My driver Leo has very broad taste in music. He particularly seems to like Oz rock and drum + bass. So it was a surprise today when I asked him what his all time favourite song was - and he said Glen Medeiros - Nothing's Going to Change My Love for You. I've downloaded it for his benefit - my itunes cred is forever in tatters.
If you should so wish to revisit the work of Seniore Medeiros, please click here
The Sunday stupour in my street was shattered by this - ghetto blaster meets ancient hindi scripture (I'm guessing).
We were driving down the main highway through Orissa (which connects to Kolkata in the north and Chennai in the South) late one evening recently. Rounding a corner we came across the mother of all jams. More than two thousand trucks (and I'm not exaggerating) were lined up on the road - and judging by the card games underway between drivers they'd been there a while! We cheekily drove on the wrong side of the road for about 2km passing truck after truck - nothing coming the other way. In a small village we asked why the trucks were all stopped. A policeman told us a child had been hit by a truck that afternoon while walking home from school. The villagers, enraged, had blocked all traffic on the highway. They were unwilling to move until the District Collector (sort of a chief town bureaucrat) came down to negotiate compensation. It seemed the going price for a child's road death was Rs20,000. But the Collector was busy, and no subordinates were authorised to approve such an expenditure (about AUD600) so the trucks stood still, their loads sweltering in the heat. Eventually when the Collector rocked up, a compromise was agreed - Rs10,000 and a promise that the Government would erect speedhumps on the highway through the village. Leaving we passed another thousand trucks backed up in the other direction. All sat there patiently, filling the 5 hours of boredom with comradery and endless stares down the line of trucks.
Not to suggest this has national applicability, but in villages I visited recently it was hard to miss the amount of hard menial work being done by the women of the village. Here a woman is sorting the rice husks from the chaff. In the fields women were bending over to prepare the ground for the growing season ahead - waiting for the rains. Nearby other women were washing, caring for infants and cooking. All the while wearing spectacular hot pink saris. I suspect the men were mostly undertaking work further afield, but those present were doing quite a bit of 'important man' business.
India's trucks are a astonishing feast of colour and they light up the highways by day and night. I love a country where truckers aren't afraid to bling up their rigs with tinsel, streamers, and flower pictures. I saw one last week which had a bunch of peacock feathers attached to the grill.
How's this for an environmental quandry. I've just been to Punjab where they are worrying about the carbon change consequences of traditional cremation. Apparently authorities have built electric crematoriums but nobody wants to use them. Fair enough I guess - I'd prefer a fragrant sandalwood cremation any day. But authorities are also worries about the denuding of the landscape and increasingly have to import wood from neighbouring states to meet demand.
For the record , Chandigarh has solar powered traffic lights and collects rainwater from large office buildings. The future is here.
