Jaipur Bombings

In grief for the Jaipur bombings, which were given all of 8 seconds on Canada's national news broadcast tonight. In 2000, Jenna and I stood in the place where three of the bombs went off, had our photos taken by a street vendor, toured the Palace of the Winds. Thoughts with you tonight, Jaipuris.

Categories: India

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Gogol

And I'll say right now that when I was at Queen's I took a full-year course in Russian Literature in English. No Russian language training required, mind.

Kal Penn's character in The Namesake, talking about Calcutta rickshaws, running alongside his mom and sister in the seats, who are imploring him to shift over and come join them:

"No, you know... Because, like, being pulled by another human being is feudal, and exploitative, and... I don't want to be part of something like that."

Oh Kal Penn. Oh, we've all been there, princess. A few years of undergrad and it's all kinds of brutal to make the people work FOR you in the "third world".

Kal, you may have been cute when you were confined to the Toronto suburbs to film Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, but let me tell you this: if you have 2.5 tonnes of luggage as the average traveller does, and you need to go even 600m to the train station at, say, 6am (as Turner and I might have needed to have done, per se), and there's no such thing as a motorized vehicle to help you, you BET you'll take the emaciated man and his cycle-rickshaw to help you make your non-refundable booking on time.

No questions asked, and all that socialism training out the window, too.

Categories: Ash | India | Wurldliness

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NYC on Flickr

There's lots more to come, but the first of the NYC photos, from the Coolpix (low tech), are now up on Flickr, here.

Categories: Book Tour | Friends | India

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India On The Brain

I'm pining for the fjords. Or for the "Relax" stoplights. ...Something.

First off, I should come clean and tell you that for the last five months or so I've been scheming to get myself to India again this year. Yes, again. Tamil Nadu in February just didn't sate my India thirst this year, I'm afraid, the Chennai airport bathrooms notwithstanding. ...Mainly it's that Angad and Tara are getting married in what will certainly be the awesomest most Punjabi-and-Jewish-est wedding ever, anywhere, on earth, and the festivities begin at the end of November and go clear on through the first week of December. I want to go to that wedding. So. Much.

But we's broke. Most people don't pay us in any kind of "prompt" manner. Although we have done our work and people rave lovely feedback at us and we've invoiced them long ago, many decide, for example, that they're going to pay until June next year. And if we don't like it, tough titties (you know who you are). Imagine working, but some arbitrary and unexpected decision suddenly sets your paycheque back 9 months. I'm not talking about being paid poorly. I'm talking about NOT BEING PAID for months and months. A perfect shitstorm of unethical jackass behaviour of this sort from various people has set us back tremendously this year. Even now we're owed more than $10K in outstanding invoices. Can you dig that? I can't. It's beyond me to dig, at this point. All I know is that we have a new toilet flushing policy to conserve water (the ol' "if it's yellow, let it mellow/if it's brown, flush it down"), and we're on our fifteenth straight day of rice & beans. A few weeks ago I took some books on Quaker frugal living out of the library to look for ideas.

Anyway, recently I realized I probably wasn't going to be flying out to Angad's wedding at the end of the month. Paying the mortgage and the daycare bill and keeping up with our car payments alone has been impossible without some outside assistance (thank you thank you, you too know who you are). Soooooo.... yeah. It's really NO time to be putting a couple thousand dollars on the credit card.

But this month the whole universe seems to be conspiring to make me live and breathe India all the time. Thaba and Phet are currently in Delhi scoping out their new digs and I'm following them around the city through Thab's update emails, sighing as we whiz through Jor Bagh and shop at Fab India. John Johnston is on assignment in Bangalore, and I'm following his southern India adventures via his blog. Then I got a gig with a lovely prominent Ismaili Calgarian running for mayor next year, and he and I have been singing along to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai during the photo shoots and comparing notes on where to eat in Old Delhi (my vote, as always, goes to Karim's near Jama Masjid). Our friends Bauer and Karen are finally in India (Varanasi-Delhi-Rajasthan-south) after nine months on the road in Asia, and we've been emailing back and forth, comparing stories and travel advice. Then Ian Connacher & Cryptic Moth brought me on as the production coordinator for the upcoming India leg of the film schedule (check out their recent stuff out in the Pacific ocean aboard a Greenpeace ship, here: www.crypticmoth.com), so I spend my evenings chasing cool plastics leads on the Subcontinent, putting in long-distance calls to lovely erudite Indian friends-of-friends to get ideas and suggestions, and to book them onto the doc's itinerary.

