Serenade!

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Darlings, Infosys Grrl and I have just been serenaded to within an inch of our collective lives! We in a hotel room that overlooks the Arabian Sea but between us and the sea is a men's hostel or dorm or something of the sort. Infosys Grrl was leaning out of our window to take a picture of the sun going down over the sea and attracted the attention of some of the denizens of this hostel or whatever it is. A cry of "Eveda, eveda, photo" went up (over there, over there) and the next thing we know was that half a dozen young men were leering up at us. We ignored them and went out for dinner but didn't realize that our room was being carefully marked. We've just returned and the minute we came and turned the lights on, a chorus started up outside! Honest, I could not make this up: they sang a poppy Bollywood song, the gist of which was to beg us to look over there! Needless to say, we pinched all the curtains shut even tighter and ignored them. They've stopped now but there's no way we're ever going to be opening those curtains again -- so perhaps it's a good thing we're leaving Cochin tomorrow morning for Calicut.

Serenade apart, we've had a lovely time today. We decided that we must do a backwater tour (after all, we are tourists in Kerala, or at least I am) and it's as beautiful as anything the tourist brochures show. We went on a 3 hr trip on a converted houseboat and it was lovely! I have a ton of pictures of coconut trees reflected in the waters of Vembanad Lake; I'll put up a couple of them when I figure out how! We were kept amused by the antics of some of the other people on board: there was a group of six older folk from North India who pumped us for information about what there was to see in Mysore when they figured out where we were from and then looked horrified when we suggested that they schedule a trip to a museum among the other sights; and there was a young Danish couple with two little kids, the younger of whom lay on the bottom of the houseboat and tortured the little black ants crawling around there for a good part of the trip. The trip ended with a "Keralite" meal -- avial, poreal, red rice, etc. And I have to report to y'all that I felt chuffed by the fact that the little Danish kids and I did a better job of eating all of this stuff than did Infosys Grrl -- and she's a Keralite, born and bred! Hee.

I will admit though that my delicate stomach made its presence felt in the 45 min drive back to our hotel in a jumpy jeeplike vehicle. We raced along at a crazy pace, and scraped past a whole slew of other vehicles that were coming at us at equally breakneck speeds, along potholed roads. I moaned in terror, Infosys Grrl grinned unfeelingly and the driver smirked. It was a fun ride and I swear that my poor stomach only caught up with me about half an hour after we'd reached our hotel. I spent the time in between lying on the bed, directly under the fan, recovering. Then a nap, followed by the incident of Infosys Grrl giving the wimmin-starved boys next door ideas and an evening spent by the water -- Cochin is made up of various islands and spits of land broken up by water bodies and I dragged poor Infosys Grrl on to a little local ferry. And she repaid me by claiming that it was her turn to be sick -- on a ferry ride that lasted all of 4 and a 1/2 minutes. Honestly, I ask you! But we got there safely, and wandered along looking at Chinese fishing nets scenically spread out against the orange sky of the night. This was all in the old part of town -- Fort Cochin, where we also had dinner, right by the moving waters, under a full full moon, looking across at the city on the other side -- it's the first time on this trip that I've felt as though I could do this forever. It's as though I've finally reached equilibrium. I just wish I could bottle it up and take it with me when I return.

G'night!

Kochi (Cochin, as was)

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I begin to realize that I'm of a certain age and some things will never change for me: it's harder than I would have thought to keep name changes in mind. I can't quite bring myself to think of "Bombay" as Mumbai -- and though one of the reasons I have trouble with that particular change is because of the associations of "Mumbai-zation" with the rise of militant Hinduvta, the Shiv Sena and all that wonderfully right-wing reenervation of anti-colonial sentiment to disguise other, less positive, sentiments and behaviours. But I'm also having trouble mentally turning "Cochin" into Kochi and as for keeping in mind that "Calicut" is now Kozhikode, I barely spell that last, let alone pronounce it.

