Wednesday 5th November 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday 4th November 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adult Video

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

Sunday 2nd November 2008

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



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

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

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



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



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

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

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