Watch. Listen. Learn. (India 3: Agra)

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 6 comments

Nov. 6, 2011 — Agra, and The Taj Mahal

Where the only horns in the streets that aren’t blasted every few moments are the ones on the cows.

Agra Street Scene

I was more impressed with the traffic in Agra and the massive Red Fort than I was with the Taj Mahal, but the title of this blog post would have been far less interesting if it had read, “Red Fort, Agra.”

“More impressed” probably isn’t the right term. I was impressed with the Taj Mahal: how could one not be impressed with a 186-foot-square mausoleum that is considered one of the seven wonders of the world, is made entirely from white marble with floral designs and arabesques inset with jasper, carnelian, emerald, crystal, jade and many other precious stones, is perfectly symmetrical in four directions in the Muslim style — even its four gardens subdivided into four and four again — and stands as a testimony to the greatest love in the world ever, from all accounts: that of the mighty Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his third wife Munoz Mahal. When she died during the birth of their fourteenth child, a still-born girl, the emperor went into such a terrible depression that he did not emerge from seclusion for seven days and when he did (according to our guide) he had “lost his height.” What a lovely way of expressing the effect his sorrow had on his physical presence!

The Taj Mahal

The queen had told him that if anything happened to her he should create something to commemorate her, and the Taj Mahal is the result. It is a truly astounding edifice, and if I had not seen Agra’s Red Fort earlier in the day, I would have been knocked flat. My biggest wonder, though, is what wives One and Two thought of all of the attention bestowed on wife Three: “What have you done for me lately, my Esteemed Husband?” they might have wondered — with some justification.

Queue at the Taj Mahal

When we were there, it was a Sunday during the holiday season, and there were thousands upon thousands of Indians there to see the Taj, mainly Hindu people.

We observed that the many fine qualities of Indians we have observed so far do not seem to include the ability to stand patiently in line (as, for example, Canadians and Brits have been raised to do). As we approached the main mausoleum in single file, the line ahead of us grew as flocks of Indians stepped into line ahead of us — despite the frantic disapproving whistles of security guards. We finally got in to the inner sanctum just after dark, saw the crypt by artificial light and made our way around by flashlight. (I did have the opportunity to go back the next morning before our bus for Jaipur but I declined. I needed coffee and a bit of quiet by then.)

Backflash: From Delhi to Agra

That morning we’d taken a six a.m train from Delhi to Agra, which meant we were up at 4:30, and as promised the trip by Indian train was an experience — although thankfully, we did not need to climb onto the roof or hang out the door… quite the contrary, in fact: a two course-breakfast was served on board and we were given the Sunday papers with which to amuse ourselves for the two-hour trip. The Sunday papers include the “matrimonials” (personals section) in which suitors advertise for prospective brides and grooms in the most flowery language they can think of, making what seemed to this skeptical outsider at least to be some doubtful claims to fortune and stature.

Gridlock, Agra style

We checked into our hotel in Agra, which was very safe, but plain and filthy. (Later in the day, exhausted and desperate for a shower, I realized there were no towels, so I called the desk and the towels were delivered by a man with an expectant look like an extended hand. But since our group had decided that we would all pitch in to cover tips at all the hotels throughout the trip and that the tour leader would pay them, and since I felt that towels were fairly basic, I just said, “The group is tipping.” He left, wearing an expression that said, “Oh well. I gave it my best shot.” That much achieved, I pulled off my clothes and turned on the water: nothing came out of the faucets. I put my clothes back on and called the desk. They sent someone up who magically turned the water on then expectantly waited for a tip. Sigh.)

Constructing a wall

I have come to trust few people in the “service industry” in India when it comes to money, and I leave the dickering to the tour guides and just don’t engage in conversation with the street vendors and beggars. We’re warned to make sure we’ve agreed to a price for travel before we enter a cab or a rickshaw, and not to pay until we’ve alighted at the end of the trip. I sure don’t begrudge anyone their fair share, or a bonus for extra service, and the prices are very cheap, and I understand that to many of these people we are simply rich foreigners with bottomless pockets — and that relative to them, we all are. But I tip what I am told is reasonable. (I am sure the situation is quite different for those with more expansive budgets: I’m talking “service industry” at a fairly basic level here.)

I also follow the instructions of our group leader not to give money to kids who ask for it (“We do not want the next generation to grow up to be beggars,” he said) or to take an elephant ride in Jaipur (“G Adventures does not believe the elephants are well treated”) or to admire the snake charmers, whose cobras are defanged and kept in baskets, which is also cruel. Our guide pointed out that there are excellent foundations and programs to which we can donate if we want to help the poor in India, especially the children, and if we felt we wanted to give money to poor women or the disabled in the street, that was up to us. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of opportunity to do that.

Agra’s Red Fort

Almost immediately after our arrival in Agra, we headed out to the Red Fort which is magnificent and I will try to post some photos of it here as soon as I figure out how to get them off my iPad. (An iPad is a great thing to travel with, by the way. It’s light to carry and I haven’t even needed to buy a SIM card: we’ve had access to wireless internet here and there, and I supplement by using hotel computers and internet cafes to do the things the iPad can’t.)

