Reflections on New Years Past...

In less than two days, most of the world will be ringing in the New Year (why do I feel it necessary to capitalise those two words?) and also the New Decade (there go those capitals again...) Not surprisingly, with the onus of having to look forward to the ten years ahead, I've gone all nostalgic on the year that's just gone by, and cannot help but think back to where I was this time last year.

People generally are supposed to have something interesting to do on New Year’s Eve. Normally, I’ve been quite good about avoiding the damp, windy and cold weather that plagues London around this time of year, and have spent the past two years in cities with SNOW, as opposed to sleet. So much better, no? So two years ago it was Paris, and last year it was Berlin. Berlin was definitely the more fun of the two getaways, though that may have had to do with the insane amounts of partying that I managed to indulge in. I went clubbing on New Year’s Eve, and ended up at Berghain, this truly terrifying, massive industrial hellhole spread on three floors in East Berlin. The place has a basement that closes 45 minutes after the club doors open, and what happens in the basement, stays in the basement. I left the club (not the basement, I can assure you) at 7 am, and there was a queue a mile long to get INTO the place at that hour. The Germans can party, I tell you.

Funnily enough, my most vivid memory of that morning is choosing to hop straight into a cab home, ignoring my initial (and ultimately wiser) urge to hop into a kebab shop and pick up food. On getting back to the apartment I was staying in, I realised just how ravenously hungry I was, and as no other shops were open at the time, ended up having to sate myself with a day-old Danish pastry and some apple juice. I spent the 1^st of January going to bed on an empty stomach.

Some might argue about the inauspiciousness of such a start to the year, but perhaps going hungry just made sure that I stayed hungry the whole year. Not for food, thankfully, nor shelter, but for new experiences. As much as a cliché as that is (and that’s a lot of “as”-es in a phrase) 2009 has been a fabulous year; time spent travelling, quitting full-time employment to do so, being adventurous, both in my professional life and my personal, my social and my love life. It’s meant not being content with the status quo, not being happy to be complacent. It’s meant forcing myself out of my comfort zone, doing things I might not have done in previous years, pushing myself.

It’s been absolutely terrifying.

But equally so exhilarating that I can’t believe I didn’t do this before and also cannot imagine going back to the way things were in 2008, or indeed in the years before then. I think I’ve figured out now how I want to live my life, and that’s not at all a bad thing.

Unless you’re my liver, I guess.

Changes slow and gradual

It’s been some time since my last post; not as long as previous absences from this blog, but still, a gap significant enough for some momentous developments to have occurred in the interim.

First things first – I’m now back at work. As of the beginning of this month, I re-entered the workforce, after nearly eight months away from professional life. The time I took off in the middle has been one of the happiest, most emotionally and personally satisfying periods of my life; it was a gap wherein I managed to travel across three continents and fourteen countries, visiting friends, family and places that have long been on my radar. I can look back and feel truly fulfilled. 2009 will go down in my life as the year that I visited my first World War II concentration camp (Auschwitz), my first villa holiday (Spain), my first visit to Venice, my first trip to the land of the Sound of Music (Salzburg), my first visit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, my first visit to Borobodur in Indonesia and my first visit to some amazing Indian heritage sites (Khajuraho, Agra & the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri).

As lists go, that isn’t an unimpressive one, methinks.

But as is the case with all good things, this period too had to come to an end. I returned to London and regular life at the end of August, and pretty much had a job lined up by the end of September. I don’t want to sound arrogant, or full of myself, but I have to give myself a pat on the back for finding a job in an economy in recession, during one of the worst downturns in the past century. Most importantly, not only is it a job that pays the bills, but it’s also a job that I like and fits into my own personal career growth and plans.

After five years in the big bad world of international finance, M&A and executing on corporate transactions, I was quite keen to try my hand at something more entrepreneurial, more dynamic and ultimately more fulfilling. My new job offers me a lot of what I was looking for and didn’t have in my previous job, which ultimately cannot be a bad thing. So I don’t think it’s out of order to be a little proud of myself. If that is arrogance, then so be it.

So it will not be long now before I have to update my profile (up there on the top right corner of this page) to read differently. Luckily for me, I will not have to edit the strap line for the blog; I am (still!) a former banker. Whether my current lifestyle will entitle me to the “part-time traveller” label remains to be seen.

As for the sometime cynic, well, why spoil a good thing?

But there have also been some other happenings worthy of mention. A dear friend came to visit me at the end of October, flying across from Amsterdam to spend three days in the cultural hotspot that is London. Despite having lived here in this crazy, amazing, cosmopolitan city for six years, I often forget (or perhaps as a result of living here, I am inured to) the many wonders that make London the brilliant place that it is. This is why I love it when friends from other places come to visit; it forces me to reorient my own perspective on this city that I have no shame in calling my own, to see it through fresh eyes, and to remember to appreciate the little things that make it frustrating and so enjoyable at the same time. My friend is a bit of a culture vulture, and so for the three days that he was here, we managed to hit three different art galleries. On Friday, it was off to the Tate Modern at South Bank (after a brunch at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre right next door) to soak in the splendours (or not) of the Pop Life exhibition. Saturday included a mad dash to Abercrombie & Fitch (friend’s boyfriend in Amsterdam had sent a comprehensive shopping list that needed to be filled) and as always, I was mostly horrified by the store, its insane crowds – there was a queue to get in! – its unapologetic sexualisation of the male form, and the unbelievable attractiveness of its ridiculously good looking yet utterly incompetent staff. Brains + beauty is clearly a very rare combination.

Saturday evening included a trip to see the eclectic Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy, which was, to my mind, one of the best sculpture exhibits I’ve visited in a very long time. I loved the mix of textures, colours and just the sheer scale of all the pieces on display. It was then time to hit Soho on Halloween, which itself was a mad experience; Dutch friend is intellectually familiar with the holiday, but it is often hard to translate the sheer exuberance that people in London take to dressing up. (As someone who was walking around with vampire fangs, I have to admit I was not immune to the frenzy).

And so finally to Sunday; an early morning trek out to Southall for some mooli parathas, chai and masala dosa for breakfast, some Indian spice & Ayurvedic product shopping, and finally a quick prawl around the many little DVD stores before it was back to Central London for some Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection, before wrapping up the weekend with a Sunday roast lunch at a cute little Notting Hill pub.

Ah, London.

And so it is that I enter the third week of my new employment this week. Christmas is around the corner, Oxford & Regent Street already have their festive lights up, the shop windows are full of holiday cheer, and it will soon be time for my own Christmas tree to make an appearance.

And before long, it will also be time for another blog post.

Shoddy Scholarship is No Excuse for Stupidity

The UK media and blogosphere is currently convulsing over the BBC’s decision to let the odious head of the racist and xenophobic British National Party onto its leading political TV show, Question Time. I am going to spare myself the need to hold forth on whether the decision by the Beeb was appropriate, and will also refrain from commenting on the performance (for let’s not pretend that all the participants were not putting on a show for the eight million viewers who tuned in) on Question Time. I have been following both right & left wing commentators with some interest, if only because as an expatriate of non-Caucasian origin in the UK, the rise of the BNP within UK domestic and international politics has a direct impact on my decision to continue living in London and paying UK taxes.

In general, the tone of the comments have varied from anguished handwringing over how the BBC’s decision to provide a platform for the BNP was to legitimise its opprobrium in the national discourse, while others have focused on how the BNP is only becoming a force majeure through the inability of mainstream political parties to tackle “sensitive” issues like immigration. Occasionally, there are slightly more obtuse debates over why parties like the BNP have been able to take on a significant share of votes, focusing less on specific issues and more on conceptual frameworks.

Into this final space fearlessly strides Times journalist and commentator Antonia Senior. In a piece on Friday, 23rd October 2009, she claims that the reason that far right politics and views have gained traction is through a persistent and pernicious application of “moral relativism”, and an unwillingness on the part of contemporary (read white) Britons to take an absolute position on any issue (“I’m right, and you’re wrong”). She argues that this is primarily predicated on three factors: an unwillingness to be painted racist in a post-colonial world, where any promulgation of the virtues of a Western cultural standpoint smacks of racial and cultural imperialism, a sense of being “shackled” by the moral relativism inherited by contemporary British commentators, and due to a decline in faith across Western societies; it is much easier to adopt absolute views when you have a little faith – look at the US evangelicals so furiously arguing against gay marriage.

