I awoke this morning to some disturbing news. The security services in Bangalore will be on full alert tomorrow for V-Day. It took me some time to figure out what V-Day was. At first I thought it was an Islamic attack. India is on tender hooks since the Mumbai bombings (or 26/11 as it is known here). Metal detectors are in place in every shop and hotel and tensions with Pakistan are mentioned in every news bulletin.
But it turns out that V-Day is the 14th of February, when Cupid comes out of his winter hibernation and refills his bow and arrow. In India, it marks the nexus between the old and the new. Between Hindu fundamentalists like the Sena party who want to go back to comely sari dressed maidens dancing at crossroads and the modern India of Bollywood and IT consultants. Sena are growing in popularity by pulling publicity stunts like calling on Australian cricketers to be banned from the IPL because of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne. This month, they have turned their attention to the unfortunate St Valentine, who did nothing worse than encourage young Indians to hold hands on their way to the latest Bollywood release.
Tensions grew when teenage liberals on a Bangalore current affairs program rubbed black paint on the face of the Sena leader. An insult apparently equivalent to throwing shoes at somebody in Iraq or bearing your ass to an Irishman.
Sena are now threatening to attack anyone holding hands on V-Day and to declare World War Three if the abomination of public kissing takes place. People are dying of hunger in this country and the border disputes with Pakistan and China rumble on like the stomach of someone who has just spent the week eating Vindaloo curry (that would be me). But it’s good to see that Sena are looking after the important stuff.
When not attacking young lovers, Sena spend most of their time attacking Muslims. They have a hard time doing this because by regional standards, India is a remarkably tolerant country. There are many Muslims here but few if any Hindu’s in Pakistan. The locals are very proud of this and their country in general and are keen to know what the rest of the world thinks of them.
I hadn’t the heart to tell them that the rest of the world doesn’t really care about the disputed Kashmir region or their tit for tat dispute with China over Tibet. In fact if you asked most Westerners “What’s a Hindu”, the most likely answer you’d get back is “Lays eggs in New Zealand”.
India is so tolerant that the biggest Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan, is a Muslim. He stars in this week’s biggest cinema release here “My Name is Khan”, which ironically it actually is! It’s a Forest Gump style movie that in the best tradition of Bollywood is ripped off from various Western Classics.
Khan is doing the media rounds, which like in the West, are a charade of interviews and TV appearances that mention his latest movie every 30 seconds. This was going innocently enough until as always in India, the subject of cricket came up. He was asked about the IPL, the Indian based 20-20 competition that has become an international sensation. The best players from around the world play in it, with the exception of those dastardly Pakistanis. Khan innocently suggested that as Pakistan has many exciting young players, the competition would be better for their inclusion. And with those innocuous words, he unleashed the dogs of war.
The Sena party are busy attacking cinemas all over India that are showing the movie, but their actions have only made it more popular. As that great show business maxim goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity!
I tried to go and see it at the weekend but all six showings in my local cinema were sold out. It’s in Hindi and doesn’t have any dancing so maybe it’s just as well and I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Bollywood anyway. I asked a local what the big selling point of Bollywood movies was and he said the films normally run for three hours, whereas Hollywood movies run for ninety minutes. That strikes me as a strange argument and is like saying that if the Mona Lisa was twice the size, it would be a better picture.
Hindi or not, I was keen to go to the cinema to escape the noise and smell of Bangalore. There are many who enjoy this, as though the aroma of rotting rubbish and the eternal beeping of Indian drivers was a charming virtue. I am less charmed by third world culture, particularly when it claims first world status. India in swarming with money these days and is planning metro systems for all its major cities and a nuclear and space program. Yet they can’t seem to find the money to pick up rubbish from the streets. To paraphrase my old friend Joseph O’Connor, who wants to live in a slum with a large casino attached?
Having said all that, my impressions are better than expected. People had warned me about the begging and the obvious poverty, not realising that I grew up in Dundalk in the 1980’s. I remember when the Irish lottery was launched in 1987, a friend asked me if I won the jackpot, what would I do about the begging letters. I said I’d wait for a week or two and then start sending them again. While I met a few beggars here, I’d have to say that you’d meet more on O’Connell Bridge in Dublin.
So apart from the nauseating smell, the unceasing noise of traffic, the obsession with beeping horns every five seconds, the pot holed roads, the invisible footpaths and the undrinkable water, what is there to say in praise of India?
