Counting the Years

It's either very late, or it's very, very early.


My living room lights are set to a low setting. There is an odd combination of Hemant Kumar and Joan Baez playing softly on my laptop. And while I sip a glass of red wine, I write this post.


Because today, it is my 31st birthday.


I've never been much of a birthday guy. Growing up, birthdays were mostly small, private family affairs. We never did big public celebrations. As the son of parents with a hectic social life due to my father's professional responsibilities, family celebrations were characteristically personal. There would be a cake (quite frequently Black Forest) with candles. There would be presents, but never elaborate ones. Small, discreet, tasteful. There would be fine china laid out on the dining table (always impeccably dressed up itself in my mother's finest linen) and there would be your favourite food as part of the meal. But I can look back at all my birthdays growing up as being incredibly private affairs.


Things have changed recently though.


For the past few years, my birthdays have become a bit of a "thing" on my friends' social calendars. Coming as it does in January, there has been increasing pressure over the years to make it count, and to make sure that it is spectacular enough to overcome the January blues. And so they've become bigger, bolder, more fabulous each year. 


There was the year when I took a massive group of friends out to a Vauxhall nightclub for that uniquely British thing - roller disco. Oh, how they all mocked, groaned and scoffed when the invitation was sent out. Only to be recorded in every photo taken that night grinning like a child as they careened across a wooden floor, vodka & tonic in one hand, other arm outstretched as they clung desperately to a balance that could escape at any second. (There might have been some bruises the next day)


There was that other year too, when the only way to bring in my flirty thirties was to organise a Bollywood-style fancy dress party. There was the friend who came and DJ'ed the whole night. There was the coordinated dance routine. There was a Santa Claus. There was even a Ukrainian belly dancer. All in the name of Bollywood.


And even I, the eternal melancholic, has to admit that things could be worse. 


So here I sit. Hands on my laptop. Sipping some wine, and drinking to my own health. It is a night I ring in another year, a night I look back at the year past, and celebrate, amongst many things, the fact that I've survived another year on this planet. Which, given how horrible this planet can be to people, is not a bad thing. 


But it is a year that brings with it much promise. The promise of change. The promise of hope. The promise of despondency. And the promise of... life. 


Which is not something to be taken lightly.


Perhaps it is a consequence of old age, but I have become even more introspective with age. And so, oddly enough, the first thing that came into my head as the clock struck midnight was how I've lived my life. 


And again, I cannot complain.


There are things I've done that I'm incredibly proud of. There are things I've done that I cannot decipher, but that I am very glad I've done. And then there are things I've done without quite figuring out to this day why I did them.


So here, in no particular order of importance, are ten things I am proud I've done. 


1. I went backpacking. On the cheap. If ever there was a stereotype, it's that the best way to see a place is to do it on the rough. And boy, can I tell you, doing Asia on the rough is... ROUGH. I think that at certain angles, my butt will still feel the impact of a bad seat in a ramshackle van and the worst of Java's roads. But also of the fun that came with it.


2. I've skinny dipped. Not being someone who lives in either a C-grade porn flick or a bad Hollywood horror movie, this is not something I ever thought I'd do. But it's amazing what the combination of a wedding by a lake in upstate New York, poisonous amounts of alcohol and a warm July night can do.


3. I've had random, hot, sweaty, anonymous sex. Not once, not twice, not from a relationship perspective, but the ultimate in rough & tumble slap & tickle.


4. I've had dull, boring, it's-a-Sunday-morning-and-you're-here-in-bed-well-why-not sex. Which, though not really exciting, can be incredibly satisfying. Especially when you're hungover.


5. I've been to a movie premiere. In London. With real celebrities. Sadly, my own celebrity status was not appreciated.


6. I've got street credit in some awesome cities. I can get into high demand places in Barcelona, New York, Hong Kong and Berlin. Just because. 


7. I've had my heart broken. Badly.


8. I've cried in public in an unhappy place. It was in Auschwitz. It was horrible. It was important to see.


9. I've cried in public in a happy place. It was in Angkor Wat. It was beautiful. It was one of the best moments of my life.


10. I've broken into song & dance in a street. Because every so often, it's important to do that. Even if you don't live in a Bollywood movie.


None of which is spectacular, or exceptionally awesome, but is actually pretty fucking cool when taking collectively. Or so I'd like to think.


And so, I think it's fair to say that it's not been a life I can regret. Or resent. 


So I guess I can say this now: Happy Birthday to Me.

The Maps of Our Lives

This story begins on a cold winter's day in the North West of England.

A young man walks through long corridors lined with books. It is quiet in this part of the library - most students tend to lurk around the sciences and management sections. This is the literature section, and there aren't that many takers for world literature. The department for literary studies is small, and other students save their lending tickets for course books; weighty tomes about critical theories and comparative studies.

All except the young man, of course.

Of all his precious library tickets, he saves one to use for bed time reading. When tiring of books dealing with advanced statistics, financial analysis and econometrics, he retires to a narrow single postgraduate student accommodation room bed, his dinky student laptop streaming the latest Napster download, to try to fall asleep whilst reading his latest fiction lending library selection. Over the past three months, he has read many books this way. Writers from all around the world have kept him company in this cold winter in the North West of England. He has made friends with Ariel Dorfman, Doris Lessing, John Ruskin, Amitav Ghosh, Ian McEwan.

Except tonight, he has a book by a writer he's not read before. 

The book is good enough. What foreign student wouldn't relate to a novel about a non-EU student who is trying to reconcile a childhood spent in heat and dust with time spent in a small rural community in a cold, dark corner of Lancashire? A narrative of reconciling different facets of one life, one human being split across different continents?

That was how I made friends with an Egyptian writer called Ahdaf Soueif. I started out reading In the Eye of the Sun. Discovering her to be an alumna of my university, I set out  to make the most of my enjoyment of her writing and my loyalty towards my alumni by trying to track down everything she'd written to read. Over the coming years, I was to read The Map of Love, her Booker-nominee novel, various short stories, and eventually her many articles in the Guardian. (Yes, even her writing for that rag did not diminish my appreciation for her). 

Eventually I was to discover her work in translating the amazing Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti's work describing his return to an exiled West Bank. Shortly followed by a read of her short stories, I Dream of You. By then, I had been to Egypt. I had walked through the dusty, smelly, magical streets of Cairo, fallen in love with the ageing, crumbling beauty of the city, drunk cocktails at the rooftop bar at the Ramses Hilton, had lunched by a slow Nile in the early April heat. 

I fell in love with Soueif's Cairo, her Al-Qahirah, a city whose mystique was matched only by Istanbul and my own precious Delhi. An ageing, crumbling city that felt as if it was, to quote Urdu poet Gulzar, in the pieces of its past life. A city that, unlike Delhi, had fallen into hard, sad times, overrun with the stench of tyranny. But a city that was eternally beautiful, despite its ugly architecture, its suppressed populace. Cairo revealed itself to me as a city that would not be broken. Damaged, yes, but not broken.

