Three months in Delhi

Monday 8th December 2008

2008-12-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

"Which religion you from?" asks a man trying to sell us some bangles. He rattles them and smiles. He looks a bit like the lollypop catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and it's starting to scare me a bit. I look at Elsa. We've been in this situation before: there's no point in telling someone in India you are an atheist; it's just not an answer. So we're Christian. And we hope people don't really ask any more questions after that.

The conversation continues in the newsroom.

"Tomorrow is Eid," says one of the online editors. We stare at her in confusion. It was Eid in October, we say. With a justifiable look of disdain for our ignorance, she explains that no, that was Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Tomorrow is Eid ul-Adha, the Muslim festival of slaughter and sacrifice. We've heard nothing about it.

Usually at this time of year, the streets of the Muslim area of Jama Masjiid are full of goats and cows, painted in vibrant colours, dressed in gold and silk, being fed almonds and sweetmeats, dressed and ready for a glorious public death. They would be sold, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of rupees. In remembrance of Abraham's willingness to slay his son before God, they would be taken to mosques or private homes to be slaughtered and cooked. Then the meat would be shared with the poor.

This year, however, fear hangs in the Delhi air along with the dust and mist. Many think that enough bloodletting has already happened. And for those willing to stretch the analogy to fit their agenda, an unfortunate parallel can be made. For many see, in both instances, the butcher's knife in Islamic hands.

As a result, at this year's Eid ul-Adha, Muslims are tiptoeing where they should be dancing. Clerics have pleaded with Muslims to mute their feasting and celebration in respect for the Mumbai dead. And with the memory of fresh blood in India's head, there is a fear that as Eid descends, blood will be shed on the streets as well as the slaughterhouses. Bollywood stars have declared that they will not mark Eid with celebration, and ordinary people and Muslim groups have made their own pledges. But goats will still be sold, and merriment will still take place. Since, for many Muslims, this fear of reprisal is nothing new.

Since Partition - the largest single migration of a people in history - Hindus have traditionally found their home in India, and Muslims in Pakistan. Most sectarian conflicts have been characterised by a Hindu-Muslim element. Muslims in India have long felt the need to fight for civil rights that they feel are denied them. Now, as India accuses Pakistan of harbouring Muslim terrorists, fears are as sharp as they ever were.

During the day, in the hustle and bustle of Connaught Place, you might be forgiven for thinking that Muslims don't really exist in this city. But in the early mornings, the call to prayer rings out across old Delhi. In the evenings, crowds jostle in Jama Masjiid, weaving in and out of market stalls selling copies of the Koran and wearing the Muslim veil or kufie. They cook chicken and mutton in huge clay pots, and the occasional non-Muslim will sneak in for a kebab, knowing that when it's time for meat, no one does as well as a Muslim.

In fact, there are more Muslims in India today than there are in Pakistan. Yet they represent one of the most disaffected minorities in India. Even the Dalits - the 'untouchables,' the lowest caste in India, who still in some parts of the country will not even be glanced at by another Indian - have more jobs and higher wages on average than Indian Muslims. Amongst Dalit men, there is a 47% unemployment rate, thanks in part to laws set in place which reserve a certain quota of jobs for people of their caste. Yet 52% of Muslim men are unemployed in India, with no laws to protect them. Over half of Muslim men over the age of 46 cannot read. Though Muslims represent 11% of India's population, they make up 40% of its incarcerated criminals.

Many of India's Muslims, themselves angry and alienated, find themselves in a situation where they cannot freely celebrate their own festival. To the least optimistic, they represent a tinderbox waiting for the first spark.

So perhaps, given the hush around this year's Eid ul-Adha, it is not surprising that we had no idea what day it was today. When dates are dictated by the moon and the Muslim calendar, it leaves us heathen completely baffled. But this year is particularly auspicious. Tonight in Jama Masjiid, as people adorn their goats for their last night on the town, the silent alarm bells are ringing.

Charity might begin in India

2008-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Check out the article I wrote this weekend for the Economic Times.

Thursday 4th December 2008

2008-12-04T23:44:00.000-08:00

The Foreign Correspondents' Club is a playground for Delhi's displaced journalists. It has everything a hack could need after an isolated day in a lonely office: cheap alcohol, smoking indoors, and the requisite ping-pong table. It looks very much like an Oxbridge college bar. A flushed landlady stands behind a ramshackle table pouring bottom-shelf spirits to thirsty punters, random maps and black and white photos hang on the wall, and the toilet looks like it might have seen more than one vomiting episode in its time. Not to mention the waft of accents that might have stepped straight off the rugby field, or the polo ground; voices that by day narrate radio programmes and present live-stream television bulletins.

Here, the stories behind the stories are swapped: the interviewee who was a complete bastard but had to be polished into a hero for the sake of newsroom politics; the bus that broke down on the way to some far-out refugee camp and lost them the story; the budget cuts that mean there are no more long lunches on fiddled expenses.

Tonight, over red wine and paneer pakoras, a man announces himself and joins us at our table, in the way only long-term expats know. He's Johann, a German banker, who has joined his Swedish correspondent wife to live in India. She's down in Kerala, writing a story on the cashew growers there, and has left him to his own devices in Delhi. We talk about the usual issues: the Delhi winter that is creeping in, leaving our bones chilled at night under layered blankets; the sluggish government; rude rickshaw drivers and the rate of the rupee against the Euro and the Dollar. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, he announces that he is having a baby.

His wife, that is. We are shocked. In India? Is she not afraid? We imagine her labouring in some dirty ramshackle hospital, crying for an epidural that never comes, yanked with dirty clamps and scalpels. He laughs, and explains that the private hospital she is booked into is cleaner than most you would find in Europe.

It seemed ironic, however, that she should choose to come from the country with the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, to a country with one of the highest. And to choose India over Sweden - a country with one of the most generous laws concerning maternal leave and government grants - and instead give birth in a land where these concepts are virtually alien.

One woman dies in childbirth every five minutes in India. The maternal mortality rate is 540 in every 100,000. Compare this to 11 in the US, or 2 in Sweden. Most deaths are caused by bleeding, infection caused by unclean hospitals and equipment, or high blood pressure and anaemia which go undetected and untreated. Most women who die in childbirth, according to UNICEF, remain invisible. Many die in their homes - where the majority of births are still carried out - without trained midwives.

Johann has no idea whether his child is a boy or a girl, and it's not a choice. In Inida, most clinics prohibit expectant parents from being told the birth of their child - even white parents.

I think back to a conversation I'd had in Mamallapuram with the owner of the (optimistically-named) hotel we'd been staying in. Having tried for over 24 hours to get a towel, or indeed a bedsheet that wasn't stained with something ominously brown, we found out that the maitre d' had been running around trying to get his wife to the hospital.

"She is dropping the babies soon," he said, seemingly unruffled. "I will be back tomorrow morning when she has dropped." I said he must be excited. Was he worried? He just shrugged. The next day, when he appeared, I had decided to forgive him for the lack of towels, and instead attempt to shake dry in future. The poor man was having a baby, after all.

What was it? I asked excitedly. "Twins," he said. I squealed. Congratulations! What were they? He looked down, and frowned. "Girls," he growled. He seemed irritated that he had wasted an afternoon off work.

In the South, posters on walls and on the side of buses proclaim, "Save the girl child." A small childish scribble of a little girl's face accompanies the slogan. Despite being illegal, sex-selection is performed all the time, whether before conception, or after in the form of abortion. Otherwise baby girls are killed, often poisoned with the sap of the Oleander plant. Families fear paying dowries, or otherwise having to support a female child who will never be a breadwinner, or nurse her parents into old age having been absorbed into her future husband's household.

The problem is so endemic that the country's population sex ratio has been seriously skewed. Where populations in the rest of the world are typically female-heavy, India has 927 girls for every 1,000 boys. In some regions there are around 800. Many men cannot find brides because of the female shortage.

Those who do have children in India can expect few special rights. Compare this to Sweden, where parents can take 16 months of parental leave at 80% pay, and can share it between the mother and father. In India, mothers can legally take 12 weeks fully paid, but it's rarely practised, and in any case, most do not have any formal employment structure, working in fields or labouring for cash in hand. A great many work on subsistence only, which they cannot afford to give up with a baby to nurse.

Of course, despite missing out on Sweden's perks, Johann can expect his child to be born with few glitches - whether a boy or a girl - with mother and child doing well. Perhaps in a few months he'll come back to the Foreign Correspondent's Club to toast their health.

Wednesday 3rd December 2008

2008-12-03T05:04:00.000-08:00

As we walk back from the market today at twilight, the usual throng stands beneath India Gate. But today, something is different: the crowd's silhouette is strangely silent. On the platform, the speaker's microphone isn't turned up to its usual feedback overdrive, and for the first time, we hear the bird's evening chorus in the trees. We're not sure we've ever heard the sound of Delhi birdsong, until now.

On closer inspection, each member of the crowd is holding a small white candle; but this is no ordinary vigil. Each person, clutching a taper in one hand, is gesturing wildly with the other, pointing to someone in the crowd. A gang of boys are playfighting with each other, completely silent as if in real-time mime. Two teenage girls are giggling in the corner, but their bodies convulse silently.

Today is World Disability Day. Of the 600 million people in the world who are defined as living with a disability, 90 million live in India. It seems strange that a country full of the lame and crippled, those ravaged by polio or leprosy, skin diseases and deformities caused by malnutrition, should need to single out and highlight the needs of the physically handicapped. In the Western world, it's a given that those with disabilities should have maximum rights, but in India, the handicapped are largely ignored.

Take, for example, the brand new Delhi Metro: with stairs and no lifts, narrow metal detectors and a scrum to get on and off the train, a wheelchair or walking stick wouldn't stand a chance. Museums lack any kind of special access. It's rare if not unknown to see facilities installed in workplaces.

Not that the Indian government hasn't made huge gestures to ensure an appearance of concern. Last year, India signed the UN Convention for the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities. It promotes "their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others." India was one of the first countries to do so. India also introduced the "XI Plan"; which promised "the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement." Within six months, it promised, each government ministry would have a plan to further the inclusion of disabled people in society, and to allocate 3% of their funds to the cause. A year after it's implementation, the chai-drinkers in meeting rooms have done nothing at all.

And in any case, words and policy are useless for the majority of disabled people; the half-clad men who struggle without legs, dragging themselves across the pavement, asking for spare rupees. Or the old women, leaning on sticks, barely able to lift their hands to do the same. These are not people concerned with employment, or the right to equality under the law. They are in need of the most basic rights to life: of hospital care; of a blanket to keep them from the cold; of a daily meal.

Traditionally, elderly parents are prioritised in India, cared for at home by willing children and daughters-in-law, treated with deference, considered wise. There is no such structure for the needy and disabled. Many are abandoned by families, out of shame, or out of the sheer inability to cope financially. And conversely, many are born healthy, and crippled by poverty, their spines curved, their leprosy leaving them without limbs and without feeling. Others hack with TB coughs, slowly losing strength. More suffer without HIV retrovirals, slowly succumbing to illness.

Today, the more able-bodied have travelled from Maharastra, Kashmir, the Punjab, Uttar Pradesh. Their brightly-coloured banners, lining the walls, display their efforts to be here. And their manifesto promises that they will remain under the concrete arch of India Gate, day and night until promises to rekindle broken promises, which were in turn preceded by empty promises, might be made. Those signing to each other, or guiding the sightless through the crowds, represent those who hobble along the roadside, or lie in their beds. Looking down Rajpath from India Gate, the parliamentary buildings at the other end are obscured by Delhi's dusty air. They cannot see, and they cannot be seen. But perhaps it is their silence - the rarest sound in India - that will be deafening.

Tuesday 2nd December 2008

2008-12-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

Over the last week or so, we’ve been flooded with emails and phone calls asking if we’re alright, now that international terrorism has launched itself on our doorstep. If only our parents and friends knew that the real danger was not on streets, but in cars.

I am thinking about this as we pick up a kebab from the local market and travel home. Our rickshaw driver, surprisingly happy to accept the first price we offer him, chugs gently along the road and lights up a joint. As the herby smoke curls into the back of vehicle, and we slalom gently across the road, we just look at each other and shrug. It’s not the worst we’ve had, after all.

Last week, Eva and I were trying to hail a ride at the absolute no-no time of 6pm. About this time, Delhi steps out of its office, or packs up its street stall, and gets into the nearest rickshaw. Scuffles, fights, screams, fisticuffs: even armed with these methods, you’re unlikely to travel anywhere except on two feet.

A small black van pulls up by the roadside. It looks as if though it has been pummeled by a plague of locusts armed with chisels. A plump Sikh sticks his head out of the window. “Where you going?” he asks. I tell him the name of one of the colonies on the south east side of town. “Three hundred rupees,” he demands, ushering us, presumptuously, into the back. It’s not even a one hundred rupee journey. I tell him it’s that or nothing. “Two hundred,” he says, and I shake my head. He drives off. Less than ten seconds later, the sound of a squeaky reverse gear. “OK, one fifty.” Tired, and also willing to admit we’ll never find anything else at this hour, we agree.

Conversations in the back of taxis and rickshaws almost inevitably start with the same question. Which country? England. And you live? London. Sometimes this is greeted with confusion. You are being born in the country of England and you are living in the country of London? It’s best at such times to simply shrug.

“You are having smoke?” I tell him he can have a cigarette if he wants one. But he’ll only take one lit from my mouth, he says, and there’s something I don’t like about this strange, specific arrangement. He asks several times, but I’m slightly creeped out and thus pretty adamant.

“I do not like the smoking either,” he says. “But I have pimple on my nose and it makes it better. This and shower. I have shower for one hour every day.” With this, he opens the window and in the tradition of drivers all over the city hocks a huge, snotty globule of spit and projects it across three lanes of traffic.

“You married?” he asks. Yes, I reply. What does husband do? I think quickly. A doctor’s always a respectable choice for an Indian. Our Sikh driver grins. “Is he a gynacologist?”

The banter continues for another twenty minutes before we realise our friend has no idea where he is going either. I get out my Delhi streetmap, show him where we are and where we want to be, gesturing towards the right hand lane. He grins. “This map is very nice,” he says, flicking through the pages with one hand while the other strokes the steering wheel. I realise he has no intention of following it. He fills the traffic jam waiting with pictures of his family, and at one point jumps out of the drivers’ seat, apparently to go and buy some ‘soup’, though he returns empty handed. Having miraculously found our destination after driving only a few kilometres out of our way, he hands us his businesscard: ‘Harvinder Singh Bindra,’ it says, and then, ‘transporter.’ He didn’t, after all, promise us anything more than that.

Our driver to the Taj Mahal could not have taken a less lackadaisical attitude. Rajesh was not only our transporter, but our sworn guardian. Dropping us in the centre of Agra, he gently took us aside and whispered. “Here is the gate,” he breathed. “You walk in there, you go straight-straight for ten minutes. You do not talk to any other peoples. You do not stop for any other peoples. Agra peoples is not good. I am your man.” After that, the urchins selling plastic bracelets and Taj Mahal keyrings loomed from beneath us like Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and even the ice-cream sellers were out to steal our passports - and our souls.

On the way home, once he was assured we were safely tucked into the back seat of his car, Rajesh shouted questions at Eva as he straddled two, sometimes even three, lanes of traffic.

“How many cars are there being in your country?” he asks, as the cacophany of car horns aimed our way grows slowly louder. She replies that she doesn’t know, there are really to many to count. This is not enough for Rajesh. How many? He shakes his head.

“And how many Muslims are there being your country?” He asks. Once again Eva shakes her head. She doesn’t really know exactly. But how many? She doesn’t know. How many Muslims are there in India? He kisses his teeth mournfully. “Many, many,” he replies.

Being a driver in Delhi is a thankless task. Drivers wait around for unspecified periods of time, being relieved only when madam or mistress deign to return. Drivers sleep in their cars, and are woken at all hours of the night. They are on call 24/7, and – perhaps dangerously – there are no maximum limits for working hours. Middle class Indians moan about their drivers the way Brits moan about the weather. They make the car smell, they don’t speak good English, they’re lazy, and, of course, they never know where they are going. “I don’t have my driver any more,” said a friend of ours as he sped down a city freeway, late at night. He had consumed at least twice as much red wine as I had, and I felt more than a little woozy. “I was driving back from a party the other day,” he shouted over the thump of R’n’B, “and I just told him to get out of the car. He sat in the passenger seat while I drove. Imagine!”

Delhi drivers may be smelly, they may be lazy. I can at least agree that they get lost a lot. But one thing is sure: they ask a lot of questions, and while one serious eye is always reserved for madam in the driving seat, the other is winking at the road.

Monday 1st December 2008

2008-12-01T04:23:00.001-08:00

"I knew her well," says my editor. "we used to play Scrabble all the time." He's talking about Sabina Saikia, the Times of India editor who was killed in the Taj this week. She'd been trapped underneath her bed in her hotel room, in one of the first floors to be set on fire. Several people, including her husband and our editor, had been frantically texting her over a number of days, but any signal from her phone, according to detectors, was cut off after 24 hours. She was found dead in the hotel sweep after the siege had ended.

Before I can say I'm sorry, and before he can even take another breath, he asks me the reason I really came to see him. I can't, after all, have knocked on his door for idle chitchat. I can't help but feel, as someone slips a china cup of coffee on the table in front of me, that editor is strangely stoical about the situation. The Times of India ran a humble obituary for Saikia, several headlines down. But in the office, the buzz does not subside. I couldn't help but feel that if the same had happened to a British or American journalist, a headline would be run, a candlelit vigil organised. Like Daniel Pearl, perhaps a movie would be made, starring Angleina Jolie (nationality cunningly disguised of course).

It's a common assumption in the West that India doesn't really care about death. Death in India is sati, or sinking people in the Ganges. They're used to death, more of it happens there. One child dies, another is born. The New York Times today reported that more Indians have died in terrorist attacks since January 2004 than in any other country except Iraq. Quantities of Indians can die before it becomes news, but take a small number of Westerners, and it's straight to the top of the headlines. In Mumbai, 174 people were killed: 27 of these were foreigners. It's hard to believe that without that 27, coverage would have been so intensive. It doesn't just happen in India; over 400 Nigerians massacred over the weekend in clashes between Muslims and Christians have barely scraped column inches.

"I remember being in New York during 9/11," says a friend of ours over a bottle of red wine in one of the swankier eateries of Delhi. "Everyone was out on the streets crying. Just on the streets. Crying." She sniffs a little. "That would never happen here." Indeed, if footage from the last few days can be considered typical, Indians were out on the streets, and on rooftops, watching in curiosity and incredulity.

But India does mourn it's dead. Women weep for their children, men for their wives, mothers for their sons. Scratch an Indian and he or she bleeds like any other human being. Outside every cemetary in Delhi, street wallahs do a roaring trade in floral tributes; they can be seen on the back of motorcycles, and for sale in every local market. India may not ululate at funerals, its newscasters may not cry on live television, it may not take out full page advertisements in newspapers like firms did after 7/7. But the dead are not forgotten.

Some grieve through anger. Sitting on the balcony of a pseudo-diner in Delhi's Khan Market this lunchtime, three Punjabi men sit smoking cigarettes, vapour trails winding their way around their turbans. "It's Pakistan," they say. "Those Pakistanis. They'll hound them out and shoot them. Hopefully."

"It's our own fault," declares a woman in a bar in the trendy district of Defence Colony. "How could the navy miss this? How could we take 60 hours to stop a siege? We must be asamed of ourselves in front of the world. Not all those people needed to die."

The US Embassy has circulated an email warning American nationals across the country that riots could take place, and could potentially target Westerners.

But where anger manifests itself on the streets, behind closed doors, tears fall. The Times of India today published an article advising its readers on how to deal with death. When advising how to reach out to friends a doctor states, "it is important for people around them to ensure they do not fall into a depression." In the West, depression is an expected part of mourning. Depression comes from believing that, being trapped in an impossible present, there is no worthwhile future. The article suggests it is important to move on; not out of callousness, but out of hope.

India is mourning. But yesterday, Leopold's Cafe, only two days ago riddled with bullets, reopened, leaving so short a period of mourning it would be a source of outcry in London or New York. But in Mumbai, so many customers poured into the cafe, ordering beers, cokes and chow mein, that it had to close early.

But my editor is not here to talk about the distant, or recent past. "What are you going to do when you get home?" He says, "You must have a plan?" I tell him I'm planning to write a book and his grey eyes flash. He rubs his hands together. "Good," he says, "good. This is a very good time to be writing a book about India." I am about to tell him I wasn't planning to write about India at all. But perhaps, given the fact that its future can only get better, it wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

World AIDS Day

2008-12-01T00:05:00.000-08:00

Check out the report and video Michelle and I did for World AIDS day...

Saturday 29th November 2008

2008-11-29T05:47:00.000-08:00

We're heading out of the office with our cameras, tripod and notebook. Our editor catches us on the way out.

"You'd better be back by sundown," he says in a motherly tone, "or it'll get dangerous." For once this week, he's not talking about the terrorist threat, but the riots that traditionally break out the evening polling booths close.

Today is election day in Delhi. The BJP, the Hindu national party, headed in the city by the aptly-named Vijay Jolly, is challenging the government's Congress party, led by an iron Chief Minister with the more unfortunate title of Sheila Dikshit.

Before the terror attacks, the papers were packed with concerns over the pollution at the Yamuna River, the state of public transport, and the skyrocketing price of tomatoes. But the events in Bombay have muted the pre-election buzz.

The usual election precautions are in place: a police presence on every corner, army lorries in the streets, and three 'dry days' in which alcohol sale is banned across the city. But these scenes are small beer compared to the carnage 700 miles away.

Michelle and I drag our equipment into rickshaws, zipping across the city to interview voters as they hit the polls. Except that they don't seem to be hitting the polls at all.

We step out in the middle of the market and ask for directions to the local polling station. A street wallah shrugs and returns to his job of squeezing fruit. A man buying cigarettes flicks his hand in a general direction. We hail a cycle rickshaw. Our wallah, who must be at least sixty years old, huffs and puffs and every two minutes is forced to get out and push. We ask a young girl where she is going to vote. She says that the voting here has been postponed until next month. After circling another market for fifteen minutes we still haven't found anything, and are beginning to think our rickshaw wallah will not survive another ten yards. We dismount and catch a businessman on his way to work. "I'm sorry," he says, "But no election today. Our candidate has expired." This is not bureaucratic lingo. It turns out he really is dead.

After a while we find a bona fide operational polling station at a school in the bustling bazaar area of Karol Bargh. Children run about, set loose for the day. They mob our legs and jump up at our camera, waving, trying to get on film. We try to look for voters, but are shooed away by stern looking policemen. They tell us we don't have official electoral commission press passes and can't stay. But the cops seem unruffled when we set up ten metres away on the other side of the road. Some of them even pose for the camera.

We park our tripod and get out our notebooks, poised for interview. And wait. And wait some more. The trickle of voters is slow. A man hobbles out on a walking stick, aided by his daughter. Time passes. We look around at the shuttered shops. Only the man selling paan and sweets is open for business. He grins as he takes advantage of other people's discarded business.

A few men venture out of their houses, asking us questions in Hindi. Why are we here? Why aren't we in Mumbai? Surely that's where all the journalists are...

India is the largest democracy in the world. I point this out to a young man in a yellow fleece, who seems to be the only person in the area to speak English.

"All the rich people have left the city," he says. "It's a holiday, after all. Why not go on holiday?" And why are all these people standing around? Why aren't they voting? He simply shrugs.

India is not an apathetic nation, at least not by Western nations' standards. On local election days in Britain, most potential voters barely shake the dust off their shoes, whereas turnouts in India are consistently between 50 and 60 per cent, even at the worst of times. And where middle classes in the UK are more likely to tick the ballot, in India it's often the dalits and lower castes who are particularly active.

But today terror is the buzzword. Democracy is on the back burner. The streets are strangely empty as people remain glued to their televisions and radios, venturing out only to buy some overpriced tomatoes. The only excitement for a truckload of policemen in Central Delhi this afternoon is the sight of two foreign, female reporters, standing beside a video camera and tripod, looking completely lost.

Friday 28th November 2008

2008-11-28T05:16:00.000-08:00

The siege continues. Back home, newspapers report as if it's all over. But this is a terrorist attack that goes on, and on, and on. Gunshots are still fired and people are still trapped in Nariman House. Like the men and women who dropped from the Twin Towers, bodies are slowly discovered, people in the Taj Hotel slowly crawl from under their beds and call home. Some are safe, some never were. Some are still trapped, trying to make their way out, climbing down bedsheets and ripped hotel curtains.

The Western newspapers proclaim another attack on the West. The British, American and Australian Foreign Offices call their people out of Mumbai. But there is no whisking away or warning for the vulnerable Indians, even though a hundred of their nationals are dead, compared to a handful of Westerners.

America and Britain are calling this battle their own. It must be Al-Quaeda, they say, because Westerners were rounded up and targeted. There is little mention of the fact that terrorist messages also voiced anger over the Muslims in Kashmir,

We have been voicing our fears about our own status here in the house in the last 48 hours. Our people have been targeted on the same soil on which we stand. But in the newsroom here today in Delhi, we realise that it's not our battle at all. We wonder why the newspaper isn't employing our services instead, since it's our countrymen who are dying. Until we realise that the story is not ours to own. The bodies being dragged out of hotels are Indian. The police who have dies in shoot outs are Indian. The troopers keeping seige are Indian; the people climbing out of the windows are mostly Indian, the people on the streets, cheering soldiers and voicing their disgust and anger, are Indian. The reporters here in the office, glued to the television screens, tapping away madly, anxiously speaking on their mobile phones which ring constantly, are Indian.

A senior reporter for our newspaper is somewhere in the Taj Hotel. No one has heard from her since she spoke to her husband, over 24 hours ago, telling him she was hiding under her bed, listening to a man, carrying a gun, creeping around her bathroom. Whether or not she is still there, nobody knows. Western reporters are standing outside, or are being flown in, staying at a safe distance.

The Taj Hotel has been painted as the playground for Western millionaires, a symbolic target for the Islamic Mujahedeen. But what has never been mentioned in the press is that the building was, in fact, built by an Indian entrepreneur, JN Tata, after he was thrown out of another five star hotel for being too 'native'. It was a monument to Indian pride and industry, not to Western affluence. A couple were celebrating their wedding with 200 guests, and two days ago found themselves, instead, cowering in their bathtub. There were far more Mumbaikers going ahead with their everyday lives on Wednesday than there were Westerners on holiday.

This is not a war on the West. It's too easy to forget that the 'West', in a geographical sense, doesn't exist anymore. The world economy exists as much in Bombay, in Dubai, in Beijing, as it does in London or New York. India is as much a target of hatred as downtown Manhattan. Bombay is not the stage for a battle between the West and the terrorists. It is the battle.

A CNN report today showed an American reporter, standing outside the Taj Hotel, amidst a group of angry, drunken Bombay men. They asked why she was here. They asked with hostility what others in India, watching their battle unfold, are asking with genuine curiosity.

Thursday 27th November 2008

2008-11-27T23:01:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I sat in the lobby of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Elsa and I had spent the day wondering around the hotel and around nearby India Gateway, talking to foreigners about their reasons for coming to the city. Weary backpackers, their faces pasty with sunblock, walked in and out; a German man who who had just arrived in India told us about that morning's sightseeing tour, sporting his socks, sandals and ill-fitting khaki shorts, a tilak pasted on his perspiring forehead. We were out on the terrace observing the middle-aged couples fighting over the breadbasket, and single travellers nosing through novels, when a few members of the England Cricket Team, here for a press conference, giggled and waved at us. When we went over to wish them the best of luck they became coy, turning towards their tikka hamburgers.

Back in the lobby that evening, I waited for a friend to pick me up for a party. Perching on the edge of a couch, and trying to remain inconspicuous, I was joined by a gentle Arab-looking man who struck up conversation. He was originally from Baghdad, he said, from a fairly humble family, but had lived in India for decades before making some lucky investments in property. Now, he lives in Holland Park, his two sons American college-educated. He was staring around the lobby of the Taj concernedly, craning to look behind the huge display of oriental lilies that scraped the gold mosaic-ed ceiling. He was looking for a man, he said, that he hadn't seen for forty years; his old housekeeper when he lived in India. His earnest eyes opened wide. He was rich now, he said, and laughed. After he'd left his service, he studied for an engineering degree and now had a business of his own, a family, and two grown up children. His life had completely changed! And now, they were both in Bombay on the same day, the master and his former-servant-made-good. They were going to meet, in the lobby of the Taj Mahal Hotel, at 6 o'clock. They had their whole lives to catch up on. My ride came, I wished him the best, and waved goodbye.

