chartandwaters

For a variety of reasons I had to delete this post from the blog. If you would like to talk about staring in India please email me. :).

Things India Is (Sort of) Good At:

1. Conservation of poor people's resources. Everyone's (except I think hotels and rich people's) water shuts off at 10am and comes on again at 7:30pm.

2. Having a phone book somewhere else. This a.m. I saw my very first Indian yellow pages, in my new friend's government-affiliated tourist agency. According to my friend, this is because they keep it where they have a phone, such as an office or shop. But this cannot be the only explanation, because even my guest house, which has 24 hour room service, laundry, and tourist assistance, has no phone book. Indeed, the manager looked very chagrinned that he could not fill my request for one.

3. Gorgeous, painstakingly detailed and as fragile arts and crafts. Oppression of the people who make them.

4. Import export.

5. Markets. Yesterday I went with my friend to a gym in one of the much less touristed neighborhoods, Bhogal, which has the same mix of slums and city apartments you find elsewhere, but more slums and debris, less fancy (by fancy I mostly mean large, a.c., bright lights, in very good repair, although there are also very fancy places) shops than in the neighborhoods I'd been staying in, and more people sleeping (at night) anywhere there's a spot. I liked this area best of places in Delhi, because without the shiny shops in front of slums, and with everyone seemingly closer to each other in "income", it felt more normal, even, and yes peaceful. Also, the air was less polluted. As in all the other neighborhoods I've seen it had long rows of tiny open-air shops selling textiles, arts and crafts, luggage, everything, yet here everyone on the streets appears poor. Given these obvious conditions, I asked my friend, who lives in Bhogal, "Who is buying all these things?" "I don't know," he said, "but if you watch a few hours, you will see, there are people."

5. Same old same old: "Tony Blair's peace mission [in 2002] was actually a business trip to discuss a one-billion pound deal (and don't forget the kickbacks, O Best Beloved) to sell Hawk fighter-bombers to India. Roughly, for the price of a single Hawk bomber, the government could provide one and a half million people with clean drinking water for life."--Arundhati Roy, "War Talk", in The Algebra of Infinite Justice

"'Nobel laureate Amrya Sen may think that health and education are the reasons why India has lagged behind in development in the past 50 years, but I think it is because of defence,' said Home Minister L. K. Advani, on the development of the nuclear bomb in 2002." --Roy, idem. (or op. cit.?)

Things I Am Good At:

1. Wearing the stoll that is part of the salwar kameez.
2. Smiling at people.
3. Looking like I know where I'm going.
4. Eating with my hands.
5. Partaking in the head nod of ambiguity.

I was going to start by talking about the toothpicks in Delhi--how the Asian kind with the little round handles are so much sturdier than the American ones that shred at the very sight of a molar--except that I saw an elephant in the market today. I am staying in an uppish-scale area called South Extension, whose market has gained a reputation for being one of the very nicest ones, with nice restaurants and clubs and fancy high-end goods (Lacoste and Benetton from the West, and exquisite sari shops, and one of the nicest internet cafes, full of new computers each with webcams, and an etched glass sign coolly advertising lattes and espressos). In this market as in most others here, the main buildings mix with many more and less formal stands where men (mostly men), most of them poorer entrepreneurs sweating in the 105 degree afternoons, press fresh juices, sell fresh vegetables or roast them for you, sell newspapers, jewelry; and many of the stands are devoted to just one thing, such as one kind of melon, fresh eggs, or roasted corn, or ironing what clothes you bring. To the original buildings of the markets, much stained with age and humidity, are many newer and newest additions and new construction. The new construction distracts me as I pass because the buildings' main posts are not perfectly round logs; they are thin (4" diameter) tree trunks shaved of their bark but still with their distinctly tree shapes, bound to each other by thick rope. And then, it appears, the whole things is covered in concrete.

And this may be very very common in developing nations, only I've never seen it. Which I promise not to say again.

