Yet another place I recently toured has been visited by violence and chaos. Of course the attacks were in Mumbai, not Delhi this time. Still, the bombings in Delhi and elsewhere seemed to suggest a growing violent Islamist movement in India. I was told, repeatedly, by the news media in India that the police and security forces there have just about zero penetration into these groups. It seems they have just about no Arabic speakers in the national police force. Sound familiar? A very long time ago Hsun-Tzu warned in his The Art of War that it was best to always "know thy enemy." Strange how fear and xenophobia make this such hard advice to follow.
Indian Forces Battle Pockets of Militants
By KEITH BRADSHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
As the Mumbai crisis neared its third day, two Americans were confirmed dead and bodies were found in a Jewish center.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Gwalior and Orcha
9-31-2008 Orcha, India
In almost every country I visit, including my own, I relax as I pull away from a large city. It's ironic that I live in such a dense urban area as Glendale. I often think I'd be happier in the countryside, despite the lack of cultural options. The same was true in India. Smaller cities like Gwalior and small towns such as Orcha are easier to digest, though foreign tourists definitely draw more attention in these places.
In Gwalior we visited an ancient hilltop fort, sometimes referred to as the Gibraltar of India. On the road up to the fort there are ancient Jain carvings, suggesting that Gwalior was one of the first centers of Jain worship. The are remarkably similar to Buddhist scultures of the same time period and later eras. Later, we saw a first-class hotel in the former home of the last Maharaja of Gwalior during the British Raj period. All were fascinating. Gwalior occupies a strategic location in the low hills in northern India and has been taken by many empires. The fort its
elf sits on a rock outcropping well above the city and drainages below and is so old that it was built by Hindus but later occupied and expanded by Muslim invaders, including Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal and Agra's Red Fort. The great Mughal emperor Babur reportedly thought of Gwalior Fort as the jewel of all Hindu forts. The audacity of the massive fort and the expansiveness of it's grand stone rooms and underground halls call to mind the palaces depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn't realize that such a place really existed, with its multiple levels of underground chambers, secret passages, stone carvings, complex water channels, and seemingly miles of solid stone fortifications. Remnants of colorful paintings and decorative detail are peeling away. The stonework can only be described as monumental. Architectural references are a mix of Hindu elephants, Islamic arches, and Greco-Roman insipired columns. The subterranean women's room, a place of safe-keeping for the queen and harem during battles, used stone shafts carved to the surface and then focused by diamonds for illumination. This room was turned into a very effective dungeoun by the Mughal invaders.
On the train from Jhansi to Bhopal I had a nice talk with a man from Bhopal. He works for a subsidiary of Tata, India's dominant automobile manufacturer. His branch does telecom infrastructure. Like many middle class and wealthy Indians, he is well-educated, with degrees in engineering and an MBA. His wife is a math teacher in the Indian equivalent of high school and together they have a five-year old son. Obviously proud of his country, he suggested all the places our tour guide should take us that we are not scheduled to see. Having no power to change the itinerary of my tour, I forgot all of his suggestions straight away. Still it was very nice to meet him and chat about his country. Bhopal was described as booming economically and "very developed" by our guide. While we only spent a night there, it didn't look developed by Western standards. This is in stark contrast to the economic expansion I saw first hand in China in 2003. Neither Delhi nor Bhopal appeared to have a single office tower or skyscraper, whereas China has so many and is building so many more than I predict a massive economic retreat, even a collapse, in China when they realize they've overbuilt. Nothing like that in India. No rooftop, rotating restaurants here.
Out the bus window today I saw small girls in traditional saris doing homework on wet ground outside of mud huts as a fiery sun set the puddles to glimmering. I saw men with long, wiry physiques and fantastically thick black hair walking and sitting everywhere. All were shiny clean in their western-style dress shirts and carefully combed hair. They must shave every day.
Every bus, every truck honks as they pass on the right. The noise is insane. The back end of trucks is often painted with "Honk Horn Please." There's seemingly no need to ask.
In almost every country I visit, including my own, I relax as I pull away from a large city. It's ironic that I live in such a dense urban area as Glendale. I often think I'd be happier in the countryside, despite the lack of cultural options. The same was true in India. Smaller cities like Gwalior and small towns such as Orcha are easier to digest, though foreign tourists definitely draw more attention in these places.
