Welcome to Incredible India!

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

I tried looking out the dusty window to get a look at–what I assumed–was a beautiful scenery, and not just a row of terribly made houses of various proportions. I shifted the weight of the bag to my other leg. There wasn’t any available space for me to put my luggage in the overhead compartment because by the time I reached the train all the empty slots had been occupied by bags belonging to my fellow passengers. Not one to cause any trouble or let such small incidents ruin my adventurous mood, I busied myself with trying to breathe in the atmosphere. It smelt like a communal toilet at an all-male college hostel, but, that is part of the charm of travelling by a train in India.

My mouth watered as I saw the steward distributing trays with packed goodies. The food was here! Finally, some relief for my famished stomach. As he threw the tray at my wobbly, make-shift table with the grace of an orphanage warden from a Charles Dickens novel distributing grub to his most hated wards, I shook my head at this endearing show of familiarity. I took one bite of the unrivalled delicacies placed in front of me and let out a contented sigh. It tasted like it came from home. Specifically, an old people’s home. Because it didn’t have any salt, grain, texture, flavour, or any other qualities that would let us classify it as an item fit for consumption by a living being of any species. As they say, that’s how the cookie crumbles. Or at least I thought that was a cookie?

* * *

Once upon a time, around the early aughts of the current century, the ancients used to share their thoughts with the rest of the world by what a majority of people referred to as ‘a blog.’ Short for weblog, this was quite a popular enterprise for a lot of people: parents wanting to share their experience with other parents, those with a lot of proverbial skeletons in their cupboard looking for an outlet, writers wanting to practice their craft, bar drunks looking for an audience to rant to, people willing to rally against conventional wisdom and those who felt that a certain point of view was being ignored by the mainstream media. The best way to identify a blog run by a person of Indian origin was to look at its title. If it contained either “random” or “confessions” or a Vedic reference, then there was a very high probability of that blog having at least some connection to the subcontinent. 

One of the most frequent occurrences on these blogs (and a meme that is still strangely popular on twitter) was nostalgic posts romanticizing the travel industry in the country. The beautiful sights! The amazing journey! The awkward moment when you realize that you’ve been had!

Travelling to our country is not for those who give up easily. We like to make everything much more difficult to accomplish! Trying to book a train ticket using the Indian Railways website is harder than trying to master bullfighting. The government sites that are supposed to provide information look like their developer hired a time travelling teenager visiting us from the 90’s who is colour blind and has only read the first chapter of ‘The World Wide Web for Dummies’ instruction manual to make them.

Not that privatising everything solves any problem. Most popular destinations now have more food courts than actual visitors. Private resorts think that adding a fancy Urdu word to the end of each menu item raises its value by at least a thousand percent. Try our Singaporean Fried Rice Zafarani, a bowel moment stopping exotic blend of two unique food cultures. Our Chicken Khwabgah has been marinated with flavoured yogurt and slowly roasted over a pit heated by the burning embers of the hopes and dreams that you had for your first born which disappeared the minute you realized that you spent all the money that you had been saving for their college education to pay your bill at our hotel. The mineral water being served with your meal was extracted from the bladder of a unicorn then injected with the weird liquid that turns even those sugar pills homeopathic quacks hand out bitter and then sprinkled with the bacteria living in the hands of your designated server.

Safety isn’t really an issue in our country in that most people don’t have any. Flying with our ‘national airline’ is like playing Russian roulette with five bullets instead of one. Our highways are like storage units for potholes. Most of our public facilities are so unclean that some of them probably still have strains of the smallpox virus embedded in them.

We’re also quite friendly to folks who are not like us. The majority of the people of this country are very accepting of those who are different. That is why they don’t stare and make the visitors feel uncomfortable at all. They don’t even treat them like exotic objects flown in for us to admire or treat with disdain depending on the pigmentation of their skin.

