Hindier
Ganesh Chaturthi
Guillaume and me drank wine and ate Pringles tonight because it’s Bastille Day tomorrow (and because it was Tuesday) and we just watched Slumdog Millionaire and holy fucking shit India is an awesome. Talk about nostalgic. I mean India and Mumbai are so cool, they’re just tops. I love India.
Mumbye
Kenya, Kenya, I’m moving to Kenya. Kenya dig it? “Kenya dig it” is so funny that I’m probably going to put at least three blog entries under that same title while I’m there, because I can’t rename my blog that. Snake surprise is still funny though:
Ha ha ha, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. You are a movie. Chiner, Indier, Kenyer, I guess it could work. Although I am uneasy with Nairobi not rhyming with Shanghai and Mumbai. I may need to call it Nairobai. I have been told by a friend who works for ACTED that sometimes they change your destination at the last minute though, so I should take Kenya with a grain of salt.
I went on an Indian safari this week, as an attempt to do some more touristy stuff before I leave, and it functioned like a funny segue from India to Africa. Did you know India has hyenas and lions and leopards and rhinos? Kenyer does too. Didn’t India use to be part of East Africa? There are half a million Hindus in Nairobi as well. Also, Mumbai had the biggest slum in Asia until this year, and Nairobi has the second biggest slum in Africa. So you see, they’re basically the same place. India also also has tigers, making it the only place in the world that Ligers, the coolest animal in the world (I’m not making a Napoleon Dynamite reference, I have standards) can occur naturally. The safari was in this massive national park/ wildlife preservation a couple stops away from home called Sanjay Gandhi National Park – Sanjay Gandhi being a politician who, like other politicians Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Maneka Gandhi, Varun Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, is no relation to Mahatma Gandhi, it’s just a common name (especially in politics). 
While also having cool animals (monkeys are never not funny. They’re freaking people, look at them!) the park also has very old Buddhist caves that monks carved into the side of a mountain like awesome badasses. They’re called the Kanheri Caves and there are more than a hundred caves there that are more than two thousand years old. There was also an ancient water system too that channeled rainwater into tanks. Most of the caves are rooms that monks slept in (they lived in a mountain!!!) but some are temples and stuff, with heaps of Buddha statues and inscriptions. Some of the statues were really big (like that one there), I love seeing that big Buddha head all smiling serenely. Enlightenment must be chill. There weren’t many people at all (the park is far from the city, the caves far from the gates) and I managed a few minutes of meditation in a hall for congregational worship, a big cave with rows for the monks to sit in and meditate in front of a large Buddha carved out of the wall. It was so quiet and it was such a beautiful area, all remote with this awesome view from the inside of a mountain. The caves echo really interestingly too, and strongly, so when I was in there it was like the air was vibrating a little, though it might have been my imagination.
Meditating there was cool, have you ever meditated? It’s very pleasant, if nothing else it would be a fun experiment if you tried it out for a month, just ten minutes a day makes a big difference. Here, read this. One thing Buddhism says (this is just a Buddhist perspective on meditation, you don’t have to belong to a religion to meditate) is that when you clear your head of thought, when you don’t want anything and there’s that emptiness underlying it, that’s where we all lie, where we rest, we’re all united through that. That’s what they call buddhanature, some other people call it God, the universal spirit, Christ consciousness – what you feel when everything is stripped away from you, when there’s no anger or fear, frustration, worry. Resting in that space, open, touching all things, like a cloudless sky or an ocean. We are all one, keep the string connecte, give ceaselessly. Dr Jack Kornfield says, “Our sense of separation is done with mirrors – with our thoughts. It’s all illusion. Awaken from the dream of seperateness.” Like a drop merging with the ocean, the ocean merging with the drop.
So that’s something Buddhism says, that we’re all together in that space, and when I was meditating, during which you basically try not to think of anything, I was thinking (which I shouldn’t have been doing) that everyone thinks of a lot of different stuff and we are separated by those differences (to an extent), but I knew that in that room, an awful lot of people had also sat where I was sitting, not thinking of anything, thinking of the same nothing I was. Because nothingness is eternal, see? I felt a part of something because of that, or a part of everyone, or a part of nothingness. I guess it can be a little complicated. But like, it’s a link that we can all key into.
I’m not a Buddhist, by the way. I’m super uncomfortable with being labelled (“If you label me, you negate me” says old Kierkegaard), and I don’t subscribe to karma or reincarnation or realms and junk, but I’d be lying if I said Buddhism hadn’t influenced my personal philosophy in a big way. It’s very cool. Far, far more than anything else it’s just philosophy and psychology, not religion, which is why I enjoy it so much. It also says you don’t have to believe all of it if you don’t want to, just take what works for you, we won’t call you a prick behind your back, you can come back later if you like, but no pressure. Anyway, this is worth a read. I definitely noticed though at the caves that it is easy to be enchanted by temples and churches, giant statues, beautiful architecture, powerful words and history, and want to be a part of that tradition so much that you could leap into and totally immerse yourself in a religion, and become a tangled-up fundamentalist. Careful, Clinging Mind.
My phone got fixed right after going to the national park so I was able to take photos when I went to South Mumbai the next day for more tourist stuff <pulls out slide projector, everyone groans>
I thought this was the train station from Slumdog Millionaire so I took a photo, then I realised that was Victoria station, not Churchgate, which is the other southern train station I was at. “FASCINATING, Nick!”
