Dem foreigners

I would prefer not to be judged as a Briton, but have expectations of others based on their nationality. Hypocrisy is wonderful. Sadly as described before I fit a number of national stereotypes, from the 19th century. Leo Tolstoy's 'The British think they know how to run the world' might describe my thoughts, and a description of the eccentricity of the British with regard to the local flora and fauna from the National Gallery in Delhi my interests. I certainly wouldn't agree with a positive association with nationality; I consider national pride dangerous and Nationalism a sickness. But undeniably there are traits, as it appears to outsiders, which are common between the people of a nation. This is proved wonderfully in the case of those who try and deny the importance of nationality. The reply 'what does it matter what country I am from', or 'Europe' is a good clue that you are speaking with a German. Nationality shouldn't matter, but it does, at the very least first language, and in most cases the expectation of fluency in English. Nationality gives an expectation of shared cultural references, it just shouldn't be too closely held with pride. It seems obvious that English people are not all the same, but without any evidence on the overlap between the EDL and Oxfam.

It's impossible not to form stereotypes. So, with all the obvious preconditions, I give you travellers in India, in the vicinity of Goa, in the most unfavourable light possible.

Russians. India is cheap, the Russians are going on holiday. They don't speak English, and don't want to speak English. Everyone should speak Russian. (A painful stereotype to recount given the international reputation of monolingual British tourists). A typical conversation with a Russian may proceed as follows:
Speaker 1 "Hello" Russian Speaker "What you want, no speak English"
Speaker 1 "Hi. Do you know x" Russian Speaker "What you want, ask somebody else"
Once you get past the abrupt language, it is possible to get to know Russians. It's just unfortunate that their culture is a little prickly on the outside, and politeness is not the norm. But on the whole Russians prefer to associate with Russians, and go to businesses with Russian signs, menus and customers. Parts of Goa are dominated by heavy drinking Russian tourists, who manage to make the dangerous Indian roads even more so (India's system of road chaos works providing speeds are kept low, and of course the Russian was never at fault in the accident recounted). Elsewhere Russians prove deserving of their first prize for cultural sensitivity with minimally covered women, hot pants are definitely 'in'.

Israelis. I have made friends with pleasant Israelis, but unfortunately for their international reputation the presence is dominated by obnoxious early 20s hedonists who have just escaped the army. Military service is for both sexes in Israel, and somehow regresses people to an age of about 12-14. Childish, spoiled and almost always in groups. They can speak English perfectly well but will switch to Hebrew as soon as possible, even if half the people present are non-Israeli. The greatest numbers of Israelis is to be found where the best Charas is (Indian hash). Israelis barter hard, sometimes to the point of being offensive (especially if you know the person doing business), but consequently get good prices. On the other hand there is a tendency to complain about the unchangeable. I have watched an Israeli be told repeatedly not to wash clothes in the guest house by the stressed lodge owner (in Ladakh where water really is scarce), and then complain that her friend is in the shower and the water has run out, placing the blame on the lodge owner, within 10 minutes. Israeli's are probably also deserving of an award for dangerous driving, driving too fast through the town. I have seen more than a few limping, sporting broken arms or bits of plaster, all as a result of accidents which also weren't their fault.

British. Sadly, near Goa, the British have a less than ideal reputation. The Scottish and Irish also fit in to this, often worse, and with an accent far less intelligible to any other nationality. Somehow 'Brits abroad' Brits stray out of Goa, and these fine examples of English speakers occasionally manage to say a word which isn't fuck. They can be identified on Gokarna beach (a quiet smokers atmosphere) by their heavy drinking and unpopular and loud music, often described by the word "Chune [sic]". The drug of choice is still ketamine, which isn't entirely popular on the beach due to a history of fires/deaths/k-holed-people. The 'alright lads' Brits are also present, less in your face but also with far less going on upstairs. I spent the last evening listening to one, who kept asserting that London was home to 14 million people. It's not, it's 8.1 million according to google, and 'near 9 million' according to my memory. There is a figure for the number who travel into London each week for work but it seems less than 1 million. There is good news on the horizon however, for when Scotland gets it's independence the heavy drinking guys with the guitar singing Lola will officially belong to a different country.