In Gwalior we visited an ancient hilltop fort, sometimes referred to as the Gibraltar of India. On the road up to the fort there are ancient Jain carvings, suggesting that Gwalior was one of the first centers of Jain worship. The are remarkably similar to Buddhist scultures of the same time period and later eras. Later, we saw a first-class hotel in the former home of the last Maharaja of Gwalior during the British Raj period. All were fascinating. Gwalior occupies a strategic location in the low hills in northern India and has been taken by many empires. The fort its
elf sits on a rock outcropping well above the city and drainages below and is so old that it was built by Hindus but later occupied and expanded by Muslim invaders, including Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal and Agra's Red Fort. The great Mughal emperor Babur reportedly thought of Gwalior Fort as the jewel of all Hindu forts. The audacity of the massive fort and the expansiveness of it's grand stone rooms and underground halls call to mind the palaces depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn't realize that such a place really existed, with its multiple levels of underground chambers, secret passages, stone carvings, complex water channels, and seemingly miles of solid stone fortifications. Remnants of colorful paintings and decorative detail are peeling away. The stonework can only be described as monumental. Architectural references are a mix of Hindu elephants, Islamic arches, and Greco-Roman insipired columns. The subterranean women's room, a place of safe-keeping for the queen and harem during battles, used stone shafts carved to the surface and then focused by diamonds for illumination. This room was turned into a very effective dungeoun by the Mughal invaders.On the train from Jhansi to Bhopal I had a nice talk with a man from Bhopal. He works for a subsidiary of Tata, India's dominant automobile manufacturer. His branch does telecom infrastructure. Like many middle class and wealthy Indians, he is well-educated, with degrees in engineering and an MBA. His wife is a math teacher in the Indian equivalent of high school and together they have a five-year old son. Obviously proud of his country, he suggested all the places our tour guide should take us that we are not scheduled to see. Having no power to change the itinerary of my tour, I forgot all of his suggestions straight away. Still it was very nice to meet him and chat about his country. Bhopal was described as booming economically and "very developed" by our guide. While we only spent a night there, it didn't look developed by Western standards. This is in stark contrast to the economic expansion I saw first hand in China in 2003. Neither Delhi nor Bhopal appeared to have a single office tower or skyscraper, whereas China has so many and is building so many more than I predict a massive economic retreat, even a collapse, in China when they realize they've overbuilt. Nothing like that in India. No rooftop, rotating restaurants here.
Out the bus window today I saw small girls in traditional saris doing homework on wet ground outside of mud huts as a fiery sun set the puddles to glimmering. I saw men with long, wiry physiques and fantastically thick black hair walking and sitting everywhere. All were shiny clean in their western-style dress shirts and carefully combed hair. They must shave every day.
Every bus, every truck honks as they pass on the right. The noise is insane. The back end of trucks is often painted with "Honk Horn Please." There's seemingly no need to ask.
In Orcha yesterday we saw the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh arrive at the temple for a visit. His strutting entrance with his entourage was grand in a way that U.S. politicians can only envy since they are carefully locked in automobiles whenever they arrive anywhere. See if you can find any women in this video.
This is typical of many Indian street scenes and public places. I have not seen a single woman waiting tables, driving a car, or staffing a shop. Women are hard to find unless you are wandering near homes. Before visiting India I had no idea how limited the role of women is in the average household. I knew that India had elected women such as Indira Gandhi to the highest political offices so I assumed a kind of elightened attitude about feminism. This is a terrible mistake. It can be dangerous to be a daughter-in-law in India. According to news reports and the testimony of our female Indian tour guide, dowry-related killings continue to be reported in the thousands each year. Many other mother-in-laws simply torment and harrass their daughters-in-law. Of course most women are not so badly abused (or abused at all) but dowries are still common, despite being technically illegal, and the role of women is incredibly limited in public. Our guide, for example, can only hope that the man her father and mother choose for her will let her continue to work.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Agra, the Taj Mahal, and Sikh Temple
9-30-2008 Train from Jhansi to Vidisha/Sanchi 
The Taj Mahal was even more impressive than I expected, though the beggars, intense poverty, and polluted streams surrounding it were discouraging. I expect there has always been a shocking contrast between the opulence of the massive white marble structure and the struggling masses outside it's gates. Emperor Shah Jahan built the structure to honor his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after she died bearing their fourt
eenth child. It took 17 years to complete the main mausoleum and a full 22 years to complete the entire complex. 20,000 laborers worked continuously and 1,000 elephants ferried the translucent white marble from a distance of over 300 kilometers. Shah Jahan was a great lover of architecture and is also responsible for many other buildings, including the largest mosque in India, the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) of Delhi. My visit there was my first entrance into a mosque and I found it a calming respite from the urban chaos of Delhi. It had the air of a 
park with families strolling about the grounds and men sleeping in the shade of the bordering archways.
