Fine by us?

         I just came across a rather upsetting article in the New York Times about the Right to Information Act and corruption: A Law Empowers Indians, but Some Pay a Price.  The Right to Information Act is an amazing piece of legislation that gives anyone in India, from the rickshaw drivers to the slum-dwellers, access to information that is generally off limits.  Stories about its effectiveness are common, and it's a point of pride among my Indian friends.  This article exposes another side to the story.  Although I would say that the "feudal lord" paragraph is a little exaggerated if not downright condescending/racist, the article makes some bold statements about the probable role of local politicians in the murder that I don't think you would find in Indian media.  Newspapers here write about corruption on a daily basis, but I have never encountered stories about corruption-linked killings.  
         That this tragedy occurred in Gujarat, an Indian state bordering Pakistan to the north and Mumbai to the south, is not altogether surprising.  Despite being both a prosperous state and Gandhi's birthplace,  Gujarat has recently been one of the most radical regions of the country, witnessing a major outbreak of communal violence in 2002.  While my knowledge of modern Indian history and politics is fairly limited, that a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been implicated does not surprise me too much either.  In saying this, I'm not being entirely fair.  First of all, the BJP is very popular in Gujarat, which means most politicians there would be members anyway, and second of all, I have a personal gripe with the BJP because it is in power in Bangalore and is responsible for the rule that shutters all pubs and bars at the ridiculous hour of 11:30 p.m.  Nevertheless, in contrast to Congress who are and have been the most powerful party in India since Independence, to me, the BJP represents the wrong sort of change.  While Congress is ineffective, slow, corrupt, and have a far-from-spotless past, they seem at best unifying and at worst relatively harmless.   On the other hand, the BJP has roots in a violent, revolutionary organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that was actively involved in the massacres following Partition, and the BJP retains something of this radical character to this day.  Besides being right-wing, the BJP is closely associated with Hinduism, playing off India's long history of communal strife and thereby, whether directly or indirectly, encouraging future episodes.


        On a separate note, I was missing home a little and rediscovered this song and wanted to share it.  Basically, I'm making a shameless plug for my good friend Ben's awesome new band called "Beecher's Fault."  I have no idea why they go by that silly name, but they are about to release an EP and make it big, so get on the bandwagon while there is still room.

Holy Cow!

            It’s too easy, I know, but I had to make the joke at some point...

Indians, as you may have heard, consider the cow a holy creature, which makes sense because cows are vitally important food sources.  No one eats them, but they produce milk and dung, plow the fields, and do other vitally important things, I’m sure.  One of the theories I have heard to explain their sanctity is that certain species of psychoactive fungus grow very well in cow dung, and the people who consumed these magical mushrooms started worshipping the cow in a moment of inspiration.  In any case, to this day and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, cows roam the streets of India with a sense of entitlement and impunity.  I think in some of India’s other big metropolises cows are becoming more and more scarce, but at least in Bangalore, the famous cow traffic jam stories are true.  The neighborhood menagerie consisting of a few familiar stray dogs, a large healthy rat, and a terrified cat, would not be complete without this achingly cute calf that makes daily visits to the house across the street to get scraps and scare the children.

How the cow’s sacred status has affected its evolutionary development is unclear, but I suspect that cows in India may just be the stupidest bovines on the planet.  With no real threat to their survival (even India’s most menacing predator, traffic, will defer to the cow), the Everyday, Indian Urban Cow (from now on referred to as a EIUC, pronounced “yuck”) has become a swaggering, professional beggar.  Actually, in that sense, EIUCs are not that stupid because it can be difficult to fill seven stomachs when many, many people in India have a hard time filling just one.  Nevertheless, they are not potty-trained nor do they look both ways when they cross the street like the dogs do, so we are not really talking about Einsteins of the animal kingdom or anything.  They're an udder disaster!

Oh, and did you know that when a cow gets old in India it is put onto a train and sent to Bangladesh where there is a large, hungry Muslim population demanding cheap beef?  I don’t know how that fits in with the whole “do-not-harm-cows” rule, but I suppose ruminant nursing homes would be impractical.

            This past weekend, my group of expat friends and I headed south to the fertile fields of Tamil Nadu where the annual harvest festival was taking place.  Every year, about six months or so after the monsoon, people across India celebrate the harvest.  The festival has many different forms, but in Tamil Nadu, it is known as Pongal and lasts for about four days, each day involving different ceremonies; for more information I refer you to Wikipedia. Wiki: Pongal.