And of course there's Angad's wedding. Let's face it, you get to attend very few great, grand weddings in life. You know, the sort where you look at the couple and think, YEAH. These are soulmates. Aside from the hoopla of this mixed-race mixed-religion wedding that's going to involve chartered busses to bring everyone from Part 1 (Chandigarh) to Part 2 (Delhi), I love Angad, and everything about he and Tara has been right, and good, and solid from the word go. I am so proud of him and pleased for him. I am grieving not being able to be there. It's been good to feel so connected to India again these last few weeks, but it's also just so tantalizingly close.

Back to work, Khabi Khushi Khabi Gham in the headphones...

Categories: Ash | Friends | India

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India: Mamallapuram, Auroville, and Chennai

Many, many, many more Flickr photos now posted, here. Stories en route from somewhere in the foggy post-India recovery portion of my brain.

Categories: Asia 2006 | India

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Ashley Bristowe, Global Snobizen

As we stepped off the plane I figured we should hit the bathroom before wading into the customs lineup. Chennai’s Anna International Airport: as I walked up the hall from the plane and through the glass hallways, I sussed it out: not bad, not bad… newish but not sparklingly ‘global’ in feel, various television screens telling us to head for the customs clearance desks and from which belt to gather our luggage, friendly-looking Indian Police officials with giant guns and miles of decorations leaning in doorways, watching us pass.

So the toilet, the toilet… where is the toilet? And then I saw a sign, toilet this way, with an arrow, just before the giant lineups to get our passports stamped, so I hung a right.  And there it was, in all its welcome-to-India glory: the shithole bathroom indigenous to every transportation hub on the Subcontinent. I can’t believe that I was expecting a standard airport bathroom: shame on me and my terrible sieve-like memory!

Oh, it was everything I hadn’t remembered and more: Despite the entirety of the rest of the airport being a sealed and air-conditioned international space, they managed to build this bathroom on an outside wall, obviously to allow for the circulation of hot jetfuel-scented air and the free passage of the obligatory 1001 flies. Single tinny fluorescent tube lighting the whole place. Water all over the floor, even way over by the door. An ill-hung mirror, the back silver of which was fading away in a sort of top-down watermark smear. And of course, in the stall itself, the lock, broken; holes in the door (though this let in some badly needed light – I should have been more grateful); dripping hose with cracked blue plastic pail underneath; and brand new toilet with stained, side-slung seat (though I should give props where due: usually there’s no seat at all). It goes without saying that there is no paper provided, ever, anywhere in India. As I did my business I balanced the baby on one hip and held the bags over my head: there was nowhere to put her or them down.

When I was a resident of India, the filth and refuse bothered me, but I could live with it. You have to. When you’re young you can sort of say to yourself, okay, they’ve got this caste system that no one will properly explain, but it seems to prevent anyone from actually caring for washrooms, except in private homes. You end up going to that place in your mind that says, “Well now Ashley, don’t be such a judgmental asshole, this is their culture and you are the outsider here.” No matter what the venue or business or locale, a bathroom with even the vaguest hint of public access in India is, always, a complete disgrace. Ainsley and I finally snapped one day on the Shatabdi train between Delhi and Chandigarh and, armed only with paper towels, a bar of soap, a credit card (to scrape up the grime), and the water provided in the basin tap by India Rail, we scrubbed that bathroom from top to bottom and emerged damp and exhausted, but jubilant and grinning: BEHOLD, THE ONLY CLEAN BATHROOM IN INDIA, AND LO, WE MADE IT SO.

But after a while – and I’m talking about a few months here – if you have any sense of cultural relativist decency, you do, finally, bow to the seemingly endless parade of revoltingly spartan and broken water closets and give up your pretentions. Without actually going “native”, as Rudyard Kipling so condescendingly put it, you do suck it up, so to speak. And in truth, this is a survival tactic, and being inured to the filth is a precious resource in the battle to preserve your sanity here. If you know me personally, I’m sure you’ve heard the ol’ busride from Leh to Manali story, which features a terrible case of the shits and me, half-collapsed and feverish at a bus station urinal, looking over to realize that a man was masterbating in the gloom, looking at my hunched and sickened self. Yeah… so. Can you see that getting to a zen place as to the quality of public toilets can save your soul? Yes. It truly can. And I know this. But it does take time, a long time.