As I write, the Indian Army are in the last stages of a siege in the very same lobby. Less than 24 hours ago, armed gunmen burst in, looking for Americans, English, Jews and failing that, any foreigners, shooting indiscriminately and throwing grenades. Screams filled the air, and the smell of dust and burning, the sight of falling golden plaster, the sound of smashed glass. People hung out of upper windows, frantically calling on their mobile phones to relatives and other people. Scores of people were trapped by gunmen, some of them allowed to escape when they could prove they were not British or American. Guests hid under the beds in their hotel rooms as gunmen lurked in their bathrooms. Some of these are still missing, including prominent Times of India journalist who called her husband several hours ago and has been silent since. Downstairs in the cellar, a 73 year-old British businessmen cowered in the cellar, on the telephone to the BBC, before being shot and killed. Up in the lobby, Indian staff were picked off arbitrarily. Blood covered stairs and hallways that for years had been polished to perfection.

A few hundred metres away on the bustling main bazaar, Leopold’s Café, a traveller’s haunt for decades, is pockmarked with bulletholes. Two weeks ago, we had sat in here, talking to giggling British backpackers about their days as extras on Bollywood sets, watching Italian women drinking their afternoons away with a yard of beer, ordering Indian, or Chinese food from the grumpy waiter. Today, it is empty, shattered, silent, shaken.

The terrorist attacks in Bombay today have shocked the world. But they have shocked India more. And a country that is struggling, and failing, to contain its own internal terrorist threat is powerless against an international one. It has not the capacities in security, nor intelligence.

Before we’d learned of today's recent attacks, we left the house early for a day trip to the Taj Mahal – the original one this time. The road to Agra is precarious – and not only for the upturned lorries shedding their loads. Roadside cafes are set up to overcharge tourists for weak coffee and rubbery toast, men at stoplights peddle miniature Taj Mahal snow domes, and every other car passenger rubbernecks to smile and wave at the foreigners in the back of the taxi. When we arrive, we are surprised to walk straight up to the designated tourist ticket desk, when all the guide books had told us we were bound to wait in line for hours. We pay our fee (at a 750-rupee premium for foreigners) and go to the security desk. A man there empties out of the contents of my bag and makes two piles, “allowed,” he said to my purse, “allowed,” to my sunglasses, “allowed, allowed, allowed” (novel, SLR camera, notepad) “not allowed” (novel number two, for some reason) “not allowed” (iPod earphones). The fact that a bomb is much more easily disguised as a five year old clunky camera than a tiny pair of earphones does not seem to cross his mind.

India has too nascent a security culture to deal with the burden of terrorism. Bombay is incredibly vulnerable: the perfect, if unexpected, target. A ship docking in the harbour, whether full of terrorists or fishermen, goes undetected and unnoticed, and a step onto the shore brings its passengers right into the heart of the city, its tourists and its bustle. A couple of hundred metres away is the Taj Palace Hotel, looming up to face the dock, guarded by two smiling footmen in turbans who point the way through the same wooden ‘metal detectors’ in place in every public building checkpoint, which beep no matter what the entrants are carrying. They're shuffled through regardless. At the entrance to the Bombay Taj Hotel, the guards even hold your handbag as you go through, not opening it to look, and passing it back to you with a bow. When confronted with armed terrorists, they would have been thrown down like ninepins. At the train station the same applies. Terrorists would not be noticed until blood smeared the entire floor. At Leopold’s customers were sitting targets through open windows, and police, if called, would have to shake the dust off their shoes before leaving the station, if they even answered the phone in the first place. Today, at the Taj Mahal in Agra, less than a day after tourists were targeted 1000 kilometres away, guards are just as nonchalant. If terrorists had come here instead, none of us would have stood a chance.

And so, today, as we walk through the‘metal detector’, we are lightly patted down by a female guard, and pushed out to view the giant white mausoleum. Wandering around the fountains, we take pictures for Indian couples on honeymoon. A gang of boys want their photos with us, and a gaggle of young women in saris laugh and wink at Karsten. The strange lack of white Westerners still hasn’t occurred to us. We walk around, squinting in the sunlight reflected from all angles off the white stone. A gang of Muslim schoolkids surround us “Handsome! Handsome!” they shout at Eva. “Pretty! Pretty!” they chirrup at me. Eva looks put out. “Howayu? Howayu?” waves a toddler, prompted by her father. The reception we get as Western Tourists is, as usual, a mixture of curiousity and ridicule, treatment that’s both offputting and enjoyable at the same time.

Then, the moment comes: a call from home, and we realise what has happened. Bombay is in tatters, people are dead, terrorists are involved. And Westerners are the targets. We are practically the only white faces, and every face, Indian, Muslim, for a moment, becomes a menace. The innocent attention we arouse becomes something frightening, and the lack of security is no longer a joke. Our vulnerability is exposed.

Only a handful of Westerners were killed in the attacks in Bombay, compared to a hundred Indians. We are no less objects of hatred to terrorist groups here than we are at home. But India has not the means to deal with the threat, or the actualisation, of terror.

And no one is more afraid in this instance than Indians, who over the last five years have suffered bombings and shootings that have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people. Overtures to the West have resulted in no assistance at all.

Today, we feel that fear for the first time. Suddenly, we are the targets, and we understand what it is like to feel vulnerable with no one to come to our aid. Ordinary people, meeting long-lost friends, swimming in the pool, arguing over dinner, backpacking on their gap years are objects of hatred. Ordinary Indians have lived with this same threat for years. Now that perhaps Westerners as well as Indians have become casualties, the West may offer intelligence, training and technology. Doormen in turbans may be replaced by trained officers, and makeshift wooden arches by something more technologically sensible. Perhaps the international community, finally understanding India’s terror, will listen to its plea.

Sunday 23d November 2008

2008-11-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

We’ve come to Chennai to catch the train back up north, and in the meantime to experience something of one of India’s biggest cities. Eva asks the Chennai hotel travel desk what we should do here. The man behind the counter frowns and replies, “Mamallapuram.”

We arrive in a monsoon downpour, brown rain leaking through the rattling window frames as we pass the scattered random dwellings of the city. Dogs who have given up on trying to swim their way across the road lie limply on corrugated iron roofs, while men take shelter below them, hanging around tea stalls, elbows leaning on the counter. Even my camera gives up the ghost in this town – hence the lack of photos on this post – sighing its last muggy breath.

All work and no pay makes Chennai a dull town. Chennai’s financial district, one of the largest in India, looms tall across the horizon, its office highrises topped with the banners of Standard Chartered, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and HSBC. Traffic labours down the main streets, mired in the small lakes that spread apace where basic drainage lacks.

The search for entertainment is disappointingly fruitless. The city’s small multiplex cinema, our only real hope, is sold out. We visit the ‘government museum’, enthusiastically recommended in the Rough Guide as the city’s best attractions. Of the four ornate buildings that make up the museums and galleries, three are barred by rusty padlocks. The woman behind the ticket desk sighs, rips a couple of chits in half, and throws them at us, as she gabbles on her mobile phone and nods in the direction of the one building that seems to still be open. Inside, there are two floors of ‘art’ and ‘Indian heritage’. The former, on the upper level, consists largely of art shop prints of Van Gogh and Renoir in gold-ish frames. The latter resembles nothing more than some of the pots, drums and incense holders culled from the markets outside and placed in glass cases with labels. The security guard nods in our direction and then settles back down to his lethargy. Having used up ten minutes of the eight hours left to waste until dinner, we stare at each other vacantly.

It seems there are two things to do in Chennai: work, and nothing.

This is not entirely true, of course: alternative entertainment of the less cultured, more alcoholic kind is aplenty for the blue-collar workers coming down from their ivory towers. Where bars and nightclubs seem to be lacking, their potential customers crippled by the 58% tax imposed upon them, hotels make a roaring trade on clientele who pick up the drinks tab on the company credit card. In the evening, flashing neon signs indicate these ‘permit rooms’, small lounges with black walls and sports screens. They normally play some form of seventies disco, which thumps from behind smoked-out windows. In front of them, the men who have only just been able to loosen their ties and undo their top buttons are smoking cigars.

Chennai is the fourth biggest town in India, and brings in a large chunk of its revenue. After finance, Chennai is Kollywood, the largest Indian film-producing area outside Bombay.

Sitting on the local bus to our hotel, passengers are squeezed in tight around us. With my backpack on one side, and an old lady’s protruding stomach on the other, I couldn’t stand up to offer my seat, even if such a gallant sentiment should overtake me. But twenty minutes into our journey, there is a loud elephant call, and two policemen leap on board from the centre of the market, and haul off four boys, holding by the ears like a bunch of naughty Victorian chimney sweeps. They are dragged off, half-grinning, into a nearby police station. This whole incident leaves the bus in a state of chaos as a virtual stampede begins and everyone jostles and gabbles madly, people holding on to the passenger handles for dear life. Instead of an incident of teenage light-fingered behaviour, it seems an act of terrorism has been committed. Stories are swapped, ‘did you see that?’ ‘perhaps it is the beginning of the end for our city.’ After all, in every town, there are always those who’ll make their own entertainment.

Saturday 22nd November 2008

2008-11-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

Mamallapuram, long before it was a town drowned by the sea, was a town hewn out of rock. Famous for its ancient religious monuments and cave temples, almost every corner heralds a new shrine: elephants, reclining Vishnus, temples to the elephant god Ganesh; even a large Indiana Jones-style boulder perched precariously on top of a craggy mount and known as ‘Krishna’s Butter Ball.’

We get up early, and rent a couple of rusty chopper bikes, negotiating morning rickshaw traffic and arriving at the famous Shore Temple just in time for the day’s drizzle to begin. Immediately we park our cycles, there is a man with an ‘official tour guide’ badge waiting for us to pay him a hundred rupees to talk us around the shrine. Trying to explain (in all honesty) that we just wanted to look and we weren’t really interested in the history (such philistines!) he tries to encourage us to buy a set of postcards from a pushy dwarf, before giving up altogether. When we arrive, the shrine is magnificent: standing atop the cliff since 700 AD, but, we are warned, being slowly eroded by the sea air.

This morning, it is also being gently eroded by an old woman in a headscarf, who is bending over among the ruins, sloshing water over them from a bucket. Chipmunks dance around her. On the other side of the temple, a family of Italian tourists have clambered upon one of the more intricate carvings, smiling as one of the guides takes their picture. The youngest daughter jumps off and stamps up and down some of the hewn steps.

A few metres away from this spot, a sign proudly pronounces Shore Temple a National Heritage Site.

Outside the next temple, people weaving in and out selling pendants and bracelets are more than happy to kick us off our bikes. As coachloads of tourists snap away the the rock, climbing in and out of the temples, an Indian man holding a small broom climbs up to the head of an elephant. He proceeds to sweep vigorously, as below him, a team of 'litter-pickers' kick pebbles off the top of a statue. A guard walks down the steps, hooking a bottle into the bushes with his left foot. A handful of monkeys sit atop a temple roof, and swing off the columns. It is World Heritage Week, and a banner being tied to nails on the rock face reminds Mamallapuram of this fact. The town is choosing to celebrate with it’s own preservation initiatives.

There are signs all over the town pronouncing littering a sin, and rubbish bins are scattered about the place, labelled with instructions to keep Mamallapuram tidy. There must be some logic behind the fact that they are all blue and shaped like penguins.

Meanwhile, the monkeys watch tourists stepping in and out. A fenced off area is broken through, and since the only guards are the government tourist touts bartering for guided tours and pointing backpackers in the direction of the best knick-knack shops, kids are hanging out beyond the mangled chicken wire, listening to mp3s on their mobile phones.

It’s an old adage often asked in the West: ‘Why spend so much money on heritage when there are people starving in the world?’ But when a centuries-old monument crumbles before your eyes, there is some instinct within that compels you to jump and save it. No one wants to be reminded that any mark we may leave on the world may one day also crumble and be swept over by women with straw brooms.

Here in Mamallapuram, workshops line the sites of almost every shrine, men outside, chiselling away at lumps of basalt with sharp tools and plenty of elbow grease, throwing dust into their eyes as, at the end of their fingers, effigies of Ganesh, or the laughing Buddha, or a sitting monkey, appear. As each new tourist arrives, by foot or by car or by cycle, they stop and call out, inviting them to come over and bring home a carving, even before they have set eyes on the original works they came here for. And they do a roaring trade. If the temples and shrines were to crumble away, it is still possible to imagine these men here, the clink of metal on stone ricocheting from hill to hill, and across the empty bay.

Ayurveda

2008-11-24T02:02:00.000-08:00

“You change your clothes,” says a solid, grumpy woman in a dirty red sari. What do I change into? I ask, miming the question. She shuffles off into a dark corner and comes back holding up piece of string.

Mamallapuram has almost as many Ayurvedic massage parlours as it has houses. Each has its touts which line the streets waiting to pounce on any tourist who, for even a second, might look as though he or she is lost. Big boards outside explain in misspelled English all the things Ayurvedic massage can help with – back pain, stress, weight loss, marriage problems. And they always feature a soft-focus picture of a blissful, stress-free man or woman, stretched out upon a table, being kneaded to wholeness by a smiling woman in a flowing sari.

Ayurveda, at 5,000 years old, is believed by some to be the most ancient method of medical treatment in practice. Though I doubt the woman offering me the string has ever taken the Hippocratic Oath, some medicines have been examined and patented in the West. Not that the average punter is bothered with the details of the five elements. Or the balance of air, phlegm and bile. Here in the South, training as a practitioner is less a higher calling, more a lucrative way of earning bucks off the biggest beneficiaries: tourists.

I think of the word ‘benefit’ as I climb, naked except for said piece of string, onto a slippery plastic green mattress. Behind the grimy screen, I imagine that Eva is going through the same thing, though her woman is younger, more timid, and I would guess, possesses softer hands. I think about this with envious malice as my stern-faced masseuse stares at me, hair pulled tightly back from her face like an Indian Brunhilda. ‘White girls eat too much cake’ I imagine her thinking, or at least something like that. From over the curtain, a click, and the trill and durge of ‘om,’ ‘om shanti om’ and something about Krishna.

Take it from me, there is nothing in the least bit erotic about this. Not even when she pours what seems like bucketfuls of hot oil over me and starts digging her chubby fingers into me like she’s making the dough for a steak and kidney pie. I think about Eva. There has not been so much as a squeak from her.

The two women speak in Tamil to each other. I wonder if they are comparing patients, tutting to each other. Look at those thighs, mine is probably saying to Eva’s. You can tell she needs to cut down on the chapattis. They’re probably laughing about my silly tan marks, too.

Suddenly the dynamic changes, and she’s hammering me with the rough sides of her hands. Now she’s pressing heavily against the back of my head and chanting something – what is she chanting? Will it hurt? – now telling me to turn over and I’m totally lost as all I can do is concentrate on is clamping my eyes shut. I recall somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory that this is supposed to last an hour. How long has it been? It must be half way through? I think of Eva, silent behind the screen, and imagine she is lost in some ecstatic meditative realm. Either that or she’s been clubbed and dragged away while I’ve had my eyes shut.

After a while of being rubbed, manipulated and prodded, I can sense my masseuse stepping back. I can feel steam in the air and suddenly the smell of warm fat reaches my blind nostrils. I realise that she is sponging the oil off me with a hot cloth. She doesn’t make much of a gesture towards finishing the job, however, and instead slaps me on the shoulder and says, ‘change clothes’ which means I can take the string off now.

I slide off the mattress, stunned and more than a little embarrassed. A small squelch from next door suggests that Eva is doing the same. I stand, shiny with grease and completely unclothed, in front of my stocky masseuse. We face each other for a moment, two women completely bewildered. I look into the eyes that have seen more of my skin than I probably have. Then, suddenly, she grabs my shoulders with two firm hands, and, grinning like a spinster aunt, gives me a big kiss on the cheek, before skipping out the door. Forget the oils and the om shantis, I think, smiling to myself: that’s all she really needed to do.

Friday 21st November 2008

2008-11-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

The hotel Lakshmi in Mamallapuram can be best described as Butlins, if it was included in the set of I am Legend. Unsurprising, perhaps, when you think that less than four years ago, it faced its own apocalypse.

The tsunami that hit this coast on Boxing Day of 2004 killed 18,000 Indians and flattened the homes of around 650,000. Thirty metres high, caused by the second largest earthquake ever recorded, it hit this small fishing town without any notice. After the disaster, rescue workers ran out of body bags. Throughout the affected areas of Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, the response was swift, and the death toll from starvation and disease, though significant, was not as large as projected figures. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused to take much of the $7bn in aid offered by the West, insisting that his country could go it alone. Many Indians even now tell me they have never forgiven him for what they see as nothing more than stubborn pride.

The repairs and regeneration since have been slow. Even now the place has the feel of a town reeling in shock; the shop signs that have taken so long to replace; the water stains that have yet to be painted over. People still sleep on the streets. Poverty is more apparent than that seen in neighbouring Pondicherry, just over an hour's drive away. There were reports in the years after the disaster that women in Mamallapuram and the surrounding villages were trading their kidneys for around £500.

Today, Mamallapuram is covered in tie-dye shawls and ying-yang printed fabrics. Australians, Brits, French and Russians sip cappucinos and green tea in the Bob Marley café. In the evenings, they sit on rooftop bars lit by coloured paper lanterns, and drink ‘special tea’ (beer in a painted china pot), eat crepes with nutella (from a black market in Pondy) and catch the puppies and kittens that seem to be dropping, inexplicably, from every tarpaulin roof sheet. They're all sopping wet from the warm monsoon rains which hammer down suddenly, and disappear as quickly as they start. The strains of caribbean music float down from one window and into the Bob Dylan ekeing from another.

But along the beach, where women tidy fishing nets into brightly painted boats, the empty shells of houses crumble, their iron reinforcements sticking out of the rubble, naked and bent. Almost all the hotels here are still being rebuilt, paid for by the tourist revenues that chatter, slurp, and buy small gaudy statues of Ganesh to put on top of their fridges.

The town is full of orphanages, and touts visit hotels looking for tourists to sing after school songs to the children. Teenagers on GAP year placements here line the bars sipping beers after bed time. Along the beach, houses still provide accomodation for tsunami victims who do not yet have the money to reconstruct their lost homes.

Today at dusk, sitting in the sunshine by a makeshift swimming pool, debris and dust begin to fly everywhere. A French tourist shouts over, and points at the sky. From nowhere, a grey-black cloud, like a giant scouring pad, looms in the sky. Without time to even grab our soggy belongings and run, rain tips from the heavens, soaking the path and weighing down the palm trees that creak in the wind. When the tsunami struck, there were a great many more casualties than a couple of sarongs and the tedious holiday reading I’d taken out of the British Council Library.

Back on the beach, a large dark object can be seen in the sand. On closer inspection, it’s possible to make out a rusty swing seat, and following the chain upwards, its steel frame, tipped on its side. And underneath, a twisted, grey slide. Both the slide and the frame still have a thick ball of broken cement on their legs, like the end of a cotton bud. No one in the last four years has come to reclaim this piece of playground. And so, the fishermen’s wives pass on by, every morning and afternoon; it's another reminder of the day the town was swallowed by the sea, only to be slowly spat out again. Reggae music or none, the giant wave is not forgotten.

Thursday 20 November 2008

2008-11-22T05:08:00.000-08:00

Goubert Avenue, Pondicherry is a cross between Hastings and the French Riviera. Except of course, for all the Indian faces. The promenade has little seaside cafes, serving café au lait and crepes au banane, and is dotted with leaning palm trees and huge monuments in marble and gold. The street signs, the same blue and white design and typeface used in Paris, are in French and Tamil. Pastel yellow and mute pink houses with curlicued wrought-iron balconies line the streets.

In the evenings, Indians stroll along the seafront, perhaps picking up an ice cream, or a cone of nuts, or watching the waves crash against the sea wall. French expats and Pondy residents alike sit in bars, sipping the Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon which is not only imported from France, but completely tax free. In a land where the cow is sacred, here people tuck into steak frites with gusto.

On the seafront a memorial stands, dedicated to “des Indes Francaises” who ‘died for their country’ in the First World War. It’s a strange facet of colonialism, that a government can not only claim a land, but claim it’s people also, drawing them into a conflict that would take their lives.

Not that Pondicherry seems to mind today. The policemen are dressed as gendarmes, with the cylindrical visored hats. The town hall is still known as the Hôtel de Ville. People lounge over two hour lunch breaks, and buisinesses open late into the evening.

Pondicherry is known as Le Côte d’Azur de l’Est, the French Riviera of the East. The French colonised Pondicherry in the eighteenth century, and finally left fifty years ago. Though two years ago Pondicherry officially changed its name to ‘Puducherry’, or ‘new town’ - its new name is seen neither on shopfronts, nor street signs; local chatter would never have you guess. The French still have ‘special administrative status’, and developers must receive official permission to demolish buildings, promising to rebuild them in the original French architectural style.

And yet there are only 10,000 Francophone residents in the Pondicherry area, compared to 820,000 Tamil-speakers. Taking a morning stroll, we are approached at all angles by men, their arms dripping with trinkets. Do we want necklaces, won’t we take anklets? Do we want peacock-feather fans? Or small carved African drums? Good price, madam. Or maybe we’re looking for a rickshaw, and a place to stay for the night – have we booked hotel? My His friend has nice place near the sea…

One approches with a small wooden chess board. “Chess, madam?” No, no chess. “You sure madam?” Yes, I am perfectly sure. At this he reaches for something behind his back and says, “snake?”

Out on the seafront, beneath the shelter of a straw beach hut, an Indian gendarme taps away at a text message. Beneath him, lying in the sand, is an old Indian man, wearing raggedy shorts and a t-shirt, trying to sleep in the blazing sun, his bony knees up to his chest, tucked into the foetal position. The policemen is too absorbed in his mobile phone to turn around, and when he does, he simply walks over him. There are some aspects of India even patisseries and paté couldn’t disguise.

Tuesday 18th November 2008

2008-11-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

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“Where are you staying in Pondicherry?” asks a friend of mine on Facebook. In the last few weeks, facebook has been my contact with a) bored friends with office jobs, and b) people giving me accomodation suggestions. After all, it seems 50% of ex-students have found themselves in India at some point, and most of them wish to help me on my journey to inevitable spiritual epiphany.

“I’m staying in Auroville,” I reply. The answer confuses some, and disgusts others.

Auroville is an artifical community first opened in 1968. It was built on the orders of a French woman known only as ‘The Mother’ and still referred to in reverent, hushed tones by Aurovillians. She had a vision based on the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, that a city should be built, made of international peoples of all races and creeds living together in harmony. It would be an experiment in ‘human unity.’ In The Mother’s own words: “Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.”

Now Auroville stretches out over 20 kms. There are currently around 2,000 Aurovillians from 38 nations. A third of them are Indian but the majority of Westerners are French. The eventual vision is to create a city of 50,000, and constantly buildings are cropping up: handbuilt, architecturally futuristic, a mix of asymetry and sharp lines and mostly topped with solar panels. The design, orginally envisioned by The Mother, included four zones, though at the moment it is a collection of settlements, each with names such as ‘grace’, ‘serenity,’ ‘surrender’. We are living in New Creation, where the school is based. It is on the outskirts near the Tamil village of Kuilapayam.

Auroville is a hive of vision and research. You must apply to be an Aurovillian, which involves promising to be ‘a willing servitor of the divine consciousness.’ Not that all Aurovilians are seeking to find their inner consciousness: some are dragged by husbands or wives, or born into the community, and some are well-wishers believing the vision. In any case, becoming an Aurovillian is a two-year process, and each individual must promise to bring something of themselves to the community. Thus, there are urban research offices, organic farms, educational research, medicinal plants production. Auroville has its own schools and kindergarten, its own hospital (including a refrigerated glass box where bodies can be kept for seven days in according to the guidelines of The Mother), supermarkets, solar power stations, tailors, shops and handicrafts. Auroville produced its own crops, milk, cheese, chocolate, even jam. There is a lovely French boulangerie down the road, which does a mean pain au chocolat, opposite the shop that sells tye dye tshirts and elephant beaded bags. Auroville’s taxi service, its travel agency, its street signs are branded with what looks like a Star of David but it in fact Sri Auribindo’s sign, and with a five-sectioned circle with a dot in the middle, which is the sign of The Mother.

To some outsiders, Auroville is just a hippy paradise. And indeed there is something of Southern California about it. Old men with beards and ponytails scoot around on motorbikes while women in floaty linen trousers with long plaits carry organic carrots in their hemp woven bags. But there is something about Auroville that takes its vision a little further than the fading vision of Woodstock.

Drive Auroville’s road for a while and you might come across a golden golf ball, 360 metres in length, glinting in the sun. If so, you’ve found the Matrimandir. Also envisioned by The Mother, it’s covered in a million tiles of gold leaf smelted between pieces of glass, given by a wealthy donor. It’s a spectacular – and some might say spectacularly ugly – sight. It’s built next to an ancient Banyan tree, which marks the dead centre of Auroville, and where Aurovillians still gather in times of world crisis to ‘channel energies’.

Entering the Matrimandir is something like climbing into the Millennium Falcon – or as Eva suggested, being zipped up by something in Strange Encounters. You must descend downwards on a ramp, to then walk upwards into the base of the ball. The Mother’s philosophy was to strip away your outer self and find within yourself the person you really are. Inside the ball, complete silence is demanded. You must, as in any temple, take off your shoes. In this one, it is also imperative that you don white socks to prevent Auroville’s red earth from staining the white marble. Inside, the sphere is truly unbelievable. Some might even believe they had landed on the planet Krypton. The inside surface of the sphere glows in pink, while huge concrete spirals lead upwards to the meditation chamber. The concrete, I am later told, contains remnants of Aurovillians’ former lives left behind, thrown into the wet mix, including pieces of the Berlin Wall. Around us, water trickles from the ceiling along golden mosaic furrows. A light shines down through the centre – a beam of sunlight, reflected off a motion and light-sensitive reflective mirror positioned at the top of the structure.

We pass into the meditation chamber, which is dark except for the white mats, upon which we sit, and except, of course, for The Mother’s pièce de resistance: a perfect glass globe, through which the sunlight passes and into the chamber below. It is here that Aurovillians can meditate. At the base of the Matrimandir, water trickles peacefully over dozens of marble petals which create the shape of a lotus flower.

What the mother taught is not another religion, though it’s an all too easy target for the word ‘cult’. But its self-declared non-religious status doesn’t mean that Auroville has escaped the cattiness of church politics. Arguments over doctrine have stretched to everything, from whether or not Aurovillians should be deemed ‘ready’

Auroville has been a controversial topic in India, even more so in the last few months. Most Aurovillians here remember Rachel White (***), the lovely young journalist who came to stay, and chatted to them, enjoying their hospitality. Little did they know what their openness might lead to. A little later, a documentary made by the BBC accused Aurovillians of exploiting surrounding Tamils, and even of cases of paedophilia inflicted on Tamil children by white Aurovillians. The latter is an exaggeration of the truth; but the two cases referred to by the documentary did exist, and were cleared up years ago. My mother herself, though not an authentic ‘Aurovillian’ had to deal with some of them while running her school on the outskirts of the community. But when the documentary was aired, the small community fell apart. Emails dashed around the intranet and message boards of Auroville, through the settlements of Peace and Unity and Solitude, like red alarm bells ringing. Many recall thinking that this would be the end of Auroville.

But today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, and Auroville lives on, more babies are born to Aurovillians, and more newcomers fly in from all over the world to build their houses here and grow the community.

Post-BBC, Auroville goes back to its squabbles among architects and arguments over administration, as well as pushing on with its vision which can be seen as either admirable or naïve, depending on your level of cynicism. The biggest stalling block for the community are the locals who live here in the surrounding Tamil villages. They refuse to sell their family’s land to the Westerners who wish to buy it at a decent price; whereas Aurovillians see the Tamils as deliberately trying to hike up their offers. The local Tamils rely on Aurovillians to give them and their children the opportunities for education, employment and development they otherwise would not have. And yet the Aurovillian presence, which has often proved demanding, can sometimes lead to a sentiment of living on Western Occupied Territory encroaching from all fronts. As with all communities – giant golden golf ball or no – warring over differences can be a serious stalling process. Even those seeking universal human unity are not exempt.

