~
the year, that is. Something about New Year's Eve seems to call for that kind of thing (and for me to play The Children of the Revolution loudly) so here goes, in no particular order:
The Good:
The Postdoc
The 5 weeks in London
Coming to India
Wandering around India
Family
Time to think
Research
The Beyond the Books conference
Spending two months doing nothing in Toronto
Discovering the Harry Potter books (and reading the first 6 the week before book 7 came out)
New Music I've loved : Junoon, DeVotchka, In Flight Safety and Joan Osborne
Surviving Dal
Chocolate, red wine, G & T
Can-lit: I devoured a lot of it this summer (thanks to my house/cat sitting gig!)
Reading fiction for fun
My wonderful housemates
Jane, my Ipod (thank you, Apple!)
Bollywood can be fun
The Tata Indicom "Walky" which lets me log onto the 'net from some remarkable places
My peeps, new and old (I don't know what I'd have done without you -- you know who you are! -- this year)
Moving back to Toronto
Missing the Canadian winter
Colour
Cats
Rediscovering Chinatown
Wonderful academic mothers
The joys of mail, MSN and letter/ postcard writing
Not so good:
Coming to India
(too much) Time to think
Family
My delicate stomach
The last few months at Dal
Leaving Toronto (again)
Cancer (two more people I care about were diagnosed this year)
Not finishing the book yet
Roaches on trains (don't ask! shudder)
Too much teaching
The winter of discontent in Halifax
Time spent reading crappy fiction
Missing my peeps (again, you know who you are!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So girls and boys and cats, I've learnt that some of the things that made me the happiest this year also have the power to crush me or frustrate me beyond words. I suppose realizing that is something, right? Now if I can just figure out what to do with this knowledge.....
Also, also, and really, I know this and I'm grateful -- the Good outweighs the Not-so-Good by so much that I'm humbled by how lucky, how privileged, how healthy and how happy I should be, and generally, am. When I think about how far I've come this year -- I can't for the life of me even remember where I was last New Year's (I know, that's a deplorable memory) -- I'm rendered wordless.
So I'll just wish y'all all the happiness you want for the new year and go now.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
The Airtel Ad
~
I suspect that I should warn y'all that this is going to be a soppy sentimental posting about a soppy, sentimental advertising moment: this one, in particular. I'll admit that I find -- found? -- it moving (at least the first couple of times I saw it). I imagine that it's supposed to be set in the neutral zone between India and Pakistan; and given that that border is sealed again now and tense, in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination, it seems instantly recognizable to all in India as such. I have to admit that when I first saw it, I placed it between Palestine and Israel. I suppose the location doesn't really matter... the emotion it evokes in both those putative settings is the same.
So am I a schmuck? A sentimentalist to be moved by something so... engineered? There is a part of me that's rolling my eyes at the easy sentimentality that this ad -- that ads like this always -- appeal(s) to but there's also a part of me that thinks this is a very interesting ad in the context of the political situation in India. I don't think it's any secret that I've been saying that the entire South Asian subcontinent is getting more and more polarized in terms of religion. The forces of fundamentalism -- both Hindu fundamentalists as evinced by the increasingly open Hinduvta platform of the BJP, and Muslim fundamentalism in -- is on the rise, feeding on each other in a vicious cycle. The ideals of secularism seem more and more like irrelevant footnotes from the idealists of the anticolonial generation, a generation that may have won India its freedom but which, in the end, proved its inability to cope with the consequences of this freedom -- that is, the global reality of capitalism by embracing the "non-alignment movement" and an ineffectual form of socialism -- at least, this is how the current generation of zombielike and zoomingly globalizing middle and upper class Indians would see the last half century's history.
So, commercially speaking, it's not an environment in which platitudes about tolerance and secularism are especially well received, I wouldn't think. Airtel is a cellphone provider -- and incidentally, cellphones (and their service providers) have been phenomenally successful in India over the last 10-15 years -- so it's interesting that this is the showcase ad for Airtel right now. Then again, perhaps even within the young and wealthy market segment that Airtel is hoping will be reached by its ads, there are enough people who pay lip service to the sentimental ideals of "no walls, no barriers" to find the ad memorable.
What are we to make of it all?
I suspect that I should warn y'all that this is going to be a soppy sentimental posting about a soppy, sentimental advertising moment: this one, in particular. I'll admit that I find -- found? -- it moving (at least the first couple of times I saw it). I imagine that it's supposed to be set in the neutral zone between India and Pakistan; and given that that border is sealed again now and tense, in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination, it seems instantly recognizable to all in India as such. I have to admit that when I first saw it, I placed it between Palestine and Israel. I suppose the location doesn't really matter... the emotion it evokes in both those putative settings is the same.
