Wandering Inanity

Ahmadinejad’s Inauguration Does not Spell End for Opposition

2009-08-06T19:26:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khamenei planted his imprimatur on Mahmoud Achmadinejad’s second four-year term as President of Iran. The inauguration seals the results of last month’s disputed election, in which Interior Ministry vote counters credited some 63 percent of the 40 million votes cast for the hard line leader, even as reform candidates cried foul, igniting bitter protests throughout the country.

While those working to avert the solidification of Ahmadinejad’s position atop the Republic-half of the Islamic Republic have lost a battle, this setback has hardly stolen the wind from their sails. Although primary opposition candidate and unintentional political lightning rod Mir-Hossein Mousavi has slowly ramped up his open involvement in post-election rallying, others now carry the torch of resistance. Chief among them is Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leading religious and political figure, considered by many to be the second most powerful man in the country behind only the Supreme Leader himself.

Rafsanjani delivered a recent sermon at the weekly Friday prayer ceremony at Tehran University, using the pulpit to demand that “the government release those arrested in recent weeks, ease restrictions on the media and eradicate the “doubt” the Iranian people have about the election result” according to a New York Times summary of the event. Having allies, and now leaders, so far up the political ladder (Rafsanjani is also a former president) can only aid the opposition in its continuing struggle, especially as Ahmadinejad fills his cabinet with allies, further galvanizing his own power.

In reaction to the inauguration, thousands marched through the streets of Tehran in protest, and a number of important figures, Rafsanjani, Mousavi, and former President Mohammad Khatami, were noticeably absent at the event.

Why Does Obama Remain Silent?

2009-06-13T23:28:00.018-04:00

Following what was reported as a landslide victory for Mahmoud Achmadinejad in Friday’s presidential election in Iran, accusations of fraud at the Ministry of the Interior (Achmadinejad’s own purview) in vote counting and reporting are running rampant, both from within the country and from international observers. With the skirt of Iranian democratic rule caught in a gust of wind, revealing the hairy, autocratic legs of the regime, the people of Iran are making their presence felt, if not at the ballot box then in the streets.

But with democracy fighting for its life in the most powerful country in the Middle East, the Obama administration has gone curiously silent since his “robust debate” comments from Friday, neglecting to offer a word of encouragement to bolster confidence of Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s Green Revolution (the name given to those who’ve taken to the streets, wearing his campaign color, disputing the legitimacy of the results).

Promotion of the enfranchisement of the everyman is supposed to be a principal tenet of US foreign policy, so where are we now when democracy needs a boost? It would seem that the administration is hedging its bets. While they are no doubt thrilled to see Achmadinejad’s national mandate take a black eye in the form of strong protests, it remains the most likely scenario that the current government will beat back the protests and remain in power, even if it means staging their own Tiananmen Square-style crackdown. If Obama were to voice support for the protestors and thus against Achmadinejad’s government, it would make for a much more difficult road toward the negotiation table, which is another principal initiative being pursued by the Obma administration. So for now, it seems the best option to keep quiet and see how things develop.

Why not pursue a secret campaign to aid the protestors? Unfortunately after thirty years of diplomatic silence between the two nations, US inroads into Iranian social and political power structures are dreadfully undeveloped, meaning that simply getting in touch with the right people would be a difficult prospect, much less pushing an agenda or offering aid. That being the case, and with the Revolutionary Guard and Iranian police locking down most forms of popular communication (Facebook and text messaging were first to go, then went the internet in general and wide-sweeping power cuts), it seems that logistically it would be next to impossible. The risk remains a limiting factor as well; if the protests are indeed subdued and fail to bring down Achmadinejad, and the US’ secret role was publicized, it would set relations back to near 1979 levels.

In the mean time, all we can do from abroad is to keep watching. I am following the events as best I can, and given the US media’s maniacal interest focus on blithe domestic events of the day, like the engrossing feud between Sarah Palin and David Letterman, we’re left to find our own information sources for stories that actually matter. Enter Twitter: the best place for up-to-the-minute news. You can find constant updates under the #IranElection hashtag, or from a number of individual Iraninan Twitterers.

Update: Here’s a heroic report from the BBC in Tehran. Watch as the crowd turns on a secret policeman who tries to get the reporter to stop from filming. There are also some great shots of the crowd surging against the police. The clip ends with a short comment from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking from Canada about “monitoring the situation.”

Update 2: Rumors are that the BBC reporter has been arrested. Also, all foreign reporters have been ordered to leave the country. Also, the Independent’s Robert Fisk provides a graphic, first-hand description of the protests from Tehran.

Update 3: Former US National Security Council member Gary Sick advocates a hands off approach by the Obama administration, so Mousavi supporters don't appear to be "tools of the West."

Can Obama really bring peace to the Middle East?

2009-06-13T20:13:00.000-04:00

For those who have until now been stuck under particularly weighty rocks, President Obama delivered a speech last Thursday from Cairo University with the intent of addressing the perceived rift between the United States and the Islamic world.

Video of the entire speech is available on YouTube, courtesy of the White House’s newly invigorated Web 2.0 information campaign. Coincidentally, the hour-long address was also made available live worldwide via SMS text message. Hopefully anyone who signed up has an unlimited plan.

Obama’s discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict served as the evening’s sole surprise. In a departure from previous U.S. policy, the president made clear a call for the absolute cessation of expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, signaling a cooling in relations between the U.S. and Israel. While this particular conflict is only one of seven issues which Obama highlighted as comprising the wedge that exists between Islam and the U.S., it may be the most injurious, especially among the Arab contingent of the Muslim world.

Hearing the same words from George W. Bush would have been cause for a great deal of eye-rolling and nose-thumbing. However, Obama has been given a carte blanch among Muslims thanks to his tenable connection to their religion, having been born a Muslim to a father of the faith, and partially raised in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country. And while skepticism about the true aim of U.S. initiatives remains, Obama now does indeed have the ear of Muslim peoples around the globe, having voiced a deep respect for their history and culture, and honoring them by appearing in person in Cairo to address them.

Why should it matter if Obama gains the support of Muslim populations around the globe? It means that Arab leaders can work with the U.S. on key global issues without angering their constituents and losing popular support, and it defuses the vitriolic arguments of anti-U.S. extremists around the globe.

Most importantly, it means that key U.S. foreign policy goals like amelioration in the Israel-Palestine conflict become much more achievable. How? It allows the U.S. to reposition itself not as a global hegemon with a myopic interest in backing Israel, but as an even-handed third party, to whom giving a little at the negotiating table won’t mean kicking the hornets’ nest back home for Arab leaders.

This raises another question: Are the U.S. and Israel really at loggerheads over the issue of West Bank settlements, or is the apparent cooling in their relationship a coordinated effort to defuse Arab anger and move the peace process forward? That seems unlikely, given Netenyahu’s position as head of the hard-line Likud Party, which took over Israel’s government by a thin majority last month. Given the fact that the resulting government has a rather weak mandate, it would be difficult to make grand departures from party platform, unless he does so at proverbial gunpoint, i.e., in the event that his country’s principal patron, the U.S., makes hard demands. Netenyahu is due to give a major foreign policy related speech this coming Sunday, so watch that for developments in the situation.

As for how far Obama’s speech will go toward turning Muslim opinion for the U.S., it depends on two factors: how well the State Department is able to promote U.S. interests among Muslim populations, and how much Obama’s political clout can actually get him among the Arab nations.

So far, most reactions are along the lines of “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I feel the same way.

8 Ways to Get the Most Out of Backpack Travel

2009-05-14T01:07:00.000-04:00

Backpackers are a different breed; that much we know. But there’s more to these creatures of the road than unkempt beards and odoriferous undergarments. Indeed, there’s an actionable urge to shed the comfort of one’s home, shove off from shore, and plunge knowingly into the maelstrom of confusion that is a foreign country experienced on the cheap. It is the acknowledgment and acceptance of that confusion that sets the backpacker’s experience apart from that of the vacationer. It’s the recognition of confusion as a healthy challenge to the mind, rather than a nuisance, that forces one to grow, learn, and make fast sense of one’s surroundings or be lost. People who travel by backpack end up more independent, more insightful, more knowledgeable simply because they are the type of people who are willing to accept a bit of hardship, knowing they’ll come out on the other end a better person.

I’ve been lucky enough to backpack through South America, much of Europe, India, Morocco, and Israel, and while I’m not nearly as traveled as many of the people I’ve met along the trail, I have accrued some experience that will be helpful to those setting out for their first time.

This guide is not meant to take the place of other, more pragmatic backpacking guides that offer advice like how/why to hide money on your person, or how to go about registering with your country’s embassy in every new country you visit or how to detach piranhas from your body parts. For a comprehensive guide in that spirit, see World Backpackers’ web site. This guide is about how to conduct yourself in order to take the most back from your travel experience.

1. Inform yourself. Read a bit about the country and its culture before you go. Often times, having read a book or two (novels especially) about the country or culture before you go will help you to make sense of what it is you are seeing, as you are seeing it. Plus, you’ll probably be better off knowing beforehand if the showing the bottom of your foot is the equivalent of offering your donkey in marriage to someone’s daughter.

For a guide on how to do practical trip-related research before you go, see the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler’s recent blog post on pre-trip research.

2. Walk. Shun the bus, the metro, the subway, etc… walk from point A to point B and you’ll learn so much more about a city than you’ll be able to through a bus window or through the whack-a-mole familiarity that the subway/metro grants. Choosing to walk means you’ll happen upon unique shops, parks, and people living their real lives, as opposed to the faux-authentic “locals” that congregate near tourist sites to attract the attention of tourists. Instead, you’ll meet people who aren’t just looking for another tourist to rip off, and who are willing to actually engage in conversation and real cultural exchange. Plus, you’ll get a bit of exercise (always important, especially if you’re on the Travelers’ Diet- bread and cheese) and most likely find some interesting things that’s are not on the “Top 10 Things to See In ______” list, but that will give you a far better picture of the local culture than any ancient ruin or museum. And when you’re lucky enough to get lost, just ask someone for directions. Hopefully they’ll be benevolent enough (and speak enough of your language) to send you in the direction of home, and if not you’ll be off on another adventure, and have an even better story to tell when you get home.

3. Interact. Travel is about interaction. Specifically, that’s interaction with people whose perspectives have arisen from an experience of the world different from your own. This is what one should strive for when we find ourselves a stranger in a strange land. It is why do what we do, and it’s something that took me a while to understand when I first traveled. Too often I was “too tired” for one more experience or excursion, and instead of challenging myself, I would relax or sleep. Travel is not a vacation; you aren’t there to relax. The amount of growth you experience as a result of time abroad is directly correlated to your ability to keep yourself off your own rump and out among the culture exploring. On that note, local populations will always be mesmerized by your presence. They’ll see you as foreign, strange, (probably) rich, exotic, interesting etc... So say hi, try to speak to them in their own language; they’ll appreciate it and they’ll be inclined to try to their luck with your language. Even if you can’t get a single word across the one another, it’s the mutual attempt to understand that matters most.

4. Explore. If it ever comes down to it, turn the next corner, poke your head into the forbidding shop, and just see what there it to see. For me, the most interesting experiences often arise from completely unexpected circumstances, and you open yourself up to having these sorts of experiences when you wander and let your curiosity take control. Instead of wondering what might be going on behind that curtain, or inside that door, take a peek.

5. Take chances. Often times the experiences you have as a result are difficult in the moment, but by no coincidence they’re also the ones that a) challenge you to rise to the occasion and prove your wherewithal to yourself and your companions and b) make the best stories later on. So go ahead, try the street food; what’s the worst that can happen? You lose a little weight in the restroom later. What’s the best that can happen? You discover a delicious and cheap snack that can save you a lot of money and time during your trip. Plus you get to tell everyone back home how much you loved integrating yourself with the local culture by eating the food the locals eat. Don’t waste the opportunity of being abroad in places you know; McDonald’s, for example, might have a unique menu for every country in the world, but whatever they offer will still be a diluted imitation of real local fare. Find the restaurants where the locals eat, and eat there. And remember: taking chances is not limited to food, it’s also about how willing you are to submit to the demons (angels?) of curiosity.

6. Smile. Body language says everything when you can’t communicate with language. A wide smile is an amazing tool for a traveler; it opens hearts like keys open doors. People will be far more likely to want to interact with you when you’re wearing a smile.

7. Disconnect. Don’t spend too much time emailing people back home while you’re on the road. Of course you are going to miss your family and/or significant other, and they’re going to want to know about every single thing you’re doing. But remember the opportunity cost of spending time in front of the computer; every second you use writing emails back home is one second you could be out exploring a city or getting lost in a market. So send quick updates so your loved ones know you’re safe, and maybe describe one or two things you’re doing, but focus on spending as little time as possible connecting with your local environs. They are what you’ve come to see and understand, and you’ll miss that opportunity to constantly learn when you go back home and realize that it’s (probably) the same as it always was and will always be.

8. Number eight is not a recommendation but a call for suggestions. What do you do when you travel to connect with your environment?

Is India Really Ready to get Tough on Terror?

2008-12-29T13:26:00.001-05:00

More than a month has passed since the world stood still, watching as a small yet heavily-armed gang of terrorists took hold of India’s financial capital, fighting off Indian security forces and holding dozens of hostages for three days straight.

Only now are the city and its residents beginning the slow march down the road to normalcy, a process symbolized by the recent reopening of the Taj Mahal hotel, long a habitat of the city’s local nobility and foreign dignitary population, and home to 31 of the roughly 170 killings (exact counts differ depending on source).

As Mumbaikers gain distance on the events, and the accompanying perspective, the question of how this could have happened rises to the forefront of public debate, both from within India and among the international community.

But to anyone familiar with India’s recent history of terrorism and endemic lax attitude toward security, the attack, while still shocking in its magnitude, comes as no surprise in and of itself.

According to The Times of India, India has suffered 19 major terror attacks in the past six years, resulting in more than 900 deaths. What is particularly noteworthy is the apparent acceleration of scope and frequency during 2008, with 11 attacks and 400 deaths coming this year alone.

Officials have had every reason to bolster security measures, yet none of the gumption to actually do so, choosing instead to continue resting on their laurels and living under the misbegotten delusion that their jobs and the lives of their friends would be safe as long as the terrorists continued to perpetrate their attacks upon the simple folk who would be found on public transit, in open markets, and at major temples, which have been by and large the setting for the most of recent attacks.

Of course, now that the worst has happened, those same officials are either jobless or scrambling to overhaul security and intelligence plans. The proposed changes will supposedly revamp India’s feeble security infrastructure, and represent a u-turn in security philosophy. Instead of waiting to clean up the next disaster, India is finally going to get tough on terror.

But before we applaud India’s newfound commitment to locking down the terrorists, let’s remember that it was barely two and a half years ago, on July 11th 2006, when 209 people perished in a terrorist attack on Mumbai’s subway network. The attack was followed by similar promises to get tough on terror, and the more recent Mumbai attack is evidence of just how serious those promises were. If that doesn’t underscore the dubious nature of the Indian bureaucracy’s new-found resolve to move its 800-pound gorilla mass and buttress security, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Still, there is a unique confluence of factors that may prove to be potent enough to inspire real practical improvement this time.

Firstly, the world-wide live media coverage and resulting scrutiny of Indian law enforcement’s anemic response to the crisis has caused the Indian government significant embarrassment thanks to its inability to provide safety for its citizens.

Secondly, due to the attack’s focus on foreigners, the foundations have been laid for a colossal slow-down in one of India’s principal industries: tourism. Indian politicians and their constituent understand Dollar (or Rupee) signs, and according to Vijay Thakur, President of the Indian Association of Tour Operators, the number of foreign tourists coming to India has already taken a 15 to 20 percent hit since the Mumbai attacks.

Finally, for the first time India’s urban elite class has been directly and exclusively targeted by terrorism, granting the attack something of a more personal connection for policy-makers, the majority of whom are of the same high caste as many of the victims.

These factors set these attacks apart from previous ones, and naturally the next question is what ought to be done?

There are three fronts that need to be addressed: Internal, border, and external.

1. Internal: Create basic internal security procedures and increase police salaries

This dual solution addresses a dual-pronged problem within the country, as India still harbors a number of home-grown terror threats such as Indian Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for the September 2008 serial bombings in New Delhi.

Within India, potential security threats are numerous. Check points in train stations are often comprised of a simple wooden frame meant to simulate a metal detector, or more commonly, nothing at all. A sham of security does no one any good.

In their haste to prepare for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the city of New Delhi is expanding the reach of its metro subway system throughout South Delhi and to the neighboring business districts of Gurgaon and Noida. To save money and time, most of the new track is being laid above ground, raised twenty feet above the streets by thousands of sequential concrete columns, each an obvious target for a highly visible terrorist action.

At national monuments like the Taj Mahal, strict metal detector and wand searches are enforced, but at an equally major attraction like the Golden Temple, a precarious 30 miles from the Pakistan border, visitors are subjected to a mere eyeball exam under the gaze of a volunteer staff of religious guards armed with spears and knives.

In the case of the Mumbai assault, the security camera video of the two police at Chhatrapati Shivaji Train Station fighting a pair of terrorists with only one rifle between the two of them will forever stand as testament to how woefully unprepared Indian security forces were for the attacks.

Where do police salaries come in?

Common opinion dictates that many Indian police constables are motivated more by the potential to receive bribes than the actual application of the law.

That’s not to say there aren’t police with scruples, but on a salary of 8,000 Rupees a month (the average starting salary for a police officer in New Delhi), the rough equivalent of being paid in peanuts here in the States, scruples become subjective.

Bribery and corruption are endemic to Indian society, and a thorough exploration of their implications is a bag of worms for another day. In terms of terrorism and security challenges, the concern would be that if the police can be counted on to look the other way for a traffic violation in exchange for a few hundred Rupees, what more can they be expected to let pass? (Web comic Fly You Fools is written and edited by an Indian humorist).

Augmenting police salaries won’t turn the bad apples good, but it would serve to increase the size of the applicant pool for police positions, and therein the quality of candidates, while simultaneously lessening the economic need for officers to seek and accept bribes.

2. Border: Step up patrols

Indian officials are already lining up to declare their support for this initiative, as the irony sinks in that the perpetrators of last month’s attack gained access to the city by rubber dinghy.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram, India’s top law enforcement officer, was quoted in the Washington Post with the following statement.

“Among a slew of security measures, India will create a Coastal Command to secure 4,650 miles of shoreline, set up 20 counter-terror schools, raise regional commando units, strengthen anti-terror laws and set up a national agency to investigate suspected terror activity. “

On the surface it looks like an air-tight solution to India’s terror problem. More guns, more troops, more intelligence, etc… But in reality it’s a lot like drawing up a wish list of free agents your basketball team would pick up in a salary-cap free world. Simply put, where will the money come from? It’s not as if India has piles of Rupees in some back room, and has been waiting for a situation grave enough to merit opening the flood gates.

No, this is a country whose 300 million poor (fully ¼ of the population) live fathoms below the international poverty line, whose streets are a hodgepodge of potholes and gaping crevices, whose heavily-used passenger trains are 20 years past their last legs, whose tap water is one-way ticket on the express train to dysentery, whose public healthcare system is a shambles, and whose power grid suffers multiple daily indefinite blackouts. In short, if there are extra funds out there, it’s not for lack of necessity. (Linked study is made available by the United Nations Development Program).

The intent here is not to claim that the money for the new security initiatives ought to be put to use to resolve these pressing social issues, but instead that if there is a large enough surplus in the security budget (whether it comes from the elimination of wasteful programs or unspent funds) to account for the creation of these new security apparatuses, why hasn’t that money been reapportioned previously in efforts to alleviate the problems that afflict millions upon millions of Indians every day? And “anticipation of such a calamitous event” doesn’t quite cut it.

So once again, from which money tree does the government plan to shake the funds? Can they count on the urban elite to put together charity drives to buy not just Kevlar vests for city police, but also the patrol boats and high-tech surveillance equipment? Will the rampant tax evasion that fleeces government coffers fade away by itself? Or maybe India could just sell a few nukes? I can think of a few countries that are in the market.

The plan set forth by Indian authorities to address border security may indeed by achievable. Then again, it may also be more empty talk by politicians more skilled in the art of bloviation than that of implementation. Time will tell.

3. External: Deal with Pakistan

Ever since the 1947 partition of British India into the modern states of India and Pakistan, violence has characterized the relationship between the two countries. Tensions came to a head in a trio of major wars (1947, 1965, 1971), all of which ended with terms favorable to India. While the conflict is rooted to the age-old struggle between the Hinduism and Islam in this region of the world, the immediate problems are a result of challenges faced by the political leadership in both countries.

India’s problem may be its inability to properly confront the terrorism that has so afflicted it in recent years, which has at times originated in India, but more often across the border in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s head-in-the-sand faux ignorance of the militia groups it harbors in its northern provinces is as incredulous as it is dangerous. The country’s civilian government doesn’t enjoy strong support from its constituent, and doesn’t have full reign over the military or the powerful spy agency known as Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI has historically spent significant resources training radical groups to act as surrogate military forces in efforts to destabilize India’s hold on the northern state of Kashmir, the epicenter of two of the three major wars between the countries.

Counted among these groups is Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which India blames for the Mumbai attacks. The question that lingers over the current crisis is just how close the ISI and therein the Pakistani government remains to LeT, and whether or not government officials were involved in the planning and execution of the attacks.

Naturally Pakistan claims to have no connection to the responsible “non-state actors” and has been making all the right moves, shutting down at least one of LeT’s training camps and pledging its support to investigate any terrorist activity on its soil, as well as cracking down on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a parent to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

However, it remains to be seen if these are tongue-in-cheek crackdowns, or if President Asif Ali Zardari will actually get serious about eliminating radicalism within the borders of his country.

According to Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings Institute, it may not matter what Zardari intends, as the power of his civilian government is tenuous as best.

“The [Mumbai] attack was designed among other things to provoke India-Pakistan bad relations. I thought it was designed to hurt the Zardari government. That was true of the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Their target simply wasn’t India but to show the world that Zardari had no control over what happened. Perhaps, over his own government.”

Still, Zardari will have to find a way to appease Indian’s current anger. The vernacular from the other side of the border has grown more and more hawkish over recent days, as Indians question the authenticity of Pakistan’s moves to clean up its countryside.

Deeper probing might lead one to question whether or not Pakistan really has any intention at all of eliminating terrorist groups. A mutual disdain for India may be the glue that holds the nation together, if there remains any glue at all. Pakistan as a nation lacks a cohesive national identity, and is instead more of a loose conglomeration of parochial states, held together by a strong national military.

Balochistan, for example, by landmass the largest of Pakistan’s four main provinces, is home to the popular Balochistan Liberation Front, whose mission is inherent in the name. Of similar disposition is the North West Frontier Province, current home of the Taliban and al-Queda, two organizations not subjugated by the Pakistani federal government but with their own independent power structures. This past week, a Taliban spokesperson affirmed his organization’s full support of Pakistan in the event of a war with India. The fact that a public announcement was necessary emphasizes to whom it is that the Taliban answer.

The active proliferation of “non-state actors,” to use Zardari’s own terminology, within Pakistan gives the impression that the President and his civilian government are content to continue receiving billions of dollars in aid from the U.S. in exchange for backhanded promises to enforce a nationalizing agenda, and shut down the terrorist groups that use Pakistani territory as a training ground for actions against U.S. forces in Afghanistan (eliciting a series of tactical strikes from the U.S. military in the same “sovereign territory”) and destabilizing attacks in India.

The irony of the aid situation should not escape one. It is after all the U.S. that is dumping funds on Pakistan in the hope that a solution can be bought, and given the current U.S. administration’s aversion to tracking the money bombs it drops on unstable foreign governments, we can say definitively that the money is not being used to bolster anti-terror efforts. Ironically, it could be funneled through the Pakistani military or ISI and end up in the coffers of the same “non-state actors” it is intended to stop. This is pure speculation, but given the history of collaboration between Pakistani government representatives and these groups, it’s hardly an outlandish proposition.

So how does all of this confront India? Simply put, India has evidence that elements within Pakistan have given rise to the Mumbai attacks, and now must convince Pakistan that it is in its own best interest to dissolve those elements. Up to now it has served the Pakistani cause, both politically and militarily, to remain complicit and allow these groups to operate, and therein the challenge for India is to apply the proper amount of pressure without bursting the bubble and sparking a fourth major war, which, according to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was the objective of the Mumbai attacks to begin with. Besides both nations being nuclear-armed, the danger of such a confrontation is that it would further destabilize Pakistan’s civilian government and create a vacuum of national leadership thus permitting al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or some other organization to further foster popular support for fundamentalist agendas, and push for a popularly-supported political coup.

Naturally Pakistan recognizes the dangers of another war with India, especially one initiated by India with the intent of reaching far enough to stamp out terrorist cells. However given the ties of Pakistani officials to terrorist networks, including former ISI Chief Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, questions abound as to whether or not Pakistan is working in its own best interest as a nation, or if powerful forces like Lt. Gen. Gul are working toward another agenda.

Looking at the BBC’s conglomerate page on the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, it’s telling to see the same back and forth volleying between the two countries now being rehashed. It would seem that one side or the other must find a new approach. If Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to be seen as anything other than soft on terror, as his inability to prevent the recent rash of attacks would suggest, he’s got to find the remedy, whether the terrorism is state-sponsored or otherwise. Beyond the threat of military action, supporting intelligence operations would be a worthwhile investment.

4. All fronts: Bolster intelligence

This would seem to be the obvious cure-all: to know about terrorist actions before they are perpetrated. Unfortunately that’s far easier said than done. Infiltrating and monitoring terrorist groups both inside and outside India should be a major component of any future efforts, and would require the India to borrow tactics from one of its principal antagonists, the ISI.

Further efforts would include working side by side with the U.S. to freeze the assets of those who fund terrorist groups and encouraging more collaboration between Indian police, paramilitary groups, and military forces.

Admittedly this is a skeleton plan, in dire need of fleshing out, but the premise is sound: know what’s being planned in time to stop it. Clearly India has not done this as of late, and has been caught with its proverbial pants down too often.

It’s time to get serious and to turn the tables on those who’ve made fools of Indian security and corpses out of Indian people. A few basic ideas for the improvement of general security are supplied herein, but a comprehensive plan is the urgent task of those in power.

Good can come out of the Mumbai crisis, but only if Indian officials are willing to finally learn from their mistakes and wake up from the deluded dream-like haze that has characterized their attitudes toward terror up until now. The time for heady talk has ended, and the time for action has begun.

Wandering Inanity Vol. 14: India Part Four - Two Weddings and a Chicken Roll

2008-04-10T08:19:00.002-04:00

Preface: I’ve split this journal into three sections for the convenience of the reader. If you’re not interested in part one, part two starts somewhere six miles down the page. If you’re not interested in part two either, you’re probably in the wrong place and might find something of interest here instead. No photos up front this time, they’re embedded with their respective stories in the text below.

Comprehensive Table of Contents
1. A Modest Experiment in Cultural Examination
2. Stories from the Road
3. Protracted Ending and Coming Attractions

1. A Modest Experiment in Cultural ExaminationAmble off the street and into one of Delhi’s thousands of open-front dhabas, and you’ll find yourself confronted with a culturally-telling decision. No, not hot or cold, although some Indians’ glee in downing ulcer-inducing curries as the sadistic July sun beats down from above is equally as impressive as the feats of any Chinese acrobat, Spanish bullfighter, or Brazilian spiny blowfish swallower. (Admittedly, performances of the latter are more renowned for their singular nature than for any spectacular quality, as few live to compete more than once.) No, not sanitary or contaminated, that choice was made implicitly when you crossed the threshold and entered the dhaba, but the general lack of hygiene is not as culturally indicative as it is economically derivative. The choice is vej (vegetarian) or non-vej.