The whole tourism industry seems to be built on fleecing people. From the service providers responsible for transportation, to the officials who deliberately misguide those whom they are supposed to be providing help to, everyone is in on the take. Hey, this person is naive enough to trust us. Let’s stiff them for all they’ve got! In fact, getting fleeced is one of the most essential parts of your experience. Your vacation in India isn’t a success unless you’ve been overcharged, cheated, duped, misled, or taken for a ride at least once.

Now, please excuse me as I try to convince this American billionaire I ran into that he can legally lease the Taj Mahal.

How to be a Real Tourist

(This first appeared in the Sunday Guardian)

Do you like to travel? If you do, then have you ever made a whole bunch of your fellow travellers uncomfortable with your cringe inducing presence? Have you ever improved the quality of a tourist spot just by leaving it? Do you have that application on Facebook which shows the various cities and countries that you have travelled to? If your answer to any or all of the above questions is a loud no, then ladies and gentlemen, consider this an intervention. Clearly, you’ve been missing out. And as a concerned citizen, I consider it my patriotic duty to help you correct that.

First things first. If you’re using public transportation to get to your destination, remember that you paid good money for your ticket. So you better avail every service that they provide. For starters, you should charge all your electronic items on the train. That’s what they’re there for! You should monopolize all the electronic sockets near your seat for as long as your journey lasts. Other people should’ve planned ahead. Why didn’t those moochers charge their cheap tablet at home anyway? Also, grab every food or beverage they serve you. Even if you’re not either hungry or thirsty. Even if it looks like it carries a thousand diseases. Don’t be one of those hippies who don’t take things that they’re legally entitled to because they don’t feel like it. The service providers probably expect you to take those sachets of sugar or those cheap headphones with you anyway. Why add extra work for the staff by leaving things behind?

Then, as soon as you are a few minutes away from the end of your journey, stand in the aisle with all your luggage so that you're ready to get down the second the blurry visuals passing by vaguely resemble your destination. Remember, it’s a race! Whoever leaves first wins! Even if it’s only the satisfaction of leaving a claustrophobic confines of a public transportation vessel a few minutes before the rest of your fellow passengers. Don’t wait for your mode of transport to slow down before you start taking down your luggage from the overhead compartment. It’s always safer to do it while trying to stand still in an object moving at a high speed! You’re not liable to fall down or cause injury to other people at all. The laws of motion, like other laws you don’t care about, were meant to be broken.

Further, always haggle with the porter for cheaper rates. They expect you do it. Even if it is in a foreign country where they don’t include the possibility of bargaining in their pricing strategies. Hey, if those who survive on minimum wage want to scam you for your money, why don’t they open a fancy resort like normal people? This is why you also never tip at restaurants. You’re not going to show up at this place again anyway, so why reward good service?

Don’t forget to take pictures of everything, so that many years later you can remember the time when you were present to see this awesome sight befolding in front of you and you were taking a picture so that you could enjoy the experience later. Even if you’re never going to look at any of these photos again! A grainy cellphone picture is always better than actually being there. You should even take pictures of museum items like old paintings. Sure, the light from the flash in your camera might damage them, and you can buy a replica at the souvenir store, but why should you be forced to buy something which the shitty camera in your phone can record for free?

Your experience is not going to be complete without sharing your pictures with a few thousand of your closest friends on social media. It’s the modern version of the classic ‘wish you were here!’ postcard. Except more passive-aggressive and self-aggrandising. You could be a little subtle and let the location tags in your pictures and tweets reveal where you really are. Or you could go all guns blazing like a real townie and let everybody know where you really are by talking about your existential experience at a famous landmark.

When you’re looking for food to eat, always look for something familiar. You didn’t come all this way to try something new! Who does that? Look for a restaurant serving your native cuisine or a local franchise of a fast food chain. Most of the time time the food will taste very different from what you’re used to. This will give you a great opportunity to feel superior and talk about your travels when you’re back home. Oh, I couldn’t find a decent portion of butter chicken anywhere in Florence! Even a rodent could whip up a more edible casserole of Ratatouille than what they serve in Kanpur!

