This isn't just about Cricket

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

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

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

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

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

Slumdog: The Review

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

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

moreish

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

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

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

Experiment in 19th century design!

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

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

The Victoria & Albert Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The City

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

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

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

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

The Two Indias

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Nano, the Nuclear Deal and the Floods

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

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

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

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

Not in Kansas Anymore

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

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

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

East and West

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

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

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

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

Let the Games Begin!

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As I spend days lazing away, watching cricket and eating chakli and mysore pak, I am returned to childhood summers. Some things never change. Yet, as I watch, I can't quite capture the ease with which I watched those games. What with my consiousness of the racial and class overtones of cricket (not to mention cricket-watching), I'm contantly reminded that cricket is a game that is deeply entrenched in the traumas of colonial and postcolonial history. I don’t suppose anyone with a sense of the history of the game will really deny that – one of the ironies of this history is that, like the English language, cricket is one of the colonial imports to have taken deep root in diverse ex-colonial spaces – the four cricket-playing nations of the South Asian subcontinent, the West Indies, Australia and New Zealand and a handful of African nations and England are the only nations wherein cricket is still played on a national basis. And arguably cricket is most popular now in India and Pakistan: not only is there no other national game in these countries but it seems as though no other game can possibly encapsulate the metonymic weight of the nation that cricket is accorded. Historians of the game may date this improvement of the qualify of subcontinental cricket in the 1970s and1980s, when teams from Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan began to stake their claims to the trophies but it seems to me that the advent of television across much of the subcontinent in the 1980s also had much to do with the creation of national audiences for cricket’s national teams.

Cricket became the national game and international matches began to take on a fervidly nationalist atmosphere. For instance, the historic rivalry between Pakistan and India – a rivalry rooted in religion, a rivalry that is underlaid with the memories of Partition – has meant that there is no stronger rivalry in cricket than that between India and Pakistan. Other international matches are watched, possibly by similar numbers of people but for sheer partisan intensity, nothing comes close to a close match between these age-old foes. And the size of these audiences (mainly in India, but also in other postcolonial nations) – and the advertising revenues they generate – has meant that the old guard in cricket (England and Australia) have had to give way before the power of these newly fledged national sides and their “boards” of control.
Last week, cricket in India (and by association), cricket in the rest of the world has gone through another shift of seismic proportions. What was once so much the preserve of gentility that a cricket game stood as an utterly comprehensible marker of the leisured privileges of the landed class in England (come on, haven’t you see any of the Merchant Ivory films?) has already become the national pastime of poverty-stricken millions. These days, the audiences for cricket matches in the subcontinent, certainly, but also increasingly across the world, tend not to be ladies with parasols and gentlemen in straw boaters as young men disenfranchised by globalization who see in this sport a last vestige of national pride and identity.
Now, however, the attempt is on to try and convert these questionable national allegiances into city-based sporting franchise audiences. Modelled after the NHL and the NFL, the Indian Premier League has arrived: the 8 city based leagues of the IPL intend to play a series of intense matches over April and May of each year. The games will be in the Twenty20 format, which means that they last for 3 hours or so each – this to ensure that they can be played during the evening hours and on weekends. Much is expected of the IPL; the 8 city franchises were sold off for millions of dollars and yesterday, the successful bidders of these franchises participated in an “auction” of world class Indian and international cricketers. Media outlets in the cricket playing world have since been trumpeting the news that further millions have been spent on “buying” players – the current Indian captain, for instance, has been “bought” for a cool $1.5 million a year for the next 3 years. I’ll repeat that: $1.5 million a year for 3 years, to play in a 2-month tournament that is yet to be initiated. 77 other players, including Indians, Australians, South Africans, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and the odd New Zealander or two have also all been bought, though a number of city franchises have yet to find names for their teams.
So what we have is an intriguing hybrid: a colonial game made peculiarly their own by audiences that are as far removed from its original audiences as we can imagine, a game that is now being shunted in an entirely new direction – a direction influenced more by the enduring popularity of games featuring the Toronto Maple Leafs or AC Milan than the symbolic national pride that has characterized its popularity in postcolonial spaces so far. I’m the first to admit that I don’t know the difference between a Yorker and Yorkshire pudding, but what I do know is my postcolonial history. I’d be willing to bet that this whole cricket thing is a case study of the overarching trajectories of colonialism, postcolonialism and globalization. Go figure.

Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

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Yesterday was madness here. Everywhere we went, there was pink and red. Streamers, clothing, advertisements -- the Times of India (a serious newspaper, that) -- took it upon itself to have kitschy Valentine-related articles and pictures all of last week; at a grocery store, I came across a display of Valentine cards (I think the pick of the bunch was "A Valentine's Day Wish for My Boss and Bestfriend"); all of the local news channels ran Valentine's "specials." We stopped by an eletrical appliances "fair" -- only to be ambushed by an offer to buy two electric rice cookers -- "One for you and one for your Valentine Mother." Schools and colleges and other places where the yout gather have all been done over in pink and red for the big day. But clearly, St. Valentine's Day isn't just about the sickly-sweet sentiment that love is assumed to be by the vast masses of Indian yout for whom sweaty hand-clasps have to be the extent of the expression of love. Oh no, it's become a family and friend and people you don't know extravaganza driven by corporate marketing, disposable incomes in the hands of the young techie demographic and mass media. And it's not just the women; I counted 17 men in pink and red shirts yesterday and we were only out and about for an hour or so. It's nuts. NUTS, I tell you.

Especially because this is still a deeply traditional culture. And I do mean deeply. The norm is still for marriages to be arranged. Gender roles are pretty much still the traditional ones; female foeticide is still a subject of serious concern to the nation -- there are entire states where the ratio of women to men is in the 800:1000 range. So this embrace of Valentine's day is bizarre, on so many levels. But I also suspect that it appeals to the new-age Indian consumer of globalization precisely because of the syrupy sentimentality attached to its global marketing. St. Valentine's day -- or at least its mass-market variation -- is all sickly sweet chemically tasting chocolate, fluffy bunnies and expensive hot house roses with no perfume. It's not about any real change in the deep patriarchies of Indian social life. A Valentine's day date might involve the girl being invited out to the latest movie or the nearest Coffee Day but I'd wager that few of them get invitations to come and meet Mom and Dad (and Grandad and Grandma). The superficial acceptance of love and sentiment hasn't changed the conservative traditions upon which social life is built any.

But you wouldn't think that on the face of public display of Valentine fever yesterday, and because this is India and there is never any kind of a ridiculous embracing of this type of pop culture without an equal and opposite heart-rending somewhere else, there were protests organized by right-wing Hindu groups over "unIndian" Valentine's day celebrations. The irony will no doubt be lost on them, but I think it's worth mentioning -- given the depth of right-wing Hinduism's contempt for Islam -- that in Saudi Arabia, the religious authorities have reportedly ordered a crackdown on the "decadent" practice of St. Valentine's day to the extent that there is now a "black market" for roses and women have been instructed not to dress in red on that day.

Yes, I know. My mind boggles too. Boggle, boggle, boggle. b.o.g.g.l.e....

Of Riots and Racism

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Sharad Pawar of the Board of Control for Cricket in India claims that no Indian can be "a racist." His rationale -- if it can even be called that -- is that India has been at the forefront of the "fight against racialism in its history." After my reaction of "eh?!" I'm tempted to note here that if one of my students offered me such "proof" in support of such an "argument," that student would have had the laws of argumentation explained her. At approximately the same time, and incidentally, in the same city from which Pawar's absurdities flow, there are near-riots on the streets: the people of Bombay, now dubbed "Mumbaikars" are being encouraged to kick others (namely, North Indians) out of their "Mumbai" by scions (metaphorically and literally, since the prime accused in this is one Raj Thackery, whose main claim to fame seems to be his close relationship with Bal Thackery of the Shiv Sena) of the BJP and allied right wing organizations. This isn't limited to Bombay; according to all the news sources here, across the state of Maharashtra, North Indians are being targeted by unruly mobs with the motto "Maharashtra for Maharashtrians."

Though I was born in Bangalore, and all of my family in India live in Karnataka, I have a Maharashtrian last name (courtesy of dad, whose father was born there): so I'd like to know if I count as a Maharashtrian? Having never lived there, and having only been to Bombay to fly in and out of the country, not speaking a word of Marathi, do I count? Am I -- unlike the hundreds of thousands of "other" Indians currently living and working all over the state -- welcome there? If I am, I'd like Mr. Pawar, or anyone else who feels qualified, to tell me how this is different from the racism of apartheid-era South Africa, or indeed, the current policies of the Jewish state?

If not, i.e, if I'm not "Maharashtrian" enough, then surely Maharashtrian-ness is a matter of nurture rather than nature. And surely those who've flocked to the state, who've contributed to its robust economy, who've chosen to live and work there have as much right to be there as anyone else?! So what price "racism" in India?

