Belatedly

There is a new blog. It's in Italian and yes, still mainly about India and its marvels.

The address is:

http://unbearableindia.wordpress.com

Update

I am planning a change for this blog.

I'd rather write in Italian, and stop trying to be politically correct.

We'll see. I also have a penchant for verbally abusive blogs, and am quite good at it myself (the verbal abuse). English is too sublime a language for what I really want to say.

Anyway: I'm going back to The Cold Country in three weeks, where I'll stay till the new year and I will eat MEAT at every meal: cow meat, pork meat, turkey meat, boar meat, moose meat (delicious), hopefully even whale meat.

And I will drink, and I will go out after dark on my own (ooooh...) and I will be able to walk the streets without fucking retards calling me pussy or suggesting I sucked their cock.

In the meantime, I'll keep you (who? there are no readers) posted.

Morning glory

This morning I woke up exhausted, after enduring eight hours of deafening fireworks last night; it was Diwali, the fesitval of lights, which as far as I could see consists of buying sweets, eating a big meal with the family, and then going out shooting crackers all night. It was like being in a warzone, the explosions so loud it was impossible to do anything like talking, reading, watching TV.

I hated this place with all my heart last night.

So anyway; I make coffee and I am pacing the terrace looking at several cracker butts scattered all over the floor. Then I look up and I see, on the roof, two large monkeys staring at me. The male start fucking the female and laughing at me. Well, morning sex is supposed to be good for you, isn't it? Then the two monkeys jump down on the neighbour's roof and the male, after uncovering the water tank, starts his ablutions. He washes his legs, his crotch, his face.

I am quite taken by the sight, feeling like I am watching some documentary about urban monkeys. Suddenly they both jump to my terrace, getting very close to me: I wisely retreat into the bedroom and watch them from behind the door. Wisely because before I know it, the male stares at me again, then starts messing with my plants, fiddling with the soil, pulling away the leaves... and then he charges towards me!

I slam the door in time.

I can hear they are playing havoc with the furniture, overturning the table. I hear the glasses shattered on the floor, and the monkeys' insouciant screech.

I have spent at least half an hour locked in my room, terrified. When I finally got out, the terrace looked like a mess, but thankfully the fuckers were gone.

Can anyone please get me out of here, please?

Newsround

A quick review of some of the past week's news from this burgeoning superpower:

Big events: Delhi is set to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, starting exactly one year from today. The preparations for the games are so behind that the president of the commission (an Australian) warned India that if it goes on like this, the whole thing will fail. He urged India to take in foreign experts who could implement an effective management plan, and he even asked to meet India's Prime Minister personally to talk about the dismal situation. The reply from Delhi's powerful ones: we do not need any external help on this. If the work has been a bit slow (with only one year left, it is estimated that only about 20% of the hospitality structures are in place) it is because we are a democracy.

Public transport: the buses called 'Blueline' (which are in fact green, but this is India) killed about 100 people this year. The latest case is that of a student who was hanging half outside the overcrowded bus, as it's customary over here, when said bus hit another parked vehicle, smashing the head of the student. The driver has been charged with 'negligent driving'.

Modern love: a young guy wanted to marry a 16 year old girl, who rejected him repeatedly. Unfortunately, the girl's family had agreed to the marriage, but the obstinate girl still refused. Angry and frustrated, the guy showed up at the girl's house, attacked her, abused her and forced her to drink acid in front of her relatives, who didn't do a thing.

Note that news like this are reported everyday in the paper. Everyday. In fact, right now police are questioning the family of a young woman who died in mysterious circumstances a couple of days ago, and was immediately cremated: it transpired that the woman had married a guy from a different caste without the family's approval. As preventive measure, anyhow, the husband has been put in jail.

Shoppers' delight: in case you don't know, India is big on security measures. Every time you enter the metro, a cinema or a shopping mall, you have to pass through a metal detector and your bag is searched for dangerous items.

Police have run a security test in 13 malls in Gurgaon (a suburb of Delhi) using plainclothes policemen, armed with guns, detonators and knives. The result? None was caught. They all managed to pass the security and even leave the fake bomb packages around the mall without anyone detecting what was going on.

