all (a first for me) is a reminder of the New India. By the way, the luxury taxi cab – hired for the night, basically and including the return trip from Bangalore to Mysore – cost us a whacking $110. Plus a gratefully received $5 tip for the driver.

So we got to the hospital at 4:30 in the morning – I know, I know – very soap opera but it wasn’t really like that – hospitals in India are still evolving so the fact that my mom and her brother and sister were all with their mother in the hospital at 4:30 am is not that surprising. So we went in, after being warned of what to expect, and visited with my grandma for a while. I can’t begin to articulate how awful it is to see her like this – hooked up to oxygen tubes and what not, her hands and feet swollen, her face folded in and her eyes set in deep dark hollows of misery and exhaustion. There is no drama here – only sadness. I’ve now spent hours sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, trying to figure out what she’s saying when she can mouth a few words, trying to distract her from the pain and discomfort… all of this is just excruciating for her and miserable for us who wait with her. The hospital she’s in here is one of the best in the city but it’s an Indian hospital, which means that she’s in a “Deluxe Private” Room – these rooms have a bed for the patient and an extra bed for an “attendant” as someone is expected to stay with the patient all the time. We’re also expected to provide her food (and ours!) and to monitor the IVs and medicines and just call the nurse when there’s something to be done – like changing the IV. To be fair, my grandmother is getting royal treatment here because my mother used to be a well known doctor in Mysore (20 years ago and that, m’dears, still means something here!) and she knows all the doctors here and so on. In fact, we’ve been given the unheard of privilege of having another “Deluxe Private” room which is currently not needed set aside for our family to use – we take it in turns to nap there, eat takeout food in it and so on. I can’t imagine a setup like this anywhere in Canada! Not the “attendant” allowed – no, required – to stay with the patient nor anything else.

But nonetheless, I hate it. I hate the sense of bareness about this best of the options hospitals (I’ve discovered that I have a lot of faith in the technologies so easily available in hospitals in the West – there’s no such thing as a crash cart here; there are no intercoms or call buttons; the nurses have to call down for the one oxygen meter when they are asked to check oxygen saturation levels (and trust me, this is not a complicated or expensive machine!)… everything feels pared down to the basics, which in general is a good thing because I think medicine in the West is too mechanized and too dependent on technology as opposed to trained diagnosis etc but this… this is a little bit too much bare-foot-doctor for my tastes). More on this theme later, I’m sure, because it’s something I find interesting – after all, I wrote about this in my thesis!

More than anything, though, I hate her helplessness, I hate ours and this sense of just sitting there waiting for death to come and relieve her. It’s so cruel that after all these years of enduring life, she has to go through this. That there is no hope of recovery makes it all the harder to bear for everyone – it’s impossible to not resent this phase when there is no chance that she will get better. “Better” at this point is counted in a good hour here or there.

My “break” at home is over so I’m off to the hospital again. I’ll write more soon. In the meantime, please keep the good vibes (and emails!) coming – they’re my only link to my normal (whatever that is) life in Toronto!

I leave today; I'm packing light, a suitcase and some toiletries....

It's true: I do leave today and I am packing light. I didn't think I'd be returning to India this fall and certainly not to Mysore or with the shadow of my grandmother's illness hanging over me. But some things are beyond prediction or anticipation: we can only respond to things as they happen. I returned last week from New York to find that my imperious, indomitable (and I truly mean that: she was the one who ruled her family -- seven younger sisters and a brother to start with!) grandma is terminally ill; since then, I've been desperate to get on a plane and go to her. There were complications, of course, with visas and tickets but we're all set now. The Brother comes with me and we fly out in a few hours. I'm going back to the blog because it's going to be the easiest way of keeping in touch with y'all over the next few months and because I'm hoping (selfishly) that writing through my experiences in Mysore will help me to deal with them.

In the meantime, I want you to meet my grandmother, Kasturi Sivaswamy. That's her up there. She means the world to me: until I was seven, I (we) lived with her while my mom and dad bounced around the world practicing medicine and doing other doctorly things.