But we are in Kochi! Against the odds (for you've got to keep in mind that Superefficient Infosys Grrl, for all that she works for Infosys, one of India's best known global firms, and has just turned thirty, have never gone away anywhere without her family in tow so this trip was planned in the teeth of much familial opposition and dread), we've managed to escape the loving clutches of our familiies (well, nearly) and spent a night on a train from Bangalore to Kochi all by ourselves! I say we've only nearly escaped family since Infosys Grrl has an uncle in town and he was called on to arrange our hotel for us (in case we booked ourselves into a den of iniquity, you understand) and picked us up at the railway station (at 4:30am) and booked us a car for all day yesterday (for we might get picked up by lusty, leery men otherwise) and then insisted on taking us out for dinner with his family last night. Today, we're off on a short boat cruise (that we booked all by ourselves! gasp!) and we have strict instructions to call in every few hours so he knows we haven't been kidnapped by brigands (another term for the same lusty, leery men, I imagine).

It's hard to get properly mad at such... solicitude. Though I could do so far more easily than poor Infosys Grrl, who's caught between placating her anxious family and me. Anyway, Kochi or Cochin or whatever it calls itself, is *beautiful*. You'll get a proper report on it tonight -- right now, I have iddiappams waiting for me! And then a boat ride....

The Moon is a Wedge of Lime

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in an aubergine sky tonight. Stunning; you should all be here to see it! After a hot day, the temperature has dropped suddenly and I felt the first chill I've felt in Mysore tonight. It's actually exciting to feel cold in this part of India -- it really does mean that we've hit winter (or what passes for winter here). In the daytime, the temperature hovers around 28 degrees but right now (at 9pm local time) I'd guessitmate it at around 12 degrees. Cool enough that in Toronto it would betoken the end of summer and the start of fall.

Today was Infosys Grrl's 30th birthday. She's taken a few days off from work: it's not difficult to do since she works entirely on short-term contracts, training Infosys kids in communications skills and suchlike things. We went to Mysore's grandest hotel for their buffet lunch: it was good but not that good. It's funny how all the grand hotels in Mysore (in India in general, I suppose) try to serve "Western" food: the Hotel Regaalis, where we were today, had, among other things, some weird kind of "fish ball in pepper sauce." Personally, I've always thought that when one is in India, one ought to eat (and enjoy) the wonderful Indian food that one finds here! Anyway, it was an expensive meal in the most opulent surroundings and I couldn't help noticing that most of the guests at the hotel were foreign tourists; nor could we help overhearing some of their conversations.

I've nothing against foreign travelers in India -- after all, I'm more or less a foreigner here myself but there is something disconcerting about how this style of hotel makes it possible for someone to visit India and still be completely cut off from the realities of life here. No matter how picturesque it seems, India is not just importuning beggars, lovely architecture, attentive staff and great presents, all available at favourable exchange rates (as our overheard conversations would have it!). There is both misery and exultation here; insidious traditions and gallant conventions collide head-on and contradictions exist everywhere. But for most of the people who are destined to live out their lives in this land, life is difficult and I resent anyone who travels through this country without acknowledging this basic fact. I think that realizing this makes it easier to understand the desperation that underlies so much of the importuning that foreigners in India endure.... Globalization might have brought one version of "India" -- the economic powerhouse, the hub of the IT industry, the heart of Business Process Sourcing -- to the notice of the world but there is another, far larger, India that still exists. And those who are trapped in it -- those who are condemned to live and die in it -- are the invisible citizens upon whose labour our globally-mobile class of Indians and foreigners are living upon. I'm not sure that this knowledge makes the line of beggars who follow one around any more palatable but surely, it should at least make one kinder to them! To the poor in India, anyone who can afford to visit here from the West is wealthy beyond their imagination. And if I had my way, I would make every single would-be visitor to India watch Stephanie Black's Life & Debt before setting foot in this country. Different places, same faces.

