Diary

Yer man in India there. This is an aide memoir, an electronic postcard and somewhere to park things I might want to use elsewhere. I update it and store it here: http://www.esnips.com/web/japicksOtherStuff along with pictures: http://www.esnips.com/web/japicksPhotos It’s seven years since my last visit, and India has got richer and is proud of it. Papers, TV and street posters declare: ‘India Poised!’ and ‘Our Time is Now!’ In the cities there’s been a lot of building, painting and roadworks. There are plenty of new cars and motorbikes. Delhi and Bangalore are gridlocked. Even Pondicherry, which used to be a quiet little town, is jammed. The countryside looks much as it did, and has for centuries. In the cities too, there are still the monkeys, the street dogs and the eternal cows placidly ruminating. What with them and the bullocks there’s plenty of bullshit, but more of the conferences later. To take advantage of the cool mornings, the day in Pondicherry begins around 5.30, as different communities of Old India try to outdo each other. The Muezzin calls from the Mosques, hugely amplified, the temples put out a Vedic hymn and the churches ring their bells. There’s no doubt about the winner. An ecstatic human voice, so amplified that you hear it quietly but clearly from miles off, is hair-raising. It happened around 5.40 in Pondicherry, but I think that may be governed by sunrise. For the devout it must mean to called from sleep to prayer and service to the One God. No wonder Islam is so resilient. It makes alarm clocks seem signs of servitude to the Machine. As they are. Alarm! What a brutal way to start the day. Mind you, I expect there are plenty of the not-so-devout to whom it’s a pain in the ear. At least they don’t wake up with a hangover. In Delhi and Bangalore, the New India day begins with aircraft screaming overhead and traffic roaring through the smog. All set against an auditory backdrop of hooters, horns and bells. Pondicherry is quiet by comparison, like the little French colonial town it used to be. Rickshaw drivers there say “Bonjour m’sieur, taxee?” rather than “Allo’ sir, rickshaw?” Wide roads are laid out in a grid and bougainvillea pours over courtyard walls. Inside there are fountains and formal gardens. There’s an elegant Institut Francais, a Lycée and restaurants offering haute cuisine, seafood is outstanding. Beyond the promenade its next stop Thailand. The sea is the Bay of Bengal, which is ideal swimming: warm, inviting and a bit rough. Like Barbara Windsor. Unaccountably, there seems to be no tide. Everyone wants to live in Pondi, and the locals complain that hot money from booming Bangalore is pricing them out of the market. I wanted to have something more presentable than the old sweat shirts I’d brought with me. I thought an Indian shirt-tunic, a Kurta, would do well and so went into a clothes store where a ravishingly beautiful girl tried to help me. She can’t do English and I can’t do Hindi, let alone Tamil. Even so, we get it on with gestures and drawings. She shows me the best, embroidered silk and whatnot. Very fancy, but I want tough everyday wear. I say: “Too good – I want street clothes.” She cottons on immediately, and says: “Make. Make!” So we look at rolls of material and I pick what looks right. She cuts off enough for a kurta and we go round to the tailor, a young man working in a dingy room up some back stairs. He has an old treadle machine to which has been fixed a powerful electric motor & fan belt. It looks dangerous and god knows how he controls it. He takes measurements and says it’ll be ready in a day. It is, skillfully done and a perfect fit. His bill is 100 rupees, about 112 pence, the cost of the material is a couple of quid. Everyone seems pleased with the deal. I think about having some more made, but only because I want to see the girl again. Some Indian academics at the conferences work in both India and the US. Those who speak better English than I do (did someone say “not difficult”?) are also likely to speak Hindi, Tamil or another of India’s 1000 or so regional languages and maybe a bit of German or French too. Most also know Sanskrit and Pali. My smattering of German seems a bit paltry somehow. The meetings are quite intensive, with a only break in the middle of the day. Indian-style conferences are a bit chaotic, but the food is much better and there are more elephants.