The Mughal Empire was ruthless in its aggressiveness against outsiders and its own. In order to gain power, Shah Jahan rebelled against his father and brothers. Princely competition among Mughal sons determined who gained the throne, thus murderous intrigue abounded. Shah Jahan's own son, Aurangzeb, deposed him when he fell ill. Aurangzeb then killed his own brother and placed his father under house arrest in the Agra Fort. For his last eight years Shah Jahan could only gaze at the Taj Mahal through the bars of his royal prison at the Taj Mahal. On the other hand he was allowed to keep his entire massive harem with him until the very end so it can't have been too rough for him over there.
While in Delhi, we also visited the Sikh temple in Delhi. It is at the location where the ninth Sikh guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was martyred for not converting to Islam. Washing my feet with the other adherents before entering made it clear we were entering a privileged place. It was fascinating and strange to wander through the turbaned-adherents as they prayed and knelt in front of a golden shrine. Men and women prayed together while a man sang religious songs and others drummed. We drew very little attention as we wandered among them. T
ry to imagine a group of, say, Indian tourists wandering about taking photographs during a Christian church service and you'll get a sense of how it felt. No matter. Our guide assured us that no one would mind. This seems to be another example of very different ideas about privacy and personal space. Even sacred space is largely public in India, despite the ongoing religious tensions throughout India. The bombings make the news, of course, but the daily accommodations of millions of diverse peoples living side-by-side are at least as noteworthy. In fact, in the next building, the congregation runs a continuously operati
ng kitchen that feeds anyone who comes asking for a meal. The labor is done by believers and anyone can partake at any time in a large open room where people sit on the floor in long lines consuming food. A beautiful gesture that exceeds the Christian soup kitchens of which I'm more familiar.
The Taj Mahal was even more impressive than I expected, though the beggars, intense poverty, and polluted streams surrounding it were discouraging. I expect there has always been a shocking contrast between the opulence of the massive white marble structure and the struggling masses outside it's gates. Emperor Shah Jahan built the structure to honor his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after she died bearing their fourt
eenth child. It took 17 years to complete the main mausoleum and a full 22 years to complete the entire complex. 20,000 laborers worked continuously and 1,000 elephants ferried the translucent white marble from a distance of over 300 kilometers. Shah Jahan was a great lover of architecture and is also responsible for many other buildings, including the largest mosque in India, the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque) of Delhi. My visit there was my first entrance into a mosque and I found it a calming respite from the urban chaos of Delhi. It had the air of a 
park with families strolling about the grounds and men sleeping in the shade of the bordering archways.The Mughal Empire was ruthless in its aggressiveness against outsiders and its own. In order to gain power, Shah Jahan rebelled against his father and brothers. Princely competition among Mughal sons determined who gained the throne, thus murderous intrigue abounded. Shah Jahan's own son, Aurangzeb, deposed him when he fell ill. Aurangzeb then killed his own brother and placed his father under house arrest in the Agra Fort. For his last eight years Shah Jahan could only gaze at the Taj Mahal through the bars of his royal prison at the Taj Mahal. On the other hand he was allowed to keep his entire massive harem with him until the very end so it can't have been too rough for him over there.
