I was lucky recently to have an opportunity to gain a real, albeit small-scale, insight into what young Indians think about the state of their country and its society. This opportunity presented itself while I was interviewing final year students in the grounds of a college at one of India’s most prestigious universities. What these informal discussions revealed about what some Indians in their early twenties think was largely negative to my mind. I admit that ‘fear and loathing’ is an exaggeration; ignorance and condescension would be a better way to describe the opinions that were expressed.
We were talking about rural India and about conditions in the slums that are a part of every city in the subcontinent. Knowing that very few well-off urban Indians know much about the realities of village life or even those of slum life, I was not expecting much insight. But I was surprised at how little insight there was. People living in slums were described to me by two different sources as being “criminal”, while the rural existence of 70% of India’s population was seen as “simple” by another. Associating poverty with crime is of course something that a great many people do. There is everywhere, in any country, a gut reaction that the majority amongst the middle-class experience when faced with poverty. It’s a feeling not far from disgust. This is brought out clearly in a recent documentary made for Channel Four in the UK, where an upper middle class girl and a working class girl spend a day together. Before they meet, the girl who goes on skiing holidays declares that the other is going to be a ‘chav’. Chavs; travelers; the underclass in Britain; they have long been seen as a primary source of criminal activity. In India, slum dwellers may well occupy the same space in many better-off people’s minds. Equally, spinning a utopian idyll out of rural life is a well worn activity. M.K. Gandhi was a great fan of the uncomplicated and harmonious existence that, supposedly, is village life in India.
I was surprised partly because several of the students I spoke to had spent time in villages or were from semi-rural areas themselves (although not from agricultural families). One had even been into a slum for a day, which is saying a lot for a university educated Delhiite. Revealingly though, this visit had been organised by a college environmental group with the aim of educating slum dwellers about how bad the use of plastic bags was for the environment. I had to stop myself from suggesting that going to the wealthiest enclave of the city with the same message would have made more sense (though been less rewarding for the soul). Perhaps this ignorance is borne of the particular way many middle-class lives are lived in India. Living in something of a bubble, effectively cut off from the deprivation around them, many people, young as much as old, seem unable to fully comprehend that reality even when they look closely.
But these young people were actually telling me they wanted to do something about inequality; they wanted to devote themselves to social service. Despite their ignorance they were aware that something wasn’t working in society and there was value in being part of the fixing. This puts them well ahead of the morally lost campaign launched by the Times of India newspaper, ‘India Poised’. By describing half of India as a “leash” holding back the progress of the rest (this ‘half’ cannot be other than those who don’t read the English Times, live in the booming metro cities or consume conspicuously), this campaign not only effectively acknowledges the bubble of middle class urban existence but denigrates all those excluded from it. This belief in a bright future for India, if only the poor would get up off their backs, can even be expressed in terms that deny the very existence of India’s 300 million or so citizens who are officially poor. For example there is a Facebook group entitled ‘India is not a third world country’. If not ‘developing’, what is India? Almost developed, as some have told me confidently? Riding on the Delhi Metro, sitting in a multiplex, shopping in a gleaming mall, one might well think that. But it would mean being duped by aspiration and blind to the reality of life outside the enclaves of progress.
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Monday, 3 November 2008
Into the Mountains - Part II
It was with a certain amount of relief that we left the hotel in Pahaganj for the domestic airport and our flight to Leh. The room was not very clean and had just one small window that looked out onto a cement wall. Had we stayed there any longer the surroundings would have become quite depressing.
After the heat and grime of Delhi, the air-conditioned relative luxury of the plane was extremely welcome. And the flight to Leh was spectacular. Although there was little to see for the first hour or so, after that we were into the mountains and soon the snow peaked ranges were all around us. Cloud drifted beneath the tips of the peaks and as we slowly lost altitude the lower slopes could be seen clearly, their jagged outcrops of rock casting shadows in the morning sun. There were a few audible gasps in the cabin as the plane banked and the sun glinted off snow fields higher up. The sky was a perfect blue: it was one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. I stared long and hard out of the small window, trying to imprint the view on my memory. As we started the final descent to Leh’s tiny airport we flew across a parched valley floor, a river coursing through it with the sun reflecting off it too.