Okay, rant over for tonight. In other news, Superefficient Infosys Grrl and I are off to Kerala for a week on the 22nd -- we have no intention of slumming it (for people in our circumstances in India, that would only be a form of reverse snobbery) but we also have no intention of traveling in stratospheric style: more than anything else, it's an excuse for us to get away together and hang out, without anxious family members hovering around us. Truly, people never leave you alone here: I've counted up all the hours I've spent alone since I landed in India and they add up to a grand total of 6! I'm looking forward to a few more....

Book Reviews: Chetan Bhagat's novels of the New India

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So did I ever tell y'all that Superefficient Infosys Grrl -- who teaches "Soft Skills" there -- also has another job? She takes English classes at a "CAT" coaching centre. The CATs are the Combined Aptitude Tests (I think) that are used as admission criteria by Business schools in India -- and apparently, they're huge. I mention this because this year's CAT test was held on Sunday and they made the front pages of all the main Indian newspapers -- 230,000 students wrote them and most of them want to get into the MBA program at one of the internationally famous IIMs (Indian Institutes of Managements). Given that there are a few thousand places at these elite institutions, most of the writers are headed for heartbreak -- and one of the thousands of other private "B-schools" that have suddenly cropped up in India. Anyway, the IIMs are patterned after the IITs (where the T stands for Technology) and both now seem to form the pinnacle of those aspiring to reach the top of India's newly liberalized and aggressively capitalist economy.

So I thought that the time was ripe for me to review Chetan Bhagat's two novels for Mysore Daze, given that the first of them, Five Point Someone, is subtitled "What Not to Do at IIT." If you check out Chetan Bhagat's website, you'll note that he also has degrees from both an IIT and an IIM and now works for a "global financial corporation." And I've been here long enough and associated with enough upwardly mobile middle-class folks to realize that CB is living his parents' dreams. I'm not talking about the novels, either!

Five Point Someone is both a bildungsroman and a classic college novel: a young man comes of age -- he makes friends, learns to deal with success and failure, develops a relationship and finally emerges onto the real world. That he happens to do all of this at IIT Delhi adds to the appeal of the book; I imagine a lot of people who read the book read it for the vicarious thrill of trying to see inside the fabled institution. There are some good bits in the book, notably an early scene wherein Our Hero and his soon-to-be best mates are called on to introduce themselves to bullying seniors in the college: they mumble their names and then enunciate their CAT ranks clearly, suggesting the relative importance assigned to these two identifying factors. On a similar note, the title refers to the middling GPA of 5 point something (out of a possible 10.0) that Our Hero and his two best buds soon settle into. There are many more trite bits; I have to admit that Bhagat's treatment of women in the book is banal and irritating. I realize that his focalizer is a shallow 17? 18? year old boy but still! The sexist bigotry should at least have been leavened with humour -- and it is not. As for the end, meh. Too much melodrama.

I give Five Point Someone a 5.6 out of 10 too. In case you're wondering, that's a C- in my book.

I managed to finish Bhagat's second novel, One Night @ the Call Centre, while relaxing today. It's a fast read -- six people who work at a call centre have a bad night, which ends with them perched on a precipice of construction materials taking a call from God. Again, there were a fair number of things I liked about the book, not least of which is Bhagat's obvious concern with the consequences of a too-quick liberalization and a too-rampant corporate globalization. That the precipice our call centre staff are perched on is made of the iron grids supporting new construction is an irony that we can all pick up on. And at moments, Bhagat's writing flows because he is intimately familiar with the cultural economies he's dealing with: here's how an irritated ex describes his girl's new fiancee, an NRI (Non Resident Indian) who happens to work for Microsoft in the US: "He is MSGroom 1.1 -- a deluxe edition" (70). But as with Five Point Someone, it is the details that I found interesting, while the story itself is too Bollywood for me. Incidentally, it should surprise no one that One Night is being turned into a film, tentatively titled Hello. Anyway, what Chetan Bhagat has captured in this novel is the wholly new (to India) lifestyle of the young staffers who work in call centres or BPO offices or in the info technology sectors.