The Red Fort

The Red Fort was built by the Mughal emperor Akbar in the 16th century, on the site of the ruins of a 2500-year old fortress, and it incorporates both Muslim and Hindu art and architectural styles — showing the deep roots of the respect for other religions in addition to one’s own that makes India so remarkable (even if the Mughals did steal everything in sight when they took over the territory — including untold wealth that included what later became known as the Koh-i-Noor diamond). The fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been described as a “walled city,” and that is a good way to envision it. Akbar’s grandson, Shah Jahan extended the fortress even further, using marble which was his preference (he was the one who built the Taj Mahal) and which is much cooler than sandstone.

Every room is different, but all of them are enormous. There are passages with filigree stone screens from which the women watched proceedings in the more public areas (i.e., where the men were), extensive women’s quarters, vast open areas where the rulers heard petitions from the public and made decisions, rooms that were built to capture the coolness of the air and to encourage breezes, stone planes that created indoor water cascades and fountains (also intended to cool the air). Outside were massive gardens whose flowerbeds provided not only colour but also scent to be carried inside on the carefully captured breezes.

Our guide showed us where the musicians would have been posted in the middle of spacious courtyards and, there, one can feel the ambiance they must have experienced in those huge stone rooms with their pillars and carved arches (both Moslem and Hindu shapes), nooks and crannies; it is possible to imagine the perfumed breezes, the brilliant flower gardens, the curtains wafting against the pillars, the music. The excesses of both detail and scale of the Agra Fort are magnificent. There is even an enormous square right in the middle of the fort where the Mughal installed a great deep pool that he stocked with fish. Our guide showed us where the emperor would lean against a pillar and expansively cast off the balcony.

The son of Shah Jahan overthrew his father (in good old Mughal fashion) and allegedly locked him up in a section of his own wing of the Fort, where he lived for the last eight years of his life: the only concession to his lifetime achievements being a view of the Taj Mahal in the distance (now almost impossible to see from the Fort through the humidity and smog).

Traffic

The traffic in Agra was an eye-opener for me. It made me realize what terrible drivers we are in North America: we can’t even get down relatively empty roadways sporting lane markers, street signs and signal lights that other drivers actually respect, much less talk on a cellphone and smoke a cigarette at the same time. We’re wimps. Here, although they are certainly travelling at much lower speeds than the ones in North America, the confusion is something one can only sit back and admire.

There are trucks of every description imaginable in the streets, from tiny to large, full of people and goods and brightly painted to honor various Hindu deities and to speak to their fellow drivers (“Blow horn!” they urge, as though any other driver needed an encouragement.) There are auto rickshaws or tuk-tuks — so named because of the sound they make. There are bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, buses, camels, horse- and mule-drawn carriages, pedestrians and motorcycles, and they are all going wherever the hell the want to go, and they are all doing it at the same time with their horns blowing. I would not last five minutes as a driver in this traffic — and until I realized nobody seemed to be bumping into anyone else and began to just sit back and watch and marvel, I did not think I would last five minutes as a passenger, either. Sometimes your knees are so close to the rider’s of a motorcycle that they nearly touch — and it behooves you to keep your elbows and belongings well inside. Sometimes a bicycle comes across an intersecting road ahead of you going east-west as you go south-north and a collision seems inevitable, but your driver swerves, narrowly missing a pedestrian, a dog, a hugely horned cow and another tuk tuk, and suddenly all is well. I loved it.

So on Sunday, we travelled from Delhi to Agra, we saw the Red Fort, the Baby Taj (… look it up), and the Taj Mahal and somewhere in the middle of all that had a fabulous South Indian lunch. By the time most of us got back to the hotel, we were dead on our feet and the amount of dirt in the bedrooms no longer seemed to matter.

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Watch. Listen. Learn. (India 2: Delhi)

Posted on November 6, 2011 | 19 comments

Saturday, Nov. 4, 2011

Delhi

Delhi airport

Delhi. The only way I can describe Delhi at this point is, Yikes! And I can only begin to imagine what it would be like in July — “Yikes times ten,” perhaps.

Today I set off on my own to see two Mughal-era landmarks the Rough Guide insisted I should not miss: The Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, “India’s largest and most impressive mosque.” I did not see either, but I did get a personal tour of a Hindu prayer site and I also got whacked by a woman in the street as hard as she could hit me. So it’s not like nothing happened.

The major problem with Delhi for me is that a lot of people really don’t speak English very well, and I speak Hindi even less (namaste being the only word I know). So I set out for the Metro with only general instructions on how to get to it and no real sense of what the hotel manager had told me to do when I did get there. It’s about 80 degrees F. today, and the streets of Delhi are just like you see on tv — an absolute maelstrom of vehicles of all kinds, from bicycle rickshaws to trucks, none of them adhering to any of the lines that are painted on the street (a woman on the plane who is originally from Delhi and was coming back here from Brisbane for FOUR weddings in the next two months told me that in Delhi, the lane markers are considered no more than decorations on the streets. No one pays any attention to them). Our tour guide, who I met just an hour ago for the first time, told our group that the reason there are so few accidents in Delhi are “good brakes, good horns and good luck.” As I sit in my hotel room here in Karol Bagh (an area of many inexpensive hotels) the sound of horns in the streets outside my window is incessant. The sidewalks are few and far between, and usually jam packed with people both horizontal and vertical, hub caps, motorcycles, garbage, dogs, you name it. So the pedestrians kind of just walk around the vehicles (and through/between them, when it’s an intersection) on the edges of the streets themselves.

