Final post: What have I learned?

Incredibly, I will be leaving India in two days. That's okay, though, because I think I have reached my naan saturation point.

Results of fieldwork:

Big take-home insight #1: Ambivalence regarding minority politics

I'm very torn about the Gorkha movement, as I am about all the minority-language-group struggles I have been researching. On one hand, if the society around you has defined you in terms of your ethnicity, and discriminates against you on that basis, it seems entirely within your rights to resist that. And if the society around you is full of negative stereotypes about this category that they put you into, it seems natural and warranted that you would want to counter that with a movement highlighting what is good about your ethnicity.

I feel sympathy with these movements because the status quo is so unfair.

Then they go and run around burning the cars of the sons of the people who disagree with them.

So I guess I also feel ethnic identities are ultimately dead ends as a means to build a society. There is not enough room for flexibility and generosity of spirit. All the movements I have looked at always end up being kind of fascist internally and racist externally.

Big take-home insight #2: Lonely Plant is wrong about fare negotiations

Both the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide I have consulted during my time in India advise you to always negotiate cab and rickshaw fares in advance. This is nonsense.

Remember your basic game theory: at the end of the ride, you are already where you want to go. The driver can either take the fare you offer or get nothing. The bargaining power is on your side.

Therefore, you should NEVER make any attempt to negotiate the fare before the ride. Just get in, stay quiet, and pay what you want at the end of the ride.

I've had tremendous luck with this. If the driver protests and won't take the fare, you set it the money on the dashboard and walk away. (Best to get out of the vehicle before offering the fare). As I've become more bold, I've stopped being bothered when the driver tries to hold initial negotations. Sample dialogue:

Me: "Can you take me to [x place, a measly 20 rupees worth of distance away]?"

Rickshaw driver: "100 Rupees."

Me: "No." [climb into rickshaw and sit down]

Rickshaw driver: "90 Rupees." [climbs into rickshaw and starts engine -- major tactical mistake on his part]

Me: "No."

[Rickshaw driver shrugs, begins to drive. When we arrive at destination, I offer the entirely reasonable 20 rupees and we go our separate ways. This has worked thus far.]

I always offer a reasonable fare. If I were a true economist I would try to offer nothing and see if I could get away with it. But, as you know, economics, the term for which is derived from the Greek for "if I had channeled my mathematical acumen into computer science I'd be a zillionaire by now", is a discipline full of small and bitter people.

My whole plan is, of course, subject to the caveats that (1) you don't want to do this in some dark and deserted place. Fortunately, in India it is never deserted. And (2) you don't want to be so grossly unfair as to bring the wrath of the crowd upon you. But no rickshaw driver is going to run after you on the grounds that you only paid him the normal price, rather than the grossly inflated white person price. And the law isn't on their side because they're supposed to be running the meter and because Indian policemen loath Indians.

Also, you have to have the correct change with you and you have to know the appropriate fare for the place you are going. The latter doesn't take too long to get figured out. But getting change in India is really difficult. I mean, heaven help you if you've just been to the ATM and all you have are 500 rupee bills (~$12). Those you can really only use at a bustling establishment, like a McDonald's or a store being run by Sikhs or Marwaris (they're like the Jews/Chinese people/Lebanese of South Asia). Maybe Gujaratis. But, in general, no one ever has change.

Liet motif of time in India: Poor people's fundamental problem = not enough money.

Big take-home insight #3: India’s identity crisis and the limits of my ability to understand this place

If you want to say something about what India ought to do or what's going to happen to here, you can't get all that far before you have to discuss Hinduism. Because not only are about 80% of the people self-described as Hindus, but also because many of the customs associated with Hinduism—caste in particular—are put in practice by non-Hindus: Muslims, Christians, etc.

But Hinduism is a really hard subject even for Indians. For one thing, Hinduism is really internally diverse, and there is a very politically-loaded debate about what being Hindu actually entails.

As far as I can tell, there is a correlation between education, income, and ambivalence about Hinduism and, by extension, Indian history.

I have to mention this ad for Maruti cars (one of two Indian car companies, though now partially owned by Suzuki) about which I could write an entire dissertation. It is the most amazing ad for displaying the ambivalence of upwardly-mobile Indians about India. The slogan is “India comes home in a Maruti-Suzuki” and the commercial is a montage of homecomings (in Maruti Suzukis) against a sentimental song about love of India.

But all the images imply this profound uncertainty about what the customer is supposed to like about India. Is India terrific because it is a rising world power, becoming richer, more modern, and considerably-more-Westernized than many of its post-colonial peers? That is, is India terrific because it is changing? Or was India always a pretty terrific place? Can both of those things be true?

The closing image of the ad, for example, is of a boy (in Western clothes and backpack) hitchhiking with a sign that says “Need to be home for Diwali.” In English. In the background, slightly out of focus, you see the old, rickety bus that he was taking, broken down by the side of the road, with Indian men in traditional garb milling about, unloading some of the baggage. Then a new Maruti-Suzuki pulls up and picks up the boy.

So, the protagonists in the image are these comfortable, middle-class Westernized Indians who hitchhike in English. Yet, this boy, on his way home from the college where he is learning terribly modern stuff, is intent on celebrating a traditional holiday. And a sort of stereotypical, dysfunctional, poor India is there in the background—looking kind of picturesque, actually—but is easily transcended thanks to Maruti-Suzuki.

Indian politics has a lot of references to this ambivalence.

For one thing, India had a famously secular set of founding fathers in the Indian National Congress and the Indian communist parties. They tended to be socialists and Marxists, so many of them were pretty skeptical about God, let alone religion. For that secular founding generation, India’s lessons for the rest of the world were evidenced by its leadership in self-determination of colonized people, the Gandhian model of non-violent political struggle, and non-alignment in the wars of the capitalist, Western powers.

To people who are Hindu fundamentalists, though, the Indian founders' secularism was basically hostility toward Hinduism. It is the case that the Indian constitution and legal code ban certain aspects of what-was-once-considered-Hindu culture, like untouchability. And, over time, socialism, secularism, Gandhian political practice, and non-alignment have all become a lot less popular in India. And there is the uncomfortable fact that the secularists’ version of why-India-is-a-really-awesome-place didn’t have very much to say about India prior to colonization.

There is also a history running back to colonial times where lefty, secularist Indian intellectuals respond to Western critiques of Hinduism by drawing attention to the aspects of Hinduism that look really good according to Western lefty, secularist standards and, particularly, the aspects that seem even better than old-timey Western traditions. For example, the tradition of renunciation of the material world is cited as demonstrating that this is a culture that is less grasping and economically exploitative than the Protestant-work-ethic-of-the-British-and-other-white-folk. A more contemporary example: the worship of goddesses can be cited as proof that Hinduism has better feminist bona fides than the West, female infanticide not withstanding.

In these treatments, aspects of Hindu culture that don't appeal to Westerners are often blamed on foreign influence. People argue the British made the caste system oppressive, whereas previously it was quite fluid, or that the Muslims are the ones that screwed up gender relations.

