Though it is undoubtedly one of India’s most popular tourist destinations, it might be surprising to readers that Goa most definitely is not being overrun with big-time real estate development projects. There are some large resorts around (the “Taj Exotica”), in both north and south Goa, and a really insistently Philistine foreign tourist could potentially stay in Goa and never leave one of those places. But as far as I can tell, Goa is not in the process of becoming another Dominican Republic or Jamaica, with mega-resorts so dominant they threaten to eclipse local populations and culture. The best beaches are still, by and large, open to the public, and while some are quite crowded (Calangute), many of the public beaches we’ve visited seem perfectly tranquil, with a mix of foreign (largely Russian) and Indian tourists enjoying the sun and sand.

It’s also worth pointing out that the state has a substantial economic, industrial, and cultural life that has nothing at all to do with tourism. (To give just one example, Goa is apparently popular with pharmaceutical companies, because the low levels of pollution in the air and water make it easier for pharma factories to achive high levels of purity in manufacturing medicine. The local Cipla plant makes the Indian/generic version of AIDS cocktail drugs that are sent to sub-Saharan Africa, and delivered to patients at a cost of $1 a day.)

This resistance to outside money and mega-tourism projects is not for want of trying. This New York Times article from March 2007 is a good introduction to some of the debates over the direction of Goa. The short version is this: the state government was more than ready to implement a “regional plan” that would open doors to major development projects, but a popular “Save Goa” protest movement emerged in 2006-7 that forced them to drop the plan. As a result, you do see some pockets of new tourist development, but it is measured and limited. (The article foregrounds the story of an investor whose focus is on finding distinctive individual houses in Goan villages to renovate and then market in a limited way.)

The emergence of a movement to protect Goa’s distinctively laid-back, but fluid cultural heritage does not come without some problems and dangers. Yesterday, we had the distinct privilege of meeting a local Goan writer and journalist named Vivek Menezes, who had a lot to tell us regarding both the history and current status of Goa.

One article Vivek published in 2006 details the tensions produced by the boom atmosphere that was prevalent at the time:

Chakravarti continued, “Piece of the action is …driving Goa to the edge,” and writes movingly about tears at his friend’s funeral marking “a sense of loss for a Goa we pine after but can no longer recognise.”

It’s a sentiment that’s nearly universal in 2006. Long-stayers, relative newcomers and locals all describe a sensation of being under siege.

This feeling is particularly strong at the fringes of Goa’s burgeoning tourism marketplace, in the decades-old long-staying communities that developed from the hippie phenomenon of previous decades. On the heels of a series of directives from the centre, officials from half a dozen different state agencies are turning up at people’s doorsteps, checking the ownership and legal status of homes and businesses, and denying licences and permissions required to et up shop in Goa. (link)

I would recommend reading the rest of Vivek’s article, where there is some great material from people abroad who have come to the state not as tourists, but to live and settle here.

My preliminary outsider’s sense is that the feeling of “crisis” Vivek was referring to in 2006 may be at least temporarily at bay with the collapse of the regional plan. Some people still seem to have a sense of nostalgia for the lost “old Goa,” but in a region with history as rich as this one, it’s not always clear whether they are talking about the 1990s (Goa NRG/rave culture), the 1970s (“Dum Maro Dum”; western hippies), the 1920s… or the 1570s.

Vivek lent me a book called Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa (edited by Jerry Pinto; Penguin India), in which I’ve been encountering some interesting essays that address some issues relating to Goa’s earlier history. More about that below.

We’ll be returning to Goa in a day or two, but meanwhile there was some family visiting to attend to in the north.

First up, Delhi. My dominant impression of Delhi this time around is of seeing construction everywhere for new Delhi Metro stations. In a couple of years (when Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games), I’m sure it will all be wonderful, but right now it adds to the traffic headache. That said, I was impressed by the new domestic airport terminal (the old one was hopelessly insufficient), and by what I took to be preliminary attempts at revamping the central train station.

We were happy to get to meet Jai Arjun Singh at a Crossword book store (Jai, thanks for waiting for us) in Saket, south Delhi. The bookstore was in a massive, opulent new mall called “Citywalk Select,” which has designer boutiques everywhere (Indian, European, and American), and the general feel of the massive King of Prussia mall near our house in suburban Philadelphia. It was certainly surreal, after seeing continuing signs of poverty elsewhere in the city, and Samian wondered how there could be enough Delhi-ites who can afford to pay $500 for Kate Spade purses to support these stores. Also surreal in such a place was the presence of the writer Ruskin Bond, who I think of as an R.K. Narayan-type writer (simple, elegant, and compelling storytelling), not someone you would ever expect to see in this kind of place. In this case, he was doing a book-signing at the bookstore, which was surprisingly packed.

When you’re traveling with a two-year old, you don’t get to read quite as much as when you’re either alone or with other grown-ups. Still, I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Carlo Levi’s Essays on India here and there, and I thought some passages from his essay “The Invisible Capital” (1957) might be of interest:

The city of New Delhi appears, as you drop suddenly down towards it out of the sky, as something unreal and abstract, an immense placeless space, a utopian place. It doesn’t really seem like a city; there is no centre, no cluster of houses, only a vast expanse crisscrossed by immensely broad boulevards that seem to stretch out endlessly into the distance, and dotted here and there by monumental buildings, isolated in the greenery. Much as in the shapeless, ameboid city of Los Angeles, the distances are so vast that you can only move around by car (this modern conveyance that ensures medieval isolation). It is also reminiscent of Washington, with its plan of an administrative capital, silent and reserved; to an even greater degree, it is reminiscent of London, in the attempt to blend a sense of power with a yearning for the earthly paradise prior to the original sin.

I think the comparison to Washington is probably the most apt (I don’t see the comparisons to London or Los Angeles at all). More from Carlo Levi on Delhi below:

I’m always nervous about being too personal in this space, and anyway when you’re traveling with a two-year old your travel experiences tend to revolve around him, so I’ll boil it down to this: Goa sure is nice this time of year. (I’m visiting in-laws, who live here now.)

We were also in London for a couple of days, where I was happy to get to meet Sunny Hundal. Again, let’s keep details to a minimum, and say the highlight of our London experience was a restaurant called Imli, serving Indian Tapas (nice idea, huh).

In a London bookstore I found a book of poems by Daljit Nagra, Look We Have Coming to Dover! (the title poem is a postcolonial answer to Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”). My favorite poem so far is “Rapinder Slips into Tongues,” and I hope the poet won’t mind if I share the poem here, in hopes of provoking discussion. It certainly resonated with me:

Rapinder Slips into Tongues…
by Daljit Nagra

Dad and me were watching the video—
Amar, Akbar, Anthony. It’s about three
brothers separated after the family is parted
by gangsters. You can get it with subtitles, Miss.
When Anthony, who grows up in a Catholic home,
begged Christ for the address of his real parents
then crossed himself, I jumped off our royal red
sofa, joined Anthony with his prayer:
Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary,
four-quartering myself then curtseying a little.

Dad just stared at me, knocking his turban side
to side that I almost thought it would come off
which it normally does when he’s doing his press-ups
and his face goes mauve. Instead he took off
his flip-flop (the one with a broken thong),
held it in the air, shouting in ‘our’ language,
Vat idiot! If you vant to call on Gud,
call anytime on anyvun of our ten gurus,
Do you tink is white Gud’s wife your mudder?

Dad’s got a seriously funny way Miss,
sometimes he cries, and says he’s going to give me
to a Sikh school, a proper school. That’s why
I did what my cousin Ashok does at our local
temple — while you were all doing hail mary
to end registration, I first locked my hands,
knelt down, prayed with this ditty we do on Sundays,

imagined the Golden Temple and our bearded gods
to your up-on-the-cross one, then roared:
Wahay Guru!
Wahay Guru!
Wahay Guru!
Like that.

A critic named Ben Wilkinson has a brief take on the poem, and Daljit Nagra’s poetic style as a whole, here.

Riffing off of Sugi’s post concerning Naan Fromage in France, and I just learned [via Camille] that the Italian dairy industry in Lombardy that produces Parmigian cheese relies on desis for 90% of their work force. That’s right, we can do more than just paneer. No more Amul for you, baby, from now on it’s only the finest Italian cheeses. We are milkmen to the world!

The first immigrants came 20 years ago to (according to the documentary clip) work as animal handlers in the circus, now the town of Novellara has 600 Sikh immigrants and the second largest Gurdwara in Europe. The Po Valley has 60,000 desis working there and couldn’t function without them. Here’s the news clip:

My favorite part is when the guy explains that he likes to hire Indians because they are patient, methodical, and extremely reliable, with a natural gift for working with animals. Clearly he’s never been to India.

p.s. can I use the fact that Sikhs run the dairies of Parma as credentials for a government sinecure?

Related news: African Lumberjacks in Canada

Hurray for traveling, but also: hurray for airports with sweet, stable and FREE (!) Internet connections. I have a brief interlude here in Kansas City on my way back from a reading, so I thought I’d tell you about a trip I took last month. After attending a desi wedding in Georgia (the American one!) I took the Delta nonstop to Paris (the French one!) for another wedding. And in France, I did a little desi-spotting, in the part of Paris known as La Chapelle.

So, in this blissful hiatus from the security line (as Kumar says, “random search, huh?”), I bring to you tales of gastronomie and naan fromage!

I can’t pretend that I had an exhaustive look at La Chapelle—time did not permit—but you know me, I managed to eat. And take pictures. Neither can I pretend to be Preston Merchant, but I did try to get some of the signs that captured the French-Indien-Srilankhan (!) vibes.

There were two reasons that I was in Africa. The first one was that the mountain is there. I contend that every good journey involves a mountain high enough that it keeps a piece of you with it after you think you’ve gotten off. On top of the mountain is a doomed glacier of storied beauty that I needed to see before it melted into just a “once upon a time” memory described in a book or by an old man. The second reason I had long desired to come here was that my mother was born in East Africa (Uganda) and I wanted to feel a trace of what she once knew. Being under this sky, on this land, the pidgin that is Swahili ringing in my ears, I sought to better understand some part of her that ended when she was a teenager, a part that remained an unearthed root of my life.

Dar

The South Asian quarter (Uhindini) of Dar es Salaam is where you want to be if you have only one night in one of East Africa’s largest cities and you blog for a South Asian themed website whose readers expect you to work around the clock. It is also where the food is the best mix of Indian, Chinese, and East African. The gem dealer from Sri Lanka recognizes us as fellow guests of the dingy hotel. Your first night in a country should always be spent at a dingy hotel, otherwise you won’t learn how things in that country really work (such as how much cab fares to locations in the city should really cost). He tips us off to the fact that the best money exchange can be found next to the mosque at the end of that street. A good restaurant (I have the mutton) is directly next door to the hotel. The 34-year-old sits down with us at dinner and explains that if we want to find nice girls (why aren’t we married yet?) all we have to do is provide them with a little jewelry and some spending money. He swears that those two things will keep them satisfied and they won’t ever talk of divorce. I decide to keep my “blood diamond speech” under wraps just this once, even though Africa is the most appropriate place for it.