Before I get further into the details of her arguments, let me first preface my own comments by saying that in the entire maelstrom of comments that this 1 hour TV show have triggered in UK politics, Senior’s is one of the few that, by choosing to focus less on specific (and perhaps therefore limiting) issues, and more about public discourse and wider narratives, as well as the underlying philosophical and moral frameworks that underlie them, provides an interesting analysis of UK debate and the mores that underpin it, both in mainstream and virtual media.

Unfortunately, merely undertaking some form of intelligent discourse analysis is not sufficient, especially when the conclusions that are reached are as flawed as Senior’s. She argues that contemporary debate is heavily tinged by moral relativism, a framework that, according to her, is intellectually bankrupt within philosophy itself, and that it is “incoherent, logically flawed and utterly tired.” The only reason it has any currency today in wider debate is because it prevents the awkwardness that is triggered by taking on moral / ethical absolutism. How very British indeed – let’s adopt a philosophy that helps avoid embarrassing moments over afternoon tea.

The problems with her article are so numerous that it is difficult for me to find a single space to begin. Perhaps her entire premise is exposed in the single sentence, “The relativist’s position is that all cultural views are equally valid, unless your culture is that of a white, male racist.”

Actually, NO. Relativism, when applied properly, and FULLY, turns around and says that all cultural views are equally valid, but – and this is where Senior misses the point – within their OWN frames of reference. Therefore, if you want to be a bigoted white racist, that is your issue, provided you apply it to YOUR framework. So if you DON’T want to hang out with black or brown people – don’t. That does NOT mean you stop them from entering your local pub, since that local pub may be a part of your framework, but it is not exclusively of your framework. So if you don’t want to sit next to a darkie, then don’t go to the pub; stay at home, which is (hopefully) exclusively part of your framework. If, however, your adult daughter decides to start dating a black man, that again becomes a problem, and your home may also no longer be an exclusive part of your framework. The point is this - moral relativism does not define the rules of engagement between differing world views, does not say that violently disparate opinions must mutually coexist, or that “everyone must get along”. Moral relativism merely states that all opinions and perspectives must be viewed within the prism of their individual circumstances. So in our example, moral relativism doesn’t tell you how to get along with your daughter’s black boyfriend. It does turn around, however, and say that within your world, if you want to hate a black person, that’s your issue. Don’t make it your daughter’s.

Yet another problem with Senior’s article is that she manages to confuse moral relativism, as propounded by thinkers like Sartre, with moral nihilism, which seems to assume the absence of an objective (universal?) morality. So very few cultures, if any, seem to suggest that theft is acceptable; is this an example of multiple cultural moralities co-existing, or is it the case that there is perhaps a “meta-morality” that pervades across all cultures? In either case, Senior seems to argue for abandoning what it has taken decades of philosophical and intellectual effort to achieve – the ability to adopt non-ethnocentric frameworks when assessing different cultures, and to be able to move away from imperialised racist constructs when approaching anthropological and cultural studies – to adopt the classical 18th and 19th century white European approach which looked at all non-European cultures as those of “noble savages”, that placed the burden of a civilisational mandate on the white man (a.k.a. the white man’s burden) and to speak of rights and wrongs.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly for someone who advocates the abandonment of moral relativism, is that Senior then goes on to commit the even greater crime of essentialism; the idea that a complex, multifaceted concept like “culture” can be reduced down to a single practice, on the basis of which it can be judged as being superior or inferior to another culture. She does this through her use of the example of female genital mutilation in Middle Eastern and African cultures. Senior’s rationale is that the prevalence of a moral relativistic framework within the UK prevents feminists from taking on a practice that is harmful to millions of women. It can only be shoddy scholarship that lets Senior take a massive leap here with the statement,

“Take female genital mutilation. I think it is an abhorrent, evil crime. Yet the woman slicing out the clitoris of a child with a rusty knife thinks she is doing the right thing. Clearly, one of us is absolutely right and one of us is deluded. If your culture believes in genital mutilation and mine does not, then my culture is right and good and yours is wrong and bad.” (emphasis mine)

What Senior does in this seemingly innocuous statement is incredibly dangerous. To turn around and assume that because a particular practice (in this case, FGM) is prevalent in a specific culture, EVERYTHING within that culture is equally horrific, and therefore available to be judged in terms of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, drags us back right into the 18th century. Her analysis here is equivalent to someone turning around and saying, “It was a Christian German culture that provided the cultural and political framework for the rise of the SS and the Nazis within Germany, which in turn led to the mechanised murder of 12 million people in Europe, including Jews and Roma, therefore everything in German culture is bad, including Nietzsche, Bach, Schopenhauer, Beethoven, etc.”

But you see, nobody would say that, because all good British commentators are well versed with the wonders of German intellect and their enormous contributions to European culture. Therefore any analysis of the rise of the SS and anti-Semitism within Europe is carried out with much greater intellectual honesty and with careful scholarship. It is much easier, when operating from within so clearly a Eurocentric worldview to dismiss other cultures, other voices, other narratives as being “wrong and bad”, and to get away with statements like the one Senior makes.

If I was to even step away from the mediocrity of Senior’s scholarship, though, I could perhaps find it amusing how her own theory does not hold to the whole BNP debate. To assume that the reason the BNP are able to occupy an increasing space in UK politics is due to an inability of other politicians to turn around and say, “You’re wrong” is clearly NOT borne out by the one hour of badgering that took place on Question Time with Nick Griffin. I personally struggled to see a single instance where any one person addressing Griffin didn’t turn around and say, “well, you’re not really wrong, but..”

Senior’s column in many ways makes me despair of leading publications in the UK. There are so many well (possibly over-) paid commentators in all the leading papers, and most of what they publish is such bilge that its quite depressing. Perhaps that is why I am increasingly beginning to rely on the blogosphere for intelligent analysis, as opposed to the mainstream media, who I now only really trust with breaking news (though after the balloon boy fiasco earlier this week, one has to question the wisdom of even that decision)

Bollywood Troop Rally!

A friend of a friend is currently in Turkey, there to learn dance, and not surprisingly is being harassed to death about teaching her classmates how to shimmy and do the Bolly . She's struggling a bit with ideas, and since youtube isn't readily accessible in Turkey, can't even do an online crash course. So come on folks - spread the love, spread the dance, and send her your suggestions!

Check out her dilemma here.

Damn those f*cking cliches...

Live your life. Live every hour, minute, second of it. Live it to the fullest, soak in every little experience that you can squeeze into this short, temporary, fading life of yours.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying light.*

It’s such a fucking cliché.

We hear these empty phrases, hollow platitudes all around us. Pop psychology on t-shirts, sappy crap on cheap ceramic mugs retailing in hippie markets. We hear these paeans from spiritual guides, holy leaders, wise old men sitting on park benches. Narratives excerpted and summarised from idiotic TV talk show celebrities, feel-good messages on the back covers of self-help books. Desensitised, we smirk and sneer, disparage and mock both the message and the messenger. We are so sophisticated, caught up in our modern, culturally evolved and intellectually superior pursuits. Our cynicism inures us from the inanity of triteness.

Except when something happens, something to shake us out of our sarcasm, our derision, our hyper-intellectual disdain.

Today I had one of those moments. A pleasant enough afternoon, spent with a former co-worker recounting travel anecdotes. It was a surprisingly warm autumn day in London, despite the clouds. Trendy coffee shop with a Kiwi theme (the country, not the fruit). Kitschy Maori art, Buddhist statues (how that’s Kiwi, I don’t know, but there you go). All in all, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

Then, returning home. A quick cursory glance at my email inbox, only to find a note from my parents. An aunt, a distant cousin of my mother, had died this afternoon in a hospital. Several days of high fever, jaundice, complications, finally leading to liver and kidney failure. She passed away this afternoon.

I can only hope it was painless.