While in Delhi, we also visited the Sikh temple in Delhi. It is at the location where the ninth Sikh guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was martyred for not converting to Islam. Washing my feet with the other adherents before entering made it clear we were entering a privileged place. It was fascinating and strange to wander through the turbaned-adherents as they prayed and knelt in front of a golden shrine. Men and women prayed together while a man sang religious songs and others drummed. We drew very little attention as we wandered among them. T
ry to imagine a group of, say, Indian tourists wandering about taking photographs during a Christian church service and you'll get a sense of how it felt. No matter. Our guide assured us that no one would mind. This seems to be another example of very different ideas about privacy and personal space. Even sacred space is largely public in India, despite the ongoing religious tensions throughout India. The bombings make the news, of course, but the daily accommodations of millions of diverse peoples living side-by-side are at least as noteworthy. In fact, in the next building, the congregation runs a continuously operati
ng kitchen that feeds anyone who comes asking for a meal. The labor is done by believers and anyone can partake at any time in a large open room where people sit on the floor in long lines consuming food. A beautiful gesture that exceeds the Christian soup kitchens of which I'm more familiar.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Delhi to Agra by Train
9-29-2008 Agra, India 
Fighting your way hurriedly through the cacophony and chaos at Delhi's central train station, the sheer mass of humanity astounds. Everyone stares at everyone else. The diversity is impressive. Indians stare at the tourists, at other Indians. Hindus ogle wealthy Sikhs. Sikh stares at Muslim, Muslim at Jain, Jain at Buddhist. Peasants gaze openly at businessmen. Soldiers watch porters c
arry huge wooden boxes of goods through the crowd. Running through the crowd, looking for the sleeper cars near the front of the train takes much more time than expected. The trains are so very long. To get to the more expensive executive class sleeper cars you have to walk pass seemingly hundreds of unreserved, open-windowed, non-air-conditioned cars as hundreds and hundreds of people run in every direction looking for their place. It's well over 90 degrees. Sweat drenches your shirt, your back, your trousers. You're used to it by now and yet it's still uncomfortable. It would help if you slowed down, but you don't want the train to leave without you. You definitely don't want to be separated from the group. So you jog on like everyone else.
The stink of excrement and urine permeates the thick, smoky air of the platform since all train toilets empty directly on the tracks. Rolling away from Delhi the buildings begin to thin and fields start to appear. Shanty towns of complex and varied construction line the tracks for miles. The first is a collection of tent homes made largely of plastic sheeting. The next area is mostly mud brick and straw. Another is a mixture of concrete, mud, and plastic. In most of these neighborhoods there is a small depression, full of water from the waning summer monsoon. People and cows rest and bathe, often together, in these sinks. Looking out the train window is peering right into the most intimate details of the lives of some of the world's poorest people. Here a shining man, slick with water, hair jet blag and glistening, is walking back towards his tent with nothing but a small towel around is tiny waist. Next I see a young boy sleeping in the shade of black plastic on a wooden cot, woven with cloth. Over there infants chase each other in the mud as a newborn cries on its back in the tropical red dirt. Everywhere there are men and children shitting by the tracks. A young man rises from a squat and gingerly negotiates his way, barefoot, back to the shanty. Where are the women? They must have somewhere else to
go. The men and children, though, are brazen, thoughtless about it. Eventually rice fields and small farm villages appear and I visibly, audibly relax, "uhhhh." The dwellings and agricultural storage sheds are all made of some kind of reedy plant. These look so much less offensive to my eye. The organic wholeness of them makes some kind of innate sense to me. There's no plastic visible no and the garbage on the ground thins. In places there is no visible garbage at all, a first for me on this visit where garbage has been strewn underfoot at every turn.
My train ticket placed me in a seat apart from the other tourists. Many of the others were frustrated by this. They seemed to want to cling together. I saw it as an opportunity to finally talk to some Indians. A fascinating conversation developed with a middle-aged man, his daughter, and another young, college-bound man who later joined our car. This last hopes to be accepted to study computer networking at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He was thrilled to find I'd visited and that I am a college professor. "Is it a good school? A good place to study? Is it reputable?" he asked. He was even more excited when I told him about U.S. News and World Report's rankings of colleges and graduate schools. He immediately typed the details into his cell phone. The man and his daughter wanted to know all about me. Where was I from? Did I have children? Which parts of India was I going to see? They were full of advice about where to go and what to see. The father in particular wanted to know about my job and the teaching profession. Throughout our conversation he constantly nodded his head from side to side and grinned to show his badly eroded teeth. This was the first time I experienced this quintessentially India custom. Even though I'd read about it, it took me a moment to realize that he was indicating his agreement with me, his pleasure with the conversation.
