Monday 8th December 2008

"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

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

Thursday 4th December 2008

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

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

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

"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

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