So am I a schmuck? A sentimentalist to be moved by something so... engineered? There is a part of me that's rolling my eyes at the easy sentimentality that this ad -- that ads like this always -- appeal(s) to but there's also a part of me that thinks this is a very interesting ad in the context of the political situation in India. I don't think it's any secret that I've been saying that the entire South Asian subcontinent is getting more and more polarized in terms of religion. The forces of fundamentalism -- both Hindu fundamentalists as evinced by the increasingly open Hinduvta platform of the BJP, and Muslim fundamentalism in -- is on the rise, feeding on each other in a vicious cycle. The ideals of secularism seem more and more like irrelevant footnotes from the idealists of the anticolonial generation, a generation that may have won India its freedom but which, in the end, proved its inability to cope with the consequences of this freedom -- that is, the global reality of capitalism by embracing the "non-alignment movement" and an ineffectual form of socialism -- at least, this is how the current generation of zombielike and zoomingly globalizing middle and upper class Indians would see the last half century's history.
So, commercially speaking, it's not an environment in which platitudes about tolerance and secularism are especially well received, I wouldn't think. Airtel is a cellphone provider -- and incidentally, cellphones (and their service providers) have been phenomenally successful in India over the last 10-15 years -- so it's interesting that this is the showcase ad for Airtel right now. Then again, perhaps even within the young and wealthy market segment that Airtel is hoping will be reached by its ads, there are enough people who pay lip service to the sentimental ideals of "no walls, no barriers" to find the ad memorable.
What are we to make of it all?
Benazir
~
This wasn't the post I was sitting down to type up.... I was going to write up a nice chatty little post about my birthday and the strangeness of turning thirty but not feeling at all that old but the local news channels are all reporting that Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I've just seen incredibly disturbing live footage of the carnage so I'm inclined to believe them. [Just as an aside -- I've been meaning to note that while there's censorship of all kinds here in India (Bollywood films, for instance, can be and censored, usually for anything involving a kiss), the most brutal images are shown as part of news footage or even appear on the front pages of newspapers; the other day, I picked up the paper half-asleep only to see a series of pictures of a man who'd been mauled to death by a tiger at a zoo somewhere in Northeastern India -- ugh.]
Benazir. I'm not an avid follower of all South Asian politics -- I confine myself to India! -- but it's been hard to ignore the ruckus going on in Pakistan over the last little while. In fact, I even had a conversation with a friend about whether Benazir was an opportunistic politician or a "patriot" (whatever that may mean). Y'all won't be surprised to find that I came down on the "opportunist politician" side. Be that as it may, her death is an important break in time. Yes, in the sense of every unnecessary death being a tragedy for those involved personally but also because for better or for worse Benazir, as the "Daughter of the East," was a real symbol of defiance in Pakistan. The forces of fundamentalism are on the rise all over South Asia -- I've been meaning to write about the election victory of a particularly virulent form of right wing Hinduvta in Gujurat last week; there was all the rioting over Taslima Nasreen's latest and so on -- and Pakistani politics have been steadily sliding downhill ever since this misconceived "war on terror." I don't think anyone would deny that that "war" has made more visible the backlash to secular politics and (what passes for) democratic governance in Pakistan. And for all of her faults, and I truly believe that Benazir was as venal and conniving and corrupt as every other South Asian politician, she was also a powerful (because she has global recognition) symbol of secular politics and (what passes for) democratic governance.
Benazir's being a woman was also clearly a factor; though I have little respect for politicians in the subcontinent, I am constantly amazed by the women politicians. Life for women here is such a struggle against gendered expectation. Every little act requires extra effort if you are a woman here -- getting a taxi, a rickshaw, buying things, just walking down the street is an activity that I find constantly gendered (because even walking down a street one attracts attention as a woman). And politics, which at the local levels at least, is so completely masculine -- and I'm basing this on the few rallies and marches that I've seen and the many pictures and footage of others that I encounter on a daily basis) -- well, it's not an easy field in which to be a woman on the subcontinent, I don't think. And if it's difficult for women in India, Benazir, I think, had a harder time of it since Pakistan is officially a Muslim country, since there are so many more taboos against women's participation in the public sphere in a land where religion and politics are officially intertwined.
Beyond all this, if, as the news reports already suggest, the Taliban has a hand in this attack, it is easy to see how Benazir is a symbol of all that they oppose: an educated woman, a Western educated woman, rich, independently wealthy, independent (how many of you can name her husband?), speaking out, and trying to speaking to women voters, promising to galvanize them, making promises directly to them... the progressive politics Benazir stood for, whether or not it was a facade, was unique in Pakistani politics. The tragedy of her death -- beyond the personal and the familial -- is that it marks the end of Benazir-as-symbol and that is a national tragedy. And because India and Pakistan are as intertwined as any old married couple, her death will also impact upon India in the future to come.
This wasn't the post I was sitting down to type up.... I was going to write up a nice chatty little post about my birthday and the strangeness of turning thirty but not feeling at all that old but the local news channels are all reporting that Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I've just seen incredibly disturbing live footage of the carnage so I'm inclined to believe them. [Just as an aside -- I've been meaning to note that while there's censorship of all kinds here in India (Bollywood films, for instance, can be and censored, usually for anything involving a kiss), the most brutal images are shown as part of news footage or even appear on the front pages of newspapers; the other day, I picked up the paper half-asleep only to see a series of pictures of a man who'd been mauled to death by a tiger at a zoo somewhere in Northeastern India -- ugh.]
