The beauty of India

An orphan from Triplicane
Madras, Tamil Nadu, India

When I was in Madras (now called Chennai) this past February, I tracked down and took photos of all the street kids my friend Robert in California is helping. Actually, I didn't so much have to track them down as run from them. They got advance notice that the "dancing lady" was coming to town and from then on, I could barely escape them.

I had a few favourites, though, that I did not mind hanging out with. V. Prabhakaran, proprietor of Star Books, and his family were very cool. I especially loved Muniamman, an 80-plus elderly lady, a relative of VP's wife.

V Prabhakaran, though struggling himself like most Indians, manages to find time to help others, like the girl at right. This is a photo of Jennifer, who is essentially (not literally) an orphan.

As you can see, Jennifer is absolutely radiant, bordering on stunning. She has a total innocence that just shines from her.

Jennifer's real dad ran off and left the family. The mother then remarried, to a man who didn't care at all for Jennifer, only for his own kids that he was raising with the mom. They then sent Jennifer to a "home" (read: thinly veiled slave labour) where the girls are not treated or fed well, are worked too hard and are never given decent clothes.

Now, Jennifer is living safely with a good family. V. Prabhakaran and his wife, despite having a one year old son of their own, have taken Jennifer in. She sleeps on the concrete floor in their small 2-room flat in Triplicane. The last I heard, they had tried to start a cloth-selling business for Jennifer and she was learning to cut and sell "piece goods."

A "homely girl"
Often in such a situation, the girl is open to all kinds of exploitation from the hosts (forcing her to do housework; sexual come-ons from men in the family; use your imagination). But I have seen VP's house and family and I trust them.

They are looking for a nice boy to marry her. I think any guy would do well to marry her. Actually, I don't know of anyone who would be good and innocent enough for Jennifer.

Her father was a Christian, so Jennifer got a western name. (The fact that her name is not Indian made it Christian, at least to them. I didn't bother trying to explain that there is no Jennifer in the Bible.)

In Indian matrimonial ads, they describe a girl who likes to stay at home, cook, clean and be a traditional wife as a "homely girl." I wonder if they are using this word to describe Jennifer.

In sickness and in health

More scenes from the exciting life of a world traveller
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dear Friends:

Thanks for all the "get well" e-mails. I would love to answer them all but unfortunately, it takes all my energy now just to write one blog entry like this. I am so nauseous (side effect of Tinidazole), I can't be around food (have to force myself todrink tea. The doctor says no dairy products which cuts out a lot of my diet) and even walking around in this rainy season is a challenge, because everything smells.

The CIWEC Clinic
With all my illness, I have had plenty of opportunity to get to know the CIWEC Clinic. The atmosphere at CIWEC is very professional, almost yuppie. A sort of yuppie Peace Corps boutique. Their clinic complex would not look out of place in southern California... complete with SUVs in the lot. Their lab tech, Ramachandran, turns out to be one of the most respected parasitologists in the region. Anyone who's visited this region for an extended period knows the importance of identifying your intestinal beasties correctly.
Visit their web page at http://www.ciwec-clinic.com/

Most of the foreign med students and doctors are like me - they came to Nepal years ago on a fluke and fell in love with it. Everyone falls in love with it. Then they went back home and rearranged their lives figuring out how to come back here and either get paid for it, stay on a student visa, or something. The visas here are much more restrictive than those given for India (more about that in another blog). The dentist, Dr Hollander, is a big, deep voiced gentle man from Oregon who has been coming to/living in Nepal for 25 years! He used to run the US Embassy dental clinic. He was so gentle administering novocaine, I only felt the first pinch (and this was a front tooth - very sensitive).

The other doctors here are equally impressive. The clinic director, Dr Pandey, a Nepali woman, went to Harvard. Contrary to my previous statement, there are, in fact, a number of Nepali doctors...all western trained (ie, very upper-crust). The receptionists and nurses are a combination of those living here on an employment visa, professionals who love Nepal and chose to come work here - and students who are doing summer internships.

If there is a specialty that CIWEC doesn't cover (like my eyes), CIWEC can recommend a good reliable doctor. The eye doctors they sent me to, Dr and Dr Malla, are Nepali husband and wife who were trained in the US. (At least one of them was.) None of the authoritarian "shut up and listen to me, you are the patient" of the Indian doctors. They were very caring. They actually called to check up on me. Unheard of for any doctor, anywhere, these days!

Life Styles of the Expats
A friend asked me whether the nurses and clinic staff stay in a hostel or special housing. I don't think so - I think they have nice flats on their own. This is not difficult to get here. Unlike India, they do not mind renting to foreigners and ads in the paper even say "priority foreigners" (which has got to be some kind of discrimination, really!) and "flat or bungalow suitable for foreigners;" meaning, it is nice and clean and
everything works.

