Culture Shock - Reverse

Greetings all - With the exception of two weeks in "first world" enclaves in South Africa, Patty and I have been in the "third world" for almost 7 months. "First" and "Third" worlds are controversial labels that conjure up all manner of generalities and unfair comparisons. However, it took me less than a day to recognize the profound differences when we fled India and arrived in the UK on Sunday.

Now safely holed up on the wonderful Pembrokeshire coast of Western Wales, we are both unpacking our experiences while unpacking our bags for an extensive laundry treatment!. We are in a small coastal village called Porthgain - a former slate quarry port now thoroughly gentrified to cater to weekend escapees from London. We are having fun with the tongue-twisting lingo of Welsh place names and find ourselves, strangely enough, located between "St. Elvis" to the south and the "Preseli" hills to the north. The contrasts to last week are startling and many. On Saturday, we were sweltering in the heat and commotion of Delhi amidst its 15 million inhabitants. Yesterday, on a five hour walk on the coastal trail, we saw fifteen people. For the first time in months, we are wearing fleece and raincoats and loving every second of it. The extent of contrast can be reduced to the welcome and simple act of opening a tap, pouring a glass of cold water and then drinking it -something we have not been able to comfortably do the better part of half a year. I have seen grinding poverty and humans reduced to beasts of burden - women smashing rocks to make gravel, Nepalese porters shouldering unbelievable loads, cycle rickshaw drivers in Delhi facing the sledgehammer 40 degree+ heat. I have experience and learned to tolerate disgustingly filthy hotels and public "conveniences" (Squatters? just say NO!), waded through more garbage and cow shit than I will want to remember and suffered the stinging eyes and ratcheting throats brought on by the extraordinary pollution in places like Kathmandu and Delhi.

And yet there is much I will miss - about my Third world experience. I will miss:
- the sense of joy and pride manifest in people who have nothing.
- the hope and determination, against all odds, to meet what we would consider in the West very limited aspirations for one's life and labour (As Paul Simon said " One man's ceiling is another man's floor").
- the simple, unadorned and genuine friendship offered to strangers who find themselves in very foreign settings and cultures.
- fresh mangoes for a dollar a dozen!
- the fiery passion about sports - football in Africa, cricket in India
- at the slightest instigation, the unabashed public eruption into song, dance and music - from the wondrous singing in Lesotho to the clatter of temple bells and chants in India and Nepal.
- the profound and multi-faceted spiritualism that you see everywhere, every day in India - from its cartoon gods to the moving worship of a river as a lifeblood for a people - the Ganges.
- the dramatic and tortured interpretation of the English language - topped by the colourful lingo of the Indian media
- the proud struggle to conserve and enhance natural assets where the funding required to do so is so much in demand for more urgent social needs - the Serengeti in Tanzania, the Annapurna circuit in Nepal.
- Cycle rickshaws weaving bravely in a swirl of road traffic (safely said now that we have survived all of our trips in these vehicles)
- the carnival atmosphere in Indian trains - with their ever-changing on-board "markets"
- monkeys galore! - a pest to most but a constant source of amusement to me
- unabashedness about sleeping in public in the hot,hot afternoons
- the sense of sharing from people who need all they can get and the demonstration that one can live with a whole lot less in life - even if this is by necessity rather than choice.

A shortlist indeed to which I invite others to add. Now off for a fine Welsh pint (another distinct First world benefit!)

Currying Favour among the Masses - Election Indian-Style

Yesterday, as British Columbians went to the polls to elect a new government and decide on a new system of voting, I found myself trapped in the Indian Himalaya city of Nainital. By trapped, I mean stuck inside this hill station town surrounded by army roadblocks unable to leave for our next destination some 250 km away. Inside the city, armed police guards were staked out at strategic points and road junctions carefully observing milling crowds to ensure no disruption of order. The reason for this display of force - Civil insurrection? A terrorist threat? None of the above, I was assured as I was welcomed to Election Day in India.

Over the past several weeks traveling throughout India, I have been fascinated by watching the world’s largest democracy cranking up its creaky electoral machine into action. With over 700 million eligible voters, India’s national election takes three weeks and five phases to complete as each of India’s 29 states goes to the polls in a staged approach. Yesterday was Nainital’s state of Uttarakhand’s turn in the last day of national voting. The Indian media has, of course, been thick with election news mostly focused on possible alliances to form the next coalition government rather than the campaign promises of dozens of federal parties. As Canadians grow perhaps warily accustomed to a minority government at the federal level, this result is not even in question in India. That there will be a coalition government is a certainly. All that remains to be known is how it will be constituted and who will lead it. Previous Indian governments have featured coalitions involving over 20 parties from right to left – including a few species of Marxist-Leninists who remain alive and well on the Indian political landscape.

There have been campaign promises, no doubt. One popular campaign battle has been waged between India’s two major parties – Congress and the BJP – over the price of a kilogram of rice to be accorded to each individual by quota. Congress was first out of the gate with 3 rupees ($0.07) per kg. for 25 kg of rice per person only to be trumped a week later by BJP’s promises of personal quota of 35 kg of rice for 2 rupees per kg. Both parties have evidently concluding that the quickest way to an “X” on the ballot is through the Indian stomach.

The high security around Election Day has been aimed at preventing what the colourful Indian English media calls “miscreants and agitators” from violently disrupting elections as has been witnessed in the past. Security concerns are a primary motivation behind the rotation of the election throughout the country so the army can be deployed from state to state. Our hotel had the good fortune – or misfortune – to be located across the street from one of Nainital’s two polling stations. The already impossibly narrow road was choked with tables of party workers clustered under the colourful pennants of their parties surveying voters’ lists in their respective efforts to “get the vote out”. Indian voters lists appear to contain a lot of personal information including voter photos taken from Indian National ID cards, making potential supporters easier to target as they stream out of the hills to the polling stations. The polling station itself was protected by several armed officers and, without a national ID card, I was not allowed to get anywhere near the action.

