Saturday, September 30, 2006
Don't eat a cow. Or take a picture with one.
Y'know the way you have to get a picture with Mickey before leaving Disneyland? Well, I was determined to get a picture of myself and a cow before leaving Indialand.
A serious, brooding picture. Unshaven. Squinting in the sunlight. And that was just the cow.
Then these midgets show up....
...and a tall midget too. Suddenly, I'm surrounded by kidkins.
Brooding? Or broody?
Damn cute/crazylookin' kids. The cow, though, you have to agree, did remarkably well to hold its pose through all this. And I'm still looking at least a little brooding.
This is probably the last of the dry, fantastically witty, intensely sarcastic posts before I get all sentimotional about flying out at 02h20, Wednesday morning.
Bring on the mush.
www.levdavid.com
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
That old enlightment thing again.
Back in the departure's lounge of Mumbai Domestic, there's a tourist
sitting immediately to my left reading Shantaram. (There's a tourist
sitting immediately to her right updating his blog.)
So obviously seeking enlightenment, I wonder if she might actually
find it. So obviously not seeking enlightenment, I wonder if I might
actually not.
www.levdavid.com
In my office in Mumbai and, I'm thinking....
If you cut me....
(Yes, another blurry, illegally-taken, cellphone-picture.)
In case you're wondering, the meal you're trying not to look at is an Indian Airlines speciality listed in their cookbook as "Lumps of Stuff".
www.levdavid.com
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Fuckoff formula.
So, your're on a plane to Delhi that will be a minimum of 35 minutes
late, and there's no reserved seating, but you've got the aisle seat,
thank Bob, but you want to preserve the centre seat betwixt you and
windowguy, and you're a little grumpy from a lack of sleep and smog in
the lungs and you need to give off some major fuckoff vibes.
How?
Type emails. Look stern. Do not look up at latecomers searching for a
free seat. Not even the littleoldlady with the walking stick. Whip out
your iPod. Carrying sunglasses? Wear them. In the absence of gum,
pretend to chew gum.
Ooh, cute girl comin'.
"Would you like a seat? ...So, where are you flying to? ...What a coincidence! Me too."
www.levdavid.com
Monday, September 25, 2006
Memories of Kerala.
They call it God's Own Country. Even this agnostic can see why.
The sweetmeats here rocked my socks. Well worth the risk of heart disease.
I became a bit of a regular at the best restaurant in town... and one of the best I've ever eaten at, Paragon.
Yeekibloodyhell. They have this rice-bread thing that'd make the wings fall off angles... and paratha (spelling?), that had me whimpering. Dammitwow.
And here's a good story:
So, aleady kinda late for the airport, I decided to sneak in one last lunch at Paragon. I'm alone, so I sit alone.
And then, this guy sits down.
At MY friggin' table! Needless to say, I was startled.
(Yes, I know. Time for a haircut.)
Turns out that this is the way things are done here. You sit down with strangers. Because every stranger is a friend.
Babeesh and I swapped numbers, and he promised to put me up at his place and show me around, and whomever else I might be traveling with, when I'm next in Kerala. How bloody awesome?
Sure, he's kinda scarylookin' in the picture. But then, so am I.
I'm reminded of a time not too far back when I suggested to a few friends, out for drinks at Lapa Fo in Emmarentia, Johannesburg, that it would be great to have a restaurant where you went in in a group, and they split you up and made you sit with other people. They laughed. They laughed in my face, dear friend.
Babeesh would not laugh.
Echoing footsteps on cold, stone floors.
I found it in the Bangalore National History Museum.
I've said before that I'm quite unsentimental about old stuff, at least on an intellectual level. Still, I have a deep love for museums that I can't claim has nothing to do with growing up with the Indiana Jones movies on instant replay.
(This is a statue of the Surya, the chief solar deity in Hinduism, 12th Century AD. The picture's blurry coz I was sneaking a snap with my cellphone -- no pics allowed, of course.)