Germans, Belgians, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swiss: Rather nice people, good English.
North Americans: Friendly, polite, amusingly fit the standard stereotypes.
Italians, misc. Spanish speakers: Fair in their way.
French: Slightly arrogant, will turn up to a fire with an international crowd and sing in French.
Australians. Healthy, tall, young, blond, airheads. For sure.

Myself. Cynical negative energy sucking bastard, work in progress.

Intermission and refreshments

For your amusement I give you the most popular Indian dance, the corruption dance. Based on numerous reports Gokarna feels at times to be in the midst of a corrupt police feeding frenzy. I give you a composite summary of these tales, with as much accuracy as a non-practising engineer can muster.

Cannabis is illegal in India, legal in India for religious uses, legal and sold by the government when called bhang, grows wild in India, and is of course strictly illegal. Generally speaking it's a crime for most people to possess, and you very much do not want to go to court. I have heard that you can expect 6 months imprisonment and a large fine. The police know this, the tourists know this, many tourists smoke charas (indian hash), many police are corrupt. Does this sound like a recipe for extortion?

Those elements of the society most prone to corrupt behaviour, known as the police force, have learned when tourists who are likely to be carrying drugs arrive into Gokarna and lie in wait. The rickshaws from the Goa train and the tourist bus are then intercepted, and the occupants searched. When some drugs are found, or a mime of finding some drugs is performed in the case of Israeli passport holders who will afterwards tell you they know it wasn't real because the drugs were in the other pocket, the extortion begins. The typical story is of an initial demand of Rs25,000 or Rs50,000, which is a vast sum of money. This is probably at least 2 months wages for any police officer, and 5 months wages for most Indians! Thankfully this is normally negotiated down to the much lower level of all the cash that the tourist is carrying. The distribution of sums I have heard of is Rs1000, Rs8000, Rs9000, Rs10000x3, Rs16,000. This is still a considerable sum of money (around 100 GBP).

The sites of searching and extortion are as you might imagine out of view of too many people who might know better. Even if the search is somewhere semi-public the negotiations are often described as slightly removed. The rickshaws are stopped between the station and town, and the tourist connecting bus from Ankola also at a convenient checkpoint. There have also been many reports of police, often non-uniformed except for the distinctive moustache, lurking in the forest paths between the beaches or sitting openly on Paradise beach. They have even ventured into the guest houses on Om Beach, a curiously public approach, where they sit in wait for a tourist who rolls a suspicious smoke. The smokers have already revealed themselves, but in other cases men and bags are searched carefully. Note that as to women, accusations of sexual harassment is something that even corrupt police don't want to touch with a barge-pole following India's sudden national recognition that this problem exists and has existed for a long time.

For me, I'm torn. The drugs are illegal, and these are the laws set by a democratic government of the country. Even if the policy on cannabis makes very little sense, it is as it is and the reason these police have not been challenged is that they stick to people who are breaking the law. On the other hand, this form of revenue collection is illegal and detrimental to tourism (a number of tourists feeling that the searches are a rather fascist action). While no tourist fancies time in jail it's not going to change fast.

Of course for a long time the alternative revenue collection force of India, with their fine bamboo canes, have had their finger in another Indian pie. Many of the businesses on the beach sell alcohol without a license, as the licensing laws of India are highly restrictive (places which sell alcohol are by law required to have a minimum level of seedy atmosphere). Not that I suggest otherwise, Goa has more liberal licensing and I can't say that the results are entirely pleasant. This is a problem for tourism in India, tourists want to drink, but the restaurants can't legally sell them beer.

The Engineer in India has the following thoughts, the corruption is facilitated by strict regulation and laws. Tourism is important to India, it's the third largest export, if you accept the arbitrary categories used by the source I used to research this, behind petroleum products and gems and minerals. While it shouldn't be a case of changing the customs of the country, small changes affecting foreigners remove some of the opportunities for corruption. For example, permitting the sale of beer to foreign passport holders (as in Gujurat), and replacing the custodial penalty for possession of charas with a fine and deportation.

But I can't see things changing too quickly. Corruption.