The Muslim friend I’m with tells me to stick with him for protection in this part of town. Five minutes later and three blocks north we pass the Pramukh Swami BAPS mandir, services just ending. “Your on my turf now,” I tell him.

Closer to the hotel again, it sounds like some bar or disco is playing Bob Marley. Sweet. I wanted to check out a bar here anyways and this one apparently has good music blaring on a Saturday night. As we get closer to the source I see that the music I am hearing is in fact emanating from a large group of women sitting on a mosque floor. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t Buffalo Soldier I was hearing. It is probably not polite for me to keep staring like this either.

When I travel to a new country, my eyes are always peeled for a desi sighting. My recent trip to Brazil was no different. This is the second BRIC nation I’ve visited (with Russia and China left to go) and having heard about Indian Oil Corp., Hindustan Petroleum, and Bharat Petroleum joint venture earlier this year to start ethanol production in Brazil, I thought I might spot other signs of investment. At the very least, I figured I would come across a Sindhi shopowner (the joke goes that even if you travel to the moon, you will meet a member of the diasporadic community of Indian traders, of which my family is a part).

But, there weren’t any Sindhis or Indians to speak of in Brazil. At least, we didn’t see any. (Well, there was one uncle type we ran into near the Ipanema farmer’s market, but he turned out to be a Mallu from New York, visiting his Brazilian wife’s family!)

We’d heard about Nataraj, the only Indian-run restaurant in Rio. It’s in Leblon, Rio’s most trendy residential neighborhood, and I figured we’d find a desi there. “It’s no good,” our New York uncle friend told us while he helped us shop for figs and sitaphal. “Don’t bother going.”

So we didn’t. (Now that I’m home, however, some scoping did yield a little write-up about Indian restaurants in South America here which pointed out that the restaurant is run by a family whose matriarch used to work for the British High Commission in Rio. “She had been doing special event catering for the embassy as a side interest and then one fine day she decided to open a restaurant - I’m glad she did. It takes courage to make a caipirinha with an indian twist.”

Dang. Missed opportunity for a good Sepia post. Next time I go to Rio, I’ll have to make it a point to go here.

So, Brazil is home to a multitude of skin colors, so it’s easy to mistake Brazilians for Indians and Indians for Brazilians, so much so that many times, people mistook me and my husband for Brazilians and spoke to us in Portugese. There were, however, a few exceptions.

In Salvador de Bahia, the northern city which was the first capital of Brazil, from 1549 to 1763, a photojournalist came up to us during the 2nd of July Independence Day celebrations. “Are you Indian?” he asked. “Yes,” we answered. “Can I take a picture of you? First time I’m seeing Indians in Salvador,” he said.

Wow. I felt like an intrepid explorer, though I was quite certain I couldn’t be the first Indian in Salvador.

I was proven right. Later that day, in Salvador, we were at Rafael Cine Foto in Pelhorino, trying to get our camera repaired—and ahem, negotiating for a better price—when the shopkeeper (whose English was limited) asked us, laughing, “Are you Indian?” (I guess we carry our reputation as bargain makers around with us, wherever we go!) Later, my mother mentioned that her once-in-a-while Brazilian cleaning lady told her that there are lots of Indians who own shops at the malls in Salvador. I guess I should have gone to the mall!

Despite my lack of desi human spottings, there was no dearth of Indian influence—mostly of the exotic India variety—to be found in Brazil. [A brief photo essay follows below the fold.]

The New York Times has an article on Sranan Tongo, the creole language that is spoken by a majority of people in Suriname, in South America.

Suriname, like Guyana and Trinidad, has a large Indian diaspora population from the 19th century, people who came across originally as indentured laborers. For a country of just 470,000 people, the linguistic and cultural diversity is truly astonishing:

To get a sense of the Babel of languages here, just stroll through this capital, which resembles a small New England town except the stately white clapboard houses are interspersed with palm trees, colorful Chinese casinos and minaret-topped mosques.

Slip into one of the Indonesian eateries known as warungs to hear Javanese, spoken by about 15 percent of the population. Choose a roti shop, with its traditional Indian bread, to listen to Surinamese Hindi, spoken by the descendants of 19th-century Indian immigrants, who make up more than a third of the population. And merchants throughout Paramaribo speak Chinese, even though the numbers of Chinese immigrants are small. (link)

Is it just me, or is Suriname exactly like Queens? (The food options sound enticing.)

For the curious, there is a Sranan Tongo-to-English dictionary here (not many words derived from Indian languages, as far as I can tell), and a “Sarnami Hindustani”-to-Dutch dictionary here. (Of course, for the latter, you need to know Dutch!)

I would also recommend a reader comment on an earlier post by Vinod (where he mentioned the Surinamese Indians in Amsterdam).

I’ve never been a big fan of the Incredible India tourism advertising campaign. I find it orientalist and tacky, like the images below:

Coffee Brown? WTF - why are they advertising india based on the “exotic” skin color of the Indians?

Still, I concede that it’s hard to advertise India without being a bit exotic, after all, you’re trying to appeal to tourists based on cultural novelty. They’re not going to India for the skiing, they’re going because the culture is different.

That’s why I was so tickled by the television advertisement below for the 15th International Pondicherry Yoga Festival [via BB]. I thought it did a good job of showcasing some amazing yoga, but doing so as incredible physical activity rather than random freak show. For some reason, I found the video appealing and it didn’t set my orientalism alarm off, even though they were showing some impressive contorsions.

Did they do something different here or did they just do it better? Or perhaps you feel these ads are just as orientalist and exotifying as the GOI’s ads … what say you?

A friend of mine from here in Texas recently handed me a copy of the Gujarat guidebook she’s edited and published after living there for some time (and with the additional help of some paid local writers). Since my family is originally from Gujarat I’ve never even considered the need for getting my hands on a guidebook before each visit there. After skimming through nearly 400 pages rich in history and photography I think I’ll be taking this along on my next trip to the motherland. Think “Lonely Planet on steroids”:

A grill would have totally completed this cover picture.

Five thousand years of civilization

Savor the history and romance, colors and textures, rhythms and dance of a land where time have never stood still.

From the rocky heights of the Sahyadri Mountains across to the salt flats of the Desert of Kachchh, Gujarat has something for everyone. Wander through remains of ancient Indus Valley civilizations; venture to meet the lions of Gir Forest; soak in the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi; dance on the streets for nine nights of Navratri. Enjoy an unparalleled ethos of hospitality. Experience vibrant crafts, exquisite architecture, rich wildlife reserves, colorful festivals and eclectic traditions. Join five millennia of seafarers, merchants and settlers from around the globe and come explore Gujarat. [Link]

What the hell. Gujarat has lions? I wonder why my dad has failed to ever mention this salient fact to me (but I’m sure he’ll comment on it and give me an earful down below). I remember going all the way to the northern part of India on a tiger safari but had no idea that there were lions right there in Gujarat. I think part of the problem is that to me Gujarat is just Ahmedabad, and if someone asks me what you do there I’d say “ummmmm…CG Road, Gandhi Ashram, and Siddi Sayid.” I love eating Amul cheese sandwiches when I am in India but I didn’t know I could take a tour of the Amul plant and watch it get made. It’s probably similar to going wine tasting in Napa (but cheese sandwiches are better than wine). The guidebook also taught me a little about the village (Sarkhej) that my grandparents lived in and where my parents partially grew up. I’ve been there but either didn’t know, or couldn’t remember, the significance of the place until I read here about the complex that the village was built around:

Sarkhej Roaza is a mosque, tomb, and royal complex dedicated to the memory of Salikh Ahmed Khattu Ganj Baksh, the spiritual advisor of Ahmed Shah…The Roza was a retreat for successive rulers, each adding a garden or pavilion. Sarkej is another excellent example of a structure that combines Hindu and Islamic design.

I always find it a little suspect when people try to do novelty airlines, maybe because I’m one of those paranoid people who, even after years of flying and hundreds of flights, still routinely thinks “We’re all going to die!” at least two or three times on any given flight. Thus, I will never fly the now-grounded “Hooters Air,” even if it does come back. (Guys, keep your eyes on the… cockpit? please?)

Kingfisher Airlines might end up as a better bet, but as might be proper in an airline that emerged out of a beer company, if I do ever fly with them I’ll still probably feel compelled to smell the pilot’s breath before I take my seat. Apparently, Kingfisher Airlines, one of India’s newer domestic carriers, has signed a deal with Airbus to buy several jumbo and superjumbo planes, with an eye to entering the international market. The move is part of a general boom in international travel to India (which has been up by about 40% this year alone).

The New York Times article about the event spends as much time talking about the lifestyle of Kingfisher’s flamboyant CEO Vijay Mallya, as it does considering the economic viability of the venture (they do note that Kingfisher Airlines has yet to turn a profit as a domestic carrier in India):

Mr. Mallya personally is the sort of unfettered corporate czar that many American boardrooms have not seen in at least half a century. He surrounds himself with a close group of longtime advisers, wears copious diamonds, holds business meetings at his house until 5 in the morning, winks at female journalists and flaunts the “good times” corporate motif in most aspects of his life.

At home, a Mercedes, a Ferrari and a Bentley are parked in his driveway. His ornate living room is filled with silver gilded furniture and art objects like a marble statue of a nymph-like woman, as well as a Picasso sketch. His CD collection includes dance, lounge and party music.

A group of largely silent young women clad in white deliver drinks, answer phones and clean up ashtrays. (link)

Kya baat hai. Vijay Mallya seems to be a mix of new-school Indian self-confidence and ambition (this is a huge endeavour), and a kind of old-school, “ladies’ man” absurdity that seems to have come out of some 70s Bollywood movie. Even the attractive female flight attendants are a big part of the company’s marketing campaign, which seems like an obvious Vijay Mallya touch (see this article).

In general, I have to say that Kingfisher’s “keep the good times rolling” marketing campaign simply isn’t appealing to me. From an airline I really want the boring things — professionalism, competence, and yeah, safety — not so much “party time.”

But is he perhaps appealing to a real demographic, one that’s a bit less stodgy and paranoid than me? Are people really going to fly Kingfisher “Good Times” Airlines to go to and from the Desh?

Recently, I went on a four-day trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, with eighteen relatives from India. The group was mainly cousins, uncles, aunts, and a two-year old baby (my cousin’s; I left my own kid at home). Some were from Delhi and Bombay, but others were from smaller towns in Punjab and elsewhere.

The biggest surprise for me was realizing that many of my relatives were awed by the lights and sounds of Las Vegas — and only modestly impressed by the Grand Canyon. You can kind of see why: the New Las Vegas is obsessed with showing off its grand, pseudo-classy facades (i.e., the fountain show at the Bellagio that Steven Soderbergh admires so much), while downplaying both the less glamorous past and the seediness that still exists in the fringes, in places like “downtown” Las Vegas. To a first-time visitor, it might be easy to miss how pseudo the new Vegas really is.

In the casinos themselves, I saw lots of Desis in the older, cheaper casinos on the north end of the strip — where the table minimums are $1 or $2. I didn’t see quite as many in the Bellagio, where the minimum bets start at $20 and go up (considerably) from there. Personally, I am not really that into gambling, so my favorite casino is still Circus Circus: give me Whac-A-Mole over Roulette, any day. At least you’re likely to walk away with a prize (i.e., a teddy bear), rather than a big hole in your pocket where your life-savings used to be.

