So much for good intentions... I'm leaving the Madras University guest house whereat I've been staying for the last two weeks en route to the Aeroport, and still not a blog post on this new city! Well, I have about 45 minutes until the taxi arrives, so I thought I'd write some quick observations while my laptop's recharging.
People say Chennai is like a series of large-ish towns glommed together to make up a metropolis only in terms of scale, rather than the new urban culture that characterises Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, and perhaps Calcutta once upon a time. I don't think that's wrong. It's ironic that the most urban Indian state demographically seems to have the culture of the provincial town.
Provincial usually has derogatory connotations, but in this case, it's descriptive and politically meaningful. The Dravidian movement, on which my colleague Matt is writing his dissertation, first created itself against the cultural hegemony of the North represented by the Congress and other 'national' movements. This cultural resurgence of Tamil identity turned political in the post-Independence years, with Congress being beaten in Tamil Nadu by the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (sp?). DMK and its splinter, the All-India (Anna) DMK, have been in power ever since. There's also a deep connection between politics and Tamil film: ever since MG Ramaswamy -- the great movie star MGR -- became Chief Minister. Film 'heroes' can portray the ideal Tamil, and this symbolism leads to leadership. It's certainly more powerful in that sense than Bollywood.
There are darker sides to this identity, including vicious anti-Brahmin sentiment where Brahminical privilege isn't nearly as powerful as it is up North. It's also led to the greatest level of 'reservations' (affirmative action) in any state in India. Far from removing caste, Tamil politics has solidified it.
To get back to the city and my experiences, though, I haven't felt as much an outsider anywhere else I've been in India... which admittedly comprises of mostly metro - urban experience. A friend living here said that he found this initially annoying but has come to appreciate how culturally unified the city and state are. I don't think this was possible in two and a half weeks.
And yet, I've had some fantastic interviews here, just fantastic... I lost my audio recorder and have really wished that I had it back, which is not the case for most of my interviews. I find the upper classes wonderfully reflective, and that contributes to it. For all I know, the lower classes might be more reflective -- certainly there are high levels of literacy here -- but I don't speak Tamil and have gotten more angry at rickshaw drivers than anywhere else.
The city itself is sort of enclosed and polluted, but with some lovely spots. I find that I'm not much of a beach person, although these are some of the nicest beaches I've seen in India. The country around is very green but doesn't have a deeply tropical look to it, except for the odd clump of palm trees. On the other hand, there is not much to do here. And less connected -- I couldn't find a simple Olympus DS-2... though that might just be India in general.
Most of my stay has been coloured by the fact that I don't know many people here. Most evenings have been spent inside the guesthouse, on the internet. It's the worst part of fieldwork, this isolation, and it's been staved off in Delhi by friends and acquaintances, and a pretty exciting vibe, with all of its problems. It's going to be more of a feature in the Spring, based in Bombay but taking many more of these trips, so we'll see how that is.
One big exception was an overnight trip I took with Faisal to Mahaballipuram and Pondicherry, which was fantastic. Both are laid-back seaside towns with a lot to see. It was just great to have long discussions on epistemology (what else?) while staring out at the Bay of Bengal.
This part of the country seems to me, a non-Tamil, as a place to lose yourself. There certainly is that vibe here: many of the great spiritual reformist movements and figures ended up here: the Theosophical Society, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekenanda. I guess I hold on to myself pretty tightly, and that's why I'm more affirmed by places with materialist coherence like Bombay and Delhi. But who knows? Perhaps you'll find me in ten years living in a hut on the beach somewhere off the East Coast highway, watching the sun rise over the Bay of Bengal and pondering the mysteries of the infinite. Right now, though, I've got industry to study.
So, New Delhi at midnight, home and asleep by two am, I hope... and then just two weeks until Christmas break!
More soon.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Distance Away from 'the City of Djinns'
First. apologies to anyone regularly checking this blog (though I can't imagine there are many, some how?). I think the thing with fieldwork is that after a certain point, motivation to do anything but the daily grind slowly leaks away. Thus the frontier paper, which I was happily and confidently revising, is now languishing in my hard drive, this blog hasn't been posted in for almost a month, nor has www.passtheroti.com... thinking about it, I definitely need a vacation of some sort. Going to Islamabad in less than a month, so that'll be it.
The hidden cost of shorter and shorter time in research is that every day spent in the fieldwork site must mean something. If you're away for two years, you can build roots in a place (typically one), and if you get two or three things done a week, that's fine.
Relatedly, I'm almost finished reading William Dalrymple's first book, 'City of Djinns', which has a soothing quality to it -- I like it more than I expected. But part of that calmness is how his historical sketches of Delhi City are interlaced with sustained encounters with assorted characters (interviewees) in the Old City and descriptions of the trials and delights of daily life experienced by him and his wife during their year living there. I find it unsurprising that Dalymple and his family now divide their time between England and India -- they have established ties here, a niche that, while elitist and founded on success in Western writing and publishing, is as real as any South Delhi Punjabi emigre elite. The basis of this niche is the open-ended curiosity of archetypical outsiders: a Scotch couple with little knowledge of Hindi (initially) but with amazingly good connections, and with naught to do but explore, talk to people, read, write, paint. I don't mean any of this as a criticism: this open-endedness allowed him to write a book that is both evocative and interesting. It's not academic history or cultural critique, nor should it be. To my sensibilities, admittedly more than a little English, it's a wonderfully crafted narrative of a person's experiences in a city over a year, over-laid onto a folk historiography of nostalgia and decline.
Mini-book review aside, the point I wanted to make is this: it's interesting to contrast Dalrymple's year in India at 25, in 1991, to mine at 27, in 2007. The occasional complaint Dalyrmple has in his narrative of the faster pace and the crass commercialism of South Delhi is now a dominant pace of the city -- reading the book, everything from his housing situation to his transportation has a quaint air to it. Life in Delhi, and in any metropolis in the country, has a cut-throat commercialised feeling to it. I argue with auto rickshaw-wallahs about fares several times a day, I'm staying in a PG room for probably four times as much as William and Olivia paid for a barsati, and roads are getting more and more choked with traffic. This is not surpising -- liberalisation occurred in the same year as Dalyrmple's research, and Delhi-wallahs are getting richer and richer.
Consider what he was and I am researching. His book is about Delhi's history, from the Tughluks to the Moguls to the British to the Partition and the riots of 1984, along with other more meandering topics from eunuchs and the Anglo-Indians to sufi saints. Together, these form an air of nostalgia as the grandeur and sophistication are undone by the quotidian nature of thepresent Indian state (I told you it was elitist). His researches are almost always accompanied by learned and personable characters who enliven history and narrative and serve as translators between dense culture or archeology and the reader. I am, by contrast, studying manufacturing in the industrial areas and districts of Indian urban and peri-urban space. There is little beauty and nostalgia for me comes from old ideas (say, that of industrialisation) rather than old civility. And there isn't any kind, wise old gentleman, like Dr. Jaffrey, to show me the way.
Lastly, and most importantly, look at differences in personal life. Dalymple was accompanied by his partner. I have no partner. He spent a year in Delhi, traveling to Ajmer and Shimla and the Maharashtrian hinterland but essentially living in one place. I am going to be based in two of the major metros and will travel out a fair bit from them.