Have a nice weekend!

Delhi is a shithole

View of Paharganj: the neighborhood lies in the very centre of Delhi.

A fellow blogger's view of India's capital city:

First of all, let me just say one thing about Delhi. It’s absolutely fucking filthy. I mean, London is filthy, most cities are filthy, granted. But New Delhi is just in a whole league of its own. During monsoon it gets especially worse because of the rubbish sewer systems and apparently non existent waste disposal services. You can imagine how torrential rain does nothing to improve this. Contrary to what you may think about the rain cleaning the streets and washing away the cities filth what it actually does is just turn the roads into muddy rivers of garbage and human excrement and the junctions into swirling cess pits and quagmires of shit, rubbish and grime. Its difficult to imagine why anybody would want to come here. I saw most of the interesting sights in one afternoon drive around the city and frankly that was enough.

My room was a shitty little box with a toilet that didn’t work and a window that didn’t open (lonely planet recommends this place so god knows what the bad places are like) and it was a staggering 400 R’s per night. Compared to my pleasant 250 R’s a night room in Varanasi this was a rip off.

The idea of any more than a few days in Delhi makes me want to cry to be honest and I was so happy to get on that train to Varanasi.
The whole time I was there I didn’t take my camera out of its bag, partly because I was very jet lagged and just wanted to acclimatise and get used to India before I became the intrepid photojournalist and partly because the place just didn’t interest me. It was just shitty, muddy, filthy, smelly streets filled with people trying to rip you off, crazed rickshaw drivers, annoying touts and shop owners who see any white person as pay day.
I fucking hated it. As soon as I got off that plane and the heat and the smell hit me I knew I would hate it. The smell, the fucking smell. Mix, petrol, shit, sand, piss, smoke, filthy water, sewage, rotting rubbish, and miscellaneous pollution together and hey presto, you have New Delhi. I’m no cynic, and I wont be this negative about everywhere I go. But let me get this straight. Delhi is horrible. Just horrible. It’s everything I hate about India all in one place.

(text and photo: Jack Laurenson)

Jack gets it absolutely right. No other place is India is as disgusting as Delhi. Which is why I don't go out: no sightseeing, no visiting places, no shopping strolls, nothing. This shithole doesn't deserve my time.

Sunday treat: Airtel

First of all, Airtel is crap. Despite being one of the biggest telecom service providers in this country, their service is lousy at best, downright cheating otherwise.

We got a wireless router for our internet connection. After you pay a hefty price for it, they make you buy the router - nothing is free in India. It cost about 20 euros.

We soon discovered that said router would not work across the flat - which is less that 50 square meters! From my work station, I'd only get a feeble signal, or none at all.

We call the customer service, and the first time someone came who didn't speak one word of English; he changed the router, replacing the old with a new, identical one. Obviously the problem remained. We could not get the message across, even with my best attempts at explaining the situation in Hindi.

Today, someone else showed up. A young boy. No ID whatsoever. How can you tell it's someone from Airtel and not a passer-by is another matter.

He scientifically assessed the situation, and concluded: the router doesn't work because there are walls in this house.

Marvelous. Walls. The problem is walls.

After seeing our faces, he added: Airtel only sells Beetel routers, and they don't work in a different room. To get a strong signal all over your property you need to purchase a Netgear routers.

We asked (drooling with rage): so why the fuck did your installation engineer (engineer being the operative term for whoever handles tools and wires in this country) tell us that this piece of shit would work, and made us pay for it?

What followed was half an hour of discussion involving physics, management, contract breach, various gods being called various names.

Airtel cannot do anything about it. It sells you a product that will not work. If you want it to work, you have to shell out some more money and buy a new router.

The myth of India as a cheap country is, well, a myth. Nothing is ever cheap here. You have to pay 3, 5, 10 times to have things to work just fine. You have to call people, shout at people, accept the fact that service engineers will show up while you are having dinner only to fiddle around with a few cables. You have to know that whatever you buy will break, you will have to bring it back, try to get it repaired under warranty only to discover that the warranty was fake.

Best of luck to the people (the husband!)who are trying to develop business between India and the West.

Some pictures