Twelve hours in Mumbai

So I had 12 hours to spend in Mumbai (why? Don't ask...). I arrived in the central train station at 9 a.m., and had to be back to catch my 24-hour train to Delhi by 9 p.m.

Naturally, I knew nothing about Mumbai save for what I'd read in Suketu Mehta's book and the 11/26 coverage, and (of course!) what I'd seen from watching Slumdog Millionaire umpteen times as it played on loop on an interminable Emirates flight. Images of Muslim-Hindu riots, a smoking Oberoi Hotel and slums. SO well-informed.

So:

9 a.m. The train station is a zoo. People sit on overstuffed bags, force their way up crowded stairways out of the station. I stow my bag in a locker-room type place, haggle over a city map and head out into blinding sunlight.


9:15 a.m. Stop at a corner to get my bearings, buy paan from a paanwalla from Lucknow. Leave with betel-stained teeth, little comprehension of where in the city I am.




9:30 a.m. Ocean! At Chowpatty Beach. Glorious in the already stultifying heat. Wade through warm water to amusement of passersby. A young couple perches, legs swinging, on the seawall just above a trash heap where a family has set up a house.







10 a.m. Stop to watch a cricket match at the Police Gymkhana. Still don't understand how this game works.



11 a.m. Made it to Kalbadevi. Wander through crush of markets, small stalls with vendors vending cotton, jewellery, toys, fruit juice, electronics. Crawford Market is a quiet respite from the chaos, with neatly stacked heaps of fruit gleaming in the bizarre, grey, gothic building. Adjacent pet market reeks.



12 p.m. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus) is imposing stone. What's odd isn't that the enormous gothic building is out of place; it's that they seem entirely natural in a city by Portuguese and British flavours. The place is packed, but the nearby shady park is closed to the public. WTF?




1 p.m. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum--are we noticing a trend here, courtesy of Bal Thackeray et al?) is closed on Mondays. Argh. But the nearby Jehangir art museum offers air-conditioned respite from the crush of activity and heat on the street. And some gorgeous b&w photos.


3 p.m. Gateway of India isn't nearly as impressive as I had hoped. Just lots of tourists, lots of people looking to scam tourists. Rahhhh colonialism.





3:30 p.m. Taj hotel isn't looking too shabby, under the circumstances. Clientele frighteningly posh.


3:45 p.m. Vendors can't figure out why I laugh at their oversized oblong balloons. Sigh.



4 p.m. Less than 100 metres from India Gate is a collection of ramshackle lean-tos next to a beach that seems to be used both as fishing dock and public toilet. Um, minor problem? (the slum itself, however, is the most friendly place I've yet encountered in this city)






5 p.m. Wander through colourful and fascinating mazes of Colaba, end up in a navy base. Feel distinctly unwelcome. Manage to grab public bus going...somewhere.



6 p.m. End up in Nehru Park in Malabar Hill after bus ride to the north of the city, and then back. The park is crowded with young families, elderly people on strolls, young couples.


8 p.m. Try to walk back to train station, get hopelessly lost (how is that possible? Map made them look so close), take most unreasonably expensive cab in the history of the world.


9 p.m. Back at station and manage to almost miss train thanks to scramble at luggage check. Luggage attendant finds this hilarious. Still think I should charge for entertaining entire subcontinents with foreigner antics.

Soldiers, separatists and soggy houseboats

Kashmir feels like a place under siege.


The northern valley, which Jawaharlal Nehru famously described as " the face of the beloved that one sees in a dream and that fades away on awakening," is supposed to be known for its natural beauty and the trekking in nearby mountains.


But far more striking for any visitor are the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, police and paramilitaries patrolling every inch of the still-disputed territory.


A brief recap by someone who knows precious little about, um, anything: Both India and Pakistan lay claim to all of Kashmir, which was divided along a Line of Control in 1972 following decades of conflict after partition in 1947. Over and above bilateral hostility and violence, a local insurgency (fuelled, so India says, by money, arms and militants from Pakistan) has been continuing since 1989. Tens of thousands of people have died in the past 20 years.


But Kashmir is supposed to be approaching normalcy as militant activity has died down. Foreigners walking through Delhi's Paharganj are accosted by people enticing them to visit Srinagar houseboats. Everything's fine now, they say; the place is quiet.