And then, in early 2011, the Egyptian revolution came to our doorsteps. As I sat in the UK, captivated by the visions brought to my screen via Twitter, Facebook and BBC News, I was overwhelmed with visions of the Arab Spring. These street battles in Midan el Tahrir were taking place through places in Cairo that I had visited and driven through. These were people I had seen in the cafes and restaurants in Zamalek, students I might have interacted with whilst they were studying in the UK, professionals I had worked with when we both were working in the banking institutions based in the City of London. And now they were changing their destiny. 

I was riveted.

So when the opportunity to mix these two experiences, by going to an English Pen event in Farringdon tonight, to listen to Ahdaf speak, as a revolutionary, a journalist, a troubadour and a raconteur, to hear her describe what she had seen on the streets of Cairo as an observer and a participant, was presented to me, there was really only one choice. Of course I was going to go.

I was slightly concerned, of course. So many times have I met people that I'd read and liked, but who had ended up having feet of clay in person, that I admit to maintaining a sense of trepidation. I was pleased, however, to be presented with a diminutive firebrand of a woman; smart, articulate, witty, and not without an ironic sense of self-depracation. But also someone who I heard speak, whom I asked a question of, who sounded in person exactly like she sounds in her writing. 

And so it was not without a sense of karmic completeness that I am pleased to report that I managed to connect with - in person - that lonely foreign student who wrote about being a lonely foreign student and whose work gave succour to another lonely foreign student. Because perhaps at some point, some place, in some instant, all the maps of our lives coincide. For a small, infinitesimal instant, but nevertheless connect us to our fellow humans.

And all we have to do is live that moment. As I hope I did tonight.

My Name is Singh and I am who I am

I had first heard of My Name is Khan back in the summer of last year, after Shah Rukh Khan was, somewhat ironically given the plot & premise of the movie, held at US immigration for a few hours as the airport authorities found him suspicious on the basis that his surname was “Khan”. The story was soon dropped, but for a few hours, the rapacious Indian media feasted on the bones of the scandal. (As an aside, I love using the word “rapacious” – it reminds me of the Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movies)

So going to see the movie last night with an Austrian friend who is rapidly sinking into the quagmire that is Bollywood-mania, I had a pretty good premise of what the movie would be like. My concerns were primarily around the fact that the movie was a Karan Johar production, especially since KJ is never quite known for being subtle or discreet, but prefers to hammer in the ham & emotion with a sledgehammer. Don’t get me wrong – I love my good ole’ Johar flicks – but I was intrigued how a filmmaker of his ilk would treat something as sensitive as racial profiling in the USA in a post 9/11 world.

This blog-post is not meant to be a review, so I won’t spend much time going over the fundamentals of the film. But the reason I’m writing this piece is because there were many elements of the story yesterday that resounded quite closely with me, and that I found particularly affecting. And at the very end, for me, a film is only successful if it can relate to you personally; the big bang glamorousness of a blockbuster is only as good as the emotions it can generate in your heart. That is why the first Star Wars worked, while the more recent additions to the franchise don’t. And that is why My Name is Khan is, at least in my eyes, a successful film.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward – MNIK is a film about being different, not being typically like the others around you, and about having the courage and conviction to embrace the identity that is yours, regardless of how well that lets you “fit in”. Rizwan Khan is, in the movie, the ultimate outsider, who through his entire life inhabits liminal spaces. In India, his minority status is based on his religion. In school, he is bullied by peers for his autism. At home, his brother resents him for being the centre of his mother’s attention. In the broader US community, he is an immigrant. In the US Muslim community, he is a vocal moderate willing to challenge fundamentalists, who marries a Hindu divorcee with a child (herself a minority). But the Khan we see in the movie is someone who is at peace with his own identity, in whatever the circumstances. He is not necessarily able to understand why other people do not like him, but at no point do we see him turn around and say, “I wish I was not Muslim / autistic / brown ..."

And for me, this is where the success of the movie lies. Unlike other commentators, who have moaned at length about how "unrealistic" the movie is, I don't really give a damn (especially since most of the same commentators had raptures over an equally improbably Inglourious Basterds.) I don’t care how “cognitively realistic” the movie was, but how "emotionally realistic" it was. I don’t need to know why Rizwan Khan travels the length & breadth of the US, in his attempts to meet the US President and tell him that he is not a terrorist by virtue of his name. Fundamentally, none of these elements really matter.

Perhaps my perspective is skewed by my circumstances. I am an Indian national who has lived less than a third of my life in the country of my nationality, but my identity is intensely Indian, primarily founded on a childhood travelling with parents who were diplomats. I was not born in India, but in Pakistan, which means that unlike other NRI’s who travel back to India, I am now increasingly subjected to intense scrutiny at Indian immigration, where officers are perplexed that someone who was not born before Partition can have an Indian passport even though he was born in Pakistan (the same happenstance raises eyebrows at many airport check-in counters, immigration barriers, and cocktail parties). And even though I am proud to be an upper-caste Rajput Hindu with an impeccable lineage that I can track back hundreds of years by name, I find much in religion to be tedious and ritualistic; something that is exploited by clergies to keep the masses in check.

But the results of this upbringing are ubiquitous. I find that India drives me insane, but outside the country I am one of its most impassioned (and I would hope, erudite) defenders. I have lived much of my life overseas, and as a frequent traveller on an Indian passport have the infinite joy of having to apply for millions of visas ahead of any journey. At the same time, the idea of giving up my passport for a more convenient one, though attractive from a purely pragmatic point of view, is quite emotionally difficult. I have friends who are activists of all sorts across the world – ranging from LGBT campaigners through to aid workers in Haiti, through to American Muslim university professors, much like Khan’s hijab-wearing sister-in-law in the movie, who wear the scarf not out of any circumstance of familial or gender-based suppression, but out a sense of identity and protest. Many times my friends have opinions or views that I cannot agree with. At the same time, the reason we are friends is because we are able to accept that we are inherently different, and are friends because, not despite, those differences.

And so perhaps because of these circumstances I was touched by the movie last night; and this is why the movie is "emotionally realistic". Rizwan’s message of being true to yourself, regardless of circumstances or environment, was a strong, touching and most importantly, personally relevant one for me. It reminded me that there are many other people out there in the world who are as different as I am from the others around me, with different hopes, aspirations, dreams and identities; people who cannot claim to be from any “majority”, but that ultimately it is important to remember that despite being different, it is still possible to be yourself.

And perhaps, even, to be happy.

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?! :)

And so we wait

Yes, its been another couple of months since my last post. Hopefully, for those of you who haven't spent that time hiding in a cave somewhere in the depths of the Atacama desert and were hooked into any business news service, you'll possibly be able to connect my inability to post long, contemplative or generally witty and well-worded missives with the complete meltdown in the financial markets that took us all by surprise in September.

