Juhi called to tell me the wedding was on and that I should wear traditional clothing. I told her no problem. I was ecstatic, in fact. This would be my first Indian wedding. I didn’t have a sari waiting in the closet (actually still don’t and working on that) but I had acquired a satisfactory collection of the long kurta-panjama-pant-and-scarf-worn-backward outfits so commonly associated with north India. People in the know call them salwar kameez.
So I picked the outfit in my closet I thought was the fanciest: black, white and with just a hint of silver threading and embroidery. I thought it was a classy look, even elegant. Now looking back, I realize it was likely viewed by my hosts as boring, tame and under dressed to their colorful, shall we say, ornately designed outfits that don’t have a 'hint' of anything.
Juhi told me I needed to show up at her north Delhi home (way north, like another auto rickshaw ride past the last metro stop, north) at 5 p.m. It was hours before the wedding began at 9 p.m. I had to show up early because it was also her birthday — her 15th birthday — and I absolutely had to be there to meet all of her friends. “You will come, yes?” she asked.
Perhaps this seems odd, coming from a 25-year-old stranger to the eager and considerably younger host, but I was equally excited about the birthday invitation. I was warmed by her and her family’s hospitality and gentle curiosity of me, a foreigner and a single women (gasp!) who ended up so many miles away from home and family. I was curious to learn more about Juhi, too.
I met Juhi randomly and very early on in my time here when I visited Amritsar, the holiest of pilgrimage sites for Sikhs.
It’s the locale of the Golden Temple and on the border with Pakistan. Juhi and her younger sister, Kamal, were the umpteenth pilgrims who approached me and Adrienne, the stand out white tourists, with giggles and perfectly executed questions in English: “What’s your good name?” Where are you from?” “Why are you here?” “Do you like it?” “Can we take a photo?” Their mother joined in the friendly interrogation with a smile and attempted to communicate with her few words of English until body language and hand gestures took over. Their father stayed in the background, smiling a big wide grin. I realize now, apparently embarrassed by his limited English.
Through the line of questioning we discovered that we all lived in Delhi. Juhi immediately grabbed pen and paper and wrote down her address. She said it was near the Park Hotel. I thought that meant right next to the five star Park Hotel in central Delhi, meaning they lived in one of the huge bungalows in the area. I thought they were Wealthy. That’s right. Wealthy, with a capital W. Turns out, they live near the one star CITY Park Hotel, on the outskirts of Delhi.
It turns out, Juhi's family, is a quintessential member of the emerging Indian "middle class". It's that elusive "middle class" that the media keeps talking about, but depending on demographics and qualitave factors, it can shift and refer to a number of different groupings of people. Regardless, the middle class here has very little to do with American middle class families, complete with picket fences and mowed lawns. Juhi and her family live on the second floor of a government sponsored apartment complex and I label them "middle" class because, they are a four-member family and reside in a four room home. They have a living room, and count 'em — two bedrooms — which means they have the luxury of giving their children a seperate room to sleep, dress and store their clothes and keep-sakes. They also have a kitchen, one bathroom and even have a computer. No Internet, yet.They do, however, have one cell phone the whole family shares. Juhi's father manages (perhaps owns) the local taxi stand. Her mother is a teacher.
When I arrived at 5 p.m. for Juhi's birthday, decked in my salwar kameez, Juhi and her friends had just returned from school. They attend a private school (probably subsidized in some way) and were all sporting knee high socks and kilts. Juhi was giddy. The other girls, curious but not as chatty. They ran back to their various apartments to change and when the girls returned they were sporting flare jeans, cutesy t-shirts, and big bejeweled earings. (My observation is that when it comes to style, it's go bling, or go home.) They could be teenagers anywhere.The birthday "party," I found out was to be a hang out session at the newly built mall across the street from Juhi's apartment. This was Juhi's third time going to the mall since it opened six months earlier. It was her first trip there without her parents. Apparently the fact that I was in attendance was key to this arrangement.
Image of a New Delhi mall. The one I went to was
much smaller.
