Image-I-Nation

Wheeee! I'm just so happy to upload photos again, I have to share a bunch with you.

Rajdhani Express Train from Madras to Delhi, March 2006



GandhiNagar, Madras, Tamil Nadu, February 2006

Sikh women reading Grantha Sahib at Ram Rai Darbar, Dehra Dun, May 2006

Nap time in Mylapore, March 2006


Bowl of water lilies and marigolds, Mylapore, Madras, March 2006


Blindfolded nuns parcipating in Kalachakra Initiation, Andhra Pradesh, January 2006

Greatest hits, near misses

Big hits and fazed cookies
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dear Sports Fans and Loyal Readers:

Greetings from the monsoon-cloud-shrouded insurgency-wracked landlocked middle kingdom -slash-modern democracy Nepal!

Please assist me if you will. I'm trying to hone down some of the voluminous typing (not sure it always deserves the term "writing") of the past few years to make a "Greatest Hits" sidebar, and possibly edit a future compilation.

If you have a minute to reflect (or just a few hours to kill while your supervisor is out of the office), please let me know which (if any!) of the blog entries or Trekshare pieces and photos you have enjoyed the most, or found the most useful. Also mentioning things you found annoying, or just mediocre, is helpful.

You need not page through and wade among all the stuff...but if you remember something cool just drop me a Comment or email. Thanks for giving feedback over the years (gosh, has it been years now? It has!). Thanks for taking the time to write, and help me weed through the unruly garden.

Cheers,
the Siren of Shangri-La

No direction home

Refugee Nation
Kathmandu, Nepal

Everyone knows about the Tibetan refugees; they are very high-profile and have a dramatic, romantic story. Tibetans are still coming over the mountains - still escaping Chinese occupied Tibet. But probably 20% of the city of Kathmandu - maybe more - are some kind of refugee.

Besides the Tibetans, there are several Bhutanese Refugee camps here in town. Meant to be temporary, like all such camps, the Bhutanese have been there nearly 16 years. King Wangchuk, an absolute if otherwise somewhat enlightened monarch in the neighboring mountain kingdom, kicked out lots of ethnic Nepalis who had been born and raised there (they were demanding things like "rights") in the early 1990s. The UN Human Rights Commission is here investigating the Bhutanese refugee camps this week; yesterday a bunch of protesting Bhutanis were arrested in front of the SAARC Secretariat.

Then there are Biharis - refugees from comparatively prosperous neighbor India. Ordinarily Nepalis go south to find work in India. There are some 1 million Nepalis working there now, largely as waiters or hotel staff; the stereotypical Nepali diaspora job is that of security guard ("bahadurs" - a Nepali word meaning courageous). These reverse Indian migrants are fleeing the state of Bihar, notorious for its poverty, violence and corruption. With their distinctive Indian features - prominent noses, enormous bushy moustaches, large, liquid eyes and unsmiling faces giving them a somewhat doleful look - they are easily spotted selling fruit from large bicycle baskets all over town. Every time I buy fruit, I ask them "what is your native place?" So far, they have all answered "Bihar." They are thrilled that I even know one or two cities in their state and that I have ridden through it, however briefly, on the train.

Yet another category of Indian refugee comes from Kashmir. Theirs is a diaspora of long standing. The Kashmiri conflict needs little introduction; because of it, green-eyed, fair-skinned Kashmiri men (known as much for their butter-tongued salesmanship as for their good looks) can be found in curio shops from Ladakh to Kerala. I would imagine the Kashimiri diaspora accounts for a good percentage of Nepal's very small Muslim minority.