So I'll give One Night a slightly higher grade: a solid B.

Final comment on the anomie of the young that both the books hint at, though they never quite dare to go there completely: there's an attempted suicide in Five Point Someone and a young woman who cuts herself in One Night. Clearly, the call centre economy brings in wealth -- the kids the two books are about have access to the kind of wealth that would have been unimaginable even when I lived in Mysore (and that was only in the early 90s!). Along with this wealth, they've acquired the superficial trappings of Western life: pizza, SUVS, alcohol, crushes on members of the opposite sex, even sex occasionally... but there's been no real integration of these objects (yes, even the sex seems to be more of an object than a visceral experience) into the culture of home. Nor is there any sense that these kids (be they call centre employees or IIT students) will be able to move on from the fry-guy-for-the-business-sector jobs of the call centre economy into something more satisfying.

If you come across the books -- and I don't know that you will because they're both published by Rupa & Co, an Indian firm and are so popular that they've sold out many printings here so I don't know that they're being exported anywhere else -- read them for what they tell you about the state of a particular (and influential) class in Indian today, rather than for their literary or entertainment value.

All My Relations, Part the Second (and Bollywood Reviews!)

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Dears, I'm sorry it's been a while since I've updated this. And that I haven't answered email. It's been a crazy week -- Diwali festivities continued in Gulbarga till we left that city behind on the 14th. I spent the next two days in Bangalore, acquainting my insides with India's infamous smog and pollution. It was not a happy meeting: my insides grumbled and protested. Thankfully, Bangalore has been left behind and I'm now back in Mysore and will not be going anywhere till the 22nd (more about that later). For now, I've also dispatched the parental unit -- the Father leaves the country tomorrow morning, after spending a hectic week here. I should add that his hectic week has meant that I've also been learning about how India works (and doesn't work). We spent the last two days running around trying to sort out boring financial matters -- I now have a nodding acquaintance with lots of nerdly and oily Indian men -- bank managers, a notary public, a stamp vendor (no, not that kind of stamp -- the kind that you need to buy from the govt in order to submit legal documents) and so on. The most lasting contribution the British have left behind in India is truly its legendary redtape. Trust me, you can't imagine it and I can't even begin to explain it. Bah.

Anyway, I think I promised y'all some Bollywood movies reviews so here goes: when I was in Gulbarga, we went to see the two blockbusters that came out over the Diwali weekend (apparently, that's a coveted movie release date): Saawariya and Om Shanti Om. They're both notable for different reasons: Saawariya is the first Bollywood film to be a Hollywood coproduction and Om Shanti Om is a Shah Rukh Khan vehicle. So we went to see Saawariya first and I liked it (well, I liked it as much as I like any Bollywood flick). There's not much of a storyline to it -- boy meets girls, boy falls in love with girl, girl tells boy the sad story of her own love life, boy struggles to make her fall in love with him, he fails and girl marries her own true love who magically reappears at the crucial moment. The charm of the film is in the heavily symbolic atmosphere in which it is filmed. The entire film seems to be set in darkling maze: shadowy streets turn into shadowy alleyways which turn into shadowy corridors in shadowy homes. The twist to this tale is that the boy (Ranbir Kapoor -- mmm hot!)) and girl (Sonam Kapoor) are both new to Bollywood (if you're interested, they're both the children of famous older actors but they're not related I don't think) but the anti hero who the heroine chooses in the end is one of other Khans -- Salman, to be precise. And what I found most interesting about the film was that when he appeared halfway through the film, the audience went crazy! I went to see it with all the women in the family and there are a lot of us; we occupied half the top row and the rest of the pricey seats were filled with respectable matrons escorting young women but the front three-quarters of the theatre was full of screaming, hooting, whistling boys! They spent the intermission leering up at the young women in the back of the house and tried to outdo each other in noisemaking whenever Salman Khan appeared on the screen or the heroine revealed some skin. Speaking of skin, did I mention the much-talked about towel song? Early on the film, newest hotboy Ranbir Kapoor dances around clad only in a little white towel, singing about his newfound love; the climax of the song coincides with the towel's fall. Apparently a towel-dropping scene was filmed but was cut by the censor board of India so we don't get to see that.... (do read this scathing review!). It was quite the experience. You know, that just confirms my old theory that Hindi film caters to the voyeur in women as well as men! It's kinda interesting because I can't think of many other forms of pop culture in India where men's bodies are displayed for the viewing pleasure of women in quite such a way! I asked my aunts and cousins about this, just to get a sense of how "decent" (their word, not mine) women would react to this assertion -- and they more or less giggled and turned away. Judge for yourself: here's a bit from the song on YouTube.