There is a course the food. I’ve been a curry fan since I had my first Korma on the 6th March 1988. Last Tuesday I had a chicken tikka masala for breakfast. In many ways, I was coming home.
Sunday 28 February 2010
Saturday 20 February 2010
The Passage to India
They say that India is the home of meditation and spiritual transcendence. And after a week there, it’s easy to see why. You would need the patience of a saint to deal with the machinations of Indian bureaucracy.
First off all, you have to get a visa, a simple task when visiting most countries, but as you later find out, India is not most countries. In fact, the drama involved in getting one would not be out of place in a Merchant Ivory movie. In reality the passage to India is paved with many potholes.
I checked the Visa website which seemed straight forward enough, apart from the extortionate fee required, and presented myself at the consulate office in Melbourne. I took a ticket and waited in the queue, not realising that such things are just a show for the uninitiated. I watched as others arrived and marched straight up to the service counters, regardless of whether some other unfortunate traveler was standing there.
Eventually the waiting room emptied and I was the only applicant left. I sorted my papers and approached the desk confidently. The official sniffed at my Irish passport and said “We can’t process that here, we only deal with Australian passports.”
I was prepared for such a challenge however and produced the paperwork required for this eventuality. “This is the form on your website for people with overseas passports. “ He peered dismissively at the form over the rim of his glasses. “This no longer applies. Delhi changed the rules a month ago. You will have to apply in person to the Indian embassy in your home country”.
I explained that my home country was at the other side of the world and that a trip there to pick up a visa wasn’t really in my travel budget.
He relented and said I could apply by post and so began the tortuous journey of my lonely passport across the world and back.
But it turned out that when dealing with Indian bureaucracy, getting a visa is the easy part. When you arrive at an Indian airport you realise that they work to the maxim “Why have one person doing a job when you could have ten”. I got my passport stamped and then immediately had to show it to another gentleman who checked that the stamp had been correctly applied. And so it went on until I had made my way to the taxi rank where the world and his brother were waiting to try and rip me off.
I eventually found what I thought was an official driver, but it turned out that he was just the official that noted your place in the queue. Another official was responsible for writing down your destination, while you also got to meet the luggage official, whose job it was to put your bag in the boot of the taxi, overseen by three supervisors who were monitoring everything.
When I finally got into the cab, I was surprised to find that there was only one driver as I was sure at that stage that they would have separate people operating the steering wheel and accelerator.
Sumit was a decent enough driver, although sticking to lanes seemed to be a challenge to him, as was the concept of one way streets. We battled our way against approaching traffic like we were in a car chase in a James Bond movie.
I arrived at the hotel shaken but not stirred. But I later found out that Sumit was one of the more conservative drivers in Bangalore. Drive around here for a few days and you’ll wonder why India has yet to produce a Formula One world champion. People pay a lot for thrills elsewhere, like jumping out of planes or tying elastic bands to their feet and chucking themselves off bridges. You can get the same thrill by trying to cross a busy street in Bangalore. Amid the din of beeping car horns, you will notice that traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are as irrelevant as a sun dial in Ireland.
The trick, I discovered, is to find a local who is trying to cross at the same point. Stick to his shoulder and go when he does, ignoring the buses and motorbikes that are hurtling towards you. Amazingly nobody seems to get hurt and it seems to me that there is an unspoken rule at play. It’s as though little vehicles have to give way to big vehicles or the bravest get the right of way. Either that, or they drive like bats, navigating by some sixth sense unknown to us Westerners.
After a week at work, when I saw little apart from the office and the hotel, I decided to spend the weekend discovering the real India. First of all I walked around the centre of Bangalore, which was just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. There are no footpaths to speak off and the temperatures get unbearable as the day wears on. This after all is the country that inspired the line “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” I did what all Irishmen do in these situations and searched out an air-conditioned pub where I studied a couple of Indians trying to make sense of the ski-jumping at the Winter Olympics.
On Sunday, I finally got out of the City and into the real country. A land of endless queues and strange animals. I got up at 5am for a 6am planned departure which turned out to be as notional as an economic forecast. We eventually left at 8am and I found myself as the only non-Indian on the rickety old bus that was taking us to Mysore.
If I was doing it again, I’d go by helicopter, because it’s worth seeing, but not worth going to see. Mysore Palace is amazing however, as are the monkeys that steal tourist water bottles and then scurry up the side of a temple and try to open it.