So, there we were. Me, the farang (foreinger), in my traditional Indian garb, and they, the teenagers in their very hip outfits, gabbing in Hindi (probably about the boys across the floor) in a two story mall on the outskirts of Delhi. I was settling into my role as token-foreign-friend-to-show-off, come chaperone, when we stepped on the lone escalator. It was catty-cornered and took up half the space on the bottom floor, as if it was partly there as a conversation piece. Juhi broke from her girl-talk to ask if I was nervous about the ride up the stairs.
"Nervous?," I repeated.
"Yeah, I am. It's only my second time on them, the moving stairs," Juhi said.
And bam. Just when you think you could be anywhere in the world, you realize where you are.
("Moving stairs" which only arrived with the malls and the subway are something of an amusement park ride for a good portion of the population who visit Delhi from rural or poorer pockets of the city. I once held the hand of a woman wearing a sari on her first escalator ride in the subway. To be frank, I would be nervous about riding the stairs, too, if I was clothed in one big long piece of fabric, hanging on the ground that could easily get snagged.)
Juhi really liked me. She, I think, saw something of a role model in me. She told me later she couldn't really identify with her mother, a woman from a small village who spoke little English. She kept saying a phrase I have heard often from young women who are constricted by family finances and traditional values: "I want to be a modern woman." She wanted an older sister. Someone female who could help her navigate the future she is being offered by the country's growing economy but that doesn't always coincide with the values and lifestyle of her mother's past. Clearly, I'm not the person who can help her negotiate that path. She will have to mold this identity for herself.
So, as not to leave you hanging about the Indian wedding experience...
In typical Indian fashion the wedding started a few hours late, around midnight. Well, the crowd showed up around 10 p.m. and I was dutifully introduced to every single guest who proceeded to ask me the same three questions (good name, which country, married?). Oh and they fed me. A lot. But I say the wedding started at midnight because that's when the bride and groom finally paraded in with fanfare. Though, none of the guests really payed attention. They were too busy dancing or eating. The major gift to the bride and groom, prominently displayed at the bride's apartment, was a brand new two-wheeler ( a motorbike).
Juhi said they would be happy.
Some business thoughts on India's middle class from the McKinsey Global Institute:
India’s rapid economic growth has set the
stage for fundamental change among the country’s consumers. The same
energy that has lifted hundreds of millions of Indians out of desperate
poverty is creating a massive middle class centered in the cities. A
new study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) suggests that if India
continues its recent growth, average household incomes will triple over
the next two decades and it will become the world’s 5th-largest
consumer economy by 2025, up from 12th now. (The full report, The ‘Bird of Gold’: The Rise of India’s Consumer Market, is available free of charge online.)
Along the way, spending patterns will shift significantly as
discretionary purchases capture a majority of consumer spending.
India’s potential should make it a high priority for most consumer
goods businesses, but to succeed in this complex market they must
overcome major challenges.
(Unfortunately, having some weird difficulty downloading photos. Will remedy this soon.)
Manas Mohanty popped his bubble gum and reclined in the comfort of his air-conditioned SUV moving past laborers washing after a day of pounding iron ore in India’s eastern town Joda, Orissa. As the car approached another stretch of highway that resembled a pothole surrounded by tiny roads, rather than a major artery carrying about 15,000 trucks a day, he grabbed onto the passenger’s side handle in preparation for the bumpy ride.
“Here we go,” Mohanty said. “Heaven-Hell. Heaven-Hell. Heaven-Hell.” The phrase mimicked the sensation of the car bouncing up into the heavens and down into hell as the driver navigated the maze of red-mud watery ditches. It was a joke describing the pathetic situation of the roads, which are the lifeline for numerous mining companies transporting iron ore to steel factories in other parts of the world.
'Heaven and Hell' doesn’t just describe the roads, it’s a description of the hellish life of the day laborers who are building the heaven that could be India’s future.