Standing on the tarmac in Leh we took our first breath of really fresh, unpolluted air in India. It was crisp and delicious and I recognised the familiar smell of the Himalayas; a smell that I can’t describe. As we had just climbed 10,000ft in under two hours we spent our first day in Leh relaxing. I quickly found that even the smallest exertion could give me a head-rush and send dark spots dancing in front of my eyes. We spent most of that first day sitting on a small terrace at the Oriental Guest House, our chairs shadowed by tall shrubs and our hands clutching books. I would occasionally order small china cups of sweet chai. The terrace was separated from another, bigger, one by a neatly ordered vegetable garden with tidy irrigation channels, which an old woman in a headscarf tended carefully. Surrounding the terraces and garden were the three large Ladakhi houses comprising the Guest House. On the larger terrace we ate our breakfast and sometimes lunch. Breakfast in particular was excellent: banana and honey pancakes for Dani and omelet with soft, exquisite, freshly-made Ladhaki bread (an extravagant cousin of the pitta bread) for me. With butter and homemade apricot jam or stuffed with ketchup laden omelet these were heaven. From both terraces there was a stunning view of the distant snowcapped mountains.
We were only able to get out and explore Leh on our second day, after an eagerly-looked-forward-to sleep in a bed with an actual duvet and comfortable mattress. Leh is a small town with dusty lanes leading away from a busy centre with heavily laden trinket and carpet shops, rooftop pizza restaurants, internet cafes and backpacker tour shops. There are also lots of Indian Army personnel: in regulation-green jeeps, piled into trucks and out on the street in matching running gear. Leh is of course near India’s contested borders with China and Pakistani Kashmir, both of which have been fought over in the last fifty years.
The centre is overlooked by the square, flat-roofed shape of the Palace, built in 1553; its sheer walls rising up from a rocky promontory that juts out of the tangled lanes of the old town. Seen from different parts of the centre the Palace forms an impressive backdrop to less regal but equally old shops and houses. It was built when Leh and the Tibetan capital Lhasa maintained regular trade connections and as a result the Palace bares a strong resemblance to the Potola Palace of the Dali Llama. Although we were put off actually entering the place by the exorbitant entrance fee, we did walk up to get a closer look at the outside.
It was almost midday when we headed past the town’s principal mosque and into the narrow lanes of the old town on our way to the Palace entrance. It was very hot in the sun, but once we were well into the old town we were able to keep in the shade of the almost featureless light brown brick houses on either side of us. Down the centre of the lane ran a waste water channel and in the cool patches by the base of the walls lay silently slumbering dogs, their thick coats designed for Leh’s harsh winters and not the summer’s fierce sun. As the lane narrowed further and the incline increased appreciably, there were twists to the left that gave us glimpses of the steep stone walls of the Palace ahead. After only ten minutes of walking we found ourselves within twenty feet of the base of the walls and looked back to see the town stretched out in front of us, bleak, craggy hills in the middle distance and beyond them the empty air above the valley floor where the Indus River snaked below the tall mountains rearing up with their white slopes to the clouds above.
Beyond the Palace and on an even higher mound was a Gompa, a Buddhist monastery. We managed the steeper climb up to this point later in the week, but even after several days of acclimatization the uphill stretch on a dusty, tightly zigzagging path was painful and made us lightheaded. The Gompa was closed when we visited it, but the view from that height was spectacular: the mountains looked even more beautiful from high ground and those nearest to us were a canvas for the shifting patterns of the shadows thrown by the slowly moving clouds above. The Gompa was interesting to see from outside: its 500 year old exterior was rough and weathered, its small wooden doors and window-shutters locked shut and uninviting. We learnt in the middle of our week in Leh that the plain exteriors of Gompas hide enchanting interiors.
The first Gompa we actually entered was Spituk, a short bus journey from the town and past a large Indian Air Force base. We took something of a leap of faith to get there. The most common method of getting anywhere outside Leh seemed to be by big jeep, but balking at the cost of hiring one, we decided to try local transport instead. And so we spent half an hour standing in the sun in an exposed minibus park, our noses and throats assaulted by acrid diesel fumes and the sharp stench of urine, before we managed to find and board a bus that would pass the monastery. We paid Rs.7 each for the twenty minute ride. But we were not entirely sure we had gotten on the right bus until the ticket collector motioned at us to get down at a dusty corner of the main road, where an untarmacced road led off over a bridge and up to where we could see the Gompa nestled against the top of a small hill. We walked the 400 metres from where the bus dropped us to the monastery’s steep entrance steps in the blazing sun of 2:00 in the afternoon and were relieved to find a small shop outside the main gate where we could buy water. Opposite the shop stood a huge prayer wheel, perhaps a metre and a half high and three quarters of a metre in diameter, which one set in clockwise motion by pulling on a metal handrail at the bottom of the drum. As the drum-like wheel turned a piece of metal at the top hit a small bell, making it clang in a dully melodious way.