Psychology in Indian universities is hampered by the cost of foreign textbooks and the internet is making a real impact. Most delegates are well informed. There are lively debates about the merits of experimental versus humanistic versus dynamic versus phenomenological and so on. Some experimental work is a bit old fashioned, but a lot is very much up to speed, with sophisticated statistics. Qualitative methods are popular and some think they’re “more Indian”, whatever that means. There’s a strong sense that with India rising, research and teaching should reflect India’s traditions and values rather than Westernised ones. Postcolonialism is old hat. India looks forward, not back. Trip by car from Pondicherry to Bangalore took 8 hours at an average of 40km/hour. Not bad going for mostly rural roads with a stop in Mysore, which boasts the biggest South Indian temple I’ve ever seen. A staggering pyramid that seems as high as Nelson’s column. Down it cascade gods, demons, sages, rishis, people, animals, plants and symbols. All in vivid colours and set with burnished brass, silver, gold, coloured glass, lights and mirrors, from which the sun is blindingly reflected. Anglicanism seem a bit bloodless somehow. As for worries about homosexual clergy, forget it. Here, carnal life can be path to liberation, though I think they’d draw the line at Jordan. Biggest news story of the past few days is racism in Big Brother. Massive support for Shilpa and lots of invitations to Jade to come to India to see for herself. Next biggest is the violent demonstrations at the murder of Saddam. He is described in the national media, by an ex-prime minister, as “A true friend of India and a heroic opponent of Western Imperialism”. Big posters in Bangalore proclaim: “Death to Bush. Death to Blair! Kill the aggressors! Justice in Iraq!” If asked, I say I’m from Holland. In Bangalore I work at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS). This claims to be India’s Premier Think-tank, but with monkeys. In the grounds. It’s got an open courtyard with lush vegetation around which are three stories of air-con, wi-fi offices, lecture rooms and libraries. Bangalore isn’t India’s silicon valley for nothing. Oddly, I bump into an ex-Warwick mathematician, Tim Poston, who gives me a message for Ian Stewart to be hand-delivered via a cleft stick. He turns out to be a fixture at NIAS. I have a suspicion that he likes India so much that he’s turning his hand to whatever will keep him there. He and his wife live in a village outside Bangalore and he walks 5 km into work each day so he can see the wetland birds and the village children en route. As he’s well over six foot tall, has a long white beard and hair, they call him ‘Babuji’: ‘Dear uncle’. Outside NIAS, you can’t go more than a few yards without finding an ATM and an internet café with webcams, audio links … whatever. If money makes the world go round, ones and zeros, which are the same thing, make it one place. Using credit cards here is like using them in Leamington: you queue for ages. Must spell the end for money-changers and traveler’s cheques, and not before time. There’s more money about, fewer small denomination notes and coins. In cheap restaurants The prices on menus are usually 5 rupees apart as opposed to 1 or 2 as it was when I was here last. The paisa (100 to a rupee, 88 rupees to the pound) has all but disappeared. If your change includes something less than 50 paisse, you’re given a tiny sweet instead. This is cities; in the country I expect it’s different. TV has over sixty channels. Two offer bland English language news in CNN format. International news is CNN and Fox. There’s an Arabic channel, but not Al Jezeera. BBC is nowhere. Two sports channels offer full, live coverage of English premiership games, international cricket and tennis, all with the adverts crammed into breaks. Why can’t it be like that in the UK? The rest is the usual: films, mostly Bollywood, soaps, shopping, games, chat and kids – some with Indian spin. Most distinctively Indian are the God slots. Secularism in India means every religion get equal airtime. India’s religious groups include Muslims (two flavours), Christians (three or four flavours), Hindus (Tutti Frutti), Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs, Jews, Zoroastrians, Bhauls and more. Hindus win the prize here: men with painted foreheads sit cross legged in flowing robes and give uplifting talks. These are punctuated by vedic hymns and videos which contrast mundane getting-and-spending with the Flow of the Infinite; traffic jams versus the ocean is quite a favourite. Sure beats ‘Thought for the day’.

India is not secular. Religion is a huge political force, not an outdated lifestyle option. Partition is a living memory and potentially the cause of more bloodshed. For example, both moderate and extreme groups wanted a recent Bollywood movie banned because it tried to address Partition. Moderates wanted it banned because they feared it would lead to trouble, extremists because they felt their side was blamed too much. It was banned in some states but not others - another fold in the political strata. Secularism means equal air time for all religious groups. Some political parties are explicitly religious, like the BJP, which roughly translates as the Hindu Nationalist Party. They’re a mixed bunch, varying from cautious reformers to out-and-out racists. They’re very hot on rejecting decadent Western imports, like St Valentine’s day, and very gung ho about ‘India Rising’. They see it as restoring the leading international role India had before Islam and colonisation set them back. They’ve got a case there, since the achievements of pre Mughal India are amazing. Having them rammed in your ears can get a bit wearisome though (my responses in brackets). Apparently India invented everything: what we mistakenly call ‘Arabic’ numerals are Indian (‘that’s true’), calculus (‘well I never’), Atomic energy (‘… right’) and space travel (said whilst backing away: ‘Oh definitely, absolutely’). Also, if you make the slightest query about caste you’ll be advised through clenched teeth: “Westerners should mind their own business and not interfere with things they don’t understand.” I consider asking, in the manner of Groucho Marx: “So which bit of ‘All men are created equal’ don’t you understand?” The conference at the psychology department of Delhi university is a chaotic and splendid tribute to ‘India Rising’. The Indian diaspora is celebrated: Wall street will soon be dominated Indians and Ramachandran will get a Nobel Prize. One speaker was outstanding. Karan Singh is 70 but looks 50. He’s been the Prince of Kashmir since he was 18. Educated in India, France, UK and US, he is fluent in four languages and has degrees in all sorts of things. Indian ambassador to the US in 1990’s, a long standing MP known for his opposition to the caste system and chancellor of Banaras Hindu University, he’s a senior political figure and possibly the next president of India. Gave an electrifying talk: why is the curriculum of Indian universities still so Westernised? Why doesn’t India honour it’s own traditions? It brought the audience to it’s feet. He’s known to have a prodigious memory and to be able to recite poetry at will. They wouldn’t let him go until he did. Charmingly, enjoying the adulation, he did one by Sri Aurobindo in Hindi, one in Urdu, by Kabir I think, then Frost’s ‘A path not taken …’ finishing with two by Yates: ‘When you are old and grey and full of years …’ and the one that ends: ‘Silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun.’. All delivered so well it brought tears. Stunning. What a comparison: India may have this man for president and we’re cursed with an oafish thug like Bush. Bangalore to Delhi by Air Deccan, one of India’s many internal airlines. Have to get to the airport by 4.30 am. Driving through night time Bangalore gives you a chance to see the place instead of having constantly to watch as another kamikaze driver attempts to take you with him. Business district has US corporation skyscrapers: Microsoft, UPS, Chase Manhattan ….. Huge banners yell “Thank you Bill” – meaning Gates rather then Clinton I think. Forget Nehru, Ghandiji and non-alignment, Bangalore loves capitalism now. And why not? The place is booming. Bangalore airport is squalid and crude. Security thugs with guns and weighted bamboo clubs, lathis, look like they’d welcome a bit of violence to ease the boredom. Bussed to the plane with long waits between busses. Seat numbers on boarding passes mean nothing, it’s a free for all. Restrictions on ‘cabin luggage’ likewise fictional. Gigantic things, some still living, are stuffed into overhead lockers until they will hardly close. Seats are battered, as are the safety instructions. Half hour delay because the dilapidated tractor that passes for ground equipment can’t back the plane out. Finally get off as the sun comes up to give fabulous views of mountain ranges. Delhi airport a nightmare of crowds and noise. Taxis trying to get out can’t break into the traffic, its so fast and dense. The police have given up and handed control to gangs of streetwise boys. You give them cash and they run into the stream to bring a few cars to a screaming halt so you can get in. Neat idea. I didn’t see any of them hit, but it must have happened – they were risking it too much.