Benazir. I'm not an avid follower of all South Asian politics -- I confine myself to India! -- but it's been hard to ignore the ruckus going on in Pakistan over the last little while. In fact, I even had a conversation with a friend about whether Benazir was an opportunistic politician or a "patriot" (whatever that may mean). Y'all won't be surprised to find that I came down on the "opportunist politician" side. Be that as it may, her death is an important break in time. Yes, in the sense of every unnecessary death being a tragedy for those involved personally but also because for better or for worse Benazir, as the "Daughter of the East," was a real symbol of defiance in Pakistan. The forces of fundamentalism are on the rise all over South Asia -- I've been meaning to write about the election victory of a particularly virulent form of right wing Hinduvta in Gujurat last week; there was all the rioting over Taslima Nasreen's latest and so on -- and Pakistani politics have been steadily sliding downhill ever since this misconceived "war on terror." I don't think anyone would deny that that "war" has made more visible the backlash to secular politics and (what passes for) democratic governance in Pakistan. And for all of her faults, and I truly believe that Benazir was as venal and conniving and corrupt as every other South Asian politician, she was also a powerful (because she has global recognition) symbol of secular politics and (what passes for) democratic governance.
Benazir's being a woman was also clearly a factor; though I have little respect for politicians in the subcontinent, I am constantly amazed by the women politicians. Life for women here is such a struggle against gendered expectation. Every little act requires extra effort if you are a woman here -- getting a taxi, a rickshaw, buying things, just walking down the street is an activity that I find constantly gendered (because even walking down a street one attracts attention as a woman). And politics, which at the local levels at least, is so completely masculine -- and I'm basing this on the few rallies and marches that I've seen and the many pictures and footage of others that I encounter on a daily basis) -- well, it's not an easy field in which to be a woman on the subcontinent, I don't think. And if it's difficult for women in India, Benazir, I think, had a harder time of it since Pakistan is officially a Muslim country, since there are so many more taboos against women's participation in the public sphere in a land where religion and politics are officially intertwined.
Beyond all this, if, as the news reports already suggest, the Taliban has a hand in this attack, it is easy to see how Benazir is a symbol of all that they oppose: an educated woman, a Western educated woman, rich, independently wealthy, independent (how many of you can name her husband?), speaking out, and trying to speaking to women voters, promising to galvanize them, making promises directly to them... the progressive politics Benazir stood for, whether or not it was a facade, was unique in Pakistani politics. The tragedy of her death -- beyond the personal and the familial -- is that it marks the end of Benazir-as-symbol and that is a national tragedy. And because India and Pakistan are as intertwined as any old married couple, her death will also impact upon India in the future to come.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas in India
~
One of my "correspondents" asked about "Christmas in India" so here goes:
What can I say about Christmas in India that won't sound silly? Here in Mysore, it's a sunny morning -- I'd say the temperature is around 25 degrees here. Apart from the schools being closed for the last week or so, it's been hard to remember that Christmas was almost upon us. There's been a slow buildup in the newspapers but that doesn't translate into reality -- the traffic on the streets hasn't changed, people don't seem to be extra festive and most importantly, shopping doesn't seem to have been affected. I don't know if it's any different in the malls in Bangalore -- perhaps it is, because the malls in Bangalore seem to be trying very hard to imitate malls elsewhere in the world -- but in the markets of Mysore, Christmas is just one of the many festivals that take place and are shopped for by householders.
The oddest thing is that work doesn't seem to stop at all for Christmas: the newspaper arrived as usual this morning so clearly the presses ran last night though it remains to be seen whether they do tonight and there is a house being built behind ours with construction guys on the job as a I write. Most of the shops are open and there appear to be both staff and customers in them. I'm so used to be being bored on Christmas because nothing much is open that it's very strange to be here and see life being carried out as usual. Government offices, banks and major businesses are closed today but other than that... I suppose it's not all that odd because the country more or less shuts down for many other holidays and religious festivities... or perhaps that makes this odder still? I dunno.
In any case, I'm just waiting for tomorrow, when I turn thirty.
One of my "correspondents" asked about "Christmas in India" so here goes:
What can I say about Christmas in India that won't sound silly? Here in Mysore, it's a sunny morning -- I'd say the temperature is around 25 degrees here. Apart from the schools being closed for the last week or so, it's been hard to remember that Christmas was almost upon us. There's been a slow buildup in the newspapers but that doesn't translate into reality -- the traffic on the streets hasn't changed, people don't seem to be extra festive and most importantly, shopping doesn't seem to have been affected. I don't know if it's any different in the malls in Bangalore -- perhaps it is, because the malls in Bangalore seem to be trying very hard to imitate malls elsewhere in the world -- but in the markets of Mysore, Christmas is just one of the many festivals that take place and are shopped for by householders.
The oddest thing is that work doesn't seem to stop at all for Christmas: the newspaper arrived as usual this morning so clearly the presses ran last night though it remains to be seen whether they do tonight and there is a house being built behind ours with construction guys on the job as a I write. Most of the shops are open and there appear to be both staff and customers in them. I'm so used to be being bored on Christmas because nothing much is open that it's very strange to be here and see life being carried out as usual. Government offices, banks and major businesses are closed today but other than that... I suppose it's not all that odd because the country more or less shuts down for many other holidays and religious festivities... or perhaps that makes this odder still? I dunno.