Ma Mere had wanted to see Saawariya but the rest of the family wanted to see Om Shanti Om, given that there is an emerging consensus that OSO is winning the head-to-head Diwali battle between the two blockbusters. So we went back a couple of days later to see OSO -- it is clearly the made-to-please movie -- a much more complicated storyline involving conspiracies and murder and rebirth and revenge and romance. All involving Bollywood's most bankable hero of the moment: Shah Rukh Khan (who, incidentally, is on TV airing his views on "Cricket in India" -- I'm watching the last of the One Day International matches between India and Pakistan as I write this and apparently SRK is there watching the match and couldn't resist the urge to stick his face in front of a camera). Ahem. Anyway, I found this flick a bit too Bollywood, though the villain of the piece, Arjun Rampal was brilliant (and he's hot!). Ma Mere enjoyed OSO only because the first half of the movie (which culminates in the murders of SRK and the heroine which are avenged in the second half of the film by the reborn SRK) is set in the 1970s! having grown up in India in the 70s, she recognized lots of things that the film mocked that went way over my head. But I will admit to being amused by the wild 70s clothing and cars and hoardings; and the film has its funny moments too -- there were all kinds of allusions to inside jokes about the evolution of the Bollywood film industry. Also, also, I think one of the reasons why the film is so popular in India is a loooong song sequence which features almost every actor of yesteryear making a cameo; again, Ma Mere positively thrilled at being able to point out people like Jitendra and Rekha and Dharmendra and lots of others I didn't know. If you'd grown up following the industry, the in-jokes and allusions would have added a whole another layer of enjoyment to the movie, I imagine. And lastly, back to my theory about these films baring male skin for the viewing pleasure of women: SRK appears half-clad in a number of song sequences in Om Shanti Om, including one in which he's (half)dressed as a fireman.... I'm sure you know what that suggests!

Cheers, m'dears. The cricket is becoming exciting. More soon now that things are a little more normal around here.

All My Relations, Part the First

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I've been trying to write this post for 3 days but there's been one interruption after another; for one thing, I don't think I've been alone since way before I left Mysore. Honestly, I don't even get to sleep alone: this 8 bedroom house is so brimming over with rellies that we're sleeping three to a room. In the last three hours alone, there have been two babies (very cute babies but still...) screaming in my ear. Also, an uncle wanted to check his email on my little laptop. Then, one of screaming toddlers' moms (my cousin by marriage, I suppose) came to hide out in our room for 10 mins -- looking for a little escape from her son's damp and screechy embrace, no doubt. Another aunt appeared with my "nightcap" of lime juice....The children were finally dispatched (not permanantly), the uncle and cousin were dealt with, and the lime juice has been downed. So this is Diwali in the bosom of a large, noisy, and I daresay, conservative Indian family.

Let's see -- I left off on board the train, didn't I? Well, we arrived and were met at the station by another of my assorted cousins. At last count, I had 18 cousins on this side of the family -- about 12 of them had gathered for this Diwali, plus a few spouses and a few babies. The cousins haven't started to breed wholesale so there are only a handful of babies -- well, 9. And they're all pretty young -- under 5, I think. So there are always a couple of anklebiters underfoot in the house. I'm having lots of fun teaching them to call Ma Mere "Ajji" (grandma) while she prefers that they learn to call her "Aunty." My hope is that when she's faced with the reality of being called Grandma by a variety of rugrats she'll realize that she doesn't really want to marry me off and become a grandmother for real.

