Mushin-Sho

Senior endured the multiple health problems of the very old, the daily penances of bowel and urethra, of back and knee, the milkiness climbing in his eyes, the breathing troubles, the nightmares, the slow failing of the soft machine.––Rushdie

A running critique of American culture, one that has become a cliché, holds that Americans don’t value their elderly like people in the old world. The nuclear family being the standard unit of existence, the elderly are confined to retirement communities, nursing homes, or other rarely seen quarters. The elders, as an ideal old world would argue, are not to be treated this way; they are integral to the family as supplemental guides to both their children and grandchildren and should properly assume their post with the regal air proper to one with white hair.

Things are never that simple. The dignity of hard won wisdom decays slowly with the flesh; the beautiful wrinkles of a full life stiffen with the bones they cover; the mind slips and breaks hips irreparably.

I visited my ancestral home village, Sankapalli, and visited my dead grandfather’s younger brother. My grandfather was a police officer after independence before his eyes began to fail. His pension days were filled with reading, a task made less daunting by the numerous eye surgeries that his two doctor-daughters-in-America made possible. These daughters were the product of a union that emphasized education above all; in his last years, however, he wasn’t able to see those precious printed words.

And suddenly, here was his little brother honoring the dead sibling by wearing the same face. The resemblance was uncanny; my Mom noticed it first. He had recently suffered a series of minor strokes, suddenly going blank and falling flatly on the stone floor, distressing his wife. He stood waiting for his guests, us, to sit down first but took a seat on his family’s insistence. I sat directly in front of him and held his hand. They told him my name and asked if he remembered me. He tilted his head left and right: yes, he remembered.

My Telugu failed me miserably and my body tensed from the awkwardness. He couldn’t care. I looked at his downcast eyes as they floated through their milky paths and wondered when I too would be disconnected.

“Are you doing well?” I asked politely, trying to get a few words of him
“Yes”

And that was the end of that.

My mother asked him questions about his health: when was the last time he had fallen? Was he in any pain? Is he visiting his neighbors? Is he reading?

That was not my role. I was merely a grandson paying proper homage to an elder. What does one say to another who is dying? Whatever questions I wanted to ask were in a foreign tongue made worse by an incomprehensible accent. There was no need for a dialogue when presence sufficed, no need for questions when the final answer was so close, no need for a story about to end. I simply wanted to drink his aura and digest these final lessons.

People can die again. My grandfather will die again in his little brother. And again, his grandson will wonder if such a death is a punishment or a blessing.

I’ve just returned from Tirupati and the trip solidified an idea that was already coming together in my mind. I will never go there again. I will never visit another temple that has any kind of VIP Darshans. Period.

Because we are privileged and my aunt is a ranking government officer, she was able to get us special tickets to a puja my mother wanted to attend. This same access allowed us to receive Darshan twenty minutes after the puja and leave the Temple complex entirely within a few hours of getting there. A lot of rupees and connections were used to make this all happen.

My very privileged experience, indeed the easiest trip to Triupati I’ve ever had, is in stark contrast to what most people have to go through. Certainly, those with enough money, even without government contacts, will be afforded similar treatment. Most of the temple’s visitors, if the three-kilometer Darshan line is any evidence, have to wait all day, if not days, for a glimpse of an avatar’s stone image. The glimpse is only that, and even if one’s hands are clasped in prayer the guards on duty will angrily shove you through the congested line and yell for you to keep moving. As if there is nothing to see.

There are many among the throngs of people who bare this inequality with awesome devotion, starting waves of “Govinda, Gooovinda” chants, or repeating the name more quietly. There are many who are irritated, angry, push and shove their way forward. I can understand both, revere the former but identify with the latter. Save the setting, nothing about Tirupati strikes me as godly; I have no desire to worship inequality.

I ask my Mom mildy, “So what is so special about Tirupati? Did something holy happen here?”
“I don’t know,” she smiles slightly embarrassed, “it’s just a popular place.”
I ask my aunt the same question, hoping more from her sincere desire to be there.
“I don’t really know what the story is. I’m not sure,” she replies with a confused face.

Horrible Temple practices are enough to make me angry, but the blind adherence to those practices, affirming them with money and time, by educated people makes me furious. What is godly about uncritical attendance of pujas repeated mechanically by disinterested priests?