I am not devastated. I am not heartbroken, I am not shattered. I hadn’t seen her for four years, and didn’t even know that she had been unwell, so it wasn’t as if we were close.

But the news did manage to shake me, in my little intellectual world, up a little. And part of the reason is because the news just reinforced just how insufficient, how fragile, and how terribly short this life of ours is. (There’re those damn platitudes again).

But it’s only at times like this that you realise just how true each and every one of these fucking clichés are.

So tonight I remember a woman, who was kind, gentle, slightly eccentric (but then, if you’re in my family, you’d have to be) and had a lot of love and affection for everyone. Someone who desperately loved her three children, who fought for them, who travelled further emotional and cultural distances for them than perhaps many of her own siblings would have, and who was ultimately a fighter when she had to become one for them.

And when the shock, and the sorrow, of her passing away has worn off, I will try and remember not to mock the many platitudes, the kitschy pop psychobabble that we find all around us, and try not to sink into my cynical derision of them quite so soon. Because no matter how stupid they all sound, in the end, you realise that they’re all absolutely fucking true.

RIP, dear aunt.

* Excerpt from Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"

Let the Right One in - the Live Blog!

Kicking off: Okay then. First time for a live-blog on The Buddha Smiled. I keep meaning to try this, and should have really done this before, but hey, better late than never. Starting out with Swedish vampire horror movie, “Låt den rätte komma in” (or "Let the Right One In", which was the title under which it was released in English markets) may sound unorthodox, especially since I tend to focus on Bollywood on this site, but hey – why do things by the book? You can read a short bio on the movie here, but otherwise, let’s just say that its a 2008 Swedish film adaptation of a vampire horror novel of the same name, written by John Ajvide Lindqvist. So – here goes nothing!

Menu & Set up: This has a pretty creepy sounding soundtrack. Loving the close up of falling snowflakes though....time to hit Play!

01:20 min: I want a name with strange Scandinavian characters in it too. Maybe I should rename this blog, ”The Büddhå Smiled".

06:53 min: Okay, so within five minutes we’ve established the Oskar, the lead character, is a bit of a school misfit, who reads creepy books that allow him to decipher forensic evidence and also gets bullied around a little in school. New neighbours in the apartment / housing complex, but is it just me who would find it odd that people moving into a new place would choose to board up windows? It’s like, HELLO! Your new neighbours aren’t the Joneses, they’re bloodsucking ghouls who are afraid of the sunlight. Also – they moved in after dark, and live in Sweden, a country clearly reknowned for long sunlit hours. Duh.

15:37 min: ”A person who kills children is certainly capable of taking the subway two stations. Or walking a mile.” This is clearly why child slayers are threatening - they’re able to use public transport.

16:39 min: Okay, this kid is officially weird. His parents are divorced, which may explain some of it, or it could be a lack of sunlight, but seriously, most pre-teens collect stamps or seashells, not newspaper clippings relating to murders, massacres, genocides, violent crime and gang wars. Also, why can he not get a normal haircut?

27:59 min: Obviously its a good idea to be murdering people in areas with heavy snowfall. A good flurry covers your tracks, and you can use your sled to move the body through the forests.

28:22 min: Gaah – I hate vampires! Not only are they blessed with eerie good looks, immortal life and an incredible sense of personal style (have you ever seen a badly dressed vampire?) but apparently they’re also blessed with great analytical thinking capability. Atleast, this vampire does – she solves Oskar’s Rubik’s cube and leaves it out in the courtyard for him.

28:45 min: On second thoughts, this vampire girl child is probably the first one I’ve met with absolutely no sense of personal style. And what is with those hideous jumpers? Maybe its because she’s pre-teen? Nah – if you’ve been alive for that long, you’ve had enough time to develop a fashion sense. Must introduce her to Kirsten Dunst from Interview with a Vampire to help this one realise that just because you're one of the living dead and a child, there's no reason you can't dress well.

36:24 min: Vampire girl tells bullied boy who’s been recently flagellated by schoolmates to hit back. Perfect. This is why we hate vampires – they screw up with the natural order of society. Imagine if everyone started hitting back. What would happen to the world? And more importantly, who would the poor schoolyard bullies pick on?!

41:43 min: Someone needs to tell Oskar’s dad that wear high-waisted faded denim jeans with a grey Christmas sweater TUCKED IN is never going to be a good look. No wonder Oskar’s mom divorced him, if that’s his idea of casual wear. Which is a shame, really, because he's pretty good-looking. But there's no accounting for taste, now, is there?

44:04 min: Ugly middle-aged man standing at gym window watching teenaged Swedish boys in gym kit playing basketball, and nobody’s calling child services and the police? What, so perving on teenage boys is legal and normal in Sweden?

46:50 min: Vampire child’s servant (?) defaces himself with acid to avoid detection and being traced back to Eli (said vampire child) And people complain that good help is hard to find even today. Bah, humbug.

53:20 min: So vampire child’s help is dead, she’s now climbing into bed with Oskar and its all getting a little weird. Are Swedes allowed to show pre-teen loving?!

56:41 min: And I thought I had relationship issues. Imagine dating a vampire.

1hr, 05:43 min: Note to self; the next time I’m dating a vampire, remind me not to suggest mixing blood as a sign of pre-teen fealty. The situation is unlikely to end well.

1hr, 20:45 min: Do all Swedish moms wear Ikea print gowns to bed?

1hr, 21:52 min: Vampires self-combust in sunlight. Important to remember the next time I’m dating one.

1hr, 24:21 min: True love is forcing yourself into houses you’re not invited into as a vampire, so that you can bleed from your eyes and ears. That pop! sound when your eardrums go is also really nice. Unrelatedly, why does the sight of a bleeding vampire give me cravings for aloo ka paraatha and bhare mirch ka achaar?

1 hr, 26:28 min: This movie’s obviously set in the late 70’s. Nobody would dare own a TV set quite that hideous today. And there I was thinking that the random decor was just how they rolled in Sweden (all that Ikea influence, you know). So I might as well also give up my fantasies of moving to Sweden, which this movie had led me to believe was the kind of place where I could wear brown mid-calf boots and not be beaten up in the streets for looking too “alternative” (read gay). Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Oskar’s hairstyle as well, then. On second thoughts, scratch that. Even the 70's can't be an excuse for a bad hairstyle. That one will only go so far, you know.

1hr, 32:28 min: You’ve got to love a script in which the normal human, out to seek revenge on the vampire that’s killed his friend and girlfriend, is somehow the evil one, while the evil bloodsucking ghoul that self-combusts when exposed to sunlight (a bit like leech +salt = goo) is the good one. Must recommend movie to scriptwriters of Interview with a Vampire” for lessons on how to make the vampire the popular one.

1hr, 40:09 min: Oskar is being totally set up at the gym by the guys who used to bully him, and the one he whacked across the ear with a metal stick. DUDE! Suspense is not good. Will Eli, vampire girl child, be back to save him? Only if it’s a Bollywood movie; these damn Europeans don’t know how to do feel-good. (groan)

1hr, 43:37 min: I told you these damn Europeans couldn’t do feel-good. So Eli, i.e. vampire girl child, does show up and save the day, but it involves decapitation and dismemberment. Not cool, especially when random body parts end up in public swimming pools. Now you see why I have a phobia of public pools? Who knows what’s been in there?

1hr, 45:20 min: Awww. True love is carting your vampire girl child girlfriend around Swedish national railways in a cardboard box. Chho chhweet!

And that’s it? Hmmm.... not a bad movie – definitely kept me engaged, but I can’t say it was mind-blowing. I did enjoy the live blogging experience though, so I can’t really complain. The grim landscapes of Blackeberg, Sweden, with snow-covered walkways and icy pine and fir trees does seem appropriate for bloodsucking ghouls that abhor the sunlight, but I’m not a fan. Especially since everyone and every review has been going on and on about what a brilliant movie this was. That may be a slight exaggeration, methinks.

Why I hate Bollywood

So if you’re a regular reader of this blog (or even someone who’s stumbled across this site via my Twitter or my blog, or are just a friend who’s here out of curiosity) you will be very aware of the fact that I am what could be described as a die-hard Bollywood fanatic. Perhaps one of the best things about living in Central London is that it is very easy to access the latest cinematic offerings at mainstream cinemas at Piccadilly Circus, unlike some other geographies where Bollywood movies play in suburban desi ghettoes (this is also probably yet another reason I dislike Singapore...)