In terms of cuisine, we went twice for satisfying lunch buffets at India Oven, at the north end of the strip. (Is it the only Indian restaurant on the Las Vegas strip? I didn’t see any others) There weren’t many options at the Grand Canyon, so we ate at Denny’s (which was a flop; my relatives really didn’t like it) and Pizza Hut (better).

Speaking of Desis on the Strip — since there are already so many Desis visiting Vegas, why not a Desi-themed casino? There’s already the lightly Morroccan-themed Sahara and the heavily Egyptian Luxor, the pseudo-Italian Venetian (where you can even go for a gondola ride), and the pseudo-French Paris. Donald Trump already has the pseudo-Desi Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, so maybe we could step out on a limb and call it… Maharajah? (Las Vegas is already completely defined by kitschy appropriations and simulations of real places and cultures — why not embrace it?) If I had $1 billion to invest in a casino in Las Vegas, I would model my Maharajah on the Lake Palace at Udaipur, except in Las Vegas — unlike Udaipur — the lake would actually have water in it.

I’m sure the science-fiction geeks amongst y’all know about the lost continents of Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu. These are the “missing continents” that were submerged in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans respectively.

[The story of Atlantis has its origin in the Platonic dialogues, while Lemuria was hypothesized in the late 1800s as an explanation for why there were Lemurs in both Madagascar and India but not in Africa or the Middle East. Both are now beloved of mystics and kooks. Nobody really cares about Mu, although it is sometimes confused with Lemuria.]

However, I’ll bet you’ve never heard of the Tamil analogue, the lost continent of Kumari Kandam! Proponents say Kumari Kandam is Lemuria, different names for the same continent that once covered most of the Indian ocean:

Sri Lanka together with India, Indonesia and Malaysia were a part of this continent. Many islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans are remnants of this continent that in ancient time covered the whole area of today’s ocean. [Link]

The lost continent of Kumari Kandam

It turns out that everything does not actually come from India, it comes from Kumari Kandam. And by everything, I do mean everything.

“Homo Dravida” first evolved in Kumari Kandam; it is the cradle of civilization; the birthplace of all languages in general and of the Tamil language in particular. This is where the first and second great ages (Sangams?) of the Tamils happened, not in India, but in the true Dravidian homeland, further south.

Some paragraphs were accidentally omitted from Somini Sengupta’s recent article on Chaat and other Delhi street foods in the New York Times. Because I am a super-devoted-Somini Sengupta groupie (a “Sengroupie,” you could call me), I was sent the missing paragraphs as a gift, under strict order not to reveal my sources:

The reporter visits a lost alleyway in Mastinagar, a suburb of Delhi. In the alley are an endless variety of special chaat stalls unknown to western taste-buds and unimagined by western food tourists. This is as “street” as it gets; if pressed, the people of this alley all state that they have never been near an air-conditioner or even a piece of plastic. Indeed, it is highly unclear whether the residents of Mastinagar have ever been outside Mastinagar, or even know that their “Shehr” is in the city and state of Delhi (indeed, one resident referred to the city, rather anachronistically, as “Tughlakabad”). In the lost alley, one finds an almost infinite variety of Chaats, some of which were tasted by a reporter. A short list of the highlights follows:

Orientalist Chaat: This type of chaat will fulfill all your desires for mystical knowledge and understanding, and set your brain on fire. If this chaat is eaten, it is said, the eater will learn a thousand yoga poses (a DVD is included), a thousand Sanskrit chants that will lead to Enlightenment, and perpetual unity of mind and body in pure relaxation bliss. After eating, you will have reached the other side of the moon, tasted the stars, found the ergonomically perfect chair, and finally know the answer to the question, Why Did the Bodhi-Dharma Leave For the East? (NOTE: Insiders report that Orientalist Chaat is exactly the same as regular Chaat, only 10,000 times more expensive.)

Erotic Chaat: This chaat is an aphrodisiac composed entirely of garlic and crushed Viagra powder. Not especially tasty, but surprisingly “potent,” as a reporter subsequently discovered.

Chaat Feng Shui: This Chaat, which is composed entirely of wind, water, and garam masala, is not meant to be eaten, but rather dispersed around a room in need of redecoration. Pirated Chaat Feng Shui originates from China, which continues to flood the Indian market with inexpensive rip-offs of actual Feng Shui.

Oh no. Hot on the heels of Amrita’s most excellent rant on her visit to the “Gateway of India” themed event at New York’s ABC Carpet & Home, and the subsequent deployment on the same thread of the neologism “Ho-rientalists,” here comes, via the SAJA mailing list, a new development that brings it all together more beautifully than one could have dreamed for. It turns out that if you visit the ABC show, which runs til March 14, you can enter to win one of “Six Unique Travel Experiences” being offered by the Taj Hotels group in conjunction with a desi-owned New York travel agency called Our Personal Guest, and known as Tattva Tours.

Tattva? The term the brochure uses to translate this rather complex mystical concept is essence — as in, the essence of India. The press release explains:

Each 10-day tour explores a distinctive cultural perspective of India; some tours also offer a choice of Northern or Southern India itineraries. They are designed to bring out the essence of an Indian experience and are named after the elements that, according to Eastern philosophy, form the basis of all existence.

For details may I direct you to the tour brochure, which is a marvel of — shit, every single last damn cliché you could possibly round up about the mysterious, mystical, spiritual, romantic, esoteric, and not least, luxurious Orient, all set against glowing ochres and purples and yellows and labeled in the requisite faux-Devanagari script. It offers conceptual summaries of the six tours, which include Agni (“The delicacies by Indian fire - It’s not what you taste, it’s what you spice your memory with”), Vaayu (“A flight of fancy with Indian royalty - It’s not how you fly, it’s how high you soar”), Bhoomi (“The earthy splendour of Indian crafts - It’s not what you touch, it’s how it caresses you within”), Aakash, Jal, and Kham.

If we start quoting the descriptive copy for each of these tours we’ll never get out of here, so let me just offer one editorial gem:

Vaayu - Wind
Knowing no bounds, the royalty of India knew no limits when it came to revelry and celebrations. Without India’s royalty, pink would not have become the navy blue of India.

Now hold on a second. This might sound like gibberish to you, but then again, chances are you just aren’t sophisticated enough to understand it. After all, Our Personal Guest is aimed at a very specific type of client, the OPG Traveler:

[some names have been changed]

Delhi

“What is your business in India, sir?” Police inspector sahib was looking me intently in the eyes (with what I swear was a smirk). It has been proven by the record of El Al that the single best method of revealing a suspected highjacker is by employing a thorough screening interview.

“I’m actually not staying in Delhi, but just transferring through to Nepal. My younger brother is getting married there.”

“But you are Indian, no?”

“I’m American, but yes, my parents are from Gujarat. Well, actually my mom is from Africa but she is Gujarati too. But the girl, she is Nepali.”

“But your last name is not Gujarati. You must be Bihari.”

“No, I’m quite sure of it. I am Gujarati”

“Can’t be. I have Bihari friends with the same last name.”

“I know, I tried to convince my father once that we weren’t Gujarati also…but after a half hour he got mad at me and said I was just wasting his time and that even great-great-grandfather was Gujarati.”

“I think you must be from somewhere else, not Gujarat.”

Should I have continued to argue some more? Maybe he was right. My confidence regarding this whole matter was rapidly deteriorating. I was equally troubled by the fact that I could not locate Bihar on a map. Who knows who migrated where 300 years ago? He had a gun. Most importantly, I still hadn’t been given the clearance to pass. There was a very long line behind me and I could feel stares on my moist back. Inspector sahib kept on with that smirk and his head was now cocked to the side. I don’t trust people with side-cocked heads. I gently reached for my bag without his verbal clearance. With purposely slow movements (eyes on the ground) I walked away. I hoped that airport security did not determine me to be a counterfeit Gujarati unworthy of passage. My family had gotten away with it for a few hundred years. I couldn’t now fail them all.

“Have you seen Nepal?” Apparently those words appeared at the bottom of a poster hanging on the wall of Royal Nepal Airlines’ offices in Delhi. The poster featured this lovely picture:

“Have you seen Nepal?” Apparently neither has Royal Nepal Airlines.

It took a sharp-eyed tourist from Peru to notice the obvious error and tattle to his countryman before the world was made aware of this sinister plot. To that tourist I can only say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

“The airline … offered apologies to Peru for using the picture of the Machu Picchu Sanctuary on a poster to promote their country and assured that the lamentable error has been corrected,” the statement said.

“As a consequence, the Nepalese airline fired an employee in the rank of a manager … It is concluded that it was an isolated error,” it added. [Link]

I wish this news would have broken a week later! I’ve hiked to Machu Picchu and will be in Delhi next Saturday en route to Kathmandu, Nepal. What a coup it would have been to pose in front of this poster for the entertainment of SM readers (although perhaps “coup” is the wrong word in this context). I’m wondering if I can take a lot of pictures in Nepal and use them in a poster encouraging tourism in North Dakota where SM’s headquarters are based. By the way, do we have any Nepali readers in the house? Should we even consider a meet-up?

I’m here in Mombasa on the coast. Mombasa is Kenya’s second largest city and a popular holiday spot for its beaches and laid-back lifestyle. It’s also a different culture from the interior. Here, the Swahili, Arab, Indian, Portuguese, and British colonial influences blend into something uniquely Indian Ocean. It’s tough to tell where one culture stops and another begins, or which person belongs to which group, or even if such concerns matter at all.

There are auto-rickshaws plying the streets (called tuk-tuks here), people in every variety of Islamic garb from skullcaps and robes for men, to scarves and full purdah for women—or no special dress at all. With its colonial architecture, palm trees, blue ocean, and cultural melange, Mombasa seems a lot like Pondicherry. The tourist development is elsewhere, so the place is surprisingly “local,” and the people are friendly. In the late afternoons the streets are full of schoolkids in uniforms. Mildew grows on the yellow and white apartment blocks, with laundry drying outside.

I took a tour of the Old Town and have posted some tourist snaps below. It’s the poorer quarter of the city but the most interesting, with architectural flourishes from all the contributing cultures. My guide was Mahir Mohammed (who also goes by Ali Mohammed and Ali Baba). Photography wasn’t particularly welcome in Old Town, but he smoothed most things over. The issue seemed to be that I would make money off the photos and was therefore exploiting people commercially, so I didn’t take many pictures or press the issue. At one point, we were in a narrow lane looking at a coop of pigeons. Ali was telling me about them and clucking at them (I wasn’t photographing), and a woman came out of the house and yelled at him. We walked on. He told me she was accusing him of using her pigeons for his business.

The Indian presence is very strong in Mombasa. All the restaurants serve more than one Indian dish (curry, biryani, somosas, chapatis, etc.). There are Hindu temples and Ismaili mosques. Well-off Indians own shops in town and estates on the ocean, but there are poor people in the mix in Old Town. My hotel, a colonial-era three-star with mosquito nets, a fan, and a dipper in the bathroom, has Preity Zinta calendars at the reception desk and behind the bar. (There are also a large number of a craggy old single European men in shorts, and this is the tourist off season, which makes me wonder how Mombasa figures in the sex trade.)

