Just to reiterate: Nothing’s fair.
During my Pittsburgh Spring, when I was never sleeping enough or studying enough, I had vague ideas of what my summer in India would be like. I knew there are a lot of hungry people in India. I also knew there are a lot of rich people in India. But in the few moments I had to speculate about what my life this summer would be like, I never imagined I would come to India and get fat. Well, the process is beginning. Mainly it happens because Indians love to see me overeat and take third helpings. The lawyers place bets at lunch about how much I’ll eat. I also feel obligated to finish all my food because so many children on the streets beg me for food.
And because my gym partner is unreliable – I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks, although I have woken up at 5:50 to go the gym nearly every morning and he doesn’t show – I went jogging this morning on the Bandra Sea Face. It’s embarrassing for me to go jogging because so few people jog, and the white guy in shorts running on the streets gets stared at.
On my jog I paid a visit to the Land’s End Taj. The Taj you’ll remember is a luxury hotel, and the most famous one is at the Gateway of India down in South Mumbai. There are Taj’s all over the country, however, and there is one in Bandra. It’s on a small point, and there is a dilapidated Portuguese fort from the 1600s there too. According to the plaques at the fort, the Portuguese stole this point from the British and managed to hold out for a while. But the fact that the Portuguese controlled Bandra at one point explains why there are so many Catholics and big churches in Bandra.
And the Taj is opulent and modern. There’s a small Louis Vuitton kiosk inside. There is also a restaurant and bar. Cups of coffee were Rs.275. That’s about $6.50. That would be an expensive cup of coffee in the U.S., even at a luxury hotel. But the Taj is ultimate Indian luxury, and nothing there is reasonably priced. I was thinking to myself that the luxury hotel business might not be a bad business idea to pursue – I mean, if it’s possible to jack up prices like this.
In my freelance journalism career and during time spent satiating my reading addiction, it’s become tradition for me to drink coffee at hotels and read and write. The ambiance is usually good and so is the service. Plus they’re large spaces and people aren’t very often bothering you. And if you desire, you can sit in a hotel lobby and order nothing. You just pretend like you’re staying there. So I’ll probably work someday on some of my legal journalism at the Taj. Plus, I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway or like lots of writers of old who seemed to always be living in hotels. And plus, and maybe why Fitzgerald and Hemingway liked hotels so much, luxury hotels almost always have hands down the best bars (but the most expensive drinks).
The Taj in the Indian Milieu
It’s not prohibitively expensive to drink a cup of coffee at the Taj, but I feel silly spending so much money when Amand and his brother and sisters are hungry. But life in India is polarized. How to rectify the poles? You can’t. Nothing’s fair (of course, nothing’s fair anywhere in the world). It’s not fair that I have a mattress to sleep on. It’s not fair that my belly is getting big. It’s not fair that my LSAT score was too low to get into Yale, even though I studied so hard. It’s not fair that I was born into a comfortable life in the U.S., and it’s not fair that most of the rest of the world wasn’t. And it’s really annoying that Faisel comes over to my house and kisses my iPod and says it is his favorite iPod. So what can we do about such natural injustice? Not much, it seems. Life just happens.
Maybe we can try to avoid living lives of ostentation. Check out this high rise that India’s richest man is building in Mumbai. He’s building a 27 story house for him and his 6 family members. This skyscraper “house” is definitely ostentatious, but what about more border-line cases? Where to draw the line between ostentatious and not? Is it ostentatious to go see a movie? Is it ostentatious to spend $50 on yourself at a restaurant for a special occasion? Is it ostentatious to spend a day at the beach? My Coach messenger bag was kind of expensive, but the bag appears indestructible. It’s a quality item and remains looking stylish and un-battered, even though it’s rarely treated delicately.
Would the world be fair if I never drank wine or coffee? Would the world be fair if I sold my mattress and slept on the concrete? I think all I can do is just not ignore the tragedies of life. I’m interested in other people’s lives. So I might as well devote my spare time toward a little bit of understanding and ensure my career path doesn’t trample on the world’s unfortunate. The world’s always going to be miserable for the majority of its population, but I might as well try to help a little, even if my efforts amount to just a few more drops in the giant bucket.
There have always been the haves and the have-nots. The world population is rising, and it is true that there are larger absolute numbers of people in the world not living in poverty than there were 50 years ago, 100 years ago, et cetera, et cetera. But I wonder what the percentages are. If 60 percent of the world lives in poverty today (60 percent is a made-up number – I don’t know the real number), I wonder if 60 percent of the world was living in poverty in 1950, 60 percent in 1900, 60 percent in 1500. When I think about the Middle Ages in Europe and the aristocracy and the serfs, I would guess that percentages of poverty were higher then than now.
