by
evilhippy
@ 2008-01-22 - 08:05:33
G'day ya'll. We-urm've arrived in the Deep South urr somethin', folks.
Today's sermon will concern a few of the differences between what used to be our our green and pleasant isle, and is now everybody else's slightly brown and expensive isle, (oooh, political) and this chunk of nation statey goodness known as India.
I'm joking about England being everyone else's, of course. We know it's really all owned by Lloyds-TSB and ASDA-WalMart.
Something I thought would be particularly close to home for us Englischers is the state of tea over here. It isn't real tea at all, and comes in rather inferior branded bags (brooke bond batches fom 1992 seem especially favoured) which might surprise some of you; what might incite some of you to riot is the time it takes to get a cuppa in a cafe or restaurant - at least 10 minutes, and sometimes up to twice that. No electric kettles, see?
Quite apart from the fact that the powercuts hits most areas at least once during most days, the kettles would be a huge waste of the already scarce electricity when there is already a fire going all day long, either in the tandoor oven or the various others used for cooking the majority of meals.
On the plus side, a black tea costs just Rs.5 to Rs.10 per glass (No cups or mugs here either, all glasses. Everywhere. I have not seen a behandled beverage container in months) which is about 7p - 14p, which I think you'll agree is pretty reasonable.
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Restaurants all have the same menu. Well, very nearly all. This is alarmingly true after a few days in any new place - it really is the same as the last place and the place before and the place before - and you find yourself drifting vaguely into various establishments on the pretense of being a customer, and moving discreetly in the direction of the menus to see if they do anything different at all.
If they don't, chances are they wont get any of my custom. There are only so many times you can look at the same chinese dishes, the same indian veg dishes, the same pizzas, pastas, fruit juices, faux-burgers, lame Mexican meals and unrepresentative Israeli dishes before you feel like a good old fashioned murder, preferably of someone who sets these kind of things down and never trains their staff in anything new.
Some of it is good, fair enough, but 90% of it is identical in mediocrity to everything else done everywhere else, and occasionally it is pretty sickening (sometimes literally).
The upside of course is that if you want Hakka noodles or a generic veggie pizza or any of the standard Indian veg. dishes then you can go for lunch just about anywhere you please without any actual decision needing to be made, which is nice.
The politeness and friendlines everywhere, too, is nice, in fact often it is superb with waiters rushing around or chatting jovially with you and everyone else, or just being the very pinnacle of charm and warmth. The speed of service, of course, isn't always up to the same standard 
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Medicine in every shop in every town, with the exception of pharmacies (the closest to Hampi is 3 miles away and is very badly stocked, its the only one for dozens of miles in any direction too) is all Ayurvedic, which, for our purposes here, means Herbal. If I was any more cynical I would add that THAT means it doesn't work, but fact has proven this fiction to be just a convenience of cheap deprecatory verse because the stuff does, generally, actually work. There is one company with an apparent monopoly on the whole of India, called the Himalaya company, and all common medicine comes from them. They must be absolutely raking it in.
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Every third or even second foreigner has dreadlocks. True. Danged layabout hippy scum...
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Beds. Oh boy, they really saw us coming with the beds. The thickest mattress I have so far seen was a hefty 4" (about 10cm/100mm) thick, and that was twice the thickness of all the rest. None of them have any kind of springs of course, and may as well just be made of bath towels. Many of them seem to be, in fact, made of nothing but bath towels sewn together.
In Anjuna I'm pretty sure I was actually lying on a stone table (possibly easier like that for the impending sacrifice?) for 6 days, but at least it wasn't infested.
My current mattress is infested. There is a particular and unpleasant smell when bedbugs have taken a hold on your soft furnishings, and if I turn over at night I can't avoid it; still, I refuse to pay the full rate at places where the beds aren't laced with tiny bloodsucking insectoids so, for one more night at least, I gotta put up and shut up at least to the real world, of which the internet obviously isn't a part. Hey look at that! I managed to avoid ending my sentence with a preposition, and I finally learned what the hell that actually meant, like, literally just then. Wow. Go Tim.
Thanks to these nighttime plasma fiends my feet look a bit like one of those hillsides on Salisbury plain that the army use for artillery practice; pock-marked, multicoloured and alarmingly lumpy.
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Which leads me nicely onto the subject of mosquitoes and flies - there are a lot. More than you would have even thought for the climate, seriously, really a LOT.
Probably something to do with the fields surrounding us on all sides, sometimes so close as to start within 2 or 3 feet from the wall of your room or the open side of the restaurant, being used to grow rice. I hesitate to use the term paddy field because I don't know if that applies to China or somewhere else in particular, but yeah, paddy fields everywhere, submerged 24 hours day in water and the very definition of heaven for a breeding mosquito and his 12million closest relatives.
This does in turn offer some spectacular views over the fields and across the valley, really they are so gorgeous at sunset that I'm ashamed I haven't got any snaps of it yet (every time I go to one of the places with the restaurant next to the fields I forget my insect repellant/flamethrower, and end up losing a pint or two of blood and half my food to the insects with bad grace and plenty of indiscreet blasphemies. Thank Krishna this town isn't Christian or I'd be staked upside-down to a burning tree by now).
