Courage and Consumerism

I could not agree more:

If We Don't Shop, the Terrorists Have Won?

That seems to be the prevailing sentiment within Mumbai's chic boutiques. Buy expensive stuff, or the terrorists have won. Eat in fancy restaurants, or the terrorists have won. Sleep in over-priced hotels, or the terrorists have won. So, we drain our bank accounts on useless crap and--we win?

I get the idea that fear tactics shouldn't break our spirit, yadda yadda, but how has courage suddenly been equated with consumerism?

The terrorists, and, to a less violent degree, the disenfranchised people they claim to represent, take issue with our free-market, unabashedly consumptive lifestyle. But maybe they don't just begrudge us our Louis Vuittons simply out of evil.

As Sameer Reddy points out in his fantastic piece for Newsweek, the deep divide between rich and poor in India (with most of the country's Muslims leaning heavily towards the poor side) is a petrie dish that grows resentment like bacteria. And resentment taken to a bloody extreme leads to violence, such as the kind we experienced last week. So maybe, instead of trying to defeat terrorism by frenetically swiping our credit cards, we could think more about how to close the gap between the have and the have nots, giving more people access to opportunity and bring them into the fold of society? Sure, it may cost us a pair of Jimmy Choos here or a summer home there, but isn't the prospect of world peace worth it?

Quick Conclusions

Suketu Mehta, whose book was my guide to Mumbai when I first arrived, writes in the NYT:

In 1993, Hindu mobs burned people alive in the streets — for the crime of being Muslim in Mumbai. Now these young Muslim men murdered people in front of their families — for the crime of visiting Mumbai. They attacked the luxury businessmen’s hotels. They attacked the open-air Cafe Leopold, where backpackers of the world refresh themselves with cheap beer out of three-foot-high towers before heading out into India. Their drunken revelry, their shameless flirting, must have offended the righteous believers in the jihad. They attacked the train station everyone calls V.T., the terminus for runaways and dreamers from all across India. And in the attack on the Chabad house, for the first time ever, it became dangerous to be Jewish in India.

The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and Australian teams have been shelved. Japanese and Western companies have closed their Mumbai offices and prohibited their employees from visiting the city. Tour groups are canceling long-planned trips.

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.

If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?

So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn’t have to be just economic.

His initial analysis is right on, but veers off course at the conclusion, which is unsettling in its familiarity to what Bush said after 9/11:

When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.

We see where that got us. Instead, I'm drawn to Anand Giridharadas' article for the NYT Week in Review:

A text-message moving among Mumbaikars expressed the uniqueness of the now: “Brothers and sisters, it’s time to wake up and do something for the country — however little — related to this or not — start today and continue it through the years — do not forget as easily as we are used to forgetting.”

Many told themselves and each other that this time would change things, just as Americans had told themselves after 9/11. But they knew their own history, and America’s, and they seemed, even as they spoke the words, to disbelieve them already.

Closer to the scene

As a follow-up to my last post, this is the best collection of personal reflections, context, and analysis I've found, so far, about the attacks:

http://www.indiauncut.com/

Mumbai

(photo Arko Datta/Reuters, NYT)

The news out of Mumbai has felt very personal, very painful, and very close to my heart. Fortunately, those closest to me in the city are safe. And yet, watching, listening, and reading the accounts of the violence as it unfolds – the senseless loss of life – is simply stunning.

When I first heard the news, it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Automatic weapons and grenades: guerrilla warfare was taking place on streets and in places that hold deep meaning for me. I used to walk by Leopold, glance at the backpackers drinking huge mugs of beer, and somehow feel superior to those who had come to India and essentially stayed home. Those thoughts are now distant and meaningless. Westerners were certainly targets, but meanwhile, scores of local commuters were gunned down in the CST railway station. Eerie pictures of the aftermath show pools of blood amongst abandoned luggage.

Over the past three days, I’ve felt lost between many worlds: the comfort of home, the memories of Mumbai, and the new images – both real and imagined – that fill my head, of Mumbai as a war zone. I feel endlessly sad and empty.