Even now, there are times that I have to stop and look back at the events of the past three months and pinch myself to remind myself that I'm neither delusional nor dreaming. If you'd told me in August 2008 that by the end of the year, there would be no broker dealer of note left on Wall Street, that the world's largest insurance company would be a national enterprise, that most major economies run on the principles of free markets would have injected huge amounts of capital into their national banking systems, effectively taking them to the brink of nationalisation, if not explicitly into that dubious territory, I'd have laughed, bought you a drink (or possibly taken the one you were drinking away from you) and attributed your predictions to the ramblings of someone with a very poor grip on the world of international finance.

So what does this mean for us in the banking sector, and those in the wider economy? It's very hard to say, since we live in "interesting times" that have very little precedent in economic and financial history. Suffice it to say that we're all war veterans now, and that the next few years will be nothing if not exciting.

A Veiled Insult

Serendipity is a word that we apply to happy, unexpected but ultimately personally satisfying discoveries; things like finding that perfect little café that has the best cheesecake in the whole city. Sadly, no similar word exists (and if it does, I certainly am not aware of it) for discoveries that are unexpected but can be quite distressing. Sometimes, personal epiphanies or revelations about oneself can fall into this category too. I had a similar “eureka” moment on the ubiquitous London Tube some weeks back, and it has taken me a long, long time to come to terms with all three major components of that biblical moment: the actual discovery , the events that triggered it, and my own personal reaction to realising what it was that I had found out about myself.

What happened is this – I boarded a Tube train some time back, my mind focused on Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah on my iTouch, and took theonly free seat available opposite a Middle Eastern couple. Unlike other Middle Eastern / Arab Muslim couples, however, who tend not to be incredibly expressive in public, this one was generally quite “couple-y”, holding hands, whispering softly to each other, feeding each other cookies out of a bag from Cranberry; you know, just generally being very lovey-dovey. Nothing too out of the ordinary for a normal train journey in London, albeit with one surreal twist.

The man had a long, unkempt and straggly beard, and was walking around in a long djellaba/thawb/dishdasha that could have done with either a wash and darn, or possibly a binbag. The woman was wearing a long black burqa and had a full facial niqab, with a tiny little crack in the face for her eyes to peek through. But that was not all; not only did she have several layers of veils on, she was also wearing black gloves on her hands - from the part of her hands that protruded from the long billowing sleeves of her cloak, they caught the light in that weird way that cheap synthetic faux opera gloves that you can buy at your local costume shop do. I could almost imagine her wearing elbow length opera gloves, and who knows, potentially a black off-the-shoulder evening gown underneath her many-layered veil. All very bizarre, especially that given the warm weather and bright sunlight, the black material was a portable heat sink.

So why am I taking this much time to describe how this couple was dressed? For a very simple reason: the sight of this otherwise so ordinary couple filled me with completely unexpected, and at the time, inexplicable, rage. My sudden anger at seeing this couple dressed in what would be a totally unremarkable way in the Middle East, including that "Western" idyll of Dubai, totally caught me completely by surprise. I spent the ten minutes or so that I was in that carriage sitting opposite them listening to Jeff Buckley's dulcet tones, trying to calm down, not looking at them and generally trying to come to terms with the fact that I was very, very angry. And I was very glad to get off my train after a couple of stops, with a chance to walk and clear my head. But once my rage dissipated I had to spend the remainder of my journey, and several days afterwards, trying to get my head around what it was about that perfectly ordinary, typical couple that had angered me so much.

What was particularly galling about the episode was that I like to think of myself as a multicultural citizen of the world; someone who is truly a global person, able to live in anywhere on the planet (well, except Singapore, maybe) and accept and appreciate diversity in culture, food, music, dress, religion. And having spent time in countries where the sight of women in full black veil is not uncommon (try walking through the old city in Istanbul, Delhi, or even East London, and you would be hard pressed to avoid them) I could not fathom what it was about the couple, and particularly about the woman in the opera gloves, that really drove me over the edge. After several days of introspection and having discussed my reaction with several friends, I think I'm beginning to understand the causes of my rage. It is always very difficult to talk about Islam in today's world, and I know that what I will say may be construed as being incendiary, but in the spirit of independent, liberal analysis, and in the interests of freedom of speech, here goes nothing.

Essentially, there were two particular aspects about the woman in the niqab and opera gloves that got me angry. And they had to do with how the veil was a symbol of broader interactions concerning the woman in her own life, and her interactions with me as a random passing stranger; a stranger you share space with in public transport, but do not actually verbally communicate with.

With regards to the woman herself, I don't know why she was veiled. The standard, often immediate, assumption made about a woman in a veil is that she is oppressed and has been coerced into wearing it, or that she would be risking honour killing by choosing to discard it. It is also the easiest and most accessible assumption to make about the veil, particularly in societies where the majority of women are not veiled. However, I have also met several people where the adoption of a hijab has been a personal choice, usually as a consciously forged link with a heritage, but also often as a very visible form of personal protest – Turkish women being a classic case in point. A (Muslim) female friend in London also once told me that sometimes a woman can choose to wear a veil (usually a hijab) as an educated adult in the West as a way of registering political protest in today's Islamophobic geopolitical environment, but also as a means of demonstrating an awareness and acknowledgement of her own sexuality and as part of the process of sexualisation into an adult. There have been several news articles in the mainstream UK media about women choosing to adopt a full niqab out of personal choice.

That is not to say, however, that all women wearing the niqab in the West do so out of personal choice. Furthermore, given that personal decisions are coloured by the lenses of our upbringing and our environments, I don't know whether the woman in the tube wore a full veil out of free will, or because that was what she had been brought up to do. But my anger surrounding her being veiled was partly driven by my own implicit assumption that she had somehow had been coerced into being fully veiled; an assumption that was reinforced by her obviously intimate interactions with a man himself dressed in a way as to facilitate easy identification as a conservative Muslim man. I realise that this part of my anger was possibly based on a preconception on my part, and therefore probably the more irrational part of my being angry. It is also the pettier and baser part of my own anger, something that does me no favours, but therefore all the more necessary for me to challenge and confront as a (previously) hidden prejudice.

What is not so easy to explain away as irrational is what the niqab implied with regards to the woman and her interaction with me as a co-passenger in London's public transport. The entire premise of wearing a niqab is to protect yourself from the gaze of strange men; men who as strangers might be driven to uncontrollable lust by the sight of an unveiled face, or the sight of an ankle or wrist. The veil hides, covers, shields, but most importantly, protects, the wearer from the attention of strange men.

So by choosing to wear a niqab in public in London, this woman was making a statement about the potential people she would be likely to encounter on the street, ordinary people like you and me. The veiling of her entire body in public was a statement that as a random (male) stranger in her Tube carriage, I was a threat. I was assumed to be incapable of controlling my sexual urges, and that the safest thing she could do to protect herself was to cover herself up fully to remove the slightest threat of temptation. The wearing of the opera gloves was the reinforcing element that catapulted me over the edge. Not only was I unreliable as a purportedly healthy male, I was so much of a threat that every last vestige of flesh that could be concealed had to be; who could say that the glimpse of a fingernail would not send me over the edge and turn me into a boorish caveman, bursting with lust and full of dishonourable intentions?

