Little touches

I thought the local people were panning for gold in a dried up river bed, it is a hive of activity.

But no, India is too poor for that. They are picking out the stones by hand to use the silt as a building material.

The other day within a short period in Delhi a local intervened to stop a cycle rickshaw from trying to rip me off, another warmly shook my hand, and a group from an automotive parts manufacturers conference invited me in to see 'Indian dance'. It turns out that, as almost all the business representatives were men, this is basically as cultural as a woman showing a bit of middle jiggling about to not entirely well suited music. Also as always in India, the music is too loud and badly distorted. Somehow either distortion is associated with loudness or distortion is a learned concern. The peak of the performance was "Russian dance", which raises the stakes with quite a lot of  atheltic white Russian middle and leg on display, to a kind of aerobic routine which possibly has traces of Indian dance, Russian dance, or neither.

India is also a country for the more questionable little touches. Delhi's metro system doesn't go to one of the cities main rail stations and bus stations. Take the walk from Euston to Euston Square, double it, and add in a few 4 lane roads to cross. I've seen half length metro trains, which stop at the front of the platform causing the usual chaos in the rear coaches. I wasn't offered a room at one of the lodges here on account of my inability to hold my mouth at their extra special little touch. This time one room's bathroom vents directly into another bedroom. As much as I like listening to someone...

Notes on Delhi

The hilarious thing about this part of Delhi is that you can walk around and hear people talking, then realise they are speaking English with a strong Birmingham accent. Sorry Birmingham.

Delhi, but slightly different

... and despite everything, a moment in Delhi. This time the lodge is on a side street off the main bazaa road, and somehow the atmosphere is entirely different. The narrow but busy road feels peaceful, and only the occasional motorcycle or cycle rickshaw disturbs the slow walking crowds. There are few tourists just this one street away, and consequently none of the hassle and touting of the main road. In fact as I walk along nobody seems to notice me. It's just after sunset and the lighting is atmospheric, coming from each shop entrance and the odd street lamp nested amongst the chaotic Indian overhead wiring. The shops are varied, and there are sellers for vegetables and fast food, not tourist tat and money exchanges. The quaint touches of India are visible, a man is trying to negotiate the crowds with a long hand cart packed with boxes of goods. I walk slowly with my pack of sweet lassi (yoghurt, I've discovered it's about Rs13 (20p) from the dairy shops, so may even start gaining weight). There are odd sights, the ground floor of one building has been converted into a stable for ten or so white horses, and another building's ground floor is converted into some kind of waste dump. Don't worry I've not gone soft yet, these spots don't exactly smell fresh.

A great place to see in India

I have some advice for potential tourists trying to plan a trip to India. Personally I recommend using the lonely planet guidebook, as follows: first make a note of all the interesting places it mentions, then don't go to any of them.

The problem is that tourism destroys what originally enchanted the first visitors (at least in India). The buildings remain, but when the atmosphere is gone you are merely led like sheep around empty creations of stone and brick. Even the Taj Mahal isn't that impressive, while its not insignificant don't beat yourself up if you miss it. What is it to stand in the same place and take the same photo as the previous million people. Then there is the hassle, the cheating, the cost... driven by tourist money and Indian culture. This hassle is worse the more tourists there are, and depending on your disposition it can be tiring. Whatever you may read, if its in the lonely planet, then it is most definitely not "little known", "largely undiscovered" or "unaltered". You don't 'explore' anywhere by following a book... you wont find a cheap India (easily) in these places. For food well you can have your pizza, pasta, Japanese, Israeli, German. The choice is yours. My only doubt in this rant is that if you want to try real Indian food... well Indian people are quite keen on Chinese food!

The worst example so far is of course the golden triangle. The level of shit is high here, and a great proportion of the Indian people you meet here will be too. This isn't racist, these are only the people who have come to make money; its business, no holds barred. And that folks is the end of all that is reasonable...

