Under Western Eyes

arundhati roy and the decline of the indian state

2010-11-18T23:57:00.001-07:00

A cover story in Tehelka a few weeks ago about the controversy surrounding Arundhati Roy and an accompanying interview. For background, Arundhati made several statements about Kashmir in a speech given in Delhi. In it, she said that

When I was in Kashmir.. what broke my heart on the street of Srinagar was when people say "Nanga Bhukha Hindustan, Jaan se Pyara Pakistan" and I said no because "Nanga Bhukha Hindustan" is with you, and if you are fighting for a just society then you must align yourself with powers and here are people who have fought their lives opposing Indian state....You have to look beyond stone pelting and how the state is using people. ...You have to know your enemy and you have to be able to respond by aligning tactically, intelligently, locally or internationally.

This raised some fuss, with BJP ministers accusing Roy of sedition. Rather than denying the charge, she instead takes issue with the word 'sedition' itself:

Sedition is an archaic, obsolete idea revived for us by Times Now, a channel that seems to have hysterically dedicated itself to hunting me down and putting me in the way of mob anger. Who am I anyway?

Put in context, Roy is pointing out that the BJP had a very real interest in diverting attention away from its corruption scandals and none-too-small involvement in the Ayodhya violence. As the Tehelka reporter points out at the beginning of her article, Roy has become a favorite target of India's middle classes.

Many in India and abroad, especially those in academia, might have no problem with this. The nation-state, they might argue, is already fading from the picture. From banking to immigration, commercial and local players are taking over from national governments.

The issue is one of legitimacy, and it is in no way limited to India. In the United States, in Europe--really anywhere democracy is struggling to stay alive--people are calling into question the idea that a large, diverse body politic can articulate itself in the form of representative government. This may seem abstract, but it is doubtless the reason Roy so rankles India's political elite. She does not stand for an independent Kashmir, but for the repudiation of state power exercised by the national government of India.

"I am among those who are very uncomfortable with the idea of a nation state," Roy said in the interview. "But that questioning has to start from those who live in the secure heart of powerful states, not from those struggling to overthrow the yoke of a brutal occupation. Sure, an independent Kashmiri nation may be a flawed entity, but is independent India perfect? Are we not asking Kashmiris the same question that our old colonial masters asked us: are the natives ready for freedom?"

bundi

2010-11-14T01:47:00.001-07:00

bombay

2010-11-12T00:56:00.001-07:00

Happy Diwali everyone. Here are a bunch of pictures (in reverse-chronological order) of my trip to Mumbai.

overlooking the oval maidan, with the college and high court in back.

Sharon and Aimee in a bar that looks a lot cooler than it was. (Although there were a few Hoxton kids there, so the plae could probably be justifiably deemed 'discovered')


	We took a carriage from Colaba to the bar above

udaipur

2010-11-11T02:10:00.000-07:00

some images of my trip to udaipur.

a roadside temple

a roadside snack

somewhere around the corner from our hotel

overlooking lake pichola

a darning workshop

looking back from the entrance to city palace

city palace guard

city palace

RIFF

2010-10-30T00:15:00.001-06:00

The 21st to the 25th of October I was in Jodhpur helping out with RIFF, one of the world's best international platforms for folk music. Although my sole duty was 'documentation', I had my finger on many pulses, running around doing errands, printing flyers, writing notices, liaising with artists, &c.

The festival was magic. I have had the privilege of seeing some of the collaborations (Such as Pete Lockett's) gestate. From visiting Gopal Geela's village in Shekhawati to their rehearsals at the Kawa cultural center to the Main Stage in the Mehrangarh fort, it was a truly amazing experience to see the successes and faults that such a huge act involved.

The best part of the festival by far was the Dawn Devotions. Every day at 5:45, the most hardy audience members would come to the Jaswant Thada to hear some of Rajasthan's best folk music accompany the sun's rise along the stunning walls of Mehrangarh fort.

I will be steadily uploading most of my photos to my Flickr feed over the next few days. Please stay tuned. - JWB

the stadium

2010-10-11T03:42:00.000-06:00

Took a walk yesterday to an abandoned construction site near where I live in Jaipur. It's the site of a polo arena, which would have had a dome and was to be air-conditioned. It was built near several 'luxury' high-rises and a cricket pitch where lots of guys from around Jaipur congregate every Sunday to play pickup matches.

a bunch of photos with no comments

2010-10-08T00:28:00.000-06:00

Arundhati Roy and the Problem of Indian Democracy

2010-10-03T01:49:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, I went to a meeting of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL--note the reference to America's ACLU). The meeting took place just off tonk road. A driveway next to a bustling vegetable market announced the meeting. Inside the still-incomplete concrete high-rise, I paid the Rs. 100 (~$2.25) registration fee and took one of the dusty plastic seats in the half-full hall. On the long table at the front of the hall were name placards for "Prabakhar Sinha", "Prashat Bhushan", "Arundhati Roy", "Dr. Binayek Sen", "Premkrishna Sharma", and "Aruna Roy". Aruna Roy, the political activist well known for passing the 2005 Freedom of Information Act, was not present, sending a spokesman with excuses.

Arundhati Roy had everyone's attention. The Man Booker Prize-winning author has recently skewered India's political establishment for its treatment of the poor, Maoists, and other oppressed groups. In her most recent article for Outlook, she coined the phrase "India is a poor superpower", a phrase which seems to be catching on in social circles.

Binayek Sen was recently imprisoned for 20 months for pro-Maoist agitation. His radical credentials (and credentials, as Tom Wolfe pointed out long ago, are the most important thing, no?) seemed more legitimate than Roy's, but his lispy voice and quiet demeanor belied his poor treatment in prison and his relative usefulness to 'the cause'.

The proceedings were mostly in Hindi, so I have to rely on translations I received from my companion, what newspaper clippings I've been able to gather and the odd English phrase that the speakers used out of their hindi context.

There were several speeches before Roy took her place in front of the table. She held in her hand a copy of Outlook, and proceeded to recapitulate the points in her most recent article: 100 people control 25% of India's wealth; 20% of its population are responsible for 75% of its GDP growth. The formal economy (that is, the economy which figures into GDP figures) only accounts for 18% of the livelihoods that Indians draw from the economy at large. Her arms are crossed, and she remains stationary on the stage, barely moving her head as she speaks. Her hair is frizzy and long, grown out from the famous pictures of her with shaved hair after her time spent living with Maoists in Madya Pradesh. She wore incredibly baggy pants, carrying herself like a cosmopolitan Delhiite.

Roy casts India's current political crisis in terms of binaries: If she is to be believed, there are only two choices for the future of India: American Capitalism and Soviet Communism, and both are inadequate. Rhetoric like this is by no means new, but when combined with her vaguely incendiary revolutionary rhetoric ("Preaching nonviolence can be immoral," she said at one point) it is fresh and blunt.

"The Indian Nation only exists for the 20% who live in the sky," she said later on. "They think they can do anything to ensure the growth of GDP." But if this is to suggest that Roy engages in more than her fair share of agitation, then I should also add that she has good cause. India's 8.8% growth rate year-over-year is much-touted in the Western media. But with food inflation rates at 16%, it becomes increasingly clear that the poor are the big losers of India's modernization. An example: I pay a rickshaw driver Rs. 150 every day to drive me back home from Jaipur. The distance is about 15 kilometers. Assuming the rickshaw gets about 50 MPG gas mileage, and it takes about an hour for the journey, he is making roughly 80 Rupees from my fare. This 80 Rupees is about $2. Now, if you extrapolate this daily fare out to a month's wages, it's easy to see why 16% inflation in food prices can in no way be remedied with 8% growth in the man's wage (even if this is realized. I still pay the same amount of money for a rickshaw that friends paid last year and the year before).

But this is a digression. Roy had touched a nerve with the audience, and after Prabakhar Sinha, a supreme court lawyer, said that the court systems are outright corrupt, the scene took on a distinctly revolutionary tone. "What is to be done?" seemed to be the question of the day, and after Roy finished her speech there seemed to be no end to the questions about how "accountability" can be restored. Although Roy said that the constitution is the "Foundation of the Indian Democratic Secular Socialist Republic", she seemed to actively encourage the view that "real people" had lost all control over the proceedings of Indian government.

If there is a formula for revolution, then surely an essential part is the feeling that the government is no longer accountable to the people. The flurry of government absurdities of recent (For example, the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya case recently allowed motions to be filed on behalf of Lord Ram, a hindu deity--this granting him personhood. Imagine, in the United States, we are angry enough with the possibility of corporate personhood!).

However as enticing as revolution must sound, I have the feeling that most Indians feel as indignant towards their government. Roy's most serious error seems to be her assumption that the choice between American Capitalism and Soviet Communism can even be made. India may be a democracy in name only, but if so it is still the world's largest charade. Tyranny in a nation of 1.3 billion people, all from different social, religious and economic backgrounds would probably cause the country to split apart. So long as Arundhati keeps this in mind, India will not be without its revolutionary patriots.

langas, manganiyars, and bears, oh my!

2010-09-27T05:06:00.002-06:00

A few musicians came from Shekhawati, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, and Alwar to play for Mumbai starlet Sona Mohapatra. I took some photos.

america days

2010-09-17T03:39:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago everyone in my office was invited to a concert at JKK (Jawaharlal Nehru Center for the Arts), dubbed "America Days: Jaipur". The concert, we were promised, would provide "Authentic music from the American South." Put on by the American Culture office of the U.S. Consulate to India, the invitations were nothing if not strange, arriving as they did in the mail with no warning. No one in the office had even heard of the Culture office, much less that they were traveling across India putting on concerts.

The concert was this past Wednesday night. Because of the Monsoon, it was held in one of the auditoriums instead of JKK's beautiful central courtyard. This auditorium had plush reclining seats, as if to auto-suggest that the material comfort of the auditorium would correspond with the music. We arrived after the show had already started. The seats were full of well to-do Indians and American ex-pats. Perfect audience for a few old-fashioned and inoffensive country tunes, right?

Wrong. Against a backdrop of a giant blue poster depicting a kind of photoshop-merger of an Indian temple motif with a bunch of American stars, "Nashville Freight and the Freightliners" played four-chord renditions of such songs as "Tennessee Mountain Angel" ('Met this girl at a bar while I was drinking') and "I'll go to my church and you'll go to yours"; the entrance to the auditorium became a revolving door of offended Indians as the band played on heedlessly into the wet evening. The lead even performed "the first song I wrote after September 11th" (over-anunciated 'e's in 'September' included).

