ghost writers in the sky

This morning I watched a dog eat a human foot. It looked like a rather stringy meal, but the dog was emaiciated and diseased, so any feed’s a good feed. Varanasi is the most INDIAN of places- the holy of holies, the city of light, extant in the same form since the sixth century b.c, a place where pilgrims can be completely purified of all sins in the mother Ganga, and just by dying here can attain INSTANT NIRVANA!!! It’s a confluence of untroubling contradictions, where enlightenment and squalor, disease and purity coexist like two sides of the same coin. It’s one of the most fundamental things about this insanely religious country of hindus, moslems, sikhs, buddhists and christians, that contradictory ideas can occupy the same space and time. It seems absurd to watch hindi children seeking ritual purification by diving into the torrent gushing from a large-bore sewage outflow pipe issuing into the ganges, where charred body parts bob in the shallows, where factories disgorge constant streams of mercury and other toxic shit, where men pick through the mud for jewellery left behind by the funeral pyres of the burning ghats, but it is all kind of beautiful, and understandable on the fundamentally human levels that politeness, “standards” and political correctness do not equip us westerners to describe.
Destroyed several times in it’s long history, Varanasi, constantly regenerative, has grown itself into a tangled, maze of unmappable alleyways. Lined by crumbling buildings and temples built atop the ruins of older structures, these streets will not admit cars, and even rickshaws have trouble, so the old city is explored on foot (pressing past cows and water buffalo where necessary), leaving one open to the unwelcome attentions of the touts, souvenir sellers and conmen who have been preying on the healthy tourist industry since the middle ages. We westerners stand out like a sore thumb, and the exchange rate, and general attitude of guileless loved-up credulity that this country seems to inculcate in even the most hardened german backpacker means that we may as well have giant dollar-signs painted on our foreheads when the priests administer the smeared saffron and ganges mud of puja. I have fifteen thousand rupees cash in my wallet for fuck’s sake, and moving amongst people who don’t earn that much in five years means you get to see some pretty elaborate and cynical scams.
Despite the fact that everyone you meet is trying to take your money, the people of varanasi seem able to combine a rapacious business sense with a weird hospitality and friendliness that seems to well from their gentle pace of life and religious security. ALL of the locals will try it on with you, though, and the best response is just to laugh at their outrageous demands and inflated prices, because generally they’ll laugh along with you at the whole fucked-ness of it all.
Although the monsoon has arrived here, and the river is very high, It’s unbelivably stinking hot here, and I pour sweat even lying under the ubiquitous indian ceiling fan (manufactured by bajaj!) in the stained-glass lit haven of our beautiful hotel room, except for two hours every afternoon, when it buckets with incredibly torrential rain. I love this place, and it feels possible to learn stuff about life here, surrounded by all this death. Around the burning ghats, pieces of human bone litter the cobbles underfoot, but it is forbidden, and considered inappropriate for anyone to cry.

casio :: Jun.30.2008 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Back in the stinking hot sprawl of lepers and wristwatch salesmen and delicious street food and horse poo that is the modern metropolis of mumbai. Everyone here wants me to be an extra in a bollywood movie, or sell me coke, or show me where the best nightclubs are. Leopolds is pretty funny (If you’ve read Shantaram, you’ll know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, don’t), although a round of drinks cost me rps850. At least I got to dance to justin timberlake in the v.i.p room.

I haven’t been able to post for a while, cos down south internet access is patchy at best. Plus the monsoon came, which means everything kinda shuts down. Kerala is exactly like the vietnam of apocalypse now (which was actually the phillippines). Leeches, water everywhere, jungles etc. We hired a scooter and gave it quadrophenia out to a few beaches a lot lusher than brighton. The arabian sea is as warm as bathwater, and it’s hosing with warm monsoon rain, and everything seems hysterically funny. Cochin is overrun with really cute goats, stinks of fish, and features Jewtown, a jewish settlement founded in, like 500a.d. You can find Jewtown by following Jew street. Kerala has the only democratically elected communist government in the world, so there’s all these hammer and sickle flags hanging in the jungle.

A day’s train ride, then the world’s most most precipitous ricketty bus disgorges us in the freezing cold mountainous hill station of Ooty (Udaghamandalam) a little fairytale kingdom of displaced tibetan midgets in the south. Surrounded by verdant tea-fields, and possessing No mod cons, it’s a really cute place and plus it’s funny to see indians wearing beanies and wooly jumpers.

After that was a 35 hour train ride back to mumbai where we couldn’t get beds, so had to sleep on THE FLOOR. By the TOILET. It was ok, actually kina hilarious. we laughed the whole time. I just wanted to bitch about it here. I love the trains. next time I’ll write a whole post about them. Right now I’m off to some tomb in the middle of the ocean. Then pushkar.  Sorry this one wasn’t very funny/interesting. bit pressed for time. love you byeeee!!

casio :: Jun.18.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 1 Comment »

The following is slightly out of order, occurring before the previous post, obviously, and of course, is entirely fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincedental.