Trains, trains. Sometimes people will just offer me their seats on the train, as if I’m handicapped or something, it’s funny. Trains are nuts, please view grainy video I took of what happens when a train arrives at a station:
See at 0:07, people jump on and jump off the train long before it stops, those doors are never closed, it’s crazy dangerous. I wish I’d said something cool in Hindi at the end there instead of sounding like I was wetting my pants.
The old guy on the ground was giving his friend a noogie and telling me to film it, you can’t see very well. Ah, this video was a waste of time. Every time I get the train there are half-naked children and men and women sleeping on the ground at the station, not just on the platform, in the stairwells and by the ticket counter. These people are alive, man, they live and breathe every day. It’s weird how many people you walk past in a day, or an hour, and every one of them has lived thousands of days and will keep on living after you skim your eyes over them. I don’t know sometimes I want to grab a random, faceless stranger and hear all about their job and relatives and pet peeves. Everyone is so different, people always say that people are all the same but they’re totally not.
So I got a train to South Central, oh and before I get off trains, look at this photo:
At Churchgate station there are signs all over the platforms in English, Hindi and what I think is Marathi, with all these kind-of-motivational esoteric quotes on them. Some of them: “Death is only a big change in life and nothing more.” “Replace greed by love and everything will be alright.” “The masses do not want to fight if the leaders do not.” “Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality.” Isn’t that cool? And extremely India? I like how none of them are religion-specific, too. Imagine seeing a big sign telling you not to fear death or spirituality in the middle of Brisbane central station or something. People would be weirded out, that stuff is so taboo. Anyway, Majithia Trust Foundation is OK in my book.
So I went to visit Mani Bhavan, a three storey house that Gandhi lived in for almost twenty years and is now a museum dedicated to him. Can I say, Mohandas Gandhi, that guy was just tops. Just about everything he’s ever said kicks ass. What a chief, look at this photo of him:
"Ey, yo, I'm always half naked but no one ever draws attention to it! I led a nation to independence dressed like this and didn't kill anybody! Hahaha! Truth and non-violence and shit!"
Did you know he only wore cloth that he spun, so he would be more like poor people and so closer to humanity. I love how he wore his scraggly dhoti when he met the king of England too, recreated in one of the funny dioramas
there. I like Gandhi so, so much that I can’t really think of what to write about him. But there are quotes and letters from and about him all over the museum, I took photos of a bunch that rang true for me personally, but I think I’ll just transcribe instead of loading them up:
“I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world… Religions are given to mankind so as to accelerate the process of realisation of fundamental unity.”
“True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves.”
“Not until we have reduced ourselve to nothingness can we conquer the evil in us… and when a man loses himself, he immediately finds himself in the service of all that lives. It becomes his delight and his recreation.”
“A man who has broken with this past feels a different man. He will not feel it a shame to confess his past wrongs, for the simple reason that these wrongs do not touch him at all.”
“And as Satyagrahi (his philosophy of truth and non-violence) never injures his opponent and always appeals either to his reason by gentle argument or his heart by sacrificing self; the satyagraha is twice blessed; it blesses him who practices it and him against whom it is practised.”
Did you know he got Britain out of India non-violently? Totally unprecedented. I really like this quote from Albert Einstein on the wall, who is another ridiculously quotable guy by the way:
“A leader of his people, unsupported by any outward authority; a politician whose success rests not upon craft nor mastery of technical devices, but simply on the convincing power of his personality; a victorious fighter who has always scorned the use of force; a man of wisdom and humility, armed with resolve and inflexible conistency, who has devoted all his strength to the uplifting of his people and the betterment of their lot; a man who hoas confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human being, and thus at all times risen superior.
Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”
"Be truthful, gentle and fearless."
Look, just read all these, everything there is a gem. Gandhi, fuck. Teriffic guy. It was a powerful experience being in his house, where he formulated his philosophy and launched the Quit India campaign. Powwwwerful stuff. There are worse national heroes.
Yesterday was Christmas, at the mall there were kids everywhere because Disney was sponsoring a Christmas thing there, I’m not sure if they would have done anything if a Western company wasn’t putting it there, but everyone seemed to be enjoying it, and there was a Santa in whiteface. There was also a Santa Claus with a white mask on (of Santa’s bear and his face too) giving out gifts at the liquor shop on the walk to the mall, I’m not sure if the shop was doing it ironically. It was my first Christmas I didn’t speak to my family, just as this year’s birthday was the first one without speaking to them either. Hum.
Rajesh, me, and my face pubes
Today, I said goodbye to Shri Rajesh Singh and the chaps at All India Human Rights and Citizen Option, where I guess I’ve been working for five months now, though only part time since November. I mentioned Mani Bhavan to Tinkle, Rajesh’s nephew who works there, and he slapped both his cheeks a few times to signify Gandhi’s turning the other cheek, it was cute. I suppose I haven’t talked much about the company because in reality, it’s a bit of a mess that is fairly successful at what it does now, but no one has any idea how to go any further, which is what they wanted me to help them do. Right now they provide legal aid and help people to become more aware of their rights as citizens, they have monthly forums where people can air their grievances and develop their public speaking and interaction skills, now and then but very rarely they’ll have an AIDS awareness campaign or provide eye care to slumdwellers or skillbuilding workshops to women but very very rarely, because they have no funds. So they get me to find grantmaking organizations to try and get money, and other NGOs they can partner with to try and share resources, but they’re too poor to pay partnership fees so no one wants to partner with us or give us funds, so I can only make unsolicited grant requests to foundations with really broad interests that get zillions of identical unsolicited grant requests a year, and we get a generic “Regret to inform you” letter a month after I email them. AIHRCO wants to be more international but they won’t be until at least one person learns half-decent English there and they’re willing/able to pay fees to partner, but I know that just won’t happen. It’s kind of frustrating. They’ll stay an Indian, not-at-all-international NGO, and they’re doing OK at that, but I can’t help but feel a little like a failed experiment in that respect. Still, I helped them in other ways, and the time there served its purpose of introducing me to the development sector and helping me get a better job, so it certainly wasn’t a waste of time. Nice people.
