Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The New India

Tonight was my night off, and I was sitting at the bar a short time before being joined by Rajiv, a man higher up than me in the hotel employment food chain, who is none the less, friendly and chatty. He joined me for a drink, and after a short time we got talking about our favourites among the library of coffee-table books available for browsing in the hotel bar. 

Rajiv’s favourite was a book on the Ladakh region of the Himalayas. I’d never heard of this region, but had enjoyed looking through the book once, and he went and got it, brought it back to the bar, and we started to look through it together. 

Ladakh is a very remote region, under snow a large portion of the year, very Buddhist in culture, so monasteries abound. The people live simple lives, hearding livestock in the summer months and, as best we could tell, hibernating during winter. 

As he flipped through the pages I was admiring the simplicity of life, wondering on the hardship of living in this stunning but harsh environment. I made the odd passing comment to these effects. 

We turned to a page with a picture of some people sitting outside their rudimentary, one-room hut, and Rajiv shook his head, gestured toward the picture and said “Man, some people really waste their lives”. 

It was a bit of a slap in the face, because I’d been admiring their tenacity and appreciating the simplicity with which these people lived. “Well, ” I said, “I am not sure they’re any less happy than people who live in big cities”. 

“But these people, think of everything they don’t know. They’ve probably never seen a mobile phone, and have no idea what the internet is”. 

I paused….were these things really the measure of ‘not wasting’ ones life??? Hmmmm. “Maybe,” I ventured, “but….they seem to have some good community”…..

That was the end of our conversation. And I wondered if I’d fought the good fight on this one or not. It felt hypocritical to know that I sit in a hotel room each day, surfing the web, checking two email addresses and a facebook page, uploading and downloading and syncing my ipod, while checking texts from two mobile phones and at the same time “missing my community back home”. Did the people of Ladakh really have better community? I was willing to venture yes, and had argued that such community might make them happier, even amid a tough lifestyle, than all my modern gadgetry was making me, but I wasn’t about to give all the gadgetry up to achieve their kind of happiness. 

But what struck me more than my implied hypocrisy was Rajiv’s attitude. By his command of English, his accent and his role in the hotel, I know he’s come from an affluent background, he’s been very well educated at good schools and hasn’t wanted for anything in his life. And his attitude seems to represent what I see in much of India’s 20, 30 and 40 something crowds staying at this hotel, and in Gurgaon (the “millennium” city, full of the luxury accommodation and big office buildings of the new and wealthy India). Life is all about the modern gadgets and luxury items. I’ve never seen so many adds for luxury watches in my life – there’s even a luxury watch magazine. Laptops, iphones……one waiter I don’t know well was explaining to me how I should get an ipod because you can download music and it’s amazing….I didn’t tell him I already had one and did that a lot, because he was so into his explanation of it, and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a very cool item/system and love my ipod. But the awe and value placed on these things here is different to what I experience at home. 

I raised my surprise with another waiter once, about how many people I see in Delhi and Gurgaon who look very poor, but are all using mobile phones. Everyone in India has one, it seems. Oh yes, the waiter said, everyone has one. And, I continued, when people are sitting in the bar at the resort, with family or friends, everyone has their mobiles out on the table, turned up loud, taking calls. Oh yeah, he said, people definitely want you to see their phone, and hear how many calls they’re getting. It’s all about prestige. What phone you have is such a status symbol. How many calls you get is definitely making people feel important.

It seemed so sad that India is being sold on these ideals, when people go hungry and live in the dust of the streetside. My pianist blames the western companies that have flooded into India to greedily make their profits without demanding more from the government at the same time, the way they could have because the govt so wanted foreign businesses to come (have I mentioned that in a previous blog??). And I wondered whether it was the luxury I had, growing up in a western country where all the latest gadgets and inventions were available to me, if I wanted them, from a young age, if I simply had the money or credit to purchase them, that allows me to down grade them as meer accessories to life now. If I’d watched other parts of the world have all that access to cool stuff, and it had been kept from me for so long, then suddenly it was all there, maybe I’d be pretty enamoured with it also, pretty sure it was those things which were making life in “the west” so good. Maybe I’d think the people of Ladakh were wasting their lives not buying into the modern IT world too, if I were Rajiv. 

And really, neither of us have ever been to Ladakh, neither of us know what the people of Ladakh know, what they feel about their lives and whether or not, just out of the photo, there was a huge satelite dish feeding 150 channels into a big screen tv inside the one room hut. I’m sure Sony and Foxtell have certainly tried to achieve that end. 

So, I wasn’t sure whether I was sadder that the people of Ladakh would probably one day succumb to the drive to modernise, and get phones and igadgets a plenty, or that Rajiv, and many like him, have already been sold out to ideas about modernisation that I feel are just empty and unfulfilling. Or was I the saddest of all, having been born into sold-out-ness, and come full circle in identifying that community is what it’s really been about all along, but I’m just too addicted to the gadgets to ever let them go, so I fool myself into philosophising about community while sitting here blogging my thoughts to the e-world….hmmmmm. 
Posted by nomes in 00:33:55 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

So, I’ve made it to the final count down – 9 days to go here in my 5 star bubble life. About a week ago I crossed a line somewhere, landing me in a weird psycho-emotional zone that seems just blank. I think I’ve exhausted my ability to handle this much repetition and banality in life. The same routine every day, the same weather, the same faces, the same dresses, the same songs……none of it changes. I think I’ve broken my brain’s ability to engage. I stare blankly at walls and listen to the clock ticking…..

In an effort to not spend my last days of “blissful living” in a complete stupor, I have set about seeing the remaining “must see” sights in Delhi, and shopping for souvenirs. That done, I’ve decided I still need one more trip into the capital before I go, to make sure I’m done, not just with the shopping, but with India….at least for this trip. 

I continue to read in the paper of people being killed – by state-sanctioned communal violence (by way of inaction to stop it) in Orissa and Karnataka; – by the public bus system in Delhi; – by car-jackers; – for Dowry related issues; – at stampedes at Holy Shrine sites; – and by their own hand, in the face of financial or mental crises. India is an incredibly over populated place but it is also a place where people die way too often too! Westerners continue to tell me how life seems so cheap here, and I agree. As long as it’s not your loved one, death seems not to matter much. 

I have just finished reading Christopher Krammer’s “Inhaling the Mahatma”, which is a book recommended by a colleague in Sydney, and which I began before leaving home, finding it hard to get into. It took a month or so here before I picked it up again, and suddenly the book had traction for me. My attempts to understand India, in all it’s confusion, made the book (essentially an Aussie doing the same thing) very engaging. The book has been, ever since, a constant companion at my lunch table. It’s a big book, and I finished it only yesterday. It’s been amazing how I’ve experienced something and then picked up the book only to find the next chapter was about the very same experience, had by the author. I’ve found Krammer to be like-minded when it comes to his attitudes and assessments of India, its culture, its religion, its hypocrisy, its corruption, its politics…..but all the way through his book, Krammer still comes out positive about India, where as I was feeling more and more negative about this country. The book has been a good challenge. It possibly helps that Krammer fell in love with, and married, an Indian woman, and became part of her family here, which gives him a soft spot for the place I do not have. But still, I wondered how he could find India’s faults as uncomfortable (at best) and anger-inducing (at worst) as I did, and still feel fondly for it. 

