One of my favourite comic books is Asterix in Switzerland, in which all the Swiss characters have neat ginger moustaches and wander about with cleaning implements, dusting off everything including the people they're talking to. On my first visit in six years to this notoriously clean country, I'm happy to report that it remains spotless despite the influx of Bollywood film stars and crews (long ago my mother saw Karishma Kapoor sitting in the middle of the road in Montreux, eating chappatis that were being heated beside her on a little portable stove).
Switzerland is the sort of place where everyone is in bed by 10pm. Euro 2008 is happening here, of course, but the most I've seen of it is the odd little sticker saying 'Allez les Bleus!'. The matches must have television audiences, but they're extremely quiet, at least in the little villages of Blonay and St. Légier, which overlook the inverted blue smile of water that is Lac Léman, a.k.a. Lake Geneva, and which look up at the jagged snowy range called the Dents du Midi that hangs suspended in the clouds like a toothy grin.
Of all the things you might expect to see on Lake Geneva—sailboats, swans, swimmers, the odd subversive cigarette butt—possibly the last is a fifteen foot high metal fork standing tines down in the water at the Quai Perdonnet in Vevey. This is the Alimentarium, the Food Museum, before whose entrance they grow twenty types of potato including two blue varieties, and celery, and Quinoa grain. Any questions about where the Alimentarium gets its funding are answered when you walk into the lobby, which is overhung by a vast mobile of food products from Nestle, which is also headquartered in Vevey.
A walk through encompasses the history of food, eating and and renouncing it, interesting taste and smell tests, cooking workshops, the history of chocolate, and the constituents of a balanced diet (which, for reasons I just can't think of, include three cups of coffee a day). One of my favourite items on display is a loaf of bread baked during the famine of 1817. It's half the size of my thumb.
Emerging from the Alimentarium, I decided to sit in the sun on one of the chairs that some clever designer has embedded in the rocks beside the lake. Three people next to me on similar chairs were discussing the menu for a birthday party. One of them said, in rough translation, "Love has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing, but still, come on." It was impressive by the standards of casual conversation and by the lights of the thought I'd just had, which was "Man, my toe hurts." Perhaps being in these lovely surroundings a little longer would have improved the quality of my thinking; after all, just a little further up, the same lakeside path becomes the Chemin Fleuri, where Rousseau once walked.
Food has been a large part of my Swiss experience this time, if you discount the truly dismal servings on Swiss airlines—from a three hour fondue lunch in Geneva's Old Town, to the seafood paella I had during a cooking competition held between several Swiss cantons at the weekly Place du Marché farmer's market in Vevey, to the bread, cheese, meat and wine affairs that constitute most normal lunches and dinners. I expect that when my airplane lands in Delhi next week it will be with a slightly harder bump. I have this dream that suddenly Delhi's markets will fill with fragrant fresh breads and cheeses and the terrific wines of the Valais, all at wonderfully reasonable prices; but I might, as they say, be living in cuckooland.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Uncivil society
Indians are notoriously good at slagging each other off but taking offence when someone else does. I’ve recently been having conversations with foreigners new to Delhi who talk about the lack of civic sense, and I’ve noticed that Indians in the conversation tend to react badly, accusing outsiders of overreacting, or parrying their observations with irrelevant remarks about what a great ancient culture we are, or (worse) how it’s the same everywhere else, or (even worse) what an economic powerhouse we are.
It’s happened to me. When I moved back to Delhi in 1995, I remember having a conversation with a young lady to whom I was introduced at a party, who raised her threaded eyebrows at me and said, “So, what’s up? How do you like Delhi?” Being earnest and not well schooled in the ways of small talk, I told her. “Well, the thing is that nobody seems to have any civic sense in this city.” Her polite smile became rather strained. “When people throw something away, they just drop it right where they’re standing,” I continued. “Or they chuck it out of their car right onto the road!”
Today it wouldn’t really surprise me that her eyes glazed over and she walked away to another corner and studiously avoided me the rest of the evening, but at the time it did. At the time, I just wondered whether she agreed, or disagreed, and either way, why she didn’t seem to have anything to say about it.
But the truth is that there are only two possible ways to live in Delhi: either you insulate yourself from the daily frustrations and eyesores and injustices by erecting what Douglas Adams would call a Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP) field; or by being daily bloodied, and having your sunny temperament shot to bits, by the same frustrations and eyesores and injustices. The people who don’t think Delhi’s non-existent civic sense is a big deal, tend to be people who are insulated from it by a rich layer of money, and armies of people who engage with the city and its denizens on their behalf.
Or they’re perpetrators themselves, like the older gentleman who squeezed his large car in front of mine at a petrol station tire pressure station. I marshalled my courage, got out of my car, and marched up to him. “There’s a line here,” I told him. “Oh, I didn’t see it,” he bellowed, invoking the marketing principle that if you say something loudly enough, other people with mistake it for the truth. “I think you’re incredibly rude,” I croaked, which made him sneer so hard that I was afraid he might inhale his lips.