Getting good help
For an average American, getting used to dealing with servants is a new experience. It is part and parcel of life in much of Asia, though. For those of us accustomed to doing everything ourselves - driving, cooking, cleaning and laundry - the social system with all its built-in middlemen (middlepersons?) takes a lot of getting used to. Often, thanks to the difference in language and work standards, it's just easier to do it yourself.

Most long-term expats, whether it is a doctor for the Embassy clinic or a teacher at the Lincoln School, has a maid or "didi"... if not a gardener, too. Lots of them are on near-US salaries so for them, to have a house with a gardener and maid for $200-300 a month is a steal. They think nothing of having a maid. It's a little weird for an American, or at least, for this American.

Therefore, when I talk about and compare maids, it doesn't mean I have struck it rich over here. Far from it. Maids, watchmen, hotel "boys" and so on are just part of even a budget traveller's life. One must learn to treat them with a careful balance of respect, friendliness and still maintain the elaborate role-playing that is all part of Asian life.

The maids in my hotel are always so good-natured and energetic, nothing like the shiftless Indian maids who just barely push the dirt around with a broom. This is why Nepali help is so popular in India. As my Garhwali friend Laxmi said to me, "These people will work." Whether it is a physician, or a maid, or a bank teller, or a bus driver, many Indians seem to have decided long ago that they were just above working. Working is beneath them. They just exude this air of, "I really am too good to be here. Your job is an insult to me."

Punjabi Sikhs are a notable exception to this. They pride themselves on being hard-working. No wonder many other Indians look down on them and make Polish-type jokes about them. How stupid, for someone to brag about working hard!

Also unlike India, landlords do not charge outrageous deposits on a rental house or flat. Amazing. The only place I have been in like this in India is Koregaon Park in Pune and, to an extent, McLeod Ganj. In India they want 10 months deposit up front. And, if you move out early you do NOT get it back (some deposit!). That's in addition to the ridiculous finder's fee you must pay someone.

Everything in India is designed to make improvement impossible. For real! This is a social-levelling mechanism to keep people in their place keep the peace by ensuring that no one gets ahead of anyone. My friend Robert discovered when he painted his friend's house in a Chennai slum. After seeing the nice new paint job, the landlord decided the house was now worth more money and that he should rent it to someone else. It's a real disincentive to improving things there - If you improve it, you could actually endanger yourself.

These places - Koregaon Park, McLeod Ganj, Kathmandu - interest me because they are welcoming to foreigners, but are still mixed. That is, you will see local people other than just the rich people's maids. Of course, there is some of that but there are also local students, professionals, business owners and so on. Nepali people go to the nightclubs and restaurants. It is not intensely segregated.

Compare and contrast: south of the border
India has a much heavier class system, and a greater population with about 70% belonging to the lower castes. Always in India, you get that feeling of fending off. People are constantly fending off the Hordes Outside. Everything from the bars on the windows to the watchman with his stick at the door of every decent shoppe or restaurant...everything says Fending Off. This is best illustrated in a situation like the train trip into Calcutta. As you leave rural areas behind and enter the urban zone, it gets increasingly intense...until The Outsiders are literally reaching into the train windows from the platform outside. For what? Anything. Grabbing onto Anything At All, just to be grabbing.

I'll never forget going to Sri Lanka and being so amazed at not only the cleanliness of the railway platforms, but the fact that no one was living on them. Unheard of, in India - the railway stations are semi-0fficial homes to countless people. And the windows of Sri Lankan trains are big, and open - no bars!

In Nepal, you can let your guard down (almost literally). There are very few beggars here, comparatively. Most of the street kids are actively trying to DO something - even if it is just sell satin pocketbooks. One little kid does hand drawings in crayon and walks around"selling" them. Other teenagers hawk tiger balm, wooden flutes, and so on. At least they are trying to do something. They are far less aggressive than in India and would never follow you down the street harassing you.

It is interesting to keep in mind that Nepal is the absolute last on the SAARC list of nations economically. Below even Bangladesh. Yet they are so laid-back and relatively genteel.

The Academic Tourist
Yesterday, I met a Fulbright scholar from Harvard (!) sitting opposite me at the wireless cafe. It turns out I know his roommate, an American lady who speaks fluent Tibetan and is teaching conversational Tibetan here. Last week I met a German and a Nepali-American student here learning classical Nepali music at the university. The German girl is here on a student visa, whc. Three weeks ago I met a guy from Kentucky, Drew Bewlay, who is here doing his college internship with the newspaper The Rising Nepal (he is a photojournalism student). Kentucky is the border state with Tennessee so it was almost like meeting a next-door neighbor.