At the end of the book, he is back in India, after a period of living in Australia again, and has arrived at just time of the year (October), when Hindu’s celebrate the Ramlila. During this time huge week-or-so long productions of the story of Lord Ram, as written by Tulsidas (who is the first guy to translate the original stories from Sanskrit to Hindi, thus making Hinduism far more accessible and popular, across northern India particularly), are put on in towns and cities all over India. These can be very elaborate productions, either on stages, or just put on in a field, where the actors walk amongst the crowds for their different scenes. Krammer talks of visiting the production in Varanasi, where tradition holds that all the actors are pre-pubescent boys, and those playing the various Gods are worshipped as if they are, in fact, the Gods they play. Here in Delhi, a huge production is put on, and the man and woman who play Lord Ram (the central character and one of Hindu’s best loved Gods) and his beloved Sita (who is kidnapped for most of the story, and Lord Ram is hunting for her) are actually married in life, when their characters marry on stage. My driver for my first day of sightseeing in Delhi told me this. I was trying to ask him how the two actors were chosen, but he couldn’t tell me that. 

Amid the religious fervour of Ramlila, Krammer goes through a process of converting to a very loose version of Hinduism, but not without grilling (quite satisfyingly for someone like me who has seen so much to critique in Hinduism) his chosen guru about the flaws and failings of Hindu-based India. The guru cannot answer the criticisms, but neither seems too worried about that inability. 

During his conversion phase, sitting on his guest house balcony, Krammer, overlooking the Ganges river and all the people participating in their daily religious rituals, makes a statement that summed up what I was missing, the difference between his experience of India and mine. He said (this is not a verbatim quote) “I was able to look out at India and appreciate it for what it is, not for what it should be”. This is a skill I don’t yet have. But his line had an impact for me. I don’t want to appreciate a place that has so many negatives (one of Krammer’s criticisms to his guru was something like “Maybe Hinduism itself is the problem, Christian countries don’t seem to have quite the same difficulties when it comes to public sanitation.”), but I can see now that the only way to change any of the problems here is to see what India has already achieved in it’s long and troubled history. India has a very troubled present, and there isn’t much likelihood that this will change any time soon. it faces some huge internal problems, based on poverty, lack of education, lack of medical care, religious conflict, culture clashes and ethnic discord, corrupt politicians, and Indian culture itself. 

But India has only been its own for 62 years after who knows how many years of foreign rule. I guess it is still finding its feet. The young, wealthy and well educated of India have a lot on their shoulders, as the bastions of power over the future of this nation, and while I don’t see much in them that gives me hope they’re pushing for change, they are the only hope India has. I guess that’s reason enough for me to be here, amid them, in the 5 star bubble, talking and challenging, being disappointed and interested, befriending, learning, being changed and hopefully, inducing change. 

….which would be a noble purpose if only I wasn’t struck blank and suddenly content staring at a wall listening to the clock ticking.
Posted by nomes in 07:54:48 | Permalink | Comments Off

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Saturday Sept 27th

Before coming to India I was connected up, via a friend, to a friend of a friend of a friend, who lives in Delhi, and she and I had emailed a few times about the possibility of my doing some “good works” with her while in India, either to assuage my guilt at living in 5 Star Luxury for such a long time, or just because it’s a good thing to do in a country of such great need. 

However, the distance of the resort from Delhi and the illness I notoriously suffer upon return from Delhi, and the fact that my day off kept changing each week, meant that hooking up for a meeting about this just didn’t happen. 

Recently I emailed my “good works” friend, Blessi, in the hope that she and I might be able to get together at least once before I leave. As it happens, she is leaving Delhi this week, not to return until after I go home, and the only available time she had was Saturday lunch. As it also happens, due to incompetence of hotel car booking systems, or divine act of God (probably both) my planned trip to Delhi on Friday was postponed to Saturday, and so I was conveniently placed to meet up with her. 

And I’m so glad I did.

I met Blessi for lunch in a modern style cafe in Connaught Place, surrounded by a mixture of Indian’s and expats. Blessi is a middle aged woman, with two grown daughters, who is instantly impressive – stylishly dressed in modern Indian clothing, striking eyes and a lovely smile, but all the more impressive as soon as you speak to her. Strong, intelligent and well informed, Blessi was the perfect lunch companion, as far as I was concerned. Working hard for little reward, to improve the lot of those less fortunate, she was a gold mine of opinion and information for me. I had a lot of questions and gripes about India that I wanted to discuss with her, the first Indian I’d come across actively living in opposition to most of those gripes.

Blessi is currently working as an independent consultant to NGO’s, both Indian and International, going to remote areas and rural settings and evaluating the NGO’s programs, advising them as to whether the programs are working, what changes are needed and so on. This work provides her income, and allows her time to invest in her un-paid work with one particular NGO, who’s focus is training women in remote and rural areas to be community health workers for women’s health, particularly providing neo-natal care, aid during delivery (India still has a high rate of women who die during childbirth), and this community health worker will also provide assistance for women who are getting pressure from husbands and in-laws to have an (illegal) ultrasound for gender determination, for which clinics abound, and the resultant pressure to terminate pregnancies if the foetus is found to be female. Community health workers can act as a go between, and offer protection and liaison services for women facing such pressure. Blessi talked about the gender divide in new borns in India (which I’ve mentioned before) and in some places it’s as stark as 1000 boys for ever 600 girls. And that’s just the amount of girls who get to be born. The female infanticide rate is also high, and these health workers can help to prevent that as well. Blessi and I talked a while about the place of women in Indian culture and dowries, dowry deaths, education and so on. India is still entrenched in a devaluation of women, with dowries (essentially a family saying “we think our daughter is of such low value that we will pay you to marry her) still abounding. The work Blessi is doing is so valuable.

Discussing with Blessi the arrogance and superiority I have encountered in the wealthy of India, their “it’s not my problem” attitude, the change of heart I’ve had personally to giving money to organisations helping the poor in this country (seeing that India has all the money it needs to fix it’s own problems, it just doesn’t want to spend it’s own money on the poor – I even had one Indian say to me “India gets so much money from International donations for the poor here, they don’t need my money) and so on, I was happy to hear that she felt those assessments and experiences were very valid and I had read the culture well. She confirmed that the caste system still holds a very powerful place in Indian culture (another thing I’d been struck by), and also the complete corruption of the government. I asked if cleaning up the govt was necessary before any real change would ever happen. She said probably, but “who would do that?”. Even when someone enters politics with high ideals, giving hope to people like Blessi that change might happen, they are quickly corrupted by the entrenched corruption in the system. But, she added, when someone does manage to get something changed for the better, it really does so much good. 