Reading about the renewed drive to get beggars off the street in time for the Commonwealth Games, I can’t help but wonder what they’re going to do about the other sorts of eyesore. Like the fat hairy fellow with jewelled rings leaning out of his Mercedes to spit paan; or the householder who speaks to his or her domestic staff as if they’re naughty children—or speaks about them in their presence but in English, on the assumption that they won’t understand; or the person who jumps a queue without a shred of hesitation; or the driver who barges up to the top of a driving lane waiting to turn without worrying about the lanes of traffic being blocked behind. And that’s not even getting into the murders and thieving, from petty break-and-enter to the corporate and political crème-de-la-crème.
There is a school of thought that says that it isn’t productive to focus on this sort of thing—why ruin your peace of mind? To which my own response is, I hope I never find myself untouched by it.
It’s happened to me. When I moved back to Delhi in 1995, I remember having a conversation with a young lady to whom I was introduced at a party, who raised her threaded eyebrows at me and said, “So, what’s up? How do you like Delhi?” Being earnest and not well schooled in the ways of small talk, I told her. “Well, the thing is that nobody seems to have any civic sense in this city.” Her polite smile became rather strained. “When people throw something away, they just drop it right where they’re standing,” I continued. “Or they chuck it out of their car right onto the road!”
Today it wouldn’t really surprise me that her eyes glazed over and she walked away to another corner and studiously avoided me the rest of the evening, but at the time it did. At the time, I just wondered whether she agreed, or disagreed, and either way, why she didn’t seem to have anything to say about it.
But the truth is that there are only two possible ways to live in Delhi: either you insulate yourself from the daily frustrations and eyesores and injustices by erecting what Douglas Adams would call a Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP) field; or by being daily bloodied, and having your sunny temperament shot to bits, by the same frustrations and eyesores and injustices. The people who don’t think Delhi’s non-existent civic sense is a big deal, tend to be people who are insulated from it by a rich layer of money, and armies of people who engage with the city and its denizens on their behalf.
Or they’re perpetrators themselves, like the older gentleman who squeezed his large car in front of mine at a petrol station tire pressure station. I marshalled my courage, got out of my car, and marched up to him. “There’s a line here,” I told him. “Oh, I didn’t see it,” he bellowed, invoking the marketing principle that if you say something loudly enough, other people with mistake it for the truth. “I think you’re incredibly rude,” I croaked, which made him sneer so hard that I was afraid he might inhale his lips.
Reading about the renewed drive to get beggars off the street in time for the Commonwealth Games, I can’t help but wonder what they’re going to do about the other sorts of eyesore. Like the fat hairy fellow with jewelled rings leaning out of his Mercedes to spit paan; or the householder who speaks to his or her domestic staff as if they’re naughty children—or speaks about them in their presence but in English, on the assumption that they won’t understand; or the person who jumps a queue without a shred of hesitation; or the driver who barges up to the top of a driving lane waiting to turn without worrying about the lanes of traffic being blocked behind. And that’s not even getting into the murders and thieving, from petty break-and-enter to the corporate and political crème-de-la-crème.
There is a school of thought that says that it isn’t productive to focus on this sort of thing—why ruin your peace of mind? To which my own response is, I hope I never find myself untouched by it.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Cricket who?
I’ve been dimly aware, recently, of people in big sunglasses being excitable on TV and photographed either weeping or celebrating in the newspapers, and of a fair bit of running about in different coloured shirts. “What’s this IPL thing?” I asked a friend of mine on the phone. There was a long silence. “Are you serious?” he said finally, and I could have sworn there was a little sob in his voice. “I know it’s some cricket thing,” I said, guessing wildly, “I’m just not sure what.”
His trembling voice might have been on account of disappointment in me, or exhilaration at being presented with a bonus opportunity to talk about it. Either way, he launched into a happy jabbering full of words like ‘franchise’ and ‘league’ and ‘carnival atmosphere’ and ‘the future of cricket’—I could almost see him pushing up his big sunglasses—while my brain wandered off in search of words that rhyme with ‘purple’ (there aren’t any).
When he seemed to be done I said, “Hm, you’re right,” which usually covers all the bases, and deftly steered him into his favourite game of which movie star do you like-which movie star do you like. At the risk of being arrested for lack of patriotism, I must state that when it comes to cricket, I can take it or leave it.
This wasn’t always the case—I watched Bodyline as a teenager and loved it, though that had more to do with the pathos of watching women hanging up endless quantities of laundry on washing lines in cold northern mists, and moody cinematography.