Yet, even if there is scholarly support for a reading of Hinduism that is not caste-discriminatory, is more gender equal, less racist, etc., the fact is that for millions of Hindus who practice now, those objectionable-to-Westerners aspects of Hinduism are part of their beliefs. I definitely don't have the expertise to say which interpretations of Hinduism are most consistent with the various texts and so on. But it does often seem that traditions and texts are being culled for whatever figures and traditions look right according to outsiders. Finding an "indigenous progressive tradition" is a little oxymoronic if you go looking for that tradition based on a foreign definition of "progressive".

The most prominent political defense of Hinduism against political secularists is Hindutva, often called Hindu fundamentalism; the movement developed as a response to Christian missionaries. But Hindutva, too, is often transparently over-compensating in its attempts to present itself as valuable according to outsiders’ standards. The most extreme example I know is the claim that the Vedas contain the secrets of quantum physics and nuclear weapons.

Basically, I think Hindutva still contains a lot of culling of Hinduism according to what will make India seem more impressive to foreigners, but with a unique take on what outsiders allegedly find inferior in Hinduism. Whereas India's founding fathers were very concerned with the negative views of caste, for example, Hindutva is quite concerned by the view, which the Muslim Mughal kings and the British colonialists shared, that Hinduism isn't very manly. So Hindutva is really hostile to a lot of the androgeny in Hindu tradition, and plays up the myths and traditions that surround men and military conquest. Not to mention the claim that Hindus have always secretly known how to make WMDs.

Now, it is possible that I am overstating the extent to which debates about Indian culture and Hinduism are shaped by defensiveness against Western standards; that could be a function of my own prejudices and tendency to overstate the importance of the West. If one believes, for example, that there is something inherently sensible about the equality of all humans then maybe the secularists’ rejection of caste doesn’t have to be categorized as Western-informed. But Indians do talk a lot about this problem of being seen as inferior.

Here, I have to mention my other favorite part of the Maruti Suzuki ad, at the risk of belaboring the point. An older gentleman is waiting impatiently outside his beautiful house, which is a sort of sleek, Nordic design, the sort of house Ikea would sell, if it sold houses. His wife stands nervously in the background. His grown-up daughter arrives (in a Maruti Suzuki), looking a bit sheepish. Then, out of the driver’s side of the car emerges a young man, who walks up to Dad, smiles and holds an arm out to shake hands. (NB: he offers a handshake. He does not fold his hands and make a little bow). Mom and Dad are immediately excited to see their daughter has brought home a future son-in-law, and all delay (which was definitely not any fault of the reliable yet affordable Maruti Suzuki) is forgiven.

The most notable thing about this young man is that he is wearing a Sikh turban. The Dad is not. Maybe the family isn’t Sikh. Or maybe their daughter has actually found someone to marry who is more devout than her parents. The marriage is thoroughly modern: it clearly wasn’t arranged, their daughter is apparently off living her own self-actualized life. Her beau is obviously Westernized, what with the handshake and the button down shirt he is wearing. And, yet, he’s completely at home in Indian tradition and, in fact, maybe even better able to integrate it into his identity than the future-in-laws.

Such is the promise of the future generations of India, which will be both more and less Indian than their parents. While still driving Maruti Suzukis.

Now, this is where it gets really weird for me:

I think that the process of trying to justify Hinduism and Indian culture to outsiders is demeaning and not necessarily helpful to India's national project.

But I'm not a cultural relativist. So I pretty much share the view that the good points of Indian society are the ones that look good by my lights (pro-female, universal equality of people, acceptance of homosexuality, etc.). And my wishes for India subscribe pretty much entirely to a Western leftist's teleology: get rid of arranged marriages, castes, excessive use of cardamom in desserts, and so on.

I don't think, as an outsider, I could ever develop a critique or view of Indian society that was more informed by its internal truths than by me trying to find my own values within Hinduism and other Indian traditions. I can’t pretend Indian society doesn’t seem really screwed up to me, but I also believe the conversation about this alleged screwed-up-ness is one to which I can't contribute very much, if at all.

Which, in turn, does make me think my ability to ever recommend or predict where India is concerned is pretty limited.

But I already have my whole second book—about this Maruti-Suzuki commercial—mapped out. So that should get me through to tenure.

In conclusion...

I have met one big goal with this fieldwork: I had no hypothesis about why some language groups get states and others don't when I arrived here. And now I have some hypotheses, which I think I can clarify and test. And I know a lot more stuff about India.

I've also become not-too-bad at cutting my own hair, had a chance to live with my younger sister again, and had fun writing this blog. So thanks for reading it.

xox
B (soon to be not in India)

A car being burnt outside my window

Yesterday, someone in the crowd at one of the GJM's rallies was shot while protesting outside the house of a leader of the recently-deposed GNLF. That man's house and two cars were burned, and other GNLF-connected people also had their houses or stores damaged. I'm not clear on whose car I saw being burned. But, so far as I know, there were no people attacked.

A little visual meditation on the nature of the Indian state: Note the position of the police as the crowd rolls the car to where they are going to burn it.


Compared to what this area has been through in the past, this was really a pretty contained and limited episode of political violence. It was definitely obvious that (1) these guys were very knowledgeable about the safest and most effective way to burn a car. They had crowd control going and everything. And (2) the spectators were all quite calm -- there weren't even shouts of encouragement or solidarity, actually. They definitely seemed more like observers than participants.

And today things were very calm. The stores were open, the car removed from the road, the rallies back on.

Oof... I'll write something more complete about my take on the Gorkhaland movement later.

I actually only have 12 more days in India. I'm already supposing that I'll have to make a return trip, so I don't feel too panicked to finish things up. Nonetheless, it did sneak up on me.

As compelling a reason for a separate state as any

Darjeeling really isn't much like the rest of India. For one thing, its not flat, hot, or particularly crowded. And there is much less rice, lots more noodles. Also, they tend not to use milk in their tea. (There is also supposedly some stuff about separate cultural identities and unique historical civilizations or blah blah whatever that my interviewees are always going on about.) But a REALLY important difference, and one that I am uniquely well-qualified to measure, is the region's surprisingly advanced cuteness technology.

This was first evident in the glorious array of umbrellas on daily display.


Then there is the broad deployment of pint-sized uniforms.

And, for another thing, the better weather and quieter streets mean that people walk their kids about in public quite a bit. There are even pony rides! Another impact of the weather seems to be that the town's indigenous cuteness production is oriented toward knitting children's clothing (note the pink striped sweater on the left in the pony-ride picture and the blue cap in the shot below).

Finally, many people keep pet dogs here, and those are pretty rare in the rest of India. Doma is the puppy who lives at my guest house. (Up close, she kind of has the face of the dog who guards the Labyrinth, from the David Bowie movie).

You may recall that in an earlier post I put forward a rough unified field theory of the commercial-availability of cuteness. In which the critical explanatory variable for high levels of cuteness technology was low birth rates. WELL: as previously hypothesized, Darjeeling is, in fact, near the replacement rate with total fertility of 2.1 children per woman, based on the 2001 census. This is well below the rate for the state (2.6) and far below India's national fertility rate of 3.2 children/woman, which, as we have seen, dooms much of plains India to its shocking lack of appreciation of stuffed penguins.

Albert has voted that we remain in Darjeeling for the balance of the trip.

