Apparently "Panic" is "Radiating" From India

...at least according to the New York Times' Jim Yardley. Intercultural conflicts between Muslims and the Bodo tribes of northeast India have led to an "exodus" of Muslims from the region, an issue exacerbated by wild rumors circulating around social media regarding planned attacks on Muslims. The situation is especially dire in the state of Assam, where 78 people have been killed and 300,000 have fled.

The closest I have come to experiencing this crisis myself was last weekend, when an expat acquaintance who was crashing on our couch for the day (for no apparent reason) looked up from his iPhone and said, "Whoa, dude...I think there's, like, some terrorist stuff going on." "Yeah, probably," I replied. "Hey, howza bout you get off our couch and go back to your own apartment?"

He didn't leave -- not then, at least -- and proceeded to read me the lurid details. Turns out the "terrorist stuff" was a riot in Azad Maidan in South Mumbai, which left two dead. The Azad Maidan violence was a response to the violence in Assam -- and police say the chaos was pre-planned.

I've found Mumbai to be a very safe city for the average pedestrian at any time of day (except for the occasional "pariah dog" ruffin' at you). This sort of report reminds me there is still a ton of political and cultural contexts I have to fully understand before forming my ultimate opinions on this country.

On that note...I need to find a more consistent source of India news besides the New York Times and the occasional Business Insider slideshow. Any suggestions? Besides the actual Mumbai newspapers...

Such a Beautiful Creature, the Feral Dog...

No matter how many times the travel nurses told me to "expect wild animals," I still wasn't fully prepared for the packs on packs on packs of stray dogs roaming the Mumbai streets. I have had a few dubious experiences with dogs, so I'm generally weary of any pup without a leash. However, my roommates were quick to dissuade my worries, noting "They never do anything. Just don't pet them..."

Indeed, the dozen or so doggies I pass on a given street block here all seem focused on finding the next heap of trash to procure their daily 'noms, and pay little attention to the general insanity of India day-to-day traffic and street life. I eventually grew accustomed to the constant canine presence -- until now.

The New York Times ran an article today on India's street dogs, and once again, I am given reason to never ever trust my roommate's advice on anything ever. According to The Times, 80,000 people were bitten in Mumbai alone last year...and 20,000 people die every year in India from rabies infections, the vast majority of which are dog-inflicted. 

I had thought rabies was a 28 Days Later sort of deal, where those bitten run around biting other people until you stick them with the antidote...a quick Google search proved me wrong, as well as leading me to more then a few grim lil' Web MDs who classify rabies as "inevitably fatal." Well then.

Oh yeah, and these ain't wild pugs roaming the streets...these are "Indian pariah dogs," which The Times describes as "similar in appearance to other prehistoric dogs like the Australian dingo." 

Now granted, 80,000 bites in one year means that about 0.6% of the Mumbai population gets bitten. And maybe the government's most recent plan to spray the dogs with ink to take poll of their ranks will help the situation...or it could just result in a bunch of ink-covered, pissed-off dogs. That Indian government is a wonder, isn't it?

If only this is what we were dealing with here...

Christopher Hitchens: Destroying Indian Bloggers from Beyond the Grave

I always gag a bit whenever I read some fawning New York Times elegy on a  literary figure they deem to be "indispensable"...like their recent obituary on Gore Vidal. Unfortunate, because I'm sure I'd love Mr. Vidal's work as countless other have, but I always feel like with each successive death of a "last of a breed," as the Grey Lady termed Vidal, the grizzled Times' newsmen are really lamenting the death of their industry.

Despite my aversion to self-serious, self-destructive essayists, I still surprised myself by how long I held out on reading any Christopher Hitchens. Must've been a particularly lachrymose Times' obituary, that one. Regardless, I was happy to find a 1997 Vanity Fair essay of his, "There'll Always Be an India," which comments on pretty much everything, say, a blog on India could cover...only in essay form!

Among other epic declarations in the piece, Hitchens notes: "Land of Contrasts. I challenge you to show me the Indian guidebook or travel piece that does not resort to this dismal cliche."

Well...uhhh...there goes the subject of my next post...

Ooohhh you're just so erudite and witty, aren't you...

Hitchens also explains why Coca-Cola's relationship with India is even more complicated then I thought -- turns out the Indian government demanded the secret Coke formula in the late 1970s. Coca-Cola "denounced India as a basket case" and stopped doing business in the country until the 1990s.

I highly suggest reading this piece, for more then just the pithy asides -- he packs in a lot of info, and a lot of reporting. Not bad for a guy who was probably wasted when he wrote it. 

India to Jim O'Neill: "Shut up, you're not even my real Dad!"

Maybe it's just because I live with other five other post-college twenty-somethings, but at times this country seems like it's organized with all the care and common sense of a hormonally challenged, demotivated adolescent. So I guess I wasn't surprised that the hardass father of the BRICs, Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs, would speak to the country en masse as if he were talking to his loser teenage son.