The results of the election will not be known until mid-June. Accordingly, the media has focused on voter turnout, electoral drams in individual ridings and, prominently, the presence of Bollywood stars at polling stations. Mumbai, India’s financial and media centre, voted in the first phase. The day following the poll, the media lamented that for a city that within the past six months had experienced both a devastating terrorist attack and the heavy impact of the global economic meltdown, the pathetic voter turnout in the mid-50% range spoke to an inexplicable apathy to the democratic cause. I noted that voter turnout in this range would cause no small amount of envy among Canadian democracy advocates. Some states registered over 70% voter turnout in their polls.

The election has caused me to reflect, once again, on what we Canadians take for granted in our democratic processes. When was the last time we had to worry about armed forces providing security to protect right to vote and our individual journeys to the polling station? How comfortable would we feel voting in the shadow of armed police guards? “Never” and “not at all” are the answers. Yet despite the police-state feel of the process and the disruption caused to my personal travel plans, the Indian election is surely a thing of beauty when one considers the scope and size of the effort needed to allow Indians to cast their votes and their energetic response in a mammoth expression of democracy.

An India Gallery

Liz drowning in silk in the Varansi market - Wow!

Ian happily meeting up with a Canuck Fan (in the old "Flying V" colours!)

The Sub-Continental Express - Adventures in the Medical System Chapter Two

Greetings blogistas from blissfully cool Nainital - an old British hill station high up in India's Himalaya foothills. thanks to all who e-mailed me with sympathies and "get well soon" wishes in response to my recently-reported savage attack by a Buddhist temple ornament in Nepal. I feel all are deserving of the second (and hopefully final) chapter of my explorations of sub-continental medical systems - namely, "Stitches out - the sub-continental Express".

This past Saturday, my stitches were scheduled to come out. Saturday found us in Agra, India - home of the stunning Taj Mahal (talk about exceeding expectations - this surely is the most beautiful building on earth - perhaps only rivalled by Maple Leaf Gardens - enough said!). Our driver Raju found us a small hospital in central Agra with allegedly English-speaking staff. Patty and I entered at about noon and braced ourselves for a full flight of Indian bureaucracy (Have you ever wondered where the world's supply of carbon paper wound up?). Instead, we did not even have a chance to sit in the crowed waiting room before we were escorted into a small operating theatre. The stitch-removal process was clearly not going to be the subject of the same level of public viewing and participation as experienced in the Nepalese suturing. I was laid out on a hospital bed and then attended to by first one, then two, then ultimately a team of six doctors, interns and nurses. Amidst a lot of English-free pointing and grunting, bandages were torn off, stitches pulled out, antiseptic and bandages placed back on and best wishes extended by the entire team. We then were whisked out of the room, back to the front desk and then, surprisingly, out of the with a wave of bobblehead nods from the staff - no registration, no forms, no carbon paper, no fee - total time expired = 15 minutes! All appears to healing nicely. I have certainly learned my lesson about hanging out at temples with bad attitudes.

Back to our Indian adventure. We are now a team of four voyagers having been joined by our children Elisabeth and Ian who arrived in Delhi on April 27 - bagged and baggless - for a three week trip. A baggage reunion was achieved the next day - the same day that Delhi performed a magnificent welcome for us all as it set the 50 year heat record of 43.5 degrees C. After a shopping blitzkrieg through Chandni Chowk and Ian's efforts to watch the Canucks-Hawks semi-finals on streamed internet, we set off with our car and driver for Agra and then points east. We have just spent three days in Varanasi - one of India's holiest cities and India's claim to the longest continuously inhabited place on earth - clocking in at plus 3000 years. On the banks of the holy Ganges, Varanasi is full-on India - pouring with colour and chanting, home to hundreds of temples and wandering barefoot sadhus, tumbling with cheeky monkeys and clogged with cows and goats and their easily-stepped in "gifts". Our hotel sat perched on top of the Scindia ghat, one dozens of stepped quays that descend into the Ganges. From dusk to midnight, the Ganges in Varanasi is a hive of activity. Here Indians travel from around the country to perform ritual plunges in the holy river. Children swim and play in it to beat the heat. Water buffaloes wallow therein beside laundry being thwack, thwack, thwacked on river bank stone platforms. At night, the river is a colourful scene - set ablaze with floating candles set in small flower boats. Set aside the fact that the river itself is seething with garbage and apparently starved of oxygen at near-morbid levels of toxicity. Evidently, this does not matter to anyone - its holy status trumping all such worldly problems. Most moving without doubt was the Manikarnaka ghat - the so-called "burning ghat" - located about 100 metres from our hotel. Here Hindus bring the corpses of their loved ones for cremation followed by a scattering of ashes into the river. Women are draped in red or saffron shrouds and men in white - all heavily garlanded with flowers. Funeral processions - some 200 a day - wind through the choked, narrow streets of the old city to the ghat. The shrouded corpses are dipped into the river and then set alight on wooden fire pits lit from a flame that has allegedly remained burning for thousands of years since it was ignited by the Hindu god Shiva. These processions served as useful navigation aids for us as we tried to figure out how to get back to our hotel through Varanasi maze. Varanasi is a very moving place which reverberates throughout in a spiritual tone. It should be an easy entry for any one's A-list of places to visit in this wondrous country.

Namaste all