It doesn't quite feel that way. Despite largely successful local elections earlier this year that boasted high voter turnout and put a relatively moderate "pro-Kashmiri" party in power, there's still widespread anger over what locals see as a militarization of their home. There's one security forces officer for every seven Kashiris, and the forces in Kashmir are granted almost total immunity under Indian law. As the civilian death toll mounts, so does the anger and tension underlying what have become weekly (if not daily) protests in Srinagar and surrounding villages.


Not one of the Kashmiris I spoke with wants to join Pakistan. Frankly, given what's going on there right now, can you blame them? But they all--even those not actively advocating independence--were furious at the Indian government, felt alienated from the rest of the country and defended the actions of protesters and separatists as necessary in fighting for freedom and their civil rights.


As one angry student put it, the army isn't there to protect the people--it's there to fight them. So why not fight back?


The soldiers I spoke with, of course, saw the situation differently. They laughed when I asked what would happen if they left. The militants would run amok, they said. And angry citizens? They're just stirred up by local separatist groups.


A Kashmiri soldier said people who advocate independence are kidding themselves.

"Have you seen Kashmir?" he asked, laughing and spreading his arms wide to encompass the entire valley.

"We couldn't exist on our own."

That doesn't make people any less angry, however.


So how does this translate for a clued-out gori (white woman)? Think barbed wire and soldiers decked out in camo everywhere, and frisking checkpoints every time you want to enter pretty much any public building. People are eager to air their grievances with the lost-looking foreigner. If only she could speak Kashmiri.

Scooter diaries: A Taj-tastic odyssey

Let me be clear: I had no intention whatsoever of seeing the Taj Mahal while in India.

If this sounds idiotic or pig-headedly non-conformist, that's because it kind of is. Cool as it looks in photos, the Taj has never really enticed me all that much.

But when a friend offered to take me to Agra via scooter, I found the offer hard to resist.


So off we went, leaving Delhi around 2 a.m. in the hopes of making it to Agra by sunrise.

The trip was, well, a trip. Flyovers and other pavement edifices flew past, replaced by fields punctuated with streetside chai- and chapati-selling dhabas hung with strings of lights. Why we weren't squished in the inky darkness by a passing truck, I have no idea.

Then around 4:30 a.m., it started to get cold. Really, bone-chillingly, seriously fucking cold. We stopped for chai in Chhaat, a place discernible only by the road sign and the godsent dhaba that was inexplicably open at that ungodly hour. The hot, cardamom-spiced liquid was one of the greatest beverages I have ever had--dirty glass be damned. I was tempted to curl up on a pile of blankets on a nearby bench, never to emerge.

We didn't make it by dawn--we hadn't even made it close to the Agra city limits when a painfully bright orb peeked over the edge of the horizon and made the ride a little less frigid. But by 7:30 we were lining up--easily the grubbiest, most suspect-looking supplicants come to pay respects to a marble wonder of the world.

I'm not gonna lie: The Taj Mahal may be Uttar Pradesh's biggest cash grab. It cost an exorbitant 750 rupees to get in, and every subsequent junction featured another way to fleece handycam-toting tourists of all they were worth. 75Rs to check my bag? Really?

But, in the interest of total honesty: The structure itself is pretty incredible. The outer gates and surrounding stone structures, including two beautiful temples flanking the head honcho, are beautiful. But the white marble edifice is beyond stunning. To circle the thing is to be awed by one man's bordering-on-maniacal obssession with architectural perfection--and its largely successful realization.

What's sad, though, is the toll the area's disregard for minor considerations like pollution is taking on the Taj. Crap from nearby factories and refineries, which had coated me in a delightful layer of grime during our morning scooter ride, is also harming the structure, taking the sheen off the previously gleaming white marble. A digital reader in a corner scrolled through levels of pollutants in the air--particulate matter was more than twice what the digital reader stated as the WHO's safe limit, in parts per million.

That's reassuring.

We lunched at a small dhaba on the rural edge of Agra, near a field of grain (hops? barley?) I was told the resident family used to make beer. My travelling partner fell asleep and I spent a couple of hours engaging in stilted, largely incomprehensible conversation with my server and fellow patrons.