The band itself had only two Americans: the drummer and bassist were Indian, and backup vocals (if they can be called that) were performed by a girl from Hong Kong. Are we outsourcing music as well?

Interestingly, most of the young Indians present stayed through the entire 2-hour show. A few unconnected thoughts:

It's tempting to think of this as cultural imperialism, but it's a far cry from Louis Armstrong's visit to Egypt after World War II. For one, Louis Armstrong was musically talented. But more importantly, America had something to prove then. As the world decided between Anglo-American capitalism and Soviet authoritarian kleptocracy, Armstrong had a significant contribution to make to the cultural debate that was also raging. Today, such American government-sponsored performances come across as contrived. American popular culture already dominates the airwaves; why not let the market function, and give the Indians what they want: American performers like Akon and Justin Bieber. (Although I faintly recall Bieber being Canadian. Whatever.)

But even if we discount the performance as an attempted act of cultural self-assertion, there is something to be said for the event itself: no one can dispute that on September 15th, 2010, several hundred people used up two hours of their day in order to listen to music (albeit poor) from America.

"I come from the American South, and this is a song from my home in Louisiana. The South is like Rajasthan," the lead said. "Louisiana is like Udaipur." Everyone laughed, although I'm not sure why.

American culture pioneered the proliferation of recorded media. It is an irony that the two largest markets, India and China, will use pirated versions of the technology to return music to its origins: that is, something local, free, and ultimately supported by patronage.

monsoon!

2010-09-14T00:06:00.000-06:00

Even though I've missed most out on the bulk of it, the monsoon is definitely still weighing heavily on Jaipur. Every day brings a fresh downpour, and the crushing amount of water has brought with it mold, pests, and of course deliriously happy farmers. I've been living on a farm outside of town, and every day I walk into freshly-spun webs of spiders and new puddles in the middle of roads.

Some things

2010-09-13T04:36:00.001-06:00

I've been more or less occupied over the last week with Pete Lockett's rehearsals with Rajasthani musicians. I already posted some photos of Pete's rehearsal, but below is a recording I took with my phone of some Maanta players. It starts in the middle of their act, so apologies for not capturing the serene build-up to where the recording begins. In any case, I found it highly enjoyable on second listen.

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the return

2010-09-11T01:02:00.002-06:00

Salve, citizens--from Jaipur!
It's been almost three days since I touched down on the misty tarmac of Indira Ghandi International Airport. I've yet to lose my jet lag, but that hasn't prevented me from being in the thick of things preparing for the Rajasthan International Folk Festival. I'm setting up a festival blog, planning a brochure, and taking photos of JVF's build-up to the main event. This past week, the famed UK drummer Pete Lockett has been with us, rehearsing with about 25 Rajasthani musicians for a performance at RIFF. He'd met these musicians before, so the familiarity was already there.
Now that it's the weekend--and a national holiday! Eid Mubarak, my muslim friends!--I've got a short bit of time to write about things here in Jaipur.
Two days ago I went to one of Pete's rehearsals at the Kawa Cultural Center.
As is so often the case with the people depicted in the pictures I'm posting, I do not know the correct spelling or sometimes even the names of the pictures' subjects. Anyone who can supply corrections or information is invited to do so in the comments.

Pete improvises as a band leader whips along with his Kartal.

Gopalji's Chang troupe was there.

And Gopalji himself! Remember him?

JVF's Vinod Joshi was there to translate and provide input for Pete and the musicians. I wish I'd had a 'before the monsoon' photograph of this courtyard. Imagine it completely devoid of plant life. The monsoon is truly amazing...

Marie-Noelle Jaffre, the kind proprietress of the Kawa Cultural Center, smiles as she takes in the music.

Hello!

2010-08-14T16:31:00.000-06:00

I will be back in Jaipur at the beginning of September. I will be helping set something up.

I will take more photos. I will do my best to post them here.

अधोबिंदु

Jodhpur RIFF 2010

2010-04-29T09:42:00.002-06:00

The fault in making this blog suit a purpose (that is, to record my travels and experiences in India) is that it is neglected once I leave. Since I am now sitting in London as I write this, it strikes me that there are several things both in and related to India that are worth talking about from Imperium. (Too bad latin nouns cannot be conjugated; Imperium Geriatricus will have to suffice).

First, there's Jodhpur RIFF 2010. I didn't have the chance to see RIFF 2009, but I did get to see the setting of the festival, the stunning Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur. Jodhpur is an amazing city, and Maharaja Gaj Singh is a huge patron of the arts there. I know the festival will an unmissable experience for those who attend. If you found any of the photos in the blog about music interesting, you should book your tickets now.

kolkata is a system

2010-04-22T02:19:00.001-06:00

Santiniketan is a small skeleton of a town surrounding Visva Bharati University, which was founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1901. I took the train there on my third day in Calcutta. The day before I met the artist Chandrima Bhattacharyya at Aka Praka gallery in Hindustan Park, a small, mixed-use neighborhood in South Calcutta. She offered me a tour of Santiniketan, so I took the Bolhpur Express two days later to see what an Indian college town is like.

It's no Ithaca. For starters, the heat: For about 4-5 months a year, Santiniketa is tolerably tropical. The other 7 months, however, are brutal. The heat is nearly unbearable. The non-AC reserved seat car on the way up was like a furnace, and I only survived by the convection provided from the open windows and hundreds of Raj-era electric ceiling fans.

Bolhpur itself is a typical bustling Indian town, except there is a larger presence of hawkers selling handmade goods in the local style, a tourist favourite. Santiniketan is much more picturesque, with fewer cars and more students on bicycles.

The most popular courses at the University are art and art history; Chandrima showed me the magnificent glass chapel for ashram activities. The holy day is wednesday and the ashram of the Brahmo Samaj (a semi-religious school of thought that Tagore founded), the core institution of the school before it enlarged to become a university.

Chandrima showed me around a few more buildings, and then I went and saw her beautiful studio situated on the outside of town. But for the heat, the day was great. Chandrima made some home-cooked mustard fish and I was truly happy sitting on her couch, admiring her art as she smoked cigarettes and talked about her education and time as Curator of the Patha Bhavan's art museum.

I stayed at the "Park Villas", a guest house near the science building. There was one other guest, an elderly man in a sarong who I'd like to imagine was writing some long tract about Bengali classical music in the mid-20th century.

The next day I toured the campus and saw Tagore House, the museum-cum-office of the nobel-laureate founder of Visva Bharati, Rabindranath Tagore. The Nobel Prize medal that Tagore won in 1913 was stolen in 2004, so the museum is without its most notable object. Tagore received it under slightly ignominious circumstances, anyway: I've heard that Tagore's treatment in Europe was patronizing at best; he returned the knighthood he received subsequent to his nobel prize in protest of massacres of Indian civilians at the hands of British soldiers.

I took the air conditioned car back from Santiniketan the next day. The rest of my week at Calcutta was spent in a somewhat lackadaisical manner: breakfasts at Flurry's, the famed Swiss baker (now humiliatingly placed inside the trendy cafe of the Park hotel down Park street). The gutted remains of Stephen Court, the usual home of Flurry's, was surrounded by makeshift barriers. I heard the dim sounds of clutter being removed from the building and thrown to the pavement below.

The Park St. Cemetary is about two kilometers down Park Street from Chowringhee, maintained by the British Association for the Preservation of Cemetaries in South Asia (didn't know that such a thing could exist, to be honest). Among other notable early colonizers of India there buried, the grave of William Jones stands imposingly over the rest, as if to acknowledge his towering presence in both Indian and British culture.

Jones was a master of European and Asian languages, reputedly knowing more than ten. Somewhat relatedly, Macaulay, the future governor of India and equally proficient in the apprehension of strange languages, did not learn Sanskrit (and, therefore, hindi) because his dictionary fell off the boat on his journey to India.

The cemetery is a welcome refrain amidst the grime and exhaust of Kolkata's streets.

The best part of my visit was the Marble Palace, somewhat near College Street in North Calcutta.

As far as disorganized museums full of dust and with no regard whatsoever to the visitor, Marble Palace takes the cake. Built by Raja Rajendra Mullick in 1835, it's a smorgasbord of neo-classical kitsch and Babu fawnery.

Imagine a building modeled on the parthenon from the exterior, with sun-shades between pillars, and an inner courtyard a-la the medici palazzio. Then imagine two floors of "Belgian Crystal Lights" 20-foot tall mirrors, unlabeled Titians, Rubens and "After Rubens" paintings next to each other, live parrots imported from Germany and Australia, Statues depicting Sophocles, the four seasons, Homer and the Four Continents (America Africa Europe Asia), electric lamps from 1910 and turquoise marble floors. Each room is symmetrically arranged, for example with two statues of napoleon or victoria one on each end.

There was a room with twenty sculptures, paintings, or other depictions of Queen Victoria in different media. Undoubtedly the best was Victoria as a kind of venus made from wood, standing on a dragon rendered in art-nuveau triumph. The guards want bribes unless you go to the tourist office and get a pass. I had a pass so I received a free tour.

I was staying at the Old Kenilworth on Little Russel street, a classic Victorian lodge with draft rooms, cheap rates and three Alsatian shepherds guarding the front gate when I arrived at 2 a.m. every night. Calcutta: a great city.

Kolkata - Photos

2010-04-11T01:27:00.000-06:00

The post about my week in Kolkata (or, interchangeably at least for me, Calcutta) must wait until I'm settled in London. I'm far too occupied with packing and running various errands before I head to Delhi tomorrow. So, as a sort of concession to my readers, here are some photos of Kolkata.

my train compartment. Cockroaches and nosey Indians not displayed.

bread and butter

2010-04-08T07:32:00.002-06:00

Until I write something about my week in Calcutta and the future of UNDER WESTERN EYES, have some photos:

My Name is Khan

2010-04-01T11:05:00.001-06:00

George Orwell, in his evaluation of Kipling, wrote of Kipling’s essential advantage over his liberal critics:

“Because he [Kipling] identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ’enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases."