The Indian Idol ripple effects continue

When last I was in Darjeeling (November 2007), the Gorkha Janmurti Morcha (GJM), led by a firm supporter of Indian Idol winner and ethnic Gorkha Pradan Tamang, was trying to unseat the incumbent Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), led by an old-timey guy who probably secretly misses the days of radio.

Fast-forward to July 2008, and the GNLF and its unhip leader have been forced to step off the political scene. And the GJM is now leading the charge for the creation of a Gorkha state. Technically, Darjeeling is in the midst of an "indefinite" strike, but this week is a "relaxation" of the strike, so things can go along as before. (What, you feel like that's fundamentally a contradiction of the concept of a strike? Well, mister, there is no place for your Western-centric purist notion of political tactics here in India. You probably think that a "relay" fast-unto-"death" doesn't make any sense, either.)

The GJM flag is up everywhere now, and there have been rallies held regularly to keep people focused on the cause.

The GJM presents a certain normative tension, something that strikes me when I read about many different mass movements. It is clear that many, probably most, people here are passionately in favor of the GJM and its cause. But despite and even because of that genunine popularity, there is clearly a lot of pressure to conform. There is a wing of the GJM for almost any identity you can think of: women, youth, students, truck drivers, private school teachers, hotel owners-- even a wing for non-Gorkhas. Other political parties are essentially non-existent, and anti-GJM posters are immediately torn down. The group is starting to enforce social reforms, like cracking down on alcohol use. The GJM is quite tactically focused on strikes and road blockades, so it issues all kinds of directives about when people can and can't work and travel.

It's probably true that if these measures were put to a vote they'd prove overwhelmingly popular. But it's also true these measures are being unilaterally announced by a small group of people who've never even run in an election. From one point of view, this all looks like a cynical strategy by the GJM leadership to remove any potential opposition, and from another point of view it is a spontaneous, grassroots development that is essentially democratic.

Today's illustration: the private school students' march!

Schools are actually on summer break, but about 500 students turned out this morning - running the gamut from age 9ish to 16ish. They were all in their uniforms and organized in pairs, the girls first, then the boys, lined up in the town square by school. Then a GJM leader said a few words and they proceeded on a little march through town.

My first thought was that this was the most adorable political protest I'd ever seen. It was a veritable sea of pigtails and pleated skirts. And, maybe I'm just getting pervy as I get older, but I think I would have had quite a bit more trouble concentrating in middle school if all the boys had been required to wear those cute ties, not to mention properly tailored pants. They looked so dapper!

There was nothing particularly menacing about the gathering, either. For one thing, it looked like a good way to correct one of the problems of summer, which is that you don't necessarily have all your friends together in one place as often as you might like. Second, attrition from the march-through-town was already starting within the first few blocks--I'm not sure they could have kept things going much beyond the first internet cafe they passed. Third, the kids were supremely undisciplined with the call-and-response they were supposed to be doing as they marched. I've seen a number of these GJM marches now, and about every 40 people or so there is supposed to be someone who shouts things like "We want Gorkhaland!" and then the crowd around answers "Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland!". And variations ensue. There are always some people walking fairly far away from any "caller" who aren't really shouting. And if one of the callers is uninspiring or stops shouting, that can result in a gap of about 40-50 people in the line who are just strolling along.

Well, with the kids, a few teachers had selected the right kid for the "call" part of the job -- someone popular but also loud. But most of the students put in the "call" role were blushing and muttering instead of shouting out their lines. And, I'm sorry to say it, but there was not a single girl in a "call" role who was doing an adequate job, and most were very giggly. Perhaps the neckties do have excessive swoon inducing properties.

So, this morning I was thinking the whole thing was pretty amusing and harmless, not too National Socialist Party Youth or anything, despite the uniforms. But then in the paper today there is a story about a teacher getting fired because his students told that parents that he had criticized the idea of Gorkhaland in class.

Young people engaged with the democratic process or totalitarians in knee socks? Can anyone really know?

Also, I think my book of Sudoko puzzles is a give away

Hello from Siliguri! Crossroads of Northeast India and jumping-off point for Darjeeling, if they ever stop with their strikes

I’m going to write more about this town in a future post. It is a challenging place to describe. But I wanted to mention something super exciting: BOTH of my first two contacts here mentioned that I might be put under surveillance by the government while I am here!! Because this is a border area and the strikes are still on in Darjeeling (north of here) and they try to keep tabs on all foreigners in the area. Plus, it wouldn’t be too hard to follow me – I am the only white person in town, my residence is registered at the police station, and rickshaws trail me on the street as it is, hoping I’ll change my mind about walking.

Still, I believe that when certain facts inevitably come to public view, they will give me away as someone who is definitely not an international woman of mystery.
1. I have a really lame phone. Seriously, the Vodaphone guys were shocked by it – they didn’t say this to me directly but I know “purana” means “old” in Hindi.
2. I’ve been reading the Bourne Identity. I figure real cloak-and-dagger types probably get annoyed by all the inaccuracies in popular culture depictions of deep cover operations.
3. I checked my luggage on the flight here. Not conducive to quick get-aways.
4. I have a blog.

In limbo

Harrumph! I'm stuck in Kolkata, again. Last fall I got stuck here for a day when I missed my flight because of general strikes against the West Bengal government (http://tinyurl.com/2rrnph); a week or so ago I had an unplanned two-day reprieve from research when the West Bengal government called a general strike against the central government and then the opposition called an "us too" general strike against the central government for the following day (http://tinyurl.com/5aavry); and now I'm stuck here because I missed my flight to Darjeeling. Because the Darjeeling-statehood party called a general strike and asked all tourists to evacuate, then relaxed their stance a bit, at which point the anti-Darjeeling-statehood party called a counter-strike (http://tiny.cc/ODl92).

I feel West Bengal is like a little bit of Latin America in India. Full of anachronistic leftism, overzealous civil disobedience, and totally loony, paranoid anti-Americanism. (I don't mind anti-Americanism, as long as it isn't too UFOs-and-second-gunman-esque. Saturday's interview was all about the Darjeeling agitation is a US plot meant to destroy the otherwise vibrant Indian communist movement and slow the global revolution of the proletariat. I think my Indian Idol theory is better).

The increased urgency of the Darjeeling statehood movement over these past few weeks is generally good for my dissertation -- more to observe. And I really appreciate that everyone here is working hard to make my topic policy-relevant. But it raises problems for me when they get over-enthusiastic and limit my ability to do my research. The general strike is not -- I don't think -- all that dangerous. But, while it's still being strictly observed, it isn't possible to rent a room in Darjeeling, move around, get food, etc. And, the reporters I've been conferring with me tell me, political leaders are keeping a low profile and won't give interviews during the strike.

Actually, that is something I didn't realize: the political parties are technically supposed to be inactive during general strikes, too. If a political party uses cars or keeps its office open during their own general strike, an accusatory article appears in the paper. This is surprising to me because, in my mind, (a) general strikes are inherently political - the one thing they are definitely not is a day off from politics and (b) general strikes are supposed to pressure the government by causing economic losses and inconveniences. But since political parties don't make anything or facilitate anything, what's so intimidating about them not working? The opposition strikes fear into the heart of the government by taking a day off?

The rest of India thinks Bengalis are lazy. I think they've probably just been enervated by sixty years of excessive general strikes.