            We traveled to Madurai, a temple town in the heartland of Tamil Nadu about 200 miles south of Bangalore.  Besides having a tremendous temple dedicated to Shiva and Parvati, this small city was rumored to host some of the most lavish Pongal festivities in the area, but as is often the case, my information was faulty and it was in the surrounding towns where most of the action took place, which unfortunately meant that most, but not all!, Pongal-related activities were beyond our reach.  Despite the lack of excitement within Madurai, I liked the city.  The memory of sitting inside the Sri Meenakshi Temple in the cool evening darkness, enjoying the quiet and calm of the complex, gazing at the moon, getting bitten by mosquitoes, and having relaxed conversation with a few temple tour guides, will stick with me for a long time.  The setting reminded me a little of an Italian piazza late at night when the heat and crowds of the day have dispersed: an empty, echoing square and a moon-shadow cast by the square’s church.

Is that a temple back there? Yup!

Each statue represents something, but I'll save a complete analysis for another post... joking

Telling secrets to Shiva in bull form

One of the unifying themes of Pongal is the cow whose work over the course of the growing season is honored and celebrated.  On the first day of Pongal, cows are ritualistically fed a sweet rice concoction (also called Pongal) and adorned with bright powders and garlands of flowers.  The event that our group was really excited to see occurs later in the festival and also involves cows.  Known as jallikattu, the event bears some similarity to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, except in India the bulls aren’t chasing you – you are chasing them.  Every year, many people get seriously injured trying to "tame" one of these bulls, and inevitably there are several deaths, which is not too surprising considering that before letting the bulls loose in the crowds, the owners sharpen their horns, get them good and drunk, and stick chili powder up their noses to royally piss them off.  The event was recently banned by the Indian government because it involved “animal rights” abuses.  Though it can’t be pleasant to have chili powder up your nose nor is it very nice to have a bunch of people try to tackle you, perhaps this ban was repealed because the event seemed to be more of a humanitarian issue than an animal rights one.  Please take a look at the below video to see what I mean. (NOTE: If you don’t like blood, please skip the section from about 2:45-3:15.)

This video was all that was needed to convince five of my friends to make the nine-hour bus journey to Madurai with me.  Though none of us were particularly keen on participating in the spectacle, we sure wanted to see it, and so it was a big disappointment when I discovered that my information was again faulty, and that the largest, most violent version of Jallikattu would be occurring on Monday when we would already be back in Bangalore.  Fortunately, a smaller event at the town of Palamedu was planned for Sunday, and thither we hastened.

Two village children.
Their faces' yellow hue is not due to jaundice, but rather is the residue of their daily tumeric powder facial,
which helps soften the skin and prevent hair from growing... and turns your skin yellow.

The scene that greeted us seemed to be straight out of the movies.  The crowded town was in full festival mode, and rows of rickety, over-burdened stands had been erected around the bull pen/pit-of-doom.  We bargained our way onto one of the stands where my height advantage over most Indians once again paid-off, affording me a relatively unobstructed view of the action below.  I’ve posted a video and a few photos taken from our vantage point that gives you an idea of what went down.

And the mayhem begins

It was a little crowded up there

            What’s going on you might wonder?  It’s still unclear to me, but I think, at heart, the event is a competition between the guys in orange and the owner of the bull.  If one of those crazy orange guys gets hold of a bull for a certain period of time, he is awarded some sort of prize, such as a fan, a bicycle, or a piece of cookware.  If, on the other hand, the bull makes it through the scrum of orange without being caught, then the owner of the bull is awarded the prize.  The guys in white sitting above the bull’s entrance were the judges. 

Which is more scary: the imminent arrival of the bull or that menacing fan?

The bull

The day was also notable for a probable appearance on StarNews, one of India’s national news networks.  A reporter curious to get a foreign-perspective interviewed us, and so it is quite possible that the mug of yours-truly was flashed on televisions across India.  As we were leaving, having succumbed to the heat and the crowds, we were asked to participate in a second interview, this time for a documentary about the festival.

A truly terrible popsicle containing, no kidding, vermicelli!
I had already finished mine because I was too polite not to eat it...

The second interview

After returning to Madurai and spending the afternoon recovering from the morning's excitement, we hopped on a night bus to return to Bangalore.  Another tough Monday, but it was definitely worth it. 