Speaking of becoming a grandmother for real, I should note that the Famme would take great offence to me phrasing it that way. The way this particular family works is very... linear, I guess is the best way of describing it. They believe that nominally, at least, all of the children belong to the house and all of the adults are their mothers and fathers. Well, almost. The catch is that it's very much a patrilineal household: all of my dad's brothers are my "fathers" and all of their wives are my "mothers" -- even their designated names bear this out: "Big Dad" (everyone calls the oldest brother this). So, Ma Mere is a "mother" to about 13 of the 18 cousins -- she's a "Mami" or aunt) to the others, not any kind of a mother -- and the funniest bit of this is that she's a mother-in-law to Big Dad's sons' wives. Which makes her a Grandma to their kids.

As confusing as all of that was, it determines a hell of a lot; for instance, you can't ever marry any of your "brothers" or "sisters" (i.e, first cousins who are the children of the sons of a family can't marry each other) but it's still quite acceptable to marry off first cousins who are the children of a brother and sister. Again: blame patriarchy -- the argument here is that once a sister is married off, she (and any kids she has) aren't from your family so there's no familial bar against marrying them. I don't know what Mendel would have had to say about this but it seems to me a thoroughly bad idea from a genetic standpoint. Other, less mind boggling things that are determined by this system is that you get lots of gifts bought for you by random family members - but there are rules about how and when you can accept them. At any time, you get to accept and don't have to reciprocate with gifts when they come from the any of your father's brothers (and their wives) 'cos after all, you're their kid too. But if you're given a gift by your father's sister... then you (well, your parents really) have to buy her (or her family) something in return because they're not part of your family, after all.

Still with me? I could tell you about the various varieties of aunts and what not but I'll spare you. I'll just say that inspite of what must seem like real chaos, the family is fairly well sketched out and everyone seems to know what to call everyone and how to treat them. And after all that is figured out, there's the fun of doing everything is huge mobs: bursting firecrackers, going to Bollywood movies, eating out, eating in, dressing up and attending wedding-ey events, buying saris... everything is more chaotic and (generally) more fun when you're doing it in a pack of 12. Note that I've done all of the above and I've only been here for 3 full days! Details on all of the above (and more!) in Part the Second of All My Relations!

Overnight to Gulbarga!

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Darlings! It's 4:26am and I'm writing to you from an Upper Berth in an AC 2-tier carriage on the Udyan Express, a superfast train that plies between Bangalore and Bombay! Mind you, I dunno that my "mobile" internet connection is quite this mobile..... but we'll know if I manage to get this posted tonight. Anyway, the Dad hails from Gulbarga, which is unremarkable except for being almost exactly halfway between Bangalore and Bombay (always and forever Bombay in my mind, partly because I fear that "Mumbai" is a bit of a right-wing Hindu nationalist creation). You can follow the journey on this map here. To my mind, that's lovely because it means we left Bangalore tonight at 8pm and we get in at around 8am, giving us the night on the train. Have I mentioned yet how much I love train travel in India? Well, if possible, I love overnight train travel in India even more than day journeys! There's something so wonderfully soothing about the regular swaying of trains -- the Ma claims that I was a perfect train travel baby 'cos I'd fall sound asleep as soon as it began to move! I can still do that -- the only reason I'm awake at 4am is 'cos the Ma is not a sound sleeper (or trains or not). Incidentally, she was taken aback when I told her that Indian Railways has a "Senior Ladies Quota" which meant that she, being a "Senior Lady," automatically got assigned a Lower Berth.