Inside the Gompa it was cool and silent. Lying in the corridor that the entrance doorway opened onto was a scruffy dog that had been asleep, but which looked up with reproachful eyes as we stepped in out of the sun. The monk that appeared after we called “hello” showed us up a flight of stairs to the wood-paneled prayer room, where golden statues of sitting Bodhisattvas were positioned behind glass in a floor-to-ceiling cabinet covering one wall. It was dark in the small, low-ceilinged room and the smell of smoky Ladakhi incense permeated everything. We took our time inspecting the small figures behind their glass panes, offerings of rupee notes stacked on the ledges in front of them, and taking in the peace of the still room, in no way hurried by the expressionless monk who lingered outside with the key to lock up the room. When we were done we walked further up the hill, still within the monastery’s walls, and ducked under a mass of fluttering prayer flags in red, white, blue, green and yellow to enter an older part of the site. Here there was a grotto-like room: small but with a high ceiling, no natural light and lumpen, misshapen walls. Occupying most of the floor space bar a small area to stand in were massive figures, sooty-looking in the gloom and one much larger than the others. The face of this figure was obscured by material, no doubt to protect us from the horror of its features. In its brawny, upraised arms were various weapons and from its groin protruded an obvious symbol of fertility. The gloomy room with its eerie statues and flickering electric bulbs was fascinating and spooky in equal measure. On our way out we paused to blink in the sunlight. From a doorway we had not noticed on our way in, a voice called out goodbye and was followed by the silent emergence from the shadows of the head and red robes of a monk who waved a hand at us in farewell.
After the heat and grime of Delhi, the air-conditioned relative luxury of the plane was extremely welcome. And the flight to Leh was spectacular. Although there was little to see for the first hour or so, after that we were into the mountains and soon the snow peaked ranges were all around us. Cloud drifted beneath the tips of the peaks and as we slowly lost altitude the lower slopes could be seen clearly, their jagged outcrops of rock casting shadows in the morning sun. There were a few audible gasps in the cabin as the plane banked and the sun glinted off snow fields higher up. The sky was a perfect blue: it was one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. I stared long and hard out of the small window, trying to imprint the view on my memory. As we started the final descent to Leh’s tiny airport we flew across a parched valley floor, a river coursing through it with the sun reflecting off it too.
Standing on the tarmac in Leh we took our first breath of really fresh, unpolluted air in India. It was crisp and delicious and I recognised the familiar smell of the Himalayas; a smell that I can’t describe. As we had just climbed 10,000ft in under two hours we spent our first day in Leh relaxing. I quickly found that even the smallest exertion could give me a head-rush and send dark spots dancing in front of my eyes. We spent most of that first day sitting on a small terrace at the Oriental Guest House, our chairs shadowed by tall shrubs and our hands clutching books. I would occasionally order small china cups of sweet chai. The terrace was separated from another, bigger, one by a neatly ordered vegetable garden with tidy irrigation channels, which an old woman in a headscarf tended carefully. Surrounding the terraces and garden were the three large Ladakhi houses comprising the Guest House. On the larger terrace we ate our breakfast and sometimes lunch. Breakfast in particular was excellent: banana and honey pancakes for Dani and omelet with soft, exquisite, freshly-made Ladhaki bread (an extravagant cousin of the pitta bread) for me. With butter and homemade apricot jam or stuffed with ketchup laden omelet these were heaven. From both terraces there was a stunning view of the distant snowcapped mountains.
We were only able to get out and explore Leh on our second day, after an eagerly-looked-forward-to sleep in a bed with an actual duvet and comfortable mattress. Leh is a small town with dusty lanes leading away from a busy centre with heavily laden trinket and carpet shops, rooftop pizza restaurants, internet cafes and backpacker tour shops. There are also lots of Indian Army personnel: in regulation-green jeeps, piled into trucks and out on the street in matching running gear. Leh is of course near India’s contested borders with China and Pakistani Kashmir, both of which have been fought over in the last fifty years.
The centre is overlooked by the square, flat-roofed shape of the Palace, built in 1553; its sheer walls rising up from a rocky promontory that juts out of the tangled lanes of the old town. Seen from different parts of the centre the Palace forms an impressive backdrop to less regal but equally old shops and houses. It was built when Leh and the Tibetan capital Lhasa maintained regular trade connections and as a result the Palace bares a strong resemblance to the Potola Palace of the Dali Llama. Although we were put off actually entering the place by the exorbitant entrance fee, we did walk up to get a closer look at the outside.