Monday 17th November 2008

2008-11-19T01:50:00.001-08:00

“When I grow up I don’t want to get married,” says Geetha. “I want to read a lot instead.” We are standing on the roof of New Creation Bilingual School in Auroville, a settlement close to Pondicherry, in Tamil Nadu. We’re staring at the sky during a meteor shower, trying to spot shooting stars. In this part of India, there are many stars to watch.

Coming to New Creation has been a pilgrimage for me. My mother was principal of the school just before she died, three years ago. We stand in the same classrooms she taught in, sleep in the same room that she lived in, and are probably being bitten by the same mosquitos as well.

My mum, a hardened feminist, would certainly approve of Geetha’s philosophy. She has too much ahead of her to be ensnared by a love-rat. At 12 years old, she can speak fluent Tamil and English, and is learning Spanish. She takes classes in sign language. She knows all about the planets, all about the plants and different kinds of birds. She takes classes in all kinds of sports, and arts. She also is trained in woodwork, and embroidery, and pottery, just in case she wants to get one of the surplus manual jobs that are open in the surrounding area. She is also supported by the school’s special needs class, a rarity in India. But Geetha wants to be a nurse and help people who “have no eyes and no ears and,” she covers her mouth with both hands and nods her head.

Gita is an orphan, one of ten or so children who board at the school. Thirty-five children in total, from the nearby village of Kuilapayam come to receive a better education than they could have ever otherwise expected. This afternoon they sit on the grass outside the concrete pod classrooms which surround them (designed by a French architect, and decidedly Star Wars-esque). Inside them are the decorations and displays of a happy Western primary school: wobbly hands drawn around and coloured in, alphabets decorated with apples and books and cows and ducks…The only difference is that here are the curlicued letters of the Hindi alphabet, of which there are just over a hundred.

“It’s important that they learn their own language too,” says Shankar, the headteacher who eventually took over from my mother. He’s introduced a modern system of schooling, and hopes soon to bring in national exams. I remember the words of my editor back in Delhi, who was gently bragging about how many languages he knew. When I asked him if he knew Tamil, he laughed and asked what use I thought that could possibly be. Tamil is a language in a class of its own: one of the most ancient languages still spoken in the world today. Alongside this, children must learn English if they are to do anything beyond the ordinary. And they are all extraordinary enough to do so.

Even those with special needs are trained in carpentry, cookery and gardening, skills that will get them jobs to meet the insatiable demands of surrounding Auroville and nearby Pondicherry. They are also taught pottery, but since the profession is traditionally for lower castes, only the youngest show any interest. The potter’s wheel fell into disrepair long ago.

Outside, the children sit around in a circle with their teacher, the younger ones holding battered little textbooks, repeating phrases in Hindi. Some of the older children have taken the little ones into groups and are sitting in the shade, reading English books aloud as they trace their finger underneath each word. There is a gentle hum of activity. We are surprised to see they are eager, and even more surprised to learn that this is just homework time. They hardly see us as we pass by.

The children are all in uniform - either purple or green – gingham shirts and trousers, or pinafores. The boys’ hair is neatly cut, and the girls have ponytails tied with ribbons and strings of lily of the valley. Cuts are neatly bandaged back up. Gone are the grubby faces and hands of the orphans and beggars of Delhi. Some of these children are washed at school. Their parents are sometimes abusive; at best they are neglected, and at worst they suffer physical harm. A brand new building, recently given as a one-off gift by a Western donor, has been polished until it shines in the sunlight, making it slippery for the bare feet underneath. It is here that the children receive their midday meal and their snacks, piles of rice soaked in yellow daal, scooped up eagerly by tiny sticky fingers. For some, it’s the only food they will eat.

A ten minute walk to their village after the school day, and all of a sudden the second world they inhabit looms into view. A collection of ramshackle huts make up the little estates where the day students live. Outside, a stick thin mother rakes the mud, a small baby tied to her back with a grubby rag, its head lolling behind her. She can’t have been more than 25, but her weary gait would suggest otherwise. Two dogs lie in the middle of the tarmac road, and it takes a closer inspection to check that they are breathing – which they are, albeit slow and shallow. The huge green palms and lush cashew trees which grow around the village seem to ignore these settlements. These come instead in textures of stick and slush, and various shades of brown. But from behind the huts hurtle little purple and green figures, recognising us from the afternoon’s tour. They jump up onto the walls, brandishing sticks they have been playfighting with, demanding that we take their pictures. They jump and shout, full of energy. Looking behind at the tired, bony woman with the baby, I wonder if any of these children belong to her.

But New Creation is short of funds. Janet and Mauna help run the school. They are, respectively, American and Dutch, though they have lived in Auroville for decades. They sit in a sunlit classroom, tin tea kettle before them, and explain that their donors and their donations are slowly receding. The credit crunch has hit hard. In addition, Western donors slink back from an increasingly wealthy India, not realising that there are no regular wealthy Indian donors left to take their place. New Creation is short of donors to keep them in lentils and rice for the next few months. On top of that, though they have funds for a new library, partially paid-for by a fund my sisters and I set up for my mother - they have no books to fill it with. And daal comes first.

Back on the rooftop, after a noisy evening meal with the menagerie – plates piled high, tonight at least, with rice and daal, pasta, tomato sauce and curried egg, seconds aplenty – The rest of the boys tell us their life plans. Against the various chirrups and chirps of the night-time, they shout their aspirations with the enthusiasm of a pantomime audience: Pilot; Engineer; Policeman. “Astronaut!” shouts a boy with his arm in a cast. He’s broken it twice now, flying off a building. As for Geetha, she has decided exactly how her plans are coming to fruition. She is going to grow wings, she says, and fly to London where she will be a successful (and presumably single) woman. She’s going to have a big house and own lots of books. Apart from the wing-growth, and maybe the singledom too, it all seems totally plausible for her: the little girl wearing a jingling anklets and a bindi, who can name each bird and insect in the nighttime Indian chorus, who was born under a thatched roof in a Tamil village.

Sunday 16 November 2008

2008-11-19T01:07:00.000-08:00

When lulling in and out of train-sleep, every glimpse out of the window is like the new article in National Geographic. On pulling into a station, awake and you might see the cut paper doll silhouettes of women carrying as-yet empty shopping bags, waiting for the early morning train. Open your eyes an hour later and you will see wide open landscapes that are not unlike the bracken-filled copses outside any British Rail window. As the train wallah prods your breakfast through the curtain, look out to the edge of a slum, bricks painted with bright advertisements in Hindi, children running towards the railroad tracks as young boys sit on the littered mounds and look on.

Though all regions blur into one, mobile phone text messages give a rough global positioning. “Welcome to Airtel M. Pradesh. For India-England live one-day cricket scores, did *646*605#.” “Welcome to Airtel Goa/Maharastra. Calls cost 1rs/min STD” “Welcome to Airtel Tamil Nadu.”

India is an enormous landmass. It’s easy to forget this, spending time in a city where people clamber over each other like mice in a bucket. When told there are 1.2 billion people in a country, you sometimes imagine that there is no space at all. And then you realise that India is no Luxembourg, covering some 1,269,210 square miles.

It’s also difficult to believe that there are stretches of Indian land not covered in a smattering of garbage. And yet it is one of the most enviromentally-aware cultures I have lived in. Tips on how to be greener fill the newspapers, and warnings of the current and future natural disasters are everywhere. Perhaps this is because the effects of pollution are tangible here: floods in Bihar, failed crops across the country, early snowfall in Kashmir. For the last couple of days a permanent smog has hung over Delhi, more intense than even the usual. The Times of India reported yesterday that it was part of a huge brown cloud hanging over South Asia, blocking the atmosphere. They even had a fairly terrifying graphic to illustrate it.

Recycling programmes are in effect across the country. People are paid to keep piles of old newspapers; they are bought back and collected by the government for a good proportion of their original street price. This scheme is so effective that news publishers have had to carefully track vendors to avoid them selling their papers to recycling wallahs rather than readers. There are other schemes in place, even in the most remote villages. One consists of swapping old clothes for kitchen utensils. Autorickshaws and public buses run on compressed natural gas, and there are plans to make these vehicles solar-powered. At stoplights, huge government signs encourage motorists to turn off their engines. One of the country’s first Critical Mass events was held in Delhi last week, and though the turn out was hardly significant enough to truly earn its moniker, there are increasing numbers of bicycles on the roads.

Compare this attitude to the US, for example, where at least 31,000 scientists still deny that global warming exists. In New York, for example, recycling schemes are fairly primitive compared to other big cities such as London. You have to make something of a scene to prevent being given even a cup of coffee in a takeaway bag. Only until last year was it made illegal for stores to keep their doors open with their air conditioning on full blast, enticing summer customers in from the heat. The New York Times rarely publishes environmental features. Despite this, Western governments are quick to point the un-green finger at rapidly industrialising countries, especially China and India. London is trying, but it is not that much better. India is blamed for its poor infrastructure, but it has been more proactive in evangelising the green message than most African countries.

Of course India is not perfect; and it’s often difficult to understand the ethical rationale behind preaching the recycling message to a people without access to basic santitation. But India is a country that experiences the destruction of global warming firsthand. While people in Devon suffer flood damage to family airlooms and row dinghies to the local post office, families in Bihar die in their thousands for lack of food aid. It’s no wonder that the latter are more willing to accept the global warming problem, and begin to think of solutions.

Saturday 15th November 2008

2008-11-19T00:48:00.000-08:00

There are few experiences more ambivalent than the feeling of being encased in the womb of a train berth, lights out, being gently rocked from side to side. It’s strangely safe and cosy, but you are simultaneously the mercy of anything existing ten centimetres from your head. I remember this in the middle of the night when a train wallah comes by, chanting, “chai, garam chai,” far too close to my ear, or, Blair Witch-like, the shape of an elbow or a leg suddenly appears through the curtain.

As people hunker down to sleep, it’s easy to spot the middle class man at a loss without his wife and housekeeper: struggling to work out how the sheets on his bed fit, and searching maniacally through his bag for the socks someone else packed for him. From the berth opposite comes a waft of fresh shit. Someone is changing a nappy in full view. I realise that there’s nowhere to stash it except somewhere in the carraige. The smell turns slowly stale throughout the night.

I’m with Eva, a good friend of mine from Cambridge. She arrived in Delhi only the day before, and bewildered I dragged her through the chaotic and unforgiving bazaars of the old part of the city. She was as shocked as she was delighted by the dirt, the smells, the bodies that unapologetically ram and push and grope and reach out. This morning, I introduced Eva to Shafi, our Muslim friend at the Government Tourist Agency. Though we don’t require his services any more, he’ll call us up for a chat, and we’ll pop in for chai with him to talk hypothetical travel plans and wishful thinking.

“You don’t come around any more,” he says. “You don’t understand how rude it is in India not to come and see your friends.” It’s not enough to say that we are here now.

Every time we come in, Shafi laments our job as journalists. He tells us that we lie. “You are not honest,” is his favourite catchphrase. He will then lament the latest atrocities committed in the country: six-year olds being raped, nuns being killed, more people dying of poverty who never appear in the newspaper. Instead, he says (quite rightly) newspapers are all full of sex and Bollywood.

“How do you find India?” he asks, pointing to Eva. She replies politely that it is nice. “No, it is not nice. Do you like it better than London?” Eva hesitates. “No, of course you do not. London is much better. Delhi is not nice. Have you cried yet? You will cry soon.”

For a man who works at the Government Tourist Agency, Shafi has a strange way of making India more appealing. What is even stranger is that it works.

After a tear-free afternoon, we’re on the Tamil Nadu Express to Chennai. The journey is 1,090 miles in total; more than the distance between Newcastle and Norway. It takes 32 hours to get from one end to the other. Judging by the state of the toilets after only two of those hours, it’s going to be a long trip.

I remember being shown a picture slide in a colonial history lecture at university. It was of a Victorian memsahib, being tucked into bed by a houseboy, folding layers of net curtains around her as she, half-dressed, dropped off to sleep. Upon seeing it I remember coiling in bitter disgust at the weakness of our foremothers, ruling a country they marked as uninhabitable, running to hill stations in the hot summer, and being swathed in taffeta before they went to bed. Meanwhile. the ‘natives’ were primitive enough to cope with the elements.

My curtain now is all too reassuring, as my separation from smells and belches and bodies. And I’m a little ashamed of hiding. I was told it was customary on trains to strike up conversation and meet new people, like Paul Theroux in The Great Railway Bazaar. My thoughts go back to the sepia memsahib and I somehow make a connection to her fears. They're the same fears that the protagonist overcomes in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. This is India: a mixture of the beautiful and the profane – as Shafi would agree – sometimes at the same time. And there’s not always a curtain to separate you from it.

Our own Bollywood Flicks

2008-11-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the web documentaries Elsa and I made on Bollywood tourism last week:

Thursday 13th November 2008

2008-11-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

Priti sits in a bright red and white bedspread, tracing her fingers along the lines of a book as she mumbles the words to herself. At 10 years old, she's eloquent in both English and Hindi. She's reading Thumbelina, the tale of a tiny girl who meets adversity in everyone she meets: kidnapped by a toad, rejected by a beetle, bitten by the winter cold. Eventually, a fieldmouse encourages her to find her handsome prince. She grows wings to fly away with him.

Priti was born HIV positive. Both her parents are dead, and, here in India, she has slim chance of growing up in a family. She's a lifelong burden to whoever might otherwise foster her. She has to keep her status secret from the school she attends, for otherwise other parents, if not teachers, are sure to hound her out. When she is older, she's unlikely to get a good job, and even less likely to find a husband.

But she has found her fieldmouse in the NAZ foundation, the orphanage where she lives. Here, another 35 other children are schooled, fed, and cared for. They sleep in brightly coloured dormitories, scattered with toys and adorned with glittered decorations and cartoon-pattered curtains. A bookcase in the corner is full of books. Other children jump off beds and on to the floor, giggling and throwing paper aeroplanes.

"Most of them are the highest five in their class," says Anjali Gopalan, who has run the orphanage for eight years, alongside a peer education programme and an outreach group for infected adults and the gay community. "I can see them giving back to society. They are aspiring to be engineers and doctors and anything they want to be."

But society does not want to give back to them. Many of these children have been rejected by their families, and even by doctors and other orphanages.

The misunderstandings such children face are both physical and moral. Gopalan says that while people believe they can be infected simply by touching HIV infected individuals, they also see them - even children - as being sexually promiscuous, or otherwise behaving against society's norms.

"One child was brought to me by a woman from a major orphanage who was wearing gloves up to her elbows," she says. "A lot has to do with the fact that the medical profession is still reluctant to even touch people with HIV. Doctors are not touching patients."

In June of this year, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) said it would work with the National AIDS Control Board (NACB) to set up 10 care homes in the most AIDS-ravaged regions of India - Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh, Maharastra, and Manipur. NACO has identified 32,000 AIDS orphans in India. In 2005 the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated the real number to be more than 2 million. Gopalan says she feels these are empty promises.

"I'm very grateful to the government for having done what they claim to be doing," says Gopalan. "But I know at the ground level, it's not reaching people who really need it." said Gopalan. "There's nothing being done for children. Any government minister who says that is lying through their teeth."

Tarundeep, at 15, is the oldest child at the NAZ foundation. He is a singer, whose reputation at the orphanage precedes him, though he's too shy to sing for the cameras. He has plans for the future.

"First I want to become a playback singer," He says. Though he's too shy to dance up front, he'll fill the lips of the stars who will.

Tarundeep must soon leave NAZ and join a society that will treat him and his illness with hostility. The orphanage has given him wings; now it's his turn to fly. And if he can't fly to Bollywood?

"I'll take care of NAZ," he says, chuckling gently, before going downstairs to have dinner, finish his evening studies, and say his prayers.

Tuesday 11th November 2008

2008-11-12T11:23:00.000-08:00

A kerfuffle breaks out on board the Rajdhani Express to Delhi. At a time when many passengers are attempting to drop off to sleep, three men are shouting in Hindi.

“You are like a machine, sir,” one man shouts to the ticket inspector. And again: “you are like a machine.” It appears that two of the men have purchased senior citizen tickets, at a 50% discount, but cannot seem to produce any I.D. Despite the presence of the ubiquitous Indian moustache and manly paunch, they still don’t quite look old enough. The argument snowballs as high pitched female voices join the fray.

Taking on Indian bureaucracy is more dangerous than competing with it’s cricket team, and you’re twice as sure to lose. When something is written on a piece of paper in India, especially when it’s in someone’s job description, it’s hammered with a golden chisel. India probably has the largest list of rules in the world. And it’s not always clear who is allowed to break them and when.

For example, when do you call a place after its British name, and when must you use the politically correct post-independence moniker? Kasturba Gandhi Marg instead of Curzon Road, but Victoria Terminus Station instead of the mouthful that is Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus? Many Indians have laughed at our polite use of ‘Mumbai,’ instead of the far more common ‘Bombay.’ Try telling someone you are hoping to visit post-colonial ‘Puducherry’ rather than the original ‘Pondicherry’ and most people will just frown and look confused. The same ambiguity that applies to place names also applies to rickshaw driver etiquette, tipping, and the behaviour of traffic policemen. Rule-breaking is the secret language of India, but must have some logical system behind it. I think back to ‘Indian Mind’ and accept that as a foreigner it will always elude me.

Yesterday, we queued at the foreign traveller’s ticket desk at Churchgate Station in central Bombay. All major ticket offices in India have a separate office for tourists. In a strange fit of benevolence, Indian Railways decided to reserve foreigners a certain quota of tickets on each train. Today, however, most of the people in line look suspiciously Indian. No one bats an eyelid, and not even the portly lady behind the glass counter.

We were here to change our rail tickets for the same train the next day. When we reached the front counter, we were handed a form, faded from relentless photocopying. It was almost unreadable. After we’d filled it out, we joined the line once again.

In the meantime, a middle aged gentleman had poised himself to jump to the front of the line with the classic sideways manoeuvre. His sense of entitlement was baffling, though it wasn’t the first time we’d seen it done. The assembled ‘tourists’ would not, this time, let him get away with it, and he was neither surprised nor apologetic as he was hissed and shooed to the back of the queue.

Reaching the portly lady once again, she told us that we were too late: an hour earlier and she could have done something for us, but now…it was impossible. Didn’t we know it was impossible? Glancing at the wall clock behind her head, we were baffled by the seemingly arbitrary cut-off point. She sighed, and explained that for a higher sum, she could help us. And did we have our passports? Sadly, one of us did, and the other did not. We hadn’t needed them to book in the first place, but once again we came upon a rule that seemed nothing if not random. But we had driving licenses, and surely she could see we were foreign? If one of us was, it made sense that the other was too. We looked meaningfully around at the sea of Indian faces behind us.

“I can see you are foreign, madam,” she said. “You are white. I know you are white, you know you are white.” She sighed. “I wish I could help you.” And then she came out with a line we had heard many times before in India, the line that slid the last brick into the impenetrable wall: “It’s in my job.”

The official who draws up job descriptions, I think to myself, is a bit like the army chief in Monty Python, I think to myself, except with a bushier moustache. He sits in his office, and twiddles his thumbs. He pretends in his pomposity to know it all, and when he is forced to divulge a rule, he resorts to making it up, There’s a Railway rule book it is possible to buy from stations, and it’s several centimetres thick.

So, we give up the interview we were hoping to stay in Bombay for, and instead join the Rajdhani Express. Here, we find that the berth reservations have been entirely rejigged, and we have no idea where we are supposed to sleep. The ticket inspector standing outside with a sign points out our new numbers, and writes them on our tickets. We are half a carriage away from each other. When the train leaves, Elsa shifts bunks, choosing from the two opposite me. An old man points and shouts in Hindi.

“He says that seat belongs to someone,” translates a businessman in the berth below. Does it belong to him, I ask? “No. It belongs to someone. Someone who will get on the train later.” But isn’t this an express train? I thought it didn’t make any stops. He shrugs. “It belongs to somebody.” And so, as the man and his translator begin to fall asleep, we make a bed in tribute to the absent passenger, and Elsa considers it a rule to crawl in. For, as with faries, if you believe in a rule hard enough, it’s certain to exist.

Monday 10th November 2008

2008-11-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

The 3.45 pm train from Churchgate to Bandra is twenty minutes late. Not that it matters; the platforms are always crammed with people, the women pushing around each other, creating a kaleidoscope of sari silks, the men a throng of filthy shirts and sacks held up in the air. As the train pulls in, and passengers pour off, another load climbs in, elbows out, anxious to board, even though the train won’t leave for at least another ten minutes. It’s every person for themselves: God help you if you stop to apologise for treading on someone’s feet. If you’re lucky enough to land a seat, someone is bound to ask where you are getting off, and then say, assassin-like, “when you go, this seat is mine.” We get into the all-women’s carriage, and Elsa muses as we cower in a corner, is this some old-fashioned way of separating the sexes, or is it just to protect the women from the men?

While we are stationary, a couple of boys surreptitiously jump on the train, avoiding the train stewards, to sell snacks before jumping out the other side. By the time we pull out, it is impossible to remove your elbow from someone’s face without hitting someone else with it anyway. Some hang half outside the open doors, their scarves blowing precariously in the wind. The smell of fish floats disperses through the carriage as wives are bringing their groceries home from the docks. During the journey, old women with tattered saris tied beneath them like sparkling loincloths squeeze through impossibly small spaces between ladies, holding aloft oranges to sell, or costume rings, or sweets made from apricots, shoving them in front of faces that are practically eyeball to eyeball already.

India laughs in the face of the Malthusian theory. With a population of 1.2 billion and growing, the country is still growing fast. It is estimated to pip China by 2035. In addition, India has 25 million expats in 35 countries abroad. Its insatiable growth – around 25% in the past ten years alone – would, it is assumed, leave the country’s infrastructure staggering under its weight. In reality, sanitation and poverty is just as much a problem as it ever was, but no worse. The levels of starvation are no higher in this decade of population explosion than they have been before. The government are slowly raising levels of literacy, and more and more ordinary children from rural areas are speaking English as well as their regional language, giving them hopes of easier social mobility. More young people are studying abroad, only to come back to contribute to their country’s economy. There are as many hopes for India’s next generation. Malthus would be left scratching his head.

A corollary of India’s huge population is its employment situation. More people require more work. India’s job creation, and cheap labour rates, have made the country a service culture. There is someone to do everything for you: to hand you a hand towel in a high class hotel, to open the door on your way into a café. In restaurants, there are some waiters who simply stand all evening, backs pushed straight against the wall. Pull into any main train station and a dozen unformed men will descend, ready to take your baggage ten feet to the front entrance. Electronic ticket machines are few and far between, despite the length of the queues on the concourse. Instead, ticket clerks fuss behind clear plastic screens.

And yet in certain circumstances, it’s hard to see it happening any other way. In Bombay, hundreds of tiffin-wallahs are responsible for ferrying packed lunched from kitchens, cafes and even housewives to the desks and dens of workers. For want of a travelling lunchbox and a microwave for reheating, they deliver 600,000 meals each day, with a centralised sorting office co-ordinating the whole system. In another area of the city – one that has now become a tourist destination – is Mahalaxmi Dhobi Gat, where hundreds of people create a human washing machine, receiving dirty laundry from Bombay’s restaurants and hotels, scrubbing them and wringing them clean. When labour is so cheap, and jobs are so essential, machines will never interfere with what humans can do.

Neither, however, will India’s trains become any less crowded. As we leave the train at Bandra, the old lady who’d bagsied our seat is thrown off by a woman with a huge bag stuffed with sweetcorn kernels. Now we know, I say. The ladies carriage is not there to protect the men from the women; quite the opposite. With handbags like these, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Sunday 9th November 2008

2008-11-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

“You will wear very small dress,” says Viki. He hold the sides of his palms against the bottom of his jeans pocket, and then mimes a cropped boob tube on his chest. His teeth are stained red with paan and his breath stinks of whisky, even though it’s ten o’clock in the morning.

We met Viki yesterday while pounding the pavements for the story we’ve come to report: tourists are picked up on the streets of Bombay by casting touts, and paid to work as extras in Bollywood movies. It’s a well-known phenomena to backpackers, who are left to wait for hours in ridiculous costumes, as Bollywood divas pass by, and normally spend two weeks hovering over the toilet bowl thanks to the pakoras they ate on set. But to the average Indian, the whole phenomenon is an hilarious quirk.

We spent the day lurking outside hotels and in the tourist bars and cafes, around India Gateway and in marketplaces, waiting to be talent-spotted. We were told by friends who had gone before us that we would hardly be able to breathe for all the scouts offering us work. We tried to be as authentic a pair of tourists as we could, snapping photographs of everything from market sellers to our lunch, bartering badly for jewellery, waving our Lonely Planets and even wearing a red sandalwood spot on our white foreheads, but will it wasn’t until 6 hours in the scorching sun that we finally met Viki, who took our phone numbers annd promised, in broken English, to pick us up from our house at 8am the next morning. We would get paid 500 rupees (£6) for the entire day. The other details would be worked out later.

As the mist rolled over our neighbourhood of Pali Hill this morning, we trudged to our designated meeting point, bought a copy of the Sunday newspaper and waited. And waited some more. We read the matrimonial advertising section, choosing ourselves husbands from the array of Brahmin soldiers, American-educated lawyers and half-crippled divorcees. An hour passed. We called Viki and a woman answered the phone, shrieking something in Hindi. Eventually a man’s voice, which wasn’t Viki’s, told us to meet him at a location that was ninety minutes away by bus. From there, he said, we’d be taken to the studio.

When we arrived on the street corner, we were not met by Viki and his promised steed, but instead were ferried from a cinema to a designated café by someone we hadn’t met before, and never would again.

And here we are, having worked our way through the matromonial section of the paper and now trying to decipher the cricket reporting. It is almost ten o’clock. Someone comes in, claiming to be Viki’s ‘brother’, and tells us Viki will be here in five minutes. Just past eleven o’clock, he turns up, in the same dishevelled football shirt he’d worn yesterday, his hair slicked back with grease.

“You’re late,” he says, smiling, and showing a row of half-rotten teeth. When I explain that he, not we, were three hours tardy, he shrugs and giggles, explaining in stuttered English that he had drunk too much whisky last night and forgotten to wake up. When I explain that it wasn’t really an acceptable excuse (not least because we’d been our clubbing that night until 4am) his smirk disappears and he apologises. He hops along the road with us for another four blocks and leaves us on a pavement, promising that he is just going to find his boss. Twenty minutes passes. He comes back, smelling conspicuously of vodka.

“Married?” he says, pulling open a foil packet of paan and popping the huge wad into one mouth cheek. “Yes,” I said. I might have slammed my fist a little too hard on the bench. “Is she married?” He pointed to Elsa. “Yes,” I said again. He hadn’t bothered to check for a wedding ring but it didn’t seem to matter. Viki leant over me, huffing boozy breath into my face, his hand resting on my knee. I remove it.

“When are we leaving?” I ask. It’s nearing twelve. Four hours away from the agreed time, and more than forty kilometers from the agreed place. “Soon,” he says, spitting part of his red smile out onto the street. Two boys come along asking Elsa and I to be in their photo. They disappear after a few refusals. “Fucking bastards,” says Viki. It’s the most coherent piece of English he’s spoken all morning. He offers us a cigarette, waving a golden packet of Benson and Hedges under our noses. It would have been a harmless gesture, except that today happens to be the first day of my drive to quit smoking. My gittery nerves are ready to break, and he doesn’t seem to be able to take no for an answer.

“You want Wodka?” he asks. We stare incredulously at him. “Is nice,” he says. He disappears again, allegedly to ‘look for his boss’ again. His boss must he quite lost, I say when he returns, the odour of alcohol a little more pungent than before. He brings with him a toothy old man in a driver’s uniform, who sits with us for twenty minutes, bringing with him the hope that we might soon get in a car. But eventually, in just as random a fashion as he arrived, he leaves again. It is now that Viki makes reference to my outfit.

I ask exactly what it is we are supposed to be doing in this film. “You dance,” he grins, and puts his hand on my knee again. I yank it off. I really need a cigarette now. “I in film too.” We are both beginning to wonder exactly what genre this Bollywood flick might be. Viki’s eyes flash. I ask him again how long we’ll be waiting. He deflects attention with another question.

“What is this?” he says, pointing to Elsa. “This is Elsa,” I say. He nods. Elsa looks up dejectedly from her newspaper and nods in his direction. It’s the third time I’ve introduced her to him in ten minutes.

