It's the strangest thing, thousands of miles away from 'home', the same distance from 'normal', in a place that is slowly becoming my most familiar reality to see old feelings and queasy pains rear their ugly heads again, seemingly having burrowed their way from new york to Kolkata, brushing aside their cloaks of dirt and detritus to re-reveal themselves in full glory. In less muddy terms, I feel like I had subconsciously made a rather strange assumption in the first few weeks upon landing here, spontaneously formed in the humid smog that led from the tarmac to the winding city streets. Considering the constant inundation of so many new difficulties and mentalities, every day becoming a process of assimilation and amalgamation, navigating a rough terrain wholly different from home, I had somehow thought that I would be spared from those feelings and that contributed the more average peaks and valleys of life back in Amerika. However, after a couple of the strangest weeks in quite some time, I'm realizing that (perhaps intrinsically tied to the fact that walking down the street is less of a bother than it used to be, that here really is becoming home to one degree or another) these kinds of feelings and ouches are a bit more universal than I may have imagined. If I want this to become my home, my reality, my everyday, than I need to be ok with embracing everything about such a reestablishment. If I want there to be a teleology rather than just a stasis interrupted but nothing besides car horns and packs of street dogs, I'm gonna have to accept the path as it bends and might become torqued and painful in the process. These past couple weeks saw one relationship never permitted to get going despite a rather strong impetus from the opposite member, and another... something... come to a close after a slow souring once I had stopped fooling myself it was something other than what it was.
Foucault, Terracotta, Dumb Fuck, Sociology, Cappuccinos, Street-tea, Facial Hair, Funny Pronunciation, Baggage, Post-coital cookies, Waking up to mist rising from pukurs, Stretchy smiles. Etc.
Done. Finished. It's time for a new start, but not because I've packed up and moved somewhere new, the kind of freshness tied to temporarily and its antecedents. Rather, it's because this is how things go in life. Wayward. But it's kind of comforting to feel these familiar feelings come rushing back clouded in cigarette smoke and a new saltiness in the air. Though through this haziness has also emerged an amazingly close new friendship, and a rather well-cultured shoulder to lean on. Home. Sweet. Home.
December 17, 2008
Bombs over Bombay
(Note this was written some time ago, during the terrorist attacks... excuse the nonexistant backdate)
I woke up this morning to hear (only after being called from the US) that a spate of bombings and hostage situations have descended on Mumbai, that a Mujahedeen group has decided to pull a series of attacks more alike to the recent bombings in Islamabad - bombing popular western/tourist/expensive institutions with precise large blasts - rather than the less targeted sprinkling of attacks which have occurred in other cities, taking place in crowded markets and main roads but disseminated throughout the area with a just as violent but definitely less focused targets. There are a number of strange aspects of the story so far, particularly in the reactions from the Amerikan media, the Indian media, Kolkata itself as one of the four metros, and... myself. Firstly, while this entire year has seen a tremendous and concerning up tick in the rate of bombings, this is the first story to make the top of the New York Times website, to ascend beyond style columns about dog sweaters and bok choy. Thusly, everyone in the Amerika is reading this event as a single catastrophe that signals a great terrorist takeover of India. This is simply not true. The Indian media has had a much more accurate reading, in my opinion. This event was frightening and meaningful in its degree and exact nature, targets, etc, but more concerning is how it exemplified the lack of training of the police force and the complete failure of their response. While events have been taking place continuously this year, and the lack of proper police action was slowly revealed, it took a drawn out hostage situation to reveal how misguided their efforts and strategy really were.
However, sitting on the opposite end of the country in a state with such an amazingly different socio-political situation, I feel bizarrely unaffected by these events. While everyone reads up on the news in the paper, and 'chi chi's in disgust over both the actions of the terrorists and the poor reactions of the police, people here seem fairly confident Kolkata won't be hit by an attack anytime soon. Yes, the bombs have been going off seemingly everywhere, and Kolkata as one of the metros is a perfect target, but for a variety of reasons and theories Kolkata is not seen as a target by the general public and (they hope) the terrorists themselves. Firstly, Kolkata is just so far east it feels rather aloof and separated from the more entwined Bombay/Delhi Metropolitan swath, and thusly farther away from their politics and issues, and those affixed to them as urban symbols of the larger India. Secondly, a theory held by one of my teachers is that too many Muslim militant groups and jihadists have large Indian centers and communities living in Kolkata, relatively unbothered by the police. If they were to attack so close to their own soil, a police raid is much more likely to occur and also to be be successful. It pays to keep your own lawn rather well-kept and unpocked by bombs I suppose. My most favored theory is that the political scene here is simply too distracted by its own super-local concerns that the greater national dynamic of Hindu/Muslim relations is drowned out to the point of being mute. While much of the rest of the country is being spurred on by the Hindu fundamentalism of the BJP political party as a rising alternative to the secularism of the Congress party, the BJP/Congress presence in West Bengal is almost insignificant. Rather, an intense competition between the 30 years incumbent CPI(M) Communist party and the (literally) grass-roots Trinimul party over highly local and almost entirely areligious issues primarily dealing with the increase of local industry, the decrease of farmland, and (occasionally) scheduled tribe status, dominates the political scene. Safety through a particular kind of chaos and destabilization. Neat!
I woke up this morning to hear (only after being called from the US) that a spate of bombings and hostage situations have descended on Mumbai, that a Mujahedeen group has decided to pull a series of attacks more alike to the recent bombings in Islamabad - bombing popular western/tourist/expensive institutions with precise large blasts - rather than the less targeted sprinkling of attacks which have occurred in other cities, taking place in crowded markets and main roads but disseminated throughout the area with a just as violent but definitely less focused targets. There are a number of strange aspects of the story so far, particularly in the reactions from the Amerikan media, the Indian media, Kolkata itself as one of the four metros, and... myself. Firstly, while this entire year has seen a tremendous and concerning up tick in the rate of bombings, this is the first story to make the top of the New York Times website, to ascend beyond style columns about dog sweaters and bok choy. Thusly, everyone in the Amerika is reading this event as a single catastrophe that signals a great terrorist takeover of India. This is simply not true. The Indian media has had a much more accurate reading, in my opinion. This event was frightening and meaningful in its degree and exact nature, targets, etc, but more concerning is how it exemplified the lack of training of the police force and the complete failure of their response. While events have been taking place continuously this year, and the lack of proper police action was slowly revealed, it took a drawn out hostage situation to reveal how misguided their efforts and strategy really were.