Since the trip, we've discovered that Palamedu wasn't the jolly holiday we felt it to be.  For the sake of the bulls, PETA has launched a campaign to ban or fundamentally alter the festival.  I agree that the bulls are mistreated, but they aren't dying as happens in bullfights for example.  The bulls scatter everyone with such ease that the people may as well be flies.  And they end up squashing them just like flies too.  Please consider the following article: One Killed, 68 Injured at jallikattu.  Every year people die in Pamplona as well.  Why do festivals like this exist all over the world?  Why do people participate in them?  Does preservation of tradition justify the continuation of these festivals?  Would a government ban on jallikattu be an infringement on one's right to choose how they want to live?  Complicated questions...  In any case, I'm glad I had the privilege of seeing jallikattu before it is too late.

Newsflash:  Riots in Bangalore today!  I've been at home all morning, but I can only imagine what it is like outside.  Karnataka 'bandh' turns violent

Welcome to the Monkey House: part 1

             Before I launch into yet another post about the absurd and the frustrating in India, I just want to set the record straight: I am having a great time here and think India's an amazing, beautiful place.  It's also a lot of fun to complain about and poke fun at.  India's a bit like that friend who ends up being the butt of every joke, but you love him/her even more because of it.  I don't think that my relationship to India is unique in this way and that many of the locals feel the same way about their country as I do; I'm just more attuned to the ridiculousness because I haven't been desensitized.  Which brings me to yet another post in that vein, this time about my lab.  It's something that I've been excited to write about for a while because I have some good material, but I'm getting on an overnight bus in a few hours and want to leave with you with something before I go, which is why I've excerpted a couple of emails on the subject.  Sorry about the small font size.  Did my best.

Bangalore on three legs

            During the first few days following an injury like a broken foot or a torn ACL, the pain and inconvenience is slightly offset by the concerned attention you now receive, and in fact, there is even some perverse pleasure to be found in the mere novelty of wearing a cast and not being able to function properly.  This can be called the "honeymoon period" if you will.  Eventually, however, the concerned attention becomes unwanted attention, the novelty wears thin, and you have to settle in for the grind, the long slog, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.  You tolerate each drawn-out minute knowing that you are now that little bit closer to terminating the relationship with that cruel and despised partner who has been preventing you from reaching your true potential and has been making life difficult for so long.  And finally, the day arrives [cue soundtrack of fluttering doves and the voices of angels] 

... ...

            I'm still waiting for that last part though, to be fair, the waiting isn't nearly as bad as they make it out to be.  The biggest challenge I now face is getting around because navigating Bangalore, which I find difficult to begin with, is now more difficult than ever.  India is not an ideal place to have mobility issues.  Although a handicapped person will have plenty of company and will receive plenty of sympathy, the country is not designed to make life easy for the disabled.  The sidewalks are lined with deathtraps; the phrase “holes and uneven surfaces abound” does not do the reality justice.  Seriously, the Appalachian Trail is, on average, a smoother, safer surface.  If there are guidelines for making a building accessible in Indian construction codes (assuming those exist), they are certainly ignored.  There are flippin’ stairs everywhere, and we're not talking Italian marble staircases here.  Finally, because of increased population density and decreased amounts of personal space, you are always fighting the jostling crowds to maintain a bubble of safety.  Maybe I should start an NGO.

Christmas Keralas and other travels in South India

            Le dernier weekend, j’ai voyagé à Pondicherry, une ancienne colonie française se trouvée au côte est de l’Inde du Sud, avec mes amis, trois qui viennent de l’Allemagne et un de la France elle-même.  À Pondicherry, il y a des choses vraiment françaises comme les boulangeries, les gendarmes portant des chapeaux rouges, et les francophones indiens.  Mon dieu!

            As difficult as it was to compose the above few phrases, speaking was even more of a challenge.  Though English is probably still the second most important language in Pondicherry after Tamil, I brushed off my French to order a croissant at the bakery, and at our hotel, I declined the services of the maid in la belle langue, saying we were “au moment, indisponible.”  My inability to speak the one language other than English that I have studied was disappointing to me and a little embarrassing in light of the multilingual mastery on display in India, but c’est la vie.  My weak excuse is that I didn’t grow up in an environment where it was necessary or easy to learn a second language.