So I made my way to the Metro station about six blocks from the hotel, darting through the traffic as best I could and attempting to follow close behind other pedestrians when crossing busy intersections, and then I faced the challenge of finding someone else to ask about how to get to where I was trying to get to. The ticket seller at the Metro seemed not to have heard of the Red Fort so I pointed it out to her on my map, and that didn’t seem to help her much, but she did sell me a tourist ticket for INR20 or thereabouts that would get me around the city for one day.

I entered the station (which has a security system where you need to get patted down before you can go through, then send your bags through a scanner. Women go in a different patting-down line than men, as I found out by trial and error. 😉 ) When I got onto the platform I asked two other people (I chose people in uniforms wearing guns who were positioned as security around the station, thinking that they seemed to be fairly safe bets) and by the time I actually got on the train I had learned that I’d need to go two stops then get off and transfer.

I did that, and then went through the same rigamarole at the station I got off at (a pretty central one named Rajiv Chowk), trying to find someone to tell me where to get another subway for the Red Fort in Old Delhi, and finding almost no one who could help me. I also appeared to be the only Western female in the entire city today, so I was trying my best to act like I knew what was going on but I’m sure no one was fooled.

I disembarked at the correct station and emerged into a very busy market area, crowded with shoppers, vendors and street people. I walked steadily in the direction I thought was correct (and probably was) but there were no signs in English and at a certain point the market thinned out and there were more street people than shoppers and as always many many more men than women.

I grew unsure of myself so I turned back and near the Metro I stuck my head into an intriguing-looking building, dark pink with small towers and many rooms containing (it turned out) statues of various holy men and gods that Hindu visitors were coming by in droves to honor. Despite the fact that the place was packed with devotees, a woman at the door welcomed me in, asked me to remove my shoes and wash my hands, and then gave me a tour of the premises, explaining who each of the statues depicted and showing where I could drop a bit of money into that deity’s coffers. I understood almost nothing of what she said and she didn’t know where the Red Fort was (although she did know of Canada. Lots of people here know of Canada and have relatives and friends in Toronto.)

As I was leaving the prayer centre another woman came over and pointed to a narrow arched lane nearby and told me to go down it and turn left to get to the Red Fort. The lane was standing room only, accommodating at most four people across, who were all basically pushing their way along the lane. It was lined down one side with with tiny shops selling brightly coloured fabrics and other goods which people paused to check out, slowing progress further, as did those who struggled against the tide to go in the opposite direction.

Finally, I emerged from the tunnel to the light and turned left. The streets here too were crowded and noisy and there was no sign of other tourists. After a few blocks when I could still see nothing resembling a red fort or any minarets, I decided it was pointless to go farther: I felt that I could not stop to take out my guidebook and look for a map or even dare to take a photo, as revealing my “tourist” status would just reveal me as a mark. There were no signs to the landmarks I was looking for — at least not in English — and there seemed to be no one official anywhere to ask. So I turned back, and this is when a woman in a sari, about 40, maybe about five foot three, came across the sidewalk at me with her fists raised. I thought she was shouting angrily at a man nearby but she kept coming at me at and she struck me hard on the chest and arms with her raised fists. It hurt but not a lot: mostly I was just amazed. I just kept walking, trying to appear as though nothing had happened, and the woman didn’t follow me.*

I made my way back to the tunnel lane and pushed my way back up it toward the Metro. A couple of children attached themselves to me, asking for money, but I refused — concerned that if I gave them anything, swarms of other children would emerge from the crowds also looking for money.

Back on the Metro, which was now more crowded than it had been earlier, I decided to get off at Rajiv Chowk and have a look at Connaught Place and maybe see India Gate and some of the more upscale market promised in the Rough Guide. But up top when I emerged from the Metro station, it was store after store (many western ones there) and again few tourists, so again I was unsure how to get to the sights I wanted to see.

I decided to admit defeat, and to take the Metro back before rush hour got any closer. By then I felt like a pro at using the subway system and I think the achievement of my day was going as far as I did without much signage I could read, through all of those crowded confusing streets, and then making it back safely to my hotel — because if I’d got lost in Delhi, I’d have been really lost. It’s amazing what a little fear does for my sense of direction!

*Please note that I don’t attribute the woman’s behaviour in any way to the fact that she lives in Delhi: there are crazy people everywhere. And if she does live on the street in that city, she probably has a right to hate me on sight anyway.

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Watch. Listen. Learn. (India 1: En Route)

Posted on November 5, 2011 | 6 comments

Hong Kong Airport, November 4, 2011

One thing I like about airports is that you don’t need to pretend that you’re not a tourist, like you do in major cities when you don’t know your way around. Here, everyone looks lost.

So I’m sitting in the Hong Kong airport and it’s about 6 a.m.. local time but it’s about 6 p.m yesterday in my head, so I’m having supper. I’m eating spicy chicken noodle in fish soup and HK really means it when they say “spicy.” With a tea, it was only HK$54! (Honestly, I don’t know either, but I gave them US$20, and got back HK$90. So not much.)