Now, I’ll remind you that Sloane and I are only going to be here for 10 days this time ‘round. And as such, I fully realize I don’t have the dubious ‘luxury’ of attending to the whole wearying process of having my snotty superior spirit broken on the matter of public toilet cleanliness. I’m going to blame my stubbornness at least in small measure on being a mother and having my baby ‘on board’, but I’m holding firm and this is my decree on this day: good god the toilets in India are awful, and I won’t apologize for my snobbery. Wet, dank, dirty, insect-infested, unserviced, broken, neglected, abandoned: you’d hardly think that there were a billion people in this country, all of whom, I assume, have to shit once or twice a day. Really, you’d think that the Indians would’ve really had it all figured out by now on these matters. (Which, considering the age of the culture and the history of civilization here and whatnot, begs the chilling question: What if they do have it figured out, and this is it?)

So I’ll be unrelentingly bald and cold when I say: shame on you, the management of Chennai’s Anna International Airport – you are running an AIRPORT. People pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for the privilege of transportation via airplanes. And as the air terminal, you are the first and seminal welcoming can-can line when people arrive in this country – and given the uncompromising filth we’ll find everywhere else, there’s no worry that we won’t encounter “the real India” in this realm. So the very least you could do is break us in slowly. For the love of god, renovate and maintain your goddamn toilets, I beg you.

[You know, it’s only fair to report that I’ve seen and used plenty of public toilets in Canada that totally rival the Indian ones for disgustingness. The around-the-back gas station toilet at the Hwy 6 corner mart in New Denver, BC, leaps to mind (mainly because every time I end up having to use that bathroom, I think to myself: “I should never complain about the toilets in India as though Canada is so much better, because this one SUCKS.”) So I should be kinder – but for now, I won’t be.]

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | India

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Tamil Nadu Or Bust!

Onward to Hindustan! Tomorrow Sloaner and I get on a creaky early-morning flight to Madras, to meet up with Turner (already "in station") for the final leg of the India research.

The plan: We'll spend a few days in Mamallapuram, a temple town on the coast south of Chennai, and then head on to Pondicherry at the end of the week. On the weekend we strike (slightly) inland, to Auroville, the "experiment in international living".

         Ha ha ha - can you tell I'm no Photoshop expert?

It's all in the name of research. ...And self-aggrandizement of course. Who can resist us when we are carrying such a lovely strawberry-blonde baby? We're putting to the test the notion that you're treated "SO" much better when travelling with a child in India. Turner has been trying out the radical idea of "wearing clean clothes" and reports that the difference in treatment is marked. (Myself, I'll be testing the whole "not punching men who pinch my ass" technique, since the retailation-in-a-crowd thing on this matter once started a small riot at Dusshera in Delhi, from which we were saved by police brandishing lathis. I have never been so glad to see a lathi being swung in my direction, I tell you. In any case, hopefully the ass-pinching vector will experience a decided downswing with aforementioned baby on board. We can only hope.)

Turner is giving a talk in Auroville on February 19th at their Matrimandir - reading from the first chapter from The Geography of Hope, "Down At The Windfarm". So if, y'know, you're in the area, drop by!

You know I'll take a bazillion photos and collect up some good stories to tell. Internet access in India is, as I recall, "the shits" vis a vis reliability, so I'll make no claims on posting regularly and whatnot from the Subcontinent. We're back to Bangkok on the 24th, and I'll post stuff then, if not before.

Jaye he, jaye he... jaye, jaye, jaye, jaye, he! (Be careful this link doesn't burn your eyeballs out.)

(Crossposted with The Geography Of Hope's website.)

Categories: Asia 2006 | Book Tour | India | Work work work

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Snobby! Indian! Ladies! of Soi 2

I have mentioned about the Shiva statue in our complex, but I may not have told you that probably half of the residents here are Indian. I'm talking about born-in-India people uprooted for business reasons to Thailand. Mostly families, from all areas of India - Mangalore, Chennai, Delhi. Mostly Hindus - hence the Shiva statue, and also the seperate Ganesh and Krishna shrines elsewhere on the grounds, and the spitted paan dots on the pavement near the front stairs, and the Indian sweets on sale at the corner store. But best of all, the Snobby! Indian! Ladies!

Snobby? So snobby. All those exclamation points are richly deserved.