And so by choosing to wear a niqab, by branding me (not personally, but as a random male stranger on the street) and a threat, this woman had insulted me and my ability to interact as a civilised member of society in public; or perhaps she was calling into question our assumptions that existing societal structures would be in a position to protect her. Historically societies have developed rituals and norms around "protecting" women, particularly so in Asia where concepts of family honour are intrinsically tied to the "virtue" of women. And if it was the 12th century and if I was a Safavid soldier at the siege of Jerusalem I could understand the assumption being made by a veiled woman that all men were potential rapists. But to perpetrate the niqab in Central London was perhaps taking things a little too far.

Now don't get me wrong - I don't mean to say that women are not harassed while walking down the street in many parts of the city by men who find it easy fun to wolf-whistle or to (in more unpleasant situations) actually grab or pinch some body part; in India this goes by the anachronistic and incredibly ludicrous phrase of "eve-teasing". But at the same time, there is an important distinction between wearing what you want, regardless of its suitability for the neighbourhood you walk through and in wearing a full niqab with gloves and black shoes to prevent the slightest chance of skin being exposed.

I suspect that I would probably not mind the full veil as much if I was in a country where the social norm was for women to be veiled, in as much as my choosing to live or visit a place where such traditions exist would involve a subconscious acknowledgement of that tradition, and of accepting it within my own consciousness. However, when in a culture where a woman being veiled is not the norm, then I have to call into question what the act of wearing a niqab is about. Is it about exercising religious freedom? Is it about personal choice? Is it about a right to be able to discriminate against complete strangers on the basis that they are strangers? And if a woman choosing to wear a niqab is exercising religious freedom, what about my own personal right to not be insulted?

I don't have the answers - not yet - but hopefully I'm asking the right questions...

Why Tibet Matters

It's been almost fifty years since the 1959 invasion of Tibet by China, an act of aggression which merely formalised the sustained political, military and social pressure that an increasingly strident Communist government had been applying for several years to the isolated country. The political and religious elite fled soon thereafter, crossing into India where they were granted political asylum, setting the precedent for a stream of over 1 million Tibetan refugees over the years. However, after capturing the attention of the world for a few brief years, the Tibetan struggle for independence soon fell by the wayside, as more and more governments sought to form stronger ties with a China that was growing at a sustained pace never recorded before in world economic history. Who cared about the concerns of a small minority, whose only claim to fame was that their temporal leader was also one of the most influential figures in Buddhism, itself a religion easily relegated by the more rigid of thought to a less than serious status as the manna of a hippie fringe seeking enlightenment?

And so it may have been - for over thirty years, the world turned a blind eye as the population of ethnic Tibetans remained stagnant at just over 5 million, while the number of ethnic Han Chinese in the territory has increased several fold. The world ignored Tianenmen Square, and also the brutal suppression of protests in Lhasa in 1989. The world ignored the Chinese crackdown on Falun Dafa, as it ignores the continued arrest, torture and detention of Chinese human rights activists; the recent imprisonment of Hu Jia is only one of many such acts. In fact, not only did the world ignore these excesses, it was often complicit in them: multinational companies, including Google and Yahoo, were too eager to bend over backwards and provide sensitive information to Chinese authorities regarding political dissidents in their attempts to avoid being kicked out of an increasingly attractive market. Economics, or so it appeared, had won the battle for the world's willingness to engage with China. The manner in which Chinese support for a regime supporting genocide against its own people in Darfur has stymied international intervention over the past two years seemed to indicate that the Red Dragon had won, and nobody would quite be willing to take a stand against what is most likely going to be the hegemon of this century.

So why bother? And does it matter whether or not the world takes up the Tibetan cause?

The answer is that it does matter. In fact, it is of crucial importance that the world engages with China (and when I say China I refer to both its government and its people) if we are to influence the the world we will live in tomorrow. Globalisation is often touted as a recent phenomenon, something that really only became a reality in the latter part of the twentieth century. This is, however, only partially true - the only thing that is recent about globalisation is its democratisation, and the flexibiltiy with which both human and financial capital can now be deployed around the world. Technological advances have made it much easier for individuals to move and travel, while access to information is increasing exponentially (provided you're not sitting behind a Chinese government firewall in Shanxi or Guangzhou).

What is a much older phenomenon is what I could call the authoritarian part of globalisation, where the fates of millions were decided by decision makers in places often thousands of miles away. Jewish populations in Lithuania and Italy were condemned to gas chambers by policies agreed in Berlin; millions of Indians died of famine during World War II thanks to Winston Churchill's economic policies, while Palestinians today live in refugee camps or in ghettos in the West Bank and Ramallah thanks to the Balfour Declaration made in London. Iraq is burning today thanks to decisions made in Washington DC, and even as we speak, it is difficult to guess where Iran will be in the next few years. The impact and influence at any given time that the world's current hegemonic power has over the rest of the globe is immense and often immeasurable; just watch the fascination with which media organisations cover US Presidential elections around the world; elections in which only a few hundred million will vote to choose a leader with the greatest global impact worldwide.

And this is why Tibet matters. IR theorists have been debating whether or not America's role as the world's sole superpower, a position of preeminence that it has enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is coming to an end or not. What is not being debated is China's inexorable rise as a military and economic power; as time goes by, the extent and strength of the influence it will exert in global discussions will only increase.

And so the question we must ask ourselves is what sort of global power do we want to be active in the world over the next one hundred years? Do we want the worlds that we and our children will live in to be shadowed by the presence of a large, largely democratic state that values human rights, encourages dialogue and freedom of speech, and values the individual's right to life, liberty and property? Or will we be happy to have the greatest influence of global discourse on trade, defence and economy to be an authoritarian state, where torture in prisons continues to be an endemic issue, where arrests are sudden, unprovoked and where shrill government spokespersons are the only sources of information, where free speech does not exist, and where critical thinking is not tolerated?

So the issue of Tibet is now much more than how China chooses to engage with demonstrators in the territory. While the protests surrounding the Torture Relay are as much about the brutal crackdown on clergy and laity alike in Tibet and China's western provinces, the issues has magnified into something much less tangible, but with far greater repercussions on all of our lives. How China deals with Tibet has become part of a broader discussion of the shape and form of the world that we want to live in. Tibet is no longer an issue between two Asian countries. And if you think that Tibet is someone else's problem, you only need to look at the streets of London yesterday, where a large Chinese security detail, part of the government machinery that uses brutal methods against its population, jogged with impunity through the streets, while protestors wearing "Free Tibet" t-shirts were ordered to leave the area. Democracy is a very fragile institution, and it does not take much to descend into authoritarianism (and if you disagree with that, I'd only point you towards Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib). The question is, at what point does it become important to speak out?

