In summary

India was amazing. It was just as I had been told, read, seen on TV and so on but quite different to what I expected; a physical experience (noise, reactions of and interactions with people, smells and other sensations) rather than an intellectual appreciation.

Photo: Elephant in the Street
In the street in Udaipur

I've been all over Europe, N America, the UAE, China, Morocco, Turkey, Malta, NZ, PNG and various pacific islands but of these only Morocco is remotely like India in terms of poverty (over 20%), population growth (largest country in the world within 20 years – and already so by a good margin if you take in pre 1947 India) terrible treatment of women (in some areas and castes) and environmental destruction.

The main differences are that while the environment is even more degraded, Morocco lacks cows and deliberately (uniformly) maimed beggars; and is cleaner, more honest with strangers and better organised - due to Islam? In Rajasthan, where you still hear 'the call to prayer'. India is perceptibly better organised (but not much cleaner).

Photo: Morocco
In the Souk Marrakech Morocco

Unlike Morocco, where the food (even from street stalls) is excellent; the common person India has possibly the worst food in the world - only chicken or 'mutton' or vegetable stew (that all look much the same) and rice - covered by the excessive use of chilli and 'curry' (whatever that contains). As I am quite allergic to chilli I had to be very careful and thus largely avoided the ‘delhi belly’ suffered by others. But there are fresh fruit and vegetables (not bad) for those who can afford them and commercial drinks and confectionery and cigarettes are very cheap.

Most hotels for the higher castes and tourists have a good continental breakfast and a reasonable and relatively inexpensive restaurant serving westernised dishes, so I didn’t starve.

A few international restaurants can be found in Mumbai or New Delhi (eg serving venison, duck, lobster, quail, shellfish, edible fish etc) but then you pay much the same price as here for the food; and a lot more for the wine. These are not for the average Indian. We had my birthday dinner at Indigo (duck, quail and even beef!); very nice but expensive.

There are also a few physical places and districts more or less reserved for the Indian upper classes, business or government (like parts of Mumbai, New Delhi and Shimla) where the public spaces are relatively clean and well run - if a little shabby up close (Katoombaesque) where the Indian food is either less (or more?) authentic; but edible.

Except for recent concrete and glass constructions in business areas (commercial offices and hotels) and infrastructure in economic growth areas (like the Delhi Metro and airports) most substantial structures (public buildings, palaces, forts, monuments etc) are generally left over from the Raj or even the Moguls (like the Taj Mahal) and now sometimes a little worse for wear.

You know where

Yet on the whole, and throughout, I found India enormously stimulating.

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Travel

Southern France

Touring in the South of France

September 2014

Lyon

Off the plane we are welcomed by a warm Autumn day in the south of France. Fragrant and green.

Lyon is the first step on our short stay in Southern France, touring in leisurely hops by car, down the Rhône valley from Lyon to Avignon and then to Aix and Nice with various stops along the way.

Months earlier I’d booked a car from Lyon Airport to be dropped off at Nice Airport. I’d tried booking town centre to town centre but there was nothing available.

This meant I got to drive an unfamiliar car, with no gearstick or ignition switch and various other novel idiosyncrasies, ‘straight off the plane’. But I managed to work it out and we got to see the countryside between the airport and the city and quite a bit of the outer suburbs at our own pace. Fortunately we had ‘Madam Butterfly’ with us (more of her later) else we could never have reached our hotel through the maze of one way streets.

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Book of Mormon

Back in the mid 1960's when I was at university and still living at home with my parents in Thornleigh, two dark suited, white shirted, dark tied, earnest young men, fresh from the United States, appeared at our door.

Having discovered that they weren't from IBM my mother was all for shooing them away. But I was taking an interest in philosophy and psychology and here were two interesting examples of religious fervour.

As I often have with similar missionaries (see: Daniel, the Jehovah’s Witness in Easter on this Website), I invited them in and they were very pleased to tell me about their book. I remember them poised on the front of our couch, not daring or willing to sit back in comfort, as they eagerly told me about their revelation.

And so it came to pass that a week ago when we travelled to Melbourne to stay with my step-son Lachlan and his family and to see the musical: The Book of Mormon I was immediately taken back to 1964.

Opinions and Philosophy

The reputation of nuclear power

One night of at the end of March in 1979 we went to a party in Queens. Brenda, my first wife, is an artist and was painting and studying in New York. Our friends included many of the younger artists working in New York at the time. That day it had just been announced that there was a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor at a place called a Three Mile Island , near Harrisburg Pennsylvania.

I was amazed that some people at the party were excitedly imagining that the scenario in the just released film ‘The China Syndrome’ was about to be realised; and thousands of people would be killed.

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