Hello? Hello?

I have often wondered why I decided I would do fieldwork, knowing that I don’t particularly like talking to strangers. But, now that I’m in West Bengal, trying to interview people in a place where I don’t have many contacts, I am realizing that there is an aspect to fieldwork I dislike even more than talking to strangers: talking to people on the phone.

My best college friend, Michelle from LA, could tell you about how little I like the phone. About how, when we were in college, I would go weeks without checking my voicemail. And about how I still sometimes do that. And about my tendency to not return calls for a long time even after I listen to my messages. And how my phone goes unanswered a suspiciously large percentage of the time. Large enough that, if you didn’t know me, you might start to suspect I was sitting by the phone and letting calls go to voicemail, just because I didn’t want to use the phone. But, since Michelle does know me, she is certain that is what I’m doing.

Now, I’m stuck here making tens of phone calls per day trying to get interviews. I just hate it.

First, there are all kinds of technical oddities with Indian phones—I can’t possibly get into it here, seeing as how the capacity of the internet is finite, but in India you have to dial the numbers differently for cell phones, land lines, long distance land lines, and long distance cell phones. And it has taken ages to master that. And, for whatever reasons, even properly dialed calls get dropped about 25% of the time.

Oh, also, West Bengal has no government phone directly. Full stop. There literally isn’t one, in print or online. In fact, the government of West Bengal website does not list even a single phone number. And, also, so far as I can tell, if you do call the West Bengal seat of government, there is no operator to help you if you don’t know somebody’s extension. The one time I’d like to speak to a person!

When I finally get someone on the line… Well, the next thing I hate is that nobody identifies their office when they pick up the phone. As in “Hello, this is the office of Mr. Singh.” Instead, they just say “Hello” or “Namaskar” or sometimes just “Ji?”—which is a polite form of “yes?” but still seems terribly abrupt to me. I mostly have the rhythm of asking whether I am speaking to such and such an office down, but initially it really threw me. And it is still bad when I’m being transferred. As in:

Me: “May I speak to Mr. Singh?”

Unidentified Voice #1: “Just a moment”

Unidentified Voice #2: “Hello?”

Now, at this point: how am I supposed to know if I’m speaking to Mr. Singh’s secretary or to the man himself? Because, it has gone both ways on me. Which means I’ve talked to secretaries and inappropriately used the second person and to politicians and inappropriately used the third person. I wouldn’t be quite as self-conscious about this were it not for the low quality phone connections. Which mean that when I get someone on the line I antagonize them for the first minute by shouting back and forth about whether we can hear each other. And then I antagonize them by not really having any idea who I’m speaking to. And I go on to antagonize them by not being able to understand about 40% of what they are saying. It doesn’t make me feel confident about asking for favors.

I get two kinds of “no’s” and I’m not sure which one I dislike more. People who have actually said “no” have been, frankly, kind of mean about it. I particularly dislike when someone posts their direct number online and then has this whole “how dare you waste my time?” attitude when I call that number. Because, listen buddy: I know you’re important. I don’t expect you to take your own phone calls. But how am I supposed to know that you’re using some perverse logic wherein your listed numbers are the ones you don’t want people to call?

The other kind of “no” is the handle-my-call-like-a-hot-potato between assistants. With transferring and retransferring, and “why don’t you call back” at this time or on this date. And I don’t really expect people to call me when they say they will, although I can’t help being a little hopeful when they give an actual time and date when they are going to call. Why do people have to embellish when they blow me off? It’s just mean.

What is totally mysterious to me, though, is trying to figure out when “yes” means “no”. In particular, the people who promise to get me meetings with or phone numbers of important people and then disappear. I think it is pretty common to have someone make a promise he does not intend to keep in order to avoid saying “no.” But why would you promise things above and beyond what I even requested? I guess it is about wanting to appear cool. Like telling the other 10^th graders that you have a girlfriend from summer camp...

Which reminds me: once, when I was in 6^th grade, I hung up the phone on someone who had called to ask if I wanted to go out with his friend, Carson. I thought it was a prank and they were making fun of me. It was only in the last few years that it occurred to me that they might have been serious and that, in that case, I may have been a wee bit harsh in my rejection. I believe that my current troubles probably relate to the bad karma I accrued from that early phone misadventure.

When I get back, I think I will get a Blackberry. Then I can enjoy the illusion that I don’t own a phone at all. Evil, evil machines.

The new baby!

I have a nephew! Nathan Robert Thornburg was born June 4. His pictures are up at:

www.thethornfield.blogspot.com

Hurray!

Over the top is just enough

It's just a couple hours until we leave Delhi, but there was one other set of photos I wanted to post. From a florist near my house where you can see the guys outside making flower arrangements, and they are using cans of spray paint to, quite literally, gild the lilies.

One of the things I find most striking about many Indians is that they just don't have share the NPR demographic's self-conscious, fussy, and ironic approach to public displays of consumption. It's a disarmingly sincere aesthetic.

There goes the neighborhood. Or not.

I’m moving out of New Delhi this Saturday. And though I switched rooms once, I’ve been in the same building since I arrived here last July. So this is my last opportunity to show you pictures of the abandoned car that has been sitting on my block since I arrived.

I really regret not taking a photo of it when I arrived, so I could give you some sense of the rate of decay. But last July this tan Ford Falcon was clearly abandoned, old, and beaten up, but it was largely intact. Since then, the glass has been broken, some of the seats have been torn up, and paint was dumped on the car at some point. The car has also been used as a trash can, including one person who got rid of a small oil lamp – of the kind used for festivals and temple – by sticking it in the back window. Odd. But, and this amazes me, the car hasn’t yet been hauled away or completely stripped for scrap metal. Part of the engine block is definitely still in the hood, so you’d think there’d be something there a junkyard would buy.

This car is a good illustration of what I think it means to live in a “fancy” neighborhood in New Delhi. Because, on the one hand, no one in the neighborhood is sufficiently strapped for cash to haul the car away for scrap. And/or the private security guards at the adjoining houses scare-off any attempts to blatantly appropriate the car. But, on the other hand, there is no “not-in-my-backyard” outrage at having this mini-junk yard midst these very expensive homes. There are block associations in Defence Colony, but they don’t seem to have made this car a priority.

I’m definitely going to try to come back to Defence Colony one more time before I leave, so that I can see if anything new has happened to the car. But I don’t have any idea what would finally spur someone to take charge of getting rid of the car.

About 10 minutes on Wikipedia has led me to conclude that Ford Falcons do not biodegrade. So, I guess this patch of Delhi’s sidewalk is scheduled to for clearing circa 7.5 years from now when it will be incinerated along with the rest of the planet due to the expansion of the sun. Unfortunately, on balance, I think that’s going to be tough on neighborhood property values.

Killing Time. And Windows.

Prior to these latest, nearly decisive, primaries, Barack Obama was pointing out that, in the time he’s been running for president, babies have learned to walk and talk. HA! What I wouldn’t give for a job-qualification process that short!

