The Nationally Confused

When you have lived in and been integrated into more than one culture, exposure to a different mindset changes your own. After that first long sojourn abroad, the true culture shock comes on your first trip back home. People ask seemingly ignorant and annoying questions. You realize that your countrymen’s knowledge of the world is limited to a mixture of TV, myths and illogical conjecture. Their prejudices seem shockingly narrow.

Now that you know a different side of humanity, there’s a temptation to feel a certain smugness in your amplified understanding. That might occur after you’ve integrated into one new culture, inasmuch as such is possible. After the second or third, the smugness evaporates, leading to a feeling of loneliness, of sorts. Few, if any, can identify with your life experiences. You are a foreigner everywhere, even, and perhaps especially, in the place where you were born. Citizenship takes on a very different meaning, as does nationalism. You question the aspects of your own national narrative, with which you may identify, defend, or even reject outright.

Relating to an intimate partner can present a particular dilemma. You are always the foreigner. In many cases, there is a certain cachet to it. In some cases, if foreigners are looked down upon, it can lead to hurtful situations.

Are mentalities so different from one country to the next? I believe they are, especially when you go beyond surface niceties and relate to people in their own language. People have different personalities in different languages. It stands to reason. You learn each language in different environments, at different ages, under different circumstances. Listen to an immigrant speak his native tongue in his adopted country. Listen for the words directly transplanted from the new country’s language into the mother tongue. Although these words almost certainly exist in the immigrant’s native language, the fact that he transplants them show that he had no experience of such a thing prior to moving to his new place.

Language influences mentality. Some languages have no verb tenses. People who speak them as a first idiom relate to time quite differently as opposed to a native speaker of a language with multiple compound tenses. Languages with a subjunctive mood emphasize the subjectivity of certain situations, as opposed to the supposed objectivity of others. Some tongues have a rich lexicon that relates to environmental aspects unique to the respective culture: Inuit languages have many words for ‘snow’, each with it’s own subtle nuances. Japanese has several ways to say ‘no’, ranging from the take-a-hint polite, to the more emphatic variants, used perhaps in the most extreme cases.

Nationality is one pillar, among several, of one’s identity. While nationalism is now frowned on in many Western countries, people undoubtedly cleave to their national and linguistic identity, especially nowadays as we see the sovereignty of nation-state diluted by globalization and the accompanying uniform consumerist customs imposed by corporate cultural imperialism. Insultingly, this pseudo-culture often pays patronizing lip service to local traditions.

Yet, if you have learnt new languages in new environments, or grew up in a home vastly different from those around you, you live in more than one world. Your sense of nationality is eroded. In some cases, it disintegrates completely.

Naturally, I have quite an affinity for people who suffer from such national confusion. It makes me feel more like a citizen of the world; with them, my views seem to challenge fewer non-conscious ideologies, since everything is open to question and interpretation. I will now introduce you to some of the more intriguing people whom I have had the privilege of meeting and befriending in my travels.

Photos: March to May 2007

At long last! It's taken me four days to process all of these, but here they are. Let me know if you have any trouble with the links. They are valid for 90 days from date of posting.

Farewell Tel Aviv

Farewell East Jerusalem

Farewell Dead Sea

Hello Bombay

Jodhabai Akbar Film Shoot

Elephanta Island, Maharashtra

Havelock Island, Andamans

Neil Island, Andamans

Port Blair, Andamans

Port Blair

Indeed the Andamans are a quiet and peaceful place. Even Port Blair, the territorial capital, is sleepy and crime free.

There are no beggars at all. Unlike Bombay, nobody makes any nevermind about foreigners. There are no traffic lights; instead, traffic circles, occasionally manned by a police constable in the busier areas, are judiciously used and mostly heeded. Shopping and restaurants are wanting. But Port Blair is set in the most stunning location. Lush vegetation abounds.

Port Blair is also a prosperous place, generously endowed with a number of Federal ministries and agencies, as well as many schools and NGO offices, including some that arrived to rebuild areas and lives damaged in the 2004 tsunami. Houses and buildings in general are of a very good standard for India, and urban development was clearly planned.

I had the good fortune of being taken around by a young man, whom I had met during the few days he had worked at the DVDs and weak weed guesthouse in Havelock. His name was Vikram Singh, and when I told him about Skye Frontier, he asked if he could be in it. This is for him.