I don’t mean to say the distinction is unique to India. Surely, the ability to distinguish between dishes that contain the flesh of formerly living beings and those that don’t is universal to all cultures; even the Inuit of Eastern Labrador and Newfoundland, whose particular conception of “salad” is composed of disparate elements less grown than they are born, would understand the logic behind grouping the carrot with the cheese wheel, and the seal tail with the reindeer thigh (sorry Rudolph, it’ll grow back). So what is it about having the option here in India that is so characteristic of the culture? It’s not the mere fact that the choice exists; it’s the particular diction of the distinction that I find so telling. “Why” in a moment, but first, a little history:

In days of yore, Hindus were a far more courteous people, with respect to their fellow living beings. They slaughtered not the animals of the earth, for food nor for tool; they consumed not the milk of the mother; they fried not the egg of the hen; they sliced not the breast of the turkey nor the side of beef, garnished not with lettuce and slices of mild cheddar cheese and raw onion, and wrought not delicious Delhi Dagwood sandwiches between thick slabs of seven-grain bread. They didn’t do any of those things, and it’s too damn bad, because if they had, chances are that would be a part of the cuisine around here and right now I’d be wrapping my jaws around one instead of writing this. Nothing against writing- if I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t be behind the keyboard- but when your daily ration ranges from rice and curry one day, to curry and rice the next*, a thick deli sandwich comes in somewhere just south of ”ascension to heaven” on the gratification scale.

*Not an accurate representation of my diet. To complete, just add water.

During the first half of the second millennium, Muslim conquerors moved east from Persia (now Iran) and south from various -stans, to the geographic area now known as Pakistan and North India. At first, relations with the locals were a bit rocky (indigenous populations rarely take kindly to violent invasions), but with time, when it became clear that these Muslims weren’t going anywhere fast, the two cultures, previously oil and water, began to synergize. Soon after 1500, a Muslim ruler known as Babur (not the elephant, that’s Babar) seized control of Delhi and Agra, and thus the Mughal (MOO-gull) Empire was born.

Without dipping a figurative bucket into the Well of Vapid Lexicon and hauling out gems like “history happened,” it would be difficult for me to provide the reader a greater over-simplification of world events than that which I offer herein. However, for our purposes, this will have to do. Babur’s descendents would rule until the early 1700s, and their influence on India is still felt today, some 300 years later.

Today, the tapestry of Indian culture is woven thick with threads both Hindu and Muslim, and the result is something not purely one or the other, but still altogether Indian. The mixture manifests itself in sometimes surprising ways. For example: India’s signature cultural attraction is not a Hindu temple, but the Taj Mahal, a monument to the lost love of Shah Jahan, a Muslim ruler. Despite this fact, it is held in high esteem by all Indians, both Muslim and Hindu.

The Taj marks the arrival of Muslim architecture to India (although it wasn’t the first instance here, it is the most prominent), but the Mughals didn’t stop there. They also brought their form of centralized government, their art, their trade routes, their language, and most importantly for our purposes, their cuisine. Suddenly, the North Indian sheep and chicken population, who by all accounts had led rather placid lives up to that point, passing most days munching on tall stalks of grass, contemplatively gazing into the distance, watching the horizon squeeze the last drops of juice from the orange setting sun, and composing metered romantic poetry, found themselves being systematically slaughtered for human nourishment, and altogether confused about the whole business.

In the beginning, animal emissaries were sent to normalize relations, but hope slowly died as each successive negotiator failed to return, and was subsequently spotted roasting leisurely over an open flame. These days you can find the descendents of these martyrs, spinning on a spit (as their ancestors once did) or deep in a tandoori oven. We don’t call them emissaries though, we call them kabobs.

The crux of all this is really quite simple, and when I finally get to the other end of the etymological tightrope we’ve been walking (and have just fallen off), you’ll probably want punch yourself in uncomfortable places for climbing so steep a slope, only to be told by the yogi on the mountain-peak that the secret of life is “Hawaiian pizza” or something lame* like that.

*Hawaiian pizza is not lame in and of itself; in fact it’s probably the one type of pizza that is closest to being the secret of life. However, you didn’t just climb the mountain for advice on your next Domino’s order, you did it for the axiom, adage, or allegory that’ll tear the blinds from your eyes, pull you out of the matrix, and make you see the world for what it really is. Unfortunately, if that’s what you’re expecting, you may have just climbed the wrong mountain.

So now that I’ve pre-emptively beaten it up, dragged it through the mud, and thrown it into a live volcano, let’s get to the point of all this rigmarole. Today, as I said, you have two basic types of food in Indian restaurants: vej and non-vej. The key to all this is in the semantics: that which is traditional, that which is Indian, that which is normal, merits the positive designation, it is ”vej.” Conversely, food that comes from a different tradition, food that comes from the ”other,” food that breaks with custom is negatively designated: it is “non-vej,” or not normal. Without even knowing the history detailed herein, we can deduce a significant fact about the history of Indian culture.

Were I a cultural investigator of any ardor, I’d take the next step in the logical progression and ask why it is that the erstwhile Hindus were vegetarians? However, that’s like asking an Orthodox Jew “Who wrote the Old Testament?” or a Catholic if the Eucharist is really the body of Christ: the answer is too steeped in the cultural lore for rational elucidation. Furthermore, our own line of pursuit leads us to other worlds than these.

I probably could have skipped most of this, and simply begun with that last paragraph about vej and non-vej and made the same point, but it is the journey, the endeavor, in which we gain most, isn’t it? Isn’t it?? Now wait, relax those fists, don’t punch your computer, yourself, or anyone near you (unless you’re standing next to Dick Cheney, then punch away and aim low), and don’t start plotting my timely death just yet. We’re not done. The question we’re now obligated to ask is: Why is this so culturally salient? Why should anyone care that traditional Indian food is given the positive moniker, while food that comes from a different tradition is given the label of the “other?”

It’s indicative of one of Indian culture’s defining characteristics: the almost seamless perpetuation of cultural values from one generation to the next. Indeed, things do change here, if we don’t accept that, there’s no rationalizing the torrid pace of development that is sweeping this country. Evidence of this is visible on every street corner, in every open field, and along every roadside, where change rearranges the face of modern India. Life here is rapidly transforming, from business (improved law enforcement is driving more openness in commerce, so instead of getting ripped off every time, you’ll only get ripped off most of the time), to infrastructure (today you tear your hair out stuck waiting in traffic jams, tomorrow you’ll tear someone else’s hair our fighting your way onto the metro train), and on and on. But while a cyclone of Westernization tears at the branches of the culture, core family values remain strong, an oak tree stoically defying the raging winds of change.

In most family homes, three successive generations mingle. As children become parents and parents become grandparents, values, traditions, and customs pass from one set to the next. What it means to be a Singh, or a Patel, or a Gupta, and on a broader scale what it means to be an Indian bridges the gap from one generation to the next, by way of the close daily interaction between the purveyors of the culture and their offsprings. The foods, the rituals, the ethos: all this unites those long gone with those still yet to come and everyone in between.

Not to say that traditions don’t span the gap elsewhere. It’s not as if parents in Paris are popping out babies who grow up to wear shallow conical hats and till the rice fields, or drape themselves in the Stars and Stripes while swallowing triple cheeseburgers, clobbering terrorists, and smacking home runs for justice (all simultaneously). No, French babies grow up to be French, just like Vietnamese babies grow up to be Vietnamese, and real Americans babies grow up to be real American heroes. Here in India, the same is true, but in my estimation in a different way and to a different extent.

Admittedly, the Indian family faces change and the challenge of evolving ideals like families anywhere, but with more egos enforcing “the way” than among some other cultures, the tendency is for family values and decisions to take precedence over individual prerogatives. This is the case in so many situations, but I’ve seen the conflict manifest itself most commonly when the case is labelled “marriage.”

There are two types of marriages here in India. So-called “love marriages” and “arranged marriages.” Love marriages are ostensibly your basic boy-meets-girl story, and are becoming more and more common among the middle- and upper-classes. An informal survey* among co-workers reveals that some 70% of Indian marriages are love marriages today. However, considering the sample demographic, middle- and upper-class Indians, chances are that my conclusions weren’t representative of India as a whole, especially with 300 million here living below the poverty line and leading lives nothing like those I first spoke with.

*Survey consisted of the following question: “Among people you know, what percentage of marriages are arranged and what percentage are love marriages?”

With this in mind, I asked a number of lower-caste Indians with whom I have daily contact (office helpers, drivers) the same question, and my curiosity paid off, revealing far more traditional tendencies among the poorer demographics. According to these people, 10% or less of the marriages among their friends and family are love marriages. One particularly noteworthy comment was “love marriages always end in divorce,” and knowing the implications of a divorce in this culture (a woman will find it almost impossible to be remarried, while the man may do so almost at his leisure) this is a serious assertion. The statement is indicative of how people here think of the pitfalls of following your heart, and allowing emotions to get in the way of properly raising children. In some senses I suppose I agree; if marriage is more a social agreement than an emotional relationship, the involved parties are more likely to work out any issues for the benefit of the children, whereas if feelings and egos are involved, lines of communication are easily distorted. Then again, as individuals who among us wouldn’t rather spend their time with someone with whom he/she shares an emotional connection? Once again, the view of marriage as a social agreement, one made between two families in the interest of the propagation of their family line, is another crucial trait distinguishing Indian culture from Western culture.

An arranged marriage is the progenies of a spark, deep in the nether regions of the idle mind of a mother, aunt, or cousin. Neurons flash, cobwebs crumble, an idea is born, and suddenly Guarav and Neha find themselves seated furtively across a living room from one another, anxiously avoiding the other’s gaze, as their parents engage in seemingly idle chat, ascertaining whether the other family is “suitable” (a subjective evaluation if there ever was one, and providing of an easy out should one family find issue with the other, or with the other’s marriage candidate). The fact that the two families have come this far implies that there are no caste conflicts, which commonly frustrate the aspirations of those who wish to be wed to a partner chosen of their own volition and also of a different caste. Chat ranges from family background, to employment, to general interests, to future intentions, and further matters of familial concern. Questions may be directed at the individuals themselves, or to the parents, who will invariably provide the “proper answer” should Guarav not know that he plans on being the CEO of a multinational corporation within five years, or Neha not realize that she can cook anything under the sun, with skill. Forgive me if I appear to be gender stereotyping, but given the fact that a propensity to abide by tradition is why a marriage would be an arranged one to begin with, it follows that traditional gender roles would prevail within the resulting household.

Assuming all goes well between the families, a prospect more dubious than one might expect, the potential marriage partners will discuss their reactions with their respective clans, weighing concerns and praise for the other. Should the bad outweigh the good, a polite excuse will be found, and they’ll start back at one.

However, should all parties acquiesce, the next question is that of dowry; with what will the bride’s family provide the groom’s family in exchange for the added burden of hosting their daughter? In Western culture, we might see this as a paradox of sorts, not only does the bride’s family lose their daughter, but also some large sum of money, which might be surrendered in cash form, as a new car, or even as an army of trained monkey slaves. Here in India, where they are well versed in marriages of this sort, practicality reigns. Since the groom’s family will now have another mouth to feed, it makes sense that they should receive recompense, at least while they adjust to the change and the girl is finding her place in the new home.

Now that we’ve covered the matchmaking/courting process, the ceremony deserves equal billing.

Thanks in large part to the recent movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," marriage ceremonies from the Hellenic end of the Mediterranean have taken center stage in the world wedding consciousness (a contentious position, if there ever was one). And deservedly so. This past summer I found myself knee-deep in a Greek wedding while walking home late one night on the isle of Ios. The scene was something out of a three stooges movie: plates crashing on the floor and on heads; Ouzo flowing down throats and on heads; dogs flying through the air and, of course, on heads. In a phrase, the party put Bedlam to rest and went out for a night-keg or three. It was one part spontaneity, two parts tradition, and all parts madness.

But look a little further east, across the quagmire in the Fertile Crescent, past Persia and Pakistan, to a little country once called Hindustan, now India, and you’ll find a custom nine notches down on the debauchery scale, but as insanity goes, still cranking it to eleven. (Why they don’t just make ten the highest, I don’t know.)

About now you’re probably saying to yourself, “can any party absent of a thick rain of booze, flying tableware and domestic animals really be considered wild, or for that matter, even a party?” Well, find yourself an Indian wedding and you might just reconsider the preconception that respectable parties necessitate high velocity airborne objects and a torrential downpour of alcohol.

A rainbow exploding: that’s an Indian wedding. In terms of the aesthetic, the marriage ground is a grassy park cordoned off from the outside world by way of hanging sheet walls, reaching fifteen feet into the night sky and sparking pink, orange, and white. Just about everything, including small children, is weighed heavy with heaps upon heaps of orange, white, and yellow marigold wreaths, which are common to almost all Hindu spiritual ceremonies. The men come dressed in kurtas, generally more conservatively colored, at least in comparison to the sarees in which the women wrap themselves.

A pair of rabbit-minded Crayola Big Boxes couldn’t match Indian textile manufacturers for the production of spectrum-bending hues, and the result is an incredible variance in saree coloring, from infrared to ultraviolet and everything in between.

Riding the tangent for a moment, conceptually, an infrared saree is going to cause some kind of uproar amongst the prudish Indian moral majority. Being wrapped in a garment of a color invisible to the human eye would be a shock, at the very least, to a culture that won’t even show a kiss on its movie screens. But seeing as how sarees here come in colors more exceptional poison dart frogs, Joseph’s coat, and the San Francisco Gay Day parade to shame, chances are it could be managed without requiring an adjunct overcoat to obscure the body’s natural form.

The party starts in the early evening, and the guests who arrive first are the bride’s. They mingle, stuff themselves with food, and wait. A bit later on, after parading through the streets among a crowd of familial revellers, the groom dismounts his steed (no joke, he really rides a white horse to the wedding), and confronts the bride’s parents at the entrance to the wedding ground, backed by his entire constituent. At this stage, it’s mom’s last chance to reject Sanjay the call-center jockey and force her daughter go for coffee one more time with Anooj the stock trader, but for all intensive purposes, it’s too late to go back, so after a few rites and rituals, in flows the other half of the party.

The starving masses who’ve been walking the streets solve for the shortest distance between themselves and the food, leaving young children and elders as mere obstacles to be trampled underfoot like pylons in traffic, as they make their way to the steaming casseroles. The bride and groom ascend to stage and trade ritual flower wreaths, then proceed to be doted upon by both sets of parents, pose for pictures, and act as if they actually remember the bride’s tenth cousin six times removed (Indian families are huge) long enough to snap a quick photo and shoo him from the stage as the next anonymous relative approaches. This is also the time, now that the two sides have mixed and no one knows more than half the crowd, when the randoms start strolling in... and then out again with a belly full of dal makhani, shahi paneer, gobi aloo, a dozen roti, gulab jamun, more dal, mixed vegetables, ice cream, and some more dal (just for good measure).

As night advances and morning looms, the ceremony begins. Of course, by this time most of the freeloaders, acquaintances, and distant relatives have faded away into the darkness, followed not long after by the close relatives. This leaves behind the betrothed, their parents, the pundit (Hindu spiritual leader who facilitates the ritual), and a few people who wandered in after smelling the food, but missed dinner and so don’t even qualify as freeloaders.

The union itself is intricate and protracted. I’ve been to a pair of weddings myself, staying this late only once, but from what I gathered, there was a lot going on, all of it completely incomprehensible to the untrained eye. My eye, being primarily lazy but also untrained (the former an anatomical condition, the latter a lack of culture), is highly susceptible to the distracting influence of things that are brightly colored and shiny, found plenty by which to be diverted, to the point that I was, for all intensive purposes, incapacitated among the swirling hurricane of sparkling multicolored kryptonite.

What I missed while dazed and confused, was the bride covering her eyes with large green leafs and being carried in circles around the groom seven times while seated on a platter, after which the two placed flowered wreaths over each other’s heads. Then, the pair sat cross-legged, face-to-face, under a flower-draped canopy as the pundit chanted prayers and incantations. After an hour or so of this, the ceremony ends, the street dogs find their way to the leftovers, and everyone goes home happy. Except the bums who showed up too late for the food. They’re still hungry.

After the honeymoon, the happy couple move in with the husband’s family, married life begins, children sprout, and on spins the wheel of time.
2. Stories from the Road
Previously I had promised details from a number of recent travel experiences. Unfortunately, time constraints and my stifling inability to put more than five words on the page per day over the past three months has led to something of a logjam of these sorts of stories, so in the interest of keeping this journal under ten thousand words, the section dedicated to each location will be short and sprinkled with photos.
Late last year, I made a return trip to India’s mountain paradise by the lake, Nainital, alongside my eight concurrent roommates. To give you an idea of how backlogged I am, this trip happened last Diwali, or November 11th. Indians spend this holiday launching fireworks into the air and lighting firecrackers under old people’s chairs. We spent the weekend admiring the nightly re-enactments of the Siege of Leningrad from our hilltop hotel, and appreciating the fact that the heavy ordnances being launched into the night sky, directly above densely populated pockets of the mountain village, were plenty far from us. Beyond that, we busied ourselves with gruelling hikes up into the mountains, watching monkeys & sunsets, playing with young children, and shopping.

Photos from Nainital: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/72157603226008343/

I also made a return to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, this time for the second wedding I attended. I won’t rehash the wedding rituals, I’ve done injustice enough to that subject, and the same goes for the Taj (which I visited again, knowingly walking into another 750 Rupee ambush). One topic I have yet to insult is Fatehpur Sikri, an ancient city/palace about 25 miles from Agra, built in 1571 by Akbar the Great, some 75 years before the Taj Mahal, and used for all of 14 years before being completely deserted by its inhabitants. Theories as to why the populace hit the collective eject button vary widely, from lack of water supply to the whim of a fastidious ruler, to cheaper real estate in Agra, to loud neighbors.

My own theory is that the mass exodus was directly correlated to the creation and public operation of the Elephant Tower. What is the Elephant Tower, you ask? Why, nothing much. It’s just a decorative little tower where criminals (whose guilt was decided arbitrarily by Akbar himself) were tied between two elephants, then torn limb from limb as the elephants were fearfully driven in opposite directions. I don’t care if you’ve never even dared to jaywalk, much less break the law, after seeing an execution that brutal, you’re headed in the opposite direction and you’re running until you hit ocean. Then you’re swimming. Maybe that’s what was racing through the heads of the people of Fatehpur Sikri when they packed up shop and left.

Today, the city is known as the Ghost City, thanks to the spirits which purportedly inhabit the grounds, especially the rear areas, which are now mostly ruins. Our guide refused to take us there, feigning fear, but changed his tune when we made his payment contingent upon the fulfillment of his earlier promise to do so. That’s where we found the Elephant Tower, and “the truth” about the desertion of Fatehpur Sikri.

Photos from Fatehpur Sikri (and Nandita’s wedding): http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/72157603804575511/

Elsewhere- in a different place and time- I couldn’t get over the laundry list of similarities I saw between the state of Goa, which I visited this New Years, and the Greek Isles, which I cursed with my presence last summer. The comparison started as a visual fixation, but during my ten day vacation there alongside the Indian Ocean, the likenesses revealed themselves to be more salient than I had initially expected. Expansive beaches, a coastline freckled with quaint Bohemian villages, and relatively little penetration by chain stores and corporations means a distinctly indigenous flavor endures in both locales. Admittedly, the jungles of coastal India and the semi-arid climates of the Mediterranean coasts are topographically disparate environments, but in terms of atmosphere, I felt a similar vibe.

To give you an idea of how good life is in this place, the primary debate among Goans is not how to deal with the poverty, rash of development, and the erosion of family values like the rest of India, but whose beaches are better: North or South Goa? I was able to gain a modicum of understanding for Goan life thanks to the fact that a friend with whom I studied in Spain has family in Panjim, the state capital. This, compounded by the fact that she happened to be visiting at the same time meant that I had not only a free place to stay and three meals a day (Thanks Lisa!), but also a bit of immersion into Goan culture. A few abbreviated observations: Goa is different, streets are clean, cows roam only country roads, and a foreign face is no reason to stare slack-jawed, but instead a chance to offer a quick smile and a nod.

Why is Goa different? Well, for one, it wasn’t until 1961 (12 years after greater Indian independence from Britain was achieved), after 450 years under Portugal, that the Indian army rolled in and pitched the Portuguese back out into the ocean, wresting one of the last satellite states away from a once proud global empire (the last was Macau, near Hong Kong, returned to China diplomatically in 1999). But this doesn’t explain the differences between Goa and the rest of India. If mere status as a former Portuguese colony implies greater attention to cleanliness or Western values than status as a former British colony (meaning the rest of India) then try explaining a place like Singapore (former British colony, independence in 1965), which is so clean people don’t eat their dinner off plates, but off the very streets they drive on. No, Goa’s extraordinary nature is not a direct result of the injection of Portuguese culture, but it could be a derivative product of that influence.

Thanks to their time under the Portuguese, Goa’s religious composition is unique among Indian states. According to the 2001 Indian National Census, India on the whole is 80% Hindu, 13% Muslim, and 2% Christian, whereas Goa itself is 66% Hindu and 26% Christian, and 7% Muslim. Christianity is far more widespread in this particular corner of India. The astute Western reader will immediately cry foul, labelling my implied connection between Goa’s endemic cleanliness and the relative pervasiveness of Christianity politically incorrect, prejudice, or worse. But before you measure the noose, afford me the opportunity to expound. Any Indian will tell you, it is the interior of one’s home or business whose appearance matters most. The outdoors is the place you throw your trash, and so there’s no need to keep it in proper order. Inasmuch, Goa is generally a clean place, but is pockmarked with remote stations owned by non-Goan Indians, which tend to be as Indian as the rest of India.

Photos from Goa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/72157603801428900/

Awkward tourist-local moments during our February visit to Udaipur, Rajasthan (RAH-jus-tan), but first a quick bit of context. The city sits cradled among a number of small lakes, upon which rest man-made structures that, due to their singular architectural, appear to float on the wake. One such structure, The Lake Palace, a prominent construction on the lake (called the Jag Niwas), was featured in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy thanks to its pure polished white marble composition and illusory hovering above the water level. These days, the Palace is an exclusive hotel, run by the Taj corporation.

While tooling around said lake in a boat, our pilot made an inadvertent pass by the local ghats. Ghats are tall sandstone steps that lead from a city down into its water supply, common in cities with access to the Ganges, but less so in Rajasthan, the state being mostly desert. Upon the lower steps of the ghats, Indians without facility otherwise do their daily washing, both of the laundry and of the body. You can imagine the tumult as we casually drifted by, staring gaudily and snapping photos as locals scrubbed their half-naked bodies, robed only in their skimpies (in India this means tight-fitting garments that still obscure most of the body, but being visible to an outsider while adorned as such is still a breach of acceptable social etiquette and cause for shock) and in the midst of their daily wash.

Coincidentally, it wasn’t just the communal ghats we coasted past, it was the women’s ghats, which meant that instead of merely breaking conduct, we thrashed it properly, then left it in the dust where someone else could pick up the pieces. While the ladies didn’t scream and run, they didn’t exactly smile and wave either. Imagine just as you hop into the shower, some tourist waltzes into the bathroom and starts snapping high-resolution photos while you’re swathed in nothing more than your birthday suit and the day’s dust and sweat. Probably not the way you’d want to address the nation, or even, for that matter, a small group of camera-toting tourists. However, forgiving a few caustic glares, most ignored our violation of conduct and carried on about their business. Had our boat spontaneously split in two, or been torpedoed and/or attacked by dingos, something tells me these women might have found their laundry a more prudent task than our timely rescue.

Worth a mention are also Udaipur’s City Palace*, an ornate conglomeration of smaller elemental palaces overlooking the Jag Niwas (and the ghats), and the Monsoon Palace, perched high above the city.

*Photo taken by someone else, though I have no idea who

Photos from Udaipur: http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/72157603960672892/

Oh yes, and last but not least: the camel fair in Pushkar, north central Rajasthan, where what impressed me immediately were the cadres of women wading through crowded streets robed in lightning-struck neon sarees, even more brilliant than those I’d seen at weddings. The great irony was not the stark contrast between the women’s dress and the dusty, litter-strewn streets, but that while immersed in an environment so singularly stimulating, I managed to get my camera pinched from my pocket a mere ten minutes after stepping down from the train. That’s irony.

Regardless, textiles were hardly the only attraction at the camel fair. Surprisingly, there were also camels. Some 50,000 of them according to overblown estimates from the Rajasthan Tourism Authority, and almost all on the auction block. For a mere 20,000 Rupees (~$500), you too could take the scenic route back to the oasis, the envy of all the Maharajas in the neighborhood, atop your very own four-legged luxury desert transport aristocrat! I myself would have taken the plunge, but my two past camel-top experiences have impressed upon me the idea that piloting camels is just too painful in all the wrong places to be done more than once every few decades.

Highlighting the list of other noteworthy events at the fair was one spectacle from the midway. Tucked unobtrusively in between the Ferris wheel, tilt-a-whirl, and carousel sat an inconspicuous attraction, about forty feet tall and thirty feet in diameter. A peculiar half-barrel shaped construction, topped with a conical thatch roof, and painted with the flaking signs of advancing age. Curious enough to fork over cash, my friends and I each paid 10 Rupees and ascended the rickety scrap metal staircase to the viewing area, a bi-level grandstand crowning the barrel’s upper circumference. The view from above revealed a completely hollow structure, whose walls extended from the dirt floor to our perch above, but were angled at a more moderate grade near their base, maybe 45 degrees compared to 80 degrees up high. Below, a man waited astride his motorcycle.

Once the stands filled, our hero dramatically kick-started his bike, and began to ride slowly in circles along the shallow lower wall. What I saw next astonished, befuddled, and flabbergasted me. After building up a strong head of steam, he made a slight adjustment in direction and maneuvered himself right up onto the steep wall, where he proceeded to carry on as if driving on the wall was no big deal at all, and the type of thing he might do for a Sunday drive (and in fact, it was a Sunday). And if one motorcycle defying both gravity and death wasn’t enough, just after the initial shock passed, a second joined the first on the wall. The two bobbed and weaved, strutting like Spanish flamenco dancers, bravado on full blast, playing to the crowd, ensuring that if two guys riding motorcycles perpendicularly along steep walls wasn’t enough to capture your attention, then maybe two guys riding motorcycles perpendicularly along steep walls while shouting, throwing their hands in the air, and zigzagging left and right by steering with their knees would be. Naturally, the crowd loved it. I guess the harder you beg for a spectacular death, the more people are willing to watch and wait. It’s an ancient twist on Social Darwinism coupled with a heavy shot of voyeurism.

At this stage, while watching two lunatics pilot their way around the circle like a pair of hamsters on the same wheel, I was sure we had reached the far edges of what was permissible by the laws of state, physics, and sanity. But as usual in India, I was proven wrong. A pair of small cars that had been waiting below, the size you might see bench pressed on those World’s Strongest Man competitions, which I had thought must surely contain stretchers and medical supplies for the two maniacs on the wall, hit the low ramp running, then merged into traffic on the wall. One more car and we would have been witness to a real live vertical traffic jam, which probably wouldn’t have been too exciting for anyone in the audience, as we see worse here in Delhi every day.