Some tourist snaps from Old Town and the rest of Mombasa are on the flip.

Like many desis, I love me some deals. I know I am playing into stereotypes here, especially because I am Gujarati, but come on EVERYONE likes good deals. The enjoyment for me isn’t just finding a good deal, but the whole process: it is the hunt, the chase, and the glory in opening the mail and finding that rebate check that you thought might not ever come. Suffice it to say, I spend a good percentage of my time on the internets perusing some favorite deal sites.

But while I like finding good deals, one of my pet peeves is really poor customer service and the feeling that I have been taken advantage of. So when I was visiting one of my new favorite deal/consumer rights blogs, The Consumerist, (part of the Gawker family of blogs) I was a bit dismayed to hear the tale of our desi brethren, Mahesh, who reported on his parent’s really poor experience on United Airlines.

Mahesh’s parents flew from Omaha, Nebraska to Colombo,Sri Lanka, but at LAX, United Airlines (UAL) refused to honor their tickets, saying that they had not “been approved, authorized and authenticated.” The family ended having to pay $2860 extra to complete their journey. Apparently, Sri Lankan Air Lines, a United code-share partner, could not find the reservation Mahesh’s parents made. Mahesh wrote three letters of complaint to UAL and so far his parents have only received two $300 coupons in return. When Mahesh scoffed at the sum, United wrote, “our policy does not permit us to respond with the generosity you had anticipated. (link)

It seems that instead of writing letters, which I am a big fan of, now when desis are wronged, we blog. So as a good South Asian, Mahesh has started his own blog detailing his battle with United Airlines’ Customer service at evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com. His story is really messed up and I hope the airlines eventually do the right thing and refund the extra three grand his recently operated-on parents had to hand over to get home.

This is brilliant. Via SAJA, here’s the story of the Pakistani-American brother who has bought land in Lahore, Virginia, and has great plans for its use:

We spoke to the present American owner of a portion of the town’s land, and also the Pakistani American who has recently bought that piece of land to develop it to match the Pakistani town of Lahore. The new Lahore will have a school, a museum, an airport, and a replica of the famous Shalimar gardens in Lahore, Pakistan.

The report, for the Voice of America’s Urdu TV service, is by journalist Imran Siddiqui and features great local characters who are interviewed in English.

This opens up a lot of possibilities. For instance, there is a Delhi in New York, Delaware, California and Ohio. There’s an Agra in California and Kansas, and another in Oklahoma where there seems to be no shortage of land to build your miniature Taj. There’s also a Bombay in New York, population 1,192, with a tantalizing but undeveloped backstory:

The town of Bombay, comprising township Number One of Macomb’s purchase and. all of the St. Regis reservation on the American side of the boundary, was erected from Fort Covington by an act of the Legislature passed March 30, 1833, to be effective on the first of May following. Its name was chosen by Michael Hogan in compliment to Mrs. Hogan, who was a native of Bombay, India.

There are also Calcuttas in Ohio and West Virginia, a Madras in Oregon, and even a Lucknow in western Ontario. I couldn’t find a Thiruvananthapuram.

I hope y’all are enjoying your holiday travels. For me it’s yet another December spent at home on the East Coast, followed by 3 days of hard-core academia at the annual South Asian Literary Association and Modern Language Association conferences. (Note: I’m not really complaining: this year we are blessed by the presence of a smiling, gurgling little baby. But yeah, a change of scenery would still be nice.)

Travel journalists, by contrast, get to have leisurely travels all the time — for work. Today I was particularly drawn by a recent New York Times article about visiting beaches in Bangladesh, and a Times of London travelogue (thanks, Indianoguy) of a reporter’s trip all around India. Going to the beaches of Bangladesh (on the eastern tip, near the border of Burma/Myanmar) is something I would never have thought of doing, but it actually makes perfect sense. Incidentally, the tourist board’s official motto is perhaps unintentionally comical, but actually works despite itself: “Visit Bangladesh Before Tourists Come.”

And my favorite bit from the London Times travelogue is about a train ride to Jhansi:

Train journeys here are great levellers. Few Indians frantically fill their time, as westerners do, with work or reading. They regard the journeys as a chance to “interact” and talk, about anything from the price of aubergines to the finer points of Tantric meditation. By the time they get off, they’re exchanging business cards and pledging eternal friendship.

As fillings turned to extractions, the cabin attendant slouched past with an urn of peppery tomato soup, which he served in plastic cups (they would have been biodegradeable pottery cups five years ago). He scattered it with a handful of croutons from his pocket. The lady dentist seized her moment. “How does your daily routine here compare with back home?” she asked.. “How does India compare with UK?”

I said the UK is ordered, startlingly quiet and clean in comparison, and that its people are reserved and, in places, few and far between. I mentioned North Ronaldsay, the Orkney island which is three miles long and one mile wide, and has a population of less than 50. “Amazing!” said the dentist. And I described how my wife and I go walking in the Derbyshire Peak District and sometimes meet no more than six or seven people in four hours. “Astonishing!” said the biotechnology student.

He had a point. In the packed 3rd class carriage next door, some sort of evolutionary struggle for survival seemed to be going on. I said that British trains sometimes travel with as few as a dozen passengers. And that, if it’s even ten minutes late, there could be a riot.

This was a lie, but it seemed pretty relevant, as our train was now four rather than three hours late. (link)

I especially like the point about how mass-transit in the west is largely anti-social, while the experience in India (or perhaps all of South Asia?) is the opposite. (Does anyone have favorite subcontinental train/plane/bus experiences they want to share?)

Incidentally, if you’re sick of reading about western travelers in India (while they’re far from uniform, the stories always seem to have comments on the crazy traffic patterns and the smell), there are some great “internal” desi travel stories up at OkTataByeBye.com. I thought this in-depth article on Lucknow was an especially good read. And there are plenty more.

Pitt and Jolie in Rickshaw Drama! Jolie-Pitt Photog All Choked Up! India Gets a Jhalak of Brad & Angelina!

The news wires are all abuzz with desi-related gossip about the couple we love to hate, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Pitt and Jolie, along with their three children, are in India to shoot scenes for the upcoming movie A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie stars as slain journalist Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane. Pitt's Plan B production company is coproducing the film...Relentless paparazzi coverage of the Jolie-Pitt clan's visit has led the couple to remain holed up in Pune's Le Meridan Hotel almost nonstop since they arrived by private jet late last week. [link]

Brangelina starring in The Great Rickshaw Escape

Brangelina in India has created all the frenzy that the Hindustan Times Page Six thrives on. First, we had Angelina Jolie wishing she were filming in Pakistan instead, where Daniel Pearl's abduction had originally taken place.

Meanwhile, Jolie says she and Pitt are disappointed they are not shooting the film in Pakistan. Security concerns there caused officials to suggest they work elsewhere. So with the exception of a few background scenes shot in Pakistan, A Mighty Heart will be made in Pune.

"I am disappointed that we could not shoot the film in Pakistan, a country that I love and have visited three times," said Jolie in a statement issued on Saturday by Trevor Neilson, an adviser to the couple.

"They talked with people from all levels of the Pakistan Government and there's certainly no hard feelings. But it became clear that it was preferable to film in India," Neilson said. [link]

Now, we have Brangelina's security with an (almost) killer choke hold...

A bodyguard for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie manhandled a British photographer as he tried to take their picture at a hotel in western India, an incident caught on video by an Indian television station. On Saturday afternoon, when Pitt and Jolie tried to leave the hotel, one of their security guards caught a British photographer trying to take their photo, grabbing the man by his neck and verbally abusing him. [link]

And the infamous rickshaw escape...

The couple were chased by photographers, cameramen and reporters, forcing them to turn back after a 20-minute ride that took them past stores in downtown Pune, in western India.[...] Several traffic signals slowed their short rickshaw ride. At every red light, security men traveling in a rickshaw behind jumped out and surrounded the three-wheeler to prevent the media from snapping pictures of Pitt and Jolie. [link]

Oh, Brangelina. Welcome to the motherland. I'm placing bets that the next baby in their internationally adopted clan is going to be desi. Any takers?

Update: You can watch The Attack of the Brangelina Security Guard here! (Thanks, Manish!).

For the past week I have been absent from this website while on an anthropological excursion for SM (like anyone but my monkey assistants even noticed). Sometimes a blogger just needs to get out of their bunker and talk to the real people. The question I was seeking an answer to was a profound one. Do those states…you know, the ones up there near the Canadian border…do they even have any desis that live there? For my excursion I needed a field assistant. My brother (we will call him P to protect his real identity) has lived in Idaho for the past two years and served as a good travel companion.

From L.A. I flew to Portland, Oregon where I had a layover. While walking from one gate to the other I had my first desi sighting. It was a Sikh man with a long flowing beard and an unusually large turban who I spotted in the TSA security line. Upon closer inspection however, two things became clear. First, the man was white and not desi. Second, he was a TSA screener and not a passenger.

Four hours later (damn airline delays) I landed in Spokane, WA where I collected my possessions at baggage claim. I began to re-arrange some of my gear when a woman walked up to me holding a sign.

Woman: Excuse me but are you Mustafa?

Abhi: Heh. No, sorry.

Woman: I’m sorry but you are the only one that looked like he was…lost.

“Lost” of course was a very clever euphemism for “brown.” I didn’t mind though. The name “Mustafa” reminded me of a powerful figure with a glorious mane. For just a minute I forgot about my military short haircut and hummed a little Hakuna Matata as I waited on the curb for my brother to drive up.

I can see the Bollywood movie now. It would be like Swades, but instead of SRK bringing electricity into the village it would be installing an internet connection. Instead of an NRI romance, it would be internet love. What exactly am I talking about? Why, you didn't hear?

An Indian village has uploaded itself onto the Internet, giving the outside world a glimpse of life in rural India.Visitors to Hansdehar village's Web site (http://www.smartvillages.org/) can see the names, jobs and other details of its 1,753 residents, browse photographs of their shops and read detailed specifications about their drainage and electricity facilities.

Most of the residents can't yet surf the Hansdehar Web site as the village is not yet connected to the Internet. [link]

It's cute. These villagers have ideas on how to use the internet- to get better prices for crops by trading online, job hunting, and even, wife searching. The website itself has pictures of the village, tourist attractions, and even a voter list. I think there is great potential with getting Indian villages connected to the web. I really started thinking about this when I bumped into Nipun from Charity Focus, when he was walking across India in an attempt to tie in service with internet in the villages (yes, he blogged his trip). The internet does have it's advantages in connecting villages with the rest of the world, and I see a lot of potential with this.

But what about the privilege associated with getting accessing an internet connection? Seems like an MIT grad at United Villages is trying to take care of that with the advent of 'drive-by Wi-Fi.'

United Villages ...is working with Indian nongovernmental organization Drishtee to network 50 villages in Orissa's Cuttack district, where bus-powered Wi-Fi service begins this month... "You have drive-by McDonald's, and we have drive-by Wi-Fi," says Mr. Hasson. The buses will use short-range radio to pick up electronic messages three or more times per day from Wi-Fi-enabled computers placed in kiosks. Hubs near bus stations will handle traffic via a connection that can be as slow as dial-up.