However, sitting on the opposite end of the country in a state with such an amazingly different socio-political situation, I feel bizarrely unaffected by these events. While everyone reads up on the news in the paper, and 'chi chi's in disgust over both the actions of the terrorists and the poor reactions of the police, people here seem fairly confident Kolkata won't be hit by an attack anytime soon. Yes, the bombs have been going off seemingly everywhere, and Kolkata as one of the metros is a perfect target, but for a variety of reasons and theories Kolkata is not seen as a target by the general public and (they hope) the terrorists themselves. Firstly, Kolkata is just so far east it feels rather aloof and separated from the more entwined Bombay/Delhi Metropolitan swath, and thusly farther away from their politics and issues, and those affixed to them as urban symbols of the larger India. Secondly, a theory held by one of my teachers is that too many Muslim militant groups and jihadists have large Indian centers and communities living in Kolkata, relatively unbothered by the police. If they were to attack so close to their own soil, a police raid is much more likely to occur and also to be be successful. It pays to keep your own lawn rather well-kept and unpocked by bombs I suppose. My most favored theory is that the political scene here is simply too distracted by its own super-local concerns that the greater national dynamic of Hindu/Muslim relations is drowned out to the point of being mute. While much of the rest of the country is being spurred on by the Hindu fundamentalism of the BJP political party as a rising alternative to the secularism of the Congress party, the BJP/Congress presence in West Bengal is almost insignificant. Rather, an intense competition between the 30 years incumbent CPI(M) Communist party and the (literally) grass-roots Trinimul party over highly local and almost entirely areligious issues primarily dealing with the increase of local industry, the decrease of farmland, and (occasionally) scheduled tribe status, dominates the political scene. Safety through a particular kind of chaos and destabilization. Neat!
November 25, 2008
WW (Wacky Whities) Strike Again
"You're White!"... glee!
I don't tend to go to bars much here, less often the bars attached to the main luxury hotels, the bars that attract and retain the largest possible foreigner/whitey population "out on the town in India" for a night. Though last night after encountering a number of locked doors of more desirable places and their annexed empty alleyways, we went to just such an establishment. There was a cover band fronted by a Bengali woman who despite the ban on public smoking seemed enshrouded in her own kind of sensual haze, playing Amerikan rock classics without even a shred of restraint or irony. There's a certain demographic here that has adopted Amerikan and British classic rock as their own anthem(s), believing in the power of these melodies and lyrics above anything else, and with an intention stronger than anyone I've ever seen before. Brows furrowed in concentration and zeal, eyes pulled tight in moody sacrosanct. More of a show, however, was the nebulous tourist doldrum that occupied much of the middle of the bar floor, made up of half fairly bored and confused faces, the others lost in the ecstasy of being a complete and utter mess. As soon as I got into the bar a girl dressed in last year's big summer fashions (when you're away from the west for too long, you do happen to lose touch after all) flailed her arms in almost frightening excitement and yelled "You're White!... where are you from?" the latter with much less enthusiasm and fervor than the former. This is true, I do happen to actually be exceptionally white. Though my only response was to point out that my friend Tahmid standing at my side whom they had not greeted with such pomp and celebration, while indeed being brown, was also from Amerika. As I sneaked away from this rather contrived and slightly stomach-tipping reception, Tahmid took over rather seamlessly within a few second of it beginning. Apparently all of this girl's tourist friends were leaving the next day, thus leaving her 'homeless', and so after all that she repeatedly asked Tahmid if she could stay with him. He avoided her for the rest of the evening.
On the other side of this tourist encampment was the real mess of the evening, a couple dudes embarrassingly trashed, breaking out into groin-focused dance every few minutes, occasionally falling into people or furniture, or simply grabbing a girl for a moment of dance, usually dropping her, or themselves, or everyone involved, onto the regrettably sticky floor below. The night continued on this queasy path: interesting comments and glances from all directions, punctuated by the slips, falls, or banshee-like yelps of the whiteys somewhere in the immediate distance. Germans looking for a little love on the road, men with ambiguous sexuality momentarily pushing their way into inconvenient spaces to posture before retreating back into the crowd in defeat. Photographers looking to get a picture of (us) whiteys, particularly due to the radiantly blond tresses of my companion. The overall theme of the evening however remained a negatively connoted "wacky whities", sticking in my mind like a sour aftertaste. No wonder we're treated by strangers initially as these horrible, soulless tourists, more likely to pay 200 rupees for a beer at an enclosed sanctum of a bar than to really actually try to understand anything about the place they actually are or even have a simple civil interaction. Because it doesn't matter - when the haze of the night before passes they'll probably pack up whatever knickknacks they've picked up from street vendors at inflated prices over the past few days, get on a train, go somewhere else, and buy a beer. And maybe dance.
I don't tend to go to bars much here, less often the bars attached to the main luxury hotels, the bars that attract and retain the largest possible foreigner/whitey population "out on the town in India" for a night. Though last night after encountering a number of locked doors of more desirable places and their annexed empty alleyways, we went to just such an establishment. There was a cover band fronted by a Bengali woman who despite the ban on public smoking seemed enshrouded in her own kind of sensual haze, playing Amerikan rock classics without even a shred of restraint or irony. There's a certain demographic here that has adopted Amerikan and British classic rock as their own anthem(s), believing in the power of these melodies and lyrics above anything else, and with an intention stronger than anyone I've ever seen before. Brows furrowed in concentration and zeal, eyes pulled tight in moody sacrosanct. More of a show, however, was the nebulous tourist doldrum that occupied much of the middle of the bar floor, made up of half fairly bored and confused faces, the others lost in the ecstasy of being a complete and utter mess. As soon as I got into the bar a girl dressed in last year's big summer fashions (when you're away from the west for too long, you do happen to lose touch after all) flailed her arms in almost frightening excitement and yelled "You're White!... where are you from?" the latter with much less enthusiasm and fervor than the former. This is true, I do happen to actually be exceptionally white. Though my only response was to point out that my friend Tahmid standing at my side whom they had not greeted with such pomp and celebration, while indeed being brown, was also from Amerika. As I sneaked away from this rather contrived and slightly stomach-tipping reception, Tahmid took over rather seamlessly within a few second of it beginning. Apparently all of this girl's tourist friends were leaving the next day, thus leaving her 'homeless', and so after all that she repeatedly asked Tahmid if she could stay with him. He avoided her for the rest of the evening.