The markets are two and three stories high, and what struck me at first very powerfully, for some reason, was the way the signs for each of the new and old shops are stacked all one on top of the other, not so much vying for space, but as if put wherever someone could find a place. The layout of the signs seems to show exactly how the market's grown--randomly, unexpectedly, with every nook and cranny taken advantage of.

Inside the new shops are clean and shiny; in contrast the parking lot is dirt and much littered; many thin dogs wander around.

But this morning there was also an elephant, a small one, singularly baggy, its thin skin drooping as much as I think was possible. It labored along to carry its two charges--who were smiling, they looked happy to be on their elephant--across the market. The elephant looked hot, determined, resigned, and fully conscious that it would have been very happy to be doing anything else, a certain expression I consider to match many of the older residents.

In the evening, I told my host Sumita (Shu-me-TAH) that I had seen an elephant in the market. She said, "Oh, how sweet", which is what she says when she is happy for me to have seen a sight that pleased me. I said, "WHY was there an elephant in the market?" She laughed and said, "Hm. Why was it there. Let me see. I know the churches own some elephants around here. Now why would it be there." I said that it was carrying people, and she said, yes but it wasn't serving the purpose of a car, which of course I knew, or sort of knew, but couldn't be sure, and finally she concluded, "I don't know actually, that's interesting."

Now, my friend Jamie had said he loved India because you would walk along and see a bull in the middle of the road. As a result, when I saw my first bull in the middle of the road, I thought, well, yes of course. But I thought you had to go certain places to see elephants, and here was an unhappy looking one, but a one.

It is very funny to come from New York traffic to Delhi traffic. Very funny indeed, because I was scared in New York traffic this last time I visited, for some reason, and Delhi traffic is so much so much more chaotic, but I'm not scared, partly, perhaps, because usually no one's going very fast, no more than 30 or 35 mph, I think, in the danger zones. But everyone drives extremely confidently and with incredible understanding of what everyone else will probably do. As Monica noted, there is a gentle form of bumper car that I've seen a few times, where the car just allows itself to hit the one next to it. I've always been interested in those moments when humans act as easily as monkeys that swing from branch to branch and generally catch them. This is what people do in Delhi traffic. When I watch them I think how these talents are being wasted.

As sort of in New York, pedestrians are one of the players in the traffic thrill; the others are autorickshaws (nearly as fast as cars?), cycle rickshaws (with cyclists of superhuman strength, as thin strong and wiry as Cirque du Soleil performers), taxis, regular cars, bicyclists. The pedestrians play by crossing the street in the midst of the traffic. My first flush of anger at the Delhi government here was, embarrassingly, what must be the very, very, very least of its frustrations, the lack of crosswalks. Connaught Place is a market that's considered "the heart of New Delhi"; it has a circular road in the center and roads radiating out from it, like a child's drawing of a sun. There was in all these roads about one crosswalk. Otherwise you just wended your way around the traffic, which was not slow. I hooked myself to different groups to cross. In one instance a family crossed the (laneless) street like this (and I with it): The family waited on one side, and when there was a clearing the man began to cross, and the wife and children followed his cue, one fourth of the way then waited for a long bus and many cars to pass directly in front of it, then the man began and the family followed and went another fourth, then a bicycle sped by and a motorcycle and of course all the vehicles that were going behind the family; the man walked two more feet, and the family with him, then waited for the speeding autorickshaw, the demonic taxi, etc., then crossed the last four feet safely to the sidewalk. The wife was not unstressed; the husband had the confident but taut air of someone carefully navigating a boat that was carrying his family across a rough sea, and I don't think I imagined his faint look of (deserved) pride at the end.

One of the funniest things I saw was when an autorickshaw driver actually called another driver crazy, because although everyone on the road was absolutely crazy, this driver had indeed managed to be distinctly clearly much much worse. And I wasn't exactly sure why what he'd done was worse than anyone else, but I knew it was, so it was as if I didn't understand the language but I got the joke.