The name Vikram Singh is typically North Indian, and there are probably as many who answer to it as there are Robert Smiths in the English-speaking world. Of medium stature and slight build, Vikram had a motorcycle, and a number of gashes and scars to prove it. At 21,he still sported the aura of invincibility common for people at that age. I’m a great motorcycle passenger, totally flexible on bending curves, as well as for quick starts and stops. With such a handsome face and gentle demeanor, I was inclined to trust him intuitively.

Sightseeing was punctuated by frequent visits to his many friends. Being a small town, with not a lot for youngsters to do, they enjoyed each others company and smoked chillums, more or less nonstop. And yet these were all good boys. I also realized that Indian men don’t just love their friends; they fall in love with them.

The boys were invariably thrilled by my stories of having been in three Bollywood movies, and I suppose there was also the cachet of a new face in a relatively slow-moving town, as well as the novelty of being able to speak about topics close to their heart even with a foreigner. My Hindi took a nice little leap forward, with the noteworthy increase in the number of curses in my repertoire. Laughter is a stupendous teacher.

To wit, chudh, means fucker. The most common prefix to it is mada, which means mother. Bahinchudh, or sisterfucker, is also liberally used. Employing some other words I knew, under the influence of the constant chillum smoking, we had ourselves doubled up with laughter as I coined:

Bhaichudh – brotherfucker
Dadichudh – grannyfucker
Saurachudh – pigfucker

And so on and so forth. Such is Island Life.

Shantaram

During my time alone in the Andamans, I read Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. Actually, I devoured it: 933 pages in four days.

It’s the mostly true story of the years the author spent in Bombay, after having escaped a jail sentence for armed robbery in Australia. Really.

So this guy goes to live in a Bombay slum while hustling tourists in Colaba. The neat thing about all the geographical references in the city is that I knew most of them personally, which lent it special resonance for me.

He learns Hindi and Marathi, get thrown into and sprung out of jail, joins the mafia, runs guns on a mission to Afghanistan, and has an unsuccessful relationship. But this is one sensitive and insightful guy.

Shantaram gets the Skye Frontier 2007 Must Read Book award.

Neil Island

Traveling alone, I now headed to Neil Island. The rainy weather disappeared, and it was sunny, hot and humid.

I stayed at the nondescript Pearl Park guesthouse. The jungle setting was spectacular, but the room was Spartan, with a variable-speed fan, meaning it varied randomly as per the consistency of the electrical current and supply. There was only one other cottage occupied, and I had to order meals well in advance, as they didn’t keep a large stock of provisions in the kitchen.

The place was managed by Ram, a 21 year old of Nepali stock, who had studied tourism at college in Port Blair. This was his first stab and the tourist job market. One of the neatest things about the Andamans is that it is an authentic mini-India in terms of ethnic makeup. The lingua franca is Hindi, although they speak a local variant. While the Andaman and Nicobarese natives are nearly extinct, with their dwindled numbers on protected islands in the southern part of the archipelago, settlers and their descendents hail from all parts of the subcontinent. The largest group is of Bengalis, many of who are Hindus from what was once East Pakistan, and who were resettled after the founding of Bangladesh. There are sizable numbers of Tamils, as well as North Indians, some Gujaratis, and Nepalis, among others.

The Andamans are a green paradise under a blue sky, as Ram pointed out. I was becoming accustomed to all manner of gorgeous tropical scenery that took my breath away each time anew.

I ventured out to the beach near the guesthouse. For decades, my favorite daydream, visualization, or escape mechanism, if you will, has been that of the perfect abandoned beach. After nearly two weeks in the Andamans, I was as centered as I have ever been. Still, the verdant flora, sandy expanse littered with seashells, rocks and driftwood, the coral rocks, the sound of the low waves coming ashore, all defied even my tendency towards hyperbolic superlatives. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I was master of all I surveyed. This was my personal ground zero, and I experienced what can only be described as religious ecstasy. This was the place I had always dreamed of escaping to, to be alone with my thoughts. Not the thoughts that occupy our waking hours at work or on the bus or whatever. The deeper thoughts that require time and the removal of all filters before they venture through to the conscious mind.

As I leisurely explored my surroundings, I found my thoughts wandering astray to the next leg of my trip to Bangalore, India’s hi-tech capital, where I was scheduled to give a lecture to the assembled members of the technical writers’ guild, the STC. That I should think about such a thing in those surroundings made it abundantly clear to me that my ground zero was a refuge, not a home. I could now find it and return when I wanted. There’s the benefit that I now have a real experience to visualize for posterity, rather than attempting to build a mental composite. Being in that centered state of mind, I realized that now was the time to simply savor the backdrop, paying attention to the details of the trees, waves, sand, and caves. There would be plenty of time for other endeavors. This is what is meant by living in the ‘now’.