In boarding school, where the boys in my class played cricket every weekend, a friend of mine took me on as a personal challenge. “The proper way to watch cricket,” he said, “is to bring a blanket, and a kettle of tea, and a book.” He sat with me in the shade of a tree and explained the rules of a game in progress on the school football field. I didn’t get all of it, and I got through a fair bit of my book and the entire teakettle, but it was enough to kindle my interest. I eventually reached a stage when I would open a beer and watch a game with more than the legal minimum level of enthusiasm. But now, frankly, I’d rather just drink the beer.
So a true fan would consider it a criminal waste that I recently had the opportunity to wander around the Bradman Museum, dedicated to the great Sir Donald (I did gather, in between bouts of Bodyline laundry, that he was a legendary player). The museum is in Bowral, the genteel little town in which he grew up, in Australia’s beautiful Southern Highlands area north of Sydney. It is attached to the neat Bradman Oval (really more of a Circle) overlooked by a pretty mountain, and features a statue of the great man in cricket gear. They’re very pleased to point out that the sculptor mistakenly has both pads buckled up on the same side, a fact that you’d have to be much more interested in cricket than I am, to be moved by.
I have to say, however, that I quite enjoyed the museum: it has a replica of the startlingly small Ashes urn, and many old photos of Donald and his wife, and pictures of spectators standing in the heat at the Bradman Oval impeccably dressed in long dresses and coats and hats, and old cricketing equipment, and a pullover donated by Sachin Tendulkar, and lots of audiovisual cricket gobbledygook, and a souvenir shop where you can knock yourself out. It’s ‘a living centre of cricket’, so if you’re a real fan, you should visit it at some point.
Meanwhile, I’m off to look up this IPL thing.
His trembling voice might have been on account of disappointment in me, or exhilaration at being presented with a bonus opportunity to talk about it. Either way, he launched into a happy jabbering full of words like ‘franchise’ and ‘league’ and ‘carnival atmosphere’ and ‘the future of cricket’—I could almost see him pushing up his big sunglasses—while my brain wandered off in search of words that rhyme with ‘purple’ (there aren’t any).
When he seemed to be done I said, “Hm, you’re right,” which usually covers all the bases, and deftly steered him into his favourite game of which movie star do you like-which movie star do you like. At the risk of being arrested for lack of patriotism, I must state that when it comes to cricket, I can take it or leave it.
This wasn’t always the case—I watched Bodyline as a teenager and loved it, though that had more to do with the pathos of watching women hanging up endless quantities of laundry on washing lines in cold northern mists, and moody cinematography.
In boarding school, where the boys in my class played cricket every weekend, a friend of mine took me on as a personal challenge. “The proper way to watch cricket,” he said, “is to bring a blanket, and a kettle of tea, and a book.” He sat with me in the shade of a tree and explained the rules of a game in progress on the school football field. I didn’t get all of it, and I got through a fair bit of my book and the entire teakettle, but it was enough to kindle my interest. I eventually reached a stage when I would open a beer and watch a game with more than the legal minimum level of enthusiasm. But now, frankly, I’d rather just drink the beer.
So a true fan would consider it a criminal waste that I recently had the opportunity to wander around the Bradman Museum, dedicated to the great Sir Donald (I did gather, in between bouts of Bodyline laundry, that he was a legendary player). The museum is in Bowral, the genteel little town in which he grew up, in Australia’s beautiful Southern Highlands area north of Sydney. It is attached to the neat Bradman Oval (really more of a Circle) overlooked by a pretty mountain, and features a statue of the great man in cricket gear. They’re very pleased to point out that the sculptor mistakenly has both pads buckled up on the same side, a fact that you’d have to be much more interested in cricket than I am, to be moved by.
I have to say, however, that I quite enjoyed the museum: it has a replica of the startlingly small Ashes urn, and many old photos of Donald and his wife, and pictures of spectators standing in the heat at the Bradman Oval impeccably dressed in long dresses and coats and hats, and old cricketing equipment, and a pullover donated by Sachin Tendulkar, and lots of audiovisual cricket gobbledygook, and a souvenir shop where you can knock yourself out. It’s ‘a living centre of cricket’, so if you’re a real fan, you should visit it at some point.
Meanwhile, I’m off to look up this IPL thing.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Unmanned on Mars
Last Sunday NASA’s exploration robot, Phoenix, touched down in the Vastitas Borealis, the plains below the northern pole of Mars. It survived entry into the Martian atmosphere, deployed its parachute, landed gently in what is informally called Green Valley, dug its foot petals into the spot where it will stand for three months, unfolded its stoic little arms which have a reach of 160 square feet, and set about its scientific experiments.
