Feringhee: The India Diaries

Mellowed out
Kathmandu

Everything's so mellow now here, now that "season" is over. Unseasonable rains, perhaps a hangover from Cyclone Nargis, have made what's normally pre-monsoon mugginess quite cool and breezy. All the high-energy level goal-oriented tourists are gone (gotta cross alllll these things off our list so we can say we've done them all!). Now there are more long-termers ("I dunno, just thought I'd see the country, experience it, you know...."), NGO workers, doctoral students and English teachers. Actually they were always here, but now you can see them.




Looking Kathmandu
"Great, I'll see you at 11," I told my friend Shanda, whom I hadn't seen since an ashram in India, where we were all chastely attired in white sannyasi gear. "But I have to warn you - I'm looking verrrry Kathmandu."

In this case, Looking Kathmandu meant I was wearing a screen-printed hand-dyed t-shirt blouse with hippy bell-sleeves and a flaming Yin Yang symbol on it, a day pack made of Guatemala woven fibres, and some long dangly scarf thing from my hair. Kathmandu had finally gotten to me.

People who go to India hoping to relive the 60's are about 20 years too late. The place to come is Nepal, specifically Kathmandu. It's one of the last places on earth you can still live in a guest house for as little as $1.50 a day, or if you should choose, wear tie-dye, dreadlocks and bikini tops without causing scandal or harassment, and without the sneering judgmental stares that is so much a part of foreign tourists' India experience. (Before anyone gets huffy, I take surveys. It's unanimous.)

(I can always tell when a woman has just come from India - she's still wearing the full punjabi suit and chunni. And I can always tell when someone hasn't been to India yet - they are still wearing spaghetti-strap tops and short skirts.)

At one point this winter, hashish (nominally "illegal") was more readily available than gasoline or electricity. Countless embroidery shops on Freak Street still churn out designs of the Freak Brothers, magic mushrooms and marijuana leaf logos. Multi-headed, many-armed Buddhist and Hindu god icons in shop windows merge seamlessly with posters of vintage psychedelia. And the ultra-specialist Bong Shop on Bhagavati Bahal is *not* a place run by Bangladeshis.

Other major Asian cities have been taken over by Hindi film music, techno and hip-hop sounds. That won't get you far in Kathmandu, where "Born to be Wild," "Purple Haze" and "Break On Through" blare from every bar in Thamel.

Oh, we also have demonstrators - lots of them - and a confrontational police force.

Yes, the dream lives on....at least the consumable, marketable elements of the dream with occasional flashes of utopian idealism, before the stick comes down.

Back in the real world
Back in the other Kathmandu (the newly politicized city where it still takes 10 days to get 5 days' work done) , it's surprisingly mellow, too. Following the earthquake in Sichuan Province (China/Tibet), the Tibetan government has asked all protestors to refrain from demonstrating for at least the coming week, in deference to the quake victims. However, the hunger strikers continue at Swayambhu. Here's a photo of some of the Kopan nuns taking their turn (they are on 24 hour rotating shifts).

The International Herald Tribune ran an article declaring the "Chinese" earthquake has overnight turned the Chinese oppressors into victims and put a damper on the Tibetan voices of protest. What most people don't seem to realize is that Qiang prefecture/Sichuan province is part of northeastern Tibet, and thousands of Tibetans were also affected by the situation.

Equally disconcerting is the thinly disguised glee with which people are pronouncing the Beijing Olympics "safe" ("Earthquake mutes Tibetan voices").

All the same problems of inequity pre-existing in these areas of Chinese Tibet will extend to the post-quake situation (unequal access to resources, Han favouritism and so on).

Here is the statement from Students for a Free Tibet Delhi on the situation.
It is encouraging to see the incredible rescue efforts and increasingly open media reporting taking place in China, but we have heard almost no information about relief efforts in the affected Tibetan areas. However, on the day the earthquake struck, the regional government issued an urgent official document entitled “Combining work on anti-separatism and safeguarding stability with disaster relief work.” Considering the Chinese government's history of systematic oppression and disenfranchisement of Tibetans, we are gravely concerned that Tibetans impacted by the disaster will not receive equal consideration and assistance

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Now playing: War - Low Rider
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Labels: culture, earthquake, hippy, kathmandu, nepal, sirensongs, tibetan, travel china

Vote, dammit
Kathmandu

Well, only one person voted on the ICONS category of photos (thanks Brother Martin). I guess my photoblogs are getting boring.

This is what it looks like when you 're actually getting important things done and deadlines met....boring. I dislike doing it for the same reason I always hated going to bed on time - there's always something more interesting to do....so I just kind of go till I fall over, like a little kid.

After I finally fall over, I'm too tired or sick to do anything exciting. It's only then that administrative things finally get taken care of.

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Now playing: Certain General - Hello My God
via FoxyTunes

Mustard flowers in bloom outside Panauti, Kathmandu Valley 2005

The next category is Landscapes. Admittedly mine is not a landscape camera. But I think I did all right with these 'uns. ....