On the other side of this tourist encampment was the real mess of the evening, a couple dudes embarrassingly trashed, breaking out into groin-focused dance every few minutes, occasionally falling into people or furniture, or simply grabbing a girl for a moment of dance, usually dropping her, or themselves, or everyone involved, onto the regrettably sticky floor below. The night continued on this queasy path: interesting comments and glances from all directions, punctuated by the slips, falls, or banshee-like yelps of the whiteys somewhere in the immediate distance. Germans looking for a little love on the road, men with ambiguous sexuality momentarily pushing their way into inconvenient spaces to posture before retreating back into the crowd in defeat. Photographers looking to get a picture of (us) whiteys, particularly due to the radiantly blond tresses of my companion. The overall theme of the evening however remained a negatively connoted "wacky whities", sticking in my mind like a sour aftertaste. No wonder we're treated by strangers initially as these horrible, soulless tourists, more likely to pay 200 rupees for a beer at an enclosed sanctum of a bar than to really actually try to understand anything about the place they actually are or even have a simple civil interaction. Because it doesn't matter - when the haze of the night before passes they'll probably pack up whatever knickknacks they've picked up from street vendors at inflated prices over the past few days, get on a train, go somewhere else, and buy a beer. And maybe dance.
November 16, 2008
Temp
1. A temporary temporality
As I close in on the sixth month mark here, evaluating in which ways I've 'succeeded' and in which ways I've faltered or fallen*, I keep turning on a defining characteristic of the very time I spend here - the temporary nature of it all. No matter how much I feel like I finally belong here, no matter how many fewer stares I get per day or how many more successful conversations I manage to carry off, how much more integrated I become in this neighborhood and its quirky dynamics, always nagging and tugging is how temporary all of this is. All of the friendships, relationships, apartments, ideas, feelings, desires, hatreds, wants, needs... all are based on an assumption of this one momentous moment, with the suspension of the outside world and my life within it. This is a flash that happens to last a few months rather than minutes yet ends all the same, without even the slightest vestige or trace of its glow, no matter how brilliant it had been. This temporality effects more than the obtuse and the diffuse existential mindset, rather it constantly fucks with you, leaving you wondering where you really are and what your situation really is. 'Best friends' disappear back to the west, crowded social schedules suddenly appear vacant and bleak, as the particular tenants in this expatriate boarding home pack up their books and trinkets and head back to a world with stop-lights on every corner and 24 hour delis.
Basically, I feel lonely sometimes even when sitting in front of a friend, their image almost flickering before my eyes with a hollow transparency... poof.
* = My goal being the comically simple aim of actually just existing without too much in the way of defined goals, plans, or desires. In other words, living in someplace very very different for one year, without reading or injecting too much into it, letting it happen as it seems to be inclined rather than trying to force or contrive something different or alien out of it.
2. Again sick
Again tonight I'll go to sleep hoping not to wake up shaking from cold halfway through - a particularly obnoxious effect of my recent bout of sick. The newspapers have been blaring on and on about the 'vector diseases' (malaria, dengue, encephalitis) and their recent rise, pushing me in a fair bit of worry and concern to the doctor today, confused as to the reason behind this fever that has lasted several days now, swinging rapidly between 96 to 102, never seeming to actually abate (a particularly common pattern for malaria). I went to the doctor's chambers at 7 Hindustan Road, a tiny room with half-doors like an old-west saloon, kirtan or baul music (I can never tell the difference outside of guessing) so loud it was difficult for my complaints of headaches and 'loose motion' to be heard, a sikh man with both a turban and a motorcycle helmet (the two often come paired, it's true!) rudely peeping his face over the doors in impatient agitation. The blood test, after much waiting, and the possession and presentation of a number of numbered disks to mark my place in a tumultuous queue, luckily came back negative. I'm still sick, but now I just need to wait it out with heavy doses of antibiotics, happy to know I didn't somehow manage to catch malaria. No malaria! No vector diseases today!
As I close in on the sixth month mark here, evaluating in which ways I've 'succeeded' and in which ways I've faltered or fallen*, I keep turning on a defining characteristic of the very time I spend here - the temporary nature of it all. No matter how much I feel like I finally belong here, no matter how many fewer stares I get per day or how many more successful conversations I manage to carry off, how much more integrated I become in this neighborhood and its quirky dynamics, always nagging and tugging is how temporary all of this is. All of the friendships, relationships, apartments, ideas, feelings, desires, hatreds, wants, needs... all are based on an assumption of this one momentous moment, with the suspension of the outside world and my life within it. This is a flash that happens to last a few months rather than minutes yet ends all the same, without even the slightest vestige or trace of its glow, no matter how brilliant it had been. This temporality effects more than the obtuse and the diffuse existential mindset, rather it constantly fucks with you, leaving you wondering where you really are and what your situation really is. 'Best friends' disappear back to the west, crowded social schedules suddenly appear vacant and bleak, as the particular tenants in this expatriate boarding home pack up their books and trinkets and head back to a world with stop-lights on every corner and 24 hour delis.
Basically, I feel lonely sometimes even when sitting in front of a friend, their image almost flickering before my eyes with a hollow transparency... poof.
* = My goal being the comically simple aim of actually just existing without too much in the way of defined goals, plans, or desires. In other words, living in someplace very very different for one year, without reading or injecting too much into it, letting it happen as it seems to be inclined rather than trying to force or contrive something different or alien out of it.
2. Again sick
Again tonight I'll go to sleep hoping not to wake up shaking from cold halfway through - a particularly obnoxious effect of my recent bout of sick. The newspapers have been blaring on and on about the 'vector diseases' (malaria, dengue, encephalitis) and their recent rise, pushing me in a fair bit of worry and concern to the doctor today, confused as to the reason behind this fever that has lasted several days now, swinging rapidly between 96 to 102, never seeming to actually abate (a particularly common pattern for malaria). I went to the doctor's chambers at 7 Hindustan Road, a tiny room with half-doors like an old-west saloon, kirtan or baul music (I can never tell the difference outside of guessing) so loud it was difficult for my complaints of headaches and 'loose motion' to be heard, a sikh man with both a turban and a motorcycle helmet (the two often come paired, it's true!) rudely peeping his face over the doors in impatient agitation. The blood test, after much waiting, and the possession and presentation of a number of numbered disks to mark my place in a tumultuous queue, luckily came back negative. I'm still sick, but now I just need to wait it out with heavy doses of antibiotics, happy to know I didn't somehow manage to catch malaria. No malaria! No vector diseases today!
November 10, 2008
Week ??? (Disappearance, etc...)
I disappeared again. It was accidental, mostly. I think this weekly updating scheme was a bit to ambitious. I often feel too lazy to make these little posts, especially when I'm so unsure if anyone's reading them. Though hearing from a few friends and acquaintances after a recent internet vanishing act makes me want to give it another go. So, here we go.
(This one's going to be a bit long...)
Weather! Scarfs!