Eventually, after an hour or so of dodging time-related questions, Viki announces that he has had a call from his boss who is waiting at McDonald’s for us. When we arrive, we are greeted by yet another old toothy driver – perhaps they are all brothers in the business – who informs us that he has been waiting for us since 8am. He has no idea who Viki is, or indeed who his fabled boss might be. The shoot is off.

By this point, my brain cells are shreiking like tightened violin strings. We have been waiting for five hours. I need caffiene, and water, and I need to get out of the sun. Shouting and pointing at Viki, I tell him that he is lazy, he is rude, he is drunk. And he is definitely not going to be my husband. A German couple who were previously poring over some elephant carvings look up. I realise that I am unleashing not only a chemical imbalance, but over a month of pent up anger at India: the India that rips us off, yanks at our arms at stoplights, gropes us in the marketplaces, stares at us in the street. I shout at the India that keeps us waiting for hours, and keeps telling us that it is looking for a good wife. And most of all I shout at the India that won’t really let us hate it at all, before agreeing that yes, we will see Viki same time same place tomorrow.

Friday 7th November 2008

2008-11-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

The first thing you notice upon arriving in Bombay from Delhi is the breeze. The air that comes off the sea saves the city from Delhi’s dustbowl climate.

As the sun sets by the coast, most of Bombay seems to gather around India Gateway, a huge grey basalt arch stnding tall in front of the ocean, built to commemorate a 1911 visit by King George V (it must have been some guest book to sign). Children are pulled from the edge of the sea wall by hassled parents. Groups of young boys swagger in and out of people peddling almost anything: earrings, chai, samosas, pastel-coloured ice lollies, multicoloured marbles. One man is sitting on an outspread rug blowing up plastic bubbles and sticking them together in a tower formation. There are several men dragging around enormous orange marbled balloons the size of motorbikes. An emormous silver-gilded carriage, attached to a healthy looking horse stand on the road, decorated with smaller balloons, waiting for an unsuspecting tourist.

People stand around watching the boats come in. One man is holding a contraption that looks like an enormous tin ear-trumpet, but turns out to be a telescope that he charges five rupees to use. The breeze is gentle this evening. Two boys tug at black and yellow kite that has proved entirely useless.

“Please, ma’am, have photo taken with my friend,” one man says, grabbing my arm. I politely refuse, but he continues, grabbing Elsa also. “Have picture taken with my friend. No rupees, I charge you nothing.” Quite why we would want to pay for the privilege is beyond me. “Don’t you like your Indian friend?” Eventually we agree, posing politely with a young scrawny man who giggles as we stand on either side of him. It really does feel a little seedy. Straight afterwards, we are asked again. Unwilling to be seen as a source of entertainment, we agree so long as they’ll leave us alone. Just as we are posing for photo number two, we notice that the two men from photo op number one are gathering around a cordless photo printer. It turns out someone’s running a lucrative business selling snaps with the foreigners. You have to admire the ingenuity.

Over the road, the Taj Mahal Palace hotel looms over, intimidating the gateway with its sunset shadow. Its domes and spires spike the sky. It was built in 1903 by JN Tata, one of the founders of Tata Motors, now the second biggest company in India. He pledged to build it after being ejected from another Bombay hotel for being ‘a native.’ As we sneak in to use the bathroom, scruffy and sweating profusely, we have a peak into the courtyard marked ‘residents only.’ A smattering of white tourists sit drinking beers in the sun. Others swim a lazy stroke or two in the pool.

Out on the streets of Colaba, sellers press jewellery on goggle-eyed tourists. Pashiminas, bangles and handbags onto leather-skinned skinny backpackers, who generally dress like Indians might have fifty years ago, but with the mandatory dreadlocks/hair dyed pink. In Leopold’s café, two Italian women are working their way through a yard of beer. They finish it and order two more Coronas and a ramekin of peanuts. Outside, a man sets up a stall selling nautical memorabilia – ship’s compasses, pocket telescopes, charts and antique deep-sea divers’ helmets – along with a collection of old comedy car horns, a saxaphone, trombone and a trumpet. Somehow he must do business. I suppose setting up shop late in the evening at the exit to a bar allows you to sell as many brass periscopes as knock-off t-shirts outside Brixton Academy.

As we jump, exhausted, onto the ladies-only carriage of the rusty train at Churchgate Station, it’s the greatest feeling to have the breeze on your face. We pass shanty houses lit warmly with star-shaped paper lanterns, their kitchens open to the railway tracks. People hang out of trains, nodding to passengers travelling the other way. The lights of skyscrapers twinkle in the distance.

This is Bombay.

Thursday 6th November 2008

2008-11-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

New Delhi train station’s architecture might be modelled on a British Polytechnic university. The crowds milling through it give it away, though – travelling at frenetic speeds, weaving in and out of maniacal rickshaw drivers, which just about manage to keep their loads of bags and people inside the vehicle as they lurch around corners. Three priests in identical black and purple robes watch as we pull our bags, cameras and tripods towards the station entrance. We’re on our way to Mumbai to make some documentaries for the paper.

On the main concourse, families sit huddled together in little circles under the departure boards which read both in English and Hindi. There’s none of the push and shove of the bus stations here, or of the rickshaw scrums and marketplaces. Those travelling air conditioned (A/C) classes walk with a sense of briskness and self-importance. There are stalls on each platform selling tea and samosas, and stands selling books and medicines (or both together, for those who like to take a Xanax before Tolstoy).

Every so often a train will pull in alongside us, with open sides and no seating arrangements, and without glass in the windows. Men, boys and the occasional woman will peek out from behind rusty bars.

Indian Railways employs 1.6 million people – 1.3% of the population. It’s the second biggest employer in the world. And 14 million passengers travel Indian trains every day. For a large chunk of an already large country, they’re part of daily life.

We eventually find our train, which is a class above rusty bars, but certainly not anything Wes Anderson might have dreamed up. We’re travelling 2 A/C, the class down from first which includes air conditioning and two tier berths rather than one. Elsa and I have been tucked into a side compartment, and we spend some time squeaking, pulling at curtains and lifting and lowering seats, and generally acting like silly Western tourists should. Already, the more trainwise Indians have unwrapped their blankets, stowed themselves away into their berths, and are snoozing with makeshift blindfolds tied around their heads.

A train wallah comes around selling snacks and we buy cookies and chocolate and giggle about midnight feasts. Wearing a gingham shirt and a matching cap, a second comes around taking our meal orders – there are two things on the menu, the descriptive ‘veg’ and ‘non-veg’ and even trying to make this preference understood proves surprisingly difficult. But soon we are on our way, helped by a startlingly hot samosa, silver and red mithai and a cup of chai.

Indian trains have three gears: steady rolling, stock still, and painful crawl. For the first hour we’re on third as we creep past slums on the outskirts of the city, allowing people to run, jump up and sit on the roof cross legged. There is a class all of its own up there, an open air cabin the ticket inspectors will never brave. There are people running over the tracks, adults as well as children. An Indian train driver will, on average, kill forty people during their career, even at speeds such as this.

Through the night, the train picks up speed and rocks its human cargo gently to sleep. The Indian landscape whizzes past in shades of black. Occasionally it’s possible to catch the twinkling pattern of a building’s Diwali lights but as we get closer. The gentle piped Indian folk music is only occasionally interspersed with the crackling headlines of All-India radio, which bring us back into a world of plunging stock markets and new American presidents.

As the journey continues, we catch a whiff of moist toes and stale bodily emissions, so it’s something of a relief when dinner arrives, masking it with the scent of cumin and warm paratha. There are little foil packets – of daal, rice, rolled up parathas and paneer masala (Indian cheese curry). Everything is steaming, fresh and spicy.

“If we were in America, this would all be shrink-wrapped,” Elsa says. “There’d be nothing bad in it, but there there’d be nothing good in it either.”

Taking a walk through the crowds of bodies that crawl over bunks, steam is sucked through the train corridors from the kitchen car. Inside, huge puts bubble over with red viscous liquid, hands madly chop. One man is flipping chapattis over a jumping flame. Another is pouring dall into the little foil containers, and passing full trays to a man who scurries away to put them in on a hit plate a few carriages away. Awaiting distribution. It’s a terrific human chain which feeds the hundreds of people on the train.

Carriage through carriage, families sit in their berths, the kids crawling over the top bunks, and their parents holding babies on the laps on the seats below. They take their trays as they are handed around by the stewards who squeeze past with trays piled high. Kids peek from the bunks above, grinning and playing hide and seek with the white girl. “Foreigner!” they call as they giggle and pop their head behind their curtain. “Foreigner! Foreigner!”

Squeezing back the way we came, we pass squat toilets where people battle with obstreperous children or smoke furiously and without subtlety.

Back in the bunk, one last bulletin from All India news is played before people hunker down with blankets and pillows for the night. Curtains close and lights are dimmed. It is all too easy, lulled by the gentle sideways rocking of the train, to fall into a deep and satisfying sleep.

We are woken by another bulletin, and Obama has “hardly been shown a warm welcome” by Wall Street, which seems to have gone and crashed again. Chai is brought around, and people rush to the sinks, of which there seems to be a major shortage, to perform morning ablutions. In the meantime, the smell of omelette wafts down the train, and people open up their morning Times of India. More on Obama. He’s expected to save Kashmir, and avoid more war with Pakistan. And still 89 days before he becomes president.

A steward fights his way through the carriage, snatching bedsheets and blankets as people are distracted by washing or chai, and folding them quickly and neatly, into perfect uniform quadrilaterals, whipping them off. A complete turnaround is performed before we reach Mumbai Central station. The next set of passengers is already waiting, and there is no time to lose.

Wednesday 5th November 2008

2008-11-05T22:04:00.000-08:00

There's a sign on the door: "schedule of anxiety." It's like a set list taped up outside a concert, though this event will certainly be running to schedule and besides it's far earlier in the morning than any self-respecting rock star would be seen out of bed. We're here to watch the results come in as the polls close for the American election. The Democrats Abroad chapter in Delhi have organised the breakfast for expats, although everyone is here. Ostensibly, to watch history being made.

Inside, the cafe is Bedlam. There are more journalists here than people to document, so TV cameras jostle for space and an elbow-free view, reporters end up interviewing each other, and it's impossible to get a photograph without someone else's flash going off in your face. Waitresses weave in and out of tables and underneath armpits, narrowly deflecting their trays from people's waving arms as victory after victory comes in. A huge map of the US has been drawn on a bed sheet and pinned across the back wall. A girl with a statue of liberty headband is smacking Democrat and Republican logos on the states as they are claimed. It's soon clear that the blues have it. Each new cheer is ever more filled with ecstatic disbelief that the next American President will be the black Democrat from Hawaii. The underdog.

Outside two girls have their faces pressed to the window, confusedly peeking in at the cameras and flashing lights and cappuccinos. One of them has a huge open sore on her leg, weeping infected pus. Every time someone comes out of the cafe for a break from the chaos, she runs up and thrusts her leg in their face. Her companion crouches down and holds their shoes, asking for rupees. Neither are having much success.

Back inside the cafe, McCain makes his concession speech. There are titters among the crowd, some of whom are wearing Democrat hats in the shape of horses heads. There's whispered debate over whether some of his comments are backhanded slurs to their victorious hero. When eventually Obama appears, with Michelle, Malia and Sasha, there is bacchanalian whooping and cheering. As Obama makes his victory address, there is a reverent hush. Tears are shed, twinkling in the TV screen light.

And the biggest cheer comes as Obama delivers his message to those, 'beyond our shores', promising a 'new hope' for those watching in "parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world."

I wonder what the little girl peeking through the window thinks. Obama won't give her a rupee, or the medicine for her leg. The speech would be impossible for her to understand, even if she were to know more English than 'hungry' and 'sir' and 'please'. The optimism would be impossible for her to understand because it's an optimism of ideals and not of s physical reality she could grasp. But Obama is without doubt the greatest leader to come in our generation. And what can be hoped on a day like today is that those inspired by Obama can be inspired to help her.

As we leave the cafe, the morning air is finally beginning to warm up. The little girls are sitting in the gutter. Someone inside the cafe has given them half a packet of cookies, and one of them has a small American flag. She's not really sure what it is, much less what she's supposed to do with it, but it seems to amuse her for a while and they play contentedly, crumbs in their hands and between their teeth. Perhaps this is the new dawn Obama was talking about.

Tuesday 4th November 2008

2008-11-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

We are sitting in the dark tonight, reverently silent, eyes glued to laptops. We sit in the dark because no one can extricate themselves from their seats to switch the lights on. All that can be seen through the blackness are the glows of small apple logos and the flicker of the snowy TV reception in the corner. No one speaks. Everyone has iPod phones in, listening to CNN streamed off the internet.

Tonight represents the pinnacle of this month's anticipation. Five Americans live with me, the lone Brit - two from New York, one from San Francisco, another from St Louis and a last, unfortunately, from Wisconsin, America’s equivalent of Bognor. Since we’re all journalists, we’re all, according to most Republicans at least, Obamaphiles who have controlled this entire election campaign, steering it in the Democrats’ favour. They’re probably right. Therefore, for lack of dinnertime debate, we spend our evening swapping internet satire, from Sarah Palin being fooled by comedians to, well, Sarah Palin being fooled by comedians. There has also been a breakdancing Obama, a Halloween Palin, and a hamster-faced McCain. The latter didn’t even need any photoshopping.

In any case, election mania has by no means been confined to our household. India, like most other countries outside America, has become Obama-crazy. The newspapers have, for days, asked, not ‘what India can do for America’ but ‘what Obama can do for India.’ The election result a foregone conclusion, of course. But what seems more interesting is that where America demanded of India circa Dubya Bush, India is expecting some kind of recompense from the first Black President.

Like the rest of the world, Indians see Obama as a kindly face, and have done so colourblind. Obama is celebrated here, his profile on the masthead of the Times of India almost every day for the past two weeks. It would be interesting to take a poll of how many Indians realise that the votes have yet to be counted. A puja was said today, and an astrological prediction that the Democrats have a 75% chance of winning. “His reign is going to be a long and prosperous one,” according to the guru involved. There is both a South Indian Vedic Chart and a North Indian Vedic chart drawn up to calculate Obama’s fate with precision.

“Everyone seems to be supporting Barack Obama,” says the anchor on CNN India as I sit here typing. “I don’t understand.” What he doesn’t understand is not Obama’s popularity, but why anyone is even bothering to count the votes. India loves him, America loves him.

But India’s enthusiasm for America’s black hero is itself confusing. There are few black faces, even in Delhi. The small enclave of Africans who do live here are mostly male, without families, and known for gang activity and dealing drugs to the bad boys of the Delhi suburbs. Apart from the Democratic candidate, the only other black faces in the newspapers in the last few weeks have been the Somali pirates that are snatching Indian sailors from the seas. Africans in India don’t really exist, and when they do, they’re hardly celebrated as potential history-makers.

And Obama is unlikely to change that. He escapes the barbarism branding because being articulate, with an American accent, he becomes white, or at least of a completely different race to blacks living in Delhi. It’s not likely that a black man would ever run for government in India. The liberal press in other large democracies do some soul searching, asking themselves where their next great black leader might come from. in India, the idea is so unthinkable that it would never enter an editorial meeting. It’s laughable, even.

Yet it’s not as if India hasn’t voted a non-ethnically Indian candidate into power before. Four years ago, a woman born in Vincenza, Italy was triumphant at the polls. Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, better known as Sonia Gandhi, had a father who was a fascist officer and didn’t even visit India until shortly before she married Rajiv Gandhi at the age of 33. After winning the election, she renounced power in favour of Manmohan Singh. Had she taken it, she would have been India’s first Roman Catholic Prime Minister.

The Americans sitting around the room are receive messages from home from friends and boyfriends, mourning the length of lines at polling stations, competing with anecdotes about how long they spent in the queue, but excited about the likelihood of change. They sit on the edge of an historic decision. Four years ago, India already made one. Whether they’ll ever make another is yet to be known. In the meantime, the rest of Delhi is happy to live vicariously, cheerleading the Kenyan-American.

Adult Video

2008-11-03T08:59:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the video Michelle and I made last week for ToI about Adult Sex Education Workshops at a Delhi hospital:

Sunday 2nd November 2008

2008-11-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

“This should be such a beautiful place,” says Alex. “But instead, it’s like a dead body soup.” He’s standing on the edge of a small concrete jetty on the River Yamuna. We’ve been spending the day, myself, Alex who’s an art critic, and artist Nitin, taking photos for a Delhi gallery exhibition piece. It’s called Nature of the City, and, today, involves travelling around the Delhi hinterlands, and finding the places where nature lives alongside the worst of the city’s pollution. Right now, we’re waiting for a boat to take us out onto the river.

Searching for a boat and helmsman, we accidentally wander into one of Delhi’s crematoria. In the city every day, there are between 600 and 900 cremations. Two of the grounds that serve this demand stand here: the ‘electric’ crematorium, and Raj Ghat, which uses wood. Looking for the river, we stumble across its gate, where street wallahs are selling bundles of firewood to the poorer tribute-makers. In a small stone hut resembling an Auschwitz gas chamber, the ordinary people of Delhi bring their dead to be burned using Compressed Natural Gas, or CNG, the fuel that auto-rickshaws are run on. It’s also used to burn stray dogs. For the production of cremains, 500 rupees (£6) changes hands. It’s above the heads of most people. The other option, and a popular one, is just to dump bodies in the river. This must be done under cover of darkness.

Moving swiftly past the CNG chamber, we come to the last destination for Delhi’s well-to-do. In carefully sequenced plots, bonfires in various states of combustion flame and smolder; it takes some ten hours for the average body to burn and some of the fires, if you look closely inside the sticks, are yet to consume the bundles inside. Beside others are the charred remains of marigold garlands. Men stack wood on top of plots, waiting for the next bodies to arrive. We shouldn’t be here. But we are fascinated, floating through the scene, guided by perverse curiosity. We just cannot leave. We walk up and down the concrete ramps between fires, through the stench of burning wood and human flesh.

Behind us, an ambulance pulls up to the gates and from its back doors. Men hoist up a stretcher, upon which lies a body, swaddled in embroidered linen. It is covered with garlands of bright orange marigolds. The women remain outside the gates as the men begin to chant prayers and follow the procession up the concrete ramp and past the burning bonfires on either side. They pass the three of us as we stand and stare, and for the first time in India I feel invisible, as if I am a ghost at a funeral. They hoist the body up to a chlorinated pool which looks like a kind of morbid water-park feature: a garishly-painted statue of Indra, the manager of heaven, overlooks a platform set on the water. The long bundle is laid on top of it. More prayers are said in Hindi, the body is doused, and brought down to the river. Here, again, are more bonfires, and hundreds of men looking out across them. These bonfires are covered with canopies made of coloured foil and sticks, which partially burn along with the fires. Older boys are hoeing the riverbed, setting up and putting out fires, removing piles of ash. No one has said anything about there being a white woman in the presence of men, because no one has noticed. There is a silence here which is indescribable.

Eventually we feel uncomfortable enough to leave, and persuade a young Indian man to take us out in a boat down the river. Nitin wants to take some pictures of the Yamuna River for his project.

So here we are, on one of the most polluted rivers in the world, a river in which New Delhi dumps 57% of its daily waste. We are rowing through the dead body soup. From the other side of the river, the masses of men are obscured by the smoke, and the place looks like a factory. A couple of hundred yards further down the river, there are people picking among the rubbish dunes. Piles of garbage are everywhere, and birds circle overhead. Somewhere, a group of children are hoeing in the mud near their hut – they’re trying to make some home improvements. In front of them, men are defecating in the water. The air smells of shit and burning human flesh. Above us towers a monstrous concrete flyover. In the water around and on the banks of the river are scattered pieces of Diwali detritus: incense boxes, tinsel, marigolds, cigarette packets, plastic casts of Laskshmi, empty crisp packets. They float on the surface of the water like sparkly algae and cover the ground in a garish, half-rotten carpet. There are literally islands made of the stuff, and we float through them in our smelly lagoon.

“This is religious pollution,” says Alex. And he’s right, there’s sacred tat everywhere, just thrown into the river. And bodies, too are just that: sacred to be used and thrown away, because the party is over, and another one’s about to start.

It’s not that Indians have no respect for human life, as some have said. It’s that they have no fear of the dead. They can be dumped in water, burned by taxi fuel, or charred in open air, in front of all, before being floated out on the river covered in fancy aluminium foil. The party is over, after all. Why mourn it for so long - their next one might be even better.

Friday, October 31st 2008

2008-11-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

"What is this Halloween about?" asks the broadband editor who works behind me. She is asking one of my American colleagues, well-versed in all things 'happy holiday', to write her blog for her. She's amused that Sarah Palin has been used as a ghoul, hung on the side of houses, to ward off evil spirits. "Halloween is a bit like the Day of The Dead," says Elsa, scrabbling around for Wikipedia. There's still no sign of recognition from the editor. "When the dead spirits come to life and you, well, I guess you frighten them off by looking scary yourself." It really is, I think, the most non-nonsensical holiday in the calendar.

Until the last couple of years, Halloween was barely a puff of smoke in Delhi. When there's not much disposable income for the average household, there's not a huge market for plastic bats, devil's forks and sexy witch outfits. But this year, the parties are more than just ex-pat affairs in gated houses. Young well-travelled Indians are bringing home the American greetings card traditions; dressing as the Mask of Zorro, passing around candy and playing Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' at full volume. There's a bar in Connaught Place offering, for a few thousand rupees, butler service, your own personal pole-dancer, access to a champagne bar, and free vodka, whiskey and spicy nibbles all night. One restaurant is charging between 3,000 and 5,000 rupees for entry to their dining room decked out with jack o'lanterns and masks. Another is promising to "switch off the lights every 10 minutes and give our guests a scary dance". I wonder if they decorate the shrine to Ganesh in fake cobwebs.

Tonight, we leave the Indian Halloween scene to find its feet and head out to an expat party on the edge of town. The motley crew of party-goers are all on the roof, overlooking out over the flat buildings of the city as the last bursts of Diwali fireworks pop around them. The sound of Bucks Fizz's 'Making your mind up' winds its way through the air vent, and empty plastic cups are strewn all around. A laundry basket with an American accent berates me for mistaking him for a shopping trolley. A shaolin monk brings up more whiskey from downstairs. A woman who can best be described as a negative copy of Amy Winehouse struts her stilettoed walk towards a spaceman. In the midst of it all, a man dressed in a suit and turban, and a woman in a red sari stand together and stare around in confusion. I realise that they're not actually in costume.No one knows who invited them.

There certainly are many indicators here that Halloween and India are a rather incongruous mix. Most of the party guests here are aid workers, teachers or diplomats. Even in drag, there's no way to escape India. A German vampire laments the fact that the government will not allow Indian children to attend embassy schools, even though the teaching is incomparably better than anything they would get from state-sponsored education. A banyan tree with a knitted octopus on his shoulder tells me that several species of indigenous Indian tree are soon to die out with the rapid increase in floods. A sheriff from Massachusetts sings the praises of the International Baccalaureate. A shirtless cowboy in a long blonde wig talks concernedly about the fact that TB in India is growing at a prolific rate. It's the biggest-killing disease in the country by far. He laments that the American Government are cutting funds to USAID in India (where he works) when the same amount of money could be used to save more lives here than in most other countries. "But America doesn't care about India," he says, crunching his beer can in his fist. In India, there are some evil spirits which can't be warded away with a candle and a pumpkin.

But while the expats cannot hide their fears behind a ghoulish mask, the novelty is still fresh for the young Indian revellers in the centre of town.And perhaps for them, it can still provide an escape from the real fears which exist for them, day to day. The newspapers still wrestle with their consciences here, musing on whether Halloween is just a Western trend being poularised to make money. But there are also non-economic theories. With 12 bomb blasts ripping through Assam two days ago, killing over 70 civilians, some plastic terror can only come as a relief. "In these modern times," The Times of India reported today, "it just feels good to dress up as a scary character and not, even for a little while, be scared yourself."

Wednesday 29th October 2008

2008-10-29T10:13:00.000-07:00

The huge glass doors of Gallery Espace open up to white echoey caverns. We could be standing in any gallery off Hoxton Square. Except that as soon as I step outside, two children run up, reaching up to my knee with little brown arms. They hold their hands on each side of their horsetail hair and wear a starved, pained expression. This is the universal of beggar children all over the city. The children, as they plead with money can be terrifying, each of them speaking with a gutteral husk from having breathed nothing but the dusty Delhi air. They have a ringwraith grasp.

And then something happens. They spot the camera around my neck, and all of a sudden everything changes. Rupees are forgotten, their browns uncrease and they start giggling and hopping around. They want their photo taken, of course. It has never ceased to amaze me that wherever I’ve been in the world – from the poorest, remotest parts of Africa to the playgrounds of Central Park – kids want their photos taken. They want to see themselves on a screen. Even those who act coy at first hardly need to be coerced into joining the fun. Kids have no hangups about whether or not you’ve got their best profile, or whether you’ve caught their double chin. Seeing their own static reflection is such a novelty.

Here, out on the pavement outside the gallery, the smallest boy, dressed in a grubby blue shirt and torn shorts, hangs from my jeans. His hair is sticking up from all directions. He must be about five or six, though it’s difficult to tell since he’s so malnourished. His sister points to him maniacally and then to my camera. He jumps up and down, and stays still just long enough for me to take a non-blurred image. He grabs at my shoulder strap. No fear that he'll take my camera – he just wants, for a moment, to see his own image. Does his sister want a photo? She makes the coy face and shakes her head. Eventually, after more pictures of her scruffy little brother, and a shy smile, she gives in. As if from nowhere, handfuls of kids are gathering, and jumping up and down. A fairly reluctant little boy with a dark face and black eyes is pushed forward. They all screech and roll on the ground. People stop and stare, with the slightest look of disapproval bending their lips downwards. But then they move on. Perhaps they have forgotten the excitement of seeing their own faces in pixels.

I take a shot of the reluctant sister, who has been yanked in front of the viewfinder again by her brother. His hands, which are roughly the size of my lens, grab the screen and he screams when he sees her face there, kissing the glass. Eventually I manage to extract myself from the four foot reach of the melee and step back into the gallery.

When I get back inside, I wipe the saliva from the back of my camera and look at the picture I’ve taken. The little girl is beautiful, I think. Her serious little eyes stare outwards. Their look should belong to a person far older than she is.

There’s a muffled noise from outside and people in the gallery begin to stare. The little faces are pressed up against the newly washed windows and no one’s impressed. They know they’re not allowed inside, so they do a little dance instead. They wave at me, just in case anyone could be at a loss as to who caused the rucus in the first place. Long ago, they forgot that they were hungry and that I could feed them. Instead, they just wanted to play. They are children after all.

Just for a moment, the nannied offspring of the Upper West Side and the streetkids of South Delhi have one thing in common: they just wanted to play with a camera.

Tuesday 28th October 2008

2008-10-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

The roads are empty tonight: no sound of horns, or chugging of rickshaws. There’s no one out on the streets. Inside houses people gather with their families. Diwali has a distinct Christmas Day feel, though without the mid afternoon Disney and Pixar movies to keep the kids quiet. All around town,people sit around tables, ready to light candles and pray. Diwali is a festival celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists: every major religion in India except Christianity and Islam. But today all will drink chai and eat Mithai: Indian sweets of different colours, tooth-acheingly sweet, made of compressed sugar and condensed milk, ground almonds, or coconut, or squishy dates, topped off with silver leaf and more nuts. All around town, people have been walking with foil-wrapped boxes containing presents to exchange. Strings of bulbs hang from every building, lit up after nightfall along with the fireworks that explode in the air. Huge bright anemones, spreading through the sky, are accompanied by the machine gun sputter of Chinese Crackers. The sky is full of an ashy smoke, weighed down by the dusty Delhi air. It’s chokingly thick.

Before any of this takes place, Hindus pray to the goddess Lakshmi, who emerges this day from an ocean of milk, to ensure wealth and prosperity. But this year, those prayers may be even more earnest, and the presents exchanged even smaller. As the economy hits India as hard as any, it’s going to be a tight Diwali for Delhi families.

India suffered a drop in the Sensex (India’s value-weighted index) four days ago – their lowest since 2005. Of course, it hasn’t been hit as hard as some (or had it as easy as others, such as Iraq, the only country whose economy is growing at a pace) Despite this, India is still the world’s second fastest growing economy, which, considering the fact that the UK’s economy is recording minus growth at the moment, is fairly impressive.