I extend my gratitude to all those who suggested books they’d take with them if they had a 16-hour flight and several other long hauls ahead of them. There were great suggestions for books and authors I hadn’t heard of. I’m going to check out quite a few of those when I get back. The books I finally did bring with me are, in paperback: Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black and Peter Carey ‘s Illywhacker (thanks, Bert and Victor, respectively). On the iPad I have Arivand Adiga’s Last Man in Tower and Russell Banks’s Lost Memory of Skin (thanks for both suggestions, Charles, but how come every book you suggested is available only in hardcover? Do you think I’m made of money and built like Hercules?) (actually, I think I know: you read review copies, right?). I also (thanks to Rhona) have with me The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever. So I’m well nourished every which way. So far I’ve started the Adiga and the Carey, and they’re both light-handed but engaging, and they’re going to be perfect.

Some of the suggestions I liked about the kinds of books to take on long trips from other people were: to take classics so you’d be forced to finally get to them; to bring an old favourite; to include a Calvin and Hobbes collection to break up the heavier reading; and to take a selection of genres such as a mystery, a local history and some more challenging books as well.

As I started to write this post, I was nearing the end of the first leg of my journey, the 16-hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. I had read a few chapters, slept for a while, done some crocheting, watched a movie (Bollywoodish), and been wellfed (as Joyce might have spelled it) twice. It was crowded in my window seat with my own stuff plus the blankets, pillows and headphones they handed out, and the plane was full. Still, it was much better than I’d thought it was going to to be and I hope the rest of the flights go as easily.

I saw nothing out the window as it was night from the time we left Toronto till we landed in HK, except one brief time when I noticed a bit of light under the lowered blinds. I am not sure where that happened, as we flew up over the top of Canada and Alaska before heading south again towards Hong Kong, where it was about 5 a.m. when we arrived. Where could there have been light? Also mysteriously (to me) it was 5 a.m. on November 4 when we arrived although we left Toronto at 1:30 a.m. on November 3. Time to learn about the International Date Line, I guess.

Bangkok looking very wet, Nov. 4/11

I have no idea what happened to my photos of Hong Kong but here are a couple I took as I landed in Bangkok briefly on the way from HK to Delhi. Bangkok was just beginning to recover from the flooding. I thought the airport was appropriate — its arches looked “Siamish” to me —

Bangkok Airport, Nov. 4, 2011

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What to read on a 15-hour plane ride?

Posted on October 29, 2011 | 2 comments

So my trip to India involves a bunch of looong plane rides, and I’m looking for titles of books that are going to totally distract me for a few hours. It has to be a “good” book — not just a quick read. I need to get involved in it, hooked by it, transported by it. What do you suggest?

I’ll post some of the responses and my decisions here. I have read in the Rough Guide that there are some neat bookstores in places I’m going like Pushkar! Imagine buying a book in Pushkar! (Of course, if you live there, it wouldn’t seem so exotic, but to me it does.) I think I will leave whatever books I take there, with someone who wants them, and get more in India for the return trip.

Five days to liftoff!! I read this article today and I was reminded that it’s not all pink cities and taj mahals: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/oct/27/india-grand-prix-formula-one?INTCMP=SRCH but my anticipation is undiminished.

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TMI!

Posted on October 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

I have been (pleasantly) inundated with Indian history all week. Having finished reading Empire of the Soul, I have turned my attention back to India: A History. Revised and Updated"" by John Keay. There is no way I’ll get it finished before I leave, and I won’t take it with me because it’s two inches thick, but I am still taking my leisurely time with it rather than trying to skim, and hoping I will retain at least a little of the knowledge I am picking up.

In recent days, the history has hit solid ground – instead of to informed speculation, Keay can now refer to documents that provide at least general dates of battles and invasions, and lives of specific individuals – most notably that of Siddharta Guatama, better known to us as the Buddha, who is thought to have been born c. 563 BCE in the area now known as Nepal. I have also read about Alexander the Great’s remarkable advance through northwestern India, starting in about 326 BCE. He withdrew several years later, mainly because his men were about to mutiny after eight years on the road, but they took the first known Indian expatriate back to Greece with them. Calanus, whose recorded behaviour indicates that he may have been a Jain, was a towering figure who impressed the Greeks not only by walking around naked but also by unflinchingly immolating himself on his own funeral pyre when he felt his end was drawing near: he didn’t want become a burden.

Tonight I turned on TVO to see an episode of The Story of India, a fascinating PBS/BBC series narrated by Michael Wood. Tonight’s segment, fifth in the series although it’s the first I have seen, was entitled “The Meeting of Two Oceans.”  It concerned itself with India’s history from about 12oo to 1600. During this period, which includes the Renaissance, India was the richest and most powerful nation in the world. One of the most remarkable characters from that era was the Mughal ruler Akbar, whose fictionalized story I read only a few years ago in The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. Akbar in real life, according to the PBS/BBC program, was remarkable for, among other reasons, his efforts to find a common ground among India’s religions.