These past few weeks have pretty nice, a strange return to a kind of normalcy. The weather has calmed to the point where the air no longer suppresses as it once did, when the shear heat kept the sweat flowing but any ambition to do anything at all mildly interesting at an all-time low. Interesting, I now feel that temperatures in the 60's-70's (ie. 20's c) are downright chilly and frequently need to bundle up in a scarf. I suppose that means I've adjusted, though it remains a bit baffling to feel a shake of a chill when it's still semi-tropical outdoors... as it always is.
Politics (US Election in Indialand)
The amerikan election came and went in Kolkata in a classically unusual and novel fashion. Due to the time difference the polls closed at around 6 in the morning, though luckily the consulate was putting on a results watching party in a smaller ball-room at one of the nicest hotels in town. Fruit-juices, chocolate donuts that reminded me of elementary school birthday celebrations, and miniature pizzas - that were so by name only - abounded, along with a ridiculous supply of pins, the mccain-palin ones remaining mostly untouched. Interestingly, or perhaps expectedly, the demographics of expats living in Kolkata lie heavily in the blue, save for the occasional patron of red, or really more commonly green. Perhaps it's because the group here tends to be fairly young, fairly open-minded, failry well-educated, fairly moneyed enough to be able to take a salary in rupees rather than dollars for a few months that this group of people tend toward the left. I'd be curious if the make-up of the expat communities in other metros like Delhi and Mumbai would be equally so unequal... if this was a trend specifically for the iconified 'neediness' of Kolkata, or if it exists throughout the larger India. As the polls began to get tallied and the sun slowly rose invisibly beyond the velveted and draped walls of our stately compound others began to filter in: the majority of my friends and friends-of-friends here, the volunteer-tourists from sudder-street, the stay-at-home mommies of big amerikan company men, the unmistakable glossiness of nri's temporarily back in residency, the old kurta'ed men there seemingly only for an interest in international politics. Lining the back edge of the auditorium a line of video cameras had been set up by local press and men with large cameras took pictures of occasionally enthused foreigners watching two jumbo-trons bedecked in tricolor (our tricolor) balloon archways.
[In the day that followed the election, the pictures of various expats, particularly the pretty girl ones, graced the covers or inside foreign sections of the newspapers perhaps just as often as the exuberant portrait of Obama himself. I myself was in a few, and of course kept copies of the better ones. Theres something novel about a picture posed with Obama, its subtitles cast in the unmistakable points and curlicues of Bengali]
Soon after breakfast began transmogrifying into mini-pizzas the election almost anti-climatically was called to its well received close, though we lacked the same kind of exuberant punctuation lent by the parades and celebration that I heard about back home in the big cities. We did, however, have a rather large amerikan flag cake and some hearty smiles. Our own sort of proxied celebration, momentarily tied back to our homes not through economic worries ill-fated news, but rather this poetic blessing of change. Sitting in this particularly polyglotic group, watching a self-titled mutt shake his fist in the air on stage as the new president, I felt an embarrassing little surge of giddiness and excitement. The future...? Mixtures, ambiguity, heterogeneity, internationalism, globalism, contradictions and juxtaposition... the future! change!
Varanasi
I visited my friend Davey, living in Sarnath right outside of Varanasi a week or so ago. The train ride itself was a bit of a good old adventure; Me, alone somewhere in northeastern India, in an overnight train for at least 15 hours or so, amused particularly by the varying supplies of snacks sold aboard the train and the occasional invasion of the train cars by packs of Hijras (Those characters that occupy a particularly strange fringe of Indian society, a troop of heavily made up and sometimes strangely disproportionate, their ranks made up of Eunechs, hermaphrodites, transvestities, transgenders, gays, and what have you), clapping and jeering at men frozen stiff in a mockery of deaf and dumb. They'd straddle mens legs gesturing awkwardly, their mouths twisted in a compromise between the Lolita and the aggressor, squawking retorts until men coughed up a few rupees in return for an air kiss not bargained for. Sometime after a tiffin-dinner and before the lights in the car flicked off for sleep, as the train lay idling in a field somewhere, no doubt rice-paddies spread invisible in the darkness beyond the window bars, flashes of light jostled about outside as a hush fell over the cabin. Suddenly people and bags were being rearranged for seemingly no reason as a swarm formed outside the train car, identifiable only by the uniformity of Muslim dress. My fellow berth mates refused to explain what was happening, their mouths clamped below eyed beaming apprehension and some kind of fun. I panicked a bit inside, thoughts of communal violence and muslim-hindu aggression managing to both cloud and cut through the situation. However this group of mohammadean pirates were little more than illegal passengers, boxed out of getting tickets due to the holiday-time uptick of travel, looking to sneak into any space left unoccupied, the panic on board only based in losing a little foot and luggage space, rather than a limb or an eye. I felt a little foolish. Ooops. But eventually I reached my destination without so much a hitch.
I witnessed Diwali (The festival of lights, the symbolic return of Ram back home amongst much celebration and invitation) gearing up in what's supposed to be its festival capital. I was a tourist for a few days, enjoying such things like crusty bread and a wide assortment of pastry, things really only available in tourist enclaves and thusly pretty sparsely found through Kolkata. There was a profusion of swiss, a gaggle of elderly English eating pizza riverside, and only a couple or so Amerikan mingling amongst the Indian population through the alleyways of this city so totally defined by such disparate industries. Firstly, and primarily there's the industry of death, of ritual burning and immersion, an economy based on fortuitousness and the merit of dying and being cremated in this particular spot.
(It's interesting, for a moment to consider the shape of the city with respect to this. Just as the city for so many represents a cosmic threshold, represents the hope and possibility of a better life, or more hopefully its very dissolution... a passage into the grace of nothingness, the city itself seems composed of one immense stark edge - The city sits heaped up along the shores of the Ganga, its density and solidity standing in profound contrast to the absolute nothingness of the river and the sandy flood-plain opposite. Urban and disurban, chaos and perfect emptiness - at night the curl of the city becomes illuminated, the faint bustle of traffic still echoing within its arteries, the flash and giggle of a firecracker carried along its shores, while the mist rolls in to confront it from the river, reflecting back only a faint and diffused echo of its light and life. A shallow reminder of the bustle we all occupy, obliterated in a near absolute and beautiful empty.)