Mohanty is a local mine contractor and journalist who translated for me while I was in Orissa. Like most Indians, he embraces the contradictions and conflict of interest in his life. "You do what you have to do," he said.
So Orissa is one of those hot spot states of controversy that everyone kind of knows is not in the best of shape and a spot whose conditions and issues people rarely think about until its too late. In other words, it's easy to ignore it because it doesn't directly effect your life.
It's a state rich in minerals: iron ore, bauxite, aluminum. Steel companies see big dollar signs. Foreign and domestic companies have been in the region for decades. After India's economy opened up, the companies have come in droves.Especially in the last four years. Yet it's also the most financially indebted state in India.
The problem is that the state is largely populated by tribal communities (adivasis) living off the forests and water. So as the companies come, the tribals lose their land and have no other choice but to take jobs working in the mines. Their culture disappears. Family structures breakdown. Children don't got to school and women lose their social status. Their only pleasure is getting drunk off the local rice beer. It's often their only food, too. The central and state governments thus far have offered no incentive for the companies to invest in the communities by building roads, schools or hospitals. So in Joda and towns all over Orissa — towns producing millions in revenues for multinational companies — there are slum packets instead of neighborhoods, traditional healers instead of hospitals, child laborers instead of students.
This isn't a new phenomenon. It happened to Native Americans in the USA and Aboriginals in Australia. Some say its the cost of development. Perhaps. Except that it seems like Orissa still operates in a colonial economy. The state made more money off of alcohol tax in 2004 than tax from the minerals. The minerals then get shipped to China, which produces the steel and then China sells it back to India so another millionaire can build a mall.
I did not take any photos of my time there as I was traveling with a freelance photographer, Adam Ferguson, who took stellar shots. Follow this link to see a little bit of what we saw. Go to stories and click on Poverty in Orissa. He'll be going back to Orissa to visit some other hot spots. I would like to go back as well. We'll see. I will have a story published about the women of Joda shortly.
Yup. I'm still in Delhi. Still writing. I spent a chunk of September traveling. First stop was in the eastern state of Orissa, a state rich in mineral-ore and yet the most indebted region in the country.Then stopped in Calcutta (Kolkata) before going to the Sundarbans, a delta system in the Bay of Bengal that is sinking due to rising sea levels. More on these visits soon.
In the mean time, a story from a previous trip to Gwalior, a city in India's central state of Madyha Pradesh:
Stepping onto a Shatabdi train is a drastic contrast to the mayhem of India's railway stations. The stations are busy, smelly, dirty. Touts grab your bags insisting you need help carrying your luggage. In my case, a very small back pack. They would probably offer to carry you if they thought you'd give a good tip. Children with legs as thin as people's thumbs tug on your shirt for money, while homeless men dressed in the holy color of bright orange, as if they were sadhus from the mountains, brush their teeth while squatting on the side of the platform and then 'petooo'...they spit onto the track.
But when you board the Shatabdi, you escape into a bubble where in a rare instance, everything is fast, clean and polite.
Ah, the Shatabdi. Reclining chairs next to wide windows placed at optimum height for countryside viewing and air you don't mind breathing welcome you. The florescent lighting isn't a highlight, but the food is pretty good. Trays of veg or non-veg meals are included with every ticket. Full course meals. Dessert too. And no one, not even fresh-off-the-plane tourists have gotten sick from it. Shatabdis are the express trains that zip travellers from Delhi to some of the bigger cities in the north. Amritstr in six hours; Jaipur in five; Agra and the Taj Mahal in two.
But when I went to Gwalior on a Shatabdi, a city about about two hours south of Agra, I saw the chaotic India I've come to know. To be honest, I've sort of developed a soft spot for the craziness too.