The Mumbai I experienced is a city of extremes. You see it, smell it, and feel it when you’re there, but it’s far more than sensory. It’s personal. Life is lived out in the open, and it’s messy. More than any city I’ve ever been to, you can’t just observe it; you’re forced to internalize it and reflect on your place in it. Particularly as a foreigner, your presence in a crowd or public space affects and changes what happens, just as much as what happens affects and changes you.

That which is subtle elsewhere is polarized, magnified, and held directly in front of your eyes in Mumbai. The city’s most obvious juxtaposition of extremes is excessive opulence co-existing beside wretched poverty. And for me, nowhere in Mumbai was the contrast more visceral, or more likely to start a fit of existential anguish, than at the Taj Hotel.

I visited the travel desk at the Taj every few weeks to purchase Indian Railways tickets. For a small service fee, the staff inside the hotel was always impeccably friendly and eager to serve. I could never get over how helpful and patient they were, and how earnestly they worked at their jobs. I imagine they were caught in the middle of gunfire, and it hurts my heart to think what may have happened.

I remember traveling from my apartment to the Taj on the city’s local trains, packed in amongst thousands of sweaty male bodies jostling for space. The smell of raw humanity on those trains – hot armpits one moment, raw sewage (from the tracks below) the next – is unforgettable. Once, a teenage boy was staring at me from across the crowded car. I was standing near the open door as the train shot through the city. Suddenly he pointed at me and said to his friends, “Foreigner!” Eyes turned toward me and stared. I froze, unsure what would happen. Nothing did.

The station nearest the Taj swarms with maimed stray dogs, orphaned children, and others living and suffering whose eyes haunt you. I used to stop at the Coffee Day vendor and buy a shot of sweet milky coffee on my way through the station.

A taxi from Churchgate station to the Taj costs twenty rupees (fifty cents), but occasionally a driver asks double. After living in the city for months, there’s a swelling sense of frustration and righteousness when you know you’re being cheated. The feeling isn’t really about the money; it’s more the reminder that you’re looked upon as an outsider. Frustrated, I’d catch a glimpse of the glittering lobby outside my window and remember where I’d asked to be taken. There’s a good chance the taxi driver who took me to the Taj would return home at night to the slums. I’d usually pay double.

At the Taj, an Indian doorman with a Hungarian moustache, dressed in an elaborate white suit, smiles and greets you as you approach. He pulls open a glass door, and a wall of cold filtered air comes gushing out into the hot thick night, inviting you in. The lobby is full of lavish carpets, sofas, chandeliers, and white people who don’t know, or don’t care, to dress modestly and cover their legs. I’d make my way across the oval lobby, aware that this was one place in the city where I – a foreigner – would not be singled out, solicited, or started at.

To leave the hotel, I would walk past the famed bathrooms, through a long hallway lined with some of the world’s most exclusive retail shops. I remember a Luis Vuitton and a fancy bakery at the end of the hall. I’d pass the guests-only pool, and well-dressed people along the way, most of whom walked slowly, talked loudly, and smiled.

I’d step out the door, back into the thick air. Heading west, away from the water, I always looked up: the last chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling above the sidewalk always swung in the wind, and it always made me nervous. I’d look ahead and see a dog in the road. Then there might be a woman begging for change, or a child tugging at my arm, or a thin man selling humongous balloons. I never understood the appeal of those balloons.

I’d walk past these people, away from the Taj, through Colaba. I felt like all the people out there knew where I had been. Though I continued on my way, eyes glancing down occasionally, I’d feel my heart fill with guilt, anger, and a sense of alarming injustice. I’d walk on, acutely aware that I’d gone from a carefully manufactured world of wealth, the world for those who have ‘made it’, to one so unpredictable, oppressive, and real, full of those who have not.