Between leaping from 500 BCE to 1600 CE, and trying to keep a close enough grip on the present to keep track of what I need to take with me when I leave on my adventure (such as a plug adapter so that I can recharge my camera batteries and iPad), I have already got a sense that I am gradually losing touch with the mundane matters of my life (which also need my  attention for at least another ten days!)

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The Rough Guide Has A Sense of Humour. Who Knew?

Posted on October 17, 2011 | 4 comments

I’ve been diligently reading the opening section of the Rough Guide to India to get a clear idea of what I should expect, what I should take with me, what I should leave at home, what I should get jabbed with before I go, etc. I keep coming across statements in the travel guide that make me laugh out loud.

Since the tour company I am travelling with recommends bringing a sense of humour to India in order to survive the inevitable unexpected last-minute changes and confusions and unfamiliar practices and customs, I am beginning to think I’ve already packed one of the most important contributors to a positive experience (along with the Imodium and the pre-treated mosquito net), because I am certainly amused.

Here are a few examples from the Rough Guide that have made me laugh:

  • “Getting good maps of India, in India, can be difficult. The government – in an archaic suspicion of cartography, and in spite of full coverage of the country on Google – forbids the sale of detailed maps of border areas, which include the entire coastline.”
  • “Sending a parcel from India can be a performance. First take it to a tailor to have it wrapped in cheap cotton cloth, stitched and sealed with wax. Next, take it to the post office, fill in and attach the necessary customs forms, buy your stamps, see them franked and dispatch it. Surface mail is incredibly cheap and takes an average of six months to arrive – it may take half or two times that, however.” (I am very tempted to mail myself something, just to experience this.)
  • I want to try the laundry system, too: “In India, no one goes to the laundry: if they don’t do their own, they send it out to a dhobi . . . . The dhobi will take your dirty washing to a dhobi ghat, a public clothes-washing area (the bank of a river for example), where it is shown some old-fashioned discipline: separated, soaped and given a damn good thrashing to beat the dirt out of it. Then it is hung out to dry in the sun and, once dried, taken to the ironing sheds where every garment is endowed with razor-sharp creases and then matched to its rightful owner by hidden cryptic markings.”
  • Finally, following several pieces of advice to women travelling alone who may need to deal with unwanted overtures or harassments: “If you feel someone getting too close in a crowd or on a bus, brandishing your left shoe in his face can be very effective.”

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Countdown to India: 22 days to liftoff

Posted on October 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Pieces are falling into place. I have completed the requirements for applying for a tourist visa to India and need only go back to the passport agency office (for a third time) to pick it up. I have received all the necessary inoculations, and have prescriptions for the meds I will pack but am hoping I don’t need while I am there (Ciproflaxin, for example). I am making plans for walking tours on the two days I will be spending in Mumbai between when my tour is over and when I fly home. I am starting to get so excited about this trip that on a few nights I have been awake far too late, just reading about where I’m going.

I am reading the introductory material (what to bring, what not to eat when you get there, etc) in the The Rough Guide to India (Rough Guides), which I received as a gift from the tour agency, G Adventures, when I booked my trip. And I am reading about the individual cities and sites I will be visiting. I read the entire section on Mumbai the day I went to hand in the application for my tourist visa: that night I barely slept at all because I was so pumped about this trip. So much to see! So much to do! So little time!

I’ve also been reading Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India"", a book by Paul William Roberts that a friend of mine gave me for reasons I don’t remember about 15 years ago (thanks, Deb!). I’ve been moving it from one residence to another ever since — waiting for the right moment to read it, I suppose — and I’m glad I did because now I am being transported by it. 🙂

Published in 1994 by Stoddart, the book is the story of the author’s several journeys to India between the mid-70s and  the early 1990s and it is funny, insightful and illuminating. Roberts’s early explorations of India were based largely on his search for enlightenment among the gurus and seers of the subcontinent, and this interest (combined with a nicely skeptical eye) took him to a wildly diverse range of ashrams where he soon found that some holy men were more “holy” than others. His early journeys also took him to the beaches of Goa during the Hippie era, where he had encounters both amusing and alarming: sometimes both at the same time.

Roberts, who has also written about Egypt and was a respected reporter on Iraq during Desert Storm for such notable magazines as Harper’s and Saturday Night, has won a National Magazine Award as well as other accolades. He is a man of diverse interests, so his travel stories focus not only on his spiritual explorations of India but also on such topics as the country’s history, geography, natural history, culture and economics (to name only a few). His recounting of an experience with “Delhi Belly,” while hilarious as a piece of prose, redoubled my determination to drink only bottled water on my trip, to eat no vegetables or fruits unless I peel them or see them being boiled, and to avoid meat unless my tour guide gives it the thumbs’ up.

Empire of the Soul is a fine book, and I recommend it. I was sorry to read on the website of the author, who is “considered one of Canada’s s top experts on Middle Eastern affairs,” that he lost his sight a few years ago and has lived in seclusion ever since.