The Ma is currently reading there and I'm up here: it's a pretty cool perch -- all around me, people are asleep, the bluey-green nightlights are on down the centre corridor of the carriage and I'm as snug as a bug in the blankets and sheets supplied by the train staff. Tonight marks the start of Diwali (often called Deepavali in the South) and so we watched fireworks exploding overhead as the train pulled out of Bangalore Station. On a night like this, it's hard to remember how filthy the city is -- all I can think of right now is sitting in a darkened train window, watching houses lit up with lamps and strung up with coloured lights blur by, as children ran along the streets with sparklers in their hands and the dark sky exploded with an unchoreographed but nevertheless beautiful display of starbursts and rockets. I think that Diwali is meant to mark the end of Ram, Lakshman and Sita's exile but don't quote me on that; I also think, logically, that it's another form of a harvest festival. Dasara, which I've written about earlier, is less of a religious thing and more of a local celebration; I suspect Diwali is more of a wider celebration of similar sentiments. For me, though, it's always been the festival of fireworks and family visits -- when I was a teenager, we lived in India for a couple of years and I remember this overnight train ride to Gulbarga from those days. Diwali has always been a big deal for the Dad's side of the Fam and so we would make this trip, meet up with what seemed like a million cousins and spend a week playing around with firecrackers (pataki! even the name is evocative, isnt' it?). The Ma's side of the family weren't into pataki, apparently because it was common knowledge that a lot of them were produced using child labour in places like Sivakashi in Tamil Nadu, but the Dad's side of the family were less... responsible. And had a horde of kids. I'm assured that things are a lot better now; that the international attention drawn to the "firework children" has meant that the pataki factories have been cleaned up a lot. I'm still not sure that I'd go out and buy any but.... I'm also not going to regret those memories.

That's one of the things I realize anew every time I come to India. Child labour is a terrible, terrible thing but it isn't enough to condemn it. It's part of a vicious cycle of exploitative capitalism production that is deeply entrenched in the normative life of everyday Indians. Be it fireworks, or matchsticks or carpets or embroidery, there is a huge consuming class that simply can't (and of course, sometimes won't) pay double or triple the sum for adult-produced products when they have the choice of buying cheap stuff produced by slave kids. I would, but then again, I'm not trying to live off an Indian wage, and nor am I unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. And of course, there will always be folks like the Ma's family, who've not bought commercially produced fireworks since 1963, but that's never going to be the entire consuming class. And the other side of the problem is that there are children who are sold into such practices. Until that stops, the problem will remain. And I'm cynical enough to believe that as long as there are such "surplus" children in India, they will be moved from industry to industry and exploited and murdered in the hundreds of thousands so it's not a question of targeting the industries so much as reducing this population and providing their families with alternative means. Against this context, the right wing Western anti-abortion agenda -- which translates into a refusal to fund critical NGO work -- is nothing short of criminal. I also happen to think that's it's not driven only by religious politics; in a place like India, clearly more "unwanted" children mean more exploitable labour.

Whew! I dunno how we ended up here but I suspect that that rant has been coming for while.

((Goodness! I think I'm actually going to be able to post this from on the train!!! It's now about an hour later and my best guess is that I'm somewhere between Raichur and Wadi -- on this train map. Have I mentioned that the Internet is amazing?!!1))

Planes, Trains and Cars

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So mes amies, we’re back in Mysore after two days in Bangalore. I’m pleasantly surprised that we all made it back in such good order, given Ma Mere’s jet lag (it seems that Lufthasa wasn't all that great to fly on and the flight was delayed). That meant that our plans to get some obligatory-visiting-of-relatives out of way went a little awry: we spent hours in a rental car going back and forth across that dratted city because people kept mooting contradictory plans. Am I old enough to have high blood pressure yet? If not, I think I had a trial run.