The detail, if you can't tell, is plainly nutty. Why would anyone work that hard at anything? I certainly wouldn't.
It's the kind of detail that demands a kind of madness, surely. Probably that flavour of madness we call "faith".
Very few of today's artists have the patience for it. Perhaps that's evidence that we live in a less mad time. Perhaps that's also evidence of how much delusion is part of who we are as a species. A species with not only the ability to imagine the unreal, but to believe it. And, on occasion, to make it real.
(A frieze of a buffalo and a winged horse. 1 - 2 Century, AD.)
This one gave me shivers. I doubt that the picture will, but the movement in this piece is incredible.
Just think, though: there must've been a lot of crap back then too. We've just had the good sense to save some of the good stuff.
Dance like no-one's watching... unless someone's watching.
So, there I was, first night in Bangalore, a city with an 11pm curfew, desperately needing to have a bitto dancy-dancy. But there was no dancy dancy to be found. And so, alone, back at the guesthouse, I was slamming it to some Modest Mouse...
...When Srini, who picked me up from the airport earlier, made an unexpected appearence to see if I had everything I needed.
Fairly embarrassing. Played it cool, though. Coz I'm cool, y'know.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
The loneliness of the long distance business traveler.
In this, the continuing tale of my time alone in Bangalore, I find
myself alone in a restaurant packed with happy couples and happy
families and, don't get me wrong, I'm happy too, but one does think,
alone at a table for four, that it would be nice to share this with
someone from back home.
I'm getting a level of attention from the staff here that can only be rooted
Yeah, I chose to spend the weekend alone. Sure, I made Bangalorian
friends who invited me to hang out with them this evening. But you
tire of the good-natured coddling. Of being protected. So I'm not
calling anyone just yet.
There's profound joy in being lost.
Yet, there's also that little seed of sadness that says: "...Aahpoo."
(Hey, we can't turn our emotions into poetry.)
www.levdavid.com
Tough customer.
I just bargained down the price of a beautiful Kashmiri shawl from Rs.
1900 to Rs. 1400. I still think they probably chuckled as I left the
market -- another foreigner bites the dust -- but the sense of
victory, however false, is worth paying for.
Besides, it's a beautiful shawl.
www.levdavid.com
Bangalore Redeemed.
I've found it!
The homeless! Poo! Cows! Dogs! A cow AND a dog hanging out together!
Oh! The poetic realness of it all!
There must be more to Bangalore.
I'm struggling a little with Bangalore. I keep on asking to be taken
to the old city, and I keep on being told that it doesn't exist. That
can't be true. It looks true, though.
Malls and glossy arcades appear to have been built right on top of the
fallingapart ancient city. This is progress. If you think I'm being
sarcastic, I'm not. This is a cleaner, more efficient Indian city than
any I've seen. This is good for humans. And, at an intellectual level,
I'm fairly unsentimental about the preservation of old stuff.
Emotionally, though....
Part of me must be that simpleminded traveler who wants the Disney
version. Gimme cartoon India. Temples and animal-headed Gods and
incense piped in from the incense plant and finding enlightenment. The
homeless? The poo? Alwaysalmost getting run over by rickshaws? Well,
that's part of the show.
Indialand! Take me back to Indialand!
Better than booze...
...is dancing. I haven't done any of that in FOUR WEEKS. One way or
the other, that'll change tonight. I'm here to dance, dammit.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Just one more:
!
That was the worst Mojito I've ever had.
Multiple-exclamation-mark post.
I'm out in that dreadfully generic, globo-contempo part of Bangalore.
And I've just realised that I haven't had a drink in THREE WEEKS!
Let's just throw in another exclamation point for emphasis:
!
Unintentional sobriety. Just hadn't occurred to me.
Look, I'm not big on booze. And I despise the attitude that one must
be drinking to have fun; that's strictly for those lacking
imagination. But this is more sobriety than I can take.
Mojito please.
www.levdavid.com
Once bitten.