I also continue my perusal of India: A History. Revised and Updated"" by John Keay. One section explores the history of the word “India” itself which, until late in the last century, had demeaning overtones — largely due to centuries of the subcontinent’s colonization by outside powers, from the Mughals to the British. Keay says that the word “India” itself likely derives from the Sanskrit word for “river” — Sindhu — as transformed during its passage through various other languages including Persian and Greek to finally become “Indus” (also the name of the vast river basin in north-western India). By the time the British had taken control of the subcontinent, “The Indies” had come to mean to outsiders a place to be conquered and exploited, and after Partition, many expected that the new state would take another name. But it did not, and since that time, India has successfully begun to redefine itself as an independent nation, thereby altering for the better the connotations associated with its name.

Keay also presents an interesting account of the beginnings of the caste system in India, explaining that the two highest castes  were originally members of either the ruling or “warrior” families (kings and/or governmental leaders) or the brahmans, a priesthood. These two castes believed they shared a common ancestor and they were associated in the Rig Veda (the collection of sacred Vedic Sanskrit hymns, composed — it is thought — between 1700 and 11oo BC) with the arms (the ksatryia and rajas) and the mouth (the brahmans). The next caste, the agricultural workers and merchants, were called the vaisya and although they were not as well pedigreed, they were still “twice born” — once physically and once through sacred rites. They were the people who created the wealth for the ksatryia and brahmans, and they were associated with the thighs. The lower castes were comprised primarily of the indigenous people of the region that is now northern India. These were the labourers, and the caste was named the sudra and represented by the feet.

In addition to history and travel stories, my attention has been attracted lately to stories in the media about India. I thoroughly enjoyed one that appeared recently in The Guardian, “Delhi’s traffic chaos has a character of its own,” in which Jason Burke shows that cultural and economic patterns of daily life in Delhi dictate traffic flows at various times of the day (and night), and that driving within lanes is simply not part of the script for Delhi drivers. I may be less amused and intrigued by this story in three weeks and a day or two when I am trying to get from the airport to my hotel. Stay tuned.

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Countdown to India: 5 weeks, 2 days

Posted on September 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

Today I went to the Consulate General of India (Toronto) to get a travel visa. I had my passport with me, my vaccination record, my birth certificate and my travel bookings. The on-line information said that people had to apply in person. Still, I had this niggling little feeling that I should have phoned first.

Sure enough. When I got there, they insisted I go away again and apply for the visa on-line, then print out the result and bring it back — in person.

The Consulate General of India (Toronto) is about 1/2 hour from my place by transit, so when they directed me to a nearby Staples, I took the advice. I went to Staples and waited in line for another half hour for the one rentable  computer (someone else was also applying for a travel visa to India). When it was finally my turn, I input two pages of data (father’s name, place of birth; mother’s name, place of birth; religion; passport number, etc etc etc), saving as I went. At the end of Page 2,  the document went BLINK and everything disappeared. Everything from Page 1 was also gone.

I came home.

I figure that many things about India are going to drive my obsessive, goal-oriented, time-conserving Western approach to life around the bend and I should just start to get used to it — so I only threw a small fit, and only when the computer at Staples refused to print my receipt.

I think the Consulate General of India (Toronto) should install a couple of computers with internet access and charge for their use, thereby saving applicants from having to walk over to Staples and pay them.

I have my vaccinations and am starting to deal with the details I didn’t take care of last winter when I made my basic travel arrangements. I am getting very excited.

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How The Web Fits Our Cities: What I Learned from Cory Doctorow, Sara Diamond and Mark Surman

Posted on June 12, 2011 | 1 comment

Last week I attended an excellent panel discussion entitled “How Can We Build A City That Thinks Like The Web?” It was part of a conference/festival at the University of Toronto (May 28 to June 5, 2011)  called Subtle Technologies: Where Art and Science Meet.

Three “big brains” (as moderator Dan Misener called them) convened to discuss the issue of cities and the Internet: Mark Surman, executive director of Mozilla (creator of FireFox); Sara Diamond, digital-media artist and researcher, and president of OCAD University (formerly the Ontario College of Art and Design); and sci-fi author, Boing Boing co-editor and renowned blogger Cory Doctorow.

I went to the discussion mainly to hear Doctorow, as I have read several of his columns with interest and pleasure, but happily found that the other two panelists were as interesting as he was. I was particularly intrigued by what Dr. Diamond had to say, with her prodigious knowledge about the intersections among art (and artists) and technology, and the connections of these conjunctions with social history and design.

What I heard that evening surprised, worried and encouraged me, and it made me think about potentials for the Internet that I had never previously considered. In fact, I’ve been thinking about some of them all week. If a successful presentation makes you see the world in a new way, then this panel was a success for me.

The title of the discussion was inspired by a comment made by Surman in 2008, at which time he had been feeling optimistic about the ways in which Washington, D.C. was opening its data bases to the public, contributing to “a buzz around the city as an organism.” By last Saturday, he was feeling less excited about the speed of the transition to municipal-data accessibility: with a few notable exceptions (Boston being one, he said), the provision of municipal databases for public access has progressed “more by bits and pieces than leaps and bounds.” Still waiting for “the tip” (the reference pleased me as I am currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book),  Surman joined his fellow panelists in pointing out the social, cultural and other benefits that can accrue through citizen access to public databases—and some of the downsides.

The topics the panelists discussed fell into three general categories: 1) the potential for the Internet to make citizens into more active members of local communities; 2) the conflicting interests of personal privacy and personal security, particularly those associated with advances in surveillance technology (these affect more than municipal contexts, of course); and 3) some really interesting Internet-based urban initiatives that are already underway.