Delhi Ashram turns out to be massive and rather forbidding, very different from the one in Pondicherry. Lots of things you mustn’t do: no smoking, no drugs, no guests in rooms, compulsory meditation, keep your Spartan room clean, no playing with yourself, or anyone else. Strict routine of classes and exercise, including cleaning the place. You do your own washing up. All very monastic and aimed at getting you into a state of deep, spiritual inner quiet. A noble idea hampered by being under Delhi airport’s flight path. The planes come over so low you have to open the windows to let them through. Actually, place is great. Accommodation and food are free. It’s run by saintly people who also run schools, nurseries, clinics and other Good Works. Ashramites wear blue, wannabe Ashramites (‘Aspirants’) wear white. In travel-soiled grey, I’m an aspirant to greater personal hygiene. Main administrators are a pair of amiable and efficient middle aged women known as ‘Didi’ and ‘Sant’. Most of the time they’re inexplicably patient but if pushed, they turn into icy dragons. I saw Didi trounce a bunch of obnoxious Russian nouveau riche. The racist slobs were trying to muscle their way in to what they thought was going to be a cheap deal. They besieged her, shouting: “We religious too!” She stood it for a bit then got to her feet, she’s big, her eyes went very large and said, with energy and very clearly: “You belong in the street. Get out.” They did. Wonderful. Ideal day at the Ashram: Wake 6.00 after deep dreamless sleep. Tai Chi then sitting meditation. An hour’s ecstatic, visionary writing; a frugal breakfast in the sacred silence of the huge dining hall; chores done in a happy communal spirit; then an hour or two of study and more writing; lunch at 12.30; nap; games or other exercise; work in garden picking veggies for evening meal; Tiffin at 4.30; more writing; free time; meditation at 7.00; supper at 8.00; talk about Deep and Meaningful Things with Ashramites until lights out at 10.00 whence back into the Dreamless. Real day at the Ashram: Times and Tai Chi are the same, but little else. The writing is as costive as ever; I often go into central Delhi to try to get things done, like email, posting stuff or booking tickets and come back tired, disheveled and frustrated. Like most other guests, I do little communal work except washing up. I talk with Ashramites, which is nice but frustrating. I want to talk about Sanskrit, Vedanta and Ghandiji, they want to talk about Big Brother, London and David Beckham. The Ashram is huge, about 40 acres, dusty – all Delhi is dusty – and freezing in the morning this time of year. The main buildings are grey marble covered in vines with blood-red flowers. Day-glo green parakeets with red beaks swarm everywhere, yelling: “Come on then, if you fink you’re ‘ard enough” at each other. The huge dining hall is shared with amiable, tubby birds who dodge in and out of people’s feet, picking up crumbs. My room on the second floor is blessed with a little balcony overlooking a courtyard with a few trees. The pigeons here are seriously overweight and lead lives blighted by indecision. A pair keep coming into my room – presumably prospecting for somewhere to nest. The male comes in first, flies into the wardrobe, inside the wardrobe that is, and begins to call his mate. She comes in eventually but she’s very uncertain and eyes me suspiciously, head bobbing around. As she approaches, he gets more and more excited and switches from cooing to a randy gurgle. She doesn’t say much, while he’s effusive and enthusiastic. Him: “Hey it’s great here! Look at the décor! Tasty or what? Great place to raise a family! Whoar! Fancy a bit of … you know … how’s yer father?” Her: “Well … I don’t know … not in front of strangers … I mean, look at him (nodding towards me) … can we trust him? … what if he shuts the door? … I don’t know….” Decided to post home some books and other impedimenta. What a business. First the things are wrapped in paper then sewn into a bag, then the stitching is sealed with red wax. All done in the Ashram. Then off to the post office. Bare, filthy and sinister. Huge queues of men move agonisingly slowly. They are separated from officials by a heavy glass screen which is scratched and cracked, despite being reinforced by steel mesh. Grim things must happen here. Eventually you get to the slot where you can give your parcel to someone. The scene on the other side is Dickensian. First encounter is with a saintly, competent girl, who has to contend with frustrated and aggressive customers, a computer system that has a mind of it’s own, a scruffy dot-matrix printer on it’s last legs and a weird set of colleagues. They all have very different jobs. One is a large impassive

woman whose task is to sit behind a grille, out of arm’s reach, and stare with disdainful impassivity at angry inquirers after information. She rarely answers and if she does it’s with a curt gesture of her head and eyes. Her hands never leave her lap. She spits red betel juice at a tin, with occasional success. Another stands still looking mournfully at the haphazard piles of dusty letters and parcels on the floor, moodily rearranging them. He snorts a lot. Another dashes about mopping his brow and asking everyone else questions. They ignore him. Another wanders in and out from a nasty cage like structure taking and bringing piles of documents – apparently at random and often to the consternation of the people at the counter, who scrabble around for things they thought they had whilst eyeing the newly arrived stuff with dark mistrust. There’s dust and money everywhere. Customers pay in grubby notes which are simply thrown onto the desk with the other stuff. There’s a general lack of concern for cash in many places. People seem to have a lot of it, nobody seems that interested in how much you’re carrying and most market traders just throw it in a box lying beside them. As ever, a single glimpse is not enough. Turns out the knockabout above had to do with a special day when pensions are paid or something. When I posted another parcel about a week later, everything worked like clockwork. Delhi’s huge, messy, with buildings going up everywhere. Finding your way around is frustrating even though people are friendly and helpful. I