So, dear reader, if you live in a country where you will not be jailed for raising your voice, for wearing your beliefs on your t-shirt, where it is legal to stand in the street and chant, "Tibet will be free", and if you are in a city through which the Torture Relay is scheduled to pass, then as a citizen of the world, as a friend to those millions who cannot wave a simple cloth without fear of detention, torture and summary execution, in solidarity with the people of a country where it is illegal to have a photograph of the Dalai Lama, go and protest. Do so nonviolently, because violence only begets violence. Go and stand in peace, in harmony and in solidarity. Go and protest the rally, not just for your Tibetan brethren, but for the millions of Chinese citizens who are currently locked up in prison for having the courage to express their views in public, for challenging their regime through peaceful protest and dialogue. Go and protest to send a message to your government and that of China's, and other authoritarian regimes like it, that the voice of millions cannot be discounted. Do not despair - it was after all the student protests of the 1980's that finally forced an economic embargo onto the apartheid regime in South Africa, which crumbled in the following decade.

Do not be silent, because that is another name for complicity. Protest, for the millions in bondage around the world. Protest, but not just for the millions in bondage around the world.

Do it for yourself, and do it for your children.

Torture Relay

Almost a month after protests to commemorate the 1959 invasion of Tibet by China turned violent in Lhasa, we are seeing no resolution to either the tension within the territory, nor to the growing complexity of international politics surrounding China, Tibet and the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Activists and supporters of many causes, including Darfur, Falun Gong, the environment and general human rights, had so far struggled to broadly link the Beijing Olympics with China's generally dismal record of not respecting individual civil liberties, while supporting regimes that indulged in the genocide of their own populations. Darfur was perhaps the strongest rallying point for activists worldwide, in no small way due to the tireless efforts of celebrity campaigners including, among others, Mia Farrow. China has been able to avoid significant censure from governments on the strength of its economy.







But Tibet is proving to be a thornier issue to resolve. Perhaps as a result of, or directly due to, the stature of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, China has struggled to both brutally prevent protests in Tibet and to present a less than completely negative image in the international press. A carefully choreographed visit by foreign journalists to the Jokhang temple complex in Lhasa backfired badly when resident Tibetan monks, at no small risk to personal safety, chose to break through and directly address the journalists in an attempt to present their side of the story.



And the protests continued today in London, as the Olympic Torch completed its 31 mile tour of the city. Protestors lined the streets along the circuit, starting from Wembley Stadium, through West London, across the heart into the East. News reports suggest that over 35 protestors were arrested.

I went to the protest at Queensway station, just down the road from Notting Hill and the more exciting events of the morning, where protestors attempted to put out the torch with a fire extinguisher at Holland Park. Queensway was a surprisingly bourgeois scene, where pacific middle-aged professionals lined the streets, huddled under umbrellas while waving Tibetan flags. Some more dedicated protestors had loudspeakers and led the slogans, while a handful of Metropolitan policemen (approximately 10) were designated to control a crowd of well over 100.

A few memorable moments:

1) A Dominican friar, out in full regalia, including hood and cassock, distributing Free Tibet lapel pins

2) A family with a baby waving small Free Tibet flags

3) A woman with two dogs, both of whom followed the sloganeering with great interest

4) A police photographer openly videotaping all protesters...

I will write a further post about what I believe needs to be done as the Torch wends its way across the globe, most notably in India, but for now, I leave you with some photographs from the demonstration this morning...

The Bollywood Samba

So I was browsing the net trying to find the Tibetan name for India, which, if memory serves me well, means "the Land of Dance". However, old age and the stress of the current markets is obviously catching up with me, and as a result, I'm reduced to random googling to get the answers to many of my questions about Life, the Universe and Everything.

Having said that, the joy of random googling is the serendipity with which I occasionally run across the most fascinating and/ or unexpected websites out there. My search for the land of dance led me to the site Bollywood Brazil, which is a site set up by a Sao Paolo based production company, and aims to increase awareness among Indian television and film producers about the potential of filming in Brazil. After the runaway success of Dhoom 2, which was extensively filmed on the beaches near Rio de Janeiro, I guess the potential revenues associated with more Bollywood productions being filmed in Brazil was too juicy an opportunity to resist. I'm also beginning to wonder how popular Bollywood films are in Brazil; I know for a fact that Latin America is a significant foreign market for the industry, and that the first language that Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai was translated into was Spanish, primarily to cater to this audience, but there definitely warrants more exploring...

And to make sure that this post is of suitable intellectual quality, can I just add a comment on how this is yet another example of how globalisation is fostering increased South-South trade....

Brighter than a thousand golden suns...

No, I'm not gone and haven't disappeared forever.

I guess apologies of sorts are definitely in order, given that I've been terrible with my posting recently. It's not as if I haven't had things to say, stories to tell, experiences to share or just pet peeves to vent about. Life has been hectic, busy, incredibly satisfying and equally frustrating at the same time, and definitely not dull and boring.

No, its not that.

There has been travel. Seven countries in less than than three months, transcontinental flights, Heathrow at its best and worst, snowfall in Berlin and Amsterdam, rain in Hanoi and the warm sun in Delhi. Long nights, fancy bars, grubby clubs, beautiful women in Vietnam, jealous transvestites in Holland. The kids of close friends, friends from your past; so many binaries, so many dichotomies. Evenings spent with a glass of wine in front of a fireplace, a movie, a river. Kids throwing snowballs at your moving car, cyclists nearly running you over while they paint their nails. Looking at a Van Gogh original and feeling the urge to cry, watching a movie on a plane and feeling the urge to laugh until you can't stop, sleeping, riding that amazing white horse on a crisp winter's day.

All I know is that something is different; something has changed, and it will never be the same as it was before. What it is, I cannot tell, but trying to figure it out is half the fun. I feel energised, but tired as well. It's as if there are a thousand golden suns buried deep within me, each one straining to burst out, and even though as each one emerges the brilliance of its light astounds me, it also leaves me drained.

Damn you Hosseini - you stole my autobiography's title.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'll be flying in a couple of hours to New York, where I'm being sent by work for two weeks of corporate training....I will have blog & email access, but work schedules threatening to be what they are, I'm not sure if I will get time to update...



So I guess I'm ending this on a Bollywood in New York note...

Image courtesy: Bollywood Mantra

I think I just found my perfect holiday....



" This wild and rugged 11-day trek begins at the edge of the wide open plains of Argentine Patagonia and proceeds into the rugged mountains, forests and volcanoes of the Chilean Lake District. Ride through ancient larch, beech and monkey puzzle forests while learning the real meaning of the word ‘bamboozled’ as you forge a path through the bamboo thickets with experienced guides. The huge rock formations, towering overhead give rise to the myths and tales about secret cities hidden here in the Andes. The breathtaking peak of Lanin Volcano at 13,000 feet is an inspiring backdrop to this adventure."

(Check out the tour at here)

(Image courtesy Riding Tours Blog)

Cairo Claustrophobia

It's funny, isn't it, how travelling to a place always somehow makes something written that much more real and identifiable? I always find that once I've been to the place that a particular novel is set in, the stories that I may have read before become that much more magical for me when I read them again. Perhaps all I do is colour in the narratives in my own head with what I now know of the place, but in any case, I somehow find the second reading so much more intimate.