Dalrymple's year in India produced a highly successful travel book that I like despite all its faults. My eight months will, I hope, eventually lead to a book, but I can guarantee you it will be less successful by all accounts. I'm certainly engaged in a different project: my eventual audience will be academic, and I will in the end live or die by theoretical contributions rather than readability or attention to detail. As a result, I need to keep variation going, I need to treat interviews as data collected rather than interesting stories. Ultimately, this is an eight-month long research assignment -- I got research grants on the strength of fairly specific activities, and while there is no oversight what-so-ever, I still feel like I'm here for a job. I don't know how Dalrymple funded his year, but it would've been a) a great deal cheaper, and b) infinitely more flexible.
And yet, I guess I miss the world, now gone, in which fieldwork meant both living and working, and most importantly being stable enough to start enjoying yourself as who you are in this weird context, rather than treating it as a means to professional ends.
Research is hard. Harder still when you're on a two and a half week trip to Madras, a place where you know hardly anyone and can't speak the language at all. If there's a point at all in this rambling self-pitying stram of verbiage above, it's to bemoan the leisure of soaking up life in a new place with people you love, and have work that complements that soaking. 'Sukha' actually means dry in Hindi / Urdu, and I'm afraid that life is getting a little too dry and brittle at the moment. I hope good interviews tomorrow will alleviate that a little.
I'll write a more traditional 'Madras splendour ' tomorrow or the next day, I promise -- idli and coconut chutney, the beach and the ever-present lungi, the beach and the suburban rail system... 10ish more days here, and then I return to late autumnal Delhi, 'the City of Djinns', for three weeks.
The hidden cost of shorter and shorter time in research is that every day spent in the fieldwork site must mean something. If you're away for two years, you can build roots in a place (typically one), and if you get two or three things done a week, that's fine.
Relatedly, I'm almost finished reading William Dalrymple's first book, 'City of Djinns', which has a soothing quality to it -- I like it more than I expected. But part of that calmness is how his historical sketches of Delhi City are interlaced with sustained encounters with assorted characters (interviewees) in the Old City and descriptions of the trials and delights of daily life experienced by him and his wife during their year living there. I find it unsurprising that Dalymple and his family now divide their time between England and India -- they have established ties here, a niche that, while elitist and founded on success in Western writing and publishing, is as real as any South Delhi Punjabi emigre elite. The basis of this niche is the open-ended curiosity of archetypical outsiders: a Scotch couple with little knowledge of Hindi (initially) but with amazingly good connections, and with naught to do but explore, talk to people, read, write, paint. I don't mean any of this as a criticism: this open-endedness allowed him to write a book that is both evocative and interesting. It's not academic history or cultural critique, nor should it be. To my sensibilities, admittedly more than a little English, it's a wonderfully crafted narrative of a person's experiences in a city over a year, over-laid onto a folk historiography of nostalgia and decline.
Mini-book review aside, the point I wanted to make is this: it's interesting to contrast Dalrymple's year in India at 25, in 1991, to mine at 27, in 2007. The occasional complaint Dalyrmple has in his narrative of the faster pace and the crass commercialism of South Delhi is now a dominant pace of the city -- reading the book, everything from his housing situation to his transportation has a quaint air to it. Life in Delhi, and in any metropolis in the country, has a cut-throat commercialised feeling to it. I argue with auto rickshaw-wallahs about fares several times a day, I'm staying in a PG room for probably four times as much as William and Olivia paid for a barsati, and roads are getting more and more choked with traffic. This is not surpising -- liberalisation occurred in the same year as Dalyrmple's research, and Delhi-wallahs are getting richer and richer.
Consider what he was and I am researching. His book is about Delhi's history, from the Tughluks to the Moguls to the British to the Partition and the riots of 1984, along with other more meandering topics from eunuchs and the Anglo-Indians to sufi saints. Together, these form an air of nostalgia as the grandeur and sophistication are undone by the quotidian nature of thepresent Indian state (I told you it was elitist). His researches are almost always accompanied by learned and personable characters who enliven history and narrative and serve as translators between dense culture or archeology and the reader. I am, by contrast, studying manufacturing in the industrial areas and districts of Indian urban and peri-urban space. There is little beauty and nostalgia for me comes from old ideas (say, that of industrialisation) rather than old civility. And there isn't any kind, wise old gentleman, like Dr. Jaffrey, to show me the way.
Lastly, and most importantly, look at differences in personal life. Dalymple was accompanied by his partner. I have no partner. He spent a year in Delhi, traveling to Ajmer and Shimla and the Maharashtrian hinterland but essentially living in one place. I am going to be based in two of the major metros and will travel out a fair bit from them.
Dalrymple's year in India produced a highly successful travel book that I like despite all its faults. My eight months will, I hope, eventually lead to a book, but I can guarantee you it will be less successful by all accounts. I'm certainly engaged in a different project: my eventual audience will be academic, and I will in the end live or die by theoretical contributions rather than readability or attention to detail. As a result, I need to keep variation going, I need to treat interviews as data collected rather than interesting stories. Ultimately, this is an eight-month long research assignment -- I got research grants on the strength of fairly specific activities, and while there is no oversight what-so-ever, I still feel like I'm here for a job. I don't know how Dalrymple funded his year, but it would've been a) a great deal cheaper, and b) infinitely more flexible.
And yet, I guess I miss the world, now gone, in which fieldwork meant both living and working, and most importantly being stable enough to start enjoying yourself as who you are in this weird context, rather than treating it as a means to professional ends.
Research is hard. Harder still when you're on a two and a half week trip to Madras, a place where you know hardly anyone and can't speak the language at all. If there's a point at all in this rambling self-pitying stram of verbiage above, it's to bemoan the leisure of soaking up life in a new place with people you love, and have work that complements that soaking. 'Sukha' actually means dry in Hindi / Urdu, and I'm afraid that life is getting a little too dry and brittle at the moment. I hope good interviews tomorrow will alleviate that a little.
I'll write a more traditional 'Madras splendour ' tomorrow or the next day, I promise -- idli and coconut chutney, the beach and the ever-present lungi, the beach and the suburban rail system... 10ish more days here, and then I return to late autumnal Delhi, 'the City of Djinns', for three weeks.
Monday, November 12, 2007
A thousand bangs and flashes
(This was originally written Nov. 12th, but somehow forgot to post it then... so hoping to keep posts at the two week mark -- sounds reasonable, na?)
A lot's been happening in the last few days, it's sort of hard to keep track.
Musharraf declared a State of Emergency in Pakistan, things are calm and parents are fine, watching US sitcoms on DVD. I've written quite a bit of political commentary on a community blog here (www.passtheroti.com) so I won't retread except to say that I'm worried less about the event itself than the violent internal politics that ostensibly caused it.
I went to the student elections at Jawaharlal Nehru University student elections, which are a *big deal*, though also interestingly untied to the balance of national politics. The Students' Federation of India -- associated with the Communist Party of India-Marxist -- were unseated by the All-India Students' Association, part of the Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist. How's that for anti-incumbancy?
Diwali brought work to a halt last week, as the city started looking more and more like a festive war-zone, with bombs and missiles and gunpowder smoke saturating the air. And between all these festivities, I had an excellent time: hanging out with new-found researcher friends, going to art exhibitions and meeting random writers who have booker prize winners on speed-dial.
A lot's been happening in the last few days, it's sort of hard to keep track.