Aahcrap. I just got my first mosquito bite since landing in India. I
won't say where.
www.levdavid.com
Bangalore!
It's cool here. The air, I mean.
My body, grown accustomed to hot, wet air over nearlythreeweeks, can
barely believe it. "Seriously?" it says.
I've just gotten to the guesthouse from the airport and about 800
metres down the road is a grand white temple. It's 18h11 and I'm told
the gates are closed. I'll walk there first thing in the morning.
I'm missing Kerala like you miss the girl you didn't kiss goodbye but
should have. Too little time.
How like life.
www.levdavid.com
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Calicut!
If I owned an airline, I'd have planes that played ice cream truck
music while they taxied. Wouldn't that be amazing?
Kerala is far more beautiful than any state needs to be. The word lush
was invented for places like this. Everywhere coconut trees and rice
fields and prettylittlevillages and communists.
I'm loving that my business associate, Rai, a Hindi-speaker in a
non-Hindi-speaking state, is having as much difficulty communicating
with the locals as I am.
Sexist pig!
Clearly, the Mumbai Domestic Airport, Terminal 2, is a
hotchickhotspot. I'd take a picture to prove it, but that would
qualify as potential terrorist activity.
As many of you would've discovered already, flying has become even
more complicated. The security checks take thrice as long and you
typically have to unpack every bag. (No stripsearch yet, alas.) My
waterless hand cleanser is no longer allowed, which is fair, I think.
I'm sneaking it onboard anyway. I'm no terrorist. Promise. And clean
hands are very, very important.
They're calling.
Calicut, Kerala. To this foreigner, at least, every place's name still
sounds like a poem.
Sax in the City.
Been reeeaaally busy. Made a few work breakthroughs, which is luverly. Funny how work, when it works, feels nothing like work.
Here's a pic from Calcutta last week. Flury's, a truly legendary restaurant/patisserie, regularly has live jazz.
They played Cole and George and cool covers of The Beatles. It was one of those perfect travel moments. Wish I'd tried the cakes.
Guess I'll have to go back.
I'm off the Calicut now. My first adventure down South. See you on the other side, m'pretty.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Indtalian food. Yum.
I'll recover soon enough, though.
Hey! I got the loveliest letter from the loveliest lady, Ms. Eloise Pretorius, one of the great talents of South African radio. She asks of my trip to India:
"Is it wonderful?"
Yes. All the time. Even when it isn't, it is.
"What's radio like in India?"
If I came in with any assumptions that I'd be The Great Wise South African with everything to teach and nothing to learn, I was wrong. India has one of this planet's hottest media industries. Rules are being rewritten here. Of course, this has only made the mission more exciting -- I get to work with enormously talented people in a market so big I've lost fingers and toes to count the millions of listeners on! Nothing but yay, hey? Come see!
"Are you working hard?"
I try to avoid it whenever I can.
"How's your accommodation?"
When it's been good it's been very, very good, and when it's been bad it's been, well, um.... There was this one hotel in a little rural town outside Calcutta that David Lynch would love to take a camera to. But I'm grateful for all of it; I tend to think that we should live each day searching for stories to tell. And I've certainly gathered a few of those.
"What are the people like?"
Let's not forget that I have the foreigner's advantage and most people seem endeared by my lostness. People tend to be nice to me.
Somebody back home asked me this morning: are the Indian people especially special? Especially benevolent? Especially kind? Good questions all.
A mindset of mutual acceptance and a zen-like calm is often mentioned in reference to Indian people in general, and I can't say it's not supported by what I've seen and experienced -- Mumbai traffic would drive most people to beat each other up with lead pipes, but it doesn't. I sometimes find the general unwillingness to become infuriated damn infuriating.
Still, I think general differences in the nature of people in any part of the world -- cold Englishmen, humourless Germans, dumb Americans, saucy South Americans -- are ultimately superficial.