I'll try not to go into a reminiscingly rambly post about all the perceived trespasses I've ever endured at the hands of Indian ladies over the years. Because there've been many. Scary and cruel upper-class British people have nothing on "heartless" when it comes to the Indian lady mob mentality. I'll just say this: I'm friendly. I have a big smile on my face and I'm carrying a gorgeous toddler. I say hello, I wave, I ask people's children's names and compliment their eyes/shoes/size. And yet, the ladies here Give! Me! Looks! SNOBBY looks!

...How snobby? SO snobby.

I realize that I sort of brought it on myself. See, I wear salwaar as often as not, and I wear them with regular tshirts and tank tops. Salwaar are the billowy, baggy drawstring pants women wear as part of what's called "punjabi suit", or just "salwaar kamise". In the Indian mind, they're part of a locked set: salwaar on the bottom, and then the kamise - a long, flow-y shirt-dress that falls to your knees - on the top.

(Oh, and a dupatta. That's the scarf that goes backwards around the neck. I could never really bring myself to truly accept the dupatta and only wore it under duress on special outings, in India. Despite my cultural relativist leanings, my feeling towards the dupatta was summed up quite nicely by a fellow student at the Landour Language School, my first week in India. A Swiss girl, she was in India to study meditation. She'd gone out on the advice of some of the professors and had some salwaar kamise made. I met her at Char Dukan on her way home, and she was struggling with the flimsy dupatta, flapping in the slight breeze. I complimented her on the new duds, whereupon she said, "Yess, it'z niice I guessz... But ziss sing! [pulling at the dupatta in disgust] It iz soo... stoo-pidd!" Yes. My sentiments exactly. It slips off your shoulders, it falls on the floor, and I couldn't help but picture mine getting stuck in a fan intake, leading to my inadvertant strangling-by-dupatta. I'm sure I was glaringly, obviously underdressed according to my fellow Shimla-ites. But you know what? It's not like I was going undercover or actually trying to don a disguise when I wore salwaar kamise. I wasn't fooling anyone in India: I'm white. Nobody was going to mistake me for a Punjabi lady, all up in her soot, browsing in the market: no. So I never worried too much about the dupatta.)

See: giant pants, under long dress-like top. Also scarf-like dupatta. Most women, me included, don't look this glam in salwaar kamise. But you get the picture.

I got really attached to salwaar in India, and brought a few pair home with me, which I wore until they fell apart (though their companion kamise-es are in perfect condition, unworn and packed up in a box somewhere). Very comfortable, the drawstring sits at your true waist and the rest just hangs there. Nice heavy hem at the bottom to pull the fabric earthward. A fan-like design of folds across the front hides a lot of fabric in the garment, so you can move every which-way and not worry about being constrained. They're lovely. It should be said that they kind of make your ass look big, and I can't really disagree. But I'm usually looking at myself from the front when I face a mirror, and Turner really likes them on me (like, really), so let's be honest: who else am I trying to impress?

In Canada I don't generally wear salwaar outside the house. For one, the material is too light, built for hot weather and Canada's dang cold most of the year. But also, I'm aware of the fact that Indian people would regard me as being half-dressed. Or inappropriately dressed, perhaps is a better way to put it. I'll mention it again: the salwaar and kamise are a set. They're worn together. You don't wear just the bottoms when you go out in public.

Anyway, when I got pregnant, I ran out and found a Punjabi tailor in northeast Calgary and had her make me six pair of salwaar. I got them made in heavy fabrics that would stand the Canadian winter, and I practically lived in those salwaar for the next year and a half. I got rather used to them as my standard everyday uniform.

When I was packing for Thailand, I threw four salwaar into the suitcase. Enh, I figured Thais wouldn't know the difference, they're just baggy pants, really. And these salwaar are fancy silk, shiny and luxuriant. No one would think anything untoward, except perhaps that my ass looked a little big.

But I hadn't realized, before we arrived, the nationality composition of Thab & Phet's complex. I probably would've brought the salwaar anyway, but may have just worn them indoors, if I'd known. I dunno. In any case, the salwaar are perfect for this weather, so I wore them every day in that first week of acclimatization while we were getting our bearings. And I slowly started to notice that I was getting very pointed, very snobby (So! Snobby!) looks from the ladies around the compound. They'd look down their noses at me. Then shift their gaze very obviously to my pants. And then back at my face, before turning away with a clear look of disgust. It didn't take long to realize what was up.

