Bry's parting thoughts on India...

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A warning to anyone from the Indian Tourist Board... you won't enjoy the following comments. I'm also very aware that my reaction is based on a short time in a small part of a very large country so I don't pretend for a moment that what I'm about to write is in anyway balanced, it's just my honest reaction to my experiences there.

Tom and I are doing these entries blind, so we may repeat things, but we thought it would be interesting to do a summary completely independently to see how our thoughts differ, or not.

So, before I go onto the nitty gritty, here are a few observations along the way that haven't yet made it into the Blog elsewhere.

* Spitting It seems that it is customary in India to spit almost anywhere, anytime. It clearly isn't considered remotely rude and the more noise you can get behind hacking up the contents of your throat the better it seems. It gets pretty irritating after about ooh... five minutes.
* Reversing tunefully All vehicles seem to have been fitted with a reversing tune, somewhat akin to those highly naff musical door bells that were big in the eighties. Very strange.
* Noise India is by far the noisiest place I have ever been to. Any opportunity to add a little noise to proceedings and it is taken up with gusto. As with the tuneful reversing vehicles, every street vendor, stall, shop, bar, hawker has either a different shout or tune to offer, all competing for your attention. The transport hubs are manned by guys shouting the destinations of each bus or train incessantly, and the plethora of animals living on the streets add to the chorus with dogs howling and crows hacking. And that's not to mention the constant tooting of all the bikes, motorbikes, cars and rickshaws... a veritable assualt on the ears.
* Frilly dresses The thoroughly modern parent seems to have shunned the traditional clothes for their little girls in favour of the frilliest synthetic dresses a la American beauty pageant. It is quite surreal to see all the little girls looking like they're off to a party.
* Young fashion The trend amongst the fashionable young men is to wear the most rediculous pocketed and strappy jeans. Skinny cut with enormous and seemingly useless pockets and belts are de riguer.
* A clean shaven rebel The really trendy young men are asserting their independence by not sporting the otherwise mandatory Indian moustache.
* A eerie lack of teenage girls We met a number of teenage boys, indeed there seem to be large groups of them on every corner. However, sighting a teenage Indian girl was quite a rarity. On the beach in Fort Kochi I did ask a teenage lad where all the girls were, but he didn't seem to understand my point. I hope they are indoors somewhere rather than this being the hangover of a more sinister past in which female babies mysteriously disappeared... as there were plenty of female toddlers.
* Job creation Why have one person to do a job when three could do it? Well in an overpopulated country I suppose it makes sense to have one man selling a ticket, one man checking a ticket ad another tearing it in half... but it does rather slow things down. The worst example of job creation has to be the 'pay and use' toilets. Usually costing about 1 or 2 rupees a time, the toilets are universally disgusting and have never seen the slightest whiff of a mop or cleaning materials so it would seem that the fee simply goes to cover the cost of having someone sit there to take a fee!
* A woman's work We saw plenty of women navvies, builders, crop pickers and beggars but a female waiter or maid, or any serving role was very rare indeed. Now, I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't do these jobs, it just seems that the men seem to get the much easier options. A few in the shops. Now, this may sound sexist... (and my Dad aside) I'm yet to meet a man who can really see dirt... which might explain why the rooms we stayed in were typically pretty foul. Thankfully I don't suffer from OCD, but India very nearly brought it on. The urge to clean every room from top to bottom, getting a toothbrush into the corners, was overwhelming at times. I only gave into the urge once in Varkala... but then we had fully sprayed the bathroom with our vomit so I thought it was only fair to give it a thorough scrub as I was damned sure the staff weren't going to.
* Litter It would seem that India is fast turning into one large landfill site. The litter is quite incredible. I doubt they actually create more rubbish than us, we're just better at hiding it I suppose. There was nowehere, except for the Ooty hills, that wasn't covered in rubbish. We should have got some better photos to really show you what we mean, but if you imagine London after about a month of no rubbish collections you'll probably get the idea. They create little roadside bonfires to keep it down a little, which leaves a lovely aroma of burning plastic in the air, which temporarily masks the smell of raw sewage I suppose.
* Colour Finally, something positive! The colour is amazing. If they can paint it or decorate it they usually will. Every lorry and rickshaw was vividly decorated, usually in either a Hindu or Christian theme. The goods lorries remind me of the 'Playbus' kids tv programme.
* Scams We did alright on this one, I think! (Assuming our furntiure actually arrives!) We did pay over the odds for a couple of rickshaw rides and some stuff on the beach in Goa, but not unknowingly. I know we're not meant to falsely skew the economy in this way, but when you know its the difference of pence to you and a meal to them it is really hard not to.

So... onto my feelings about the place. All in all, I'd say disgusted. The inequality is palpable and the caste system is deplorable. To see the 9km of slums in Mumbai and the children begging to survive was truly heart-breaking. I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of seeing mile upon mile of slum housing set against the backbrop of Mumbai's office buildings. It almost seems as if the natives have become blind to it, or numb to it. One of Gandhi's great hopes was that independence would restore dignity to India's poor and that the 'untouchables' would become but a memory. He would be sorely dissappionted. The current furore over the racist comments on Big Brother is laughable... to imagine that a country's news can be dominated by the words of Jade Goody whilst ignoring the sheer destituion of millions of its people is sad beyond words.

So... did I enjoy my time in India?
I'm not sure enjoy would be the word, it was interesting certainly. Isn't there a Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times'? I'm glad I went and I hope to recall these feeling anytime I feel even the slightest bit sorry for myself.

Will I go back?
Almost certainly. We've seen such a small part of such a large country and I am intrigued to see what the 21st Century holds.

My final comment is to recognise the huge hipocrasy in all I've said considering the imminent trip to Hoi An where I will spend more on clothes than many Indians will earn in a lifetime and that I am set to return to a life or luxury in a democratic country... although I hope more humble and more supportive of the charities doing something about these things. Indeed, I think any UK charity will struggle to get any money from me when poverty of this kind exists elsewhere our domestic problems really do seem totally trivial!

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