worked out a system. You photograph the bus numbers on the stop you want to get back to, then surf the busses photographing the numbers at landmarks. The camera remembers for you and you can generally surf your way back. Store the numbers on your computer and you’ve got a connectivity map. It really works. Getting directions is tricky when you don’t do Hindi, despite the fact that Hindi uses lots of English. Indians call it ‘Hinglish’. Conversations around you on the bus dip in and out of English and Hindi with no pattern that I’ve figured out yet. It’s not like Welsh, say, where there’s a long stream of Welsh interspersed with English phrases for which there’s no Welsh equivalent. Hinglish is a more intimate mix, rich in British army-style words used in Hindi syntax. For instance, “leftside” can mean ‘turn left’ ‘lefthand’ or ‘left side’. “Backside” is “behind”, topographically rather than anatomically speaking, which is a bit startling when first encountered. The radio and TV ads are mostly in Hinglish with recognisable chunks: ‘Terms and conditions apply’ ‘Hurry hurry hurry!’ ‘All day soft contact lenses’ and so on. But real-time speech is Hinglish too, so the presenter of an early morning ‘phone-in will say something in Hindi then “Now here’s our first caller, who is ….” Then the presenter/caller conversation flips back and forth from Hindi to English, all at bewildering speed. Indian musak is Hingli-rap: explicit lyrics with an unmistakable bump ‘n grind rhythm: “Smaka – smaka, on the floor, smaka – smaka, give me more, smaka – smaka, (censored) ‘til we’re sore …” Makes a chap blush. There are also high wailing female singers like Smurfs on speed. Another startling sound is the Snort. This side effect of Delhi’s corrosive dust sounds like an elephant snuffling up a blancmange. In the quiet of an evening it can carry for miles. If the first time you hear it is right behind you on a crowded bus, the shock can have lasting digestive consequences. It occurs unpredictably in face-to-face conversations as it did when I was talking with a cultured woman who up to then had seemed rather refined. I almost swallowed my samosa. There’s a lot of brass-tacks security around. There have been bombs on busses and messages warn you to look under seats. The security on the Delhi Metro is fierce. Body and bag searches for everyone. The embassy section of New Delhi is a reminder of the late raj: huge buildings set back from the roads surrounded by vast gardens. Often described as ‘elegant’ or ‘graceful’, they were designed to offer no concealment and to give machine guns a clear field of fire. Sand-bagged gun emplacements and pill boxes for the guards. The British and American embassies have chicane entry barriers guarded by tanks and heavy machine guns. The only comfort (comfort?) is that the Indian Embassy and parliament buildings are similarly defended, so it’s not just aggressive Western nations that are targets. The common enemy is Islam and both sides are in deadly earnest. But again, I

discovered later that this was exceptional – to do with Independence Day celebrations where there’d been a threat of some high-profile terrorist attack. From today’s (1/1/07) ‘Times of India’: “India On Song, Tatas outgun Brazilians for Corus, Take world by Storm!”. Tata is the giant Indian industrial corporation, Corus is what used to be British Steel. It’s recorded with some relish that in 1904 Sir Frederick Upcott, the then Chief Commissioner of the Great Indian Penininsular Railway, swore that: “If Indians ever make steel to British standards, I’ll eat every pound of it.”. Too bad he’s dead. ‘What’s on in Delhi’ notes that Buddy Guy is to play that evening to a sellout audience. In the interview he says: ‘Humans should be like animals …” Big, fruity chuckle, ” … ‘cos they only fight in the mating season’. Delhi bus conductors are a tough breed who really earn their keep. Busses stop at stops but also anywhere where there’s a chance of picking up a fare. The braking is fierce and the conductors leap off and begin shouting like mad whilst banging on the side of the bus. I presume it’s partly to attract attention. Its really loud inside the bus, where piercing Musak is usually playing too. They shout a variety of stuff, some is repeated over and over and may be something like ‘roll-up, roll-up’ or ‘all aboard’. Some is not repeated so often and could be the route and number. Even though these are written on the bus, a lot of the customers look like they could be rural and hence they’re not likely to read or to know their way about. The conductors’ attitude to customers varies a lot. Some are clearly well-known characters and seem to have a friendly relationship with a set of regular of commuters. Others are toughs who can give people a hard time if they are slow to move down the bus, which can get so crowded that people hang off the exits. At a stop a conductor will hold the bus up until he figures he’s got a maximum load. This can mean that people on the bus pressure him to go, because they’re in a hurry. When he thinks he’s got enough, his banging changes rhythm and the driver begins to edge out into the traffic. The conductor stays off the bus until the very last minute, near the rear door, which is mostly for entering. Then, just when you think the bus is going without him, he sprints to the front and leaps on board, risking the traffic, so he can collect fares working the bus from front to back. He’s got to get to the back before the next stop or people get off without paying. If they do they get a mouthful. Nor is he delicate about how he gets through the crush. He generally gets to the rear door by the time the bus makes it to the next stop, where it all begins again. While on the move, drivers and conductors keep an eye out for anyone who may want to flag the bus down, the braking is fierce. During the rush hour it’s all done at tremendous speed and the conductors really sweat. When there’s less pressure it’s much more civilised. Musicians, who may have children with them, may get on for a couple of stops with little harmoniums or fiddles. They sing a couple of songs, passengers joining in sometimes, then go round collecting, and people seem happy to give. The busses are worked to death and the older ones look dangerous. Maintenance