In the time since I started graduate school at Stanford, my niece was gestated, born, learned to walk, talk, and identify the principals from both Winnie the Pooh and Dora the Explorer. And now she is two years old and expecting the arrival of her sibling on May 31. And that baby will probably be walking and talking before I’ve actually finished writing my PhD. In fact, by the time this India project finally becomes a book, my little niece will probably be horrifying her parents by asking for precociously-sexual “tween” apparel and her own cell phone.

Which is to say: this has been a week of waiting—not without some interviews or fairly firm promises of the same, but lots of down time, nonetheless. I’m a little restless and concerned that May has turned out to be a low value-added month in the field. But, hey, minus the waiting and the dead ends and the interviewing of the entirely wrong person, what would I have done for a whole year in India, anyhow?

It’s also been a week of maintenance. Just as soon as I start writing about having perhaps underestimated the competence of the Indian service sector, events conspired to change my mind back. Our internet connection was canceled thanks to an Airtel mistake, and then reconnected only after five days and a heartbreaking series of phone calls, hours wasted on hold, totally pointless home visits, and general misdirection. A highlight: a visit from a technician to confirm that our connection had, in fact, been switched off. Because, obviously, if I were receiving internet access without an account and, thus, not paying for it, the first thing I would do is call and fraudulently complain about not having service. I also like to buy the unlimited-refill soda at fast food restaurants and then drink only one glass of Coke, just to game the system. But I’ve always been pretty edgy.

Also in the “are you !@#$-ing kidding me?” category of high quality workmanship is my landlord’s house. Because two days ago I put my hand through the glass in my extremely poorly made window. (I only got a little scratch, no problem.) The window, which opens outward, was sticking against the sill and so I was banging against the frame to get it open. And the heel of my palm rapped the glass. Which mustered all the resistance of a crème brulee. Actually, I think the reason that I didn’t cut myself is that I didn’t put my hand through the window at all. I gave it a smart tap. And the glass could apparently only repel force = f <>

This is definitely not a case of not knowing my own strength. (I am totally up to date on my “not much” status in that respect). Because two of Merideth’s windows broke the same night when they were banged shut by the wind. Terrible.

I like him even more than Christian Soriano

The ultimate aim of this fieldwork is to provide the raw material for the presentation that will, hopefully, win me a job in a few years. I’ve decided to define that mandate broadly, so I can pick up some custom made business attire. To look snazzy when giving my job talks, you know?

I started thinking in the fall that I should buy a suit over Christmas break and then bring it back to India and have it copied. I mentioned this plan to a history graduate student here, and she had heartily endorsed buying an article of clothing in the US so that I could get exactly the same thing made in India. She, apparently, had no luck trying to take pictures and measurements to a tailor. Now, because she is a historian, full of advanced language skills and nuanced local knowledge, I took very seriously her account of what it was like to go to an Indian tailor. And I was very determined to find a suit that could be copied without any flexibility on the part of the Indian tailor; I even made sure my suit was all wool so that the fit would not depend on synthetic fabrics he might not have available.

In retrospect, the social scientist in me is ashamed to have been overawed by the humanities. (Extrapolating from an n of 1 – what would my committee say?!?) Because when I went to the fabric store/tailoring establishment (Delhi Cloth House & Garg Brothers Tailoring, in Khan Market, as recommended by Lonely Planet) they were just so entirely not overawed by the task I was requesting. The suit came out perfectly, probably to the point of constituting some kind of intellectual properties violation. Frankly, I am downgrading my opinion of the quality of the workmanship on Project Runway – and did I mention they use foot pedal style machines at this place?

When I showed them a dress shirt, the first thing the fabric seller says, without even touching the shirt, is that it looks like it has Lycra in it. And directed the fabric-bolt-fetching-assistants (that seems to be their main job) to fetch some poly/cotton blends. And here I was thinking I might not be able to get anything other than pure wool in Delhi – I guess it’s good that I at least knew they wouldn’t be raising the sheep out back.

Actually, Mr. Garg, the tailor, has been very patient with my naiveté regarding Delhi garment making. After I picked my suit up, we returned to the tailors and Merideth ordered a suit jacket and skirt – mind you, Merideth aren’t the same size and we have no pattern for a skirt, so this is a complete abandonment of the idea that one could only get exact replicas of existing clothes. While having lunch in the restaurant around the corner, we started to wonder if she should have asked for the skirt to be lined. You know, because women here don’t really wear skirts, so maybe the tailor wouldn’t realize that’s a part of Western business attire. And I convinced her to go back and ask. The tailor, with the munificence that is so becoming of the truly gifted, patiently said “Yes, of course, a skirt won’t work unless it’s lined.”

My experience at the tailor has prompted two things. First, extensive daydreaming about further clothes it would be fun to have made while I’m here. And, second, a bit of soul searching on the lines of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Being able to make something as well as these guys is impressive no matter where you are from. But I also think that over the course of the time I’ve spent here, I’ve drifted into assuming that many people in this city aren’t very good at their jobs, and kind of bracing myself for hassle and disappointment before any business interaction.

Of course, many of the holdups in navigating India involve differences of opinion about what doing a good job constitutes. For example, I would prefer to arrive at my destination in one piece, but the rickshaw walla would prefer to arrive there fast. So, I can’t fairly claim that he isn’t talented at driving his rickshaw even though I didn’t enjoy the ride.

Still, it seems like at most jobs—apart from the small businesses where the proprietor is always on site—hiring and incentives just aren’t particularly related to qualifications or even to effort. And who would bother to learn a job well under those conditions? To put it another way: there is a car dealership in Delhi which is named Competent. They sell a lot of cars, and so I think that name must resonate.

On a related note, I’ve become a bit slow with writing on this blog because I’ve had trouble coming up with topics. I hesitate to keep posting on the theme of the sublimely ridiculous or very weird aspects of India – I don’t want to be a hater. So this post is my salute to the small businesses of India, and my tailor in particular. They're kind of a big deal.

Answer in the Form of a Question

I have three interviews tomorrow and I'm having trouble getting motivated to write my scripts for them. Because I really haven't come up with the script that makes my respondents, well, respond. At least to the questions I am asking. So, I present a Jeopardy like exercise -- what must I be asking to be getting these answers?

The Interview Script for the Answers my Respondents Give

Please share with me your views of Pakistan.

Could you explain in 300 words or more why the United States’ ongoing support occupation of Iraq renders my question irrelevant?

What would Gandhi want for your group?

Please tell me the history of the present controversy beginning in 1650 and do not spare the excruciating, dubiously historically accurate detail. And be sure to fade into unhelpful generalities as soon as your narrative approaches 1947.

Globalization is a US imperial scourge that has caused all India’s present difficulties. Please discuss.

What are the views of “the people”? Do “the people” want development, self-governance and dignity, or do they prefer corruption, squalor and repression? What evidence do you have for these preferences?

Is your situation in anyway analogous to that of the Palestinians? Why or why not?

I would like to discuss an apparently less-than-ideal moment in India’s recent history. Please clarify for me the uniquely profound insights of Indian statecraft that explain why the Indian government has always done the exact right thing at every juncture since its inception, including the instance I have just mentioned.

Is there a lot of corruption in India? And how have you, an honest man among thieves, been personally thwarted and held back by the wickedness of others?

Why don’t you explain to me how in India you have a bicameral legislature? Since, obviously, I could not possibly have bothered to find that out before our interview.