Musharraf declared a State of Emergency in Pakistan, things are calm and parents are fine, watching US sitcoms on DVD. I've written quite a bit of political commentary on a community blog here (www.passtheroti.com) so I won't retread except to say that I'm worried less about the event itself than the violent internal politics that ostensibly caused it.
I went to the student elections at Jawaharlal Nehru University student elections, which are a *big deal*, though also interestingly untied to the balance of national politics. The Students' Federation of India -- associated with the Communist Party of India-Marxist -- were unseated by the All-India Students' Association, part of the Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist. How's that for anti-incumbancy?
Diwali brought work to a halt last week, as the city started looking more and more like a festive war-zone, with bombs and missiles and gunpowder smoke saturating the air. And between all these festivities, I had an excellent time: hanging out with new-found researcher friends, going to art exhibitions and meeting random writers who have booker prize winners on speed-dial.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Diwali crackers sound like bombs
...honestly, these scare me half to death and they increase in scale and intensity as the Festival of Lights nears. And the industrialists have started to push meetings off until after Diwali, etc. I suppose shouldn't be such a scrooge about it, but well-heeled Delhi-ites throwing a huge week-long bash for themselves is not particularly to my taste. No doubt more Diwali stuff to follow.
Work continues, pushing out further and further into the edges of the National Capital Region. Lots of rickshaw rides and dust, lots of textile businesses doing OK but honestly wishing they were in China. There was an auto part factory that had the japanese terms in roman script for 'efficiency', 'motivation'. It was Toyotism taken out of Japan, transplanted and then systematically ignored. The Sensex (Bombay stock exchange) hit 20,000 for the first time, having doubled in only 10 months, and yet I only see India Shining on the surface. Actually that's the story I'm probably going to have to tell in my dissertation.
I was sitting drinking coffee in this cafe and NDTV shows up and starts making a report on this particular place, complete with two internet startup guys who are regular customers. I'm probably in different shots, but I guess a guy sitting by himself surrounded by work was not exactly cool enough to be featured. Oh well.
I think my ship's about to come in! Apparently my Fulbright-Hays clearance is reaching its final stages, whatever that means. I'll keep you posted.
It's getting colder, especially at night -- I need to buy a jacket. Other than that, things are pretty much OK. Am about to buy a piece of art, go out and relax for the evening. Probably smoke some sheesha -- you know how it is.
More soon.
Work continues, pushing out further and further into the edges of the National Capital Region. Lots of rickshaw rides and dust, lots of textile businesses doing OK but honestly wishing they were in China. There was an auto part factory that had the japanese terms in roman script for 'efficiency', 'motivation'. It was Toyotism taken out of Japan, transplanted and then systematically ignored. The Sensex (Bombay stock exchange) hit 20,000 for the first time, having doubled in only 10 months, and yet I only see India Shining on the surface. Actually that's the story I'm probably going to have to tell in my dissertation.
I was sitting drinking coffee in this cafe and NDTV shows up and starts making a report on this particular place, complete with two internet startup guys who are regular customers. I'm probably in different shots, but I guess a guy sitting by himself surrounded by work was not exactly cool enough to be featured. Oh well.
I think my ship's about to come in! Apparently my Fulbright-Hays clearance is reaching its final stages, whatever that means. I'll keep you posted.
It's getting colder, especially at night -- I need to buy a jacket. Other than that, things are pretty much OK. Am about to buy a piece of art, go out and relax for the evening. Probably smoke some sheesha -- you know how it is.
More soon.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Where I go
Part of this job gets me out and about the city quite a bit -- particularly last week, when I passed state lines into Uttar Pradesh three times (to Noida and Ghaziabad) and once to Haryana (Faridabad). Delhi is expanding in all directions, but the satellite cities are way far out, but that is where a lot of the industry is located. This week saw interviews with more guys who have their offices near their factories, so a touch more of real life than usual in non-discript office buildings.
On a memorable occasion in which I figured out that a guy's office was actually across the border in South Ghaziabad (if you want to know where these places are, maps.google.com is your friend), I took an autorickshaw as far as the border, a cycle rickshaw to a well-known (to them) restaurant and the back of a scooter to this place, and the same in reverse. I can tell you that far eastern Delhi is quite pretty: eucalyptus groves and empty space punctuated by industrial zones, new housing complexes and ridiculous malls that stand out like mesas. In another direction, along the famous Grand Trunk Road to the northeast, crossing the border meant clambering into a tempo with 15 labourers and a lot of baggage. And they were sweet enough to forgo the Rs. 3 charge for traveling 1.5 kms because they couldn't break a 50.
I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say that this is where the Indian economy is, not in the glitzy malls and call centres of 'India Shining'. Most of where I went was not shining, but it was alive. Today's interview took me to a small garments factory on the top of a small building in an alley of Paharganj, which Delhi-wallas would know as the grungy area where backpackers stay near the New Delhi Train Station... goats, dogs, bullocks, cycle rickshaws and mounds of al sorts create an obstacle course, the house is rusted and basic, the factory is not larger than an apartment. And yet 29 people are employed there, there are lives being lived and at least some wages being earned. It felt solid and real, if shabby (sha'abi), not like the platitudes of Incredible India...
On a memorable occasion in which I figured out that a guy's office was actually across the border in South Ghaziabad (if you want to know where these places are, maps.google.com is your friend), I took an autorickshaw as far as the border, a cycle rickshaw to a well-known (to them) restaurant and the back of a scooter to this place, and the same in reverse. I can tell you that far eastern Delhi is quite pretty: eucalyptus groves and empty space punctuated by industrial zones, new housing complexes and ridiculous malls that stand out like mesas. In another direction, along the famous Grand Trunk Road to the northeast, crossing the border meant clambering into a tempo with 15 labourers and a lot of baggage. And they were sweet enough to forgo the Rs. 3 charge for traveling 1.5 kms because they couldn't break a 50.
I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say that this is where the Indian economy is, not in the glitzy malls and call centres of 'India Shining'. Most of where I went was not shining, but it was alive. Today's interview took me to a small garments factory on the top of a small building in an alley of Paharganj, which Delhi-wallas would know as the grungy area where backpackers stay near the New Delhi Train Station... goats, dogs, bullocks, cycle rickshaws and mounds of al sorts create an obstacle course, the house is rusted and basic, the factory is not larger than an apartment. And yet 29 people are employed there, there are lives being lived and at least some wages being earned. It felt solid and real, if shabby (sha'abi), not like the platitudes of Incredible India...
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Quwaali
Eid al-Fitr Mubarak! (not that I was fasting, but...)
It seems like the big deal in Delhi around Eid time, and a lot of the rest of the time, is quwaali -- sufi devotional nusic centred here around the labyrinthine complex of the Durgah of Hazrat Nizamuddin and the surrounding ghetto in the upper bit of south Delhi. Going to the Durgah itself is quite an experience: winding through the alleyways thronged with people, finding your way to the marble tomb, seeing scores and scores of people trying to wind their way past the saints tomb, and the staccato and emphasis of the singing itself. It's a very Muslim experience, by which I mean very rooted in particular types of religious experience that I certainly don't have access to. There's also something deeply heretical and thus endearing about this, as (ultra-)orthodox Islam has decided to transcend place, and the Durgah is rooted in the city, the city of Ghalib and the latter Mughals.
