This isn't just about Cricket

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

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

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

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

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

A Novella and a Novel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like the novella, a good read.

The Proof of the Pudding

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

2009!

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

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

Poetry and Prose in Politics

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is being used to describe Barack Obama a lot. Someone over at the New Yorker said that his "aura" trumps her "arguments" -- that's a nice way of putting it. But the sentiment has been all over the news and the political junkies might just have a point: Obama is poetry and Clinton is prose. Which, for those who buy into Cuomo's take on political campaigns ("we campaign in poetry and govern in prose" make him a more appealing candidate and her a more effective president. I'd buy that -- at least, think of the words used to describe them or the words they use to describe themselves: Obama is a dreamer, a thinker, an ideas man, an idealist, a visionary, a peacemaker, and so on while she's presidential, a pragmatist, a doer, an incrementalist. He was a community organizer; she's organized. If I were to guess as to their cooking styles, I'd say he's a thrower of various things into a pot and a stirrer until it tastes right (which, in the end, it does often but not always) whereas she's a baker who knows her recipes cold and turns out perfectly only the things she knows how to bake. That's what Clinton's comment about Martin Luther King and the President who legislated his "dream" was about: I don't think it was a racist comment, really I don't. But it was an illuminating moment: it showed that she viewed social change as a reaction to legislation. I'd suggest -- based on his campaign and his personal history -- that for Obama, legislation is the reaction to social change. That's where the "transformativity" of his candidacy comes in. But the question remains: can a movement also be a goverment? Can a poet translate his dreams into legalese? (It's it funny how we talk of "Obama" but never of "Clinton"? Is it because "Barack" is just too un-American a first name for the down-home boys to be able to say? How long do you think it'll take for him to become "Barry"?)

Anyway. Super Dooper Tuesday for the Americans is almost here: so here are some last minute predictions: "Clinton" will emerge with more delegates than "Obama" but by a margin that's too slim for her to carry the nomination.

More later, I'm sure.

Aftermath

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LibraryGirl wants to know if I really spent my time at Canadian weddings boozing and flirting with boys. I suppose the truth is that I didn't, really. But I've consumed my share of celebratory glasses of champagne and been checked out by my share of inebriated men who are trapped at weddings. This seems to be the time honoured way of passing time at a wedding in Canada; in India, this is not a possibility. At least, not any wedding (or wedding-related function) I've ever attended here. Instead, you go around being introduced to people you've no interest in meeting and who've no interest in you except the purely genealogical: witness this one, where I must have been introduced to at least four dozen relatives with the words "this is my granddaughter, you know, my daughter Paru's child. She's thirty, and not married yet, but she has a PhD." Trust me, that gets old fast. Note that while I might be exaggerating here, it's not by much!

The reception itself was... nice. Everyone was all dressed up and they were fun to deconstruct. I got to play at being a glamourous Indian woman one last time, complete with sari (red and black silk with beads) and jewellery (gold) and heels (wobbly). The food was good, though that's already palled for me. I mean, I've been eating wonderful Indian food for 4-5 months now, so what's another such meal anyway. Aunt and I were to spend the night at a hotel in Bangalore and then spend the next day shopping before returning to Mysore. And so we returned back to the hotel and debriefed. And then, at midnight, we were awakened by the wedding party!: they'd decided to come hang with their out-of-town guests after seeing off the stragglers at the reception. That was the best -- we actually got to talk to the bride a bit though I do think she found the 12 or so of us gathered at the hotel all a bit much.

The next day Aunt and I spent wandering around the used and new bookstores of Bangalore. Oh joy! I'm now stocked with enough books to get me through to the end of my trip here (at least, I think so) and I've confirmed that (new and used) books are probably one of the few things that cost as much in India as they do in Canada. The stuff you can buy here though is crazy: I picked up a 70s edition of Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, for instance, for just over $2! It's the kind of book that no one reads nowadays (with good reason) but since it's one of the earlier fictive attempts to deal with questions of academic freedom and political repression in the university, I've always thought I should read it sometime. Well, sometime was yesterday, when we had no power for 12 hours and I therefore had very little to do. So, the book is dated and depressing but interesting in an odd way. And I can't imagine the circumstances under which I'd have read it in Toronto so this was all to the good!