 Stumbling off the 19 hr train ride from my beloved mumbai/revolting ahmedabad bleary-eyed after 5-ish hours sleep in second-class (then the last couple of hrs sitting in the doorway of the traincar watching the rajasthani mountains go by in the misty dawn, my jandals dangling in the slipstream above nameless viaducts, smoking my hong-kong duty-free dunhills and drinking endless cups of chai proffered by kids at the trackside whenever we slowed to go through a country station) comma, I am met by an equally bleary (”too much of the beer, and of the whisky last night, sir”) rickshaw driver (a rickshaw being the chief method of transport in india; an ancient Bajaj, or Vespa scooter, with a wide, roofed backseat). UNLIKE every other fkn tout in India, i take one look at Manu with his beedie hangin out of his mouth, badly in need of a shave, and Immediately trust his judgement, and as we get into his vehicle for our madcap, cow-dodging careen through Udaipur’s narrow alleys, he thrusts a book at me, filled with backpacker’s (hisssss) glowing recommendations of his proud self. On finding out I’m from New Zealand, he snatches the book, and hands me a dog-eared copy of our glorious NZ Listener, and points me at some travel writer’s glowing recommendations of his proud self. OK OK OK. I get it, i’m in ‘the most romantic city in India’. We screech to a halt somewhere and sit down on a step for 7am chai and beedis and more chai on Manu’s tab. “relax, relax, you’re in udaipur”, he keeps telling me, and believe me, I am relaxed, after 3 days of Mumbai’s overcrowded glorious hectic insanity.

My hotel, the panorama (octopussy screening every day 7pm!) is utterly brilliant, my third-floor corner rooms overlooking the lake, city palace and ghats, looooong warm shower, and enormous bed which I lie on feeling exhausted under the fan for all of about 5 minutes before taking off to get a load of this place. Breakfast at ‘edelwiess german bakery’ (ha!) where I have my first espresso in India (shit), then spend an hour talking to the indian baristaabout his machine and coffee in general, him very keen to learn how to improve his, well, shit coffee.  A ramshackle brass band inexplicably marches by followed by a hundred women in really fancy saris balancing things on their heads. It’s just like octopussy. After shitty tourist shops I wander down to the last ghat on the lowtown lake edge (visible in photo above), and meet this guy Zep who introduces me to his friends; silent no-english guy, and some street dude who proudly tells me he hasn’t taken a shower in 5 years, and looks like it (smells like it too, but everything smells here). We sit in the shade sweating and smoking charras and Zep and I talk for hours, punctuated by him leaving me to talk w/ silent guy while he takes off to get some opium. Zep is from udaipur, but has been living in germany, for a while, so has a german/hindi accent and says ja instead of ha. Monkeys fang around in the trees above us and untouchables dig around for shellfish with their feet in basically what amounts to raw sewage below us (the lake level is very low, owing to a drought) Suddenly! it’s 5, and I have to get back to my hotel to meet ‘the greatest rickshaw driver in all of India’ for our trip up to the mountain palace high above to watch the sun set over the whole of Rajasthan in 360 degree cinemascopic octopussyvision. Yah yah beautiful etc, then I hustle across the (semi) dry part of the lake bed beneath the bridge, trying not to think about what I’m stepping in, on my way to meet Zep again. I’m very late, but silent guy has been posted there to take me on a vespa ride through narrow alleys to a street full of shiva temples and drug dealers. Zep’s there, and he hands me a squishy brown pellet, saying “chew this, its the cocaine cocaines” I watch him eat his, before following suit. We sit on a doorstep and watch the street go by, and the guy who does’t wash appears. He and I perform an impromptu duet, me beatboxing, and him singing and dancing a weird marathi version of jingle bells. I notice that everyone on the street comes up to Zep and greets him or complains at him, in hindi, of course, while he argues with his girlfriend in german on his mobile and continues his philosophical conversation with me in english, all at once. Money is changing hands constantly, I notice. I am genuinely beginning to like this guy. Did I mention octopussy?

 Zep tells me to give this kid some money, who disappears on a vespa, to return with a bottle of whiskey, paneer masala, limea lemon drink and bottled water, whereupon a few of us cross the road to a tall building, enter, and begin climbing stairs to the roof. We’re passing through offices, with computers, and when we stop in one for opium, I ask Zep what the deal is, does he live here? He laughs “No, this is a government building, this is our place. We’re safe here”, before indicating silent guy and himself and proudly telling me “Mafia, we are mafia”.

We sit on the roof of the building with the best view in udaipur, the whole city twinkling below us ocasionally lit up by fireworks celebrating the indian premier league finals at that moment being contested between Rajasthan and Chennai (Rajasthan’s captain? Shane Warne). We drink whiskey and laugh and talk late into the night.  At some point silent guy stretches out against the parapet, indicates udaipur, and says “Mine. This is mine. I am King”.

“you’re the fuckin maharajah”, I say, and seriously he turns and says “No no no no no. I am not Maharajah. I am Don”.

*(p.s. Large sections of the James Bond film Octopussy were filmed in udaipur, and the whole city seems obsessed with this claim to fame. many of the guest houses and restaurants screen it EVERY NIGHT at 7pm)

casio :: Jun.07.2008 :: 'journalism', india :: No Comments »

• Hook up w/ your boyz. (useful if yr boyees are local rickshaw mafia, so you just get to belt around in rickshaws puffin charras all day)
• Fang in rickshaw, avoiding other rickshaws, cars, people, cows, and elephants, to ‘chiken shop’
• select yr live chicken. The dude will cut off its head, and drop it in a 44 gallon drum to flail around for a while going ‘bonkbonkbonk’, after which he will skin, de-feet, and chop it into chunks faster than the eye can see, all for 240 rupees. Fresh!
• Jump back in rickshaw and cheat death again on long ride across city to a building site (no shit).
• give chicken to some kid, issue no apparent instructions, find a table and chairs lying around. Sit and drink kingfisher strong. Charras can also be introduced at this point if you are indian, otherwise, employ caution. That shit is potent.
• After 45 minutes, enjoy your ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE BEST CHICKEN MASALA YOU EVER TASTED, which the aforementioned kid delivers to yr table, along with endless chapatis.
• have sweet buzz.

casio :: Jun.04.2008 :: india :: 1 Comment »