Gwalior is just a short stop on the express train between Delhi and Bhopal, the Madhya Pradesh capital. No one knows how long the train will stay at the Gwalior station. A fact I didn't know. I figured there would be enough time for everyone to get on and everyone to get off. So when the train pulled in I lined up with fellow passengers to descend. But the passengers waiting to board had crowded around the doors and started pushing us back. Major gridlock and panic ensued in the teeny tiny train door, right next to the teeny tiny smelly train bathroom. All of the train exits were crammed with people trying to move through each other. Somehow in the middle of pushing, shoving, grabbing and Hindi jabbering, perhaps cursing, I found a hole between someone's leg and someone else's arm and made my move.Once on the platform I let out a nervous laugh and turned back to look at the pack of people — more like a rugby scrum — forcing its way into an opening meant for one.
When it came to make my return trip to Delhi I was prepared. The train pulled into Gwalior and people on the platform crowded the train cars. I put my pack in front of my head and rammed through the crowd. Push, nudge, force, grab, scratch, scream, shove. When I landed in the train a women in front of me was nursing her wrist that had been mangled while trying to keep her suitcase from leaving her side. She smiled and sat down in the seat next to me. We then waited a good 10 minutes before the train pulled away. Clearly enough time for people to calmly get on and off.
The logical thing would be to make the front of every train car an entrance, and reserve the back for descending. But then it wouldn't be India. It wouldn't be organized chaos. I don't know how, but somehow it all works here. Perhaps inefficiently and with a vigilante mentality, but people get done whatever it is that they need to get done.
Click here to see what I was doing in Gwalior
Views from Gwalior
You know you've survived the summer in India when the weather outside feels really cool and refreshing and the thermometer still reads 91 Fahrenheit.
India celebrated its 60th anniversary of independence yesterday. I pasted below an article from The Indian Express because I think it articulates some of the same points I've heard neighbors and friends make. I've also included some photos from India Gate, which like the Mall in Washington D.C., is an open park with views of memorials and official buildings and draws a huge a crowd on Independence Day. Some come with food and picnic, but more often they just bring a kite to fly in the cooling Monsoon air.
People of the midnight hour
Farah Baria
Once the party is over, birthdays have a knack of throwing up
disquieting existential questions. Laugh or ignore them at your peril,
warn the seers, for they will return to haunt you. So 60 going on 16
obviously calls for some introspection. For six decades we have
studiously sidestepped that fundamental query: has it worked? The
answer, I’m afraid, is a churlish maybe.
I don’t mean to rain on our patriotic parade. After all, with a growth rate of 9.2 per cent, a stock market that seems hooked on Ecstasy, and the exhilaration of becoming the world’s third-largest, trillion-dollar economy, the India Story is as seductive as a self-improvement book that proffers nirvana in three easy steps.
There’s a reason for this misplaced euphoria, particularly, I think, for those of us who were conceived during the pecuniary impotence of the sixties and seventies. But now that Dr Singh (prime minister) has rewritten the history, our tide has turned. Recently, a BBC poll found that an unprecedented 71 per cent of us are proud to be Indian.
And yet, after 60 years of Independence, India simply cannot shake off her past. That’s why six decades of democracy cannot erase these...
TRIBALISM: A society governed by moral and cultural control, many tribal identities are forged by ethnic hatred — the kind that has butchered thousands in communal clashes since Independence. Yet our bigots are rarely brought to book. Worse, thousands are persecuted and killed in caste wars. As for moral control, we may be a nation of one billion, but sex is still a foreign contraband that would ‘defile’ our values.
FEUDALISM: A society based on power, money and royal lineage. Thanks to our feudal mindset, elected representatives can ‘rule’ with impunity, unaccountable to their ‘subjects’. Feudalism is also why, despite a multi- party democracy, the family at 10 Janpath has remained India’s de facto sovereign for four generations.
What’s more, feudal policies ensure that nothing will disturb the status quo between India’s haves and have-nots. So while 100,000 Indians are dollar millionaires, 380 million of us live on less than a dollar a day.
COLONIALISM: A
society based on racial superiority. Indians are probably the most racist people on earth. Our scope for bigotry is boundless: a
ny caste, religion, or ethnicity serves as a worthy target, from mian and madrasi to mathadi and mallu.
