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?! :)

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.

First Among Sequels

Like many parties in the world, the Jasper Fforde series of novels that centre around Thursday Next is yet another one that I am late for. Showing up late often means that you’ve missed some of the festivities and have to play catch-up to get yourself to the same state of mellow bliss that your fellow revellers have less difficulty in reaching, given that they usually have a head start in working their way through the cocktails list.

So normally, I would expect reading First Among Sequels, the fourth in the Thursday Next series of fantasy/comedy fiction to be a bit challenging. Most fantasy novels that run across several volumes tend to be fairly closely interrelated, and as a reader you suffer terribly if you try to pick one up and try to work your way through it without the benefit of having read earlier volumes.

Thankfully, First Among Sequels does not suffer from this particular malaise of the multi-volume genre of writing. Fforde writes a standalone novel that for first-time readers like me does not overwhelm or discombobulate with multiple, cryptic references to events and characters from earlier volumes; where a character is repeated, a brief and helpful description is supplied, sufficient to let said character stand alone, but also purportedly to allow the reader familiar with earlier works connect all the dots. Similarly, events from prior novels are explained in brief, and for the first time reader offer just the right amount of colour to be useful background without boring you with excessive verbiage.

So what exactly is First Among Sequels about? Well, you see, that’s the hard one to explain. Thursday Next, secret agent and member of the officially-disbanded Secret Operations Network’s Jurisfiction department, is charged with the maintenance of law and order within BookWorld, the world / dimension / weird sort of place which is the place that all stories and novels are set. BookWorld is where stories actually happen, fictional characters exist, and narratives are played out on a daily basis. A journey into BookWorld could mean running into Cinderella, Gandalf, Juliet, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and even Flash Gordon. Next, having inspired several novels about her exploits, has variations of herself wandering through BookWorld, but since they’re “written” differently from her bear little resemblance to her other than physical (hence the title).

Next juggles her role as a member of Jurisfiction with the challenges of raising a family in Swindon and running an illegal cheese smuggling organisation – the separation of the Welsh Socialist Republic having led to a significant decline in cheese imports into the country. But her time in First Among Sequels will be complicated by having to deal with some unusual apprentices training to be Jurisfiction agents, trying to prevent the Books Council from turning Pride and Prejudice into an “interactive” reality show edition (a surreal attempt to stem a staggering fall in readership levels across the world) and also trying to ensure that her son, meant to be the future of the ChronoGuard (time travellers) actually gets his act together and joins the force instead of being a teenager that doesn’t bathe or shave and prefers to spend the day sleeping. Throw in legions of Mrs Danvers, who operate as the armies in the BookWorld, the Stiltonistas (Swindon’s infamous cheese mafia) and an evil corporation called Goliath that is trying to harness the technology to facilitate travel between BookWorld, and you have a novel of over 250+ that keeps you engaged, and often laughing out loud.

Fforde is reminiscent of Douglas Adams in his ability to create a parallel world in his writing, with the humour very dry and tongue-in-cheek and, well, very English. The writing is engaging, though by page 175 you do start to wonder about the point of it all. Though it sometimes feels as if Fforde had too many good jokes built into the story to risk editing out, generally though you get to the end without too much grief. And if you are a lover of literature, you can only admire and laugh at all the many references that he manages to pull into a tight script. Fforde also successfully works biting criticism of today’s culture, where reality TV and abysmal pop culture has led to a massive decline in good literature.

All in all, though a little long, First Among Sequels is an entertaining read, something to clear your literary palate in between more serious works of fiction, but for a lover of literature and for someone who knows their books, it is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the world of books. And perhaps as the biggest sign of what an enjoyable read this book is, I will be tracking down earlier volumes of the Thursday Next series...

The Art of Forgetting

Memory and the art of remembering is something that writers and philosophers choose to dwell on at great length - perhaps because in so many cases the creative process itself is a means of commemorating a past, and the act of creating a story is often the path to remembering something. Over the past two hundred years, authors ranging such as Kafka, Kundera, Borges and Murakami have spent a great deal of intellectual horsepower on what it means to remember, and what it means to forget.

Following this noble and illustrious line of storytelling is The Amnesiac, by Sam Taylor. The narrative opens in Amsterdam, where the protagonist, James Purdew, is recovering from a broken ankle. Living an apparently satisfactory life (he has a stable job, a loving girlfriend, an apartment in the heart of Amsterdam) his veneer of contentment is perpetually ruffled at the edges by premonitions of his past, and the fact that he has no memory of approximately three years of his life. What happened to him when he was a university student in the English town of H.? Why is he haunted by the strains of a tune that he cannot remember more than two lines of? And above all things, who is Anna?