A more generous narration would attend to the sincerity of my family’s devotion, the serenity gained from being at the Temple, and their belief that real blessings have been gained. But I find this to be too generous. Those benefits of faith are nowhere evident. Instead, those family members who are quick to anger, wear perpetually annoyed faces, carry themselves humbly or too proudly continue to do so even while performing their devotions. Nothing changes. I am often too critical of my family but my criticisms usually center on the same issue, blindness: of critical questions, of self-critique, of learning better methods to achieve a goal, etc. I can’t see why they don’t see.

On a final note I’d like to say, especially for those who may be googling, that The Golden Temple of Sripuram is a spiritual shithole. This gigantic waste of time, space, money, and energy is a tourist destination and nothing more. There is even a “deluxe hotel” next to the temple (note the lower case ‘t’) that is built to look like a temple itself. Their desire to suck the money out of you while giving you a godly excuse is bold enough, but that they succeed is appalling.

Built to anticipate massive numbers of visitors, the line to the actual place of Darshan is almost two kilometers long and traces a star shaped path along lush gardens, which must be quite expensive to maintain in the South Indian heat. Fortunately, there are also stalls selling milk biscuits and water to the devotees. More obnoxious still, numerous signs posted along the way offer “wisdom”. These are little more than “spiritual” platitudes about creating good karma, being kind to others, the necessity of devotion, etc. Pick up a book of proverbs or two from any “Eastern” spiritual tradition and you will receive the same lessons; that is apparently what the self-aggrandizing toolbag of guru did. There are pictures of “Amma,” the aforementioned guru, that literally have him crowned, holding weapons associated with the gods of Hindu cosmology, wearing garlands, and being bathed in milk (again, a tradition reserved for idols). Of all the fake spiritual teachers and leaders I’ve heard about in India, this idiot gets the “blatantly-hypocritical-asshole-who-gives-spirituality-a-bad-name award.” Congrats.

God is a practice. Even without the grand narratives of religion, of which I’m not a fan, one can believe in the divine potential of human beings, of their ability to perform godly behaviors. I am thinking of both great spiritual figures in human history and those minor deities in all our lives whose passion, patience, kindness, or equanimity, inspire us to be better, to practice being divine humans.

We arrived at the Temple in our large car, were given access to a close parking spot reserved mostly for large, that is to say important, people, and out tumbled our large bodies round with American spare tires.

A man met us there, and said he had already arranged everything for us. We left our sandals in the car and walked on the hot, wet, stone dirtied by the march of people. After washing our feet, for symbolic reasons clearly, we walked into the Temple interior and met with a small heard of cows whose foreheads had been properly anointed with bottus and other colored powders. The holy cows were sanctified again at the temple. My uncle took the rope to one, and I was given the rope to another. I looked at her,  privately apologized for the weirdness of human behavior and asked for her patience during this ritual that I had never heard of or performed. (It is for good health). She tried to walk elsewhere and I pulled on the rope, shortening it to keep her close so that the little children wouldn’t be scared. She followed obediently.

We were to make a full circle of the Temple interior and my private, indeed telepathic, conversation with her continued. “You’re beautiful and certainly know this route better than I do, so lead the way.” She stayed slightly behind, as if to reinforce a hierarchy of species. I slowed down so that I was by her head. We turned a corner and I had to step carefully around the remnants of recently washed away dung that her partners blessed the Temple with. A slow pace. A serene expression in her eyes and, what I imagine must have been, a confused and slightly distant look in mine. I tug again to keep her moving and away from a snack of flowers she has discovered. Damn humans.

Returning to our starting point, I am told to place the rope’s hoop around an anchoring stone, which is also anointed with sacred powders and must be bowed to. I say goodbye and think, could swear that, she glances for one hopeful moment at me then turns and returns to snack finding.  I wonder what she hoped for?

My family and I are guided through a series of narrow corridors formed by temporary mental fencing. A guard opens a gate and we slip form the crowd and are taken to God’s abode from the side. We are to gaze at infinity askew. This is the V.I.P entrance given to those who can donate generously. One Darshan (the blessings gotten from glancing at a saint or his image) follows another and we barely interact with the other visitors. Small gates open to grant us front row visions. I’m baffled by the brazenness of this setup, and begin praying for greater equality among people. I’m not sure God heard me.

One can never just leave a Temple without sitting for a moment in the sacred space. We are guided to a thick carpet to enjoy our holy pause. No less than five priests are chanting divine words, led by a finely aged renunciant at whose feet we bow before leaving. Generous donations are given.

I’m wearing black shorts and white polo shirt, Ying-Yang colors. People stare at me and I feel like an ungodly space alien.