Having said this, there are several things that I either find singularly irritating about my relationship with Bollywood, and with Bollywood’s relationship with me. One of these many irritants is how Bollywood has made me into a strange combination of champion and pimp (a pimpion?) Insidious, devious, underhanded, it forces its way into all my relationships – friends, lovers, colleagues – and I end up pitching for it everywhere. There have been so many random conversations – acquaintances in pubs over beer, lovers in bed after sex, random strangers on transcontinental flights – where what starts out as chitchat ends up turning into an unsettling blend of passionate sales pitch, courtroom defence and self-righteous admonishment of ignorance.

Now while you might say that it serves those idiots who dare broach conversations with the strangers next to them on transcontinental flights right to have me bite their heads off, imagine what it does to your sex life. And I always feel that some of my friends have gotten too cautious about what they say in front of me, out of an overweening fear that it may unleash the Bollywood beast.

The thing is, in my own pimpion head, it’s a simple equation. If you plan on maintaining any modicum of a relationship with me, in whatever capacity, you will have love the Bolly; not necessarily as much or as passionately as I do – it’s not too cool to be too eager or desperate – but enough to get me. And if you can’t get to that special place in your heart where you love it as much as I do, where if you could you would marry it and have lots of little Bollywoods, then at least show me that you respect my love of it. It’s the same as how I choose not to make disparaging comments about croquet to friends who I know can think of no better way to spend a mild English summer’s day knocking clunky wooden balls through metal hoops with even clunkier mallets. I may not get it, but I will respect your right to risk sunburn and potentially broken toes.

So yeah, I kinda hate Bollywood for making me into such a raving fanatic. I hate how it turns me into a Bolly-vangelist who deep down feels that everyone who doesn’t believe will burn for all eternity in some antiseptic Iranian / French cinematic graveyard (all monochrome and bleak) without ever a rainbow coloured dance routine to brighten up the day. (Note to self: can you burn for all eternity in a graveyard? Oh what the hell; it’s an Indian thing to mix metaphors...)

The other reason I despise my addiction with Bollywood is because it’s just so damn relevant to what’s happening in my life, and in the lives of my friends and family. Just when I get lulled into this sense that my life can be considered to be unique, individual, or just distinctly my own, something comes along that just proves that despite India and Bollywood being such massively post-modernist narratives, we’re all really just part of a wider piece.

Bah, humbug. This, however, totally contravenes all attempts to reinforce my inherent coolness by doing things that are supposed to be unique, different and not so mainstream that the world’s largest commercial film industry can make blockbusters around the broader themes.

For example, when I was growing up, everyone who was Indian would rush to the USA for postgraduate study. How typical, I thought. I was going to go somewhere else. Somewhere hatke. The UK had been a big destination post-Independence, but had slowly lagged behind as the USA took over as the main destination of brown brainiacs in search of a Masters’ degree in something (if not a PhD). That’s it, I thought – I’ll look at programmes in England.

And then what happens? As soon as I start my research, Bollywood had to run across and start filming every second song over here. Starting out with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Main Prem ki Deewani Hoon, Mujhse Dosti Karoge... it was like, so you want to go here? Look, if you’re lucky you may run into Rani Mukherjee! And it’s not gotten any better these past few years that I’ve chosen to live here. Salaam-e-Ishq and Love Aajkal have significant portions filmed in London, a city I’ve lived and worked in for the past six years. It’s like, wtf? Go somewhere else!

Alright, I know you’ll argue that my being here in London and Bollywood’s presence here are not unrelated. (No, TBS, it’s not as if an entire film industry is stalking you). Both the UK, and London in particular, have strong links with India, not least because of a large diaspora community, and there are a large number of Indian expatriates who come here to study and work for a few years. Some stay on, some return home. So yeah, you’re just part of a wider trend. Chill.

Well, okay. I might buy your argument there. But it’s not as if this is the only instance. There are distinct moments while digesting the latest Bolly news that I get a sense that at some cosmic level, someone is having a massive cinematic laugh at my expense. So last year when I was gearing up to go to Delhi for the wedding of a good friend, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na came out, along with famous song Pappu Can’t Dance Saala. Listening to those lyrics, I realised that my friend, the would-be groom, was actually Pappu. (Hey, hey, Pappu ke paas hai MBA, karta hai France mein holiday... I even think he had a Rado watch before he hid it to avoid too many comparisons. And yes, my friend can’t dance either.)

Okay, I know you’ll argue that again my friend is merely typical of a broader genre of Indian men who are well educated, travel and have poor rhythm and fashion sense.

So how do you explain these last few “coincidences”?

Fine, I decide - the UK is a but-obvious choice for anyone who’s Indian and making movies. What with 200 years of colonial rule, maybe it was going to be difficult to pretend that there’s no real link between the two countries, especially since the damn Kohinoor diamond’s still over here. Meanwhile, I’ve spent the past few years exploring other parts of Europe, hoping to find the next city for me to move to (NB – given my itinerant childhood, I get this uncontrollable desire every few years to uproot myself and find a new home in a new country. I’ve realised that the smart thing is not to fight it; rather, I should facilitate the move by pre-selecting the next destination before the urge kicks in, just to speed up the transfer process.) I’ve now also decided that I don’t want to go to a place that is mainstream, popular with Indians or something that’s made it to a Bollywood movie.

So in 2007, for the first time, I get my ass out to Berlin. One weekend, and I’m in love. The place is unbelievable. In 2008, I’m back again with work for almost a full week, and it’s just reinforced the attraction. This is it, I decide. It’s funky, it’s cool, it’s unique, and nobody will film a dance sequence here. It’s a beautiful city, but it doesn’t have that Bollywood aesthetic. I’m safe.

And, then, back in London, after a couple of weeks, I read about how Shah Rukh Khan is planning to film the sequel to Don in Berlin.

Bah, humbug.

And finally – the icing on the cake - a recent one that’s just reconfirmed that I’m being stalked. By an entire frickin’ film industry:

My sister, a good Indian girl (she was born in a good family in the city of Varanasi – you can’t more desi than that) has been seeing a Brazilian guy for the past eighteen months. Both sets of parents – one Indian, one Brazilian – came to the UK to allow both families to meet, so it’s been all fun and games, really. The one thing that struck me when they started going out last year was how, despite a life spent in four different continents, in fairly international communities, where international relationships are usually a norm, not an exception, while I’ve come across Indians with Europeans (French, German, English), Indians with Australians, Canadians, even Japanese, I’ve never encountered an Indian-Brazilian couple. So in many ways, I liked to think that my sister’s breaking new ground. I mean, India – Brazil is just not spoken of unless you’re talking about BRIC economies.

And then I go to India in June and figure out that the latest new actress is this woman who plays good Punjabi Sikh girl Harleen Kaur in Love Aajkal. The catch? Her real identity was kept secret until after the movie was released. She’s BRAZILIAN!!!!!!

DAMN YOU BOLLYWOOD!!! STOP STALKING ME!!!

Why I love Bollywood

Doesn't it suck that I missed this when I was in New York in August? I would have loved to have been there at Times Square when the Bollywood flash mob hit town:



Though I have to say I'm not quite with the very weird blue and silver shirts these dudes are wearing. I have my own personal tastes in Bolly bling, thank you very much!

Maybe I should organise secret Bollywood flash mobs in London... any takers?!

Travelling thru' the Big Apple

(The following posts are excerpted from my trusty Moleskine travel diary that I carried around in my backpack and wrote in occasionally while backpacking. The excerpts below were all written when I was in New York or Philadelphia in August 2009 for a week.)

Time flies when you're having fun.

Life in the crazy Big Apple is hectic, busy, stressful, not so cheap. Fancy bars, stylish restaurants; Brooklyn / Fort Greene is the new hip, Chelsea / West Village is getting jaded. Meatpacking is SOO pre-recession darling.

