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| Mark with Professor Action Figure Chad |
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| Inside the home of one of Ramesh's relatives |
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Ramesh and Ganesh Take Us to the Slums and Dadar Flower Market
Hookah in Bombay
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| India Gate |
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| Ganesh and Ramesh |
We spent half of a day touring the island and taking in the spectacular rock carvings and then we returned to Bombay. Annie and I were wiped because we both picked up colds along the way, so we turned in early.
The nice thing is, I’ve had the local water a few times now and have yet to get sick. We’ve eaten ice cream, which is a majority/third-world no-no, and we had their yogurt, another no-no in India, and an ice cream shake, a slurpee made with local water/ice, and we’ve eaten whatever our hearts desire. I think my stomach may have been made for international travel.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The Taj Mahal Hotel and the Terror Attacks
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| (1) Taj Mahal Hotel |
Over one year ago a pretty
significant terror attack happened here in Bombay. It was no 9/11-Two
Towers catastrophe, but not because the terrorists did not want it to
be. Most reading this probably remember the attacks carried out by
these terrorists at the Taj Mahal Hotel on November 28. The reason they
attacked the Taj Hotel is because it is the most expensive hotel in
India and for the terrorists, it represented western opulence and
decadence… and an opportunity to strike fear into the hearts of "white
people" the world over. Their message: "we will find you in your richest hotels; nowhere is safe.”
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| (2) |
What most do not know is that the Taj Hotel was only one of eight
coordinated attacks upon Bombay that day. The terrorists had planned to
kill over 5,000 people and they attacked in South Bombay, Chhatrapati
Shivaji Terminus (train station) Oberoi Trident, Leopold Café, Cama
Hospital, Nariman House, and the Metro Cinema.
According to Peter Foster, who published an article on this subject: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3529804/Bombay-terror-attacks-Why-the-Taj-Mahal-Hotel-was-chosen.html, the
National Security Guards were brought in and they were quite effective
at ending the violence, but not so effective at minimizing collateral
damage. A local on the ground said that western Special Forces go in
with SWAT teams and snipers, while Indian Special Forces solve their
terror problems by blowing $%@^ up. They did exactly that. They named
it Operation Black Tornado and unleashed their fury upon the Pakistani
members of the Lashkar-e Taiba—a terrorist organization centered out of
Pakistan. The result was that 295 people died; among those were six
Americans.
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| (3) |
As stated, their goal was mainly the
Taj Hotel and the surrounding area, as they were targeting a very
specific demographic that frequented the hotel; those people being:
India’s leaders, politicians, white tourists, foreign investors, and the
country’s new economic heavy hitters.
I explained all this because we are
staying exactly one block away from the Taj Hotel and that is why the
managers of the guesthouse we arrived at were being such sticklers about
not letting us stay there. It just so happens that the terrorists
stayed in these very kind of guesthouses and were coming and going at
all hours (like us) and they kept adding new people into the rooms at
all hours (like our group had been doing) and because of these factors,
new rules were created for travelers to more easily track them and their
whereabouts.
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| (4) The Taj as it Stands Today |
I want to be clear that this area is
not dangerous. It has not been dangerous in the past and is not a
dangerous place to be right now. Like New York, it was randomly
attacked and that attack does not make New York or Bombay inherently
more or less safe than they were before the attacks. The goal of
terrorism is the leverage of fear: for a minimal price they get a
maximum bang for their buck. Terrorism’s mission is to change the
psyche into thinking violence is just around the corner when
statistically, nothing could be further from the truth.
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| (5) The DC Snipers |
Think back a few years ago in Washington D.C.; Steven Levitt, author of Superfreakanomics, pointed
out that in a typical year, D.C. experiences fifty murders. In 2002,
however, that average stayed the same but ten of those murders resulted
from shootings that caused panic to set in, ultimately paralyzing the
entire area in fear. The culprits were two men acting as snipers,
picking off random individuals from the back of their car. They were
domestic terrorists and their ten coordinated attacks did not change the
average death toll in the area for the year, but because they were
coordinated, everywhere felt as they were the next to die. It is psychological warfare and it plays to our darkest
fears that tell us: "the world is not safe and you are about to die."
