Sleepless in India(na)

Well, it’s 5am and I’ve been wide awake for two hours at this point. The good news is that I’m in a bed, in Jaipur, in India, in mid-June. Forty-eight hours ago, none of these outcomes seemed at all probable. Let’s take the story back to Friday morning. The day before, I’d packed up my room in HGS and laboriously shifted a good portion of my worldly belongings into storage. Come 4.30am Friday, it was time to extract myself from bed, hop onto a shuttle to Hartford, where a plane carried me to Indianapolis via Detroit. Apart from dog-tiredness, this leg went fine: no great surprises, so far so smooth. And the next bit – the wedding of Mike and Sharon (now Dr and Mrs Richards of New Haven CT) – was a triumph in every way, shape, and form. I was ushering – ultimately a task I pulled off with no great elan, but there we are – so had an invite to the rehearsal plus barbecue dinner. A wonderful chance to get acquainted with some new people: Sharon’s very gracious family, Mike’s folks (whom I’d visited over Thanksgiving last November) and his groomsmen. My slightly excessive double-double-bed room [sic] at the Westin lay waiting; determined to make the most of it, Saturday morning and I didn’t come across one another. As it turned out, this was the best slumber I was to have for many days to come. The wedding itself went without a glitch. Outside the Indianapolis Historical Society, we assembled for the brief ceremony – picture-perfect procession, adorable baby flower girl, kind-talking minister, the works. Dinner was held in the grand main entrance hall. We came, we ate, we danced, we drank. As things there wound up, the after-party commenced. We moved to what’s apparently an “IU” bar (Indiana University) - Kilroy’s - downtown. More chat, more merriment. By hook or by crook I was back at the hotel ca 3am, that chapter of the odyssey complete.

Sumir, maybe against his better judgment, had kindly agreed to drive me to Chicago Sunday morning. Of course, we overslept. A James-Bond-like car ride/chase ensued. Plain sailing till we got into Chicago, followed by gridlock. Pulse reaching all-time highs – two and a half hours till the flight. We make it with time to spare. But it was for naught. The overnight direct to Delhi was canceled due to a mechanical fault (apparently a wing was about to fall off). We were bussed to a hotel and sternly enjoined to arise super-early for a 7am rescheduled flight, i.e. another 4am start. Further delays at the airport in the morning, yet eventually those of us aboard AA292 parted with the ground for a 15-hour sky-high trek into boredom, the likes of which I’ve never before experienced. Bad food, bad movies, air hostesses who clearly viewed passengers more as inconvenient clutter and the chief cause of the ruckus engulfing their beloved flying-machine than as paying customers (and human beings with basic food needs, for that matter). Kipping in coach ain’t so easy, nor is reading when you’re delirious from sleep-deprivation. So mostly I brooded over how I’d eke my revenge on the monsters of American Airlines and their collaborating minions: the stern words I would have with the pilot, the letters and pamphlets I would write for the national/international press, the Congressmen I would lobby – leading to a final, catastrophic collapse in the company’s share price, I predicted. Naturally, none of this happened, but it proved an effective way to pass the time.

Touch-down in Delhi. I was met by a driver from the American Institute of Indian Studies who informed me in sorrowful tones that the group had already set off for Japiur. All was not lost, though, for a six-hour bus ride could deliver me there by evening. Someone would meet me on arrival. I took the bus. No-one met me. Foolishly, I had no address, no number, no nothing. What to do? Hmm. Internet café! The internet knows everything, does it not. Accompanied by a swarm of auto drivers – who like nothing better than a tourist in distress – I tracked down a computer and induced Google to cough up an address. I arrive at this address. It’s not the Institute I was expecting. In fact it was one of the professor’s houses. His bemused wife took me in, sat me down in front of the Discovery Channel with a glass of water, all the while dialing frantically as she sought to get hold of her husband (understandably eager to get this lunatic unwashed Brit off her couch and out the door). It worked. He sends a car and I get to the hotel where my fellow classmates to-be (including three other Yalies) are stationed. At this stage I hadn’t slept in at least thirty-six hours. Now I did. And like Caliban, I cried that I might dream again.

