Law, Partially

What was the number one highlight? Let’s say it was my trip to the villages around Latur. I gave a harrowing speech about the U.S. education system and how when there is no discrimination, children can study to become whatever they want to be: engineer, doctor, lawyer, pilot, astronaut. I also sang the Star Spangled Banner to a gathering of 25 village leaders, and yes, I fell flat on all the high notes. I was so drunk on my success with that song, I followed it up with Redemption Song by Bob Marley. I asked my CRY friends to tell the leaders in Marathi (the language the villagers understand) that Redemption Song is a song about the Jamaican people’s struggle. These village leaders were Dalits and embroiled in their own struggle – ie the struggle for basic human rights in their communities. And all weekend, the villagers treated me like the most revered celebrity. Maybe I will move out there for a short period of time – to write a report for CRY.

I’ve been back in the States for two weeks now. Some Indian reflections are in order. Consider this closure. I think I’ve done all the things in the States that I had been dreaming of all summer. I’m drinking red European wine and eating European cheese as I type. (American wine and cheese were also dreamed about, but it just so happens that I’m going European tonight.) These items are prohibitively expensive in India, but at Costco in the U.S., they’re just the right price. I ate Mexican food at El Maguey. I saw friends and family. I spoke English, and everyone understood. As I type this, I’m thinking, being back home sounds underwhelming, and actually it probably is. I have unfinished business, it feels, in India. Eleven weeks just wasn’t enough time. I was intimidated by India when I first arrived there. What shocked and scared me most at first was the madness of the streets. People were walking on highways. Also on highways there were roadside stalls set up. People didn’t stop at r...

This turned to be a pretty funny day, and I still shudder when I think how lucky I am I ended the day on a plane headed west. My last day in Bombay was Saturday. Friday night I stayed to work until 10:30pm trying to finish my work (especially since I had taken a 5 hour lunch break on Thursday with Christine). I even went in to work on Saturday morning, just to make sure my work was done enough. Actually, I have some significant portions to finish here in the States. I have no time for this, but I’ll make time. I was originally supposed to stay at Marico for another 4 weeks, back in those heady days where I thought I was traveling onward to Hong Kong from India. Had I stayed those 4 weeks, I would have finished more of my project. I am rather tired of Indian food, but just because I hadn’t eaten pav bahji very much and because it’s the last time I’ll have it in a while, I went to my office building’s cafeteria to get some pav bahji. Pav Bahji is a spicy tomato-based thick liquid eaten w...

These are the ruins of an ancient mosque south of Delhi called Qutab Minar. It was one of my favorite sites in India. It's built in an Afghan style, and this huge tower has Arabic script carved on parts of its surface -- but it's the background that's carved away, leaving the script to be protruding. I just liked the way this tower looked. It was in a different style than the tens of Mughal mausoleums (like the Taj) and forts I'd been visiting in Delhi and Agra. Qutab Minar is red, but there's not supposed to be such a pinkish tint in the bottom left. My camera is broken, and the accuracy of photos is erratic -- this is why I gave it to Amar. This is the Raj Ghat, the place where Gandhi was cremated in Delhi. I really liked this memorial. It's just a block of marble, and such a simple memorial seems fitting for the man. I also went to his house in Delhi. It's now a museum, and it was probably my favorite museum in India. This is Babalu, my driver in De...

All six of my regular readers are probably wondering how my trip to Jaipur, Agra, and Delhi went. I am, however, flooded at work trying to finish this project in my last week and a half, and I just don't have the luxurious time to be writing these overly-extensive blog entries for which Law, Partially is renowned. But here goes... Jaipur is famous for its handicrafts. In Jaipur I spent the whole day hanging out with some middle age Indian men who took me workshops for all these handicrafts. This definitely is not on the normal tourist itinerary. I saw a jeweler make a ruby pendant. I saw rugs being knotted. I went to a private art gallery and an art college. I went to a cloth manufacturer. And I kind of missed out on exploring too much of the ancient walled city, but there just wasn't time for everything. I took an overnight bus to Agra and didn't sleep much because the ride was so rough. I man also got into bed with me, and I was like fine, there's enough room, but the...