In Agra, a young boy, maybe six years old and holding a small baby approaches the windows of my air-conditioned tourist bus. He's wearing very dirty clothes, rags really, unlike most Indians who tend to be cleanly and colorfully dressed. His eyes meet mine through the window as I sit in the back of the bus reading. He pleads with me for help, first with his eyes, then with gestures that indicate his baby sister needs food. His look is achingly young and beautiful. His desperation seems complete. His eyes tell me that if I don't give him money, he will surely starve - his sister too. Amazingly, I draw the curtain so that he will no longer see me and I, of course, will no longer have to see him. Then, I cry a bit, alone. Strangely, I do not get off the bus and help him as I surely would at home.
Never before has a place so rattled my nerves and attacked my conscience. Scenes like the one described above are a daily, even hourly, occurrence for the wealthy tourist in public in northern India. It is brutal and dehumanizing for everyone involved. At times I found myself huddling in my hotel room, hiding from the world outside. Why did I not give him a few rupees? To do so would have meant drawing many more beggars to the bus and, yet, so what? This excuse is given so often but it makes little sense. All of us had flown halfway around the world at great expense simply to act as voyeurs of a sort. We had no work to go to, nothing else to do. What is the harm in attracting a small crowd of beggars? The answer I think has to do with fear. It’s necessary to keep them at bay to maintain denial, to make sure there essential humanity doesn’t become apparent.
Here in Agra these needy people are particularly numerous and aggressive. Every manner of cripple, beggar, and street urchin crowd these streets. Few of my fellow tourists ever give. From time to time I do. When a mother holds a clearly malnourished child up to the taxi window and tapped, I wait until the taxi is ready to pull away and then quickly hand her 50 rupees. This amount, about a dollar, is enough for them both to eat well. Her response is to continue to tap on the window with no apparent lessening of her plaintive, baleful stare. Apparently I need to give more.
My fellow travelers are a bit disgusted with me. “I’m going to ruin it for everyone,” said one. It would be better to send money to an aid organization once we returned home than to give anything to a person directly. You’re only raising their expectations. I’m sure that’s true and certainly it would be good to give to aid groups, but how will that help this hungry, bag-of-bones child that stands in front of me now? Moreover, how many of these tourists will actually send that money later, once they are comfortably ensconced in the luxuries and distance of home?
Thus, I find myself giving whenever my resolve, my will, is sufficiently weakened by the misery in front of me. There is no other logic to it. Some of the children begging were well-dressed. These I avoid, but when two dirty children approach in Orcha and demand food by pointing to their mouths, shortly after watching me haggle over the price of two bags of snacks, I simply smile at them and hand over my snacks. Suddenly I realize I’m not all that hungry after all. They pose for a photograph. "Very nice," they say in English. Still, they look weary, almost old, and they can’t really manage much of a smile.
This is clearly the most challenging place I've ever travled. Everyday will feel like work.
Fighting your way hurriedly through the cacophony and chaos at Delhi's central train station, the sheer mass of humanity astounds. Everyone stares at everyone else. The diversity is impressive. Indians stare at the tourists, at other Indians. Hindus ogle wealthy Sikhs. Sikh stares at Muslim, Muslim at Jain, Jain at Buddhist. Peasants gaze openly at businessmen. Soldiers watch porters c
arry huge wooden boxes of goods through the crowd. Running through the crowd, looking for the sleeper cars near the front of the train takes much more time than expected. The trains are so very long. To get to the more expensive executive class sleeper cars you have to walk pass seemingly hundreds of unreserved, open-windowed, non-air-conditioned cars as hundreds and hundreds of people run in every direction looking for their place. It's well over 90 degrees. Sweat drenches your shirt, your back, your trousers. You're used to it by now and yet it's still uncomfortable. It would help if you slowed down, but you don't want the train to leave without you. You definitely don't want to be separated from the group. So you jog on like everyone else.