Here are some highlights:

Surf Locally

The panelists discussed:

  • The ways in which citizens can work with Internet data to make their communities and governments (municipal and others) work better, citing as an example a traffic-monitoring experiment in Galway, Ireland, where citizens provide real-time information on traffic congestion on the motorways for the benefit of other drivers;
  • The Internet’s capacity to galvanize large numbers of people around local issues (such as the recent rash of on-line/social-media photos and complaints by Toronto Transit customers), bringing matters of public concern to a point of visibility where they can no longer be ignored by bureaucrats and elected officials;
  • How public access to aggregate data — on neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood power usage, for example — can encourage residents to act: by, for example, reducing their power consumption. “If we can actually see online the impact of turning off a light,” one panelist said, “we’re more likely to do it.” The importance of releasing only aggregate data in this and other contexts was stressed: knowing exactly how much power your next-door neighbour is using can only lead to conflict;
  • How the Internet has led in some cases to what Diamond described as “intense localization,” facilitating such initiatives as community gardens and even block parties. In Surman’s words, “Smaller groups with fewer resources can achieve more than ever before.”

The Individual vs. The Machine

  • Cory Doctorow, who was born and raised in Toronto but now lives in London, England, wants to see a future in which people are “scanners rather than barcodes.” Humans, he points out, have the capacity to explain and interpret what we see, and designers and individuals should be thinking about how our mobile devices have the capacity to provide us with data and information that we can put to use as individuals, rather than expanding the ways in which they act like implanted wildlife-tracking devices. Doctorow says this requires a shift in attitude: we need to start thinking about the information our mobile devices store over the course of the day that can help us to understand what has happened to us – sort of the way a journal does. He suggests that we should be framing the development of both hardware and apps in a context that puts us, as thinking beings, at the centre;
  • In order to capitalize on the potential humans can bring to information, Doctorow points out, we need network services that provide no caps on data, and do not prefer one type of data over another: we must be allowed to be the filters. He said, “We need a world where the majority of us have access to the available data, and know how to get at it”;
  • Doctorow also raised the matter of the conflicting goals and purposes of technology intended to protect individuals and families from criminals such as burglars, stalkers and pedophiles, and the invasions of our privacy. He cited the irony of the situation in which he finds himself when he walks his child to day-care from his home in London: he passes about 40 closed-circuit tvs (CCTVs) en route, which have been installed for the security of the property owners but end up monitoring him and his daughter, too—recording their passage through the neighbourhood—but when he gets to the school he is not allowed to take a photo of his own child anywhere on the property because of the school’s child-protection concerns;
  • The ultimate question is how we can keep our own data under our own control — although Sara Diamond also wondered whether the next generation (the one that has grown up with the Internet) cares as much as their elders do about privacy issues in such arenas as social media. The younger members of the audience seemed to suggest that they do still want to protect their privacy (giving only first names when they went to the mike, for example, or in one case an email-type nickname). In regard to data control, Surman pointed out that we need to turn the existing paradigm of information acquisition upside down: “Now as a society, and as local business people, we get a lot of benefit from the proliferation of specific user data. For example, it allows us increasingly refined location-based marketing. Now we need to provide evidence of ways in which controlling the distribution of our own personal data can offer us benefits”;
  • The matter of data collection, even in aggregated format, continues to be a concern.  “Aggregating data for no good reason almost always leads to a leak,” Doctorow pointed out.

Cool Stuff

  • Sara Diamond pointed out the artistic possibilities of open access to data: she said that “amazing stuff” has come out of “open-data hackathons” – such as tracking the activities of local humane societies;
  • Diamond also mentioned what can happen when artists are involved as artists in efforts to bring about change—the Surveillance Camera Players, for example (among other subversive activities) create artistic performances in front of the CCTV cameras that have proliferated in urban areas since 9-11;
  • Diamond also talked about the potential of data visualization in social contexts in urban areas, mentioning the work of architect and activist Laura Kurgan who studied data in new ways to relate incarcerations with federal census blocks—showing that the enormous costs of incarceration go to residents of a disproportionately few number of neighbourhoods—in a project entitled Million Dollar Blocks;
  • A great example of local initiatives facilitated by the Internet is [murmur] (So cool! And it’s not just in Toronto. Check out the other cities). The website describes it thus: “a documentary oral-history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. We collect and make accessible people’s personal histories and anecdotes about the places in their neighborhoods that are important to them. In each of these locations we install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place.” As Diamond pointed out, [murmur] allows the remapping of geographical areas, creating the overlay of a virtual space of memory and history on our actual neighbourhoods;
  • Several panelists mentioned Toronto’s new Bixi Bike program. The status of the bike stands are monitored digitally and, Misener pointed out, within a few days of the program’s establishment someone had mashed up a map of stands where the bikes were out – an act of citizen ingenuity that suddenly provided us with a new way of looking at the data — and the city.