Se Cathedral in Old Goa. All that's left of the formerly grand city of Old Goa are a splattering of giant churches like this. With so many huge churches, this must have been a pretty full town back in its day. This is the waterfront of Old Goa. Check out how red that water is. I'm guessing it's because there's iron down there, or maybe some other mineral that makes it red. Not much left of the waterfront today, just this modern junky metal dock. All that's left now is a ship salvaging operation. These huge rusting ships could contribute to the red of the water, but water was red everywhere, not just here. This wide river would have been great for those Portuguese sailing ships to slide up. My hotel, the Panjim Inn in the restored Portuguese mansion in Panjim, Goa's capital city. My tour guide at the Spice Farm in front of the scraggly looking cinnamon tree. Women bent over in rice paddies. This picture was taken from the back of a motorcycle taxi whi...

At the top right of the front page was an ad for the Sunday magazine: "I would sleep with..." where a gay fashion designer lists who he would sleep with. Homosexuality is illegal in India, btw. "Naughty gifts for gennext: Sex is just a joy toy away." Even though sex toys are illegal in India, according to today's paper urban Indians in the 18 to 21 year age bracket are gifting them to each other. Mehul Shah, a 20-year-old engineering student had this to say: "I found out about the variety of sex toys from the Internet and, on a trip to Amsterdam I bought an inflatable doll." I wonder if Mehul really said this or if the quote was made up. At M we used to make up quotes, and I don't find Indian journalism to be of the highest standards and wouldn’t be surprised if it was made up. But really, why would any real person want to say something like this for the public record? Many in India want the country to be conservative, but what’s true in the U.S. i...

With Melissa and Sanjay from CRY Mumbai and towing along my three Singapore friends, I ventured 14 hours from Mumbai into the interiors of Maharashtra. I went to villages and met Dalit farmers who are collectivizing and working together and claiming the human dignity that they’ve never had the wherewithal to claim before. Traditionally, a farmer Dalit wouldn’t even look his landowner employer in the eye, let alone request a living wage, let alone request anything. Nobody really spoke much English except for our CRY companions who provided some spotty translation. And never before in my life have I been treated as such an absolute celebrity. I would sit on the ground in these villages and just have children staring and smiling at me the whole time. I like CRY because CRY doesn’t just roll through villages throwing out money like the U.S. and the U.N. used to do. This old strategy achieved very bad results, especially in Africa where increased foreign aid has increased the wealth of dict...

Seeing and listening to the rosy picture painted for us in the villages around Latur, I was reminded of statements I’ve often heard in the U.S. For example, a celebrity spends a day with some disadvantaged children and then says something like, “their strength and determination is an inspiration to me,” and this celebrity gets a pat on the back for caring. Paris Hilton gets out of jail and is inspired to party less and live a life devoted to helping prison women. How selfless of Paris. You can throw some money at the disadvantaged and leave. You can build them a house and then roll out of town. But these things don’t really get to the roots of why these people are disadvantaged in the first place. The house is likely to be taken care of poorly and the money spent imprudently. People tend to appreciate things a lot more if they have earned it themselves through their own work. I think this is why CRY goes about this development work the right way, empowering people through education and...

Each morning when I wake up, I think that today will be the day that my Delhi Belly will be gone. And breakfast doesn’t upset it, and I think, yes, today is the day. But then I eat more, and sometimes during the meal, or sometimes after, I began getting shooting pains and pressure through my gut. I hunker down for a minute, and they go away and return in a few minutes. This usually goes on for an hour or so and returns numerous times throughout the day. So yesterday evening I went to a doctor at Lilavati Hospital. It’s right across the street from my office and, I am told, a famous hospital. My visit was Rs. 600, $15.00. My smiling and rotund doctor’s name was Dr. Schimpi. He said he had taken his family on vacation to the U.S. last month and had driven from Buffalo to Orlando. That sounds nice about now. Dr. Schimpi also told me I just had a stomach virus. He prescribed some medicines with names I’ve never heard (Satrogyl-O, Drotin-DS, Pacimol, and Vizylac) and told me to skip work. I...