Tomorrow I leave to go back to Australier for a couple of weeks and then ACTED is flying me to their headquarters in Gay Paris for a few days’ training before going to Nairobi. I’m going to see a bunch of people from the French stage of my life, from when I used to live about an hour from Paris with a host family in 2003. I’m looking forward to seeing some people I haven’t seen for more than four years (since I last visited France, right when they lost the bid for the 2012 Olympics – oh man it’s fun to see an entire country stamp their feet like an angry toddler. I’m pretty sure I heard sixty million people cry “Sacre bleu!”) but I’m more looking forward to going to Brisbane and seeing all the wonderful people there that I know. Except my entire family, who will all be in New York City celebrating the new year (our schedules did not align). I’ll show them how jealous I’m not, I’ll turn the house into a brothel like Tom Cruise did in Risky Business. Then I’ll convert to Scientology. Ooh, I’m topical! Then I’ll jump on a couch!! Oh, what hot-button controversy I cover on this blog! Lucky I didn’t bust out my Lewinsky material.
I feel I should say something about leaving India, maybe forever. India, Indier, Hindia, Hindustan, Bharat Mata, you are a magical dream of a country. <everyone leaves> Aw, when am I going to learn to write well. Um. Breathing in smog through the open sides of a rickshaw in a Malad traffic jam and looking at the various glittering “Om” and Krishna-themed stickers on your dirtyass windshield; Sitting in the shoebox-sized human rights office on the fringes of the Kandivali slum that’s full of warm, courteous people and their elephant-headed statues; Smoking a cigarette with the heartbreaker barber who worked next door as Jitendra scrapes leftover luch into the feeding trough of the huge cow stable next door to the barber’s.. Nothing can make me laugh quite like a real life cow moo. Teaching in that orphanage too, being a part of the lepers’ festivity day, that nutty border closing ceremony, infinite head waggles (they’re so much more efficient than actually opening my mouth and saying “thank you”! India, ahead of the curve), I don’t want to keep listing because I’ll never stop and this is coming off as egotistical enough, but India, you kick ass. Everyone here is awesome, and your culture is awesome as well, awesomely awesome. Hum, I should have planned this better. Where’s that thesaurus button.
Today, a man missed his elevator because he decided to introduce himself to me in the lobby of my building. His name was Rajesh, we spoke for about ten minutes, and he ended the conversation saying, “When I am talking with you, I am happy with you.” Handshake, head waggle, touches heart. Yesterday, I was given a permanent ten percent discount at “Wimpy’s”, a fast food place at Churchgate railway station, because I had a nice talk with the manager about India and human rights. The day before that, in the national park, when making the ten kilometre walk to the Kanheri Caves that everyone drives, I got offered a free ride to the caves on the back of a motorbike with a group of friendly rapscallions; when leaving the caves later I got picked up by a family from Chandigarh who drove me to the front gate of the park. Indians are very friendly. When I am talking with you, I am happy with you.
I think I achieved one of the things I hoped to do in India, which was reignite my interest in people that I lost in the crushing climate of Shanghai. When I saw what’s happening back there, the most populous and powerful country in the world, and how China is ruled and handles things I thought that might be where people as a whole are headed, but India is the complete opposite of China, while fairly close in terms of age, population, location and power. China has Mao on all their notes, India has Gandhi on all of them. These two countries, total opposites, India, it’s spiritual, warm hearted, democratic, sensitive. It’s uplifting to see a place as huge and powerful as India, while definitely having its problems, really making a concerted effort to better themselves, their democracy and the happiness of their citizens, while at the same time keeping a dizzying concentration on spirituality but not allowing it to influence their secular government. God, I love this place. India, man, shit. They’ve got a lot of work to do but they’re headed in the right direction.
Jai Hind.
Indier, Indiest
Here’s what I like about old Hindia. For one, these people, I’m starting to think they are infinitely better drivers than we are. The speed of the reflexes of a rickshaw driver, oh my god. They speed toward two vehicles that are a millimetre apart because he knows by the time he gets there the cars will have separated by enough space to squeeze through. These spiders’ reflexes are so fast, some say they border on precognition. Compared to the effort that goes into driving from Indooroopilly to Sherwood back in Brisbane, which I’ve done with one hand while strangling a hooker like, four times, driving in India is super-driving. And accidents never happen, except when they do. They’re geniuses, seriously. Also, Indians are really nice, even the <whispers> Muslim ones. Through the course of a week, I’ll swing back and forth between “Indians are freaking awesome!” to “Indians are alright.” but never over to actually thinking negatively of them, they never give me a reason to. Like no one has ever been racist to me, it’s insane, because I look all different, you know, a different ethnic background to them, I’m a part of one. Everybody tells me I’m their guest here, that’s how they see it, I’m their guest. When I use the super crowded train system, no one even gives me the stink eye when I don’t know what angle to stand at so I don’t get bowled over by people carrying gigantic sacks of grain. People gently take my arm, not speaking English, just helping me figure it out. Two days ago at the mall I was sitting 
sipping grape juice and a man just sat down and started talking about how happy he wanted me to be, how lovely both our countries are, the joyful life he wished me, “You are our guest,” he said, becoming the lucky millionth person to say it to me. “You are our guest.” I hear the phrase so much I assumed it was from a popular commercial the tourism agency put out, isn’t that cynical? You are our guest. No, they’re just nice.