Ankle healed, relationship with Dutch girlfriend Ingrid terminated, James returns to H. (why can’t we call it Hull and be done with?) to try to find out more about his past, and to (both figuratively and literally) find a key to unlock his past – because of all the diaries he’s ever kept throughout his life, the ones pertaining to the three years he cannot remember are in a locked black box, and he cannot find (or even remember) where the key is. From here on the novel begins its tortured tour through the past of a life that is at once fascinating and also equally dull and pointless. For Purdew’s life is very bourgeois, with all the trappings of a traditional English childhood in the seventies and eighties – the bad hairstyles, the quaint television shows on the BBC, the agony and the ecstasy of first love, sex and death. Add to this mix an ongoing renovation project that Purdew takes on (how could a novel so thoroughly English leave out the persistent English obsession with home equity?) and you have a classically English novel for our times. Through all these events, clues towards unlocking the past slowly accumulate; references (almost tongue in cheek) zip past as we hurtle along the narrative as the author throws in clues to the denouement.

Taylor does well in creating a haunting reality, almost Camus-like in his emphasis on duality; his one passage on how hope and fear, light and dark, are potentially merely two sides of the same emotion is very reminiscent of The Absurd. Taylor veers between different times and narratives, choosing to work in several voices (the hidden observer, the narrator, the first person) to move the story forward. Over the course of nearly four hundred pages, Taylor moves (sometimes smoothly, other times not) between genres, going from nihilistic twentieth century self-reflexive novel to Robin Cook-like medical thriller involving large sterile corridors and doctors with mind-altering chemicals speaking in hushed tones through to nineteenth century Victorian murder mystery, tracing its path through the narrow side alleys behind Waterloo.

But alas, that is where the good times end. The extended references to Borges are cute to start with but soon belabour the point, and there are sections where he insists on discussing philosophy that could have been handled with more subtlety; either readers will already know about solipsism, or they will have the good grace to find out; you don’t need to explain it a la Philosophy for Dummies. And perhaps most disappointingly, after all the build-up, the denouement is completely unsatisfactory; loose ends come together a little too neatly, the whodunit solved cleanly, all the pieces falling into place too well, but the overall conclusion is like the English football team (who also make an appearance, albeit tangentially, alongside Doctor Who) – just not good enough. And if you rely on Borges’ trick of nothing being as it seems, surely there was some way to keep the ending as engaging as Borges?

Despite its flaws, The Amnesiac is an engaging read; Taylor writes cleanly, albeit a little too consciously and cerebrally, and his prose is crisp and engaging. One has to acknowledge that despite the shortcomings, The Amnesiac is better than a lot of what passes as literary fiction these days, and Taylor knows how to dot his literary i’s and cross his cultural t’s; he just needs to do it with a little more aplomb. Maybe he'll remember that for next time?

(The Amnesiac is published by Faber in the UK and Penguin the US)

Les Chansons d'Amour

Over the weekend I had a classic "crazy" moment and ended up renting about a hundred different movies (okay, not a hundred, but more like seven). I then proceeded to spend hours watching them, even after squeezing in a night of crazy clubbing on Saturday, and reached Sunday evening in a state of bliss. Don't you love insane weekends like that?

One of the movies I rented (alongside more staple Hollywood fare like Be Kind, Rewind)is a French production from last year titled Les Chansons d'Amour (or literally, Love Songs). Directed by Christophe Honoré, who is reputed to be one of the great new hopes for French cinema, and with music by Alex Beaupain, this movie is a new all-time favourite. With fantastic cinematography, crisp dialogue and also incredible mind-blowing music, its something I've already ordered on Amazon, and have also bought the soundtrack on iTunes - in fact, I'm listening to "J'ai cru entendre" right now.

So I'll leave you with the lyrics to a beautiful song As-tu déjà aimé....

As-tu déjà aimé
Pour la beauté du geste?
As-tu déjà croqué
La pomme à pleine dent?
Pour la saveur du fruit
Sa douceur et son zeste
T'es tu perdu souvent?

Oui j'ai déjà aimé
Pour la beauté du geste
Mais la pomme était dure.
Je m'y suis cassé les dents.
Ces passions immatures,
Ces amours indigestes
M'ont écoeuré souvent.

