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?

2007

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the year, that is. Something about New Year's Eve seems to call for that kind of thing (and for me to play The Children of the Revolution loudly) so here goes, in no particular order:

The Good:

The Postdoc
The 5 weeks in London
Coming to India
Wandering around India
Family
Time to think
Research
The Beyond the Books conference
Spending two months doing nothing in Toronto
Discovering the Harry Potter books (and reading the first 6 the week before book 7 came out)
New Music I've loved : Junoon, DeVotchka, In Flight Safety and Joan Osborne
Surviving Dal
Chocolate, red wine, G & T
Can-lit: I devoured a lot of it this summer (thanks to my house/cat sitting gig!)
Reading fiction for fun
My wonderful housemates
Jane, my Ipod (thank you, Apple!)
Bollywood can be fun
The Tata Indicom "Walky" which lets me log onto the 'net from some remarkable places
My peeps, new and old (I don't know what I'd have done without you -- you know who you are! -- this year)
Moving back to Toronto
Missing the Canadian winter
Colour
Cats
Rediscovering Chinatown
Wonderful academic mothers
The joys of mail, MSN and letter/ postcard writing

Not so good:

Coming to India
(too much) Time to think
Family
My delicate stomach
The last few months at Dal
Leaving Toronto (again)
Cancer (two more people I care about were diagnosed this year)
Not finishing the book yet
Roaches on trains (don't ask! shudder)
Too much teaching
The winter of discontent in Halifax
Time spent reading crappy fiction
Missing my peeps (again, you know who you are!)

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So girls and boys and cats, I've learnt that some of the things that made me the happiest this year also have the power to crush me or frustrate me beyond words. I suppose realizing that is something, right? Now if I can just figure out what to do with this knowledge.....
Also, also, and really, I know this and I'm grateful -- the Good outweighs the Not-so-Good by so much that I'm humbled by how lucky, how privileged, how healthy and how happy I should be, and generally, am. When I think about how far I've come this year -- I can't for the life of me even remember where I was last New Year's (I know, that's a deplorable memory) -- I'm rendered wordless.

So I'll just wish y'all all the happiness you want for the new year and go now.

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.

Christmas in India

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One of my "correspondents" asked about "Christmas in India" so here goes:

What can I say about Christmas in India that won't sound silly? Here in Mysore, it's a sunny morning -- I'd say the temperature is around 25 degrees here. Apart from the schools being closed for the last week or so, it's been hard to remember that Christmas was almost upon us. There's been a slow buildup in the newspapers but that doesn't translate into reality -- the traffic on the streets hasn't changed, people don't seem to be extra festive and most importantly, shopping doesn't seem to have been affected. I don't know if it's any different in the malls in Bangalore -- perhaps it is, because the malls in Bangalore seem to be trying very hard to imitate malls elsewhere in the world -- but in the markets of Mysore, Christmas is just one of the many festivals that take place and are shopped for by householders.

The oddest thing is that work doesn't seem to stop at all for Christmas: the newspaper arrived as usual this morning so clearly the presses ran last night though it remains to be seen whether they do tonight and there is a house being built behind ours with construction guys on the job as a I write. Most of the shops are open and there appear to be both staff and customers in them. I'm so used to be being bored on Christmas because nothing much is open that it's very strange to be here and see life being carried out as usual. Government offices, banks and major businesses are closed today but other than that... I suppose it's not all that odd because the country more or less shuts down for many other holidays and religious festivities... or perhaps that makes this odder still? I dunno.

In any case, I'm just waiting for tomorrow, when I turn thirty.

Of Taj Mahals and Houseboats

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The done thing these days is to go to Kerala and faff about on boats -- big boats, little boats, motor boats, row boats, paddle boats, canoe boats, house boats, country boats, town boats -- ok, I made that last one up. But the rest are all available for the tourist trade. When Infosys Grrl and I went to Kerala last month, we did two boat rides from Ernakulam and enjoyed them thoroughly. I tried to convince Canadian Tourist that we should do one of the same rides again but in the end, we didn't. Instead we went to Alleppey and went on a house boat for a night: it was as lovely as everyone told us it would be and as I'd remembered it being from the time Blondie and I had done it four years ago. Unlike the last time, we ended up on a motorized houseboat -- which is bigger than the non-motorized version and is worse for the environment. We did ask for the non-motorized version but were told (very firmly) that they really weren't in use in and around Alleppey anymore, that they were not at all fun, that they couldn't go very far in a night, etc etc etc... it was quite clear that as tourists, we were expected to rent the expensive and worse for the environment motorized houseboat. So we did: we went on a smallish, motorized but non airconditioned (there must be limits!) houseboat called Vidya. The most interesting thing about it was that we were told -- by 4 or 5 different people -- that the number of houseboats in Alleppey has gone from about 100-150 to more than 400 in the 4 years since I was there last. When Blondie and I did this houseboat thingy, it was still a fairly offbeat thing to do; now, it seems to be part of every tourist's list of things to do in India. This isn't a moan about "how it was before" except that it is.... we saw half-a-dozen houseboat building yards lining the Keralan backwaters, all churning out ever larger houseboats. As it was, we were moored for the night in a row of other houseboats; and I don't think we were ever out of sight of at least a couple of other houseboats in our entire 21-hour "day" on the Vidya.