So I went to two quwaalis in the last couple of days/ The first, followig some friends of mine, was in a crowded stuffy smoky room opposite one of the entrances to the Durgah in Nizamuddin: just consisted of a few guys -- an old man and a guy with a beautiful voice but no legs and a few others -- and then a small crowd jammed in. The chillum was readily available and the singing was good, but the image of the experience was better: just some people, from wildly different backgrounds, coming together and sharing in the mysteries.
The second 'quwaali' I went to was part of a cultural programme at the US Cultural Attache's residence. Seated on chairs, we listened to the Niyazi brothers (whom I'd actually seen at the Durgah) sing abridged versions of quwaalis in a very limited environment.
It occurred to me then that what was missing from the latter was the dangerous, transformative part of quwaali (and sufi-ism): the tendancy for religious abandon, direct experience of God's love that will leav you a little crazy, or at least moved. Obviously, there's no place for this at the United States Cultural Attache's residence, which is all about 'safe' culture being packaged and served out like tiny vol-au-vents. But the experience, without the chillum (and for all I know the hashish), the crowds, the meditative swaying, the cold marble and the moon overhead, seems to just be missing the point.
It seems like the big deal in Delhi around Eid time, and a lot of the rest of the time, is quwaali -- sufi devotional nusic centred here around the labyrinthine complex of the Durgah of Hazrat Nizamuddin and the surrounding ghetto in the upper bit of south Delhi. Going to the Durgah itself is quite an experience: winding through the alleyways thronged with people, finding your way to the marble tomb, seeing scores and scores of people trying to wind their way past the saints tomb, and the staccato and emphasis of the singing itself. It's a very Muslim experience, by which I mean very rooted in particular types of religious experience that I certainly don't have access to. There's also something deeply heretical and thus endearing about this, as (ultra-)orthodox Islam has decided to transcend place, and the Durgah is rooted in the city, the city of Ghalib and the latter Mughals.
So I went to two quwaalis in the last couple of days/ The first, followig some friends of mine, was in a crowded stuffy smoky room opposite one of the entrances to the Durgah in Nizamuddin: just consisted of a few guys -- an old man and a guy with a beautiful voice but no legs and a few others -- and then a small crowd jammed in. The chillum was readily available and the singing was good, but the image of the experience was better: just some people, from wildly different backgrounds, coming together and sharing in the mysteries.
The second 'quwaali' I went to was part of a cultural programme at the US Cultural Attache's residence. Seated on chairs, we listened to the Niyazi brothers (whom I'd actually seen at the Durgah) sing abridged versions of quwaalis in a very limited environment.
It occurred to me then that what was missing from the latter was the dangerous, transformative part of quwaali (and sufi-ism): the tendancy for religious abandon, direct experience of God's love that will leav you a little crazy, or at least moved. Obviously, there's no place for this at the United States Cultural Attache's residence, which is all about 'safe' culture being packaged and served out like tiny vol-au-vents. But the experience, without the chillum (and for all I know the hashish), the crowds, the meditative swaying, the cold marble and the moon overhead, seems to just be missing the point.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Leaves burning
I know I haven't been posting regularly: I'm dividing my blogging energies, such as they are, between here and www.passtheroti.com ... the latter is a collective left alternative to the suffocating self-satisfaction of desi communities in the West. See if you can guess which one I am.
Autumn is definitely arriving in Dehi -- the morning was fresh, and hung with a light haze from the piles of fallen leaves burning. From childhood in Islamabad, I always remember the smell of burning leaves as a sure sign of the seasons changing. It's not an unpleasant aroma as the many and varied smells of India go, and almost provides a counterpoise to deisel exhaust fumes, open sewage canals (nullahs) and stale urine. And yet what a disaster for the environment! Our Ecology Club at ISI (my first attempts at activism) was complaining about this.
For my work, I've been travelling out to different parts of the city -- mostly to the solidly middle-class (real middle class, not the elite South Delhi equivalent) neighbourhoods of western Delhi, accessible by the Metro: Karol Bagh, Moti Nagar, Rajouri Garden, etc. If you want to see what gentrification really looks like in Delhi, look at places like that. Old, sweet houses of the miniture garden city variety are becoming increasingly connected into networks that link new mega-mall type outlets and the spanking new housing developments farther out... the metro helps, but it's mostly cars. The current transformation of consumer tastes doesn't result aesthetically in the 'post-material' kinds of quiet coffeeshops with jazz and wireless access wherein I want to spend my afternoons. It's loud, it's garish and it's here to stay.
Other than, just trying to get over a cough and hoping to plan trips out of Delhi in the next two weeks, to meet with the industrialists in Punjab and the north. Jaipur can wait another couple of months -- it's not cool enough yet!
Autumn is definitely arriving in Dehi -- the morning was fresh, and hung with a light haze from the piles of fallen leaves burning. From childhood in Islamabad, I always remember the smell of burning leaves as a sure sign of the seasons changing. It's not an unpleasant aroma as the many and varied smells of India go, and almost provides a counterpoise to deisel exhaust fumes, open sewage canals (nullahs) and stale urine. And yet what a disaster for the environment! Our Ecology Club at ISI (my first attempts at activism) was complaining about this.
For my work, I've been travelling out to different parts of the city -- mostly to the solidly middle-class (real middle class, not the elite South Delhi equivalent) neighbourhoods of western Delhi, accessible by the Metro: Karol Bagh, Moti Nagar, Rajouri Garden, etc. If you want to see what gentrification really looks like in Delhi, look at places like that. Old, sweet houses of the miniture garden city variety are becoming increasingly connected into networks that link new mega-mall type outlets and the spanking new housing developments farther out... the metro helps, but it's mostly cars. The current transformation of consumer tastes doesn't result aesthetically in the 'post-material' kinds of quiet coffeeshops with jazz and wireless access wherein I want to spend my afternoons. It's loud, it's garish and it's here to stay.
Other than, just trying to get over a cough and hoping to plan trips out of Delhi in the next two weeks, to meet with the industrialists in Punjab and the north. Jaipur can wait another couple of months -- it's not cool enough yet!
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Miscillaneous Meanderings
It's been over a week since I last posted, ad it's hard to find a common theme for the last nine days or so. Interviewing has started but continues slowly: most of the guys I interview are not in the office regularly, certainly not before 11 am or so, and you have to go through some ridiculous (company) bureaucracy to get to them. Lately, a number of them have suggested I email, and then they'd set up a meeting. This is rich: I have yet to receive an email response from an interviewee -- and this includes over eighty interviews conducted in Pakistan, too. Mostly, it's just tiring, trying to set up interviews, heading out for them, and then wondering in the end whether it's all going to turn into something worthwhile someday. At times, I think that 'rigourous methodology' is just merely people's way of assuring themselves that their work will be taken seriously.
Cell phone problems seem to have resolved themselves (in sha' allah), but still having internet troubles -- more specifically with the completely ludicrous idea of 'address verification' for a completely mobile internet device. Really just astounds me the level to which modern, private companies are unable to reduce stupid transactions costs that are not at all imposed by the government. The idea that someone can and should be at home to receive representatives from the company at random hours certainly does not accord with India's image of flexibility and productivity.
It seems like I'm here to carry out the work of tarnishing shining India.