UV will sell pre-paid cards, with phone number and email address assigned to them, in different denominations (up to 100 rupees, roughly $2.20).[link]

Interesting- so it seems like even though people with television sets won't be able to watch Paris Hilton's too-racy-for-India banned music video, it looks like people in buses with Wi-Fi connections will still be able to download and watch the video. Indian villages online, drive-by wi-fi at bus kiosks, and a banned Hilton video; I can see the Bollywood script now...

From today’s New York Times, this lede:

SHE was Glinda in a sari. Early that morning, she had glided ethereally across the courtyard with her fellow healing goddesses, their feet bare, their flowing white garb edged in gold. The bird trills reverberated off the palace walls.

“Please sit,” she said prayerfully. Soon, thick warm sesame oil infused with medicinal herbs began to permeate my meager muslin thong. She breathed heavily, karate-chopping the oil with the edges of her hands. She gently pummeled me with poultices, hot bundles of herbs resembling bouquets garnis. In the background, I heard oil sizzling. I felt a strange compulsion to go fry myself in a wok.

Pummel me with poultices! Stay me with flagons! Gag me with a spoon! What on Lord Krishna’s blue earth is going on here?

It’s just San Francisco-based writer Patricia Leigh Brown receiving treatment, for research purposes, at the Kalari Kovilakom Palace for Ayurveda in the hills of Palakkam, Kerala, where “ayurvedists — longevity-seekers who are already deeply into the present moment — come … to detoxify and purify with ayurvedic doctors, the new yogis, for whom mind, body and spirit have been fused for more than 3,000 years.”

Exempted from the resort’s two-week minimum stay rule, Brown was able to pick and choose her treatments, avoiding the “stamina-challenging sequence of enemas” and secretly brewing Peet’s Coffee in her room.

The article is long, and not entirely as ridiculous as would appear from the opening. By the end, in fact, some interesting cultural analysis has crept in. En route, however, you get lines like “My spine was a cobra unfurling,” and the apparition in Brown’s mind, during treatment, of a vision of Dick Cheney. Surely that can’t be therapeutic.

No, not Star Trek — across the Himalayas. Xeni Jardin, a freelance journalist who is on the Boing Boing blogroll, recently went to India, China, and Tibet for NPR, as part of a four-part series called “Hacking the Himalayas”. The Boing Boing post introducing the series is here; the main focus is on how technology is transforming the lives of Tibetans, both in Tibet and in exile in India.

The first two parts in the series have links up at NPR, though as of now only part 1 has audio (part 2 is expected to go up later today). The first story is actually not on the Tibetans themselves, but on a partially-nomadic local tribe called the Gaddi, who are based around Dharamsala and various villages in Himachal Pradesh. Most of the story is about their local folk traditions, which are apparently somewhat in decline. I’m not quite sure what technology (or Tibet, for that matter) has to do with it, but at least the story is something other than the usual, “look, they have Cyber Cafes!” type of thing.

Xeni has started a blog dedicated to providing auxiliary material to the stories that air on NPR. Among other things, she has a short post there on the popularity of hip hop amongst Tibetan-in-exile teens in Dharmsala.

(Link via Desipundit)

While browsing the deeply-discounted “remaindered” aisles at my local Barnes & Noble, I came across Satish Grover’s Masterpieces of Traditional Architecture. It’s a coffee-table book with beautiful photographs and appreciative descriptions of fourteen of India’s ancient and medieval architectural masterpieces.

In his introduction, Grover points out that the ancient sites in India are all religious (Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Muslim), not because India was traditionally especially devout. In fact, only the religious structures were carved in stone, so they are the only edifices to survive. The secular architecture of ancient India might have been pretty wonderful too, but those brick and timber buildings have all vanished.

Since I can’t do any real traveling this summer because of work, I thought I would link to images on the web of the various monuments in Grover’s book as a kind of vicarious travelogue. A lot of people have tagged these sites in their Flickr photos, though for slightly more obscure places like the Karle Caves you have to search on the open internet to see what comes up.

Maybe it’s just me but when you travel to foreign locales isn’t there some kind of charm to having the “commoner” experience? Of going somewhere and moving (as my father says) “with the people”?

The Wall Street Journal called it “VIP Travel on the Cheap” but I think a better name might be (with all due respect to the anonymous maharaja in question) “People Who Want To Visit Foreign Countries Without Having to Interact with Anyone Who Actually Lives There”.

One of the hottest concepts in travel right now is the “insider” experience, where travelers are promised a chance to hobnob with celebrities, go behind the scenes where other tourists are barred and be treated like visiting dignitaries.

Companies are selling tours of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entertaining room, visits with Olympic athletes and drinks with an Indian maharaja — complete with an elephant parade.

Now, I’m not saying you have to go to India and tan in the Dharavi slum or drive an auto rickshaw around Queen’s Necklace during rush hour or do a load of whites under the oppressive third world sun. But, if you’re going to sit in a plane and make the commitment and fly all the way around the world to India, shouldn’t you actually try to see some of it?

Ah, mysterious India, ever in flux yet steadfastly the same! While greenbacks, terabytes and bushy-tailed MBAs woosh back and forth between Bangalore and Wall Street, the eructations of Tom Friedman speeding them across the Flat World like some kind of ill pneumatics, the doings of the superstitious masses still supply orientalists correspondents with fare for cutesiness and condescension. As Henry Chu sat barricaded at the crib contemplating his balls, Jonathan Allen of the New York Times was bravely setting off into Delhi’s diesel dawn to document the queer customs of the Hindoo:

the creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it’s a small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on parade.

After noting that the temple is inspired by Disneyland (“We visited five or six times. As tourists, I mean,” the temple’s PR officer clarifies), Allen goes on to, let’s see, analogize Indian temple-goers to people waiting for the toilet, and Indians in general to dogs, amongst whom he is like an unflappable elephant…

Wait, you think I’m making this up?

Here are the toilets:

The appeal of this might at first be lost on visitors to India, who are usually coming to see the country’s abundance of genuinely ancient buildings [say wha…? - ed.]; Indians, who are surrounded by them, will generally grab any opportunity to escape from all that decrepitude for the afternoon, ideally to a place with musical fountains. The crowds here aren’t pilgrims; they’re day trippers. (…)

And so, although Western tourists are welcome, they can expect to receive the occasional look of benign giggly bemusement, the same kind a gentleman receives upon joining the line for the ladies’ toilets. (…)

The dogs:

Sometimes the allegorical power of elephants is overestimated, as in the tableau which, according to the caption, claims that: “One problem elephants never face is the generation gap.”

The one that most strikes me is the creature shown “equipoised and nonchalant amidst barking dogs”; for the tourist sometimes overwhelmed by the colorful chaos of India, this could well be the most relevant elephant.(…)

Portrait of the author as a patient pachyderm:

People cut in line and tread on my toes, which strike me as things Bhagwan Swaminarayan would not do. It seems the combined efforts of the Akshardham’s robots, elephants and talking boats in relaying BAPS’s essential message of humble compassion may still not have been enough.

As I leave the temple, a horde of rickshaw drivers surrounds me, loudly and physically hustling for my business. I again try to adopt the posture of the unflappable elephant.

But unlike Henry and the hijras, this elephant has balls. Jonathan gets all New York on motherfuckers:

Then it occurs to me that that elephant must get ripped off all the time, and I argue furiously with the drivers until one of them relents and agrees to take me back to central Delhi on the meter.

Balls and all!

Technics aside, a perfect photograph usually involves both, an absorbing subject matter and an image that leaves an imprint as if it were a memory of one’s own. Take these qualities and wrap them around India’s filmi phenomena, turn the roll into a series and what you have is the stuff that dreams are made of. Bollywood dreams, to be (slightly inaccurately) exact.

Jonathan Torgovnik’s extensive travels throughout India in the early 90s led him to rural India’s nomadic cinema halls and the masala movie sets of Chennai and Mumbai. On the way he managed to create a completely riveting contribution to the study of Indian cinema in the form of Bollywood Dreams (Phaidon Press, 2003). This (unbelievably perfect coffee table) book feels like a deeply personal photo essay as well as a tribute to Indian cinema’s grass roots. All seen through the eyes of a former combat-photographer for the Israeli army.

Online exhibitions of Torgovnik’s work with the Indian film industry can be found at Digital Journalist and foto8. A short (5min.) self-narrated clip of his photographs can be found at Google viddy. His website too is chock full of goodies, like the Mumbai laughing clubs series, which is reducing me to fits of giggles just thinking about it. Or the Satosh series, which is pure breaking my heart. Either way, I can’t stop looking.

Days like today the wanderlust sets in and I feel like getting away for a while. Unfortunately, until my wealthy Uncle Sam starts providing me with cash (~seven months from now) I will remain as broke as a joke. In the meantime I will be gazing longingly at the pages of Time Magazine Asia. Their current issue features The Best of Asia. Did you know that the best Red Light District Experience in Asia is at…Cooco’s Den & Café in Lahore, Pakistan (note that Time currently has the wrong description here)? What I really wanted to know is where I could go to just blow out for a few days.

“You must be crazy” is the response you tend to meet with when announcing an intention to vacation in Afghanistan. But for the courageous traveler willing to overlook the backdrop of simmering warfare between U.S. forces and Taliban insurgents, the country offers astonishing rewards—none more uplifting than Band-i-Amir. These five connected lakes in the central Bamiyan province are among the world’s least visited yet most dramatic natural wonders. Spilling like a string of sapphires across golden desert canyons, buttes and mesas, the lakes of Band-i-Amir (the name means “jewels of the king”) are fed by an underground source, rendering them preternaturally pristine. Their purity and extraordinary depth give the lakes a blueness of indescribable intensity. Local legend has it that a plunge in these waters is a cure for madness. Possession by djinn, or demons, is a standard Afghan explanation for insanity—but djinn hate swimming, the reasoning goes, especially in a holy lake said to be carved out of solid rock by the magic sword of warrior-saint Hazrat Ali. Local faith in the healing powers of these waters is evident in a small shrine at the first lake, where the recently exorcized leave discarded clothing and tokens of thanks. If they’re right about the waters, then you’re in luck: even if you were a little crazy to vacation in Afghanistan, Band-i-Amir will restore your sanity. But you don’t have to believe in the folklore to rejoice in the fact that you ignored the naysayers and ventured here: the surreal beauty of these lakes is a balm for every soul. [Link]

Now for this next “Best” I felt a little guilty for imagining myself there. We shouldn’t be happy about bargains brought about by unrest…err, right?

Visiting violence-wracked countries isn’t everyone’s idea of a vacation, but local unrest can be a boon for the bargain hunter. Nepal, which has endured 10 years of civil war, is a perfect example. Although foreigners haven’t been targets in the conflict between the government and Maoist rebels, the U.S. Department of State asks Americans to defer all nonessential travel to Nepal; the British government tells its citizens to remain vigilant. But if you can live with a moderate level of risk, you’ll come across fabulous hotel and restaurant deals and have some of Asia’s most iconic sights, like Durbar Square and Everest, virtually to yourself. [Link]

I still don’t understand the next “Best.” What the hell is a “Democratic Dreamscape?” It is hard to imagine that a place where politicians spend their days arguing can be considered a “Dreamscape.”