Some experiences are not destroyed by being jostled by crowds of other eager tourists. For me, seeing the Taj Mahal is one such. I've seen it thrice now, always in the midst of thousands of sweating, squirming, screeching Indian and foreign tourists and the structure still has the power to awe me. Perhaps my enjoyment of the Taj is a little diluted because I have to share it with so many others but the experience of the Taj Mahal is in seeing it (in the stone, so to speak) and the stone isn't altered by whether it has one spectator or one hundred thousand. The Taj is monolithic, it stands and withstands all viewers; it doesn't move or change or alter in any way, though we react to it. And do we ever react to it: I dare you to look at these pictures of it and not be moved by its cold stone perfection.

The Kerala backwaters are different. And a houseboat trip taken to admire these backwaters is quite different: it isn't so much a viewing as it is a living, a way to admire the sheer mobility of the life on these backwaters -- and for me, part of the appeal is that it used to be one of the few ways that you could encounter solitude during a trip through India. Not real solitude of course, for there you are accompanied by three staff people on your boat and then there are the people or person you're traveling with but still.... in the context of India, this is solitude indeed. The sights you see from a houseboat -- coconut trees, banana trees, rice fields, fishing nets, small houses perched on fingers of land threaded between the backwaters, all seemingly postcard perfect -- are not monumental in any way. They don't take my breath away and make me forget the hundreds of other boats plying the backwaters with me in the way that the sheer monumentality of the Taj can. They make me long to live there, to breathe in the warm, humid air and to sit in the shade of the coconut trees to watch the drunken reflections they cast into the waters. It's not a comment on the beauty of the two -- they are both sublime but for me, one was a sublime vision and the other a sublime experience. So perhaps this posting is just a comment on the effects of their respective beauty. I don't think I'd want to spend a day and a night gazing at the Taj. For all that it is beautiful, it is also a cold marble memorial to the traumas and agonies of married love and regular childbirth! Not to mention the traumas and agonies of those who actually built it. The Kerala backwaters are nothing like that: they are a warm and floating sensation and I'm very much afraid that if I go back to spend another day and night in them in another 4 years' time, all I will see will be the back ends of hundreds of other houseboats.

"All Cool All the Time"

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Alapuzzha, here we are. Also known as Alleppey. This is supposed to be the "Venice of the East" -- a little town that has become Kerala's backwater (house)boat ride capital. And it's a new thing: Blondie and I were here four years ago and it was nothing like as touristy or as polished as it has become. I should add that I've no complaints about tourisitiness in itself, places go through these cycles of becoming popular, becoming too popular and then going through a decline. I'm sure there were fewer tourists, fewer "guest houses" or "heritage homes" and certainly fewer houseboats on offer at Alleppey when Blondie and I were here. But I'm fond of indoor plumbing and if the cost of that is the sight of a few more hippy-dippy Western tourists in the town, well, I'm prepared to pay it. I also imagine that in a place of this size -- the town is a bare 3.5 km wide -- tourism, even on this scale, creates employment and wealth for the local population.

The "heritage home" we've ended up in is lovely -- nearly 200 years old and with modern plumbing installed! Doesn't get any better, at least not in my book. It's an interesting place in that it's clearly catering (in this season anyway) to the Western tourist trade: there are mostly white folks here and they are mostly in the 20-30 age range. So they're not quite the 18 year old backpackers heading for the beach parties... but they're looking for a place to kick back and relax, drink a few beers and while the days away. I'm generalizing but I suspect that a lot of the people here would be willing to not step outside the welcoming walls of our "home" -- there's reasonably good food and reasonably expensive beer on hand, they can be consumed in the tropical lushness of a beautifully watery garden or on your own private verandah space and the rooms are great for the prices they're going for. You can walk in here and leave behind the hassles of being a traveler in India -- no desperate kids beg from you within these walls, no sights of abject poverty or deprivation meet your eyes here. Inside here, it is as one of the 20-something boys (yes, I know but they are really boys -- barely that much older than the school kids who line up to say hello to Canadian Tourist and shake her hand) said to me, it's
"all cool all the time." I understand the appeal of this, especially after our experiences in Jaipur and Agra, but I also resent the fact that I (and pretty much every Western tourist I've encountered in India) can walk into these safe havens and walk away from the reality of life in India for the poor and the weak.