In Canada, on the occasions that I've actually left the house in salwaar and been called on it by Indians in the grocery store, it's been in the form of, "Ah? Salwaar? Have you been to India?" It's generally friendly, somewhat amused, perhaps a little surprised. I got the point of course, but overall it was a friendly interaction. Here, however? No. Not friendly. Pointedly UNfriendly. I stopped wearing the salwaar outside.

But then? Then. Then I realized that it didn't matter that I wasn't wearing the salwaar outside anymore. Because? Indian ladies? They're gossipy and judgemental. And they'd taken notice of who I was from the waist up, and it didn't matter that I was in jeans or gouchos. Because they'd STILL give me snobby looks (Snobby! Snobby, snobby, snobby!). There goes that asshole who wears the salwaar without kamise, they were clearly thinking. It was enough to make me finally confront two of the women, sneering at me from the stairs. By that point I'd gone back to wearing the salwaar. Because, like, it obviously didn't make a difference. I'd wrecked my fragile standing with the Indian ladies of Soi 2 and there was clearly no going back. So, fuck it: the salwaar are the best pants for this weather anyway.

I stopped on the stairs, newly surprised by their undisguised looks of distain. "Yes. Indian pants. Salwaar."

They ignored me, while still staring (a curiously Indian skill).

I looked around me, very obviously indicating that there was no one else, I was talking to them. "Hello?" I said. "Hellllooo?" My body language was all about the notion of ME talking to THEM. I was smiling, but it wasn't a fun moment.

Finally one slowly blinked, and said, "Hellllo." And turned away. The women pouted at each other, briefly: How uncouth!

Most of the time the ladies were so! snobby! that I just had to laugh. I actually laughed AT a woman in the elevator. I just have to guffaw. Because, like, C'mon you people! We're in THAILAND. This isn't my country, but it sure isn't your country either! I'm sorry that you feel you have some divine right to this pattern of tailoring for pants, but give it up already! Oh ho ho. Did I learn nothing from living in India for a year and a half? Yes, apparently I learned nothing. I will never live down this repuation, now.

Anyway. Yesterday I was heading out to meet Bauer and Karen for lunch and an excursion to the Royal Palace. I was wearing jeans and a tshirt, and a hat. As I got into the elevator an Indian man inside looked me up and down and suddenly exclaimed, "Wow, you are looking thin!"

I looked at him. I'd never seen him before. Like, I'd never consciously laid eyes on him and registered his existance before this moment. I said to him, "I... see you are wearing a purple shirt today!" Because...? Like...? ...What else do you say? The other man in the elevator, a Thai Chinese business guy clearly with the Indian guy, just looked down. "I see you are wearing a beige shirt today," I said to him, not to be boxed into a corner. The ride is short from the 5th to the ground floor; I didn't have to let an awkward (for me) silence descend. "...Yes, I am," said Mr. Thai Chinese business guy. Indian guy in the purple shirt beamed.

I was still at a total loss as to who he might be, this Indian man. I finally had to decide that yes, I'd truly never seen him before in my life. I mean, thanks for the compliment and everything, but in all my years of dealing with Indian men, I'd never received a spontaneous compliment from a knowing stranger such as this. Like, he'd clearly seen me before, knew exactly who I was: his manner wasn't that of someone who was speaking to a stranger. But how? When? He wasn't creepy about it: clearly it was a sincere comment, meant to be taken well.

Walking away from the elevator, though, it came to me: I realized... that... the ladies, they'd been talking about me at home! Not just amongst themselves - they were bringing their bitch sessions about me and my salwaar-wearing self into discussion with their husbands and families. ...And about my ass? Yeah. That it looked big in the salwaar. I bet, I'd bet $1000. This guy was seeing me at close range, in jeans, and I guess the difference between my skanky salwaar-wearing big-ass reputation and the lithe goddess of denim he saw before him was just too much. He clearly had to say something.  

...You know, we all have those fleeting ideas that people are watching us, talking about us. Once you get out of junior high though, more often than not these ideas are just paranoia. Nobody is talking about you. Everyone is far too busy wondering if anyone is talking about them to actually talk about people, themselves.

So when? People actually are talking about you? Being mean and condascending and rude? And you're an adult? It's disorienting. You think (or at least: I think), "I'm exaggerating, I'm making too much of this.They don't care as much as I think they do." But then some stranger up and tells you (me) that your ass isn't looking HALF as fat in those jeans. And you wonder: is it better to be paranoid, or to be right?