Where are the Kashmiri or Bihari women who must have accompanied their men? Do they stay at home in purdah (Muslim seclusion of women), or tending children? or did they stay behind, leaving the men to dream of a day when they could earn enough money to return home and marry? A few days ago, I saw two tall, thin women dressed in the unmistakeable style of far northern India. Punjabi suit with churidhar pants, chunri (long scarf) pulled over the hair, no bindi on the forehead - that means, she's Muslim. The younger one could have been my sister, her features were so Caucasian. They were so exotic in these surroundings, I sprinted to catch up to them. "Place you are coming from?" I asked breathlessly. The elder one couldn't understand. "Kashmir," said the younger girl; "you are from?" "America."

The ladies were carrying water in what looked like old-fashioned plastic gasoline jugs, the kind with a handle on one side. Since there is no running water near their tiny flat, she told me they go to fetch water from a public tap some four times a day. They trudged up the sidewalk with the plastic jugs perched on one shoulder, heads held high.

Internal Affairs

Then there are the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) - those who've been flooding Kathmandu escaping the Maoist/RNA conflict in their villages for the last few years. The Kathmandu population has mushroomed recently, mostly young men fearing recruitment or death at the hands of either army. Many young women have fled as well. Some find gainful employment; some are driven to dance in the many strip bars in the tourist district; some turn to either outright prostitution or a "softer" kind involving a relatively wealthy city man or "foreign gentleman" they have met during their migration.

Still more Nepalis are just fleeing poverty and lack of opportunity in their rural districts, armed conflict or no. Maya is here with her 2 daughters and sick husband. The husband has TB and is just sort of acknowledged to be terminal. There is treatment for TB, but they seem to have accepted that he is dying. The husband just lies in bed all day (all he can do) while Maya and her daughters do a sort of hybrid job in Thamel, alternately selling small pocketbooks (the kind tourists use as money pouches) and when that fails, begging. Maya buys the bags wholesale for about 30NRs each and sell them for whatever they can get. If the tourist looks rich, they start at 500NRs (about $8.00). However, they will part with the bag for as little as 50NRs. The same bags are for sale in every single shop in Nepal; often for much better prices, but Maya and girls are counting on pity and immediacy (being in your face on the street, that is). I wonder to myself whether she purposely doesn't wash her girls properly for this reason.

Maya came here from Pokhara, the centrally located lake town, seeking treatment for her husband. They seem to have forgotten about that now and just accepted that he's dying. While we were talking to her, Maya started crying and said "I just wish someone would take her" (the baby) "back to America."

And of course, there are the expats...not tourists, but lifers. Foreigners who came for a season and stayed. They're all running from something - many seem to be running from conventional ideas of prosperity and all its confining trappings, as our Nepali neighbors are hoping to run toward them. They ran to a place where the human touch still counts, everything is not yet mass produced, and you can still ride a bicycle to work without getting run down by SUVs.

Most foreigners are involved in one or more charities, projects or volunteer work; like Renate, the Dutch Nepali resident and owner of the posh restaurant 1905 Kantipath. Renate is deliriously busy not only running his business, but with myriad projects and homegrown, small-scale charities which emphasize training and education.

Unlike India, the locals here don't seem to consider you "stupid" for wanting to help. And a heartening number of projects seem to do long-term, sustainable good.

I met Rachael as she was taping up

hand-written posters to the notice board of the posh Kathmandu Guest House. Rachael is a very low-budget traveller here from New Zealand. "I hope you don't mind eating here," she said quietly as we ducked into a dark, smelly local lunch joint where flies buzzed around the food counter. It turned out to be too dirty even for her, and we ate elsewhere. Her guest house is 150 NRs a day (about $2.00 US) and only has hot water from 8-10 in the morning. Rachael is trying to raise money for "her" family in the Langtang region. She met them while trekking, spent time with them and got to know their situation intimately. Rachael wants to collect $100 US to repair their leaking roof (especially now that it is monsoon) and is in the city collecting it - 100 NRs (that's about $1.50) at a time. Her sunspotted skin, worn out sandals and frequently stitched and re-stitched pants showed that she spent no money on herself.