Agra, short for aggravation, isn't really that interesting. Before you arrive you might at first be surprised by the endless smoke stacks from the brick kilns which make up the horizon of UP and Rajastan. This local industry also ensures pollution never falls below legal limits. The cheating is strong in this one, and despite the prepaid autos they have found a new way to scam, dropping you short of your destination. It might seem an obvious trick, but in all my time trusting auto drivers while getting dropped off in strange and unknown places, they have not cheated me. Once you have agreed a price, they generally do their job. This time, its just stupid, why drive the first 5km but not the last 0.8km. He tried the bullshit "buy your drinks here, no more drink stands near the Taj", but I barely notice this behaviour any more, its normal. For anyone who feels peckish after the Taj I can recommend the government restaurant for bland and overpriced food... note this cynicism doesn't extend to all governments though. Karnataka govt. tourism (from the lovely south) has provided me with Rs22 dosa and Gujarat govt. tourism a clean and tidy room in a beautiful mountain tourist spot for Rs400.

Jaipur isn't much better, but here some of the local behaviour at least gives much amusement, my favourite example being the calculator price. Sometimes even for Indians a price is just too bullshit to say, so out comes the calculator. It's comic how clearly they have just communicated their intent to defraud somehow. After reaching the "ok I tell you good price" instead of just saying it they have to pick up a standard desk calculator and poke in the number. I can only hope it would pain them to say this level of bullshit in their own tongue. Do they think the ownership for this figure is then relocated to an electronic device. I don't think any of the reasonable excuses, confidentiality or intelligibility, can really apply. This is just Incredible India. Another small refreshment in the hot day is the slight grammatical misuse of "You like tuktuk". To which the answer is simple: "No". Or my amusement at how fast the 'guide' scurried away after his "you can't enter Amber Fort without guide" was met by "I report you".

The scams just don't stop. It's not the first time I have heard an auto driver say "Price per person", but it is followed by my rebuttal, heavy on the F word. In short I explain that this isn't how it works in India. People will always lie, in tourist places. In other places I well know that the Indian style of giving directions and time keeping isn't what we are used to, and you can't resent it. But in tourist places it will be a lie. No more true than with private buses, they know you don't want to arrive in a place at night, so will tell you something else

So you may already know I can be an angry person, but in all of these dealings I have restraint (have some belief!). Learning how to not let these nasty little parasites bother you is essential to enjoy living here! But one Delhi auto driver received a full lecture involving several conjugations of the F word. I hope he understood the subtlety, but I wasn't in a state to translate to international English. The bus from Jaipur began the encounter, which in private bus style dropped us by a busy road in the middle of nowhere late at night, throwing us to the wolves as it were. The first wolf quoted Rs250 to take us to the stop, less than 3km away. This attempted fraud for what could be a Rs50 daytime or Rs80 nighttime journey in a city where using the meter (even cheaper) is a legal requirement sent me over the edge. I devoted a full two minutes to shouting in his face about trying to cheat foreigners before choosing a new auto.

Do you really want to go to India? If you have money to burn I'm sure a booked tour can actually make for a fairly pleasant experience with many western luxuries (some toilets even have paper). Otherwise, how about you don't go to the iron pyrite triangle

Intermission

Dear Scott, I've decided to write a short post about racism and cultural judgement. I may be some time.

In the meantime why not a brief intermission; after all nobody is expecting Obama's race speech or Julia Gillard's sexism condemnation. So what really goes on in my mind... "[guitar plays] A lovestruck Romeo sings the streets a serenade". Yes this is the mind of a music addict without any source of music for many months. It's not as if I choose what random track fills the part of the brain dedicated to this function. Now slowly unwinding with the help of fast internet in Delhi and youtube!

My mental playlist (unfortunately due to neurological copyright restrictions limited to 15 second portions of each track) is as follows
Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet
Bright Eyes - Easy/Lucky/Free
Amander Palmer - Ampersand
Darren Hayman - Big Fish
The Magnetic Fields - Quick
The Killers.... I think my mind has created an entirely new song

From Russia With Love

And now another predictable little tale, best captured by the spirit of the "Never get off the boat" scene in apocalypse now, where the Chef decides to go for some fresh mangoes. (In case you haven't seen the extended version of this classic, leaving the relative safety of the boat brings the chef face to face with a tiger. This is followed by his running away and subsequent shrieks of "Never get off the boat". Somehow it is the repetition of these words which makes the scene comic). In my case the boat is in fact the slow moving life of Om Beach, the mangoes take on their role in British innuendo, and the tiger is trying not to stare at a big shaved cock during evening conversation. For those that don't know about the near paradise that is Om Beach, lets just say that by the time you have finished breakfast and got ready to do something with the day its 12, and before you know it you've finished lunch and have only a couple of hours of daylight left. In the blink of an eye its evening, and when you check the time at the fire its 3am. Leaving Om Beach 'tomorrow' can take up to a week, and 'the day after tomorrow' at least a fortnight.