It is a wonderful irony that one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies should be housed in its most ethereally elegant parliament building. But such is the case in Bangladesh, where the Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, or National Assembly—flooded by natural light and ringed by the still waters of an artificial lake—is the official arena for politics of breathtaking malignancy. Situated on a 200-acre site in the center of Dhaka, this giant gray octagon of a building at first looks like it was hallucinated by Isaac Asimov, or that it came to George Lucas in a dream. In reality, it is the deeply thoughtful work of American architect Louis Kahn. [Link]

A cloud-darkened sunset carried the light in at a rich angle on the shore of the Arabian Sea. You can eyedropper some of my favorite hues right off these sheets, like blowing smoke.

Related posts: Night Watch, She sells seashells, Navi Mumbaikar

The snack ads on the train say ‘Chowpatty ka maza, ghar baithe’ (the pleasure of Chowpatty Beach, sitting at home). But nocturnal futon noshing isn’t quite the same as littoral manœuvres in the dark.

Human-powered Ferris wheel

Something wikkid this way comes

Juhu Beach is mobbed on Sundays:

Pao bhaji on the beach (in the U.S., this qualifies as a riot :) )

Kalakhatta walla

On Bombay’s Bandra seashore:

Autorickshaw driver slumbers by the Bandstand wall, which is covered in Gaudí-like cracked ceramic

No Romancing, Sitting in Obscene Postures or Kite Flying — well, there go my Bombay plans

I’m off to Bombay for a few months for a change of scene. (Switches to the deep sepia ink and sharpens the nib.) If I don’t come back in waxed chest, brown highlights and mirrored shades yelling ‘call me, yaar!’ into a trick GSM, I’ll be deeply disappointed.

These juths were made for walkin’

Some of you have asked why I spend far less time slamming Bollycheese than American exoticism. The answer is that I walk past the exoticism every day. Now the lazy susan turns, the juthi is on the other foot, &c., &c. Sunil Shetty, a.k.a. Funky Hunky, you’re goin’ down.

I’ve gotten some great advice from Mumbaikars who are big fans of our ‘South Asian’ blog. They told me the best place to live is east Mumbai, stay out of Colaba because it’s not safe after dark, and if you’re on the Bandstand late at night and a policeman approaches you, pinch his buttocks — it’s a friendly Mumbai greeting. They also told me Parsis are the poorest Mumbaikars, Haji Ali sells authentic electronics, the women’s carriage is the safest way to travel and the best time to avoid traffic is from 3 to 6 pm on Marine Drive.

Please god, let me survive the Sepia readers of Bombay.

Related post: Livin’ la vida Sepia

Yesterday was Thai Pusam - the most important festival for the Indian community in Malaysia. The festival is celebrated in honor of the Hindu God Karthikeya - the younger son of Shiva and falls around the full moon day in the Tamil month of Thai. There is some dispute about what Thai Pusam actually commemorates - several versions exist, but the most popular one is that it is the birthday of Karthikeya.

Thai Pusam is a giant carnival - an long stretch of road leading to the local Karthikeya temple is cordoned off, and a large number of people - wearing equally large quantities of jewellery - congregate for a few hours of fun tinted with devotion. In Penang, in spite of the constant drizzle, this year's celebration was apparently one of the best attended - at least a hundred thousand people showed up. The street leading to the Waterfall Temple was lined with makeshift "water tents" - most sponsored by multinationals - that provided colorful liquids for free to anyone that showed up.

Among the visitors that passed on the refreshments were the Western tourists armed with Sony Handycams and increasingly incredulous expressions - because Thaipusam has another side to it. Belief has it that Karthikeya would grant the wishes of people who visit His temple on Thaipusam bearing burdens (called Kavadis) and over the years people have interpreted the belief as meaning that the more pain you inflict on yourself - increasing the burden - the more the odds are of your wish being granted.

At its simplest [the kavadi] may entail carrying a pot of milk, but mortification of the flesh by piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks with vel skewers is also common. The most spectacular practice is the vel kavadi, essentially a portable altar up to two meters tall, decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the devotee through 108 vels pierced into the skin on the chest and back. Fire walking and flagellation may also be practiced. It is claimed that devotees are able to enter a trance, feel no pain, do not bleed from their wounds and have no scars left behind. However, some of the more extreme masochistic practices have been criticized as dangerous and contrary to the spirit and intention of Hinduism.

The largest Thaipusam celebrations take place in Malaysia and Singapore. The temple at the Batu Caves, near Kuala Lumpur, often attracts over one million devotees and tens of thousands of tourists. The procession to the caves starts at the MahaMariamman Temple in the heart of the city and proceeds for 15 kilometers to the caves, an 8-hour journey culminating in a flight of 272 steps to the top. In Malaysia, although rare, scenes of people from different ethnic groups and faiths bearing "kavadi" can also be seen. Interestingly, Thaipusam is also increasingly being celebrated by the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. [Link]

An elaborate refreshment tent; there must've been several hundreds of these along the street.

Late last week, just as Manish was zeroing in on me after scouring the entire blogosphere to find a guest blogger who could make the rest of the Sepia Mutiny gang look good, a friend approached me with a plan. I was on my first visit to Hyderabad - the rapidly growing capital of Andhra Pradesh - and the friend was trying to convince me to go to Ramoji Film City, a Universal Studios type setup on the outskirts of the city.

“But this is not like Universal Studios at all. It is a functioning studio, not a theme park. No trip to Hyderabad is ever complete without a visit to the film city. It is a happening place. We should go.”

“Happening place? I see you’ve never been to K-Mart.”

“No, but this is happens to be largest movie studio in the world. Sometimes you can even see live movie shootings. Imagine seeing Nagarajuna in action. We are going.” This from the increasingly hysteric friend, who was starting to drool.

So we went. And it was a very disturbing experience. I might have grown up building elaborate temples for film actresses, but I know as well as you that not everything I see in movies is true. Like the blood spurting out of people is tomato ketchup. That the vamps are all drinking Sprite, not vodka. That there is a small possibility the email Aishwarya Rai wrote to me asking me to go check out her topless pictures on the internet may not be from her. All this I know. But then, this trip proved to me, there is so much more to add to that list. Such as the Taj.

Two of Time Magazine’s Persons of the 20th Century were the duo of Sir Edmund P. Hillary, and Tenzing Norgay. Their accomplishment was simply mindboggling. In an era in which there existed the most rudimentary of climbing gear, the two men became the first to summit Everest on nothing but heart.

On May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first human beings to conquer Mount Everest—Chomolungma, to its people — at 29,028 ft. the highest place on earth. By any rational standards, this was no big deal. Aircraft had long before flown over the summit, and within a few decades literally hundreds of other people from many nations would climb Everest too. And what is particularly remarkable, anyway, about getting to the top of a mountain?

Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time. [Link]

Tenzing was born in Tibet and grew up in Nepal. He was one of “Chomolunga’s people,” and so it was fitting that he was part of the first summit. Almost every great prize in moutaineering to be won, has now been won. Still, every mountaineer worth a dime aspires to one goal, however impossible it may seem. The Seven Summits. These are the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents: Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua, Carstensz Pyramid, Vinson, & Everest. To date, less than 130 climbers have bagged all seven peaks and not a single one has been Indian, which is especially surprising given that India lies in the shadow of Everest. Well Gautam Patil is out to change that.

As an avid mountaineer, Gautam has been invited to present motivational talks at various venues including Sierra Club, REI Company Stores, and Any Mountain Company. He has shown bravery in dealing with people and situations in extreme conditions including those involving death and dramatic rescue operations. Gautam’s professional background is in Technology Product Management in Enterprise Software Products. He is a founding director of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association Inc.

He has already completed Kilimanjaro, Denali, Elbrus, Aconcagua and is currently mounting an expedition up the Vinson Massif.

At some point after hearing the fifth K3G remix at the Net cafe in Fez and watching a Moroccan boy who knew and sang all the words to ‘Shava Shava’ doing chair-bhangra (it’s just like car-bhangra, only the entire cafe doesn’t tilt), I became obsessed with the idea of watching Bollywood in Morocco.

I had already selected my target, the Empire Ciné, plastered with posters for Oceans Twelve, Crazy Kung-Fu (which you may know as Kung-Fu Hustle) and several Bollyflicks all starring Priyanka Chopra. Waqt looked like the highest Priyanka I.N.Q. (item number quotient), and so with high standards of scientific precision it was duly chosen.

I had stared so long at the Bollyposters, the only ones not translated in French, and taken so many photos that the local lafange (layabouts) out front craned their heads and stared anew at the posters they ignored every day.

My atrocious and limited French interposed itself between me and my Priyanka fixation like an ill-tempered gendarme with little bits of toilet paper stanching a bad shave. ‘Waqt.’ I said, pointing at the movie poster and tapping my wrist. ‘Quoi heure?’ The man behind the grill patiently wrote ‘8.30’ for me and repeated it in French. ‘Waqt, oui?’ Same answer.

On the ferry from Spain to Morocco, I had my ear bent for several hours by a friendly Moroccan bloke, as they tend to be. It was either that, or coming out of stealth mode and joining the Americans listening to an Aussie English teacher yap nonstop for four hours. The job selects for strong lungs. Between broken English, a smattering of French and German, and long phrases in Mime, the fellow now residing in Germany kept the ferry crossing lively.

‘You… sing?’ he ventured cautiously.

‘Uh… not really,’ I replied.

‘I two Indian friend. They sing,’ he said.

‘Qawwali?’ I asked. The universal gesture of ‘WTF are you talking about?,’ palms upturned. ‘North Indian, they sing,’ he told me.

Why yes, I suppose we do.

‘Prime minister sing. First time!’ he said. Ahhh… got it. Singh. Turban, not pipes. His ululatory fixation now made a lot more sense.

He proceeded to tell me about his friends in Germany. ‘Sing crazy for whiskey!’ Yeah, yeah, Ustad Walker and his famous school of blended malt scotch. He told me with no small admiration that he’d seen a grown man down a full liter of whiskey and show up the next morning with no ill effect. He said that Germany is recruiting Indians because they are the computer caste.

We compared the etymologies of words from Arabic and Farsi which show up in Turkish and Hindu/Urdu, such as kitap (book), maidaan (plaza) and duniya (world). He said he wasn’t religious, ‘religion politics, only makes trouble,’ but was visiting his family for Eid-ul-Adha. He mimed ram horns, slitting the beast’s throat, and asked how you translate Lucifere from French.

The rest of the encounter got weird.

Yesterday in Sevilla, I saw Christopher ColumbusŽ purported tomb and learned that locally, ‘las Indias’ means the Indies, i.e. the Americas. Only ‘la India’ qualifies as the name of the country. ‘Indio’ means Native American, while ‘Hindú’ is the word for desi, even if you aren’t. That man was confused, confused, confused.