Hinduism is a really interesting religion, I can’t think of any like it. Buddhism has karma and reincarnation as well, but the focuses of the two religions are totally different, Buddhism just talks about psychology, Hinduism has a huge focus on stories and myths, Buddhism has no god (Buddha not even being one himself), Hinduism might have more gods than any other religion, probably more than all of them combined (330 million at last count) – all of which are meant to be aspects of the formless and attributeless essence of the universe, Brahman, from which everything emanates and will eventually return. India is about 85% Hindu, and I feel fairly comfortable saying that it’s a big reason for why people are so nice. India is technically secular despite a few religious laws sneaking into the system (no cow killing, for example) but apart from temples everywhere you’ll see these little… assuaries? Essuaries? Am I using that word right? Like big open closets with a statue of Vishnu or Ganesha or someone in it, invariably with flowery necklaces and petals and incense sticks strewn about it from worshippers. If you sit and watch, you see passers-by stop and mutter a prayer, or clasp and waggle their hands, or touch their heart and their forehead a few times over, or the feet of the statue, or do all of these. Dr Yogesh Dube, this all powerful and pretty sarcastic politician has a Hanuman statue on his dashboard just like the rickshaw-drivers do, and he touches his fingers to the statue’s head and his own heart several times over when he gets into the car, and doesn’t say anything of it.
It’s a complex religion though, there’s no founder or central authority, but there are so many stories, about adolescent Krishna’s mischief and Arjuna’s battles and how Ganesha got his elephant head, most of the stories aren’t even what I’d call parables, just long stories that don’t have a particular 
moral lesson, but still everyone knows how to tell them. I often catch animated versions of the stories while flipping channels, and recently saw posters for a CGI movie of the exploits of the baby Ganesha. I mean, there are stories that specifically talk about morals and how to act and the nature of the universe (The Bhagavad Gita being a famous example that I’ve been about ten pages into for like five years) but the majority of the stories are like, this god married this god under a mango tree – which is why mangoes symbolise love – and then this god’s stepmother exiled him to this forest where he killed this many demons to find this girlfriend who he teleported to this kingdom where she got the monkey god’s army of monkeys to help storm this palace and then everyone had a party, al-right! The moral is: Always be yourself. That’s what I took from it anyway, that’s an important lesson too, it’s why What A Girl Wants is my favourite movie.
There’s so much symbolism too, in Hinduism, really intricate symbolism. I don’t know if I’ve written this before but I sometimes get given a coconut if I go to a forum or whatever, and my roommate explained that it’s because coconuts have three black dots on them but one of them is covered with that coconut hair stuff, and it represents Shiva or Vishnu’s third eye being covered, which is good because it means he’s not angry and there won’t be earthquakes so it’s nice to give someone a coconut. And that’s just one example, everything is symbolism, symbolism, Vishnu holds a conch shell because that can be blown like a trumpet which symbolises the cosmic vibration from which all existence emanates, things like that. I really have trouble discerning moral lessons and commandments from a lot of the symbols and the stories about Krishna stealing butter from his neighbours when he was a kid, but somehow Hindus wind up some of the nicest people ever. I won’t pretend to have a sound grasp of the religion though, it’s gigantic.
One more thing, did you know the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh is a Sikh? That’s why he wears a turban. Sikhs form less than two percent of the population, that’s a member of a very very small minority who managed to be leader of a country of almost all Hindus, and everyone loves him. My roommate Chandra just spent ten minutes talking about his integrity and kindness and how the entire country embraces him as their leader, and I believe him, you know. Hinduism isn’t a proselytising religion, so maybe that’s why they’re extra tolerant? I don’t know. Still, Sikhs form less than two god damn percent of India, that’s less than blacks in America, less than atheists/agnostics there too, who would probably have a very hard time becoming president. Also, a Catholic, Italian, woman, Sonia Gandhi, was president of the India’s ruling party in 2004. It boggles the mind.
So, Indians are nice. Except one lady was very mean to me because I used toilet paper in the public toilet so I got banned from using them. Maybe I wasn’t meant to, but she didn’t have to storm into the office and yell at me in front of everyone, talk about embarrassing. I say, she can keep her public toilets. I had to pee around a sleeping stray dog that was lying over the pee hole in the ground there like, thrice. Since my ban I’ve been very dehydrated at work. Let’s talk more about toilets. Noe.
A couple of things made me go “Hey, yeah…” lately. The first was when I was watching Fool’s Gold (my state of mind led me to believe it was the greatest movie ever made – the ripples on Matthew McConaugheys abs hypnotised me) and the baddies said of his Ukrainian sidekick, “Well well well, if it isn’t the Ukrainian sidekick.” And the sidekick, this super minor character, goes, “I don’t think of it that way. I am the main character in my own story.” I thought that was the best line. I said “Hey, yeah!” The second was in an email to my big sister, I said something along the lines of, <broad generalisation> “You know, in a lot of places, like Thailand, people pretty much think that you’re not a man until you’ve spent a year as a monk. Isn’t that badass? So like, instead of having a gap year and hitting up Europe, they go and be a monk and get a moral foundation for the rest of their lives. I think if everyone spent a year just thinking about how to be good and how to properly reflect on the world, it would be a better place.”