As for life, it's going well. I got rather bitter taste from the ex pat researcher social scene one evening at this too-high-end-for-its-own-good joint in GK-II. Drinks cost much more than most people earn in a day here, the music was too loud, and the crowd was a bit too self-referential. Didn't feel a great deal of inclusion. I can't decide whether it was the people or the scene or perhaps a combination of the two that led to this feeling. Since, I've had a number of very pleasant interactions, so I actually feel relatively blessed... much rather be sitting around someone's apartment until 2 am (last night) than be out when the bar scene jarringly shifts to the club scene.
Delhi's getting nicer -- still warm during the days but increasingly cool at nights. The leaves are falling everywhere but you see little evidence of it on the trees: nice to hear the crunch of leaves under feet and the dance of leaves as cars barrel down large shady avenues near the centre of the city.
Cell phone problems seem to have resolved themselves (in sha' allah), but still having internet troubles -- more specifically with the completely ludicrous idea of 'address verification' for a completely mobile internet device. Really just astounds me the level to which modern, private companies are unable to reduce stupid transactions costs that are not at all imposed by the government. The idea that someone can and should be at home to receive representatives from the company at random hours certainly does not accord with India's image of flexibility and productivity.
It seems like I'm here to carry out the work of tarnishing shining India.
As for life, it's going well. I got rather bitter taste from the ex pat researcher social scene one evening at this too-high-end-for-its-own-good joint in GK-II. Drinks cost much more than most people earn in a day here, the music was too loud, and the crowd was a bit too self-referential. Didn't feel a great deal of inclusion. I can't decide whether it was the people or the scene or perhaps a combination of the two that led to this feeling. Since, I've had a number of very pleasant interactions, so I actually feel relatively blessed... much rather be sitting around someone's apartment until 2 am (last night) than be out when the bar scene jarringly shifts to the club scene.
Delhi's getting nicer -- still warm during the days but increasingly cool at nights. The leaves are falling everywhere but you see little evidence of it on the trees: nice to hear the crunch of leaves under feet and the dance of leaves as cars barrel down large shady avenues near the centre of the city.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
one lazy Sunday afternoon in the world economy
Sundays are good here: no one works. Saturdays are usually working days, depending on your company, office, whatever: I do my best to schedule interviews then as it's a day when people are in the office but aren't necessarily doing all that much. The weather's turning slowly more pleasant: still very warm in the sun in the middle of the day, but pretty nice in the evenings.
So Sunday meant a rolling trip to the Habitat Centre, Khan Market, Lodhi Gardens and Hauz Khas -- first for a mediocre brunch, then for coffee and work, and then for a very pleasant evening with new friends self-dubbed the 'Hauz Khas Hipsters'. The critical South Delhi scene is interesting: people stand out (shine, even) exactly because of the level of conformity and consumer culture that pervades everything around. The perfect example of this is the college crowd: one can usually run into these characters in groups of five to twelve and up, and they take up much greater space in relation to their content. It's exciting to get connected with people who run counter to dominant trends in the emergence of middle class identity.
I've always thought of Arend Ljiphart's thesis on post-materialism to be teleological rubbish, because I see the choices people face: so much easier to prove yourself as a member of elite circles in the buying of cars and clothes and watches than through what you can argue and write. If the consumerist drive left India today, where would the economy be? Not like many people are happy with production for its own sake -- perhaps excepting the Soviet Union early in the day with Magnetogorsk, Stakhanovism, etc -- and yet it's hard to see anything else in this economy but a rabid consumer drive. Where is the innovation? Where is the industrial splendour?
One image I do want to share, though: as I was walking from the Habitat Centre along Lodhi Road, I saw a man artfully and painstakingly repaint a sign -- such as what you would find everywhere in Delhi -- for the Indian Foreign Languages Institute. The man was painting in the Devenagri lettering, and it was beautiful how those characters were being formed so exquisitely for such a mundane purpose. I was mesmerised... I stayed for the entire painting of 'videshi', and it made my early afternoon.
So Sunday meant a rolling trip to the Habitat Centre, Khan Market, Lodhi Gardens and Hauz Khas -- first for a mediocre brunch, then for coffee and work, and then for a very pleasant evening with new friends self-dubbed the 'Hauz Khas Hipsters'. The critical South Delhi scene is interesting: people stand out (shine, even) exactly because of the level of conformity and consumer culture that pervades everything around. The perfect example of this is the college crowd: one can usually run into these characters in groups of five to twelve and up, and they take up much greater space in relation to their content. It's exciting to get connected with people who run counter to dominant trends in the emergence of middle class identity.
I've always thought of Arend Ljiphart's thesis on post-materialism to be teleological rubbish, because I see the choices people face: so much easier to prove yourself as a member of elite circles in the buying of cars and clothes and watches than through what you can argue and write. If the consumerist drive left India today, where would the economy be? Not like many people are happy with production for its own sake -- perhaps excepting the Soviet Union early in the day with Magnetogorsk, Stakhanovism, etc -- and yet it's hard to see anything else in this economy but a rabid consumer drive. Where is the innovation? Where is the industrial splendour?
One image I do want to share, though: as I was walking from the Habitat Centre along Lodhi Road, I saw a man artfully and painstakingly repaint a sign -- such as what you would find everywhere in Delhi -- for the Indian Foreign Languages Institute. The man was painting in the Devenagri lettering, and it was beautiful how those characters were being formed so exquisitely for such a mundane purpose. I was mesmerised... I stayed for the entire painting of 'videshi', and it made my early afternoon.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
my new office, on the veranda
Settling in continues -- this hasn't exactly been the smoothest transition into fieldwork, but I keep reminding myself it's for the long haul. Apparently, most Indian entrepreneurs of note are in New York, supposedly selling 'Shining India' as an investment hub, but certainly visiting cousin this in Boston and my son and his family in this place called North Carolina. So as a result, interviews are starting out slowly. As is phone and internet connections -- the bureaucracy, even in the private sector, seems absolutely obsessed with proving that you're actually living where you're living. This has to come into fairly constant friction with the myriad different informal arrangements that scatter the social landscape. I'm certainly living here relatively informally: renting a room in a house without the explicit knowledge of the relevant authorities, because I'm only here in this city for four months and because it's very little benefit for quite a bit of hassle.
As far as I know, most of the people I know here are living with one level of informality or another -- and these are mostly journalists and academics, not street-hawkers -- so I simply don't understand a system that requires people to prove through government stamps and notarisation that they live where they live.
As for informalisation: I've just discovered that the one free wireless network I can find is on the front porch -- the veranda in this part of the world -- in which there are several comfortable chairs, a couple of lights and a tiny little garden at my feet. There's even a plug! So I get to bask in the very first evening breezes of autumn while being connected in spirit and through electronic media to friends and loved ones far away. This arrangement might actually work: the outside has more privacy (or less proximity) and less stuffiness than my room, and it will only get cooler and cooler as the year goes on. I see the first sprinkling of yellow leaves on the sparse grass in the garden, and playing at the tyres of vans and trucks speeding east-west through the boulevards with overhanging trees.
I'll save my love-song to autumn for when the weather really means it. Otherwise, there have been other moments of splendour: meeting a brilliant young writer, spending time with other friends, and at this moment, a civil breeze coming in from the street. Points of hope among bureaucracy and officiousness that tend to be the currency of social life here.