Other than that, the Pushkar Camel Fair was pretty uneventful.

3. Protracted Ending and Coming Attractions
I also recently played in another television commercial, this time for an anonymous investment company whose name includes some combination of the words Max, New, York, and Life (though it shall remain nameless), in which I had to wear a suit, sit in front of a computer, stare into the camera authoritatively, and say “India is the place to invest right now, capital markets are booming. Change your underwear daily!” I may have added the second line to see if they were paying attention, I guess we’ll have to wait to see if it made the final cut, or if the killjoys in charge decided against the adlib addition of my invaluable piece of life advice. I am working on acquiring a copy of this commercial and also my previous one.

I’m going to call it a day for now. My apologies for the four month wait, although I’m sure some of you are just now finishing my previous offering. Then again, if you’re just now finishing my previous installment, chances are you won’t be reaching the end of this one for another few months. Either way, congrats, you’ve once again lost a few hours of life that you can never get back.

Last time in this same space I promised stories of, among other things, bribery. Never fear, those tales are coming in the next edition (I’m aiming for a June release, but whether that’s June 2008 or 2009 remains to be seen) alongside the highlights from Holi and the elephant festival in Jaipur, the Blue City in Jodhpur, the Himalayan village of Manali, and Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest temple.

As always, looking forward to your responses.

Wandering Inanity Vol. 13: In Search of the ‘Real’ India

2007-12-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

In accordance with ancient ritual, we’ll begin with the latest and greatest in photographic fare from here in India. A few unenlightened readers may take issue with the use of both ‘ancient’ and the concordant ‘ritual’ in reference to a practice I’ve been employing for a period encompassing only my previous two journals, and I will remind said readers that the application of terms in the space-at-hand is done at the discretion of He-Who-Composes (sounds heavy doesn’t it? Yeah I’m a heavy guy, figuratively speaking). And, if I so choose, I can designate an act with a lifetime (in days) less than even my basement IQ as ‘ancient’, and therein a ‘ritual’. By extension, I can call the street dogs I play with ‘clean’, or myself ‘not a moron’, despite what everyone now knows.

Anyway, the photos you’ll be seeing comprise the captured digital memories of a four day trek through the northward holy cities of Rishikesh and Haridwar, and the eastward mountain village of Nainital. I made this trip during the month and a half I had to myself between jobs here in New Delhi, a time period I’ve designated ‘Freedom Festival 2007’ for obvious reasons, or ‘Lazypalooza’ as a result of the torrid pace at which I accomplished stuff during that time. Ignore the purposeful ambiguity of the word ‘stuff’ and just trust that ‘things’ happened.

Rishikesh and Haridwar are both considered holy cities as a consequence of their positions alongside the sacred river Ganges, a fast moving body that shares color and opacity with chocolate milk, but - and I found this out the hard way - tastes nothing like it. I guess the fact that the locals were bathing in it instead of bottling it ought to have tipped me off.

Then again, the fact that they were immersed in the muddied mixture to begin with brings up a whole separate set of questions, ones that would probably find a better home in my previous journal, the one that dealt with so-called "serious social issues". I have, for the moment, given up that line of examination in favor of more humor-evoking [fluffy, brainless - ed.] avenues of thought.

Enough with the tangential philandering; without further ado:

India IV - Unemployed and Loving It

The photos contained in India IV are absolutely without peer in comparison to previous sets from my time here in India. Quite frankly, this trip is what convinced me to stick around these parts a bit longer, and I think the photos are highly illustrative of why I made that decision. Inside are monkeys up close and personal, a hidden jungle waterfall, a riverside Hindu spiritual ceremony, and a level of majesty and mystique so far high beyond Everest's peak, your eyes will pop out just to give the sockets a look too.

On with the show.

The month and a half period between jobs was a time of great personal discovery for me; I watched as a diligence and duty previously absent from my character took control of me. I found that I could, for days on end, move with ease through a taxing daily regimen, all with the intent of propelling myself majestically forward along the continuum of human advancement, lugging in my tow the balance of humanity.

Each day, I would not only drag myself from the depths of slumber to stand and face the world, I would then further surpass previous apexes of human accomplishment by eating breakfast, showering, and clothing myself (though admittedly I’d rarely have the further chutzpah to go so far as to scrape the hair from my face). Indeed, the harnessing of fire, Egypt’s Great Pyramids, and Moon Shoes have been relegated to second-class testaments to humanity’s indefatigable drive for advancement, thanks to my monumental feats of determination.

It got to the point where even algae, were it capable of motherly admonishment, would have called me lazy. I was a rock; spending my days without so much as a shake or jiggle; lying motionless on the ground; growing a beard a mile long (Rocks with beards? May I present to you The Bearded Stalactites of Ulaanbaatar); and generally finding myself under the influence of nothing but the slow churn of the earth’s crust (and that, only dawdlingly). But an inert stone only goes so far in this life. As one, you pass your few brief moments in the perpetual parade of time like some erstwhile beauty queen, backside rooted to the folded hatch of a red 1991 Dodge Shadow convertible, smiling and waving to the crowd, but unable to eliminate the nagging feeling in your gut that the world has already passed you by.

It was under these circumstances that, at the behest of and alongside my two friends Marcus and Elisabeth, I decided to shake the calcium deposits from my fusing bones, and depart for the northeast.

Of course it wasn’t only fear of fusion between my feet and our flat’s marble floor that motivated me to move my mass. It was a genuine belief, preceded by a celestial leap of faith- as I had no evidence that this could possibly be the case- that India had much more to offer than what I had seen up to that point in New Delhi. Detailed most thoroughly by my first India journal, my experience of this city (and by extension my impression of India) had been tainted by poor support from my sponsoring organization coupled with a bad office situation, amplified by the fact that I saw in my immediate future no escape from the difficulties of life here. In the end, my blind faith was vindicated. And this is the story of how.

We left late one night on a “9 PM” bus for Rishikesh. The ride, we were told, was to be nine hours, so we would arrive at the convenient hour of 6 AM. Unfortunately, it didn’t dawn upon me until too late that the travel times were not quoted in Newtonian time, but in fact Indian time. That being the case, I should have expected a travel time of something like two billion... oh wait, calculator’s upside down... something like fifteen hours. In light of that, the fact that we arrived at noon the following day (Newtonian noon, not Indian noon - which comes some time early next century) meant that we actually arrived a few hundred years early! Amazing how that works isn’t it?

Upon arrival we found our way into a vikram (a sort of oversized autorickshaw) which carried us, zig-zagging all the way, up one of the steep tree-covered slopes that bracket the Ganges in Rishikesh. The town itself is below, alongside the river, but the city’s attractions are all up in the hills that overlook the river. Among those attractions are the city’s ashrams (meditation communities), in which one can live for months on end without any sort of payment, under an agreement to live by the rules of the community.

A Polish friend of mine went to an ashram (though not in Rishikesh) to live for two weeks wherein members were fed, given places to sleep, and provided ample opportunity to meditate in exchange for a vow of silence that lasts from the instant you enter until the instant you leave. Not my kind of place. Apparently those who spend their days within an ashram’s walls attain a higher level of understanding in and of themselves and in the world around them. I’m pretty sure the only understanding I would gain from being in a place like that is an even healthier appreciation for the soothing sensation of wind strumming my vocal cords on its way to my mouth to be molded into words (as if I don’t already consider this the finest feeling of them all). There are many of these residences in the hills above Rishikesh, none of which I visited (for obvious reasons).

Beyond its inundation of ashrams, Rishikesh also promotes itself as the “World’s Capital of Yoga”, an asinine distinction if there ever was one. After all, who the hell wants to be World’s Capital of Twister for Geezers®, anyway? Not me. I’m proud to say that my home town, Traverse City, Michigan, is the Cherry Capital of the World. The cherry, a first-fiddle fruit if there ever was one, beats yoga hands down ten times out of ten in a taste competition. Heck, even rotten salmon beats yoga ten times out of ten in a taste competition, as do rotting tree bark and yellow snow. After all, any taste is better than the taste of pain careering wildly through all your soft squishy parts. Then again, if you’re into that kind of thing (masochism and all that), I hear the human pretzel is delicious.

Beyond venues in which one can feel the joy of forced silence or self-induced physical pain, Rishikesh is also home to a rather famous temple, which was either designed by a big fan of Space Invaders, or stolen from the set of Battlestar Galactica. Pious worshipers travel from miles around to wander in concentric circles around its thirteen floors of open-air hallway, searching for its entrance. It has yet to be found.

The hills surrounding Rishikesh are your run-of-the-mill Indian jungle, replete with a heavy tropical tree density, low canopy, rushing streams, and dozens of little critters that love to scamper across the hiking trail inducing shrieks of surprise and dark wet patches down all the white tourists’ inseams.

It was with intention of immersing ourselves in this habitat that, between sudden and repeated torrential downpours, we made our way with a tour group to this jungle, following our guide to what he assured us was a waterfall and not our untimely death at the hands of bone-gnawing jungle dwellers. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced, but that didn’t stop me from plunging into the overgrowth alongside my fellow hikers.

Along the way we survived a gauntlet of jungle tribulations. One young woman, who had the brilliant foresight to wear flip-flops on a trek through the jungle, lost one in a rushing stream, then dove into the waters in a vain attempt to save the ten-cent piece of molded foam. Just when the thought crossed our minds that the she might have gone the way of her sandal, a foreign mass erupted from the flowing depths, fist raised, clutching triumphantly what she knew to be her lost piece of footwear but was actually a fish. The evolving look of astonishment/disappointment/dejection that drenched her face, each shade sequentially, as she realized that her captive was not actually her sandal is one that I’ll never forget as long as I live. And I plan on living a long, long time.

Numerous river crossings later (we lost no more oxen) our guide pulled back a low palm fawn to reveal a small jungle clearing framed by lime-tinted foliage, downed tree trunks, and criss-crossing vines. At its rear stood a twenty foot solid-rock wall over which poured the waterfall, and at its base, a small pool of water where the spewage violently landed. It was everything I had ever imagined a jungle oasis should be, with the exception of the customary rampaging pack of monkeys (they’ve all moved to the city). The hour we spent frolicking in the downpour, which poured so brutally that I had trouble standing under its point of contact at times, was one of the few extraordinary moments during my time here in India of which I can say my expectations of this place were entirely fulfilled. It wasn’t touristy, it wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t a facade; it was real, it was everything it should have been, and it was more. The group relaxed, played guitar, meditated, reflected, and simply enjoyed the experience for what it was: a quick dip of the toe into a different India, into the real India.

Also among noteworthy experiences in Rishikesh: a short face-to-face encounter with a monkey. As I mentioned, the city’s tourist centers rest on the opposing slopes that sandwich the river, and to connect the two sides the city features a pair of footbridges that stretch from one bank to the other. White-haired monkeys congregate at one end of the northern bridge, and passing tourists throw popcorn to them, which can be bought from vendors at either end.

In my mind, feeding monkeys is the sort of “Look, I’m interacting with my environment” moment for which parents often applaud their toddlers, just like when they start playing with the family dog or chase a butterfly. This moment usually comes in chorus with learning to plug the square peg into the square hole or the ability to wobble on two feet like a real human being. Fittingly, there I found myself, feeding a monkey.

I placed a single kernel of popped corn on my open palm, then offered it to the hairy little Martin Van Buren look-alike, at which point he cautiously reached out his tiny hand, snapped it up, and stuffed it past his eagerly waiting jaws. I repeated the feat four or five times, growing more and more amazed with each passing interaction, but soon decided I’d seen the in and out of the trick and that the traffic jam I’d caused on the bridge was congested enough. As I began to walk away, the monkey, until this point the gracious recipient of my charity, became irate and seized my forearm in his curiously strong grip.

Now would probably be a good time to relate the potential severity of a monkey attack here in India. Angry packs of monkeys have been running amok in Delhi as of late. Our simian cousins populate the city, just like the cows and dogs, but monkey traffic generally keeps to trees and green areas and avoids populated avenues like roads (since their feet don’t quite reach the pedals). Lately though, as Delhi has expanded into the monkeys’ green sanctuaries, the little primates have less and less space in which to live, which forces them into uncomfortably close quarters with their human oppressors.

Discontented and cramped, the monkeys are lashing out, not only wreaking havoc in the subway, but by actually killing New Delhi’s deputy high commissioner (deputy mayor), and rampaging through neighborhoods, biting children, scratching people, and grabbing babies. This is no joke, folks, and the severity of the problem has caught the attention New Delhi’s top civic minds. These masters of municipal problem resolution have, in a true stroke of genius, hired even bigger monkeys to kill the smaller monkeys. No way that could go wrong... no way at all. I can see it now, full blown monkey wars in the streets of Delhi. Then again, I guess it wouldn’t be all that different from the way things seem to be going now.

The real difficulty is that in the Hindu religion, monkeys are considered sacred reincarnations of the god Hanuman, and inasmuch, a human doing harm to a monkey is tantamount to slapping Hanuman in his monkey face. That’s why monkey catchers instead of monkey murders have been employed by the city to remedy the problem. Apparently though, there simply aren’t enough catchers to deal with the legion of monkeys, and so New Delhi is saddled with the rising issue of dealing appropriately with its increasingly irate monkey population. My suggestion- and this would probably be seriously considered by the local government- is to unleash an unstoppable highly-contagious microbe disease upon the monkey population of the city. No way that could go wrong either... right?

You can imagine the progression of thoughts that crossed my consciousness as my simian friend clasped my wrist, as I crossed that bridge in Rishikesh. At first it was “oh that’s cute,” which quickly progressed to “wait a minute, I saw Outbreak,” which was followed by “good bye cruel world,” "But I never got to ride an elephant,” and finally “I wonder what’s for lunch.”

But alas, it was not the end for me. Far from it, I pulled my wrist free and stole away across the bridge, managing to escape with mere light scrapes. I had bested the monkey, but to this day, I keep a close watch on my flank, just in case he has relatives here in Delhi whom he’s contracted to finish the job.

From Rishikesh we descended the mountains to Haridwar, intent on seeing the nightly Aarti ceremony. The city itself is what I would call a typical Indian city, which means that it’s still miles away from ‘ordinary’, to coin a phrase. Navigating the flow of traffic means wading through an unflagging current of bodies: some human, some animal, some machine, all with a an important appointment that are presumably more important than your continued ability to live without footprints, hoofprints, or tire tracks planted straight up your backside.

The machines (cars, autorickshaws, trucks) will plow through anything in their path, including people, as will the animals. The humans will cut you some slack, only because they’re not big enough to run straight through you, but their ‘compassion’ only stretches so far. Those who aren’t aggressive enough to go bowling through the masses like a runaway semi are sure to get bounced around, pick-pocketed, and finally lost like a five year old in K-Mart.

We bypassed most of the congestion by hopping into a cycle rickshaw to make our way down to the riverside for the Aarti, a slick logistical move for which we thought we were pretty smart. Unfortunately we had to pass through the city’s old market, which was cursed with a thick blanket of muck thanks to the recent heavy rains mentioned previously. Wheels are generally ineffectual in ten inches of wet, viscous mess, and this was no exception. Periodically, our cycle rickshaw got stuck in the quagmire and guess who had to hop out and push? Yep: the driver. And me. And let me tell you, there are few quicker routes to an ego check than pushing a rickshaw through ten inches of something that could be mud, but could just as easily have come from the business end of an elephant. Crowds of locals stared on as I mud-bogged alongside the driver, amazed to see a foreigner incurring even the slightest form of physical strain, moreover without regard for the state of his formerly unsoiled shoes and pride.

This quick tale is telling in many ways. We were in an older district, but clearly a part of Haridwar’s heart. The fact that a bit of rain turned it from bustling market into a swamp speaks to the ‘in-development status’ this country’s infrastructure. There has been a great deal of progress, especially over the past ten years, with regard to modernization and optimization, but there is still a long way to go. Even New Delhi, the country’s capital, is still about ten years from having a comprehensive and fully-functional metro subway system. Furthermore, power cuts are common, some lasting a few minutes, others lasting a few hours, and not just in poor areas. In my former office on Barakhamba Road, New Delhi’s skyscraper row and the heart of its business community, we endured power cuts a few times a week. This meant no air conditioning during the sweltering summer months, as well as no lights, computers, refrigerator for cold water, etc... Even in the newly constructed business districts in the modern suburbs Gurgaon and Noida, power cuts are common occurrences.

For those accustomed, a power outage is banal and familiar. It evokes not so much as a twitch of the eye. But for those less habituated, the experience can be far more traumatic. One moment you’ll be perched at your desk, dutifully sleeping the office hours away; the next you’ll be plunged into a dark and primitive world without even the comforting hum of your computer to keep your lonely soul company. Some cry under desks, some cry on top. Some congregate in small groups, testing their skill with the flint and steel, while still others hunt for small office critters, thrusting keyboards and chair legs into shadowy corners. Some sprint through the halls, tattered clothing hanging from their bodies by a thread, faces smudged black with permanent market, swinging power cords and shouting for others to take up the cause: “Follow me! Follow me to freedom!”

And just as suddenly as it went, the power returns, and each of us act as if none of it ever happened. It all makes for some awkward restroom conversations as I scrub the black marker from my face.

Down by the holy Ganges, thousands of Haridwar’s pious gathered for the nightly Aarti ceremony. After finding our way to the riverside mandir (shrine) for the ceremony, we did our best to melt into the crowd as the sun retired from its daily duties high in the sky. No such luck was to be had, and within five minutes we were swarmed by local children, selling blanket-sized sheets of uncut snack wrappers as ground covers, so we could sit comfortably on the stiff ground alongside the thousands of others.

We made our way through the crowd, wading through a heavy flow of locals, looking for a decent viewpoint out onto the opposing riverbank where locus of the pooja would be. A crowd official spotted us as we searched fruitlessly for an unobstructed view, and invited us up to a cordoned-off set of stairs so we would be able to see. Graciously, we accepted.

Was it right to accept this “free tourist upgrade”? Maybe not, but then again if it means the difference between actually being able to see (and possibly participate in) a cultural event instead of simply staring at the backs of people’s heads wondering what all the hubbub is about, then it’s a moral sacrifice I’m willing to make. After all, the first-class treatment did excoriate us of the thirty beggar children who had been clinging to us like fire to a man dunked in gasoline, as the crowd official ensured that we entered the roped-off section sans-entourage.

So there we sat on our staircase, a group of three, eyes focused twenty yards across the river, waiting for something, anything, to happen. As the last amber rays of the sun dipped below the horizon, the crowd’s haunting chant began to rise. The chant turned to a song as prayer leaders lit pint-sized effigies. Those so inclined set their prayers afloat in small leaf boats crewed by a diya candle and pulled orange flower petals, sweeping down the river like an armada of little green galleons glowing by the golden light of their own waxed-wicks and the growing riverside effigies.

We sat in awe, a state of total sensual immersion, as the crowd’s staccato song swelled to a fervor and our thousand companions raised their hands in one simultaneous motion. Trying our hardest to draw some bit of understanding from the proceedings, we focused on the prayer leaders now waving the effigies (raging pyres at this point), through the air. Those close to the flames, mostly Sadhus, seemed particularly taken by a spiritual fever, bobbing and weaving their painted heads and undulating in their faded orange cloaks while the tune chased the floating diyas down the river.

Even if I couldn’t understand the Aarti’s cultural significance, I did understand one thing. For those few fleeting moments, I was in India. Not the ‘India’ in which I live and work every day, that India is a world of contradiction; a place wherein ultra-modern shopping malls, ostensibly plucked from some futuristic post-apocalyptic gun-metal world (see: Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd) lord incongruously over shanty communities where corrugated tin-metal and blue plastic tarps are the crude building blocks of necessity, and emaciated goats and dogs kick dust into the air as they scamper from one side of the rutted road to the other.

This farcically fitting manifestation of the conflict between tradition and progress is as confounding as it is thought provoking, if for no other reason than it exemplifies the India of today; the hottest gadgets and designer clothes, the food courts and shopping malls; all the trappings of self-indulgent ‘modern society’ mashed right up against impoverished dust-streaked shack villages (which, coincidentally, house most of those who work to build these towering modern monstrosities). A more fitting microcosm of ‘have’ and ‘have not’ was never conceived.

As I sat beside the river that night in Haridwar, swaying with the music, watching the Ganges flow past, mesmerized by the furtive flicker and dance of the candles’ river reflection it occurred to me, just like it had during my few moments under the waterfall in Rishikesh, that everything fit. It wasn’t Gurgaon, the proverbial monkey in a tuxedo, it wasn’t Delhi, whose cup runneth over with upscale development projects (to complete the metaphor; a veritable beanie toting gorilla). No, this was pure India; spiritual, color-splashed, congested, and all unabashedly so. There were no liquor billboards to blot out the sky, no glass and steel atrocities to spoil the aesthetic, and scant reminder that the Western world even existed. It was India in its purest form, and the pleasure of our introduction was all mine.

The third leg of our tour took us to Nainital, a peaceful lakeside village about 10 hours to the northeast of Delhi. The community both ends of a small mountain lake (probably a mile square), encircled by forested slopes, rising gently toward a lightly clouded blue sky. The lake reflects the trees’ deep green hue, as colorful animalian paddle boats and elongated row boats pepper its surface. The first thing one notices upon arriving to Nainital, is that it’s almost like leaving India. This is exemplified most evidently by the distinct lack of trash covering its streets, the proper maintenance granted to buildings, and most importantly by the absence of our favorite human snakes: autorickshaw drivers.

You can get a cycle rickshaw from one end of Naini Lake to the other for five Rupees (at this juncture, one US Dollar is roughly 39 Rupees), and the price is set, so there is little opportunity to deploy the typical arsenal of shenanigans. Also, the idea of municipal maintenance is conspicuously present among the local government’s tome of values in Nainital. Attention is paid to roads, public structures are properly attended to, and there are no piles of rubble obstructing traffic, randomly placed road blocks, or cows daring drivers to go for the t-bone (both the crash and the steak). All of this is strange for me because finding new and creative ways to block traffic and infuriate the citizenry seems to be the public service that the powers-that-be in Delhi are best at providing. Then again, maybe the stark contrast between Nainital and Delhi shouldn’t surprise me; one has to question the fitness of mind of any supposedly-rational assembly of elected officials that unleashes hordes of ferocious large monkeys upon its own constituent in order to wage a war of extermination upon other smaller monkeys.

Back to Nainital. The citizens here have a cumulative literacy rate of 80%: leaps and bounds beyond the Indian national average of 61%. This is a result of the area’s history as a cool air retreat for British colonial officers during the 1800s, which paved the way for the establishment of a number of English boarding schools in the hills above the lake, many of which are still in continuous use today. The general adherence to Western norms of cleanliness and order is, in my mind, a direct result of the continued presence of these institutions.

We spent most of our first day there trying to find a decent hotel, not for a lack of quality options, but because our budgets were so absurdly tight that any room with both a bed and a roof was tragically beyond our means. Eventually we found a hotel that met our wallet standards and provided the requisite amenities, dropped our bags, and headed into town.

Our first destination was the lake. Nainital’s yacht club provides sail boat rentals for the low, low price of only 100 Rupees (~$2.50), a deal of which Elisabeth, eager to display her Dutch sailing prowess, promptly availed herself. Marcus and I found ourselves a rowboat (and a rower), also for 100 Rupees, and proceeded to effect the dawn of a new age of terror on the high seas. As Elisabeth swept in adroit little circles around the lake, we convinced our rower - a hardworking fellow to be sure - to take a moment of rest while the two of us took charge of propulsion responsibilities. This was a mistake on his part. What happened next will be remembered for generations to come in Nainital. A simple mention of ‘The Incident’ will be sure to induce seizures, fits of vomiting, instantaneous permanent dementia, and a nagging feeling of discomfort in the sciatic nerve.

The battle was epic. The beast: vicious, atrocious, ferocious, and many other kinds of –cious, but by the time it was all over, they were scraping his exploded remains from the four disparate corners of the lake with the duckbill end of my splintered oars. Humans- 1; Rancorous Beast from the Depths- 0. That day, structures were razed, children went missing, and animals of every shape and size were violated in the all the worst ways. But in the end, justice went unserved, the virtuous beast was vanquished, and I went on flipping boats, dunking young children, and generally making a mess of polite lake society.

There wasn’t time for much else in Nainital, as the thick fog that had blanketed the surrounding hills hit the runway, headed for the skies, then did a swift U-turn and dumped laser-guided buckets of rain on the unsuspecting citizenry, who promptly headed for shelter and then pointed and laughed as we foreigners floundered in the downpour like fish out of water, frantically searching for a roof under which to cower. Eventually we found our way into a cycle rickshaw, whose driver we managed to convince to ferry us from one of the lake to the other along the half submerged lakeside avenue, him paddling and us on the rudder all the way back to the hotel.

The next day on the bus ride back to Delhi, as I mentally rehashed all the things I’d seen and done during the previous four days’ whirlwind tour, it occurred to me that this travel experience, while trying at times (as they all are), provided me with evidence that India is not defined by its capital city: it’s head, if you will. The body is magnificent both naturally and culturally; it is indeed a joy to explore, and it hit me that the opportunity to have more incredible experiences was staring me in the face. My time spent in the steaming squalor of New Delhi had blinded me to that fact, but having seen a bit of what the “real” India was like, I was resolved to give it another chance. In retrospect, I realize now that this little trip was the single crucial factor in my decision to stay here beyond the abrupt and acrimonious termination of my internship.

The next month and a half of my life was marked by daily five to six hour marathons spent in an internet hole (cafe would be too generous a noun) near my flat, engaged in an internet job search between consequential periods of time wasting. I eventually found a position as a content writer at a firm that sells investment land in the London area to Indians and other internationals, which inexplicably transferred me into the sales department after about a month with the company (although I was un unbridled failure as a content writer, my insipid personality and horror-movie-zombie looks availed me of an opportunity to move elsewhere in the company), and soon after I was managing a team of sales people.

Don’t ask me how or why any of this happened, at the moment I’m feeling a bit of altitude sickness, although it’s less that typical queasy sensation as it is a distinct insecurity with the way job roles are assigned and defined in the so-called professional sector. For the time being let’s ignore the elephant in the room: my outstanding whiteness, and say that my rapid upward progression through the ranks of this company has had more to do with my deep understanding of business principals, my foresight into the hearts and minds of men, and my fantastic ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound than it does with any melanin-related factors.

Anyway most of what I find myself intimately involved with during the day is data-management focused, which I suppose sounds about as exciting as six years of solitary confinement, but it’s not nearly that bad; maybe two or three years, but certainly not six. No, in reality I have a lot of responsibility, and as a young professional there is not much more that you could ask for.

Personally I’m staying active in the Delhi expatriate community, playing soccer at the US embassy on Thursdays with a group of internationals, and rugby on Saturdays near Nehru Stadium (the national cricket ground) with a bunch of people from the traditional lineup of white, English-speaking countries that tend to send a large constituent of their citizenry abroad (That’s England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand).

Weeknights other than Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday there are enough things to do around this town to keep me busy with wasting time, time that I should be spending doing something productive (the upswing in my social activity in this town is inversely related to the time I spend on this journal, hence the three month gestation period that this journal has experienced). While the trip through the north gave me a reason to give this place another chance, this new social pre-occupation, along with a modestly increased salary have contributed greatly to my sustained interest in remaining here through my visa’s listed validity (June of ’08).