So we get to new places. Everything is transitory here. 230 5th, Plum, all of them are 2007. 2009 has a new list of places, new cool spots, new cool looks. Looking pretty ain't worth shit if you're not looking pretty in the right places.

Everything is transitory here. But everyday, you're not here. Every instant, I mutate into something else.

Where're you from? They all ask me. What's your backstory? What makes you who you are? It's a series of questions asked with a strange blend of uncaring casualness and somewhat discomfiting curiosity. New Yorkers aren't supposed to care. They've seen it all, remember (after all, everything happens in New York, doesn't it?)

So when they ask, not out of a habituated boredom - just the closing verse of a well-rehearsed liturgy - but out of a genuinely actuating desire to find out, it's much more uncomfortable.

Perhaps there aren't that many brown multi-lingual ex-bankers with a pierced eyebrow and a serious sense of personal style in this world after all. Not everyone can be glamorous, you know.

*********

I haven't stopped thinking 'bout you, you know. There have been times that I've wondered what it would have been like to have gone travelling these past four months with you. What if you had kept me company, if you had been there?

Fantasising about you sticking around is never a good thing. It's not going to help me get over you, now is it? But did you think that I'd have moved on, so quickly?

Do you miss me? Do you think of me? मेरे लिए भी क्या कोई उदास बेकरार है?

*********

Last day in the Big Apple.

Hanging out in the Upper East Side. Art galleries, Iranian contemporary painters. Holding myself back from making a deposit for a 55 inches (square!) canvas. Only 35 grand. Yes, its US dollars, but that's still like 25 grand sterling. Not cheap.

I like it here in NY. Not like it was in 2007; hostile, alien, unwelcoming. 2009 NY is like the NY of my childhood, when I felt like I was a part of the city. Funnily enough, NY is not home anymore; not the way it was when I was growing up, and I have a strong feeling that it will never be home; not in the warm, comfortable way that London has adopted me over these past five years. But London is European, English, Indian, worldly; whereas this place is so decidedly one thing: American.

Life is manic here; you feel like the alien that you are each and every minute. Either you conform, fit in, become that most unnatural of things - a New Yorker - or you remain alien, touristy, a foreigner.

I "know" this place; it is familiar to me as an adult in the same way that London was, but whereas London was a place that I got to know through the prism of my first adult debacle, my sorrow and my intellect, New York is what I know from a happy and warm childhood memory; warm, fuzzy, hazy, with big shoulder pads and clashing colours, but still familiar and known.

It helps that this time I haven't been treated like a criminal at immigration. I know that I'm a single brown man, but seriously, how many terrorists have had my good looks and impeccable sense of fashion and personal style?

But this time, I don't really mind. I enjoy being the outsider, living in liminal spaces. I've realised that I've grown up always being on the periphery, so why start trying to fit in? In London I sound Canadian; in the US they're not quite sure, and the poor Canadians keep going, "what the f*ck?"

(Warm and muggy August afternoons in the Upper East Side; Central Park is four blocks west of this Starbucks cafe. The radio plays kitschy American shock rock pop.)

And of course, being exotic never hurts in the bars and clubs. "You're beautiful" is not an uncommon thing to be told, especially here in New York. Random checkouts on the street, in shops. Bearded, tattooed, clean shaven, pierced, twinks, rough trade; all good. The girl on the subway who wouldn't look away; the guy in Whole Foods this afternoon.

Maybe I'll hit the Lower East Side this afternoon. Gay it up a little.

Puddles of green coolant shimmering in the summer haze beneath the white van pulled up in front. Gay rights campaigners trying to get people to care in this, the most indifferent of world metropolises. My Starbucks iced green tea (grande, unsweetened) strong, bitter, healthy.

People are good looking here, but often quite tediously slow. So much effort, primping, preening, pumping, running, plucking. If you're not beautiful, you're automatically ugly. Not much of a choice, but the food here is so super fortififed, the portions so huge, that it's a bit of a default option if you're not killing yourself in the gym.

Puerto Rican shop attendants stunned at my knowledge of Spanish.

*********

So the Lower East Side absolutely rocks. Far grittier, grimier and down-at-heel than the much fancier and trendy West Village & Chelsea area that I'm staying in right now. Perhaps, if I ever moved here, I'd end up trying to live in the LES or East Village. Chilled, relaxed, grungy; immigrants, rent control, graffiti, almost a Ladbroke Grove / pre-trendy Notting Hill as compared to South Kensingon / Mayfair in London.

Note to self: places that are called Chelsea are almost always pretentious and quite expensive. Not that that's a problem; au contraire, its quite nice to have places like that around, if only to keep the wannabe trendy and tres hep guys out of the actually cool and happening places.

I'm writing this entire post in XES Lounge, a fantastic little bar on 24th St, near 7th Avenue. Speaking to a guy who works here called Derek Tod. We both agree that people should do what they want with their lives, as long as it makes them happy. Not a bad approach, if you ask me. But then, I wouldn't disagree now, would I? I quit a job in banking to be happy. Poorer, definitely, but infinitely happier.

New York (or should I say the Northeast) is very recession aware. People are shopping smarter; denial is the new cool. You save today, spend later. Credit cards are soo 2005.

So this is it. I'll go back to the fancy 2-bed Chelsea pad where I'm crashing with a friend, go out for dinner with R&D. We get along, despite distances, in time and space, despite different realities, different world views, different expectations from life. R&D are mainstream; cool, funky, but mainstream. I, on the other hand, voluntarily seek out the periphery. Liminal spaces; always at the fringes.

Peripheral in the straight world. At the edges in finance (you're not supposed to kick the money in the face and walk off, remember?) Liminal in the brown world (not an immigrant, not Indian either). And don't get me started on the gay scene.

Damn. I'm a fr*cking minority. That Polish Jewish grandmother didn't help my efforts at mainstreaming either.

It's a hard life

Yet another travel post. It's a manic Monday morning here in Indonesia, and things are hectic in Bali; can you believe that its only noon, and I've already had a swim in the pool, a laze by the beach, spent two hours reading in the shade, and have had to drink two mojitos? The afternoon's not looking any better; I have a massage at 2 pm, and will probably have to schedule another session with that damn swimming pool. Oh yeah - there's a follow up call at 5 pm to wrap up the day's events with another batch of mojitos.

Shit. This is tiring work.

Yes, I know, I'm a smug b*stard. But frankly, after the kind of hellish working hours that I've put in over the years, not to mention the stress of travelling for the past four months, I think I'm well within my rights to kick back and relax for a week.

That's the plan, anyway.

I was getting all excited by the prospect of (a) surfing, (b) diving, and (c) horse riding, but given that this is high season in Bali, everything is either booked out or freakishly expensive. So I'm resigned to vegetating by the pool, getting lots of 20 dollar massages (SOOOOO good), and the odd book as I consume novel after novel.

Getting to Bali from Yogyakarta was an adventure in itself. A normal bus ride would take 15 hours, but I decided to do Mount Bromo on the way. So the two day adventure began at 9 am in Yogyakarta, where I bundled myself into the back of a Mitsubishi min-van, which then proceeded to drive me and seven other tourists for the next 12 hours to Probolinggo. Even for me, a seasoned Asian road traveller, there were times I felt that we were done for, especially when the minibus rammed the side of a truck carrying beer. At least the impact woke up the driver, who I suspect had started to nod off. The minivan's air-con was fried though, and there's something distinctly unpleasant about slowly toasting in a car for sustained periods of time.

Made me feel like a poodle.

Getting to Probolinggo, we all transferred into another rickety bus for the ride up the volcano to Cewang Lawang, the mouth of the volcano and hellhole / tourist trap. I was supposed to be in the cheap budget hotel, but due to the mechanics of the Indonesian backpacker tourist rip off industry, I was mysteriously upgraded to the fancier, "volcano view" hotel (that was not its name - it was called Cemara Indah Hotel, and had a view of the entire Bromo caldera). Not that we knew anything about this view, mind you, as we reached the hotel around 10 pm (we had initially been promised a 7 pm arrival), and it was pitch dark. Oddly enough, after doing a slow roast to Probo, during which all I could do was fantasise about standing under a stream of cold water to cool off, the arrival to Cewang was meteorologically disorienting, as we were around 2500m up, it was raining, and average temperatures were around 12 degrees. After dinner, all I wanted was a hot shower.