In any case, I'm just waiting for tomorrow, when I turn thirty.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Of Taj Mahals and Houseboats
~
The done thing these days is to go to Kerala and faff about on boats -- big boats, little boats, motor boats, row boats, paddle boats, canoe boats, house boats, country boats, town boats -- ok, I made that last one up. But the rest are all available for the tourist trade. When Infosys Grrl and I went to Kerala last month, we did two boat rides from Ernakulam and enjoyed them thoroughly. I tried to convince Canadian Tourist that we should do one of the same rides again but in the end, we didn't. Instead we went to Alleppey and went on a house boat for a night: it was as lovely as everyone told us it would be and as I'd remembered it being from the time Blondie and I had done it four years ago. Unlike the last time, we ended up on a motorized houseboat -- which is bigger than the non-motorized version and is worse for the environment. We did ask for the non-motorized version but were told (very firmly) that they really weren't in use in and around Alleppey anymore, that they were not at all fun, that they couldn't go very far in a night, etc etc etc... it was quite clear that as tourists, we were expected to rent the expensive and worse for the environment motorized houseboat. So we did: we went on a smallish, motorized but non airconditioned (there must be limits!) houseboat called Vidya. The most interesting thing about it was that we were told -- by 4 or 5 different people -- that the number of houseboats in Alleppey has gone from about 100-150 to more than 400 in the 4 years since I was there last. When Blondie and I did this houseboat thingy, it was still a fairly offbeat thing to do; now, it seems to be part of every tourist's list of things to do in India. This isn't a moan about "how it was before" except that it is.... we saw half-a-dozen houseboat building yards lining the Keralan backwaters, all churning out ever larger houseboats. As it was, we were moored for the night in a row of other houseboats; and I don't think we were ever out of sight of at least a couple of other houseboats in our entire 21-hour "day" on the Vidya.
Some experiences are not destroyed by being jostled by crowds of other eager tourists. For me, seeing the Taj Mahal is one such. I've seen it thrice now, always in the midst of thousands of sweating, squirming, screeching Indian and foreign tourists and the structure still has the power to awe me. Perhaps my enjoyment of the Taj is a little diluted because I have to share it with so many others but the experience of the Taj Mahal is in seeing it (in the stone, so to speak) and the stone isn't altered by whether it has one spectator or one hundred thousand. The Taj is monolithic, it stands and withstands all viewers; it doesn't move or change or alter in any way, though we react to it. And do we ever react to it: I dare you to look at these pictures of it and not be moved by its cold stone perfection.
The Kerala backwaters are different. And a houseboat trip taken to admire these backwaters is quite different: it isn't so much a viewing as it is a living, a way to admire the sheer mobility of the life on these backwaters -- and for me, part of the appeal is that it used to be one of the few ways that you could encounter solitude during a trip through India. Not real solitude of course, for there you are accompanied by three staff people on your boat and then there are the people or person you're traveling with but still.... in the context of India, this is solitude indeed. The sights you see from a houseboat -- coconut trees, banana trees, rice fields, fishing nets, small houses perched on fingers of land threaded between the backwaters, all seemingly postcard perfect -- are not monumental in any way. They don't take my breath away and make me forget the hundreds of other boats plying the backwaters with me in the way that the sheer monumentality of the Taj can. They make me long to live there, to breathe in the warm, humid air and to sit in the shade of the coconut trees to watch the drunken reflections they cast into the waters. It's not a comment on the beauty of the two -- they are both sublime but for me, one was a sublime vision and the other a sublime experience. So perhaps this posting is just a comment on the effects of their respective beauty. I don't think I'd want to spend a day and a night gazing at the Taj. For all that it is beautiful, it is also a cold marble memorial to the traumas and agonies of married love and regular childbirth! Not to mention the traumas and agonies of those who actually built it. The Kerala backwaters are nothing like that: they are a warm and floating sensation and I'm very much afraid that if I go back to spend another day and night in them in another 4 years' time, all I will see will be the back ends of hundreds of other houseboats.
The done thing these days is to go to Kerala and faff about on boats -- big boats, little boats, motor boats, row boats, paddle boats, canoe boats, house boats, country boats, town boats -- ok, I made that last one up. But the rest are all available for the tourist trade. When Infosys Grrl and I went to Kerala last month, we did two boat rides from Ernakulam and enjoyed them thoroughly. I tried to convince Canadian Tourist that we should do one of the same rides again but in the end, we didn't. Instead we went to Alleppey and went on a house boat for a night: it was as lovely as everyone told us it would be and as I'd remembered it being from the time Blondie and I had done it four years ago. Unlike the last time, we ended up on a motorized houseboat -- which is bigger than the non-motorized version and is worse for the environment. We did ask for the non-motorized version but were told (very firmly) that they really weren't in use in and around Alleppey anymore, that they were not at all fun, that they couldn't go very far in a night, etc etc etc... it was quite clear that as tourists, we were expected to rent the expensive and worse for the environment motorized houseboat. So we did: we went on a smallish, motorized but non airconditioned (there must be limits!) houseboat called Vidya. The most interesting thing about it was that we were told -- by 4 or 5 different people -- that the number of houseboats in Alleppey has gone from about 100-150 to more than 400 in the 4 years since I was there last. When Blondie and I did this houseboat thingy, it was still a fairly offbeat thing to do; now, it seems to be part of every tourist's list of things to do in India. This isn't a moan about "how it was before" except that it is.... we saw half-a-dozen houseboat building yards lining the Keralan backwaters, all churning out ever larger houseboats. As it was, we were moored for the night in a row of other houseboats; and I don't think we were ever out of sight of at least a couple of other houseboats in our entire 21-hour "day" on the Vidya.
Some experiences are not destroyed by being jostled by crowds of other eager tourists. For me, seeing the Taj Mahal is one such. I've seen it thrice now, always in the midst of thousands of sweating, squirming, screeching Indian and foreign tourists and the structure still has the power to awe me. Perhaps my enjoyment of the Taj is a little diluted because I have to share it with so many others but the experience of the Taj Mahal is in seeing it (in the stone, so to speak) and the stone isn't altered by whether it has one spectator or one hundred thousand. The Taj is monolithic, it stands and withstands all viewers; it doesn't move or change or alter in any way, though we react to it. And do we ever react to it: I dare you to look at these pictures of it and not be moved by its cold stone perfection.
The Kerala backwaters are different. And a houseboat trip taken to admire these backwaters is quite different: it isn't so much a viewing as it is a living, a way to admire the sheer mobility of the life on these backwaters -- and for me, part of the appeal is that it used to be one of the few ways that you could encounter solitude during a trip through India. Not real solitude of course, for there you are accompanied by three staff people on your boat and then there are the people or person you're traveling with but still.... in the context of India, this is solitude indeed. The sights you see from a houseboat -- coconut trees, banana trees, rice fields, fishing nets, small houses perched on fingers of land threaded between the backwaters, all seemingly postcard perfect -- are not monumental in any way. They don't take my breath away and make me forget the hundreds of other boats plying the backwaters with me in the way that the sheer monumentality of the Taj can. They make me long to live there, to breathe in the warm, humid air and to sit in the shade of the coconut trees to watch the drunken reflections they cast into the waters. It's not a comment on the beauty of the two -- they are both sublime but for me, one was a sublime vision and the other a sublime experience. So perhaps this posting is just a comment on the effects of their respective beauty. I don't think I'd want to spend a day and a night gazing at the Taj. For all that it is beautiful, it is also a cold marble memorial to the traumas and agonies of married love and regular childbirth! Not to mention the traumas and agonies of those who actually built it. The Kerala backwaters are nothing like that: they are a warm and floating sensation and I'm very much afraid that if I go back to spend another day and night in them in another 4 years' time, all I will see will be the back ends of hundreds of other houseboats.
Friday, December 14, 2007
"All Cool All the Time"
~
Alapuzzha, here we are. Also known as Alleppey. This is supposed to be the "Venice of the East" -- a little town that has become Kerala's backwater (house)boat ride capital. And it's a new thing: Blondie and I were here four years ago and it was nothing like as touristy or as polished as it has become. I should add that I've no complaints about tourisitiness in itself, places go through these cycles of becoming popular, becoming too popular and then going through a decline. I'm sure there were fewer tourists, fewer "guest houses" or "heritage homes" and certainly fewer houseboats on offer at Alleppey when Blondie and I were here. But I'm fond of indoor plumbing and if the cost of that is the sight of a few more hippy-dippy Western tourists in the town, well, I'm prepared to pay it. I also imagine that in a place of this size -- the town is a bare 3.5 km wide -- tourism, even on this scale, creates employment and wealth for the local population.
The "heritage home" we've ended up in is lovely -- nearly 200 years old and with modern plumbing installed! Doesn't get any better, at least not in my book. It's an interesting place in that it's clearly catering (in this season anyway) to the Western tourist trade: there are mostly white folks here and they are mostly in the 20-30 age range. So they're not quite the 18 year old backpackers heading for the beach parties... but they're looking for a place to kick back and relax, drink a few beers and while the days away. I'm generalizing but I suspect that a lot of the people here would be willing to not step outside the welcoming walls of our "home" -- there's reasonably good food and reasonably expensive beer on hand, they can be consumed in the tropical lushness of a beautifully watery garden or on your own private verandah space and the rooms are great for the prices they're going for. You can walk in here and leave behind the hassles of being a traveler in India -- no desperate kids beg from you within these walls, no sights of abject poverty or deprivation meet your eyes here. Inside here, it is as one of the 20-something boys (yes, I know but they are really boys -- barely that much older than the school kids who line up to say hello to Canadian Tourist and shake her hand) said to me, it's
"all cool all the time." I understand the appeal of this, especially after our experiences in Jaipur and Agra, but I also resent the fact that I (and pretty much every Western tourist I've encountered in India) can walk into these safe havens and walk away from the reality of life in India for the poor and the weak.