Now that you’re armed with these tips, go forth and see the world. Don’t let silly things like “common courtesy” or “the opinion of other people” bother you. 

After all, they still don’t allow Yelp reviews of individual tourists.

Adventures in Real India: Visiting the Wagah Border

Ever since Dear Leader Rahul Gandhi said something about there being two India’s, I’ve always been wondered about the second India. Was he talking metaphysically? Was he going all Philip K Dick on us and talking about an India which exists in a parallel universe, where the grass is green and even the boys are pretty? Nobody had answers to these questions. So, to solve this huge mystery, I put on my cap, stuffed a few clothes into a backpack, got into the car and started driving to an unknown destination. (Not really. I don’t wear caps, my trip was pre-planned and I took a plane. And had to pay for extra luggage. But, hey, the truth doesn’t always sound romantic).

So there I was, in the heart of Real India, (I don’t really know what is really the heart of Real India. Only Generalissimo Gandhi knows that. But this is usually how one begins such pieces, so bear with me.), Amritsar. I hadn’t been to Punjab before. but coming from Delhi, I thought I could handle Punjab. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Punjab. Butter chicken, bhangra music and Harbhajan Singh. What else is there to know? But no, there is so much more to Punjab. There is also Butter Nan, Meethi Lassi and Harbhajan Mann. I was accompanied on the trip by a Mallu friend from Bangalore. Who, for the record, couldn’t stop complaining. You know how those Madrasis are. (Yes, yes, we get it. Everyone in North India is rude and doesn’t understand rules and regulations. Pfft! Rules and regulations are for people who cannot beat other people up and buy their way out of jail!). I guess this is why the Aryans must have driven all the Madrasis down South in ancient times. Because of the constant whining! Sheesh!

Anyway, what’s with the food in Amritsar? I had lunch one day and wasn’t hungry for the next whole week. I thought Italian food was heavy, but it’s got nothing on Amritsari food. Seriously, if there is a solution to world hunger, I’m pretty sure it lies in Amritsar.

While I was in Amritsar, I was also scheduled to go to the Wagah Border. I wasn’t particularly interested in going there because patriotism bores me. If I wanted to hear people lose their shit over a worthless cause, I’d watch a match featuring the Indian cricket team. I said I would go, but only if we could get the good seats. Not the nosebleed seats with the rest of them. I was ready to embrace real India and everything, provided I didn’t have to come into contact with it’s inhabitants. I didn’t want to try too many things at the same time, like a small town resident visiting a mall in a big city for the first time.

However, my socialist Madrasi friend was feeling let down. Since he is a unpretentious prick man of the people, he wanted to sit among the nosebleed seats. (Abeyaar, what do they feed you down South? Do they grate the communist manifesto into your dosas? Leave the communism to the Bengalis. That’s all they’ve got anyway. The thing is, if we can’t use money to decide the importance of people, the whole world will be thrown into chaos!)

So we get ready and head towards the border. The drive is a good one. The scenery was decent, but I was expecting something more Yash Rajesque. The government should look into that. Well, even though it could not hold up to the production values of a Yash Raj movie, I was quite enjoying the scenery. Until my driver/handler (Oh yes! I had a handler. SUCK ON THAT, POOR PEOPLE!) told me that some of it was Pakistan. Now I am as tolerant as the next person, but suddenly the grass on the Pakistani side started looking evil and gave off bad vibes. Like it wanted to assassinate me or something. Typical!

When we reached our destination, we were allowed to take our car a kilometre or two closer to the border than the riffraff general public (Obligatory #LikeABoss). But I had to still make the supreme patriotic sacrifice and had to walk a little. Whilst we entered through the VVIP entrance, we found out that our seats had already been taken up. Apparently, some asshole minister showed up with extra members of his asshole contingent. Can you believe how entitled these people are? They think they can just waltz in with their power and government contacts and expect to be given special treatment. What kind of a sociopath does that?