policy appears to be to do nothing until it breaks down, which they do a lot. The passengers are a mixed bunch. Because the bus is the cheapest form of transport, a lot are poor. But there are plenty of young rich people with ipods, blackberries and G3 mobiles too. They’re there because they’re in a hurry and busses are often quicker than taxis and auto rickshaws. Nobody gets in the way of a bus. They have air horns so powerful they actually force a path through the shoals of auto-rickshaws by making it very unpleasant not to get out of the way. They’re lethally fast, battered, have bumpers like girders and they don’t care about collisions, of which there are plenty. Its dodgems with Attitude. So, if you’re proudly driving your brand new BMW, of which there are also plenty, you know who’s boss. Delhi’s air is a virulent miasma. The weather is often gray and overcast, tamping in the outpourings of busses, factories, street food stoves, dungfires and the stench of sewers full of rotting everything. When it’s clear, the sun is like a brazen hammer. Damp clothes dry in 30 mins. And do they need washing. I bought an inappropriately virginal white sweater from the Ashram. A day or so of exposure to Delhi’s dust and it had become that trademark back-packer grey. The dust is a potent mixture of mud, leaves and the outpourings of every orifice and wound possesed by cows, donkeys, horses, elephants, camels, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, birds and people. Add to this oil, rubber, fruit, vegetables and clotted cream and you have a

supremely toxic sludge. Alright, I lied about the clotted cream, but when the sun bakes the sludge to dust and the wind blows it about, it does to your throat what boots do to doormats. The miasma is not only the cause of the Snort but also the Hawk. Loud and un-nerving, this is mostly heard in the morning. Not so much a clearing of the throat as a cry for help, it has the despairing quality of someone choking to death on trifle. This is not an Indian invention, but nothing matches the phlegmy gusto with which its done here. In fact, there’s a lot of gusto about. I was finishing a meal in Haridwar when an ample matron, departing well-fed, favoured us with a sonorous belch that would have done credit to a water buffalo. No one took any notice even though it rattled their cutlery. Sign of a good meal, that’s all. At traffic lights, right down where the miasma is thickest, tiny children beg or try to sell things, without much success. They’re black, barefoot and some are so small they don’t even reach the top of the bus tyres. Incredibly, some carry even smaller babies. Next to them you see Delhi’s nouveau riche in air conditioned 4x4’s with satnavs. I seldom see children or beggars given anything. Poverty here can’t be blamed on evil multinationals. If India’s got enough to build nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, launch satellites and land something on the moon by 2008 (why?), they can stop their own people starving. Adverts in the paper tell you not to give to beggars, where ‘you’ means Indian citizens, not tourists. There are help centres in all big cities now, and you’re meant to direct them there. Somewhere like Pondicherry is too small to have them yet, so there, people still give. There are more beggars in Muslim areas (the market near Jama Masjid in Old Delhi for instance). Maybe this is because the Koran requires the giving of alms. Had brief a meeting with Vandana Shiva – Reith lecturer, environmental activist and thoroughly impressive person. She’s doing tremendous work to help Indian farmers resist the murderous incursions of Monsanto and remain organic. India’s average growth rate is 9%, meaning that bits of the economy are growing at 20 – 30%. Hence India’s a magnet for international capital. That’s why Mr. & Mrs. Nice of Putney are doing rather well thank you with their ‘Asian Boom’ portfolio. The result is direct and brutal. Aided by India’s inexhaustible supply of corrupt politicians, Chase Manhattan fund transnationals like Monsanto to literally and knowingly kill off Indian farming traditions and the farmers with it: ‘Small farms are uneconomic – genetically modified crops will feed the world’. They won’t and don’t, but genetically modified Terminator seeds are sold to illiterates who don’t know what they’re buying. The plants yield well but their seeds are sterile, which wrecks the traditional seed-sharing that has kept India going for thousands of years. Farmers get into debt, sell their land, then their organs, then those of their families, mostly kidneys. Then they kill themselves because debt is shameful. The multinationals grab their land to sell for property development near cities and for massive industrialised farms elsewhere: ‘Bigger farms mean progress’. Presently in Rishikesh - what a contrast with grey, dreary Delhi. After a damp, freezing sleeper to Haridwar and then a local bus, I had a shave, a shower, bliss, and sat doing email in my Kurta having wandered around in the sun. More rains on the way apparently, but at least I got the chance to warm up. Rishikesh actually feels holy, as it is. The place has a sprinkling of Western gawpers like me, but the vast majority, as in Haridwar, are Indians. Lots of saddhus, holy men, in orange-pink robes, who are mostly amiable and whose holiness takes the form of smoking huge pipes of marijuana, offering it around and laughing a lot. Like Brixton only with more ATM’s. The real McCoy are the pilgrims who come, sometimes on foot from 1000s of km. away, to bathe and take home a couple of bottles of Ganga water on a gaudily decorated yokes carried fore and aft. Most seem to be young men and I saw a group on the platform of Haridwar station singing, dancing, clapping –celebrating their pilgrimage or maybe just having fun. Here the Ganga comes directly from the Himalayas, where Shiva lives. It’s turbid, freezing, clean, with huge fish that foam the surface to get the handfuls of food thrown to them. By the time it gets to Allahabad and Banaras it’s polluted and deadly. The only things that survive there are the ‘freshwater’ dolphins. It feels holy here because of the gigantic statues of Shiva and because people have been coming here to honour him and his river for over 3000 years.