Secondly, (I have strayed... now back to industry/economy), there is the massive tourist industry: The boatmen lining the shores shouting for customers (some boats filled with knick-knacks rather than passengers, which sideline the tour-boats in transit to make a sell), the children selling postcards, floating candles,and bizarre meaningless insignia to be painted on the bony plane between the wrist and thumb. A community of these touristing cosmopolites rummages through these shit-dazzled streets, looking for their own kind of (right of) passage, yet often distracted by the many opportunities to buy flowy pants and patchworks shawls and sling-bags, a kind of fashion that looks like an exotified and fetishized pair of Indian pyjamas, traditionally never worn out of the house and in sum alien to actual 'local' culture. Though in a sense, while this transient population exists liminally in its own way, always taking a train or more often an air-conditioned behemoth of a bus onto the next fanciful destination after a few days, and returning to the safety and austerity of their european espresso makers and smart minimalist furniture usually after a few weeks, in a city like Varanasi they have become their own culture, their own economy, their own market superimposed upon what actually existed in the city that attracted the first visitors, that somehow contrived the 'flowy pant' for sale to these dewy eyed and fair-cheeked spectators. The citizens might be temporary, might be only renting and loaning their small guest-house residences, their membership to their nation, yet this very nature stands permanent, ready to be filled by its fleeting migrants, its funny patrons. All hail the tourist economy, the tourist culture, the tourist nation, marching onwards to the distant horizon, trance music buffered by local percussion blasting around their army, che guereva standing at their helm, dreadlocks flying up in a sudden gust of unusually chilly wind... the wind of our own fleeting mortality, or perhaps only hankering for Thai food or a baguette whilst abroad in the 'fantastic kaleidescope' of India.
(This one's going to be a bit long...)
Weather! Scarfs!
These past few weeks have pretty nice, a strange return to a kind of normalcy. The weather has calmed to the point where the air no longer suppresses as it once did, when the shear heat kept the sweat flowing but any ambition to do anything at all mildly interesting at an all-time low. Interesting, I now feel that temperatures in the 60's-70's (ie. 20's c) are downright chilly and frequently need to bundle up in a scarf. I suppose that means I've adjusted, though it remains a bit baffling to feel a shake of a chill when it's still semi-tropical outdoors... as it always is.
Politics (US Election in Indialand)
The amerikan election came and went in Kolkata in a classically unusual and novel fashion. Due to the time difference the polls closed at around 6 in the morning, though luckily the consulate was putting on a results watching party in a smaller ball-room at one of the nicest hotels in town. Fruit-juices, chocolate donuts that reminded me of elementary school birthday celebrations, and miniature pizzas - that were so by name only - abounded, along with a ridiculous supply of pins, the mccain-palin ones remaining mostly untouched. Interestingly, or perhaps expectedly, the demographics of expats living in Kolkata lie heavily in the blue, save for the occasional patron of red, or really more commonly green. Perhaps it's because the group here tends to be fairly young, fairly open-minded, failry well-educated, fairly moneyed enough to be able to take a salary in rupees rather than dollars for a few months that this group of people tend toward the left. I'd be curious if the make-up of the expat communities in other metros like Delhi and Mumbai would be equally so unequal... if this was a trend specifically for the iconified 'neediness' of Kolkata, or if it exists throughout the larger India. As the polls began to get tallied and the sun slowly rose invisibly beyond the velveted and draped walls of our stately compound others began to filter in: the majority of my friends and friends-of-friends here, the volunteer-tourists from sudder-street, the stay-at-home mommies of big amerikan company men, the unmistakable glossiness of nri's temporarily back in residency, the old kurta'ed men there seemingly only for an interest in international politics. Lining the back edge of the auditorium a line of video cameras had been set up by local press and men with large cameras took pictures of occasionally enthused foreigners watching two jumbo-trons bedecked in tricolor (our tricolor) balloon archways.
[In the day that followed the election, the pictures of various expats, particularly the pretty girl ones, graced the covers or inside foreign sections of the newspapers perhaps just as often as the exuberant portrait of Obama himself. I myself was in a few, and of course kept copies of the better ones. Theres something novel about a picture posed with Obama, its subtitles cast in the unmistakable points and curlicues of Bengali]
Soon after breakfast began transmogrifying into mini-pizzas the election almost anti-climatically was called to its well received close, though we lacked the same kind of exuberant punctuation lent by the parades and celebration that I heard about back home in the big cities. We did, however, have a rather large amerikan flag cake and some hearty smiles. Our own sort of proxied celebration, momentarily tied back to our homes not through economic worries ill-fated news, but rather this poetic blessing of change. Sitting in this particularly polyglotic group, watching a self-titled mutt shake his fist in the air on stage as the new president, I felt an embarrassing little surge of giddiness and excitement. The future...? Mixtures, ambiguity, heterogeneity, internationalism, globalism, contradictions and juxtaposition... the future! change!
Varanasi
I visited my friend Davey, living in Sarnath right outside of Varanasi a week or so ago. The train ride itself was a bit of a good old adventure; Me, alone somewhere in northeastern India, in an overnight train for at least 15 hours or so, amused particularly by the varying supplies of snacks sold aboard the train and the occasional invasion of the train cars by packs of Hijras (Those characters that occupy a particularly strange fringe of Indian society, a troop of heavily made up and sometimes strangely disproportionate, their ranks made up of Eunechs, hermaphrodites, transvestities, transgenders, gays, and what have you), clapping and jeering at men frozen stiff in a mockery of deaf and dumb. They'd straddle mens legs gesturing awkwardly, their mouths twisted in a compromise between the Lolita and the aggressor, squawking retorts until men coughed up a few rupees in return for an air kiss not bargained for. Sometime after a tiffin-dinner and before the lights in the car flicked off for sleep, as the train lay idling in a field somewhere, no doubt rice-paddies spread invisible in the darkness beyond the window bars, flashes of light jostled about outside as a hush fell over the cabin. Suddenly people and bags were being rearranged for seemingly no reason as a swarm formed outside the train car, identifiable only by the uniformity of Muslim dress. My fellow berth mates refused to explain what was happening, their mouths clamped below eyed beaming apprehension and some kind of fun. I panicked a bit inside, thoughts of communal violence and muslim-hindu aggression managing to both cloud and cut through the situation. However this group of mohammadean pirates were little more than illegal passengers, boxed out of getting tickets due to the holiday-time uptick of travel, looking to sneak into any space left unoccupied, the panic on board only based in losing a little foot and luggage space, rather than a limb or an eye. I felt a little foolish. Ooops. But eventually I reached my destination without so much a hitch.
I witnessed Diwali (The festival of lights, the symbolic return of Ram back home amongst much celebration and invitation) gearing up in what's supposed to be its festival capital. I was a tourist for a few days, enjoying such things like crusty bread and a wide assortment of pastry, things really only available in tourist enclaves and thusly pretty sparsely found through Kolkata. There was a profusion of swiss, a gaggle of elderly English eating pizza riverside, and only a couple or so Amerikan mingling amongst the Indian population through the alleyways of this city so totally defined by such disparate industries. Firstly, and primarily there's the industry of death, of ritual burning and immersion, an economy based on fortuitousness and the merit of dying and being cremated in this particular spot.