Blessi is clearly a woman with endless energy for “good works”. She is currently the Indian rep to the World Health Organisation, attending their annual meetings to report on the state of public health in India. Prior to being an independent consultant to NGO’s she had worked for a large, Christian, international one, which she left because she could not justify the way they spent their money. She’s a woman who speaks 8 languages, including Hindi and Arabic, and has lived in a variety of countries including India, the UK and Somalia. She and her husband have chosen to live in a highly islamic part of Delhi, not a well off suburb, partly because her chosen work style affords her no greater luxury, and partly because it’s precisely these areas that need people to build community across religious, racial and cultural divides. She’s disillusioned with the church for it’s lack of action for the poor, but has not abandoned it, and still attends regularly. She sees far less benefit in people giving money than when people give time and energy. While her current area of interest and work is in women’s health, she has also worked with India’s HIV/AIDs community and the Transgender community (The Indian Supreme Court is currently reviewing an appeal to overturn the law stating homosexuality is illegal. The govt’s official line was that homosexuality is the result of a perverse mind and decriminalising it would lead to moral degeneration of Indian society, and particularly young people, and the spread of AIDS. The govt’s ministry for health is saying, essentially, the opposite and decriminalising it would mean that health workers could more effectively treat HIV/AIDS. I read this morning that while not yet having made it’s decision, the Supreme Court made a statement to the govt saying it’s comments were unfounded and they needed to back up their claims with scientific studies that prove decriminalisation would lead to greater HIV rates, because currently it’s a huge issue in India despite homosexuality being a crime. This is a hopeful sign that the court might overturn the law).

So, I asked Blessi what westerners could do to help things, apart from giving money, which we can, of course do, but neither she nor I think this is the best option. I also asked more specifically if there was much we could do from our home countries. She was thinking and I suggested political pressure. India has a huge need to be seen as a major player in the world, a leading nation. I asked if western govts put pressure on the corrupt Indian govt to pull it’s socks up, saying “you think you’re up there as a nation because you have money, but we can see the state of your country, your poor, your lack of public health care, inadequate public education, your lack of law & order” and political pressure and shame being introduced from foreign nations, would that help? Yes! she replied, without hesitation. So, I resolved to write personally to the PM here, as well as figuring out how to do that in Australia too.

Blessi took it a step further, saying that non-Indians should pressure Indians, have the difficult conversations, push those with money and power and education to accept the fact that their fellow countrymen are their responsibility. We talked about the ugly and insatiable hunger that wealthy and middle class Indians have for money, for the trimmings and trappings of wealth – big cars, big tvs, designer brands etc. I mentioned that it looks to me like they’re devouring the worst of the west in an attempt to be more western, but not taking the best of the west as well. Blessi said she explains it this way – if you like where the west is, you’ve got to look at what it’s built on, what got it there. if you take the cream from the top of their cake without the bast, then it wont work, it will create something ugly. You’ve got to have the foundation that can support that sweetness.

About an hour or so into our conversation Blessi got a text from her husband saying he’d heart that a bomb had gone off near their home. A few moments later he called and confirmed it. No one was home at their house at the time. From this point on, Blessi’s phone rang hot, as friends and family checked to see if they were all OK. I took out my map of Delhi and she showed me where we were and where she lived (the two were not close to each other!), but as we were sitting in an area that, two weeks earlier had been the site of two bomb blasts, I began, for the first time since arriving in India, to feel nervous. I wanted to move, to leave Delhi. She’s caught an auto rickshaw from home, and getting back there now would be a nightmare, so I offered her a lift. OK, maybe my fear of staying in that area wasn’t best offset by driving directly into the area that had been bombed, but for this impressive and amazing woman, it was no sacrifice at all. 

We couldn’t get close to her home, as the area was blocked off by police by the time we got there. We had a rushed goodbye, and I felt like we were sending her off to a great unknown chaos. I was sad to drive away – I would have liked to have accompanied her into the affected area, for I’m sure if there was help needed, she’d be at the forefront of offering it. She’d also mentioned earlier that I should come back for tea, but this was not possible now. A pity, indeed. She’s the first person I have met here who has made me think there was some good reason to return to India some day. 
Posted by nomes in 08:44:39 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

One for those who know their Jesus quotes.

In today’s Hindustan Times, an article appeared in their “Inner Voice” section, written by Nilanshu Ranjan, and it started like this:

“Somebody asked Jesus, ‘How we should live?’”. We’d automatically think that Jesus might have given a list of Do’s and Don’ts. But no, Jesus didn’t reply that way. Instead, Jesus looked into the eyes of that man and said, ‘Do not ask me. go ask the trees, flowers, mountains, birds and fish.’”.

Hmmm, I’ve grown up hearing and reading the bible, but never once to I remember that quote. I wondered, at first, if the writer had mistaken the work of Francis Schaeffer for Jesus – wouldn’t be the first person. But I can’t confirm, as I’ve not read How Should We Then Live, and suspect Schaeffer would have replied more with “be artists, musicians, writers, and be good ones”….but that’s just my speculation.

Ranjan’s article goes on, a little further down:
“Jesus says, ‘Just be yourself, in pure ordinariness. Don’t try to become ‘extraordinary’. Just be in ordinariness and you will find extraordinary transformation within yourself, you will find an extraordinary ecstasy in your inner world’”.

Now, this is not an anti-ordinariness blog entry, I encourage everyone who feels called to ordinariness to embrace it, whole-heartedly. But again, it’s another quote from Jesus I’ve never come across.

I wonder if some clever missionary has written his own “Hindu” translation of the bible, and made it a little more palatable to the Hindu sensibilities. This Jesus sounds very much like the swami’s that get quoted in the equivalent column of the Time Of India newspaper I read most mornings. 

I’m thinking of writing to the column (at the bottom there’s an email address) and asking for the references so I can look up these very alternative Jesus quotes for myself. 
Posted by nomes in 12:33:33 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The price of poverty or just really bad culture.

This morning I was reading the latest article in a story I’d been reading about for a day or two. Two young Indian teens, from the Dalit caste (lowest caste, as I understand it), in love for three years, were facing pressure from parents. Rekha had told her mother she would marry no other man besides Sonu. As today’s article puts it “She did not relent even when told about Raju’s [Sonu's father] lower social and economic status”. 

One day earlier this week, the two teens were found murdered. The bodies were then set on fire and reports say there was evidence that Sonu’s body had been castrated. The murder took place after the two were found by her family in a field, in a “compromising” position. The murder was committed by Rekha’s family members, she being strangled with her own shawl, Sonu being beaten to death. Rekha’s grandfather was arrested on the spot, her father absconded but today’s report told that he had since been found and arrested also. 

As I sat eating my croissant this morning, reading this latest development in the Rekha/Sonu case, I struggled to figure out just how it was more shameful, less desireable, for your daughter to marry someone of lower social and economic standing, rather than have her alive. Not only that, any shame or social stigma one might attract by actually having murdered your own, and someone else’s, child didn’t compare to that of having the two children marry. 