This is exactly what happened with a book I'd read some months back, but hadn't thought to write a review of. But after my whistlestop tour of Cairo, which only served to whet my appetite for going back, I picked up The Yacoubian Building again. The book itself was a gift from a friend who was passing through London from Cairo last year. When I'd read it originally, it had seemed a good read, but nothing exceptional. But after spending just over 36 hours in Egypt, with a hotel view that looked out over Garden City towards Mohandiseen & the Citadel, I was somehow drawn back to the novel, and picked it up again last week.

First published in 2004 in Arabic, The Yacoubian Building is the work of Egyptian author Alaa al Aswany, a dentist by profession. The story traces the lives of several characters, each from different walks of life and different social strata, with very little to connect them to each other other than the fact that they all live in The Yacoubian Building, a typical Egyptian residential block in the old city. While the more affluent & powerful residents live in the large apartments in the main building, the roof contains small rooms which are inhabited by the poorer characters in the tale.

The story reads like a mosaic, moving fluidly between multiple narratives and tracing the ordinary lives of its protagonists, each of whom is in a unique way a victim of their own circumstances. There is Zaki Bey, an affluent man from a landed family, who was destined for power and influence, but had that deprived by the 1952 revolution. Taha just wants to be a police officer, but his humble antecedents deprive him of a place in the academy. Busayna does her best to earn enough to feed her widowed mother and younger siblings, but ends up in all her jobs as the victim of sexual exploitation. And there are many, many others.

Through all of their troubles and worries, the Yacoubian Building is the recurring leit motif. The story takes place in many locations, but at several points the scene is set in one of its apartments or on the crowded rooftop. On the whole, the story is not particularly cataclysmic, and there the ending of the story is somehat abrupt, leaving you feeling as if you were being led along, but were not given any catharsis. The small joys and sorrows that are spread through the novel continue until the end, perhaps appropriately illustrating what the realities of its characters must be like to live through. But there are two things I found remarkable about this novel, and more so after my trip to Cairo.

The first is this incredible sense of claustrophobia that pervades the novel. The overwhelming sense of entrapment, of being stuck in a situation from which you cannot get away, is one that affects each and everyone of the characters. Whether due to a lack of money, or for other, more complex circumstances, each protagonist is a prisoner of their own reality, unable to break out of a cycle of corruption, fraud and exploitation, whether a perpetrator or victim. While this claustrophobia came across even the first time I read the novel, it was magnified after I went to Egypt, and could see the streets and city for myself. Like so many developing countries, people in Egypt are either extremely rich or extremely poor, with very few individuals qualifying as "middle-class". And associated with these extremes are the classic cycles of exploitation, whether economic or sexual.

The second point that, at least for me, was quite unusual, was the sexuality of the writing. The Yacoubian Building was originally written in Arabic, and was for some time a best seller across the Arab world. Perhaps this is symptomatic of my own ignorance of the region and its multiple realities and complex social mores, but there is a frankness in dealing with so many things that I would have thought would be taboo. Whether it is the detailed exposition of Busayna's exploitation at the hands of her many bosses, the extensive lovemaking between various couples (never graphic or titillating, nor even erotic, but suggestive) or in the extensive description of the gay scene in Cairo, I was suprised by the extent to which Aswany deals with what I would have thought taboo, especially in a country like Egypt.

Finally, and perhaps appropriately for our present day realities, there is one subplot that is worth mentioning. Aswany describes in one of his subplots the evolution of an Islamist, one who is motivated by the desire for change in what is perceived to be a corrupt and decadent establishment to one that is fair, egalitarian and just. The sense of inevitability that surrounds the birth of the extremist is handled adeptly, but also sensitively, without going into any moralising or political grandstanding. Aswany reminds us that there are no black & whites - just one really confusing grey.

Dreaming of Dublin

So these stupid exams are doing my head in. Not only because I have to study, but because my life seems to have stopped until they're over. Not much travelling, not too much socialising, no movies, no theatre, no partying...nothing. Just getting to work in the morning, trying to leave early, and coming home to study...

So today I was flipping through some old photos and found a few that I really liked. They're from a business trip that I made to Dublin, Ireland, back in January 2005. It was cold, dark and incredibly windy, but the city had a welcoming feel to it...

So tonight I'm thinking of Dublin...on a chilly spring night in London...

Dreaming of Istanbul...

Okay - this may be cheating, but given that between work and study (I have an exam coming up in June) I haven't really done much interesting stuff for the past month. So in order to spare you folks the agony of my currently boring life, I'm recycling something very cool that I did back in the winter of 2005 - it was my trip to Istanbul. I had sent a travelogue-esque email to friends with pics when I came back, so I'm reproducing excerpts for you to read below (especially since a reader asked for a detailed travelogue). I really want to go back - don't think I've gotten Turkey out of my system just yet!

Just got back after five fairly hectic days in Istanbul (and if you're Greek, that's Konstantinoupoli to you...) It's a fascinating city, and one that I was almost being haunted by. For those of you who haven't heard the stories, here's how it goes.

Basically, I've always been intrigued by Istanbul - it was such a historic place, with so many stories and myths and legends and events attached to it - truly one of the few great historic places in the world. I think somewhere deep inside I always wanted to go there, but over the past year, it felt as if I was being haunted by the city. Every book, movie, music, novel, you mention it, seemed to have a connection to Istanbul. I think I had the decision to visit made for me the weekend I rented three movies - a Bond film (The World is Not Enough), a German movie (Gegen Am Wand, or Head On) and a Jackie Chan movie (can't remember the name) and all three of them ended up in Istanbul. I was like, OK FINE I'LL GO!!!! I mean, seriously ... Jackie Chan??

So finally I went there in December 05 with a good friend who coincidentally is Greek. We got there on Sunday evening, after a rather turbulent flight (we were flying British Airways, and while passengers in the row next to us were clutching to their arm rests and praying with tears streaming down their face, the pilot said, "I'm sorry this isn't a very comfortable flight!" Ah, the British) Anyhow, the turbulence was caused by a ridiculous storm that had turned the streets (and runway) of Istanbul into rivulets of water and mud that cars threw up at pedestrians as they raced by. (By the way - if you go to Istanbul, be warned - the traffic is MANIC, so avoid driving)

We got to our hotel, reasonably dry thanks to the taxi, and after checking in, decided to be gung ho adventurous tourists and go out and walk along Istiklal Caddesi, which is a pedestrianised avenue in the Beyoglu/ Pera district (I don't have a Turkish keyboard, so you'll just have to pretend). However, given that we were slightly disoriented and that it was still POURING down with rain, we actually only ended up wandering around in almost zero degree monsoon style rain and got thoroughly soaked. Suitably chastised, we spent the rest of the evening in the hotel, warming up with hot showers, food, and really bad Turkish TV.