The American story draws its fundamental basis as well as its international appeal from the story of immigration to America. The “American Dream”, that kingmaker and illusionist of universal material prosperity, is indelibly marked with the story of millions of immigrants who have come to the United States pursuing fortune. The obvious is only so with repetition: America’s national pride is bound up in the proposition that this wealth is not unnatural or god-given. It is through effort and pain that one succeeds in America. And because pain and effort are open to all, success cannot be limited to the few.

America’s immigrants and their descendants are the avatars of America’s self-image. The sinusoidal ebbs and floes of their success in American society is tracked by Americans’ self-image. Although this often results in self-congratulation, it is also a cause for self-criticism: Give me your weak, your sick. I am not Europe. I am not a king, you are not my serf.

The treatment of Muslims and torture of detainees after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th is thus judged against a baseline of inherent American ‘goodness’, both within and outside America. Harassing Pakistani shopkeepers is not acceptable because it happens quite often abroad; Rather, it is unacceptable by very dint of its happening in America. (this is a functional definition of ‘American Exceptionalism’).

There is a scene in My Name is Khan where the main character Rizwan Khan (Played by Sharukh Khan), the autistic son of muslims from Bombay, begins to recite the hateful chant of a group of muslims he observes from his apartment window during the Riots of 1986. His mother chides him for reciting the chant, even though he doesn’t understand it. “Rizwan: there are no muslim people, no hindu people in the world. There are only good people and bad people.”

Besides becoming a leitmotif for later dramatic provocations and resolutions, Khan’s mother hints at the ultimate basis for American egalitarianism: there is no primacy of ideological beliefs, but only the rule of law and equality of opportunity. You will only be judged for your goodness or badness, not for your identity and associations. (I do not thereby discount the equally-plausible explanation that the belief in equality among men is not an American conceit but a muslim or christian one.)

My Name is Khan is not a Michael Moore-inspired morality play on American politics. Khan, because of his Asberger’s, is a gifted mechanic but remains unable to succeed. His brother emigrates to the United States to attend college and start his own business. After Khan’s mother dies, he moves in with his brother in San Francisco. There he meets the beautiful Mandira (Kajol Devgan). They fall in love and are married.

Khan’s brother disowns him for marrying Mandira, a hindu. But Khan ignores the stigma of miscegenation. His dysfunctional autism and Mandira’s two-bit job as a hairdresser aside, the couple move to a suburb of San Francisco, buy a house, send their child to public school and live life as the rest of the world perceives Americans to actually live it: as a nuclear family, in the suburbs, away from any kind of conflict, social or economic.

Although some critics say the film is less political than it is dramatic, I don’t accept that a Bollywood film can claim innocence for its ham-fisted political commentary in allegorical statementsof love, kindness and naiveté. Khan’s mental illness does not prevent him from selling cheap beauty products and traveling by plane. The ugly side of the American social contract is that the very mindset which advocates worldwide egalitarianism is the one most eagerly embraced by regimes of cheap oil and immigration protectionism. (Imagine how cheap a haircut would be if someone from Mexico could come to San Francisco and set up a barber shop on the corner. Mandira would find it a lot more difficult to buy her SUV and move to the suburbs, yaar?).

On its face, My Name is Khan is interesting to this American because it engages in the objectification which Americans and Europeans often utilize against the Orient. But when Khan arrives in the benighted town of Wilhelmina, Georgia, and is taken in by “Mamma Jenny”, a jolly, obese black woman who “fixes him up” some food and cries every twenty seconds, all the while dressed in a potato sack and ambling around her wooden cabin, Khan outs itself as little more than a pastiche of stereotypes, aimed at glorifying the greatest farce of all: that we are all American.

going to calcutta

2010-03-31T11:03:00.001-06:00

I won't be updating the (already in need of attention) blog. in the meantime, since I'm leaving my computer back here. I'll be taking photos, in any event.

goodbye!

under construction

2010-03-24T23:26:00.001-06:00

Saw this the other day on my way back from lunch. Note the wooden scaffolding.

“…In a recent contribution, Javier Cuenca Esteban …puts the “arguably minimum transfers” from India to Britain between 1757 and 1815, Plassey and Waterloo, at 30.2 million sterling. This figure is the estimate of exports from which there was no compensating import for India.”

Computed (in an admittedly table-napkin fashion):

In 2008, £30200000 0s 0d from 1775 is worth

£3,070,000,000.00 using the retail price index.
£41,100,000,000.00 using average earnings.

news from the front

2010-03-23T05:51:00.001-06:00

Judging by the enthusiastic temper of last post, I started the Jaipur summer more than a little bit ignorant of the heat's effect on ones' mind and body.

For the past few days the temperature has been hovering around 41º celsius, or about 100º Fahrenheit. This wouldn't faze many, but the lack of air conditioning in Jaipur and my vegetarian diet has made the expenditure of energy (physical, mental) an altogether different proposition.

The heat smothers. I wake up every day at six a.m. to catch the sunrise and enjoy the dawnlit hour of cool, 25-degree temperature. I sit on the porch and read or write. Because I will be working on the computer all day, I usually stick to books and my diary.

By 8 a.m., the sun has already begun its ascent. As I walk to breakfast, I have to wear my hat and sunglasses. By the time I walk into the office at 9:45 a.m., I begin to sweat underneath my clothing as I walk the distance from the street to the office verandah.

Once inside, I turn on the fan and pour myself a tall glass of water. The dark, cave-like office remains about 30º throughout the day.

Outside my office window, life plays out in half-speed. People move slowly, almost unnoticeably down the street. The sun reverberates against the piles of dirt and chai stands.

The Times of India has been reporting on water shortages in the pink city (Jaipur's oldest sector). Water is being rationed at about two buckets per day per household, or about 40 gallons. Compare this with the average American's use of approximately 70 gallons/day.

By the end of April and in early may, temperatures should reach around 50º celsius or 122º Fahrenheit. Water will be more strictly rationed. The farm I live on already has a drip irrigation system, and it is building a catchment system for the summer monsoons. The amount of well-water in Jaipur has long ago passed the point of no-return. The monsoon water cannot penetrate the hard, dry earth in order to replenish the aquifers in Jaipur, so rainwater catchment systems will be the only reamining means of agriculture.

what's next

2010-03-19T06:22:00.001-06:00

I know half of keeping all five-hundred of you coming to this blog regularly lies in simply making inane posts, so this one's dedicated to my growing audience:

This week I'll be making a few posts about food in India, inspired by a conversation I overheard. (teaser: it's about meat-eaters and karma. Are carnivores destined to lower reincarnation? stay tuned.)

Also, I've got some photos of a construction site down the street from my office. Get ready Jaipur, for Hotel Modal!

Thirdly, I've got some ruminations about my trip thus far. It's difficult to put a cap-stone on a trip which had no obvious beginning (nor, for that matter, does it really have an end. -I am planning on returning to India in August, all else equal), but there are several things which have given me pause for thought of late, and I'd like to share them.

HDR

2010-03-18T03:06:00.000-06:00

Now that I've found a decent enough program to stitch together the photos, I'll begin taking more HDR photos on my travels. (Although, sad to say, the heat has put a damper on most of my enthusiasm to get around India. Hopefully I can make it down to Mumbai this trip, at the least.)

Roit Police & Puppet Colony

2010-03-17T23:38:00.001-06:00

This one is a bit scattershot. Every day during my commute to work I drive by the Rajasthan parliament building, an imposing sandstone structure that looks eerily stalinist--even though parliament is currently in session the building shows no signs of activity (that is, the massive, 50-foot-tall doors are not being opened and closed. But this is probably just to keep the cold air in.)

About a block away is the puppet colony, which I've already posted about.

This is the massive dirt lot that abuts the colony. If you look closely at this and other pictures in the set, you can see it in a little more detail.

The main road leading to the parliament has the highest wall in Jaipur next to it, a quaint pink job with white etchings of various mascots (Elephants, etc.). Of course, the wall also does a good job of hiding what's on the other side from dignitaries and tourists.

Just in case people get unruly, the police are always at hand:

Jasol

2010-03-15T02:33:00.002-06:00

Jasol is the hometown of former BJP Finance Minister Jaswant Singh. He was ejected from the party for his republican tendencies. Jasol is about an hour West of Balotra. We visited the former curator of the Mehrangarh Trust's museum there, as well as a few temples. That weekend (the 6th of March) happened to be a festival commemorating the rule of Rawal Mallinath and his wife Rani Rupade.

Rupade is a revered folk saint. I thought I had written down her story when I was told it in broken English, but I can't find it anywhere. All I know for certain is that she reached out to untouchables and is remembered for this act.

Rawal & Rupade

The Mehrangarh trust's former curator in his home. I wish I had a photograph of the mosaic he'd made, depicting Jaswant Singh surrounded by his party enemies in lilliputian miniature form.

Later that night we headed for Jasol proper, to see a small Ger concert. This was much better than the concert we were to see the next night in Balotra. I've also found some notes I wrote:

Ger dancing is a kind of martial dance traditional to Rajasthan. Dancers dress in lancer uniforms–white, suspended martial dresses with a thick, long cotton skirt. Orange, yellow or red sashes are often used, but not always.

Dancers move in a circular formation around two drummers. One with an approx. 6'' brass cymbal who hits it with two wooden sticks (this provides treble), the other hitting a large, common-type bass drum often seen in marching bands, except with an animal-skin surface.

The dancer's have a set routine, based around a single rotation of the drum. The Gera hold a staff in either of both hands, usually about 3-4' long. The staffs are made of anything from wood to metal to bamboo. Every 3-4 strides, the dancers hit their staffs together or against the outstretched staff of their neighbor. This creates a rhythm which is harmonized by the drums in the center of the circle.

Note the beautiful canopy in the pictures below.

Next, the women came up and provided a performance. Sometimes I think they only do this to make the men feel better about their own music.

Afterwards an actor came up and provided a monologue. He sounded something like Donald Duck on a serious amount of stimulants.

One of the preoccupations of the Gera we met in Jasol was with the material of their dresses. Apparently more than 50 years ago a material was used which gave a much better impression when used in the dance. Knowing our connections with textile factories, they were probably interested in JVF finding and sourcing a new material for their dress.