So, I did what has become my custom when reading the morning paper and stumbling onto things I don’t understand…I called a waiter over and asked for insight. Today, I called over Sneha. Sneha is a friendly girl, though I don’t know her well. The fact that she works here indicates she’s been to University and therefore comes from a family not only happy to get their daughter a higher education, and not only happy for her to work and have a career, but also happy for her to live away from home. This is not common in India. So right there, Sneha’s take on life is going to be different from that of the farming communities in Uttar Pradesh (the neighbouring state to Haryana, in which I am residing) where this article’s story took place. 

I asked Sneha how this family figures that the shame of murdering one’s own child is less than the shame of her marrying “the wrong guy”. Sneha’s first response, perhaps predictably, was that these are rural and uneducated people, who hold to tradition and rules because it’s all they have. This is probably true of the murderers, but both Rekha and Sonu were students at the local university. They were, at the least, from families who see value in a good education. Rekha’s family just didn’t seem to value human life. 

Pushed further (by the look on my face that just didn’t get it) Sneha then added – you know, these people have so many children, that losing one really isn’t a big deal. And they probably thought if they punished this daughter, the others will learn their lesson and do the “right” thing. For mothers, maybe losing a child is hard, but for fathers, losing one is no big deal, there are many more. 

And I had no more questions. 
Could Sneha be right? Do uneducated, rural men remain so detached from their children that they can murder one in good conscience, just to teach the others a lesson. Surely if he were really detached he wouldn’t care what she did nor with whom she did it. Perhaps children are not so much dispensable, as they are tools for something greater – tools to continue to expand one’s social standing and prestige? That might make a bit more sense. 

So I wondered more on the issue. I could not avoid wondering if it made a difference that Rekha was a girl child. Girls in India live a precarious life. As abortion become more acceptable here, the rate of aborted female babies continues to be far greater then male babies, such that the current gender divide is roughly for each 1000 males there is 800 females (in Delhi). While it’s illegal to have an ultra sound to determine gender in India, a recent article in the paper said the journalist found many clinics willing to do them. 

In my time here, reading the paper each morning, I have seen several reports of wife burning, always in the context of dowry issues. Even years after the marriage, if the bride’s parents don’t meet the demands of the groom’s parents, her life is in danger. 

One of the chef’s here, a very lovely Indian man, was showing me photo’s of his two daughters, whom he clearly adores. He mentioned, quite off handedly, that he loved both the moment they were born, but when the second child turned out to be a daughter, even her own mother wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t hold her, because she so wanted a boy. It wasn’t until HIS mother arrived and said that it was OK that she had borne two daughters and no sons, that the mother felt OK to embrace her child. At first this seems like a case of a cruel and heartless mother, but clearly, if her husband’s parents didn’t think she’d done a good enough job at producing the right gendered children, it was in her best interest to detach from the child and refuse to accept the situation…..it might just save her life. 

The issues of sexism in India are deeply entrenched in a culture that simply doesn’t value women as much as men. So, that doesn’t make India any different from most cultures at some point in not-too-recent history. But if India seeks to think of itself as a modern country, something clearly needs to change. Maybe most families, of any caste or social standing, would not resort to murder. But it certainly happens a lot, because I’m reading it every week. 

I am also seeing the very clear link between the plight of economic development and the plight of women. Almost all the murders of women in such cases as these – cases of marriage and love – are financially driven. Dowries not enough, partner not from rich enough family…I read one article about a bride who walked out of her own wedding because the groom’s father had demanded more money in the dowry, the day of the wedding. She was wise, I would think, as her own life would clearly be on shaky ground had she married this man and her parents, by either refusing to pay or being unable to, had not satisfied the grooms parents. 

When economic need, or greed, is heightened, it seems women suffer first. We’ve heard this before, as an introduction to how women go without food first, in order to feed the family, and women do more work more quickly to provide for the family etc. But at least here in India, economic need and greed can very well mean a woman loses her life so that the groom can be married off to a more wealthy bride. And that opens up the issues surrounding my growing opinion of arranged marriages…but that’s another blog entry altogether. 

One could blame poverty, if it was just the poverty stricken who acted this way. The aborting of female babies was just as common in upper class Delhi families as with poorer ones. Rekha’s father was, while low caste, a wealthy land owner. A guest at the hotel was telling me last night that in the three years since he was last in Delhi, his home town, and certainly in the 7 years since he moved to the USA, he was shocked, on his return this month, at how money hungry India had become. Everything is about money here now. 

I’ve even read an article about a woman fighting for a divorce because while pregnant she was forced to have an ultrasound by her mother in law to determine the baby’s gender, and when it was discovered she was carrying twin girls, the pressure for abortion set it. The children are now born and the woman is still fighting for her freedom, and I dare say, her life. 

Daughters are expensive – you raise them, feed them, educate them, they’ll never earn what a boy will, and then you pay to have some other family take her off your hands in marriage. So the more money oriented India becomes, the more women’s lives are at risk. But then again….I also read an article a few weeks ago about a boy who was found dead in the bathroom of his ashram school, clearly murdered, and not the first child to be found this way at the school. The parents were quoted as saying “We are sad, but it is our fate to lose our son this way. It is what God planned for us, so it is ok”. When individuals so readily accept as their lot situations of such brutal injustice, I guess no one’s life is worth too much.
Posted by nomes in 08:44:45 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

A Hindu, A Buddhist and A Christian

A Hindu, a Buddhist and a Christian walk into a bar……….and they start talking about religion, and how to gain true enlightenment/spirituality. 

Well, the Hindu was actually working in the bar, and the Christian was sitting there eating, and the Buddhist, who works in a different part of the hotel, was the only one who walked in. But still, the conversation happened and it was really interesting. 

So Kangu, the Buddhist, who wears things around his neck that protect him, from what he couldn’t say, but he just knew that if he believed in it, it’d protect him, and as I was asking what these things do for him, he said “Well, why do Christians where crosses round their necks?” and was a bit surprised to hear that there were many reasons, none of which really involved some mystical protection from danger, physical or spiritual, and it was mostly just fashion these days…..Kangu and I quickly moved to religious topics of conversation. He was talking about how, if a person just believes it, then it is true. I expressed some doubt about that. He said “It’s true, actually, if you believe the dog is God, it will be God”. I shook my head, just coz I believed it, doesn’t make it true….what if God just isn’t the dog. Then he said I misunderstood. We had a long and convoluted conversation, and I think his point, at the end, though he’s not good at actually boiling down his beliefs to something tangible, is a very “new age” (which really, I guess, is probably Buddhist) idea that we can create reality if we believe it. But not completely. I said I knew examples where people really believed things would happen and they didn’t, cited some “christian” believing for healing situations. To this he said “but why are you focusing only on the good?”. To me, the question didn’t quite make sense. So we went back and forth a bit to try and nut out what he was really asking. He said “If you only have all the good stuff in your life, then who will get the bad stuff?”. Again, the point of this question???? Is there a set amount of good and bad and it all has to be distributed? Again, he couldn’t quite explain it to me. So he started again with the “if you just believe” line, “you’ve just got to keep believing”. Believing in what, I asked. You can’t just have belief, it has to be in something or about something or for something. He couldn’t say. 