Also, autorickshaw artists (my own term) appear so nonchalant, and cavalier, an impression which is exaggerated by your knowledge that they are notorious for being hucksters (with everyone, not just tourists, example below). Such that it was kind of wonderful when, two days ago, my autorickshaw actually slowed and stopped in the middle of a thoroughfare, behind several slowing, stopping cars, each suddenly lurching to the left and around till he finally moved up to the thing he had to lurch around, which was of course a bull. I wasn't surprised about the bull, of course, I'd heard about them, after all (joking, joking). But my nonchalant, cavalier autorickshaw driver's face was completely startled.

Autorickshaw hucksters, example: One autorickshaw artist told me, a common trick says Lonely Planet, that the chemist (pharmacist) I wanted to go to was closed and I would have to go to another that was 30 rupees (about 75 cents) farther away. I said that then I just wanted to go back to my home, which was only a block from my chemist. He took me to the other chemist anyway, then asked for the extra 30 rupees. This is how far they will go to complicate your life, but if you're onto them I'm not sure how much they can really take advantage of you. I had another huckster the next day; he quoted one price when I got in and another as we started off. I started yelling, "Let me out. I want to get out," which is what I'd decided to do if someone does that. So he took me and asked for extra money but I just didn't give it to him and that was that.

***

When I first arrived, I was of course awed by just how different every little thing is, the marble of the airport floor, the choice of ceiling material, everything. The duty-free shop in customs says, "an undertaking of the government", which is catchy, but also why are they running the duty-free shop? Once you've cleared customs you walk down a long ramp to the taxis, and among the fifty faces lining either side was my smiling young host Sumita with her little sign GABI to accompany me by taxi to the home of her friend Sujata.

Sumita works for a nonprofit focused on analyzing how the media covers stories, and how it approaches issues of race, gender, ethnicity and the like. She met Sujata when they worked together on an analysis of how the media approaches disability. In the taxi we had a very nice conversation on the lack of funding for disability research, for research on the media, and how desperate the media situation is, while Delhi flew by and all I could sense of it for sure was the deep tropical humidity, and sometimes I glanced clusters of men huddled purposefully under the lights of storefronts, on this corner and that.

Then we were at Sujata's. Sujata may be one of the bravest women in India, for she lives on her own as a woman with a visible disability in India. She works for herself with children with disabilities in a very diverse practice--cross-disability (so blind, deaf, mobility, learning disability, mental retardation, others) and she applies her knowledge of rehabilitation, education, physical and occupational therapy to help them reach their best function. Frequently her goal is to mainstream a student into public education, which means she is typically educating the local schools about who CAN be mainstreamed. What she doesn't know, she'll learn. One of her students has autism and dyslexia. It occurred to her while she was typing, one day, that she could teach him to learn how to spell using motor memory--in other words, the memory of where things are on the typewriter. It seems to be working. I will have to save another day to write about her work and perceptions of disability issues in India.

I stayed at Sujata's just one day then moved into a guesthome right next to Sumita's family's house. So Sumita's family keeps an eye on me and in the evenings quizzes me about my silly tourist adventures.

I'm not going to Dharamsala, not to any of the northern Hill Stations, as Sumita's family says they are so touristed that they are unpleasant, and the hygiene standards go very far down. They recommend going to Bangalore, which is cooler now than I thought. Before I left, ICAF, the organization I'm volunteering with (www.icaf.org), gave me a list of nongovernmental organizations in Delhi with whom it has had some contact. So I hope to visit some of them next week, then go to Bangalore Friday.

Well, I fear the newness of things is making me loquacious, but I will say just two more things: (1) I am reading the Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy, her book of political essays, the very best "guidebook" I think I could have and I do recommend it to India researchers (read this no matter what you thought of her novel God of Small Things). (2) ...No, I'll save two. Much love to everyone, I think of each of you with regard to different events and will try to put them down in emails. P.S. I will be blogging more steadily now.