Bizarre.

Anyway. We were roused from restful slumber at 3:15 am by a persistent knock on the door; the adventurous souls that we backpackers were, we had opted for a jeep ride up a hill at 4 am to catch the sunrise (supposedly an awe-inspiring view). Sitting in the back of an old school Toyota landcruiser, being flung from side to side, with the wonderful scent of diesel fumes permeating my clothes, not to mention sleep deprivation (I'm not used to functioning with only 4 hours of sleep these days; I quit my job, remember?! :) ) we got to the observation point and I really felt like I was going to throw up.

Luckily, I didn't. Neither did any of my co-passengers, though a couple were threatening to.

Finally we get to the observation point. The locals, always keen to spot a business opportunity, had migrated from hawking Buddha souvenirs, t-shirts that said "Borobodur" and blow-tubes to renting raincoats and parkas for the poorly equipped. Given that it was around 12 degrees, I could see value in the the merchandise, but coming from London, where we laugh in the face of damp and will sit in shorts and t-shirts around our barbeques in 15 degrees, there was nothing my hoodie and jeans could not cope with. It was amusing, however, to see the serious climbers all kitted out in North Face and Berghaus - within the hour they were all turning puce from the heat inside their artic-calibre mountaineering gear.

Two hours later, with nothing to show for sunrise except some grey clouds that obscured the entire view, we drove down to the peak itself to hike up some volcanic grey sand and horse shit to the top of the caldera, again for the purported views. Again, nothing, thanks to the cloud cover. I should have stayed in bed instead. Oh well. By 8 am, I had had more exercise than I've had this entire trip, which can't be too bad a thing.

After some breakfast, and a miraculously hot shower, it was off for another 15 hour bone crunching bus ride to Denpasar, on the island of Bali. Still, the air conditioning worked this time, so there was less poodlage and more sleep happening. I was also sat next to a Swiss biochemist who was reading Dumas, so conversation wasn't too bad either. (I generally keep my Joseph Conrad well hidden when talking to other backpackers for fear of being branded a nerd, but that was a low risk here, I thought.)

Finally to Bali, at 10 pm at night. Finally to the nice hotel I'd booked, with a little private garden, a verandah, hot water, and cable tv. Finally to those damn sessions with the pool and mojitos.

Finally, time to chill and rest.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to see a mojito rather urgently.

Volcanoes, Vampires, Voldemort, Vatever.

So here I am in a little (well, okay, its huge) internet cafe in little (okay, its not massive, but it ain't no village either) Yogyakarta. For the uninitiated or un-Indonesian among you, that's pronounced Joge-Ja-Karta. I think that the pronunciation was a little joke that the Javanese played on the Dutch colonisers. Everyone knows that the Dutch pronounce the "J" as a "Y", so why not mess with their minds and pronounce a "Y" as a "J"? Just to clarify, Java is NOT pronounced Yava...

Indonesia is the latest on the travel itinerary. I got into Jakarta (not Yakarta) on Friday from Bangkok. All was well when I left Bangkok Suvarnabhoomi airport (which is pronounced Su-warn-a-poom; don't ask). With a two hour layover at Kuala Lumpur, I decided to explore the wonders of the airport (not much) but found a TV screen playing CNN, and it was there that I found out that there had been two bomb blasts in Jakarta, at two luxury hotels downtown.

Groan. The last thing I wanted was to head into a war zone, or be under threat. If that was the kinda adventure I wanted I would have gone to Kashmir. Still, there wasn't much to be done about it but to just suck it up and get to Jakarta.

Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta (I don't even KNOW how that's pronounced) airport is quite unusual and exceptional in South East Asia's glitzy airport populace; it feels like something out of air travel in the 1970's; you expect people to be wearing bell-bottoms, loud floral print shirts two sizes too tight, and to be chain smoking Marlboros. Still, the airport had all the chaos and hum of people that you can expect from any self-respecting Asian airport, so it wasn't all that unsettling. After an HOUR at immigration (the queues were...challenging) I finally got out of the airport. The best thing about the airport has to be the big signs saying "Welcome to Indonesia; DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING".

Just so that we're clear on that, you see.

So I'm outside the airport, trying to figure out whether I want to head into Jakarta city (my trusty Lonely Planet told me that the city popularly called the Big Durian wasn't great on culture or pretty things to see, but was great for chaos, mayhem and overall pandemonium.) Feeling that a city that is chaotic on a good day might be a little unbearable the day two massive bombs rocked through the business district, I grabbed a minivan to Bandung, a town about three hours away from Jakarta.

Word of advice to the uninitiated; do not take a minivan in Indonesia unless you are used to travelling in Asia by road, and definitely do not do it if you are weak of mind, spirit or bladder. Our driver seemed intent on careening headlong into the big trucks carrying metal poles all over the highway, while other cars and minivans were racing him for the privilege of doing so. Sitting at the very back of the van, I spent some time trying to calculate how much impact the three rows of human bodies in front of me could take before I got to the metal poles in the event of a collision. Sadly, I left Physics and Biology after school, so it wasn't a very enlightening time.

Anyway. I made it to Bandung at 11 pm at night, most unexpectedly in one piece, and the city looked completely comatose. Unable to find Kebonjati road (which I also struggled to find the next day in bright sunlight) I decided to follow the "Splurge" box in my Lonely Planet and ended up at the Savoy Bidakara Homann - a hotel dating from the 1910's that was redone in the art deco style sometime in the 30's. It was also a stone's throw away from the Asia Afrika Museum, which commemorates the Bandung Conference that helped establish the Non Aligned Movement during the Cold War, and most importantly, had satellite tv, hot water, and air conditioning. A night well spent, even though I ended up watching my first episode of True Blood (DUDE! Well cool, as they'd say in an American version of England...)

Trying to get to the top of the Tangkuban Perahu (big volcano close to Bandung) the next day ended in tears and a sprained ankle. Ironically, the sprain happened even before I left Bandung, so I was not too pleased. Still, I value my joints more than random Javanese volcanoes, so I decided that the best course would be to hit a bookstore and then a movie rather than try to climb rocks and scrabble across lava flows with a strapped-up ankle. Bookstores in Bandung have limited collections of English fiction, so it was either a choice of reading the Brisingr trilogy (just finished it) Danielle Steel (would throw myself into boiling lava first) or Twilight - the latest vampire craze. Having hated the movie (I actually fell asleep in it) I was sure the book would be equally stimulating. Still, beggars being choosy and all that crap.

Thankfully I found a Starbucks (though my order for a double tall sugarfree vanilla skinny latte was enough to confuse the entire team; we finally settled for a double tall vanilla non-fat latte; sugarfree is not a word they are familiar with in Indonesia, or so it would seem...) so the caffeine was enough to keep me awake.

Having a whole evening in Bandung with a sprained ankle, my first option of sitting in a dinky hotel room reading sleep inducing vampire teenage romance novels was not thrilling. I did, however, manage to figure out with my non-existent knowledge of Bahasa that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was out and playing. A quick trip (literally - I fell again inside the office) to the tourist information centre and I was off to watch HPATHBP in a theatre full of families, children, and mobile phones that just wouldn't stay switched off.

Random? But of course.

The next day involved an early morning train to Yogyakarta, where I spent around four hours trying to find a room. I finally settled for a hideously overpriced one in a nasty little guesthouse (they're called Losmen here). Still, it was air-conditioned, with a private little hellhole that passed for a bathroom. The owner found it fascinating that I was from India (not fascinating enough, though, to negotiate a lower room rate) and insisted on calling me "Shah Rukh Khan" and singing "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai".

Gaah. Damn you Bollywood.

I then spent yesterday being ferried around the Javanese hills in another dinky minivan (what can I say - I'm a sucker for punishment) and managed to get in the Dieng Plateau, which has some (self-admittedly) unimpressive Hindu temples, a smoking crater full of sulphur, and a lake that's the weirdest colours of blue thanks to all the minerals the volcanoes throw up.

That was followed by a trip to Borobudur, the big-ass Buddhist temple.