The cows and bulls that wander the streets are a little scarier, as hitting them a belt with a Hawthorn stick (as we would do in Ireland) is strictly forbidden. It’s strange being in a country where cattle are considered to be more important than people. I have every respect for other people’s culture and traditions, but couldn’t they have picked something more macho than a simple heifer? The meek have certainly inherited the earth in this dusty corner of it.
First off all, you have to get a visa, a simple task when visiting most countries, but as you later find out, India is not most countries. In fact, the drama involved in getting one would not be out of place in a Merchant Ivory movie. In reality the passage to India is paved with many potholes.
I checked the Visa website which seemed straight forward enough, apart from the extortionate fee required, and presented myself at the consulate office in Melbourne. I took a ticket and waited in the queue, not realising that such things are just a show for the uninitiated. I watched as others arrived and marched straight up to the service counters, regardless of whether some other unfortunate traveler was standing there.
Eventually the waiting room emptied and I was the only applicant left. I sorted my papers and approached the desk confidently. The official sniffed at my Irish passport and said “We can’t process that here, we only deal with Australian passports.”
I was prepared for such a challenge however and produced the paperwork required for this eventuality. “This is the form on your website for people with overseas passports. “ He peered dismissively at the form over the rim of his glasses. “This no longer applies. Delhi changed the rules a month ago. You will have to apply in person to the Indian embassy in your home country”.
I explained that my home country was at the other side of the world and that a trip there to pick up a visa wasn’t really in my travel budget.
He relented and said I could apply by post and so began the tortuous journey of my lonely passport across the world and back.
But it turned out that when dealing with Indian bureaucracy, getting a visa is the easy part. When you arrive at an Indian airport you realise that they work to the maxim “Why have one person doing a job when you could have ten”. I got my passport stamped and then immediately had to show it to another gentleman who checked that the stamp had been correctly applied. And so it went on until I had made my way to the taxi rank where the world and his brother were waiting to try and rip me off.
I eventually found what I thought was an official driver, but it turned out that he was just the official that noted your place in the queue. Another official was responsible for writing down your destination, while you also got to meet the luggage official, whose job it was to put your bag in the boot of the taxi, overseen by three supervisors who were monitoring everything.
When I finally got into the cab, I was surprised to find that there was only one driver as I was sure at that stage that they would have separate people operating the steering wheel and accelerator.
Sumit was a decent enough driver, although sticking to lanes seemed to be a challenge to him, as was the concept of one way streets. We battled our way against approaching traffic like we were in a car chase in a James Bond movie.
I arrived at the hotel shaken but not stirred. But I later found out that Sumit was one of the more conservative drivers in Bangalore. Drive around here for a few days and you’ll wonder why India has yet to produce a Formula One world champion. People pay a lot for thrills elsewhere, like jumping out of planes or tying elastic bands to their feet and chucking themselves off bridges. You can get the same thrill by trying to cross a busy street in Bangalore. Amid the din of beeping car horns, you will notice that traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are as irrelevant as a sun dial in Ireland.
The trick, I discovered, is to find a local who is trying to cross at the same point. Stick to his shoulder and go when he does, ignoring the buses and motorbikes that are hurtling towards you. Amazingly nobody seems to get hurt and it seems to me that there is an unspoken rule at play. It’s as though little vehicles have to give way to big vehicles or the bravest get the right of way. Either that, or they drive like bats, navigating by some sixth sense unknown to us Westerners.
After a week at work, when I saw little apart from the office and the hotel, I decided to spend the weekend discovering the real India. First of all I walked around the centre of Bangalore, which was just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. There are no footpaths to speak off and the temperatures get unbearable as the day wears on. This after all is the country that inspired the line “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” I did what all Irishmen do in these situations and searched out an air-conditioned pub where I studied a couple of Indians trying to make sense of the ski-jumping at the Winter Olympics.
On Sunday, I finally got out of the City and into the real country. A land of endless queues and strange animals. I got up at 5am for a 6am planned departure which turned out to be as notional as an economic forecast. We eventually left at 8am and I found myself as the only non-Indian on the rickety old bus that was taking us to Mysore.
If I was doing it again, I’d go by helicopter, because it’s worth seeing, but not worth going to see. Mysore Palace is amazing however, as are the monkeys that steal tourist water bottles and then scurry up the side of a temple and try to open it.