That is, in part, why we visit some of these places; we wish to confront
those very fears.
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| (6) |
But I digress: as it was, Chad—the leader of
the OutDoor Program, Annie, and I were looking for breakfast and
accidentally wandered into Leopold Café. We sat down and found out
this was the very same café that had been attacked on that fateful day.
The place has been restored, for much of the damage came from the
Indians blowing up the terrorists, but they left the bullet holes and a
shattered bullet-ridden window as reminders of the carnage and as a pull
for tourists to frequent their establishment.
I bet the
terrorists never counted on Robert Merton’s economic Law of Unintended
Consequences: the terrorists wanted to drive fear into the hearts of travelers and
scare them away from India, which, in turn, would hurt India’s economy
and its already poor population. However, the terrorists inadvertently turned on a whole new generation of travelers onto the already famous spot. The bullet holes now drive dumb tourists like me to a place where mafioso figures and backpackers the world over had been frequenting for decades. The Taj Hotel has also been
remodeled as most of its bottom floor was destroyed; they are open for business again as well.
Reporting from Bombay and one of the largest cities in the world...
Reporting from Bombay and one of the largest cities in the world...
Delhi has a Penis and Bombay has a Vagina
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| (1) |
The title is not meant to convey that one city is more gender specific or gender symbolic than the other; rather, I just want to point out the differences between the two cities, much like the little kid from "Kindergarten Cop" did years back.
To say that Bombay is different from Delhi is an understatement. In
Delhi, nearly everyone spoke English, which made it really easy to
communicate and get around. Here in Bombay, however, most people speak
Hindi and very little English. Also, in Delhi, the temperature hovered
somewhere around 70 degrees because it was winter there, which was just
about perfect for Annie and me. While in Bombay, it is the middle of
winter and still close to 85-90 degrees, with 99% humidity; it is not
unbearable but most of us are slowly melting as we try to acclimate to
the moist environment.
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| The Cows of Delhi |
And finally, the last major contrast is the
scarcity of cows here; in Delhi they roamed the streets and really added
to the ambiance of it all, while Bombay lacks the
sacred-bovine-beauties aimlessly ambling about its streets. Not that
these differences are bad, because such is not the case. They both have
a lot of different things to offer the intrepid traveler… although I am
very sad to have not found one snake charmer in city of 22 million
people. My old motto is that cobras and pit-vipers make an
ordinarily bland city taste great—they are like salt on your food; no
meal is complete without cobras at the table blowing you kisses.
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| The Cows are Much Smaller in Bombay |
Our plane touched down at 8:30 p.m. but by the time we got our taxi and
found where the rest of the group had nested, it was two hours later
and we were exhausted. I opened the door to our cab and instantly
stepped into a gutter of urine, waste, and feces—it was disgusting.
Welcome to Bombay! The southern portion of India is where many people
from around the world vacation to because of its warm temperatures and
that means finding a place to stay here during the December and January
months can sometimes be difficult.
The guesthouse where our friends
were staying was packed and when they tried to get us into their rooms
to share for the night, the management freaked. We offered to pay extra
for the extra two people (us) who were being added to the rooms but
they were adamant that we could not stay at their place. We went round
after round with them and it wasn't until Chad stepped in that we were
able to convince them to let us stay for the night. The following day
that we found out why.
Stay tuned for the next exciting edition to find out why our manager freaked.... dun dun dun
Friday, September 2, 2011
The Caste System and Circular Reasoning
Most of our last day in Delhi was spent at New Delhi's
Domestic/International Airport. It was new and to pass the time we
both read books; I read "Superfreakanomics" and highly
recommend it to anyone. There was a sign that promised free internet,
but one had to have a cell phone to use it because they text you the
code and that code only lasts for 1 hour. A nice lady let me borrow her
flashdrive encoded wifi receiver, but before we could blog her airplane
arrived and that was that. I mentioned this once before, but to know
India is to know that the cultural is paternalistic and heavily male
dominated.