A word on the expat night life here in Delhi: Between the embassy workers, company transplants, travelers, and non-resident Indians (NRIs) who come through this town, every single country in the world is likely be represented. You do end up with some strange mixes of people, in my own flat, where we have three South Koreans, a Dutch, a German, a Turk, an Indonesian, a Malaysian, a Dane, and an American (hey, that’s me), but also just about anywhere you go. One of my best friends is Iraqi, born and raised in Baghdad, but studying here in Delhi. There seem to be a great number of Scandinavians here, especially Swedes, and quite a few Dutch people, which makes for a fun contest of who can be more awkward and white. Not to malign these fine people, I’m nothing in this country if not both awkward and white, but it seems to me that both the Dutch and Swedish send a proportionally large contingent to the Indian sub-continent, at least the Delhi region, and I do wonder why.

A derivative line of thinking leads me to question why it is that there are so many expats involved in the night life here, and I think it has to do with the fact that many of us are planted here, often alone in a flat, and if one doesn’t get out and meet some people, one ends up going crazy trying to understand all the little things that make India, India. You have to have someone to talk about the crazy thing you see in the street, be it a pair of dogs fighting a cow, or a pair of dogs fighting a pack of elephants, most Indians (those, for example, with whom one would be in the office) just don’t understand how completely shocking that type of thing is anywhere in the world except India. Tell an Indian about the fights and he’ll ask “Who won?”

So in effect, getting out and meeting fellow expats, be they North American, South American, African, European, non-Indian Asian, Australian, or Antartican, is in a very unique way cathartic, and therefore necessary to sustain a six month, one year, or (gasp!) longer stationing here in India. That being said, once you get in with this group, you’ll have something to do, and someone to meet just about any time you want here in New Delhi.

Still, life is not all bonbons and bourbon. There are still days where all I want to do is pack my backpack and head home, but as before they are becoming less and less common as the days pass. Not that I want to go home less, but days in which all I want to do is escape the stench, the con-men, the trash, the poverty and the rest of the challenges of India are more rare. Still, I know that there are too many experiences I have yet to know to leave so soon. Plus it’s as cold as a polar bear’s nose back home, and I’ve never been one to seek frostbite.

Then again, it’s quite cold here too (in the 40’s at night, 50’s during the day) and without the aid of central heating, being limited to the open wind-tunnel carriage of autorickshaws for transportation purposes, and finally the fact that my warm clothing ration is limited to one sweatshirt, one long sleeve t-shirt, one pair of cargo pants, and one pair of jeans with a 10 inch rip down the middle, I’m not exactly dutifully prepared for the cold. My hat is warm though, so that’ll have to do for now.

I’ll be on holiday in Goa, India’s beach capital from the 24^th of December until the 5^th of January, so don’t expect too much from me in terms of responses between those dates, as I don’t know much about the availability of internet access there. Thanks for making it to the end, and we’ll close with a big welcome for the new coach of The University of Michigan football team: Rich Rodriguez, to go alongside a fond farewell to one of the people I respect most in this world: incumbent coach Lloyd Carr.

In coming installments: Return to Nainital, Pushkar Camel Fair Prize Winners, Corruption and Bribes in Action, Agra and The Ghost City, and details from Goa.

Looking forward to your responses,

Adam

Wandering Inanity Vol. 12: At the Taj with an Entourage

2007-09-17T10:48:00.000-04:00

In my previous journal, I made allusion to the 'India I' photo set, which at that juncture had yet to be published. Now, bowing to a deluge of public pressure (Mom asked), I have released it to the ravenous masses. The set is linked, both temporally and emotionally, to my first month here. As a caution, it reflects my concurrent disenchantment with New Delhi, a dissatisfaction that has dissipated with time, but has yet to disappear completely. Photos include depictions of my contemporaneous daily life, the challenges of fitting all 1.2 billion Indians onto a single bus (an uncomfortably close situation for all, save those who ride the bus under the auspicious protection of a suit of armor), stunningly open displays of poverty, and most notably, our favorite living road blocks: the street cows.

India I - The Pearly Gates (Astute readers may detect slight elements of irony in this title.)

My other new photo set has been published a result of the abundance of free time granted to me by my momentary lack of employment. After an arduous process that involved a great deal of clicking, dragging, staring sternly at computer screens, and a difficult series of auditions and cuts (cue montage), I present to you the following photo set:

India II - Agra and Jaipur

Agra and Jaipur were two weekend trips that I managed to squeeze in while working at my previous company. Agra’s great attraction is the Taj Mahal, and so most of the photos from that part of the set are from our visit to the Taj as opposed to the city of Agra itself which, although cleaner than Delhi (not a noteworthy feat) is still your basic Indian tourist city. Jaipur is the home of the ancient Amber Fort, by no means as aesthetically pleasing as the Taj, but equally if not more steeped in history. While sightseeing in Jaipur we ended up, by some serendipitous and circuitous means, in a small temple in the Pink City (Jaipur's old city) and the photos from that episode are as awkward and energetic as they are colorful (and if they're nothing else, they are colorful). Also, if you're into elephants (and according to Census Bureau statistics, 83% of you are) then this is the set to see.

Now, onto the words that exist for words' sake (as opposed to those that exist for photos' sake).

The Taj Mahal was built as a memorial to Mumatz Mahal, the wife of Emperor Shah Jahan, who died giving birth to the couple's 14th child (only one more and the couple was ready to go on the road with their five-level flying child-pyramid). Construction of the mausoleum began just after her death in 1631, and lasted until 1653. In the past, the Taj Mahal was revered as an everlasting symbol of melancholy human passion. Today, it's India's best extortion scheme.

Indians who come to visit the Taj pay ten Rupees for entry (about twenty five cents). Foreigners who visit pay 750 (about nineteen dollars). When I questioned The Powers That Be as to why being born outside the hallowed borders of this country granted me the celebrated honor of being allowed to pay a full seventy-five times the price for a ticket, they responded matter-of-factly:

"Well, you get to skip the entry line, and you get a free half liter bottle of water".

What, no free commemorative twist tie?

To put it in perspective, a one liter bottle of water in the street costs all of ten Rupees (twelve if the vendor is having a good day of sales), thus a half liter is worth five Rupees. The actual ticket price is ten Rupees, and a complex series of mathematical computations (750 minus 5+10) reveals that a foreigner who comes to the Taj is paying 735 Rupees for what amounts to a "skip the line" pass. At home a $20 entry fee will keep me out of most places; in India it's a veritable fortune, especially if you're earning in Rupees as we all are.

The queue to enter appeared to be about fifty people long, give or take a few dozen, and moving as quickly as it did, I would assume that it would have taken us twenty minutes to wait it out. Once again, making use of Einstein's principals of mathematics (750 divided by 20) we find that we pay thirty seven Rupees for each minute of waiting we get to skip, a stack of cash I'd rather save to blow later on comic books and jawbreakers than waste on skipping the line. Of course this indignant assessment of the situation really only makes sense in a self-serving bubble-world, as it ignores a number of economic and social realities.

The reason for the inflated foreigner charge is that most of those of non-Indian nationality who come to visit are earning in their own country's currency, which is, with the exception of the Chilean Peso (currently trading at 520 per US dollar), worth more Rupees per unit than many Indians make in a day. Furthermore, people with the time and money to travel to other countries for tourism purposes are by comparison, generally quite well off. I understand the practice, and I recognize the logic behind the stratification, but it would seem that for a group of people (us) who are currently winning their bread (or roti as the case may be) in India, in Rupees, there could be some sort of concession.

As I understand it, those who register with the Foreigner's Regional Registration Office (FRRO) are actually granted Indian ticket prices. Unfortunately, it took five hours of waiting in line at the FRRO to find out that despite my visa's listed assertion that all those staying in India longer than 180 days should register within the first two weeks of arrival, a foreigner can not register with the Indian government until spending a full five months here. This is the sort of infuriating quagmire that is euphemised as ‘Indian Bureaucracy’, a term that obscures a stunningly wide dissemination of the incompetence gene behind an institutional veil. In short, it's a linguistic maneuver that blames the system for individuals' effectual inability.

The fact is that I've got to get registered (not only to get the big discounts, but also to receive a number of other 'local' benefits), but how to surmount the Great Wall of Ineptitude that stands firm my way is one of the world’s great conundrums (scientists will be addressing this issue just as soon as they’ve ascertained the size of the universe). It may be only by the grace of Gandhi, this country's great harbinger of social change and a prominent face on all denominations of their currency, that I am able to cut the red tape and get registered.

However, I am no position, financially nor ethically to bow to corruption (how's that for self-righteous pomposity?). Earning a salary in Rupees (as I am purported to have done at some point during my stay here) doesn't really empower you to "bribe your way to the top", even were you so inclined. Furthermore, I'd rather invest that money in the upkeep of India's tourist sites (the inflated foreigner price is ubiquitous among national attractions) than in bankrolling expensive dinners, fancy cars, golden toilet seats, and personal platypus petting zoos for government officials (trust me: here in India, platypuses are all the rage).

Back to the Taj, and please take no notice of the subsequent swapping of the past tense for the present.

So here we find ourselves, strolling past the queue and into the forecourt buffering central Agra from India's iconic attraction. Admiring the well-kempt patio, what first strikes one is the close attention paid to the aesthetic element. The terrace is spacious (probably the size of a soccer pitch), geometrically rectangular, and precisely maintained. People mill about, and the neatly placed hedgerows are a healthy green, full yet neatly trimmed. The focal structure (behind us here), a gate leading to the Taj itself, is constructed of a deep crimson sandstone accented by white marble inlays inscribed with the traditional Arabic script, geometric shapes, and floral patterns that detail most Islamic architecture (as an aside: images of living beings are prohibited in Islamic art). We pass under the gate's tear drop archway, into a small crowded room submerged in shadow bottlenecking the entrance to the Taj garden, a thousand-foot-long extension of the previous terrace featuring the tomb itself at the far end. It is from here that we catch our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal.

From this distance, to be candid, the shrine is no more impressive than in photos. Only as one descends the gate's steps and draws closer to the glowing white structure can one appreciate the marble's alabaster sheen as it is illuminated by the bleached rays of the afternoon sun. Only as one passes by the elongated pools of water, grassy malls, and lateral gardens does one begin to understand why it is that the Taj is known the world over for its beauty and elegance. Beyond being absolutely stunningly crafted, a masterstroke of architecture placed atop a marble platform to ensure its only backdrop is the infinite blue sky, the trait that is most surprising is the Taj Mahal’s sheer immensity.

The main edifice is enormous, constructed entirely of a uniform white marble, reaching 180 feet into the heavens (the Statue of Liberty is only 150 feet high) and resting upon a rectangular footprint roughly 1000 feet wide by 330 feet deep. Each of the platform's four corners is home to a decorative minaret (Muslim prayer tower), which combine to flank the main structure, giving its aspect a broader appearance like an albatross spreading its wings. The central dome sits atop a decorated base, a jewel atop the crown, a colossal rain drop petrified just before impact and surrounded by a quartet of smaller domes. The structure, taken in context, is the most singularly beautiful execution of human ambition I've ever had the privilege to gaze upon with my own three eyes (What? Just seeing if you’re paying attention...). During our two hours under the searing Indian sun, we stared and marveled at its magnificent presence, appreciating that while the Taj will stand until the day people forget passion, our few moments under its magnanimous shadow were fleeting.

While not nearly as out of place as we are in central Delhi, we still managed to attract far more attention than your average ensemble of foreigners, even in a locale inundated with swarms of Japanese tourists lugging cameras twice the size of their heads alongside Norwegian sight-seers twice the size of the Japanese (and three times the size of the Indians). This may have had something to do with the fact that, while our time in the presence of the Taj began with the cliched photo of confused perspective in which the subject pinches his thumb and index finger together in the air, as if s/he was holding a particularly smelly pair of gym socks or a prize winning minnow, as the photographer angles the camera in such a way as to place the cusp of the mausoleum’s tear-drop dome within those fingers (giving the illusion that the subject is a thousand-foot colossus, cruelly holding the entire Taj Mahal up by the strength of two fingers on a whim, ready to drop it upon the unsuspecting masses), our conduct soon progressed to less explored arenas of creative photography, like the newest sensation sweeping the nation: the "Taj Jump".

While you may remember behaving with such immaturity at long-ago birthday parties held at Chuck E. Cheese (or similarly, those during college), we found that having already been stripped of our dignity when we handed over our 750 Rupees, the game became one of answering the limbo-stick question 'how low can we go?'. What started off as a bunch of foreigners acting strangely quickly drew a crowd of onlookers that soon became our partners in absurdity. This resulted in such stupid scenes as this, this and this (I’m off in the back). Needless to say, we were not invited back. Not that anyone is, but if they did do that kind of thing, I’m certain we wouldn’t have been.

As an auxiliary point, it is worthwhile to draw a quick comparison between the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. The two are inextricably linked by their shared designation as two of the ancient Muslim world's greatest lasting works of architecture, and by the fact that they both endure as internationally reputed sites of interest in their respective countries. Each features the Arabic scripture, geometric shape, and floral pattern motifs among its stucco and ceramic ornamentation, as well as the masterful manipulation of water for artistic ends.

While the Alhambra has a few hundred years on the Taj, the Taj is rather more steeped in global notoriety, possibly due to the fact that a single photo can capture its unique shape and form (from a marketing perspective this is pure gold), while the Alhambra's splendor is found in the repeated grandeur of its palaces, patios, and gardens that strike the first-time viewer like a hammer knocking a metaphorical nail of discovery into a previously unenlightened consciousness. Its many ruins, courtyards, and lookouts make for a five to six hour exploratory experience, while the Taj can be done in an hour or less if you've really got somewhere to be. It has been said that a particularly inspired ambulance driver, en route to the hospital with a crash victim in tow, could potentially make a quick stop at the Taj, pay the 750 Rupees, skip the line, sprint through the forecourt, catch a glimpse of the tomb from afar, then speed off to the hospital in time to save the five or six major internal organs still pumping inside the victim, confident in the knowledge that s/he had just “seen the Taj”. An ambulance driver with similar aspirations at the Alhambra would probably be required to sacrifice a great deal more if s/he wanted to see the site, likely all the victim’s major organs with the exception of the pancreas, gall bladder, and appendix. No issue if you’re the driver; you could probably delude yourself into believing that three of the body’s least capable parts are in fact an anatomical Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, entirely capable of leading the victim’s body to functional victory (in the form of continued life) despite a lack of what is referred to in scientific circles as a “working body”. A worthy sacrifice for the sake of cultural enrichment, at least from the driver’s perspective. In short, you could see the Taj relatively quickly, while the Alhambra’s many facets take time to explore.

This being the case, is the Taj in effect the “fast blonde” of ancient Muslim architecture: fun to look at, but with intrigue running only skin deep? (Is it even appropriate to ponder an ancient monument and UNESCO World Heritage Site as such? Maybe not, but I’m going to do it anyway because I can.) If the answer is indeed yes, then the Taj is certainly the Marilyn Monroe of fast blondes, a flight of stairs above the rest [yes, true royalty among ancient Muslim architecture’s vast assembly of fast blondes]. But I’m not sure the analogy is entirely accurate, since a snapshot view of the tomb doesn’t in any way capture its magnanimity. Like a fine wine, taking the Taj in one swift voluminous gulp might make you feel all fuzzy inside, but it leaves you without any appreciation for its profundity. Admittedly, inside the tomb there isn't much to see- your run of the mill McDonald’s is likely a greater architectural feat- but regardless, as I explained above, its exterior taken as a whole is one of this world’s most impressive sights, and the experience of standing in its shade is one I’ll treasure until the brain neurons containing the memory are lobotomized.

So that’s the Agra trip in a nutshell (Though I’m not sure that 2000 words fit into a nutshell, even a proverbial one. More fitting would be a full blown coconut or a fifty pound bag of cashews). I think I covered all the bases, except for my short stint as an autorickshaw driver, which isn’t really worth mentioning unless you noticed a recent headline reading “Thousands Flee Agra as Rampaging Rickshaw Terrorizes Streets.” Like I said though, the event doesn’t really merit space here.

Soon after our Agra trip, we made an excursion to Jaipur, which alongside New Delhi and Agra forms what is colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle due to the fact that the three cities, geographically speaking, form a not-so-equilateral triangle with New Delhi at its peak and the other two at either end of its wide base. Why the triangle is supposedly golden I have no idea, since this is an area known neither for its gold production nor for any preponderant population of Notre Dame alumni (although after their humiliating defeat at the hands of my own Michigan Wolverines this past Saturday [1-2 baby!! Rose Bowl here we come!!] it’s entirely possible that shame-inspired emigrations to India, where they follow US college football about as closely as we follow Javanese badminton, will become the rage among Golden Domers).

Among names inspired by a linking characteristic, the Northern Triangle would seem preeminent, since there is (to my knowledge) little beyond their geographical proximity to one another in the north of India that connects the three cities. However, it seems that if a moniker need not be indicative of any apparent attribute, nor have its assignment precluded by any connection to its explicit meaning, then it follows that any three cities of negligible interest within a reasonable distance of one another could also be termed a Golden Triangle. In recognition of this fact, India does indeed have a second so-called Golden Triangle, the south western triad of Bhubaneswar, and the costal cities Konark and Puri.

Jaipur’s main attraction is the Amber Fort, a 16th century palace resting on the hills above the town of Amber, just outside the city. While no Taj Mahal, the fort still manages to impress with its familiar combination of intricately inscribed red sandstone and carved white marble. The fact that for 500 Rupees, a pair of adventurous tourists can make their way from the town of Amber to the fort’s main courtyard on the back of an elephant may be a greater attraction than the fort itself. This is no detriment to the fort itself, but a testament to how cool it would be to ride an elephant. Unfortunately I had already been converted to the religion of frugality (a church of which I still consider myself a member), and as a result I abstained from riding the lumbing beast in favor of actually being able to pay the ticket price at the gate. My experience at the Amber Fort was not without a Close Encounter of the Proboscid Kind though, on the way up to the main entrance I made fast friends with a surprisingly socially-adjusted elephant, one who not only wore his own variety of elephant clothing, but also had a human subordinate to do his bidding (which was apparently to have his back ridden upon). Immediately after the photo was taken, he introduced me to an integral part of elephant etiquette by sneezing violently, thereby unleashing his schnoz cannon all over me, and when your nose is four feet long, it goes without saying that you’ve got plenty of space in the chamber for heavy ordnance. I suffered under a thick film of his the rest of the day.

While the Amber Fort was a highlight, the paramout experience in Jaipur was most certainly our visit to a small local temple in the Pink City (Jaipur’s old city, so named because of the pink stucco covering its serpentine walls) which began as a simple quest to find a popular tourist temple, but ended up as one of the more participatory cultural experiences I’ve had since arriving. In short, our autorickshaw driver had no clue where the purportedly famous temple was, and instead dropped us off at a small house of worship on a narrow street in the old city. İn we went, expecting to be one tour group among many, but instead being the only people in the temple who would have had trouble blending in with the shadows in the event of a police raid. Not that the police would ever had any reason to raid a Hindu temple in India, in fact the connection between religion and state here runs deep, but if by some twist of imagination it were to happen, we would have stuck out like, well... like white people in a Hindu temple. Our apparent incongruity drew the attention of the worshipers, who had been intimately involved in a brass-band-propelled ritual dance when we arrived, but quickly shifted their interest to the strange group of foreigners now intruding on their worship. Within minutes, the previously entranced Indian women had drawn the girls into the fray, and were themselves rapidly melting away to the sidelines to watch as the foreigners tripped over their own third legs attempting to mimic their traditional body gyrations and twirls. Not longer after I myself had, by some dastardly scheme, been drawn into the middle of the spinning mass of people in multicolored robes, and commenced to make a fool of myself as I am so often wont to do. Although there was no stand-out moment of irony or hilarity, the entire incident, and the fact that we ended up in the place by complete happenstance, and ended up having an amazingly insightful experience, is enough to make the event noteworthy.

There is a subject I’ve been meaning to address for a while now: Indian facial expressions. Naturally, a smile is a smile, just like anywhere, but there are a number of facial expressions that are more specific to Indian culture that deserve a quick bit of attention. Of particular note is the Indian head wobble. To perform this manuvre, a person will tilt his/her head from side to side repeatedly while maintaining the face's forward plane and line of sight. The move is accentuated by closing the eyes and streching the face from ear to ear with a broad smile. This expression has a very specific and pointed meaning in the culture, and after a full three months here, I have finally gained an understanding of what that meaning is. Through careful study, personal inquiry, and face-to-face interaction I can say definitively that the head wobble means either ‘yes’, ‘maybe’, or ‘no’. Depending on the situation.

But it's not just the Indians who employ explicit facial expressions to convey meaning. I myself have become quite practiced at my own "meaningful" stare, which I use to communicate to those with whom I deal that don't speak any English (autorickshaw drivers, produce merchants, shop owners). I deploy this look of terror upon my unsuspecting victims particularly when I'm convinced that they're trying to pull the wool over my eyes and squeeze a few dozen extra Rupees out of me, by lowering my eyebrows, clenching my jaw, and looking them straight in the eye very sternly. It is meant to convey the idea that I know exactly what they’re doing, particularly when I have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. İf nothing else the person realizes very quickly that I am a man who can contort his face very sternly.

At times it scares them into submission, coercing them into caving to my will, no matter how outrageous it is. Other times they actually become emboldened by the fact that I'm attempting to communicate with them, as opposed to maintaining an blank look of ignorance (a tried and true method embraced by many of my friends), which in turn causes them to argue more vehemetly, and things simply escalate from there. At times I'll use the head wobble myself, complete with a broad “I’m skipping on cloud 9” smile. This is generally accepted to mean that I am crazy (which is true) and when exercised properly can be mined for complete acquiescence from opposing party.

So, now, on to the burning question; when am I coming home? The answer is; at this stage, I have no idea, but I can say unequivocally that I am not returning home at the end of September as I posited in my last journal. I am currently interviewing for a number of different jobs all over the Delhi and greater Delhi area, and looking to stay here at least through the end of my visa (mid June '08) if not longer. I want to take advantage of this opportunity, instead of just throwing in the towel so early in the experience. There remains a great edal I wish to see and do in this country, and as a result I’ve decided to stick around for a while. Next summer, when my visa runs out, I plan on traveling a bit and then returning home for a while. The real question is if after my short leave I’ll return to India to continue a job at that point, or if I’ll stay at home and move forward with something there. I suppose it depends on what type of job I end up with here. If it's one I'm comnfortable with, I’ll probably come back, if it's one I don't enjoy, I won't. The fact is that since I left my previous job I've been enjoying life in India a great deal more, and I’ve had a much better opportunity to explore some of the places that make India an amazing place to be. My next journal will detail the trip that changed my mind about this place. Let it be known that while India does have a steep, steep learning curve, once you get the hang of things, it's not such a bad place to find yourself, especially as a young professional with native English skills (all business here is conducted in English, therefore those who have facility with the language are in high demand). Granted a primary reason for my recent contentment is that I have most of my time to do whatever it is I find prudent at any particular moment, so I think the next logical question is “will I have the same problems with my next job?” I think I can honestly say that I won’t, and because this time I’m actually able to observe and evaluate the workplace, my colleagues, and my superiors in order to decide first-hand if they are the types of elements with which I want to surround myself. One reason I had so many problems at my old company is that I never had a chance to do that, and also the fact that I was never able to negotiate terms like salary and working hours/days. Now I know what my skills are worth here, and I’m doing my best to put myself in the best situation possible. That doesn’t mean simply finding the highest salary, but instead weighing the factors that are important to me and finding a company compliant along the lines of those factors.

A few more notes. We switched flats, thankfully. It seems that the new flat is not objectively better than the old one, but the fact that no AIESEC trainees with little to no interest in the long term maintenance of the place have been living here for the past eleven months (as was the case in the old flat) makes for a much better situation. Furthermore we have a mechanism for getting broken things fixed, which we did not before, and we are better managing house funds to provide ourselves with a few extra conveniences (an internet hub, extra bowls/cups, shower racks, etc...). How much longer I’ll be in this specific flat I don’t really know. AIESEC is putting indirect pressure on me to move, so I may have to find my own place soon. As with the job situation, we’ll see what happens. On the food front I’m eating a lot of vegetable chow mein lately, which is just pasta noodles fried with onion, green pepper and lettuce with a few different spices. I have a favorite restaurant where I can get it ordered special “no spicy”, and it only costs thirty Rupees (seventy five cents) for a heaping plate of the dish.

That’s it for now, thanks for reading,

Adam

Wandering Inanity Vol. 11: Incursion into India

2007-08-14T04:18:00.000-04:00

Pre-preface:

Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the big show!

In this corner, we have your reigning World Champion of Bloviation, the Greatest Sham on Words, the Big Boss of Blathering Banter … weighing in at 9000 words: Adam's Journal!

In this corner, we have that which you'd rather invest in washing your hair, counting ceiling tiles, or catching up on all the latest spam in your inbox: your free time!

Mouth guards in, touch gloves, and let’s get it goin’!

Preface: Before we begin, those who've made comments on the overblown verbosity of these journals will be glad see their greatest hopes and dreams realized; I've decided to risk life and limb to machete my way through the literary quagmire below, fight past the horde of lumbering absurdities, into the Forbidden Temple of Visual Stimulation at the distant end of the journal, from where I dragged back to the beginning (at great personal risk) your Golden Monkey: the photo sections. Here they are-

India-

Due to unforeseen circumstances, it will be a week or so before the main set of India photos is posted. I could have waited for these before publishing the entire journal, but the text is finished, so I decided that it was most important to get the words out there as the photos are simply supplementary to the story told in text. Check the below address on August 20^th, they should be up by then in a set called ‘India I’.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/

Nokia Commercial Shoot (story below)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/72157601413495234/

On with the show.

Traffic here in Delhi is a microcosm of Indian society as a whole; everyone's trying to get ahead, regardless of who might end up serving buffer duty between their wheels and the tarmac. A driver is less likely to put his foot on the brake for a human than s/he is for a cow (and wandering through rush-hour traffic as these bovine braniacs often do, they make a better argument for their re-constitution as a pair of all beef patties between a sesame seed bun than they do as sacrosanct entities). On the whole, the spaghetti mish-mash of cars, buses, motorcycles, and auto-rickshaws seems entirely ignorant of silly things like "laws". Lanes are paint on the pitch that Indians grant roughly the same depth of consequence as they do the contents of Joe Q. Nobody's breakfast in Nickerson, Nebraska; other cars are inanimate obstacles that offer motorists a chance to experiment with new horn blowing cadences (although the "one long continuous blast" followed by "another long continuous blast" technique seems to be most popular); merging into oncoming traffic means waiting not for an open and safe entry, but for the oncoming vehicle that is both tripling the speed limit (wait, what speed limit?? The only regulation on speed is how fast/far a lead foot can carry you between red lights, and it only stops there because plunging into transverse traffic is a much faster route to the crematorium - Hindus' preferred method of post-mortuary/posthumous body treatment - than it is to the destination de jour) and swerving drunkenly from one crumbling curb to the other, then cutting that vehicle off, ignorant to the possibility that a driver so stupefied might not actually have the presence of mind to take the split-second evasive action necessary to avert a horrific t-bone collision. Sometimes, in these instances, both parties survive. Sometimes. On the whole, it could be said that beyond a serious case of left-side-driving syndrome (the scar tissue of having shed British rule a mere half century ago) Indian traffic bows to no man, mandate, or mantra. Why, it's safe to say that if not for the avenue dividers splitting most major thoroughfares down the middle, head on collisions would replace cricket as the sport of choice here.