A friend in Mumbai tells me this attack feels painful in a different way than others before. As I write, the latest news says the siege is over. Nonetheless, the stories from the last few days are heavy and hard to understand. I can’t seem to find a narrative to make sense of what has happened, and hold it all together. I’m not sure anyone can, just yet. I’m afraid something new has emerged, something awful, something that stokes fear and seeks death. I wonder whether something even more powerful will emerge, something powerful enough to meet people who choose such horrific violence before they walk that path, and show them another way. I’m not sure what that is, but I’m ready to look. I’d bet it’s somewhere between the polar opposites, so evident and so exploited this week in Mumbai. Meanwhile, life will surely continue to be lived out in the open, messy as it is.

Home

My time in India has come to an end. I came home late last night, home to State College, home to a loving family, soft carpets, fresh air, and more silence than I’m used to. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, even after 30 hours of travel, and it was because of the silence! My ears were ringing and I heard unfamiliar voices singing in my head, shifting from one ear to the other, like someone was toggling with the mixer on a distant radio, fading out of my left ear, into my right, then back. I had to play music on my computer to get the sounds in my head to stop. Has it been so long since I heard nothing at all?

*

Today we went to Wegmans – a long-awaited event. I was in line for a sandwich when the power went out and the store went dark, momentarily. Power outages: a fact of life in India. I heard a woman behind the sandwich counter say to a coworker, once the lights came back: “well that was scary!” I smiled to myself and shook my head. You have no idea. No idea. A thousand memories flashed through my mind, and then I immediately felt pretentious and unnecessarily self-important for thinking that way. Still, a part of me wanted recognition, attention, to be appreciated, recognized, and treated differently for where I’ve been and how I’ve lived. Which is odd (though not unexpected). In India, I wanted not to be an outsider. Suddenly, now that I blend in, I'm mentally seeking reminders of how I'm different: how my experience has given me a perspective that others, here at home, may not relate to, appreciate, or fully understand. I'm interested in how, when, and why these conflicting feelings take shape in the coming weeks and months.

Anyway, I’m back, so please be in touch. I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone.

Where I'm At

I had a little moment of insight this evening. A little breakthrough. I was walking through my neighborhood alone on my way to dinner, frustrated about you name it, feeling pretty low about my present situation, simply ready be back home. It was dark outside as I walked through the alleys. My level of self-pity was amazing. It was like white noise in my head, and I was using it to block everything else out. I just wanted to go home, back to my parents’ house, sink into the couch, and be with people I love. And to be honest, it’s not like I was upset over some sort of overt injustice, unique to India. No, I was mostly just moping because my internet server had crashed, again.

Then a thought snuck through the static and into my head. I thought of a book I’ve read over a dozen times since I arrived here (it’s less than 40 pages). It’s called The Way of Man, by a Jewish philosopher named Martin Buber. “There is something,” he suggests, “that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfillment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands.”

A moment later, I saw it all quite clearly: going home, for me, has come to symbolize the same thing that going abroad symbolized before I left. That is, the solution to a lack of fulfillment.

Yes, of course that simplifies my reasons for going abroad. And going home. Still, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over here, it’s that I’ll only find fulfillment where I am. Otherwise, I’ll always be taking off to go somewhere new, to find fulfillment somewhere else, and it just doesn’t seem to work that way.

Mango Season

It's getting to be uncomfortably hot, but on the up side, it's now mango season, and there's a type of Indian mango called the Alphonso which is simply unlike any other mango I've tasted. Very sweet and rich, less of a citrus flavor, and not fibrous at all. It almost makes up for all of India's other inconveniences.

Life Before

V. Akka joined a little late on the first day of interviews. She is in her mid-thirties. Her face is handsome and strong; her biceps and forearms adorned with tattoos. She comments that her sisters are older than she, but people always think it's the other way around. V. Akka can neither read nor write. She is one of two illiterate women selected for a leadership position in this project.

She is her husband’s second wife. The first wife had three children. One committed suicide. V. Akka had two children herself, a girl and a boy. The girl died in the tsunami. Unlike other women in our interview group, her husband encouraged her to work – if only so he would have more money to drink. The work she did before the tsunami was extremely hard. She collected shells (to sell to a middleman for Rs. 100-150 (around $3) per day) and fetched prawns. She even fished on a catamaran.