As scripture tells us, however, there’s no rest for the wicked. Bright and early Tuesday morning we’re massed together for breakfast and a diet of Hindi proficiency tests – my performance on which, I expect, barely distinguished me from an Englishman speaking in an obnoxiously slow, loud voice to some uncomprehending European coffee-seller. I’ve been put up in a large, well-appointed house owned by an elderly couple who haven’t yet been sighted (back tomorrow). There’s a maid and a houseboy. (Cue jokes about neo-colonialism.) It’s very nice, and Mike Weaver – a guy from my program at Yale – is in the same place.

It’s 6am now and I guess I’ll be up in an hour. To be back in India is awesome, I should add. And once we’re settled into the groove, I’ll file another report.

Unlikely encounters

You find me sitting in my room, having snuck back from the stacks, toasty warm, tea in hand, raring to write. The more observant reader of this flawed blog will notice a gaping hole in the chronicle of Nellis in America: my trip to Chicago and St Louis. I owe you a report, no question, but the energy to start up on some sustained narrative eludes me. I'd rather peddle tidbits, if you don't mind. Easier and more fun.

Two things - people, character portraits - to begin. I was at a lecture given by John Major last week. The topic was totally exiguous - "Changes in the Modern World", I think was the title. Probably the same after-dinner speech he's be trotting out since 1997. For all that, it was masterfully done. Witty one-liners abounded. Like Major asks Yeltsin in the mid-1990s, "Tell me Boris, describe to me in one word the present condition of Russia." "Good," Yeltsin replies. Major, surprised by this answer, adds, "Well, okay then, in two words." Yeltsin ponders. "Not good."

Funny, eh? And you thought Major was boring!

I went up to natter with him at the reception for a few minutes after. All standard stuff: China, Wikileaks, labor laws. In approaching him, I had, naturally, only one topic of conversation I wished to pursue: EDWINA. Sadly the heart of an Englishman beats within me; I refrained from discussing what every single British person in the room was thinking, straining, begging, nay gagging to ask. My reticence at that critical moment is something I'll regret for the rest of my days.

What seemed to me a hilarious twist at the start of the proceedings wasn't picked up on by the crowd, and American friends seemed nonplussed when I relayed the anecdote to them later. But anyway, Major was introduced by Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico (the last under the PRI regime), who now works in the Yale Business and Econ departments. Zedillo, in welcoming Major (or "Maior", to be faithful to the original pronunciation), officially presented him as the former prime minister of... England and, wait for it, Northern Ireland!!!! Faux pas, historical hatchet job, diplomatic incident - all accomplished in that one phrase! Amazing! On a serious note, it does appear to be empirically true that Americans, for whatever reason, don't recognize the Act of Union. (Cameron should bring this up next time he's in Washington.) I've even fallen into the habit of simply saying I'm from England.

Post-Major, work. Until Wednesday, when, walking along Wall Street (New Haven's Wall Street, that is, not the evil one), I bumped into none other than my old music professor, Robin Holloway. Robin's a very well-known composer and music commentator in Britain, in addition to being professor at Cambridge. He'd been invited to Yale to give a pre-concert talk at the Center for British Art, followed by a performance of his Gilded Goldbergs for two pianos. I rocked up to the concert. Robin and I met the next morning. I gave him a tour of the university. He's always a delight to be around. Truly the most knowledgeable person about music I have ever met, with a brilliantly florid, expressive manner of speaking. Perfectly inimitable. It was an unexpected joy, then, to have him here for a day or two.

From the exuberance mingled with coy calm of Goldbergs a la Holloway, I was plunged last night into the deathly world of a miserable new play at the Yale Rep - Bosso Nova. It was meant as an exploration of race, money and freedom, quintessential and weighty American themes to be sure, but too rapidly degenerated into Lear-like hell, and stayed there. For two hours. Unpleasant to watch and unedifying. Fun party after, with mainly English Lit grads in University Towers. House parties really do rule.