Besides adhering to the same code of conduct as the Half Moon Saloon (if you click no other link while reading this journal, click that one and watch it beginning to end), what's most noteworthy about traffic here is that, although each day the sadistic s and sickos among us (myself included) can find gruesome crash photos of mashed bodies and gravy garnished with a fine sprinkling of motorcycle and car parts in the tabloids, I myself have yet to be immortalized as such. And thankfully so. "Well obviously" you might be thinking, but you'd be wrong. Every time you're between the curbs riding in any vehicle other than a Sherman tank or city bus, you might as well pay the butcher's bill in advance, because your life is forfeit. What kind of gruesome irony would that be anyway, to be immortalized on account of your messy mortality? It's kind of like the opposite of celebrity death taunter David Blaine finally biting the bullet, not by failing to escape from a trio of straight jackets while suspended upside-down over a pit of lava, spikes, and giant squids, but by choking to death on a peanut. That, one could say, would be a mortality despite one's apparent immortality.

One unwritten rule of driving in India is that the maximum total time one's car horn can be silent during any transportation session is three seconds. This allotment is generally reserved for when the cows come marching in (as they so often do) and make their way across the busy streets in a single file line like the Beatles crossing Abbey Road. Clearly, Indian drivers are familiar with the fabled wrath of the irate cow, which is widely recognized to be matched in destructive force only by the wrath of the sleeping cow (beware!). In light of that, they grant them all the respect and reverence of a tiger at rest.

Humans, on the other hand, are wholly deserving of the ear drum puncturing scream, jive, and wail of the car horn, and drivers are happily obliged to fulfill their solemn duty to provide that to one another by adding their own to the collective cacophony. This use of the horn might not actually be so malicious in intent. It might be drivers' way of letting each other know that, shockingly, they are driving. As if their conspicuous occupying presence in the otherwise vacant space between the driver's seat and steering wheel wasn't evidence enough for other motorists…

So how does traffic parallel Indian society, beyond just a general sense of lawlessness presiding over the whole affair? Well. That's pretty much it, but the analogy is striking far-reaching for being so simple. There are countries where anything goes, and there are countries where anything goes. This seems to be the latter.

As an anecdote, there is a certain sect (gang?) of people who have nothing better to do with their time than drive their cow-pulled cart into our neighborhood and blast loud, obnoxious, Hindi dance music from a loudspeaker until everyone in the neighborhood comes down from their flats and pays homage to the holy effigy in their back of the cart by surrendering a few dozen Rupees (the local currency). Shouldn't this clever form of extortion be illegal? "Come out and pay us or we'll keep it up all night" seems to be the message. AC/DC said it best: rock and roll ain't noise pollution, but this garbage definitely is. And this no general critique of Indian pop music, some of which is bearable, even enjoyable. But the stuff these crooks blast is at least the most painful noise torture I've ever been inflicted with. Whoever recorded it deserves to have his/her vocal cords confiscated, very violently, so as to set an example for anyone else thinking of channeling car-alarms, nails-on-chalkboards, and reggaeton all at once. That's how entrapment works though; they know how horrible it is, and they know that we can't get rid of them since they're "messengers of the Gods" (what better way to cheapen your God(s)' image than to use him/her/them to make a buck. I'm looking at you Robert Tilton - and please don't click the link if your sense of humor has progressed an inch since the second grade). Apparently, these villains are known to hide behind their shield of diplomatic immunity at 4 AM, when they roll in looking to collect 'ear protection fees' (for the Gods of course), as a reminder that the deities need money at all hours of the night, not just when it's convenient for you. I'm going to have to make sure that all my bricks, anvils, refrigerators and rocket launchers are kept a good distance from the balcony so I don't "accidentally" shut these people up... permanently.

City buses are another place where only a very basic set of rules govern conduct; as long as passengers pay their bus fair -up to ten Rupees depending on distance to be traveled, anything goes (40 Rupees per US dollar, and a cheap meal costs 30-40 Rupees). It starts with simply trying to catch a bus, which can be a dangerous task in and of itself. About half of the buses here are run by the city government, and half are privately run. They run the same routes, and have similar paint jobs so you really never know which is which. The main difference is that the private companies, the Blueline and Whiteline, are far more prone to ignore or subvert governmental regulations on speed and passenger limits. The result is that instead of running down two or three pedestrians every day as the Delhi Transportation Corporation (DTC) buses do, the private lines run down four or five (but never a cow, as that would be imprudent). This is a result of their propensity to tamper with the governor switches that the city installs on their motors, which are designed to keep the buses from exceeding 40 kph (25 mph). Disabling the governor allows the buses to make more stops in a day, transport more people, and the crux of it all: make an extra buck during the course of a day. The real issue is that due to tension between the private lines and the city, there have been a number of bus strikes and also "inspection days" when all private buses are forbidden to run so the government can check the governor switches. The long term result of this might be safer roads, but on these days it means only a fraction of the fleet is actually on the road, and therefore a bus might come along every half hour instead of every five minutes. When one finally does arrive, it's so packed that people are hanging from the side railings near the entry door while fully physically outside the cab of the bus. Others cling to the railings covering rear windows because the doorway railings are already full (and to avoid paying the steep ticket price), and the least aggressive are left in the dust running behind the bus, trying to push their way through the mass of hanging bodies to catch a grip and foothold, usually without luck. Those who are "lucky" enough to get a spot hanging from the side of the bus resemble most closely a bunch of bananas trying to force its way into a sardine tin (why a banana bunch would want to get inside a sardine tin is beyond me, but let's just go with it), and are generally the most commonly injured/killed when the bus stops abruptly or hits one of the potholes in the street, which are often of a size large enough to swallow an auto-rickshaw. Needless to say, I don't make it a practice to hang from the side of the bus. Instead, when every bus seems to have seven or eight sloth clinging to its branches, I sacrifice the girth of my wallet to one of the hyenas tooling around this city in the guise of an auto-rickshaw driver. On a strike day, this is a highly undesirable way to travel, as the special situation of high demand usually results in the most literal form of highway robbery.

Negotiating with auto-rickshaw drivers is delicate work, in some ways more nuanced than brain surgery, in some ways more volatile than Middle East peace negotiations. Besides buses, these smart-car-sized vehicles are the main method of transportation in this city for those without cars, as the metro's reach is still miniscule. If there are plenty of rickshaws around, one can be a bit more cavalier in pitting them against one another. "Who wants a fare today?" is the question I often ask: the preacher to his assembled masses. Unfortunately, few of them speak any English beyond the multiples of ten in which pre-negotiated rickshaw fares are settled, so I'll point to their price meter, proposing that it be used as an impartial way of determining the pay rate. It seems that, despite their best intentions to ensure that riders pay a fair fare, few auto-rickshaws are equipped with a meter in working condition. Even if it appears to be functioning, and during the ride it counts properly (4.5 Rupees per kilometer), it is still, according to the driver, broken. In light of that, I’ve decided that if I ever come back to India, I will do so as a rickshaw meter repairman; I’d make a killing. Then again, maybe a state of disrepair is in the drivers’ minds ‘working’, as a functioning meter would not serve their end goal, which is to totally rip me off. In that sense, I suppose they are being totally truthful when they tell me that it’s not working, because a properly operational meter would in fact, be not working in that sense.

In the rare event that I find a rickshaw with a meter that is also equipped with a driver willing to use it, I have a slightly better chance of avoiding the dreaded “white tax”, excepting if the driver decides to take a few detours on the way back to Kalkaji (the area of town where I live). But with time grows familiarity, and if en route to home the driver deviates from the prescribed path, I start shouting random expletives like "SMORGASBOARD!" or "HIPPOPOTA-GRAF!" or "NAPOLEAN'S GREAT MISTAKE WAS UNDERESTIMATING THE DECIMATING EFFECT THE BRUTAL RUSSIAN WINTER WOULD HAVE ON HIS TROOPS!", all the while staring sternly, eyebrows lowered, at the driver and pointing in the correct direction. This usually returns some unintelligible Hindi, understood as a rambling, spur-of-the-moment excuse for why west is the new south, and of course general sentiments of surprise that whitey would actually know where to go. After seeing the types of direction changing stunts these maniacs pull upon being confronted with their fraudulence, the local legend holding that it was during a ride in a Delhi auto-rickshaw that producer Jerry Bruckheimer found the inspiration for the daredevil acrobatics in Top Gun holds significantly more water.

When I find a driver who’ll use the meter, I'll offer what I see as a reasonable fare for the proposed distance, and when that fails too (as it inexorably does), I'll walk away very conspicuously and try to attract the attention of other auto-rickshaw drivers. This is not a difficult task as a white man, as each one expects to earn some factorial of the legal rate for transporting me (of course on days that buses aren't running, they can get these rates, and not just from me, from anyone who wants to get anywhere in the city). As the sharks encircle their prey, the first-offered driver will often acquiesce to the meter or proffered price, and off we'll plunge into the crowded sea of vehicles (and cows).

Once arrival at the destination comes, drivers have one final trick they’ll employ to try to squeeze an extra ten, twenty, or thirty Rupees out of the rich white man. The most prominent is having "no change" for large bills, a tactical thrust that is parried by getting out of the rickshaw and threatening to walk off without paying if the proper bills aren’t provided. If this counter-attack has no effect, and they still hold to the "no change" line, you can often find a nearby merchant to change your big bills, except after midnight, when most shops are closed. The issue is that ten or twenty Rupees isn’t much by standards back home, it's twenty-five or fifty cents. But, for someone living and earning in Delhi, that means a bus ride or a cheap meal. It might not be much once or twice, but over the period of a year it can really add up.

I suppose part of it boils down to wanting to be treated like a local, despite being about ten pigment tones short of anything resembling an Indian. I want to pay the same prices as Delhites in rickshaws and restaurants, but I do enjoy some of the niceties afforded to me as a white man. For example, when I first arrived to the Delhi airport I was chatting in line at customs with a Polish gentleman who had arrived on the same plane from Doha, Qatar. The line probably weighed in at about 100 people, and we found ourselves at its tail end. As soon as security noticed our pallid white skin, we were upgraded from coach to first class, and moved from the line's tail to its head. This was appreciated, of course, but I was openly embarrassed to be given such special treatment simply on account of my skin color. It seemed to me that if I were one of the people waiting in such a long line, it would anger me greatly to see others skip the line on such trivial grounds. But with time, I'm finding that skin color is hardly trivial here.

Another example of the power of skin tone in India: returning to the buses, I ride one almost every day to and from work. Generally the seats are full and many people stand in the aisles, shoulder to shoulder, front end in the face of whoever is lucky enough to be in the seat adjacent. On the left side, the seats are reserved for women. Men often occupy these seats, but if a woman comes along, it is accepted that she is to be given the seat without a fuss. On the right side, it's a free for all. When a seat opens, men come diving over one another, poking and punching, grabbing and gouging like cowboys chasing a greased pig at the rodeo, all to get some major part of their body into the seat before anyone else can match or beat them in the Percentage of Body in Vacated Seat department. People throw bags, push old ladies out of the way, and generally make a mess of one another without any semblance of what I (as a foreigner) consider to be common courtesy. However, often times (mind you, not always) if a seat opens near me, instead of battling to the death for the right to rest one's rear, my fellow riders will offer me the seat in some form of broken English or hand-motion assisted Hindi. Once again, embarrassed to receive special treatment, but not wanting to be unappreciative, I graciously accept and sit down.

In large part, this special treatment can be attributed to Indian culture's "white fixation". This fetish manifests itself in many ways, but having studied communications I am helplessly drawn to a critique of the underlying ideals propagated by one particular message conduit I see here in India every day: advertising. It's no secret that advertising uses the desires, motivations and ideals of a culture to sell a product. The potential benefits proposed here are essentially the same as they are at home. X product will make our lives easier, fatten our pocket books, or make us more attractive (not a comprehensive list by any means but you get the idea).

What I find so intriguing about the ads here is not the persuasive strategy, but the aesthetic of the people whose images are used to sell those products. At home advertisers make a point to include a white person, a black person, a south east Asian, and increasingly a Latino, so as to symbolically represent all facets of our country’s population. This is not done in order to fulfill some kind of egalitarian dream that advertisers feel a social responsibility to encourage, but because people are more likely to identify with strangers if those strangers look like they do, and therein identify with the problems the stranger faces, and the solutions that the stranger finds (which comes in the form of the product being sold).

Also, most of the people we see in advertising images are above average in terms of attractiveness. This is also tied to increased consumer aspiration, the idea being that the consumer will subconsciously associate greater physical beauty with the purchase/use of the product (even if the product is something unassociated with physical appearance like car tires or insurance).

Furthermore, attractive people are more pleasing to look at, so we're more likely to spend more time making eye/brain contact with the image. It goes without saying that repetition and exposure time bolster memory retention of any stimulus, and therein make it more likely that we'll have that product on our minds later on- when we go to the store, for example.

What is so telling about ads here in India is not simply the fact that the people depicted are attractive and light skinned, but that they are strikingly white skinned. Clearly, those depicted are Indians and not white (the black hair and facial structure assure us of that) but they've been whitewashed to the point of radiating the alabaster aspect of a seagull's backside. And it's not just cosmetic ads where this phenomenon can be seen (although skin whitening cream does seem to be a very popular product here) but in ads for banks, schools, chewing gum, shoes, etc... It seems clear that in Indian culture, fair/white skin is seen as an integral part of attractiveness, and by extension, dark skin is associated with unsightliness. This claim is substantiated by the images of white skinned Indians in advertising.

I feel that there is some danger in this institutionally encouraged prejudice, especially in what it entails for those of darker complexion here. Messages like "white is right" aren’t simply intangible principles removed from any real life implication, they propagate and encourage that ideal and therein subliminally shape peoples’ beliefs about the world. The messages that surround us have a great effect on the way we see our environment, this I find to be an indisputable fact, and if these types of divisive messages permeate a culture, then it follows that these sorts of beliefs would be highly prevalent in that culture. The problem here is for the dark skinned Indians, who wander through traffic while the stop light shines red, staring in through the car window at the light skinned Indians, cupping a hand and raising it repeatedly to their mouths asking for food money.

Dark skinned Indians constitute the majority of those I engaging in this type of begging behavior, driving the auto-rickshaws, and sleeping on highway dividers at night. It's obvious that Indian culture is split on lines of race, but what is less obvious is whether or not anything is being done by those in power to combat this disparity. On one hand I understand this. Now that I’m earning for myself, even I, once the great idealist, don’t feel that I have enough extra money to give to beggars in the street. Sure if they want some water or food, I'm always willing to share a bit if I’ve got some on hand, but I need what I earn to live. If I earned more, I doubt if I'd suddenly say "I'm going to give the balance of my raise to the people begging in the street". In reality, I assume I'd simply upgrade my own life to a more comfortable state. I suppose in that sense I’m a part of the problem, but from an institutional perspective I don’t see much being done in terms of social aid or educational programs to get the dark skinned street kids into school. Those in power don't seem to care. The "darkies" occupy the bottom rung of the social ladder, and this is simply a fact of life here, like the sun rising each morning.

This might be where my previous (now ancient) analogy between Indian traffic and society rings most true. Everyone seems out to "get theirs" without much regard for those less fortunate. Maybe I haven’t been here long enough to see the social aid in action, but I find it hard to believe that anyone driving around in a Mercedes is thinking too hard about how they can help the thousands of people in the street live a better life. On the whole it seems that light skinned Indians are quite happy with the status quo (wouldn't you be?), and even pat themselves on the back for providing employment for so many of the dark skinned Indians as servants and physical laborers. I would argue that in doing so they are actually keeping darkie down. Not that I advocate the firing of all servants and laborers, but instead that it shouldn't be a given that the only thing these people are good for is non-cerebral work. There ought to be more effort to get the dark skinned kids into school, instead of begging in the streets. Here, more than anywhere else I've been, I see the negative effects of an exclusive public education system, one which requires aptitude tests/interviews even for grade-schoolers that place children of different intelligence levels into different schools. Of course, the smartest kids get the best schools, the least prepared kids get the worst schools. As I understand it, the affluence of the parents is now being used as a criterion in the placement of students. In effect, the smart/rich are getting smarter/richer, and the dumb/poor are staying dumb/poor.

Please report to the University of Michigan office of Communication Studies at 1225 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI to collect your honorary degree. Heck, drop the honorary part, after plowing through all that, you deserve the real thing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am hardly one to talk about the evils of separating the certain kids from the rest, having been shipped off to a "special school" as a fourth grader. I won't say which side of the fence that put me on, but I will say that it constituted only a small portion of the students in my district, and did not represent an overall institutional trend towards the stratification and re-enforcement of intelligence levels like I see here.

The hardest thing is avoid looking down on Indian culture for being so openly discriminatory. However, if I look at the state of things at home, we might not hold a moral ground as elevated as we believe. We grant a great deal of lip service to our own ideals of equality and justice regardless of social station or appearance, but in reality I don't feel that we deliver on that promise. In many ways our own culture is surreptitiously racist; we just ignore it and claim that we aren't. Of course those at the bottom have a responsibility to take ownership for their situation, but we privileged few must realize our own ability to help others instead of just buttressing the status quo. That's why I'm establishing the Adam Fivenson Center for Kids Who.... OK, I'm not establishing anything. I suppose my role is more about awareness than action. Maybe that’s just my way of abjuring myself of any responsibility. Cut me a break, I'm just the guy behind the keyboard, OK? (Famous last words).

In the defense of Indian culture, it could be said in contrast to US culture, that "at least they're honest about it". In our own defense, I think it could be said that people who start at the bottom have a much better chance to make it to the top than they do here. These are not excuses, nor are they justifications: they are simply attempts to re-establish the moral high ground, a maneuver with the constructive potential of a roundhouse kick from Chuck Norris.

To sharpen a point of what is now a frayed mess: racism is alive and well. Ignoring it as we do at home doesn't make it go away, but openly accepting it, even embracing it as they do here，doesn't make the world a better place. Changes need to be made among both cultures, even if they're as basic as simple acceptance of the situation as it stands.

Before I get off with totally slandering this country and everyone in it, one thing I want to communicate is that Indians are some of the most forwardly socially open people I’ve ever met. Most days on the bus, someone will approach me and ask where I’m from, and attempt in whatever English they possess to open a conversation with me. This usually results in a lot of smiling and bizarre hand motionry, but if nothing else it’s fun to try to make sense of each other despite our lingual disconnect. Also, the more you struggle through these types of interactions, the easier they get, as you learn what certain hand/head motions signify. In most parts of the world, this level of openness and curiosity between locals and foreigners is a one way fascination, and generally it’s the locals shunning contact travelers and treat them as a necessary evil that must be endured to get ahold of the almighty tourist Dollar/Euro/Pound (funny how that works, isn’t it?). This is not the case here in India, people are generally interested in getting to know you, almost always exchanging phone numbers and following up with a call. One part of me wants to attribute the desire to get to know a Westerner to an egoistic desire to bolster one’s own social profile, but I just have a hard time seeing that type of quality in the people I meet. They seem to just really want to get in the mind of the Westerner, and see what one of these mythical media-anointed deities is actually like.

Mom, Dad, Sally, now that I’ve scared everyone else off, and it’s just the four of us, thanks for making it this far. Please don’t rent out my room.

On the subject of sustenance, it goes without saying that the foods I eat here bear little resemblance to those I eat back home. Early on, the spicy fare was running a full-scale repaving operation through my intestinal tract, transforming it into a gastric Autobahn where food would enter by way of the manual chamber, race the entire track in a matter of minutes and burst forth back into the world without leaving as much as a Vitamin D behind. Due to the difficulty my body was having in acquiring the proper nutrients, a number of internal roadblocks were erected to slow down flow, but these backfired and simply stopped all internal traffic. A graphic description is neither necessary nor forthcoming, but let's just say that it wasn't a healthy situation. These days my Digestive Municipal Government is still working out the kinks, and I still have days that hearken back to one extreme or the other, but on the whole I'm adjusting physically and also finding foods that are more agreeable to my particular digestive capabilities. I'm not a big fan of spicy food, as I mentioned before it wrecks havoc on my innards, but I'm now able to take it in small amounts because if you want to eat meals at a decent price, you've got to eat the local fare. Here, that means "non-spicy" foods that set the mouth alight like swallowing a spoonful of napalm and spicy foods you're still cleansing the following week.

Some of the staples of my diet include shahi paneer, a tomato based sauce with a few slices of what they call "cottage cheese" here (it's what I would call slices of fresh or wet cheese) that is eaten over rice. Another dish, one I eat for dinner most nights is called dahl makhni. This is a bean and pulse stew that is also served over rice (as most dishes are here). Both are generally eaten using five or six roti as edible utensils. Other foods I've found that I like, but eat less of are; bread pakora, a fried half sandwich -cut diagonally- with either aloo (potato) or paneer (cheese) inside; momos, a popular Chinese dumpling made of cabbage and other vegetables, tucked inside a soft, warm dumpling shell; and for breakfast I usually down a bowl of corn flakes - small rough flakes made from ground corn - and a pack of Parle G butter cookies.

A quick digression: clicking the subsequent link will display a photo of the package in which these delicious treats come. I feel that it's my duty to warn readers that the child on the packaging scores a twelve on the creepy scale. He is, without a doubt, the future recipient of the Brian Peppers Lifetime Achievement Award from the Child Predators Association of America. Quite an accomplishment for a kid who will probably never set foot in the country. Why Parle would choose to place such a photo on the packaging of every single bunch of these cookies is beyond me. They might as well have called the biscuits "REDRUM Select". If nothing else, the illustration makes me want to call in the priests to exorcise this demon child. Please see the packaging for yourself, if you dare: Parle G.

I never liked mangos back home, but here they've become a staple of my daily diet. Two a day is light consumption, as they can be purchased for five to ten rupees a piece in the streets and take only an hour or two in the fridge to achieve optimum temperature. The best thing is that relatively little preparation goes into eating a mango. You just slice it into three parts: two slabs and one pit，then dig in, teeth tearing the supple golden meat from its flimsy green skin. It's a primal process, and it usually ends with me looking like I've just messily devoured some small yellow-blooded animal and have yet to wipe its remains from my face and hands. It’s no great argument for the evolution of civilized man when I unleash my best Tarzan call and beat my chest authoritatively, but for some reason I’m impelled to do it after each mango. This draws stares, especially at work, but I feel it's important that everyone within earshot be fully well aware that in the eternal battle of man versus food, once again, humans win. I chew up mangos like lawn mowers chew up grass, and I'm proud of it.

Now that we're fully 5000 words into this thing, I'll lay down the groundwork for what exactly it is I'm doing here in India. I secured an internship at a public relations agency through the AIESEC student organization a few months back, which was to last from June 25th, 2007 until June 25th, 2008.

After having lived and worked in India for over a month, I have come to a number of realizations about both myself, AIESEC, and the company. This has precipitated a series of events over the past week that has been both surprising and highly satisfying. As the situation stands, I am no longer working with the agency, and am weighing my options, among them to get a new job here, or possibly return to The States, possibly in late September. This still depends on a number of factors, and I'll detail the situation below.

It all began with AIESEC. Essentially, their level of support for me and other trainees here in Delhi has been laughably inadequate. For me, it meant that I spent my first night in India in the comfortable home of one of the local committee members, but was then dumped off to one of the trainee residences and forgotten about. In many parts of the world, I would have no problem with this sequence of events, I might even appreciate the forced independence, but in India it's a different story. While you're trying to come to terms with the bedlam in the streets, you're sweating your last reserves of body humidity, and wondering how you'll find food and water to survive. Also on your mind is how in the world you'll be able to conduct yourself professionally for an office internship. This means getting clothes, a mobile phone, reliable and cheap transportation to and from work, and myriad other necessities. Surely there are people with worse lots in life, but the real issue here is the disparity between what AIESEC promises, and what they deliver.

Before coming I had expected to be welcomed into a community of college-aged Indians, who would organize social events, traveling excursions, and provide support for me in adjusting to a new life in a different country, essentially these are the promises AIESEC makes on its web site to potential trainees. Sadly, AIESEC's failure in my case seems not to be an isolated incident. Almost every other trainee to whom I've spoken here in Delhi has expressed similar sentiments. AIESEC don't seem to care about the trainees, and despite their best sentiments and promises for action on the phone (when I call to complain), I continue to see their flippant attitude toward the trainees manifest itself and ruin the India experience for my fellow internationals. I myself was lucky enough to get an airport pickup, many of my colleagues were not. I was lucky enough to get placed into what I now see as a decent residence, Markus, an Austrian I recently met was living in (literally) a moldy one room closet with no fridge, no kitchens, and a hole in the ground for a toilet, procured for him by AIESEC's top notch Trainee Care Committee (laying the sarcasm on pretty thick here... no such committee exists). Despite his student manager’s promises that he would be placed there for only a single night, he had been there for eight. If nothing else, he ought to have been staying at his student manager’s home if she couldn’t be bothered to find him decent accommodation, instead of shuffling him off to a place unbecoming of his basic human dignity. This is just one more example of the local committee's (LC) lack of interest in its trainees. When we found out about Markus’s situation, we immediately insisted that he come to live with us (with Markus we have a Dutch, a German, an Austrian, three Chinese, a S.Korean and myself in the flat for a total of eight people), where we have the basics (washing machine, shower, toilet, refrigerator) that his previous accommodation lacked. The fact it is trainees coming to the aid of other trainees attests not to our own benevolence, but to our understanding of each others' situations, and of basic human empathy, something the LC here apparently lacks.

Each of us arrives bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to be turned cynical and angry by an organization that smiles to our faces, but turns its collective back on us as soon as they're out of sight. I can't count the number of LC members to whom I've explained the situation, and found each and every one flummoxed by the fact that we trainees hold a collective hatred (yes, it's beyond dislike) for the LC here. Each one vows to bring our complaints to the top and rally for change, but even those who promise to come to our flat every week to chat and check up on us rarely if ever show their faces again. This is not because I've been particularly invective in my discussions with them; it's just that none of them want to shoulder the responsibility of advocating on our behalf. That being the case, I've taken things into my own hands, and a few weeks ago I composed a 2000 word letter detailing from top to bottom both what I had expected from AIESEC Delhi IIT (as opposed to AIESEC’s Delhi University LC, which is a different organization but apparently having similar problems) and what I perceived as their failures. It stated in long form what I am laying out in digest here. This letter was sent to the LC President, the President of AIESEC India, and my contacts with AIESEC back in The States. This prompted a face-to-face discussion between myself and Bint, the LC President, and a series of promises from her to the effect that things would change and soon. Of my main issues; more activities, more interaction between the LC and trainees, a trainee database (I can’t count the number of times I've been asked for my phone number, email, dates of internship, etc...) and a more proactive attitude from the LC toward trainees, none have been addressed. Of course I accept the fact that it takes time to change the basic focus of an organization to becoming more customer friendly (and we are customers, this is a paid experience) but it seems that Markus's situation unequivocally proves that things probably won't change much. For a few days after my discussion with Bint, I was sure they would, but it seems that in the subsequent weeks that beyond one party held on a Sunday night (OK for LC members since as college students, this is summer, but not for professional trainees, who have work the following day), not much is being done. Before I came to Delhi, I recommended AIESEC to many people. As things stand, I would not recommend coming here through AIESEC to anyone I liked. Maybe someone I wanted to cause a great deal of anxiety and anger, but I can't think of anyone to whom I want to do such a dastardly trick.