The next day was cloudy and damp, but adventurism was alive and well. We decided to take a ferry across the Halic (I probably need a quick geography sketch here. Istanbul is split into two parts by the Bosphoros into Europe and Asia. The European side is further split into a North & South by the Halic, and we were in the northern part, while the old Ottoman & Byzantine city was on the Southern side). Anyway, we decided to go to the covered Egyptian Bazaar (in that weather, we weren't too concerned about the shopping, but the word "covered" really appealed to us.) After walking through what felt like Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi with really tacky touristy goods, and swarthy Turkish shopkeepers trying to sell me Indian saffron, we got out and decided to follow that big dome we saw at the top of the hill to get to Sulemaniye Mosque. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the dome ended up being Hagia Sophia, which we had been trying to avoid since we knew it was closed on Mondays. Forty minutes later, outside the Hagia Sophia, we're like, right! And then we got accosted by a Turkish carpet seller. I decided to humour him, and got ten minutes in his shop and a hot cup of apple tea for my pains, but also really sore ears as he tried to sell us Turkish carpets & kilims. Best of all, he was talking in sterling!

Extricating ourselves from his oily grasp (okay that's a little cliched, but seriously - he looked greasy) we went to the Byzantine cisterns, which are a remnant of Roman Constantinople, and are actually quite nice, if a bit humid and really drippy (seriously - watch your head and where you put your camera). But they're quite beautiful, and as long as the drops of water don't fall on you, the sound of the water is quite therapeutic. There are also two Medusa's heads on two pillars, carved there to ward off the evil eye.

Post-cistern, we decided that we might as well go to Topkapi Palace, the old Ottoman palace, and ended up spending a fair bit of time (almost four hours) inside, because its so big and also because you need to take a tour to see the harem section. I think the best part of the Topkapi tour for me was seeing the Peacock Throne. For those not in the know, this was the old Mughal throne from India which was looted and taken away by Persian marauder Nadir Shah, and then gifted (!) to the Ottoman sultans as a present. Not having realised that it had ever left Persia, I was not prepared to see it in the Treasury at Topkapi Palace, but there it was in all its glory.

After finishing up at Topkapi, we went to the Sultan Ahmet mosque, which I think was the first mosque that I've ever been inside. And its going to be a hard act to follow, I'm afraid. Built to rival the Hagia Sophia (like most big Ottoman mosques in the city) its quite spectacular.

We also managed to squeeze in a trip to Kapali Carsi, the covered "Grand Bazaar", which was again like being in Chandni Chowk. My haggling skills from Delhi came in quite handy though. Funnily, most people thought we were Turkish, and when they realised we didn't speak much Turkish, they guessed that my friend was Greek, but their next judgement for me was that I was Iranian. Only when that was knocked out did they think "Indian"?

The next day was sunnier (and warmer) and we spent this going to Dolmabahce Palace, which was built in the 1850s to demonstrate Ottoman glory to the Europeans. It is consequently decorated alternately in Baroque, rococo & Ottoman styles, and the results are spectacularly HIDEOUS! Complete sensory overload, and very over the top - definitely worth a see, but don't blame me if you come out an advocate of minimalism....

After that, and a quick trip on the Istanbul tram, we were back at Hagia Sophia, which I must admit is not as spectacular on the outside, except for its size. The only thing I could think of outside it was how large it is. But on the inside, its a lot more serene and quite tranquil really. The mixture of Roman brickwork, Byzantine mosaic and Ottoman calligraphy is eclectic, and quite sweet really. That building really feels like an old, old person, someone who's weathered a lot of things, and is really tired and almost spent. A large part of the central dome was taken up by scaffolding as they renovated it, but it was still quite impressive.

A quick coffee and snacks later, we ended up in Sirkeci railway station, in the Grand Exhibition Hall next to the historic Orient Express bar for a Sufi music concert and sema, or ceremony. Even if it was a bit touristy, the mixture of the music and the whirling did make it fairly mystical. I was intrigued to see that of the seven dervishes, four were women, since I had always assumed them to be male...but definitely a good experience.

After that rather whirlwind tour (no puns intended) we ended up in Kurucesme for dinner. We were meeting someone who is a friend of a friend of mine and while she was quite busy with work, she really wanted to catch up so we were chez hers for dinner. Her mother had cooked a really fantastic meal, and it was a really pleasant evening to sit down with a Turkish family and see what life is really like in Turkey. Also, their living room looks right onto the Bosphoros, and the view is fantastic. I mean, how many people can say they live in Europe and their view is of Asia? Our hostess was also really friendly and warm, and gave us some good tips on clubs and bars to go to - something that I don't trust the Lonely Planet on, because the last thing I want to do when on vacation is end up at a bar with tons of grubby backpackers.

We spent two more days walking around different parts of the city (we went and visited the Greek Patriarchy and the Bulgarian church as well - I'd like to think that I'm probably the first Indian to go to either; the caretaker of the Bulgarian church definitely thought) and we also got lost walking around in the old Fenar & Balat districts, which are amazingly like Dariba Kalan and Karol Bagh in Delhi.

But the best experience of the last two days had to be the Galata House restaurant. After trekking around on the Asian side and seeing yet more mosques, we headed back to Galata, and decided we needed lunch. Our trusty Lonely Planet assured us that the Galata House restaurant had to be visited, and so we did. It was definitely worth it. Housed in the old British civil prison, the building was restored by a husband & wife architect couple in the last decade, and they've also opened a Georgian restaurant in it. They both are quite the traditional hosts, and Mr Goktug, the owner & restorer, spent a long time chatting to us and telling us stories. His wife was equally charming - they were like a picture out of the old world, with the restored building and the furnishings. Most interestingly, they have left pieces of plaster untouched from the prison cells to show off the graffiti that prisoners drew on it. My favourite one was a quote "A terrific wind has caught the ship of my destiny and brought it to this strange shore"....

Till next time....

Loving the Land of the Pyramids

I was in Egypt for a couple of days this past week; not enough to really get around, but just enough to be able to see the Pyramids from the hotel in the daytime, and then attend the sound & light show in the evening. Work constraints meant that I could only attend the show that's done in French. End result is that I spent minutes listening about "le roi Tootanchamoon", "la pierre Rosette" & "la belle Neferteetee".... quite surreal, but nonetheless a fantastic experience. I really loved buzz that Cairo has; it seems like a fascinating place, and somewhere I have to go back to soon!

Day Two of the Siege - Life in Beirut

This is an email that was sent by a Lebanese woman to her friends, and has been forwarded on through the internet to reach my inbox. Read it carefully - and just think that this was written only on the second day of the bombings. And remember - the writer may not even be there anymore - just another example of "collateral damage".

"Dear All,

I am writing now from a cafe, in West Beirut's Hamra district. It is filled with people who are trying to escape the pull of 24 hour news reporting. Like me. The electricity has been cut off for a while now, and the city has been surviving on generators. The old system that was so familiar at the time of the war, where generators were allowed a lull to rest is back. The cafe is dark, hot and humid. Espresso machines and blenders are silenced. Conversations, rumors, frustrations waft through the room.