It is also a culture stratified between classes, or castes, which, because of democracy has been diminished, but is very much alive and kicking, despite what the local upper-class will tell you. There is a middle class emerging here, but it will be decades, maybe longer, before they are any kind of percentage of the population. Over 60% of the country makes $1,000 a year or less, and because I don’t have the statistics available for the rest of the break down I can’t tell you how the rest shake out but I will say that the well-to-do make up about 10% and the rest fall somewhere way below that.
The reason I write about these things is because I like to educate others and because others ask me to explain many of the cultural caveats of foreign countries while we travel; however, I also bring this up because of what we experienced on the airplane, but I will return to that in a moment.
In India, only the rich/upper-class take planes while traveling to other parts of India. India is a land filled with train tracks laid down by the British and they are and have been the main mode of transportation for over a hundred and fifty years. Indians love their trains and they cost next to nothing to cover huge swaths of area. For example, from Delhi to Mumbai by train in a first class compartment with sleeping quarters would have been about $50 a ticket, or half of that for a non-A/C compartment. While our same day flights to Bombay (they call it Bombay still here in India, not Mumbai) were three times as much. Of course we did not care about $150 same day ticket prices to cover a stretch of land that is roughly the equivalent of going from Colorado to Minnesota for such a great price, but only the rich would do such a thing in this country. Side note: in Agra our chauvinistic taxi driver that Annie just loved, said, and I quote, “When I see you I see rich!”
We could have saved the money and taken the overnight 17 hour train ride, but we had saved over $500 a ticket already by flying into Delhi instead of Bombay (the others in our group flew directly to Bombay), which meant we were way ahead on our budget and had planned to spend that money elsewhere. Therefore, we boarded our plane with all of us rich folk (because here we truly are rich) and got a bird’s eye view of how the 1st tier or the top caste treated those purportedly beneath them.
We paid $4 extra to sit in exit row seating because it usually gives you all the leg room you want, but because it is exit row seating you are always asked by the airline if you are willing to jettison the emergency escape hatch outside the aircraft in the event of an emergency, per FAA guidelines. The stewardess will ask you this question every time and you must answer “yes” or “no”. If you are not willing you will be seated elsewhere.
We were all asked the question, but the guy in front of us was talking on his cell phone, which he’d been asked to shut off but refused to do. When asked, he stopped the stewardess and told her he was talking on his phone. She politely asked him to shut off his phone per FAA guidelines and with an arrogant huff he gave her the “yes” and continued talking for another minute. She waited patiently and then began her speech about the emergency exits, while he said, “Of course, of course… yes, yes, yes.”
By this point, I wanted to slam his head into the window and teach him some manners (this is my Achilles’ heel and frequently lands me in bad situations), but I refrained. I hate to see anyone abusing the help and it is worse when it involves some form of male domination and it didn’t help that when lots were cast in life, this guy got the short end of the douche-bag straw.
I would be guilty of an over generalization if this was my only example, but sadly it is not. The lady next to us would not open her bag of nuts with her own hands but snapped, “You open them” to the stewardess.
One cannot mistake the air of Indian-money here, as their clothing (like ours) sets them apart; that is, when you see them, which is only rarely. The poor may be angry at times at their condition, but they are incredibly humble and their humility is evident everywhere you go. The opposite is also true for a large part of the rich. Culturally, it is how things have been here for thousands of years. The castes separated them and those on top were superior and those on the bottom were equally inferior. The system is self-perpetuating and mirrors social-Darwinism in that it goes something like this: I was born into money; therefore, my karma is good because I was born rich as I could not have arrived at the highest caste level if my karma was not good or if I had led a bad life in my previous existence; hence I am superior and your bad karma landed you in the socio-economic situation you currently find yourself in and that is why you are inferior. You obviously were a rotten degenerate in your former life.
How can one argue against illogical constructs based in circular reasoning?
Last night, as I was blogging outside our hotel, a wealthy young lady could not get her log-in information correct on the computer and rather than deal with the situation in a normal and respectable manner, she proceeded to berate the staff and then she descended into a tirade, cussing at the young man until she felt he was thoroughly humiliated. Then she got up and demanded he fetch a cab for her, which he promptly did.
Ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you I would have confronted that person if we had been in the States, but here I always try to remember I am in a foreign country with different cultural standards and beyond any of that, I try to act like an ambassador of my country, my people, my religion, and even my college (because they footed most of the bill for my part of this trip and even gave us $1,000 to spend in the slums on the children). Therefore, I try to keep my mouth shut, although I also tend to get inoculated from keeping my mouth shut, which probably means I’ll be blogging about this subject again in the future.
From Bombay, one of the poorest cities in the world and home to many of the kindest as well…
It is also a culture stratified between classes, or castes, which, because of democracy has been diminished, but is very much alive and kicking, despite what the local upper-class will tell you. There is a middle class emerging here, but it will be decades, maybe longer, before they are any kind of percentage of the population. Over 60% of the country makes $1,000 a year or less, and because I don’t have the statistics available for the rest of the break down I can’t tell you how the rest shake out but I will say that the well-to-do make up about 10% and the rest fall somewhere way below that.
The reason I write about these things is because I like to educate others and because others ask me to explain many of the cultural caveats of foreign countries while we travel; however, I also bring this up because of what we experienced on the airplane, but I will return to that in a moment.
In India, only the rich/upper-class take planes while traveling to other parts of India. India is a land filled with train tracks laid down by the British and they are and have been the main mode of transportation for over a hundred and fifty years. Indians love their trains and they cost next to nothing to cover huge swaths of area. For example, from Delhi to Mumbai by train in a first class compartment with sleeping quarters would have been about $50 a ticket, or half of that for a non-A/C compartment. While our same day flights to Bombay (they call it Bombay still here in India, not Mumbai) were three times as much. Of course we did not care about $150 same day ticket prices to cover a stretch of land that is roughly the equivalent of going from Colorado to Minnesota for such a great price, but only the rich would do such a thing in this country. Side note: in Agra our chauvinistic taxi driver that Annie just loved, said, and I quote, “When I see you I see rich!”
We could have saved the money and taken the overnight 17 hour train ride, but we had saved over $500 a ticket already by flying into Delhi instead of Bombay (the others in our group flew directly to Bombay), which meant we were way ahead on our budget and had planned to spend that money elsewhere. Therefore, we boarded our plane with all of us rich folk (because here we truly are rich) and got a bird’s eye view of how the 1st tier or the top caste treated those purportedly beneath them.
We paid $4 extra to sit in exit row seating because it usually gives you all the leg room you want, but because it is exit row seating you are always asked by the airline if you are willing to jettison the emergency escape hatch outside the aircraft in the event of an emergency, per FAA guidelines. The stewardess will ask you this question every time and you must answer “yes” or “no”. If you are not willing you will be seated elsewhere.
We were all asked the question, but the guy in front of us was talking on his cell phone, which he’d been asked to shut off but refused to do. When asked, he stopped the stewardess and told her he was talking on his phone. She politely asked him to shut off his phone per FAA guidelines and with an arrogant huff he gave her the “yes” and continued talking for another minute. She waited patiently and then began her speech about the emergency exits, while he said, “Of course, of course… yes, yes, yes.”
By this point, I wanted to slam his head into the window and teach him some manners (this is my Achilles’ heel and frequently lands me in bad situations), but I refrained. I hate to see anyone abusing the help and it is worse when it involves some form of male domination and it didn’t help that when lots were cast in life, this guy got the short end of the douche-bag straw.
I would be guilty of an over generalization if this was my only example, but sadly it is not. The lady next to us would not open her bag of nuts with her own hands but snapped, “You open them” to the stewardess.