On to the work situation. The agency where I worked was small, only six full-time employees, including our servant. On a side note, it's amazing how lazy having a servant makes you. When I want water I just say "pah-NEE day-DO" and he fills it right up with ice cold H2O. Simple as that. At lunch, he also goes to get my shahi paneer, a meal that costs me about 30 Rupees a day. He's a nice young kid with a great deal of personality, who loves watching Bollywood dance videos on YouTube. For me, the hardest thing to reconcile is the fact that since he is of the lower class, and as a result totally uneducated and completely without hope of surmounting his lot in life. When I first arrived, I assumed he was training to become a PR professional, but it soon dawned on me that that this couldn't be further from the truth; he is simply an office boy and will pass through life working his way day-by-day through a series of similarly menial jobs. The biggest obstacle to his advancement (besides his skin color) is the fact that he speaks no English, which is a 100% essential skill to be able to achieve in the Indian professional world. It's almost like the secret language that your older siblings made up when you were little to keep you out of conversations. Here the idea is similar, but it's rich/educated people who use it to do business and keep the poor people out of the conversation.

In the office, my responsibilities far exceeded my expectations. As an intern or trainee (the post I thought I was to assume) in The States, one's responsibilities range from coffee fetching to boot licking, from copy making to heavy object lugging, and from the logical and useful arrangement of paper clips to the placement of cover sheets on TPS reports. More or less, practical re-imaginations of jumping through hoops and swallowing burning swords, all for the management types who need that sort of thing done now and then for both personal entertainment and um... business related reasons. I assumed I'd be doing the same sorts of stuff here, lucky to pick up bits of PR experience along the way, and maybe by the end of the year be a contributing member of the office. But, alas, this was not the case. From day one, I was thrown into the fire pit, asked to copy edit, compose press releases, and create PR proposals to attract new business. I found that the service I was best able to offer was not my penetrative PR abilities (which frankly I have none of), but my ever-improving ability to string words English together in a coherent and meaningful manner. Not that anything that spews forth from the melon north of my shoulders is in any objective way deserving of such honorifics (Coherent? Meaningful?), but compared to the seemingly random conglomeration of mis-conjugated verbs, missing articles, confused conjunctions, and mistaken idiomatic expressions that comprise the vast majority of Indian English, even an Ohio State linebacker’s prose reads like Ol' Bill Shakespeare.

At first, being relied upon and granted great responsibility seemed like a blessing. I was always busy, sometimes at the office from 9:30 in the morning until 8:30 in the evening. I enjoyed the creative aspects, and the fact that I was able to provide the office with a skill it otherwise lacked. But with time, it became painfully clear that my boss was abusing his position of power, asking me to stay later and later, do more and more work that required my specialized skills, with little regard for my life outside the office. Working six days a week was at first a mere annoyance, but I soon realized that it constricted my ability to live, as I spent my entire week spinning the work-exercise-eat-sleep wheel, then had Sunday to wash my clothes and prepare for another week doing the same. It also became obvious to me that my efforts were single-handedly raising the value of each of our clients' portfolios, as a well-written press release is not only more likely to be picked up by a news-outlet, but its product messages are also far more likely to be remembered by the public. This is the pitch I made to my boss when I asked for a raise, and also to work only two Saturdays a month. In short, he said no, and as I had explained that if he was unable to meet my asking price, I would work through August, he decided to fire my on the spot. Maybe I was having delusions of grandeur, maybe I simply designed a set of demands that ensured my release from the company, but either way I'm no longer working there and much happier because of it. Some would call what I was doing paying dues, I call it exploitation, especially considering the joke jobs that most of my colleagues held, in which they could take days at a time off, or show up late. I don’t mind working hard, but I will be compensated appropriately for the services I offer, and not on the basis of an agreement that I entered without any knowledge of how little support I'd receive from my sponsoring organization (AIESEC), and a lack of understanding of how little spending power my meager my salary granted.

Compare, quickly, my situation to that of my friends here working with a market research firm. Not only do they earn almost twice as much, they are also provided with a Western-quality flat with air conditioning near their place of work, a set limit on weekly working hours, taxis home if they work past 9 PM, company clothing and bags, a subsidized company cafeteria, and a host of other benefits. It’s no Google, but they certainly value employees in a way that my former boss would never understand. There is some possibility that I’ll be finding employment with this company in the near future.

Hard work and perseverance only pay off when there is some form of ideological payoff, or you have no other choice. For me, neither of these criteria was met. I found working at a PR agency, on the whole, less contributory toward the forward progress of humanity than advertising, and that’s no small criticism. It's advertising disguised as objective content in the context of news outlets (newspapers and TV news programs) that people are supposed to be able to trust to bring them unbiased coverage. But as a PR man, your job is to get as much coverage for your clients as possible in this seemingly objective form. What's wrong with that? Well nothing, if you don't mind the purposeful delusion of readers, most of whom have no idea that what they're reading comes from the mind of a paid company representative as opposed to an objective reporter. The fact is that I may someday again work in PR, but it will be for a company in whose product I believe, not some agency whose allegiance flows with the winds, and abandons clients to the competition to charge a higher fee. Coincidentally, the company I was working for did that to a local business school. They dissolved the relationship to go work for another b-school, but then accepted a later assignment from the first company and leveraged it in the media without attaching the agency name to its press releases, which were sent to the local media by way of a specially created dummy Gmail account and managed by another company intern whose name was not yet associated with the company. This is a full acknowledgement that we were working for two competitors at once, and that my boss recognized the base-level conflict of interest, but some people will sacrifice anything (including integrity) for the almighty Rupee.

So what am I doing in India now that I'm free? First and foremost I'm contemplating. Do I want to leave this country and return home to all my friends and family? Or do I want to ride the tiger, and stick it out through the tough times (India is still no easy place to live, despite the absence of a sweaty hour and half imprisonment on the bus in my daily routine) to try to find the beauty of a place I've already consigned to the lower echelons of the Grand Pantheon of Countries?

Leaving would in some senses be a failure on my part to harness a challenge. I intended to spend more than a year away from home, to live a life unlike anything I'd ever experienced before and immerse myself in a culture completely different than my own. Up to now, I've failed in that respect. Three months is a long time, but it’s not a year. I believe that this failure is not totally my own fault, it has been affected in part by a bad experience with AIESEC and the office, but in the end we are all responsible for our own happiness, so it’s my own fault for not yet being able to find that here. I suppose that's why I've dissolved my relationship with the office (not yet with AIESEC though, since I'm still living in their residence), because I was unhappy dedicating my life to another man’s goals in which I didn’t believe. I also wanted to spend the winter away from Michigan, something that despite my travels, I've never had the chance to do as I've always had to be in class come autumn. How nice would it be to return home next June, just in time for summer in Traverse City, just as the area’s natural splendor is blossoming, for reunions with friends and family, beaches, the Cherry Festival, and the Film Festival? Not a bad deal if you ask me, and my brain is telling me to try to find a way to make India work for another nine months. It’s just that my heart is tugging in the other direction.

On the other hand, and maybe it’s just an excuse to go somewhere comfortable and be lazy, but the truth is that I miss my family and friends like never before, which is a testament to the poor conditions of this experience. I’ve never missed home while traveling, but I've never traveled to a place like India, much less gone there to work, so that has added to the challenge of integration and adjustment. That has been one source of confundity for me; despite my past travel experiences, I was completely unprepared for the punch in the gut, kick to the shins, and slap to the face that coming to India has been. This tells me that maybe I’m not as rugged as I thought. Then again, maybe it’s just that when I’m expected to be professional (an inherently un-rugged role), I’m not so rugged. The life of a traveler and a PR professional are very different, and you can’t be one during the day and the other at night, it simply doesn’t work. In my book, at least.

How badly I miss the comforts of home, family, and friends has come as a surprise to me, and beyond that, my longing for fall Saturdays in Ann Arbor, as well as the University atmosphere and community has made life here especially difficult. I recently watched a video about a class of sixth graders from Harlem, New York who visited the University, and sung the fight song together. In the past I would have considered myself a man made of sterner stuff, but the tears this display brought on sent me to the office bathroom to regain my composition. Thinking back to my own days as a sixth grader, with college still ahead put me into a pensive mood. Not that I don’t have a lifetime full of amazing experiences ahead of me, but college is special. I know how deeply I feel for that place and the people I shared it with, and to keep myself so far away at a time when I still have so many friends on campus seems like unnecessary self-inflicted punishment. Am I living in the past? Clinging by threads to an easy way of life that I no longer find myself blessed enough to be able to live, and chafing under the difficulties I face in my current life? That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Another is that I’ve had the opportunity to better my life, so I’ve taken advantage of it. Whether or not I take the next step and go home, or find a life I’m happy with here remains to be seen.

The most important thing is that I do what's right for me. I think that's why I decided to orchestrate my exit from the PR company. I lived with an exploitative family in Spain last year, and instead of fighting back or threatening to leave, I just boiled angrily in secret. I decided after that internment that I would never stand by and be used for another’s goals, irrespective of my own, again. I promised myself that no one else will tell me how to live my life, and it seemed to me that the job here implicitly required I give all my energy to making another man rich (and make no mistake, even with a small number of employees, the company was doing quite well). I don’t necessarily want to make myself rich, but I do want to have time to sit down in front of the keyboard and write, or relax, or simply have some time to enjoy life, things I was unable to do as an employee at that company. There’s a reason this journal has taken almost six weeks to complete, and it’s that I just haven’t had time for it with the demands in that office. Once again, I recognize the fact that many people are out there working longer hours in more difficult conditions, but few do so by choice. I didn’t come to India to spend the entire year in an office, I need to explore, and I think if I decide to stay, it will need to be in a context that allows me to travel.

Have I made the right decision? I don't know. But I think that if you’re unhappy, and you can make a change, it’s always the best thing to do. Otherwise you’ll always be wondering what could have been. What's really amazing is the number of opportunities that I'm seeing open up both here and back home now that I'm not tied down here. I'm still struggling with the desire to leave the country, but I want to give this place a chance when I'm not working a job I hate. I’m going to see what happens over the next couple of weeks with a few of the opportunities with which I’ve been presented.

One break of interest is to work as a white model. I specify “white” because I am no model, not by Western standards. But as I said before, this culture has a distinct white fixation, which means that there is a general need for white faces to play the part of the any-Westerner. I suppose I might be considered the grand daddy of all hypocrites right now, having just railed against white images in advertising here only a few thousand words back. The fact is though, that I’m not providing an unattainable aspirational image for the Indians, I’m simply the mythical “Westerner” in their image culture, there to provide an element of “Western credibility”. If that’s no defense, which I’m not sure it is, then I’m trying something new and interesting despite the moral conflicts I feel.

The way this all came about is through an Indian friend of mine named Jas, who called me last Thursday (what would become my last day at work) and informed me that he had a shoot for which they needed a "rocking dude" like me, and that I should skip work on Friday to participate. At first I scoffed, thinking that I didn’t spend four years at university to go off and do something completely ignorant of any semblance of intellectual ability I possess. But as the day wore on, and I had my second and final contract meeting with my boss, during which I found out that despite my contributions I was not a full employee, and in fact a trainee (he proposed that the cards he had purchased for me which say "Account Executive" might have been confusing me into thinking I was a full employee, but they were simply so I would be respected by clients and potential clients), I decided it was a chance to try something new and exciting.

The commercial was for a Nokia sponsored rock festival here in Delhi called iROCK. The concept was to show where some famous rock stars would be if they’d never been discovered. Under this premise I ended up portraying various band members at The Rolling Stones Rock Quarry, Guns ‘n’ Roses Florists, The Doors’ Wood Art, and Metallica Foundry. The shoot took a total of fifteen hours, from 7 AM until 10 PM, during which I spent most of my time preening and primping my hair, adjusting my makeup, and powdering my nose. I felt a bit ashamed, because everyone else was working hard setting up shots or putting the set together; but I, the ‘star’ did little more than sit and wait for my turn to stand around and do a whole lot of nothing in front of the camera. My Mick Jagger’s, Slash, and James Hetfield were quite convincing, but I look about as much like Jim Morrison as I do Madame Bovary.

The commercial is on the production fast track, since the event is coming up soon, so hopefully in my next journal I’ll have a link for it.

The experience was definitely a positive one. Certainly not as intellectually challenging as a real job, but I got paid three times as much as I would have for a day at the office, while being pampered like I actually was somebody. Yesterday I went down to an agency to see if there is more work like this for whities in this country. Apparently there is, so we'll see how that goes over the next few weeks, and that will probably be a factor of if I decide to stay here in India.

Photos from the shoot are at the top of the journal.

That's it for now from India. Now that I've got time in my day, I'll be writing more about my experiences in the country, especially my trips to Agra (to see the Taj Mahal) and Jaipur, as well as (hopefully) more positive reactions to the culture and country.

Adam

Adam at Large Vol. 10 Part B: Unfinished Business

2007-06-30T06:47:00.000-04:00

We continue the narrative after The Great Saganaki Incident from Part A of this volume.

A few days later I found myself playing a principal part in a scene from the theatre of the absurd. My role: a traveler, shaving in the bathroom at his hostel. The company: a bum, as himself, trying to wrest a razor blade from the traveler by way of business negotiation. The dilemma: the two characters don't share a common spoken language, and can communicate only through body movement.

The scene takes place in the bathroom at the Rethymno Youth Hostel in Rethymno, a small beach city on the Greek Isle of Crete. The island is the largest of all Greek islands, and acts as a southern cap to the Aegean Sea, which is contained by mainland Greece to the north and west, and Turkey to the east. The traveler, after spending a day hiking in the untamed wilderness of Crete, is now preparing to cleanse himself of the impurities of the natural world and return to his chemical-sustained existence among civilization.

Traveler (Under the spotlight, and as an aside to audience. Stage is dark): "So there I found myself, minding my own business, shaving after a hard day of which I spent a good portion running from a rampaging herd of goats through the bowling ball chute known as Imbros Gorge. I'm getting ready to purify myself in the waters of another cold hostel shower, and rejoin the ranks of those walking this earth without dirt-caked faces and blood-stained shins. Staring blankly past my own horribly soiled visage in the mirror, I'm scraping the mountain man's badge (my grizzly beard) from my chin, when suddenly, out from my shoulder pops a second head. Now normally this might surprise me, but after a day during which I faced more danger than a mound of ground beef at the dog pound, I was ready for anything. Despite this fact, seeing the maimed vagabond's visage staring back in the mirror remained a test in facial contortion control, as my knee-jerk reaction would have been to crinkle my nose, stick out my tongue, squeeze one eye shut, and shout "ble-e-e-ccchhhhhhh". And that new head was pretty hideous too.

(Lights go up on the stage, revealing an austere bathroom set consisting of a lighted mirror and sink.)

I quickly came to understand that it belonged to a bum who had simply wandered into the hostel's bathroom off the street, and who proceeded to waddle into the stall adjacent to my position and relieve himself while still keeping one eye on me and my precious cache (the razor). After terminating his liquid deposit at the Porcelain Bank of Crete, my new bathroom buddy turned to me, and thus began the bargaining. "

The bum: (This character never utters a word, he appears dilapidated, unkempt, and generally seedy. He leers at the traveler for a few moments, unsure of how to communicate his message, then pantomimes to the traveler the act of shaving, then points to the currently employed razor.)

(Stage lights down again, spotlight on traveler for soliloquy #2)

Traveler: "It occurred to me immediately that the bum's gesture was some sort of local Cretan greeting, in which the two parties each run a finger vertically over their neck while staring awkwardly at one another. Not wanting to offend, I repeated his hand motions, then leered back at him, pointing and adding in a bit of a googly-eye at the end for good measure."

(Stage lights up, traveler does the aforementioned monkey-dance as the bum stares on, perplexed. The bum proceeds to hold up a tattered and sodden jacket while gesturing to the razor, proposing a one to one exchange. Stage lights down, begin soliloquy #3)

Traveler: "It took some deciphering, but after a few minutes of greetings, Cherokee rain dances, and antelope mating rituals, I came to understand that the man wanted my shaving razor. Apparently a shrewd merchant in a past life, my friend was even willing to offer collateral in trade for the blade, a brilliant and strategic negotiative move. The jacket, it seemed apparent, had been used as a yak manure sled in the clay fields of central Mongolia (thus the manure's distinct strawberry jelly bouquet, not to be confused for the crunchy peanut butter odor of eastern Mongolian yak manure. Now if only we can find yak manure that reeks of two pieces of bread, we'll have the whole package...), and immediately I knew I had to have it (the jacket that is). Seeing myself sauntering down the Paris's Champs Elysees, London's Bond Street, or LA's Rodeo Drive swathed in the garment, dropping jaws and drawing jealous stares from posh people-watchers like apple turnovers at an anorexia anonymous meeting, I knew the coat was my one-way-ticket to the high echelon of fashion. But the moral dilemma remained. Did I want to be seen in garb made from the dead hides of synthetic amalgamations? In my mind, the coat carried the noisome stench of cruelty to chemical compounds, and anyone who knows me knows that I don't support the needless slaughter and reconstitution of lab-created composites in the name of aesthetic ventures like fashion. So, dejected by my own moral accountability, I motioned a refusal to my friend then escorted him from the hostel's bathroom.

In this and my previous journals I've made references to a fateful encounter with a herd of goats while hiking through Imbros Gorge on Crete. It is high time that this story was told. I feel as if I've built it up a great deal, so I hope the real thing matches expectation, though this may be difficult as most people are probably expecting some sort of Pecos Bill tornado-riding or Paul Bunyan Grand Canyon-diggin’ tall-tale, or some impossible Herculean struggle against nature and its animalian surrogates. I'm here (well actually I'm in India) to tell you that the story is nothing of the sort. It's far more outlandish.

Imbros is actually the smaller of two gorges on Crete. The larger is called Samaria Gorge, and it has been called (by certain in-expert sources, my brother among them) the "Grand Canyon" of Europe. I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of that analogy, as I've never been to either. So the question is then why did I not visit Samaria Gorge, seeing as how I was sharing an island with it for a good two nights. To that question I provide the following answer: I'm lazy. The bus for Samaria leaves at 7 AM. The bus for Imbros leaves (or so I thought) at 8:30. So I skipped hiking the so-called Grand Canyon of Europe for a mere hour and a half of sleep? Right? Not so fast, the story isn't quite so simple (and I know you're wondering when this is going to get interesting, give me a minute). It had rained two days previous to the day I was to go hiking, and all information I could find said that the Samaria was always closed for the two days following rain, so they can avoid re-filling Dead Man's Drop with... well... dead men (and women). (Whether or not a "Dead Man's Drop" actually exists somewhere in Samaria is debatable, but either way it's symbolic of the fact that the ground needs to dry so people don't slip and fall dramatically and hilariously to their deaths). It was under this impression, that I decided to, instead of getting up at 5:30 AM, trekking down to the buts station and asking if there was a 7 AM to Samaria, that I decided to catch the 8:30 to Imbros instead. The real joke was the fact that the Imbros bus didn't leave until 10:00, so I potentially could have slept a great deal longer that morning, but instead found myself braving the streets of Rethymno at the ungodly hour of 8 AM. For more on that morning, please refer to the fish story in "Adam at Large Vol. 9: Using my Words".

At noon I found myself in Imbros, an urban metropolis consisting of three houses and a restaurant, at a trail entrance curiously devoid of other trail hikers, walking past a stack of burning books (I didn't ask) down toward the beginnings of the gorge. For those in need of a refresher in grographical vocabulary, a gorge is the place where the foot of one mountain meets the foot of another, creating a long curvaceous gap between the two where the water can run down from the heights, escape the altitude and head to the coast for a swim. A valley is much larger, and wider. So there I found myself, hiking down through Imbros Gorge, lunch's remains, a yogurt and a large pack of graham-style crackers, tucked securely under my arm as I bounded from boulder to boulder and down the five miles of fissure to the coast. Along the way I met a disproportionate number of older German couples, to whom I bid a kindly "ahlo" and "tchuss", and also an overwhelming number of goats, who would invariably, after some initial trepidation, nose right up to me and my crackers and stare blankly into my eyes, as if begging for "just one little cracker for an old goat". At first it was rather endearing, thinking that I in some way had a connection to these beasts of the wilderness, to these simple creatures that, like myself, just wanted a snack. But after a while it started to get eerie, like a scene out of some Stephen King "Goats of the Gorge" story. The first group to venture into within a few feet of me was a pack of about eight, who, after a bit of bold diplomacy from their leader, surrounded me and attempted to weird their way into my parcel of delights. If you think I may be mis-representing the goats' demeanor, then please go buy a pack of crackers, and find a herd of goats some time. Let them surround you, and then tell me you aren't creeped out by their unblinking stares, perpetual grins, expressionless eye-brows, and gnashing teeth (gnashing on grass and moss, but nonetheless, an imposing and fear-inducing sight). They're like robot clowns that never stop, and I found out just how persistent they are after I tried to slip away, down the gorge, and about 10 minutes later, thinking I'd lost the lot of them, suddenly heard the "tink, tonk, tink, tonk" of the leader's neck-bell growing louder as he and his minions drew closer. Caving in to fear, I turned tail and ran, over rocks and stumps, past trees and under ledges, as fast as I could away from the maddening ring as . After a few minutes of full out sprinting, I decided that I was safe. I continued my hike, stopping at varying intervals for a photo or two, appreciating nature and basking in its glorious sculpting abilities. Admiring Imbros Gorge, one gets to feeling like maybe a few million years ago, anticipating the birth of the great French sculptor Rodin, nature decided to preliminarily humble the man by carving a masterpiece of its own. Down between the two mountains it scraped, water its tool, leaving a landscape strewn with dramatic cliffs, impossible overhangs, and boulders the size of small whales. But nature didn't stop its boasting there, it then decided to put Monet to shame too by decorating the whole thing with a forest fit for the Bavarian highlands. Sprinkling evergreens liberally, nature created a landscape both beautiful and singular in its strange situation among the arid climate of Greece. Like your mom on MySpace, it's a fish out of water; a green forest splitting desert-caked inclines to either side, each rising plane covered in spiny bushes and hard-packed dirt.

I lost myself, marveling at the stark contrast between what I had seen earlier in the hike, during my previously unmentioned "jaunt up the mountain", and what I found below in the gorge. To complete the enchanting effect of the gorge, somewhere in the distance, wind chimes sounded... unfortunately, they sounded a bit too much like a bell, the type of bell worn around the neck of a goat, specifically a goat leading a herd of followers down through a gorge in search of a human carrying food to accost. Now utterly convinced of my unwilling participation in some sort of cruel hidden camera show, I decided to confront my tormentors. I sat in waiting, preparing myself for whatever might come bounding around the curve. As I had expected, it was my old nemesis, the King of the Goats, the leader of the pack accompanied by his family and a few new recruits they'd picked up along the way. Whether or not they'd devised some plan to wrest the crackers from me or not, they were apparently undaunted by coming upon me laying in wait and as they approached I decided to make take the initiative and the first move. I walked right up to the bell-laden leader, and decided to show him for whom it was that his bell tolled. One unblinking gaze to another, I explained in a clear and concerned voice, that the crackers were "human food, and not nearly as tasty or nutritious as the mixture of grass, weeds, and dirt" that comprise their normal cuisine. This seemed to have no effect, and my comfort in face-to-face confrontation only served to embolden the other goats, who crowded closer as my counterpart continued to stare through me. "Furthermore", I proclaimed, adding a bit of imposition to my tone, if the goat envoy did not break off attempts to pester me, I would be left with no other option than to lash out violently possibly by standing board straight, and swinging my arms, fists clenched, in downward concentric circles (double windmill style), while walking on a pre-determined path between two points, on which if they happened to be found, it would be no fault of mine if they were clobbered and bashed into oblivion." It was just as if I had told them all I'd give them all crackers if they all crowded in really really close, and even the kids began to creep out from behind their mothers' hind legs to see what type of deal the kindly human was striking with their patriarch. Seeing my impassioned pleas for their health and then safety fall on ignorant ears, I decided to abandon civility. Raising my arms above my head and raising my gaze to the heavens, I belched forth a scream so primal, so Cro-Magnon in origin, that even the bones long-dead and deep-interred must have taken the hint. Slowly the goats backed off, giving me the space businessmen grant buskers in the street. I can only assume that to this day, the goats of that pack have yet to cross the line where I left them, fearing that further on, the crazy human might be waiting for them ready to make good on his malfeasant promises.

After Crete I moved on to the island of Santorini. The island is renowned for its dramatic cliffs, created after an eruption some 3500 years ago, when the empty volcano collapsed and left only the watermelon rind footprint that remains today, jutting up forcibly from the sea. The black basaltic sand beaches that line the coast are the pulverized remains of the same volcano, and help to draw what is likely the greatest number of tourists of any Greek Isle. During my time on Santorini I hiked mountains, befriended street dogs (and bore witness to the death of one: RIP Spicy), jogged the coast, and explored the greater mass of the island on a four-wheeler, both paved roads and otherwise.

Hostel Anna at Perissa Beach was one of the most austere accommodations at which I've ever stayed. But it was that very simplicity that made it so much fun. It was a set of three dorms, all accessible directly from the main veranda, where everyone congregated. Many great hostels provide great services like walking tours, laundry, free internet, a bar, and these all contribute to an enjoyable atmosphere in a hostel because they make your stay easier, or bring travelers together. Hostel Anna offered none of these things, but the simple fact that Perissa Beach is a small beach village, and the veranda is big enough for everyone at the hostel means that everyone ends up in the same spot most nights, and they all get to know each other.

I don't bring up the point simply to laud Hostel Anna, (though it's a worthwhile subordinate point), but instead to contrast the experience I had there to my time on Ios and Mykonos, during which I stayed at Far Out Beach Club, and Paradise Beach Club, respectively. The two beach clubs are to be commended on offering both high-end accommodation for vacationers, and also cheap (€10/night) bungalows for backpackers. That being said, for some reason with everyone staying in separate rooms, people tend to be a bit more isolated than they would be at a normal hostel. Granted there are still areas for congregation, and a directly accessible beach, it still is lacking that special "something" that keeps us travelers coming back to hostels, that special something that brings us all together at most hostels. As a solo traveler this is especially important, because if I can't meet and make new friends every place I go, I'll be walking the streets alone for the day, which can be nice sometimes, but it's much more fun to do with friends, so you've got someone to share the fun with and to bounce your reflections off later. This brings up the question of why one would travel alone to begin with, and that question would require a full thousand word answer, and since this journal has already passed through the Land of Plenty and is quickly approaching the border of Too Much, I will leave that essay for another day.

My experiences on Ios and Mykonos were wholly enjoyable but not honestly worth expounding on. These are both renowned islands of diversion, as is Santorini, and with good reason.

After being on each of those isles for a few days, I returned to Athens for a night, in preparation for my trek to Poland. The story of that trip, as well as my experiences in Poland, The Czech Republic, Salzburg, Austria, and Munich, Germany will also have to wait for another time.

Since I've published all the photos from Greece worth seeing (and many that aren't so worth seeing), I decided to finally take a few hours and upload my Birthright Israel photos. They can be viewed here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/afivenson/sets/72157600464598794/

First impressions of India coming soon…

Adam

PS I know I’m leaving a lot on the table here, but sometimes you’ve got to get out while you’re still ahead, as in, under 4000 words. Don’t worry though, I’ll keep writing as long as you keep reading.