I am better off here than at home, following the news, live, on the spot documentation of our plight in sound bites.The sound of Israeli warplanes overwhelms the air on occasion. They drop leaflets to conduct a "psychological" war. Yesterday, their sensitivity training urged them to advise inhabitants of the southern suburbs to flee because the night promised to be "hot". Today, the leaflets warn that they plan to bomb all other bridges and tunnels in Beirut. People are flocking to supermarkets to stock up on food.This morning, I wrote in my emails to people inquiring about my well-being that I was safe, and that the targets seem to be strictly Hezbollah sites and their constituencies, now, I regret typing that. They will escalate. Until a few hours ago, they had only bombed the runways of the airport, as if to "limit" the damage. A few hours ago, four shells were dropped on the buildings of our brand new shining airport.

The night was harrowing. The southern suburbs and the airport were bombed, from air and sea. The apartment where I am living has a magnificient view of the bay of Beirut. I could see the Israeli warships firing at their leisure. It is astounding how comfortable they are in our skies, in our waters, they just travel around, and deliver their violence and congratulate themselves.

The cute French-speaking and English-speaking bourgeoisie has fled to the Christian mountains. A long-standing conviction that the Israelis will not target Lebanon's Christian "populated" mountains. Maybe this time they will be proven wrong? The Gulfies, Saudis, Kuwaities and other expatriates have all fled out of the country, in Pullman buses via Damascus, before the road was bombed. They were supposed to be the economic lifeblood of this country. The contrast in their sense of panic as opposed to the defiance of the inhabitants of the southern suburbs was almost comical. This time, however, I have to admit, I am tired of defying whatever for whatever cause. There is no cause really. There are only sinister post-Kissingerian type negotiations. I can almost hear his hateful voice rationalizing laconically as he does the destruction of a country, the deaths of families, people with dreams and ambitions for the Israelis to win something more, always more.

Although I am unable to see it, I am told left, right and center that there is a rhyme and reason, grand design, and strategy. The short-term military strategy seems to be to cripple transport and communications. And power stations. The southern region has now been reconfigured into small enclaves that cannot communicate between one another. Most have enough fuel, food and supplies to last them until tomorrow, but after that the isolation of each enclave will lead to tragedy. Mayors and governors have been screaming for help on the TV.

This is all bringing back echoes of 1982, the Israeli siege of Beirut. My living nightmare, well one of my living nightmares. It was summer then as well. The Israeli army marched through the south and besieged Beirut. For 3 months, the US administration kept dispatching urges for the Israeli military to act with restraint. And the Israelis assured them they were acting appropriately. We had the PLO command in West Beirut then. I felt safe with the handsome fighters. How I miss them. Between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army I don't feel safe. We are exposed, defenseless, pathetic. And I am older, more aware of danger. I am 37 years old and actually scared. The sound of the warplanes scares me. I am not defiant, there is no more fight left in me. And there is no solidarity, no real cause.

I am furthermore pissed off because no one knows how hard the postwar reconstruction was to all of us. Hariri did not make miracles. People work hard and sacrifice a lot and things get done. No one knows except us how expensive, how arduous that reconstruction was. Every single bridge and tunnel and highway, the runways of that airport, all of these things were built from our sweat and brow, at 3 times the real cost of their construction because every member of government, because every character in the ruling Syrian junta, because the big players in the Hariri administration and beyond, were all thieves. We accepted the thievery and banditry just to get things done and get it over with. Everyone one of us had two jobs (I am not referring to the ruling elite, obviously), paid backbreaking taxes and wages to feed the "social covenant". We faught and faught that neoliberal onslaught, the arrogance of economic consultants and the greed of creditors just to have a nice country that functioned at a minimum, where things got done, that stood on its feet, more or less. A thirving Arab civil society. Public schools were sacrificed for roads to service neglected rural areas and a couple Syrian officers to get richer, and we accepted, that road was desperately needed, and there was the "precarious national consensus" to protect. Social safety nets were given up, healthcare for all, unions were broken and coopted, public spaces taken over, and we bowed our heads and agreed.

Palestinian refugees were pushed deeper and deeper into forgetting, hidden from sight and consciousness, "for the preservation of their identity" we were told, and we accepted. In exchange we had a secular country where the Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces could co-exist and fight their fights in parliament not with bullets. We bit hard on our tongues and stiffened our upper lip, we protested and were defeated, we took the streets, defied army-imposed curfews, time after time, to protect that modicum of civil rights, that modicum of a semblance of democracy, and it takes one air raid for all our sacrifices and tolls to be blown to smithereens. It's not about the airport, it's what we built during that postwar.

As per the usual of Lebanon, it's not only about Lebanon, the country has paradigmatically been the terrain for regional conflicts to lash out violently. Off course speculations abound. There is rhetoric, and a lot of it, but there are also Theories.

1) Theory Number One.
This is about Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah negotiating an upper hand in the negotiations with Israel. Hezbollah have indicated from the moment they captured the Israeli soldiers that they were willing to negotiate in conjunction with Hamas for the release of all Arab prisoners in Israeli jails. Iran is merely providing a back support for Syria + Hamas.

2) Theory Number Two.
This is not about solidarity with Gaza or strengthening the hand of the Palestinians in negotiating the release of the prisoners in Israeli jails. This is about Iran's nuclear bomb and negotiations with the Europeans/US. The Iranian negotiator left Brussels after the end of negotiations and instead of returning to Tehran, he landed in Damascus. Two days later, Hezbollah kidnapped the Israeli soldiers. The G8 Meeting is on Saturday, Iran is supposed to have some sort of an answer for the G8 by then. In the meantime, they are showing to the world that they have a wide sphere of control in the region: Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. In Lebanon they pose a real threat to Israel. The "new" longer-reaching missiles that Hezbollah fired on Haifa are the message. The kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia issued statements holding Hezbollah solely responsible for bringing on this escalation, and that is understood as a message to Iran. Iran on the other hand promised to pay for the reconstruction of destroyed homes and infrastructures in the south. And threatened Israel with "hell" if they hit Syria.

3) Theory Number Three.
This is about Lebanon, Hezbollah and 1559 (the UN resolution demanding the disarmement of Hezbollah and deployment of the Lebanese army in the southern territory). It stipulates that this is no more than a secret conspiracy between Syria, Iran and the US to close the Hezbollah file for good, and resolve the pending Lebanese crisis since the assassination of Hariri. Evidence for this conspiracy is Israel leaving Syria so far unharmed. Holders of this theory claim that Israel will deliver a harsh blow to Hezbollah and cripple the Lebanese economy to the brink of creating an internal political crisis. The resolution would then result in Hezbollah giving up arms, and a buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon under the control of the Lebanese army in Lebanon and the Israeli army in the north of Galilee. More evidence for this Theory are the Saudi Arabia and Jordan statements condemning Hezbollah and holding them responsible for all the horrors inflicted on the Lebanese people.

There are more theories... There is also the Israeli government reaching an impasse and feeling a little wossied out by Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Israeli military taking the upper hand with Olmert. The land of conspiracies... Fun? I can't make heads or tails. But I am tired of spending days and nights waiting not to die from a shell, on target or astray. Watching poor people bludgeoned, homeless and preparing to mourn.

I am so weary... "