This man had one of the old dresses:

The heavier fabric means the skirt swirls out dramatically during the dance.

change your bookmarks

2010-03-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

UNDER WESTERN EYES is now located at

http://underwesterneyes.com

Radio Free Rajasthan, Episode 2

2010-03-12T02:32:00.000-07:00

Ger Festival

2010-03-11T20:32:00.002-07:00

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I'd been traveling for the past 9 days. I've taken photos and have stories from New Delhi, Balotra, Kanana, Jasol, and elsewhere. I'm going to break the trip into parts, with no regard for chronology but rather how conducive an event or set of photographs are to my mood.

The following pictures are from the Ger festival in Kanana. It's pretty big. I didn't see Westerners.

Canopies were set up to give shade for the assembled Ger dancers.

Ger is a community dance performed by the Garasias of Rajasthan. This dance is performed during the Holi festival. Only men participate in this dance.
The dancers holding sticks in their hand strike it together in a rhythmic fashion. The music is produced by the beating a big drum and the striking together of brass plates. The dance and the music, which are initially slow, gather pace towards the end of the performance.

The heat was intense. My hat provided some shade, but the torrent of sunlight assaulted everyone present. Yet, they danced.

As we left, I stopped by a tent set up by Brahmakumari, a sect with a particular vision of the world soul. (Think Plato's first mover).

THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT ON THE INTERNET

2010-03-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

I guest wrote a comic for PAPER COMIC WEBCOMIC, written by my dear friend Mikey and my mere acquaintance Dan. (No offense Dan, but Mikey and I go way back--killer nuns, flying sumo wrestler, BBBFBB-back.).

Jasol, Balotra, Some other updates

2010-03-08T04:52:00.001-07:00

Not that I've been neglecting this blog, but I'm sure that anyone who's been visiting regularly probably has some desire to know what's been going on, especially since there's been nothing since my blatantly ad-hoc "Olympic Quote" post below.

Last monday was Holi, an event that is worth about a billion posts, but which will probably be treated with one, if any at all. Imagine your intrepid writer covered in chemical pigment, drunk off his ass on watered-down rum staggering across dirt lots outside Jaipur with a group of equally-inebriated Indians. Not a pretty sight.

The following tuesday Georgie and I left for New Delhi, where we spent two days checking out the Sacred Arts festival, which I've already posted about. The last day or two in Delhi might merit a "photo dump".

On Friday evening Divya and I took an overnight train from Delhi to Jodhpur. From there we met Vinod and Naveen, who had stayed the night in Jodhpur. We spent the next two days bouncing around Balotra, investigating musicians and meeting with partners of the foundation.

Which is all a preamble to my saying: hold your horses, there will be three or four new posts this week about what happened last week. -JWB

Best olympic quote ever?

2010-03-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

I was unfortunately unable to watch the winter Olympiad in Vancouver because of time differences and work. But this quote made me laugh:

“My name is Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset. I skied the second lap and I fucked up today. I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days. I have the room next to Petter Northug and every day there is noise in there. So I think that is the reason I fucked up. By the way Tiger Woods is a really good man.”

-Norwegian Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset, after winning the Silver medal for Cross-Country Skiing.

(via Abu Muqawama)

New Delhi

2010-03-04T19:50:00.001-07:00

I've been in New Delhi since tuesday. The city's several degrees north of Jaipur, so temperatures are more moderate. Georgie and I were here to check out the Delhi Sacred Arts Festival, which brings music and creative arts to sacred spaces (cathedrals, mosques, etc.).

We arrived on Tuesday night, and spent the evening in Hotel BB Palace in Karol Bagh. This hotel is strangely empty. I've only seen one other guest since we arrived.

On wednesday we had some free time during the day, so we went on a bit of sightseeing. After admiring the literal post-colonial decay and rejuvenation on Connaught circle, we walked through a market selling various nicknacks (sunglasses, clothing, etc.). We met a man named Ahmed who spoke unusually good english–with what sounded to me like an American accent. Thus interested, Ahmed led us to his shop, directly underneath a mosque in the area.

Ahmed in his shop

Georgie ended up somehow in possession of two lacquer-wood boxes with matching coasters. Very nice, and a decent enough deal. We went to the Tibetan market nearby:

one of the better finds

Then it was off to the Capital for India Gate and the Presidential palace:

a makeshift town for workers improving the area before the 2010 commonwealth games.

Some nice-looking gentlemen, who just happen to be leaders of the BJP, one of India's more racist, reactionary parties.

Most of the sidewalks we went down looked like this

Here it is. India gate.

A view of the Secretariats' buildings, with the Presidential palace in the distance.

'Round about this point in time I spotted an entry in my guidebook for the "National Philatelic Museum". So began an hour-long quest on foot to find this no-doubt amazing museum near parliament. We walked back and forth, getting conflicting accounts as to its location from different people on the sidewalk. At a certain point I realized it was almost 1 pm and we would need to leave to get lunch. "Maybe we should just give up, I said."

Georgie emitted a shriek and turned me around. Behold:

Too bad it was closed due to lack of public interest. Oh well.

We then went to Khan market to purchase some linen pants. After a refreshing lunch of meat-coated pizza and American 60's music at "The Big Chill" (a cafe paradoxically serviced by Northeasterners or even people from Hong Kong) went to Lodi Gardens:

Tired out, we went back to the hotel, changed quickly, and then went to see David Hykes perform at The Sacred Heart Cathedral.

Yesterday morning Divya arrived for a meeting with David. After a day working, we headed over to Penny's house in South Delhi for dinner. Suitably cheered up on several bottles of beer and a few heady discussions of Indian development, malls, Bollywood film culture and the like, Divya and I headed back to the hotel. Today we're going to a workshop in the afternoon and then taking a night train to Jodhpur. I'll have another post up this weekend about this leg of the journey.

Jantar Mantar

2010-03-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

When Majarajah Sawai Jai Singh built Jantar Mantar in the early 18th century, it was the largest of five observatories across India.

Because of their monumental size, the different instruments at Jantar Mantar attract a great deal of tourist attention.

The astrolabes, celestial spheres, and sundials were thought to have a practical applications in the lives of Jai Singh's subjects: farming, marriage, death. Astrology was the science of the Vedas, the ancient tomes which have become living testaments to the perseverance and transmutation of Indian culture and civilization.

Jai Singh built the instruments on a scale that so large it often confounds the modern viewer. Is this not the hubris of rulers past?

In fact, the instruments were built on a large scale to increase the accuracy of the measurements they gave. Unfortunately for the 1mm increments which are inscribed on many of the instruments at Jantar Mantar, the Sun's penumbra is sometimes as wide as 30mm.

Alas, we are left to admire these instruments as artifacts, more significant for their art than their practical applications.

introducing: radio free rajasthan

2010-02-28T09:20:00.001-07:00

One of the things which drew me to work and live in Rajasthan was the music. So much of what JVF does involves supporting Rajasthani folk musicians. The people at JVF are interested in music from all parts of the world. As popular music from Mumbai, the United States and elsewhere prevails in even the most rural parts of Rajasthan, the only hope for traditional music is to both accomodate and supplant these musical incursions from abroad.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I've continued to collect music from scenes in America and abroad. The idea of "Radio Free Rajasthan" is to show how even the rawest folk music from Bikaner can be admired and juxtaposed admirably with the hottest jams from New York and London.

You'll probably notice that this first episode doesn't contain any music from Rajasthan. This is for two reasons: I haven't got access to the recordings I really need, and at this point I'm interested in putting as much of RFR out before I leave in April. Consider this a toe in the water of Podcasting. With any luck, I'll be back next week with a proper episode: equal parts Rajasthan and the rest of the world.

Until then.

and the music?

2010-02-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

With my first foray into Podcasting coming out tomorrow morning, I'm already feeling bad that it doesn't contain any Rajasthani music. So as an act of cheap compensation, I'm posting this video from Tony Gatlif's amazing Latcho Drom:

who are you???

2010-02-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

WHO??

Shekhawati visit

2010-02-25T21:16:00.002-07:00

Yesterday we went to Shekhawati, a township along the road to Bikaner.

Gopal Geela, our friend who plays drums well

The drumming begins. This ceremony takes place in the days preceding Holi. They used to destroy the drums, symbolically breaking the calcifications of wintertime, to welcome the short harvest before the hot summer.

We headed off to another village.

And then another. (Sorry, I don't have the village names. Leave a comment if you would like to supply this essential information).

A Temple visit was in order. This guy kept ranting about how Divya was obviously a Punjabi. We left assuming the entire area would now be shaken with rumours of a Punjabi incursion.

Gopal, the agitator, and Naveen

No village trip would be complete without a wizened old man holding a staff:

Georgie was surrounded.

Sanganer Exhibition @ Anokhi Museum of Hand Block Print, Amer

2010-02-22T06:17:00.002-07:00

Last weekend I went to the Anokhi Museum of Hand Block Print at Amer fort. The museum is in a beautifully-restored Haveli adjacent to Amer fort, about 45 minutes outside of Jaipur. The Anokhi museum uses the space as a place to exhibit historical examples of Sanganer block printmaking. The style has been slowly displaced by newer, more efficient silkscreen printing methods, but Anokhi has done a great job (both commercially and, as evidenced by this museum, academically) preserving these traditions for current and future generations to admire and replicate.

A view of the fort's outer battlements

Carving the blocks

Applying the ink

The Result

Up in the Air...

More information on the Anokhi Museum, including visiting hours and exhibition dates

(more images)

the new metropolitanism?

2010-02-21T06:32:00.002-07:00

Stewart Brand, the famous founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, has a piece in last month's Prospect magazine about the current state and future promise of slums in the world's mega-cities. A preponderance of the world's population already lives in cities. Each month, more than two million people move from rural poverty into the slums of mega-cities like Lagos, Nigeria or Mumbai. It would seem ironic that the founder of a magazine almost wholly devoted towards revivalist agriculture and social techniques would therefore write a paean to the slum, but here he is:

The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents. To a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. I trained as a biologist and to my eye, they look organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density—1m people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.

It is a well-known truth that cities like New York and Tokyo are the most energy-efficient cities in the world. What reason do we have to object to the new urbanism, then? Brand suggests the European bourgeois' essential distaste for the new city with the examples he cites in order to defend this new notion of city-dwelling:

In Bangkok’s slums, most homes have a colour television—the average number is 1.6 per household. Almost all have fridges, and two-thirds have a CD player, washing machine and a mobile phone. Half of them have a home telephone, video player and motorcycle.