The Bombay High Court is an incredible looking building from the outside ( click here ). The inside is sort of ancient fortress-like. The courtrooms all lie along the front of the building, and along the back is a corridor open to the outside. From this corridor all the courtrooms can be accessed. None of the courts are air conditioned expect for the Chief Justice’s Court, and all the rooms have 30ft. ceilings. I sat in the Chief’s Court and listened to a case. The cases in the High Court are open to the public. The advocates argue into amplified microphones, and the justices could use microphones too but choose not to. So I could only pick up what the advocate was saying, and even that was difficult through the heavy accent. Plus cases are pushed in and out quickly, and there is no background introduction given before cases are heard. So I don’t really know what the case was about, although I did hear legal words like “rights.” (and sorry, no photos allowed in the High Court) I was at...

A recurring theme of this blog has been the bourgeois wave washing over India. Indians are learning how to spend money on things they didn’t use to spend on. And Indians are now learning to drink wine. Nasik, a town about 180km from Mumbai, is nearby India’s most famous winery, Sula. Sula has been making wines for about ten years. Nasik itself is a holy pilgrimage town for Hindus. Jingyi, Christine, Alvin, and I made the pilgrimage to Sula Vineyards last weekend. During our long and arduous journey to the foreign land of Nasik my fellow pilgrims and I were hindered by pestilence, catastrophic weather, death-defying mountain passages, numerous incidences of stranding, filth, and greasy food, only to make it to Nasik where I, the white man, was worshiped as a god. Advice given to me in Mumbai was to take the Mumbai suburban railroad as far as possible, and then catch a bus to Nasik from there. There is a stunted mountain range that separates Nasik from Mumbai, and the road that passe...

You may be surprised that you can study Hindi at the University of Iowa. There's actually a department of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies . Quality institutions these Big 10 schools, eh? I ran across this just because this Dr. Lutgendorf guy was quoted in a law article I read. He looks like he's probably Anglo-Indian. Anglo-Indians are (or are descended from) Britishers who stayed over when the British abandoned ship in 1947.

The cheesiness of Bollywood films is pretty easy to make fun of. Bollywood films are in Hindi, India’s unifying language (English only unifies the educated). There is also Kollywood, films from Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, the Indian state in India’s extreme southwest. These films are in Tamil, a language not even in the same family of languages as Hindi (did you know Hindi is in the same language family as English, French, German, and Spanish? Well, it is.). Based upon my rudimentary understanding… Bollywood Hindi films are heavy into singing and dancing numbers strewn throughout the film, often for no reason other than because such numbers appeal to the masses. Kollywood Tamil films are heavy into action, and the actor who plays Sivaji, the Boss , is the undisputed bad ass king of the Tamil-speaking world. He is actually, literally worshipped as a god in Tamil Nadu. Because he is a god, he can only play the good guy, and in his films, the good guy always wins. My lawyer collea...

Linking Road has become a central location for shopping in Mumbai. Lining the street are boutiques selling cheap clothes that look like Western clothes. There is also the hip department store, Shopper’s Stop, selling brands I have never heard of but that are all the rage for Indians who want to dress like a European or American. There is also a United Colors of Benetton. The street is overflowing with people and cars. Vicky from Jaipur and His Quest for a Box Every day people are pouring into Mumbai from the countryside, looking for opportunity. Last week a boy asked to shine Alvin’s shoes, and Alvin started talking to the boy. The boy was named Vijay and said he was from Jaipur in Rajasthan. He said that in Jaipur he heard that he could get a good job in Mumbai because he spoke English well, but in Mumbai he couldn’t get a real job because he couldn’t afford the legal papers that would allow him to work. They cost Rs. 9000 or about $120. He said his shoe shining business would be much...

I called the pantry boys and had them bring me some chai and toast. I'm still drinking chai, which is black tea loaded with milk and sugar. I don't prefer milk and sugar in my tea (or coffee) normally, but when in India, do as the Indians do. Walking to work, you see Indians standing at roadside stalls drinking shots of chai and boys making deliveries of chai to whomever. I woke up early this morning to go to the Indian Starbucks, Barista (Starbucks hasn't made it to India yet -- can you believe it?), and read the paper and get some American-style drip coffee. But no. I went at 8 in the morning, and they weren't open. The coffee drinking culture is more of a social than a lifestyle thing here. People don't get coffee before work, they get chai. People don't go into Barista and get takeout. Remember: "A lot can happen over coffee." They drink their coffee, sit in plush chairs, and conversate. If I were to leave my office and walk to Barista in the middl...