The larger lesson learnt is to follow your dreams. Even if the end result is unattainable or unsustainable in the original form projected, the process and its culmination lead you to your true path.

I stayed only three days on Neil Island. Having made my pilgrimage to heaven, I had the answers I had sought. In addition to which, no internet, in practice no telephone, no TV, no AC and a menu, while tasty, that can only be described as basic, all contributed to a certain anticlimax. I returned to Port Blair.

Havelock Haze

Along with the natural beauty, astounding varieties and quantities of insects, airborn and earth-bound, flourished in great abundance. Owing to my questionable navigation abilities on the tree house’s staircase, I made a point of leaving the bathroom light on at night. Venturing there in the wee hours brought me straight into a National Geographic documentary on Startling Insects: the Humungous and Microscopic.

I am lucky that mosquitoes generally favor the people beside me over my own person. Not too long after dark, there was a pressing logic to just getting under the bed’s mosquito net. Early nights were offset by waking at daybreak to witness the spectacular sunrise over the water. For a week, life decelerated down to the metronome’s slowest possible tempo, set in fabulous beauty at every turn. I finished Mao’s biography and moved on to the novel Shantaram, more about which later.

Havelock has a rather large population of the mangiest looking dogs you’ve ever laid eyes on. There was another guest house down the way, which I frequented as much for their DVD player and library as for their mediocre weed. There was a Polish tourist there who took it upon herself to care for a mother mutt and her litter of nine. They were irresistibly cute. One day I fed and played with all of them, only to suffer from no small number of flea bites.

The most exciting thing that happened during our stay was one day spotting one, then two, then several soldiers in full combat gear. They were staking out the grounds on the beach. I asked one of the waiters at the guest house what was up. He answered that they were looking for escaped convicts.

Now I’m from Israel, so my immediate conclusion was that they would only send a company like this if they were after some pretty high-value security prisoners. So I assumed that this was an exercise. Walking later through the market to the guest house with the DVDs and weak weed, the sheer numbers and casual stance of the many more soldiers I saw there only confirmed my first hunch.

The daily routine on Havelock always started watching the sunrise under the influence of weed that, to our chagrin, only produced the mildest of effects, which grew milder over the endless days. In the hours upon hours of introspection that this afforded, I was able to reach the following conclusions:

1. Rest is good; but being busy ultimately becomes necessary.
2. A home in a beautiful place is an excellent goal to strive for, but not at the price of other types of life fulfillment.
3. The more I travel and the more interesting people I meet, the more I realize how easy it is to live and work in so many of the world’s most intriguing places. Wages are usually just enough, even in developing countries. The question becomes, how much more is necessary to create a basic modicum or sense of security.

Arrival on Havelock Island

A Christian Arab friend of mine arrived from Israel, and having had my veritable fill of Bombay, we decided to fly all the way to Port Blair, in the mythical Andaman Islands.

We ended up leaving the guest house at 9 PM for a 1 AM flight to Chennai, with a connecting flight to Port Blair at 10 AM the next morning. This ensured a white night and total exhaustion upon arrival. In that state, I was unable to appreciate the city, and took the advice of the Lonely Planet, which recommended Havelock Island for the best beaches. We stayed overnight in Port Blair and following morning, we were on the early ferry at 6:30 AM. In the pouring rain. It was the very end of the season and the monsoon had just begun. My backpack got seriously wet.

The ferry took three hours under cloudy skies and in choppy water, though the rain slowed to a drizzle. The islands we passed on the way were blanketed with rainforest of the most vivacious green. Carpets of palm and deciduous trees came up to a few meters from the shore. Visiting the Andamans had been a longstanding dream, and as we approached Havelock Island, I felt one of those surges of triumph that accompanies the final attainment of a distant goal.

We decamped at the Pristine Guest House, occupying the only tree house. It had an open air shower downstairs, with a bedroom of sorts on the second floor, up from a staircase that used a real tree trunk as a landing. I made a mental note not to navigate said staircase at night without wearing my glasses and turning the lights on.

Upstairs, there was a rattan sofa in front of a glassless window looking out onto a view that surpassed the perfection that my imagination could conjure up even in its most vivid flourishes. Some two kilometers in the distance was the equally lush and rainforested Neil Island, clearly visible across a calm strait of blue and turquoise waters. At high tide, you could see bits of coral rock just poking out above the surface near the shore. At low tide, a wondrous coral garden emerged. Huge trees that grow right in the water had their roots left exposed – quite an amazing sight. The first time I took in all this beauty, I was moved to tears of ecstasy.