For those who may be a touch interested in my working life (though heaven knows why you would be), here's a short "interview" I ran off recently. Not an academic contribution, just a summary of current affairs for a French think tank a friend asked me to produce.

Orwell (whom I've been re-reading, having scarcely looked over a word since high school) once worked in a second-hand bookshop, don't you know. An essay about how and why he lost his love of books while gainfully employed there.

It also turns out that Wallace Stevens composed a long poem about my adopted city. Coming pretty late in Stevens's career, "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" is a barren poem - basically musing on whether or not poetry can do away with imagery so as to communicate base ideas in raw form. The New Haven part is inconsequential, I discovered. Still, it exists. You might be intrigued.

I'm zonked now, so good night.

Phantasmagoria! "Harvard sucks"

Well, there's lots to report in today's newsletter. Before getting started, I have a question. Can people think of famous European writers, poets, thinkers, artists who came to America, were "inspired" by it in some special way, then returned home? Tocqueville is the best example I know. Dvorak is also a decent one. The "defining visit" though seems to be much more common the other way round: Americans sojourning in Europe. I'm curious to compile a small list in my head so please drop me a note if you have any brainwaves.

Usually when writing these blogposts I self-censor. By which I mean that I assiduously stop myself moaning about work work work, because that's boring for everyone. This week, on the other hand, has seen a phantasmagoria of crazy adventures. So the censor can place his big black marker back in his pocket.

On Wednesday I took the Metro-North down to New York at 4-35. Three hours later we were settled in our red felt seats at the Met - surely one of the plushest opera houses in the world - ready for the curtain to lift on Cosi fan tutte. Now I should qualify my praise for what is one of the funniest, sunniest pieces ever composed with a note of caution and disapproval: the plot is offensive. About as misogynistic as you can get, in fact. You could glean this from the title, which basically means "All women are like that". However, the slapstick is good enough to make up for this (rather serious) shortcoming, and the ensemble scenes are earth-shattering. I bumped into Rowland in the lobby. Didn't get back into Union Station till 2am. A spectacular evening.

Then last night was Steve and Jen's housewarming party. They have a *damn fine* apartment. In its combination of designer furniture and super-high ceilings it's a sort of cross between 5th-Avenue-penthouse chic and Versailles. (Possibly a slight exaggeration.) Altogether extremely nice. I'm a sucker for peer-pressure. Guess what happened? Drinking games are what happened. Something about throwing a ball in a cup from a distance and banging a quarter into a glass. I really don't know. It's all very hazy. I managed to stagger back home, to my mini fortress in HGS. Woke up today in a state of considerable agony - akin to what I image the martyred saints of the early Church experienced. Concentration has, understandably, proven a challenge. I picked up two volumes from the library: Of Rule and Revenue, and Divide and Deal. It's part of a new policy of mine only to read books with alliterative titles. Needless to say, I got through 50 pages of one of them, thought f this, and walked over to Stuart's for high tea - crustless cucumber sandwiches, small finger-cakes, scones with clotted Cornish cream, and Earl Gray in dainty bone china cups. OK we just drank Tetley's. I've never actually eaten, or should I say "taken", high tea. However, since America is positively overflowing with pro-limey bonhomie at the moment, on account of some minor royal wedding (!), now's a good time to play up these British eccentricities.

Thanksgiving break has started. New Haven's emptied out all of a sudden. This is partly because the Harvard-Yale game's being played in Boston this year. There have been a couple of awesome t-shirts designed for the occasion by ever-resourceful Elis. They read:

"Harvard sucks"
-Gandhi

and

Harvard
The Antisocial Network

Brilliant! Should you care to watch one of the greatest pranks of all time - a variation on a similar theme - see here.

On Monday I fly to Chicago to stay with Mike and Sharon. I'll report back in full after the event.

For other reasons too I'm chipper at the moment. The week's vacation will do me the world of good. And I'm excited about coming back to Yale next Saturday refreshed.

Over and out.

Peanut butter

...is not nice. Really, it's not. And even if it were (which it isn't, wasn't, couldn't ever be) spreading it over every animal, mineral and vegetable would still be, frankly, foul. Run hybrid cars off the stuff, sure. Just don't put it in your mouth.