The insight and the horror which Brand only alludes to is this: While the educated classes fret about how to somehow lessen the plight of poverty on the masses of our fellow-men, the impoverished are quickly learning to get used to a way of life that would seem intolerable a generation ago. The "pod" hotels in Japan evoke such horror in us is that they illustrate the emerging view of prosperity in the world: a television and several other electric appliances seems enough to satisfy anyone. Whatever happened to appreciating nature, having a large house, plenty of exercise, and clean air?

When I was living with a host family in Qingdao, I noticed the decrepit honeycomb apartment block in which they lived. My host father worked in a factory several miles away during the week and was only home on weekends. What horrifies Americans and Europeans so much about this coming future is exactly this: my host father seemed perfectly content to sell his middle age to backbreaking work in a factory in exchange for an apartment with a dishwasher, washer and dryer, television, flush toilet and cement partition. When I asked his wife and daughter what they thought about the government, they had nothing but praise: look at how much their lives had changed in the last ten years!

Brand writes that

if [cities] are overall a net good for those who move there, it is because cities offer more than just jobs. They are transformative: in the slums, as well as the office towers and leafy suburbs, the progress is from hick to metropolitan to cosmopolitan, and with it everything the dictionary says that cosmopolitan means: multicultural, multiracial, global, worldly-wise, well travelled, experienced, unprovincial, cultivated, cultured, sophisticated, suave, urbane.

The fundamental stumbling block for the American or European mind in accepting this new vision of urban existence is the essential lack of dignity therein. And this is not to say that humans must somehow adapt to a life without dignity. Rather it is to say that the essentially western project of technological and civilizational progression implies a logical contradiction. Conceptualizing human prosperity in terms of material comfort requires the abandonment of freedom, liberty, and dignity–values which we thought were essential to happiness in human enterprise.

Stopgap post

2010-02-19T10:33:00.001-07:00

Apologies, reader, for the recent drought in posts. This past week I've been working pretty steadily on launching JVF's website (which just launched today!). I haven't really picked up my camera in the mean-time, simply because I haven't been doing much besides commuting back and forth from work.

The farm I live on, Anokhi Farm, has a car which drives from the farm to the Anokhi Cafe on Pritviraj road (we affectionately call it the 'Cake Car', although it would be better described as the 'bread car', for its pervasive smell of freshly-baked wheat bread). Every day it leaves at around 9:15, and it's the only way for Georgie and I to get into the office at a reasonable hour.

Every day the cake car drives past a vast dirt lot abutted by the Kathputhali (puppeteer) colony. Scattered about the lot, in a reliably constant number (usually around 5-6), Indian men defecate on the dirt. Some are alone. Others are surrounded by their friends, a few unhurriedly waiting for a makeshift cricket match to begin.

The Kathputhali are manufacturers of traditional puppets. Traditionally, the Kathputhali made puppets for shows portraying old tales of love, misfortune, and courtly intrigue. As with most castes involved in the manufacture of arts and craft, their position in the social hierarchy has always been rather low.

With the (relatively) recent advent of the internet, films and television, their craft has been quite instantaneously rendered useless. Now they occupy a kind of shantytown on the edge of a lot, about two blocks away from the parliamentary building of Jaipur. (Note: I will post photographs of the Kathputhali village when I have the chance this weekend or next week).

The Kathputhali shantytown borders one of the main boulevards leading to the parliament building, and the village's disgraceful state has given rise to one of Jaipur's more interesting monuments: the tallest wall outside of the old city. Towering at over fifteen feet high, the wall is decorated with quaint and delicate drawings evocative of the frescoes on the walls of havelis in the pink city. That the feeble vestiges of a dying caste of craftsman would be walled in by decorations evocative of their own extinct art is an irony lost on all but the cosseted few who have enough pity left to look out the window of their car at it as they drive by.

And if a problem is so inexorable as to be impossible to carry in one's mind, let alone come up with a solution to, is it still a problem?

the maharajah's biplane

2010-02-16T05:19:00.001-07:00

Two severely-damaged British biplanes from World War II were presented to Maharajah Ganga Singh for his "services to the empire" during World War II. Singh spent the next few decades painstakingly using parts from both planes to create the MDE-1 which now sits in the basement of Jungarh fort in Bikaner.

Sumitra, Daya Ram, and the dream of Dharohar

2010-02-15T03:43:00.004-07:00

One of the major projects of the JVF recently has been the band Dharohar, a group composed of musicians from all over Rajasthan and one from the UK, Jason Singh. The band's members span all India's socio-economic strata; The band combines musical themes and traditions from across Rajasthan, but most notably it also seeks to harmonize and find shared ground between musicians who, before Dharohar, were separated by caste and geographic region. With funds from the British Council and the Annenberg foundation, Dharohar has toured all over India and hopes to break into the European festival circuit.

Last week I took a trip with John about three hours west of Jaipur to visit Sumitra and Daya Ram, two of the band's ten members. John pays regular visits to musicians in Rajasthan to find out more about their townships and the circumstances which surround (and consequently affect) their art. John isn't particularly involved with Dharohar, but he came along to interview Sumitra and Daya Ram for a film currently being made by documentary filmmaker Elizabeth McKay.

Sumitra's town, Jaitaran, was our first visit.

(to see more photos from the trip, visit the flickr set)

We set out at about 8 am. The road west of Jaipur starts out as recently-lain tarmac; predictably it turns into pockmarked freeway and subsequent patchwork of roads and squares. The American idea of roadways elevated above the land (overstepping cities, state boundaries, etc.), designed to make cross-country travel effortless, either does not exist here or is not yet realized: Semi-trucks compete with horse-drawn carriages for space on roadways which only seem to exist by the good grace of the buildings which abut them.

Jaitaran is modest; the main thoroughfare has your usual allotment of men smoking bidi and lazing about over cups of chai. (A common refrain on these trips has been: "Look at all these men, doing nothing! While all the women do the work." Not really a problem endemic to India, though). We turn right and creep up a hill, alighting at a small walled compound, Sumitra's house.

We find Sumitra, her sister Shoba, her two brothers and her father Sajjan Das waiting for us.

Sumitra and her family sing a kind of devotional music unique to Rajasthan; it's impossible to describe, and unfortunately I don't have a recording of the day's performance to post. Sumitra's voice is beautiful: a sylph-cry as much as it is a call towards devotion. She sings alternately about god and the missing lover; John told me there is a reason the two are often conflated.

John interviewed her about her experience in Dharohar. Undoubtedly it is a band, she says, not simply an agglomeration of different musicians and performers. Sumitra had high praise for the democratic model adopted by the band at the instigation of Jason Singh (as de facto frontman, I because of his status as a foreigner and consequent remove from caste antagonisms). No decision is made without complete agreement by the band. John calls this democratic model of music-making "something I've never heard of".

If someone doesn't like a decision reached by the group, at the very least they must acknowledge that they participated in (and thus legitimized) the process which produced the decision. It will be interesting to see whether the seemingly harmonious working relationship of the band is merely a tacit sort of coercion on the part of the band: it is commonly observed in juries and other small democratic bodies that perceived leaders influence the opinions and decisions of those who rationally ought to oppose unanimous decisions.

After her interview, we lunched in Sumitra's room. It was a small, cozy room with cement walls and a cool draft from outside. She had pictures of herself, smiling, holding roses and awards. Many repetitions of her name, 'Sumitra', in cursive script. "Such a diva," I remarked. "A regular Aretha Franklin!" We sat on mats and ate dal with chapati and paneer. We ate curdled and sweetened goat's milk for dessert.

After our repast we went outside to see Sumitra and her family perform.

After the performance, we headed a short ways down the road to stay at Naraj house, the Rajput equivalent of a motel.

The next day, we left at 8:30 for Merta, the hometown of Daya Ram. Daya Ram plays the harmonium and sings in Dharohar.

From the Dholi community, traditionally a community of singers, Daya Ram can sing mand – a Rajasthani style of singing favoured in the courts, as well as bhajans, spiritual songs about every day life, love and loss. For the last 40 years, Daya Ram’s father has run Kuchamani Khayal performances in their local area. This is a whole night of song and drama, enacting versions of Hindu mythologies and histories written down centuries ago by Brahmins for the community, and gradually adopted for public entertainment. Daya has been involved in these productions all his life, often taking female roles (typically, men play female parts in Khayal), such as the king’s wife, and dancing and singing in these shows. He has been associated with JVF since 2004.
From an excellent write-up [PDF] on Dharohar by Georgie Pope, who pointed out several mistakes in the original version of this post.

Daya Ram (right)

The day's events echoed yesterday's. John helped Elizabeth interview Daya Ram about his experiences with Dharohar. Daya Ram betrayed a more pessimistic view of the band without Jason, who left yesterday for the UK. Although they have a brilliant working relationship, there is no way of knowing whether Jason's absence will cause hidden egotisms and ambitions to take hold of the band and fray its espirit de corps.

After the interview, Daya Ram and his family put on a show.

Daya Ram's Father

The women came out and insisted on a performance.

Daya Ram, John, and Daya Ram's father

Bikaner

2010-02-10T00:42:00.001-07:00

Last week I went to the birthday party of Mary-Noelle, a frenchwoman who lives in a beautiful music and arts center on the edge of Jaipur, called Kawa. At the party, I met a spaniard named Maria who was a middle(wo)man in the carpet manufacture and export industry. I liked her; she had a kind of good humor and charm which isn't common in the professional and mercantile classes. She had an affable smile and seemed to have no consciousness of the (all-too-Anglo) idea that at some point in life you have to "get serious." She divides her year into stints in Valencia and Jaipur, working on one of her own businesses as well as helping a Spanish company source rugs from Rajasthan and Varanesi. Maria was heading to Bikaner this week and invited me to come along. I'm still wet behind the ears when it comes to India and eager for new experiences, so I happily agreed to come along.

The trip began at 4:30 a.m. on monday, when I woke up to drive from the farm to Maria's hotel. We left at 6:30, heading for Bikaner via the local freeways.

An aside about Indian driving (I know I've already addressed it): Our driver, whose name I now forget, should be 1) commended for getting us to Bikaner and back without major incident, and 2) warned that his current choice of occupation will result in a seriously shortened lifespan; if not from a car accident, then the stress and anxiety which inevitably arises from having semi trucks speeding towards you at 100km/hr with nothing to do but hope they can overtake the slow-moving tractor carrying an enormous load of cotton in the back traveling at 10 km/hr.