A glorious view is to be had across the stepped fields, which are a work of art in themselves with their constant regulated flow of water trickling day and night from highest to lowest enclosure across each farm, and along the craggy, boulder-strewn sides of this valley carved out by a river which, in some place I haven't yet been too, apparently still supports some kind of crocodile. These would almost certainly be my ultimate wildlife photos from India so I'm gonna try and find out more...
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Spitting on the street, and spending a good 20 minutes at the dawn of each day hacking your lungs up loudly and if necessary in public, is perfectly acceptable.
You cannot walk ANYWHERE before 9am without hearing at least one or two world-class expectorators demonstrating their charmless and queasy skill.
It's a land full of Coffin Henrys, and no mistake.
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Now in case a lot of the above sounds like general bitching, bear in mind that if it was THAT important and THAT bad then I would leave and go to Indonesia or Thailand for a few months instead. Its not bad. Its really rather good, in fact.
The reason all the little gripes are bearable?
Well, apart from the scenery it has to be the people.
Those same enterprising lot for whom money is so important, and an argument for the sake of it is forever only half a second away, are so universally friendly that none of it actually matters. You can walk down any street, any track, any road outside of a big city (and many in cities, too) and smile at a stranger and you will be rewarded with the same in return, and often with a supremely friendly chat, too.
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Money. Money Money Money. So important it gets capitals even in the middle of sentences, such as they are.
There is a lot of interesting psychology when it comes to flowing cash in this country, I'll try to make it brief:
Money is the driving force behind all daily interaction outside of religion or cricket: you may argue this is the case in every country but I would disagree. In America, speaking very, very generally here folks, the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit (the pursuit of the pursuit? How far is he ever going to ever get with that?) of happiness is the daily goal.
In Italy it's the pursuit of the next meal. In England it's the pursuit of total visceral pleasure via the medium of booze, or the pursuit of something else to complain about. Money underlies all these things and facilitates them, defines their specifics, and is affected by them, but in India the driving force actually IS the money itself.
Well, that and religion. And cricket of course which is kind of a religion anyway over here.
This is entirely necessary of course for most people, because it is a very poor country, evidently so when you consider that wonderfully cold and calculating definition of real people: demographics.
A few have mentioned something while traveling about this being the third world - and it's true in some places, but nowhere most foreigners have been saving the odd village or town they have passed through. The third world to my mind involves a lot less in the way of electricity, internet connections, hot food, bottled water and lack of dead dogs and people littering the streets. Armed and lethal militias also feature in my view of that type of place, and this isn't anywhere nearly as hostile, in fact it's pretty goddamned cushy (even with the bedbugs).
However, it ain't that far from it in many places, and almost no-one you see or deal with lives in the places where you see and deal with them. They coudn't afford to, for the most part.
The `demographic groups` (that I just made up, obviously) that most people outside major cities fall into, are:
cave-dweller (yes, people do live in such places in more remote areas).
homeless beggar
penniless tenant/probable slave
scavenger or worker with bad job, shanty house
worker with okay job, tiny house/room
farmer with house
worker with average job, house out of slums or rural area
shopkeeper with anything from crap house to decent family house
taxi driver or `guide`, hell, these guys might be super rich!
restaurant or guesthouse owner with, obviously, a restaurant and/or guesthouse
The first few have little hope and will take anything they can get, the last few will take you for everything they can, generally speaking, although the guesthouse owners are lovely poeple (unlike pushy drivers and guides), they are clearly the ones making the most money.
The people who work in most places around most towns all seem to live in villages nearby, and come to the tourist areas for a few months or weeks and sleep pretty rough there, usually in the restaurant if it's a lounger-style place, and then can take their wages back to their home.
Speaking to a guy in my place last night I know he earns Rs. 3000 per month (speaking about earnings and stuff like that is very common, totally acceptable. Money really is the foundation of everyday life, they treat your income and wages the same way we might treat political opinions), which is enough for him to save for his impending marriage, but leaves him very little to live on back at home.
In these homes, I am pretty certain, children are taught the value and necessity of money from very early on, far, far earlier than we would bother - or need - to do so with children in our country. I have a sneaking suspicion that a sort of socialist way of looking at the world is instilled in many young people; that those with lots of money rightfully SHOULD share it all out with everyone else until everyone is more equal. Whether the same people would think the same with money in their hands is open to debate of course
As we have seen, socialism simply doesn't work: poeple are human.
This doesn't seem to matter to the kids, and doesn't seem to stay with many of them until adulthood either which is brilliant because that's a painfully jaded view of the world (and coming from a level 12 Cynic that says a lot).
Some, however, still feel that because you have money then you should be gently mislead into leaving lots of it with them. Many of these people may drive taxis
But it is the shopkeepers who get angry that betray this sense of wronged socialist idealism, as when you start to haggle then some, only a few, get genuinely angry and demand you pay their asking price without negotiation which is especially irritating you know for a fact that they are overcharging to a ridiculous degree.
A pair of shoes here might cost a tourist, say, Rs. 300.