(It's interesting, for a moment to consider the shape of the city with respect to this. Just as the city for so many represents a cosmic threshold, represents the hope and possibility of a better life, or more hopefully its very dissolution... a passage into the grace of nothingness, the city itself seems composed of one immense stark edge - The city sits heaped up along the shores of the Ganga, its density and solidity standing in profound contrast to the absolute nothingness of the river and the sandy flood-plain opposite. Urban and disurban, chaos and perfect emptiness - at night the curl of the city becomes illuminated, the faint bustle of traffic still echoing within its arteries, the flash and giggle of a firecracker carried along its shores, while the mist rolls in to confront it from the river, reflecting back only a faint and diffused echo of its light and life. A shallow reminder of the bustle we all occupy, obliterated in a near absolute and beautiful empty.)
Secondly, (I have strayed... now back to industry/economy), there is the massive tourist industry: The boatmen lining the shores shouting for customers (some boats filled with knick-knacks rather than passengers, which sideline the tour-boats in transit to make a sell), the children selling postcards, floating candles,and bizarre meaningless insignia to be painted on the bony plane between the wrist and thumb. A community of these touristing cosmopolites rummages through these shit-dazzled streets, looking for their own kind of (right of) passage, yet often distracted by the many opportunities to buy flowy pants and patchworks shawls and sling-bags, a kind of fashion that looks like an exotified and fetishized pair of Indian pyjamas, traditionally never worn out of the house and in sum alien to actual 'local' culture. Though in a sense, while this transient population exists liminally in its own way, always taking a train or more often an air-conditioned behemoth of a bus onto the next fanciful destination after a few days, and returning to the safety and austerity of their european espresso makers and smart minimalist furniture usually after a few weeks, in a city like Varanasi they have become their own culture, their own economy, their own market superimposed upon what actually existed in the city that attracted the first visitors, that somehow contrived the 'flowy pant' for sale to these dewy eyed and fair-cheeked spectators. The citizens might be temporary, might be only renting and loaning their small guest-house residences, their membership to their nation, yet this very nature stands permanent, ready to be filled by its fleeting migrants, its funny patrons. All hail the tourist economy, the tourist culture, the tourist nation, marching onwards to the distant horizon, trance music buffered by local percussion blasting around their army, che guereva standing at their helm, dreadlocks flying up in a sudden gust of unusually chilly wind... the wind of our own fleeting mortality, or perhaps only hankering for Thai food or a baguette whilst abroad in the 'fantastic kaleidescope' of India.
Week Sixteen (Idolatrous New Years?)
1. A Shiva Lingam in a Pretty Red Dress
While I had good intentions of joining a few other abroad jews this week for what turned out to be a rather short and sparsely populated Rosh Ha'shanah service (lacking a minyan it didn't take place in earnest), a late night and a later rise got in the way of such things. Instead, I spent the day primarily walking about under a blazing Indian sun, occasionally partaking of my (and others') religious whims. Before a go of rather universalist tashlich, a disowning of sins through the flinging of bread, I went with a friend for a dosa at our beloved and often frequented South Indian Club. After our normal go of things, after the saf/fennel was delivered to the table and the bill was paid amidst the seeds, the fellow who usually says nothing to us besides an exuberant "meals", "special", or the occasional "masala, cheese, etc...", simply pointed us to go upstairs, escorted by a small child. It was clear something was in the air besides a the normal smell of spice and sweat; while eating women had been gathering in the courtyard, sipping cha out of tiny pink plastic cups, looking profoundly satisfied. Without knowing exactly where we were going, but trusting out hosts on the quality of their dosas and the heartiness of their reception, we ended up in a large room with an even larger group of almost entirely middle age women sitting in plastic chairs facing a rather gaudily done up shrine, gossiping and taking little notice of the prayers being sung through two complimentary loudspeakers. Beneath the drapes of shiny plastic ruffles sat a veritable pantheon of gods, elephants, and happily smiling figurines, in attendance to what appeared to be a Shiv-Durga mash-up... a shiva linga done up with a little red and gold outfit, with a portrait of durga displayed behind. Simultaneously a exalted mash-up of the male and female, the paternal and the maternal, and simultaneously a stone penis in a dress. After our fill of banter and shiny things we left, picking up a ziploc baggy each of prasad and a saffron plastic bag filled with coconut, leaves, and a chunk of turmeric. I bought a loaf of "Atta-Shakti" bread - after returning the one that appeared to be full of a small contingent of ants - on the way to the nearby lake, where we proceeded to enjoy tashlich complimented by an at par number of stairs and a scenery of palm trees and concrete condominiums in the distance.
As I flicked the bits of bread into the water and snacked upon the grab-bag of prasad, I wondered more amusingly than seriously about how 'kosher' of a holiday I was conducting, considering the lack of proper hebrew prayer and its traditionally inappropriate replacement with an unexpected but rather satisfying jaunt of idolatry. I'm not quite sure of the answer, but I had to ask myself what is the meaning of a decree against idolatry outside of the context of age-old Canaan, within a world of unitarian monotheisizing Hinduism, in a post-Vivekananda India? Was my not particularly fervent audience before this funny mash-up diety on one of the high holy days an assault upon Jewish values and an action in need of atonement, pled for over the course of this week before Yom Kippur, or was it rather a completely acceptable universalist approach to the holiday, floating in the tides of the oceanic feeling of religion, replacing exact ritual yet preserving mindset and sacristy?