If I were tasked with disproving deductive logic and reasoning, I would do nothing else than point to Indian roadways. It is a classic trope of the Western experience of India to say of the chaos which apparently governs the country, "yet It somehow works". But this is to ignore the fact that social mores and customs have replaced the roles of law and order. Where chaos apparently rules (because of the noticeable lack of any police or government authority), the emergent order of the Indian street proves that much more than mere formality composes the everyday affairs and exchanges between humans.

But I digress. Our trip was filled with close encounters, adrenaline bursts, thoughts of god, &c.

I try not to take photographs through car windshields, but some things are too hard to pass up:

We arrived in Bikaner at around 11:30. The carpet factory had sent someone on motorcycle to drive us into town. As we entered Bikaner, the traffic became more heavy. we had to wait for a train to cross the main road, so I stepped out of the car and snapped a few photographs.

this was our guide.

at the crossing

We arrived at the carpet factory half twelve. Maria set to work immediately castigating the owners (cousins) Inder and Krishanpal for not getting the samples out in time and screwing up the carpet she was supposed to get to her employers (they wanted it in three pieces; the brothers hadn't separated the carpet).

women separating fibres.

We toured the area with the large foot looms where the rugs were woven:

We went to lunch at around 2, across the street from Junagarh fort. Maria had some more business to attend to, so I went into the fort and took a tour with a spanish-speaking tour group. (Oddly, my trip to Bikaner probably involved the most spanish practice I've had in years).

'Round about 5 I returned to the factory, my tourist mission complete. Maria and I stayed at the "Halaheera Business Hotel and Restro-Bar" in Bikaner. It was a strange plastic edifice in the international style; It's amazing that, 100km from the border with Pakistan, you can still get the stiff sheets, prickly AC, ESPN, and shiny fake wood accents which define hotels from Phoenix to Bangalore.

The next morning we left at 6:30 for Jaipur, and the only notable thing to report from the drive back was hitting a dog square on at 100km/hr (the sound of bone making contact with fiberglass is unique).

endquote

2010-02-09T03:53:00.001-07:00

“As if every passion did not contain its quantum of reason.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche: The Will to Power

a walk in the mall

2010-02-07T05:39:00.001-07:00

I took an early day at work, mostly because Georgie and Divya are out of town, the former visiting her boyfriend and the latter on tour with Dharohar (are you in Bombay tomorrow? Check them out at the Kala Ghoda Festival). After work I went to Bapu Bazaar near New Gate in the old city to purchase a pair of sandals.

Before I tell the story of buying a pair of shoes, a short aside on my philosophy of consumption. When I am in a foreign country which is considerably more poor than the United States, I am considerably less stingy with my cash than I am back home. This is not because of any half-hearted bourgeois attempts to 'sympathize' with the people I interact with. In fact it comes down to my own particular brand of American laziness: Knowing that each and every time a shopkeeper harangues me with 'Sir!'s and 'Young sir!'s he is expending considerable amounts of his caloric uptake in his (probably vain) attempt to catch my attention for even an instant, in the even vainer hope that this will translate to my giving him a middling sum of cash for a manufactured product of unknown origin (hence the toil which went into making which product will remain unknown to me), I do not spend any more than an instant haggling over the price of a good I want to buy.

Thus, today: After a short walk around the bazaar to gain some kind of understanding of the number and price of sandals for sale, I went into a shopkeeper's stall off the bazaar on a side street, across from a man selling cotton candy and fried peanuts. This particular stall attracted my attention for the paradoxical reason that its owners did not even acknowledge my presence: one was in the front attending to two rather skeptical-looking women in sequined dresses, and the other was in the back praying to a small shrine erected to Ganesh.

After I walked into the stall, the worker who was busy called the the one in prayer to help with this newly-arrived customer. The salesman did not acknowledge this call, and continued in prayer. After about two minutes spent poking about the seemingly limitless collection of leather thongs, jhatis, sandals, and loafers, he turned around and told me, "You looking for shoes?!"

"Yes, I am. Some sandals, actually." I said. Spurred on as if by divine inspiration, the salesman began rummaging through the piles of shoes, as if some cadence on my utterance of the word "Sandal" had somehow revealed to him the exact size, shape and colour of the sandal I would ultimately purchase.

He produced a few pairs of shoes, and I tried them on. They were either too small or the wrong colour, but this guy seemed to know what he was doing, and definitely seemed to have a method to his maniacal way of picking out shoes at random from the wall of shelves near him.

After I found a pair I liked, the haggling began. This is where my philosophy came into play. The salesman said: "Today is a good day, you are my first customer in the morning," he said. (It was 12:30 pm.) "Normally, these shoes are 825 rupees. I will give them to you for 500."

Although I lay claim to certain proclivities about buying goods in foreign lands, here is a pretty safe generalization for someone who is buying something in a stall in a bazaar, no matter where you are. Before embarking on any trip, find out the average weekly of a middle-class (in my case) Indian. Assuming an average middle-class Indians make 4-5 thousand Rupees a week (I have come to this conclusion anecdotally, so it is in no way grounded in actual fact. But as you shall see, that is not important.) When a shopkeeper offers you something at any price, divide the average salary of a middle-class Indian by the price. In this case, this would translate to roughly one-tenth the weekly salary of an upper-middle-class Indian. You can see the use of this. Someone making a salary of $36,000 in the United States is making $700 a week, roughly. Now, imagine if a cheap pair of leather sandals you were attempting to buy from a street market in Atlanta were labeled with the price of $70. Absurd, no?

Hence, I insisted on bargaining the shopkeeper down. Although laziness is often a consideration, the foreign traveler also knows that bargaining is a chance to prove one's worth. Thus anything which can be construed as a ripoff, even if it does nothing to damage ones' pocketbook will almost certainly damage ones' pride and estimation among friends.

I made the salesman lower his price to Rs. 300. Knowing the shoes were probably manufactured at a cost of 1/10th that amount, I was about to negotiate him further when my other motivation, laziness, reared its ugly head. I resigned myself to spending Rs. 300 on this cheap pair of sandals which would probably fall apart in a month's time. This is the part I like so much about my philosophy of purchase: It surprises the shopkeeper even more than it satisfies my urge to prevent unnecessary expenditure of effort. My salesman took the three crisp, clean 100-rupee notes and held them up into the sky, kissing them as he lifted them above his forehead.

This left me doubly satisfied: Not only had I landed a pair of serviceable sandals, I had also reaffirmed one man's belief in divine intercession.

look!

2010-02-06T21:14:00.001-07:00

Everyone's blogging these days. One of my best friends, Mikey, is doing what he does best (What's that? It's not making films? No, no.): Juvenile humour in a drawn medium. Head on over to Paper Comic Comic or something, even if you hate comics as a matter of principle.

(Editor's note: Actually, not everyone is blogging these days. Youth is wasted on the wasted youth!)

photo dump

2010-02-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Georgie and I went walking in the vegetable market yesterday. We went to a nearby Jain temple, and they asked her if she was on her period.

Environmentalism in India

2010-02-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

One of my most loyal readers (I won't name names, but thanks and much love for the comments) has dutifully put forward a question they'd like me to write at length about: Environmentalism in India, or its lack thereof. How do Indians treat nature? What is their relationship with nature?

First, a disclaimer: I have spent all my time in India within the sheltered confines of an organic farm. My hosts fulminate against the for-profit farmers who pervade the agricultural industries in India (just as they do in any country, really). Therefore, my opinion is necessarily informed by very few sources and extremely narrow experiences.

The first thing to know is that Indians are not actually that different from Americans, culturally. Although we are now separated by thousands of miles, and before that by the Ural mountains, Indians and Europeans came from common ancestors. The Aryans (who provided so much stock for the European races of today) also invaded and had a very profound effect on the Indian subcontinent. Around 1500 b.c., Aryans from the Iranian plateau invaded India and retained the Hindu religions of the land they conquered.

This idea of common ancestry is by no means new: the British Raj used it to cultivate a sense of shared history with subject Indians.

Whether or not there is a shared culture between Europe and India (there are shared linguistic roots, at the very least), the objectification of nature is an idea which seems to persist in both Indian and European cultures. This seems to lend credence to the idea that nature is headed towards certain collapse: humans here, as they have in Europe, have taken an instrumental view toward it and therefore do not see any inherent value in preserving the 'status quo'.

After independence in 1947, land was parceled out to owners. All that remained became state land. Since the government was not robust and did not possess the same powers of force that the Raj did, this land was ransacked by locals who needed timber. On my trip to Siliserh this became obvious enough:

There is a reason for the barrenness of the land in Rajasthan, and it is not the recent drought.

Obviously, there is a lot of research and understanding required in order to think properly about the relationship between humans and nature in India (or in any country, even my own). But there is something about the sheer oldness of this place – that people have been living here continuously for as long as humans have been, well, human – that gives rise to interesting thoughts about the proper notion of nature. Except for the Himalayas, I cannot think of any statements of natural beauty and awesome power which compare to American National Parks like Yosemite or Yellowstone.

Humans have already had their chance to make their mark on the land, and they have done so. Is the environmental condition of India going downhill or up? Is this even a valid question?

Panin

2010-02-01T23:23:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Panin at around 11:30, and there was already a huge crowd in front of Jumma's house. Elizabeth and Elio, two filmmakers who are making a film about Dharohar's members, had stayed the night and the entire village was awake with feverish attention.

Jumma exudes a happy reserve which is immediately noticeable. High and round cheeks enforce this impression; his posture and comport combine to affect a kind of happy unselfconsciousness in those who surround him:

Jumma (middle) with John (right)

We went to the town mosque, which was surrounded by a chalky square. Behind the mosque, the town youth was playing cricket. I couldn't help but join in. They played with a bat which was little more than a two by four with a whittled-down handle.

Som joined in. He and I are very competitive and we immediately saw it as a chance to prove our athletic prowess.

The crowd seemed to follow people from our party around in accordance with some kind of unwritten rule which determined the relative interest of a person and the fraction of the party they composed. When Som, Jason and I left the shade of the mango tree to bowl, we were followed by almost the entire crowd. When Jason left, a small part of the crowd followed him back to the tree.

After John talked with some prominent village members, we went to Jumma's house.

I loved seeing Jumma's home. Village life is such an interesting aspect of human existence; in economic monographs and the news media, humans are usually divided between rural and cosmopolitan dwellers; the village is ignored as a completely unique mode of human interaction.