PHONEY SOCIALISM: A society based on token empowerment of the powerless. So while we debate on quotas for higher education, 40 million children will never go to school. While the PM pleads with India Inc for affirmative action, nearly two thirds of us have no clean drinking water.
Happy Birthday? Not quite. Which brings us to that other existential query: where are we headed? Hard to say. Yet one thing is clear: if India’s destination is the Future, we must leave our Past behind. And remember to travel light.
If I was Hindu, or if I at least believed reincarnation, I like to think I could have been a Bollywood dancer in a former life.
Not because I am a particularly gifted dancer presently, though I've been told I could hold my own in a dance off against Aishwarya Rai, one of Bollywood's more popular stars (clearly someone was brown nosing). Rather I like to think I was a Bolllywood dancer once upon a time because Bollywood dancing is the art of looking cool while reveling in silliness. Because how serious can you take yourself when you're dancing to lyrics that proclaim: "Shakalakah Boom Boom." My understanding is that the words are supposed to mimic a heartbeat.
Perhaps this could all be said about Britney Spears, but somehow Spears and her pop peers don't hold a candle to these dancers; partly because Spears' success evolved from outdoing her sluttyness and these dancers are fun to watch fully clothed.
Bollywood dance is transfixing. Your laughing with the dancers and the cheesy-ness, because you're escaping with them into this world where women move in their saris with seamless grace, men dance and lip-sync just as much as women and where the only traffic in the streets are the backup dancers. Don't forget the perfectly timed sunset.
The top songs of the day usually coincide with the top bollywood movie of the day. At present I believe one of the movies is Guru. The song is Barso Re (something about asking the clouds to open up and rain). That's my current choice, anyway. The movies, the music,the famous people together create a $2 billion industry and helps make India the only country in the world where Hollywood can't pull a large portion of the audience from the local cinema. Since Hollywood can't beat Bollywood, they are going to try and join 'em. They've entered the world of Bollywood movie making.
Bollywood dance combines classical Indian dance, Punjabi bhangra, belly dancing and hip-hop. The result is a high-inducing medley of shoulder pumping, wide-eye glancing from left to right and back, neck bobbling and hip wiggling choreography that's appropriate for weddings and night clubs alike. I don't think the same could be said about Beyonce's little butt thrust.
All this is just to say, Bollywood dance makes me smile.
Come on. Who couldn't use a little more 'cheese' in past, present or future lives?
People spend a lot of time talking about change in India. Everyday, someone is debating the country's social change, political change, economic change. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. That's why they're debating.
But I do know about a different kind of change. The change as in the cash. As in, ‘can I have change for my 100 rupee bill, PUH-LEASE?’
Why is it that no one in this country, which prides itself on its service sector, ever provides the service of having change?
Yesterday, a day filled with sporadic monsoon showers, I had to find change for a rickshawwalah, a fruitwalah, another rickshawwalah, and the bank teller. Yes, even the bank — a place that by definition is a house of cash – did not have change.
It started when I hopped in a rickshaw to meet a friend for lunch. All I had on me was one 100-rupee bill. It was a 30-rupee ride. I asked the rickshaw driver for change. He had none. Shocker. So I went into a convenience store and exchanged my 100-rupee bill for ten smaller pieces.Then went back and gave the rickshaw driver the exact amount.
Later on, I went to the newsstand. I wanted three papers for 9 rupees. I wanted change for my next rickshaw ride so I gave the newspaperwalah a 100-rupee bill with hopes he would break it. He did not have enough change. So I gave him my remaining 10-rupee bill.
I got in the rickshaw to go home. Thirty-rupee ride. Again, I was left with 100-rupee bill. The driver had no change. So I walked over to the nearby fruitwalah to get change. He could only break my bill if I bought something. T.K. Ji. (O.K. sir). I'll take some mangos, please.
