Friday, October 31st 2008

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

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

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



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

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

Wednesday 29th October 2008

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

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



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



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



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

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



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

Tuesday 28th October 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Sunday 26th October 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 25th October 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 23rd October 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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