"The country's huge power blackouts highlight once more the scale of their challenges, and at the same time, ongoing economic indicators lead more to scale back cyclical GDP forecasts. In addition, they are the one BRIC nation that doesn't appear to be here on mass in London. What is the matter with you guys?"

"Dammit, India!" O'Neill went on to say. "You forgot to take out the trash...again...and hell if your gonna sit on your ass all summer while your friends are out playin' sports. Get your shit together, son!"

"Clone High" had Gandhi right all along...

I was also discouraged to see that O'Neill specified India as the BRIC that has disappointed him the most at a recent investor conference. Well, O'Neill, you may not be proud of your son's report card, so to speak, but that poke at the lack of athletic prowess is just a low blow -- just wait till they put cricket in the Olympics! India is still too big and fast-growing to count out...O'Neill knows this...and the computer nerds always get the last laugh anyway. As a proud hanger-on of computer nerds, I hope to be laughing right there with 'em. Either that or getting back to Virginia and kissing that sweet, stable American soil, I haven't really decided yet.

Blackout!!!!

India's country-wide power grid failure has got the doom-sayers coming out in droves. "It's like a day of reckoning coming nearer," said Rajiv Kumar, secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. 

My apartment, along with much of Mumbai, remains blissfully unaffected by the power outages; I guess this is just luck, but I still feel like I'm in a destined little bubble of Western privilege, opining from on high about the poor, power-less (and powerless) masses across the nation. Screw it, I'm gonna opine anyway.

As has been said many times, this disaster was completely predictable. Anyone who's driven along an Indian road for more then two minutes can tell you the infrastructure doesn't exactly inspire faith in Indian engineering. Funny, given the nation's formidable Indian Institutes of Technology and emphasis on STEM studies. 

Yessir, my beloved home-of-the-moment has got a long way to go before I think it could fairly be called 100% "developed." But then again,the U.S. infrastructure is also crumbling, as a result of the summer's extreme weather. Soooo...it's the end of the world?

Can't think of anywhere I'd rather spend the apocalypse.

"The Dark Knight Rises" is Visual Dank Chronic

Some friends and I saw "The Dark Knight Rises" last night. That sh** is tightttttttttttt. Even with its grim, post-9/11 vision of NYC/Gotham, the movie still made me miss the good ol' US of A.

All we have over here is "Punjabi Batman"

After the negative experience at "The Amazing Spiderman," we opted for the regular screen over iMax -- even though Manohla Dargis' New York Times review insisted that iMax is "the way to see the film." Well, an Indian "regular" screen is pretty darn big as it turns out, so sucks to your suggestion, Ms. Dargis.

The movie also gave me my own visions of big screen glory -- a dream that is conveniently easy to manifest here in Mumbai, where a number of my associates and roommates are already "acting" (re: appearing in the background) of major Bollywood films and commercials. The pay is also not too shabby, considering your usually just asked to dance around or stare at the protagonist in awe...half-a-days work can net you a few thousand dollars rupees.

Now that's some free enterprise that even Bane could support!

Indian 1% Put the American 1% to Shame

Last weekend, driving through South Bombay after dinner, one of my friends pointed out the 27-story personal tower of Mukesh Ambani. He noted that the tower's amenities included several floors serving as car showrooms, and a massive ice skating rink serving as another floor. I think I may have muttered something then about "wasteful" or "insensitive," but what I meant to say was "Boss-status!" and then pretend I'm shooting a basketball, the international sign for "ballin'."

Because if there's one thing this country appreciates, it's tasteful moderation.

Of course, this is Mumbai, so right outside the tower there were decaying storefronts and a few beggars wandering around. Even in the relatively posh South Bombay, I took the little trappings of destitution to be par for the course. 

I was thus happy to see a fairly thoughtful breakdown of why India's nicest neighborhoods are, like, not really that nice in the Wall Street Journal today. Hint: It's not because the rich aren't rich enough. 

"The contrast between the popping champagne corks inside and the filth outside is striking. Again, the simple economics of incentives explains why. Many of the wealthy diners who frequent these establishments pull right up to the entrance, and so don't need to worry about the filth outside," writes Rupa Subramanya, referring to upscale restaurants in midtown Mumbai located in shoddy neighborhoods.

Basically, Subramanya contends that Mumbai's rich have no emotional stake in their neighborhoods, since it doesn't cost much to hire a 24/7 driver and roll through the fecal-filled streets in a tinted-window Escalade, sipping mineral water and breathing circulated air imported from the Himalayas. She argues that the Indian aristocrats take care of the public services that matter to them -- electricity, for instance -- and as long as the infrastructural absurdities of the outside world don't impede on their personal space, they feel no civic duty to demand improvements. Even if their "personal space" happens to be a 27-story mega-apartment.