And my sister goes, “I think a lot of people aren’t able to pack up and live in a monastery for a year because of a variety of socio-economic reasons.”
Hey, yeah, they totally can’t. What a dumb thing to think anyone could do that. I could. Not that I would (or would I…) but when I think about how fortunate I’ve been, how free I am, I get queasy. You know, I’m free to do a lot of things, I’m unencumbered. I was lucky enough to be too ugly in high school for there to be any chance of me impregnating anyone so I don’t have any babies or sham marriages to look after, my parents aren’t poor or sick so I dont have to look after them, my government and society has been stable enough that I can sit on my ass munching tofu thinking about this instead of gushing cortisol from the fear of not knowing how I’m going to eat or where
Stressful upbringing.
I’m going to sleep tonight. The Buddhists would say that we (this includes you too, your life’s been pretty good, all things considered, come on.) must have lived many many lifetimes to get to a life this well positioned. Even if you’re not a Buddhist (and I’m not! I don’t label myself! Don’t negate me with your labels!!!) there’s a lot of responsibility, I think, that comes with the fortune we’ve had. Crushing, crushing responsibility. Hey, look at me, I’m in my mid twenties and daunted, I’m the most unique person in the world!
I talk way too much about myself on this website, but you see it basically functions as a journal for me you see, that other people can read if they like, plus I rarely speak to anyone (I’ve noticed that, left to my own devices and without friendship being crammed down my throat, I just sit inside and do yoga and play solitaire) so I don’t have anywhere to vent. Ah, the life of the reclusive wanker. Plus, does anyone else ever wish that they were part of a reality show that no one would see? Just so that you’d have a record of what you were like. I mean, we’re dying every second, we’re constantly changing and learning and seeing the world differently, who I was yesterday is dead, who I was before I went to China is a totally different dude, him and me would answer questions totally differently. I remember telling Dad before I left for India that I’d have to say goodbye to myself, and I did, I died, that guy’s nowhere to be found, he hasn’t done what I’ve done. Sometimes I wish it could all be chronicled, replayable. It can’t be, so I keep ticket stubs. It’s pretty vain. This is the only life I have (I think) and I’m closer to the end of it than I ever have been. Like, I’m intensely aware of my youth, you know it is never ever again going to be the 19th of December 2009. And you’re reading this in the future, Nick! (I assume everyone else has clicked away by now) When I’m older I’ll squint and try to remember what this mustyass flat smelled like, the frankie vendor who yells my order at me as I approach him, what I sold at that godawful telemarketing job, the uniform I had as a fruit delivery boy, that peach flavoured vitamin water I drank in China. Oh, shit! That herby egg pancake thing I always had at the markets in Shanghai, before teaching on Saturday mornings, when I was invariably hungover. I can’t remember what it was called. Something-bing? Can’t remember, can’t remember. So I write a little bit, now and then, unoriginally, about things that lots of other people have done and thought, but I miss things out and forget things. My kingdom for a Pensieve.
So you may remember in my first blog… you don’t? I said:
“I’m going to try to find some sort of work so that not too long after I’ve finished volunteering I can get a paying job and hence a work visa and then live [in India] for a while. I have a few ideas about jobs, but not sure which direction I’ll take yet. The thing about things is, things never work out the way you plan.”
Did I just use a block quote? Hell, yes I did. Yeah so about things never turning out the way you plan is true, I’m moving to Kenya. I haven’t written much lately (making up for it now I guess, apologies for the length) (it’s not the first time I’ve had to say that!) (… I can’t satisfy a woman.) because I haven’t actually been doing anything except applying for jobs and interviewing for jobs and wondering if buying so many pirated DVDs is ethically sound and sitting in my room willing my phone to ring with a job offer, which happened last night after three interviews and an actual exam, for this job as Reporting Intern in Nairobi for this French NGO called ACTED. When I came to India, like, I just wanted to be in India, my focus was wanting to soak up this country and work as whatever to stay here, but I’ve had a lot of time to think. I was willing to be a language coach in a call centre to stay in India but I sort of shifted from mainly wanting to be in India to mainly wanting to do something helpful, and I’m not smart enough to be a doctor and too much of a pussy to be a social worker or a fireman so I thought development would be a cool thing to do. And I applied for jobs in development just in Mumbai, then figured if it was a good job I could move to Delhi, then I was applying everywhere north of Tamil Nadu, and then I noticed that you have more opportunities if you apply in more cities (Amazing!) (with James Sherry.). So I stopped caring about place and started caring about job (dare I say, ‘career’? No, I don’t.), and I applied all over the world so I could have a bigger net to drag in, and then Kenya! I’m pretty excited, I’ve never been anywhere near Africa. “Africa” is such a powerful sounding word. Africa. UFF-DI-KA! I’ll miss India, I feel I could have attended more meditation classes here or something, but this is how it’s playing out, and I like to go with life’s current. Timing pretty much controls everything, I’ve noticed (timing and Ganesha) and this is how it synced. I’m happy with the time I’ve spent here. I’m so happy Heidi made it over. I’m so happy I’ve had my time to reflect. I could have done more bench presses, though. That’s the true secret to happiness.