Adam at Large Vol. 10 Part A: Greek Flaming Feta

2007-06-24T05:07:00.002-04:00

No text

Adam at Large Vol.9: Using My Words

2007-05-24T12:45:00.000-04:00

Greece is a bit like Spain. It's as if you took Spain's Costa del Sol, whitewashed villages and all, and set a mischievous little fairy loose upon it. Dancing from street sign to restaurant menu she would go, tapping her magic wand on half the letters in each word at random and replacing them with geometric shapes and mathematical symbols as a joke on already baffled tourists. I would warn the Greek people and their fairy; history shows that it's far from the best idea to mess with already miffed tourists. Just ask the people of Savannah about Sherman's little "jaunt" through Georgia back in 1864 after they slipped a live round into his daily breakfast of cannon balls and milk (coincidentally, Sherman is said to have crapped thunder).

OK so the reality is that confused tourists are rarely so regimented in their response to adversity. Why, just last night at the hostel, I witnessed an exemplary study in the fine art of what is scientifically known as a "hissy-fit" thrown by a young lady (clearly a well-versed practitioner of the form) locked from her room and clothed merely in a towel. While the rest of us sat in the common room, guffawing at each others' clever quips, generally having a merry old time of it, this young lady repeatedly attempted to jimmy (Webster's definition: to ease open a stuck door, hinge) the lock on her room's door with a series of firm, repeated blows to the door's central plane, from where, apparently, the vibrations can be conducted toward the lock's pins most efficiently. Either that or she just wanted to make some noise. I'm not sure which, *wink* *wink*. Anyway the rest of the night involved a great deal more banging. Of her first on the door. The rest of us carried on below, despite the din from above, then smiled smugly as we retired to our comfortable beds, confident that such an unstable, attention-starved, and aggressive beauty (read: bitch) must somehow deserve this ironic and oh-so hilarious fate. Things quieted down around 2 AM, when I can only assume that she got zapped by the fairy into whatever letter of the Greek alphabet is silent. I dont know which letter that is, or even if there is one, and even after posing the question to a group of idiot teen-agers it remains of mystery to me.

I dont apply the label "idiot" lightly, in fact, in my book it's actually a quite difficult rank to attain. Sort of like four star general in the army, or Grand Dragon in Chinese cooking competitions, it's not given to small fries. It requires a truly outstanding lack of brainpower, and this group of young men appeared to be collectively in command of just the right amount of cranial current: none. They proved their qualification by repeatedly crippling random unlucky ducks, fowl who were simply trying to catch some rays on a rock embankment splitting a small river in the Cretan village of Verisis. In a vain attempt to impress a small contingent of members of the twin chromosome club (girls) by hurling fist sized rocks from their sniper's post atop a bridge. Bravo. Looks guys, if you want to impress girls, dont do it by throwing rocks at ducks. No one's impressed by the fact that it takes you six tries to land what might be generously considered a "warning shot across the bow". And judging by the number and density of the flock, I'd say that you'd have a hard time hitting a snowflake in a blizzard.

So here I am passing judgement on a group of kids I dont really even know, feeling pretty pretentious, pretty high-and-mighty. Many in my position would ride off into the metaphorical conversational sunset, having berated and derided his/her way to the top. Not me. I've got a suggestion for these fine young men if they want to catch the eye of a lass: If you want to show the ladies how much of a man you are, dont throw rocks, throw boulders. Preferably the sort you often see bulldozers and front-end-loaders struggling with. That way, everyone will know how strong you are, and you're guaranteed to flatten a lot more of those pesky ducks.

Back to the language issue. I'm actually really enjoying the challenge of learning to decipher the Greek alphabet. Having not been involved with the Greek system at Michigan, I'm really lacking in knowledge of the rich culture and language here. However, my observations over the past few days are leading me to suspect that there may be a disconnect somewhere in the relationship between the Greeks in Ann Arbor and those in Athens. Why, in all my wandering here I've yet to hear the traditional Greek mantras " BROSEF!!" or " KEGGER!!". Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong spots, but what better place for a traditional Greek kegger than at the Parthenon, atop the Acropolis and overlooking greater Athens? And there can surely be no more fitting spot to perform the ancient Athenian ritual of the keg-stand than high atop the teetering pillars of The Temple of Olympian Zues. What better way to put your Xtreme attitude (to compliment the reading of the word Xtreme, please defiantly cross your forearms ten inches in front of the face and shout "X-TREME!!". This emphasizes the extremity of your X-treme-ness, and after all, what could be more X-treme than a hand motion? Complete the effect by having four friends launch you (in a kayak) down the snacks aisle of your nearest 7-11 as you once again shout "X-TREME!!". I'm pretty sure that this is the longest aside ever, so if you've forgotten how the original sentence began, please refer to the 8 words preceding the opening parentheses) on display than by ingesting massive amounts of beer while suspended upside down? I'm not sure there is any other way, but I'll have to check with the pan-Hellenic council on that one.

Years ago, when this passage began, I think I was comparing Spain and Greece. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I got into all that, because the only real similarities I can see are their massive Mediterranean coast lines and the prominence of fish on the national palate. The first is a big attraction, who doesn't love beaches, but the second is more of a deterrent for me. I'm not sure what it is about fish, especially raw fish, but I simply can't stand the smell, taste, or even sight of it. Case and point: I'm currently on the island of Crete, in a city called Rethymnos (don't worry, I've been here for two days and I still don't know how to pronounce it), and I had to get up really early this morning so I could make it to the 8:30 bus for Imbros Gorge and spend the rest of the day hiking. So there I found myself, searching the streets for food at 8 AM. There really ought to be a law against recent college graduates without jobs getting up before 11. PM. But there isn't, so under a budding sunrise I waded through a sea of Greeks (the real ones, no brosefs in sight), in search of some early morning sustenance. The first vendor I came across was watering his fare. No, it wasn't flowers or fruit, but fish. Reopening the Book of Adam, to which I made reference earlier, this act can be found categorized under the section entitled 'Gross'. There's no real reason I ought to be repulsed by seeing someone douse piles of fish in water, but for some reason it just irks me. Maybe the mere idea of keeping dead things in a slimy state is what gets to me, and I apologize for boiling it down to such base terms for fish fans out there. But this simple act was not sufficient to warrant a 300 word tirade. It was the gigantic decapitated heads that really pushed the Repulsive Meter's pin from "Turn the other cheek" to "Oh wow... really??". How big? Roughly the size of the boulders that the members of Idiot Squad Alpha should have been throwing if they'd really wanted to impress the ladies. Big enough to fit at the business end of a fish of sufficient size to leap from the water, up onto the a sea-side boardwalk, swallow a small dog in a single gulp, and leap back into the water before anyone had a chance to yell "Get a real dog!". That size fish. Yuck.

Athens is a city about which I'd heard not great things. People had told me that it was boring, and just like any other major European city. The discrepancy between what I had been brought to expect and what I experienced was vast. It is entirely possible that those who were not captivated by the city's archaic beauty spent their time in the wrong places. Of course one has to visit the Acropolis and its figurehead the Parthenon. BUT there is so much more to this city than just the big attractions. I found the hostel's neighborhood, Plaka, wholly enchanting. Surely the main commercial roadways look like any other main street in Europe, but the mixture of ancient Greek architecture and ruins that one finds in certain neighborhoods is distinctively Athens. They really should be paying me for this kind of PR.

I left Athens because my hostel no longer had space, and I wouldn't want to stay any other hostel there. For anyone who's going to be in the area, Athens Backpackers is an awesome hostel, and there's a reason it's ranked among the top 5 European properties on Hostelworld.com. I headed next to Crete, where I hiked 'til I dropped (and was stalked for hours by a family of hungry goats), and am currently on the island of Santorini. There's a lot more to discuss here, and I'll try to cover it all in future emails, but for the moment the length of this email is passing into the realm of the ridiculous.

Some who've been tracking my progress will know already that I spent the 10 days prior plotting the seasonal migration of White-throated Dippers throughout Europe and the Middle East. This would have been a extremely formative and highly educational experience had I ever actually done it. Actually, I was busy taking advantage of the Birthright Israel program, and traveling 10 days all-expenses-paid from north to south, east to west. Truthfully, this portion of my travels begs a 10,000 word entry, one which requires a great deal more patience and time than either the writer or the reader has. Hopefully I'll find it in my heart to write with detail on my time in the country, but for now I'm busy working on a bit of freelance (paid) writing on my experience, and when that's done I'll make sure it gets out to all of you.

Photos are going to be done a bit differently this time. I'm going to upload them as batches to Flickr.com and just post the link to the album every time. Check out my first set of photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8396077@N07/sets/72157600245435901/

More soon, thanks for reading, eagerly awaiting your responses.

Adam

Adam: Back on the Move, Vol. 8

2006-06-19T18:03:00.000-04:00

Summer has arrived here in Granada, bringing with it high temperatures and a blazing mid-day sun, as well as the conclusion of classes at the two institutions of higher learning I've been attending; CEGRÍ and the University of Granada. So now that I'm freed from the "oppression" of homework-less classes and tie-your-shoe-easy exams, what type of work am I doing to forward world peace, end poverty, save the whales, discover a viable alternative to fossil based fuels, rid the internet of pop-ups, and contribute to the body of hypotheses behind the theory of what makes the wheel 'go'? A great deal, I'll have you know. In fact, my contemplation of these matters is so deep, especially while I'm fast asleep at night, that I have to spend the entirety of my waking hours lounging in the sun and eating bonbons, while concocting clever quips for my journals, just to catch up on my rest.

So when we last parted I was headed to Gloucester, (pronounced Gluster) England to watch my Traverse City buddy Phil play his final rugby game of the season. This weekend trip was a great success, and a fine time was had by all. And there was much rejoicing. Happenings of note (or potential disasters evaded, depending on your point of view) include some 4 AM wanderings through the mean streets of London, and some incorrect train boardings, led by naturalized "local" Phil. Luckily both circumstances terminated with arrival at the intended destination, wallets and intestines in place and intact.

Phil's team didn't win the day, nor did they get the glory, but they did succeed in entertaining me for a good two plus hours (a noble achievement, to be sure). Furthermore watching the contest bore in my soul a deep seeded nostalgia for the game, and with it a desire to get back onto the pitch myself; to return to the savage seeds of human instinct and rediscover a group dynamic that has nothing to do with civility, and everything to do with who's the biggest, fastest, strongest, and meanest. An anachronism in the study of social interaction where dialogue is replaced with sheer physical brutality, where those opposed clash not wits but bodies, breaking bones and crushing cartilage, shredding skin and bathing in blood. On second thought, put like that, the nostalgia melts away pretty quick. Maybe I'll stick to watching.

Here are a few photos from the trip:

A pair of debonair gentlemen
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7424.JPG

Downtown Gloucester. No the dog isn't stiff dead, it's reaching for a doggie treat. At least that's what we'll tell the children
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7428.JPG

Phil's living arrangement (the white half) in Cinderford, about 45 minutes outside of Gloucester
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7443.JPG

Phil testing some new rugby headgear
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7449.JPG

Phil is in the middle wearing #1 (I don't know why they gave him my number)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7465W.JPG

The following weekend was spent in Sevilla (Seville in English) with a crew of fellows and a lady. Together, JT, Dave, Chris, Caitlin, and I (with scattered appearances by Mike and Andre) visited Sevilla's famous cathedral, one of the world's largest, the Real Alcazaba (AKA the Wannabe-Alhambra) attended a bull fight, and fraternized with the Michigan students who've spent this past semester studying there. The cathedral's sheer immensity was impressive and imposing, and the bell tower, the converted prayer tower of the mosque that once stood in the same place, offered a would-be excellent view out over the city. "Would-be" because of the thick horozontal iron bars, spaced three inches apart in a necessary attempt to prevent one of Spain's most common atrocities; guinea pig suicides.

From left to right, JT, Dave (both went to Morocco) Caitlin, and Chris
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7482.JPG

Study this photo for a moment. Try to ignore the hideous glare. Sorry, it was a sunny day.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7501.JPG

Now stare in open-mouthed amazement at our clever mimicry
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7500.JPG

Facade of Sevilla's cathedral
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7505.JPG

The crew, plus Mike and Andre, having a quick lunch. Dave, appearing in the middle, tastes the sour grapes of defeat. At the hands of whom? The world may never know.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7509.JPG

The bell tower (sorry no pics of the penthouse jail)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7568.JPG

Out over the cathedral
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7609.JPG

Let the pizza eating contest come to an end, my plate front and center, clearly the winner
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7627.JPG

Let the pizza eating contest begin! Alright, it was over before it started
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7626.JPG

The signs, left to right: For beer, for wine, for whisky, for hangover (Resaca is also the name of their dog). The one in the middle says At least we're sincere, and under that www.lazybeggers.com (very funny web site if you've got a few minutes)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7749.JPG

In Plaza Espana
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7757.JPG

One of the two towers at either end of the Plaza
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7763.JPG

The smallest and hairiest press salesman I've ever seen
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7759.JPG

The Real Alcazaba (royal fortress) had some nice gardens, and it was interesting to see architecture and decoration so similar to that of Granada's Alhambra, however the lack of a dramatic vista out over the city, as well as its slight size and significance, place the Real Alcazaba firmly below the Alhambra in the grand hierarchy of remaining Moorish architectural works. Nonetheless, the experience was well worth the price we paid for admission (which was, coincidentally, nothing) and more.

A few shots from the gardens:

Heisman Poseidon
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7528.JPG

The men. L to R, yours truly, Chris, Andre, JT, Dave, and Mike
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7534.JPG

If you look closely at this one, you can see a hedge
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7538.JPG

No flowers here, nope, none at all
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7544.JPG

Bull fighting is currently a topic of some debate here in Spain. There is a contingent that fights for the abolishment of the sport, claiming it cruel to the animals and pointlessly glorified violence. Unfortunately (for them) no one seems to care. Their pleas and claims fall on deaf ears and bull fighting continues to be a source of amusement and national pride here in Spain. Against this background of ignorance come the five of us, indifferent to the controversies and moral questions behind the spectacle, as the majority of the Spanish people seem to be, and concerned instead with being able to soak up an aspect of Spanish culture that we had all, up to then, missed out on. One fact that most people don't realize about the bull fight is that it's not all just "Olé!"s and "Toro!"s. In between those two staple phrases there's a lot of stabbing and blood, and as a result, afterwards, either the torero or the bull dies. Due to its opposition to insurmountable odds, it's generally the bulls doing most of the dying.

Depite the fact that the bull has almost no chance to win the fight (I'll explain why later) most toreros, and unfailingly all matadors are ostentatious primadonnas in the ring, taunting the outnumbered bull as if it had a chance, flashing smiles at the crowd, and posing dramatically in the face of the charging bull, all in order to show the bull, but more importantly the crowd, that they are the undisputed heavyweight champion of the ring (and all the cosmos). I do concede that one must have some hubris, along with a belief that you are the boldest and bravest of all men, the master of nature (and its emissary, the bull) to be crazy enough to get into the ring with an angry half-ton bull, albeit with 7 or 8 buddies. Furthermore, the bravado adds to the spactacularity, and without it, if the matadors ran scared every time the bull came charging, the only vicarious pleasure that could be drawn from watching a bullfight would be that causing our riotous gaffaws upon seeing the bull open a new orifice in the matador's posterior.

However, the current state of affairs inside the bullring are such that Spaniards draw pride from the skill and bravado of their fighters, and the event itself is really quite captivating, especially if you can look past the whole gory death thing.

Each bull fight features three matadors (literally translated: killers) also known as toreros (toh-RARE-ohs), each of whom fight two bulls. The fight begins with the bull, raging mad, stomping out of a tunnel, just looking for some oblivious fool to introduce to the business end of his horns. At that point there are four toreros, all hiding behind protective barriers around the ring. Sequentially, they will bravely step out from behind their barriers, get the bull to charge, then, equally as bravely, leap back behind their barricade and wait for someone else to harass the bull into vacating their side of the ring. Soon after, as the bull tires a bit, men on horeback, called picadors, come cantering out to deliver the first piercings. Atop their armored mounts, these men will trot out in front of the bull, and allow the raging beast to ram the side of their horse at full speed (maybe 25 mph, achieved over a space of 20 meters or less). Amazingly, the horses are able to maintain balance in the face of this incredible transverse force. The only proper training regimen I can imagine involves speeding semi trucks and blue whales lunched from giant slingshots.

After the picadors stab the bull in the back a few times, the band blows its trumpets and the picaderos and their horses go loping off. Next come the banderilleros (ban-der-EE-yer-ohs), the most exciting bull-stabbers of all. A banderillero squares up to the bull from about 20 meters, and as soon as he capture its attention, rises up onto his tip-toes, and extends his arms in either direction above his head while holding a colorful feather-laden harpoon in each hand. For some reason, this really pisses the bull off, so he comes charging for the banderillero, who immediately starts a lateral sprint. Just as the two are about to make contact, the banderillero jumps into the air, feet together, and plants his harpoons into the bull's back, about 18 inches behind the head. The harpoons stick into the bull's spine, but the colorful feathered shafts fall to the side, opening the wounds to allow more blood flow, and weakening his strong back muscles to make the matador's final stab easier. Once the bull has six harpoons in his back, the next stage begins.

After some more taunting by the toreros, the matador finally struts into the ring. Raising a cupped hand to the crowd, he begs their acknowledgment and the raucous reply does not dissapoint. Initially, the matador will face the bull and whip his red cape up and down while shouting "Toro! Toro!". Literally translated, this means "Bull! Bull!" but in context it's more akin to "Come! Face me Beast! For I am Man; mightest of earthly creatures. Patriarch of fire, perveyor of shelter, and inventor of music, math, and the electric tie rack!" Since most bulls claim the electric tie rack among their own designs, the matador's implied claim really gets under their skin, to the point that ramming their horns into the matador's chest seems the only proper recourse. If the matador is good, the bull whiffs every time, bucking the air behind the cape to Timbucktu, and completely missing his intended target. If he's not that good, he gets an extended stay in a five star hospital and a free trial of the hot new "intraveinious" diet.

As the bull weakens, it is less and less inclined to spend it's draining energy stores on attacking the matador's cape, instead focusing on more basic operations like breathing and standing. At a time designated of his own discretion, the matador will face the bull from about 10 feet, stand tall, point his sword at the bull's exposed neck, then lunge forward attempting to plunge the blade down through the bull's spine and into his heart. The more skilled the matador is, the fewer attempts he needs, and the quicker he puts the bull out of its misery. The bull will lunge at the matador as well, attempting to open a new airway to the lungs, however most matadors are quick enough to dodge the slowed bull attacks. The best matadors are able to get the stab on the first try.

With a sword through its heart, the bull then retreats to the ring's wall, a dying beast backed into a corner. The toreros wave their capes in front of it provoking it to lunge at them and expend it's final stores of energy, after which it slumps to the ground not unlike a tired dog. It might wave its horns in the air, in a final gesture of defiance, but before long even it collapses into the dirt, dead. The toreros have some greusome tasks, which I won't detail here, and then a bell-adorned three-horse team drags the lifeless beast from the ring as workers begin preparations for the next round. Each round takes twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Photos from the bull fight:

At the fight, the hands on my shoulders belong the weird old man behind me
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7638.JPG

Let the pomp begin. The three toreos up front are the matadors
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7639.JPG

Getting artsy with the camera
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7693.JPG

One more
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7712.JPG

The bull ramming a picador's horse
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7708.JPG

"Alright, which one of you jerks is hiding my hat behind that thing? I guess we're gonna have to find out the hard way."
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7709.JPG

Ole!
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7729.JPG

The guys again
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7741.JPG

Sunset over Sevilla
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7744.JPG

The banderillero vs the bull

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/MVI_7652.AVI

The final face-off
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/MVI_7671.AVI

The following weekend, I was on the move again, this time back in Madrid for a youth conference on bringing more world awareness back home to The States. Attendees included (mostly) American study abroad students from all parts of Europe, and of course, yours truly. Over the three days of the conference, 100 of us participated in a number of panel talks on such pertinent issues as immigration, terrorism, and the media's responsibility as information bearer to the world. They were all engaging and valuable, and panelists provided a number of different perspectives on the issues, although, the sponsoring organization (AID Democracy) being run by young people, the overall lean was quite liberal.

The most memorable of the program's events was a talk on political communication given by Oscar Martinez, one of Spanish President Zapatero's four speech writers. He began by informing us not to expect too much from him so early in the day (noon) because he was "totally hung-over". His appearance, in a compound word: hung-over (unshaven, shirt open with chest hair popping out, shoes with no socks) spoke to the college kid in all of us, and his attitude, "hey I'm still young and cool, just like you kids... even though I work directly for the President of Spain" rang loud the bell of an aging flyster clinging to a care-free past, even in the face of newfound responsibility and social standing. Despite slightly deceptive presentatation techniques, he was very funny, and it being that he's only 33, I'd say he's still got some gas left in the hipster-tanks. After all, like they say, it's not the date on the birth cirtificate that matters, it's the one on the printed label. Or something like that.

A couple shots from that weekend in Madrid

With friends, dirtying the merchendise (L to R, Emily, Marci, Tom, me)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7868.JPG

El Rastro street market in Madrid
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7871.JPG

My final few weeks in Granada were spent fretting my only final exam, History of the Environment. Although I'd been in every single class all semester (except the one that coincided with the Champions League Final, I missed that one under the premise of "more important things to do") my reading of the required scientific articles had been stunted by my semester-long propensity to seek and find entertainment instead of doing class work. Come the end of the semester, my reading of these 25 highly informative and undoubtedly captivating works was as completed as it was begun; not at all. OK to be fair, I'd read half of the first article for the first class, and also an entire article (albiet in English), one which I had to present to the class. Beyond that, my knowledge base was contained completely to the two to three pages of notes I'd managed to scribble down in class while doing my best to shut out the the professor's prattle. This may seem indignant, but undermining classroom protocol wasn't my intent.

I knew from the start that I'd record a full exactly 0% of the auditory information thrown my way in the class, since I don't have the mental cues to help me remember the information as I do in English, nor can I write and listen simultaneously. Consequently, a hard copy of all important details from classroom Powerpoint presentations that I could review come exam time would be my only avenue to any measure of success on the test. So while other students happily participated in class, discussing (at times heatedly) various topics of environmental importance, orating personal beliefs and defending personal creedos, I simply took my seat and slumped over my paper, ready to blend with the furniture and floor tiling as best I could. That's not to say I didn't throw in a comment now and then, just to let the professor know I was in the house (more of a public relations move than anything else) but my comments' relationship to the forward motion of the debate, whatever it might have been about, could best be described as inverse. That is to say, my additions were more often wise cracks than actually wise in any dictionary sense of the word.

As such I approached my May 26th exam date, knowing that my knowledge base was deficient at best, and laying out on various Costa Del Sol beaches in an attempt to broaden it. Come the dreaded date, by all counts, my total exam study time had topped a full three hours. Include the work I'd done for the class all semester, and you're pushing a calculator's limits, but I'd say between 9 and 10. I know, I'm a machine.

Thus I walked into the professor's office on the exam day, fully expecting to crash and burn, and being pleasently surprised to find a pair of essay questions on the exam that I could actually answer with some coherence. A few days later I got an email from the professor informing me that I'd passed (with room to spare), and my semester in Spain was over.

Lesson of the day: you don't have to study, just hope for easy exams.

The following days, like those preceding, I spent on the beach with friends, my biggest gripe the fact lunch was once again one of my Senora's terrible bocadillo sandwiches. A bocadillo is a third of a baguette filled with cured ham and cheese. It being that I don't much like cured ham, or any incarnation of ham, I have my Senora leave that part out. So twice a week, and more often if I was traveling, I'd have a "boc" for lunch. What makes Sara's so terrible is the fact that the bread sits in the fridge for a full two days before I actually eat it, leaving it chewy and crustless. At first it didn't bother me, but five months later, I was ready to swear off cheese sandwiches of any sort for good. I've already broken that promise, so I've refined it to any boc made by my former Senora, a vow I don't expect a great deal of difficulty in honoring, since since a future encounter between the two of us is about as likely as Porky Pig is to come popping out of your screen squawking "Th-th-that's all folks!" Which I don't think is very likely.

A few shots from a seaside study session in Salobrena:

Paddleball with Dave
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7836.JPG

Pure athleticism
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7841.JPG

JT wins the Fly-Guy of the Day Award
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7845.JPG

Currently I'm in Paris, and Mom just left for home after two weeks of traveling north from Granada. After spending a few days in Granada, we passed through Madrid and Bilbao, then crossed into France, where we made stops in Bayonne and Bordeaux before arriving here in Paris this past Wednesday the 14th. Altogether a highly successful and fun two weeks together. Tomorrow I fly to Bremen, Germany to begin my World Cup experience with Marcus, and yes, I'm very excited, especially considering that with a win over Ghana this coming Thursday and a win for Italy over the Czechs (also Thursday) we will be moving on to the second round.

The mood is tempered, however, by the recent passing (read: deletion) of the entirety of the 700+ pictures taken during the past two weeks, those of our experiences since my mother and me left Granada. The small plastic latch on the tiny door that protects the media card in my camera broke off about two months ago, and when that door is open, the camera immediately shuts off, supposedly to prevent you from removing the card while it's being read by the camera (something that could cause the formatting of the card). I've been holding the door in place with a rubber band, which seems to get me by most of the time (I can take it off to pull the card out and get pictures from it, and it normally holds the door shut while I'm trying to photograph something), except today, when I turned the camera on to look at some pictures, and it told me that I didn't have any pictures at which to look. Oops. So I guess the only pictures of my mother's and my travel experiences are those from before we left Granada.

Who's this beach hunk?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7897.JPG

Same deal
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7908.JPG

With three new friends (two from the summer CEGRI group from University of Illinois)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7958.JPG

Running for my life
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7964.JPG

Mother and her favorite son
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7966.JPG

The hidden beach
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7988.JPG

My alter-ego; Mediterranean Man
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_7994.JPG

From our visit to the Alhambra:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_8008.JPG

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_8017.JPG

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_8030.JPG

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new3/IMG_8080.JPG

Finishing the summer; on the 9th of July, the day of the World Cup final, I fly from Dortmund to Rome, and I'll spend 12 days roaming Italy. I fly back to Malaga, Spain (right near Granada) on the July 21st, and home to the land of baseball and apple pie on the 25th. August will be spent in Traverse City doing who knows what.

Expect one final update around the time I'm leaving, or just after.

Special surprise gifts for making it to the end:

Arnold's Clone Movie

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-xCFzuD6Bok&search=arnold%20mad%20tv

Lordi, winners of Eurovision 2006

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HePNfN3T2eg&search=lordi

Adam's Adventures Vol. 7: The Morocco Incident

2006-04-27T09:33:00.000-04:00

A couple quick notes before we get started. First, for those of you attending graduation ceremonies this weekend, apparently President Coleman, in her commencement speech, has included some of comments pertaining to study abroad from a postcard that I sent her a couple months ago, so watch out for that. Secondly, a disclaimer to you, the reader; Although this email appears to be of a length eclipsing all previous (and possibly that of the Encyclopedia Britannica volumes A through R), that’s only because the number of picture links it contains would well be described as “a jillion”. The text length is less than most others. Now, onward.

Let’s get one thing straight… I’ve been to Africa.

It’s still a somewhat otherly thought, in that it’s an assertion I’d expect to hear it from another person, that person being someone other than me. My own connotations associated with Africa are not, at first thought, compatible with those of a place I’d willingly find myself. You know… the whole Heart of Darkness complex, savage jungles, barren planes, both filled with wild animals salivating at the thought of the next clueless tourist to come ambling by, ignorant to his/her impending doom up until the last instant when even the danger-stifling turn-head-shut-eyes-flail-arms-and-scream defense tactic is mere instants too late to validate its save-all reputation. That’s the Africa I had in my head.