In the meantime, here in Karnataka -- and for those of you who are unfamiliar with Indian geography, Karnataka, the state in Mysore and Bangalore are located, shares a long border to the north with Maharashtra -- there are all kinds of protests over the lack of "quotas" for "Kannadigas" (i.e Kannada speakers, who are presumed to be Karnataka natives) in the Railways. Apparently too many Railway jobs (and keep in mind that in India, with its high umemployment rate (30%, I think), a job with the central government owned Indian Railways is pretty much a unionized-job-for-life and in the lower ranks, one of the few such things available to those with little education or experience, are being snagged by "North Indians" (those from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, mostly).

Lest you go away thinking that there is a peculiar animus that "South India" holds against "North India," it's a little more complicated than that. I'm not sure that Maharashtra, until this newest of agitations against "North Indians," would ever have considered itself a "Southern state" -- in fact, even now, it probably thinks of itself as "Central India." The "South" is Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh. And my childhood memories attest to the historic denigration of "the South" by federal politicians in India, who have mostly been of North Indian origin. Historically, it's been a question of language rather than location: and the four states of the South have always rejected the imposition on Hindi as a national language. Add to this the sense of the rest of the country that the South is "dark" -- a legacy of the Dravidians (and don't get me started on the racist connotations of the Northern dislike of "darkness"; "uncivilized" -- because it did not take well to the Aryan invasions; and "hot" -- this last is true. And what we have now is a deeply alienated part of India that in the last two decades or so has suddenly gained economic power and social prestige through its ready acceptance of globalization. The IT industry is headquarted in Banglore, and next in line is Hyderabad, the capital of Andra Pradesh. Likewise, the call centre economy emerges from Bangalore. Ironically, this can be traced back directly to "the South's" rejection of Hindi and stubborn insistence upon English as a medium of education and communication.

My point is simply this: there is a lot of murky social history in India that is being brought to the forefront now as a result of the imbalances of economics. Given this, and given the turmoil against members of various groups -- all on the basis of alleged "origins" and "otherness" -- it is not just ironic to make absurd claims on behalf of all Indians, it is downright ridiculous.

Actually, it's worse than ridiculous but words fail me at this point so I'll leave it to your imaginations.

"It's Not Tiddlywinks."

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Cricket, that is. At least, according to Cricket Australia's head, this game ain't tiddlywinks. No kidding. The "cricket crisis" has been making the headline news in India for 4 days now and I'm bored of it. There, I've said it. Yes, the racism charge caused a bad reaction here. The Board of Control for Cricket in India -- the Indian version of Cricket Australia -- and ain't just the name enough to make you think of 1984? -- sees the charge and the conviction handed out to "Bhajji" as a national insult and is now out for blood. BCCI's official response cites India's "proud" stand against apartheid.... I'll let you imagine the tone of indignation and fury. Meanwhile, sources inform me that "sledging" (that's the correct term for on-field slagging in cricket) often involves racist, sexist and homophobic language. General all-around offensiveness. Apparently the Australians call it "mental disintegration" and use it as a deliberate strategy for throwing their opponents off their collective game. So I've said my piece about it -- I still think it's a pity that the racism is all tangled up with the particularities of this match and these teams -- but I'm now moving on.

A game of tiddlywinks, anyone?

Actually, what I wanted to move on to tiddlywinks for political junkies. Heh. I'll admit to getting up at 7am Indian time yesterday so I could find out who'd won the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Course, I got up, checked the nets, and went straight back to sleep. But still. I'd like to point out that that's probably showing way more interest in the US election than most American citizens do. So, tell me, y'all -- if you were Americans -- who'd you be voting for? I like to think that I know all of y'all pretty well so it's going to be Obama, Hilary, Edwards or Richardson. If there's a Giuliani fan reading this blog, please.... keep browsing. There's aint' going to be anything of interest to you here. I've been a fan of John Edwards ever since I saw footage of him addressing a small volunteer crew in post-Katrina Louisiana on my last trip to the US. I was stuck in a hotel in Philadelphia, infuriated by the racialization of poverty that I'd seen in that prosperous city.... I couldn't believe the contrasts to be found between black and white within a city block or two. I thought it crazy then and I think it crazy now: I still don't understand why there aren't riots on the streets. Anyway, that night, as I pretty much gave up the ghost on looking for academic work in the US, I turned on the TV and happened upon Edwards talking about the relationship between poverty and race and class in the US. And he was angry about it -- not in a contrived, this is an on-camera moment kind of way but blazingly, furiously angry. Since then, I've done a little bit of reading up on his positions and I'm convinced that he's as good as any of the mainline Democratic candidates are gonna get. If I were an American, my choice would be... Martin Sheen as Jed Bartlett. But if I couldn't have my Nobel-prize winning Professor of Economics, I'd probably go with Edwards.

And the joys of globalization mean that even though I'm not -- and can't imagine ever being -- American, the US elections matter to us in more ways than we know. Bah.

Anyway, back to tiddlywinks. Who'd you be voting for?

The Airtel Ad

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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

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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.

Travels and Travails

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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 Calicut, we went to a “resort” – just to see what it would be like. I have to say that though “Kadavu” (the resort) was in a breathtaking location overlooking a coconut-tree lined riverbank and a couple of small islands in the river, the experience itself didn’t wow us. We spent a lot of money on a meh lunch, and then were shooed away from the path down to the river because we didn’t have a “boating permit” – in other words, because we clearly didn’t look like wealthy foreign tourists, who were the only people we saw actually staying at Kadavu. I’ve always thought it’s sad to see Indian staff internalize the racism and classism of their colonial masters and these so-called resorts seem to be a prime example of contemporary iterations of such internalized racism and classism. And all of this even though we arrived in state at Kadavu with a car and driver lent to us by another of Infosys Grrl’s many Keralite relatives. I can only imagine what kind of a reaction we’d have received had we arrived – as we’d originally planned to – in an auto!

Anyway, it gives me great pleasure to report that there is a little walkway past the bridge that leads to Kadavu from Calicut where everyone is welcome to walk down to the river and paddle about to their hearts’ content!

There were other great things about Calicut – since Infosys Grrl knows it really well, she took me shopping for block-printed material that I could have made up into dresses. And we bought so much of it – mostly to give away – that the sales guy offered to have salwar kameezes made up for us in an hour if we wanted them! I had to try it – and honest to goodness, this lovely woman who spoke nothing but Malayalam took my measurements and figured out what I wanted and produced it for me in 90 mins. And darlings, with an “urgent” surcharge, the making up of the salwar suit cost me Rs. 125 (that’s at an exchange rate of about Rs. 40 to 1$ Cdn). There’s nothing I can say about the price of labour in India without sounding hypocritical so I shall just leave y’all to imagine living on these kinds of wages for yourselves… especially when globalization has meant that it is perfectly possible to order U.S Pizza (that’s the chain’s name) even in Calicut. A medium cheese pizza costs Rs. 350.

We made it back to Cochin the next day, went on another boat ride and then made out way back to Bangalore, where it was my turn to expose Infosys Grrl to crazy rellies. We visited two of my cousins and their families and all engaged in a round-robin game of buying each other gifts. So I acquired two pairs of pants and a kurta top (all from Fab India, which I still love – see my first post on this blog!) and bought two kurta tops and a kid’s costume for other people. I don’t know who won the game, though my “cousin brother” bought Infosys Grrl and me tix back to Mysore and prepaid the autorickshaw that brought us to the railway station… Life Indian style!

Life Indian style is continuing. We got back to Mysore in time for my Aunt’s 60^th birthday, celebrated it with a visit to the local temple (whoo-hoo!) and a family lunch for 40. That was yesterday – and after a crazy night of laundering and ironing and packing, we’re all off (moi, Ma Mere and the 60-yr old Aunt) to Jaipur. I’m on the train now. And… and… if all of this wasn’t chaotic enough, a friend of mine from Toronto – shall we call her Canadian-in-India? – arrived in Bangalore at about the same time as I was frantically washing my grubby smalls. She was met at the airport by another of my many cousins who is bringing her to join our train in an hour or so – the train from Mysore to Jaipur goes via Bangalore. The cousin from Bangalore – she’s going to be Call Centre Grrl, since she used to work for the AOL call centre in B’lore – is also coming with on this family and friends excursion to Jaipur and Agra and Delhi so we shall be the Party of Five (women). I’m only hoping that my poor Canadian-in-India will be able to deal with the zany women of my family! In any case, she claims she wants to see India and experience it and I can’t imagine a more “authentic” way to do that than to be cooped up with all of us for a 3 day train ride! And then to spend the next 10 days traipsing through what’s called the “golden triangle” of Indian tourism with us all…. Actually, after the trip to the north, we’re both planning to take off alone so poor Canadian-in-India will have a chance to recover from her experiences with my family at some point in the near future. For now, though, it’s onto Bangalore and our meeting up with Call Centre Grrl and Canadian-in-India.

More soon, I expect!

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.