Cheese

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

Random Sunday morning Delhi

The Sunday stupour in my street was shattered by this - ghetto blaster meets ancient hindi scripture (I'm guessing).

I live in a quiet street - the type of street Mr Whippy vans might visit on hot Sunday afternoons to taunt the neighbourhood children. Today, as I digested the sunday morning papers, a full brass band strolled past my house accompanied by women dancing and a man dressed as a hindu god riding atop a truck. They stopped across the road from my house and blasted my neighbour with hindi songs for 10 minutes. The man dressed as a god made a speech and then they all turned around and walked back down the street. So random!!!!! Anyone with tips on what it all means, please let me know.

On the N5

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.

Dalit village holy man - Orissa

Hard work in pink

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.

Home beautiful

A number of the villages I visited recently had chalk markings such as this outside the front door - each house a slightly different design. My driver tells me they're done each morning and evening to "show off" (by which I assume he means "to make the house pretty"). Imagine if the taggers of the world could contribute their random little acts of beauty in chalk, ready to be washed away in the summer rain.

Marriage: toilet - important

I'm told this sign in an Orissan village reads...."you cannot marry my daughter unless you have a toilet." Fair enough criteria I reckon - and good use of leverage to reinforce a public health message.

Flamingos

Lake Chilika

Recently I took a dawn boat ride on Lake Chilika, an important migratory bird sanctuary in Orissa. The morning was still, warm and beautiful as the fishermen plied the brakish water, seeing where the fish might be running, casting their nets in hope. In the middle of the lake, whole flocks of siberian ducks and flamingos were restocking their bellies for the homeward journey. I've never been a bird man, but as a non-believer, this was pure magic.

A flash of indian truck

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.

Futile act: Man washes sign in dusty Delhi construction zone

Man sands with his hands - next door

The lane behind my house

It had to happen eventually

Last week my theory that 'Delhi traffic may be mad but it works' hit a snag, or a Maruti Suzuki to be more precise. I guess it's implicit that where margins of error are small, errors occur. So it was that as one arterial road merged into Delhi's major ring road, a Maruti Suzuki cheekily pushed in front of my friend's car at a strange angle and was duly clipped. An almightly debate ensued, first in the middle of the intersection to the chagrin of the horn-honkers, then later on the roadside. Little Maruti man lept about in histrionics, pointing at a pre-existing scrape and gesturing for payment. Then a sour looking patriarch emerged from the Maruti to gaphump around, pass judgement and gesticulate unhelpfully. My friends fought the good fight on the side of calm discussion, but failed.... the goons were called - big burley lads in red. But the day was saved when a passer-by-of-note intervened (hard to define how this helped, but it did). Pulling out the camera probably helped too - it turned out the Maruti was an illegal taxi! I'm amazed this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

Dawn at Chandigarh station

Tradition vs climate change

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.

Duck on debut

So I made my cricketing debut in the sub continent, all trumped up with expectation that my innate cricket skills would shine through. Despite a decade of once-a-year backyard cricket outings, I was sure my 'technique' would rise from the ashes of my junior cricket career. The first ball thundered down (ok I exaggerate - it sort of lumbered down) from the bowlers end and cannoned into my pads as I tried to flick it down leg side. A big appeal, but a lucky reprieve. The second ball hung in the air and swung in slow motion from right to left. I was bamboozled and my stumps were flat on the ground. As I walked off, a friendly outfielder offered that "you forgot to move your feet". Later in the car on the way home my driver - who had been watching from the car park - told me I had paid the price for playing across the line. This is a country of cricket experts, and everyone has an opinion - and they're more than happy to share it. Back to the nets for me.

India wow

A few things in the past week have opened my eyes. An activist group in Mangalore chased girls out of a pub for "indecent acts" (drinking and dancing). The same group wants to ban Valentines Day in the name of morality. A wider debate has been unleashed about whether drinking is un-Indian (and plenty of pollies think it is). Meanwhile in Delhi a married couple was charged for kissing in a train station - but the charge was disallowed by a higher court. In Tamil Nadu a man self immolated to protest against the treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka. And in a mainstream newspaper a writer mused on whether the environmental degradation of the Ganges River was foreshadowed in scripture (the Ganga was only suppposed to be on earth for 5000 years and that expired at the start of the 20th Century). Finally at a bling 5-star ceremony the Indian of the Year Award was given to the country's chief space scientist who landed a high-tech device on the moon. Pretty interesting country!

The traffic light controller man

The most powerful man in South Delhi is the traffic-light-controller who stands in the shadows of the ring road overpass each night. As the horns rise to a crescendo around him, he orchestrates who goes through the intersection and who remains stuck. The secret to his power sits within a modest control box, set back from the road under a palm tree (I choose to imagine the box contains comedy-sized red and green buttons). Tonight the lights took 15 minutes to change - did he step out for dinner or did someone slip him a few roups?