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....but you can tick India off on my BT-DT list. Five-star
India of course. And the majority of it planted in front of TV watching
Tendulkar, Dravit or Ganguly - and that's just the ads! World Cup
Cricket is everywhere and everything. They have two television stations
running 24 hr cricket: both matches live in the evening and replays
all night and day. And the radiologist I am visiting keeps getting
phone-calls: "yabba-yabba-yabba Sachin yabba yabba yabba 500Rs
on Kallis for man of series yabba yabba," as we sit in his
office with the TV blaring... All the hoardings along the road,
World Cup this, World Cup that. All the talk in the restaurants
and the TVs are set up specially in most of them I notice. You get
the idea... CRICKET MAD!!!
Why am I here? Initially scheduled for a training session in Delhi
(Delhi), this was changed at the last minute to Chennai (Madras),
but by the time I arrived the training was cancelled, and I was
doing demos for 5 days. Then when I walked in the door at the demo
site, at one of the best private hospitals in India I was assured,
the machine dropped its guts and refused to work. So the word was
"you go and rest now." When I had sufficiently rested and the replacement
parts flown in from Mumbai (Bombay) next day, it was discovered
that more than one board was toasted. Hmm. The talk then became
maybe Calcutta, in some dungeon somewhere there for several days
without McDonalds or waiters. By the time we survived a right-handed
lunch, and getting very little on my shirt, it was check out time
and a quick flight to Mumbai (Bombay) and a connection to Vadodara
(Badora) in the North West corner of India (India) where one
the best radiologists in India was working and would be kind enough
to put up with my company for two days. Did you know India has changed
the names of a lot its cities?
Red
Fort Market, Delhi
Badora, as everyone still calls it, used to be the Royal capital
of some principality in the Gujarat State. There is a partially
run-down but expansive royal palace, part of which is well-maintained
as a University, a zoo and museum. And no, they are not all in the
same building. The Museum here boasts a 3000 year old mummy, from
about the same time the floor of the museum was last swept, plus
some interesting paintings: a Titian, several Peter Paul Reubens
(or Paul Peter or one of the other Reubenses), a Poussin, a Millet...
Yeah, right, sure. But the ancient statues and Indian stuff are
pretty good. Just got to keep track of all those gods' names so
I can swear in Indian when I get home...
We are about 100kms from Mohandes K. Gandhi's birthplace. The Gandhiji's
later work was mostly done in an Ashram somewhere around Amenabad,
just north of here, currently the capital. And I am sure he would
have approved of me telling the six year old beggar children to
fuck off.
She's
seen me! Beggar child rushing for some photo money! Agra Fort.
OK, India. Just like those Mother Teresa's documentaries. Need I
say more? I have seen only minimally distorted children, and very
few beggars. Its fucking hot, but man, its a dry heat. Up north
anyway. Down in Chennai it was humid. It is soooooo dusty, here.
Heat and Dust, great name for a .... toothpaste.... Every road I
have been on has been under construction or destruction - I can't
tell the difference. Workers just dump the gravel or sand in the
roadway and leave it for several months, the traffic converging
into one lane, until a few men fit enough to drive the manually
worked pulley can lift and drop the pipes or whatever, and meanwhile
their beautifully dressed women co-workers walk in a squat and sweep
the water away with whisk brooms. The opulence of the women's saris
and their dress in general is so incongruous. Bright luxurious purples
and yellows, reds and blues, and jewellery glittering from nostrils
and foreheads. The men lounging in tatty trousers and shirts hanging
out. Most people barefoot or sandalled. And sooooooooooooooooooooooooo
many of them. A glimpse of the slums under the approach to Mumbai
airport...
Traffic. As expected. The drivers negotiate second-by-second life-threatening
situations with appropriate use of their bleating horns. Because
he has a tourist in his car, my driver is exceptionally toot-full.
Their continual blaring seems to elicit no response from any other
of the road-traffic. My driver was so good with his horn, he managed
to avoid 99.9999% of the motorcycles. That means he only hit one
in the fifteen minute drive from the airport. Bangkok-like tuk-tuks
are called "autos", and all manifestations of motorcycle except
safe ones are seen in profligacy. All the cars are this Art Deco
50's reincarnation called an Ambassador. Buses and trucks are just
nightmares happening frequently. Crossing the street as a pedestrian
is a real problem. I managed to cross the road with the assistance
of a cow that just went its own way through the all the nightmare
of twilight traffic, safe in its sacredness, me basking safely in
some reflected sanctity for once in my life... There are many cows
lounging around like sales reps, or pulling drays up this part of
India. Walked past the United Colors of Benetton, and the Baskin
Robbins (what - no Dunkin' Donuts?) down to the pathetic market
area. No-one even hassled me, except those brats of kids, rubbing
their tummies (need food, they gestured, with their hands coming
to their mouths) and holding holy cards on a brass plate for me
to buy. I had no Indian money. Twenty HK dollars would probably
get them killed.
And yes, Indian men all wobble theirs heads when they talk to you,
isn't it. And the waiters in the Indian restaurant are as obsequious
and fawning as you'd expect. Does everyone here do Peter Sellers
impersonations for a living? The vegetarian kebabs were really nice,
and the aloo ("potatoe" on the menu) curry was not too
spicy. Great food.
"Yes,
there is a public toilet just down the road." Agra, 50
metres from the entrance to the Taj Mahal.