Those same shoes will cost an Indian at a local shop out of the way of the tourist areas about Rs. 70, and that is true of almost everything.
I know you pay more in tourist areas, but, this is the clincher for me: there is a temple outside of town that is the most spectacular and well-preserved of all those around Hampi. There is a sign outside the little blue booth by the impressively gated entrance:
"Admission:
Indians Rs. 10
Foreigners Rs. 250"
So we pay TWENTY-FIVE TIMES AS MUCH for precisely the same thing. My old boss would be proud, profit margins like that...
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Marriages are still arranged, or at least in rural areas this is almost universal. The guy I spoke to last night at length is 22 years old and will be married off to a girl selected by his family in 1 to 2 years time, and will start making a family of his own.
I happen to know he likes a girl in the town here rather a lot and doesn't particularly like his future wife, but he is going to go along with the trend that's kept family life as constant and unchanging, and as starkly different to ours, as it has for thousands of years.
Of course, we used to be all for arranged marriages too, but not on this scale, and not at every level of society.
Funnily enough the highest levels of society in India are most likely to digress from ths norm, because, well, they can more often afford to, one way or the other.
The fact that marriages are split into two groups called `marriages` and `love marriages` tells you most of what you need to know. Basically, if almost any couple want to marry because they actually love each other (and aren't supposed to, having been promised to other people) then they will have to leave the country for fear of their own lives - there are still often cases in more rural areas where young people have gone against the families wishes and have been murdered by their own parents as a result.
I rememebr one case where the mother of a boy, who unsuccessfully tried to run away with his girlfriend, took him down to a barn somewhere amongst their farm fields and, with the rest of the village forcibly holding the couple, she took a rope and hung her son from a rafter, then took the girl to her parents after watching her young lover die, and they took her - their own daughter - to where they slaughtered animals for food and cut her throat rather than let her stray from their own ideals on the matter.
Pretty strong stuff then, this arranged marriage malarkey. In the case above it was found out tanks to someone in the village disagreeing with the idea of socially-acceptable homicide, and the parents were tried and found guilty (long prison sentences were handed out if I recall correctly, not hangings in kind) but it often must go totally unreported.
My friend in the guesthouse had no illusions about what would happen if he tried that and actually stayed in India.
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This is all totally acceptable. Worse things happen at sea, remember, and worse things happen in the not-altogether-United Kingdom, too, and for reasons just as barbaric to you and I as the one above. I can't say that the universal helpfulness and cheerfulness of spirit here negates the odd familial murder, but India is no more brutal, bigoted or violent than England, unless you're a politician and frankly I wouldn't mind seeing a few of Tony's old Cronies or Tory posterboys getting shot up with lasers
Only joking.
We all know no-one uses lasers.
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The underlying theme with a large part of the culture is simply that life proceeds at a slower pace than everywhere else. It takes ages to get served food in a restaurant, even though you're paying four times the price of anywhere outside the tourist belt, because that's just how long it takes. Relax. Have another black tea.
A taxi may stop at a junction for chat with a fellow taxi driver for 5 minutes because, well, the journey isn't really important, it's the price that has been agreed on and the fact that everyone gets there with all their stuff safe and intact, a few more minutes don't matter to anyone, surely?
Sometimes I get told to slow down, just walking along the street. I often walk pretty fast so I can see their point in general, but strangers; always men because there are still basic rules about who should be meek and who should be in charge here; will call out "slow! slow!" accompanied by an appropriate `calm down, lad` gesture just because I happen to be exceeding their perambulatory expectations.
It is a calmer and more gentle pace of life.
When we went to the Goa Jungle Adventure place Greg and I, being outdoorsy types I would say, ran around and set the pace and we all stormed through every course, obstacle, zipline and rope structure quickly enough to do most of it again, certainly the highest, last and coolest bits, and at a nice leisurely pace which was handy, really, because my mitts were blistered and bleeding by that point.
The instructor there had been used to holidaying Indians doing the course and sometimes not finishing it once in the two and a half hours allocated, and because of nothing more than a sedate manner of getting through the thing in front of them.
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I went to the Hanuman temple and clambered, sweating and half-crying, up and down the 575 steps and spent a good 20 minutes at the top - I got a whole load of photos and video and made it back down, made it around all the temples that day in fact (5 or 6 of them) in less than 2 and a half hours including the driving, and the guide was half impressed, half appalled.
It usually takes people 5 hours or more, he said, and he didn't quite believe me that I even got to the top of the Hanuman steps until I showed him the pictures from the `summit` on my camera.
A lot of people just don't expect you to go for it, it seems, and I find myself doing a day's-worth of sightseeing or walking or whatever and still have 3 or more hours to spare for you lovely lot on this here blog.
And, maybe, that's the biggest difference (aside from murderous relatives turning up at the wedding): there is simply no sense of urgency to much of the place.
I'm finding this both good and bad: overall I am loving it though because it gives me time to really think, and write, and sometimes draw, which I haven't really had for a long time.
All is good 
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I just got a thing for the strangler vine/aerial root things I think, the 2nd pic shows how the aerial roots become lumpy trunks in their own right, that's ALL roots I think:
