Later Skaters!

From the Mughal splendour of Delhi and Agra, to the reminders of the Hindu epics in Chitrakoot, from tiger spotting in Panna National Park to undiscovered Chanderi, and the chance to join pilgrims as they undertake their daily rituals on the banks of the Great Mother Ganges, this trip is bound to be really unforgettable.



Oh yeah, and add Bangalore and Jaipur to the routemap above.

Unless we snag an internet cafe along the way, talk to you in three weeks when I get back to work!

Kali

Brahman is Atman, say the Upanishads and the sages. God is the Self. The Self is God. We are all one, part of the great and cosmic whole. We are all god and the only reason we do not understand this is because our perceptions are flawed. We have forgotten who we are, and are trapped in a world of illusion. The only atheists, say the naked sages sitting smeared in ashes, are those who do not believe in themselves.

A week and a half ago a friend and I were walking in the markets of the Theagaraya Nagar district of Chennai. (Known to all locals as T. Nagar.) Around us were a thousand street peddlers, little road-side shops and stands fronting massive emporiums advertised by life-sized trees made of gold, showing the way to five stories of gold jewelry. In these stores we were shown to a seat, offered tea and sweet lime juice, and had a dozen beautiful women, elegant as swans in saris of silver and blue, parade a thousand types of golden bangles for our inspection. As soon as we walked out the door the children descended upon us. None were older than 8, and the eldest carried two babies not more than 2 in her arms. They showed us their sores from sleeping on the street and never being able to bathe, they displayed their emaciated ribs, bulbous bellies, and crooked spines while pushing their fingers at their mouths to indicate that they needed food.

When I first came to India sights like that were enough to bring tears to my eyes. I would not pay the children even then, because I know the terrible machine that lies behind the begging children, but I would feel this profound moment of pity and terror at looking at the face of a child, deformed and starving, who pleaded with me for the spare change in my lard-dripping pocket. But on this day I looked at the children and felt very little at all. I was not annoyed with them, I was not moved by them. I simply looked at them and said no and felt nothing at all. They were persistent though, and began to crowd around me, to poke at me and pull at my clothes. I still felt nothing, and repeated "No, no no, No. Ille, ille ille, Ille." The ragged ones, the ones with the bites from spiders and rats that had started to fester began to push in around me and my friend then, a dozen of them maybe. She started looking panicked, and I must have looked annoyed – though I don't remember feeling anything but a sense of being crowded.

The shop keepers of the area, seeing us in the midst of the mob of children, came out from behind their stalls with sticks and drove the children away, threatening to beat them if they came back. The fact that I was western and wealthy, and might leave if I was annoyed had brought men with bats to beat away the starving children who would now go away empty handed to lie down in the filth of the streets and wait for someone else to toss them a coin so that they could eat that night and not be beaten by the horrible men who prostitute their destitution.

If you are lost and have nothing on you other than your name, you can walk into a small rural village in India and ask to speak to the headman. If you tell him that you are lost and alone, that you have no food and no money, he will arrange to have you put up in the village while they find a way to get you back to where you need to be. You will probably sleep on the ground in someone's thatched hut, but this is no surprise as your host will be sleeping in the dirt right next to you. You will be given poor food to eat, mostly rice with some bean or curd, but this will be enough when you see that your host is eating much the same food as you. But if you are a child born of India, living in the city, this is not the same thing. In exceptional moments people do exceptional things, but in the grind of every day they are just people who feel very little when children with lesions ask them for money. There is a difference between the moments of epiphany and the moments of mortality, and it is in those latter moments that we doubt both God and ourselves.

Three days after that this same friend was traveling across India. She was in a good car with a good driver, going from a good hotel to a good hotel and looking forward to seeing the Taj Mahal, most perfect of buildings. Due to a late start they were driving across a semi-deserted area late at night. A drunk driver hit them, and when her driver got out to check on the damage the drunks in the other car got out and beat him brutally. While he was lying unconscious they attacked the car, screaming and beating at the windows, trying to kick in the doors so they could drag my friend out into the street. She prayed and prayed until the words had no meaning anymore while these men pounded on the doors, hurled themselves against the windows until the whole car was shuddering around her. Her driver got up, found a rock, and tried to drive the men away. They begin to beat him again, breaking his hand. Finally other drivers stopped, and made the men stop attacking the car for long enough for the driver to get back in and get the car down the road. An hour later the police arrived, and only then did my friend stop believing, down deep in her gut, that she was going to be killed by the side of the road in the dark heart of nowhere.

When Mo first came to India she spoke often of how safe she felt here. When we looked lost on the street people would come up to us and offer help, giving us directions and advice, even offering us money or food if we looked particularly out of it. Many a time one or the other of us had commented that one of the things we would miss about India was that here if you smile at anyone, anyone at all that you just met on the street, they will smile back at you. The night after our friend was assaulted we went out to Mariana Beach, the second longest beach in the world and a regular hangout for Chennites looking to escape the pollution of the city heart. That night there was no sense of safety, even here in this city that has been so good to us for two months. The faces on the beach were blank and hostile in the darkness, and they did not smile when we smiled back. The terminal end of it was a commotion in the darkness which resolved with sudden violence into a group of young men fighting, sweeping up the beach in a gang and nearly ramming into Mo in their melee. It was like we had wandered into a foreign land, a place much like the India we had started to believe we knew, but where we were unwelcome and intrusive and where violence could lurch suddenly out of the dark. We left much earlier than we had planned.

On the trip to Chennai, in Delhi again, I remember a place in the road that my taxi took between airports that was long and dark and without habitation on either side. At that moment I had a profound and sudden understanding that I could vanish forever in that place and no one would ever know for sure what happened to me. They could track me to the airport and maybe to the cab, but in that dark heart of nowhere I was nothing more than a brief spark that could vanish without leaving so much as a wake of light to mark the passing. Unlike Mo I did not feel safe from knowing it was India, because I know how suddenly hatred and malice can erupt here, turning men and women who looked at each other and smiled one day to murder three million of each other on the road the very next day. At the time I made it through that moment without fear because of faith and later I covered it up with humor. That is our way, or at least my way, to hide those most profound and terrifying moments when something in you realizes how very small and alone you are. After all, who wants to hear about that? Who wants to look you in the eyes and know that they know your fear and you know theirs? And who, most of all, wants to hear about faith in the world bright and secular?

How many of you, those who know us, are comfortable in this moment reading this? People live with terror and the specter of death everyday, and Mo and I could be killed in Toronto. In fact, it is more likely that violence would happen to us at home than abroad. But when we are far away the terror is different. It is the terror not just of violence, but of not knowing. Of not knowing where it will come from or what will happen next. And when we admit to it a silence falls in the room, the specter of an unwelcome guest falling over the conversation. I should only post this once we are safe at home, the trip to the far away place over so that in comfort we can laugh and shake our heads and end it all with "but now we are safe, and that is all behind us."

Kali is the goddess that gives most westerners trouble when they encounter Hinduism. She is a horror to behold in western eyes, black as night with her red and thrashing tongue lashing up the blood that rains from her sword, her noose, and the garland of skulls that she wears around her neck. She dances destruction, trampling the world into ash beneath her feet. She haunts and howls in the graveyards, consorting with vampires and ghouls that pick the last shreds of meat from the bones of those who died unhallowed and uncremated. And yet she is a goddess, a figure of love and veneration, a popular deity in the most unlikely of places. It is not just the warrior castes of India who worship her in the violent lands of the North, it is the common and smiling farmer in the settled lands of Tamil Nadu, and the lost and abandoned children in the streets of Kolkata. "How" we ask "how can a people who say that God Is Love and that All Is One, a people who invented satyagraha, worship such a horrible thing? Love her the way they love Krsna or Vishnu or Christ?"

Next week Mo and I are going to the Taj Mahal, we will travel back to Delhi and from there to Agra. We are going by train and not by car, we will be carrying pepper spray, we will go with forewarning and with our eyes open. We will go with the thousands and thousands of tourists who make that trip every single day without incident or injury. And we will go with the knowledge that from time to time in this trip people are beaten and dragged from their cars. I go not because I deny this, but because I accept it. And beyond that I accept that I am not large, but I am not alone. I do not doubt God, I do not doubt myself. Brahman is Atman.

This is why they worship Kali, the all destroyer, the dancer in the ashes. Because she reminds us that we are mortal and that all things end. She holds the severed head of time and mortality in her hands and lets the blood fall down around us that we will remember that all our moments are exceptional. She drags out our fears, unspoken at that liminal level, and makes us face the fact that we are all afraid, that we all are vulnerable, that we all are alone and starving and could vanish like a spark in the eternal darkness. She dances us through that and reminds us that despite that we still live, we still hope, we still stand together. Death is Life is Death is Life, and as we are all afraid we are all together, we are all One. Atman is Brahman, and Kali's gift is that unlike gentler Gods she does not let you slowly come to this realization. She rips away the blinders and makes you look at life full in its black, bloody, dying and birthing face.

Hanging with indian celebreties

From Mo:

So, a couple of weeks ago, our team was taken out for a stylin lunch at the Taj Cormandel, to the most expensive, poshiest restaurant in Chennai: Southern Spice. It specializes in all the cuisines of Southern India. The dinner was served Thali style, with little bowls full of diverse dishes on top of silver plates shaped like banana leaves to the sound of live carnatic tabla, sitar and flute players.

We learned partway through dinner that a very famous Kollywood (the Tamil region's answer to Bollywood) actor/producer was dining in the restaurant. His name is Prakash Raj and he's been in well over 60 movies. He is renown for playing terrible villains. We inquired with the hotel if we could meet him, and he came over to our table to say hello on his way out. He is, of course, the dude in the middle. The woman to my right is Melanie, and the other woman is Wendy. They are both expats that are here with me. To the right of Prakash Raj is Rejesh and to the left Bala, they work with the vendors that we are working with.



From Brand:

Just before they went to Test Match, the Indian National Cricket Team was staying at our hotel. For those of you who don't know, Cricket is a huge deal in India. Imagine Hockey + Baseball in Canada or Football + Baseball in America, and then take the best and greatest of the sport and make them a single team that will defend the very honor of the nation.

Needless to say that security was pretty high at the hotel for their stay. Even more so because of the bomb scare with the South African team in Sri Lanka about three weeks before. There were guards with machine guns at every entrance to the hotel, and anywone they didn't like could be stopped, searched, and refused entry at any point. However they never even looked at us, no matter what outlandish things we were doing or saying. I walked in and out of the hotel one day wearing a Freddy mask, and the guards just thought it was funny.

Whats more the cricketers thought we were cool and or funny. While they would often flee from the local crowds that gathered to snap them they would hang out and talk with us in the halls or on the elevator. Mostly they seemed to enjoy being able to talk to people who didn't know or care who they were. So I got to have short conversations with Robin Uthappa, Rahul Dravid, and Vikram Singh.

Then one night while the Bell folks were at work I was hanging out with Nat, the wife of one of the Bell folks who had become my breakfast buddy. She was getting a kick out of all the publicity going on, as the media was there to do a press conference with the team. I laughed and said that I should challange them to a grudge match with the American Cricket team -- whom neither of us thought even existed. I mean really, who has heard of the American Cricket team? Nat then got this idea stuck in her head and began to encourage me. Those that know me know that this is a bad thing. I'm crazy on a normal day, I do not need to be encouraged. So I put on my Superman T Shit, a crazed look, and we head out.

So out we go, past the guards who do not care, and right up to Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell. Greg shakes Nat's hand, looks at me and says, "Can I help you Superman?"

"Yes" I reply, "You can rise to the inestimable challange of facing the American Cricket team in a Grudge Match! Do you think you can possibly beat our formindable force?"

At this point Rahul starts to laugh so hard I was afraid he was going to hurt himself. Greg, on the other hand, just looks put off in that way that only someone trained in British public school can look and says, "Yes. In fact we did just last season. Badly, in fact."

With that someone from the press takes a picture of me and Greg, and then the team is hustled off to the airport to go get ready for their next test match. I was left sucking air, and turned to Nat and said, "Why didn't you tell me America had a cricket team?"

"I didn't know they did!" She says in her French Canaidan accent, "They must really suck."

I've looked it up online since then. They do suck. So me challanging Greg to the match was about like someone asking if the Clippers could be the Lakers in a grudge match.

So far as I know I didn't make the papers. I was hoping to, but it didn't happen. Ben later suggested that I would have had I only challanged them to a grudge match with the Kryptonian Cricket Team.

Ah well, you only get the best lines after the fact.

Beach Bums

Ask three Indians when the events for every festival are, and you'll get three different answers; ask where, and you'll get only one: "Everywhere". These answers are factually correct and terribly maddening, for if you haven't lived here all your life, India can be a hard place to intuit. So Brand and I had figured that Marina Beach would be the place to go to see the ganpatis be immersed... and we guessed right, but went just one day too late.

Ah well, Marina beach at night was a thing to experience in and of itself. One of the largest beaches in the world at 12km long and close to 1 km wide, the beach is a deep sandy swath along the Bay of Bengal. Close to and on the beach, because of the mitigating Bay, the temperature drops 5-10 degrees. If you'd ever spent a day in Tamil Nadu, you'd know what a big deal that is. I knew that Marina Beach was a local hangout at night, but I had no idea of the extent.

Buses lined the parking lots that brought in people from the suburbs and from neighbouring villages, couples sat closer than I've seen couples sit together since I've been here, which is to say, not really close at all. Public displays of affection are strictly verboten here. Recently an unmarried couple dared a kiss on the dance floor of the Park Sheraton hotel and the press snapped a picture. The hotel had to be emptied and all of the inhabitants cleared out as the hotel and have it's bar shut down (legally, the only nightclubs allowed in Chennai are part of foreign-style hotels) recovered from the shame of it all.

Full families, groups from out of town, ice cream vendors, parrot fortune tellers, astrologists, cotton candy vendors, juice pressers, fish mongers and craft sellers dotted the beach. There were also, booths where vendors roasted corn... and I don't mean on a barbeque... rather, there was a gizmo that the vendor would crank that would send up a shower of sparks that the corn would be passed through:



Although the beach was not wall to wall crowded, there were people every 10-15 feet or so, and on a beach that large, that's a hell of a lot of people. We were the only foreigners to be seen anywhere, at all. There were also the less safe options for amusement. For 10 rupees, you could (I did) shoot a BB gun at a wall full of balloons just to make them burst. I was really careful with the gun, but one of the dudes who worked at the booth kept blithely wandering around in front of the balloon board!

There were also lots of "rides" for children. Those quotations are well earned in this case. Most of the children’s rides that we have seen outside of amusement parks (we have not personally been to Dizzee World, but hear that the rides are actually rides there) are either A.) a bunch of (often broken) Big Wheel type things bolted to a circular piece of wood to make a carousel, or B.) a homemade ride made of wood. Occasionally, there is something even more precarious, but this picture is the biggest version of option B that I've seen since I've been here:



Down the beach, there was an entire open air local market that sold a crazy variey of stuff... mostly western style crap that even the locals seemed to like looking at more than buying. We also went to see the memorial of the ex-chief minister of Tamil Nadu, the man that brought free public education for the poor to the state. His memorial was like a giant concrete lotus.

In the same weekend, not even intentionally playing the polar opposites of India, we went to the Taj Fisherman's Cove - a resort hotel right on the beach. We had found out that if you are a guest at one Taj, you can use the facilities of any Taj in the area, so we went for dinner, massages, a beach stroll and a swim. It's a beautiful hotel that was built on the ramparts of an 18th century Dutch fort. With a terrific pool:



We had a great lunch and then went to Jiva Spa for a couples ayurvedic massage. Brand chose the Orja Dayaka (Energising - "The wonderful effects of nagarmotha, patchouli, tulsi and ashwagandha create a balancing synergy that will lift your spirits and revive your inner vitality" ) and I went for the Sukhakara (Ache relief - "This combination of black pepper, camphor, eucalyptus and ginger oils will gently relieve your body aches and muscle soreness." ) Man, oh man, was it heaven! It was a great treat in celebration of the end of the course I've been teaching.



Afterwards we went for a blessed-out walk along Covelong Beach at sunset, talked to a local named Kaji and then went for a swim in the pool. I even indulged in margaritas in the poolside bar!

Ganesh

Ganesha, the god of knowledge and joy, the eternal witness, the great remover of obstacles, the patron of letters and learning, the destroyer of vanity and pride, He that opens all doors, is the pure manifestation of happiness, the enforcer of dharma and the joyous, dancing, potbellied gobbler of sweets.

He was born of sandalwood paste scraped from his mother, Parvati's body when she needed someone to guard the door to her baths. Shiva, her husband, the dancing destroyer did what vexed dancing destroyers are wont to do and cut off Ganesh's head to get into the room. Parvati, however, was inconsolable at the loss of her son. She demanded that Shiva restore him, and so he took the head of a sacred elephant and restored the boy to life.

Ganesha's elephant head is the Atman: the soul self, while his body is the Maya: the earthly self combined by the universal AUM, formed by his trunk. He rides a tiny mouse, or rat, which is impossible small for his big body.

August 20th this year began the festival known as Chaturthi Ganesh, or Ganeshpuja. It came the day after we were at Murali and Suganya's for dinner. All over the country Hindus were building Ganpatis big and small: statues of lord Ganesh, made for the special puja, or worship of the festival. Made of clay or chalk or other materials that dissintegrate in water, the Ganeshpuja ganpatis are given worship every day of the festival, exalted in 108 invocations, and given gifts: fruits, flowers, sweets, and sacred substances. For 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 or 11 days the worship goes on before in a chariot procession, the ganpati is carried to the nearest body of water whether that be the Bay of Bengal, the river Coom, the village well. There, with songs to sing him on his way and invitations to return, Ganesh is dissolved into the universe.



We hadn't been able to see any of the events of Janmashtami (Lord Krishna's Birthday) except for on TV, we also hadn't been able to see much of Chennai, and I have a particular fondness for Ganesh, and so I was extremely excited about getting out into the streets and seeing Chaturthi Ganesh out in the world as part of people's lives. We took a tuk tuk to Triplicane and Mount Road where we were told there would be two giant ganpatis within a block of each other, and where the first day of the festival would be underway.

The street was dark, and hot and damp, and it was the first time I'd got to experience what Brand had been telling me about, that once you leave the main streets and business centres of Chennai, the English fades off into the sea of Tamil. People looked at us like we might be lost, a little wary at first, but when it became apparent that we were just interested in quietly and respectfully observing, no one seemed to mind that we were there.



There were two ganpatis, each twenty feet tall under big tent covers, two blocks apart painted in brilliant garish colours and bedecked in beautiful garlands of flowers. Floodlights ringed the tents, pouring light over Ganesh, and at each site, chairs had been set up for people to sit in. At one, beautiful little girls in traditional dress and bells on, did Abhinaya dances to tell the story of, and praise Lord Ganesha, and at the other, there was some kind of sermon going on. We couldn't of course, understand what was being said, but the tone of it seemed to be didactic... how Ganesh teaches us to move through the world.



Between the two, down a little side street there was a temple with a tall, coloured temple gate which would have been difficult to see in the darkness if it were not for the huge neon Tamil sign that (probably) declared the name of the temple. This kind of thing is married in my head to what India is: this land of juxtaposed opposites: the old and the new, the high and low tech, the rich and the poor, the holy and the secular.



Out of the temple, to the sound of winding horns and tabla drums, came a procession bringing a third ganpati out to a cart. It was markedly different than the first two, seeming to be a much smaller, more traditional version made of clay with a little ganesh and a giant rat vehicle that he rode on, garlanded with flowers. The ganpati was mounted onto a cart and a large golden array was mounted behind it, and a ceremonial elephant umbrella mounted high above. As we watched, this all happened in a flurry of movement. People did not gather, they watched or they did not. A little girl behind us, with a notebook on the seat of a motorbike finished her homework... English letters on a page.

After a while a little boy with a terrible hunched back, who had real trouble walking but was bubbling over with sheer joy, came to the chariot cart and was lifted up to sit beside Ganesh. His joy was brilliant as he strapped a pair of cymbals to his hands and played along with the music as the big, bulky chariot was slowly rolled through the street, the remover of obstacles pausing briefly at every pitted pothole in the road. We paused in a moment at the pothole to buy some flowers, a garland of lotus blossoms, some for my hair and some for Ganesh. Everywhere we have stopped to buy jasmine, or anything else at all before this, we have been quoted a foreigner's price, an outlandish sum that begins the haggling, but here, in the puja of the streets, the flower seller smiled at us and gave us the price that she gave everyone else. When we turned back, the chariot cart, the musicians and the little boy had dissappeared into the night.

I have read that in Hinduism the first important gifts that one gives God are the Pathram (a betel leaf that symbolizes the temporary quality of the body), the Pushpam (a flower which symbolizes the spiritual heart, the centre of the self), the Phalam (a fruit that symbolizes the devotional application of the mind) and the Thoyam (water, which symbolizes tears of joy). That night I saw all of these given in puja by the faithful.

Without even really meaning to, I myself gave Thoyam that night. For standing amidst the music, amidst the smell of flowers, the smiles of people and the presence of Ganesh surrounding us, I became suddenly, wonderfully overwhelmed with gratitude at the vast and beautiful opportunity that Brand and I have been presented with in this trip, and was struck with sudden, happy tears. For in that dark evening, in the heart of the vast city of Chennai, in the ancient land of India I was subject to the mercy and hospitality of this strange and beautiful land and of its people, and I was humbled by the grace of it all.

Murali

In Mamallapuram there were many of the patriotic Indians, gathered in the World Heritage site to celebrate their nation's independence who would stop to shake our hands and talk to us for a few minutes. One of the things they loved so much about coming to places like this was the chance to meet folks from far away. In the midst of the farmers from Andhra Pradesh who had never seen a white person before and the jaded cosmopolitans of Mumbai who had seen all too many there was a man who had been born in a small town, grown up in a big city, and spent a year and a half in Chicago working as an engineer for Ashok Leland – one of the largest auto manufacturers in India.

