They accept things here. If there’s anything that I take away from India every time I visit, it’s that this nation is stunned into acceptance by culture and religion – Hindu, Muslim or Christian it’s the same. Everything’s inevitable and unavoidable, as God wills. How else can you explain the horrifying smog that hangs over Delhi city, perpetually cloaking it in a [insert your own clever shroud-associated simile here]. From the airplane it looks like the smog over San Francisco Bay mixed with masala chai. Or is selfishness that’s India’s problem? On the roads, it’s every man for himself; in the shops and temples queuing is what Europeans (minus the Germans) do. I could get cut up by some twat in a beemer at Deptford Anchor lights, but in Delhi I could get crushed into a half-constructed Metro stop any day of the week.
I’m hoping I’m gonna learn something new, see my homeland in a different light, expunge all my negative thoughts connected with this unfeasibly huge country. As the plane touches down at Indira Ghandhi International, I’m reminded of Grant Morrison’s words in ‘The Invisibles’ – about the ‘city virus’ that takes and takes from the land to feed an insatiable hunger, ever expanding, ever demanding. The city, like the corporation, has become a psychopathic engine (okay, last left-field culture quote I’ll use – promise), tuned to churn out meaningless chits of ownership over every aspect of life (do I have to start doling out royalties at some point?). The state seems to only care for money and productivity. In England, the only difference is that we’ve got a much longer-term picture, forged by centuries of colonial domination and fucking up.
I get off the plane and I’m hit by that scent of India. Everyone who’s been knows what I mean. It’s like russet and sandals, success and poverty shagging drunk mixed with a hint of jealous irony. Coming out the terminal, the sky looks like an ITV News Baghdad Special, but the warmth and twinkly eyes of the toothy taxi drivers lets me know I’m back in the motherland. Bharath Maathakhi Jai! – as we used to say in Shaka. We’re met by one of Mum’s friend’s drivers – for those of you who don’t know, many Indian families have a driver, not due to a desire for a bourgeois display of wealth, but because of the specific skill set needed to endure the most terrifying constant life/death struggle for supremacy that occurs on tarmac, this side of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
We pass the shanty corrugated-tin huts of road workers, occasionally getting a peek through an open door, to dust-filled cupboard-sized rooms and dusty mattresses atop disused oil barrels.
If the British Government could get away allowing it citizens and workers to live like this, I’m sure it would. We have hundreds of years of civil action and working class uprisings to thank for that. But now the old Gov (both Red and Blue persuasions) want to ‘limit’ industrial action? Nice to see Thatcher’s legacy still holding strong. Like it or not, our countries are built on the backs of workers – those who lift the rocks, carry the loads on their shoulders – shouldn’t we be bailing them out instead of the banks and pinstriped parasites?
I’ve just realised that this is sounding less like a travel blog and more like the exorcising of my own demons – i.e. politico-intellectual wank. I will address this.
No comments:
Post a Comment