            What was Pondicherry other than a pleasant linguistic experience?  The simple answer: a culinary one.  Wherever French is spoken, French food is eaten, and my, how good even bad French food tastes after eating almost exclusively Indian food for four weeks straight.  The crêpe complète and the pain au chocolat were not exactly up to Parisian standards, but I wasn’t complaining.  Taking advantage of the French taste for flesh, my friends and I, like primitive hunters on the savanna, went in search of pâté, saucisson, and bouef.  The first restaurant we patronized had not received their daily shipment of beef, so after finishing our appetizers, we paid the bill and departed for greener pastures (the pastures were decidedly less green from the perspective of the cow).  I don’t consider myself a great carnivore, but I truly relished that steak.

            My friends and I traveled to Pondicherry on the night train, leaving Friday night after work and arriving Saturday morning.  To explore the city, we rented some bicycles, and without much of a preconceived plan, meandered through the town.  We saw the French consulate, the Alliance Française, and the Lycée Français, but if we had been expecting to find a little piece of France in India, we would have been sorely disappointed because Pondicherry is definitely still India (with a faint French accent and a higher concentration of foreign, yuppie enlightenment seekers). 

In some sense, traveling through India is an attempt to find a different or new “India” that one hasn’t yet seen, if not an attempt escape “India” altogether.  Pondicherry, especially, held this promise, but it seems that India is “India” wherever you go, and it is pointless to look for something else.  In my experience, no matter the region, the language, or the local customs, there is some fundamental Indian character that unifies this vast and diverse country.  Defining that character is both difficult and dangerous, but suffice it to say, it is easily and fondly recognizable.

On our second day in Pondicherry, we rented a few two-wheelers to make the journey to Auroville, a sort of utopian community located 9 km up the coast.  Auroville was founded in 1968 by a mythic French woman known as La Mère who envisioned a settlement bringing together people from every country in the world to live peacefully in a shared pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.   The UN supported her vision, and 30 years later, the community has about 2,000 inhabitants and a large visitor center, which was pleasant enough.  The food was decent, and the short film about the Mandir, Auroville’s geographical center and most impressive building, was interesting (unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to see it as the viewpoint is closed on Sunday afternoons for unclear reasons).  I personally enjoyed traveling to and from Auroville on our scooters more than the community itself.

Local construction team

Pondi Market

The nativity

The trip to Auroville

The Mandir

That evening, we hopped an overnight bus back to Bangalore, arriving in the city at 5:30 a.m. Monday morning.  Needless to say, it was a long day at work, but I was sustained by the promise of an even longer, more relaxing holiday the upcoming weekend.  After what by all measures has to be considered a thoroughly unproductive workweek notable more for my return to the basketball court than any particular action or result in lab (actually that’s something of a lie because, completely serendipitously, it looks like we may have produced our desired compound in >99% purity, meaning that our project can move forward though it now seems those results may not have been correct), I departed Bangalore again on Thursday night, catching a plane to Cochin, the capital of the South Indian state, Kerala.  And who was there to meet me at the airport?  My mother!!!

Though I hadn’t felt very homesick since arriving in India (despite what I may write in my blog about missing Tropicana OJ, etc.), it was wonderful to be received in the warm embrace of my family.  Aside from the tangible benefits of family-sponsored travel like air-conditioning, buffet breakfasts, and the like, it felt good to be in the company of people who really cared about me and understood me on a personal and cultural level.  It highlighted certain aspects of my life in Bangalore that I have come to take for granted, such as the tendency to evaluate a person’s language skills within the first few moments of meeting him or her and modify my conversation accordingly.  That process had become second nature, and suddenly, I could say anything and be understood 100% of the time (then again, not being understood 100% of the time has its advantages).  It also emphasized the transitory nature of my stay in Bangalore, and how many of the relationships I’m forming here are relatively superficial.  I’m doing my best, but it’s hard to form lasting friendships in the course of a few months with people who view me as temporary or with people like my expat friends from the Pondicherry trip who are temporary themselves.  I suppose this all comes with the territory of living abroad.

 After one comfortable night in the hotel in Cochin, my family and I squeezed into the car and traveled to the backwaters, which you will recall I last visited about three weeks before.  Instead of exploring the backwaters on a houseboat, we opted for the resort option, and my what a beautiful resort it was with its infinite pool, quaint cottages, and magician.  For Christmas Eve, they threw an event with a stupendous amount of food, a gregarious and glamorous M.C., a live band, various traditional performances, fireworks, and a very short, skinny, Indian Santa Claus who arrived by boat because Rudolph and co. had a prior engagement.  All the waiters wore Santa hats, and decorations included an enormous albatross hanging above our heads (I’m not sure how exactly that related to Christmas), an iceberg with papier-mâché penguins on top, a family of polystyrene polar bears, and a Chinese fishing net, which had been built that afternoon and was disassembled after the festivities were over.