It was almost midday when we headed past the town’s principal mosque and into the narrow lanes of the old town on our way to the Palace entrance. It was very hot in the sun, but once we were well into the old town we were able to keep in the shade of the almost featureless light brown brick houses on either side of us. Down the centre of the lane ran a waste water channel and in the cool patches by the base of the walls lay silently slumbering dogs, their thick coats designed for Leh’s harsh winters and not the summer’s fierce sun. As the lane narrowed further and the incline increased appreciably, there were twists to the left that gave us glimpses of the steep stone walls of the Palace ahead. After only ten minutes of walking we found ourselves within twenty feet of the base of the walls and looked back to see the town stretched out in front of us, bleak, craggy hills in the middle distance and beyond them the empty air above the valley floor where the Indus River snaked below the tall mountains rearing up with their white slopes to the clouds above.
Beyond the Palace and on an even higher mound was a Gompa, a Buddhist monastery. We managed the steeper climb up to this point later in the week, but even after several days of acclimatization the uphill stretch on a dusty, tightly zigzagging path was painful and made us lightheaded. The Gompa was closed when we visited it, but the view from that height was spectacular: the mountains looked even more beautiful from high ground and those nearest to us were a canvas for the shifting patterns of the shadows thrown by the slowly moving clouds above. The Gompa was interesting to see from outside: its 500 year old exterior was rough and weathered, its small wooden doors and window-shutters locked shut and uninviting. We learnt in the middle of our week in Leh that the plain exteriors of Gompas hide enchanting interiors.
The first Gompa we actually entered was Spituk, a short bus journey from the town and past a large Indian Air Force base. We took something of a leap of faith to get there. The most common method of getting anywhere outside Leh seemed to be by big jeep, but balking at the cost of hiring one, we decided to try local transport instead. And so we spent half an hour standing in the sun in an exposed minibus park, our noses and throats assaulted by acrid diesel fumes and the sharp stench of urine, before we managed to find and board a bus that would pass the monastery. We paid Rs.7 each for the twenty minute ride. But we were not entirely sure we had gotten on the right bus until the ticket collector motioned at us to get down at a dusty corner of the main road, where an untarmacced road led off over a bridge and up to where we could see the Gompa nestled against the top of a small hill. We walked the 400 metres from where the bus dropped us to the monastery’s steep entrance steps in the blazing sun of 2:00 in the afternoon and were relieved to find a small shop outside the main gate where we could buy water. Opposite the shop stood a huge prayer wheel, perhaps a metre and a half high and three quarters of a metre in diameter, which one set in clockwise motion by pulling on a metal handrail at the bottom of the drum. As the drum-like wheel turned a piece of metal at the top hit a small bell, making it clang in a dully melodious way.
Inside the Gompa it was cool and silent. Lying in the corridor that the entrance doorway opened onto was a scruffy dog that had been asleep, but which looked up with reproachful eyes as we stepped in out of the sun. The monk that appeared after we called “hello” showed us up a flight of stairs to the wood-paneled prayer room, where golden statues of sitting Bodhisattvas were positioned behind glass in a floor-to-ceiling cabinet covering one wall. It was dark in the small, low-ceilinged room and the smell of smoky Ladakhi incense permeated everything. We took our time inspecting the small figures behind their glass panes, offerings of rupee notes stacked on the ledges in front of them, and taking in the peace of the still room, in no way hurried by the expressionless monk who lingered outside with the key to lock up the room. When we were done we walked further up the hill, still within the monastery’s walls, and ducked under a mass of fluttering prayer flags in red, white, blue, green and yellow to enter an older part of the site. Here there was a grotto-like room: small but with a high ceiling, no natural light and lumpen, misshapen walls. Occupying most of the floor space bar a small area to stand in were massive figures, sooty-looking in the gloom and one much larger than the others. The face of this figure was obscured by material, no doubt to protect us from the horror of its features. In its brawny, upraised arms were various weapons and from its groin protruded an obvious symbol of fertility. The gloomy room with its eerie statues and flickering electric bulbs was fascinating and spooky in equal measure. On our way out we paused to blink in the sunlight. From a doorway we had not noticed on our way in, a voice called out goodbye and was followed by the silent emergence from the shadows of the head and red robes of a monk who waved a hand at us in farewell.
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