That event, a culmination of painstaking research and development, triumphed over a history of exploration plagued by crash landings, disappearances, technical collapses and other booboos collectively known as ‘The Mars Curse’. (People in the scientific community, of course, being less superstitious, scrupulously attribute the failures to a being called ‘the Great Galactic Ghoul’ which is known to live on a diet of space probes.) After 193 million kilometres of travel over almost ten months through the cold silent void, and at a cost of $420 million dollars, Phoenix is beaming pictures back to earth that prove what scientists have long suspected: that there are lots of little rocks all over the place.
I’m kidding. We already knew about the little rocks. Two Mars Exploration Rovers, called Spirit and Opportunity, have been labouring their way over those little rocks since 2004. Phoenix is there to stand in one spot and dig some inches into the Martian ground in the hope of finding what scientists think might be buried ice, judging from the polygonal lumps that dimple this region of Mars. What’s really going on, of course, is that the whole project is being funded by a shadowy bottled-water conglomerate with an eye on the future.
I’m kidding. No bottled water giant would agree to sponsor an unmanned mission on which a lawyer could not be present. But the possibility that there might be water on Mars raises exciting possibilities for the presence of life, as we know it (it might be nasty, brutish and short, but it’s all we have).
I find the whole thing staggering—that, sitting in a room somewhere on planet Earth, human beings can control a little machine through its long lonely flight and make it see and do various things on the surface of Mars on our behalf. Amazingly, and in a first in the history of space exploration, another probe already orbiting Mars was able to photograph Phoenix coming in to land with its parachute deployed.
While trying to wrap my head around this, I looked up the history of Mars exploration, and discovered, to my shock, that the first successful landing of a probe on Mars took place in 1976. Flybys had happened before that; the Mariner probes orbited and photographed Mars in the years leading up to the first landing. In 1976, however, two Viking spacecraft landed successfully on the Red Planet.
That’s 1976, people. Here’s one way to think about it with some sort of perspective: we had landed a machine on Mars, and caused it to conduct scientific experiments, three years before the Walkman was invented. Viking touched down on another planet before the advent of MS Dos (1981), Windows (1985), disposable cameras (1986), and the Internet (1990). I mean, we were fiddling about on the surface of other planets a quarter of a century before we had the iPod (2001).
I don’t know about you, but that makes my hair stand on end. I’m going to be watching Phoenix with admiration over the next few months, and I’m not how I’ll take it when they just let the little fellow freeze over when the Martian winter sets in. But maybe that’s because women are from Venus.
That event, a culmination of painstaking research and development, triumphed over a history of exploration plagued by crash landings, disappearances, technical collapses and other booboos collectively known as ‘The Mars Curse’. (People in the scientific community, of course, being less superstitious, scrupulously attribute the failures to a being called ‘the Great Galactic Ghoul’ which is known to live on a diet of space probes.) After 193 million kilometres of travel over almost ten months through the cold silent void, and at a cost of $420 million dollars, Phoenix is beaming pictures back to earth that prove what scientists have long suspected: that there are lots of little rocks all over the place.
I’m kidding. We already knew about the little rocks. Two Mars Exploration Rovers, called Spirit and Opportunity, have been labouring their way over those little rocks since 2004. Phoenix is there to stand in one spot and dig some inches into the Martian ground in the hope of finding what scientists think might be buried ice, judging from the polygonal lumps that dimple this region of Mars. What’s really going on, of course, is that the whole project is being funded by a shadowy bottled-water conglomerate with an eye on the future.
I’m kidding. No bottled water giant would agree to sponsor an unmanned mission on which a lawyer could not be present. But the possibility that there might be water on Mars raises exciting possibilities for the presence of life, as we know it (it might be nasty, brutish and short, but it’s all we have).
I find the whole thing staggering—that, sitting in a room somewhere on planet Earth, human beings can control a little machine through its long lonely flight and make it see and do various things on the surface of Mars on our behalf. Amazingly, and in a first in the history of space exploration, another probe already orbiting Mars was able to photograph Phoenix coming in to land with its parachute deployed.
While trying to wrap my head around this, I looked up the history of Mars exploration, and discovered, to my shock, that the first successful landing of a probe on Mars took place in 1976. Flybys had happened before that; the Mariner probes orbited and photographed Mars in the years leading up to the first landing. In 1976, however, two Viking spacecraft landed successfully on the Red Planet.
That’s 1976, people. Here’s one way to think about it with some sort of perspective: we had landed a machine on Mars, and caused it to conduct scientific experiments, three years before the Walkman was invented. Viking touched down on another planet before the advent of MS Dos (1981), Windows (1985), disposable cameras (1986), and the Internet (1990). I mean, we were fiddling about on the surface of other planets a quarter of a century before we had the iPod (2001).
I don’t know about you, but that makes my hair stand on end. I’m going to be watching Phoenix with admiration over the next few months, and I’m not how I’ll take it when they just let the little fellow freeze over when the Martian winter sets in. But maybe that’s because women are from Venus.
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