You know, nothing stands still for even a second. Like, when there’s an earthquake, people are shocked by the ground moving, it seemed so solid, but it never stops moving. Even the Earth we walk on is constantly shifting on tectonic plates on a planet that’s spinning on an axis and rotating around a sun which is moving around the centre of a galaxy which is flying through the universe at thousands of kilometres a second. Once, the planet didn’t even exist, and eventually, it won’t be here again. Nothing ever ever stops changing, existence is always shifting. Change is good. I feel like if you have a hard time dealing with change you’ll have a hard time dealing with death. And the meaning of life is to prepare to die, and that’s coming, and it’ll be the most important, awesome day of your life. Holy shit, I can’t wait to die! Then I’ll get me some answers.
Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I swore I would never write anything to this magnitude of douchey. But, hey man, I love you. I read (heard in an audiobook) that Fear is contraction, Love is expansion. The two great forces in the universe. I love you, man. You exist. Breathe deeply. There’s air on your skin.
Food that is high in calories tastes good, but is bad for you. What the fuck kind of cruel joke is that? And what’s the deal with airline food? I’m Nick English, don’t forget to tip your waitress. Ah, killed it out there. Killed it.
McBain: Let's Get Silly
Om Nama Shivaye
KALI MAAAAAA!!! You know when the guy gets lowered into the lava and he keeps going “Om nama shivaye, om nama shivaye, om nama shivaye…” That’s like a pretty common chant here, a guy singing it is the ringtone on a couple of friends’ phones. It basically means praise God, or praise Shiva. Om nama shivaye…
Did you know, India is a very religious country, I feel guilty telling people I don’t belong to one. I was in the elevator the other day and this lady I was sharing it with introduced herself and off the bat asked if I was a Catholic, I said no, she said, “Anglican?”
“<shifting weight> No…”
“What denomination are you?”
“No denomination really.”
“Achaa, so you’re just a Christian.”
“Ah, I’m not in a religion.”
“… So… religion does not interest you at all?”
“No no, I love religion! It’s fascinating.”
“<beat> I am a Hindu.”
“Cool.”
Religion religion. The more I travel and the more different people I meet and different religions I see, the more I come back to agnosticism, and I can’t help feeling like it’s such a cop out. In “Life of Pi” the narrator says of agnosticism that “choosing doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” But there are so many different religions, and the vast majority of people belong to their religion because of the family they’re born into. And if they don’t belong to their family’s religion, they belong to another religion that they would have been converted to because of meeting some missionary by random chance, or by picking up a book on religion that they happened to have seen by random chance, or they happened to have a stimulating conversation with a friend on religion, but they wouldn’t have had that conversation if it hadn’t led there, if they’d been someone else.
I don’t think we have free will, there. Where we’re born determines who we are, and we don’t decide where we’re born, so we don’t decide who we are. Whatever religion someone is a part of, no matter how strongly they believe in the truth of that religion, there’s a lot of people that believe in an entirely different religion with the same certainty. I mean, it’s not like you can say that those people belonging to different faiths just haven’t thought it through as much as you have. Maybe not all of them have, but there are definitely very smart and analytical people in every religion. There are a lot of smart people out there, smarter than me, who have tremendous, unshakeable faith in Christ, and a lot of other smart people, smarter than me, who have tremendous faith in Allah, or Krishna, or Joseph Smith, or Meher Baba. And they all follow their faiths because of the lives they’ve led. If they’d led a different life, they’d be someone else. If you believe that there’s a God who has a path laid out for you and that nothing that happens is random, then I can see how you could disagree, but remember why you believe that in the first place. The only reason I believe this is because I was born into my family and have had the influences that I’ve had. When we’re born, we’re a blank slate, right? And if we’re not, because of genetics, where’s the choice there?
If God were all-understanding, He wouldn’t cast someone into Hell because they were born into the family of a different religion, raised to have the temperament of someone who would reject other faiths. Although in the Qu’ran there’s a part in Surah 2:2 that says, “Behold, as for those who are bent on denying the truth – it is all one to them whether thou warnest them or dost not warn them: they will not believe. God has sealed their hearts and their hearing, and over their eyes is a veil; and awesome suffering awaits them.” So, God purposely made them unwilling to accept faith? He sealed their hearts and ordained that they wouldn’t become Muslims in anticipation of punishing them? I don’t get it. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t get. I just think maybe a good way to bring peace between people is to say, “If I were you, I’d be you.”
“The Wise Heart” is a pretty good book by Buddhist psychologist
Jack Kornfield, in it he says, (the emphasis is mine) “A mature psychology requires us to view life from multiple perspectives… A mature life requires an ability to enter each of the roles given to us. Freedom arises when we hold them lightly, when we see them for what they are… You have so many views and opinions, what is good and bad, right and wrong, about how things should be. You cling to your views and suffer so much. They are only views, you know… when we believe our own thoughts and opinions we become fundamentalists. But no matter how strongly we believe our perspective, there are always other points of view. Learn to hold your thoughts lightly.”
I wish I could say I didn’t get this from a Wikipedia article, but it’s sound: “Religious persons acquire religious ideas and practices through social exposure. The child of a Zen Buddhist will not become an evangelical Christian or a Zulu warrior without the relevant cultural experience. While mere exposure does not cause a particular religious outlook (a person may have been raised a Roman Catholic but leave the church), nevertheless some exposure seems required – this person will never invent Roman Catholicism out of thin air.” Richard Dawkins calls religion “inherited tradition,” and forgive the excessive quoting, particularly from a bigot like Richard Dawkins, but other people are more articulate than me. In “Viruses of the Mind”:
“If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place.”
Hurr, I can use Wikiquote. Mind you, I don’t conform to Dawkins’s “evangelical atheism,” he’s only an atheist because of where he was born as well, and I’ve met as many blockheaded atheists as I have religious folk. He claims to have reason and logic on his side, but I’ve seen God proved and disproved with logic so many times I’ve been convinced it’s a pointless way to try to understand His existence, or non-. For example, in the comments of some YouTube video (it’s a fun place to see people argue), I saw a Christian argue that the reason nothing needs to have created God is that God created the universe and all the laws that govern it, including gravity, thermodynamics, and the rule that something needs to have been created in order to exist – but God doesn’t exist within the confines of these rules he put in the framework of His universe, just as a painter doesn’t exist within his painting. That’s a pretty logical argument. Logically speaking, the deaths of innocent people shouldn’t bother me, because Earth will likely eventually explode with overpopulation and resource depletion, so the planet needs the amount of humans to be as low as possible. I mean, logic can only get you so far – the Life of Pi guy said reason is fool’s gold. Death and violence still bothers me, as natural as some people say they are. Others say that such feelings, the rejection of violence, that the existence of empathy or a conscience, come from God, but I don’t think we should sell humans short by arguing we wouldn’t be nice without some external force willing it. I think compassion might be an intrinsic human trait, however deeply buried it might be in a lot of people. Maybe it’s an extrapolated form of the evolutionary drive to protect your family? But what the hell do I know, I’m an unemployed twentysomething with a French degree.
Ultimately, the footprint you leave outweighs what you believe. Just be nice and don’t be a dick to people who are different, which is everyone. Respect how much like them you could be. No one’s better than anyone else, right?
This has been an unapologetically blog-like blog. I apologise. Now if you’ll excuse me, all this talk has made me hungry.
Back to aging.
Make a wish, make a wish.
edit: Ah, so it looks like Eros Entertainment won’t let me embed that video. Just click on it then and watch it at YouTube. Do it!
I totally saw this movie when it opened last week, it’s Aladdin with the legendary Amitabh Bachchan as the hip rock star genie who is hip and calls people ‘brother’ and ‘man.’ He is hip, boy howdy. Now, this Bollywood film can actually justify the existence of all the background dancers and phat beats that appear out of nowhere because Genius the genie magicks it that way, but I still don’t see why every other Indian movie has people leaping into immaculately choreographed dancing at the drop of a hat. But one thing I do know: Genius don’t got on shit on Kazaam.
So so, what’s been going on. I’m asking you. I’m not doing any more segments on Indian TV’s hyper-censorship because, in a grasping-at-straws attempt to improve myself and stop bitching I have boycotted TV, and cigarettes for good measure. I read on the box they give you cancer! Also, no matter how many times I get drunk and yell it at strangers, no one has offered me a job out of the blue yet, except for an e-commerce job that turned out to be a pyramid scheme and some teaching company but I don’t really want to teach again, so I’m still applying, still applying… Apart from that, I dunno. I gave this speech at a human rights forum the other week, it was this big gathering in Dadar East, I spent two days sending invites to it via SMS by typing out people’s phone numbers into a free SMS website that only lets you put in phone numbers one at a time and my boss wanted to save the cash it would cost to send it all in one go from a proper website, if you wanted a description of some of the retarded things I do at work, and I was just told to give a speech on whatever, they gave me a list of human rightsy things I could talk about, like oh this sentence has been going for like 6 lines. Full stop. Ellipsis…
Yeah so they told me to give the speech on anything human rights related, so I thought seeing as it was decriminalised only in July I’d give a speech about homosexuality in India, and I get up there and go blah blah blah, and mind you my talk was sandwiched between speeches about the importance of AIDS awareness, about the rights of the Untouchable caste, the possibility of poverty eradication, all wonderful things – but I get in trouble from my boss for getting up and talking about those icky homosexuals, they make us feel weird. “That wasn’t a topic on that paper I gave you!” “It said general minority rights!” “I didn’t mean gays! You should have just talked about where you’re from.” “Like that’s important!” Keeping in mind that most of my talk was about how prevalent LGBT topics are in Hinduism (gods change gender and tell people of the same sex to get together all the time, it’s great – click that link) and how it’s not illegal anymore so no one has any good reason to be homophobic anymore, but I get chastised for talking about the rights of a minority group at a human rights conference by a guy who runs a human rights organization. Hypocrisy, you know, hypocrisy, it’s hypocritical I think, these human-rights-but-not-for-everyone people, I don’t like the prejudice you see, these guys are meant to be changing things, it was an interesting and sucky little insight into the whole thing. I got grouchy on the ride home. I crossed my arms and pouted I did, let’s go to another paragraph I think.
LGBTs in India, LGBTS, you know there are these people in India called hijras, they’re not men or women (except they’re men who sometimes have cut off their genitals) and people believe they have the power to make you impotent (hijra means “this has never happened to me before!” – seriously), so they hassle men for money at traffic lights and stuff. Wikipedia says “If refused, the hijra may attempt to embarrass the man into giving money, using obscene gestures, profane language, and even sexual advances.” It turns out this is completely true and that, officer, is why the transsexual was tugging on my crotch yelling for money, I swear. Talk about uncomfortable, next time I’m breaking shis finger. A lady I met on a train once translated hijra as just “gay” so these people might be a reason gays get a bad wrap. It also turns out my roommate Ravi is mumbai-sexual so don’t jokingly crack onto him while unaware of this fact, because things will get weird. To try to help things blow over afterward, I taught him new swear words, and now every day he greets me with a jovial “Nick, your dick is a cunt!” and things are going just dandy. Fop. Life in the apartment is pretty good in general, except there’s still not much privacy, you know. There are 8 people in the 1 bedroom apartment and I guess the crowdedness of India makes people unaccustomed to giving people space, which is fair enough but my door is always unknockingly opening and closing with people wanting to get water or deliver me food or whatever, and, you know, I enjoy auto-erotic asphyxiation and spending a couple of hours a day crying in a wig as much as the next guy, but such dalliances are hard to indulge in with people walking in and screaming in horror so much. While we’re on home, the water on my filtered tap has not, in fact, been filtered as I haven’t been turning the right knob on it so I’ve been drinking Indian tap water for the last three months, while remaining eerily healthy. I like to think I just have a superb immune system but I’m sure all the eggs I must have drunk will be hatching in my colon any day now, so, to that I look forward.
I’m 90% sure I spoke to Aishwarya Rai yesterday. I was driving around South Central with Yogesh Dube, that politician friend of mine, and I always make self-deprecating cracks about how Aishwarya is my girlfriend and everything, and this friend of his said he could get her on the phone for me, and then he called this number and talked about a friend from Australia and then gave me the phone, and we briefly chatted about how stupid my friend is and how I was going to punch him for her, and she told me to box his ears for her, and then he got another call on his phone and the conversation was ended. I’ve met this guy before and he’s talked about knowing her before, and Yogesh does associate with powerful people, and it seemed like a pretty elaborate joke without any payoff if it was a joke. I’m pretty sure that was Aishwarya Rai. Next step: Murdering her husband. And who just happens to appear at her door after she discovers the body with a bowl of comforting chicken soup and a shoulder to cry on? Oh man, this is foolproof.
Heidi, you know Heidi, from Melbourne who I wrote about in the other blog, who is one of these new woman doctors (I’d sooner let a black guy operate on me, amirite?) who was in India for 5 weeks, well she came back to Mumbai and we spent a week in South Central Mumbai, a place where busting a cap is fundamental Mumbai, it was very nice.
3-faced Shiva carving on Elephanta Island
We visited these Sankara Caves on Elephanta Island (like the Sankara Stones in Temple of Doom!) (Sankara means it has to do with Shiva) which as you may recall were closed the last time I went to that island with Toby. What, you don’t remember every line from a blog I wrote almost two years ago? Well screw you, what are you even doing here, man? Anyway the island was cool, bigass carvings of Shiva and surprisingly aggressive monkeys. What do you do when a monkey is lookig in your eyes, striding toward you and growling loudly? Squeal and run like a girl, that’s what I say. I don’t need rabies, I’ve already got 3 months of tap water parasites battling it out for control of my lower intestine.
Ey, oh. Heidi is one of these do-gooder types so she got me to volunteer with her at this boys’ orphanage last Sunday, teaching, I was pretty terrified of teaching again but it came back to me – you have to yell a lot. That’s mostly it. 
The boys were rowdy but enthusiastic, we didn’t get through half the activities we’d planned but it was very good and we had a nice chat with the guys that run the place afterwards. Don Bosco, the orphange, like a lot of charitable and humanitarian organizations in India is Christian, owing to Christianity being the dominant religion in the West and the fact that the West has most of the money in the world, so they can afford to set up such places in India. So a lot of schools and orphanages and such are Christian here, but the children who attend them are never Christian and don’t become Christian, because proselytism, trying to convert people to other religions, is illegal in India, something I’ve always thought is pretty cool and respectful. So instead of running around trying to convince people they’re unhappy and telling everyone they’re sinners to get them to convert, all any religion can do to make people convert to their religion is just be really nice and non-preachy and active in their community and hope that their example will make people want to convert of their own accord. Father Roger, the (Indian) head of the orphanage said that sometimes undercover cops walk into a church/mosque/temple and say they want to convert, and when the priest says OK the cops go all “Ha! See? This guy is trying to convert people!” and get him in trouble, so even if someone comes up to you trying to convert to your religion you have to tell them that it’s a big decision and they should think about it for a while and the priest/imam/shenme shenme will interview you a few times and find out about you and who you are and everything before letting you convert. Does this law make a lot of sense to anyone else?
After the orphanage, Heidi wanted to go a nearby leprosy shelter, as she is thinking of doctoring in places like that after her internship. It was an interesting place, lots of people there had leprosy. They seemed pretty happy, they’d done some cool paintings for the near-finished museum and staff were playing some games with them too, games that didn’t involve fingers, like who can be the first to blow away a pile of flour and pick up the coin underneath it with their mouth sort of games. The shelter/colony was pretty big, with lots of nature and stuff. It was a pretty intense day though, with the orphanage and the leprosy shelter, the people who work in these places are made of way better stuff than me, I don’t think I’d be able to see that stuff every day. Good people, very good people…
Well, like an understocked herb salesman I’ve run out of thyme, ha-cha cha cha… *starts soft-shoeing offstage* but before I go, this photo:
This is people standing outside a bakery last week watching a very important cricket game on the big screen TV that’s playing inside. I thought it was such a cool India picture. Also we saw this on Elephanta Island:
There are so many cows in India. You know what cows are? Fucking huge. Way bigger than cats and dogs, the biggest animals we ever see in Australian suburbs. They’re these gigantic masses of flesh and bone that walk around the streets and have really big, sharp horns. How do they not terrify anyone else? They’re so big. You know what they are? Beasts. Mooing is just about the funniest sound in the world though. Finally, this:
Buy me Bonestorm or go to Hell! G’night everybody!
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