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | India

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Ohm Nama Shivaai

So as I told you in the previous posting about our daily routine, every day or so I take Sloane around the complex on a tour. And of all the places to visit, her all-time favourite is certainly the Shiva statue.

Shiva is one of the main deities of Hinduism, known as the god of destruction. However, Shiv "embodies seemingly contradictory qualities, being the destroyer and the restorer; a great ascetic and a symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger," or so say the various hinduism websites I consulted for a concise description of what Shiv's all about.

Most of my personal experience with Shiva occurred, not surprisingly, when we lived in India. Shiva's home is in the Himalayas, and since Mussoorie and Shimla are both situated in the foothills of same, there was no shortage of serious devotion to Shiva going on in the midst of our daily lives. Our friends with a better handle on things-Hindutastic can correct/clarify my take on all this in the comments - Carla and others, please feel free to speak up.

One of the first things you'll hear in traveller circles when you arrive in India is that pot is legal. I'm no kind of enthusiastic when it comes to marijuana, so this news had little interest for me. I realize I'm uncommon in this reaction however, and for decades there's been hoardes of eager imbibers heading for Hindustan to get a bit of ganga. For a reason that was never entirely clear, Shiva likes pot. Or smokes pot. Or created pot in the first place. Or something. I never asked for the details on this point. In any case, part of the reason why marijuana is quasi-legal in India is the legal argument of Shiva devotees requiring access to the herb in order to honour Shiv.

Before I go any further, I should mention that although people will tell you that pot is legal in India, this isn't entirely true from what I understand. Certainly foreigners travelling in India have been thrown in the clink for possessing hash and marijuana, and there are fines and deportations that come down on minor offenses. So I get the sense that there's a sort of fine line - if you keep it quiet, like a Shiva devotee would, and you don't, for example, smoke up huge coners in public places while blowing the smoke in the faces of stern-faced local folks (who might then be tempted to trot off and return with the cops), you'll probably be okay.

If you're a connaisseur and/or truly desperate, there's always the option of the bhang lassi, which is a sort of yogurt drink laced with slow-acting hash that packs a wallop. But some people get sick on those because you can't really guage the amount of hash you're injesting, and if you're sitting on a hot patio in the Indian sun and only sipping at your yogurt drink over a few hours' time, I don't have to spell out what might go wrong in the heat when it comes to a milk product. The bhang lassi was certainly something I heard about (usually in the context of a story about how the imbiber had one, it didn't seem to work, so they had another, and then finally gave up on the buzz and went to bed, only to awake six hours later high as a fricken kite and terrified of their own teeth, whereupon they felt it absolutely necessary to wake up the poor Norweigian backpacker in the next room and tell them the intricate details of how, this one time, their next-door-neighbour when they were little was backing up the car and stopped on the garden hose while the sprinkler was on and no one could figure out what had suddenly gone wrong... usually a story like that), but I never sought out the bhang lassi, and it wasn't on any menu I ever saw in my travels around the subcontinent. I suppose if I'd been interested I should have spent more time in Israeli backpacker hotels or perhaps in Manali. In any case, I think bhang was technically legal, but it only takes have a second to size someone up vis a vis their lifelong devotion to Shiva... if any of this described you: Tevas/Birkenstocks, MEC backpack, nalgene bottle, Lonely Planet/Rough Guide in your pocket, and a nationality other than Indian - yeah, you're not a Shiva devotee. You're just a pothead. Drink up that last bit of lassi and please move along.

But I digress. Back to the Shiva story.

Our servant Nazko was a Shiva devotee. She was a Pahari woman from a small village at the bottom of a valley about 30km from Shimla, and she was quiet but serious about her respect for Shiv. There was an Indian serial drama about Shiva on Wednesday nights and when it was time for the programme she'd knock quietly on our door, and with a grin move to the floor below the television and switch around the channels. The show itself was, to Canadian eyes, seriously campy and Shiv would appear with a cut-the-film-and-insert-shot-of-a-sheet-of-paper-featuring-bolt-of-lightning-and-now-back-to-our-program flash that made Harriet's Magic Hats look like a miracle of editing and technological prowess. But whenever Shiva showed up to sternly admonish the villagers or to intervene in some farming accident, Nazko would become very grave, and raise her hands in prayer to her forehead, and intone, "Ohm nama Shivaai!" We just needed to see that once to sober us up as to the camp value of the program. From then on we kept our snickers to ourselves.