The stink of excrement and urine permeates the thick, smoky air of the platform since all train toilets empty directly on the tracks. Rolling away from Delhi the buildings begin to thin and fields start to appear. Shanty towns of complex and varied construction line the tracks for miles. The first is a collection of tent homes made largely of plastic sheeting. The next area is mostly mud brick and straw. Another is a mixture of concrete, mud, and plastic. In most of these neighborhoods there is a small depression, full of water from the waning summer monsoon. People and cows rest and bathe, often together, in these sinks. Looking out the train window is peering right into the most intimate details of the lives of some of the world's poorest people. Here a shining man, slick with water, hair jet blag and glistening, is walking back towards his tent with nothing but a small towel around is tiny waist. Next I see a young boy sleeping in the shade of black plastic on a wooden cot, woven with cloth. Over there infants chase each other in the mud as a newborn cries on its back in the tropical red dirt. Everywhere there are men and children shitting by the tracks. A young man rises from a squat and gingerly negotiates his way, barefoot, back to the shanty. Where are the women? They must have somewhere else to
go. The men and children, though, are brazen, thoughtless about it. Eventually rice fields and small farm villages appear and I visibly, audibly relax, "uhhhh." The dwellings and agricultural storage sheds are all made of some kind of reedy plant. These look so much less offensive to my eye. The organic wholeness of them makes some kind of innate sense to me. There's no plastic visible no and the garbage on the ground thins. In places there is no visible garbage at all, a first for me on this visit where garbage has been strewn underfoot at every turn.My train ticket placed me in a seat apart from the other tourists. Many of the others were frustrated by this. They seemed to want to cling together. I saw it as an opportunity to finally talk to some Indians. A fascinating conversation developed with a middle-aged man, his daughter, and another young, college-bound man who later joined our car. This last hopes to be accepted to study computer networking at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He was thrilled to find I'd visited and that I am a college professor. "Is it a good school? A good place to study? Is it reputable?" he asked. He was even more excited when I told him about U.S. News and World Report's rankings of colleges and graduate schools. He immediately typed the details into his cell phone. The man and his daughter wanted to know all about me. Where was I from? Did I have children? Which parts of India was I going to see? They were full of advice about where to go and what to see. The father in particular wanted to know about my job and the teaching profession. Throughout our conversation he constantly nodded his head from side to side and grinned to show his badly eroded teeth. This was the first time I experienced this quintessentially India custom. Even though I'd read about it, it took me a moment to realize that he was indicating his agreement with me, his pleasure with the conversation.
In Agra, a young boy, maybe six years old and holding a small baby approaches the windows of my air-conditioned tourist bus. He's wearing very dirty clothes, rags really, unlike most Indians who tend to be cleanly and colorfully dressed. His eyes meet mine through the window as I sit in the back of the bus reading. He pleads with me for help, first with his eyes, then with gestures that indicate his baby sister needs food. His look is achingly young and beautiful. His desperation seems complete. His eyes tell me that if I don't give him money, he will surely starve - his sister too. Amazingly, I draw the curtain so that he will no longer see me and I, of course, will no longer have to see him. Then, I cry a bit, alone. Strangely, I do not get off the bus and help him as I surely would at home.
Never before has a place so rattled my nerves and attacked my conscience. Scenes like the one described above are a daily, even hourly, occurrence for the wealthy tourist in public in northern India. It is brutal and dehumanizing for everyone involved. At times I found myself huddling in my hotel room, hiding from the world outside. Why did I not give him a few rupees? To do so would have meant drawing many more beggars to the bus and, yet, so what? This excuse is given so often but it makes little sense. All of us had flown halfway around the world at great expense simply to act as voyeurs of a sort. We had no work to go to, nothing else to do. What is the harm in attracting a small crowd of beggars? The answer I think has to do with fear. It’s necessary to keep them at bay to maintain denial, to make sure there essential humanity doesn’t become apparent.
Here in Agra these needy people are particularly numerous and aggressive. Every manner of cripple, beggar, and street urchin crowd these streets. Few of my fellow tourists ever give. From time to time I do. When a mother holds a clearly malnourished child up to the taxi window and tapped, I wait until the taxi is ready to pull away and then quickly hand her 50 rupees. This amount, about a dollar, is enough for them both to eat well. Her response is to continue to tap on the window with no apparent lessening of her plaintive, baleful stare. Apparently I need to give more.