But to touch on a recurring theme, India’s economy still represents a polarisation of the richest and the poorest. This year, India had the highest contribution of entrepreneurs to the Forbes Global 2000 – mostly in the software business - while 60% of the country still live off the land. It's a precarious situation given the increase in floods and drought. An estimated 69% percent of Indian entrepreneurs use personal savings for start-up capital and 18% are funded by family. It’s hardly a figure that indicates the country’s richest starting from the bottom in life. There are no tales of the village-boy-made-good.

The Times of India reported the success story of one entrepreneur who has opened up a chain of paint-your-own pottery cafes in Delhi. They are wildly successful. The idea of opening up a venue for Indians – well known for their traditional crafts and artisan culture – to paint terracotta ashtrays and teapot stands in ludicrous designs in itself characterises how distant the middle class of India are from the poorest, in terms of their culture as well as their wealth.

So while the stock market crashes around the world, and the Sensex continues to fall, 60% of Indians will remain unbothered, and uninhibited. They are more concerned with the next flash flood and the worry that the government, distracted by nuclear deals to ensure the energy to power the new economy, will not be there to bail them out. It’s already failed in Bihar, as my colleagues Michelle and Divya reported for the Hindustan Times:

On this holiday afternoon, Michelle and I head out for a traditional stroll in Lodi Gardens, a local park of magnificent temples, and dotted with palm trees. A child reaches up to us at the stoplight, grabbing Michelle’s arm and asking for rupees. He is covered in sores.

Delhiite breadwinners may be concerned this Diwali that they cannot buy the washing machine their family expected them to provide. Or the car that screamed at them from the advertising pages of the newspaper, alongside a happy, healthy family celebrating Diwali together. The huge poverty problem in India is not one that entrepreneurs alone can solve, and of course they are not to blame for its perpetuity. But each are uncertain about their future. And as one has a voice, ricocheting around the world’s media, the other doesn’t. And it certainly won’t be heard above the explosion of fireworks.

Sunday 26th October 2008

2008-10-27T02:08:00.000-07:00

We’re driving along a dirt road in a dial-a-taxi, being jolted violently in every direction. Loose stones flick up and hit the windows and the odd pothole even catches the driver by surprise. They charge by the kilometre, but I can’t help feeling that they should measure the damage to the suspension and charge you accordingly.

We pass huts with special tables outside selling multicoloured packets of sweets and firecrackers. People are out on the streets on the Indian equivalent of the Christmas Eve shopping spree. Kids kick around in the dust after them. Further down the road, towards the rice mill, men half-dressed, sun beating down on their sweaty backs, lug huge sacks of grain down the road. Scrawny dogs run after them.

And then we turn a corner and the chlorophyll-green, manicured vista of the Manipur Polo Club spreads out before us. Groomed, shiny-maned horses gallop through clean space. Bright white pavilions shade the clinking of wine glasses. When we get out of the car, the smell of fresh lillies greets us.

We’ve been invited by the boys we met in the first week at the Taj Mahal Hotel (still memorable for its $12 shots of Jack Daniels). They are playing today, for the Jaipur Polo Club, and we can see them at a distance in striped shirts and jodphurs, bobbing up and down atop their horses.

A man in sunglasses with a well-maintained quiff moves in to pass over his business card, taking me by the arm. He reassures me within the first five minutes of conversation that his parents are very liberal and wouldn’t mind him marrying a white woman. Someone whispers that there is a Bollywood star in the corner and I use it as an excuse to slip away. Five British women stand together and giggle, wearing day dresses. They’s here working for marketing agencies and advertising agencies; one sells private jets. There is a woman working for a bridal magazine sipping chardonnay in the corner, and a man who works for the jewellery company who sponsor the event, who tells me that they sponsor it’s sister tournament in Windsor. They even have photos on hand to show us, and it’s almost embarrassing to make out the pink faces and oversize hats of South East England.

Polo is often thought of as the sport Eton-bred British foisted upon India. In fact, the first polo match was between Turks and Persians in 600BC, players riding on the back of camels. It was brought to India in the 16th century. British tea planters didn’t discover it until the mid-19th century, in the plantations of Manipur, and then adopted it as their own (presumably using Indian labour to keep their horses and bring their gin and tonics on silver trays). Before this it was the sport of ordinary athletes. Even now polo is played in the army: a tougher, faster, more muscular sport. Though a soldier and his pony would never set foot nor hoof on the lawns of the Manipur Polo Club. This place is for cleaner stirrups.

Like many things in India – tea, gin, chicken tikka - Polo is something the British took, modified, pretended it was theirs, and gave it back irrevocably spoiled. Polo, like tea in the afternoon, will forever smack of the Raj.

At the event’s closing ceremony, the triumphant team are pocketing their prize cufflinks, and necking champagne out of a silver trophy. They come over to the table later. One tells me what a pity it is that there isn’t more polo this season – an epidemic of horse flu has laid most of the equine population low. “I’m not even riding my usual horse,” laments one of the referees, as if he was explaining the reason for the amputation of his hand.

Plates of cucumber sandwiches and petit fours are being ferried from the buffet. Every so often I slip away to avoid the coiffed man, who comes over, oozing hair gel and charm. The bridal magazine journalist is sitting at a table alone, looking more than a little tipsy. There is very little about this montage that could be reconciled with the street scenes on the dirt roads all around. But I realise now why this whole scene looks so familiar: remove the jodphurs and the horses, and with the white trestled tables, and the women in floral dresses, you would be forgiven for mistaking the scene for a - slightly sunnier - British wedding.

Saturday 25th October 2008

2008-10-27T02:02:00.000-07:00

“I don’t know when I’m even going to have the time to read this,” Meena said, turning to the young guy driving our car. She was waving a copy of Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger towards him. Immediately, she turned back to the phone conversation she was having on the tiny Nokia in her palm and proceeded to argue in Hindi. Meena was sealing a deal with one of her advertising clients. It hasn’t stopped fascinating me that Hindi, like German, seems to be one of those languages which makes people sound like they’re constantly arguing, even when they’re just asking for directions on the street.

White Tiger is not written in Hindi. But it does read as one long argument, and one which most Indians have been ready to join, on one side or the other. For many, the fact that Adiga’s novel was named winner of the Booker Prize a fortnight ago (the second Indian to take the award in three years) was hardly a cause for celebration. The novel exposes Indian’s servant culture to eyes that used to ignore the underbelly, not least because the underbelly are the people who work in their kitchens, drive their cars, and sweep their floors. The Times of India hardly greeted it with rapturous applause.

I comment on Meena’s book, explaining that I’m reading it too. But what’s new? Half of the young people in Delhi are reading it. It’s on sale from every street vendor in Connaught Place, piles of white hardbacked copies wrapped in plastic. “He’s under house arrest, you know?” she says. “Really?” She looks harried. She’s waiting for a callback. “Well, no, I mean, it’s like self-imposed house arrest. People want to kill him. He has police outside his house.”

“Why doesn’t he move to another country? Or just outside of Delhi?” I ask, questioning why anyone would want to be a martyr to their first novel, especially when they were already working on a second. Meena looks at me and shrugs, as if to say, ‘why doesn’t anyone?’.

Adiga’s book has offended many in its criticism of modern India. Religion, money, illiteracy, poverty, sanitation, new business, corruption: all these issues, boils on the social conscience of the Indian Middle classes, are ruptured by his narrative. And worse, it’s narrated in the form of a letter from a lowly Indian servant to the Chinese Premier, India’s arch-rival bar none.

It’s easy to be power-blind in India. But India’s servant culture is everywhere. It didn’t leave with the masters and the memsahibs and the hierarchy of the British Raj. Everywhere, labourers works for those who buy them. Labour is so cheap here: the millions of deeply poor Indians who need jobs and food can likewise be employed in vast numbers by the other side of the yawning social chasm - the most wealthy - who can afford to buy several of them. The very poorest won’t leave, no matter how badly they are treated, because of the cash they send home and the pride their family take in their employment in a good household. Adiga’s narrator Balram is servant to his master Mr Ashok and his wife Pinky Madam: Indian entrepreneurs who boast about their days living in New York, drink cocktails and eat steak at TGI Friday’s in Connaught Place, and hang portraits of their dogs, Cuddles and Puddles, on the walls of their mansion. Balram is paid a fraction of the amount Mr Ashok regularly takes to meetings in suitcases to bribe politicians. He is forced to lie to take the blame when a child is run over by a drunk Pinky Madam; it is only narrowly he escapes jail. He watches his master count wads of cash, visit prostitutes, return home drunk, hit and abuse him. He stays silent for a paycheck.

But the very poorest do not stand at a respectful distance and bow low to the floor: they pull at your sleeve and push their small, shrivelled babies into your arms, grabbing at your elbows and asking for a few rupees. In their eyes you can see not only their hunger but their anger, and they demand, unlike the London homeless who look up lethargically and apologetically.

The servants are the other half of the poor, the silent half. People dressed in uniforms still bow to you, and it’s easy to get used to such treatment, even to expect it. Today, I leave my desk at the office for two minutes, and when I return there is a young man cleaning my keyboard and mouse with a duster. I wait, tapping my foot, incredulous that such an unexpected, pointless, and time-consuming task is happening when I have important Facebooking to do.

One half of the Indian poor pinch and grab at clean, wealthy hands and demand a small fraction of what these hands own. The other half stay clean, play dumb, take abuse, and wait for their measly paycheck. It is to the latter that Adiga gives a voice.

Why do they not yet revolt, and find their own voice? Partly, because they need the rupees. But there is still a deeply-entrenched servant-master mentality that verges on Stockholm Syndrome. Balram stays with his master not only because he gets paid, but because he deeply admires him. He is caught between conflictingfeelings of great moral inferiority and hatred. Like Balram, many are taken from the provincial life of the village, where the hub of life is the milk-producing water buffalo, and brought into the city, in a uniform, in a house, in the drivers seat of a Toyota Qualis. Like the British before them, Indian masters believe they are civilizing the village animals, and the village animals believe they are being civilised.

When will the revolution come? It’s difficult to believe that a serving-class consciousness will rise up from an award-winning novel; one that is being absorbed by the Indian middle classes and lauded by Western white literati. As the urban population grows (and it’s expected that half of Indians will live in cities by 2050) it may be that live-in servants are no longer sourced from villages, and instead day servants, with working hours and lives of their own, will feel looser loyalties and demand more rights.

Regardless of speculation, Adiga’s novel demands. And not just of the middle classes, but of those who serve them.

“The book of the revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian,” writes Adiga. “Crap it out and read.”

Thursday 23rd October 2008

2008-10-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

It’s just over two weeks until the American Presidential election, but in this apartment in Central Delhi you might be mistaken for thinking it is happening tomorrow. There are flags pinned across the paintings of Indian landscapes: they read, “Change we can believe in!” and “McCain: same Again!”. A girls sits in the corner by a banner declaring, “Vote from Abroad!”, her laptop perched on her knees, covered with an image of Obama’s face, mid-speech. Instead of the scent of incense smell of freshly-baked brownies drifts from the kitchen. The table is covered with finger-foods: mini sausages on sticks, precision-cut crudites, and nachos with salsa. The A/C whirrs gently. A handful of women frantically check lists and grab their mobile phones, on their starting blocks and ready to begin. Here is the Democrats Abroad phone bank.

These six women are serving one of their countries, whilst living in another. All of them Indian-American, though more American than Indian (in the way that only those with duel citizenship know, they also feel more Indian when they are in America). They are scattered all around the room, perching on the edge of sofas with mobile phone in one ear and finger pushed in the other, speaking to other expats. “Have you requested your form from Washington yet, ma’am?”; “You can FedEx it – it only costs 90 rupees”; and “I’m afraid that registration has closed in the state of Texas. But you can encourage others, right?” It must be the only call center in India staffed by Americans.

If theres only one thing that India is proud of, it the fact that it is the largest democracy in the world – with a potential votership of over one billion people. It’s the one trump card India holds in it’s competition with China. It’s possible to vote with a fingersprint next to a symbol for that even the fact that its literacy rate is waning in comparison – 61% compared to China’s 91% – it still manages to keep the d-word. And with it, remain a friend of the West.

There is a heads on race this general election, almost as nail-biting as that in America.the Congress Party (known as Cong, which makes them sound like they emerged from the jungle) is currently in government under the leadership of Manmohan Singh. Their only direct rivals are the BJP, or Hindu Nationalist Party. But with a country of such a disparate, disconnected votership, most vote in their immediate interests: who will give them a job, and who will fight for their class rights. Politics is still very much drawn along caste, rather than party lines. There’s a saying, “in India, you don’t caste your vote, you vote your caste.” Of course, corruption is endemic, and bribery is always an issue. But there will always be those who throw stones – and knowing the state of most voting systems around the world,they probably live in glass houses anyway.

India remains the largest democracy in the world. It is fairly incredible that such a sizeable landmass and population, with so many currents running through it (not least that of terrorism) has remained such. Only once has it teetered on the path of autocracy, with the emergency motions passed by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. “A billion people and and it’s a democracy,” George W. Bush once said, as if he were admiring the lassoing of a particularly fine specimen of bullock, “Now ain’t that something.”

Obama today promised that India would be one of his top priorities. The Indian media, glossing over the words “one of”, reported the statement as if the two countries were best friends. India needs the US, but it also looks increasingly likely that soon the US will need India. The two will remain democracies, and proud of it. India may lack literacy, it may lack basic santitation, and it could even get overtaken by China as the software capital of the world. But every citizen, though they may be on the breadline, can put a fingerprint on a voting card and make their small voice heard.

So the two countries stand side by side with democratic values, or so India would like to think. It’s only right, therefore, that India should help America’s elections in any way it can, even with crudites and election-branded Apple macs. And though tonight, these women with brownies and Diet Coke by their side are calling American ex-pats, it seems they could be on the phone to any Indian as they chirrup. “Wow, congratulations on voting,” one says, “and thanks for your enthusiasm for our country’s democracy.”

Terrorism and Diwali

2008-10-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

A short post I've written for the Comment Factory on the terrorist situation around Diwali. Click here

2008-10-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

To watch one of our Times of India webcasts from fashion week (and here some of the cheesiest voiceover in today's online media) you can click below:

Building Harmonies

2008-10-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

I had the unexpected pleasure today of recording a jingle for an Indian TV advertisement. It is strange to think that those perfectly polished, orchestral swells and haunting ooohs and aahs that add a ridiculous amount of ether to family cars or building societies are produced here, on the outskirts of Delhi, in a little flat covered with trinkets and Buddhas and pictures of various gurus. We have to take our clothes off before coming in the door. “I’m not eating seafood this time of year,” says Indraneel, the producer. “It’s a superstition I know, but I’m trying this new horoscope thing.” He sits madly tapping away at a file on LogicPro, while downstairs kids in ragged t-shirts play underneath washing lines. A girl sits on a mattress in the dark corner, eating daal from a small bowl, her face lit by the LCD of her macbook pro. I later find out that she is the marketing department.

The ad is for an Indian construction company. Small girl sits on her living room floor, has a eureka moment, draws a sketch of a building. Proud mother comes and sees it, gives her a hug, they look out the window and bingo! There is a beautiful highrise, ready to house more upwardly mobile Indian families like themselves. I begin to wonder why, with so many incredible, vibrato-and-pitch-perfect Indian vocalists at their disposal, they want such a flaccid, white, folksy vocal as my own. But the voice of India’s progress is still not Indian: the white face (and voice) is still the yardstick that says you’ve made it to the first world.

Around this area, where the dusty smog begins to welcome you from Rajasthan into the city area of Delhi, huge skyscrapers push up into the air like concrete and glass stalactites. The giant neon Samsung, RBS and Nokia logos sit atop them, rivalling the bright Diwali lights for sky space. A huge billboard advertising Bacardi Apple is framed in front. On it, five white twenty-somethings are holding hands and running through the lush green grass, laughing. The woollens they wear are completely inappropriate for the Delhi heat. A mile or so from the cluster of highrises is a shopping mall with a Marks and Spencer and a Debenhams. After shopping for underwear and twin-sets, you can pop to Pizza Express for a well-deserved Neopolitana and a glass of Chardonnay.

Of course, it’s not just Western companies that dominate middle class life here. Some Indian companies are marching at the front line too. Tata, India’s second largest company, makes everything from cars (it owns Daewoo, Jaguar and Landrover) to steel, to tea (Tetley’s), to telecommunications. Tata also owns some of the most ridiculously sumptuous hotels in India, and across the United States. Once manufacturing starts on it’s “people’s car”, set to retail at just over £1,000, the company is set to make the automobile affordable for millions. And to add millions to it’s own company value. But even Tata has an Indian twist: it’s owner, Ratan Tata, reportedly lives a modest life and gives almost all his money away. The Tata group has opened schools of science, social work and performing arts, as well as hospitals and research institutes.

But the gap between rich and poor, despite the example of groups like Tata, is still enormous. And while India’s businessmen follow the white ideal, those mired in Indian housing estates cater to their whim. As I stare out of the makeshift recording studio, beyond the screen that shows mother and daughter in their shiny marble kitchen, I can make out the silhouettes of the kids and the washing lines. And then I turn to the microphone and start singing.

Wednesday 22nd October

2008-10-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

“I know you writers,” says the man in the government travel agency. He has spent the last ten minutes trying to persuade me he is Italian. I have barely seen anyone look more Indian. “You are not honest.” He chuckles. “John Simpson,” he says, “he came to my house many times. I told him, ‘you are not honest.’ Michael Palin too. He came to my house many times. Not honest.”

This from a man who, last time we came into his office, charged us double for a car to Jaipur. I tell him this and he chortles.

On the way out, one of the other workers in the office opens the door for me. “Where are you going?” he smiles. I explain to him that I am going to a coffee shop around the corner to wait for a friend who's driving me out of town to a recording session. He walks alongside me. “I know you,” he says. I’m not sure he does, though to locals here one blonde white girl looks much like another, and I’m also sure that he’s not walking me down the road just to see if I get safely to my destination. Next thing I know he’s in the café, sat at the table beside me, ordering a cappuccino. I’m beginning to latch onto the fact that Connaught Place’s plethora of coffee shops only stay in business because of Indian men who cajole female tourists to come inside and keep them company over a latte.

One of the best things about India is that with time to spare, there is always someone who wants to talk to you. When all you want to do is sit and be alone with a book, it can seem like one of the worst. But Rajesh is friendly, and only slips the odd innuendo into conversation. He is also keen to tell me about his adventures in Australia, and does the accent too. He twists his mouth like a yawning lion as he attempts it. “We wid gaw for a bi-a at the bich, mayte” he says. He also tells me (quite rightly) that English people are only friendly after a few drinks. He went to Britain once: to Manchester, he says. I console him accordingly.

“You must come home to Kashmir with me next month,” he says. “It is the most beautiful place. It is cold,” he chuckles. “But I will keep you warm.” He gets out a photo album and shows me pictures of Srinigar: snow-capped mountains, people fishing in clear blue lakes, and women making pashminas out of mounds of soft wool. There's a snap of the inside of his houseboat, adorned with red paisley throws and gold patterned chairs. It reminds me of a seventies brochure for luxury caravan holidays.

“Kashmir is so beautiful.” He stirs his coffee and stares into the distance. “And everyone wants a piece of you,” I say.

“We just want a piece of ourselves,” he answers.

Kashmir has been pulled apart by adjoining powers since 1947. China, India and Pakistan all claim a piece of it, and neither recognise the other’s possession. It’s been the site of wars and violence for over sixty years. The last threatened war between India and Pakistan was in 2002. Kashmir has been the subject of a conflict that has brought the world to the edge of nuclear war, taking the earth as close to its destruction as the Cuban Missile crisis. The Indian army patrolling the region possesses the right to kill, arbitrarily arrest, or confiscate and destroy property. India claims Pakistan is funding mujahadeen. While the powers wrangle over territory, or otherwise agree to disagree, Kashmiris remain the forgotten subjects of occupying forces, the sufferers of disappearances, torture, and all kinds of extrajudicial treatment. Altogether, an estimated 70,000 Kashmiris have died, and another 10,000 are missing.

But Kashmir is the last thing on the world’s mind at the moment. Other hotspots just over it’s border cause a more prescient threat to Washington and London. Today, the world’s media celebrated the fact that a trade route has just reopened there between India and Pakistan. It puts a sticking plaster on the conflict, but in reality the world is still ignoring a gaping wound. Trade is still only permitted one day a week, telephone lines are still barred, and the movement of people across borders is still severely restricted. Drivers delivering goods are expected to drive a few miles into the country, drop their load, and come straight back again. It’s a gesture that is easily taken back. And free trade cannot atone for lives that are still being broken.

The Christian Science Monitor today reported that the number of orphanages in Kashmir is growing because between 60,000 and 100,000 of its children have been left parentless by the conflict. Though violence has abated recently, the country’s young scars have still to heal. And it looks as though they may remain open for at least another generation.

“We are a peaceful people,” Rajesh says, and suddenly all promises of whipping me off for a romantic weekend lie at the wayside of his mind. It’s a phrase so often used by inhabitants in areas of conflict. This time, looking at his pictures of local crafters, families and fishermen, I realise that for the vast majority, it really is true.

Back at the government travel agency, Rajesh’s ‘Italian’ friend is still persuading tourists to visit this “paradise on earth.” What’s there not to like after all? In the summer, you can trek the mountains or swim in the lakes. In the winter you can ski in one of the region’s resorts, or go snowboarding. Just mind you don’t bump into one of the Pakistani-funded Mujahadeen, or the 600,000 Indian troops that have license from the government. They shoot to kill.

...In search of tigers

2008-10-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

Today we go in search of tigers. Rathambhore National Park is about four hours’ drive outside Jaipur, along a dirt road that gently jostles you past small villages and remote petrol stations. Most of the route, our car is virtually bumper to bumper with freight lorries that are painted on the outside with multicoloured designs and covered with tinsel. They look more like a circus troop than containers that ferry all kinds of commodities across the country.

We arrive at Rathambhore around 10.30 am, just in time for the end of breakfast at the local hotel, the Angkor Resort. The dull dining room is full of the buzz of khaki clad, middle-aged, heavyweight Europeans, mostly German and Dutch. They are all pink from a morning on safari, and tuck into their breakfast of rubbery toast and powdered egg omlettes. There is something here that takes me back to the soggy camping trips of my childhood.

Eventually, we book in for the afternoon trip, and since the jeeps have already been taken, we buy tickets for a 20-seater canter, for ‘tourist price’ obviously, and not Indian. The canter is an ex-Indian Army vehicle, which should have been reassuring, though judging by the emission fumes when the engine starts our initial conidence may have been misplaced. We get there early to reserve the back seat, and eventually the rest of the vehicle is filled with young Indian men, jostling and elbowing each other, joking and ready to see tigers. A stern woman in a khaki uniform, and blue shawl, stands up at the front, and gives them a stern look. They fall silent.

The ride through the National Park is like riding a juggernaut without a seatbelt. It probably wouldn’t have done its MOT for a while either. We are thrown from our seats into the air. Our teeth chatter with the vibrations. I’m sure it isn’t doing our internal organs much good either. Every so often I am whacked in the face by the prickly branches of a tree we happen to be speeding past. I notice that the passengers in front of me have dried leaves and twigs in their hair too. The vehicle takes us down some narrow dirt tracks. Once, I peer over the side to see the rear wheel less than an inch away from the edge of a yawning chasm that drops several hundred metres. I decide not to do that again.

It’s always a lot of fun on safaris to play the pointing game. This involves pointing in any general direction, and watching the entire bus stand up at once to look at said imaginary object. It also works every time you raise a camera to your face. Today, it seems to be the turn of the guide to play this game as, every so often, she gives the signal for the driver to cut the engine, we roll a few metres down the path, and then wait as various sounds are detected and analysed. One, our guide assures us, is the sound of the deer warning for the presence of the tiger. A light banging is detected. I realise it is one of the guys in front kicking the edge of his seat. Then, the rustle of ferns: the child in the front seat is playing with his crisp packet. This repeats itself several times. We realise that no tigers will be found today. We wonder if any tigers have ever been found. But we have almost three hours left to be jiggled through a empty forest, and so we make the best of it.

One of the young Indian men in front of us has detected the American company. “Obama will come!” he says, assuredly. “And when he comes there will be tigers then! They will bring them in cages if they have to!”

Several times we stop by a meadow full of deer, and the Indian passengers excitedly grab their cameras and snap away. We shrug: deer are, if not an every day occurrence for us, not an endangered species. In fact, the look we are giving them is not far off the look Indians give us when we squeal and point at an elephant or a camel on the road. No tigers for us today, and it is now that we realise: there was enough wildlife for us outside, for free.

Sunday 19th October 2008

2008-10-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

There’s something to be said for only really knowing a city by walking through it at dawn. There, you’ll find the people who doing the jobs that make the city function, and the ones that clear up everybody else’s mess; the ones who know the city itself, rather than its visitors. This morning in Jaipur, women pick their way through piles of grey detritus, as flocks of black birds swoop in spirals overhead. A man urinates against the wall. One women groans under the weight of a sack she pulls underneath an LG electronics sales billboard that reads, “Life is Good”. Gone are the vibrant saris of the street scene the day before, and in place of the red evening light, the sky is grey.

But soon, the streets in the centre of town will be bustling with tourists and the colours they expect, and the hiked prices they don’t. It’s easy, after a while in India, to get ground down by the constant swindling of anyone with a white face, not least when you are living here. The tourist has the privilege of oblivion, and moreover the ability to brush off the affectionately-termed ‘white tax’ with the reasoning that it’s not much and they-need-it-more-than-me. But after a while, the paranoia sets in that somehow these clever fawning salespeople must really think you are stupid. And they may well be right.

There are the rickshaw drivers who charge at least twice as much (we have accepted this as the ‘white transport tax’); the shop owners who repeat the same phrases (‘just looking madam’, ‘good price, this is fair,’ ‘which country?’); the street men who work on commission to befriend you and take you to ‘their uncle’s shop’; the price list at tourist venues that brazenly display two prices (one for tourists, and one for Indians). You slowly get to realise that every white face is a) rich and b) gullible.

This evening, after a five hour drive, the straw broke the camel’s back (if it was a Jaipur camel, it would have already been pulling a considerable load). It was 10pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Famished, we fall out of the car and into a scene of mayhem: a huge faux-castle, straining at the leash with carnival rides, women in saris whirling to tabla beats, stalls with sweets and food, people painting with henna, people reading palms, people giving head massages. Everything was so contrived, it was like the Eastern Zone in a theme park. There had been a sign on the gate, “Do not encourage tips,” and we soon discovered why. As soon as we stepped into the compound, a small weasly man scurried out of the shadows and ripped our food coupon from us, scurrying off to get our food, despite protestations that we could do it ourselves. He appeared again two minutes later, with two trays of five or six brown paper bowls, each containing a different coloured sludge, four slices of cardboard naan which were made slightly less dry by the shiny butter they were dripping in, and some dubious rice dotted with suspicious looking black things. We hoped they weren’t squirming. After persuading him in broken Hindi that we had paid for five meals and not three (he shook his head vigorously) we were forced to grab our ticket back off him and go ourselves. He remained, looming in the shadows, scowling,watching us eat. When the others went to explore the cultural shows, he and a few friends came to circle around, asking me ‘which country?’ and I, weary, sleep-deprived, and having been jiggled up and down on a dirt road for a total of eight hours that day, made a swatting gesture with my hand and let me believe he was Australian. He made a hocking sound, and offered me a spoon, which he first wiped with a grubby thumb.

“Let’s get out of this place,” said Karsten whose 30th birthday celebration this was supposed to be. And all of us agreed. Though we’re not entirely sure whether he meant the fake castle, or a wider geographical area. We got back in the car with our driver, who mentioned that he would slap on an extra fee for our excursion that day.

And so this morning, the women on the street pick among the rubbish and search for something that they can keep or sell. We sit in our air conditioned car, looking up from our books to stare. This is the other option for the street sellers, and I wonder how important honesty is in the grand scheme of things, whether merchants all over the world have their own way of decieving to stretch their money-making potential. It’s just that here, it happens at the shake of a salesman’s hand, rather than in a corporate boardroom.

When you see the glint in the eye of the man who offers you ‘good price’, and a small child clutching a bunch of balloons skips down the road after you, you might finally come to a realisation: at the end of the day, much like the rusty rides at the Rajasthani theme park, it’s all a game. Besides, you’re welcome to join in.

