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.