Later in the day I made my monthly bank trip to turn my cash into a check for rent. The service fee was 56 rupees. I gave 100 rupees. The teller had 40 rupees, but was missing the 4 rupees change. He told me to go to the other teller. The other teller did not have change in his register either. Come on people. Work with me. Eventually one of the tellers went through his own pockets and made an exchange of a 10-rupee bill in the bank’s register for ten one rupee coins. Four were handed over to me with the four ten-rupee bills. Well at least I have the right change to pay for my rickshaw ride home.
Moral of the story:
Ten rupee bills may only be worth a quarter in the U.S., but they are gold in India.
India inaugurated their first woman president this week.
An historic occasion worthy of headline news? Of course. But a day that will mark a change in the lives of women in India…doubtful.
Headline skimming on the Internet makes it seem like Pratibha Patil’s swearing in as president is a social triumph for India and her women.
Gone will be the days of female foeticide, sexual harassment, and dowry. Well, that’s what supporters of the new president are quoted as saying.
When you take into account that India runs on a parliamentary system, (i.e. the president is the mascot, prime minister is the captain) it brings to light concerns voiced by women leaders here that while many women do hold diverse and high ranking positions in government, they are often there as show pieces who fill quotas but lack real voice in policy and decision making.
Women playing in power but lacking in power plays is not a new concern from women’s rights groups and is one that exists worldwide. It is, however, interesting to see the debate play out in India -- a country that simultaneously reveres the feminine grace of a woman wearing a bright-colored sari while riding sidesaddle on the back of a motorcycle, her hair flowing in the wind, and yet dreads the birth of a baby girl.
To include the voice of an Indian woman on the topic, I pasted below an excerpt from an editorial in The Times of India:
CYNICAL CONTRARIAN: Women on top? Poof!
26 Jul 2007
Diya Sengupta
“…Truth be told, one was downright disgusted, and insulted, when a woman as president of India was equated with the overall empowerment of women in the country…On another note, it wouldn't be far-fetched to compare a woman president with the common women of India. Women in our land have been worshipped as Durga (goddess of war), Saraswati (goddess of knowledge) and what not…
To an outsider it would seem that the women of India enjoy high status and respect, equaled only by the reverence we reserve for our gods. And they do, but only in name. On one hand, we Indians chant various incantations praising women and on the other, we feel no qualms in suppressing them in more ways than can be counted. The same ghar ki Lakshmi' is beaten to pulp if she fails to bring a hefty dowry or bear a boy child.
And that is just one example of the many atrocities inflicted upon women. Women in India, like the president, have a ceremonial high post in society. Go ahead, fete Pratibha on her victory. Just don't call it women's empowerment. It is a symbolic sham and means very little.”
Full editorial text here.
Got Beef?
The bustling beef market is there for none to see
Maybe it’s not so hard to get a steak around here, but I think I’ll stick with the mutton.
Some other recently published stories for your reading and procrastinating pleasure:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0614/p13s02-wosc.html
http://asap.ap.org/stories/1515251.s
Just when I thought this city had no more surprises, I wake up and read the newspaper.
The Asian Age, a well respected, national newspaper, ran a story on the front page this weekend with the headline, "Boy 6, gets 'daughter' married."
The story explains that the 6-year-old boy, Prince, was in his previous life the father of Rita, 19, a girl from a village in Magaria. Rita's father was murdered in 2001. After reconnecting with his previous family, Prince helped his daughter find a husband and performed all the traditional rituals of the father in the wedding.
It ran on the bottom of the page and underneath a story about Bush wanting Blair to be a special envoy to the Middle East.
The story is not available on-line but here are some juicy excerpts:
"Prince was barely one and a half years old when he started saying that he wanted to go to Magaria. In the beginning we did not understand what he wanted, but about two years ago he took the name of some people and said that they were all his relatives. He insisted on meeting them so we decided to probe further," says Naresh Shakya, the boy's father in his present birth.
The boy was brought to Magaria village and, surprisingly, he guided his father to his house in his previous birth...Prince also recalled how he had been shot dead when was working in the fields with his nephew.
"Most of the doctors I consulted say the boy will start forgetting his previous birth as he grows older, and we are waiting for that because we do not want to push him into anything," Shakya said.