As far as I know, most of the people I know here are living with one level of informality or another -- and these are mostly journalists and academics, not street-hawkers -- so I simply don't understand a system that requires people to prove through government stamps and notarisation that they live where they live.
As for informalisation: I've just discovered that the one free wireless network I can find is on the front porch -- the veranda in this part of the world -- in which there are several comfortable chairs, a couple of lights and a tiny little garden at my feet. There's even a plug! So I get to bask in the very first evening breezes of autumn while being connected in spirit and through electronic media to friends and loved ones far away. This arrangement might actually work: the outside has more privacy (or less proximity) and less stuffiness than my room, and it will only get cooler and cooler as the year goes on. I see the first sprinkling of yellow leaves on the sparse grass in the garden, and playing at the tyres of vans and trucks speeding east-west through the boulevards with overhanging trees.
I'll save my love-song to autumn for when the weather really means it. Otherwise, there have been other moments of splendour: meeting a brilliant young writer, spending time with other friends, and at this moment, a civil breeze coming in from the street. Points of hope among bureaucracy and officiousness that tend to be the currency of social life here.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
My Town
So, I have housing settled -- I am a 'paying guest' -- God, do I hate the term and the concept -- in a nice little house in a quiet street in Defence Colony, certainly one of the more expat, chi-chi corners of town... think Gulberg in Lahore, Defence IV in Karachi, the whole of Islamabad in Islamabad, Breach Candy in Bombay, Ma'adi in Cairo... full of SUVs, the upwardly-mobile and those wanting to shut India out (quite literally: many of the streets have gates that are shut at night. Yes, I am living in a *gasp* gated community).
There are advantages to living in Def. Col. First, it's certainly the most central of South Delhi neighbourhoods. Second, it's small enough to walk around in or take a cycle-rickshaw, which I have to admit, I wasn't expecting to see in this corner of town. Third, Defence Colony market has, among the trendy, over-the-top places, a couple of real gems: I've been going to this bakery / cafe / restaurant called 'Angels in the Kitchen' a lot -- where the music isn't obnoxious, they're friendly and I can get a decent cafe americano for just Rs. 25!
Certainly escapism, but after a long day's interviewing in dusty odorous industrial estates, escape might be in order.
Most importantly, the housing thing is DONE! Honestly, such a hassle! Still have to get my phone reconnected (argh) and broadband set up, but at least I'm a bit settled.
In other news, the first ever Cricket Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa... I saw a piece of history when Uvraj Singh hit six 6s in an over on Wednesday, at a gathering of Swarthmore folks in Delhi. All you baseball fans should watch Twenty20 cricket: a match is the same length as your average baseball game and very exciting.
Work seriously starts on Monday and I might even be able to report that my cellphone is setup and I have broadband working by the next post. Hoping that won't be in three months...
There are advantages to living in Def. Col. First, it's certainly the most central of South Delhi neighbourhoods. Second, it's small enough to walk around in or take a cycle-rickshaw, which I have to admit, I wasn't expecting to see in this corner of town. Third, Defence Colony market has, among the trendy, over-the-top places, a couple of real gems: I've been going to this bakery / cafe / restaurant called 'Angels in the Kitchen' a lot -- where the music isn't obnoxious, they're friendly and I can get a decent cafe americano for just Rs. 25!
Certainly escapism, but after a long day's interviewing in dusty odorous industrial estates, escape might be in order.
Most importantly, the housing thing is DONE! Honestly, such a hassle! Still have to get my phone reconnected (argh) and broadband set up, but at least I'm a bit settled.
In other news, the first ever Cricket Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa... I saw a piece of history when Uvraj Singh hit six 6s in an over on Wednesday, at a gathering of Swarthmore folks in Delhi. All you baseball fans should watch Twenty20 cricket: a match is the same length as your average baseball game and very exciting.
Work seriously starts on Monday and I might even be able to report that my cellphone is setup and I have broadband working by the next post. Hoping that won't be in three months...
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Delhi Housing Blues
I'm sure every foreign researcher has to deal with the fact that finding housing abroad is a real royal pain in the ass. Delhi is going through an annoying transition in which liveable -- as opposed to back-packable -- guesthouses are becoming far too expensive for long-term accomodation, and yet there isn't enough of a short-term housing market, and most of that caters for or wants to cater for rich expat business types who expect and pay western prices.
So where does that leave John or Jane Researcher? Well, there's the ever-popular 'paying guest accomodation' in which you rent out a room in a house in typically the quieter residential neighbourhoods. It's a little better than study-abroad home-stays in that there isn't this illusion that somehow living with patrician Delhi-ites teaches you more about India, but there is a family feel to the arrangement, and I, being a thoroughly Westernised individualist normally living alone in a studio apartment I sorely miss in the Bay Area, want to come and go as I please.
So I plunge myself into the rental market, hardly any of which is online, with two newly found friends -- both journalists in two of the more incisive weeklies here: Outlook and Tehelka. The problem here is that they're both busy and have places of their own for now, so it's been slow and I'm having to balance the novelty and companionship of roommates with the fact that I'm only in this city for four months and I need to set myself up quickly so I can start work. It's a market that doesn't tolerate a great deal of choice.
So, I promise myself not to post again on housing until I actually find a place, and I'm going to try and stick with that. But since it's a blues piece:
- Spent two hours at the Foreigner's Registration, in a stifling room with a regular United Nations of People Who Don't Want to Be There. The Indian government requires registration for anyone staying over 180 days, and it's not what you might call efficient. I got out of t particularly quickly due to the immense help of Mr. Arora of the AIIS, who knows the system, but still, a headache.
- My phone's getting disconnected! Because I haven't provided them with sufficient verification of my address! Should've just gotten a pre-paid SIM, but now I'm committed to the number and will try and sort it out over the next couple of days.
Tomorrow's a new day, right?
So where does that leave John or Jane Researcher? Well, there's the ever-popular 'paying guest accomodation' in which you rent out a room in a house in typically the quieter residential neighbourhoods. It's a little better than study-abroad home-stays in that there isn't this illusion that somehow living with patrician Delhi-ites teaches you more about India, but there is a family feel to the arrangement, and I, being a thoroughly Westernised individualist normally living alone in a studio apartment I sorely miss in the Bay Area, want to come and go as I please.
So I plunge myself into the rental market, hardly any of which is online, with two newly found friends -- both journalists in two of the more incisive weeklies here: Outlook and Tehelka. The problem here is that they're both busy and have places of their own for now, so it's been slow and I'm having to balance the novelty and companionship of roommates with the fact that I'm only in this city for four months and I need to set myself up quickly so I can start work. It's a market that doesn't tolerate a great deal of choice.
So, I promise myself not to post again on housing until I actually find a place, and I'm going to try and stick with that. But since it's a blues piece:
- Spent two hours at the Foreigner's Registration, in a stifling room with a regular United Nations of People Who Don't Want to Be There. The Indian government requires registration for anyone staying over 180 days, and it's not what you might call efficient. I got out of t particularly quickly due to the immense help of Mr. Arora of the AIIS, who knows the system, but still, a headache.
- My phone's getting disconnected! Because I haven't provided them with sufficient verification of my address! Should've just gotten a pre-paid SIM, but now I'm committed to the number and will try and sort it out over the next couple of days.