Ok, rant and confession of conflicted self-criticism over. Incidentally, we were greeted at Alleppey station by a Bob Dylan wannabe, wearing a "The Times, they are a Changing" t-shirt and sporting a Dylan circa 1966 haircut. I don't know that the times are a-changing in the way Dylan imagined but... I was chatted up the owner and a friend of his, who were intrigued by my Indian but not quite self and in the process, I was told that "no one works here, everyone is free to do what they want." Hmmmm. Ok, but someone did cook that Garlic Fish we had. And I don't know what freedom had to do with that.
The chatting up happened after we'd eaten, as we lazed on rattan chairs outside our room. It was such a funny little session that I found it entertaining; poor Canadian Tourist found it a little alarming, I think, since she stayed with me for all of it, though I know she was really tired. But I figured if a chatting up starts with a discussion of family and progresses through a recitation of your qualifications, employment and residence history before turning into 20 questions, there is more curiosity involved in it than anything else. I think it's partly them trying to figure out how I fit into their binary model of "decent" Indian woman or not. On the "decent" side of the column for is that I tend to be fairly well covered up with clothing and that I'm traveling with Canadian Tourist, who is clearly old enough to be my mother (or my mother in law!) and therefore am only indulging in immoral sexual escapades (please spare me your lurid imaginings -- I'll just say that the Indian imagination when it comes to this stuff is pretty conventional). Also I speak Hindi, Kannada and Tamil and have a smattering of Malayalam, and I can hold forth in great detail about my family in Bangalore and Mysore (a sign of authenticity, that) all of which makes it hard for them to dismiss me as a complete tourist. On the other hand though -- and I do get that this is a big deal -- I'm clearly not traveling as Indian women travel. We're back to that question again. I'm reminded of the fact that when the first of my female cousins to marry wanted to visit her parents, her younger brother was dispatched to fetch her and escort her back on the overnight train journeys that visiting her parents involved. It was -- and by most accounts, it still is -- considered inappropriate for young women, married or single, to travel alone or even in a pair, without familial male escort of some sort. Why, Infosys Grrl -- who's just turned 30, btw -- wasn't allowed to go to North India with only me for company.
Alapuzzha, here we are. Also known as Alleppey. This is supposed to be the "Venice of the East" -- a little town that has become Kerala's backwater (house)boat ride capital. And it's a new thing: Blondie and I were here four years ago and it was nothing like as touristy or as polished as it has become. I should add that I've no complaints about tourisitiness in itself, places go through these cycles of becoming popular, becoming too popular and then going through a decline. I'm sure there were fewer tourists, fewer "guest houses" or "heritage homes" and certainly fewer houseboats on offer at Alleppey when Blondie and I were here. But I'm fond of indoor plumbing and if the cost of that is the sight of a few more hippy-dippy Western tourists in the town, well, I'm prepared to pay it. I also imagine that in a place of this size -- the town is a bare 3.5 km wide -- tourism, even on this scale, creates employment and wealth for the local population.
The "heritage home" we've ended up in is lovely -- nearly 200 years old and with modern plumbing installed! Doesn't get any better, at least not in my book. It's an interesting place in that it's clearly catering (in this season anyway) to the Western tourist trade: there are mostly white folks here and they are mostly in the 20-30 age range. So they're not quite the 18 year old backpackers heading for the beach parties... but they're looking for a place to kick back and relax, drink a few beers and while the days away. I'm generalizing but I suspect that a lot of the people here would be willing to not step outside the welcoming walls of our "home" -- there's reasonably good food and reasonably expensive beer on hand, they can be consumed in the tropical lushness of a beautifully watery garden or on your own private verandah space and the rooms are great for the prices they're going for. You can walk in here and leave behind the hassles of being a traveler in India -- no desperate kids beg from you within these walls, no sights of abject poverty or deprivation meet your eyes here. Inside here, it is as one of the 20-something boys (yes, I know but they are really boys -- barely that much older than the school kids who line up to say hello to Canadian Tourist and shake her hand) said to me, it's
"all cool all the time." I understand the appeal of this, especially after our experiences in Jaipur and Agra, but I also resent the fact that I (and pretty much every Western tourist I've encountered in India) can walk into these safe havens and walk away from the reality of life in India for the poor and the weak.
Ok, rant and confession of conflicted self-criticism over. Incidentally, we were greeted at Alleppey station by a Bob Dylan wannabe, wearing a "The Times, they are a Changing" t-shirt and sporting a Dylan circa 1966 haircut. I don't know that the times are a-changing in the way Dylan imagined but... I was chatted up the owner and a friend of his, who were intrigued by my Indian but not quite self and in the process, I was told that "no one works here, everyone is free to do what they want." Hmmmm. Ok, but someone did cook that Garlic Fish we had. And I don't know what freedom had to do with that.