Our two nights at the Kumarakorum Lake Resort were very pleasant, and we reluctantly checked out on Sunday to travel to Munnar, a hill station six gut-clenching hours away from the idylls of the lake.  The trip was difficult; I’m still a little queasy just thinking about going up those narrow, twisting mountain roads, dodging traffic in that characteristically hair-raising way.  After climbing through several different climate zones marked by pineapple, banana, rubber tree, and cardamom plantations, we arrived in a breathtaking series of picturesque valleys completely covered in tea bushes.  As the sun was getting low on the horizon, with a thin fog rolling down the bald, jagged mountains, the scene was oddly reminiscent of the Lake District in the U.K., which I suppose makes some sense, as it was the English who originally developed this area for tea cultivation.

When we finally pulled into our hotel, darkness had settled.  In the gloaming, our rooms seemed comparatively dingy and dirty to the digs we had just departed, and we considered returning to the lake if only there wasn’t a painful six-hour drive separating us from its shores.   Fortunately, in the daylight, our situation did not appear nearly as grim as we had imagined.  That said, my sister had developed a cold, and she was very miserable as we piled into a jeep to ascend to the highest tea plantation in the world, located at, if my memory serves, about 8,000’ above sea level.  If the ride to Munnar was difficult, the officials at the Tour de France would label this jeep journey as hors categoire.  It was so bumpy, spine-shattering, coccyx-crunching that we would have been more comfortable riding a stegosaurus with a limp.  In the end, it was worth it because the tea plantation was interesting and the view was fantastic, but my sister may have another opinion.

The next day, we left Eden to return to Bangalore on the night flight.   I logged a half-day at work and then met up with my family in the afternoon to show them my apartment and my neighborhood, which both pass inspection.  We shared a final meal that night, and then we said our goodbyes as they were flying to Bombay in the morning and I would be at work.  But oh, how plans change.,,

NEWSFLASH… NEWSFLASH…

            On the night of December 30^th, at approximately 7:15 p.m., a certain individual by the name of Alex Beecher met an accident as he was crossing 80 Feet Road in the Koramangala area of Bangalore.  After topping up his mobile phone, he began the treacherous passage across with the intention of patronizing a favorite juice stand on the other side.  The first half of the crossing was remarkable for being unremarkable, and he had hopes that the second half of the crossing would be just as successful. 

Standing on top of the divider in the middle of the road, he saw an opening in the traffic and decided to make his move.  Keeping his eyes fixed on the approaching bus, he stepped down and pop…  He had landed awkwardly on his right foot, badly rolling his ankle, and stumbling forward into the road.  His first instinct was survival, so he immediately moved to regain the safety of the divider, but there was no need as, defying the law of conservation of momentum, the oncoming vehicle stopped to let him hobble across.

Thinking it was just a sprain, he walked it off, just as Dad always taught, and limped all the way back home where, upon taking off his shoe, he discovered a very disturbing bump on his foot, not the expected swelling around his ankle.  Judiciously, he decided to go to the hospital where an x-ray revealed an avulsion fracture at the base of the fifth metatarsal.

When asked about the incident, the involved party declined to comment.

My foot

The fracture

Noooooo…  I’ve got a broken foot, and I have to wear a stupid cast for at least 4 weeks, and I won’t be fully healed for at least 6, and then I have to do ankle exercises to regain ankle mobility, and, and, and, and OH, THE HUMANITY!!!

It could be worse.  It doesn’t really hurt that much, and I should make a full recovery, but what bad luck.  The only redeeming factor was my injury enticed my mother who hadn’t yet left India to return to Bangalore where she pampered me and ensured I didn’t go out on New Year’s Eve and do anything foolish.  We also made a furtive trip to Mysore to see Tipu Sultan’s famous palace, but don’t tell anyone at work about that (if you're curious, look at Interactive Mysore Palace).  Speaking of which, this injury does affect my ability to do lab work (if only indirectly, because I’m still physically capable of doing lab work; I’ve just been put on a tight leash by my boss), but I’ll let you know how it turns out.