Ok, rant and confession of conflicted self-criticism over. Incidentally, we were greeted at Alleppey station by a Bob Dylan wannabe, wearing a "The Times, they are a Changing" t-shirt and sporting a Dylan circa 1966 haircut. I don't know that the times are a-changing in the way Dylan imagined but... I was chatted up the owner and a friend of his, who were intrigued by my Indian but not quite self and in the process, I was told that "no one works here, everyone is free to do what they want." Hmmmm. Ok, but someone did cook that Garlic Fish we had. And I don't know what freedom had to do with that.

The chatting up happened after we'd eaten, as we lazed on rattan chairs outside our room. It was such a funny little session that I found it entertaining; poor Canadian Tourist found it a little alarming, I think, since she stayed with me for all of it, though I know she was really tired. But I figured if a chatting up starts with a discussion of family and progresses through a recitation of your qualifications, employment and residence history before turning into 20 questions, there is more curiosity involved in it than anything else. I think it's partly them trying to figure out how I fit into their binary model of "decent" Indian woman or not. On the "decent" side of the column for is that I tend to be fairly well covered up with clothing and that I'm traveling with Canadian Tourist, who is clearly old enough to be my mother (or my mother in law!) and therefore am only indulging in immoral sexual escapades (please spare me your lurid imaginings -- I'll just say that the Indian imagination when it comes to this stuff is pretty conventional). Also I speak Hindi, Kannada and Tamil and have a smattering of Malayalam, and I can hold forth in great detail about my family in Bangalore and Mysore (a sign of authenticity, that) all of which makes it hard for them to dismiss me as a complete tourist. On the other hand though -- and I do get that this is a big deal -- I'm clearly not traveling as Indian women travel. We're back to that question again. I'm reminded of the fact that when the first of my female cousins to marry wanted to visit her parents, her younger brother was dispatched to fetch her and escort her back on the overnight train journeys that visiting her parents involved. It was -- and by most accounts, it still is -- considered inappropriate for young women, married or single, to travel alone or even in a pair, without familial male escort of some sort. Why, Infosys Grrl -- who's just turned 30, btw -- wasn't allowed to go to North India with only me for company.

More Travels and Travails

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Dears! Sorry about the radio silence -- we've been traveling the country as a family party! Ma Mere, Canadian-Tourist masquerading as my mother-in-law, my Aunt, Cousin and I have been been from Mysore to Bangalore to Jaipur to Agra to Delhi and back. We've finally rid ourselves -- excuse me, lost -- the rellies and now it's just Canadian Tourist with me. We're in Kerala now: it's lovely, especially after the craziness of the North.

Anyway, yesterday in Fort Kochi (the oldest part of Cochin as was) we saw a dilapidated portrait of Che Guevara, hung in an empty office. Of course, this is still India so as soon as we started taking pictures of it, we gathered a small audience. It turns out that Che is adorning the walls of the Democratic Youth Federation of India; the comrades who were surprised by us were a little unsure of what to make of us (obviously middle class Indian woman and older white tourist admiring a ratty Che on their wall) but welcoming nonetheless. Canadian Tourist's assertion that she'd been to Cuba was met with nods and grins: "Che, Cuba. Ah, good." All in all, I think it will be my fondest memory of the day.

After wandering through Jaipur and Agra and Delhi -- cities which seem to be tourist hubs and nothing else, where poverty is obvious everywhere, with children begging at every corner and crowds of unemployed men staring after you, Canadian Tourist and I have decided that Kerala is certainly better off after its decades of unbroken Communist rule. We've yet to encounter a begging child, though as Canadian Tourist has remarked, the acid test for that is going to be the railway station. Still, while it's clear that there is poverty and unemployment here in Kerala, it's not as blatant. I don't know if that simply means that it's not visible to us.... but it seems to me that there isn't the same sense of desperation attached to making money off tourists in the South as there is in the North. This is pure speculation but that suggests to me that the economies here are not that weak because let's face it, economies that depend entirely on tourism are under a lot of pressure. There's always going to be a newer, cheaper, less touristy, more "authentic" experience on offer somewhere else.

There's lots more to be said about the tourist experience and what that means in a country like India. Until now, even if I couldn't pass for a local, traveling with family or with Infosys Grrl has meant that I've passed for some kind of Indian. That makes for an entirely different experience: there are some ways in which it is extremely confining to travel in India as an Indian woman -- if you don't live up to the expectations of "decency," then you're putting yourself at risk. For those of you who are skeptical, yesterday's Deccan Herald (the Bangalore newspaper) headlined a story about a woman who got into a taxi at the airport late one night and demanded to be taken to a "5-star hotel." A couple of failed attempts at getting a room later, she ended up in a service apartment belonging to a "friend" of the cab driver's... and emerges 5 days later, having been raped and abused. The story goes on; it seems to be getting murkier but my point is only that such stuff is not uncommon. I don't think it would happen to someone -- male or female -- who is readily identified as a tourist -- so being one and acting like one provides you with some immunity. In the popular imagination, Indian women come in two forms -- "decent" (whatever that means though I suspect it has a lot to do with silence and sexual repression and not traveling alone or demanding independence) or not. And heaven help the ones who are classified as not.