One more truism: people always look to the past as being more perfect than the present. People romanticize the past. People will tell you the world is getting worse, that life was better in the old days, but tell that to a serf in the Middle Ages or a slave in Mississippi in 1800. Technically, a serf of today, being no longer bound to the land, could work hard enough to one day own his own land. And hopefully an African-American will be running for President in 2008. I think the reality is that the more we do to make our lives more comfortable, the more we can do. The more we do to make our lives comfortable, the more glaring it is that not everyone lives in such comfort.
And because my gym partner is unreliable – I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks, although I have woken up at 5:50 to go the gym nearly every morning and he doesn’t show – I went jogging this morning on the Bandra Sea Face. It’s embarrassing for me to go jogging because so few people jog, and the white guy in shorts running on the streets gets stared at.
On my jog I paid a visit to the Land’s End Taj. The Taj you’ll remember is a luxury hotel, and the most famous one is at the Gateway of India down in South Mumbai. There are Taj’s all over the country, however, and there is one in Bandra. It’s on a small point, and there is a dilapidated Portuguese fort from the 1600s there too. According to the plaques at the fort, the Portuguese stole this point from the British and managed to hold out for a while. But the fact that the Portuguese controlled Bandra at one point explains why there are so many Catholics and big churches in Bandra.
And the Taj is opulent and modern. There’s a small Louis Vuitton kiosk inside. There is also a restaurant and bar. Cups of coffee were Rs.275. That’s about $6.50. That would be an expensive cup of coffee in the U.S., even at a luxury hotel. But the Taj is ultimate Indian luxury, and nothing there is reasonably priced. I was thinking to myself that the luxury hotel business might not be a bad business idea to pursue – I mean, if it’s possible to jack up prices like this.
In my freelance journalism career and during time spent satiating my reading addiction, it’s become tradition for me to drink coffee at hotels and read and write. The ambiance is usually good and so is the service. Plus they’re large spaces and people aren’t very often bothering you. And if you desire, you can sit in a hotel lobby and order nothing. You just pretend like you’re staying there. So I’ll probably work someday on some of my legal journalism at the Taj. Plus, I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway or like lots of writers of old who seemed to always be living in hotels. And plus, and maybe why Fitzgerald and Hemingway liked hotels so much, luxury hotels almost always have hands down the best bars (but the most expensive drinks).
The Taj in the Indian Milieu
It’s not prohibitively expensive to drink a cup of coffee at the Taj, but I feel silly spending so much money when Amand and his brother and sisters are hungry. But life in India is polarized. How to rectify the poles? You can’t. Nothing’s fair (of course, nothing’s fair anywhere in the world). It’s not fair that I have a mattress to sleep on. It’s not fair that my belly is getting big. It’s not fair that my LSAT score was too low to get into Yale, even though I studied so hard. It’s not fair that I was born into a comfortable life in the U.S., and it’s not fair that most of the rest of the world wasn’t. And it’s really annoying that Faisel comes over to my house and kisses my iPod and says it is his favorite iPod. So what can we do about such natural injustice? Not much, it seems. Life just happens.
Maybe we can try to avoid living lives of ostentation. Check out this high rise that India’s richest man is building in Mumbai. He’s building a 27 story house for him and his 6 family members. This skyscraper “house” is definitely ostentatious, but what about more border-line cases? Where to draw the line between ostentatious and not? Is it ostentatious to go see a movie? Is it ostentatious to spend $50 on yourself at a restaurant for a special occasion? Is it ostentatious to spend a day at the beach? My Coach messenger bag was kind of expensive, but the bag appears indestructible. It’s a quality item and remains looking stylish and un-battered, even though it’s rarely treated delicately.
Would the world be fair if I never drank wine or coffee? Would the world be fair if I sold my mattress and slept on the concrete? I think all I can do is just not ignore the tragedies of life. I’m interested in other people’s lives. So I might as well devote my spare time toward a little bit of understanding and ensure my career path doesn’t trample on the world’s unfortunate. The world’s always going to be miserable for the majority of its population, but I might as well try to help a little, even if my efforts amount to just a few more drops in the giant bucket.
There have always been the haves and the have-nots. The world population is rising, and it is true that there are larger absolute numbers of people in the world not living in poverty than there were 50 years ago, 100 years ago, et cetera, et cetera. But I wonder what the percentages are. If 60 percent of the world lives in poverty today (60 percent is a made-up number – I don’t know the real number), I wonder if 60 percent of the world was living in poverty in 1950, 60 percent in 1900, 60 percent in 1500. When I think about the Middle Ages in Europe and the aristocracy and the serfs, I would guess that percentages of poverty were higher then than now.
One more truism: people always look to the past as being more perfect than the present. People romanticize the past. People will tell you the world is getting worse, that life was better in the old days, but tell that to a serf in the Middle Ages or a slave in Mississippi in 1800. Technically, a serf of today, being no longer bound to the land, could work hard enough to one day own his own land. And hopefully an African-American will be running for President in 2008. I think the reality is that the more we do to make our lives more comfortable, the more we can do. The more we do to make our lives comfortable, the more glaring it is that not everyone lives in such comfort.
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