Tomorrow's a new day, right?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
High-Modernist Aesthetic
This goes out to all the architects and city planners of my heart...
Walking around south-central Delhi can be quite an eye-opener, and not in the Los Angeles sense. The Lodhi Estate is an institutional space right to the south of Lutyens' biggest creations along the Washington Mall-like Rajpath. It includes the Indian International Centre, the Ford Foundation, UNICEF's India headquarters, and other buildings by the architect Joseph Allen Stein, who came to India on Nehru's invitation in 1955 and, unlike more famous contemporaries Le Corbousier and Louis Kahn, stayed. Allen's masterpiece is the India Habitat Center (1995), a gargantuan modernist complex of brick and glass that houses all sorts of institutions involved with development, the environment and housing. It is as soaring as it is expansive, with fully grown trees reaching up to a plated ceiling six storeys up. The complex contains, offices, restaurants, a hotel, auditoriums and performance spaces. I happen to think it's quite beautiful -- there is a sense of grandeur that comes from a time when human capacity were meaningfully represented in size. It's also ordered, quiet, well-tended... in short, much closer to a Western university campus than anything Indian (in fact, in a relatively recent film, the IHC was actually passed off as Delhi University). And the soul needs that calm once in a while, fully realising the inauthenticity of it.
So, this is where I had brunch today, and then set off to find a place to get my hair cut somewhere. Walking along the wide avenues of the Lodhi Estate and Colony, passing the huge houses of MPs, Air Marshals, Vice Admirals, etc., I start thinking about space and order, and (surprise, surprise) state control, British and Indian. There is hardly a soul in sight walking these pavements, they feel as private as they are legally public. And all over Delhi, there are estates, colonies, compounds and the like that are literally gated. Society gets pushed out of where the state or the state's elite clients are actually present.
I don't know what to think about this, exactly, but it chimes with the book I'm re-reading for work: James C. Scott's Seeing like the State. Scott argues persuasively that some of the most spectacular disasters in development planning happen when the state tries to enforce 'legibility' on society, making it more ordered, easy to analyse and transform. Cities like Chandigarh and Soviet collectivisation are cases in point. It's a great book, you all should read it. Anyway, the point is that we sometimes give up too much to make things neat and tidy -- he suppress custom, lose folk history, ignore the roots of what we've become.
To end, I will just say that I spent a lovely evening with my friend Adnan at Jawaharlal Nehru University's dhaba. Dhabas are typically road-side snack stands: this one faces a small dip from the main campus road, where concrete blocks have been placed haphazardly as makeshift benches and students sit around in the darkness sipping two-rupee tea from little plastic cups. There's even a bull that hangs around and sometimes starts moving in your direction. It's wonderfully chaotic, but it works and it's one of the places I like the most in Delhi, a far cry from anything Berkeley or Swarthmore has to offer short of decorative open lawn. It's pretty neat.
Walking around south-central Delhi can be quite an eye-opener, and not in the Los Angeles sense. The Lodhi Estate is an institutional space right to the south of Lutyens' biggest creations along the Washington Mall-like Rajpath. It includes the Indian International Centre, the Ford Foundation, UNICEF's India headquarters, and other buildings by the architect Joseph Allen Stein, who came to India on Nehru's invitation in 1955 and, unlike more famous contemporaries Le Corbousier and Louis Kahn, stayed. Allen's masterpiece is the India Habitat Center (1995), a gargantuan modernist complex of brick and glass that houses all sorts of institutions involved with development, the environment and housing. It is as soaring as it is expansive, with fully grown trees reaching up to a plated ceiling six storeys up. The complex contains, offices, restaurants, a hotel, auditoriums and performance spaces. I happen to think it's quite beautiful -- there is a sense of grandeur that comes from a time when human capacity were meaningfully represented in size. It's also ordered, quiet, well-tended... in short, much closer to a Western university campus than anything Indian (in fact, in a relatively recent film, the IHC was actually passed off as Delhi University). And the soul needs that calm once in a while, fully realising the inauthenticity of it.
So, this is where I had brunch today, and then set off to find a place to get my hair cut somewhere. Walking along the wide avenues of the Lodhi Estate and Colony, passing the huge houses of MPs, Air Marshals, Vice Admirals, etc., I start thinking about space and order, and (surprise, surprise) state control, British and Indian. There is hardly a soul in sight walking these pavements, they feel as private as they are legally public. And all over Delhi, there are estates, colonies, compounds and the like that are literally gated. Society gets pushed out of where the state or the state's elite clients are actually present.
I don't know what to think about this, exactly, but it chimes with the book I'm re-reading for work: James C. Scott's Seeing like the State. Scott argues persuasively that some of the most spectacular disasters in development planning happen when the state tries to enforce 'legibility' on society, making it more ordered, easy to analyse and transform. Cities like Chandigarh and Soviet collectivisation are cases in point. It's a great book, you all should read it. Anyway, the point is that we sometimes give up too much to make things neat and tidy -- he suppress custom, lose folk history, ignore the roots of what we've become.
To end, I will just say that I spent a lovely evening with my friend Adnan at Jawaharlal Nehru University's dhaba. Dhabas are typically road-side snack stands: this one faces a small dip from the main campus road, where concrete blocks have been placed haphazardly as makeshift benches and students sit around in the darkness sipping two-rupee tea from little plastic cups. There's even a bull that hangs around and sometimes starts moving in your direction. It's wonderfully chaotic, but it works and it's one of the places I like the most in Delhi, a far cry from anything Berkeley or Swarthmore has to offer short of decorative open lawn. It's pretty neat.
the phone -- connected!
After waiting 27 hours, I finally have my phone connected! I exist in the world! Then, while taking a rickshaw south to GK-II, the rickshaw-wallah showed me his brand-new phone, which a) was way more expensive than mine (colour, built-in music player, etc), and b) he couldn't figure out how to use. So I spend the entire time teaching the guy, in Hindi, how to switch on and off the music player on the bloody phone.
And then went to a electronic dance party with my potential future room-mate at this bar at Sunder Nagar. The maitre d' looked disapprovingly at our kurtas and sandals, the techno was so loud I couldn't hear myself think and the g&t I ordered cost close to $9! I met some nice people, but I can't say much for the context. Honestly, Delhi needs to get a grip about how they want to manage their night-scene... far too much pretentious club-scene in midtown Manhattan and far too little chilled-out bar-scene in Brooklyn or Queens.
At any rate, I'm enjoying myself far too much for the start of a field-trip. It'll settle down soon.
And then went to a electronic dance party with my potential future room-mate at this bar at Sunder Nagar. The maitre d' looked disapprovingly at our kurtas and sandals, the techno was so loud I couldn't hear myself think and the g&t I ordered cost close to $9! I met some nice people, but I can't say much for the context. Honestly, Delhi needs to get a grip about how they want to manage their night-scene... far too much pretentious club-scene in midtown Manhattan and far too little chilled-out bar-scene in Brooklyn or Queens.
At any rate, I'm enjoying myself far too much for the start of a field-trip. It'll settle down soon.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Eating Nightingales?
This is the end of my second full day here, and it won't take that long before I stop counting -- and that's when I'll think of myself as really living here. After flying across a continent and an ocean, I got to spend an evening at my grandmother's in lovely, leafy Hampstead in the midst of a cool, fresh Indian Summer. I always wish I could spend more time there, London holds a special place in my heart. I would love to spend an autumn there and see the leaves of the trees on the Heath turn colour and the liveliness of the breeze keep me in a skippy, active mood.