However, one thing I’ve found in my travels over the past couple of years is that the more forbidding a locale is, the cooler it often turns out to be. Furthermore, my macabre visions of the continent (those detailed above) represent my own misgivings about a small part of the sub-Saharan region of the continent, a habitat that is as far from the region we were to visit as I am from any semblance of sanity today. Whether or not my time there bore any contribution to the growing fissure between “a sound state of mind” and the condition of my own has yet to be determined.

The point is that Africa is a big place, and therefore the very definition of multifaceted. My fears about the continent remind me of other travelers’ inquiries about the US.

“Hey,” they’ll say, “what’s the US like?”

To which I will respond, “It’s like Grandma’s hot apple pie with ice cream under a strawberry summer sunset, it’s like humming America the Beautiful as you throw a salute to Old Glory flying high above the horizon, and it’s like hitting a walk-off Grand Slam in the bottom of the ninth to win the World Series.”

“What???”

“Well… have you ever watched The Simpsons?”

“Yeah…”

“OK, it’s like that. Everywhere.”

In truth I’ll tell them that it’s a really big place, and that every part is unique, so asking me to sum it all up is like asking someone to sum up every single page on the internet, it doesn’t work because every place is different, and I haven’t been to them all. The only response that really pertains is “it’s big”. The same goes for Africa. It’s big too, and there’s no reason to believe that what we know (or think we know) about one part of it applies to other parts.

As such on Thursday, April 6th I found myself, in the company of Carl, JT, Dave, and Alex, speeding across the Straits of Gibraltar aboard the Fastferry 5000; the quickest route from A to B, A and B being not Spain and Morocco, but an internal state of comfortable equilibrium and one of head-spinning sickness. So there I sat for one full hour, rolling from wave to wave, contemplating the least gory method of separating my nauseous head from the rest of my body, so as to prevent the sickness from spreading to my gastric regions and prompting a one to one return on investment of my recently downed lunch.

Here are a couple shots of us on the boat across, if I don’t look green with sea-sickness it’s because people don’t actually turn green when they get sea sick. They just barf. A lot. If you don’t believe me, ask the twenty people who were doing just that for the entirety of the ride.

The crew (L to R) Me, Dave, Carl, JT, Alex
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6748.JPG

JT and Carl attempting to take flight, or maybe doing a Titanic impression, the world may never know
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6750.JPG

Arrival in Tangiers meant a temporary cease-fire between my brain and the forces of motion sickness, and our introduction to Alal, a card carrying member of the Tangiers Tourism Authority, who promptly informed us that the 2:00 train we were so eager to catch to Fes was in fact not running, and that we would have to spend the day in Tangiers as the next possible escape was not until 7 PM. On top of that, if we were to be spending the day in Tangiers, we might as well explore things a bit, and there is no better way to explore a locality than with a local guide, such as Mr. Alal himself. And why yes, for the low low price of only 100 Dirham a head (10 euro) we would be whisked away into the ancient world of the medina (old city) to experience Moroccan culture first hand. In the interest of dramatic irony, I’ll let you, the reader, know that there in fact was a 2 o’clock train, and that we in fact were being hoodwinked, bamboozled, and most probably both. Not knowing this at the time, we took the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and followed Alal into the medina.

Alal showing us the oldest US consulate in the world. Now you know what he looks like… do with that information what you will.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6761.JPG

Tangiers in and of itself is not a terrible place. Despite what we’d heard from others, things like “it’s a complete dump with no redeeming qualities” and “hop the first train out of town, doesn’t matter where it’s going” and “each step you take there is one step away from heaven” and “go there and die”, the day we spent there was cultural and educational. Alal, despite his glaring deficiency in the honesty department, was a good guide, showing us around the medina as promised. He would take us to a shop of some sort (rugs, clothing, spices, jewelry) where the owner would take us up to the roof for a view out onto the cityscape, and then take us back down into their store and try to convince us that whatever ware they were vending was by some logic or another a necessary accessory to our continued interest in living. Apparently they’re used to presenting to groups of impotent tourists, because just about half the products to which we were introduced during the trip were in some form or another an “aphrodisiac”, especially rugs containing any minute trace of camel hair. That makes sense because when I think camel, I think vigorous desert dynamo, certainly not lethargy incarnate (OK, actually, that’s exactly what I think of).

On the roof, “checking out the view” with Abdul, rug salesman extraordinaire
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6766.JPG

The crew on Abdul’s roof, posing for a photograph taken by a camera
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6770.JPG

The real Abdul exposed, he was just trying to sell us rugs the whole time, and I thought we were friends
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6772.JPG

Getting a massage in the spice shop. Why I’m making that facial expression is beyond me.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6779.JPG

In the spice shop with our spice guide, who was also trying to sell us stuff, this time saffron and a variety of other aphrodisiacs (apparently salt and pepper are aphrodisiacs)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6783.JPG

Down into the medina from above
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6784.JPG

Anyway in the medina we were for the first time exposed to Tagine, Morocco’s greatest contribution to the culinary pantheon in the form of a couscous base topped by cooked veggies (carrots, potatoes, squash), garbanzo beans, and either chicken or beef. My thorough enjoyment of the dish blinds me to the fact that it is, most likely, what kept me tethered to within a hop, step, and a jump of a restroom for the entire week subsequent to our return, but as long as I don’t know that I can keep singing the dish’s praises.

A fine tagine
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6791.JPG

Our waiter. Yeah, he was fly.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6793.JPG

Drinking mint tea with sugar (AKA Berber whiskey) and eating dates and nuts for Carl’s birthday
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6797.JPG

A 5.5 megabyte video of our waiter and I performing “Mustafa”
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_6798.AVI

While waiting for our bus Fes, we went down to the beach and met some locals
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6804.JPG

Dave decided he’d had enough of the cultural experiences and decided to put himself in a time out
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6812.JPG

A Turkish toilet in the bus station. Once again, this is a toilet, not a shower.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6815.JPG

So at 7 PM we loaded up onto the bus, which Alal assured us would be a ride of only three hours, far less than that of the train, and headed off to Fes. I’d like to continue here by launching directly into our pleasant experiences in Fes, however the events that the bus ride held for us prevent me from doing so. Essentially, between long periods of seemingly drunken wandering, teetering from one side of the road to the other, we hit something large. In the dark I would have put my money on it being either an office building or a whale, but judging by the way it rolled under the tires, one set at a time, it was probably something smaller, like an elephant. Either way it knocked off the entire front bumper of the bus, which required a highly efficient Navy SEAL-like operation by the driver and his first lieutenant to rescue from the road, which then gave way to more decidedly inefficient driving by the momentarily adept chauffeur.

Here’s the driver repairing the front bumper
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6818.JPG

Our arrival, furthering Alal’s disrepute, did not come at 10 PM as a three hour ride would have entailed, but instead at 3 AM for a total of seven hours on the bus. It wasn’t the length of the ride that was irritating, I can deal with seven hours on a bus as I often have in Spain and did throughout South America last summer, but the fact that Alal totally swindled us into believing his falsehoods. It meant that we ended up in a city where we didn’t speak either language, Arabic or French, without a hostel reservation and without a clue of what to do. Someone’s ingenuity (whose is still a topic of heated debate, and the rest of the story will reveal whether people are claiming or shunning credit) landed us in a minibus taxi, flying through deserted streets on the way to (grammatical article ‘a’ intentionally omitted here in the interest of historical accuracy) “good Berber hotel” where we were promptly overwhelmed by the luxurious lack of working faucets, Turkish toilets (scathing adjectives would be superfluous here), proliferation of the indoor insect population, chipped paint ornamentation, and cracked floor tile motif. Nonetheless, it was 3:30 in the morning, and our desire to sleep outweighed our desire to sleep in comfort, so after a 20 hour day of travel, we crashed, anticipating deep and sustained sleep despite our coarse surroundings. Oops. At 8 AM, a mere four and a half hours later, we were abruptly yanked from la-la land by violent screaming directly outside our rooms, and envisioning either the breakout of World War 3, or a confrontation between a midget and Bigfoot, we bravely cowered under our sheets. Some maintain that they detected the strong odor of urine radiating from my general vicinity, and I counter their implied allegations with a definitive “no comment”. The cessation of the commotion brought with it a veneer of bravado among the group, as we all agreed that whatever or whoever had caused the tumult outside was lucky to have kept the uproar to their own realm (the entire world outside of our rooms), because if they’d passed into ours, it would have been bad. For whom I’ll not say, but either way they would’ve had to contend with the overpowering bathroom smell, of whose existence I remain a staunch denier. So, as poking our heads out from behind doorframes revealed neither World War 3 nor a dead midget (I suppose it’s obligatory that I give mention to the fact, although I find it far from noteworthy, that there was a dead Bigfoot), we decided to cancel further attempts at sleep and head to a more reputable locality, in the form of a hostel whose name and address we’d acquired. So we packed our bags, paid our 50 Dirham (5 Euro, 6 US Dollars) and headed out into the Arab world.

The fine facilities in “good Berber” hotel
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6824.JPG

Yours truly, in “good Berber” hotel
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6827.JPG

Us, in front of “good Berber” hotel
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6829.JPG

After some initial confusion, and discovering that even locals sometimes don’t know how to read maps of their own cities, we ended up at our hostel, which we all found quite agreeable, as they had English toilets, hot showers, and clean rooms, all for the price of only 75 Dirham. Hot-diggity! Along the way to the hostel, we had also been approached by another accredited member of the local tourism authority, as Alal had been, and after some initial distrust, we accepted Najid as our guide for the day. He proved his good intentions from the outset, as we offered him 300 Dirham for his services, and he immediately undercut us with an offer of 250. On the surface it would appear to be a bumbling move, especially in the eye of a businessman, however his low price (50 Dirham a head) and his willingness to guide us to our hostel free of commitment, proved that he was trustworthy (read: the antithesis of Alal) and thus got him hired for the day. Maybe he’s on to something with this honesty thing…

The medina wall
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6831.JPG

Carl and Alex heading through an archway
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6833.JPG

Me, traveling in Morocco
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6834.JPG

Najid was, like the taxi driver and the owners of the hostel from the previous night, a “good Berber”. The Berbers are the people indigenous to Morocco, who have made al-Magreb (Arabic for Morocco) home since long before the Muslims arrived from the Arabian Peninsula half way through the first millennium, bringing their religion and culture with them. The Berbers maintain their own culture and language, however most all speak Arabic and are practicing Muslims. Most also speak French, due to France’s colonization of the country during the 1800’s. Najid informed me that the cities are predominantly populated by people of Arab descent, some 98% in his estimation, while the other 2% are of Berber descent, and the villages and farmlands comprising most of the rest of Morocco are closer to a 50/50 split between Arab and Berber.

Berber women (sometimes) wear these cool hats
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6776.JPG

A little book I picked up on the street for 15 Dirham. You might recognize the endorser.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6842.JPG

This guy is obviously a HUGE Michigan fan
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6847.JPG

Carl and JT headed through one of the Blue Gate’s small doorways
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6848.JPG

Pickin’ up some snacks
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6851.JPG

Still pickin’ up snacks, Najid to Dave’s right
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6856.JPG

We spent the day wandering the streets of the medina, Najid showing us the best places to get cheap/delicious/traditional fare (I personally caused a date famine in Fes, as I my consumption of the sweet little fruits easily eclipsed even the bountiful supply that the city proffers), as well as the customary lineup of rug stores, leather tanneries, and metal artisans. The leather tannery was a remarkable sight, as my pictures will show. It was also a remarkable smell, and those viewing the pictures should thank their lucky stars that the swamp stench doesn’t accompany the photographs. At the rug shop, we were greeted by Aziz, who, as visual evidence will once again show, loved his dog. This fact, along with a fair price and the apparent quality of his merchandise induced us, 5 college dudes, to buy authentic Berber-made blankets. The prices started at 400 Dirham a piece, I worked them down to 250; far from the biggest blanket heist ever, but I’m no Alal. Anyway after drinking some “good Berber whiskey” which was in fact mint tea with sugar (Morocco is a Muslim country and therefore alcohol is greatly eschewed), we headed out with Najid to our next destination.

The tourist mosque, very reminiscent of the inside of the Alhambra here in Granada
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6859.JPG

Good Muslim kitties
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/Carlos%20016.jpg

This guy made it his business to look sinister and stare down at everyone from up above
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6864.JPG

In the medina
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6871.JPG

Alex in front of a very impressive fountain
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6874.JPG

Carl’s backside, heading through one of the oldest parts of the medina. This section was from the 9^th century.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6884.JPG

You know who at the leather tannery, note the mint leaves
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6892.JPG

A better shot into the tannery. Apparently they’ve been doing it the same way and in the same place since the 1100’s.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6893.JPG

Into a mosque during prayer. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter religious places.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6901.JPG

Here’s a 3 megabyte video into the same mosque. Note the orations.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_6902.AVI

I present to you; fruits and nuts
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6904.JPG

Out over the city from Aziz’s roof. Note the ruins on the hill in the middle; these are where we would end up later.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6908.JPG

Aziz loves his dog
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6917.JPG

We love his dog too
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6919.JPG

Sorry, last picture of Aziz’s dog
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6921.JPG

The crew with Berber whiskey in Aziz’s shop
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6925.JPG

Drinking Berber whiskey
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6927.JPG

Who is that masked man?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6930.JPG

The blanket I bought
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6935.JPG

JT and Carl in a cool courtyard. It’s currently a shoe factory, but it was once a hotel for nobles.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6943.JPG

Good kitty
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6946.JPG

The bakery. The flat, round, bread you see on the table is the most prevalent bread in all of Morocco. It was cheap, tasty, and filling.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6953.JPG

Fine brass work, all hand done
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6957.JPG

More of the same
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6959.JPG

Here’s a Jawa that we met in a Jalaba shop
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/Carlos%20021.jpg

Five ominous looking characters in the Jalaba shop
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6968.JPG

We ended the day by heading up to a nearby hilltop we’d been staring at from different points throughout the medina, and getting a fantastic view out over the city as well as a number of memorable pictures. Those very same pictures are viewable here:

A market in the main plaza, selling mostly clothes. Carl and I went and searched through piles of shirts for clothing with Arabic print, with no luck. In the entire country I don’t believe I saw a single shirt with Arabic print, instead, those with lettering were in English, Spanish, or French.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6970.JPG

Dave and I outside the medina
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6973.JPG

These yellow flowers were everywhere just outside the medina
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6977.JPG

There were a bunch of people up on the hill, including these kids
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6980.JPG

The view from the other side of the hill
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6983.JPG

Philanthropy
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6992.JPG

This stranger was selling candy to all the kids up on the hill, and they were buying it.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6996.JPG

Heck, even we bought some
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_6995.JPG

Five long shadows
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7000.JPG

Last shot from the hill
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7005.JPG

A stop sign, we called this “the canoe”
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7022.JPG

Playing a bit of football with the locals
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7025.JPG

In front of the Royal Palace of Mohammad VI. The doors were made by the same people that made the brass dishes from earlier.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7041.JPG

A 4 megabyte video of us making out way through a market
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_7032.AVI

Alex picking up a fine potato dumping sandwich for two Dirham
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7044.JPG

You know who, mowing one of the sandwiches
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7047.JPG

Moroccan deserts, the cake with the waves on top was especially common
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7048.JPG

The Blue Gate by night
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7063.JPG

A Moroccan Coke truck (this is not a joke)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7070.JPG

Picking up breakfast before the big train ride to Marrakech
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7073.JPG

The next day we spent nine hours on a train to Marrakech, and in a classic case of complete stupidity, none of us thought to bring food or drink. The train itself was quite comfortable, and our rotating company was always pleasant and willing to make attempts at communication, however the lack of alimentation available on the train was cause for some discomfort during the second half of the trip. We arrived in Marrakech and found our way to another nice hostel, this one charging only 50 Dirham a night, and promptly headed out to the main plaza, which is, if I had to estimate, about the size of five football fields adjacent and covered completely with orange juice stands (best glass of your life for only 3 Dirham), fruit and nut salesmen, open air restaurants, and the biggest bunch of crooks ever to masquerade as snake charmers on the face of Allah’s green Earth. If you show any interest whatsoever in their trade, and are within 10 meters, this crew of “gentlemen” will charge at you, toss a snake around your neck, rip the camera from your hands (be they warm and alive or cold and dead), take a picture of you, and demand 200 Dirham. This sad tale is exactly what happened to JT, although he was smarter than to hand over the outrageous payment. One lassoed me with his serpent noose too, but I simply stood stoic, informed the man what he could do with his snake, and that he wasn’t going to get his treacherous hands on my camera, or my money. I don’t have a problem with having a snake tied around my neck, assuming it’s less than 50 feet from head to tip of the tail. I do, however, have a problem with people invading my personal space in order to sell me crap (yes a picture with a snake around your neck is crap). The whole plaza reminded me of the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru, except the hawkers were five times more aggressive here in Marrakech. All things considered, the atmosphere was really quite enjoyable in a craziest-place-you’ve-ever-been sort of way, and I was able to put to practice my best vendor evasion techniques, which boil down to simply offering a single “no” response, and in the case that such a stimulus doesn’t elicit their departure from my personal space, simply stepping right around them. My purchases in the Plaza totaled to two glasses of orange juice and a pair of “super fly” sunglasses, for a total of 46 Dirham.

The train to Marrakech made a random stop along the way
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7086.JPG

Decent shot here, the red flowers are poppies, and they were very widespread throughout the countryside
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7092.JPG

Another musical performance, this time a 5 megabyte video
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_7078.AVI

Sunset over Marrakech (the tower to the left is a mosque)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7096.JPG

The main plaza
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7104.JPG

Another big Michigan fan
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7106.JPG

My friend the snake charmer
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_0493.JPG

Walking through the open air restaurant area, between hawkers’ molestations
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7108.JPG

Picking up some crepe type wraps. They filled them with cheese, veggies, and meat. Awesome and only about 7 Dirham.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7122.JPG

The new Fly Specs. I made it a practice to wear these when it was darkest out, in order to emphasize their licentiousness. And also to look cool.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7125.JPG

Another musical performance in Marrakech’s main plaza (video is 2.5 megs)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_7120.AVI

Pourin’ a glass of that fiiiine Moroccan orange juice
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7130.JPG

JT and Dave at the hostel
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7133.JPG

That night we also organized a meeting with a travel agency, in the interest of making a trek to the Sahara to ride camels. This was accomplished, and we signed up for a three day, two night trek with the second of the two nights being in a tent in the desert. We spent the majority of the next two days in our small bus with ten new friends, stopping at strategic points along the way to admire striking desert oases, walk through “good Berber” villages, and wade in shallow rivers at the bottom of box canyons enclosed by 500 foot cliff walls.

Fording the river
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7147.JPG

We don’t know what this was. We didn’t have a guide the village outside this fortress
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7149.JPG

Snapping a shot as the camels speed by
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_0521.JPG

Tippin’ back on some yogurt

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7152.JPG

Waiting for departure. That dog had a lot of fleas.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7152.JPG

Strange rock formations
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7157.JPG

Out over a desert oasis
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7186.JPG

Another tagine that Dave was, apparently, trying to give the shocker
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7205.JPG

We spent a total of sixteen hours in the bus over the first two days, so our arrival at the desert was a welcome one. It was also aesthetically notable, due to the fact that the copper dunes rise very suddenly and abruptly from the badlands type habitat from whence we approached. After acquiring a few necessaries (extra water, blanket, turban, camel) and dropping a few unnecessaries (everything else), we were off. Into the desert we went, back into the harsh heart of the Sahara. By harsh heart I mean mildly unpleasant outskirts, but we were overwhelmed by the spectacle of actually being on a camel, dune surfing to actually take note of the fact that within ten minutes of the onset of our trek, the wind had whipped sand into every exposed orifice, and even some not quite so exposed.

Loading up the camels
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7209.JPG

Another mysterious character
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7210.JPG

Dave ready to roll
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7212.JPG

You know who, riding the camel the only way I know how (forwards?)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7228.JPG

The camel behind me kept bumping into me, so I gave him some attention
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7218.JPG

The caravan
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7235.JPG

Here’s a 4 meg video of the caravan, you can hear how the wind was whipping sand in our faces
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_7248.AVI

After about an hour of ridin’ camels, we ended up at out encampment, where we spent the remainder of the evening climbing the nearest and tallest sand dune, which, due to our curious temporal arrangement (post-sunset) ended up being very difficult. Once we reached the crest of the dune, we decided to head to its highest point, which was not twenty feet away as the twilight foretold, but closer to a quarter mile. “A quarter mile,” you are probably saying, “I could sprint that one-legged while a hippopotamus and lumberjack fought to the death on my back, no problem”. Well, I can assure you of two things, a) you probably couldn’t and b) that’s a good way to describe the sensation one feels, trudging through deep, loose sand, as every footstep forward carries the stepper not closer to his/her goal, but instead back to Go without collecting $200. In the time you’d normally cover fifty feet, you probably make it three (over a period of eighteen steps), then collapse face first into the sand wondering if your legs will ever function properly again. You then repeat this process until (hours later) you get to wherever you’re headed. Was the view from the top of the dune worth it? I don’t know; I made it up first (champion!) then passed out, asphyxiated. Later, back down at base camp, we had a fine dinner of tagine, a riotous drumming session, listened to and told some fine Berber jokes, then headed for the tents for a solid four hours of sleep.

A camel up close and personal, set for the night
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7256.JPG

Inside our tent with our friends from Quebec
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7258.JPG

Heading back up the dune in the morning
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7264.JPG

A final musical performance, Dave and I welcoming the African sunrise
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/MVI_7272.AVI

Ridin’ dunes
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7269.JPG

Approaching the peak
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7275.JPG

Adam of Arabia
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/Carlos%20043.jpg

Admiring the sunrise
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7279.JPG

Desert kitty
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7282.JPG

Suiting up for the ride back to civilization
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/Carlos%20046.jpg

Dave and you know who, in the caravan
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7284.JPG

Desert silhouette
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7286.JPG

Another caravan shot
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7293.JPG

Dave and JT bringing up the rear
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7295.JPG

Obey your thirst
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7306.JPG

The next day was spent on the bus, and for me, (again) under the influence of skull-splitting motion sickness. It appeared at first that I might be alright for the ride, but the driver’s habit of squealing around mountain curves entirely ignorant to the existence of the “pedal on the left” (the one that slows the car down) afforded the perfect opportunity for the dormant illness to call in reinforcements and declare all-out nuclear war on the unstable provisionary government administrating the peace inside my cranium. The ensuing hours of travel were some of the more excruciating I’ve been through, as we spent the next 23 hours on trains, busses, and boats, finally arriving back in Granada Wednesday night at 9 PM.

Our final Moroccan sunset
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7337.JPG

The crowded streets of Marrakech
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7355.JPG

On the night train, Marrakech to Tangiers
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/morocco/IMG_7360.JPG

I realize, upon finishing my recount, that most of my stories cast a negative light on the subject situation or individual. There is a reason for this, and it’s not that the trip was a horrible experience. Quite to the contrary, the week I spent in Morocco was one of the most incredible weeks of my entire life, one that stocked my storehouse of experiences with a barrage of new sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. The reason I’m so quick to disparage is because things that go wrong or don’t go exactly as planned usually end up as the best stories (for evidence look above). If I were to write about how nice everything was and how all went according to plan, it’d probably be pretty boring. That being said, there were a number of very positive ventures in which we partook during our Morocco excursion, and the trip as a whole leaves a very positive imprint in my mind. Fes, Marrakech, and even Tangiers are all as spectacular as they are exotic, and I cherish the time I spent in each. Even the desert journey, which I fear may not have been granted the full detail it deserves among my other tales, is a prized memory that I will take pleasure in detailing innumerable times from now until the day someone tears out my vocal cords in a repetition induced rage (hopefully not soon).

A hiking trip to the Alpujarras area of the Sierra Nevada mountains was the activity the weekend before we headed to Morocco, and the outing met and exceeded all expectations. We (about 35 CEGRI students) spent a good five hours a day on a Friday and Saturday hiking trails, visiting villages, and admiring the scenery. The first day was especially cool, because the trip took us around a horseshoe shaped part of the mountain range, hopping from white washed mountain village to the next and the next, stopping in each for a short rest and to admire the view out onto the other villages and nature. I don’t have the eloquence necessary to describe the splendor that surrounded us, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Carl on the trail
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6551.JPG

Three intrepid explorers
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6555.JPG

A mountain lion, ready to pounce
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6562.JPG

The view
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6563.JPG

A refreshing bath
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6564.JPG

Making our way through one of many mountain villages
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6567.JPG

Making friendly with the locals
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6572.JPG

Another shot, back towards one of the villages
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6578.JPG

A familiar face
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6581.JPG

Alex looked happy, until I started the avalanche
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6583.JPG

Making our way down for lunch
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6587.JPG

Who’s this guy?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6589.JPG

Lunch time kiddies!
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6591.JPG

Relaxing on the rock
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6599.JPG

Lunch is served (thanks JT)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6601.JPG

Another view shot
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6608.JPG

A raging waterfall
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6611.JPG

In another village
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6613.JPG

Resting on the terrace for the evening, juicing up for the next day
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6614.JPG

They told me it would help my breathing (they didn’t tell me how)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6619.JPG

Back up into the mountains
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6625.JPG

Carl and Ben, no doubt discussing either world politics or fuel-cell feasibility (probably both)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6629.JPG

Four fine chaps
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6632.JPG

The final in “the view” series
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6639.JPG

Jess and JT on the summit of the Agro-crag
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6641.JPG

Emo Carl
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6644.JPG

Hidden Carl
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6648.JPG

Following the brown dirt road
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6653.JPG

The fountains
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6660.JPG

Hanging out with sheepies
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6674.JPG

JT Heisman
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6683.JPG

With a friend
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6691.JPG

Ready to pounce
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afive/stuff/pics/spain/new2/alpujarras/IMG_6703.JPG

My summer plans are looking more and more definite every day. Right now I’m in the middle of final exams at CEGRI, and UGranada courses will be finishing come the beginning of June. After that my mom will be arriving in Granada, and after exploring town a bit, we’ll head to France for a week or so, which should be fun. After that, I’ll be headed to Bremen, Germany to stay with my buddy Marcus for the entirety of World Cup ’06, so I’m excited (to put it lightly) for that. The Cup will end in early-mid July (in certain victory for the US) and after that, I’ll head to Italy for a final bit of nomadic roaming, then back to Malaga, Spain for my flight home on July 25^th.

21^st birthday passed without much fanfare, it being on a Monday I didn’t even go out with the crew. My Senora wished me a “cumpleaños feliz” but there was no cake or singing at home. There were some pranks around CEGRI, in the form of a series of posters featuring a somewhat revealing photo of yours truly, and even that form of attention, although mocking, was welcome. Not that I was anticipating fireworks, dancing zebras, and mustached sword-swallowers, but I guess I expected the 21^st birthday to be different than all the others. I spent the remainder of the evening working on this email for all of you. Oh, the sacrifices I make for the masses.

England this weekend. For those of you hailing from the Traverse City region, I’m going to Glouster, on the west side of the island to watch fellow TC native and ’03 graduate (although from West Senior High) Phil Thiel play his final rugby game of the season. Should be a fun time.

Here’s the treat for making it all the way to the end: http://buzzbat.shackspace.com/EasterBunny.MP4

Thanks for finishing the marathon, hope you enjoyed it. See you in a month, as that appears to be the standard time interval between these things.