My friend Rene is here also in college - she arranged an internship with one of those companies where you pay to volunteer, but got there and didn't like it, so now she volunteers with various people all over town including the gay rights magazine, Blue Diamond Society. She extended her stay by 2 months' time and now is going to India to do commercial photography. So many interesting people doing interesting things.

In a bar last month I met 2 logisitics specialists who work for the World Food Programme, which has a major office here. They go out to rural locations and see what the situation is. How many helicopters will we need to airlift bags of rice into Mugu district? Where will we store it? Will the rats get it? Monsoon rains? Are the people so corrupt that it will all disappear before the villagers see it? And so on. Many of our conversations revolve around how to stay in Nepal, why we love Nepal, places we have been in Nepal, people we have met, stories of people we have met, what's going on politically, and whatever work we are doing (in my case I am tracking down various stories, in between breakdowns).

Kevin is an Australian pilot who works for Dragon Air HongKong. He came here for 4 weeks after his marriage broke up and spent 2 volunteering in an orphanage, which he liked even better than trekking. He told me about his last day, when two of the kids came up and said, "Mr Kevin, we don't want you to leave." Kevin is a big, manly guy, but he got a little misty telling me that story.

There are also the party-hardy type recreational tourists, but they live in rather a different world. They are a very different breed from the people who come to do something here, or to study. That's fine, because they are good for the economy and they are tolerated and even welcomed by the locals. There are also the ultra hard core adventure tourists, but they are mostly in the hills or whitewater rafting or bungee jumping off a gorge.

Amoebas in our midst

The Host Organism speaks
Kathmandu, Nepal

Today I went back to the CIWEC clinic (no one seems to know what these initials stand for) to give a specimen. CIWEC, located in a new building in Lazimpat opposite the British Embassy, is the kind of place that would never be allowed to exist in India: a fully modern clinic staffed almost entirely by foreign doctors and dentists (with a few foreign-educated Nepalis). The clinic and doctors are clean, friendly and efficient. The receptionist (usually a British or Australian volunteer) is welcoming, with no haughty attitude. The nurses are foreign volunteers here on student visas. Other than Dr Kishore Pandey, who describes himself as "a pukka Nepali," all the doctors are from America and various European countries.

Amazingly, they are able to analyze the specimen while you wait - and the wait is never long. They have this wizard of a Nepali guy doing all the lab work and he's very accurate.

In India, such a clinic would be either taken over by the government or (much the same thing) shut down within weeks. The official reason would be trumped-up, but the real reason is that the foreign doctors, with all their friendliness and efficiency, make Indian hospitals and doctors look bad. And they would be right.

I like walking to CIWEC, because I get to stroll through some quiet backstreets from Thamel to Lazimpat. There's a vacant lot where, on dry days, kids often gather to play soccer. Now it's muddy and full of puddles, and dingy-yellow sheep graze there innocently. There is no fence and the sheep are not tied; when the day is over their keeper, who lives down the block next to the video store, just kind of comes and herds them home.

On this same street (which is smack in the middle of the city's Embassy district) people keep goats and chickens by the side of the road. I have gotten to know the regular street dogs whose universe is divided into corner domains.

Lama's Food Shoppe is one of the only places I can find my favourite orange popsicles. By the time I've reached Lainchaur I am hot, so I always sit on the concrete stoop with the lounging street dogs and try to eat the popsicles before they melt. Other regulars come by, and buy soda pop, candy and cigarettes. Lots of school kids in uniform hang out there after 3pm, procrastinating on the way home.

Turns out I have not only giardia, but 2 types of amoeba and something called Blastocystis. I seem to have picked up some travelling companions along the way. This explains my weird weight gain, bloating, loss of appetite and general lousy feeling.

I have to take Tinidazole, which makes you feel like crap (okay because I already feel like crap and can't do much) for a few days and it's up to me whether I want to give another sample. The doctor was $50 and the sample lab work was $17.

Tinidazole should (should!) help the Giardia. I don't know what will get rid of amoebas. I have picked these up some time in the past year; last year at this time I had only ("only!") Giardia and the Blastocystis.

This just in...

...Violence works!
Kathmandu, Nepal

In the wake of country-wide protests regarding the proposed hike in all fuel products, the government has announced...they are reconsidering. Prices might not go up after all. Yay, democracy in action!
Read the full story here.