Perhaps its Shiva who is looking after me. Picked the one sunny day for weeks to hire a motorbike and climb up steep hairpins for 26 km out of the dust into cleaner, colder air. The road stopped at a peak where there was a sleepy temple with a friendly dog. I rang the bell to let Shiva know I’d been there. The view down the Ganga made the cold worth it, so did a samosa, a cup of chai and a cheroot. Then sudden rain, after which a rainbow against a Himalayan backdrop. The rain left the roads greasy and the thrill of being on a bike again overcame my judgment, never strong, and though the spill broke the headlight it left me unhurt,. I must have been under the protection of whatever Indian god looks out for twerps. Or perhaps it was Orion, whom I saw from the hotel roof that night, along with a sizzling shooting star. You can’t throw a stone into the street in Rishikesh without hitting a blissed-out hippy: ‘Like, it’s ok man, no worries’. The place is thick with Yoga schools, Ayurveda colleges, Meditation training and whatnot. Much of it is nonsense, but blow the froth off and you realize some people came here before the Beatles and stayed. They’re now growing old gracefully, studying, working in schools and hospitals, teaching, living in Ashrams, whatever. Seems as good a way of spending your earthy visit as a career in Accounts and a mortgage in Godalming. The rest are standard issue dopeheads who drift about playing with their chakras. Not a pretty sight, I remember the same in Benares. The sixties were invented in the eighties, and so much was superficial attention-getting. But some of it stuck. George Harrison hadn’t the wit to see the Mararishi was a fraud but even so he organised ‘Concert for Bangladesh’, funded a lot of education, did some India inspired numbers like ‘Blue Jay Way’ and ‘My Sweet Lord’ and finally his ashes took their turn down the Ganga to join the millions of his fellow believers in the ocean. The train back from Haridwar to Delhi took six hours at about 50km/hr, so that’s around 300 km. Beautiful well-kept fields and orchards. Crop trees have dense under-planting of what might be coriander. Some villages seem quite wealthy, with power lines and satellite dishes. Bullock carts take loads of sugar cane to massive refineries, trains take the molasses away. Journey starts next to the Ganga and ends next to Dehi’s Yamuna, which joins the Ganga later. There were no inclines or cuttings the whole journey, so that means 300 km of rich flood plain soil. And that’s just NorthSouth. East –West it’s 1000s of km. and there’s the monsoons too. No wonder India now exports food. The train was built to the no-frills specifications of Indian Railways, but I had a comfortable individual seat, civilised conversation, excellent food and safe water both on the train and at halts, basic toilets and freedom from hassle. The cost was 94 rupees – about one pound fifty pence. Third class is rougher, naturally, but it cost about a third of second class. Now that’s what I call subsidised public transport. I’ve finally realised what the multiplicity of Indian gods is all about. The monstrous excess of limbs, eyes and the miscegenated humans with animal heads repulsed the Muslims and the Jesuits. Characteristically, the easygoing Mark Twain, who visited Banaras, was more amused than horrified. Anyhow, what it really means is that the early Vedic philosophers, the ones who invented space travel, also foresaw Delhi’s traffic. It’s so obvious once you see it. If you want to stay alive you need the cunning of a monkey, the watchfulness of a snake and the patience of an elephant. Two eyes are simply not enough when traffic comes at you from every direction at once, including from above. Nor are the conventional number of limbs enough to steer your motorbike, use your mobile, sound the horn, hang on to your wife and children who’re behind and in front of you, and edge up in jams by walking the bike along. This I have seen, and most of it is true. Sadly, the sun is setting on the ‘Ambassador’ the 1950’s style Morris that Hindustan Motors made their own. There are still plenty around. With their heavy, chassis, simple diesels, clunking gearboxes and the acceleration of a slug, they’ll last for years. Now though, Indian car makers are teaming up with Japanese and Korean firms.