The lack of power yesterday was the last straw. I've been sick, on and off, for the past 2 weeks -- nothing major but just sick enough that I'm always conscious of it. And if you add traveling and meeting relatives reluctantly to that and then garnish it with the irritation of being ill and not being able to turn on a fan, you'll have an accurate picture of my state of mind (and body). So I've invested in an inverter, or UPS, or whatever it's called. It's a little black box that will apparently store enough power to keep us going with a light and a fan for a few hours when the power fails again (as it surely will). It wasn't cheap by Indian standards (about $400).... and it reminds me that quality of life in India is a matter of wealth in a way that it isn't in the West.

It's been awhile....

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and I'm sorry I caused a few of you to wonder what's been going on that's so exciting that I haven't been updating this blogue. The short answer is that I've been trying to get on with w.o.r.k -- that thing that I'm really in India to do: I've been setting up formal interviews and informally talking to people and it's taken me a lot longer than I thought it would to organize what they've had to say in reasonably accurate and easily retrievable passages.

Other than that, I've had a short foray into the world of public health care in India (for my aunt, not for myself). I've lots to say about it but I'm still processing it so that's a post for another day.

And perhaps more interestingly, one of me cousins has gone and gotten hisself engaged and married! All in the space of two weeks, too. The Fam has been abuzz with curiosity and more curiosity about it all, especially since the wedding was held with a week's notice in Bombay. Which meant that no one apart from said cousin's Ma and sister attended. No, it's not what you're thinking -- this is still India: there's very little pre-marital sex and pregnancy here. At least among the so-respectable middle-classes. But there's to be a fancy-schmancy reception at a private members' club in Bangalore tomorrow night and ofcourse, we're all gonna be there. It's not often we get a chance these days to experience any kind of Monsoon Wedding off the big screen; there aren't very many unmarrieds left, even given my extremely large and extremely trying Fam. And never mind that I don't approve of private members' clubs; this might be my last chance to get all dressed up in a fancy sari while I'm in India. It also means that I don't have to go visiting all the distant rellies to say hello and goodbye; they'll all be at the reception so I can see 'em all in one go. One night of plastering a smile on my face as people I haven't seen in a couple of decades take it upon themselves to tell me how much I've grown since then and how I should be married with sprogs by now. I'm planning to bare my teeth and bring up all the gossip about erring children and straying spouses that I've been assiduously gathering since I arrived for precisely this purpose. All in all, it should make for a fun night -- bad bollywood music, greasy Indian food, hundreds of Indian relatives and a few hours in a swish costume with no alcohol and no one to flirt with -- ah, what would a trip to India be without an Indian wedding to attend!

I shall report back. Till then, enjoy the tiddlywinks games that are going on all around the US: I gather it's South Carolina and Florida next.

By the way, for those of you who care, my entirely unscientific survey of y'all has Obama in the lead, with Edwards second. Only a couple of youse folks plumped for Hilary. Interesting. For what it's worth, I'd take an Obama-Edwards ticket just fine. Though one can only imagine what the Reps would do with that come election time. Feeding time for the sharks, most likely.

I'm gone.

"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?

Playing Cricket

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I've found a new fave website : yes, yes, it's Literature Map! If y'all knew about this one before, why didn't someone tell me? I don't know how accurate it is but it's a wonderful idea -- it's like Pandora for books!

We've been spending a fair bit of time watching India play Australia in cricket these past few days. And darlings, I know: I'm not the sports type. But let's call this an exercise in anthropology, shall we? Anyway, the reason I mention it here is that there's a pretty big controversy brewing in this series -- and it's all about race and nationalism and political sensitivity. You know me: I can't resist this stuff! So, for all those of you who don't follow cricket, the Indian national team is in Australia on a 6 week long trip during which they're playing 4 test matches and 15+ one day games. All you need to know is that the Test matches go on for days and days (like 4 or 5) and they're considered the true test of a team. Australia is currently the top rated team in the world; India is one of the very that can take them on and give them a good match.... at least in theory. My sense from having watched a few India-Australia games (the Australians toured India in late 2007) is that the Indian team has a lot of the greatest players in the world currently, but they are brilliant on occasion and not on requirement, whereas the Australian side, though perhaps lacking the same kind of brilliance, work harder and are way more disciplined. Brilliance is all very well but doesn't often trump discipline. In our language, playing cricket ain't like being an academic!