Mother in Law!

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as in, I've apparently acquired one! Every time Canadian-in-India and I went anywhere together in Jaipur, people would look from me to her and from her to me and then sidle up to ask consolingly, "is she your ma-in-law?" The third time it happened I just decided to go with it. Cousin and I decided to embroider on the story after a little while: Canadian-in-India became mother-in-law to us both and we used her as an excuse to not buy any of the trinkets on offer. "No, no, our mother-in-law -- that's her -- is with us and she's very strict, she won't let us buy your model of the Taj/the Hawa Mahal/T-shirt/bracelet/necklace/carved elephant with little baby elephant inside it/object of choice." And the crazy thing is that most of the hawkers -- usually kids or women -- would nod in commiseration and leave us alone after that.

Makes you wonder about their experiences of mothers-in-law, don't it?

Though there was one persistent and chatty fellow in Agra, who chatted us up on the walk back from visiting the Taj. After the strict ma-in-law story, he asked why she wouldn't buy his little plastic-floating-in-a-water-bubble-Taj. When we told him that she had no money, he looked us all up and down and said, "But she's come a long way -- I don't know where she's from but she's from somewhere not here. Are you really telling me that she has the money to come all the way to India and see our Taj and pay the Rs.750 foreigners entrance fee for that but doesn't have a measly Rs.10 for me?"

That kind of logic in little kids that age -- he must have been all of 10 -- makes me want to cry because of what it says about their experiences.

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!

Serenade!

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

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

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

G'night!

Kochi (Cochin, as was)

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

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

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

The Moon is a Wedge of Lime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All My Relations, Part the First

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

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

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

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

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

Overnight to Gulbarga!

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

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

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

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

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

Planes, Trains and Cars

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

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

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

Arrivals and Departures

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

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

Give me strength.

Book Review: Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair

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First things first: Ladies Coupe is published in India by Penguin and has a lovely cover. I'm particularly taken by Namas Bhojani's photograph of the woman in a train window that appears on the Indian edition; there's a North American edition available here but it's got the type of exoticizing Indian-village-belle-cover that I loathe! It's writer Anita Nair's second novel; she's since published a few other things that I'll check out soon.

Now for the book itself: I'd give it a B+, where an A+ is Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and an F is Pankaj Mishra's The Romantics. (Aside: I liked Mishra's Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, which I actually read while travelling through Bhopal on the way to and from Sanchi my last time in India but just couldn't get into The Romantics.) Dutiful Brahmin daughter and sister Akhila, who has a boring clerical job and lives with her sister and her family suddenly decides she's had enough and buys herself a one-way ticket to Kanyakumari. She finds herself in the "ladies' compartment" on the train and the book explores her story alongside the stories of the five other women who share this space with her.

It's a nice conceit for bringing together six women of different ages, classes, statuses and temperaments. But each of the women's stories are narrated rather than spoken... so what we get seems more of an overview or a summary of each of their lives rather than a sense of how they would tell their own stories. In fact, while the stories are different, the narrative voices and tones aren't distinctive enough for us to identify the character who goes with each story. I found myself turning back to the establishing chapter in order to figure which of the women's stories I was reading.

Anita Nair's style also fluctuates: there's an exquisite passage that chronicles Akhila's furtive introduction to eggs that begins with the line "It was Katherine Webber who brought an egg into Akhila's life" and ends so: "To Akhila, an egg was an egg only when surrounded by a shell and baptized by boiling water." In between, we find out that for Akhila, eating a boiled egg plain, with a bit of the white and a bit of the yolk, is "the composite joy of surreptitious pleasures." We find out how Amma, her chastely Brahmin mother, deals with her becoming an "eater of eggs." Much of the book, though, feels a lot clunkier than this airy bit that flirts with comedy. There are too many lines that make me want to roll my eyes. Take this one, for example: "Dare I dream again? Now that the boys are men, can I start feeling like a woman again?" Or: "it was only natural that he should be the one to show her the wonder of being a woman." Unexceptional sentiments, perhaps, but not expressed either originally or movingly. I know that I'm supposed to feel for Nair's characters at such moments but the triteness of the words simply block that response. It's in the details of the lives of Nair's characters that an original turn of phrase offers an original interpretation of a life or an experience. And there are enough such moments in the book to make it worth savouring.

I'm off to savour something else now: kachoris!