As we exit, I notice again a begging child, a beautiful little girl who is no more than five years old. She tugs at the saris and pant legs of strangers, none of whom miss a stride across the holy ground. I have no change, only 500 Rs ($12) notes that I am too tempted to hand over. I fail to do so. Beggar women outside gesture their need for food, all five fingers touching and reaching for the mouth with nothing but air.

We take some family pictures. I wonder if I should smile. And we drive away.

The central mistake I’m trying to avoid while being in and thinking about India concerns time, particularly Fabian’s “denial of coevalness.” Or, to paraphrase Conrad’s language from Heart of Darkness, to penetrate into the wilderness was to go back in time, back to the origins of the planet. The place you are exploring, then, does not exist at the same calendrical moment, but is rather what your own home must have looked like decades or centuries ago. This view is blind to the complexity of the globe, the false universalism of modernity and dislocates places from the present by rendering them “backward.”

My Athamma (maternal aunt) points to a large complex of buildings with small one room apartments and tells us––as we speed by in a (for India) luxury car––that these are government housing initiatives for the “backward classes.”

The hip clothing fashion here, as I said in a previous post, is mostly incongruous with a climate and, in my elitist view, a poor miming of Western dress. Middle and lower class men, especially in Karminagar (where I am right now), dress in 1970s fashion: bell bottoms that are tight at the thigh and flared at the bottom, shirts with wide collars and flared sleeves, in patterns that are dizzying and colors that rival the noon South Indian sun. But my language, and its underlying episteme, is wrong.

There are frequent power outages here. “Current poyindhi,” my relatives say. The electricity is gone. The electric current went away. The current, the present is elsewhere.  

I was going to write in detail about this moment, but found a YouTube video that will do the job better. This is DJ ZTrip paying homage to all that is Detroit, all the sounds that allowed everyone who performed at Movement, (including the douchebag who kept shouting "Chi-Town") to do what they do.

Hip-hop beats with drum kicks at Techno bass frequencies, scratching samples, Plastikman’s infamous Pakard track overlaid, LL Cool J mixed in, and some things that unfortunately don’t make the video: scratching that turns into pure noise and sounds like the wind, mixing in a lone "De Troit" that repeats, echos, fades and comes back; this was an pure and absolute Detroit moment; the sounds would simply not make sense in another space, and would certainly not be the final peak of a DJ set; an homage that deserves homage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxHylpVDgo

 

 

I was nearly in tears. For the rest of the festival, if a DJ didn’t make a gesture to acknowledge Detroit, to acknowledge that this post industrial wasteland gave birth to their sounds, he could fuck off.

A friend asked me if Hyderabad was exciting as it would be to her. Here is my reply:

India generally, and Hyderabad specifically, frustrates me a great deal. I’m attached to this place, mostly through childhood memories and a sense of gratitude for shaping some key early experiences, no matter how joyous or painful they may have been. I’m also deeply annoyed by the filth, congestion, disarray, lack of consistent electricity etc… Shopping malls have arrived here and my aunt and uncle were rather proudly showing us the sights. It’s the dawn of hyper-consumerism and thus, tacky, repulsive, aggravating to the senses and sensibilities. I know I sound like an elitist prick––something like Adorno’s critique of mass culture––but these are my feelings nonetheless.

Hyderabad and India don’t have the appeal of the exotic for me. It feels more like an outcast family member, a shameful thing that one still loves or is obliged to love. I’m hoping to change my sense of this place as I stay here longer.

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I bought and am reading Salman Rushdie’s Shame here, hoping to use him to think through Indian political history as well as my own troubled reactions to this place. The novel serves to remind me that powerful minds have sought to think through India’s political-cultural ethos, and I have arrived belatedly. Or rather, I have returned belatedly.

The stark contradictions are too easy to see. “Contradictions” is perhaps the wrong word, although it has the benefit of echoing Marxist critiques of capitalism.  But I’m not comfortable with it because it has the power of a quick explanation, an inner satisfaction that you have just made sense of what is before you. The feeling is intoxicating, and I’m addicted enough to enter the academy for it. “Contradictions,” I feel right now, simply doesn’t do justice to the incomprehensibility of it all.

What I’m looking at: Next to massive Western style shopping malls are small pan (not pawn, but pan, tobacco) shacks, motor bikes with five people on them including a few small children ride next to a new mass of small cars and some larger cars including BMWs and Benzs, while virtually all seem to ignore the amputated and age wrinkled beggars––they have developed city eyes––women in old saris bearing heavy loads are walking along the roads to god knows where, but the servant in our house may be a clue, because I’m sure she too walks to this place in our Colony.

