some delayed posts from the trip to india

just found these whle looking through my files…

Thursday, February 12. 2:02pm

i’ve moved downstairs while waiting for the housekeeping folks to finish the room. i’m sitting at a table in front of the elevators, looking out the floor to ceiling glass windows out at the patio walk. the style of the walk is somewhat reminiscent of one that might surround a tuscan villa, done in shades of beige and red. palm trees and ferns with red flowers line the walkways. It’s a little bit of paradise…

It makes the contrast between the hotel grounds and the outside that much more stark. Everything here is designed and planned, every seed drop assigned and cultivated, while everything outside seems to follow a sort of natural law. There is no artifice in the seeming chaotic order outside, as there is here at the hotel grounds. It’s a different way of thinking and seeing, as reflected in the surrounding environment.

I think of American ghettoes in particular when i think of environment and patterns of thinking. Humans are creative animals, obeying a sort of natural law of creativity and chaos. How then, does a human being grow up in a place where there are bars on the window, streets organized by gridding, and no outlet for creative growth? Areas of New York may possess two of the above characteristics, but there is Central Park, there are museums, there is art, there is intellectual activity, there are communities formed that serve and are served by its citizens.

And then there is are places like South Central LA, which seem to be nothing but endless stretches of cement, barren and barring, built to be structures that constrict and contain rather than centers of discovery and humanity. The city feels like a cage of cement and bars, encircled and locked in by even larger structures of cement and gravel — freeways. And there is no greenery, there is no life that surrounds people or reminds them of the beauty of nature, beauty that they possess also within themselves. Perhaps all of this is a stretch, but I feel a lot of these a subtle subconscious ways in which we interact with our environments…

How ironic that in the long march of progress we are so easily able to lose sight of our basic humanity.

Tuesday, February 17. 8:02pm

days like today make me wish i had a mobile phone camera!! or at least my digital camera. *wince*

I had lunch at the McDonald’s in Colaba, Mumbai, today while i was browsing the street markets for goodies to bring back to the States. I try to sample the local McD’s wherever I travel because it’s interesting to see the regional variations introduced into this international brand. India’s McDonalds (of which there are very few) feature a Veg and Non-Veg menu, a sandwich called the Chicken Maharaja Mac, a Paneer Salsa Wrap, and the conspicuous absence of pictures of big juicy beef hamburgers. My filet-o-fish seemed to be made from not-so-fresh snapper, although everything else tasted about the same. The tartar sauce was the same, their ketchup had the same sweetness to it, and the fries were close enough (minus the beef tallow now, i’m sure). But the ad McD’s always puts on their trays as tray liners was the thing i found profoundly ironic. McDonald’s in America stress how delicious (rather than healthful) it is to eat their food. In stark contrast, the tray liners in India assert the importance of nutrition in a person’s diet (very true) and how McDonald’s food is a great source of proteins, carbohydrates, and essential fats, and is very good for you (!!).

the ironies:
– McDonald’s is HEALTHY??
– McDonald’s food is HEALTHIER and hence superior to the diet the average citizen is eating right now, and is worth paying twice as much for than what he eats now for a lesser quantity? Hasn’t the Indian diet been enough to sustain a subcontinent for oh, several thousand years? It needs *McDonald’s* to improve on it?!
– Or maybe i’m just biased by this article where a man who ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month ended up riddled with a host of serious health problems. Or from reading bits of Fast Food Nation.

It’s one thing to read about Nestle and other transnational corporations interfering with the nutrition and health of citizens of third world countries for the sake of their pocketbooks (Nestle+baby formula, condom manufacturers+African AIDS crisis, etc), but another to see the subtle, insidious influence of western corporations for oneself. I love America, but it’s depressing to think that these corporations can become the face of a nation whether or not we Americans support them and/or their policies. It’s understandable that if this is all you see, this is all you can hate.