To the delight of my pinko commie friend, we were then led to the semi-nosebleed section. I tried to protest, but the loud music drowned out  everything I said, just like when the sage old family senior at a Punjabi wedding tries to convince all the dancing members of the groom’s party to stop dancing and come inside the wedding hall and is drowned out by the sound of the band. Finally, the Yash Raj fantasy was coming true! People were dancing, without any reason whatsoever! However, the dancing was like an episode of Glee, if Glee were choreographed by a blind guy with no legs who is also mute and cannot move his hands.

 

For a moment, I was lost in the fanfare. About three hundred people who didn’t know each other were “dancing” next to each other, while another ten thousand other were singing along. We sat there looking at people doing what can only be described as moving their bodies in a weird fashion, while they played every bollywood song even remotely related to patriotism. I think they use the same set of songs at concerts for NRI’s. It seemed strange for someone like me to see all these people, most of whom don’t know each other (I’m assuming. Unless of course, they were all part of a small punjabi wedding party), enjoying the moment together. It was like their differences didn’t exist and just being at the same place at the same time was enough reason to bond. This usually only happens during college fests in Delhi or at an Osho commune.

Suddenly, they played Jai Ho and my bubble burst. Of course this song got the most applause. Of course even the white people jumped in to dance with the natives. Apparently, along with the cellular network, even irony did not exist here because nobody else seemed bothered that the song of a British movie got the biggest pop at the India-Pakistan border. I could imagine the G4 freedom fighters, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel & Bose looking down from freedom fighter heaven, shaking their head and going “We did all that for these assholes?”

Anyway, unbeknownst to me, the ceremony was about to get even more ridiculous. The dancing was followed by shouting. The MC of the event made it clear that we could only shout positive slogans, as part of the new confidence building measures. But that didn’t stop him from pointing us to VIOLENTLY VOMIT OUR SLOGANS in the general direction of Pakistan.

I only briefly looked at the Pakistani side, but it had a look of sadness and despair. Kind of like a metaphor for the whole country. The men and women were sitting separately. When their MC was encouraging them to VIOLENTLY VOMIT SLOGANS in the general direction of India, he didn’t sound like he believed those slogans himself.  It was really transparent that they were written by a quixotic Pakistani government bureaucrat who was serving in the army during the 1971 war. And really, those slogans were even sadder than the whole atmosphere in that place. That’s because during partition, all the best slogans representing the independence movement were taken by India. Wow, whoever our lawyer was during that time, he was one crafty sumbitch! Not only did we get the best of everything, we stuck them with Balochistan! I bet the hardest part must have been trying to make them believe that we actually wanted to keep the Frontier provinces. Jinnah was such a n00b! Governor General Smoking Skull got pwned by Prime Minister Horny McEdwinaPants!

Before all the shouting commences, they play the battle cry theme song from the Mahabharatha teevee program (I’m guessing Daft Punk wasn’t available?), because nothing signifies futile battles like the Mahabharatha. So first, the crowd shouts, then some of the soldiers pull a Shankar Mahadevan and shout the word “OH” for a really long time without taking a breather. Then the crowd applauds them and shouts some more slogans. Then some of the soldiers march towards the gate, while making their feet walk like an Egyptian. Which the crowd applauds and this continues for a while.

All the shouting and applauding presents us with really strange moments.. Like there was this group berating those of us who were mute spectators to the festivities for our lack of patriotism. They were obviously from Bombay. Then there was this group which kept shouting Inquialab Zindabad. Because, really why the fuck not? It’s been sixty three years since the British left, but, whatever, JUST IN CASE THEY LEFT SOMEONE BEHIND! Better safe than sorry!

Then, after what it seems like forever, they take down the flag, and fold it in the prim and propah gay military technique and take it to for safekeeping in the flag(?) house until it’s put back up on the flag pole again at daybreak.

And then everybody gets up to go. But first, only the white people are allowed to leave. That rule must be there to remind everybody how it must have been like before the country got independence. I almost shouted “SIMON GO BACK!”.

Damn, patriotism can be so infectious!