Les amours qui durent
Font des amants exsangues,
Et leurs baisers trop mûrs
Nous pourrissent la langue.

Les amour passagères
Ont des futiles fièvres,
Et leur baiser trop verts
Nous écorchent les lèvres.

Car a vouloir s'aimer
Pour la beauté du geste,
Le ver dans la pomme
Nous glisse entre les dents.
Il nous ronge le coeur,
Le cerveau et le reste,
Nous vide lentement.

Mais lorsqu'on ose s'aimer
Pour la beauté du geste,
Ce ver dans la pomme
Qui glisse entre les dents,
Nous embaume le coeur,
Le cerveau et nous laisse
Son parfum au dedans.

Les amours passagères
Font de futils efforts.
Leurs caresses ephémères
Nous faitguent le corps.

Les amours qui durent
Font les amants moins beaux.
Leurs caresses, à l'usure,
Ont raison de nos peaux.

(Music - and lyrics? - by Alex Beaupain)

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...

Blood on my lips, holy red wine

It is dark outside, and I am lost in my own private purgatory.

The rain shatters against the thin glass of the window; the tiny droplets slapping against the clear panes before trickling down in tiny rivulets while the lightning paints silver zigzags against the dull grey of the overcast sky. I am lost in my own musings, wondering about life in general. The brightness of the giant screen in front of me flickers, it seems in tandem with the jagged lightning and occasional thunder that makes its way through the thick glass, the city laid out behind my back in amber puddles and silver glass.

You are close enough to tantalise me with a taste of your fullness; the acrid bite of your soft sweat tickles my nostrils, while the ripe perfume of your hair fills me with longing and desire. I can see a glimpse of crisp hair in the corner of my eye, and so too can I see your gently sashaying walk as I turn my head to get an eyeful of you. But you, wilful, cunning, seductive and purely a beautiful fantasy in my own head, are not even in the same room, building, city. I seek you everywhere I go, looking for you in the hordes that pack the trendy clubs all over Chelsea and Greenwich Village, Mayfair and King’s Road. I have travelled continents, gone to cities that I would never have imagined, and only occasionally have I found you, your presence lingering in a dark and seedy bar, luring me in with the idea of your symmetry, and leaving just before I get there. I clutch at straws, the barman sadly telling me of all the tricks he’s seen walk through his doors, before pausing long enough to hand me my standard gin and tonic, Rick-like, his warm and sweaty hand lingering too long over mine as he takes his payment. “Don’t wait for the love of your life,” he says heavily, the curly hair of his chest curling with droplets of sweat that show through the open checks of his undone shirt, “they never stay long enough to cause you anything more than pain”.

And so he leaves me, as always, in the darkness of my barstool, the bland bitterness of the Gordon’s biting into the back of my tongue, and I am left to contemplate the brutality of human emotion, of the sentiments that drive us to seek ever more meaning in our diurnal ellipsis of life. The snake always swallows its own tail, I muse, swigging ever-increasing gulps of my drink as my jaded eyes scan the dark solitude thrown up by the shadows in this, a bar like many other bars. Where and when you will be is a question that I can never answer, but it is one that I seek to find eternal responses to each night that I go out on the hunt. Perhaps the irony of it all is that the only immutable part of our petty and insignificant lives is in our hunt for immortality, that never-ending quest for love, longing, fulfilment and completeness. The snake will swallow its own tail, but only because that tail is no longer part of the same snake when it makes contact with its lips.

Is that then the bitter poignancy, the arid desperation of our lives? That we go out hunting for ourselves each night, condemning ourselves to failure because if we cannot find the person we were five minutes ago, how can we find someone else? That the snake swallows its tail, not out of any other reason but a desperate urge to find something, and only through this wilful act of self-destruction is it possible to find itself, to consume itself, its own essence, its complete being? Is that the ultimate aphrodisiac? I cannot have you, but I can consume myself, so that I am a giant star imploding in on itself, gorging myself on the sweet succulence of my own flesh, tasting the veracity and feral tanginess of my own life fluids in my mouth? Could I drink a case of you?

A Case of You
Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star
And I said, constant in the darkness
Wheres that at?
If you want me Ill be in the bar.

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue tv screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
And your face sketched on it twice...

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I'd still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that aint afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
And you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
And still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Color go to him, stay with him if you can
Oh but be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood youre my holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I'd still be on my feet

(Lyrics by Joni Mitchell)

Quote of the Year...

"The meek may inherit the earth, but only the shrewd will collect the rent...."