It is human participation and ingenuity that is going to make the Internet an essential partner in local initiatives. The “web and the city” panelists agreed such enterprise will also add a level of beauty and art to our worlds (both its “meet spaces” and its “techno spaces”), as we–for example–communicate information online about our neighbourhoods, and our memories of those neighbourhoods. But it is essential to the range and success of creative local projects that citizens have open access to all the data that is relevant to their undertakings. Our governments can help us make our communities better, more interesting and more beautiful places by sharing the aggregate data they currently control on issues that affect us.

“Structures of control are what have made our cities ugly,” Sarman said. “Hope lies where it has always been: in our capacity to provide the human overlay.”

Note: My interest in the individual uses of digital technology and the Internet is explored further on my Militant Writer blog, most recently in an article entitled “As Publishers, Agents and Booksellers (unfortunately) (for them) Go The Way of the Dodo, Writers Learn To Fly.“

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Into India (2)

Posted on May 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

I had hoped to get to see the magnificent exhibition Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts at the Art Gallery of Ontario (it was organized in cooperation with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) for a third time before I left town for a family vacation in late April, but it was not to be. The first two times I had visited Maharaja, I had stayed for about two hours each time—but I could have gone a third and fourth time and still not have given any appropriate amount of attention to the artifacts on display.

Quite aside from the hundreds of individual pieces of jewelry—(one platinum necklace designed by Cartier for Maharaja Bhupinder Singh in 1928 originally contained 2,930 diamonds), art, drapes, pillows, furniture, clothing, weapons, even thrones, carriages and the “Star of India” Rolls Royce, each opulently decorated with jewels, embroidery, filigree, carvings and enamelling—the exhibition offered so much written and video history that in fact it would have taken weeks to absorb all of it in any way that could have hoped to justify the monumental effort that had gone into the curatorial process.

I was surprised by one of the historical perspectives I acquired in my visits to the Maharaja show: I realized that the maharajas had been largely figureheads, at least from the time of the Mughal Empire through the era of the British Raj, which was shortly before their decline in the latter years of the 20th century. These noblemen are depicted in art and photographs emerging on festive occasions from their  palaces clad in diamonds, rubies and silk, riding on an elephant or, later, in one of their elegant carriages—only to fall into line behind the then-rulers of their countries—the Persians, various Europeans, the officers of the British East India Company and other governmental leaders.

I was also interested to note evidence in the Maharaja exhibits of the freedom that royal women evidently enjoyed in the 1600s and 1700s, participating publically in hunting expeditions and military exercises. This was quite a contrast to the article I read recently in the New York Times, “Improving Women’s Status, One Bathroom At A Time,”  that pointed out that the shortage of public bathrooms for women in India has an enormous effect on their ability to participate in the workforce or go to school. But perhaps this contrast has more to do with birth status than the century in which these women live or lived.

I turned back to John Keay’s India: A History, looking forward to finding out more about the Aryan civilization to which 19th century historians had attributed the evolution of Sanskrit language—one of the important influences on all “Indo-European” languages including English—but when I finally had time to read Chapter 2  I discovered that there are two histories to be taken into account in all matters Aryan: and probably all matters historical when it comes right down to it. First there is the actual history which (obviously) the historians are attempting to uncover; then there is the history of the history that the historians are uncovering. If you get my drift.

In this case, after the 19th century excitement among historians and the public about the possibility that a huge Aryan civilization had once spread across much of eastern Europe, which was followed as we know by widespread efforts particularly on the part of certain Teutonic leaders in the 1930s to show themselves to be direct descendents from this “pure” “white” civilization, new evidence came to light that suggested that there might never have been such a civilization at all.

Early in the chapter called “Vedic Values: C 1700 to 900 B.C.,” Keays says, “Questions tantamount to heresy among an earlier generation of historians are now routinely raised as to who the arya were, where they came from, and whether they were really even a distinct people.”  (p. 19).

Take that, Klu Klux Klan and Adolph Hitler!

Keays goes on to explain how the confusion came about, which was primarily as a result of efforts by historians to explain how the Sanskrit language had come into being. He also points out that this investigation led to an interesting series of discoveries in which probable historical events were deduced on the basis of philology, or the study of how language changed.

The philological study of the Sanskrit Vedas, songs or hymns which are held sacred by Hindus, led to intriguing revelations such as that the word used for “plough” in the Vedas was not a Sanskrit word but was adopted from another language—which meant that the original speakers of Sanskrit did not have ploughs. (I love this stuff.) Sanskrit originally (and ironically) also has no words for “writing” or “scribe.” It does, however, contain lots of terms relating to managing herds of sheep and cattle, so it is likely that the arya cultures were pastoral rather than agrarian. Nice, eh?

Anyway, one of the sums of all these findings is that today historians think that a group of ethnic influences on language (Sanskrit), priesthood (brahmans) and social structure (castes) either invaded or migrated into India, or perhaps it was far more subtle: maybe over the centuries the influence of the thinking of these speakers of Sanskrit merely had increasing sway over the thinking of others among whom they lived and worked.

Keays then explores the related and similarly fascinating (to me) subject of how the Vedas, which were passed down generation to generation by word of mouth, affected the subcontinent’s religion, culture and even scientific thought for the next several hundred years.

I must admit that the story of India seems to grow even more complex and unfathomable the more I attempt to learn about it, but mysteries that are too easily resolved are boring, so I’m okay with this.

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