Have you ever watched The Muppets Take Manhattan? If you haven't, drop everything and track down a copy. There's a very special bit of dialogue from Pete, the owner of a New York diner. It's stuck with me since I saw the movie at age four. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Age four. I want to get it right, so I'm pulling this quote off imdb.com:
"Big city, hmm? Live. Work, huh? But only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay?"
It gave me a lump in the throat back then, and it still does now. Peoples is peoples. Dark and light. Good and bad. Smelly and nice-smellin'. Complex, wonderful, horrible, unfathomable, damn predictable, but above all, endlessly entertaining. Each an individual.
Peoples is peoples.
Over here, though, they tend to be brown. Like me.
www.levdavid.com
Is that a pen in your pocket?
Monday, September 18, 2006
Getting my hands dirty.
Morning in Jaipur.
Welcome to Jaipur, The Pink City.
Heartbreakingly beautiful, I'm determined to go back to Jaipur; to have my head made silly by colour and texture.
Temples in the middle of the road every 100 metres or so provide convenient drive-thru worship.
It's at times like this that you're grateful you can spell the word h-a-b-a-d-a-s-h-e-r-y. How about those colours? Dammitwow.
Suhaya informed me perhaps a little too late that it wasn't the Ray Bans, nor my distinctly foreign aura to blame for the stares I was getting, but my floral shirt. Apparently floral shirts on men aren't done in Jaipur. Nor the state Jaipur's in. Nor India really. I avoided telling her that they're not really done in South Africa either but, hey, I like flowers. (When I heard Jaipur's called The Pink City, I figured....)
Here, we're in the back of a bicycle-drawn rickshaw. By the way, I've subsequently lost the Ray Bans. Damn. Made me feel like a rockstar.
http://www.levdavid.com/
Enough already.
The first class lounge.
Get me to the temple on time.
At first, I thought Suhaya was having me on, but it turns out that Delhi woman successfully campaigned to have the bike-helmet laws not apply to them. Their argument? They didn't want to mess up their hair on the way to weddings. I wonder if the Mumbai cops will accept the same excuse from me.
McEverywhere
McDonald's in Delhi.
The fast food chain is probably in more countries than there are countries and here, in India, they repeat their formula of expertly pandering, and rake in the GM dough as a result. Can you blame them for being good at what they do? ...Perhaps.
Catching up.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Bhubaneshwar!
I promise there's so much good stuff to come. Pics, prose... even a
poem written at Calcutta Train Station. Rocking, yes? Yes.
Communications have been difficult. I'm now in one of the smaller
towns on my list -- Bhubaneshwar! Bloody good name, yes?
Predictably, my cellphone doesn't work here. Unpredictably, there's
WiFi everywhere. And so, I say hello.
Hello.
I love the feeling of this place. After the madness of Calcutta (I'll
tell you more later, promise), this more rural, deeply green, wet,
college town is exactly what I need. And I have about 24 hours to
experience it before heading back to Mumbai.
I'm going exploring now.
If my mum asks:
I'm in perfect health. I'm having fun. I've managed to find fruit, I
haven't had the runs and, no, I haven't met a nice Indian girl to
settle down with.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Jaipur!
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Delhi!
Even from the air, Delhi appears more ordered and cleaner than Mumbai.
The traffic is marginally less chaotic and certainly less noisy. And
now, Suhaya (my guardian for much of my worktime in India) and I are
killing time in a generic sort of shopping mall. Large, cool,
escalatory. We're sitting in a place called Ruby Tuesday. Jamiroquai
is playing. There's iced tea on the menu and a salad bar. People drink
iced tea and eat salads. The crowd is young and well dressed.
We could be anywhere.
There's a song in my head.
...It's such a perfect day / I'm glad I spent it with yooooou! /
Dum-dum-dum-dum / Such a perfect day! / You just keep me hanging on...
/ ...You just keeeep me haaaaaaanging oooooon!
iPod time.