The cows and bulls that wander the streets are a little scarier, as hitting them a belt with a Hawthorn stick (as we would do in Ireland) is strictly forbidden. It’s strange being in a country where cattle are considered to be more important than people. I have every respect for other people’s culture and traditions, but couldn’t they have picked something more macho than a simple heifer? The meek have certainly inherited the earth in this dusty corner of it.
Friday 5 February 2010
The Lonely Planet Guide to Sorrento
I bought my first Lonely Planet guide in 1995 when I set off on a round the world trip that could better be described as “New Zealand plus a few places I can’t remember”. I thought I was one of the first to discover Lonely Planet as “Rough Guide” was the dominant force in travel literature back then. So imagine my disappointment when I climbed onto my first tour bus in Christchurch and found every other passenger studying the same freshly printed edition as me. That summer the Planet caught the Zeitgeist and became the standard reference book for backpackers.
Something similar happened to Google in 2001. I can still remember where I was when I heard that word for the first time. I was outside Lansdowne Road in Dublin on my way to watch another brave but fruitless display by Ireland against the All Blacks. I was boring some kiwi with my knowledge of Yahoo and Ask Jeeves, when she mentioned a new kid on the block. I’ve never looked back and have been a loyal Google customer ever since. Future generations will not even know that there used to be alternatives, just as we once had 8 track tape cassettes, or tape cassettes of any description for that matter. Hell, I’m even old enough to remember a time when computers came with a choice of operating systems, none of which were called “Windows”.
As Google is to my on-line searches for pornography and gossip, Lonely Planet is my constant companion on my world travels. I’ve bought or borrowed the Australian edition, the Vanuatu edition and the books covering various European countries that I used to visit as part of my research into the best beer in the world (that’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it).
I’ve even guiltily browsed the Irish edition in bookstores, checking to see what praise they were heaping on my home town. “Dundalk, you should avoid. You’ll have low expectations when you visit and they will be entirely met,” is generally all it merited.
You might think that such purveyors of the “off the beaten track” tourist market, would have their head office in New Caledonia or Kathmandu, but actually you’ll find them in a non descript warehouse in the industrial part of West Melbourne. And, if the scandal sheets are to be believed, it’s in that warehouse that most of their guidebooks are written, without ever visiting the places they critique. That might explain how they missed Dundalk’s true beauty.
In an effort to restore their reputation, the founders of Lonely Planet have helped set up “The Wheeler Centre”. This is a building committed to Books, Writing and Ideas and confounds the notion that Australia is full of bogans with as much culture as a pot of yogurt. Melbourne is designated by UNESCO as one of the World’s Cities of Literature, an achievement not yet reached by the birthplace of Joyce and Beckett. One of my mates back home describes Melbourne as Australia’s home of “Aaaarts and Culthaaa”, although he says it in a derisory tone. The Wheeler Centre adds to this image and better still, most of its program is free. So all those hippies who think they are the next Jack Kerouac will have somewhere to go in the evening.
I don’t see myself as a hippy or the modern embodiment of a beat era writer. But I’m planning to go along to try and find out more about this writing game. I recently published my 100th blog and at 1,000 words a go, I now have enough writing to publish a small book. Whether anyone would want to read it when it’s free on the web is another matter of course. It wouldn’t be as beautifully written as the most recent book I’ve read (Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin”) although it would be as disjointed and grammatically incorrect.
As the centre also deals in ideas, I might try and discover what it is that makes people write. Is it a core part of our humanity that we need to have our story told? And that some people are unable to do this through speaking and have to resort to the written word? Do we write as a means of massaging our ego or as desperate attempt to hush the voices within?
Whatever reason we do it for; writing has become a more public event in the last ten years. We used to consign our writing to private diaries or angst ridden poems passed only to those we were actually writing the poems about. These days we blog, twitter and post intimate details of our lives on social networking sites. The spoken word has been replaced with email and text messages, to the point where Alexander Bell’s great invention is becoming redundant.
But I think we write for the same reason we read books like the Lonely Planet. It can take us anywhere, to far off lands and people or to the limit of our imagination, if indeed there is a limit to that. I start each week wondering what I’ll write about here and find myself, 1,000 words later; in a place I’d never dreamed off when I started out. Writing releases us from the confines of the daily grind and allows our spirit to soar.
Try it out sometime, it’s hugely liberating. And if you want to learn from the master, search for Joe O’Connor’s podcasts on www.RTE.ie . He makes those us who toil on blogs like this seem like tongue tied simpletons. But more importantly he is making verse acceptable again. I thought of this as I lay by the beach in Sorrento last weekend. It sums up a weekend and is a little tribute to Joe.