Saturday 18th October 2008

2008-10-20T11:29:00.001-07:00

We’re speeding through the morning roads, somewhere in the middle of our the five hour car ride to Jaipur. A silence cuts through the people carrier we ride in; those who snooze mumble softly and those who don’t stare transfixed to the road. We pass countless shanty stalls peddling crisps and tea and paan to rickshaw wallahs and truck drivers. We pass toll road booths, where children clasping cans have congregated to beg from motorists. There are monkeys traipsing in their humpbacked crawl by the curb, roadside restaurants topped with rusty coke signs, and gyms advertising ‘body bilding’ classes.

After a few hours we stop at one of the optimistically-named ‘resorts’: a step up from the cafes, which sell cups of chai almost guaranteed to leave a cockroach in the bottom along with the tea residue. Here, however, we saunter off in search of caffeine and cigarettes. A couple of rounds of toast are ordered, smeared with what is loosely termed ‘jam’. Indian jam never declares its allegiance to any kind of fruit in particular, presumably because it contains none. Instead, this neon-coloured gloop is sugar and red food colouring melted down into lumpy syrup. This morning, however, we’re grateful for it. Also on the menu are baked beans on toast and omelettes. The bread comes without the crust sliced off, and the waiter does not flinch when we ask him to hold the sugar from our drinks, a sure sign that this is not a place run for the Indian customer. And looking around, there are more white faces in this café than we have seen in three weeks in Delhi.

Jaipur sprawls for at least a hundred kilometers before the city walls loom. Cafes and roadside stalls still call themselves after the city here. But it’s a bleak landscape: flat scrubland, above which looms the occasional grey mountain, a repetitive scene which serves only to remind you how large this country is. It’s the Nevada of India, with coke stalls where casinos should be. As in Nevada also, there are more hotels by the roadside than would ever have clientele to fill them, and it leaves the wide eyed traveller wondering how they ever pay their overheads. This strange world is something never seen by the thousands of tourists who fly in every year.

But suddenly, these Potemkin Villages disappear and we pass through the huge pink arches of Jaipur. Immediately, the roads are filled with rickshaws and bicycles and camels pulling carts loaded with firewood (here camels are beasts of burden, rather than the showpieces they are elsewhere. Cows, being holy, have it a lot easier in Rajasthan). The women here wear saris brighter than those in Delhi. they create a cacophany of colour: yellows, greens, blues. Even the old wrinkled faces that peek out from beneath them are radiant with their vibrant reflections. Everywhere there are roundabouts; and in the centre of them are miniature village hubs where men sit and talk as the traffic whizzes by. The streets are bazaars selling bags and turbans and saris and pashminas to tourists for three times their worth. And all this against a backdrop of buildings that are uniformly, and bizzarely, pink. They look like Cinderella’s palace atop a child’s birthday cake.

The whole city was painted pink in 1876 by the Maharajah, Ram Singh, to welcome the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). These days, when Prince Charles visits, he brings his own personal chef, since he can’t stand the food. Though he and the current Maharajah (who went to Eton, but not with Charles) are now great polo buddies. Though Maharajah-Windsor relations may have changed, the city still remains pink.

When later we ventured back out into the city to do some shopping, we were surrounded by swarms of men beckoning us into their shops, assuring ‘best price’, and all of them taking the time to whisper warnings in our ear. “This other man works on commission,” once says, “do not speak to him – you can trust me.” “You can just looking, not buy,” reassures another. “Best price, madam, I assure you. You can look around and come back – you’ll see.” And no amount of pleading can convince them that you do not need a pillowcase or a bedspread or a sari or a string-puppet. “You take as presents,” they say, even though you explain you’re not going home for months.

And everybody asks, “which country you from?” It’s not considered impolite in India to ask anything, and when another seller (who is busy spreading saris before me despite my protestation) offers to sell me a hat for 500 rupees, he next asks me which religion I am – for I cannot be none. I shrug and say that I am Catholic, even though I haven’t taken communion for years. He breathes a sigh of relief. “Me too!” he says. I offer him 300 rupees. “No, then you are my Catholic friend and you can give me 1,000!”

It’s the hard sell, the desperation to grab tourist rupees before someone else does. And even though you know you are being ripped off, somehow even the buying is fun; shouting multiple refusals to the man following you down the road with a hand drum, while ignoring the jewellery seller who has sent his nephew to persuade you back to his stall, as simultaneously you have some fly-encrusted pistachio brittle thrown in your face by an old man. Under one of the pink arches, a man lies inexplicably naked, while a car screeches to a halt as five goats wobble across the road.

We head up to the Amber Fort around four o’clock and our driver struggles with four kilometeres of switchback roads. But once at the top, the sunlight reflects off the orange stones, and falls behind the city sprawling below. As the darkness settles, and the Muslim call to prayer echoes off the walls, the twinkling lights spread out as if the stars have fallen on the ground. We all take in a quick breath.

“I hate to say this,” says Neil, “But it reminds me a lot of Los Angeles.” And though he meant to spoil the moment, in a sense he was right.

Before us are Jaipuri’s residents, all two million of them. And this is Jaipur: like L.A., chaotic, noisy, and full of things that sell for far more than they’re worth. It’s just that this city is a hell of a lot more pink.

Friday 17th October 2008

2008-10-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

Today is Karva Chauth. For the last few days, the markets have smelled of henna paste as men and women sit in the gutter with little paper cones, painting women’s hands for the festival. The fine, burnt orange patterns of henna snake around fingers and knuckles into the intricate shapes of flowers and birds, turning a fierce brown on the palms of the hands where they are absorbed into the fleshy skin. “Yours doesn’t come off though,” laughed one of the women in the office, pointing to the slightly blueish tattoo of a swan on my hand, which was needled into my skin last year somewhere in the East Village.

This particular coworker wears red and silver bangles all the way up her forearms, stretching from wrist to elbow. It’s a tradition amongst some wives to wear them until the first anniversary of their wedding (in the shower too, I can confirm on further investigation). Karva Chauth is a marriage-related day. It derives from the story of Karva, whose husband (fairly carelessly it must be said) was swallowed by a crocodile whilst having a bath. Karva lassoed the offending reptile with some string, before taking him to Yama, the Lord of Death to ask him to send the crocodile to hell. Seeing the ‘power of a devoted wife,’ he did so, and freed the husband, who presumably found a new bathing spot from then onwards.

So today women fast from dawn til dusk to pray for the long lives of their husbands. Not even a glass of water passes their lips, which is quite a tough call in the Delhi heat. It might be considered a chauvinist practice, but for the fact that in return women get showered with jewellery and clothes, and fed by their husbands after dusk. And what woman in the West hasn’t starved themselves for a man who’ll buy them presents and dinner?

It’s a grumble my friend Neil, who is Indian-American, has with these festivals. “They always end in the girls getting presents,” he says. (Neil has sisters).

But while pious women stay at home avoiding the fridge, the tall, amazonian kind are still strutting down the catwalks at Delhi Fashion week. There to finish a couple of documentaries for the web, we meander in and out of silver trees and chairs draped in satin and other pointless installations, and duck in between besuited and unbesmirched buyers tipsily waving bulbous glasses of chardonnay in the air in circular motions.

Indian catwalk models are among the worst paid in the world. They are often not paid at all, and go through 12-day long fittings without seeing a single rupee. They often fail to get jobs on runways in New York, Milan or Paris, because neither their families nor their sensibilities will stomach the idea of appearing half-naked in public. In some of the catwalk shows today, the girls look nervous and attempt to pull down their skirts as they strut. Vinu is a fierce looking, six foot tall amazonian that had appeared at every show. She has cheekbones like razors and huge, scarleted lips that puckered with every vowel. “I’m here for I, me, myself,” she says, turning her better profile towards our camera. Presumably Vinu is not fasting for her husband today.

Ten minutes later she appears on the runway. Her long, brown, athletic legs make her look as if she could clear the whole thing in two strides. The wall of cameras flash away as she struts her way through the glittery path, wearing little more than a bra underneath her sari. But what a sari! Dripping with sequins and beads, wrapped around her taught, wiry frame, she looks like she was painted by Klimt. India hasn’t yet given into denim and viscose, despite it’s practicality in a country that is so poor and dirty. I finally understand why.

There are few white faces in the crowd, but among them is a heavily pregnant British journalist who is covering the event for Womens Wear Daily. She sits in the corner licking a chocolate ice cream cone. Normally, she writes for The Economist, she says. Later, we bump into a gaggle of blonde Swedish women, one of whom is a buyer for Ikea. They too stare around at the trendy deluge of Delhiites that mill around. It’s still seems a little incongruous standing at an international fashion week, full of people in diamonds and stilettos, in a country that has one of the highest number of citizens living below the poverty line.

It’s easy, in fact, as the Friday night champagne parties begin, to forget you are in India at all. It’s one of many such oubliesques around Delhi, mainly in the bars of five star restaurants (or otherwise in the city’s branch of TGI Fridays). It isn’t until we attempt to make our way back to the offices to edit the tape that, stuck in a gridlock, we remember it’s festival day. Moreover, it’s dinnertime and hundreds of couples all around us, sharing the seats of motorbikes, are off to their celebrations.

So today was women’s day. In kitchens over Delhi, mothers, aunts, wives and daughters sat in kitchens, making conversations and pujas and distracting themselves from the growlings of their stomachs. At Fashion Week, where fasting is an everyday matter for most, young girls bathed in attention. And tonight was a time for them all to let go: some to their dinners and some to their champagne. Both, I imagine, were toasting to longevity.

Thursday 16th October

2008-10-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

If there’s something that Indians love, it’s bureaucracy. Papers, orderly queues, forms, documents. Today, we have to register with the Indian government, presumably to reassure them that we are not creating nail bombs for terrorists or opening a sweat shop for nimbled-fingered children to make Western-branded sports gear. As we queue at 8 am outside the Foreign Registration Office, it’s unclear whether any of our punctual, baggy-eyed group could cause subversion at the best of times. An American teenager with her hair in tiny dreadlock-plaits reads an Amitav Ghosh novel. A wiry, pasty Russian peers down his rimless glasses into the dusty air.

We’ve all signed our names on a torn-off piece of paper, next to hastily-scribbled numbers which tenuously denote our place in line. In the meantime, the office is not due to open for another 90 minutes. We leave Michelle glued to her Hindi phrasebook marking our place while we venture out for coffee. On our return, a scrum has appeared around the entrance, as people attempt to assemble themselves in numerical order. It’s like some corporate ice-breaking game, but instead of teamwork it’s every man for himself. Michelle is screaming at an Armenian who has brazenly placed himself in spot number three.

“No!” she shouts, as only a native New Yorker could, “that is NOT OK.” Her red-rimmed eyes are blazing, “There are NUMBERS!” Those in the back of the queue don’t know whether to nod in agreement or cower in embarrassment. A few Philippina women shrink in fear. The Armenian gentleman just grins. He is as resilient as a punchbag to this barrage of American abuse. A small, plump Kosovan child walks up and brazenly begins to bash at the tiger-shaped buckle on my belt, just inches from my crotch, while his mother looks on and laughs. The Afghan visitors, who have an entire line to themselves, push themselves up against the wall, keeping out of this particular diplomatic spat. “Chaos!” shouts the wan Russian with glee. “This country runs on chaos!”

The country does not, in fact, run on chaos. On the contrary, it is ground down by its own bureaucracy. It’s commonly known that the greatest lasting legacy of the British colonial days is not tea, or gin and tonic, but a civil service so complicated it would make Chairman Mao blush. Around 21 million Indian workers are employed by the government. They earn a modest amount more than the average Indian, but salaries can of course, be supplemented by a little bribery and extortion on the side. Moreover, it’s the kudos that matters. The paycheck that buys the new TV for Diwali is nice, but the uniform and ID card brings a level of deference that can be brought out at teatime every day of the year.

Government officers from indiscernible offices are chauffeur-driven in white Beetles around the city, small Indian flags waving on the dashboard before them. They pass effortlessly through no entry signs. Uniformed men, doing apparently nothing, stand at stop points, wearing headgear of varying degrees of flamboyance. Today, one stands at the entrance, peacock-preened, grasping the soggy scrap of paper with our numbers on it, It is meaningless in the face of his turban. What the man in the orange and green hat says, goes.

It’s not the last we’ll see of a government worker that day. In the afternoon, we wander around Connaught Place, looking for an office where we can book some train tickets to Jaipur. “What you looking for?” asks a man in Khaki trousers and sweat-free blue cotton shirt. We ignore him – we’re used to the hassle now and too hot and bothered to be polite. “No, look,” he says, “I work for government,” He takes out his wallet and shows me his ministry ID. “I take you to government office. They book tickets for you.”

On the way, our civil service friend explains his job proudly to me. He works in the tax department. He wants to move to London, he explains gently – to live with his brother in ‘big house in Hounslow’ - but the British government won’t give him a visa. “Until I find wife and make myself marriage,” he says, leaning over and opening the door to the travel agent. True to his word, the office is efficient and ten minutes latee we emerge, not only with transport to Jaipur, but a chauffeur-driven, air-conditioned car at our disposal for sight-seeing all weekend, and directions to the nearest bar to get a decent pint on draught.

Of course, not all Indian government officers are as straight-wheeling. Take as an example the heavy policeman, mounted on an enormous motorcycle, who decided to hail is a tuk tuk and happily (and illegally) cram four of us in the back for a ‘decent price’. The tuk tuk driver, nodding vigorously, gestured in agreement. In New Delhi, 400,000 rickshaw drivers are unlicensed and operate illegally. Suffering beatings and extortion from police is what keeps them on the road.

Under Article 311 of India’s constitution, it is almost impossible to fire or demote a government worker. This means that there are more civil servants than there are useful offices. It also means that no amount of imploring on the part of bribed constituents can bring them justice. Corruption is a way of life in India. In the 1970s, Indira Gandhi, when asked about the high levels of bribery and extortion in the government, simply replied: “What can you do about it? It’s a global phenomenon.”

Back in the queue for the Foreign Registration Office, tensions are running high. While Michelle tries to drum up a multinational force to push the Armenian to the back of the queue, I am still battling to protect my dignity against the giggling Kosovan kid. In the meantime, various office employees shuffle papers, make scummy chai, sweep non-existent detritus from the floor, and attempt to look busy, while anarchy descends between nations.

Tuesday 14th October 2008

2008-10-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

The aesthetic of India Fashion Week is much as you would expect from any other world city: marble floors, chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, wire-thin women prancing through the entrance with their certification hanging around their necks, tangling with their Louis Vuitton handbags. There are the flashes of cameras, the pouting of faces covered with outsize, bug-like sunglasses, even though it is shady enough inside.

Emporio Vasant Kunj is on the outskirts of Delhi, and the venue for half the shows in this year’s fashion week. It is a brand new building, purpose-built for the upper-middle class of Delhi: nothing but the highest end, biggest names of fashion couture: Dior, Chanel, DKNY. Here, the young and fabulously rich (and often fashionably-challenged) drop their Lexus off for valet parking and return a couple of hours later with their hatboxes and be-ribboned Gucci carrier bags. Less than five minutes’ drive down the road, we pass children returning from school with tattered backpacks, and women bent over with the weight of firewood to sell, and mouldy vegetables to buy.

We walk through the barriers, flashing our media passes with superior pride. The buyer’s entrance is bustling with the Eddies and Patsies of the Delhi glitterati, clutching glasses of Stoli Vodka and soda, and grabbing each others’ arms, whispering.

In the corridor outside, there is an art exhibition. It’s called ‘Wander Lust’, and devised by an unnamed artist. Each picture, blown up to a length of six feet or so, depicts an Indian villager – herd boys, women with wrinkled, careworn faces, girls with little flesh on their bones, men who stare, eye sockets protruding, into the camera. Each of them is depicted in India chic: expensive diamond rings through their noses, linen shirts, saris shining without a crease, in the finest of silk. A new trend is creeping into the nascent Indian fashion scene: peasant chic. India Vogue has just celebrated it’s first anniversary. In August, it published a controversial spread, styled to the nines, in which Indian peasants and beggar children were dressed in designer fashions. Small malnourished boys wore striped designer-kiddie striped jumpers. Young, tired mothers were smothered in angora. Women hanging off the back of motorcycles clutched VL-logoed handbags, while their husbands, at the front, were wearing tailored blazers. And on each of their faces, that familiar, haunting, hollow look that is so often the central appeal of charity leaflets. Instead of making poverty history, Delhi Fashion Week was making poverty sexy.

In a society where two thirds of the population are illiterate, and around 40% live below the poverty line, it’s a situation that’s easy to condemn and difficult to really understand. No matter how clean and fragrant their life lived in India, affluent Delhi-ites come face to face with the smell and grit of poverty every day. Children selling magazines at stoplights, weaving in and out of cars that narrowly scrape past them. Hunchbacked men, holding their bent arms out for a handful of rupees. Toddlers sitting in gutters that stink of sulfur and human excrement. And here we are, slipping on marble floors and gasping for a cappuccino.

In London, we are shielded from poverty. The beggars we do see are bums, we reassure ourselves. They are drunkards, or layabouts, who could get shelter and sign up for the dole if they want to. Real, dire, inescapable poverty is something we rarely, if ever, have to see firsthand. And so we fear it, and fetishize it. We leave it to Bono and Bob Geldof and Africa. We give to charities and cry out whenever human rights are broken but most of us don’t do anything useful about it anyway. We are scared of what we can’t see.

But every Indian knows what poverty looks like. It’s a way of life, even if it’s not their way of life. It’s not something to be afraid of, and it’s not something to be tiptoed around. The photoshoot might be tasteless, and it might never have run in American Vogue, but it’s not as stupid an editorial decision as it might first appear.

On the way back from our first experience of fashion week, we drop into a hotel to make a film for the newspaper. We’re videoing India’s most famous drummer, at a concert he’s giving as part of a hospitality event hosted by India’s largest telecommunications company. Somehow, we manage to impress said drummer, who invites us backstage to eat and drink and watch his show. We meet one of the most famous Bollywood composers and singers. We meet diplomats from various foreign consulates, who distribute their business cards and demand ours, inviting us to travel and drink wine and come to parties in five star hotels. Barely is our back turned before our large tulip-shaped wine glasses are refilled with the finest Shiraz and Chardonnay by waiters with scarlet turbans, wearing impeccable white suits. Driving back in the dark, more than a little tipsy, it is impossible to see, in the shadows, the camps of children living under tarpaulin, and fathers crouched by the roadside on thin moth-eaten mattresses, waiting for the night to come. They aren’t dressed in Prada polo necks today.

The gap between the most wealthy and the poorest of Indian society is gargantuan. Women get a french polish in a five-star spa, where barely a hop, skip and jump away, kids sell coconut segments to tuk tuk drivers and their passengers, before settling down for the night on an ancient blanket. But what to do is another question. The answer is not to drip them in diamonds, but it’s also not to take out a 100 rupee standing order to a charity that will probably never deliver your money to the right place. There’s no point in covering guilt with an ineffectual contribution.

As the sun sets over the stage of the hotel, we swat the flies from our bowls of chocolate mousse and think back to the photos in the Emporio Mall. What next for the anonymous faces of suffering, now such a worn-out phrase that they are considered iconic enough for the fashion industry? Whatever the answer, it probably won’t be found in the Stoli Vodka tent.

Monday 13th October

2008-10-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

“The thing about India is…” It was about the fourth time in the last two minutes our host had said it. We are sitting in a restaurant in Connaught Place, a plaza area which can best be described as the Oxford Circus of New Delhi, but with better food. Some family friends of a friend had taken us out for a sumptuous dinner. When you are ex-pats, the most tenuous of links become your comrades, such is the common bond of alienness shared, and the pool of likely acquaintances shrunk. And now we were the honoured recipients of one of the best meals we’d ever had: lamb, tandoori chicken, spicy paneer, perfectly cooked lentils, naan glazed with creamy butter, parathas sprinkled with gentle spices. A restaurant, I find, can always be rated by the standards of its toilet facilities. Here, before you can reach the top of the stairs, an old man smiles and greets you, before dashing into the cubicle before you with a handful of paper towels to wipe down every possible surface.

Back at the table, I sit across from our host again. He begins, “the thing about India is…” and launches into a conversation about India’s pre-colonial history. He regales us with tales of pre-colonial kings and queens and princes, of the triumphs of Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Indian national pride is one of the country’s strongest assets. It comes partly from an economic rivalry with China, and partly from a deservedly-held self-congratulation in being an emerging, billion-strong democracy despite it’s size, poverty, and the fact that it has only had 50 years to do so.

“Look outside at the people here begging,” our host says, pointing to the door. On our way in, one of the beggars who swarm Connaught Place in the evening had crept around the group, before being severely scolded by our host and sent away. He continues, “no one out there is insane, though. They are poor, but they are not insane like back in your country.”

The average beggar on the street may not be as crazy as most New York bums, or soaked in Special Brew like the bearded men living below Waterloo Bridge. But mental illness as a whole is a big problem in India. And the country is struggling to keep up with demand. A recent report by the National Human Rights Commission of India found that around 3 million people suffered from some kind of mental illness nationwide. By 2010, it is set to overtake heart disease as the biggest killer in the country. Every day the Times of India reports details of at least two or three suicides in Delhi. This is a city obsessed. In India, if it can be proven that someone drove the deceased to their death, the charge is murder.

The same report also found that there were only 29,000 beds nationally to treat mental illness, meaning that roughly 90% of people are not getting the medical attention they need. The fallout between people needing, and people receiving treatment, especially for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia, was seriously lacking; that is, among the poorest classes that is, and not the wealthier who could afford their own personal shrink.

There is a view in the West that Indians are spiritual, centred beings who do yoga every morning, ayurveda in the afternoons, and visit their guru’s ashrams regularly for guidance. In fact, Indians are the same as any of us. They suffer from the same biological imbalances, the same reactions to trauma, and the same work and family pressures. And there is an increasing interest in mental health too. In the city, people attribute disorders to the breakdown of traditional family ties, to the increasing speed of life, and to the pressures of work, not least in the current economic climate. But these are common scapegoats. Doctors are taking mental illness increasingly seriously, not just for the average commuter but for the poorest, most downtrodden village people.

Back at our table in Connaught Place, we are far from any village, and cordoned off from the threat of any beggars, mentally stable or otherwise. We drain our wine glasses and shift our full bellies to the waiting cars, and roll into the back seat. I sit next to our host’s wife, who engages me in conversation about her recently-started career: turns out she is a hypnotherapist.

Sunday 12th October 2008

2008-10-13T05:04:00.000-07:00

Farizabad is an hour’s drive outside the city. On the way we pass the enormous dome of the Hindi temple Ashram, which is brand new and comes complete with hydro-tour ride. We pass hospitals, bowling alleys, the call centers that have fallen silent as American customers sleep on the other side of the world.

We drop into a roadside café, where truck drivers eat dosas and samosas and sweets. The tarpaulin pulled over the top creates small corners in which bugs hide in piles of dust. The cans of coke we buy are crusted with something similar. No trail mix or kendal mint bars for us here, so we buy a few backets of bourbon biscuits and head on our way.

Farizabad advertises itself as a ‘tourist resort’ and there’s a sign on the right of the car park for a ‘bar and restaurant’ we won’t even bother to follow, even though we’re all starving already. A sign for ‘boating and sailing’ points to a dried-up stagnant river in the middle of some marshland. In it, water buffalo toss algaed water into the air with their snouts. Strangely, someone decided it would be a good idea to sell camel rides, and two of the dehydrated beasts lift their heads dejectedly as we pass. Children run around us, their mothers pulling them forward for us to take their picture, clicking their fingers in the air in front of the faces in that universal, futile attempt to make children look at a camera.

The Indians we meet can’t quite understand why we would want to go hiking. Why walk up a pile of rocks, just to walk down them again? We attract the attention of a gang of boys playing cricket beside the water buffalo, and they want us to join, but we politely decline. Indians are the world’s cricketers, and even without our hiking boots on, our certain thrashing would frankly be embarrassing. But where are we going? They ask. As we point to the distant horizon they are even more confused.

So, covered in burrs and sporadically emitting shrieks every time we loose a footing, we hike to the top of a small hill. We stop to survey the safety of our next step, try the solidity of the next rock, and try and find some kind of non-thorned bracken to hold on to. In the meantime, two skinny brown ten year-olds have spotted us from below, and leap like nymphs from boulder to boulder. They are now standing above us, looking down quizzically. They leapfrog before us, singing softly and occasionally asking for biscuits and money. We give them some bourbon biscuits. A few hundred yards to our left, women are working amid the hot stones, hacking away at the bracken. They all stare at us in confusion as we snap pictures of each other and giggle as we attempt to climb trees. The boys munch and look on in bemusement.

India is beautiful. It’s always been the dream of photographers and travel writers, even the most inexperienced of whom find themselves with the Midas touch, writing about maharajahs, and taking the mandatory pictures of beautiful dusty children adorned with jewels and paint. There’s a mystique that touches GAP year students and young travellers, and infuses in them a spiritual ephiphany that they return home and evangelise to their friends and family. India has created music, dance and art that the West finds irresistable. And here it’s humdrum. Incense is burned like charcoal. The embroidered and bejewelled saris women wear to work are ‘only everyday styles’. Men sit atop elephants which saunter down the inside lane of the road, and nobody bats an eyelid. Candles and colours and music and dancing happen every day and everywhere. It’s Indian Ikea. The fact that it might be at all special both confuses and delights locals. As far as they are concerned, there is no mysticism or magic about it. As the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, once said, “To a Western observer our civilisation appears as all metaphysics, as to a deaf man piano playing appears to be mere movement of fingers and no music.”

It’s easier to feel that you are part of generations of foolish Westerners who, standing agog, have bought into the idea of some kind of magical Indianism. But, when you sit in a tree, on top of a mountain, looking over at the vast scape of trees and strange-shaped birds, children playing cricket and buffalo crouching in the water, you realise that it’s even easier to be seduced by it. And it’s pointless trying to resist.

Sunday 12th October 2008

2008-10-13T05:01:00.000-07:00

India holds an ongoing love affair with the cellular phone. There are 289 million mobile phone connections in the country, and it’s growing at a rate of 9 million a month. Compare that to the rate of internet penetration at a measly 4% and it’s clear that no one’s being lured away too quickly. Every Indian has a mobile. Calls are cheap, and every day pop, techno and hip-hop ring tones buzz from pockets and bags. It’s perfectly acceptable to answer a phone in the middle of a meeting, and politicians have even been known to answer them live on TV. Like a sixth former with a new boyfriend, Indians will quite happily to send twenty or thirty text messages a day. Get yourself a handset in India, and you’ll soon be deluged with multiple daily ads, and cold calls, and sometimes calls that will, inexplicably, just play music in your ears. Indians send each others text messages of all kinds, about births, marriages and deaths, but nothing is more beloved than the text joke. There is a text joke of the day in our morning newspaper (today’s: Q: When does an Indian man do his exercise? A: Sucking his stomach in when the ladies walk by). Kids walk down the road selling maps to tourists with one hand and texting with the other, taxi drivers answer their phones sometimes more than once a trip (though take note: they always pull over first).

We, however, do not yet have mobile phones. Tightened national security means it is prohibitively difficult to register for one, and so for the last fortnight we have been at the mercy of our bosses to get them. This means that we are effectively social and professional pariahs. We cannot register for various services, since they don’t accept landline numbers, and we can’t make friends, since, well, friends text each other. It’s the daily gripe at the breakfast table in our house, perhaps principally because we’re having trouble getting internet too and it we’ve all forgotten the skills needed to actually talk to each other in person.

So, right now, we’re pressing our silent faces up to the windows of the networked world, and taking a peer inside.

In a sense, India has every reason to be obsessed with the phone call. A large part of their business is based on them. There are hundreds of call centers in India, employing an estimated 350,000 people. These are night workers, young people who by day are good Indian children to their parents, helping make daal and saying puja, and by night they are Americans. “Rajesh” becomes “Ricky”; “Subash” becomes “Sam”. They are given accent coaching to replace their Delhi-speak with perfect American drawl or London twang. They are infused with company values and the impression that they have a job which makes them upwardly mobile and in some way part of a larger, more sophisticated machine than if they worked for a regular Indian company. The better call centres have company incentives and group bonding days, yoga classes, relaxation rooms.

But reality bites when a phone call comes in. Any one who has ever spent a dreary shift in a call centre will know what demeaning, spirit-crushing work it really is. An American housewife will call, demanding to know why her washing machine won’t work, shouting that it is the third time she has called in 24 hours and that it must be your incompetence that is to blame. Or a British businessman will call, screaming that he can’t get online, swearing and cursing that he can’t seem to get through to anyone who is not Indian these days.

A novel chronicling the lives of these young people - Indian by day, Western by night – has sold more than a million copies across the country and has been made into a movie that is released here this month. Priced at 90 rupees (around £1) and available in supermarkets, the book has brought pop fiction to a generation that has not previously been known for it’s love affair with reading. One Night at the Call Centre by Chetan Bhaghat chronicles just that: an evening to early morning shift in an office team of six young people, who are tormented by their lack of identity, their insular nocturnal world, and their love-hate affair with the Western world. They go to clubs, drink Long Island Ice Teas one after another, throw stones through the window of Pizza Hut, and have sex in cars. Then they are flattened beneath the hierarchy of work, try to earn enough money to please their parents, struggle with arranged marriages. And it all comes to a head when, in the early hours of the morning they receive a call from God.

“Now, do you know what is the most important call in the world?”
“No,” Vroom said. Everyone else shook their heads.
“The inner call,” God said.
“The inner call?” Everyone said in unison.
“Yes, the little voice inside that wants to talk to you. But you can only hear it when you are at peace – and then too it is hard to hear it. Because in modern life the networks are too busy. The voice tells you what you really want.”

The voice of God, if it is to be heard, has to wrestle not with pop music, or with sex, with money, or with drugs. In India, the voice of God has to wrestle with Vodafone.

Still, without a mobile phone, none of us have yet found our religious epiphany. And inner call or no inner call, when we find ourselves at peace, all we really want is to send a text message.

Saturday 11th October 2008

2008-10-11T04:08:00.000-07:00

There’s a giant laminated five hundred rupee note sitting on my desk. It’s not mine, and I am pretty sure even the most oblivious of market vendors would consider it legal tender, but nonetheless it irks me that it has appeared. Even in their small valuable form, they are the most useless of notes, since you can only really use them in expensive bars and restaurants without raising eyebrows.

In any case, shortly afterwards a broad middle-aged Indian walks in, and grabs the note, clearly expressing delight about having found it. This is Chanchal, the man who shares my office cabin. He’s the man in charge of designing the graphics for the newspaper. Like all graphics guys (and techies), his office is strewn with bits of miscellany, and scraps of old versions of the paper pasted together that clearly represent some kind of private joke. There are outsize pictures of rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, Indian’s only gold medallist from the previous summer, a bunch of snooker balls, various pictures of Bollywood actresses, and a diagram of how to find your G-spot (which he designed). Now, he is folding up the rupee note into some kind of origami object.

“It’s a rupee boat,” he says, nodding enthusiastically. There are three classes of people in the world I consider the most difficult to communicate with: Physicists, 11 year-old children, and guys who are really into graphic design. Chanchal sees the confused look on my face. “You see,” he says, in the slow loud voice he reserves for young foreign interns, “it’s going to be a rupee boat, and we’re going to have it sailing on a sea of Indian stock market.” This is where he chuckles in self-appreciation. “It’s like, ‘is it going to sink, or are we going to float?'”

Downstairs, at the newspaper’s sister economic journal, people are running around and throwing papers. It’s pretty unusual in this office for anyone to put so much as a hop in their step on the way to the coffee machine. The stock markets are crashing, everything is red, or preceded by a downward arrow or a minus sign. Apocalypse is nigh. The Guardian today reported that the stock market had dropped 800 points and the rupee had slumped to a record low. When the US bailout happened a few days ago, the Times of India wrote a slightly smug piece the capitalist giant softening along the socialist path. Now, everyone is asking themselves whether India could afford to do the same thing. But with a tax system that is dubious at the best of times, the idea of such funds looks fairly unlikely.

Most Indians (like myself and most of the people I know) really have no idea what this means for us. With barely three figures in our bank accounts at the moment, Malena and I quipped, we really have nothing to lose. But someone’s worried, and the word ‘recession’ was something I grew up with and was always accompanied by worry lines on my parents’ foreheads.

In the marketplaces, there are no crashing red charts, or talk of the depreciation of the rupee. There are two more immediate things to worry about: terrorism, and flooding. Chanchal, as he is folding a sail into his paper boat, warns me that I should stay far away from the markets on a Saturday. He says that most of the terrorist attacks have happened on Saturdays. “We call them Black Saturdays now,” he says. And then there are festivals, which he also says we should avoid. Delhi got away lightly at Dussehra (security checks being a pat on the pocket and a push into the crowd and still no one with a incendiary device got through. Sri Lanka didn’t get away so easily). India won’t get away as lightly again. What seems to us a bustling, jerking crowd, is a huge depreciation on the weekend market scrum that was common a few months ago.

And what the food market still sells is rocketing in price. Not because of the value of currency or the price of oil, but because floods in the north of the country have meant widespread crop damage. The price of tomatoes has risen to over three times as much. The price of potatoes – so beloved of Indian cooks – has more than doubled. The same goes for okra, cauliflower, capiscum: almost everything you could name that makes up a traditional Indian meal. And so the women who take their weekly budget to market, waiting on the needs of their husbands and children, are forced to become resourceful, or else eat less.

So, the besuited journalists and speculators stare at the markets. But it is another kind of market that frightens a billion Indians. An economic downturn doesn’t mean buying economy brand microwave lasagne, taking one less beach holiday a year or spending less at Topshop. The ordinary Indian wouldn’t even be touched by the Dow Jones, or the FTSE index. They face the same economic crises several times a year, every time there is flood or storm and the crop fails. And it directly effects what, if anything goes on the table.

Meanwhile, Chanchal is still folding his giant 500 rupee note, and chuckling to himself as he tries to devise the perfect stock market sea on which to sail it.

Thursday 9th October 2008

2008-10-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

We’re sitting in a tuk tuk at a road block. I say sitting, but there are actually five of us piled in here. Someone’s neck is cricked, their ear to the roof, and there’s an unidentified leg in the air. I have my elbow in someone’s crotch and I’m sure someone’s hand is somewhere it shouldn’t be. At the crossroads ahead, barriers have been pulled across the road by policemen with rifles slung over their shoulders. Malena jumps out and approaches one such officer who is chatting on his mobile phone and swinging his firearm around his hip. She asks him whether his gun is loaded, and he responds by pulling out the magazine and showing her the bullets. She emits a small gulp.

This brings us no closer to fnding out what is behind the barriers, and now the pop of fireworks begins, and frenzied people are dismount their motorbikes and open their car doors in order to get a glimpse of sparkle in the sky behind the flyover. The only light to be seen is the intermittent flashes from the tops of Delhi Police cars. It’s universal human behaviour at this point for the stranded to ask each other questions and titter. There always seems to be the man who says he knows what’s going on; thus a taxi driver says a VIP is on his way, and that we won’t be moving for another thirty minutes. All of Delhi, it seems, is in chaos.

This is where all of Delhi has been all day, we think to ourselves. We had waited for thirty minutes for our car to take us to work this morning before we realised that it was never going to come. When we finally arrived at the offices, it was deserted. We were almost in some post-apocalyptic movie. Just before lunchtime the young guy on our team, who was the only person working on our floor that day, said we’d have a hard time trying to find food. Malena, ever resourceful, ordered Domino’s Pizza.

It’s not uncommon during this holiday season for someone to skip work without informing anyone – the universal explanation is that he or she “is probably at some Hindu festival.” Some festival, because there as many gods as there are Catholic saints and far more interesting: beautiful women, swans, demons, elephants; gods with no legs, gods with ten legs, gods with a thousand eyes, or with none at all. Gods with so many avatars, thus appearing in so many different forms, that it is competely impossible to decide which is which. And they have feast days that are almost as impossible to calibrate as the Queen’s birthdays. Puja (prayers) are offered on these days, hence the absenteeism. Today, however, everyone has skipped work. We had no idea why, because the people who make excuses for the people who skipped work has also skipped work.

We spent much of the day in the echoing silence of the office, before giving up and deciding to go home. Hailing at tuk tuk was almost impossible. The drivers has disappeared. And mysteriously, trucks would pass us on the road, carrying huge plaster statues of some god’s avatar. Occasionally, we’d hear the roll of drums, but as soon as we turned around to locate it, it was gone. It was as if all of Delhi was staging some elaborate practical joke.

But no. Eventually a Delhi-ite friend revealed the reason no one has bothered to tell us until today. Today is Dussehra, a major Hindu festival celebrated across South Asia. The rule of thumb in Hinduism seems to be each to his own (perhaps it’s really a post-modern religion?) and so in the North of India, they choose to celebrate Dussehra as the day the demon Ravan was vanquished by King Ram. Ravan was exiled through trickery (what trickery it was doesn’t matter). Whilst there, he was tempted by Ravan’s sister who tried to make him marry her (Ram already had a lovely lady-wife Sita, who, gallingly for her, was living with him on the ashram at the time). Spurned, Ravan’s sister returned home to tell her brother the story, and he went to fight Ram. Of course, good triumphed and Ravan lost. And so, huge Wicker Man-esque effigies of Ravan are burnt across the city, with fireworks and feasting and celebration that makes Guy Fawkes night look like some kids with a bunch of sparklers.

And here we are, having found some of the missing population of Delhi, albeit at a road block. We are still tantalised by the sound of fireworks and the smell of ash. Someone says they can see Manmohan Singh, and another Sonia Gandhi, but no one seems to be passing by at all. And then, inexplicably, the road block is pushed aside, and hundreds of drivers and passengers run and clamber back into their seats and rickshaws and motorbikes and trucks and the sound of car horns begins again, and somewhere someone is shouting as vehicles try to nudge each other in desperation to get going again.

As we hit Old Delhi, we are overtaken by the sidesaddle women on the backs of motorbikes, this time in crimson and emerald and russet-colours, flashing golden jewellery, their lips painted scarlet and their eyes smudged with kohl. They stop at the traffic lights and compliment each other on their outfits. Children scream and run along the roadside. The pop of fireworks can still be heard. Then, around the corner looms the mighty terracotta glow of the Red Fort, and we’ve found the place where all of Delhi have been. Thousands of them, teeming.

In the air is the smell of spice and ash, gunpowder and hot fat. The flourescent strips of fairground rides can be seen in the distance, as people whizz around ferris wheels at a rate to make a fighter pilot queasy. White tents are lit up with strings of fairy lights, and all around is dancing and dizzyness and people: so many people that you wonder how the crowd moves. Men climb onto trucks and railings, billboards and tree branches to try and catch a glimpse of the flaming Ravan. Below them, children clutch enormous bunches of heart-shaped balloons with both hands, trying to sell what they can. A street vendor pops corn over a huge fiery dish. The tungsten glows of ice cream vendors dot the pavement at intervals. And all around in chaos as people fight and claw their way through the crowd, tripping over children or jumping over leaking sewage pipes, embers raining down on their heads.

This is where Delhi is tonight, and it’s a whole lot more interesting than being at work. If this is what praying is, give me Dussehra any Sunday morning.

Thursday 9th October 2008

2008-10-10T05:09:00.000-07:00

[To see the published version of this click here. And read other stuff on The Comment Factory website. It's brilliant.]

“I miss the gays,” sighs Elsa over this morning’s breakfast of Indian hybrid Pad Thai. Our cook has an originality in planning early-morning cuisine to make a gastronomically-liberal maharajah blush. Today is noodles, yesterday was spicy pasta (a favourite, especially served with green ‘chilly sauce’), and the day before it was sag aloo toasted sandwiches with french fry-shaped potatoes that were warmly soaked in vegetable oil rather than fried in them. He does, however, make an increadible daal and the best parathas I’ve ever tasted, so I’ve taken to becoming a two-meals-a-day girl.

Meanwhile, Elsa, who is from San Francisco and engaged to a man she has been seeing for six years, has been persuading us for the last five minutes that the homosexual community in San Francisco are the ‘best gays in the world’. She wants to find a gay bar in Delhi where she can soak up the atmosphere. Karsten tells her she can’t use gay men to supplement her lifestyle preferences.

In Delhi, it’s not uncommon to see men holding hands as they chew paan and walk down the street, or to catch a glimpse of a rickshaw passenger with his arm around a male friend in the back seat. It’s a public sign of friendship here (although not considered acceptable when displayed between women). Moreover, gaze around any trendy club or bar in the capital, and you’ll notice that the middle class boys are a little freer in their fashion. Elaborately coiffed hair and extra tight clothes are not considered the camp choice. In Bollywood, the macho protagonist hunks are shiny men with slick dance moves and open shirts that gyrate and swing. Men’s gestures and dress are completely sexually unambiguous – unsurprising, since concieving of anything else would be anathema.

A list of gay Indian celebrities wouldn't roll quickly off the tongue.

Homosexuality is illegal in India, and has been since the rule of the British. In the 1860s, Civil Servants considered it an abhorrence and it was criminalised. Queen Victoria infamously approved the legislation against sodomy (refusing to sign away the social freedom of lesbians because she didn’t believe they existed). An echo of this came recently when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was asked if he supported decriminalisation. His reply? "There would not be much appreciation for a law like that in India." And so the law remains in Delhi. Conviction can lead to up to 10 years in prison, plus a fine. According to the government, there have been no arrests in 20 years, though Human Rights Watch disagree. The law has been used to blackmail people, allow abuse by police, and, worst of all, leads to ostracism and a shameful excommuncation from the family.

And it is not because of a legal loophole or a lethargy over changing legislation that it remains so. In 2005 a suggestion by the Indian Law Commission to lift the ban on homosexuality was rejected by the New Delhi government. In 1996, Deepa Mehta’s film Fire was released. In it, two women are pushed together by the abuse and neglect of their husbands, by the end leaving their families for each other: poignantly, not before one of them is badly burned in a fire. It immediately banned by certain religious groups and on the first day of screening, cinemas were attacked by Muslim fundamentalists.

Ignoring the issue only causes India’s estimated 100 million gay, bisexual and transgendered people to move underground. Many liberal Indians blame the rapid spread of AIDs on the government’s decision to force the uninformed homosexual populace into the shadows.

Some, however, are beginning to emerge, blinking, into the light. Today’s Times of India carries a story that suggests hope, if only because it was printed at all. In Howrah, near Kolkata, two women in their early twenties (prime marriage-age) met at a wedding and fell in love. Now, they are accepted as a couple, and one girl’s parents are ready to adopt a child for them to make their unit complete. Not, it might be added, before they ran away together, leaving a note. “We know our relatives and society will not accept this alliance,” it read. “We have decided to leave our families and live elsewhere as a married couple.” When they returned to their village, they must have fallen backwards in shock when one of the girls’ parents killed the proverbial fattened calf.

Gay clubs exist semi-openly in the cities, and there are signs that in liberal circles they’re beginning to be tolerated. This year saw the first gay pride marches in Delhi, Mumbai and Pondicherry. But India is a dowry-based social economy that partially condones (killing daughters) in order to afford a part in it. Decriminalising homosexuality in India will not happen tomorrow. Tolerance is far off. Celebration is practically inconsiderable.

Elsa might find her gay bar, and the gays to supplement her lifestyle preferences. But if she’s camping it up to YMCA, chances are she’ll be doing it behind darkened windows.

...Bollywood hunks

Tuesday 7th October 2008

2008-10-10T05:03:00.000-07:00

I am the Anglo-Saxon terrorist.

The security guard looked at my gate pass suspiciously. I am white (starlingly so, I realise among these Indian faces), blonde, and for some reason I come dressed in a salwar kameez. He is dressed in a crisp blue shirt with a gold logo on the lapel, and wears his hat straight on his head. He a slightly sadistic smirk lurks beneath his thick moustache. He jangles his keys on his belt – they’re on a huge metal ring, like those on a cartoon jailer. He sits me down kneecap-to-kneecap with his junior officer, who eyballs me intensely. Occasionally one will shoot me a sentence in Hindi, and it is all I can do to shrug and look confused. Perhaps they think this is one of my tactics. I wave to my Indian-skinned colleague Neilesh who is sitting on the other side of the room, though he’s sensible enough not to open his mouth and reveal his American identity. I’m not allowed to move. They’re clearly not convinced that I really know him. It’s quite possible that the Hindu fundamentalists have sent me as a mole to infiltrate the newspaper. It’s quite possible that I am the Anglo-Saxon terrorist.

Twenty minutes earlier, I had asked the same security guard to let me into the office I’d been designated the day before. He looked at me, and then looked at the door and gabbled something in Hindi. When I shook my head and shrugged he picked up the phone and called security downstairs. He asked the morning risers who were in the newsroom who I was. None of them had any idea. So here I am, pinned to the chair by the gaze of the junior security guard. I’m wishing my boss into the office as soon as possible. A young man comes round with the chai – he served me several times yesterday. He nods to me, but his ackowledgement doesn’t fly with the newsroom gestapo.

India has become a security-paranoid country. Metal detectors line the entrance to buildings and stations: ramshackle planks of wood nailed together with wires protruding from the corners. Officers take your names and sign you in and out from desks that are so makeshift they barely stand on four legs. Security hasn’t been part of India’s culture. But it is now.

India’s too busy fighting its own terrorists to bother about the world’s. Muslim mujahedeen have terrified marketplaces. Hindu nationalists attack Christian refugee camps. The Naxalists, an underground Marxist movement that has been growing over the past decade, has been fighting a guerilla war for years along the central belt of the country. Stories of rapes, bombings, riots and slaughters shout from every day’s front page, creating a white noise that is slowly reaching fever pitch. There’s an electricity of fear in the air that Delhiites tell me never existed before. A filler story which ran in the Times of India today said psychologists have found an increasing number of anxiety disorders they link to terrorism. It’s not the veracity of the story that matters here, of course, but the fact it made it to the paper in the first place perhaps says something. The atmosphere is something akin to the fear the IRA inflicted on England’s cities a decade ago: attacks are not strategic, but instead are visited on anyone who gets in the way.

I’m not an Anglo-Saxon terrorist. Instead, I’m the intern at the newspaper who no one’s quite sure about. And the fact that I am quarantined and guarded here at this desk space could perhaps only be considered a drill for when the real thing comes. My boss walks in the door, shouts in Hindi and points to the jangling keys hanging from the security guard’s belt. The guard smirks beneath his logo-ed hat as he unlocks the door - he’s had his fun with the intern.

“Ignore him,” says my boss, handing the confiscated gate pass back to me. I look at my ID photograph: I’m wearing a flower behind one ear and grinning like a cat. My boss just leans over and whispers, “he’s an asshole.”

Sunday 5th October 2008

2008-10-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

“Shuutiyaa,” Rubin shouts above the cacophany of laughter, “means to have a thousand vaginas.” It was 4 a.m. and we are sitting in the foyer of the Taj Mahal Hotel. Rubin is leaning back in a red antique chair, while beside him three girls recline on a sofa, bursting with giggles. Above our heads are several domes, adorned with gold, and a fountain tinkles in the centre of the marble hall. There are fresh flowers on the receptionist’s desk and around the room; not the lurid orange marigolds that women on the street sew into garlands, but lilies and orchids, and shiny green foliage.

We’ve just come from a sweaty four hours in the hotel bar, ordering mojitos and dancing to everything from ABBA to the Chemical brothers. Not a hint of a raga. Among the white faces, young and hip Delhiites clinked glasses, dressed in tight T-shirts, designer jeans and heels. Some leaned up against corners with each other, kissing: unimaginable in any other public place. Here, a double whiskey costs 6,000 rupees. Neilesh winced at the idea of paying $12 a pop as he pocketed his reciept.

Now, we are exhausted, though our local found companions are still more than merry. Ruben is still regaling his companions with blasphemy. He explains that he’s just come back from doing a PhD at Columbia University in New York, which he said was basically “time wasting for a year.”

I excuse myself and visit the ladies’. There, a small, dark-faced Indian women bows to greet me. She touched my arm to stop me reaching for a paper hand towel and bends forward to place a large basket of freshly laundered towels. When I’m finished I have nothing more to do than to throw it in the bin in front of me. Somehow it feels different from the black women who sit in the toilets of bars and clubs in London, amongst an array of perfume bottles and face creams. Inevitably they are slumped in their chairs and they don’t really care who enters or leaves and by the end of the night, they have stopped their lacklustre distribution of ragged hand towels. In the marble bathroom, I turn around to the uniformed woman who is wiping the handtowel and think of the man who brings us steaming hot chai every time we return to the house, and cooks our meals on demand. Indian politician Pherozeshah Mehta once said that in India “your sahib [master] remains your sahib whether in office or not.”

Ruben is still creating screeches of laughter across the inebriated group. “How do you know that Jesus was Bengali?” he asks, choking with laughter at his own joke. “He lived at home until he was thirty, he believed his mother was a virgin, and she believed he was God.” More laughter. Neilesh explains to him that in New York that’s a Jewish joke. It doesn’t matter to Ruben, who proceeds to explain that in his teaching days, he’d gather his students around, open a bottle of tequila, and interpret the Koran. Together, he said, they even started the Wikipedia entry for the Indian head wobble (it doesn’t exist).

I go outside for a cigarette. There, three young men who were also in the bar stand and smoke on the steps, even though it has been illegal to smoke in public for 3 days now – since Gandhi’s birthday. The doormen don’t bat an eyelid. They come and ask for a light, and invite me to a polo match. “It’s on us,” one of them says, flicking back his coiffed fringe as he places his sunglasses on his head. “You’re our guests.” He winks, and climbs into the BMW that has just been driven onto the red carpet by the valet boy.

There are more millionaires in Delhi than there are in New York, whilst over one third of the country - 350 million people – live below the poverty line. Thirty five to forty per cent of the population live on less than 45 rupees ($1) a day. The glass of wine I drank tonight would be around two weeks’ wages. Delhi’s middle classes are rising in population, but not as fast as the rural poor, who are growing at a rate far exceeding the rate of economic growth. Delhi is both surrounded by, and dotted with hopelessly crowded urban slums. At night, the smell of burning dung rises from them, though they are hidden from our house. Similarly, there is no sign of a beggar here in the hotel forecourt. Here, even every car is searched upon entry, James Bond-style, as gatekeepers open the boot and checked underneath with mirrors. With security like this for the guests, unwelcome ones don’t have a chance.

Begging is a daily occurrence in Delhi At traffic lights, outside shops: anywhere in the streets. Many will walk beside you to wherever you are going, imploring. Often, mothers gesture to their children who reach out with dirty, chapped hands. A few have amputated their own limbs in the hope that they might raise a few extra pity-rupees. Some are under the influence of mafia groups. Some are simply starving.

Back in the hotel, Ruben is sharing his tequila-inspired interpretation of the Koran. When it is time to go, and the sun is beginning to rise, he calls for his silver Saab and we all bundle in, giggling and sitting on each others’ laps. Ruben at the wheel sways the car from side to side on the empty road. One of our friends has already lost his license for drunk driving, he laughs, but his driver at home will take him anywhere. Besides, Ruben laughs, in Bangalore at least, the breath test for drivers consists of breathing into the policeman’s face as they sniff your breath. He’s passed that one many a time.

There are plans made for dim sum tomorrow; for cricket some time this week. We drive past one of the settlements from where the burning dung smell is rising. It’s at the end of our road. We fall out of the car into the semi-darkness, still giggling, and roll towards the gate. The watchman, who has already been working for the majority of the day, is ready with smiles to open it for us, before we can even touch the latch.

Monday 6th October 2008

2008-10-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

Delhi’s streets are dotted with small huts with corrugated iron roofs. They sell sweets and cigarettes and paan: an addictive mixture of betel nut, tobacco and lime chewed by Indians that creates the red globs of spit found sporadically on the road.

It’s down such a road that our jeep drops us off. The newspaper’s offices are contained in a large concrete building. It would look non-descript in Birmingham, but here it looms above the vendors as they lay out their plastic jars and lines of fresh citrus fruit. Inside, the marble corridors and mirrored elevators are polished of every speck of street dust. Men stride up the stairs, alongside women who walk in tiny steps in their salwar kameez.

The news room is an open-plan office on the third floor. It is largely deserted this Monday lunchtime. Few people arrive at work before noon, and even afterwards it is barely half full. There is none of the manic buzz of a newspaper newsroom back home. Instead, people are gathered by the hole in the wall which constitutes the office canteen. Through it are passed hot thalis and samosas, and tiny steaming cups of chai. People stand in the doorway gossiping. Yet everything here will get done on time: a paper will be sent to the printers by deadline, and in the hand of 17 million Indians by tomorrow morning.

Downstairs is the online section, which like most newspaper website departments, is slicker, not to mention more recently refurbished. In the corner a man in a waistcoat and bow tie stands next to a coffee machine. He asks what you would like: cappuccino, latte? What he offers is pretty much the same no matter what your answer, and comes in a paper cup barely bigger than a shot glass. It gives you the feeling that whatever you are drinking is ever so slightly precious. It’s also a good excuse to get up from your desk several times a day for no apparent reason.

It takes us five hours to get our computers online. One technician comes up, and talks to another technician, who comes up and calls for another technician, who comes and calls for another. Whilst they are congregating around the workstation, we sit and talk to Subash. Subash is old and wise, and looks as if he should be sitting in a turban under a banyan tree. He is small and bony-armed, and one of his teeth sticks out of his gums as he speaks. He commands a quiet respect as he places his battered leather briefcase on the desk and sits wearily in his chair. He says he spends his mornings working and his afternoons reading The Hindu (the liberal Indian daily) and The Guardian (for his international news).

He tells us that he is working on some research about the recent sectarian violence.

All over India, sectarian violence has been increasing in intensity, and will probably continue to do so until the elections are over. No region has been quite so badly hit as Orissa, in the East of India. In the last few weeks Hindus have attacked the Christian minorities living there. Christians, who account for 5% of Indians generally, make up 14% of Orissa’s population. In Orissa, they own many missionary hospitals and schools, and provide badly-needed aid to people largely ignored by the government. Some conversions, of course, follow. Many Christians have fled to refugee camps, which have in turn been attacked and pillaged by Hindus. Riots have been frequent. Yet the local government refuses to send in police, and the central government will not interfere with the army. Just over a month ago, a Catholic nun was raped by a gang of Hindus, and a priest who came to her aid was likewise attacked. Then, two days ago a young child who had been taken in my missionaries was also raped. It was later discovered that she was, in fact, Hindu.

Christians have not responded simply because they are outnumbered and scattered. No one is given any support or aid from the government. But the work of Hindu fudamentalists serves only to polarise voters along religious lines in the lead up to the election. If they succeed, the BJP (India’s Hindu Nationalist party), is likely to come into power, as they did in 1998. That time, they ran the government until 2004, but not before secular tension reached boiling point. On 27th February 2002, 52 Hindu nationalists were burned to death when a mob set fire to a train in Godhra, Gujarat. When the local BJP government suggested that Muslims were to blame, riots broke out that left over 2,000 people dead and 12,000 people homeless. Several official enquiry bodies still cannot reach a conclusion.

Signs of religious tensions are by no means obvious on the streets of Delhi. Jain ‘Happy’ schools stand beside Hindu temples. Women walk through halal markets on their way back from puja – Hindu morning prayers. But in rural village, official poverty is at an average of 75%. Tribes and castes fight for civil service jobs, for land and for government food aid (a quarter of which is stolen before it reaches the people it should nourish). Here, Hindu fights Christian, not only because he stands for his religion but because he stand for his life, and those of his family.

Here in the newsroom, Subash considers these things gently. He is reflective, sorrowful. He looks into the distance for a long time before he puts his fingers to the keyboard. And when he does, he is ashamed that he has to bring tragedy to his readers.

“We try to write about good news,” he says, “or the answer to the bad. But right now, I don’t know what the answer is.” He shakes his head and straightens out two sheets of paper that lie on his otherwise sparse desk. Somewhere behind us, the gang of technicians is dissipating and we are back to our computers, where we jump onto our Gmail accounts as if it were years, rather than days, since we had last seen them.

Around the cafeteria hatch is the hum of gossiping voices. A man comes around with a silver tray containing more little cups of chai. At his desk, Subash sits, considering.

Barack in Bollywood

2008-10-06T03:51:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama: he may cavort with domestic terrorists, but he is a Bollywood icon, so who cares?