Welcome and unwelcome discoveries in India: Welcome: Indian street food, especially in the south, is even better than its reputation; Street dogs are mostly healthy and are too hot to bother with aggression while the sun’s up; When I ask why bells in temples and shrines are rung so loudly, thinking it might be to ward off evil, I’m told: “The Gods can’t see us, but they can hear us.”; Temple elephants will bless you with a gentle pat on the head if you approach them in the right way. Citronella oil keeps mosquitoes off fairly well. In Tamil Nadu, doorways and other entrances are decorated with stylized pictures of flowers – it’s for welcome and good luck. Unwelcome: You can sunburn through clothes. Pondicherry’s sewers can put you right off your lunch. McDonald’s, Coke and Pizza Hut have all got into India. Getting lost on a scooter at night is bad news, busses go at maximum speed with headlights full on while many bikes and even cars drive without lights. The rules of the road are: go fast, sound horns and bells continually, accelerate on approaching crossroads, drive on the left unless the right suits your whim at that particular moment. The reversing warning on some vehicles is “The Crazy Frog”. Indian mosquitoes use power tools. Citronella oil makes you smell like a grapefruit and, if applied too enthusiastically to the thighs and splashed on more intimate places, proves to be highly irritant; Crows will steal food from your plate if you turn your back for a minute. Elephant farts can last five seconds. Now in Sri Lanka, having taken leave of India with a spat at security. Racism in India is not confined to tourists. Most security guards are ok, but some are not. I got a particularly nasty one. Bored, he chose to take exception to my tiny bottles of citronella oil on the grounds that they were ‘liquids’. I said: ‘You throw them away then, Adolf’. This wasn’t meant to please him and it didn’t. There was a brief Mexican stand-off which I broke by saying: “All right. You win. I’m carrying a lot more liquid.” He said: “What?” “P*ss.”, I replied, with a delivery intended to make clear just what was being said. Not a clever move, as the lout can make me miss my flight by not stamping my baggage tag. A longer stand off this time, after which he stamped my baggage tag with huge contempt. Honours about even I’d say. Sri Lanka feels so different. There’s none of the booming economy of India, but there seems to be far less poverty and less than when I was last here. Tourism has been hit by the civil war and Kandy is even more down at heel than it was when I was here last. The Temple of the Tooth (a relic of the Buddha) now no longer houses the Tooth, which has been sent to India. The Temple now sports a high steel fence, heavy machine-guns mounted in pill boxes, patrolling guards with AK 47’s and rolling, spiked barriers that force vehicles to stop. The papers are full of recent ‘defeats’ of the Tamil Tigers in the North, but a nation that has to send away its greatest treasure and nervously defend the empty building isn’t defeating anyone. However, the Temple of the Crown, next door, is in fair shape. It has nothing to do with Buddhism though, having been built by the opportunistic Sri Lankan Dental Association. Sri Lanka is easier than India. People seem less needy and dependent on tourism - there isn’t so much hassling by touts. You don’t see that many beggars and those you do seem to be given quite a lot by local people. Kandy may not be typical. It’s the old capital. Colombo only became the capital because the British used it as their trading port. Fabulous temples, mostly well kept, and a great market. There’s lots of meat and fish, since not everyone’s Buddhist in Sri Lanka. The mix of peoples and religions in Sri Lanka is a mosaic. The majority are Sinhalese (originally Dravidians from South India), but they’re not a big majority. They’re mostly Buddhists, but some dip in and out of Hinduism and Christianity as it suits them. For example, old friends of Tikva, my hostess here, of whom more later, are nominally either Catholics (legacy of the Dutch), Anglicans (ditto the Brits) or Hindus but when they feel like a meditation retreat to de-stress themselves from their busy working lives they go to a Buddhist centre. The next biggest group are Tamils (also Dravidians), then there are a few pre-Sinhalese aboriginals in rural areas. In really remote jungle areas there are said to be primitive proto-humans, like Millwall supporters but able to walk on two legs.

I’m writing this sitting on the balcony of Tikva’s house, the view from which is down through jungle to the lake. It’s man made c. 500 BCE and it’s said that there are a row of impaled bodies at the bottom put there by the pre-Buddhist Kings of Kandy, the original rulers of the island. The word is it was to encourage the slaves who dug the lake out. The lake’s about a mile long, so it seems to have worked. It’s usually a delightfully quiet place to work, but not today. My companion is Fifi, Tikva’s guard dog. She’s a Rottweiler/Alsatian cross with the IQ of a kipper. A stranger to restraint, she’s being driven into a slavering frenzy by a troupe of monkeys who’re enjoying themselves teasing her from the trees right next to the house. They are seriously intelligent and act collectively. The big ones, some of them females carrying babies, hang back, keeping a tactical eye on things while the incredibly agile young ones take it in turns to venture as close as is safe, and closer. They leap on to the railing round the house and then off again just as Fifi gets ready to launch herself. She’s just not in the same mental league. They seem to be doing it just for enjoyment. They’re not after food since the trees are laden with jackfruit, bananas and mangoes. They don’t seem to have any obvious predators and they’re totally at home in the canopy. The young ones especially seem to spend their time just larking about. However, it’s not innocent fun. I had assumed that the windows were barred and the doors locked because of human intruders but it turns out that monkeys are the real problem. They are frightening. The older males are as big and heavy as a mastiffs, quick and their teeth can deliver a serious bite. They attack in groups and would kill Fifi if it came to it. If they bite you, its off to A & E immediately since they carry all sorts of nasty stuff. Their tactical intelligence makes them frightening though. While I was writing this, the major part of the troupe moved on, with much chattering and thrashing