At the fire its quiet to start, and I quickly make eye contact with a girl. This is unusual, as I'm not successful with women, and its on the back of some 3 years of failure in this regard. So lets not pretend the alarm bells didn't start ringing at this point, but then again, I am a man. I move myself beside her, with no shy feint or double movement, and we exchange a few words. Then without my objection and rather prematurely she rests her head on my shoulder... I quietly remember the old saying "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is". But it's not the first time I've dated a crazy so lets just see how it goes. As the evening goes on she makes herself ever more comfortable on me, while I quietly feel discomfort at the level of public affection we're forcing on the others. This should of course all be read in the voice of David Mitchel, but I really hate it when other people shove in your face what they are getting and you're not. It's just rude in a social situation like a fire. It turns out the girl is Russian. She is small and her affection is sweet, so I decide this is most likely some kind of Mafia honey trap. It's definitely to be followed by my waking and finding that all of my possessions are gone. (think Star Wars, "It's a trap")

To my pleasant surprise I awake to discover that I am still in possession of as much portable property and so on as when I went to sleep, which was nice. I am however presented with one of those challenging decisions, as the Russian girl invites me to leave the beach and head to Arambol where she is staying. Giving insufficient consideration to my friends, and generally being an idiot, I leave the beach the next day.

I find the first of my problems before arriving: she is childish, almost insufferably. And then on arrival I find that Arambol is like Palolem but worse. Its touristy and lacking any trace of being India, but with even more drinking and idiots on motorcycles. There is something about the very atmosphere which is stressful, and then there are the Russians. While this may seem rather racist, Russians have an earned reputation for being unfriendly, drinking heavily, speaking poor English and not generally socialising with non-Russians. While I have to admit that its not fair for me to judge the quality of English as a second language, its also stupid to deny it could equally be called "International". I think Russians also suffer a false judgment by the chance of their own language, missing out much of the 'can, may, could' dressing of English.

Now, you might be wondering what is so comic about this day to day experience. Well as she had warned me, she lives with a few interesting people. In fact in the house are a married couple, a French porn actor and his Russian wife. If you need a picture the French guy has a receding hairline and a moustache, which tickles me. They aren't big on clothes and they are big on sharing. When I meet them in the evening a second (naked) man has joined for a vigorous evening of... you already know. Everything is a bit on the open side in this house, to the extent that the bed I use is in a hallway between the house and the kitchen. Get to watch the little trips out for olive oil and other items whose uses can be imagined. Oh they are polite enough, they did invite me to join in.

So later on after being abandoned by the Russian I find myself in the kitchen discussing extreme meditation whilst trying my hardest not to stare at a shaved cock. To my credit I hadn't noticed (but should have guessed) he was fully shaved the first 2 or 3 times we met. Now here is where I have to point out I am a straight man, I don't mind being caught staring at his wife's boobs so much. But just how hard is it to not stare at a cock! Think you can do it, then imagine he rearranges it, or walks towards you with it swinging from side to side... On the other hand these seem like good people. His Russian wife (topless) offers me some tea and in fact the conversation is some dose of, cock, normality.

I gather the Russian girl is known to be mad, and realise that this hot-cold attitude of the day will quickly drive me to madness. I can hear (lord) Saruman shouting "You have chosen the way of pain". Satisfied that to various extents and interpretations the open-relationship French porn star will "Take care of her" its time now for the next sketch. It's Monty Python's the holy grail, and "run away" is the order of the day. Be it from flying cow, badger, rabbit...So only now do I finally remember the conclusion of the first 23 years of my life: friends before girlfriends. (Ok can you tell I'm dressing that, but I'm not really someone that calls women "Hos", or his friends "Bros")

I get up pretty early, and some 6 roasting hot packed daytime buses later I'm back on Om Beach. Thank god for that... (As many people have pointed out I am an atheist, I will specify god to be thanking random chance, as a man may thank an inanimate object which has prevented his falling to his death)