I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member

The problem on the beach, has to do with the right people. The concept of 'the right people' seems familiar, isn't it reasonable to define types of people you don't want to be around. But it is a concept which is familiar from the world of Jane Austen's fiction, and just as in her stories I fear that those who hold this prejudice stand to be shown as fools. This fits my theme so far this year to try and condense situations and behaviours to their real nature, even if this is something abhorrent that society prefers to leave unsaid. I fear the hidden prejudice more than the outspoken one.

On the beach it certainly appears that the right people are not Indian. Such a racist definition is troubling and a cause for deep reflection. It is often summarised on the beach by the statement 'no room'. Sometimes by the time the local tourists reach the last lodge on the beach, where I stay, they have figured this out. 'No room for Indians eh'. This is an uncomfortable moment for white guilt, but isn't entirely what it seems. The definition through nationality hides the real causes of this rule on the beach.

The first clue comes from the exceptions, it is not all Indians who are unwelcome on the beach. Richer, younger, mixed groups of Indian tourists from Bangalore are far more accepted on the beach. They come for their own holiday in much the same way as the foreigners, drink moderately and behave well by standard western social rules. The behaviour is the distinction, and not all visitors to the beach behave by the same standards. The problem comes from certain groups of local tourists, and the indicator is that these groups are almost always men. While small single-sex groups of foreigners may sometimes arrive, this criteria largely separates the two groups without any national definition. Why is this group entirely men, or alternatively trailing their subordinate women who hang around separated at the end of the beach.

As a background to the situation of this one beach: There are many beautiful beaches in the area, many less spoiled than Om Beach, Gokarna. But this beach had the questionable distinction of being marketed by the state as a destination for tourism after it had already become popular with westerners, and the recipients of this marketing are mostly local. It is also known, by word of mouth and it's internet equivalents as a place where you can go and see foreign women wearing very little. So this beach is the beach chosen for the holiday, and the groups of men arrive. It's a day out, and that means splashing in the sea, lying in the surf, screaming, shrieking, burying each other in the sand (A very popular game among adult Indian men). But it also means drinking, fighting, staring at white girls, covertly or overtly taking photos of white girls, attempting to touch white girls, or even forming a silent circle around the occasional girl who made the mistake of resting alone on the beach. What else would a frustrated Indian man, not that this frustration is without justification, do with his bottle than smash it somewhere, and give me the pleasant occupation of removing bits of glass from the path I walk barefoot at night.

This is the problem, the people who choose to visit the beach from the local area are not 'the right people' as far as foreign tourists are concerned. While it's only a minority that get involved in causing problems, the quiet beach is replaced by constant screaming, and the noise of the speed boat towing the inflatable pontoon which is popular with the Indian tourists. The Western tourists would prefer a quiet beach... in short they prefer their own company. Other countries, and I have heard tales that Sri Lanka is among them, have formalised this and in the name of international tourism simply exclude local people from certain tourist locations. On Om Beach this exclusion is instead operated by the lodge owners, in front of you, and the accessibility of beach creates the conflict.

While it feels like it has reached the point of a definition based on nationality, with it's exception for Indian tourists from the more developed areas, it isn't a unique phenomenon. The business owners are merely bouncers selecting the right clientele as practised worldwide. They have learned that for Bangalore tourists the guests can be trusted sufficiently not to harass the foreign guests as many of the lodges have had experience with before. The two parallels, which explain this behaviour in significantly less racist terms, if the substitution of genderism or classism for racism is indeed an improvement. The first of these is very much at home in the UK. This is the nightclub with the 'no single-sex groups' policy. A carefully vague implementation that is used to avoid what is known as a 'cockfest' in the most choice venues when too many of the guests are men. You see this in Goa, with different pricing for men and women in the same resort. This situation comes about due to pressure from large numbers of men... in itself a problem with a far reaching stench I will dwell on later. In the most extreme case the most popular Goa nightclub is said to charge Rs5000 (2 weeks pay for a government bus driver, or at the demanded but not implemented minimum wage level) per head for men, half for men with a partner, and nothing for women. The male-female balance is simply a bigger issue in India, due to the far lower freedoms of most women in the society. The no-single-sex groups rule is almost universal among the trendy bars of Conaught Place, New Delhi.