My fellow travelers are a bit disgusted with me. “I’m going to ruin it for everyone,” said one. It would be better to send money to an aid organization once we returned home than to give anything to a person directly. You’re only raising their expectations. I’m sure that’s true and certainly it would be good to give to aid groups, but how will that help this hungry, bag-of-bones child that stands in front of me now? Moreover, how many of these tourists will actually send that money later, once they are comfortably ensconced in the luxuries and distance of home?
Thus, I find myself giving whenever my resolve, my will, is sufficiently weakened by the misery in front of me. There is no other logic to it. Some of the children begging were well-dressed. These I avoid, but when two dirty children approach in Orcha and demand food by pointing to their mouths, shortly after watching me haggle over the price of two bags of snacks, I simply smile at them and hand over my snacks. Suddenly I realize I’m not all that hungry after all. They pose for a photograph. "Very nice," they say in English. Still, they look weary, almost old, and they can’t really manage much of a smile.
This is clearly the most challenging place I've ever travled. Everyday will feel like work.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Departure Worries, Los Angeles to New Delhi
9-24-2008, 10:20 PM
Tom Bradley International Terminal, LAX
Tom Bradley International Terminal, LAX
Shannon and Catalina just dropped me off at the airport for my flight to Delhi. My emotions spilled over as I said goodbye to my kiddo. I'm more apprehensive about this trip than any I can remember since I first drove into Mexico with Dan Gunter back in 1994. This, however, is a completely different kind of anxiety. Back then I feared, among other things, embarrassment because I couldn't speak Spanish and the seemingly real possibility of violence or robbery. Today I sit here concerned about being away from my beautiful little girl for so very long. This trip will take me away for three weeks, twice as long as I've ever been away from her. I am now so attached to her that even a few days apart makes me long for her silly playfullness. This central concern has allowed me to dwell on other negatives. It is the end of the summer monsoon in northern India. There have been deadly floods in Uttar Pradesh and, although I'm obviously not going to drown, the mosquitoes that carry malaria and Dengue fever will thrive in all of that water. Diseases that are rare or unheard of in the West are still endemic in India: cholera, polio, encephalitis, hepatitis. While I've been immunized against some of these, there's nothing to do for Dengue and no malaria prophylaxis is 100% effective. Then there are the numerous negative reports I read on various online travel forums. Most argue that guidebooks stress the magical and spiritual side of India and downplay the poverty and chaos. People talk about being immediately overwhelmed by northern India, of being proud that "they were able to handle it." Add to all of this the 22 hours of flying just to get there and I have to say that right now this trip seems truly like work.
9-25-2008, 9:39 AM
Hong Kong International Airport, en route to Delhi on Cathay Pacific Airlines
The cleanest, most pleasantly sterile airport I've visited in a long time. How ironic that I'm flying to one of the world's more polluted regions on a airline that treats customers like royalty and takes me through such a clean, well-lighted place to eat sushi and noodles. It's also stran
ge to note that I'm technically in China, though this doesn't feel anything like Beijing or Shanghai. Reading the Hong Kong paper is a surreal experience, blending as it does Western sensibilities with Asian entrepreneurial energy and Chinese governmentalism. Clearly Hong Kong would be an easy place in Asia to visit. Boat tours to other islands and to mainland China are close by and inexpensive. English is spoken by many. Signs are in English and Chinese.
The fourteen hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong wasn't as painful as I feared, though jet lag is going to be a real issue this time. The final leg is a little over five hours more. When I arrive time will be offset by 12 1/2 hours. India uses one time zone for the whole country. Thus, if it's 7 AM in India it will be 6:30 PM in California. Onward to India.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Unnerving, Unforgettable India
India has been frightening, fascinating, tiring, beautiful, ugly, rancid, friendly, stinking, and fragrant. Figure that out. Complete India posts will appear within a week. I'm taking an all night train from Varanasi to Delhi tonight. Fly home the next day.
Namaste.
Namaste.
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