The chatting up happened after we'd eaten, as we lazed on rattan chairs outside our room. It was such a funny little session that I found it entertaining; poor Canadian Tourist found it a little alarming, I think, since she stayed with me for all of it, though I know she was really tired. But I figured if a chatting up starts with a discussion of family and progresses through a recitation of your qualifications, employment and residence history before turning into 20 questions, there is more curiosity involved in it than anything else. I think it's partly them trying to figure out how I fit into their binary model of "decent" Indian woman or not. On the "decent" side of the column for is that I tend to be fairly well covered up with clothing and that I'm traveling with Canadian Tourist, who is clearly old enough to be my mother (or my mother in law!) and therefore am only indulging in immoral sexual escapades (please spare me your lurid imaginings -- I'll just say that the Indian imagination when it comes to this stuff is pretty conventional). Also I speak Hindi, Kannada and Tamil and have a smattering of Malayalam, and I can hold forth in great detail about my family in Bangalore and Mysore (a sign of authenticity, that) all of which makes it hard for them to dismiss me as a complete tourist. On the other hand though -- and I do get that this is a big deal -- I'm clearly not traveling as Indian women travel. We're back to that question again. I'm reminded of the fact that when the first of my female cousins to marry wanted to visit her parents, her younger brother was dispatched to fetch her and escort her back on the overnight train journeys that visiting her parents involved. It was -- and by most accounts, it still is -- considered inappropriate for young women, married or single, to travel alone or even in a pair, without familial male escort of some sort. Why, Infosys Grrl -- who's just turned 30, btw -- wasn't allowed to go to North India with only me for company.
More Travels and Travails
~
Dears! Sorry about the radio silence -- we've been traveling the country as a family party! Ma Mere, Canadian-Tourist masquerading as my mother-in-law, my Aunt, Cousin and I have been been from Mysore to Bangalore to Jaipur to Agra to Delhi and back. We've finally rid ourselves -- excuse me, lost -- the rellies and now it's just Canadian Tourist with me. We're in Kerala now: it's lovely, especially after the craziness of the North.
Anyway, yesterday in Fort Kochi (the oldest part of Cochin as was) we saw a dilapidated portrait of Che Guevara, hung in an empty office. Of course, this is still India so as soon as we started taking pictures of it, we gathered a small audience. It turns out that Che is adorning the walls of the Democratic Youth Federation of India; the comrades who were surprised by us were a little unsure of what to make of us (obviously middle class Indian woman and older white tourist admiring a ratty Che on their wall) but welcoming nonetheless. Canadian Tourist's assertion that she'd been to Cuba was met with nods and grins: "Che, Cuba. Ah, good." All in all, I think it will be my fondest memory of the day.
After wandering through Jaipur and Agra and Delhi -- cities which seem to be tourist hubs and nothing else, where poverty is obvious everywhere, with children begging at every corner and crowds of unemployed men staring after you, Canadian Tourist and I have decided that Kerala is certainly better off after its decades of unbroken Communist rule. We've yet to encounter a begging child, though as Canadian Tourist has remarked, the acid test for that is going to be the railway station. Still, while it's clear that there is poverty and unemployment here in Kerala, it's not as blatant. I don't know if that simply means that it's not visible to us.... but it seems to me that there isn't the same sense of desperation attached to making money off tourists in the South as there is in the North. This is pure speculation but that suggests to me that the economies here are not that weak because let's face it, economies that depend entirely on tourism are under a lot of pressure. There's always going to be a newer, cheaper, less touristy, more "authentic" experience on offer somewhere else.
There's lots more to be said about the tourist experience and what that means in a country like India. Until now, even if I couldn't pass for a local, traveling with family or with Infosys Grrl has meant that I've passed for some kind of Indian. That makes for an entirely different experience: there are some ways in which it is extremely confining to travel in India as an Indian woman -- if you don't live up to the expectations of "decency," then you're putting yourself at risk. For those of you who are skeptical, yesterday's Deccan Herald (the Bangalore newspaper) headlined a story about a woman who got into a taxi at the airport late one night and demanded to be taken to a "5-star hotel." A couple of failed attempts at getting a room later, she ended up in a service apartment belonging to a "friend" of the cab driver's... and emerges 5 days later, having been raped and abused. The story goes on; it seems to be getting murkier but my point is only that such stuff is not uncommon. I don't think it would happen to someone -- male or female -- who is readily identified as a tourist -- so being one and acting like one provides you with some immunity. In the popular imagination, Indian women come in two forms -- "decent" (whatever that means though I suspect it has a lot to do with silence and sexual repression and not traveling alone or demanding independence) or not. And heaven help the ones who are classified as not.
Dears! Sorry about the radio silence -- we've been traveling the country as a family party! Ma Mere, Canadian-Tourist masquerading as my mother-in-law, my Aunt, Cousin and I have been been from Mysore to Bangalore to Jaipur to Agra to Delhi and back. We've finally rid ourselves -- excuse me, lost -- the rellies and now it's just Canadian Tourist with me. We're in Kerala now: it's lovely, especially after the craziness of the North.
Anyway, yesterday in Fort Kochi (the oldest part of Cochin as was) we saw a dilapidated portrait of Che Guevara, hung in an empty office. Of course, this is still India so as soon as we started taking pictures of it, we gathered a small audience. It turns out that Che is adorning the walls of the Democratic Youth Federation of India; the comrades who were surprised by us were a little unsure of what to make of us (obviously middle class Indian woman and older white tourist admiring a ratty Che on their wall) but welcoming nonetheless. Canadian Tourist's assertion that she'd been to Cuba was met with nods and grins: "Che, Cuba. Ah, good." All in all, I think it will be my fondest memory of the day.