Strike out

Fossil fools
Kathmandu, Nepal

There's a strike on today. That means there are no buses, no taxis, and some shops will be closed. My friend Jayanthi Lama wants me to come to her grandfather's funeral puja today, but I don't know how I would get there. Her neighborhood, Tinchuli, would take about 1.5 hours to walk too, and I am too sick to walk that far right now.

It's my favourite kind of protest - that of students and the general public. Not a pre-planned photo op, and not some special- interest group. (I have now seen enough protests to appreciate their individual nuances.)

"Situation is very bad on the outside today," said my favourite waiter at the hotel, Raj Lama. Raj Lama is seventeen years old and has been working in restaurants full-time since age 15, to help support his mother and siblings back in rural Kavre district. "No taxis, no buses. One American man was here and had to go to airport, he paid 1700NRs (nearly $30) for a cycle rickshaw!" A cycle rickshaw to the airport? that's quite a haul, but "ke garne" (what to do)?
(A taxi ride from Thamel to the airport is never more than 150NRs or about $2.50).

"Ke Garne?" ("what to do?") is the quintessential Nepali expression. People here have been helpless in the face of unchanging reality for so long, but somehow they never give up. They find a way around and through things. I'll never forget seeing tiny Nepali porters (about 5 foot 5) carrying full-sized modern refrigerators on their bent backs, or a full-sized sofa strapped to the top of a rural bus. (how did they even get a sofa up there? was it like building the pyramids, moving giant blocks on rolling logs?)

Even though I haven't left my room because I have a horrible cold and fever, and have been coughing up thick yellow goo for 2 days, I could tell there was a strike. First, it seemed awfully quiet for 10am. Usually by now, there are plenty of taxis honking and motorcycles beeping. Suddenly I heard a tremendous rattling cacophony. It sounded like 2 dozen metal shop gates being pulled closed at once, which is exactly what it was. Almost in unison, the shop keepers (who sit on their front steps waiting for business) jumped up and the corrugated metal gates came cascading down, with the keepers themselves safely behind on the shop side.

At the same time, I heard a chorus of throaty chanting coming down the street, and marching rhythms. About 100 young men, some wearing red kerchiefs but most in the usual t-shirts and jeans, were trooping - loosely, like they hadn't quite decided whether to just jog, or march in semi-formation - down the narrow street, chanting "Loktantra Zindabad, Zindabad" (Long live the rule of the people) . One guy in front carried a satiny red flag aloft, leading the way. A few amazed, dazed white tourists stepped aside (as much as you can since the streets are so narrow); some took photos.

The shopkeepers "down shutters" in case the protest turns violent. Whenever protests turn violent, shops that remain open are targeted (since, if you are sympathetic to their cause and standing with your fellow Nepalis, you are also meant to be out protesting...not running business as usual). Taxi and bus drivers are supposed to be joining the ranks; those that might disagree don't dare run for fear of reprisal from the strikers and protestors.

I flashed back to Friday's newspaper headlines. "Petrol price hike." The commerce minister announced on Friday that all petroleum product prices were going up - petrol (gas), diesel, and kerosene. This affects not only buses and taxis, but private vehicles (motorcycles, scooters and the private cars of the middle class) and more immediately for the poor - cooking. The rural poor use wood fires, but the urban poor use kerosene stoves (which only light about 1/3 of the time. You spend more time trying to light the stove than you do cooking on it). Those with a bit more means these days use butane gas that comes heavy, red metal cylinders. These prices are going up 100NRs per cylinder. That's a lot when you only make a couple 100 Nepali rupees a day.

Here is the lead from the Himalayan Times story, plus link:

Price hike fuels national furore
August 19: Protest demonstrations were staged nationwide today against the hike in the prices of petroloeum products. Kathmandu Valley remained tense throughout the day after the students and general public began protesting. Protestors demanded immediate withdrawal of the government's decision besides the reginsation of Ministor for Indisutry, Commerce & Supplies....They vandalized government and private vehicles at Teku, Balaju, Maitidevi, Chabahil and New Baneshwor. A few protestors were injured in police action at Teku....

"On the occasion of her 79th Auspicious Birthday"
It's also the Queen Mother's Birthday. Queen Ratna, wife of late King Mahendra, somehow managed to escape the massacre instigated by her own grandson and lives on as Dowager Queen or Queen Mother. It's the custom here for the newspapers to print a front-page photo of any royal family member on their birthday, and wish them a "long, happy and prosperous life."

It was also"the occasion of" my own mother's 76th birthday a few days ago. Maybe I should continue this Nepali custom on my own website. My own mother is still the Queen Mother in my life. (sorry Mom, I don't have a scanned photo of you....)