About a kilometer or so from Pristine was a market of sorts: just a bunch of stalls and a municipal building. On our second day there, a Mexican traveler, who immediately brought to mind Subcomandante Marcos, had organized with some local business people and the middle school, a garbage collection drive on the island. This seemed like a worthy cause, and a chance to get to know people.

I went with the Class Nine boys. They weren’t terribly enthusiastic. I filled up two big jute bags in about 15 minutes. Once older local woman wanted to know why we were doing this strange task. The teacher told her that Americans pay dollars for the glass and plastic. She thought this rather amusing. Why else would anyone pick up garbage, if not for a financial incentive? It was doing just fine on the ground where it was! I guess you can put it down to cultural differences.

Ta Ra Rum Pum – Movie

What better way to escape from the grind of the city, as and to apply balm to my shaken spirit, traumatized as I was from the trip back from Matheran, than with the magic and make believe world that is a refuge for me and more than a billion other souls: Bollywood movie, and a Class A production to boot. Ta Ra Rum Pum, starring the ever-suave Saif Ali Khan and the eternally beautiful Rani Mukherjee, had a huge promotion budget. I had seen the posters. I had watched the trailers. And I was to see it on no less than opening night at the Regal Cinema in Colaba.

Wikipedia’s synopsis is as follows:

Rajveer Singh (Saif Ali Khan) has an immense passion for driving and dreams of making it big on the racecourse. He is discovered by his manager Harry (Jaaved Jaffrey). In a sudden twist of fate, he meets Radhika Shekar Rai Banerjee (Rani Mukerji) and instantly falls for her. He joins Speeding Saddles - a failing race team and transforms from Rajveer Singh to RV the race car driver.

What started as an innocent love blossoms into a serious relationship as months pass by. Radhika is a great pianist, majoring in music at
Columbia University, whereas Rajveer has no degree or any educational background. His lack of education instantly earns the disapproval of Radhika's father, Subho Shekar Roy Banerjee (Victor Banerjee). Radhika walks out of her big mansion and marries RV. She forgets about her degree and takes on her job as a housewife therefore Radhika Shekar Rai Banerjee turns into Shona. Their family is complete with the birth of two children - Priya (Angelina Idnani) and Ranveer (Ali Haji). Luck follows him as RV and he is soon proclaimed the number one race
car driver in the USA.

However tragedy strikes when RV is involved in an accident whilst racing and he is hospitalized for a few months. He tries to make a comeback but the trauma of the accident mentally scars him. After a string of failures, he is forced to auction his house and move with his family to a run-down Bronx-style neighborhood. RV and Radhika decide to hide the terrible truth from their children by saying that they are part of a reality television show where they have to live a poor life in order to win a mythical grand prize.

The family struggle with their new lifestyle but stick together by using a mixture of fantasy and cheerfulness to pull through. However an incident forces RV to make a decision and reclaim the life that was taken away from him.

The loss of everything struck a resonant chord with me on that day. Indeed, one of my perhaps irrational but nonetheless longstanding and persistent fears was that I would somehow, but a twist of fate, one day end up in penury. While that may seem far-fetched, I had once been flat broke in Sao Paulo, of all places, which was pretty scary. Another adventure, after ownership of a successful translation business, also in Brazil, brought me to a dead end punching holes in paper in Miami. So it was in the realm of my experience.

Nevertheless, life skills that come with maturity, helped by a successful career in Israeli hi-tech, calmed such dread in recent years. Life is a series of cycles. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. The only defeat from which you cannot recover is a defeat of the spirit.

On the day I had picked up my new passport at the American Consulate, I met an older gentleman, who was a senior executive at a US oil company. He was of the Jain faith, and after a bit of line-up banter, I asked him if he could give me any words of wisdom on this very topic.

“I could sleep on the floor without any complaints if I lost everything. I have myself.” More food for thought.

Matheran Hill Station

On my last weekend in Bombay, I went with my friend Swarup to the Matheran hill station, some 100 km from the city. Seeing that it was a Sunday, and overlooking the fact that it was the May Day long weekend, we foolishly decided that the Suburban Lines commuter train from the 7th Circle of Hell, would be our chosen means of transport. As it would happen, although we got confused and lost some time in transfers, we made it there unscathed in just a few hours.

I was already getting down on Bombay. Don't get me wrong. It is a fantastic city. But it is always mobbed and getting anywhere is an inevitable ordeal. What’s more, all the fun and temptations have their price. In fact, I reckon that Bombay is not too much cheaper than Tel Aviv.