This conversation showed me I was not, clearly, of a Buddhist leaning. Interestingly, he said several times, after a pause to think about a question I’d asked, “Westerners are very intelligent. They think about things from every direction”. This was usually followed by admitting that he had no answer. I did tell him I thought he, too, was very intelligent, and maybe just in a different way. 

So, he decided to change tacks, and started explaining to me the path to spiritual enlightenment within the Buddhist framework. One is attached to many things in this life, and religion is good, but it’s a very low level of enlightenment. The truly spiritual people get beyond these things, and separate themselves from all the things that distract us, they go apart from society and meditate and detach themselves from all these things. I’ve never really been a fan of the permanent detachment theories of spirituality – short term times of meditation and quiet reflection, getting beyond materialism, these are great, but the whole monk on a hill outside society, no my thing (not that I would tell anyone else they shouldn’t do that if they felt it was right for them). 

By at this point in the conversation, Jayant the Hindu had arrived, and interrupted Kangu’s eloquent description of Buddhist spiritual perfection, with a blunt “But you just can’t do that. If we all did that, society would die, we’d be back to the dark ages”. I was so excited just to have this conversation happening, I said nothing. Kangu said “No”. Jayant said (mostly to me) “In Hinduism we have four stages of life. The first is childhood, you play, you are carefree, you just are a child. The second is learning, you must learn from school and study hard, learning about life. The third section is when you have finished learning and you go out and get married and work and you live all the things you were learning about. Then the fourth stage is old age, when your kids are grown up and it’s then that you focus on spirituality, because you have responsibilities before that and you can’t just leave to be spiritual.” 

Kangu said that wasn’t true. Responsibilities, he said, were only attachments we had to learn to get beyond. He was quick to point out that no Buddhist would condemn anyone for meeting their responsibilities, that’s a good thing, but to be truly enlightened you must choose to leave them behind. 

Then it was Jayant who began telling me the story of Buddha. How he was a prince, born with the silver spoon in his mouth, had everything, but as he grew, he saw the poverty and people who had nothing, and he couldn’t work out how he could have everything and they get nothing, so he went away and meditated to try and figure it out. He had a wife and a son that he left behind in the palace. It’s a great story, Buddha achieved the enlightenment he sought, but not many of us have a palace in which our family can be looked after in fine style while we cease to earn a living and instead seek spiritual enlightenment. 

Kangu then chimed in to tell his version of the Buddha story. It was much longer, but basically the same, only Buddha’s father was told by a sage, at Buddha’s birth, that he would either be the King of Kings, or a great Sage. And his father, hell bent on not having his son turn out to be a namby pamby sage guy, had security people put around him to ensure he never did any sage-like things, and was set to be the King of Kings. 
But one day, on a ride in the countryside, he saw four types of people…old, hunched over people, crippled people, poor people and a sage. He asked his aides about these people – who cares for the old poeple? Who cares for the cripples? Who cares for the poor? The aides said “this is the life of the common person, no one cares for them”. Then he asked about the sage, and the aide said “That person seeks wisdom and enlightenment”. 

Buddha knew there and then that his role in life was to be a sage, and he left his wife and son and detached successfully from the world, gaining enlightenment and becoming a beacon to many throughout history. 

I had many critiques of the Buddha’s choice. The obvious one being wouldn’t it have done more good to the old, poor and crippled if he’d been the best King ever and actually helped them, but I kept that to myself. 

Kangu pointed out, again, that Buddha chose enlightenment over his attachment to wife and child, which Kangu obviously thought was the ultimate in human spirituality. I suggested that it sounded a tad selfish, because it would really hurt his son to grow up without a father. Kangu had to pause at that, and again came back with “Westerners are very intelligent. They think from all angles”. I was beginning to wonder if this was his auto-response when a westerner was just being annoying and ignorant of the higher plains of spiritual understanding. 

Kangu then told me another story, about a family feud over land, where people were decietful and greedy, and the guy shafted by his family from his rightful inheritance went to a teacher of black magic, and put curses on his family till only a few remained. Then he was struck by guilt, sought out a holy teacher, who was cruel to him and made him work very hard, and he had to secretly learn to pray by watching other student. Eventually another teacher took pity on him and took him on, being kind to him and teaching him well. After he’d learnt all he needed to the guy went back to the cruel teacher, who said his cruelty was to make his pay for his sins, cleansing him, and he was now clean and good to go. So the guy went back to his family, sought forgiveness, told them they could have the inheritance with his blessing, and went off to pray. The next day one family member brought him food as a way of expressing forgiveness. Kangu’s point? I think that normal people will only forgive because they get something (the inheritance), and they have so much further to go in life. The guy had reached a higher plain and could forgive with nothing to gain, having detached from possessions. He kinda ended with a “what do you think of that”. I thought for a while, didn’t think much actually, but said…..well, we didn’t hear the family’s side of the story, but I still think the guy is human and would do some things wrong, and need to grow beyond those faults, and the family would be the same. They both have a lot to learn from each other. Kangu laughed. I suspected I was getting the “Westerners are intelligent….” look again, more convinced of my own non-eastern thinking….

Unfortunately at this point Jayant was called to serve beer to Hindus (who don’t drink) and Kangu was called to return to his post serving the wealthy in the banqueting hall. I added that one thing that appealed to me about the teaching of Jesus was that true spirituality seemed to be about putting yourself last and doing what’s best for others, rather than seeking for yourself. He pointed out that even Jesus gained enlightenment first (I think he was referring to the 40 days in the desert) before coming back to teach and lead. 

And that’s where we ended. Kangu told me not to think too deeply on these things, just think shallow. ??????

Posted by nomes in 05:39:17 | Permalink | Comments Off

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A quiet night not singing

Despite my resignation to the idea that India and I just don’t get along, and any experience of the “real” India outside the resort creates the experience of nausea and fever in my body, I find myself still arriving at conversations about spirituality, which happily arise easily in this culture of very outward religiosity. I am still struggling to piece together how such a “spiritual” culture can be so very corrupted. 

Last night, due to a cancellation, there were absolutely no guests in the bar where I sing, and my pianist and I decided that, by 9pm, we’d call it a night because it was really annoying us. So, I went inside, sat at the indoor bar, and talked with the barman. The barman was Jayant. Jayant and I get along pretty well, and this is partly because he’s very well read and very up for discussions about philosophy and thought and history and politics and just about anything. I think he’s got a great future as a barman!!!

So, I sat there a while and our conversation wandered into the realm of religion. He refers to himself as a Hindu, though later admits to never believing in God; he seems to want me to acknowledge the superiority of Indians as the ones whose religion is oldest and who’s culture produced wisdom’s that the rest of the world are now discovering the value of, such as Yoga etc. I pointed out that most traditional cultures have some form of “traditional wisdom” including herbal medicines and life wisdoms and physical practices, and the west is lapping up most of them, from Indian Yoga to Chinese Herbal Medicine to North American Indian spirituality…..and just cos the West laps something of yours up doesn’t mean it’s anything to be proud of!!!!!

So, Jayant starts to tell me about Hindu holy books. There are volumes and volumes of them, and while it took me some time and a LOT of concentration to actually understand what he was saying (he’s got quite an accent and talking about this stuff involves a lot of Hindi names and titles), he finally conveyed that these holy books, originally written in Sanskrit, and which most Indians will never read, contain many thoughts, ideas and teachings on life wisdoms, medicine, philosophy etc. These are the Hindu holy books. I asked about teachings like “lying is wrong. Stealing is wrong”. He said “NO, that’s all basic stuff, it’s not in there! That stuff is just obvious”. 

So then we had this somewhat sarcastic (on my part) conversation about how, if you don’t have a religion to tell you these things are wrong, how do you know they’re wrong? (I kinda felt like the devil’s advocate, but we were enjoying challenging each other). He didn’t really have an answer….he kept saying “Yes, but everyone does these things”. He talked about the Seven Deadly Sins, which he’d read about somewhere. He said “these are in Christianity, yes?”. I said not specifically by that title, but mostly they’re taught against, yes. “Everyone does these, they’re too basic for Hindu holy books”. I think what he meant is “Everyone knows these are wrong, it’s obvious”. So I pointed out that Indian culture is SO dishonest and lying is everywhere, so perhaps it’s not so obvious if it’s not pointed out in Holy Books. 

So then he had to concede that something had gone wrong in India. He did kinda stop and stare into space and say “I don’t know when it all went off track in India and we became like that. Maybe somewhere between the Moghul invasion and the British occupation, I think we went down hill”. I think this was his way of blaming someone else. I said I thought that the way a culture thought about God created the culture. This is when he pointed out that he has never believed in God. 

I’ve read that in India, while everyone knows the govt is corrupt and that politicians can lie, backstap, play members of their own party against each other, change sides and pretty much prove they’re covered in oil so slippery they’ll slide their way through anything, and the people don’t care. In fact, people admire the politician most who manages to really play the game, play the people, and end up scooting out of it all just as the building comes down. That is a hero, he is clever and cunning and sneaky and tricked everyone by being truly committed to no ideology or political belief at all. Riding whatever wave you need to in order to retain power. 

And hearing Jayant talk about Hindu’s Holy Books, and having read in the paper earlier in the day about the “Panchatantra”, a book of Indian folk tales, hundreds of years old and very famous, which teaches life lessons including (amongst much else) that deceit is the only way to beat an enemy, I began to wonder – if this is the kind of thing that Indian culture had really valued, these “higher” knowledges, as Jayant put it, wisdom and philosophies, and they didn’t have the more basic moral teachings anywhere, then it stands to reason that the culture that develops out of this is one that places no value for the lower morals but whose religion seeks something higher, through practices like yoga. Kinda stating the obvious. 

But on a more day to day level, the idea that there are “higher” things to know, like higher levels of castes to be reincarnated into, higher forms of wit that allow you to be deceitful and tricky and this is a good thing, it all started to look like it fitted together a bit more. Everyone here, and Jayant stated this bluntly to me, withholds information. If you know something, you don’t tell it, until it is of benefit to do so – knowledge is power. This is true everywhere, but here, it feels like if you are asked a question, even if the truth is nothing secret, nothing to be afraid of telling, you don’t tell it, you tell half of it, or you bend it, so that you retain a one-up position. An entire culture trying to interact on a “need to know” basis. Jayant thinks this is why India’s wisdom had to wait for the British and the West to arrive, before it became popular, coz no Indian was ever gonna just give away any bit of knowledge, they’re too hungry to feel important and powerful. He talked about the Brahman never telling their knowledge to the lower castes, thus keeping the lower castes stuck in their position, and because they’re all human, the lower castes play the same game, as best they can, with those lower than them, and so on. 

We also spoke about religious practice in India. I said that everyone seems religious, because so many people went to temple’s and pilgrimages etc.  Jayant said they were just trying to appease the Gods, they didn’t really believe the religion. He explained there are three gods, the Creator (whose name I could not make out from Jayant’s accent), Vishnu the saviour and Shiva the Destroyer. He said, particularly in the south, Shiva is the most popular God to worship. I asked why anyone would choose to worship the destroying God, over the creating or saving one. He said because they try to appease him so he wont destroy them. They take offereings. 

I then clarified by saying that really, they go out, live however they want, do whatever they want and then come to buy off the God with an offering, coz he might be annoyed with them. He laughed but wasn’t all that happy with the concept of buying off God, people were APPEASING God. I said it was tomato, tomahto. But this, too, made me realise that if you can buy your way out of the consequences of your actions, you don’t have to worry about how you live, you just keep on doing all the bad stuff if you want, you just make sure you’re in temple on Tuesday, and don’t eat beef. 

It was all very interesting. And enlightening. But from where I stood, it also seems really annoying at best and completely exhausting and destructive at worst. I don’t doubt at all that the West is a far more pleasant place to live because the religious systems, on which our laws and culture are based, centre around a God who is just and fair and values honesty, inclusion, freedom and basic tenants of right and wrong that build a legal system that values the rights of the country’s citizens. Nothing in the west is perfect and nothing in Christianity upholds these values perfectly. Many people, I’m sure, attend church to “do the right thing” once a week and then go back to their lives and don’t think too much about their actions. But that’s not been my experience. A God who offers something that can really change my character, as I think I’ve mentioned here before, is still far more appealing than this system of buying off a God and pretending I’m superior to others because I can be dishonest with them and get away with it. 

And that was my quiet night not singing.
Posted by nomes in 07:25:22 | Permalink | Comments Off

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Agra and the Taj Mahal.

Monday saw my first expedition out of the hotel for sight seeing purposes. 

After some hunting I located a staff member who wanted to come along for the ride, and so Rahul and I ventured to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. 

Once you leave the state of Haryana, you get to U.P, the state in which Agra sits, and this state, so Rahul tells me, is much more developed than Haryana. Consequently, this means better roads (thank goodness) mostly freeway conditions, and, funnily enough, lots and lots of temples and shrines. I guess it’s a chicken and egg thing……is it because the people of this area worship more Gods that they get more prosperity, or does their increased prosperity mean they are more thankful and worship more. 

At any rate, most of the way it was pleasant country side and the odd factory and temples a plenty. 

At the border of Haryana and U.P. you must stop and pay a tax. At this stop hawkers come up to the car and try to sell you all manner of cheap and poor quality goods. This is normal for India, as it happens at traffic lights in Delhi also. But here we also had men with monkeys, tied with rope around their necks, doing tricks, somersaults, standing on sticks, etc, in the hope of a few coins. It was all I could do to not start yelling abuse at them for animal cruelty (yes, Annabel, you’d have been proud). But once you wind down a window here you’re really in trouble, so there was no yelling. 

Agra is about 3 hours drive from the hotel, and a nice town, about 1.5 million people. It seems more wealthy, in as much as the roads aren’t as bad and have got curbs, and there’s a little less dust around. Ambarish, my room cleaning guy, says he thinks it’s a beautiful and clean city. I think it’s still got rubbish everywhere and is dirty and dusty, but compared with Delhi it’s heaven. 

So we picked up a guide once in Agra, organised by the conceirge at the hotel. This guide is the free kind, which means you get taken to a series of shops where he gets a commission if you buy something. Poor guy didn’t quite expect me to be as unwealthy as I am. But there you go. 

We went to the Taj first, right in the heat of the day, so all of us were sweating so much it felt like the skin was melting off my face. Agra is very, very hot. 

Having read my travel guide a few times I was pretty familiar with the story of the Taj, Shah Jahan had three marriages, two were arranged and one was a love marriage. Predictably, the love match was his favourite, and when she, Mumtaz Mahal, died giving birth to their 14th child, he build the Taj as a monument and tomb. It took 20 years, and 20,000 people to finish it off, bringing semi precious stones from Europe and South Africa, and doing incredible marble inlay work and marble carving on this huge, huge building. Mumtaz is buried right in the centre of the main building, surrounded by this intricate work, and inscriptions from the Quaran. 

So impressed was Shah Jahan at the work of the craftsman working on his Taj Mahal, that when they were done, he cut off their hands so they’d never do anything like this again. A great way to appreciate the incredibly hard work they’d done for so many years. But as heritage goes, this sacrifice on their part meant that their decendants, right up to this day, are still employed as the caretakers and upkeepers of the Taj. They have a massive entrance, the South Gate, just for them, and living quarters. Mostly, as far as I could see, this just meant they hung out in the gardens, lying in the shade of the trees. But I guess as jobs go in this country, it’s not bad. 

However, Jahan might have been a tad hasty. So impressed, in fact, was he that he decided to build a black Taj, on the other side of the river, facing this Taj, where he could be buried, and he and his beloved Mumtaz could forever rest in their massive monuments facing each other for all eternity. It sounds like a beautiful love story. But Jahan’s son Aurangzeb decided that his father was crazy, locking him up in the Agra fort, where he could only gaze out of the window of his room, at his lovely Taj Mahal. How evil could Aurangzeb be????

Well, as it turned out, the bit they don’t put in the travel guides is that Aurangzeb actually thought this building of monuments was a huge waste of tax payers money and refused to let his father waste another gazillion rupees on a second one when the money could be used to help the poor. So he locked up daddy and did good stuff for poor people with what would otherwise have been a black Taj. Aurangzeb wasn’t a saint, he had his crazy sides too, but he helped the poor. 

Well – that’s the myth. There’s no actual proof of plans for a black Taj. Maybe Aurangzeb just wanted the money to further the empire. Who knows. But I think I desperately want to believe that this country has actually seen at least ONE leader who cared about the poor!!!

As I sat there listening to the story and sweating and looking at the amazing building, I just couldn’t help but wonder (he he)….how can I be impressed when it took so many peasants so much time and energy, in this heat, to do this work, and they just got their hands cut off at the end of it. 

Reality always taints the myth of romance………..or maybe I’m just cynical and single and in my mid-30’s!!!!

Anyway, we went to a showroom/workshop after the Taj, where men still do the etching and inlay work that was done on the taj, and we could watch them. It’s tedious and fiddley work and it is very slow and at times painful for the fingers of the guys. 

The only other thing to do in Agra is see the Agra Fort. We drove by it, heard some stories, but the unfortunate thing is that most of the inside is currently closed to the public for restoration. This means that it really isn’t worth going in, so we didn’t. 

And back we came, along U.P.’s freeways and Haryana’s dirt tracks. As usual, upon my return to the hotel, I got very ill, my “allergy” to Delhi becoming an allergy to all of India. I think it’s motion sickness, as I didn’t eat a thing on the whole trip. I’ve never had motion sickness before. But it makes sense, the whole trip is swerving and (in Haryana) bumping along. Ughhhhhhh. 
Posted by nomes in 07:50:22 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Independence Day

August 15th is Indian Independence Day, the day British rule left India (62 years ago, I think, though some say it’s 61 years) and it became it’s own democracy. While this looks like a good idea on paper, quite a few Indians and some foreigners have said to me quite bluntly that India was better off with the British here (or for my Goan friend, the Portuguese). This is, in part (as I think I’ve mentioned before) because the class (read caste) of people who took over the government are very corrupt and lining their pockets with all kinds of money, and partly because there seems to be something in the Indian cultural mindset that is dead against doing all the things I would want my government to do……i.e. put money into education, health, public amenities etc. India has no public healthcare whatsoever, it has a decent proportion of children not in school, and those that are either attend very expensive (often western run) private schools or they’re in quite run down and rudimentary public schools. And as for public amenities, these, as much as I’ve witnessed, are pretty much a joke. The roads are ridiculous, there are no parks to speak of, rubbish removal is seen as irrelevant, electricity is intermittent, all the buses I’ve seen look like they are about to fall apart and seem to run over people quite often…..I could go on. 
But, in the spirit of Independence Day, I shall retell some more positive moments from the day: 

1 – Proving that religion and state don’t have to be mutually exclusive, on Independence Day it’s illegal to sell alcohol. The two bars at the resort have all the alcohol, normally on display behind the bar, removed to the store room, and only soft drinks are served. I was so shocked when this was explained to me I simply stated “man, we are NOT in Kansas anymore”….can you imagine such a law in Australia on Australia Day……drinking beer is the only patriotic thing most Aussies do….”. Good Hindu’s will never drink alcohol or eat meat. Hindu’s who like to think they’re doing “enough” will avoid alcohol on public holidays and meat on Tuesdays…. 
2 – Yes, Tuesdays are a holy day, and Hindu’s who can’t quite live up to a life time commitment to vegetarianism can just eat veg on Tuesdays and this seems to satisfy the Gods, or the guru’s/swami’s/godmen people. I assume you also avoid alcohol on Tuesdays, though it doesn’t seem to be a strong issue with those drinking at hotel bars. 
3 – I thought I would make it through the entire Independence Day “celebration” at the hotel without seeing a single other sari – but not so. Finding A staff member who knew how to tie a sari took FOREVER!!! But two lovely girls came, pins in hand, and pinned me into my gorgeous pink georgette sari with beadwork. The one western couple here (aussies in their 50’s) were very impressed. The Indian guests seemed kind’ve amused .. Well, the middle aged and older ones seemed to like it. The younger Indians who come to the resort tend to come across as spoilt rich kids who feel a huge level of entitlement and superiority, and they wouldn’t dare to pay any staff member much attention till they want something. And what they wanted was “Anything by the Eagles. Or Don McLean?”.We’re a JAZZ DUO. “Oh, do you know ‘Sacrifice’ by Elton John?”. …..but in the name of this point being positive, if we do play something they like, they clap loudly. 
4 – There are a lot of families at the resort this weekend and therefore LOTS of kids. It’s very odd to see these wealthy young families, all very western in their dress, their very young kids all speaking English and Hindi, being trailed by older women, not old, just older than the young parents, dressed in very plain sari’s, and maintaining the look of poverty (darker skin, more nose rings and bindi’s, hair not cut in a style but just long and tied back etc). These women, I am learning, are the nannies.These women, often at a ratio of 1:1 with the children, stick to the kids like glue, wherever they are, and this leaves the parents free to pay little attention to the children, stay up late, and basically have a holiday unencumbered by the effort of parenting. Human labour is so cheap, nannies, who get to live in and care for these kids, and come on vacations….have “good jobs”. In the scale of Indian untrained labour, it’s pretty cushy. 
I’m not so impressed…….Mala and David are looking at hiring a driver when they buy their car. This driver can live in the servant’s room, which is behind the door next to their appartment door. They have a 4 bedroom apartment which is very large, each bedroom with it’s own bathroom. The servents room is a tiny box, with a tiny bed and cupboard, and tiny window that looks into the airshaft, which despite being open at one end to the open air, is still just an airshaft and wouldn’t allow a breeze or truly fresh air (if, indeed, such a thing existed in Delhi). Mala mentioned that this was a room fit for a couple, so they might hire a driver who’s wife could be the maid. They found a driver they liked and asked if he would like the job, but he had 2 kids and didn’t want to move, though after discussion with his wife decided he’d come if he could go home one night a week. But his asking wage was too much, so Mala and David turned him down. It was all I could do not to ask how much was “too much” for a man to be apart from his family 6 days and nights a week just to be available any time of day or night for them. 
But these are not the concerns of the wealthy. How people manage their lives is irrelevant. You agree on work and money, the rest they have to sort out themselves. 
Anyway, the positive spin here is that every now and then a family arrive at the hotel who are just a delight to observe because they do not seem to follow these rules. The first one of these this week were Asian visitors, and the squeals of delight as the kids splashed round the pool with their dad and their floaty rings was fantastic, the family engagement at meals and during the day when I passed them round the resort was lovely. They were definitely on a FAMILY vacation. 
Then there’s the family who are always eating early (same time as me, very un-Indian) who just find their daughter, who’s maybe 18 months old, captivating. They are a pleasure to watch, though I do suspect this child will be a nightmare when she hits the age of 2.5, with all their focused attention and doting). 
Then there were two girls at the buffet last night, maybe 9 or 10 years old, helping themselves to desserts in quantities that unwatched 9 and 10 year olds could be expected to, and they walked by me with their plates stacked, heading back to their seats, and they spun around, came back and stopped me (as I stuck a mini chocolate tart in my mouth) to tell me I had a beautiful voice and my sari was lovely. They were a very lovely couple of girls. I made a joke about how many chocolate tarts they had on their plates and they shouldn’t show their parents. They laughed, and I thanked them for their compliments. These did not seem like spoilt or neglected girls, just really friendly. 
Then there was the most gorgeous little girl of the weekend. She’d been watching me as I sang during dinner, and I’d waved and she smiled, and I sang on. Then the muso’s took a break and I was back a little earlier than my pianist, so was just sitting on my stool and watching the guests. This little girl, maybe 4 years old, skipped up to me and stood right at my side with her hand on my knee and in her very cute little Indian lilt said “Do you know any princess songs?” “Hmmm, I don’t know. Do you know any you could sing to me?”. She shook her head, paused and then ran back to her family. Two minutes later she ran back and said “Do you know kla;hjfiej” “Sorry”, I said “which song?”"sdifjs;oihf;l”. (sometimes the accent is just too thick!!!!). “I don’t think so, can you sing it to me?”She nodded. 
And then started …. “He’s got the whole world in his hands…”. “I do know it!!!!” I said, and sang the rest with her. When we got to the end, I said “what comes next?” 
“He’s got the bees and the trees in his hands….”. So we sang out that verse. “Anything more?” I asked. 
“He’s got the humans and the mermaids…” 
She was a cutey. Pity her family was the one who were initially seated right next to us but complained that they were too close to the band and it was too loud. Small matter that the speakers were at the opposite ends of the room, no where near us!!!! They moved to a far corner that seemed to satisfy them…???? 
OK, so I’ve not done a great job at positive points, but these were the highlights of the day. 
Well, apart from my sari, which of course, the most Indian thing about the day. And a couple of proposals of marriage……girls, the key to an Indian man’s heart is not food nor beauty nor charm. Just wear a sari and you’ll realise just how ingrained the subconscious cultural cues are that a sari clad woman is real beauty. The male wait staff all made a point of saying “wow Naomi, you look so beautiful”. 
Hmmmm, there’s a back handed compliment in there somewhere about how I look normally……..
Posted by nomes in 08:47:36 | Permalink | Comments Off

Sunday, August 10, 2008

And the days go on….

Haven’t posted much of late because not much has happened of late. The rainy season finally hit, which is such a blessing, though in Delhi and Gurgaon it’s less a blessing than a flooding…but here at the resort we’re getting enough rain to flood the rooms slightly, but that’s about it. 

One of my favourite waiters is Bharat. Bharat comes from a small town somewhere in the Himilayas. He went home recently for some religious purpose he didn’t expand on, and he’s now back. Bharat is a lovely guy, very gentle and kind, he always comes to check I have water and my microphone is OK (it has battery issues). He’s a really nice person. 
Bharat gave me a great compliment yesterday. He said (something very close to….) “We’ve had three singers here, and of all three, all the people who work here [meaning the waiters] think you’re the best person of all of them. You are …. you know what to do, you do the right thing, you’re the one we like the best”. I think what he was saying was that the first woman used to drink wine whilst singing which isn’t really the Indian way, and the second singer was very young and was a bit inappropriate sometimes. 
But the compliment means a lot. I’ve tried really hard to be friends with the wait staff, and I enjoy the company of many of them. I have also decided that I should attempt to spend more time in the ping pong room, where the staff hang out on their breaks……I’m not a great fan of pong, but for the sake of relationship with these guys, I’ll play!!
We also filmed (with a dodgy, in-computer, camera, a couple of songs from our Sunday afternoon gig today. This will be up on my facebook site soon, so those who are interested can see it (provided I don’t cringe too much when I see it!!).
Friday is Indian Independence Day, and a big celebration will be happening, and I will be wearing my new sari as my gesture of solidarity with Indian self rule. This would feel more appropriate if Indians didn’t keep telling me they wished the English were still in power, because things were a lot better then…….??
Posted by nomes in 12:24:32 | Permalink | Comments Off