While I had good intentions of joining a few other abroad jews this week for what turned out to be a rather short and sparsely populated Rosh Ha'shanah service (lacking a minyan it didn't take place in earnest), a late night and a later rise got in the way of such things. Instead, I spent the day primarily walking about under a blazing Indian sun, occasionally partaking of my (and others') religious whims. Before a go of rather universalist tashlich, a disowning of sins through the flinging of bread, I went with a friend for a dosa at our beloved and often frequented South Indian Club. After our normal go of things, after the saf/fennel was delivered to the table and the bill was paid amidst the seeds, the fellow who usually says nothing to us besides an exuberant "meals", "special", or the occasional "masala, cheese, etc...", simply pointed us to go upstairs, escorted by a small child. It was clear something was in the air besides a the normal smell of spice and sweat; while eating women had been gathering in the courtyard, sipping cha out of tiny pink plastic cups, looking profoundly satisfied. Without knowing exactly where we were going, but trusting out hosts on the quality of their dosas and the heartiness of their reception, we ended up in a large room with an even larger group of almost entirely middle age women sitting in plastic chairs facing a rather gaudily done up shrine, gossiping and taking little notice of the prayers being sung through two complimentary loudspeakers. Beneath the drapes of shiny plastic ruffles sat a veritable pantheon of gods, elephants, and happily smiling figurines, in attendance to what appeared to be a Shiv-Durga mash-up... a shiva linga done up with a little red and gold outfit, with a portrait of durga displayed behind. Simultaneously a exalted mash-up of the male and female, the paternal and the maternal, and simultaneously a stone penis in a dress. After our fill of banter and shiny things we left, picking up a ziploc baggy each of prasad and a saffron plastic bag filled with coconut, leaves, and a chunk of turmeric. I bought a loaf of "Atta-Shakti" bread - after returning the one that appeared to be full of a small contingent of ants - on the way to the nearby lake, where we proceeded to enjoy tashlich complimented by an at par number of stairs and a scenery of palm trees and concrete condominiums in the distance.
As I flicked the bits of bread into the water and snacked upon the grab-bag of prasad, I wondered more amusingly than seriously about how 'kosher' of a holiday I was conducting, considering the lack of proper hebrew prayer and its traditionally inappropriate replacement with an unexpected but rather satisfying jaunt of idolatry. I'm not quite sure of the answer, but I had to ask myself what is the meaning of a decree against idolatry outside of the context of age-old Canaan, within a world of unitarian monotheisizing Hinduism, in a post-Vivekananda India? Was my not particularly fervent audience before this funny mash-up diety on one of the high holy days an assault upon Jewish values and an action in need of atonement, pled for over the course of this week before Yom Kippur, or was it rather a completely acceptable universalist approach to the holiday, floating in the tides of the oceanic feeling of religion, replacing exact ritual yet preserving mindset and sacristy?
September 29, 2008
Week Fifteen ('-ism's, dead things, cellphones, batches)
1. Thinking about '-ism's while running, a good thing?
Kolkata is not a 'Cosmopolitan City', as so often proudly touted. I'm not actually criticizing the city for its very nature, only stating that proclaiming cosmopolitanism might be a little audacious and hasty, might indicate the desires of a certain upwardly mobile middle class, rather than reality itself. To explain, before moving here I was incredibly excited about the prospect of living within Indian cosmopolitanism, about the chance to live in a city where given a little bit of time I would be able to assimilate and no longer carry with me the stigma of some inherent 'otherness'. Thinking about this while running through the park today, pocketing my usual collection of stares as I went about my business, I've realized that a truly 'cosmopolitan' city is a nexus of otherness itself, a collection of others existing within the bounds of a placeless and global culture more connected to its inhabitants and their global networks than to its intrinsic geography. If a city exists within a true state of cosmopolitanism, a true dissolution of differentiation and hierarchical citizenship, then in addition to its culture, its very citizens should be global and to some degree placeness, creating a moment of difficulty when attempting to identify real citizenship. Meaning, in New York City, one of the most cosmopolitan of all cities, there is no way to determine by color, nationality, religion, or even language who is or isn't a true citizen of the city and its culture. The city exists as such a conglomeration of cultures and people that the global, the international, the other becomes the very fabric and constituency of culture and society. It is through this very ease with which one can assimilate and appear the citizen that the contest of true 'New York' citizenship arises, more an indicator of social issues such as gentrification than a mark against cosmopolitanism. In contrast, in Kolkata, I will never be considered a citizen, will never be considered anything other than a foreigner no matter how long I stay here. By the very fact that assimilation here is ultimately impossible is to me an iron-clad indication of anti-cosmopolitanism.
This might be an errant definition; I'm not sure of the actual dictionary entry. However, how else can a city's cosmopolitanism be measured? Should it be measured by its culture, by the number of foreign influences at play, by the number of foreign foods available and the degree to which they might eventually become mundane and familiar, by the number of foreign goods and brands sitting gleaming on store shelves, their prices converted into local currency and carrying within a hidden import fee? By these measures Kolkata is nearing a penultimacy of cosmopolitanism: Imported gouda cheese available by the over-priced kilo, American and European music tinkly away in air-conditioned malls, English literature available in stacks sitting near most major intersections. However, it is the very conscious repeated use of the word 'foreign' that indicates these things indicate a global economy, yet a culture and people who remain ultimately local. Foreignness is fetishized rather than becoming a readilly recognizable culture itself.
Furthermore, culture is not divorced from its people who lend it form and affect. If the color of a person's skin immediately makes one an outsider no matter the circumstances, to the point where it becomes clear one will never be able to assimilate into society at large, yet simultaneously this foreigner's culture is being enthusiastically commodified and consumed as exciting, Western, and novel, isn't there a fault of hypocrisy at work? Symbols of larger cultural systems cannot be appropriated piecemeal and superficially as entertainment and considered cosmopolitanism if they are completely divorced from an acceptance of foreigners themselves, the building blocks of this culture. No matter how much Kolkata becomes international and global in its culture, accepting the material and thoughts of the 'other' and attempting an ownership thereof, without ever actually accepting the other as the citizen himself, without seeing the local and the global dissolve into a simultaneous singularity of otherness and cosmopolitan identity, Kolkata will never become cosmopolitan. The day someone of white skin or some other obviously distinguishing mark of otherness can walk down the street without a single hoot or holler, without being thrown terms for 'foreigner' as insults in and of themselves, will be the day that this city can truly proclaim its cosmopolitanism, rather than merely holding up a false facade of global culture while simultaneous rejecting a global citizenry.
2. Dead things in streets
Today on the way to school we passed a dead body being carried by a few-dozen person strong funeral party westward along the main road. The body was lain upon a stretcher, completely covered with white flowers save to dark weathered looking feet emerging from the bottom. The followers steps seemed oddly peppy and jolly, like their were on a fantastic morning walk. As the body passed bystanders on the sidewalk stood and turned, doing penance to this anonymous dead body lost in a tidy current of lillies. Later, while walking back from a momo and jaggery yogurt dinner I stepped on the head of an enormous and mostly squished rat lying in the street, its body flattened yet its head remaining solid and pristine. A shout from a friend kept me from actually stepping down with any force, not actually crushing... popping the head beneath my foot but a felt the gentle pressure around the ball of my foot of a rat head through the thin soles of my flip flops today. I consider that an accomplishment of sorts.