To collect shells, she said, there were two methods. Sometimes she would stand in the sea and drive iron rods into the sand, to which she would attach a net. She lifted up her leg and showed us scars from misguided attempts to control the sharp metal amidst the current. Otherwise, she would stand with other women at the point where the waves break in the ocean, holding a special net under the water to catch the shells. Often times the waves would submerge the women completely.

Fetching prawns is done by hand, at night. I asked V. Akka if she ever got scared, standing out in the ocean at night. She cocked her head a little and looked at me out of the side of her right eye. The right side of her mouth turned upward, slightly. Yes, she said – but her answer was not what I expected. She and the other women with whom she worked, standing in the ocean at night, were scared of ghosts.

The Miracle

(Just for further clarification: I traveled to Tamil Nadu with a co-worker, Veeranka, who doesn’t speak the local language, Tamil, but can understand bits and pieces. Juliet, another co-worker based in Tamil Nadu, is a native of the state, and was our translator for the week. The village we visited is called Pulicut)

We arrived on Monday afternoon, with interviews scheduled to begin the following day. I was sitting on the clay floor of a cozy house in the village when I first heard about the Miracle. Now, from what I could gather, Pulicut is a fervently religious - Christian - place. At 6am every morning, two hours of (rather catchy) hymns to Mother Mary are pumped through a village-wide P.A system at the decibel level of a rock concert. Mass is broadcast every evening at 6pm over the same system, at the same decibel level. On the cast-iron gate outside the house where I stayed are the words: 'Prise The Lord' (though presumably it means Praise The Lord). I could go on. The story of the Miracle, as I heard it, is this:

Pulicut's old church had been demolished to make way for a new one. Proper prayers were not said over the old church before constructing the new one [if anyone knows what these prayers are called, please let me know]. A number of unexplained deaths soon occurred in the village. People began to suspect that Mother Mary was mad at them.

Then, a week before our arrival, a man with a cell phone camera stood outside the new church at night and snapped a picture of the flagpole. He claims that the lights atop the pole were dim at the time. No other lights were visible. Yet, what you see on the right-hand side of my photo is said to have appeared on his camera: two narrow and sinister-looking red/yellow eyes with white 'pupils' below two blinding sources of light (the pairing of that image with Mary came later).

The people in Pulicut called it a miracle. I didn't know what to call it. Any thoughts?

Interviews

In 2005, the organization where I work began a project in tsunami-affected villages of Tamil Nadu (south Indian state). Last week, I had the opportunity to visit one of these villages. The purpose of my trip was to meet and interview four women, from local villages, who work as community facilitators for the project. Their role in the project is to lead children through a process of healing. For three days, a co-worker and I spoke with these women - through a translator - about what their lives were like before the tsunami, what they were searching for after the tsunami, what was being offered, and what wasn't being offered.

The experience was one of the highlights of my 7 months in India. Have a look at some of the pictures I posted in the slide show at the bottom of the page. I'll write a little more about this experience in the coming days.

Personal Space

The other day I happened to glance at the front page of The Economic Times. Huge headlines boasted of the accomplishments of the railway minister. “Passenger fares cut for all classes & no increase in freight across the board.” I flipped to the second page: “Mumbai’s suburban trains transport about 680,000 commuters every day.” Per-day. Per Day! It’s an almost inconceivable number. That is, until you board a local train – or you find yourself amidst a crowd, like the one to the left, that is rushing to do so. More on that in a moment.

My transition to this city has been a bit of a wake up call. In Vijayawada, I didn’t have to – well – participate too much in society. For starters, I lived in a quiet, isolated compound, set back from the road. I chose to go to the grocery store once a week for biscuits and Haldiram’s, and I chose to take the 45-minute snot-blackening walk back. In that way, the invasion of my space – when it happened along the walk– was part of the adventure. In a way, I went looking for it; I wanted stories, I wanted experiences, I wanted to feel part of something - the culture - outside of work.

Here in Mumbai, when someone or something gets into my space, more often than not I’d rather it or he (it’s always a man) get out. Immediately.