TV, other than Star Movies and Star Sport and ESPN, seems to consist
of chubby moustached men chasing long-nosed chubby women while both
exchange pained high-pitched verses in traditional "songs", (you
can tell its music because the extras are dancing in a St Vitus
manner in the background) the tunes of which are about as hum-alongable
as your average Ravi Shankar sitar solo. The basic story seem to
be boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, girl loses boy,
boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, girl loses boy,
boy finds girls, and then they all laugh. Then it repeats. A few
times. And variations from channel to channel (16 of them) seem
to be based mainly on how fat the guy is, and how long the sari-clad
girl's nose is, plus colour variations (of the saris). Also their
are some nostalgic variations from the age of black-and-white unfocussed
TV, don't you.
Cricket update: Ah well, the Sri Lankans are well and truly
fucked and so off to bed and its back to "work" tomorrow. Who's
playing?
Very Early Next Morning: AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH, I'm
gonna die, I'm gonna die.... Repeat after me this mantra: om copious
watery stools, om copious watery stools... Aaaaahhhh I think I just
shit my brains.... Ooooooooh, no that was them now... I'm gonna
die. I'm gonna die... And Steve, STOP LAUGHING! It's a man's life
at stake here. Now the dry heaves - uuuurrrrrgghhh. No sleep between
2 and 7, running back to the loo every 20 minutes. I think
it was the filtered water I drank, rather than bottled. Or
maybe that tomato slice...
And great, India has just attacked some Pakistan incursions into
Kashmir, and Pakistan has shot down 2 MIGs. Excellent. Lucky they're
in different groups in the World Cup, eh? But I think I might run
(ha!) down and reconfirm my flights....
You'll be happy to hear things settled down (in my gut, not in Kashmir,
where Pakistan is reminding India it is now a nuclear power...)
after a day of not eating anything at all, pretty settled anyway
apart from the occasional gripe in the solar plexus. Now I appreciate
why we told all of our barium enema patients not to fart in the
taxi on their way home. (True story: a certain private clinic had
to pay for the cleansing of a taxi.) Walking to the practice next
morning, I nearly lose another load into my undies when a gunshot
blasts loudly just over the wall from me, and a pair of large monkeys
scutter out of the trees and gallop along the wall...
Man
in his portable shop, man asleep on his trishaw. Agra.
After another day wasted getting from North-West to South-East India,
I was escorted to an "artisan" village just south of Chennai for
the tourist bit. Here is where all the little stone elephant statuettes
in the world are made, or so it would seem. Dozens and dozens of
"artisans" - read "beggars with a hobby" - are chipping away
at piles of imported rock. Like an al fresco prison really. The
true drawcard is lots of granite stone-work from the 7th century,
bas-relief stuff hewn into huge boulders and some escarpments in
this little village (less than 1 million residents) around the end
of the sandy peninsula area. The statues and temples hewn into the
"living" rock, were mainly of Vishnu the protector, and Ganesh the
elephant-headed god of goodness and niceness. On these boulders
there was some really cool evidence of how they chiselled lots of
little holes into the rock, then poured in hot water create a fracture.
From a hill-top vantage point of a 7th century lighthouse/temple
we could see the local nuclear power plant. "The Pakistani's have
that No 1 priority for target!" says Babu, my guide. He was
only joking, I think. Waded ankle deep into the REAL Indian Ocean
(on an Indian beach!) with a group of fully clad swimmers, and they
all wanted to have photos taken with me. Nice people, and not a
beggar amongst them.
Saw women walking along the bare sandy plains on paths well away
from the road, water jugs or food baskets on their hips, going from
where to where I couldn't ascertain. It would have taken half a
day for any round trip from the village to any place nearby. There
were some tumble-down shelters made of palm fonds up ahead, surely
they couldn't be home? Incredible thing about these women and all
the others in India, & less so the men, is the dignity with
which they carry themselves and their burdens. They seem so assured,
so erect and confident of posture in their measured paces. Is it
the caste system or some other religious attitude which perhaps
gives them the sense of a definite place or role in the world and
hence a form of cosmic self-confidence, despite their horrendous
poverty and deprivation? I am not saying they are happy, because
the women sleeping on the roadsides rousing themselves at 6 am and
performing their sanitary ablutions as I was driven to the airport
in Mombai did not necessarily look it. They just didn't
seem to be self-conscious or self-anxious in that round-shouldered,
furtive-glancing, how-do-I-look way many western women have developed.
Good or bad, I dunno. I'd rather be neurotic than hungry, I think.
(I look in the mirror - success!)
Outside
the Red Fort, Delhi
In this fishing village I saw the original Indian beggar-cum-guru,
crouching on a rock in that arse below ankles way only Asians can
do (I see the reason now - they have no muscle bulk to their legs,
and yes they practice frequently), so old-looking, his clear eyed
expressionless gaze straight at me, black skin, white beard, white
dhoti (Indian version of a kilt). Look up 'wizened' in the dictionary
and there's this guy's photo. Nearby, striding with a clear-conscience
confidence to the market, some Euro-hippy too-cool-for-like-you
crusty-type-dude, looking like he thought they both belonged to
the same world. Wrong. Choosing to be poor doesn't make you a soul
mate with the destitute who have no choice in the matter, a lesson
people from rich countries, even George Orwell (Down and Out in
Paris and London, Road to Wigan Pier), never seem to learn. Unless
you are Gandhi (and he had his detractors), don't try it. It's only
another form of oppression or imperialism in my book. That's one
thing I have going for me in India - I know I don't belong.
For one thing, my cricket statistics are not up to date.
Cheers for now
Expat@Large
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