3. Sabzi Wallah Cellphone
The Sabzi Wallah Kid (the passing subject of many past entries) got a new cellphone very recently. He likes it a lot and plays with it while sitting on the sacs of potatos. It is also a music player so he listens to it with earbuds, though so loud it every jaunty Indian beat is audible. Everything (cellphones, movies, horns) is incredibly loud hear, probably because everyone is partially deaf from the constant buzz of traffic. He sits outside most days on the side of the road so he must have quite a bit of hearing loss. But at least he can now play Xenia Snake and Pocket Carrom at his liesure.
4. Ten times dissonant
Listening to M.I.A. in...
01. (India)
02. A place often called 'The Third World'
03. A place called 'The Developing World'
04. A place dominated by a 'brown' population
05. A place where there is a constant ebb and flow of terrorist activities and bombings
06. A place where people regularly march and protest in the streets
07. A place where hammer and sickles are emblazoned on most buildings
08. A place where most people haven't heard of M.I.A. and wouldn't understand her language
09. A place where urban and social infrastructure is in constant decay and degradation
10. A place where words like 'left-front', 'communism', 'opposition-group' (etc) mean something
...is really strange and brings about a funny guilty nausea.
Kolkata is not a 'Cosmopolitan City', as so often proudly touted. I'm not actually criticizing the city for its very nature, only stating that proclaiming cosmopolitanism might be a little audacious and hasty, might indicate the desires of a certain upwardly mobile middle class, rather than reality itself. To explain, before moving here I was incredibly excited about the prospect of living within Indian cosmopolitanism, about the chance to live in a city where given a little bit of time I would be able to assimilate and no longer carry with me the stigma of some inherent 'otherness'. Thinking about this while running through the park today, pocketing my usual collection of stares as I went about my business, I've realized that a truly 'cosmopolitan' city is a nexus of otherness itself, a collection of others existing within the bounds of a placeless and global culture more connected to its inhabitants and their global networks than to its intrinsic geography. If a city exists within a true state of cosmopolitanism, a true dissolution of differentiation and hierarchical citizenship, then in addition to its culture, its very citizens should be global and to some degree placeness, creating a moment of difficulty when attempting to identify real citizenship. Meaning, in New York City, one of the most cosmopolitan of all cities, there is no way to determine by color, nationality, religion, or even language who is or isn't a true citizen of the city and its culture. The city exists as such a conglomeration of cultures and people that the global, the international, the other becomes the very fabric and constituency of culture and society. It is through this very ease with which one can assimilate and appear the citizen that the contest of true 'New York' citizenship arises, more an indicator of social issues such as gentrification than a mark against cosmopolitanism. In contrast, in Kolkata, I will never be considered a citizen, will never be considered anything other than a foreigner no matter how long I stay here. By the very fact that assimilation here is ultimately impossible is to me an iron-clad indication of anti-cosmopolitanism.
This might be an errant definition; I'm not sure of the actual dictionary entry. However, how else can a city's cosmopolitanism be measured? Should it be measured by its culture, by the number of foreign influences at play, by the number of foreign foods available and the degree to which they might eventually become mundane and familiar, by the number of foreign goods and brands sitting gleaming on store shelves, their prices converted into local currency and carrying within a hidden import fee? By these measures Kolkata is nearing a penultimacy of cosmopolitanism: Imported gouda cheese available by the over-priced kilo, American and European music tinkly away in air-conditioned malls, English literature available in stacks sitting near most major intersections. However, it is the very conscious repeated use of the word 'foreign' that indicates these things indicate a global economy, yet a culture and people who remain ultimately local. Foreignness is fetishized rather than becoming a readilly recognizable culture itself.
Furthermore, culture is not divorced from its people who lend it form and affect. If the color of a person's skin immediately makes one an outsider no matter the circumstances, to the point where it becomes clear one will never be able to assimilate into society at large, yet simultaneously this foreigner's culture is being enthusiastically commodified and consumed as exciting, Western, and novel, isn't there a fault of hypocrisy at work? Symbols of larger cultural systems cannot be appropriated piecemeal and superficially as entertainment and considered cosmopolitanism if they are completely divorced from an acceptance of foreigners themselves, the building blocks of this culture. No matter how much Kolkata becomes international and global in its culture, accepting the material and thoughts of the 'other' and attempting an ownership thereof, without ever actually accepting the other as the citizen himself, without seeing the local and the global dissolve into a simultaneous singularity of otherness and cosmopolitan identity, Kolkata will never become cosmopolitan. The day someone of white skin or some other obviously distinguishing mark of otherness can walk down the street without a single hoot or holler, without being thrown terms for 'foreigner' as insults in and of themselves, will be the day that this city can truly proclaim its cosmopolitanism, rather than merely holding up a false facade of global culture while simultaneous rejecting a global citizenry.
2. Dead things in streets
Today on the way to school we passed a dead body being carried by a few-dozen person strong funeral party westward along the main road. The body was lain upon a stretcher, completely covered with white flowers save to dark weathered looking feet emerging from the bottom. The followers steps seemed oddly peppy and jolly, like their were on a fantastic morning walk. As the body passed bystanders on the sidewalk stood and turned, doing penance to this anonymous dead body lost in a tidy current of lillies. Later, while walking back from a momo and jaggery yogurt dinner I stepped on the head of an enormous and mostly squished rat lying in the street, its body flattened yet its head remaining solid and pristine. A shout from a friend kept me from actually stepping down with any force, not actually crushing... popping the head beneath my foot but a felt the gentle pressure around the ball of my foot of a rat head through the thin soles of my flip flops today. I consider that an accomplishment of sorts.
3. Sabzi Wallah Cellphone
The Sabzi Wallah Kid (the passing subject of many past entries) got a new cellphone very recently. He likes it a lot and plays with it while sitting on the sacs of potatos. It is also a music player so he listens to it with earbuds, though so loud it every jaunty Indian beat is audible. Everything (cellphones, movies, horns) is incredibly loud hear, probably because everyone is partially deaf from the constant buzz of traffic. He sits outside most days on the side of the road so he must have quite a bit of hearing loss. But at least he can now play Xenia Snake and Pocket Carrom at his liesure.
4. Ten times dissonant
Listening to M.I.A. in...
01. (India)
02. A place often called 'The Third World'
03. A place called 'The Developing World'
04. A place dominated by a 'brown' population
05. A place where there is a constant ebb and flow of terrorist activities and bombings
06. A place where people regularly march and protest in the streets
07. A place where hammer and sickles are emblazoned on most buildings
08. A place where most people haven't heard of M.I.A. and wouldn't understand her language
09. A place where urban and social infrastructure is in constant decay and degradation
10. A place where words like 'left-front', 'communism', 'opposition-group' (etc) mean something
...is really strange and brings about a funny guilty nausea.
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