The Village of Pinan & Siliserh Lake

2010-02-01T09:39:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went to the village of Pinan, near Alwar with John, Jason, Georgie, Som, and Joe. We were visiting Jumma, a member of the band Dharohar who is now very dear friends with Jason.

Some background: Jason is a beat-boxer from the UK working with the Jaipur Virasat Foundation to raise local and international awareness of traditional Rajasthani musicians. (I am currently working for JVF to redesign their website). For the past few years Jason and another UK artist, Bex Mather, have been traveling back and forth from the UK to Jaipur to perform with Dharohar at festivals across India. They are planning on a summer tour of Europe.

Djouma lives in the village of Pinan, near Alwar. Since most of this blog's readership is from the United States or the UK, a map might be useful:

On the way, we stopped at a Baoli (the name of which now escapes me, as do the names of so many people and places I encounter here). Baoli are commonly called 'step-wells'. They are highly-wrought pits with ascending and descending sets of stairs. Baoli were fashioned to trap the inundation of water that came with the monsoon season, and to save it for drinking and irrigation in the dry months. It's quite an extraordinary experience seeing one; imagine a mayan step-pyramid inverted into the earth:

As with most important landmarks in India, there was also a place for devotion and prayer.

I'm going to save the photos and my experience in Pinan for tomorrow. Stay tuned!

recalcitrance

2010-01-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

I've found that with most long-term stays, one loses things to talk about. Routine depresses the noticeable. I'll try and keep this blog updated with my day-to-day experiences, but I think that in the coming weeks I will need to retool my focus, and start writing about specific aspects of the world I'm becoming familiar with. I've got a few ideas for future posts:

Indian commentary on American politics
The food I'm eating
The politics of India

To anyone with any suggestions for future posts or interest in some particular aspect of my experiences, please leave a comment.

toying around with things

2010-01-29T01:34:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed the different column widths and some other screwiness with the page. Before, pictures were being cut off by the sidebar column (Bad blogger! Bad!). These problems should be fixed going forward.

Anyway, if you find the blog interesting / relevant / aggravating, please drop a comment in the comment box. I read them all.

modes of transport

2010-01-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

Allow me to introduce you to the tuk-tuk:

A rather unimposing vehicle, the tuk-tuk is nothing if not versatile. Where Indian streets are crowded, the tuk-tuk weaves between cars, animals, and heaps of trash with the agility of a motorcycle. But the tuk-tuk excels in terms of capacity:

Because it is exposed to the road, the tuk-tuk is also cheaper than a taxi ride. Negotiations are swift, and a 20km ride can be as cheap as Rs. 150. Although its open cabin results in direct exposure to the rank aromas of the Indian freeway, the views it offers from the cabin are unsurpassed.

endquote

2010-01-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

"The determinist's self cannot breathe because it is impossible to breathe necessity alone, which on its own suffocates the human self."

-Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

Govindji

2010-01-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

I took a walk in the old city with Nelson yesterday. I had purchased a copy of the excellent "Six Walks to Discover Jaipur" which the JVF puts out; Nelson and I decided to take a walk to see the "Historical Monuments" of the old city, since we suspected that most shops and museums would be closed for Republic Day (this turned out not to be the case).

We started at Tripolia gate. Since it was closed, we had to walk around in order to regain our set course. We found a stairway leading up to the city walls, a detritus-filled walkway with parapets and playing children:

Rejoining the road, we found ourselves next to the City Palace and the Observatory:

Further on was the Sireh Deori Bazaar:

Then Nelson and I went into the Jaleb Chowk, a funny little square with a temple in the middle. Statues of important family heads faced the temple, in a nod to Mesopotamian ideas of piety–that an avatar can pray in place of yourself. (I can see how comparative studies and the search for a unifying thread in Eastern and Western cultures began here). I wish I'd taken some better pictures:

We turned around, deciding instead to head up to the Govind Devji, one of the largest Hindu Temples in Jaipur for evening prayers to Krishna. Govindji is extraordinary, and exactly the kind of thing I came to India to see:

We retraced our steps, taking in the tumult of the Indian city. Apropos of our outsiders view and the inherently voyeuristic nature of our visit, we finished off the walk in front of the Hawa Mahal, probably the most famous landmark in Jaipur. The Maharajah's wives would stand in the myriad windows of the Mahal and look at processions and parades below. This was its entire purpose, so I hear:

Computer Repair

2010-01-26T23:30:00.001-07:00

The compulsion of most blog-writers is to write about the things which they imagine will capture the popular conscious. This is so true as to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: the twin ideas of 'buzz' and 'popularity' ensure that tastemakers are both ahead of and behind the curve in terms of pertinence. While they have some measure of control on the topics of interest, they are also at the mercy of the currents of popular caprice and therefore must blog about what needs blogging.

My relative obscurity on the internet (my impression is that this blog is visited mostly by friends and family) is a blessing: I only have my readers to impress, not some abstract notion in my mind about what is popular or necessary to blog about. In the future, I'll try and hew more to the idea that the people who visit this page are more interested in the quotidian experiences which so often speak more profoundly about a place and time than the anthemic events the mass media uses to keep us appraised.

Yesterday, I went to the "apple store" in Jaipur to see if I could purchase a charger that would work with Indian power outlets (fyi: Indian outlets are 220-volt direct current, while American outlets are 110-volt alternating current. Even though most computers come with a power adaptor meant to handle all kinds of voltage and current types, plugging an American computer into an Indian outlet often yields interesting results: with my computer, it gives the entire body of the computer a slight electrical charge which tickles ones' hands while typing). The store was called "iStore" and it is located in a mall conveniently close (about two or three blocks) to the office I work at in the C-Scheme of Jaipur.

The mall in which this store is located is called "Crystal Palm". It's interesting to see the different transmutations of that quintessentially-american architectural-commercial concept, the mall. Crystal Palm shoots up from the decrepit streets of C-Scheme like some kind of polyurethane and aluminum fungal growth: Monolithic, square, with a giant plastic faux-glass facade shooting out of the base and into the air like an arc (doubtless within the school of international trash-architecture spearheaded by planned commercial hubs like Dubai). Outside the mall, several derelict houses stand as notional reminders of what must have existed before the mall's construction.

As you approach Crystal Palm from the street (I am convinced the place was entirely designed to be approached from the car window. There is no way to conceptualize this architectural blight when working from the standpoint of the pedestrian), one is first approached by the beggars who hang around outside the mall. They are of a more tenacious variety, doubtless because they must avoid both police and mall security in order to perch on the sidewalk between the mall and the street.

The beggars resort to the classic methods of impediment: nagging, pulling at ones' clothing. More ingeniously a young boy threw himself on the ground in front of my feet, so as to cause me to step on him. I impressed my companion with an apparently-new beggar-avoiding technique: vaulting over him with my legs, as if he were a kind of hurdle. This duly impressed my companion, as well as the beggar who absconded to his mother, unsure of how to deal with my novel contrivance.

If the sun-dazzled exterior, with its beggars and shit and noxious automobile fumes was bad, the interior of the mall was far worse. Imagine a giant square box air-conditioned approximately to the same temperature as a dead body approaching rigor mortis. This box is a 10x5x10 grid, the exterior composite cubes of which consist in various stores selling cheap handbags and the like. On the ground floor is a Costa Coffee stand. In its miniature seating area are several well-dressed Indians, students or businessmen (the funny thing about this country is that they both dress the same), chatting over lattes in ice cream parlor-style glass mugs.

I found out that my battery couldn't be fixed or replaced at the apple store, and that I had to go to a place called "Redington Ltd.", Another few blocks in the same direction as the office. We found the office on the second story of a lime-green plaster office complex. Inside was a waiting room, with several sullen-looking men reading newspapers and letting out periodic sighs.

I was told that it would take ten minutes to inspect my computer. I sat down with the other men and read a pocket Kierkegaard I'd bought from the Penguin tent at the Literature festival. Five minutes later, the engineer notified me that it would take another day to diagnose the problem and that I should come back on the morrow to pick up my computer.

We left Redington, nothing gained, nothing lost. I'm starting to get the hang of things, I think.

Photo Dump

2010-01-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

bleed-through

2010-01-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

I've wrote a post on my regular blog, A NEW NADIR, about Niall Ferguson's appearance at the Jaipur Literature festival. Impertinences like this notwithstanding, I'll continue to post most of my experiences and photographs of India here. Photo dump coming up. -JWB

Jaipur Literary Festival: Day One

2010-01-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Jaipur Literature Festival kicked off yesterday. One of the extraordinary things about the festival is the air of complete celebrity which surrounds certain authors at the festival, especially Hindu and Urdu poets. Scenes in front of the main hall resembled what one might normally see at a television or film awards show, except instead of besequined women the paparazzi mobbed old men whose beards were only outmatched by their poise and gravitas. The crowd was equal parts kafta pajama equal parts rumpled collared shirt; I still can't believe how lucky I am to be at a festival with authors like William Dalrymple, Amit Chaudhuri, Geoff Dyer, Alexander McCall Smith, Tina Brown, and others.

The day began with an opening ceremony, followed by speeches from William Dalrymple, Faith Singh, and Girish Karnad. The first panel I attended was "The Art of Criticism", with Amitava Kumar, Geoff Dyer, and Amit Chaudhuri, moderated by Nilanjana S. Roy. The ostensible topic of discussion being Criticism (or its lack thereof in modern literary circles). Chaudhuri was late because of the terrible fog in Delhi; he apologized for his head not being as sharp as it "should be...but don't ask me how much sharper it could be." The basic problem (as was completely agreed by the panel) was the lack of clear political and ideological alignment in the critical press. Chaudhuri sounded a more hopeful note, citing journals like n+1 as an example of a successful blend of ideology and criticism.

This of course reminded me of the panel n+1 had on the "lack of good Iraq war films." (this panel occurred in summer 2008, long before the premiere of Hurt Locker. It was not American filmmakers' lack of a good theoretical understanding of war films; quite simply, it was a lack of good war films. All someone had to do was make one. Similarly, what the panel today hinted at but couldn't seem to convey was that the only impediment to good, modern criticism is simply our willingness to sit down and write it instead of surf the internet for pornography.