Saturday 4th October 2008

2008-10-05T01:06:00.001-07:00

“Is there anything I can do for you?” asks the manager of the newspaper’s printing press. He has the six of us in his spotless office, and outside we can hear the whirr of machines and the sharp smell of ink. He sits straight and clasps his hands before him. His smile is fixed, and his eyes fill with excitement. We’re not sure what he can do for us. He prints our daily paper already. Karsten, a Californian with a dry sense of humour and dead-pan delivery, looks confused. “Show us the printing press?” he asks. The mind boggles as to what else he might expect us to need. A job? A souvenir? Some lifestyle advice? Evidently, he felt that we required a glass of coke, for these duly appeared on a silver tray.

The press is located an hour’s drive south of Delhi. It’s one of two presses our newspaper owns, and prints the majority of the 3.7 million copies, along with the 773,000 copies of it’s sister paper, an economic journal. They’re delivered everywhere, even to the remotest areas of the country, and all before mid-morning.

Back home, in my household at least, a weekend paper is bought and remains untouched all week. It’s eventually banished to the toilet to curl at the edges. But then, almost everyone is literate: what’s there to prove? Here, newspapers are genuinely guzzled, perhaps because their smaller size makes them that little bit less intimidating. “I bought the New York Times once,” an executive editor at our newspaper had once said. “I could barely carry it up the stairs.” I found the $4 worth it just for the wedding section, but didn’t feel that this was an appropriate comment to make at the time.

But in India, having a newspaper delivered is a sign of literacy. Poignant when you consider that almost a third of the country is illiterate. These things are precious, and a sign of status. The choice between tabloid and broadsheet is a question of age rather than class.

The printing press is a Methuselah, a monster made of rolls of paper the size of several breeze blocks, speeding belts of newsprint crossing each other like a series of enormous white ropes and pulleys, and crisp folded papers which snake to the ceiling and around to the mailroom. Here, they are cornered and packed by swift metal arms, before being shoved in the direction of a team of young men. They swing the bundles on the back of trucks as if they were aid packages. “manual labour is cheaper than machines in India,” says the manager. “Unlike the West.” We try to avoid guessing just how cheap.

We are lead through a yellow perspex door and told to take of our shoes. We’re about to enter the temple of the printing plates. “Are there everlasting gobstoppers in here?” quips Karsten. It certainly seems possible that we might soon be bundled into a boat and sailed down a chocolate river, or at least one made of ink. Two engineers sit in front of glowing screens, examining the PDFs of pages for the day. I think of my days as editor of my university newspaper when, at 4 am, our phone would ring off the hook, nudging us to send the paper. Voices would get more agitated at the press until they broke into a threatened refusal to print. These men seemed too relaxed for all that. Huge printers churned out precise aluminium plates for the cyans, magentas and yellows. It was a masterpiece of fine tuning. I cast my mind back to the student days and felt a pang of guilt.

At 4 am, we drive through the sleeping city until we reach the outer circle of Connaught Place. Amongst the shadows of colonial columns, a glow emerges. Turning the corner, we are met by the bustle of newspaper vendors, each of them scurrying between piles of newspapers, gathering their supplies for the day. It is one of several such ‘depots’ spread over the city. It was extraordinary to think that across this huge country, thousands of vendors were now doing the same. It is like a newspaper carnival, with the same trucks we had seen leaving the printing press backing up to drop off their heavy load. Somehow everything is counted, and each of the 400 vendors, known to the staff, is given their usual share of the booty.

Some set out the multicoloured carpet of their magazines right there, waiting for the early morning commuter rush that will begin in a few hours. Others have spread out blankets, or makeshift mats made out of old newsprint. Sitting cross-legged upon them, they count their papers and place the supplements inside. As the sun rises, they gather up their bundles, loading them onto the back of their bicycles and mototbikes and speed off to their beats around the city.

It’s a simple system, and a manual one. India is still a manual society. Though mammoth machines and precise technology exist to do the most pressing of tasks, there is nothing as cheap here as the human hand. And these cheap hands are the lucky hands. Vendors, packers, those that mop the factory floor: all of these are more economical for their bosses than a robotic arm. In restaurants and cafes too, more staff line the walls than would be needed to wait tables in the busiest of lunch hours. Outside taxi queues and tuk tuk lines, men hang around who seem to have no use at all. Uniformed figures sit at road blocks fanning themselves under umbrellas. People are cheap, so why not have more people? Why have newspaper shops, or vending machines, when a man can sit on a street corner, or throw papers into houses for the price of a 30% markup on the 2 rupee paper they deliver?

It’s surprising that the legacy of manual labour seems to exist in a country that is known for its rapid industrialisation. But this is a side of India that may never disappear. And, in the newspaper distribution business at least, it doesn’t need to.

Friday 3rd October 2008

2008-10-05T00:49:00.000-07:00

It is said that Indian drivers are second in expertise only to Formula One racers. In Delhi, you can believe it. Road markings do not exist save for road signs which implore drivers to use them. But instead, Indians use their car horns for a kind of sonar effect. Sounding a horn doesn’t mean, “what the bloody hell are you doing,” it means, “look at what the bloody hell I am doing.” As a result, Delhi driving is accompanied by a cacophony of beeps, honks and, presumably the odd yelp.

Today had been an induction into the paper, which included several sessions entitled “brand awareness”. This generally involved showing several slides of the newspaper’s changing masthead, a constant reminder that they were the highest circulation newspaper in the world (after The Sun, of course), and a couple of showings of a promotional video voiced by Amitabh Bachchan. It was conducted while we wore mandatory logo polo shirts, and scribbled in our own-logo reporter’s notebooks. They’d laid on spicy vegetarian pizza and burgers made with spicy potato patties to please my American comrades (the house we inhabit is non-smoking, non-drinking, and vegetarian. It also seems impossible to get a cup of coffee).

Eight hours of slideshows later, we decide to venture out to a market called Greater Kailash I to shake some Delhi dust into our hair. One of the highlights of any tuk tuk driver’s day must be spotting a couple of whiteys flagging them down on the road, in order to charge them at least twice what they would anyone else, (which, granted, is probably the difference between 30p and 60p) and then persuading them that it is ‘good price, madam, good price.’ Next comes a pas de deux which involves the driver climbing back into his rickshaw, while the haggler walks away, each sneaking a look behind at the other to see who breaks first. If you’ve misfired, he really will drive off and leave you without another tuk tuk (and goodness knows when the next will come). But if you’ve hit the right spot, and he won’t have anyone else lurking around the corner, he’ll sigh, agree to your price, and then inevitably try to convince you at the end of the journey you owe him an extra 20 rupees.

On this trip, we manage to lose the game to five tuk tuk drivers, before we befriend two Indian women on the road. Their destination is on our way, so after a showdown with two drivers at a time, we fix something like a reasonable price and all bundle in. This is another common sight in Delhi, though not one we’d ever taken part in before: to fit as many bodies into, or onto, one vehicle as possible. In the case of a tuk tuk, this normally involves some kind of limb sticking out the side, which will have to be cramp-inducingly yanked back in to avoid decapitation by the zooming traffic. We are off.

Delhi roads are full. Delhi cars are full. Taxis full, tuktuks full, motorcycles are full. It’s a not uncommon sight to see an entire family on a motorbike: the man can be distinguished as the only figure wearing a helmet, while the woman rides sidesaddle behind, sometimes with a baby, but never holding on, sari blowing a vibrant banner in the wind. If there is an extra child, or even children, they’ll be sitting over the handles. On today’s journey, we pass five on one bike. It’s become a game to see who can find the motor with the most people.

Honking vehicles weave madly in and out of each other, sometimes in and out of people, and always at speed. And yet you would be hard pushed to find a dented piece of bodywork in the city. Instead, it’s possible to sneak a peek into the sides of other rickshaws. Sometimes you will see a bundle of bodies, or a huge bundle of books tied together with string, a huge statue of Ganesh, or sometimes a bunch of boys in their sunglasses and tight denim at the beginning of a night out. More often than not, there will be several pairs of eyes peeping out at the white faces, or children running alongside on the road to catch a rare glimpse or induce a wave. On the rare occasion the traffic might stop, Delhi maps for sale will be thrust in front of your face, or a tray of coconut slices, or copies of celebrity magazines. At other times, a grubby hand will emerge begging for a few rupees.

If you are lucky, you’ll stop for a refuel, and join the line of bright yellow and green tuk tuks waiting for the pump attendant. You’ll be thrown out on the concourse, with all the other tuk tuk passengers, and the atmosphere will be something like a railway platform all of a sudden, the private transport becoming communal for a few moments before you’re all aboard again.

You’ll pass families settling down for the night in roadside tents made of blue raffia sack, their washing hanging on the chickenwire above. A peek inside might reveal a greying plastic jug or two and maybe a mucky child. You’ll cross rivers throwing up a sulpherous smell, flyovers smelling of hot, spicy ash, and over it all the thick dusty air which slows your breathing.

Tonight, as usual, death is close, but never likely. Our driver laughs as a pregnant woman emerges five inches from our speeding windscreen. “I have been doing this a long time,” he grins, as he negotiates her width between his tuk tuk and the next. She looks nonplussed. The traffic being awful, he decides to take the pavement, following a volley of motocycles, and throwing dust over the row of blue tents beside. And then, being informed that he has overshot our house by at least half a kilometre, he performs a u-turn onto the pavement once more. Avoiding an encampment of Pakistani soldiers outside their embassy, he turns head-on into five oncoming lanes of traffic. It is now that my poor, frazzled fellow passengers and I have had enough. “Stop!” Malena yells, throws some rupees at him (goodness knows what they are – his luck is in), and jump out. After all, we are not Michael Caine and this is not the Italian Job. We walk off into the dark, to the sound of his laughter, and, I imagine, head shaking with pity.

Whiteys, I imagine him thinking. When it comes to driving, there’s so much they have to learn. But we are better at brand awareness.

Thursday 2nd October 2008

2008-10-05T00:34:00.000-07:00

“We’ll have to teach you the rules of cricket,” says the Editor-in-Chief, “and then you’ll know what civilisation is really about.” The familiar Indian joke is visited upon the six of us young journalists as we begin our new job at a national newspaper in Delhi. I think these words fail to persuade my five colleagues, all of whom were American and under the age of thirty. We had spent the last 48 hours without any internet access, or promise of an Indian SIM card. Worse: this morning our cook had made us pasta for breakfast.

“Is cricket a bit like baseball?” asks Malena, a wide-eyed Nigerian American possessed of the kind of boundless, foundationless enthusiasm that makes her presence essential at such times. The Editor-in-Chief does not grace her question with an answer. He slowly tips his head towards his assistant and says, “We must teach them.”

The Editor is possessed of the attributes that all editors have, and no doubt are born with – calmless, ruthlessness, and an time-bomb scorn which doesn’t detonate until the bemused reciprocant is firmly outside the door. His bulk (which I would imagine has been acquired over a number of years) produces the sweaty validation of his power, which manifests itself in that other common editorial trait: the ability to believe that newsrooms are non-hierarchical, whilst at the same time planting himself firmly at the top. He delivers all the appropriate lines. “All newsrooms are democracies,” he says, effortlessly paraphrasing Evelyn Waugh, “up to a point.” He grins. His assistants to the left and right do not, but slip off their sandals and examine their toes with their fingers. At the appropriate time, they are primed for laughter. The Chief’s comments are always accompanied by a shaking of the head.

“Why you taking three days for orientation?” he demands of us, as if we had organised our own schedule. Human Resources had planned a very American itinerary that included an insight into the business, a trip to the plant, and a review of the paper’s history, which, conducted in our own branded polo shirts, would in New York be dubbed “brand awareness”. It would also include (spicy vegetarian) hamburgers for lunch and an all-day drip-feed of coffee. Right on schedule, a man enters with a tray dotted with small cups of milky, sweet tea.

“You are wasting your time with this ‘orientation’,” says the Editor, waving his glasses. The assistant editors sit forward nervously. He leans back in his chair. He is clearly not going to make any changes himself. Before him is spread the day’s rival newspapers, completely uncreased and bleach-white. “But what is to be done?” he asks, gesturing toward them.

Human Resources had given us a briefing the day before, in which they explained that they were on a recruitment drive. “Our job is to look for the talent,” the head of department explained, twirling the corner of a ringmaster moustache. The newspaper had been visiting university campuses recruiting reporters. I thought of the fact that, even with a masters degree in journalism, I had been offering my free services in drooling submission to one British national newspaper for two years without whisper of a contract. Like my American colleagues, I had come to India for a job because there were none at home. And these people knew it. They had beaten us at cricket for years. Now they were bowling effortlessly at new wickets.

“We do not need to teach her the rules of cricket,” laughs one of the assistants, pointing my way, “she is British.” I had just admitted to one of my colleagues in the lift that I thought cricket was an elitist sport I’d deliberately evaded understanding. Now, on demand I look up, smile, and titter gently. It was either join the friendly head-shaking or become its victim. “Did you know,” said the other assitant editor, contributing his rupees’ worth, “that the Americans actually played cricket before the Indians did?” The others nod knowingly. “The Australians and the Americans, they all played before we became the best.”

India’s world cricket game is increasingly being played in her favour. We sat in the office that day, not as peace corps visitors offering benevolent biceps to dig a well but as potential immigrants looking for jobs that were too scarce back home. The tables had most certainly turned.

Yesterday, the very same newspaper published a piece on its comment pages that followed the life of one Californian woman. She was, it reported, part of a growing number of American former homeowners who were forced to live in their cars. Her house had been repossessed; now she was left to drive around all day on overpriced tanks of gas until the parking lots opened, at which time she would drive in, pet her dog on the head, and reach into the glove box for the pot of yogurt that constituted her evening meal. She kept her gym membership open because it was the only place she could go for a shower.

The Editor leans back on his chair and surveys his young, non-Indian interns. Today is Eid ul-Fitr, the last day of Ramadan. All over the city, people are celebrating in the streets, making their way to feasts and dancing. It also happens to be the public holiday marking Gandhi’s birthday, and there are lavish displays of government charity, including education programmes, public ceremonies, and even free health checks for citizens. The tortoise is catching up with the hare.

“We’ll organise a match,” said the Editor, standing to suggest that his short time was now at the most limited of premiums. When all is said and done, it’s all cricket.

Wednesday 1st October 2008

2008-10-05T00:14:00.000-07:00

The tuktuk tips us out sideways on to the street like a wheelbarrow. Sucked into the current of people streaming through the labyrinthine corridors of Chandni Chowk market, we have no choice but to be borne along with them.

Everywhere is the sound of taxi horns, babies crying, dosas sizzling, and people peddling belts, shavers, pens, saris, babies’ clothes, sandals, beads, bindis. The air smells of hot fat and spice and urine and frankincense: as soon as one smell leaves our nostrils another rises to take its place. The tiny streets are covered in a grey-blue hue. Yellow light bounces out of the shops from sari glitter, the flash of chapatti pans, and tinsel. We turn our heads quickly enough to catch a glance at five women sitting on the floor of a shop, huge bright taffetas spread below them, choosing a bridal trousseau. Another glance at dogs ailing in the gutters (“In India, they’re either pregnant, or they’re dying,” quips my friend Neilesh). We jump out the way just in time to avoid being pulled under the wheels of a rickshaw, only a few inches narrower than the lane it is trying to navigate, ploughing its cargo of three young women through the mucky splendour of the streets. Everything is profane, and everything is sacred.

And yet nothing is ominous: Indian markets are not like African bazaars, with their dried up heads and grimacing skulls. Neither are they full of the hanging slimy corpses of poultry and small mammals, or the ground up tusks of exotic creatures like those in China. Everything here glitters, shines, sparkles; smells of the past and of hopes pressed to the ears of the gods.

Chandni Chowk is a slum, filled with treasures in tiny ramshackle niches. There are businesses that have been here for decades, carving their quiet reputation as the bookseller who sells this item best, or the tailor who is superior for that. A shopper’s method in the carnage is known only to them. The entire bazaar has the sensibility of a department store – every five minutes of our walk the theme of the shops seamlessly changes; from shoes to saris to ribbons to paper to calendars to electronics. And all dotted with dosas and lime soda stands, like shop cafes less strategically placed. Of course there are no arrows to departments, and heaven help you if you stop for a moment to orientate yourself. There are people of all kinds: mothers, babies. Tall men, tiny men, old men, boys. Each have their own errand and I feel guilt at the indulgence of simply watching. Here is human life, everyone armed with their own purpose as they elbow their way through the throng.

Last Saturday, in one such market in Delhi, two black-clad motorcycle riders, as much part of the mêlée as any other, dropped a square package in the road. A young boy, one of the many sitting among the buckets and boxes, ran to pick it up and return it. It exploded in his face, killing him instantly, and injuring dozens of passers by. Such bombs have been planted around markets and open spaces in India over the last five months, with increasing intensity. Most have been claimed by Islamic Mujaheleen, who want the rights of Muslims to be asserted fairly in Congress. And they have succeeded in terrifying Indians as they go about their way of life. They have only highlighted the fact that in a country known for its gordion knot of bureaucracy, there is one of the lowest police to civilian ratios in the world. India is a country that thrived on chaos and chance happenings, that amazed Western visitors with its ability to run adequately without digital precision, safety first, and a mechanised mindset. Now its beautiful spontaneity is being threatened by a new brand of chaos. It cannot be discovered, contained, or understood. It is not ‘Indian Mind’ and no one understands how to make it stop. It leaves the Congress Party government with two choices: either turn into a surveillance state, or let another party do it instead.

From the mayhem of the street, the new Delhi Metro springs up, as if to guide us with its steely, sterilised hand to the safety of an underground passage. The metro system here is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. Its enormous shiny caverns run trains that are on time, never overcrowded, cheap (10p or so a ride) and, best of all, narrated by a plummy Brit who must have modelled her received pronunciation on the Queen’s Speech. It’s a symbol of India’s emergence as a first-world democracy, and is due to be finished in time for the city’s hosting of 2010 Commonweath Games. The tiny plastic token, which scans each passenger through the gates on the way in, and slots them to their exit, is the ultimate ticketless ticket, and the metro’s three lines link New Delhi Railway Station and the main bus station with the rest of the city.

But there is another feature to the Delhi Metro that indicates the direction in which India is headed. Before even reaching the gates, passengers walk through airport-style security: metal detectors, and x-rays for bags. If a commuter is unfortnate enough to bleep on their way through the arch (and it’s telling that many of Delhi’s commuters do not carry enough on their person to be detected), they will be whisked behind a screen and frisked. What happens in the market - chaotic, mad, India – cannot be surveilled, but that is old India. Here in subterrania, the enclosed is carefully scrutinised.

Or will be, one day. The female officer who was allotted to me gestured behind a screen emblazoned with an advertisement for Delhi’s miaow FM. Cocking her head sideways, and giggling like the new shopgirl on bra-fitting day, she touched me barely close enough to detect a kalashnikov rammed up my tunic. Protocol, it seems, is just that.

Tuesday 30th September 2008

2008-10-04T00:21:00.001-07:00

“Women don’t read the news,” says Mansoor, over Americanos in India’s only outlet of Costa Coffee. The walls are covered with Italian odes to the coffee bean, as beneath them the only white faces indulge in blueberry sponge cakes masquerading as muffins. “Women only like romance. They just read the fiction. They watch the movies.” He pauses, and reaches in his Diesel jeans for his chortling Nokia, “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

Mansoor and I had met in McDonald’s thirty minutes earlier. Always shunning the Golden Arches of Capitalism in London, they had this morning saved me from the men haggling for my attention in Connaught Place. He was the forth Indian man to ask me for a cup of coffee in less than fifteen minutes, but this time I felt it was better to be with someone I half-trusted if only to buy some relative peace and quiet. He was busy assuring me that he had “only Western friends.” He seemed disappointed that my reaction wasn’t more enthusiastic.

“I read the news all the time. Two, three newspapers a day. And the only TV I watch is news.” He nods enthusiastically. “You have to watch what is real, you know?” I politely agree, pondering whether he would be giving the same spiel to a female Indian journalist, or indeed, to any male. We part on the promise that I might come to a Bollywood movie with him next weekend, and that I will take his mobile number. In my time in India I am making a collection of these. I wish bleached-blonde hair worked this well in Britain.

India is the only country in the world where journalism is growing – and it’s growing at a prolific rate. Waiting for a friend to finish a project in the offices of the Hindustan Times this evening, I perused just a tiny fraction of it’s rivals: the Hindu, the Times of India, The Mail Today (which, disconcertingly is the Indian arm of the Daily Mail. Seeing its unmistakeable typeface sent a small shudder down my spine). The Times of India has just overtaken The Sun (!) as having the largest circulation of any English language newspaper in the world (3.8 million), and a readership of 14 million. Indian Vogue has just celebrated its first birthday. India has it’s own People magazine, the Times Group (which owns the Times of India, among others) has just bought Hello! and Grazia, and young women guzzle the European edition much gusto. While in the West, the rabbit loses impetus, the Indian tortoise eases merrily on by. And as Indian women get their fix of fame and fashion, Mansoor gets his antidote to romance.

A few streets away, and a few coffee offers later, I meet Raj, a boy of about fifteen. He’s dressed in a checked shirt and jeans, and, head cocked nonchalantly to the side, asks me if I’m shopping.

Earlier, I’d had an unfortunate incident with an overzealous tuktuk owner and a cartel of emporium workers. The owner, persuading me that the shop I was standing outside was ‘too’spensive’, took me to a ‘good quality, fix-price emporium’ for 10 rupees. Here, I was fawned upon and plied with cups of tea by carpet sellers and women peddling £300 pashminas. I politely refused. When their smiles turned to scowls, I persuaded them that I would buy a 400 rupee (£5) scarf – the cheapest in the shop – but only so that the gods would bless them (and their first customer). After this, I vowed never again to follow the advice of someone on the street who told me it was ‘too’spensive’.

Except Raj, because he doesn’t appear to be working on commission; because he says, dubiously, that he is trying to practise his English; and because he had simply one of the brightest grins I had ever seen. He’d take me home, he said, and he’d point out some shops with ‘good price’ along the way. Walking me through the streets of New Delhi, he tells me that he is on his school holidays, but that he is learning English and that he wants to get a job. What job? “In an office.”

Raj has many ideas about what I should do in life. But mainly, he says, I have to have what he called ‘Indian Mind’. “You must get map so you have Indian Mind,” he says, prancing between lanes of deranged traffic. “You must put away guide book. This is not Indian Mind. People will give you the Five Fingered Direction,” he laughs, splaying his left hand in front of him. “You ask for direction here, they will point anywhere with any finger. Doesn’t matter. When you know this you will have Indian Mind.” (I had already experienced the ‘Five Fingered Direction’ when I asked the guard at our door where India Gate was. Though vaguely visible through some trees to my right, he smiled, nodded and pointed at the sky).

Raj had made me consider how far I was from Indian Mind, map or no map. There was so much that confuses me about this country, and so much that they misunderstand about me in return. Try explaining to the man selling me a turquoise-encrusted sitar that I am technically jobless, saddled with a student loan, and only have a fixed amount of hold luggage on my return flight. And yet I had spent a sweaty, dusty morning resenting these merchants and their long teeth.

As we near home (or so I think), Raj turns and asked me if I would buy him an English textbook. He was finishing school this year, he says, and needs to carry on learning if he wants to get a job. I feel hurt. Somehow I thought that Raj wasn’t one of these men in RayBans and Diesel denims, seeking the kudos of a white girl’s company for coffee. I thought he wasn’t a member of a tuktuk-merchant conspiracy, or a behind-the-counter scowler. I offer to pay him part of it, but he shakes his head: he doesn’t want my money. In fact, he seems just as hurt that I would want to pay him. And it was there I stop, and think, I don’t understand Indian Mind, but I’m going to see if it works. And, as he pulls me towards an old bearded bookseller, I feel strangely benevolent bequeathing Raj with a Hindi-English dictionary (and fairly clever that I’d bartered for it). I reflect on my sense of British propriety and instinctive distaste at the charity-ask. I think, why can’t we trade the things we have: me my 700 rupees (£9) for a textbook, and he, his knowledge of the Indian Mind and the Delhi Map? I feel like there was something I had learned from Raj, something counterintuitive and yet, perhaps, ever so right. This, maybe, was Indian Mind.

And with that, Raj calls me a tuktuk, since, it appeared, he actually has no idea how far we are from my home. He also explains that his name was really Ricky, writes down his cell phone number, and runs off, kicking dust into the air as he goes.

Monday 29th September 2008

2008-10-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

Heathrow airport is perpetually grey. Greyness seeps from the pores of check-in desk stewards, from the temporary boards which unapologetically hide eternal ‘refurbishments’; from the sky in the outside terminal under which plumes of cigarette smoke arise from those desperately trying to inhale their last tar and nicotine before the long haul. Weary travellers traipse around the Duty Free, snuffling for substances to giggle at during their holidays, or to lighten the heavy transition home.

Air India flight AI0112 is almost deserted. Each of us could probably have an entire aisle of seats to ourselves. But sari-ed, elegant women glide trolleys through the plane as if it was their daily intention to serve only the select few. A few rows over, two thirty-something Indian men conceal a bottle of Johnny Walkers from the eagle eye of the silver haired, thick-waisted air stewardess. They giggle, and watch Bollywood. One turns a stubbled face to me, the blonde young white girl, as I pass on sporadic trips to the toilet and each time asks how I am today, with a grin. Half way through the flight he stands, leans on one of the seats between us and simply stares at me for a full ten minutes.

Being able to stretch out over several seats, with the aid of several blankets, makes the eight-hour flight pass much more quickly. A modern Bollywood – Shilpa Shetty on a journey from potential adultery to accepting the importance of marriage, accompanied by Hindi rock-ballads.

And then, before we know it, dark sky has spread itself out for the night, and on each side of the plane, below us, the bright halogen line that marks the border between India and Pakistan appears. So strange to think that the source of fifty years of bloodshed, inhumanity, and the largest single migration in history should shine so much from the earth.

And twenty minutes later, Delhi is below us, the clusters of settlements twinkling so clearly through the atmosphere. It’s as if the milky way were reflected on the land. The plane descends gingerly through black night-clouds. We hit the tarmac of Indira Gandhi International Airport just before midnight.

And here is the plane’s load disembarking: a few bemused white faces dotted amongst the Indians, bustling in saffron or rainbowed saris, or Sikh turbans of cornflower blue. Those returning home carry Primark bags, probably back to their original destinations, I think to myself wistfully. Their own social inferiors most likely made them less than a train ride away from here.

The heat hits us immediately outside, and the thickness of the air. It smells like the inside of a clay oven – all hot spices and heated concrete. There’s a driver to meet me, his sign bearing my name which is just about visible among the dozens of others that jostle for space. He takes me to a car, marked ‘press’. I grin, if only because in London that would be incentive enough for someone to cause you an accident.

Cars which are parked too close aren’t a problem in the car park: the answer is to push them out of the way; they all seem to leave the handbrake off for such an eventuality. And then we are zooming down the highway, weaving in and out of tuk-tuks covered with tinsel, and yellow and black cabs, which are all supposed to be less than 20 years on the road, but instead look like a lurid, rusty version of something that might have been chugging through Whitehall in the 1950s. At a traffic light, we pull up next to a man on a motorbike, his sari-ed wife riding sidesaddle and his young son on the handlebars. He is wearing the only helmet.

We speed past the patchwork of enormous compounds that house the international embassies, the politicians, the prime minister. Only the tops of the trees are seen above the barbed wire. And then to our guest house, which is a kilometer from the great India Gate, where I attempt to speak to the driver and then the houseboy, both of whom, I realise, know the English words to speak, but not to understand.

The boy quietly shows me my bed in the enormous crumbling building that will be home for three months. Every white wall is crumbling, and lizards shoot across them. It’s beautiful, even in the dark; the huge open spaces, lawns and trees that bow over them. The air smells of warm honeysuckle and the gentle chirruping of unknown insects seeps up the balcony and through the shutters. The boy smiles as he opens doors: ‘washroom,’ ‘kitchen’. He points to the bed and stifles a laugh, ‘single or double’? I choose the single and realise that the others, when they arrive, won’t be happy at the prospect of sharing for three months.

And then he is gone, but not without leaving water and a jug beside my bed on a silver tray. And I feel awkward about being served, but I also don’t want to make him nervous. So I accept gracefully, and realise I will keep having to accept gracefully for a while. A thank you is all I can say; there’s no means with which to communicate anything else. And then, after a moment on the balcony, smoking a cigarette as the smoke moves slowly in the thick, hot air, the ceiling fan murmurs a soft, droning lullaby, and I fall into bed.