In what ways is the present crisis entirely the fault of the British?

I look down on Indians. Please offer me a rambling and extremely pessimistic account of your country’s cultural and economic prospects so we can bond over our shared disdain.

I look down on Indians. Why don’t you rebut my skepticism regarding your country’s cultural and economic prospects in a rambling and wildly optimistic explanation of how India will soon eclipse the Britain, China and the United States militarily, economically, spiritually, and culturally?

Could you just tie this all back to Pakistan for me?

Milkshake

I suppose it is just typical of being an ex-pat that I vacillate between feeling impatient with India and wanting to stick up for it around other foreigners. No one is allowed to complain about this place but me!

Last week I overheard someone complain to a waiter about the lack of ice cream in her milkshake. One of India’s culinary quirks is that, unless you request otherwise, a milkshake doesn’t have ice cream in it. (I think the default shake is made from a sort of malt-powder and heavy cream. And, in further random speculations, perhaps this is because of the relatively patchy quality of refrigeration or because India’s “pure-veg” dieters, like the Jainists, don’t usually eat ice cream, since it contains gelatin. Which is made from horse hooves, in case you didn’t know.) In particular there was a lady at the Hilton who declared that ice cream is part of “what a milk shake is.” Not so fast lady! Granted, some things are not culturally relative (speed of light, core human rights, swooningly delicious qualities of tandoori naan) but surely every people has the right to define the milkshake for themselves? Why not just ask the waiter for ice cream instead of loudly dressing him down? Why get all high-and-mighty as though you have unique knowledge of the urtext properties of dairy-based desserts?

Exhibit 2: this column by Hendrik Hertzberg (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2008/04/hello-kali.html) where he gripes that Indian English isn’t that good despite most of the languages being Indo-European. (A misstatement which 30 seconds on Wikipedia could have corrected.) I hope Mr. Hertzberg knows 2 or more alphabets if he is going to be gripping about Indian English. And he posts this music video in Tamil where someone has added “English” subtitles – though, to both his credit and his shame, he wasn’t able to figure out that the singing wasn’t in English at all. Some of the homophonic subtitles are pretty raunchy, so the net effect is “your weird language sounds like a bunch of bad porn dialogue.”

But, speaking of pornographic images: for the last week of March I was in Orissa, home to several hundred Hindu temples. The World Heritage temple (“the sun temple”) is a good one to go see because at one point it was heavily damaged in a typhoon. As a result, the gods were removed and the temple isn’t in use as a pace of worship. I really don’t feel so great about going to a temple while other people are trying to actually be religious there—I feel I probably detract from the mystical ambience, what with my sweaty, dirty camping-gear-esque clothes and large camera.

The sun temple is also, as is reasonably common, covered in statues of people gettin’ it on. The standard “don’t be such an up-tight Westerner” explanation for this is that Hinduism embraces all aspects of life instead of being all prudish about sex and that this is a sun temple=creation =scenes of procreation. Which does raise the question of why there aren’t any other procreation-related aspects of life depicted—like agriculture or, indeed, children. There is another theory that the pictures were a sort of instruction manual for the all-male brood of Brahmins being raised at the temple. I’m not totally sure about that, since much of what the, shall we say, unusually proportioned stone statues are doing is not strictly realistic.

Doctrinal issues aside, the interaction of the racy temple architecture and the more-than-middle-aged local tour guide was highly reminiscent of health class, where you just don’t know quite what facial expression you should be adopting. The oddest moment being when the guide explained that many people come to the temple from all over Europe and they tell him that this next statue is “69. Very important position there. Very important.” I challenge you to think of an appropriate response to that remark.

Things I am learning working in Delhi's libraries

Indian innovation with the decimal point continues. You may have been told, at some point, that the decimal system, with its use of zeros as place holders, was developed here on the Subcontinent. What you may not know is that exciting innovations in number-punctuation-hybridization continue in India’s system of university libraries. Where each institution – and sometimes each collection – is busy developing an entirely unique ordinal system. These innovations are possible thanks to a willingness to use multiple decimal points, high variability in the length of alphabetical and numerical strings between punctuation marks, special capitalization systems, semi-colons, and even quotation marks. Allowing endless organizational variety, with each library’s ordering system as unique as a snowflake. The most advanced systems seem to be based on fractal mathematics, containing as they do a persuasive suggestion of repetition and regularity while, in actuality, not corresponding to any pattern discernable through the use of primitive Euclidean mathematical tools.

My high school library was kind of a joke. I find the contents of the University of Delhi’s library, in particular, rather discouraging. Because they seem to be pretty short on the kind of sources that contain the sort of raw, complete information that is the straw for research brick making. Instead, the library is long on the kind of sources that give predigested and massively abridged summaries of various concepts. So, for example, the library only has a scattering of the annual reports of most government offices, but they have whole bunches of encyclopedias and Ready Reference guides.

What this all really took me back to is the days of writing research papers in grade school and high school – when research really meant looking up what somebody else already came up with. (Real research, of course, is writing what somebody else already came up with; realizing this only after-the-fact; and then inventing a reason why what you’ve done is, despite appearances, totally new). And it just sort of reminded me of all the things I thought were terribly intellectual when I was growing up – like Star Trek (watched by nerds = smart people = people who would know great art). Ah, youth!

Sometimes the best place to study Indian linguistic minorities is Dixie. Ironically, you know who has a complete run of the government report I was trying to find at University of Delhi? Johns Hopkins. That makes me feel very foolish.

Dust is dirt. In movies about searching out the secret to Jesus’s progeny or the Temple of the Crescent Moon, dusty libraries always have a powdery sort of look. A character pulls out an obscure book and blow on it, sending forth a grayish cloud of accumulated matter.

This is NOT how really dusty books actually work, at least not here. This dust is not some talcum powdering of antiquarian charm. This is grime. Blowing on this dust dislodges nothing. Though one’s hands and clothing (and backpack and school supplies and lunch) do become dirty when put in contact with such a book, the total quantity of muck on the book is only imperceptibly altered and much of the text remains obscured by brown film.

The great unsung heroes of the history of human knowledge are the indexers. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone ever found anything before electronic search. But what few scraps of information were retrieved in those dark times was thanks to the superhuman tolerance for boredom and/or crippling struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder of the press clippers, the book review filers, the bibliography annotators, and the reference editors of yesteryear.

Kathmandu and back again

Last weekend I was in Nepal with my parents, sharing the last three days of their package tour through India. I was really looking forward to a couple days of five star living, and to seeing the mountains. Ironically, however, I caught a terrible bug from being in a hotel with so many darn foreigners. So for the better part of this last week I was in bed with the flu, wondering why I ever abandoned my sub-tropical, filth-infested home for the bracing mountain air.

One thing I have learned: it is impossible to overstress the importance of travel companions with a similar metabolic rate. That is, the tour group we joined up with was mostly empty nesters and, as a consequence, they have reach that stage where you totally transcend base physical needs, food in particular. So the tour included breakfast at the hotel but then no rations for the next 8 hours! Despite my best efforts to get a muesli binge in early, I was starting to get a little peckish by our second Hindu temple and was practically fainting away by the time we were given free time to wander through an authentic Nepali traditional tourist emporium.