It's Guy Fawkes Day back home. Among the lesser-known feast days in the calendar, I find. It's one of those things that tends to take you by pleasant surprise, usually when you're least expecting it. Then *WHAM*, fireworks, sparklers and burning popes galore!

An even more major festival - is that possible? - is also upon us. Diwali is the Hindu celebration of the return of Ram, along with Lakshman and Sita, from his long exile, for which lamps (दीप, pronounced "deep" in Sanskrit, hence the full name दीपावली, "deepavali") are lit in commemoration. There's a gathering in the President's Room here tonight I'll be attending. It promises to be very colorful.

I'm currently tinkering on a few pet projects, besides the normal routine. A study of how various political indicators affect fraud and corruption in India's food Public Distribution System. A book review of a small collection of essays titled "Democracies in Danger". And getting down to work on an article about medical tourism in South and South-East Asia with Mike. Hopefully my productivity levels will be equal to these manifold tasks; I have to admit my energy's waning a tad. Thanksgiving break can't arrive a moment too soon.

So, to merry Britons whose august parliamentary democracy and established religion remains in-tact, enjoy the bonfires. And to Americans (who, by the way, appear to have gone slightly bananas judging by this week's midterms), lay off the peanut butter, for no good will come of it.

Mars will be apple blossom

A relic of a bygone age, touching in its optimism. A Soviet song from 1963. The words are those of a cosmonaut.

To live and to believe - it's wonderful.
Before us - an unprecedented path.
Astronauts and dreamers believe
That on Mars apple trees will blossom.

Well, when you comrades and
The whole world are seen through the porthole,
Stars will meet the flourishing earth,
And on Mars apple trees will blossom.

I will make friends with the distant stars,
Do not worry about me and do not be sad.
For leaving this Earth, we are promised
That on Mars apple trees will blossom!


(Translation courtesy of Google, adapted - I can't vouch for it.)

Thinking about India

Hari and Anirvan popped round this evening after dinner. Anirvan and I were trying to remember a charming Urdu couplet, which I learned a couple of weeks ago:

Baat agar sakht bhi kahani hai to narmi se kaho.
Labz katon ki tarah dil me khatak sakate hain.

Loosely, Even if you have harsh things to tell someone, say them with tenderness. For words may strike in the heart like thorns.

A laudable principle to abide by, I think.

We ended the chit-chat with a disagreement about the relative historical worthiness of Nehru versus Sardar Patel - representatives of the defining ideological poles of modern India. Nehru, as is well known, was India's first prime minister. He was a Fabian socialist by temperament and upbringing, and sought to construct in India an economy whose growth was driven by state planning, while affording a good amount of space for private enterprise (on this, check out Chibber's info-packed book). From the Fabians Nehru adopted a cosmopolitan, internationalist outlook, and became the central mover in the Non-Aligned Movement in the mid-1950s.

Vallabhai Patel (commonly known as "Sardar", or Chief in Gujurati) was Nehru's doppelganger: a harder, realist personality, and a committed patriot, the Iron Man of India. With VP Menon, Patel was responsible as Home Minister for binging about the accession of hundreds of principalities into the new Republic. On Partition and Kashmir, he was a hawk. He pressed for the immediate use of military force to bring J&K (and also Goa) into the union, vehemently opposed recourse to United Nations arbitration, and was frequently accused of anti-Muslim prejudice - resulting from his less than conciliatory language around the traumas of 1947. Economically, too, he favored a freer-market model than his boss. Altogether, a right-winger - yet a man who sacrificed ambition and non-mainstream policy positions time and again to the greater cause of independence and Congress unity.

Critics accuse Nehru of weakness, stuffy intellectualism, excessive eagerness to play the big statesman abroad while neglecting brewing troubles at home. To adduce the most damning evidence, they point to the China-India border war of 1962. India's humiliation in this brief but miserable spat, they contend, was the direct result of India's military unpreparedness, which they blame on Nehru's lily-liveredness and naivete. It's said that Patel would never have allowed such a state of vulnerability to emerge. In a similar vein, many attribute the pathologies of corruption and the impossibly-slow-moving juggernaut of the Indian state to Nehru's grand designs - replete with five-year plans, an over-weening bureaucracy, and the like. Patel would have gone with something leaner and meaner.