So how welcome a trip to a cool hill station sounded. Indeed, it turned out to be splendid. Set in the hills, full of verdant vegetation, not too many people, nature all around, it was literally a breath of badly needed fresh air. Above all, there was a well-worn footpath through the tropical forest that brought me back to Grandpa’s cottage on Lake Sunapee. The walk was a classic holy moment.

We had walked quite a few kilometers and were getting tired. We decided to hire horses to take us back the remaining four or five clicks. Upon finally reaching the hill station’s entrance, we were offered a taxi all the way back to Bombay for Rs 1300. Although the trip up had gone more or less smoothly, we should have quit while we were ahead and coughed up the dough. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in India, and especially in Bombay, it’s that transport is not the thing to be thrifty with. Every rupee saved is a tear shed. But we made our way back to the Suburban Lines, as we had bought return tickets.

It was about 4:30 PM, and I sat down on a bench in the train station, listening to music and wading through the hefty tome on Mao. Filthy from the trek and the profuse sweating it engendered, it was an hour or so before the right train came. I wasn’t minding the stifling, breezeless late afternoon heat so much, since I mistakenly thought I would be enjoying a cool shower, spicy veg thali and the air conditioned comfort of my tiny room, all within about two hours.

Alas, once in the train, sitting at least, some six or seven kilometers into the trip, the we stopped. Mao still had me engrossed up to this point. But the densely packed passenger car, with no movement and nary a whiff of incoming fresh air, after some time, began to produce a multitude of inconsolable infants, accompanied by much sweating and a splitting headache on my part. We sat patiently for what seemed like hours. At long last, Swarup suggested that we get out and find a taxi.

There were none.

We were totally out in the sticks, nearly 90 km from the city, and the few remaining rickshaw drivers wouldn’t go anywhere for reasonable sums. We walked all the way to the nearest station in our weakened state, where we found a rickshaw driver to take us to the next major station, whence we could find a taxi. At this point however, I was ready to fork over the price of a first class air ticket with perhaps just a sigh and a pang of minor loss.

In the event, we got stuck in traffic. When we did move, the heavy bumping combined with my fearless horseback adventure synergistically conspired to produce aching welts on my buttocks, and for all the wrong reasons. It literally took hours of fits and starts, as well as the non-stop breathing in of thick, black diesel fumes belched out by the trucks and buses that were inevitably ahead of us.

By the time we reached the station, I was a filthy and exhausted wreck. The Rs 600 taxi ride took 90 minutes and went unhindered, seeing that it was already 11:30 PM by the time we departed on the final leg of the journey.

Everything was closed in Colaba, save the Barista, where I had an expensive and particularly disappointing snack. Then, nearly falling over myself, I had a no-matter-what scrubbing shower to get off the worst of the grime.

In seclusion of my room, I fell into a long, deep sleep, in fetal position. I didn’t emerge till the next evening.

Legally Eating and Reading

I got my passport and visa reissued and once again I’m legally in India for a year. Treated myself to a bhang lassi, had a shave and a head massage and played all the happiest music I had on the MP3 player. And I realized just what it is like not to have a care in the world.

Eating out in Bombay is almost invariably a pleasant experience. It certainly helps that I really enjoy Indian food. The down-home places are often hidden treasures. Even in the high-end establishments, prices are still quite reasonable and the food can be simply exquisite.

A common activity is to take my books and sit in a café letting a good part of the day pass, immersing myself in the contents of my Bag of Culture. I started a rather harrowing biography of Mao Tse-tung by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday – a most unflattering portrait.

In one recent restaurant experience, I was intrigued to find stuffed chili peppers on the menu. The waiter assured me that it wasn’t killer spicy. Curiosity got the best of me. Fiery it was, but once I was over the initial shock and the endorphins began coursing through my brain, it turned out to be quite delicious.

It didn’t fill me though, so I ordered another portion of shrimps in spicy tomato sauce. Obviously I couldn’t finish it, but for $5, what the heck. A wee bit of neo-colonial gluttony should be permissible sometimes. Perhaps I’ll go down in the history books as the only Western tourist in India ever to gain weight on the journey.

A subsequent visit to the same establishment landed me a plate of grilled tiger prawns, with which I sipped an excellent French chardonnay. The only downside was that I was accosted by a hoard of beggars on my way out. Such experiences only serve as a reminder that if 80% of the world’s population is poor, I must make it my business to be in the other 20%.