While Mo and I were in the Shore Temple, looking into the shrine of Shiva in the far back of that monolithic structure, this fellow offered me his hand and asked me if I knew the history of the place where I was standing. Behind him his wife was laughing at him, saying "Oh Murali!" and his brother was shaking his head with the kind of dismay that said very clearly that Murali was at it again – talking to the Americans.

I shook his hand and grinned and said, "I know a little, it was…" and proceeded to tell him the story that I told in my entry Mamallapuram I. This both delighted, startled, and slightly concerned him. He was, all at once, happy that I knew about his country, surprised that I knew so much, and a little concerned that I might know more than him. But as I settled in to pump him for further information he relaxed, though his wife and brother continued to laugh at him and his odd ways. We talked for maybe 15 minutes about the Cholas and Pandyas and the dreaded Chalukas and had a grand time of it. Finally Mo asked if we could take his picture, and he said certainly, as I long as he got one of him and me together. We took said picture, and I got his email address so that I could email it to him.


I don't know if I even meant to follow through on it, it was just a sudden thing that I did because I realized I had a pencil in my pocket and a blank page at the back of my Lonely Planet guide. He, equally, looked like he didn't expect me to actually email him anything. We both knew it was a pleasant meeting at a world monument, and were both content to let it go at that. I know that in North America I certainly would have been more than happy it was over there. I have a tendency towards misanthropism and anti-social behavior that lead one of my high school guidance counselors to jokingly suggest that I be voted most likely to hide in a cabin and write a manifesto.

When we got back home to Chennai and we downloaded the 1746 pictures we had taken over the past 36 hours I found the picture of Murali and I coming up on top of the stack, sorted by my computer for its own mysterious reasons. I looked at the picture and thought how much of a type we seemed – a little big around the middle, kinda dorky and friendly and harmless looking, both obviously in a place we'd read and dreamed about since we were kids, and both obviously getting our picture taken with a stranger in a way that was not our normal mode of operation. So I succumbed to the hospitality of India and emailed him a copy of the picture. Along with it I dashed a quick note, saying I'd be in town for at least a month more and if he wanted to have coffee and talk about world politics or history I'd love to meet him again. I sent it off, figured he'd never respond, and went about my week.

By the time the response came I'd almost forgotten about the note. Murali thought it was a great idea that we get together, but thought he could do better than coffee – he suggested that Mo and I come over to his house for a traditional South Indian dinner with he and his wife. I'd met this guy by accident, talked to him for 15 minutes, and now he was inviting me to his house for dinner. This sort of thing doesn't happen in North America, or at least doesn't happen to me. And if it did I'd find a way to beg off quick, fast, and in a hurry. So of course I said yes. I was, after all, in India. We worked out the details: veg meal, he'd pick us up at the hotel and drop us off afterwards, 5:00 meeting time, we needn't bring anything.

The next several days had frequent moments of worry and excitement, even more so for Mo than for me. We were going to a real Indian house to eat real Indian food with a couple who were our age, our social position, our education level, and very much like us in every way -- but who were also from a different world altogether. We worried that the food might make us sick, might be to spicy, we debated what to do if they offered us water (Chennai water is notoriously bad, even for India), and if we should bring a present or what. We weren't sure how to dress, formal or un, and if formal how fancy? We didn't want to show up dressed like we were going to a formal dinner if they were going to be in jeans and t-shirts, and vice versa, and we had no idea what to expect. Most of all we wondered if they were as nervous as we were.

When the night in question came around Mo was so wound she was just about jumping out of her skin. I was calmer about it by that point, as I'd done my normal trick and worked all my nervous energy out before the moment and was fairly placid now that it was actually there. We wait for Murali, and I run back to the room to get my glasses. Of course he shows up while I'm gone, and he and Mo have to find each other and talk until I get there. Now in the west this would be less of a big deal, but in India relations between the sexes are very formalized, and a man talking to another man's wife without him present is rather socially difficult. So they were both very relived when I showed up, glasses in hand, and we all headed to the car.

It was at that point that the apologies started. I've heard that there is an Indian expression, "If you wish a happy evening do not invite the elephant into the house." It gets used in relation to westerners a lot, to mean that we're so used to fine things, to a certain standard of living and prosperity that for an Indian to invite one of us into his house is to invite our scorn and contempt. It is I've since come to understand an expression used with more than a little justification. I've seen some ugly Americanisms since I've been here, and even the most well meaning folks can give away more with their faces then they might dream they're communicating.

Murali apologized to us that his car was so small, and was sure that it would not be comfortable for large-bodied Mo and I. This in a city where we'd gotten around mostly by foot or by tuck-tuck and were now being offered a ride in an air conditioned car with nice seats and stereo. We assured him that the car was fine, and as we headed towards his house he apologized that his house was so small and simple. Murali, you see, had lived in Chicago and been taken out to dinner by the bosses at some major auto companies, and so his impression of North Americans was Lexi and the types of houses you saw in Feris Buller's Day Out. He knew for a fact that even though he was doing well for India his standard was not our standard, and his hands were white-knuckled and sweating on the steering wheel as we got out of the fancy part of town and into the sticks where his house was. In trying to reassure him I told him we don't even own a car, and we have only a very small condo of our own – probably even smaller than his place. This reassured him very slightly, until I made the mistake of saying that we lived on the 23rd floor of our building. I don't know if there is a 23 story building in Chennai, and the only condos that high in the loop in Chicago cost a chunk of bills. By accident I had just reminded him he had an elephant in the car.

It wasn't long after that when Murali said to us, "Well, this will be an experience for you. I don't know if it will be good, but it will be a different world." I laughed at this point and told him it was all good so far. By that point we'd passed the burning grounds at the edge of the city proper and were headed out into a neighborhood where the narrow and twisting roads were only occasionally paved, where water buffalo and brahma bulls crowded the bicycles off to the shoulder and we were the only automobile in sight. We went past the crowd of buildings built one on top of each other at the edge of the "major street" and into a green land of little paddies, fields with tall stalks growing, and deep ditches lined with verdant grass and palm trees. At the edge of one such street was Murali's house: small and white, surrounded by a walled courtyard and a little garden.

By this point it had started raining, a thick pounding Indian monsoon rain that soaked anything that stepped out into it. Murali honked to get his wife to come out and open the gate, but she wouldn't come out. He leaped out and opened the gate, refusing to let us help because we couldn't get wet. He then drove us under the patio and made sure there was a dry place for us to get out, showing the kind of gallant hospitality that you don't see in our world anymore. I swear that if he'd had a coat he would have laid it down at Mo's feet so she could walk on it rather than in the water.

On entering the house we found out why his wife hadn't come into the rain to let us in – she was dressed in a beautiful sari, jasmine in her hair and bells on her ankles. She'd obviously spent a lot of time making sure she looked proper and elegant, and there was no way she was ruining that by getting wet. It was just as obvious that she was so nervous that she was about to vibrate her way through one of the walls. If it was tough for Murali to have us in his house it must have been a thousand times harder for Suganya, the woman of the house and the one upon whom its cleanliness, livability, and class reflected most. We found out later that she also used to work at the company where Mo is training. She was a common floor rep and knew damn well that Mo was a big time international consultant – the kind who not too long before could have had her and everyone she knew fired with a single stroke of a pen. And now we were in her house.

She needn't have worried. While the house was simple by western standards it was beautiful and spotlessly clean. And I do mean spotlessly. There was not a speck of dust anywhere in that entire house. Not a cobweb under the couch, not a smuch of dirt along one floorboard, nor any sign of the overwhelming odor of human habitation that fills all of India like a smog. I've never seen a house so well tended anywhere, and to see it in the very often busily messy middle of India was a revelation.

We gave her sweets from Sri Krsna, a popular local store that hand makes fresh Indian sweets daily, and this caused her to laugh and laugh as Murali offered us a seat. We found out later that when you first visit the home of an old friend, especially an old friend you have not seen since her marriage, it is traditional to bring sweets. This completely accidental gesture of ours helped ease her somewhat, and not long after she invited us into the kitchen to see her hearth and the center of her house. This, incidentally, is a huge honor. In Mo's cultural training she was told that you do not go into an Indian kitchen ever unless you are specifically invited, for it is the symbol of the house's well being and the center of the woman of the house's power. Indeed, Murali himself did not set foot in the kitchen, leaving our side by the door and saying, "That place is hers, she must show you."

The main room of the house had been much like the living room of a western house. The kitchen, otoh, was not. The dishes, the pans, the foods… all had different shapes, were arranged in different ways. There were a million flat pans and a thousand deep pots, not many having the familiar profiles of frying pans or sauce pots. The refrigerator was small, and with a lovely and delicate flower painted blossoming across its face. Murali later told us that Suganya had painted it, and all the glass work in the house. Everything in her home has her touch upon it, you see, and everything must be as beautiful as possible.

As we left the kitchen Murali showed us the house's shrine, were Ganesh and Shiva sat. We asked if he did puja (worship) daily, and he said not so much – he was very busy you see. Suganya, on the other hand, hastened to assure us that she prayed and did puja daily. I got the sense that she was much more traditional than Murali. This is a pattern I've seen often in Indian houses since: a wife who still follows the old ways of puja closely and a husband who still very much believes in the gods, but not in idols or daily pujas.

We then spent some time talking with Murali while Suganya finished cooking. We talked about the caste system, about education and the future of India's political system, about the difference between the country and the city in Indian life, and a million other things. Murali got visibly tense every time we talked about caste, and you could just tell he'd had bad experiences talking about it with Americans in the past. That we didn't immediately level judgment against the very concept surprised him somewhat, and gave him a chance to express his opinions about it – which can be summed up that once everyone is educated caste will vanish. It will take time, he said, but it is already walking dead and just doesn't know it yet.

We queried about his caste and found that he was a kshatriya of a mid-level chivalrous jati, as was Suganya. Theirs was an arranged marriage, and they had been married for just under a year. She quit her job not long after they were married, and now kept the house. Later we found out that she had spent 5 hours making us dinner, and that in the life of the average South Indian woman this is not much time to spend daily in the kitchen. Things like premixed spice mixes and batter mixes have cut the time down from what it was in the time of their mothers, who spent most of their day cooking for their large families in little villages north and west of Madurai.

While we were talking Suganya served us juice, water, and potato patties as an appetizer. Mo and I had decided before coming that we were going to trust whatever they gave us, despite all the dire warnings we'd been given about how white people sometimes died from drinking Chennai water. As it turns out we were right to. Suganya had cooked everything in bottled water and serves us nothing that was not 100% safe. I doubt we could have had a safer meal anywhere in all of India.

After the appetizers Murali's brother joined us. He's living in their house while he works on his MBA at one of the Oxford associated colleges in Chennai. Friendly and charismatic he none the less seemed a bit bemused that we were over for dinner, like he couldn't believe that his brother had really turned his introduction into a dinner with the Americans. He was also much concerned by the fact that in the picture of Murali and I he was out of focus, and asked if we could get a new picture before we left in which he was in focus.

Moments after his entrance the thunder started to fall outside, and the rain pounded down around us, echoing in the little pond just outside the window while the wind came howling up. The electricity didn't last long under this assault, and the whole house went dark and all the fans went out. Murali went searching for candles muttering "oh shit oh shit" under his breath in a manner most Indian despite the utter non-Indianness of the words he was using. The apologies started up again, but these we were able to put aside by talking about the blackout in Toronto where we lost power for 3 days.

Dinner was thus served by candle light, during monsoon rains and howling winds in a little Indian house beside a pond. I can't possible imagine a more perfect moment, it was like all of the books I'd ever read about India suddenly loomed up around me, letting me feel that this was a perfect moment that was part of a world that was fading fast. If it hadn't been for the storm we would have eaten under electric lights and the fans would have drowned out the sound of the rain. But as it was there was the night and the humidity, the sound of frogs and falling drops, the smell of jasmine and the dreams of this wet and reincarnating land.

The food was exquisite, of course. There were six courses, all made by hand. There were idli and sambar and rice noodles served with sweetened coconut milk, halva and sambar, tangy rice and sweet rice, potato patties rich with onion and curry, dumplings of lentil, and ice cream for desert. We ate with our hands, which is harder to do than you'd think, but our hosts showed us how to do so with proper Tamil table manners and in the end we successfully stuffed our bellies without making too much fools of ourselves.

One thing, however, did make dinner distinctly odd. As we sat down to eat Murali and Suganya did not. Murali says to me, "I know this is not your way, but it is ours. So we will serve you while you eat." So for the rest of dinner our host and hostess stand by the table, serving us onto our plates, while we and Murali's brother eat our fill. Murali claimed that they ate in the kitchen between courses, but I don’t know if that is true. I think they waited until after we were gone to eat. (And even then poor Murali got no sweets or ice cream, as Suganya doesn't allow it since his cholesterol results came back high last time at the doctor.)

Much as I loved the dinner I can't express how odd this made me feel. Both Mo and I come from rather blue-collar backgrounds (farmers and miners) and the concept of being served is hard on us at the best of times. Having your host and hostess, who are rapidly becoming your friends, stand by and serve you without eating themselves is downright unnerving. Caught between the vice of personal discomfort and cultural respect we said nothing, and let them serve us in their own home. Others of my Indian friends have told us this is a great honor, both to us and to them, for it shows respect and hospitality and our trust in them. But I tell you, at the time it was nothing short of disconcerting.

After dinner Suganya came out to join us in talking for another hour or so. She talked to us about making food in Canada, and asked us how much time we have to spend cooking every day. The concept of mixes and quick-fix meals was fascinating to her, as the amount of free time one can gain by needing to spend as little as two hours a day cooking (yes, you read that right) is something she is very excited about. We also got to hear about how she felt she should have been born in America as she doesn't like Indian food nearly as much as she loves hamburgers and pizza. Murali informed us that she eats Pizza Hut every chance she gets.

As we finally went to take our leave Murali ran into the back room and brought out a present, a perfect statue of Ganesh, hand carved from some lightly colored but dense wood. It was only after we got home that we realized it was signed by the artist and is probably part of a limited series. After dinner, hospitality, and a free ride they got us a present as well. That is Indian hospitality, the degree of love and generosity and warmth that fills this country and its people in their best moments.

Murali then drove us home and explained how cricket works. By the end of the long drive back to the hotel he'd gotten comfortable enough with us to talk about world politics – particularly America and Pakistan's relationship and how it always confuses him that America sides with Pakistan above India, despite the fact that India is a secular democracy. It was good to see him relaxing enough to get into touchy matters like that, after the nervousness of the drive to his house. When we told him we'd have to have him over for dinner at the hotel he agree with cheer and hardly a nerve at all.

As a note on the picture, we all look demented because the picture was taken durring the blackout. It was taken it pitch darkness, with Mo guessing where the focus was. That it turned out at all is a minor miracle. That I look a dork is normal. I can't take a picture in India without looking like a hopeless nerd.

We’ve since had them over for dinner at the hotel restaurant. As luck had it we were able to take them to a nice Italian buffet, and to buy Suganya a lovely pizza and sneak Murali some cheesecake while she wasn't working. We gave them a present of pure Canadian maple syrup, flags, and a Toronto bag. This time waiters served us, and we were able to all eat together and talk about India and Canada and politics and everything under the sun.

Murali and Suganya say that they now must visit Toronto, and when they do they have been invited to our house for dinner. I will make them pizza and devil's food cake from scratch (my specialties) and we will tour them around the city. Our only request has been that they not come in the winter, as we're not sure that Suganya (who isn't used to temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius) would survive it.

This is why I love India. It has been a very long time since I was able to make a friend from a random meeting in North America. Part of it is our culture, and a much larger part of it is me. But here we were able to turn a chance meeting into a friendship. As Murali said as we were taking pictures as they prepared to leave after our last dinner, "I think we are connected now. Even if we are far apart we are always friends."

Chicken Pizza* bit me.

It's called Chikungunya and it's a flu that is spreading via mosquito. The damn yellow fever mosquito and the Asian tiger mosquito. There's a variant of symptoms, but for me, it means that all my joints are aching and I feel like a heavy wet blanket is over me, holding me down.

So far *knock wood* it looks like it's hit me more mildly than most (three of the other expats have gotten it since we've been here), and even more thankfully, I have enough time to get over the worst of it before I head out on our three weeks of crazy backpacking travel. I suspect the first couple of days will still be a little miserable, but I'm glad to put the worst behind me, and we just have to watch to make sure Brand and I are both wearing mosquito repellent to make sure no mosquito cross bites us. Fun!

We had a doctor come to the hotel to check me out, and to check out a rash on Brand's face which has turned out to be just an allergic reaction. The Doctor is from the Apollo Clinic, which is a private hospital, and probably one of the best doctors in Chennai. He only usually makes house calls for Indian celebrities, but he's been out for each of us chicken virus dorks. The shocking thing is that the visit for both of us and all the five medications he prescribed for the two of us cost less than 1000 rupees in total. So... just about 20 bucks.

I might have fell down at that, if I'd been able to stand up in the first place. :P

*Chicken Pizza is just the nickname we've given the virus, because for a long time, no one could pronounce it properly (Chik-in-goon-ya). At first it was "chicken disease" or "Chicken-whatcamacalit" then it became "Chichen-Itza" and then Chicken Pizza. What do you want from me? I'm delirious.

Cobra La lalalalalala!

So on the way to Mahabs the other week, we went to the Madras Crocodile Bank . It was originally set up as a conservation and research site for India's three varieties of endangered crocodiles, and since it has expanded to a herp research centre. They do work on sea turtle conservation and wildlife conservation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They work on producing anti-venom for four of India's most deadly snakes.

The snake section of the Croc Bank has been set up and is maintained by the Irulas, a scheduled caste/tribal community that has historically lived quite separate lives from their neighbours in the forests of Tamil Nadu and who were primarily employed with snake and rat catching, and the hunting/gathering and sale of forest product (firewood, honey, beeswax etc.).

In 1976, the Indian Government signed the Forest Protection Act, which made their villages and livelihoods illegal. Since then, some terrible injustices have been made upon the Irula people as they have struggled to make a new way of life. Generations of some families have worked inside rice mills in slave labour and terrible conditions, while others have starved or died in desolation and hunger, and still others defy the government mandate and continue their traditional way of life in the forest.



In that context, Croc Bank, is an especially fascinating endeavour. In the snake venom extraction area of Croc Bank, you can witness the generations of expertise in working with deadly snakes, as they nonchalantly milk kraits of their venom (the process doesn't hurt the snake) or lift deadly cobras out of clay pots. "He bite, two days you die." the snake handler assured us as he held up the cobra and laid it gently on a platform in front of him. Withdrawing the home-made hooked tool he was lifting the snake with, he began to wave his bare hand in front of the cobra as it reared up and coiled it's hood, grinning wryly and unafraid as the gathered onlookers winced in fear.



He shows us several varieties of cobras and crakes, rejoicing in telling us how quickly the reptiles could kill us, while deftly manoeuvring his flesh just barely out of reach of the snake's fangs. The last one, the saw-scaled viper, a tiny little garter snake looking thing wrapped around his hand. He grins toothily as he says; "Just two hours. Two hours you die."



Like everywhere in India, if you just have a glimpse around a corner, there's a temple, and outside the snake venom extraction centre is no exception. There, a little tiled snake shrine, with freshly sandalwood and vermillion pasted carved cobra idols, and a small Ganesh to watch over the industrious endeavours of the park.

Of course, snakes aren't all you can see. The Croc Bank is home to more than a dozen species of endangered and non-endangered turtles, including soft shelled temple turtles who blend down into the sand at the bottom of their tanks,



and those that move so slowly that the algae that grows on their backs serve as an extremely slow moving buffet for the fish in their ecosystems.



We also saw komodo dragons and monitor lizards and at least a dozen varieties of crocodiles: caiman from the Amazon, American, and many local gharials and muggers. Each of the different areas had information signs up with a list of pictures that made up the diet of the croc in question, and you knew when you came across one with a picture of a bull, that you were dealing with a serious croc. The mugger is the biggest man-eating beast in all of India, and while they're kind of cute when they are babies:



Even if they do squirm a lot (and are capable of taking off your fingers if you put your hands in an inopportune spot!). But once they are all grown up, they are entirely deadly, and can jump, surprising distances. This full grown fellow, smelled meat in the air as one of the feeders came by and jumped up over the inner wall almost to the outer wall, making us all jump back and gasp as he came just inches from where he could have taken an arm off of us. Then he stayed around hanging out on the wall "mugging" his grin for the camera.



Wild!

Buelah?.... Buelah?... Buelah?...

WORKING AT A SOUTH INDIAN BPO: TAKE TWO

So... yeah. You get the picture. The thing about the traffic, is that it really is emblematic of the culture here. By that I may mean just the culture local to Chennai, I may mean all over India. I'll let you know once I've been around more.

Everywhere you go, in everything you do, there never seems to be a distinguishable lane to travel in. Everyone just goes through when a spot appears. If no spot comes, then you just go around; if you can't go around, just stop the car and get confused.

That's how it works in a business context here too: time, like speed limits are merely suggestions. Meetings start five or ten or twenty minutes late, never have all of the right people, never seem to fully resolve, and in the middle of an essential moment, someone will just start talking on a cell phone.

Like the guys carrying ginormous boxes or whole families on bikes, what logistical resources available are put into constant maximum use and strain. Stations, chairs, headsets, computers, they are bought and used with an economy of scarcity; there are not enough for every agent, but enough for every person working in this moment (if we're lucky). My classroom was built out of a boardroom, and was constantly under construction for the first three days I was in it (and even sometimes after that). There was a giant flat screen TV set up to hook your laptop up to teach, but I found out quickly that it didn't work.



Instead, a projector was looted from another classroom used to teach a class that ended immediately before mine. It would come to my boardroom table still warm from the last instructor's information. At the end of my class every day there would be a man hovering just outside my door to come and take it away to its third assignment of the day. No building in a BPO ever sleeps. In the Centre of Learning, three shifts of eight hour classes ran seven days a week. In the actual work centres, shift follows shift follows shift in an endless progression of logins and logouts. There's never even a quiet time of the day or a single physical resource not being used to its full potential.

At first, I thought: "Well that makes sense. Companies in India must just really work on a very different operating budget that we are used to back home. When we buy things in Canada, we just have the CAPEX (capital expenditure) to purchase all of what we need." Then I realized that while this might be true, that it’s a trap to think of it so simplistically.

The BPO we are working with is one of the largest in India. It has four massive call centres in Chennai alone, and has offices in Delhi and Bangalore and Hyderabad and Mumbai. It takes calls from some big-time companies... not just us, but Intuit and Dell, HP and Microsoft. It's likely got cash on hand to pull together on the things it needs to buy.

The difference doesn’t lie in how much capital an Indian company might have in comparison to a Canadian company, but rather, it lies in the kind of currency that the capital is spent in. In Canada, if a company has a hundred dollars to spend, that capital is worth 100 dollars Canadian. Most of the product that those CAPEX dollars are being spent on are made and/or bought locally. Even if they have been made in whole or in part in another country, the product that they are buying are priced at a value close to equal what Canadian currency is worth.

I apologize for a moment as I go all corporate economics on you I promise I’ll explain: In Canada, OPEX (operational expenditure) is also priced in Canadian dollars, so often spending CAPEX now to offset OPEX later makes sense, especially when the CAPEX maintenance cost is stable and finite while the OPEX costs, in the form of EQE, is unstable and infinite. Translation? Well it’s just like the argument of buying a condo vs. renting an apartment: As a CEO, I’m more likely to invest 500K right now to build a system that will eliminate the need to pay 100 people for the next 20 years, because people cost more than product and their maintenance needs also cost more and are more unpredictable.

In India, this is not how things work. Here, OPEX dollars aren’t dollars at all, they’re rupees, and there are 40 rupees in every dollar the company will spend on OPEX costs (E.g. overhead, employee salaries). However, the CAPEX costs we’re talking about: the headsets, workstations, chairs etc, are priced in dollars (US) not rupees because they are not locally made, but bought on the world market, and so for each CAPEX widget bought, 40 times more rupees are spent than would be if an OPEX widget were bought.

So in Canada, it’s worth it to the company to buy more computers, headsets, and projectors than needed to ensure that a group of employees are never idle and waiting to be matched with the thing they need, while here, there would have to be a lot of people delayed a long time to make the case for buying a piece equipment that isn’t in demand right now.

What all of this also means is that there’s a high turnover of employees working, because it’s not expensive to try people out with different processes, or let them gain experience in the training of one process for when they end up going to another. There end up being clashes between we North Americans and our counterparts in India because to us, training is an extremely costly process that you work hard to get right the first time, and to them training is like the traffic: employees weave in and out of the chaos until they find a process that fits, or get off the road.

What this means to me as a trainer is that there are a lot of students on my training list that aren’t expected to make it to the end. Some won’t show up the first day, some will be lost to attrition as they leave the process or the company unexpectedly, some won’t make it through the mid assessments, some won’t make it through the end assessments, some will be retrained and reassessed.

On the very first day, Theresa, the other trainer, and I showed up for training to discover we had 34 students. Instead of having 2 classrooms of 17, we had one classroom of 10 and one of 24. On the first day, three people didn’t show up. Our Indian counterparts didn’t realize they hadn’t shown up for the first hour. The co-delivery trainer from India was calling out attendance and came to one name on the list: Buelah. I kid you not, he stood at the front of the class for a full two minutes saying: “Buelah?. ..Buelah?..... Buelah?.....”

I almost fell on the ground laughing, or raised my hand and said while smacking my gum: "Um, she's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Buelah pass out at Sri Krishna’s Sweets last night. I guess it's pretty serious. "

I want to make sure that the point of this post, even if it has been long and rambly, is not that the BPO’s are terrible and disorganized and don’t know how to run a business, but that sometimes cultural difference can really look like incompetence, when you’re looking at business process with a western filter. If you don’t learn to drive the Tamil way: to give up on the lines in the road, talk with your horn, and abandon yourself to the idea that the traffic will win, life will be stressful while dealing with a BPO.

From India Upon the Day

Five years ago, exactly to the moment, I was waking up in Toronto and getting ready to get on an airplane flying to Los Angeles. My friend Nicole was up already, making herself coffee and watching the news. "A plane just flew into one of the Trade Towers" she says to me, and I turn to watch the coverage start to go to New York and the black smoke.

Within 30 minutes I had canceled my ticket. Within an hour I was in tears. Nicole stood over me, with Gary and Mo, and told me that I was not going home until it was safe, that they would protect me and keep me in their house until we were sure nothing bad would happen to me.

Needless to say, I remember 9/11.

With that in mind, I present the following two articles from The Hindu, the most widely read English magazine in India. Agree or disagree, it matters not. I am posting this so that everyone can see a POV from a democratic, largely English speaking, capitalist country that is an ally of the US that none the less is not us.

9/11: Five Years Later

FIVE years have passed since the assault on New York City by the ruthless emissaries of Osama Bin Laden on September 11, 2001. Before they were brought crashing down that fateful day, I could see the twin towers of the World Trade Center from the building in New Jersey in which my office was located.

As it happened, I was in New York that day, working at home, and so I did not stand at the windows of the building, as many of my colleagues did, staring at the macabre view of smoke billowing out from the buildings and over the skyline of the city itself, the very quintessence of everything modern for millions of people across the globe.

In the days immediately after 9/11, everything felt different in the urbane city. The 1990s were great years for New York — or rather, more accurately, the richest and flashiest of New Yorkers, those who flowed seemingly endlessly into Manhattan, driving rents and real estate prices up, up and up, so that the working poor and even the middle class were increasingly squeezed out of neighbourhoods, including those that they had in fact reclaimed to live in and, by their living, made liveable. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the divided city seemed to forget its divisions. Clichés began to ring true — all the city's residents were helpful neighbours, all its men were tall, all its women caring.

Tragic touch

And who could dare deny that it was so, that all this was indeed true? It is in the nature of events like 9/11 to make truths out of clichés. They sanctify with their tragic touch. No one who died in the attacks deserved to die, not in this way. Terrorism is indiscriminate in its violence; or, if you prefer, much too righteous in its notion of guilt and innocence. And because terrorism is so, it makes towering saints of its victims. People like to say there are two sides to every story. But when it comes to an event like 9/11, many behave as if there is only one — the side of the saints of 9/11.

The consequences of such onesidedness are great. To thousands of people in far-flung corners of the globe — in Afghanistan and Iraq and in other places — they are as great as the consequences were to the saints of 9/11. Thousands in these places (by now in far greater numbers than died in New York and elsewhere on 9/11) have already paid for that fateful day with their lives as the armies of Britain and the U.S. rain missiles and bombs from the sky.

A superpower goaded to vengeance is indiscriminate in its pursuit of the terror of war; or, if you prefer, much too righteous in its notion of guilt and innocence. Thus, more sanctity enters the world, only now on the other side.

The saints of 9/11 stand ranged against the saints of the torture cells of Abu Ghraib and the murdered innocents of Haditha and countless other villages and towns across the "New Middle East". These other saints too did not deserve to die, not in this way. They too are all without blemish now.

Who could ever do the grisly arithmetic here? What matchless accountant could ever balance this ledger book of tragedy to even a single person's satisfaction?

Five years after. New York is the same beguiling city that it ever was, imperial and self-indulgent and narcissistic and liberal and tolerant and welcoming, all at the same time. Immigrants flow into the new America as they did into the old, even as many Americans grow more and more vocal in their opposition to their arrival. Osama is still free, and the war on terror shows no sign of ending, even as the American public grows tired of their country's continued entanglement in ceaseless conflict.

Memorial

What has been achieved in the five years? In the arithmetic of saints the answer will always come out to zero. What we need is not arithmetic, but something else altogether. A memorial is in the planning for where the towers of the World Trade Center stood, but the towers themselves will never again rise over New York.

The hole at the heart of this great American city, for better or for worse the most potent symbol we have for modern civilisation, cannot be measured by the arithmetic of revenge. Nor can the hole at the heart of the "New Middle East" that we are being told is being born in Iraq and Lebanon and elsewhere in West Asia by the British and the American leaders.

Anniversaries and arithmetic are for remembering, which is important and necessary in its time and its place. But forgetting too has its time and place.

If Americans, and indeed all the good people in India and in the world at large, memorialise 9/11 today, can we tomorrow fail to memorialise the hundred tragedies — many the result of deliberate American policy in the pursuit of oil and other economic and political interests in West Asia — that led to 9/11?

If all we do is remember, when is there time to stop more tragedies, more occasions for bitter memorialising, from entering the world?

Multiply 9/11 by 5? Maybe you shouldn't.

The Other 9/11

SEPTEMBER 11 is a date forever etched in our minds. The terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 inaugurated a new era of uncertainty, fear, and hatred. For some influential sections in the West, these attacks have reaffirmed a belief in an inevitable "clash of civilisations'. Such a binary view of the world coupled with an opportunism has led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and more recently Israel's brazen assault on Lebanon. After decades of unprecedented peace, the mindless bombings in Madrid and London have introduced a new and gruesome dimension to European life. Given the political and economic preponderance of the West, the impact of these events is felt worldwide. Thus, at home, the terrible bombings of Mumbai's trains are now viewed as a part of this global menace.

Despite the disbelief of its citizens and feigned innocence of its leaders, America's international record has been far from simon-pure. It is in response to such duplicity that alert minds have reminded us of another 9/11. On the same date, in 1973, the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a coup that was aided and abetted by the American Government. With Allende dead, Chile rapidly descended into a long era of darkness under the right-wing Augusto Pinochet.

Other lessons

But the messy history of humankind also holds other lessons for those alive to its metaphors. In 1892, America commemorated the 400th anniversary of Columbus' "discovery" by organising a year-long Exposition in Chicago. On the margins of this event, a meeting of religious figures was organised. Addressing this gathering, on September 11, 1893, Swami Vivekananda famously drew attention to the consequences of "sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism". While Vivekananda upheld tolerance as the key to humanity's future, yet another 9/11 coincidence provides an even more edifying story of human dignity and freedom.

In September 1906, the Transvaal legislature in colonial South Africa sought to curb the growing economic influence of the Indian community through a racially motivated "Asiatic Ordinance" that, amongst other measures, included mandatory fingerprinting. On September 11, 1906, the Indian community in Johannesburg gathered at the Empire Theatre, a Jewish institution, and vowed to resist the proposed legislation. Amidst vigorous discussions, Haji Habib, an elderly Muslim, arose and made a solemn pledge of peaceful civil disobedience, with "God as witness". That the Indian opposition to the proposed legislation would be entirely non-violent was never in question. However, Haji Habib's solemn oath in the name of God was a moment of epiphany for a man who would change the course of history. That man was Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma.

An idea takes shape

Although known for leading the Freedom Movement in India, Gandhi's philosophy and its practice were painstakingly crafted over a period of two decades in South Africa. The 9/11 meeting helped crystallise a nascent idea in his mind. Gandhi's own form of non-violent, direct action, Satyagraha, was born. An immensely significant idea, Satyagraha is notoriously difficult to translate into English. Etymologically, satya means Truth and agraha means insistence, implying a steadfast insistence of the Truth. Acting on the dictates of individual conscience in the cause of justice is an old idea present in various forms in all societies. However, it was Gandhi who elevated a personal, ethical tenet to a philosophy of large-scale social and political action that transcends time and geography.

Satyagraha has been much used, and abused, in the hundred years since Gandhi first formulated its basic tenets. While thousands took part in India's struggle against British rule, many years later in distant America, Satyagraha found expression in the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. In independent India itself, while Gandhi has been increasingly forgotten, Satyagraha has been frequently reinvented by a variety of movements for social and ecological justice.

Satyagraha has unfortunately been confused with Pacifism which has its roots in Western history. Ironically, such a conflation erases the very reason for the invention of the word. Gandhi, with help from his nephew Maganlal, coined the neologism as he felt the term used to describe his ideas, "passive resistance", was wholly inadequate. In particular, Gandhi felt that the description of his method as a "weapon of the weak" was objectionable. Satyagraha is anything but passive or weak. It is no idle piety, or woolly-headed craving for peace with no reference to the complexities of the real world. Rather it is a militant, but resolutely non-violent assertion of one's moral beliefs. Gandhi held that humans were inherently capable of both good and evil. Therefore, faced with injustice, it was one's responsibility to rouse the moral sense of an opponent. While many thinkers acknowledge the inevitability of war and strife in society, Gandhi stubbornly refused to accept violent retribution as an answer to an evil act. "An eye for an eye makes the world blind," he famously declaimed. While a violent response would make us lose our intrinsic humanity, he did not imply silent acquiescence to injustice. In fact, he held that violence was preferable to meek acceptance of oppression. However, a better world was only possible by demanding and obtaining justice through peaceful means.

Stroke of genius

The Application of this philosophy on a national scale was a stroke of rare genius and a courageous, often bordering on foolhardy, act of self-belief. It was hard enough for any individual to maintain a non-violent stand in the face of severe incitement and violence. To demand that of an entire mass struggle was unthinkable for many. But the virtue of a large-scale peaceful struggle in India triumphed and heralded the waves of decolonisation that swept across Asia and Africa. Colonial empires ultimately crumbled under the weight of the manifest truth that Freedom was everyone's birthright.

Unlike most forms of political organisation and action, Satyagraha yields no corner to realpolitik and our many daily compromises. This is so, as one's loyalty is completely given over to the only principle worth upholding — Truth. For Gandhi, this was the highest form of religion. "Truth is God", he often said. Thus the creed of Satyagraha also demanded that its practitioners freely accept their errors. Frequently, and always publicly, Gandhi would himself proclaim his errors, his `Himalayan blunders". In the process, he infused a new sense of vitality and purpose into our public life that has, sadly, receded.

Gandhi provided humanity with a non-violent, moral weapon. In a world riven by unending violence, oppression and conflict its relevance is self-evident. Beyond the symbolism of this "other 9/11", Gandhi's insight that came to the fore a century ago holds the possibility of building a world based on genuine peace and justice, where genuinely "enduring freedom" can prevail.