The best part of the hour was when the poet, translator and critic Arvind K. Mehrotra inveighed on the proceedings. Reminding the panelists that as early as the early-19th century, Bengali authors (I am killing myself for forgetting the name he mentioned) were already bemoaning the lack of good criticism in Bengali literature. The point is, he said, was not why there was not any good criticism but why there was no criticism at all.

The afternoon brought "Visible Cities", an ad-hoc panel with Amitava Kumar, Geoff Dyer and Amit Chaudhuri. Max Rodenbeck was supposed to attend this one. I thought it was going to be one of those terrible ad-hoc panel affairs, where the audience is too scared to go back on the suppositions that led them to attend and the panelists obviously haven’t prepared. Not the case here: Chaudhuri’s experience with Calcutta and Dyer’s outsider’s view of Varanesi made for an interesting discussion about the place of city in narrative. How do we know a city? Kumar made insightful comments on Susan Sontag’s notion of “The Sign of Saturn”. A melancholic is someone fundamentally stolid and uninterested in completing works. But do we want a complete work anyway? (Walter Benjamin).

After that came "Adaptations" with Michael Frayn (Noises Off) and Esther Freud (Hideous Kinky), a discussion about adapting books and plays to film. This one was a bit disappointing, with the usual recourse to how authors see their works as losing something essential when they are adapted to film. Frayn gave some decent anecdotes about films he has adapted and seen adapted by others. The absence of Louis De Bernieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) was probably the cause of all this.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Geoff Dyer

Michael Frayn & Esther Freud

on the personhood of a corporation

2010-01-21T19:50:00.001-07:00

Everyone's tearing their hair out over Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts and yesterday's Supreme Court decision giving corporations the ability to spend money to influence elections. SCOTUS Blog has the best coverage on that.

situation: situated

2010-01-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit too pressed for time at the moment, but I'm just writing to say that I'm now situated in Jaipur at the lovely Anokhi farm.

New Delhi was a hassle, and I was only there for six or seven hours. Arrive, get mobile phone, check in check out of hotel, get on train sort of thing. Delhi and most of North India have been plagued with fog for the past few weeks. Trains are slow, highways are clogged, flights are in disarray. I stayed at the "YMCA Tourist Hostel" near Connaught circle. My cab driver had no idea where this was, so I felt a particular sense of accomplishment after consulting with the basic map in my guidebook and navigating us there. The cabbie demanded more than the Rs. 10 tip that I gave him, but I told him that he didn't deserve anything for his nonexistent knowledge of Delhi streets. (I suppose I'm spoiled by New York.)

Today is the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, which is put on (in part) by the Jaipur Virasat Foundation. I'll devote another post to my experiences today.

I arrived in Jaipur yesterday afternoon. I went to town to see a group that the JVF and the British Council in India has put together composed of Kawa and British artists. Jason Singh (beat box) and Bex Mather (guitar, vocals) lead the group.

The Departure Lounge

2010-01-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the departure lounge of gate B1 at the Albuquerque International Sunport. (Apparently this airport used to run a government-subsidized service to and from Mexico City, which I now realize was entirely intended to get the 'international' in the name and thereby legitimize an otherwise provincial and neglected spoke of the domestic flight-wheel).

My flight to Delhi leaves in roughly 11 hours, counting time differences. Looking at my fellow passengers yields a queer feeling: unlike all my previous flights, I am now an exception: I am not going to see family, do business, or return from a trip to Albuquerque. Every person I look at yields the thought: are you going to India?

Of course they aren't.

The night before

2010-01-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

I write this in a harried state, packing and making sure I've got everything. I've sprayed a few sets of clothing with Permethrin and got some travelers cheques. My flight is tomorrow at 8 a.m. I've finally got butterflies in my stomach, thinking about walking off a plane in New Delhi. It's like imagining what's on the other side of a wormhole, except of course I will actually find out what's on the other side. (instead of my spacio-temporal perspective pancaking before my death in a vortex of compressed space-time).

I'm a bit too frazzled to upload pictures of my equipment (as I had earlier promised). I've packed my Canon 450D, Macbook Pro, and all their accompanying accessories, however, so I shouldn't have any trouble uploading pictures on the way.

The final dinner, followed by the last good sleep I will have for another week. Wish me luck. I'll send signals from the other end.

Medical preparations

2010-01-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

I've taken a cavalier approach to travel in the past, getting vaccinations and medications according to my schedule and convenience. In recent years (as I began to travel further afield, say to China), I tried to keep up with the CDC advisories and make sure I was inoculated for or prepared for exposure to predominant diseases and infections in my destination.

India, like any other large country, has many different regions separated by climatic, topographic and even ethnic divides. Hence there is no one way to be practically prepared for the milieu of diseases one might possibly be exposed to during a trip there.

Malaria, for example. GlaxoSmithKline, the makers of Malarone (the most popular and expensive anti-malarial regimen) had a map in my doctor's office which showed the entirety of South Asia in red (one assumes this is to indicate 'danger').

Jaipur, however, has an extremely dry and high-altitude environment. This map (from the NHS) adds a bit of nuance to the picture:

Likewise, it's difficult to believe that Yellow fever and Japanese Encephalitis occur with the same kind of frequency in both India and China, even though travelers to both countries are advised to receive inoculation for the diseases.

I have packed mosquito netting and repellent, so I have limited my supply of Malarone to a mere twenty tablets. This should protect me for any short trips into Assam or central India. A full list of my inoculations and the medications I plan to bring follow:

Inoculations:

Rabies
Typhus A
Polio
Hepatitis A, B, C
Meningitis
Seasonal & H1N1 Influenza
Japanese Encephalitis

Medications:

Malarone (twenty 250mg tablets)
Ciprofloxacin HCL (ten 500mg tablets) - diarrhea
Azithromycin (ten 500mg tablets) - diarrhea and more serious bacterial infections

Possibly more useful is the set of "general-use" medical supplies I plan to bring.

Zicam
Airborne
Maalox
Imodium AD
Colace- Stool Softener
Nexare Bandaids
Neosporin
Thermometer - non-mercury
Finger cots

Tomorrow I will post a complete list of clothing and equipment, with pictures.

Reading

2010-01-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

Once my family and friends learned I was traveling to India, I received a near-endless stream of books, recommendations, and advice about India. While the "advice" aspect of my preparations is worth an entire post, I will here post the books and guides I have made use of in preparing for my trip. Some of these, like the Rough Guide to India, will seem obvious. Others, like Saul Bellow's Herzog, still less so. I won't try and bore the reader with explanations, but I hope this post will profit anyone who is thinking about traveling to India and learning more about it.

Without any further digression:

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (Harper Perennial). Even if I had known I was traveling to India a year ago, I doubt I would have been able to finish this tome in time. I've pushed through one hundred or so pages in the book thus far, and from what I can gather it's an epic family drama set in post-independence India. I've heard Seth's magnum opus compared favorably to Dickens' major works, but I don't think the comparison stands much in the face of examination. Seth seems interested in a portrait of Indian middle-class life: This novel is published in English, the language of the educated-middle class, unbound by provincial, religious or dialectical constraints. Rather than convey an essential message of social change as Dickens was, Seth seems to be more interested in providing wider perspective on the tumult of marriage, death and life which is essential to all families, not those of a single nation.
A Travellers Guide to India by Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda (Arris). This is probably the book of the most practical intellectual value to me. Tammita-Delgoda writes this book with a mind to those interested in a far-reaching historical perspective but unable to really get past the veneer of Orientalist critiques and slipshod personal accounts which form an unfortunate preponderance of the books that furnish outsiders' understanding of India. Starting from the Indus Valley civilization approximately 5,000-6,000 years ago, the author details the historical, cultural, and philosophical currents that have shaped the subcontinent. Perhaps the most important feature of India is its separation from the rest of Asia. As a subcontinent, it has been dominated by a regular influx of foreign invaders yet paradoxically sheltered by the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. India is the only nation which can claim that a direct lineage to the peoples who began to first settle the peninsular subcontinent at the dawn of human civilization.
Burmese Days by George Orwell (Vintage). An obvious choice, especially for someone interested in the decline and fall of the Raj. Orwell, typically in-form, skewers the infantile pukka-sahibism that was the engine of the British empire in India's ironic growth. Orwell depics his semi-autobiographical experiences in Burma through the avatar James Flory. As fascinated with Burmese culture as he detests the sneering indifference of British rule, Orwell (perhaps uniquely) gives us India under Western Eyes but without the Western sun's glare.
The Rough Guide to Rajasthan - Delhi & Agra (Rough Guides). This book is essentially a filled-out reproduction of the section on Rajasthan in the Rough Guide to India. I've come to trust Rough Guides but when dealing with ubiquitous guide books you never know whether what you're looking at is the best India has to offer or (more likely) the best stuff is only known by insiders. Rough Guides will get you through almost any situation but in the end it's best to depend on them only if you need to. Otherwise, your trip ends up being a mere variation on a tired and well-traveled (excuse the pun) fugue.
Herzog by Saul Bellow (Penguin). This is a bit of black sheep on the list. How does a book about an academic's personal trials make for good pre-India reading? Honestly, I don't know. Herzog is, however, a remarkable narrative that touches on the Western experience: progress distilled. No matter how hard our trials and tribulations, how triumphant our successes and dreadful our defeats, Herzog reminds us that there's always a point in time ahead of us, a point where progress, even if unlikely, is surely possible.

Introducing...

2010-01-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

This blog is entitled "Under Western Eyes", after Joseph Conrad's master-work of the same name. The pun in the title alludes to the altogether different tone the word "Western" now possesses. For Conrad what separated East and West was the Balkan mountains. Today, no such barrier exists. Indian authors have written masterworks of the English language, and the Chinese people have embraced Anglo-American capitalism as no people have done ever before (turning so-called 'free-market' ideals on their heads in the process).

This blog is wholly meant to testify and account for a trip I will soon take to Rajasthan, India. I will be living and working in Jaipur for the Jaipur Virasat Foundation. I will be working on their website and also photographing various events other organization functions. I hope to try my hand at recording live music, but I can't get that presumptuous before I've even set foot on the plane.

The next few posts will concern that menial yet altogether most important part of any trip abroad: preparation. I will detail my mental and physical preparations for the trip, along with packing lists and links to resources I have made use of.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Please visit again soon, as I hope to update UNDER WESTERN EYES on a near-daily basis. Goodnight.