(I also learned that the cityŽs Plaza de España was used in Star Wars Episode 2, but that will excite only a few of you. A scary few to be sure ;) )

Today I checked out La Alhambra, the Moorish fort built by Berbers from Morocco when they ruled Andalucía. It is a totally wild mashup of Spanish colonial and Islamic styles. Think Spanish tile roofs, square, unadorned towers and boring crenelations on the outside, arches, Arabic carvings and geometric patterns on the inside. Think Spanish coats of arms surrounded by verses praising Allah. Think Dehli’s Lal Qila meets Taco Bell. If I didnŽt know it was done that way on purpose, I’d think the Arabic brush strokes were steganography snuck in by marbleworkers held hostage.

Most major innovation happens at intersections. The 2nd gen process that some deride as ‘confusion’ is actually tremendous cultural innovation. And itŽs preciously short-lived, too— as the wheel of assimilation inexorably grinds away, this Cambrian Explosion too shall pass.

and,

Nothing is entirely original. The aesthetic I instinctively recognize as Indian is Mughal, i.e. Islamic by way of Turkish and Irani influence on Mongols from what is now Uzbekistan. The traditions saffronists claim are ‘native’ to India— those, too, came from some intersection, some borrowing, some adaptation somewhere.

P.S. Nobody looks at a brown man in Spain and guesses American— not even fellow Americans. I had the funniest conversation just now with a white woman who spoke fluent Spanish, and then all over again in Amrikan English. So the converse is true too, sometimes.

Related post: O Henry

Reentry can be disintegrating. I’ve lived London but reminders are for thanks giving: London’s public face, its point of initial contact, is desi, from the cleaners to the flight attendants and ticket agents to the young passport control dude asking fresh questions about my New Year’s plans with a wink in his eye. Did Southall grow up around Heathrow or was it waiting to yield up lovely X-ray screeners barely out of their teens? No matter, there are countries I love for their culture and hate for their food— being vegetarian in Spain means picking bits of ham out of hard, dry baguettes. Good food can only enhance the emotionality of a place, Italy obviously, and I might like Thailand. London Delivers. Samosas, aloo tikkis, paneer wraps, mango lassi at any old cornershop. God shave the queen.

There were raucous desi b-boys in pimp threads and bling bling swigging straight from the bottle on the tube last night. An English couple opposite stared, fascinated and appalled, their dining room gossip secure for the week. Cute Asians in bobs yelled ‘Happy New Year!’ in twee, drunken accents. Uncle types stole courtesy kisses from French strangers. The Eye of London turned Eye of Sauron with fields of slowly drifting sparks, world-ending grandeur, anime. It beat the gracious fountains of fire in Rome, high on a hill above the Piazza del Popolo, set to classical, the best I’ve ever seen. Rome’s crowd was friendlier, dancing arm-in-arm, a big public party; Barcelona was football aggression; but London had an excuse, it started to pour.

Last week Bong Breaker contended that if there is a post on Sepia Mutiny about “Raw meat” then chances are that it may be one written by me. I hate to be predictable but I hate to disappoint even more. An SM tipster sends us the following article about cannibalism in India from Student Newspaper.org:

As we shared a bumpy auto-rickshaw journey between two North Indian villages, I began to realise that the frail old man I was rubbing thighs with was in fact a cannibal who claimed that babies taste “fresh” whereas the corpses of older people have a “stringy texture like wood”. Gary Stevenson (the name he used to introduce himself) then proceeded to illustrate and justify his preference for younger human flesh through the comparison of superior-tasting lamb over mutton…

Once we were sitting comfortably, Stevenson eagerly whipped out the skull of a young girl that he “dragged out of the Ganges” and carries with him at all times, proudly stroking the smooth bone and proclaiming the cranium to be the finest from his expansive collection. Licking his lips, my congenial cannibal enthusiastically described the sensation of eating his own species: “Human flesh smells like rawhide and tastes like pork. The fingers are the most succulent part,” declaring the practice of devouring corpse meat to be a sacred primordial ritual which still occurs amongst radical Hindu Aghoris in certain parts of India.

Houston-born Stevenson [a.k.a. Kapal Nath], who has come to be known as the “American Aghori”, told me of how he has roamed India for years in search of enlightenment, feasting on the remains of the Hindu dead “as often as possible…” [Link]

I didn’t know that there were any Hindu cannibals. It seems like such a contradiction in terms at its face. At first the only thing I could find was that National Geographic once featured a segment about them and that Wikipedia has a short entry about their ways:

A sect who them selves relates to the order of lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. Aghori means non-terrifying in Sanskrit. The sect is peculiar with its rituals and way of life. This extremely shy and secretive community is known to live in the graveyards, wearing the ash from the pyre, use human bone from the graveyards for the rituals.

The sect dates back to around 1000 A.D., and practices cannibalism in the belief that eating human flesh confers spiritual and physical benefits, such as prevention of aging.

Verity, at the conservative blog Albion’s Seedlings, says she wants to settle in India and buy property there. However, she’s been told that she can do neither.

My understanding is that with the approval of the Reserve Bank, she can buy property for residential purposes, and Wikipedia claims, “Citizenship of India by naturalisation can be acquired by a foreigner who is ordinarily resident in India for twelve years (continuously for the twelve months preceding the date of application and for eleven years in the aggregate in the fourteen years preceding the twelve months).”

Anyone know more about this than just what a Google search turns up?

Work & biz travel has been kicking my butt the past few months so I haven’t been able to uphold my end of the Sepia Mutiny bargain of late.   I was however, in Amsterdam last week (on business!) and had a few moments of (sober) time.  ABCD dork that I am, it’s always fun to look for the little signs of desi influence…

Honors for Desi “pride of place” in the US probably goes to Bombay— it ain’t too hard in most good sized cities to find a Bombay Palace, Bombay Bazaar, Bombay Place, etc.    In Amsterdam, on the other hand, the Desi city that secures branding is Goa - the apropos name for one of the city’s many famous, euphemistically named, “coffeeshops”
	It’s well nigh impossible for a desi techie to observe the “bicycle rickshaws” peddling tourists up and down the streets & demur that not all technological progress is, uh, monotonic. These poor, exploited Dutch cyclists, if only they could afford a noxious 2 stroke, soot-spewing engine to alleviate their burden.

I am always keeping an eye out for that next rush, even during the periods of my life where the money isn’t all that available. The key to any great adventure is long term planning, patience, and positive visualization. Visualization in my case includes marrying rich. Time Magazine’s Asia edition has a list of the best adventures in Asia. Two of them in particular stood out (thanks for the tip Punbaji Boi):

In the Indian hill resort of Manali, Tibetan Peter Dorje runs an operation dedicated to the most implausible extreme sport in the world: yak skiing. In winter, he takes up to five skiers and his herd of beasts to the hills above town, making overnight camp. Come morning, Pete heads to a high slope with the yaks, trailing out a rope behind him. You wait below, wearing your skis and holding a bucket of pony nuts. When Pete reaches the top, he ties a large pulley to a tree, loops the rope through it and onto a stamping, snorting yak. Now it’s your turn—and this is the important part. First tie yourself onto the other end of the rope, then shake the bucket of nuts and quickly put it down. The yak charges down the mountain after the nuts, pulling you up it at rocket speed. If you forget yourself in the excitement and shake the bucket too soon, you’ll be flattened by two hairy tons of behemoth. Or as Pete says, “Never shake the bucket of nuts before you’re tied to the yak rope.” This piece of Himalayan sagacity can be restated in many ways that apply to everyday life: do things in their proper order, make adequate preparations before embarking on a risky venture, and so on.

Yak skiing not your thing my friend? Well how about Discharging Firearms in Darra Adam Khel, Pakistan?

Forty kilometers south of Peshawar, deep inside Pakistan’s tribal belt, lies the village of Darra Adam Khel. It’s an area few foreigners will ever visit—unless, of course, they are surreptitiously waging the U.S.-led war on terror or trying to elude it. Yet for anyone else who manages to pass through the roadblocks to enter Darra, it’s the perfect place to release pent-up stress. The village has just one industry of note: ordnance. Darra is the arms factory of the tribal areas, and pumps out everything from pistols to anti-aircraft weaponry. Wander into any of the many mom-and-pop-style workshops, choose your weapon, haggle over the price of bullets or shells, and stroll out with the equipment into the bush. Besides being rather nice to look at, the surrounding rocks and trees also make for excellent target practice. Once you’ve finished debarking a tree with an AK-47, you can head back to civilization a better, calmer person for this cathartic experience. Think of it as a harmless outlet for the warrior that lurks within you.

Ummm. No. I’ll pass thank you. It is true that a warrior does lurk within me, however, I already got pre-selected for additional security screening both to and from Atlanta this past weekend. I have no intention of making things worse for myself.

I am not a happy blogger. Every day on Sepia Mutiny I give some of my suga’ away for free. Don’t get me wrong. Blogging is a lifestyle. Wannabe bloggers sell out to the man and go all corporate. I believe in the small but dedicated following, playing the backroom internet cafes around the world where people log on even in the dead of night. Still, it would be nice to see some perks once in a while. A bigger dressing room and some bubbly every now and again wouldn’t be insulting to my sensibilities. Last week I mentioned that this guy got a $100,000 salary for staying at home all day and watching Dukes of Hazards re-runs and blogging about it. Where is my 100K for blogging about meaningful things? Also, last week I read that the Pennsylvania State Tourism Office hired several bloggers to road-trip around the state, have as much fun as possible, and blog about it to attract tourists. What the f*ck! What is this? Where is the beautiful struggle? Where is the sweat, blood, and tears? Blogging shouldn’t be about getting paid to roadtrip. I had just begun to calm down when Patrix sent us a tip. Two of the Pennsylvanian bloggers were desi girls. Meet Manisha and Preethi:

Air India has started international flights to Amritsar from Toronto and Birmingham on a new Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto route. Given that 50% of the passengers flying through Delhi’s airport are Punjabis, this should be an improvement in service for those passengers and help boost tourism as well.

 

The flights will be operated with state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire Boeing 777-222 ER aircraft on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. [webindia]

Sunday’s inaugural flight was flagged off by the federal civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, and Punjab’s chief minister, Capt Amarinder Singh. To handle the increased air traffic, the airport at Amritsar is being given a $15m makeover which includes a new terminal building and modern landing aids. [BBC]

This is just the first step. These flights will be upgraded to daily in the upcoming months and additional flights from Amritsar to the Gulf and other western countries are planned.