We'll never know. Patel died in 1950, Nehru not till 1964 (in office). The counterfactuals involved in making the mighty case for Patel are so speculative as to be totally unverifiable. But given the attacks on Nehru's reputation - quite a voguish pastime now - his achievements bear restating. The consolidation of a peaceful, unified India was a signal political feat of the twentieth century. I don't think this would have been possible without a tolerant, thoroughly democratic philosophy such as Nehru possessed (and Sardar probably did not). For this inclusiveness, he was loved dearly at the time. Second, Nehru's strategy of fast industrialization is vindicated by India's current development woes. Of course growth is rapid right now. But the lion's chunk of that comes from the labor-unintensive sectors like software, call-centers and (increasingly) quality services. Manufacturing, factories, construction - what should usually be the fruit-bearing concomitants of modernity and urbanization - are under-advanced. Too many people still work in the fields or informally. This sorry situation, as it's turned out, was not for want of Nehru's trying.

Yes, Nehru could have be more aggressive with defense. The circumstances though were extraordinary. China's attack was unprovoked and unpredictable. In any case, it seems unlikely that even gigantic military investment in the 50's - which India could ill-afford - could have averted an attack from the Tiger to the north. Money was better spent on lifting the poor out of misery.

Nehru wasn't oblivious to the dangers confronting the state he did so much to establish - and which he hoped might become a gleaming city on the hill, an example to the world. In a depressingly prophetic jeremiad delivered on the floor of the Lok Sabha in September 1956 he ruminated, surely in sad tones:

"It is a difficult world, not a very gentle world; it does not care too much for the weak. And you have to be strong, in mind, in heart, in character and in technique, and in the modern ways of life. Otherwise you go down. I have no doubt about it."

Autumn songs

The sun's setting earlier now; leaves shedding their green garb for redder hues; colder, crisper mornings, as I take the short walk to the department each day, coffee-laden. A touch of homesickness too - reminders of friends and family back home whom I'd give much to be with, and a growing sense of the massive distance separating me from them. Even the internet's not enough to overcome that. In short, fall's here, and with it that warm sense of change tinged with melancholy - harsh impending winter, to be broken by holidays and snowscapes.

Cameron and HY were my distractions this weekend. After such a long time away from them both, I was overjoyed when they decided to visit Yale. We drove to the top of East Rock and took photographs, ate pizza and Thai food, explored the campus, but most of all just enjoyed each others' company. The evening before had seen Cameron at a fencing reunion (with banquet!). I ended up joining the gang at Mory's, a kind of gentleman's club cum rowdy sports bar next door to HGS, where drunk overdressed undergrads are to be found chugging trophies filled with a scary concoction. We had a lot of fun, though less so at a party in some guy's room in Trumbull College later on - the filthiest dive I ever did see! I'm told this is how American college students generally live.

I hit a bit of a low this evening. Class finished at 8.15pm (standard on Mondays). I had to wolf down food in Commons, then descend to the library (aptly called "Bass") where I began and completed a two-page memo on seven articles I'd barely had time to read on corruption - all within the space of two hours! Grad school sure teaches you to think and jot stuff down fast. One nugget of advice I was given before coming here was "Don't get it right, get it done!" For the first two years of coursework, that seems a wise adage. By the end of the writing-spree, I was knackered. But here I am now relieved to have everything out of the way, and increasingly less hung up about polishing each piece of work to perfection - there's simply too much for that. Balance is needed.

I have a great week ahead as it turns out, one peppered with little events and gatherings. I've been especially enwrapped in Hindi recently and think I'm making fast progress. Humming Bollywood songs in the shower, in bed, on the street ("bagoon mai bahar hein..."). I can't wait to practice properly again in India next summer!

With the unpleasantness of a work-heavy evening behind me, I now say good night.

Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence. Milton

:)zzz