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...

Saturday 29th November 2008

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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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

“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.