Wow.

Big, beautiful, serene (despite the HORDES of Indonesian families crawling all over the place, in blatant disregard of the "no climbing" signs) but still absolutely stunning. The coolest thing about it was that the hundreds of Buddha's on all four sides are each in different postures, or mudras. Totally cool. Pics to come soon too. I promise. I was expecting to be a little let-down after Angkor Wat and its glorious, massive architecture, but Borobudur was equally spectacular, if in a very different way.

Now its off to some more Javanese explorations, before hitting the beaches of Bali to chill and party for a couple of days. I'm looking forward to not doing much more than chill on a beach for a few days before returning to the mayhem that is Jakarta, and then to India, so very excited.

Watch this space.

The Return of the Prodigal. Still travelling though...

So I never did get around to replacing the tagline on this blog to say, formerly full-time banker, now full-time traveller, etc. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't back home in London for long enough to spend the time fiddling with Photoshop to get it sorted (yes, I'm tech-savvy, and yes, I know how to use Photoshop. I even used to tell my office IT guys what to do when my PC froze and I didn't have admin rights for the damn thing to make the changes. So sue me. I'm brown - we're good with IT.)

So anyway - what is with these random digressions? It's like my brain has a GPS set permanently on scenic route. It used to be bad when I was working in the big bad corporate world, but generally I could focus on something long enough to be sensible and intelligent. Now that I'm travelling, its like I'm permanently like Dory from Finding Nemo (do I know you? are you following me? oh wait, I think I can speak whale...)

Whatever.

So this post is being written from a computer in the common room of my hostel in Bangkok. I got back to Thailand earlier this afternoon from Cambodia, where I'd spent the past four days gawping at the amazement that is Angkor Wat. Seriously, of all the places I've ever been to in the world, this one has got to be a top runner for one of the best. Ever. No shit. Interestingly, I wasn't as overwhelmed by Angkor Wat, the main temple, the first time I went, but the second time I was there I managed to find a quiet corner of the compound to just sit and soak in the atmosphere (and also soak up the moisture - it was like 35 degrees and 80% humidity). And it was there that I got this very tranquil feeling about the temple. I loved its ruined / preserved / restored look, with the large grey stones soft where the carvings had faded away, the black rainwater stains, the faint enscriptions in Pali and Khmer on the walls, even the thousands of damaged statues that litter the corridors. I also went back to the big bas relief carving of the Mahabharata and managed to inspect the whole thing in much more detail. So this time around, I found Bhisma lying on his bed of arrows, I saw Dronacharya leading the Kaurava armies, I saw Karna - one of the saddest faces on the block, plus triste - as he turned to free his chariot wheel, and I saw Arjuna's arrow piercing his neck.

Damn. Karna always gets me down.

So that was Angkor Wat. I think my favourite moments were walking through the old royal city ruins of Angkor Thom, smack in the middle of a park with NOTHING resembling cover when the July skies opened and all the water that the monsoons can throw at you descended from the heavens. It probably took less than a minute for me to be soaked to the skin, and I've never been happier for a waterproof backpack since atleast my camera, money and passport were dry (can't say that about my Lonely Planet though. Oh well.) But the thing is, my whole Indian thing creeps out whenever it rains in a hot country, and I'm like, woo hoo!

Rainy days, however, do not get me down. It's probably just a very little Sridevi trying to get out from inside me and frolic in the rain. Either that or its the pernicious influence of my parents' water-crazy Rottweiler, Cookie.

So while all the other tourists are scrambling for cover, I just keep walking around the site in the rain. Eventually though, I was convinced I was going to kill myself by slipping on the mud and splatter my brains out onto the rocks. I had visions of my red blood streaming out and blending into the red earth of the area (yes, it was red soil, so yes, it WAS a Red Earth and Pouring Rain moment.) So there I am, wandering around looking for cover, and this old Cambodian woman, who sells pineapples and mangoes to tourists, and was hiding under a very large Coke umbrella fixed to her bicycle, gestured me over. About two minutes later, two French tourists joined us, and since it seemed that French was the most widely spoken language in the group, we had a nice chat. I even bought some mangoes which were not bad.

It's like a joke - two French tourists, and Indian and a Cambodian are standing underneath a Coca Cola umbrella eating mangoes. The Indian says...

Anyway. So that was Angkor Wat. A friend (who was also a relapsed blogger) has shamed me into taking up blogging again through her now alarmingly frequent posts, even though she's just moved continents and is getting married in a month, so I really had no excuse to not get back onto the blogging wagon. Given that I'm travelling, I should have more interesting things to write too, so watch this space. The only thing I'm going to struggle with is uploading the relevant photographs, but hey, nobody's perfect. You can google locations if you're that keen on the imagery, right?

So now in Bangkok for just one night - flying out tomorrow morning to a new destination - JAKARTA!

Until the next country.

P.S. I'm reading the Eragon trilogy while I'm travelling, and they're pretty cool. It took me forever to get around to the first one after being subjected to what is probably the worst film adaptation of all time by a recalcitrant sister. Still, its like the universe was trying to convince me, a regular believer, that films are never as good as books, by torturing me with the worst movie ever. It's like, dude, what gives? I get your point, and agree with you. Stop making me watch this crap. I could have walked out, but you see that way I would let the evil cinema owners win and get my money without providing full service.

P.P.S. I want to see Bruno. NOW. And also HPATHBP (which is the acronym for the New Harry Potter movie). AND I want so see them without Asian censorship.

P.P.P.S Thai keyboards are cool.

CHANGE OF STATUS!!!

Okay, I know I've been absolutely appalling at keeping this blog updated and fresh with witty, intelligent posts about life, the universe and everything. Instead of therefore putting forward arguments in my defence, I will humbly lower my head, say mea culpa, and apologise profusely.

I'm sorry. Mea culpa.

With that now out of the way, I can get to the more interesting news, and that is that I have to rewrite the "About Me" section on the side. The old version read,

The Buddha Smiled is a product of the global village, with a distinctly Indian flavour. Thanks to daddy ji's job, he grew up in four different continents, went to 10 different schools, and speaks about four different languages (though of what use Bhojpuri is likely to be in Argentina remains to be seen) He is currently doing the "right thing" with his life, which essentially means not giving it all up to go travelling (as if he hadn't had enough). "It" in this context includes working in a big bank in London, where he enjoys playing a cog in the great capital markets wheel. Pet hobby horses include Bollywood, Indian literature, current affairs, taking over the world with a hedge fund and a pencil sharpener, and trying to figure out what all this life stuff is REALLY about...

However, I have now actually STOPPED doing the "right thing" with my life, since I quit my job in March and am currently travelling the world (since I obviously haven't had enough!) So I've just returned to London after a month spent backpacking through Central and Eastern Europe, where along with a trusty Eurail pass I spent time in Krakow, Auschwitz, Warsaw, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Vienna, Munich, Salzburg, Venice and Lausanne. Now its back to London for a few days before dashing off to India for a week and then hitting the South East Asian countries of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia....

My revised profile will be up on the side for you to see, and the banner at the top of this blog will also need to be redone since I am no longer a full-time banker. Oh joy!!

The Amazing Supersonic Angel...

So this is TOTALLY random and completely pointless, but if you're bored and need to either pass the time, cheer yourself up, or are generally just in need of something silly to do, take a look at the The Hero Factory where you can "create" your own superhero character. I, for instance, am the Amazing Supersonic Angel.

I would make an awesome X-Man...

It's all about me....it's all about me baby!

Given that so many different friends are doing these, and have tagged me in their lists, I have buckled and am posting my version. So for all those people who wanted to know me better, or didn't, here goes.

1. I am a sucker for forwards, tags, and other random facebook-related pseudo chain-mail epidemics, as this particular post amply demonstrates. (A side note - don't you love the word "ample"? It just curls your tongue the right way. English doesn't have enough words that do that - which is why I find German so much satisfying since you can really get your tongue around it. I guess I'm actually all about the tongue....)

2. I refuse to worship at the altar of puritanical language use, choosing to meld it to my preference, and will therefore use words like "sucker" and "epidemics" in the same sentence with no sense of irony or apology. I will also throw in words from other languages, just for the fun of it.