How not to learn Hindi

One of the hardest things about leaving Zhongguo for Yindu was no longer being able to communicate in at least a horribly butchered version of the local language.

I'm the first to admit my Hanyu was, um, bu tai hao. But I could get by. My Hindi, on the other hand, was nonexistent. And although it's possible to communicate here in English--thank you, Queen Vicky; thank you, Rudyard--I figured it would be nice to at least try to learn a few basic phrases.

But I was amazed at how damn hard it is to find an English-Hindi dictionary. Maybe I was just looking in the wrong bookstores. Maybe I'm just a total cretin (well, that goes without saying). But I could not for the life of me find a dictionary that translated an English word into Hindi with English transliterations. And everyone I encountered was astonished at my inability to read any of the translations handily written in Hindi script.

Balls.

So I settled for the next best thing: A book that promised, a "Quick and easy way to learn Hindi."

Well.

Really, the book should have been billed a "Quick and easy way to learn Hindi, circa 1940." Not only does it feature such choice phrases as "Will you let her flirt about, then?" and "A peg of scotch whiskey," it also tells you how to say, "The allies will get success."

Mitron kee jeet hogi.

YES. All my life, this is what I have wanted to say in Hindi.

I'm still entirely bemused as to how, exactly, this book made it to the publisher IN 2006, which is the date of the latest edition on the front flap. Either it actually was published in some crazy-ass time warp, or the good people at "Quick and easy way to learn Hindi" are sadistically insane.

Possibly both.

Meanwhile, it's back to memorizing the lyrics of "Jai ho."

Honking mad

There are strange and hilarious signs on highways, roadsides and gas stations telling people not to honk.

This confused me at first: As any good, naive Canadian knows, horns are useful for telling other people they're about to turn you into roadkill. You need them.

Well. A few days and several thousand lost cochlea hairs later, I'm of a somewhat different mindset.

Here, horns are used to solely to express frustration--to scream GET OUT OF THE WAY at the several dozen cars in a traffic jam 100 metres long. If honked horns in traffic-clogged areas the world over can be translated into vented emotions, Indian car horns are like punctuation-free, expletive-ridden run-on sentences. People in auto-rickshaws, passenger vehicles and pimped-out transport trucks lean on their horns for minutes on end, as though deafening everyone nearby would somehow get them to their destination sooner.

It's mildly hellish.

But: Horns that bleep Bollywood tracks? Genius.

Holi

So I spent the day being doused--and dousing others--in coloured powder and dye, in a series of guerrilla-style ambushes.

No, I hadn't regressed to a five-year-old state (although I know several people who would dispute that claim).

I was celebrating Holi--possibly the greatest holiday of all time.

The actual story seems to change slightly each time I ask someone. But it has something to do with a king upset at his son's (nephew's?) devout belief in Vishnu. So he tries, naturally, to burn him to death in the arms of the king's sister Holika, who's protected from fire. But she burns, the kid doesn't and to make up for his aunt's awful death, names a paintball holiday after her.

Or something like that.

Either way, the concept is fabulous: A day dedicated to smearing powdered dye on other people, and ambushing them with water balloons and water guns.


Plus, Holi's traditional drink is Bhang--a crazy liquid that contains concentrated marijuana, vodka, milk and other things. Legal? Not quite. Delicious? Yes. (or so I've heard)

Of course, Holi isn't without its controversies--namely, that a lot of people don't enjoy being covered in paint on their way to work, having their new blouse soaked in water or being grabbed by a stranger's paint-drenched hands.

These are all legitimate complaints, and there are Holi-specific laws about non-consensual dyeing, throwing mud and chemicals at unsuspecting passers-by and even selling water ballons of a certain size during the holiday.

(Unofficially, anyone's fair game before noon on the day of Holi, After that, you're supposed to get a paint-free pass if you really don't want to play.

Luckily for me, I have ludicrously lax hygeine standards, and the maturity of a six-year-old. 'Twas good times.

A word of caution, however: Those dyes never come out. Ever.