Ab Dilli door nahin...

And so the day approaches.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the latest leg of the Torture Relay will take place in New Delhi, capital city of the world's largest democracy.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, over 13,000 security personnel will line the broad expanses of Rajpath down to India Gate, creating a corridor for 70 Indian citizens to carry the torch of shame, each of whom will have hopefully searched their consciences about the moral and ethical implications to have made an informed decision.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, thousands of free Indian citizens and our Tibetan friends will be denied their legal right to protest in the vicinity of the torch, which has now been reduced to nothing more than a crass symbol of authoritarianism and jingoistic nationalism for one of the most tyrannical regimes in today's world.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, thousands will watch across the world as New Delhi delivers, at a governmental level, the greatest slap on the face of democracy and Indian suzerainty, as elite commandos from China's special forces escort the torch on Indian soil.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the world will watch the Government of the Republic of India, (led by, lets not forget so easily, the only political party in India to have voluntarily suspended the Fundamental Rights of the Indian Citizen through the declaration of an Emergency in 1975) as it genuflects before the Communist Party of China, accompanied in its prostrations by its supporters in the Indian communist parties.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the world will watch as India turns its back on the greatest opportunity to break out of the shadow of its eastern neighbour and demonstrate to the wider world at large that while the globe can talk of "China & India" in the same breath, the two are fundamentally different countries, cultures and regimes. Tomorrow, the world will watch as the Government of the Republic of India voluntarity subsumes itself to the dictats of Beijing, while absolving itself of any responsibility to uphold freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of political thought, freedom of peaceful dissent, and most of all, freedom of conscience.

But that is not all. Tomorrow may be a day of despair, but it is also a day of glory.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the world will watch runners cobbled together by the Indian Olympic Committee, but will remember that four Indian citizens chose not to participate in the Torture Relay. The world will watch and will think of Bhaichung Bhutia, Kiran Bedi, Soha Ali Khan Pataudi and Sachin Tendulkar. Only Bhaichung has cited his support for the Tibetan cause, but the gradual withdrawal of the others is yet another moral victory for those of us who would draw attention to the crass politicking of the Chinese Communist Party in its attempt to turn what could have been a great opportunity for change into a despicable attempt at projecting hegemonic glory while seeking political acceptance from the six continents of the world.

Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the world will also watch as (hopefully) thousands of free Indian citizens and our Tibetans friends will congregate separately to lead a freedom rally, away from the main tunnel of shame. Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the world will watch as the stands surrounding the tunnel of shame stay nearly empty, with the Government of the State of Delhi announcing today that schoolchildren will not be sent to attend the the Torture Relay. Tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, the world will watch as Delhi and India turns its back on the torch, sending the clear message that even when the Government does not raise its voice in conscientious disagreement, the citizens of India will.

So if you are reading this from India, from Delhi, then go and show your support for the thousands who will follow the torch of freedom, who will stand in solidarity against a mighty military empire with nothing more than the strength of their convictions as their weapons. Go and show the world that India is the world's largest democracy, the only country in the world to have defeated the world's greatest coloniser with the power of the conscience, the land of the Mahatma, of ahimsa, of satyagraha, of the Buddha and Mahavira, of Meera, Ashoka and Parashurama. Go and show the world that even if the rest of the world will capitulate in the face of economic and military power, India will not.

And make sure that tomorrow, on the 17th of April, 2008, your voice is heard.

(The title of this post is taken from vernacular references to the 1847 War of Independence, when sepoys from Meerut headed towards Delhi to crown Bahadur Shah Zafar the Emperor of India. No reference to violent protest is implied, and the author completely disassociates himself from any violent protest - violence is not something that would make The Buddha Smile)

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....

It´s a Barcelona moment...

So I´m writing this post from the Sala Gaudi at Barcelona airport. Two nights and one day of great fun, good food and intelligent company. The trip out here was spontaneous, unplanned and, perhaps for that reason, all that much more enjoyable. Friday night was spent at various locations, but most notably the gloriously gaudy (Gaudi) jazz bar at the Hotel Casa Fuster, and the Zelig bar in downtown Barcelona (I think its in the Raval). And then yesterday was a Gracia day, walking around small placas and whiling away the time with friends in so many small cafes.

So now its back to London, for a lazy Sunday, reading the Sunday Times and chilling at the Prince Edward - a tiny little pub looking onto a small Notting Hill garden square, before catching up with some more friends for dinner. And its about one hour till my flight boards, so I´m checking emails and Facebook, with my iPod, and I´m listening to a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young classic:

Helpless
There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
and in my mind I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there,

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.

Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now?
The chains are locked and tied across the door,
Baby, sing with me somehow.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes

(I´ve got the k.d.lang and neil young versions)

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.

So I'm sitting here at Singapore's glossy Changi airport, sipping a glass of champagne and wondering how on earth I’m going to kill the next two hours while I wait for a much delayed flight to board. As I’m often wont to do when bored at work, I’m drawn to a site to which I’m an occasional contributor, Desicritics

(note to self – is my interest can more than eponymous? Second note to self: well done on the self referential linking - in the end, the snake swallows its own tail)

And so I discover while browsing the site that, as always, there are spirited discussions currently underway, all of them peppered generously with impassioned (usually hysterically so) comments, around articles relating to Islam, Islamofascism, Islamophobia, Islamophilia, Islamo-fill your appropriate phrase here – ia, and of course, freedom of speech. There were the usual suspects of Iran, Iraq, Al Qaeda, the evil Revolutionary Guard (whether Iraqi or Irani is unclear) the evil Hamas, the evil Knesset, the evil Hezbollah, the evil Zionists, and of course, Rushdie.And all that frothing got me thinking deep and hard.

And I tried to figure what all this Islam vs. the rest of the world debate was all about. And while I don’t claim to have a solution, I think I had a (minor) epiphany…yes, even us heathens are allowed those once in a while.

So the epiphany goes like this. Some weeks back, I was trawling through a small privately owned bookstore in Berlin – there are so few of those left in England that its quite refreshing to go to a bookshop and not find it essentially resembling an intellectual equivalent of a Starbucks (“…I need a double tall sugar-free vanilla skinny latte, STAT, to go – hold the froth; if I wanted any fricking air in my coffee I’d have asked for a fricking appuccino – and throw in a skinny blueberry muffin, will ya….”)

Anyway… so I’m browsing through the anthropological sections, and find what proved to be an incredibly fascinating browse (far too fat to buy, unfortunately, but I have an order pending on Amazon). Written by Columbia academic Joseph A. Massad, the book was called “Desiring Arabs”, and deals with representations of Arab sexuality over the past two centuries. (This also being a privately owned bookstore - see paragraph above - they were kind enough to let me spend about 45 minutes perusing the book, and even got me a coffee while I was there; for those of you who're curious, it was NOT a double tall sugar-free vanilla skinny latte)

From what I could glean, the underlying premise of the book is incredibly Said-ian (Said-ist?) in approach and feel. It almost felt like this was our old friend Edward taking Orientalism and applying it to the specific context of human sexuality, and also discussing how Eurocentric constructs within art and literature essentialised the Arab within global discourse. There has either been a historic tendency to characterise the Arab as a sensualised hedonist, out to prey on virginal Europeans (both male and female) – a view that could be seen in the depictions of Arabs (and by extension, Ottomans) in the 18th and 19th centuries, and more recently as sexually repressed and deprived members of a conservative society out to prey on European liberalism.

Fundamentally, Mossad’s underlying premise is that whatever the contemporary view of the Arab, it has always been defined in contrast to the European. And over time, these definitions have tended to draw (often inaccurate) equations between Arab and Muslim identities. If ever there was a systematic process of othering, Mossad argues, this is it.

Point being, I hear you ask while suppressing (barely) a yawn…

Well the point is this – effectively, what we see today happening across the globe and what is characterised by some as a “clash of civilisations” is merely a continuation of a well established trend of defining the other. The only difference is that the definitions have morphed slightly. What was originally classified as “Arab” is now conflated with “Muslim”, and the creation of an “other” is accompanied by the essentialising of what has historically been a very diverse area.

Ironically, this othering has not been a one-way street. If for the European the Arab was to be viewed first as the overtly sexualised hedonist, and later as the repressed sexual regressee, then for the Arab the European was the uncouth barbarian, later on to be replaced as the imperialist. Both processes reduced the chances to create any commingling, and we have two groups actively defining each other by what they are not.

History has its own part to play in this complication. What is viewed in the West as “Muslim” fury could quite possibly have a lot to do with Arabs (and other non-Europeans) taking umbrage at what is subconsciously perceived as a continuation of the colonial project, but which takes the manifestation of an “Islamist” response.

Oh wait… I think they’re announcing my flight (… finally…) Part 2 to follow soon, I promise!

(Now where’s the fricking Starbucks when you need one?)