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....