Tibetan double-take

Fifty years ago today, a massive uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet ended with thousands of Tibetans dead, thousands more forcibly resettled and Tibet's spiritual and political leader indefinitely exiled, kicking off half a century (and counting) of quasi-cultural genocide as Beijing paid Han Chinese to move to the troubled region.

Or, fifty years ago today, millions of Tibetan serfs were liberated from tyrannical, theocratic and backwards rule and shown all the wonders of a Communist Chinese society about to plunge headlong into the Cultural Revolution, kicking off half a century of modernization and economic growth.

Take your pick.

I cannot think of a single China-related issue where the gap in conceptions of reality is so friggin' enormous. A quick glance at Chinese coverage and international coverage of today's event in Dharmasala proves as much.

In the eyes of Beijing and most Chinese citizens, Tibet is an inalienable part of China, the Dalai Lama is a troublemaker and the "Free Tibet" movement an example of the rest of the world trying to gang up on China under a Eurocentric interpretation of human rights. Most Chinese people I've spoken with are genuinely at a loss as to why China is seen in such a bad light when it comes to Tibet.

A conversation with a politics professor at Fudan University threw some of these gaps into sharp relief.

He Junzhi in the U.K. during last March's protests--when peaceful protests were met with a massive police crackdown and then turned into violent attacks on Han businesses.

"Most media are very against the Chinese central government and criticised the Communist Party's policy. But a very strange situation is that a lot of the criticism didn't know ... what Tibet is," he said. "Last year, some [Chinese] people were wondering, 'We have given you so much--why did you do this against us? Some people are very puzzled."

He said this criticism of China could only stem from the Dalai Lama's ability to manipulate people who look up to him as a spiritual leader--blinding them, He argued, to other facts.

"The Dalai Lama is very good at the media language. He often uses language the media want to hear--for example, 'human rights', 'autonomy,' 'self-government.'"

Now, He insisted, Tibetans better off than they were 50 years ago and the Chinese government has realized Tibetans care about spiritual aspects of their lives, rather than just material ones. But at the same time, He said Beijing needs to wean Tibetans off their reliance on religion--"the process of modernization is a separation of church and state," he argued.

Now, he said, Beijing has better policies in place to "calm down the Tibetan people" and ensure last year's protests don't repeat themselves.

This yawning chasm between what Beijing sees and what the rest of the world sees never ceases to freak me out.

On the one hand, if "Free Tibet" continues to be a rallying call that demonizes an entire country in the eyes of people who know little to nothing about China or Tibet, China's going to remain on the defensive in an attempt to save face and the Chinese population will be united behind its government against what it sees as a hostile, Sinophobic international community.

On the other hand, Beijing holds a lot more cards in this situation. Freeing up Internet and SMS access in Tibet and allowing foreign journalists in would be a good start; it's hard to convince people you have nothing to hide when you put all your efforts into, well, hiding things.

If the Chinese government continues to dismiss Tibetans' calls for cultural, religious and political autonomy as backwards and something to be answered with renewed efforts to convince Tibetans of how much better off they are now than they were 50 years ago--while avoiding at all costs any serious discussions with the Dalai Lama, hoping he'll just go away--it's unlikely the "Xizang xiqing" will be resolved in the next half-century, either.

Now that's what I call quality censorship

This is what I get when I try to access taboo sites from Dubai.

A marked improvement to the Chinese Net Nanny's "Nothing to see here, just keep on browsing" error messages, I've gotta say. I'm considering sending some feedback, myself.

Stimulate this

To the thrill and excitement of all, the National People's Congress began its annual pooh-bah Parliamentary get-together this week.

Of course, this year's conference is more than a CCP rubber-stamping love-in: The jinrong weiji has ensured the world was watching to see what Hu, Wen & Co. have to offer, hoping whatever life raft they offer China will be big and bouyant enough for the rest of the global economy to hang on for dear life.

Or, you know, whatever.

To be honest, I don't know nearly enough about economics to make an educated assessment of the mechanics of China's economic outlook. Then again, there isn't really much to go on, given Wen Jiabao's speil:

“The external economic environment has become more serious, and uncertainties have increased significantly. ... Continuous drop in economic growth rate due to the impact of the global financial crisis has become a major problem affecting the overall situation. This has resulted in excess production capacity in some industries, caused some enterprises to experience operating difficulties and exerted severe pressure on employment”

OK, so that isn't a newsflash for anyone, nor is his declaration that the government will do its best to keep people employed, diversity export markets and somehow convince consumers to buy stuff.