Getting over here wasn't all that hard, though why, oh why, do I always get to sit next to the fat, upwardly-mobile banya type on flights to, and flights, buses and trains within India? This particular guy had the tight t-shirt, the jeans, the tasteless loafers, the consistently imperative voice when talking to the flight attendants -- only the gold chain was missing. I know I'm supposed to studying the rise of these sorts of people into industrial prominence in South Asia, but do I really need to be reminded of it on an eight hour flight?
Have since settled into the comfortable and impressively central American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) guesthouse, in Defence Colony. Have been getting over jetlag -- woke up this morning at 1:3o pm, which I hate... the strategy of tiring myself out to force a regular schedule seems to have backfired.
All the standouts of living in this part of the world came back to me in the first day. For instance:
in a rickshaw on the way to Ansal Plaza to get a mobile connected, they guy noticed my limp arm, and told me how his father had exactly that and after eating lots and lots of bul-buls (nightingales), circulation returned to his arm. I've had versions of the same conversation in Bombay, Delhi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Karachi. I know that people mean well and have great faith in folk remedies and the wisdom of elders, it's just a bit of an unwelcome reminder of a part of me that I usually try to ignore.
and the mall itself! I hadn't been to Ansal Plaza, and had in fact, avoided malls in Delhi altogether. But the experience reminded me of Park Towers in Karachi -- the acquisitive crush, all sorts of people eying each other's purchases, and none of the blank space you expect in malls in the West, for the old, infirm and bored (me) to sit and avoid the actual act of shopping. This was a scene, yaar! And as Tania had mentioned, I did see one instance of a girl wearing *gasp* a short skirt. Well, above knee-length. On a weight-and-height machine. Trying to impress the buff McMasala -type Boyfriend. Where is good old Gandhian paternalistic ascetic aestheticism (say that one three times quickly) when you really need it?
I dragged myself there again, tonight, to try and get the mobile phone connected again, so I got to see the more intense Saturday night scene. I actually thinking that 24 hours really meant 24 hours. There will be a celebratory post when the thing actually gets connected and I stop being a shadow at the limits of modern society.
Other than that: perfectly nice expat party in Vasant Vihar at which I knew hardly a soul (this was pretty much like when you know no one at a party in the States), and then a lazy afternoon today at two of my favourite haunts in Khan Market, today absolutely thronged by the goras and the well-heeled shopping. I must try this shopping thing sometime, to see what the fuss is about.
On Monday, I'm going to start getting serious: visiting CPR and Fulbright House, setting up the relatively easy interviews, nosing about. Meantime, I hope you're all enjoying yourself.
Getting over here wasn't all that hard, though why, oh why, do I always get to sit next to the fat, upwardly-mobile banya type on flights to, and flights, buses and trains within India? This particular guy had the tight t-shirt, the jeans, the tasteless loafers, the consistently imperative voice when talking to the flight attendants -- only the gold chain was missing. I know I'm supposed to studying the rise of these sorts of people into industrial prominence in South Asia, but do I really need to be reminded of it on an eight hour flight?
Have since settled into the comfortable and impressively central American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) guesthouse, in Defence Colony. Have been getting over jetlag -- woke up this morning at 1:3o pm, which I hate... the strategy of tiring myself out to force a regular schedule seems to have backfired.
All the standouts of living in this part of the world came back to me in the first day. For instance:
in a rickshaw on the way to Ansal Plaza to get a mobile connected, they guy noticed my limp arm, and told me how his father had exactly that and after eating lots and lots of bul-buls (nightingales), circulation returned to his arm. I've had versions of the same conversation in Bombay, Delhi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Karachi. I know that people mean well and have great faith in folk remedies and the wisdom of elders, it's just a bit of an unwelcome reminder of a part of me that I usually try to ignore.
and the mall itself! I hadn't been to Ansal Plaza, and had in fact, avoided malls in Delhi altogether. But the experience reminded me of Park Towers in Karachi -- the acquisitive crush, all sorts of people eying each other's purchases, and none of the blank space you expect in malls in the West, for the old, infirm and bored (me) to sit and avoid the actual act of shopping. This was a scene, yaar! And as Tania had mentioned, I did see one instance of a girl wearing *gasp* a short skirt. Well, above knee-length. On a weight-and-height machine. Trying to impress the buff McMasala -type Boyfriend. Where is good old Gandhian paternalistic ascetic aestheticism (say that one three times quickly) when you really need it?
I dragged myself there again, tonight, to try and get the mobile phone connected again, so I got to see the more intense Saturday night scene. I actually thinking that 24 hours really meant 24 hours. There will be a celebratory post when the thing actually gets connected and I stop being a shadow at the limits of modern society.
Other than that: perfectly nice expat party in Vasant Vihar at which I knew hardly a soul (this was pretty much like when you know no one at a party in the States), and then a lazy afternoon today at two of my favourite haunts in Khan Market, today absolutely thronged by the goras and the well-heeled shopping. I must try this shopping thing sometime, to see what the fuss is about.
On Monday, I'm going to start getting serious: visiting CPR and Fulbright House, setting up the relatively easy interviews, nosing about. Meantime, I hope you're all enjoying yourself.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
in transit: London
So here I am in London, 10 hours before boarding the plane for Indira Gandhi International in New Delhi. I left San Francisco last night, flight and the entire experience thus far have been relatively smooth.
Why, though? By all rights and expectations, I should be on the verge of nervous breakdown. I guess it gets easier every time, like the idea of applying local anaesthetic to one's soul. It gets you through it. I wonder how anaesthetised this experience will be -- Pakistan certainly was, but I sincerely hope for different circumstances in India.
Looking back on the world behind me: friends, colleagues, a subletted apartment, the cool sunshine one lives for in the Bay Area. I had a hard time leaving, but it does force you to appreciate the things that I love and especially the people that I love back there, now many thousands of miles away.
And so I have left Berkeley and now I'm leaving London, London in the beginning of autumn with the weather perfect and the leaves ever-so-slightly turning. I leave. I'm a leaver. I hope this keeps itself to a geographic connotation: I have not yet and hope will never leave a spouse, kids. But now, I leave, leave my life and fly to the land of sticky late summer heat and the buttend of the monsoon. Return is also, I guess, another way to put it.
Why, though? By all rights and expectations, I should be on the verge of nervous breakdown. I guess it gets easier every time, like the idea of applying local anaesthetic to one's soul. It gets you through it. I wonder how anaesthetised this experience will be -- Pakistan certainly was, but I sincerely hope for different circumstances in India.
Looking back on the world behind me: friends, colleagues, a subletted apartment, the cool sunshine one lives for in the Bay Area. I had a hard time leaving, but it does force you to appreciate the things that I love and especially the people that I love back there, now many thousands of miles away.
And so I have left Berkeley and now I'm leaving London, London in the beginning of autumn with the weather perfect and the leaves ever-so-slightly turning. I leave. I'm a leaver. I hope this keeps itself to a geographic connotation: I have not yet and hope will never leave a spouse, kids. But now, I leave, leave my life and fly to the land of sticky late summer heat and the buttend of the monsoon. Return is also, I guess, another way to put it.
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