of branches. I watched them for a bit then got back to writing. With a shock, I realised two young males had hung back and were watching me intently, sitting quiet and motionless just out of reach at what was for them an easy there-and-back leap away. If I’d gone to where they judged they could get to my table and away before I could get back, they would have come over and taken whatever they could. They take small things like glasses, salt cellars and cutlery. The flash drive next to the computer would have gone without a doubt. Not only that, it would have come back with patronising editorial comments and their disgusting poems. In fact, they must have got to my computer at some point, because I found an obscene Haiku had been added to the text. I deleted it, as it was somewhat derivative, but since monkeys are masters of pastiche, I fear other insertions may be undetectable. Yes, its nature red in tooth and clause in Sri Lanka. Yesterday we were visited by a four foot long snake. It freaked Tikva, but local opinion was that it was harmless. The rule seems to be that safe ones have small heads and no distinguishing marks while dangerous ones either have markings or big triangular heads (vipers) or a ruff (cobras) or a thickening of the tail (rattlers). It’s odd that Tikva has such a phobia, since she’s steely in most other respects. She’s a Israeli who, after making a couple of fortunes in software and consultancy has jettisoned a husband and retired to study Buddhism and await grandchildren. She divides her time between London, Malaysia, Israel and Kandy. Having got a Masters from SOAS shes doing a PhD comparing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Buddhism. Her capacity for work is frightening. She’s getting the rather sleepy department here to set up an International Centre for Buddhist Studies. She’s spotted that it could be a goldmine, so long as it’s done in the next year or so. She’s probably right, but Sri Lankans don’t do ‘quickly’, as the British discovered. I think she’ll do it, but the the Department doesn’t quite know what’s hit it. Nor me. I was thinking I’d wind down a bit here, but no hope. I’ll have about 30 minutes to breathe between now and when, drained, I get on the plane to Chennai. However I did have three days at Nilambe, a meditation centre up in the mountains (see www.nilambe.org). Visiting via the internet first is a good move. This time of year it can be cold and damp and there’s neither electricity nor drinkable running water. There’s plenty of running water but its brown, cloudy and suspiciously reluctant to come out of the tap. You wouldn’t wash a car in it and after three days without a shower or proper sleep I was Not Nice to Know. You have a cell a with concrete sleeping platform, a mattress made of cardboard, no sheets, you’re up at 4.45 for the first of

four daily 90 min. meditation sessions. You try to observe a Noble Silence at all times. Silence I can manage, my Nobility, however, needs a bit of rehearsal. A German girl who was a skilled teacher of Yoga offered daily sessions. Having never done Yoga I thought I’d try one as she said it would be ‘gentle’. If that’s gentle I don’t want to do rough. Of course, she was astoundingly supple and did things with her body I couldn’t do with a JCB. Very distracting. The lack of cold showers was quite a problem. Again, my Noble side needs a little development. However, as with the Ashram, the place has wonderful moments. There were sunny times and at night, what with no lights and being way up above any village its perfectly quiet and the stars seem closer. “Looking for something sailor?” said the Madame. Once curvaceous perhaps but now gross, she was lolling against the doorway, red light behind her, cigarette drooping from her scarlet mouth. After a furtive glance up and down the alley, I followed her in. Looking around, I saw hunched figures up to no good in the shadows. With a coarse gesture she indicated a row of ill-used models in squalid booths, awaiting my pleasure. “Take your pick, Big Boy” she chuckled, knowingly. Selecting one that looked a little more presentable than the rest, I entered the booth and closed the door behind me. Cautiously, I inserted my equipment and began. It was, you might say, satisfactory. Afterwards, relieved but unsatisfied, I paid the now indifferent Madame on the way out. But the wages of sin and all that … when I get back to Tikvas, the rather snooty guardian of her clean and wholesome system informs me I have a virus and will need to disinfect my equipment before I’m allowed in. That’s the trouble with these backstreet cyber cafes, you don’t know what you might pick up. At about the same time as the sordid incident above, I also discovered I was host to bedbugs. No co-incidence? This being an unwelcome first, I had no idea how these creatures came to be my uninvited guests. Do they lurk in beds or could I have picked them up elsewhere? Tikva and her staff were surprisingly unfazed by it all, matter-of-factly fumigating the room and leaving the mattress out in the full sun, which does them in apparently. Nasty. I’m not particularly squeamish about bodily things, except cuts, but the bed bugs gave me the horrors. I have a very different reaction to mosquitos. I try to keep them away but if they do bite, despite the itching afterwards, I try to take the attitude that so long as they don’t give me malaria, they can have a drop of blood. Live and let live as it were. But these intimate little beasts don’t irritate you in the least. It’s not in their interest to do so, since they’re not mobile. You can get rid of them if you notice them, so they make sure you don’t. Winding down after climbing Adam’s Peak. A high mountain on top of which there’s a gigantic footprint in the rock. Christians and Muslims say it’s where Adam first trod on the Earth. It’s also said to be the foot print of the Buddha – making him about as tall as a block of flats. A formidable steep climb is required to get to the top. Something like four hours of exhausting stone steps as near vertical as makes no difference. Its done, amazingly, by elderly women and young parents carrying babes in arms. The reason is that to visit gains you merit and that’s best at the start and near the finish of life. A monk tells me that the women wouldn’t walk down the road at home if they didn’t have to, but this is special. You’re telling me. I’m still feeling the effects two days later. Winding down with a day on the beach before flying to Chennai and then home. Quite a trip.