It isn't surprising that China's trying to gloss over any suggestion its economy is tanking with the same craptacular spluttering as the rest of the world; nor is it a shock that Wen's reassurances are short on details and long on platitudes. This is how the NCP rolls, promises of transparency be damned.

What is clear, however, is that there won't be any more mammon manna from heaven--at least not from Beijing's pocketbook. Despite hints last week the previous stimulus package could as much as double in size (that'd make a honkin 8 trillion yuan, if you're counting), it looks like the economy is going to have to cope with a measly 4 trillion--most of it dedicated to infrastructure and the like, and much of it coming from local governments and private sources (as opposed to the central government responsible for all these cash-rich promises).

Will this be enough to keep China's economy steaming along at a pace to satisfy anxious consumers, panicky unemployed migrants and the freaked-out and freakily volatile financial markets?

Maybe. But I'm going to guess no.

For your next family vacation: A visit to the Sichuan Earthquake Theme Park (tm)

Yep, nothing like turning a national disaster into a tourist opportunity.

Beichuan county, one of the areas worst devastated by the 8.0 earthquake that ripped through Sichuan last May, is being transformed into a "world class" relic site, where the ruins of buildings reduced to rubble that crushed thousands of people in a massive quake will be preserved for visitors.

The projects, which come with a total price tag of more than 50 billion yuan, will preserve ethnic cultural sites and turn Mianyang county into "a first class travel destination that combines sightseeing, meeting, leisure, and holiday facilities."

Ooh la la.

And the sites are already attracting the curious: About 200,000 tourists visited Beichuan during Spring Festival in January, and planners hope their endeavour will bring in enough cash to cover both the cost of the 93 individual restoration projects and the 6 billion yuan Mianyang lost in tourist revenue thanks to quake-related damages (not to mention sightseers leery of travelling a region that has been rocked by twice-monthly mini-quakes since May).



In the meantime, the millions of people left homeless in the earhquake's aftermath are still homeless, and they're wondering where the billions of yuan in earthquake relief donations have gone.

At least some of that money has allegedly been spent on snazzy cars for local bureaucrats; although few people here would ever go so far as casting aspersions on the conduct of the central government, many refer to corruption and misspending by local officials.

Beijing isn't about to let that derail what has so far been a pretty stellar publicity campaign, however. The government has given in-person notice to frustrated quake survivors that if they complain or talk to the press, their asses are grass and they can kiss goodbye any chance at getting help rebuilding homes destroyed in May (as it is, the gov is paying less than a third of the total cost of the homes--the rest will come from savings, or from cash used to pay off families of kids crushed in the rubble of shoddily built schools).

Cries of foul continue, however; a riot erupted in the Mianyang village of Baolin last month as thousands of villagers stormed a police station over disagreements on how the local aid fund was being spent. One person was killed and 10 injured during the fracas. (apologies for the Epoch link; only other English-language article I could find was the SCMP and that's behind a paywall). Residents of the ruined towns now being turned into museums are being relocated to new cities--"New Beichuan," etc--a ways away. Not everyone is delighted at the prospect of

But most of all, residents are just confused and frustrated. Families I spoke with in Shifang earlier this year are struggling to figure out how to build the homes that are still incomplete almost a year after the quake; they also can't figure out where all the billions of yuan in aid money is going to. In a country where people live for--and through--their kids, having lost their only children leaves these families little hope for what looks like a fairly bleak future.

In January, these families were living in tarp-and-bamboo tents permeated by moisture in rural Sichuan's damp climate. If they're lucky, they'll scrape together the money to build real houses, and maybe reconstruct livelihoods interrupted or made impossible by the quake's devastation. If they're really lucky, these now-childless parents will have more kids--maybe they'll even be able to afford medical costs needed for risky 40-something pregnancies in an area with few good hospitals.

And if they're hyperbolically fortunate, perhaps--just perhaps--someday they'll be able to take their kids to the Mianyang Earthquake Memorial Theme Park (TM).