To get to the meat of the controversy now: an Indian player stands accused of a racist comment toward an Australian player. I know it sounds ridiculous but it's not: the Australian in question is Andrew Symonds, the only Aboriginal member of the their team, often described -- both by the Australian media and by the worldwide cricket media (who, I presume, take their lead from the Aussies papers) as Australia's "only black player." Harbhajan Singh, the Indian -- incidentally a Sikh man -- is supposed to have called Symonds a monkey. There's some history here: Symonds was part of the Australian team that was in India in 2007 and he was taunted with what were described as "monkey sounds" by the Nagpur audience. There was a bit of a hoo-hah and a complaint was filed but since the taunts were from the audience and those who were caught on TV cameras producing the noises were kicked out, nothing much was done about this, I don't think. So before we get to the incident on the field, I should say that there's a fair bit of what I would call heckling that goes on between teams during matches, Australia in particular are known to verbalize a fair bit when things are not going their way, Symonds had had a miraculous miscall from an umpire in this match that had allowed him to go on playing after he'd been outed (he admitted this himself after the fact) and "Bhajji" -- as Harbhajan Singh is known in India -- is notorious for his quick temper over heckling, be it from audience members in the stands or other players. All in all, it made for a high pressure situation all around: then the cameras show Symonds saying something to Bhajji as they cross paths, Bhajji does a double take and indicates taht Symonds should come closer and then there's a bit of quick talk to each other. A couple of other players come up to see what's going on, Symonds recounts something to his captain, Ricky Ponting (I know, don't you love these names?), who is joined by the two umpires (including the one who let off Symonds with the miscall) and words are exchanged. Bhajji is clearly being admonished for something, and he is clearly responding vehemently -- but everyone is very discreet and hands are held up to obstruct lip readers!

The next day -- today -- it's all over the media that Harbhajjan is up on a "code of conduct" charge for calling Symonds a monkey. He says he didn't, that what went on was normal on-field talk, the umpires haven't actually overheard anything, there are a couple of players from each of the sides lined up on each side supporting their guys. But the cynic in me says of course they would.... it's a question of national pride, and reputation, at this point. There's no question in my mind that heated words were exchanged though I don't know whether the word "monkey" was ever uttered; I don't doubt (for I saw it) that Symonds provoked Harbhajjan.... nor do I doubt that Bhajji is capable of being racist and offensive. One of the weirdest and saddest legacies of colonialism is that India has internalized a racial totem pole of hierarchies. But this is a weird place to end up: for one thing, given the clear distinction made in North American contexts between "black" and "brown," if I'd been asked to describe Symonds' race, I'd have called him a "brown" man so I find some irony in one brown man being racist toward another. A cricket commentator -- displaying his own naivete and internalized racism, no doubt -- remarked that he didn't see the room for the furor, given that Symonds looked "as Indian" as Harbhajjan!!!

The kerfuffle here seems to me to be a two-fold one: there are a fair number of cricket types emerging from the woodwork, including former Australian and English captains, suggesting that this kind of thing is all too common on the field and that "what happens on the field should be left on the field." If this is true -- and I see no reason why it shouldn't be -- then there's a lot wrong with the state of play. I'm a believer in lines in the sand; I think that there's no place -- and there shouldn't be any tolerance -- for this kind of stuff anywhere, and especially not in the high-profile world of professional sport. But -- and tell me if you think I'm wrong here -- I'm not convinced that the "make an example out of this" is the best way of addressing what appears to be an endemic problem. There's been a lot of coverage of this -- as you may expect in both the Aussie and Indian media: what I'm intrigued by is that the Oz media itself isn't all that happy with this -- there's a particularly interesting piece in the Sydney Herald that makes the point that Symonds and Bhajji have been pitchforked into changing global perceptions of what is appropriate behaviour. And to me, underlying all of this, there is -- as there is in so much of anything deemed a national sport -- a sense of national honour, or pride, at stake. India seems to want to make the case that the Australians dish it out but can't it back (actually, this isn't my take on it -- that's Grieg's (the former English captain's take); Australia wants to demonstrate that they're a politically correct and sensitive country with a team that's left behind any racist and colonial inheritance it once had. Andrew Symonds, about whom I know very little, but who I imagine had to fight pretty hard to make it as far as he has, given his constant identification as "Australian cricket's only black player" is caught in the middle, as is Harbhajjan Singh, a young man from with little education and little control over his temper. In the end, they are the two who actually have to deal with whatever fallout there will be from this row. What say you, at least those of you who made it this far?

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.

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....