I have a small studio apartment, which I love; but things keep showing up against my will. First of all, I don’t subscribe to The Economic Times. It’s delivered every day, but most days I don’t read it. Still, until this morning (I moved in three weeks ago), when a teenage newspaper boy knocked on my door, paper in hand, and asked, “Do you want?” I had no idea how to cancel the previous tenant’s subscription.

This also is the case for my (his) cable subscription. Similarly, I can’t seem to eliminate the sulfuric stench in my bathroom - though I’ll concede that the smell may actually originate from outside the window, or – and this would be far worse – from the water supply that flows to my faucets.

You see I’ve read that Mumbai’s aging sewage pipes run side-by-side, underground, with ‘potable’ water pipes, and that some of the sewage – that which doesn’t drain out into the ocean – leaks and is absorbed by the ‘fresh’ water pipes. In other words, one person’s shit ends up in another person’s sink.

And many days – of late – I’ve felt like the sink.

A studio apartment to myself is as close to personal space as is possible in this city. It’s a luxury, as is my running water. Smells of questionable origin, subscriptions that should have been discontinued, and a neighbor across the alleyway whose musical taste varies from Belinda Carlisle to “How Much is That Doggie in the Window,” are minor invasions of personal space in comparison to what it’s like to, say, travel on the local trains. So it comes, perhaps, as little surprise that I should have started to go emotionally downhill – fast – after riding the train during rush hour last week.

I board the train at its origin. There are no doors; none that close while the train is running. Pretty soon I’m folded and stuffed into the center of the massive human herd. I'm wearing my backpack. I find momentary peace in the anonymity of the crowd, until I remember that mine is the only white face amongst the 680,000 people who have chosen to join me in this car, stare at me, and fight their way into what I desperately tell myself is my space. At this point, I want nothing more than to be back in my apartment, watching someone else’s cable, bathing in someone else’s shit.

People burst onto these trains at every stop like water erupting from a broken main. I become convinced the crowd will throb and I’ll be shoved from the moving train. I grip the overhead handle, redknuckled, and try to keep a distance from the door. The ride goes on. I’m not thrown from the train, but my nerves are shot. I look around: others grip the doorframe and lean into the rushing air, heads and limbs dangling from the train. They are insane. The whole thing is insane. As for personal space? Forget it.

I don’t know how to keep these unwanted things and curious but occasionally invasive people away from me, so I’m learning to embrace it, and (if I can - hopefully) them. I can't maintain the level of frustration that I have been carrying around with me of late. I’m learning to turn inwards; to find peace in my immediate surroundings by changing my attitude - and my behavior. But it's hard. I take small steps. When the inward-searching fails, I buy air fresheners; I don’t ride second-class at rush hour; once in a while I flip on the TV. BBC. Animal Planet. And when I wake up tomorrow morning, if I’m lucky, there will not be a newspaper in front of my door.

Transition

Lots of changes taking place over here. Today is, most likely, my final day in Vijayawada. My placement in this part of the country is finished, and as I write, my bags are (almost) packed and I’m ready to get on a train. Actually the train ticket has not been confirmed, so I’ll be hauling my luggage to the station with all intentions of getting on a train. This should be interesting.

One of my bosses, whose house I've been sharing (living here at first, and eating all my meals here), planned for my departure accordingly, earlier this week:

Sivaji: “Okay, the train, maybe it is not confirmed. But…” – he pauses, inhales; a huge grin spreads across his face – “the biryani, it is confirmed!”

In India, the arrival or departure of a guest is typically the occasion for a huge meal. My departure proved no exception. Yesterday morning, a well-worn steel pot, half the size of a bathtub, sat perched atop the stove. By lunchtime I was devouring its contents: chicken biryani – a rice dish made with garlic, onions, tomatoes, chilies, nutmeg, a whole lot of ghee and oil, and an assortment of other ingredients. It was delicious and I feel enormous still this morning.

I'm not leaving India now: I'm moving to Mumbai. There, I'll move into a studio apartment and begin work at a new organization where I'll stay for five months. I'll write more about this transition in the coming weeks. Off now to finish packing...