Also, also, may I take a moment and complain about the traffic we encountered in Bangalore? I know everyone complains about the traffic in India but honestly! There are a zillion vehicles on roads that were designed for a few hundred at most! Imagine being in a small metal box, laden with luggage and full of hot, sweaty people, all giving the driver contradictory instructions to go straight, turn left, make a U-turn and stop for a minute so she can be sick out the window (that last would be me, by the way). And then imagine this small metal box being surrounded by other small metal boxes all pelting along as fast as they can – it's like some tortured math question – how many cars of x dimension can fit on this 10m stretch of road and how fast can they all travel without crashing into each other? Then, there are two wheelers – mopeds and scooters and motorbikes, mostly laden with at least 3 people, all crawling alongside the cars and vans and autos and flinging themselves suicidally into the tiniest possible gap between any two bigger vehicles. Add an occasional meandering cow, a few dogs (did I mention that it's puppy season here?) and the odd goat.... all on roads that are holed and cracked and have mud shoulders that in the rainy season dissolve into mud... and the cacophony of horns and the stench of exhaust and mud and rotting garbage.... Is it any wonder that I spent most of the day in Bangalore perched in the middle of the back seat with my eyes closed? And cringing reflectively every few seconds?

Ok, whinge over. In the end, I convinced all concerned to travel back to Mysore by train. I don’t think my nerves would have survived 3 and a ½ hours on the Mysore-Bangalore Highway. Instead, we climbed on board the incredibly crowed Chamundi Express and spent the next three hours in relative comfort. Ma Mere enjoyed herself highly – she spent the journey eating the kinds of “train foods” she’d spent her childhood eating (did I ever say that my grandfather was a Railway Man?): maddur vadas, boiled green peanuts, some kind of fruit, “kappe” (the train version of coffee – trains in India have their own on-board catering staff who roam up and down the carriages hawking food and drink: so “kappe… kappe… kappe” is a cry you’ll hear along with “chai… chai chai chai”!), dry roasted peanuts that you have to shell yourself and so on. Then following family tradition, we tossed coins into the Cauvery river (yes, I know it’s probably bad for the river but I’ve been doing it every time we cross the river since I was 2! And little kids dive in for the coins in the daytime anyway – you see them doing it): we toss in a coin and ask Cauvery to give us all water for the next year. It is a Ritual. I think that’s why I love traveling on Indian trains as much as I loathe the country’s roads. And maybe it has something to do with being the Railway Man's grandkid. :)

Arrivals and Departures

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So my mother arrives for a month-long visit tomorrow and I must admit that I'm relieved. As much as I love "all my relations," they are a bit too Indian for me at times. Even the arrival tomorrow is fraught: my mom's plane arrives at 1:30 am at Bangalore airport. Given that my mom flies half way around the world once every couple of months, I figure it would be enough if one member of our family were to show up at the airport and escort her to the hotel I've made a reservation (because I'm told that it would not be safe to drive back to Mysore in the middle of the night). All right, I accept that. We'll stay the night in B'lore; in fact, my mom's keen to spend a couple of days there and visit some family and friends there. Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Pick her up at the airport, let her recover for a day, get some duty visits out of the way and then head back to Mysore. I could even cope with my aunt and I both going to Bangalore to meet my mother's plane.... but now we're at the point of including my uncle in this trip because my grandmother -- she's been demoted from Ancient and Wise one to Cranky and Unreasonable one now -- is convinced that it's not safe for two or even three women to travel to the airport and back "alone" so late at night. My uncle, incidentally, can't stay beyond a day so he's going to make the 6-8 round trip merely to escort us to and from the airport. I want to SCREAM.

This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy: I've survived -- alone -- on 3 continents, in countries where I speak none of the languages, where, because of my race, or gender, or accent, or whatever, I stick out like a sore thumb and here I am, being told that I'm not capable of hopping in a cab, booked from the eminently respectable hotel at which I'm booked in to stay with my mother, going to a tiny little airport with one arrivals gate and safely returning with said mother in tow. In the city where I was born, in a place where I speak all of the three languages going, in a space where my class access privileges me to a horrifying extent. ARRRRRGGGGH! This is exactly the kind of thing about India that drives me nuts. Our departure from Mysore will be a three-ring circus; our arrival at the hotel in Bangalore, where we will now need another room, will be the same. And I'm sure that our family excursion to the B'lore airport and back will be another unforgettable experience in family bonding.

Give me strength.