A Resort: My Babbai and Pinni (paternal side aunt and uncle) decide to take us to a Rajastani Resort on the outskirts of the city; we just want to spend time with each other. “Resort” doesn’t mean what I thought it would mean; I mistranslated the term. This “Rajastani” space is a resort in the sense that Disneyland is a resort; it’s a theme park for the middle class and their little children. We arrive early and miss the official greeting of drums, a horn and a bottu (a red dot, but extended, so a streak between the eyebrows). My littlest cousin, who is also a little sister and on her way to becoming a doctor, keeps asking if I’m bored. I keep replying, “No,” that I find the whole place funny and entertaining (gumathgi unadhi); she’s not sure how to take this and I’m not entirely sure what I mean, except that it is the most honest reply I can give. At first, I take the place to be sincere, an attempt to replicate an authentic Rajastani village, complete with tree climbers (who, from high up, will surely have a view of the swimming pool), and buildings that are all trying too hard. But it’s so damn kitschy that I’m laughing, amused by its failed sincerity. Pinni says she wishes my Mom were there too. I agree, she would get a genuine kick out of this place. I think of my nephew Samarth and how much he would really enjoy running around this kid friendly space. And I’m having a weird brand of fun.

We watch a puppet show, where a drummer sings the narration while playing and the puppets dance the story. It’s a miniature spectacle. My sisters seem to get a kick out of it. Pinni feels bad for the workers who are just trying to make a living. Paapum.

The sun sets and, as my sisters promised, covers the resort’s defects. Lights come on and dimly illuminate pathways leading form one Rajastani moment to another. We attend a stage show, a summary of all the resort’s human performances, including puppet show, a few dance numbers, a magic show, and an M.C. who can also balance spinning wheels on his palm, head, foot and chin. The whole thing is impressively cheesy and strangely enjoyable.

As I recount this to my friend, she asks if the place was really sincere. I think about it twice and wonder if I have mistranslated again. I remember the bored and distant look on the workers’ faces, glancing elsewhere as they performed, a sincere glaze over their eyes as they repeated the act for the thousandth time. I wonder what roads their thoughts travel and if there is room for a few Benzs.

An Enclave: My Mom wants to see the “Financial District” and the surrounding new developments. We travel a different direction, away from Rajastan, but to another outskirts and pass a road that leads to the gated communities of multimillion-dollar (not rupees: current exchange rate is $1: 45 Rs) homes. The roads become narrow, bumpy and littered with lorries (trucks) that bump you into the dirt. Then the buildings come.

They are not that impressive at first, resembling too closely the same steel and concrete structures that are common to India. But soon we come upon a massive building, with a curved front and the beginnings of a green reflective glass skin. My brother is stunned and wants to get a picture; my Mammaya (maternal uncle) is worried that he may get arrested. I reply, arrogantly, that he would just have to show his passport (U.S citizen, I am not) to get his release and am answered, laughingly, that it will get him in more trouble. The sprawling Wipro compound is next. They used to make detergent when I was young, and still do apparently, but have expanded into many electronic ventures as well. Microsoft, Infosys, Franklin Templeton Investments, HSBC, UBS, and a bevy of other multi-nationals have or are setting up shop here. There is another financial building, for a company I’ve never heard of, which dwarfs the rest; I remark that the company may be trying to build an Asian, or at least South Asian, headquarters here.

Within fifty yards of each transnational temple is a shantytown for the workers building them, complete with a few pan shops. “And the contradiction,” I say as we drive up to one. Mammaya doesn’t understand what is surprising about this, and will remark later, after we look at the housing developments, that the menial laborers who will work there are sure to set up similar shantytowns all around. There is something happy about this because the wealthy will never succeed in convincing themselves that they are somewhere else besides India.

There are more multimillion-dollar homes to be constructed in this district, which, if the billboards are to be believed, eerily resemble the McMansions of Arizona or Southern California. Another massive housing enterprise will boast over ten towers of forty floors each, and four units on each floor. We pass through a gate manned by a man in a too traditional (and too black for the damned summer) guard’s uniform to visit some models. An agent shows us through demonstrating knowledge about this complex and details about every other development his parent company owns. The units are spacious enough but with odd annoyances like proportionally small kitchens and bathrooms, doors that open into storage spaces, oddly placed control units and other features that will drive the detail obsessed insane. After the rupee to dollar conversion, they were being sold for a reasonable (for the Western middle class) price.