From what I could see through the haze of near starvation, Nepal has plenty of interesting architecture and is generally more approachable than India. All of the temples were very busy, which is not the case in Delhi. We saw several little boys on the way to get their sacred thread tied on—which is sort of like first communion for upper caste Hindus, except with a parade. The parade includes people carrying all the things that will be offered to the gods on your behalf, culminating in the sacrifice of an animal. Which I was very anxious not to have to witness.

Also, there has been a shortage of petrol and kerosene for about seven months now in Nepal. Apparently, this was because the Indian government started refusing to let tankers travel through its territory en route to Nepal because Kathmandu owes the Indians money for petroleum shipping. The finances seem to have been sorted out, so oil was supposed to be on its way. But a city between the India/Nepal border and Kathmandu had hijacked two tankers in the preceding days to force them to deliver oil to their community rather than driving it all the way to the capital. So now no more truckers were going to come into Nepal without a security escort.

The visible consequence of this was huge lines of cars and motorcycles for blocks & blocks. The vehicles were left in line to hold a spot for however many days or weeks necessary. Similarly plastic kerosene containers were lined up on the sidewalk, hundreds in a row. Ropes were run through the handles of twenty or so jugs, to discourage scrambling of the order. Also, my sister and I saw some kids burning tires while taking a taxis. They weren’t being very hardcore about it, but that is still a personal first for me – seeing tires being burned in protest of something, I mean.

The Himalayas are amazing. While I might in years past have felt very unhardcore & tacky flying in a little plane to get a view of the mountain peaks, I was spared these thoughts by the many recent books on the Everest climbing industry (eg). There were a bunch of trekkers on their way to Base Camp actually. Yuppie scum - seriously, why even bother climbing a mountain if you are going to have Sherpas and oxygen. (I am starting to feel a bit defensive about how long its been since I've done any cardio.)

The temple square in Kathmandu.

A shrine in use as a vegetable stand.

28th Birthday in New Delhi

I really wanted a margarita, so we headed for Ruby Tuesday's. (Surprisingly, Ruby Tuesday's has several New Delhi locations - who'd have thought?) It was a poor decision - the drinks weren't very good. But they did have real taco chips.

Keep your drink, just give me the money

Do you ever have one of those conversations—when chatting with someone on a plane, traveling in another country, or talking to an elderly (read: socially conservative) relative—where you just stop giving your real opinions or reactions? Because you can’t be bothered to explain to this person why their whole world view is massively flawed? And then walk them through the refutations of all their inane counterarguments? And you feel some guilt about your Raskolnikov-esque intellectual arrogance and unassailable belief in the superiority of your world view? But, since your belief in the superiority of your own world view is, in fact, unassailable, there isn’t much you can do about it? And, plus, you just compared your liberal, anti-humanist, hubris to a Dostoevsky novel. So can anyone really doubt whose worldview is better thought-out here?

Being, as I am, a future PhD in political science [la-di-da tossing of hair here], I run into this problem at home when people start talking politics. But in India the problem is omnipresent because people’s social values are SO different from mine. It’s like I’m trapped at a six-month meeting of the Christian Coalition. Except with white guilt.

This has all been brought into focus recently because my sister Merideth is really into communicating with people. I have a long history of being less in favor of this than Merideth, going back to the days when I used to hide in our mom’s closet when strangers rang the doorbell. But I believe my position has become more tenable over time.

For example: two days ago, one of the neighbors from our building saw us at a coffee shop and sat down to talk. And asked us what our religious orientation is. Now, I have seen this man around the building before. And I blithely claimed to be a Protestant in order to avoid having a conversation. (I’ve given my landlord the run-through of my wedding. With Adam sitting right next to me. Like I’m going to have trouble lying about this?) But Merideth – bless her open-to-having-interactions-with-other-people soul – goes and confesses to ambivalence on this point. And then we have to hear his opinions. (He recommended we read The Purpose Driven Life. We could have been in Oklahoma!) Which, of course, spirals into him discussing his opinions of the moral degradation of the US in general. The part of me that has opinions gets prickly and defensive on this point and wants to argue that the divorce rate is probably unacceptably low in India. But most of me prefers to nod along.

And then there is the young chap who Merideth started talking to at a coffee shop a few days ago. (Without me. I wouldn’t have let this conversation start. I bought this ring for a reason.) This young chap primarily wanted to know all about American sexual practices. And why there were so many Russian women in “sexy videos”? Merideth apparently tried to explain that she found pornography objectionable. (Deaf ears, girl. Deaf ears.) And reported, in response to my concern, that the whole conversation had a big-sister-kid-brother tone to it. I told her I was sure that was how it appeared to her.

I feel vindicated by his persistent stream of text messages since that time. (Which, sensibly, are going unanswered). That is another problem with countries where people don’t date: the men have no idea (a) that the hurdles that must be cleared in order to have sex with a white woman are not quite so trivial as “sexy videos” might imply and (b) in which track league they should even think about trying to run the hurdles. And, naturally, it is really only men who approach strangers for conversations. Which makes it even more infuriating.

Would I be a bad cultural ambassador if my standard response to questions about my religious and moral views was “Have you even read Crime and Punishment?”

Parental Units: Incoming!

So, tomorrow my parents arrive in India. Mostly, they are going to be on a package tour—starting Tuesday afternoon I can load them on the bus with the other tourists and they will be safe inside that magical tourist bubble where India is merely an “enchanting journey through exotic sights and sounds” or whatever. But they are arriving on Saturday night, however, to have some extra time to sleep off their jet lag and to see their daughters.

The travel agent who booked their tour could have, naturally, fixed them up with a few extra nights in the tour group hotel. But Delhi has very high hotel fees, especially now that it is tourist season. (Read: less than apoplectically hot). And the tour company, no doubt weary of complaints from scandalized Schenectady empty-nesters, insists that 3-star in India doesn’t mean 3-star in the US (which is completely true) and so refuses to book anything but 5-star Delhi hotels for its clients. And those go for about $400 per night, plus hefty luxury tax.

Now, I have a long experience with my parents and the thrifty vacation. They are really a do-it-yourself pair and tend to feel scandalized by the premiums that the tourist & recreation industries charge in exchange for convenience and ease-of-use. Their bête noirs are bellboys, doormen, taxis, and concessions stands. If my parents, lost in the middle of the Serengeti without food, water, or a map, were offered a taxi ride for a clearly-greater-than-marginal-cost fee of a hundred dollars: they’d keep walking.

So, there was no way my parents were going to pay a thousand dollars to spend two nights in Delhi. My mother’s words were something along the lines of “we’re campers: we’ll just sleep on your floor.” Not realizing that, if I could somehow get a running start, I could long jump the length of my room.

Anyhow, after a lot of avoiding the issue, I booked them a hotel a few blocks away for about $100/night.