I know it's going to be a hard trip back and nothing like the last one but I'm telling myself that it's only during the hard times that we actually learn to deal with life as it happens and not as we shape it. I've already learnt that it's pretty easy to pack up a life: I'm on leave from SSHRCC, my place is sorted out and I have nothing else to keep me in Toronto. This is both terrifying and manifestly, a good thing right now. Also, I now know how little one actually needs to take on long journeys: "a suitcase and some toiletries," as the song goes.

Send me strength and patience, won't you all? I have a feeling that I'm going to be needing a lot of those two over the next little while.

'Bye, Toronto. At least for now.

Leaving India

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That's all, folks. If all goes as planned, I leave India in about 7 hours and should be "home" in Canada in about 24.

I'll do a wrap from there -- call me paranoid but I don't want to do it here and now.

Cheers y'all!

A

East and West

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If you’re a reader of postcolonial fiction you’d probably assume that the flow of peoples these days goes in only one direction: from East to West. Literary fiction is full of the tales of those who dream of going from India, or Kenya, or another exotic sounding but poverty stricken margin to England or America and more rarely, to Canada or Australia. For two generations now, there’s been a much written about exodus from India of the educated classes, epitomized perhaps by Jhumpa Lahiri’s moving short story “Third and Final Continent.” (If you haven't read it yet, read it there at the New Yorker: it's last paragraph is perhaps the finest epigraph written for for the experience of immigration!) Smarting under what they experienced of the lazy socialism of India in the 3^rd quarter of the 20^th century, too many of the educated classes – primarily doctors, engineers, nurses, and later on, computer types and suchlike professionals – departed the shores of the young nation. I should know: my family falls right into this category.

But things are slowly starting to change: where once the culmination of most young university students’ dreams was to leave for greener pastures, now it seems as though most young graduates dream of landing a job in India in an MNC (multinational corporation). The opening up of the Indian economy to foreign direct investment and the easing of regulations on joint enterprises has meant that there are now literally thousands of companies in India which are affiliated – in some way – with organizations in other parts of the world. One consequence of this is that people now move both ways – from and into India. Leaving India for education or employment is no longer seen as a permanent decision; more importantly, there is a heady feeling in the air – perhaps still more potentially than realistically – that the world will have to start coming to India rather than expecting India(ns) to come to it.

It’s with this sentiment in mind that GMR (one of these aforementioned MNCs that is poised to reap benefits from the latent arrival of modernity in India – for instance, they have a large share in Hyderabad’s new international airport) has launched an aggressive new advertising campaign. The “Getting Ready for India/Getting India Ready” campaign features a number of spots all focussing on various people preparing to arrive in India. One, launched in the middle of the ongoing India-Australia cricket series, begin with the voiceover announcing “Getting Ready for India” as a Chinese family is learning to play cricket: as the mother grips a cricket bat, the father watches a cricket game in slo-mo and instructs his son on how to bowl. The voiceover returns to announce “GMR: Getting India Ready.” My peeps here tell me it’s a hit. Another ad features a roomful of Europeans learning to dance Bollywood style. A third shows a family weeping as they sit at a laden dining table and eat chillies. And there’s one that has two Turkish men sitting, fully clad in business suits, in a sauna and practising the names of the Indian cities they are heading to. There is a last GMR ad that’s also currently playing that isn’t obviously part of this series but which captures this sentiment even more precisely: it features an Indian mother and father (respectively praying and pacing) as they wait for their son to return from a visa interview at a US embassy. He erupts into the room, celebrating, and they stare befuddled, as he chants that his visa was denied.

I’m taken with the “Getting India Ready” ads, partly because I find them amusing and partly because I’m impressed by the truly global nature of the people they depict as getting ready for India: Chinese families, Turkish men, Germans and Spaniards are all shown as preparing to arrive in India. That old binary of the West having to mean North American/Western Europe is slowly being erodod. And that last ad – the visa rejection one – is perhaps the most interesting example of the generationality (is there such a word?) of the Westward movement. That these are ads, designed not so much to make points about national trajectories as to capture an already existent feeling makes them even more powerful: it suggests that for some at least, this satisfaction with India already exists. And that – from where I sit – can only be a good thing.