chartandwaters

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.