One cannot mistake the air of Indian-money here, as their clothing (like ours) sets them apart; that is, when you see them, which is only rarely. The poor may be angry at times at their condition, but they are incredibly humble and their humility is evident everywhere you go. The opposite is also true for a large part of the rich. Culturally, it is how things have been here for thousands of years. The castes separated them and those on top were superior and those on the bottom were equally inferior. The system is self-perpetuating and mirrors social-Darwinism in that it goes something like this: I was born into money; therefore, my karma is good because I was born rich as I could not have arrived at the highest caste level if my karma was not good or if I had led a bad life in my previous existence; hence I am superior and your bad karma landed you in the socio-economic situation you currently find yourself in and that is why you are inferior. You obviously were a rotten degenerate in your former life.
How can one argue against illogical constructs based in circular reasoning?
Last night, as I was blogging outside our hotel, a wealthy young lady could not get her log-in information correct on the computer and rather than deal with the situation in a normal and respectable manner, she proceeded to berate the staff and then she descended into a tirade, cussing at the young man until she felt he was thoroughly humiliated. Then she got up and demanded he fetch a cab for her, which he promptly did.
Ask anyone that knows me and they will tell you I would have confronted that person if we had been in the States, but here I always try to remember I am in a foreign country with different cultural standards and beyond any of that, I try to act like an ambassador of my country, my people, my religion, and even my college (because they footed most of the bill for my part of this trip and even gave us $1,000 to spend in the slums on the children). Therefore, I try to keep my mouth shut, although I also tend to get inoculated from keeping my mouth shut, which probably means I’ll be blogging about this subject again in the future.
From Bombay, one of the poorest cities in the world and home to many of the kindest as well…
The Last of Agra and Delhi
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| The Shoe-menders |
Not having paid their extortion fee, we said our goodbyes to the ingenious little scallywags and boarded our train for Delhi. Once on board we quickly figured out why the ticket was only .85; they packed everyone in like sardines and even with standing room only, it was extremely uncomfortable. We had purchased seats and were able to sit on the hard benches, but others purchased the standing room only tickets and one lady in particular was bogarting our benchy-goods and decided to hone in on the sitting-action. For an hour she tried to squeeze Annie out, even though there wasn't an inch of room, but she gave up at last and with her doughy skin and supple-big-lady-breasts (I think there were four of them), she collapsed upon Annie and fell asleep right on top of half of her body.
The next morning we slept in at our guest house and then went to the airport to purchase tickets to Bombay, which is a thousand miles south and all the way to the west on the coast of the Indian Ocean.
To sum up Delhi cannot be done in words, but here is the best I’ve got: both Annie and I loved it, but it helped that it is winter here and only 70 degrees. We would never come here in the summer when temperatures soar way past the hundreds with 99% humidity and the smells are so rank they will make the butt of a dead rat appetizing. The temperate heat kept the smells down and the wandering cows were a sight to see. The scams are everyone but we walked away without having lost a cent and we also learned why some have such a hard time here. It is not for everyone, but for those willing to take a few chances, it pays out dividends.
Taj Majal and the B-donk-i-donk That Got Us There
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| Annie Did Not Like Feifel Going West With Us |
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| One of the Gates Heading into the Taj |
All that aside, I cannot begin to describe the beauty of the Taj; so many times in life you feel disappointed when you see something with your own eyes after it has been bragged up by the world. This was not one of those times. It takes your breath away. It is massive! It is gargantuous (I don’t think this is a word, at least according to spell-checker) and it rises into the air as if you are seeing some heavenly majestic white marble edifice that should not possibly exist in this world. The Taj is solid marble covered in black onyx verses from the Koran. It is truly second to none.
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| Check Out That Smog! |
Our guide, Asif (Au-sif, like Auto with a sif), quickly countered with, “Oh yes, they had 14 children but 8 died immediately after childbirth… the queen was very sad.”
The Taj is a mausoleum that was built for the king of India’s third wife. He loved her dearly and she had three final requests (after burying her 8 imaginary kids) before she died. She asked that he take care of their 6 kids; she asked that he never marry again; and finally, she asked that he build a final resting place for her that the whole world would never forget. He did exactly that. He had planned on building a black marble replica for his own mausoleum, but before he could bankrupt India with the second monumental feat, his son overthrew him and locked him away in prison, where he died alone. Very sad, I know.
Okay, I made that quote up, but only because of the loss of my 8 children.
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