Along the Indus River, Choglamsar Ladakh. 2007

In Nubra valley near the Hunder sand dunes, Ladakh. 2007

Okay, just one more Ladakh photo....maybe someday if I get sick enough (!) I will have to move to Nubra Valley and write a book.


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Now playing: The Gun Club - Preaching the Blues
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Labels: india, landscapes, nepal, photography, sirensongs, travel

I always really liked Teilhard de Chardin, the French mystic. This quote came to me today via Rob Brezsny. ----- By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers . . . This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place." -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, *The Divine Milieu* "Let the body think of the spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing and shining into it from all aides." -Plotinus ----This is an experiment - I'm trying out blogging directly from Email.

Labels: brezsny, mystic, quote, sirensongs, teilhard de chardin

Yet another in a series of photo blogs, designed to force you to vote on which pictures I should submit to the photo competition.

This time the category is Icons.



Inner sanctum at Mahabodhi temple, Bodh Gaya India. 2007
Karumariamman temple, Bangalore. 2003Each lotus represents a footstep of the Buddha. The Mahabodhi temple Chankamana (meditation walk), Bodh Gaya 2007.
Astamatrika Bhairab mask waits to be "awakened." Patan, Nepal 2006.
Vintage colour print of the Dalai Lama, Swaymabhunath, Nepal. 2006


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Now playing: Patti Smith - Space Monkey
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Labels: icons, india, nepal, photography, travel

Another photo blog....
Kathmandu


Thanks to Ashini and John for comments on the photo entries. I can't really "see" these photos anymore, they're part of my brain now....;-)
Burmese monks visiting Bodh Gaya, Bihar. 2007

Another category in the competition is Local Friends. In addition to all the Smiling Peasantry I posted a few days ago, I would probably enter some of these.

Somebody help me weed out this glut of imagery....Tibetan folk dancers waiting for the Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, India 2007.

If it's Monday, this must be Shiva: this kid dressed as Shiva every Monday and Ram every Thursday. Koregaon Park, Pune 2005This woman in Pune's Shaniwar Wada had to get her husband's permission before being photographed. 2005


I offered to buy the flowers for this striking little Telugu girl, just to get this photo. Vijayawada. 2006. Too bad about the mobile phone sign, they're everywhere in India now....Ladakhi Muslim schoolgirls waiting for the bus, Nubra Valley 2007. Possible upper-right quadrant crop?

Marigolds for sale in Ason Tole at Dasain time, Kathmandu - 2006.
Amma Garu who ran the idly hotel in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. 2006, and her granddaughter.
Krishnakumari was all ready waiting for the school bus one morning. Her mother had just drawn this muggu. Brodipet, Guntur AP 2006.

Gurung woman selling cilantra and turmeric, Kathmandu. 2007
This is a fun shot, but not sure it could win a competition. Marathi men in traditional dress, Bombay, 2005


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Now playing: Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder - Soukora
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Labels: india, nepal, photography, portrait, sirensongs

...is the name of one category I am entering in a photo competition.

Needless to say, I have a surplus of such images (not to mention the experiences themselves).

Help me narrow them down.
Young monks dressed as the Cemetery Lords, Thiksey Monastery Cham dance, Ladakh 2007.
Newar Astamatrika dancer just before donning his mask and entering trance. Patan, Nepal 2006.

Some of these photos will be familiar to long-term viewers here. The deadline is 30 June.Ladakhi ladies serve tea at the Dalai Lama's teachings, Choglamsar Ladakh, 2007


Tibetan Buddhist nuns blindfolded for the Dalai Lama's Kalachakra initiation, Andhra Pradesh 2006. Rajasthani dancer and musicians visiting Nepal's Bhaktapur, 2006


My friend Mohanlal and a visitor at the inauguration of the new Murugan temple, Parayakadavu, Kerala. 2005
Washing the buffalo, Pune. 2005

Makar Sankranti musicians in the street, during the Kalachakra, Andhra Pradesh. 2006
Sadhu doing puja in the Ganges, Rishikesh, 2006.



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Now playing: Digital Underground - The Humpty Dance
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Now playing: Billy Preston - Outa-Space (Single)
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Labels: contest, india, nepal, photography, sirensongs, travel

No one's ever been able to explain the rubber bicycle tires lying on the thatched (and corrugated tin) roofs.

And what about the painted trees? Trees with their trunks painted white.

My great-aunt Evelyn used to have all the trees in the yard painted white from the "waist" down. I had only seen that in the American South. Imagine my surprise at seeing it all over India.

Rachel asked someone about the trees and they said "those trees are government property and can't be cut down." But like everything in India, I expect there is more than one answer.....


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Now playing: Digital Underground - The Humpty Dance
via FoxyTunes

Labels: india, mystery, sirensongs, tires, travel, trees

First world images of the majority
Kathmandu

I'm preparing to enter another international photo contest - two, actually.

One appears to be (judging by past winners) really big on smiling peasantry. Toothless old ladies in traditional headdress. Happy poor people. Friendly natives.

I admit to having a lot of these cliches in my portfolio...should be a shoo-in. ;-)

Here are just a few I have shortlisted.

Labels: culture, india, nepal, photography, sirensongs, travel