Air India isn’t the only airline increasing its flights through Rajasansi Airport; everybody wants a piece of the NRI action. In 8 years, the number of flights has increased from 3 to 56 per week:

Hollywood Masala’s Santhosh Daniel directs our attention to “Four Weeks in Bombay,” an exciting experiment in reality filmmaking/human torture:

Set in Mumbai (Bombay), the film follows four continuous weeks in the life of twenty-year-old San Diego-native, Phil Mikal, as he steps off the plane and into one of the most compelling cities in the world. Given just twenty American dollars, a few necessities and no translator, Mikal a.k.a. Jonny Quest can end his involvement in the project only if serious illness or injury occurs and, voyeurs can watch his adventure via broadband-access from May 6th-June 3rd for just $2. [Hollywood Masala]

Here are the rules for Mikal, who must have agreed to them while under some form of intoxication or duress:

1. The game starts as soon as he lands at the Airport in Bombay and ends at his scheduled flight back to the U.S.
2. He will only have $20 American dollars to get him started.
3. He will only be allowed to bring daily necessities like clothes, toothbrush, shaving cream, deodorant and so forth.
4. He’s not allowed to advertise that he’s only there for 4 weeks to anyone!
5. He’s allowed to get a job or do anything he has to do to survive as long as he complies with the rules.
6. Since he is aware of the project ahead of time, he’s allowed to do whatever research he may feel is necessary.
7. He is only allowed to forfeit the project if he catches a serious illness or gets a serious physical injury. Common cold, flu, stuff of that nature doesn’t count.
8. He will be allowed to take any required/suggested medical shots preparing him for the trip.
9. We’re not allowed to help him at all…not even translate. We’ll be operating the camera and only act as observers and leave the viewer to draw their own conclusions. [Four Weeks in Bombay]

Still, $20 is a shockingly low amount of money for four weeks in India. How will Mikal earn more cash?

Since your visa is for traveling purposes only, legally you can’t get a job in Bombay. Have you thought about how you’re going to overcome that challenge?
Either by not getting a job and trying to make money in alternate ways... [Four Weeks in Bombay]

Ah, indeed, there are many “alternate ways” for a pretty white boy to make money in Bombay. Hopefully, this will also be taped, making the $2 access fee a downright bargain. The adventure starts on May 6, and the price of admission unlocks full access to the entire show.

This has to be what fish and lobsters in tanks at seafood restaurants dream of — a glass case in the ocean filled with juicy humans, fattening themselves up with rich resort food:

The world’s first all-glass undersea restaurant has opened at the Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa on the Island of Rangali. The restaurant, called Ithaa – meaning ‘pearl’ in the Maldives’ language of Dhivehi – is situated on the seabed, six metres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. All the walls of the restaurant are transparent, offering 180 degree views of the surrounding marine life and coral reef. [World Leisure News & Jobs]

World Leisure News & Jobs: Underwater restaurant for Hilton

Bangladeshi customs officials have yet to discover the concept of a seizure auction:

Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka. NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said a trading firm had sought to evade customs duties by falsely declaring that the container carried iron scrap. "They wanted to befool us by saying they brought in scrapped metals...so we are giving them the same. They, or anyone like them, will not forget this," he told reporters at the site. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: Declaring cars as scrap? Dhaka customs makes it true

Update: BBC News has a small photo of the glorious event.

There's a new list of the best airports to sleep in, for those who are too busy or too thrifty to check into a hotel room. The best of the best? Singapore's Changi airport. The worst? Anywhere in India, which is as bad as PNG's Port Moresby airport where there was a gang shoot-out in the terminal.

Worst Airport(s) - This was toughy. I certainly could not narrow it down to just one in this case. First up, everybody please put their hands together for Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), an airport in which one of our contributors witnessed 7 seven being killed in a gang shoot-out. When in Port Moresby, be sure you're wearing your bullet-proof vest and run.
And then there are the airports in the Mid-East and India section where we have received MANY Hellish reviews. As there are so many to choose from, I am also giving the Worst Airport(s) award to the entire country of India who only has one airport rated "good", but only because it was a better alternative to actually sleeping in one of their hotels. Unacceptable seating, foul odours, filth, fleas, safety, and general hassles have resulted in India's 8 year reign of the Worst Airport(s) Title. Travellers beware: when sleeping in one of India's "fine" airports be sure you have your own bug spray, air freshener and disinfectant or just go to the nearest bar and drink the pain away.[cite]

The list is an equal opportunity critic, American airports are not spared from its scrutiny either. The first runner up for worst is Boston's Logan airport, and the fourth runner up was Chicago's Om Hari airport. [via bookofjoe]

Pay up if you bet the long lines at LAX couldn’t get any worse:

Air India will now fly daily to Los Angeles, three times from Delhi and four times from Mumbai. "These flights provide the easiest connection for passengers. Incidently, the flights to LA are AI's longest flights with 20 hours of flying time and do not involve change of aircraft," said Air India's Director for Public Relations, Jitender Bhargava...An estimated two million passengers travel between India and the United States annually. No US airline currently operates a non-stop service to India. [WebIndia123.com]

WebIndia123.com: Air India commences direct flights from New Delhi to Los Angeles

Previous post: Open skies and Air India

This one is dedicated to all you out there right now, slaves to your computers, wishing that instead you had a powerful beast between your legs and the warm desert wind blowing through your hair. Outside Magazine recently awarded its 2005 Best Trips Award (Asia category) to Alexander Souri, the founder-director of Relief Riders International (RRI). As reported by NewKerala.com:

“Alexander Souri, who has worked on “The Matrix” and “X-Men”, is the founder-director of Relief Riders International (RRI) whose members made the trip in October last year to provide medical and relief supplies to people.

When I created Relief Riders International I never dreamed we would receive such international recognition so soon,” said Souri after winning the Outside Magazine’s Best Trips 2005 award.

“I dreamt of a new way to travel, a chance to see new lands and an opportunity to transform both the visitor and the visited. I am so honoured that Outdoor Magazine appreciated our vision.”

With nearly a million subscribers, New York-based Outside magazine is one of the best-known adventure travel magazines in the world. The magazine recognized RRI for its successful aid component, emphasising the high point of the trip was seeing villagers receive knowledge such as AIDS education plus food and supplies that they desperately need.

RRI is now making final preparations for its second Rajasthan Relief Ride, which begins Feb 25.

The inaugural 15-day ride, created by Souri to establish a living memorial to his Indian father, began at the majestic Imperial Hotel with a bus ride to historic Fort Mukandgarh.

Jet Airways, the leading private airline in India, is far more luxurious than American ones: brand-new Airbus jets, hot face towels, nimbu pani and watermelon juice, coffee candies, sumptuous red and orange linen napkins bound in velvet rope, a choice of North or South Indian meals (ever had hot idli sambar and utappam on an airplane?), and a never-ending stream of tea and coffee. And all this on short-haul domestic routes rather the overseas ones served by Singapore and Virgin.

The Indian government will now allow Jet and Air Sahara to fly international routes, although it continues to shelter the lucrative Middle Eastern routes from competition. The airlines are presumably on their own for buying landing slots.

Indian airports are also in dire need of investment. On a recent trip, I could get wireless Internet access at the Delhi and Bangalore airports. However, they otherwise still resemble small regional airports in the U.S.: open-air gates, buses instead of jetways and a vanishingly small distance from gate to parking lot. They’re like the old terminal at San Jose before the tech bubble.

But with an astonishing 20% annual growth in air traffic, India just signed off on a plan to upgrade 80 airports throughout the country, including brand-new airports for Bangalore and Hyderabad. They’re partying like it’s 1999.

And in the tech-heavy cities, it pretty much is. Driving through Bangalore, I saw buildings that looked exactly like U.S. tech campuses, though smaller. Intel, Dell, Oracle, Accenture and Macromedia buildings abound; on one corner, with a shock of recognition, I came face-to-face with a company started by a friend. I couldn’t help but feel late to the party. With the number of South Indian programmers already working at Oracle, why not hire ‘em straight from the motherland :)

Reigning Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins made her first-ever trip to India last week, and expressed to Sify News an eagerness to “to touch and feel” the country.

What has so captivated the 20-year-old Australian? A report in The Daily Telegraph allows us to rule out India’s rich historical heritage:

This week, (Hawkins) flashed her winning smile and laughed when she was asked whether she would be visiting the Taj Mahal.

“The Taj what?” she replied.

“The Taj Mahal, India’s most famous tourist spot, the monument of love, in Agra,” she was told.

“Oh, really?”

To be fair, perhaps Hawkins is a preoccupied academic who is more impressed by cultural observations than crowded tourist destinations:

“I love the way Indian girls dress up. I’m fascinated by different cultures and clothings here,” she said. “I have a video camera and I have captured people around the streets. Like one man I saw shaving on a footpath.”

The Daily Telegraph: Jen’s in Taj with culture
Sify News: I want to touch and feel India: Miss Universe

I’m off to India and Turkey for a couple of weeks today. I’ll be livin’ la vida Sepia: riding the Delhi subway; hanging out in Barista, Bangalore, and the new Indian malls; watching a Govinda caper with jeering rickshaw-wallas in the upper stall; eating at the original Bukhara Grill and trying Indo-Chinese cuisine; buying clothing which flatters the desi palette; checking out the WiFi at the airports; and generally basking in the economic liberalization everyone’s been banging on about.

I’ll also be doing a literary tour of Bombay. After having read New York novels for fifteen years, it was a relief to anchor the figurative Manhattan in plaster and stone. And after seven Rushdie novels and an entire oeuvre of diasporic literature, I’m tired of names without faces: Colaba, Bandra, Breach Candy, Cuffe Parade. I feel like the clerk in Hyderabad handling parking tickets from the midwest, I’ve got an intimate map of a terribly remote place.

I’m halfway through Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, a tome about the seamy side of Bombay, its ganglords and dancing girls in modern-day slavery. It’s quite interesting, though leaden in parts; it’s not always deftly written, but it’s a fascinating read. What’s most useful, though, is local knowledge; the best spots for vada pav, Maharashtrian food, sherwanis and Bom Bahia sunsets.

Know of a quintessentially Bombay experience? Help me pop my Mumbai cherry by leaving it in the comments.

The Times of India reports that U.S. pop singer Christina Aguilera will make her first-ever visit to India during the early weeks of December.

According to the story, Aguilera said, “India has always captured my imagination with its myriad cultures and spiritualism. I am looking forward to my visit with great enthusiasm to feel the color and vibrancy of this great country.”

Where does she plan to find such “color and vibrancy?” In Sahara Corporation’s planned tourist city of Amby Valley. The 234-acre destination outside of Lonavala includes golf courses, lakes, spas and dance clubs.

Sahara has hosted other celebrities in Amby Valley, such as actress Goldie Hawn and tennis pro Anna Kournikova. Aguilera and her family will be the company’s sponsored guest for three days, but the 23-year-old singer is not slated to perform during her stay.

In a reversal of travel protocol, the trip marks the first time that Indian residents are expected to receive vaccinations for a visit by an American traveler.

The Times of India: Christina to visit India

The NYT on desis in Trinidad:

When slavery was abolished on the island in the 1830’s, the planters looked to India for workers, and the first ship, bearing more than 200 Indian indentured servants, arrived in May 1845. Over the next 75 years, some 143,000 Indians came to Trinidad, mostly from Calcutta, and mostly Hindu.

On one man’s struggles in the name of religion:

The Waterloo Temple was first built near the coast in 1947 by a devout laborer named Seedas Sadhu. Problem was, he didn’t own the land, so the bulldozers rolled in to level his creation. Undaunted, he commenced a 25-year project of hauling rocks and concrete several dozen yards offshore at low tide; there he single-mindedly set about constructing his own island where a new temple could stand unmolested… the Trinidad government commissioned a more permanent artificial island, connecting it to the mainland by a pedestrian causeway.

Seeda-sadhu is an ideal name for a priest. But since his artificial island was constantly eroding, maybe it should’ve been Sisyphus. Another devotee built a supersized statue of the monkey-king to rival the Bamiyan Buddhas: