Visiting India? Please Mind the Elephant Dung

In the comments section of a blog, I came across this link. If you are an Indian and have nothing better to do, it may be interesting to follow the link and read this blogger's blog entries on India and the comments that follow those posts. Not that you necessarily need the glimpse, but if you follow the link, it will give you a glimpse into the mind of an average American tourist visiting India. Unless the blogger in question is below average, in which case all bets are off.

To quote a snippet from one blog entry:

Well, today I leave India. I have to admit that I am rather glad to leave Bangalore. If I had seen other places in India I may have had a better impression of the place. Mysore was nice, but Bangalore reminds me of Mexico City, but even more dirty and chaotic. Maybe a slum in Mexico City is a better comparison to this city. The streets of the "nice" neighborhood that I am staying in are filthier than the streets of the favelas in Rio. People urinate everywhwere, there are signs to discourage it but if there are no public toilets, what is one to do? Not to mention the cows, PACKS of stray dogs and other misc. animals roaming around doing their business where they feel like it. Cows have a much easier time crossing the road than I do. At least the cars stop for them. Speaking of cows, you see them all over munching on piles of trash, which are also everywhere, including in this "nice" neighborhood. At least in Latin America the nice neighborhoods are clean(er). The best tip I got before I came over here was to wear closed-toed shoes.

And some more:

BTW, they have this thing in India about taking off your shoes in homes and temples and even here at the palace [Mysore Palace] we had to take off our shoes. I was glad i was wearing socks, because it would not have been nice to step in elephant dung with no shoes on.

Then there are some photographs of some locals with the following notes by the blogger about how everybody on the streets practically doted on her:

Gotta love the kid who tells me he's from India. BTW, in Peru if you want to take a picture of kids in native dress, they will charge you. Here they practically beg me to take their pics.

People, all I can say is that I really feel for celebrities now. All the attention was fun at first, but it got old fast. I lay low for a few days after this (partly because of stomach issues--used to have an iron stomach when I flew to South America with Delta, but it's been 2 years now). Am still a little hesitant to venture out on my own. Managed to go to a shopping mall without getting mobbed, but I had to avoid all eye contact and pretend not to hear people calling to me.

At first blush, if one were an Indian, one would be tempted to think less than flattering thoughts about the blogger's judgment. For example, she says, possibly for effect, that she found people urinating everywhere in Bangalore. This is, of course, objectively untrue. It is no different than if I visited New York, mingled with the natives, and then declared loudly and publicly that New York is a city of crack-whores. A New Yorker would surely be within his rights to question this conclusion. And perhaps my sanity, if he thought I was being serious.

I personally have lived for several years in a solidly middle-class neighbourhood in Bangalore and not once have I seen a guy unzip and take a whizz against a wall. Now if it were Calcutta...maybe, but not Bangalore. Perhaps the nice neighbourhood that she was holed up in wasn't so nice after all.

Some of the comments following the entries are priceless, and I suppose in a bizarre way, amusing. Someone wished an asteroid wipes out India. I sometimes wish that too. But then, I always extend that wish to the whole of humanity, so that probably doesn't count.

It is normally useless to dwell on something like this, but I sometimes feel a sense of impotent rage when I read stuff this. Because at least some this stuff is, on the face of it, true. And a lot of it is driven by simple economics. An impoverished nation cannot afford to be proper for the sake of American tourists. Where millions of people don't have access to a glass of safe drinking water, even public toilets is a major infrastructure project.

I feel impotent rage at the British who impoverished India. They fed their Industrial Revolution with cheap raw material produced with forced labour. In India they found both a source of raw material and a captive market for finished goods. They stole. Shamelessly and mercilessly. Actually wait...I use the wrong word. They didn't steal, they took. The strong don't need to steal stuff from the weak; they can simply take it. Incidentally, that is why one should never ever be weak. The guns vs butter question is a non-question. You need both. It is not an either/or proposition. If you don't have the guns, chances are that the butter will go bye-bye soon.

And by the way, do let's bitchslap the historically-challenged motherfuckers who sometimes harbour the fond notion that the British were somehow "civilized" imperialists. They were most emphatically not. They were brutal. To cite just one example, The Bengal Famine of 1943, with five million dead was a wilful genocide through negligence by the British. I don't know why it's not classed as such.

I feel impotent rage at the invaders who repeatedly brutalized India and beggared it so that a large section of its population needs to go do their business on the streets and on railway tracks. But more so I feel impotent rage at ourselves. We who meekly bent over and greased up for anybody willing to take the trouble to cross the Khyber Pass or sail a ship to Cochin.

Here's the litany of complaints. Indians are ignorant of history. Indians have lacked a collective will and a strong racial memory. A pathetic lack of a sense of nationhood rounds out the portfolio. Read the details of the Bengal Famine, o woefully ignorant Indian. Read and tell me how many Indians you know are awake enough to even know their own fucking near-history.

I feel impotent rage at the Nehruvian Socialism that followed British colonialism and hobbled India with a pathetic 2-3% growth over fifty years. India was saddled with policies that neglected universal primary education and subsidized secondary education at the cost of primary education. Population growth continued unchecked and the people were kept ignorant. The only thing better than a lot of voters is a lot of ignorant voters.

I feel impotent at how little individual pride we have. I feel impotent rage at our lack of critical thinking that makes us repeatedly bring to power those who rob us. I feel impotent rage at every old woman who miserably touches the feet of the politician who is the cause of her misery. How do you teach someone pride? What is pride? Is it concomitant with wealth? Is it a consequence of wealth, or is it a cause? Do the proud become wealthy? Or is it the other way around?

And is it all economics? Did this blogger pay every man, woman, and child who "mobbed" her while she was there and posed for photographs with her? She herself says that she would have to pay people in certain other countries for photographs. So what benefit did the Indians she met derive from making an ordinary American feel like a celebrity? No, it is not all economics.

I shudder to think what it is.