Come to Sorrento when the tide is out
And swim in the waterholes by a full moon’s light
Forget all your troubles of the daily grind
And remember to leave your blackberry behind.
Stop at Glaces for a refreshing ice.
If it wasn’t for the flies, it would be feckin paradise!
Something similar happened to Google in 2001. I can still remember where I was when I heard that word for the first time. I was outside Lansdowne Road in Dublin on my way to watch another brave but fruitless display by Ireland against the All Blacks. I was boring some kiwi with my knowledge of Yahoo and Ask Jeeves, when she mentioned a new kid on the block. I’ve never looked back and have been a loyal Google customer ever since. Future generations will not even know that there used to be alternatives, just as we once had 8 track tape cassettes, or tape cassettes of any description for that matter. Hell, I’m even old enough to remember a time when computers came with a choice of operating systems, none of which were called “Windows”.
As Google is to my on-line searches for pornography and gossip, Lonely Planet is my constant companion on my world travels. I’ve bought or borrowed the Australian edition, the Vanuatu edition and the books covering various European countries that I used to visit as part of my research into the best beer in the world (that’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it).
I’ve even guiltily browsed the Irish edition in bookstores, checking to see what praise they were heaping on my home town. “Dundalk, you should avoid. You’ll have low expectations when you visit and they will be entirely met,” is generally all it merited.
You might think that such purveyors of the “off the beaten track” tourist market, would have their head office in New Caledonia or Kathmandu, but actually you’ll find them in a non descript warehouse in the industrial part of West Melbourne. And, if the scandal sheets are to be believed, it’s in that warehouse that most of their guidebooks are written, without ever visiting the places they critique. That might explain how they missed Dundalk’s true beauty.
In an effort to restore their reputation, the founders of Lonely Planet have helped set up “The Wheeler Centre”. This is a building committed to Books, Writing and Ideas and confounds the notion that Australia is full of bogans with as much culture as a pot of yogurt. Melbourne is designated by UNESCO as one of the World’s Cities of Literature, an achievement not yet reached by the birthplace of Joyce and Beckett. One of my mates back home describes Melbourne as Australia’s home of “Aaaarts and Culthaaa”, although he says it in a derisory tone. The Wheeler Centre adds to this image and better still, most of its program is free. So all those hippies who think they are the next Jack Kerouac will have somewhere to go in the evening.
I don’t see myself as a hippy or the modern embodiment of a beat era writer. But I’m planning to go along to try and find out more about this writing game. I recently published my 100th blog and at 1,000 words a go, I now have enough writing to publish a small book. Whether anyone would want to read it when it’s free on the web is another matter of course. It wouldn’t be as beautifully written as the most recent book I’ve read (Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin”) although it would be as disjointed and grammatically incorrect.
As the centre also deals in ideas, I might try and discover what it is that makes people write. Is it a core part of our humanity that we need to have our story told? And that some people are unable to do this through speaking and have to resort to the written word? Do we write as a means of massaging our ego or as desperate attempt to hush the voices within?
Whatever reason we do it for; writing has become a more public event in the last ten years. We used to consign our writing to private diaries or angst ridden poems passed only to those we were actually writing the poems about. These days we blog, twitter and post intimate details of our lives on social networking sites. The spoken word has been replaced with email and text messages, to the point where Alexander Bell’s great invention is becoming redundant.
But I think we write for the same reason we read books like the Lonely Planet. It can take us anywhere, to far off lands and people or to the limit of our imagination, if indeed there is a limit to that. I start each week wondering what I’ll write about here and find myself, 1,000 words later; in a place I’d never dreamed off when I started out. Writing releases us from the confines of the daily grind and allows our spirit to soar.
Try it out sometime, it’s hugely liberating. And if you want to learn from the master, search for Joe O’Connor’s podcasts on www.RTE.ie . He makes those us who toil on blogs like this seem like tongue tied simpletons. But more importantly he is making verse acceptable again. I thought of this as I lay by the beach in Sorrento last weekend. It sums up a weekend and is a little tribute to Joe.
Come to Sorrento when the tide is out
And swim in the waterholes by a full moon’s light
Forget all your troubles of the daily grind
And remember to leave your blackberry behind.
Stop at Glaces for a refreshing ice.
If it wasn’t for the flies, it would be feckin paradise!
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