If she can buy a sheet of corrugated tin, Rachael can take it up to Langtang, tied onto the roof of a bus. (Anything and everything can be tied onto the roof of a bus here - I've seen full-sized sofas transported this way. It was amazing to see the men get it up there; but then, this is a land where five-foot men carry full-sized fridges on their backs.) From there, she will have to hire local men to carry it up to the family house. She's also collecting money to build a wall that will protect the family's apple orchard seedlings from the local deer, goats and pigs.

With $150 US, the family can buy a water buffalo, which will enable them to start a small-scale dairy business providing yogurt and milk to their neighbors.

Everyone gets involved, everyone has a project. No one, it seems, "belongs" here. Therefore, we all do. It's strangely liberating, and creates an environment in which anyone can fit in. Politicized enough to be relevant, romantic enough to be picturesque, bohemian enough to be accepting, and very international - a slice of Manhattan's 1980s East Village transplanted to a rain soaked mountain kingdom - Whoops! kingdom-slash-modern democratic republic... in the monsoon clouds.

Vote for meeeeee!

Go to this URL and give me a #5 rating:

http://www.trekshare.com/dailyPic/?id=110

Then page down to the following 2 photos and do the same!

Trekshare.com has selected not one, not two, but three of my Nepal photos in a row as their photos of the day.

They have a shot at being photos of the year, in which case I will win $200 US. (Hey, I can live on that for nearly a month here.)

What are you waiting for? Get clickin!

Dude, where's my Blog?

Democracy Inaction
Location: Indian Blogosphere

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" - some cool dude

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke

Report: Indian gov blocks Blogspot, Typepad, Geocities blogs
Reprinted from BoingBoing (thanks guys and gals)

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. Indian ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. SpectraNet, MTNL, Reliance, and as of Monday afternoon, Airtel. State-backed BSNL and VSNL have not started yet but likely will soon. The known list of blocked domains is *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/*.

Yes folks, the Indian government has decided to censor blogs and refused to explain why. This morning Shivam Vij managed to talk to Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue directives to ISPs. His response: "Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?"

If any Boing Boing readers in India find several sites inaccessible today, please call your ISP and demand to know why. If you can help, please join the coordinating group: Link.

Link to Shivam's post, and Jace is following developments on his blog, here.

Manish adds,

The block is still spreading through Indian ISPs. This recalls Pakistan's Blogspot ban during the Danish cartoon controversy and India's Yahoo Groups ban in '03 to shut down a separatist forum.

Dina Mehta says,

The plot gets thicker and thicker as more bloggers are getting alerted to the fact that an increasing number of Indian ISP's are banning blogspot and typepad blogs and geocities.com. Several detailed posts on this, with regular updates here: withinandwithout.com, Conversations with Dina, and Travel Tales from India.

There's a wiki here: Link. We're treading with a little caution before we go whole-hog at the government. There is a possibility that it is a mistake - where a directive from the government on a few blogs might have been misrepresented by ISP's here - who have blocked the entire sites.

Amit Varma says,

Amit Agarwal has some tips on how Indian bloggers can circumvent the ban on Blogspot here: Link. More here: Link.

Update, 11AM PT: Shii says,

An Indian political blog is reporting that the ban was initiated by the Indian intelligence service to stop terrorism: Link. According totheir source, the terrorists are using blogs to communicate. Not only is this useless (because the terrorists can simply use proxies), it's akin to shutting off the country's telephone service because terrorists talk to each other through phones.

Jim says,

Indian Censorship can easily be bypassed when using TorPark. It's a no-install version of Firefox that uses the Tor Network for communication. This should also work in China and other countries that filter the web.

And of course, this and many other censorship workarounds at BoingBoing's "How to Defeat Censorware."

Vijay says,

I am not yet facing any of the blocking effects as reported by several Indian bloggers. I have noticed a certain pattern here. The blocking seems to be affecting city users while rural netizens have been spared of this curb for now. I have mentioned this in detail here.

Special thanks to Double T of Black Cats Manor, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.