After wandering through Jaipur and Agra and Delhi -- cities which seem to be tourist hubs and nothing else, where poverty is obvious everywhere, with children begging at every corner and crowds of unemployed men staring after you, Canadian Tourist and I have decided that Kerala is certainly better off after its decades of unbroken Communist rule. We've yet to encounter a begging child, though as Canadian Tourist has remarked, the acid test for that is going to be the railway station. Still, while it's clear that there is poverty and unemployment here in Kerala, it's not as blatant. I don't know if that simply means that it's not visible to us.... but it seems to me that there isn't the same sense of desperation attached to making money off tourists in the South as there is in the North. This is pure speculation but that suggests to me that the economies here are not that weak because let's face it, economies that depend entirely on tourism are under a lot of pressure. There's always going to be a newer, cheaper, less touristy, more "authentic" experience on offer somewhere else.
There's lots more to be said about the tourist experience and what that means in a country like India. Until now, even if I couldn't pass for a local, traveling with family or with Infosys Grrl has meant that I've passed for some kind of Indian. That makes for an entirely different experience: there are some ways in which it is extremely confining to travel in India as an Indian woman -- if you don't live up to the expectations of "decency," then you're putting yourself at risk. For those of you who are skeptical, yesterday's Deccan Herald (the Bangalore newspaper) headlined a story about a woman who got into a taxi at the airport late one night and demanded to be taken to a "5-star hotel." A couple of failed attempts at getting a room later, she ended up in a service apartment belonging to a "friend" of the cab driver's... and emerges 5 days later, having been raped and abused. The story goes on; it seems to be getting murkier but my point is only that such stuff is not uncommon. I don't think it would happen to someone -- male or female -- who is readily identified as a tourist -- so being one and acting like one provides you with some immunity. In the popular imagination, Indian women come in two forms -- "decent" (whatever that means though I suspect it has a lot to do with silence and sexual repression and not traveling alone or demanding independence) or not. And heaven help the ones who are classified as not.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Mother in Law!
~
as in, I've apparently acquired one! Every time Canadian-in-India and I went anywhere together in Jaipur, people would look from me to her and from her to me and then sidle up to ask consolingly, "is she your ma-in-law?" The third time it happened I just decided to go with it. Cousin and I decided to embroider on the story after a little while: Canadian-in-India became mother-in-law to us both and we used her as an excuse to not buy any of the trinkets on offer. "No, no, our mother-in-law -- that's her -- is with us and she's very strict, she won't let us buy your model of the Taj/the Hawa Mahal/T-shirt/bracelet/necklace/carved elephant with little baby elephant inside it/object of choice." And the crazy thing is that most of the hawkers -- usually kids or women -- would nod in commiseration and leave us alone after that.
Makes you wonder about their experiences of mothers-in-law, don't it?
Though there was one persistent and chatty fellow in Agra, who chatted us up on the walk back from visiting the Taj. After the strict ma-in-law story, he asked why she wouldn't buy his little plastic-floating-in-a-water-bubble-Taj. When we told him that she had no money, he looked us all up and down and said, "But she's come a long way -- I don't know where she's from but she's from somewhere not here. Are you really telling me that she has the money to come all the way to India and see our Taj and pay the Rs.750 foreigners entrance fee for that but doesn't have a measly Rs.10 for me?"
That kind of logic in little kids that age -- he must have been all of 10 -- makes me want to cry because of what it says about their experiences.
as in, I've apparently acquired one! Every time Canadian-in-India and I went anywhere together in Jaipur, people would look from me to her and from her to me and then sidle up to ask consolingly, "is she your ma-in-law?" The third time it happened I just decided to go with it. Cousin and I decided to embroider on the story after a little while: Canadian-in-India became mother-in-law to us both and we used her as an excuse to not buy any of the trinkets on offer. "No, no, our mother-in-law -- that's her -- is with us and she's very strict, she won't let us buy your model of the Taj/the Hawa Mahal/T-shirt/bracelet/necklace/carved elephant with little baby elephant inside it/object of choice." And the crazy thing is that most of the hawkers -- usually kids or women -- would nod in commiseration and leave us alone after that.
Makes you wonder about their experiences of mothers-in-law, don't it?
Though there was one persistent and chatty fellow in Agra, who chatted us up on the walk back from visiting the Taj. After the strict ma-in-law story, he asked why she wouldn't buy his little plastic-floating-in-a-water-bubble-Taj. When we told him that she had no money, he looked us all up and down and said, "But she's come a long way -- I don't know where she's from but she's from somewhere not here. Are you really telling me that she has the money to come all the way to India and see our Taj and pay the Rs.750 foreigners entrance fee for that but doesn't have a measly Rs.10 for me?"
That kind of logic in little kids that age -- he must have been all of 10 -- makes me want to cry because of what it says about their experiences.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Travels and Travails
~
Well, boys and girls, Kerala was fun. We didn’t plan to do very much when we were there, but Infosys Grrl and I didn’t have a moment to spare: looking back at it, we did manage to do a fair bit. In
Anyway, it gives me great pleasure to report that there is a little walkway past the bridge that leads to Kadavu from
There were other great things about
We made it back to
Life Indian style is continuing. We got back to
More soon, I expect!
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