3. I am a serial traveller - and cannot remember how many countries I visited in 2008. I think it was 12 different ones, but I cannot confirm that.

4. I have therefore decided to slow down a little in 2009, because I really should be able to keep track of myself. I guess I shouldn't worry about keeping track of myself though - I'm probably being monitored by terrorists, my boss, the CIA, space aliens, or all of the above so I'm doing my bit in fighting the global recession by providing employment opportunities (Side note - maybe my boss is a space alien terrorist who secretly works for the CIA? hmmm....)

5. As an aside - 2008 was an awesome year; the travelling was just the icing on the cake, though there were quite a few irritations along the way. (Side note - I am OBVIOUSLY unable to do this without side notes, subtle jokes, and generic ramblings. How very tedious and simultaneously amusing. I'm obviously not just all about the tongue, I'm also all about the tangent.)

6. I am officially in love with Berlin, and if I could find a job there, I would move tomorrow. (this is a polite nudge for people who can help me find jobs in Berlin) I absolutely detest Singapore, and would rather move to Timbuktu or Twyford before I moved there. I actually would enjoy going to Timbuktu, so that's probably not a fair statement.

7. I speak two languages perfectly (English and Hindi - though both come with the disclaimer in No. 2 above) and several others (French, Spanish, Bhojpuri, Punjabi and Urdu) badly. I also speak enough Spanish to buy a beer, find a bathroom after drinking the beer and have conversations with Chilean ballet dancers and Catalan clowns about life, the universe and everything, so I guess I speak more Spanish than I logically should.

8. I am perpetually sleep deprived, due to a combination of factors including work, movies, novels, the internet, the local stables, my friends, my friend's playstation, and not least of all alcohol. I am therefore probably walking around with terrible skin, though thankfully I don't get too many pimples.

9. I have never had a tattoo or a body piercing - the former because I still haven't found what I'm looking for, and the latter out of a healthy fear of my father, and his threat that he would rip out any piercing I had. If you know my father, you would have a healthy fear of him too.

10. I am currently toying with the idea of a body piercing, but realise that it is essentially a potentially juvenile way to demonstrate that I no longer live in fear of my father ripping it off. I will therefore probably never get a piercing, but hey, you never know.

11. I love dancing, and can dance saala (unlike pappu). I am also an energiser bunny when i'm dancing, and can dance all night (I can also drive all night, and not be Cyndi Lauper, but that's another story). I am generally in serious pain the next day since my feet are generally sore, but hey, what the hell.

12. I love a wide variety of music, though house / techno / european electronic / rap doesn't really cut it for me. Put on Bollywood, though, and you've got a winner. Which then leads me to the next point (which should really be No 13, but I'm enjoying this too much to hit enter) and that is that I am a Bollywood fanatic. I will draw the line at anything with Himesh Reshammiya in it or providing the music for it, and anything with Mithun Chakravarty also tends to be off limits (though he was very good in Agnipath).

13. I have now hit enter, and on reading number 12 am more than slightly disturbed that I have managed to include both Mithun Chakravarty and Himesh Reshammiya into a piece about me and my life.

14. In a possibly futile attempt to recover from the trauma identified in Number 13, I will move swiftly along onto another obsession - books. I only read fiction, and will tend to avoid anything on a bestseller list, (yes, yes, I know, I'm an intellectual snob, but frankly, given that I'm smarter than atleast 95% of the world, I don't see the issue with being realistic). Favourite writers include Haruki Murakami, Orhan Pamuk, Michael Ondaatje, and my sister, Sunny (and that is NOT being parochial. You wanna take this outside?!)

Other writers I tend to enjoy include Ahdaf Soueif, Amin Maalouf, Alan Hollinghurst, Emile Zola, Amitav Ghosh, F. Scott Fitzgerald (I cry like a baby everytime I read Tender is the Night, which isi far too often, and which means that I cry like a baby quite often) Tolstoy (though I think War and Peace was in dire need of an editor, whereas Anna Karenina rocked) and E.L. Doctorow. Ariel Dorfmann is awesome too, and unlike Isabel Allende (who I think is a bit of a sell-out now and has never been able to match the dizzying heights of excellence that was Eva Luna) and Mario Vargas Llosa (who is good, but can be tedious - maybe its the translations and I should try reading him in the original Spanish - cross ref to No. 7 above) I like the fact that Dorfmann doesn't write with the ghost of Marquez on his back. Speaking of whom, 100 years of solitude is another all-time favourite - I think part of the attraction is that sometimes I think that the Buendias could have been inspired by my family....

15. I love cinema, though the troubling thought is that everyday there are more movies made and released and are added to my pile of things that I have to watch and don't have enough time to watch. It often feels like I'm trying to empty a bucket with a teaspoon while someone else is filling it up with a jug - very biblical, don't you think?

16. I am a serial post-colonial post-modernist, and will argue till the cows come home, bed down for the night and go out again in the morning after being milked about how both are incredibly valid criticisms and frameworkds for analysis even today. I therefore have massive issues with books like Shantaram and movies like Slumdog Millionaire, in which the authenticity of the narrative is established by virtue of the filmmaker or writer being Western. Apparently us poor non-Westerners aren't good enough to tell our own stories, and our attempts are somehow not good enough. Obviously people who're born and bred in Mumbai can't make movies about Mumbai as well as some random Scottish bloke can. And you didn't see Johnny Depp running to buy the film rights to Sacred Games, now did you?

17. Ella Shohat rocks. Alan Dershowitz does not. 'nuff said. (Reader, there's a pun there. Try to find it. It does not have anything to do with Jane Austen).

18. I have few obsessions, many hobby horses, and a collapsible soapbox that I whip out whenever needed. I also tend to win arguments. In fact - I tend to win. Period.

19. I love riding horses. I do not love riding motorbikes or other twowheeled motorised contraptions.

20. I am tiring of the need to get to 25, which helps demonstrate one of my vices, which is my severe lack of patience. A lasting family joke is how as an Americanised 7 year old stuck in a traffic jam on the Washington Bridge in the Big Apple, I stuck my head out of a silver sedan with a diplomatic licence plate (no, i wasn't the one driving - even the evil diplomats don't let their 7 year olds drive), and yelled to the six-foot plus driver of the 4x4 in front, "move, buddy, MOVE!". Everytime that this story is told, generally with great hilarity ensuing, I have to calmly remind everyone that buddy duly moved, and we were on our way. Funny - you would think they would care to remember that.

21. I do not like seafood, but I also do not dislike it. That may sound ambivalent, which is exactly what my relationship to seafood is like. I do like a spicy prawn curry, and a mean meen moili hits the spot (but not everytime i eat it - hence the ambivalence). I do not like sashimi. ever.

22. I would rather die than stop eating meat. I do not need to eat it all the time, everytime, and in arterty-clogging quantities and preparations, but more than two days without meat and I start feeling faint. Nothing can quite match a solid biryani, or a well-cooked steak. I don't like raw meat though, and things like tartares and rare portions don't really rock my boat.

23. I can, and often, drink like a fish (funny that, given my ambivalence to seafood - see number 21 above. Side note - I am big on cross-referencing, which is possibly the consequence of having too many PhD's in my personal sphere of influence and interaction. Blame the academics, I always say) I am usually able to outdrink most friends, make it home at 4 am and then get up at 7:30 to go horse riding (generally without a hangover). I agree with most spirits (and they tend to agree with me too, which is why we get along so well). I do not, however, react well to either Guinness, or anything that is from the fennel / aniseed world (so no raki, ouzo, or sambuca, thank you). You risk having me throw up all over you if you get me onto tequila.

24. I have a blog, which I update less frequently than I would like. I am also shameless at self-promoting, but my logic is that if I don't tell people how wonderful I am, who will? Besides, its not as I'm misleading them when I tell them that. I am also not a modest person, but then, that's just me being a brutal realist.

25. I am relieved at having made it to No 25, and cannot think of anything to add to this section, other than to say that things like this particular post are really dangerous because they give self-loving soapbox carrying erudite maniacs like me an opportunity to hold forth for far longer than we should. Don't you just love the internet?! :)