We are shown a scale model of what the whole housing development will look like, including the numerous identical towers, massive courtyard complete with 35,000 sq ft clubhouse and its amenities. The agent is proud to note that the complex will span over twenty-six acres, include full shopping malls, “specialty and super-specialty” hospitals and a host of other things my immediate shock didn’t allow me to hear. The implication was rather clear; one wouldn’t have to leave the complex for most things, if anything. A bubble that would keep most of India outside, except when cleaning was required.

Outside the complex’s entrance, another pan shop.

 

If “contradiction” doesn’t do justice to the emotions such places evoke, perhaps another borrowed word from another foreign tongue will: aporia. Puzzlement, unresolved or irresolvable bafflement, a starting point to begin thinking and asking what is to be done? 

 

 

I’m in Hyderabad, which along with Bangalore has become shorthand for outsourcing. Thomas Friedman is a Jackass. That has nothing to do with my point, but he helped put these places on the map as boogie monsters challenging American supremacy.

On to the clichés: Overcrowded, polluted by toxic gasses and blaring horns, auto-rickshaws still battling in the streets with families on scooters and bikes (motorized and not), no real traffic laws except some bare logic of don’t hit and don’t get hit, no personal space either on the road or in public spaces––driving two inches from other vehicles is common place––people bumping into you like a natural barrier, idiot male machismo that won’t step out of the way even if they’re in the wrong––physically and during conversations––horrific miming of Euro-American male fashion that is totally inappropriate for the climate––seriously who wears a sweater vest over a dress shirt with a popped collar during the summer in India?––and tacky combinations that make the eyes hurt, tiny low powered cars that are trying to emulate Bentlys from Rap videos––an auto-rickshaw is not supposed to bump, although that was pretty cool––among many other oddities.

“Learn to queue you fucking savages.”

The people are so much smaller than me it’s crazy. I’m not very tall, am a bit stocky, but I’m at least a few inches taller than most and much thicker. I’ve unhappily developed an American spare tire, which my family is happy to point out.

I used to be looked at like a space alien, my NRI (non-resident Indian) status plainly obvious, but not so much now; a quick glance if anything, then they are moving on.

My two wonderful weeks in Munich were over, and because they were so rich with success, touching down at Detroit Metro Airport felt more like a crash landing. The two-week high, quickly reached and peaking at every moment, ended, and I needed an upper.

My nephew Samarth was the first person to teach me that one can kill out of love. As I frequently tell my students, after they have gained some insight into the processes of dehumanization that make violence possible, there is no one who would survive an intent to harm him. They wouldn’t walk again. I’ve studied martial arts for eight years, I tell my students, and continue to do so. But that is irrelevant. There is already a consensus, silent smiling head nods that sign off on the invisible ethical imperative. My students agree. We would kill.

Wayne State University, located in Detroit, accepts a wide range of students and the quaintly named “non-traditional” students. There are some who could attend any university in the world, but choose Wayne for financial, personal or even political reasons. There are others who can barely, if at all, write a complete sentence. Older students who have returned to school, voluntarily or because of a “restructured” economy, work full time and raise kids, are the first to understand the crudity of my nephew ethics. There is no need to explain further. And when I tell them that they have just glimpsed the ethical clarity of one who believes he kills out of love, for family, for country, the full force of the problem hits them. We sit for a moment wondering what to do.

When I returned my nephew, student and teacher, was in the suburbs of Detroit celebrating his little brother’s birthday with his doting grandmother. I was thrilled to see him. “Itchy,” says Samarth, squirming and giggling as I tickle him with a two-week old beard. And we’re off to play.

Back at my apartment later that night, the loneliness is staved off by a sticky sweet voicemail message.

I arrive back at Peddamummy’s house in time to play with Samarth alone before his own birthday party begins. We play soccer in the basement, but it quickly turns into a game of keep away. I don’t let him get the ball easily and when he does, I challenge him at every turn. He is smiling all the time. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily….

I want to teach him to be doggedly, happily, persistent.

Spiderman arrives. He gathers all the kids and leads them through games, dances and other shenanigans. I’m watching Samarth all the time and, although a bit confused, he’s really digging it. At least one kid is terrified of Spiderman and refuses to venture near the superhero’s suburban abode. The adults empathize; they’re weirded out too.

Spiderman begins a magic show just as I’m handed a video camera. Right on. I squat down between two cynical teenagers making fun of the show, quell the desire to punch them in the throat, and point the camera at my nephew. Nothing matters except his reactions. He’s delighted, genuinely surprised when an empty tube suddenly fills with candy, and asks his Mom if she too witnessed the moment of creation.

As things quiet down, I coordinate plans to head down to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, formerly called the DEMF, now Movement.