O INDIA!
THE DIVINE CIRCUSWhen my girlfriend dragged me kicking and screaming to India this past January (she presented me with a fait accompli in the form of an Air India ticket), I was suitably horrified by my first encounter with the sub-continent, where, evidently, life is "dirt cheap".
Ostensibly, the reason for this journey was to attend a puja at an ancient Saivite temple in Sri Kalahasti. Following that, we embarked on a slow crawl through Andhra Pradesh to Puttaparthi and, later, Whitefield (in Tamil Nadu), home to two ashrams run by Satya Sai Baba -- India's greatest present-day holy man and "avatar" of Krishna.
It was in Whitefield that I finally tired of the divine circus and retired each afternoon to the rooftop of our small hotel -- just outside the Brindavan ashram -- with a copy of The Times of India, or one of the lesser national papers. My time on the rooftop was spent studying the passing clouds, blue sky, and circling hawks, by day, and the rising moon and stars, at night. This elective perch edited out the messy scene below -- the squalor and the non-stop bazaar -- and gave me time as well to creatively read the newspapers.
There were many telling episodes -- above and below the roofline -- and it was this aerie that provided me with the necessary distance to reflect on the day-to-day experiences. Far from hiding out, I was sorting the visual, olfactory, aural, and intellectual impressions of life below. My primary concern became why the Indian government -- from top to bottom -- is so hopelessly corrupt. The fact that many ministers and bureaucrats from Delhi and elsewhere daily stop by either Puttaparthi or Whitefield for private consultations with Sai Baba seems to have made only a relatively small impact on the wide-ranging mismanagement of almost everything in India. The state-by-state (fiefdom-by-fiefdom) arrangement of Indian governance has led to a type of nationwide provincialism that is extremely hard to understand, let alone justify, when most Indians live in abject poverty. The cities are incredibly polluted -- by any standard -- and sanitation seems to be along the lines of the Middle Ages in most Indian villages and small towns. In Whitefield, typical of this ethical morass, the canalized stream wending through the town is choked with garbage and water hyacinths thriving on the effluent oozing below.
The daily papers were full of the then latest Indo-Pak agitation. The airport in Bombay, whereby we passed en route to Bangalore at just after midnight, now bears the brunt of most all flights to/from India from/to Europe, as Pakistan's airspace is deemed too dangerous for overflights. Subsequently, all flights to Delhi are routed through Bombay. In Bombay (Mumbai), the retinue of soldiers processing passengers is reminiscent of the security details in U.S. airports, but with one major exception. There are no private security firms, staffed by minimum wage drones, screening luggage and groping passengers in India. All such measures are carried out by military and police units with an efficiency that would startle American airlines.
THE DISSIDENT & THE PLAYBOY
I was particularly struck, however, by the Curious Case of Arundhati Roy, threatened with contempt of court for protesting too noisily about the government's plans to build a series of massive new dams on the Narmada River, in the middle of some of the poorest lands of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The Sardar Sarovar Dam in eastern Gujarat alone will displace an estimated 300,000 people (PAPs: Project Affected Persons), wreak wide-spread environmental damage, and provide a mere whiff of new electricity for diesel-powered India. Later, in March, the Supreme Court did in fact slam Roy in the slammer for criticizing both the project itself and the politics of the project. She had the temerity to suggest that the court was merely rubber-stamping a very big, very corrupt operation favored by the Indian political and economic elite. Roy, 1997 Booker-prize winning author of the The God of Small Things, was expected to step back or else. She elected to spend her day in jail (it was considered by the court a "symbolic jailing") and pay her fine (2,000 rupees) instead.In the papers at the same time Roy was being threatened with summary justice was the woeful tale of Salman Khan (best known simply as Salman), playboy Bollywood hunk who was called before the Bombay police for questioning after intentionally crashing his car into the car of the actress Aishwarya Rai, plus breaking down her door, and etcetera. Apparently Rai was not interested in Salman's profound esteem and declarations of crazy love. According to The Times editorial entitled "Stalker Salman", her parents were considering a restraining order. The Bollywood Don Juan was summoned "to the Thana and given a talking to by Assistant Commissioner of Police Ambadas Pote at the crime branch office where he was questioned for more than 30 minutes"* [italics added]. He was asked to be "on his best behavior" by the police, which for Salman means dropping his shirt at the flash of a skirt (or sari) and further compounding interest in the "sexiest male star in Bollywood."
Meanwhile, Arundhati Roy has announced publicly that she intends to stay put in New Delhi and risk come what may as India and Pakistan threaten each other with nuclear annihilation. Someone might want to check on the whereabouts of Salman. Perhaps he has high-tailed it for god knows where until the "weather" clears.
Gavin Keeney (06/03/02)
A travelogue ("Indialogue") detailing the author's trip to India in January 2002 may be found in Serious Real - The Anti-Journal 2:1. Arundhati Roy's book dealing with the Narmada Dam fiasco (and other such things) is suitably entitled Power Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2001)
*The Times of India, January 25, 2002, p. 8
SELECT OUTTAKES
ARMAGEDDON - Arundhati Roy - "My husband's writing a book about trees. He has a section on how figs are pollinated, each fig by its own specialised fig wasp. There are nearly 1,000 different species of fig wasps. All the fig wasps will be nuked, and my husband and his book." (The Guardian Unlimited, 06/02/02)
ESSAY - The Greater Common Good (04/99) - Arundhati Roy's controversial essay on the Sardar Sarovar Dam - "I suddenly remembered the tender concern with which the Supreme Court judges in Delhi (before vacating the legal stay on further construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam) had enquired whether tribal children in the resettlement colonies would have children's parks to play in. The lawyers representing the Government had hastened to assure them that indeed they would, and, what's more, that there were seesaws and slides and swings in every park. I looked up at the endless sky and down at the river rushing past and for a brief, brief moment the absurdity of it all reversed my rage and I laughed."
A SHORT HISTORY - Narmada Dam: A History of Controversy - "If completed, the Sardar Sarovar dam will be about 450 feet high, submerge nearly 40,000 hectares of land and displace a quarter of a million people." (BBC World Service, 07/29/99)
JAIL-TIME - Arundhati Roy Jailed - "A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled that 'freedom of speech is subject to reasonable restrictions' and that the court's sanctity had to be maintained." (BBC World Service, 03/04/02)
INTERVIEW W/ ARUNDHATI ROY - Dangerous Time - "'Whatever they say to me, I'm prepared to deal with it. The most likely outcome is that they will insult me and humiliate me and let me off. But I'm prepared to go to jail,' Roy said yesterday, showing off her new plastic moustache. 'First I'll become a man, then reasonable,' she points out. 'Then pro-dam, pro-bomb and pro-war.'" (The Guardian Unlimited, 03/06/02)
LITERARY EFFECTS - A Life Full of Beginnings and No Ends - A literary life, w/ links
BOLLYWOOD - Aishwarya Rai (Galatta) - Salman Khan (Naomi & Mayuko's Sweet Salman Kahn Website) - Bollywood Blitz (India Oz)
FAMOUS BROADSIDES - The Algebra of Infinite Justice (09/29/01) / Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) (04/13/03) / The New American Century (01/16/03)