But I’m nervous about the whole thing because, if you didn’t know India, you’d think the hotel was a dive. My parents are, truly, pretty good at going without creature comforts. But one thing I have learned from India is that one tends to judge the safety of one’s surrounding by the perceived affluence. And the perceived affluence of India’s mid-range hotels is, roughly, somewhere between shabby house-of-ill-repute and nice-ish crack den. And it takes awhile to convince oneself that it is safe to nod off within walls that are visibly molding. It doesn’t help that India’s under-employment & the family-run business culture dictates that every non-international hotel employs exactly seven times the number of employees that are strictly necessary. And so about nine listless, idle, twenty-something men are staring at you as you check-in, move through the halls, get breakfast... And then there is my neighborhood. Which is really quite safe. But, again, it takes awhile before you can look placidly out onto an alley strewn with smashed glass, dog and cow feces, garbage, weeds, old leaves, and shanty housing and think “Wow! There must be trees someplace!”

Basically, even though my parents will be fortified with the bracing tonic of having saved $800 from the grasping paws of the evil tourist industry, I’m afraid they will see the place and have a heart-freezing moment of “We’re going to die here.”

Or, worse, “We are not paying $100 a night to stay HERE!” And then insist on coming home with me.

Back at it

Once again in Delhi!

I've been back for a week and I'm mostly resettled. Some things have been roughly what I have come to expect -- such as the comically epic process of getting the internet in my new room (4 days, 9 people, 6 house calls) -- while others have taken me a bit by surprise. For example, it is genuinely chilly here. I'm wearing my scarf as we speak. Who knew?

I have made one big change already: I am not rehiring the maid for cleaning. By the end of last year, the feeling of violated privacy was looming so large for me that I would only let her in to clean about once a week. And since she came twice a day everyday, that was a lot of time spent hiding. It also did not help that the maid who cleans this building frequenly seems to be enjoying a private joke in what can only be described as cackling. (I am going to keep sending my clothes out to be washed because I can just stick those outside my door and avoid too much interpersonal stuff).

Also, even though I was getting these twice-a-day, everyday cleanings for my money, I was not completely satisfied with the product on offer. Because there was no soap involved, more just rubbing the floor down with water. Which is really less like cleaning and more like diluting the dirt.

So, when I got in, I set out to really scour my apartment - I bought a western-style mop, surface cleaner, floor cleaner, dish soap, and air freshner, plus scrubbing items. It did occur to me, though, that my maid might have had a point in avoiding all of this stuff. First, I don't really know what's in any of these products. Probably one-part bleach, one-part DDT, and one-part that chemical that causes flipper babies. So maybe I'm not really making a net gain in the healthfulness of my room. Second, some of the surfaces in my room don't really seem to be meant to be cleaned. In particular, the paint (or white-wash) on the walls, window ledges, and doors starts to slough off if it is moistened or even subjected to modest friction. Again, is it really smart to go around wiping the soot off these surfaces if I'm also giving myself lead poisooning?

Still, why worry about what can kill you tomorrow if you can get rid of what makes you mildly uncomfortable today?

One further note on my new attempts to do more of my own home-making here in Delhi. I bought mint-scented dish soap during my shopping without really noting that there was anything unusual about that flavor. Because mint and cleanliness definitely go together in my mind. But upon further reflection, cleaning products that involve mint are usually for your teeth, like gum and toothpaste. I don't think I've ever seen surface cleaners or dish soaps in mint. And as soon as I started doing the dishes, it started to seem like a very strange choice. All my dishes smell like candy canes now. Not a bad smell, but one not what I expect from dishes after they are washed -- it if kind of like having plates that smell like bubblegum or chocolate chip cookies.

Little bird in China

The Great Wall

In Beijing

At the Forbidden City

Olympic Friendlies and China's One-Child Policy

I have wanted to write for awhile now about the Olympic mascots for the upcoming games in China. I have included here a picture of Albert with some representations of these mascots that greeted us on the way into a Beijing mall. I noticed them because they are (1) everywhere and (2) interesting in light of my ongoing observations about the un-cuteness of India. By the way, Albert was not discriminated against at any Chinese venue and received many compliments during his stay there. In fact, my hostess learned the word for penguin in Chinese as a result of the comments he was drawing. I, naturally, forgot the word immediately.

Anyhow, the spirit of the 2008 games is represented by 5 "Fuwa" or "Friendlies," each of whom corresponds to one of the Olympic rings, a particular set of Olympic events, and to a Chinese mythological creature. All of the Fuwa are children and have very diminutive names - Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, Nini. If you eliminate the repetition of the syllables in their names, they spell out "Bei Jing huan ying ni" or "Beijing Welcomes You." Pretty cute, huh?

Their official website not only explains what athletic events each Friendly represents, it also explains the particular virtues embodied by each Fuwa, each of which is also one of the five elements of nature (sea, forest, fire, earth, and sky). It is reminescent of reading the placemat at a Chinese restaurant to learn about the animal sign for your year of birth. Jingjing brings joy to children everywhere. Huanhuan is enthusiastic and inviting. (Have you ever noticed how certain words, like "harmonious," immediately make one think of text on Chinese culture?)

I could ruminate on the irony of the beaming Fuwa as the public face of an authoritarian country. But that's just a downer. Also, being back in India brings out my inner Barry Goldwater. All these hippies with their self-important searches for enlightenment. So I say: Down with "Free Tibet" protests!

Anyhow, I'm going to ruminate instead on the connection between the Fuwa and birth control. As follows: I have noticed an inverse relationship between country's fertility rates and the role of cuteness in their popular culture. I posit that as people have fewer children they have a higher probability of purchasing child-substitution items, like small dogs and cartoons. This drives up ambient cuteness, especially in retail. I believe that there is scientific evidence in favor of this mechanism. Because, per the NYT, the aesthetic phenomenon of "cute" is the result of our evolutionary affinity to the features of human babies, like big eyes and stubby limbs.

Consider the following evidence:

Mali has the world's highest fertility rate (7.38 children per woman). And levels of ambient cuteness are shockingly low. Granted, Bedouin chic has a certain romance. But it is emphatically not adorable. Also on the high end of the fertility range and the low end of the warm-fuzzy meter are Yemen (6.49) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (5.99). Paraguay has a medium high fertility rate (3.84) and the main cultural currents there are militarism and a German flavor brought by Nazis fleeing prosecution for war crimes.

Then we get to India, with 2.81 children per woman. And India, as I have pointed out, trails the rest of Asia in the cute column.

The USA comes in at a middlingly level of fertility (2.09). (The world median, by the way, is Israel with 2.38 children per woman.) In the USA, while cute things are generally available, we are by no means a world leader in this field. (Sesame Street not withstanding). Much of our supply of animated creatures is imported from Britain or Asia. And companies that should be putting R&D into cuteness, such as Disney and Mattel, are instead pumping out work that emphasizes glamour, wealth, and a certain precocious (and creepy) sexuality. (See: Bratz, Disney Princesses).

China (1.75) is about on par with Finland (1.73). And Finland is a leader in grotesque-cute, trolls in particular. And, finally, we get to East Asia, the world epicenter of cuteness technology: South Korea (1.28), Japan (1.23), and, with the lowest fertility rates in the world, Hong Kong (0.98).

Thus, the success of China's one child regime -- compared to the relatively modest reductions in fertility in India over the same period -- explains the two countries' divergent attitudes toward adorableness-enhanced individuals like Albert. And we can expect growing Indian tolerance for plush creatures as fertility rates here continue to fall.

Anyone who writes to tell me that development is an omitted variable in my theory is totally uncute.