Fair enough -- but I still don't think the article gets to the core of why Mumbai's wealthy don't demand infrastructural and design improvements to their neighborhoods at large. As Subramanya herself points out, in places like the U.S., there is a clear relationship between real estate quality and the quality of the surrounding sidewalks, parks, public schools, etc. If you were to build a mansion in the middle of the Bronx, for instance, you'd of course be hard-pressed to make a profit, because the poor quality of the surrounding houses and public services directly affects the value of the house. Expensive houses are in expensive neighborhoods, ipso facto.

In India, I would be very curious to see how "neighborhood quality" affects house valuation. The wealthy are of course "clustered" here as in other places -- it's not like you'll find a personal showroom in the middle of Dharavi. But still, if I built a 27-story tower for myself, I'd want to make damn sure my neighborhood is pristine, classy and ideally not near any shanty-towns. I don't know if it's a lack of civic duty, or if its just impossible to distance yourself from the poverty here, but I'd certainly like to find out.

On that note, any Indian billionaires want to hang out this weekend?

Drug Makers: "Fuck this, we're going to India."

At my job recently, I've been researching certain pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies investments in emerging markets -- particularly Brazil, India and China -- and hot dog if these companies aren't licking their chops at the opportunities. Pricing pressures in the U.S. and Europe means that drug companies are going to increasingly rely on the exploding middle classes of BRIC countries to drive sales. Spending on drugs are going to double in emerging markets in the next five years, according to the New York Times - now that's a win/win for drug companies and B.Doyle. Oh yea, and for India.

Above: India and pharmaceutical companies, meeting for the first time. 

Needless, I'm going to walk to work with a little extra pep in my step tomorrow. Unless it's monsooning again...in that case I'll tell the rickshaw driver to sing that lil' Hindi diddy extra loud, for ol' B.Doyle. Fuck ya.

Peering Over Poverty

Before I came to Mumbai, I knew I would see poverty. I just didn't know it would be shoved in my face so brazenly.

That's a photo my friend took of an impoverished lil' Mumbaikar peeking in our taxi window, begging for a spare rupee. Fortunately, I was warned multiple times as soon as I arrived: don't give money to beggars. The effect is apparently like that South Park episode where Stan Marsh is mobbed by homeless people after he gives a nickel to one vagabond.

The poverty I've seen here mainly manifests itself in the pollution and general lack of hygiene in certain neighborhoods -- adults relieving themselves in the streets, children walking around naked, cardboard shanty towns, etc. And I haven't even visited Dharavi, in northern Mumbai, where leopards from the nearby Sanjay Ghandi National Park apparently 'nom on village children regularly.

Mumbai also has a ton of opulence and "new money" as well, and I still haven't come to terms with my proximity to some truly horrible human living conditions. Will of course keep you all updated on this new-found humanitarianism as it develops. This whole "sympathy" thing is all new to me...

Tha Swiss Connection

On my flight to Mumbai, I had a two hour layover in Switzerland. They were two of the cleanest, most pleasant hours of my life. I indulged in some deliciously nutty authentic Swiss chocolate from an airport vendor, explored the sleek, somewhat Euro-hipster designed airport -- bathroom doors were constructed of polished metal -- and admired the view of the mountains from the airport bay windows. 

The flight over to Mumbai on Swiss Air was equally delightful -- the vegetarian pizza they served was top-notch, and even the seats in the economy-section were roomy and comfortable. 

So landing in Mumbai and stepping off the squeaky-clean Swiss Air jet into a wave of heat and curry smell was not the most desirable contrast.

Above: If I could live on that jet, I would.

Since my all-too-short time in Europe, I have vowed to go back there as soon as feasibly possible and plan a good ol' fashioned EuroTrip. For me, this is actually a fairly big step forward: before this year, I was truthfully baffled whenever someone listed "traveling" as one of their favorite hobbies. But it's amazing what two hours near the Swiss Alps can do to a person's psyche. 

However, before I experience Europe I still have pretty much every landmark in Mumbai alone to visit. Yeah, this past month hasn't quite brought me outside of a ten-mile radius. 

In the meantime, I've been watching this video to get me pumped up about traveling in general. WE NO SPEAK HINDI!

Indian Rupee at Seven-Week High; "The Amazing Spiderman" is Dubious; And Other News

This was a cray cray week; I saw "The Amazing Spiderman" in iMax 3D. That night was significant because it also marked my first time truly getting "caught" in an Indian monsoon. We were stuck for about an hour in a small Wadala back-alley market -- with no electricity -- as the streets got more and more flooded and the imposing Indian locals inched creepily close.

But perhaps even more important: the Indian rupee is rebounding! According to the Wall Street Journal, it reached a seven-week high against the U.S. dollar yesterday. Now if only if the dollar can sink below that 53.79 rupees mark, I can REALLY celebrate this Fourth of July!

Oh yeah, by the way, the Amazing Spiderman was WeakSauce Malloy. I'm pretty sure they just rummaged through Sam Raimi's office trashbin for the storyline. My good friend Hipster Spiderman would be ashamed.