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.

Sunday 16 November 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 15th November 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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