Now. Our flat in Shimla was part of a larger compound owned by a joint family. It had a school and a number of seperate apartments, all constructed as cliff-clingers off the main path in Upper Kaithu. We rented a spacious (for India) flat that overlooked the whole of the Annandale Valley. When Sonia Gandhi arrived in Shimla to campaign for Congress during the 1999 election, we watched her fly in by helicopter and alight at the pad on the golf course/polo ground down in the valley below. In the evenings Turner and I would have 'libations on the porch' and watch the 4:40pm train make its choo-chooing way into town along the shoulder of the north ridge, across the valley at Summerhill. And on those rare days when the mist would lift, to the west we had a spectacular vantage point for gazing upon the whole of the craggy and incomparable Himalaya that so captured Rudyard Kipling's imagination. ...What I'm saying is that we had a million dollar view.

We also had hot water, and a telephone, and privacy, not to mention the servant - Nazko - who came attached to the flat. In short, the apartment was perfect for us, and after ten days of househunting when we first arrived in Shimla, it was certainly and by far the best available accommodations of anything we'd seen (a pool which included two adjoining hotel rooms that didn't get any sunlight, though there were mirrors affixed to the ceiling and horizonally on the wall beside the bed; the unfinished room above my Rotarian sponsor's house, an hour's drive from Shimla proper; flats that didn't have kitchens, flats that didn't have running water, and finally the terrifying Visiting Scholars Residence at Himachal Pradesh University which was a purgatory of malaise so profoundly depressing that Turner and I still talk about it today as The Worst Place On Earth, bar none). In truth, when we finally found our flat, it seemed like a true godsend. It was with giant smiles and trembling hands that we readily and gratefully agreed to pay the equivalent of $400 Cdn per month for the privelege of living at Rikhye Nivas.

We'd moved from downtown Toronto in a one-room apartment for $500/mo all the way across the world to a placed with two bedrooms and two sitting rooms, two bathrooms, a walk-in closet and a balcony, and we'd downscaled in price. We knew full well we were being ripped off by Indian standards. ...But you know what? We aren't Indian. And we had sure put every ounce of effort we had into finding an apartment. This one was the only apartment that was even marginally adequate for our needs. And furthermore, I was on scholarship, and my award could cover that rent with plenty left over to provide for our living expenses the rest of the year. So there might be a fleecing going on, but overall there was no harm done, as far as we were concerned.

At some point, Nazko asked us what we were paying in rent. We knew that the amount of our rent was more than Nazko's salary in two and a half years, but we told her, truthfully, the price of our rent. Well, Nazko was beyond appalled. She really loved us and we really loved her. And she ended up taking the overcharging-of-our-rent very personally. She was incredibly pissed off at our landlord, the nephew of her benefactor. She would mutter under her breath about how criminal was this rent. And how it was stealing. And how it was wrong. And that Shiva would eventually set things right.

Well, as the months went on, we sort of forgot about this grudge Nazko was carrying around on our behalf. And then one day we received word that Turner had won two National Magazine Awards back in Canada - one of which came with a $5000 prize, something like that, a big whop of cash. We were pretty excited, very happy for Turner. And Nazko of course wanted to know what all the ruckus was about, and we told her.

And she got this huge smile, like she's been waiting to hear this news for months. She closed her eyes and prayed, "Ohm nama Shivaai!" And BEAMED at us. Shiva is to be thanked! He has corrected the imbalance! This is your reward for the exorbitant rent!

...I think Turner and I can be forgiven if we didn't seem to immediately grasp the apparently direct connection between the $400/mo and the award Turner'd just won for a story he'd written more than a year previously. But Nazko was thrilled all day. And told everyone in the neighbourhood about how Turner had won a big writing prize in Canada that came with money. And that Shiva had fixed the extortion by rewarding us.

The more we heard the story her way, the more it seemed like it was at least as good an explanation as "coincidence" or "these events are unconnected - it's all just life's rich tapestry". So we came around. And to this day we explain to people about how Shiv helped Turner win his first National Magazine Award.

Lobby view of the shrine here at Ekkamai Soi 2.

So I guess it's appropriate that our girl has become a fan of Shiva. I ring the bell for her and bring my hands together in namaste to the statue, intoning, "Ohm nama Shivaai!" And Sloane claps.

Categories: Asia 2006 | India | Olden Days

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