The second rule is class. It's something I have considered on this blog before, freshly visible when entering a country as a foreigner. Why pay Rs5000 per night for a hotel when a good quality room is available for Rs1000 (the cheapest are around Rs300). You definitely do not buy five times the luxury, comfort or convenience. What you buy is submission, as a valued guest, status, and company. People pay more to escape the company of people they don't want to be around. Whether you consider this distinction 'class', or simply a direct function of wealth 'poorer', its powerful and greatly in effect. This prejudice exists to varying extents in all countries. I'm shortening the argument greatly because it's not central, and dipping into the past for a suitable throwaway comparison, but there are many rungs between the Ritz and the working men's club. This becomes a problem on Om Beach due to the curious budgeting of long stay travellers. Having already paid hundreds of pounds to travel from Europe, North America or Australia/NZ/Japan they have already separated themselves from (and a painful thought), the poor of their own countries, and especially India where 2 dollars a day is a wage. But having spent so much money they now spend very little (comparable to mid range local prices) on food and accommodation. This is affordable by far more than the Indian middle class, and after all the beach is public property. Part of the discord in the mixing is the vastly different ease of access to the beach.

If I was to turn apologist again for this classist sentiment, I would comment on the different mix of traveler. One has left his own country to explore the world, the other has not. Even when Indians come from Bangalore the mixing is difficult, and uneasy. There just isn't the ground in common between those who are here for a weekend and those who have come for weeks, months or years. In many cases there isn't a full understanding of the freedom most of these half-way-over-the-world travelers have, there is awe, but not understanding. This isn't somewhere where the local culture is quaint because the most educated Indians are, for better or worse, less identifiably unique. Whether it's right or wrong, there is a blurring of what it constitutes to be a national of a country in all other countries. Foreign tourists from North America, South America, Europe, Israel and Australia differ far less in culture (possibly explicable... empires).

In the end, I have failed to really get to grips with the problem of the original statement. Because one group was easy to separate and due to the uneasiness in my mind had already received much thought. Sometimes the foreign tourists are not 'the right people' either. Desire to choose our company goes further. These distinctions become ever more delicate, mixed with my sympathies and fears as one who has before now felt himself to be one of the unwanted. Ultimately the hatred which flares when I hear the sound of broken glass is mixed with a gnawing inside, of empathy with the unwanted. For the second part, the more difficult look at why 'English people' are not universally popular on the beach. At least not the right ones.

Snacky is not the same as Monaco

Snacky, Monaco, Same same, said the shopkeeper.

It wasn't, Snacky has 9.3% sugar, Monaco has 7.3%. Monaco crackers are the closest thing you can get to savoury biscuits in India. They taste a little like 'Mini Cheddars' which for reference are 1% sugar. This is the problem, the Indian sweet tooth invades all food. Western style white bread is almost always sweet, and it's a disappointment to find under your eggs any style. Unfortunately I'm cursed, I can no longer bear the taste of 'sweet salt' biscuits (most of them), so I alternate between Monaco and the pure sweet chocolaty varieties. There is some specialisation, tourist places make chai without added sugar to cater for the variety of tastes (always a shock when you forget and taste chai without sugar).

A classic memory will be the Kamat hotel (meaning restaurant) in Goa. Kamat is a chain which usually offer decent clean South Indian food, and I landed on my feet when the only cheap room I could find (Rs800, it's expensive there) was around the corner from a Kamat. I suspect they have had some complaints about their south thali before from non-Goans, the waiter apologetically produced a bowl of sugar with the meal in case it needed sweetening.

Internet cafe residents

So it turns out some unfortunate spends more time here than I do! I recognise an aged hippy from my previous two visits to Delhi over the last 6 months. He seems to live here and has an arrangement with the neighbouring cafe to have the food brought in. His favourite activity is watching heavy metal music videos and playing air guitar. One hand strumming up and down into his lap, tapping the zip. Viewed from the corner of your eye it's disturbingly like sitting next to someone masturbating.

Christmas in Delhi

So far only two unimpressive santas and one merry Christmas. I consider this the best so far. Bah, Humbug.

Definitions

Not mine but perfectly described by a friend on the beach.

The people over on Paradise Beach were fascist hippies, you know, the kind which look at you funny if you don't have dreadlocks.

Back in India

The beach was nice, I wish I could say the same about Delhi. Cold, and with a blanket smog. Cough.