I've got a window seat. When last were you glad to get a window seat,
you jaded jetsetter you? It will be nice to see some countryside.
How to avoid getting your ass kicked in India.
Friend, you'd've been so proud of me this morning.
After waiting 15 minutes yesterday for a coy hotel porter to hail me a
cab, this morning I decided to take matters into my own hands and,
with my bloodybigbag'n'everything, walked in a straight line out of
the hotel front door, through the front gate, raised a hand, brought
an autorickshaw to a screeching halt and said with cool authority:
"Domestic Airport, Vile Parle East."
Done.
I just have to get the accent down and I'll rule this town.
Seriously, though, I'm learning. But what, exactly?
Perhaps that being a stranger in a strange land and not getting your
ass kicked is partly about meeting the strangeness on its own terms...
and partly about demanding that the strangeness meet you on your
terms.
The route that I paid 200 rupees for a week ago now costs me 40; the
autorick drivers seem more reluctant to rip me off now that I've
become less polite.
Now, I wait for my flight to Delhi at Mumbai International Airport.
The official clock is running 7 minutes slow and baggage checks seem
largely voluntary.
The departures lounge is a technobeautyparade; swish businessmen show
off their sexy new laptops and sexy new smartphones. Realising that,
right now, I'm very much a part of said parade, I'll end this post and
put my sexy new smartphone away.
Laterskater. See you in Delhi.
Monday, September 11, 2006
The space between.
And here, Pravin reads us the story of King Arthur.
Bloody good story, that. I remember being properly obsessed with it as a child. And there are worse things to be obsessed with than the story of a common boy of uncommon character who went on to change the world. Keep reading, Pravin.
Another day, another dosa.
Heh heh heh.
Who's there?
A little old lady.
A little old lady who?
I didn't know you could yodel.
I know what you're thinking....
...Did that boy Lev ride on the back of a bike with no helmet?
...Did that boy Lev ride on the back of a bike with no helmet through the streets of Bombay?!
...Did that boy Lev ride on the back of a bike with no helmet through the streets of Bombay at high speeds?!?
And, worst of all:
...Did that boy Lev ride on the back of a bike with no helmet through the streets of Bombay at high speeds... and take a picture of himself??!!??
...If my mum asks, of course I didn't.
I was wearing Ray Bans, though. That much I'll admit to.
Spot the odd one out.
Of course, I'd've fitted right in if I'd only remembered to wear my uniform.
English.
English.... It's the universally language.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Return to me.
My phone died on Friday morning. Conclusively. So I went and bought
another. Phones are really cheap here, so I felt obliged to wield the
enormous might of my South African Rand by buying the fanciest one I
could find.
And the locals went "Oooooh! Mighty Rand! Oooooooh!"
Sad thing: I've lost your contact details. So, mail me. Or we'll never
be friends again.
lev@levdavid.com
(Why do you look so pleased?)
I've had the most incredible weekend in Mumbai. I'll tell you all
about it tomorrow. Pictures too.
I'm off to Delhi on Tuesday, take a train to Calcutta on Thursday and
hopefully fit in Goa over the weekend. Jealous? You should be.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
They missed me.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Colonize me, dammit.
(Picture selected by Christopher Columbus.)
Survivor Mumbai.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
A simple breakfast.
So, I asked for a simple breakfast. This is what they brought me. A dosa, which is essentially a sort of pancake. Inside, a vegetable thingy. Meant to be dipped into the saucy thing, which is one of the tastiest saucy things I've ever had in my life.
You probably know this already, but India is a vegetarian's dream.
God for sale.
Hutch is a major cellular company operating in India. Ganesha is a major god operating in India. Gotta love those joint ventures.
Every hour is rush hour!
People are always almost-getting-run-over by these things: auto-rickshaws. There are no rules of the road here, or at least none by which people abide. But, somehow, it all works. And nobody gets hit. How'bout that?
People get around. Strangest of all is the general blanket of calm over the chaos. The hooter of the average Mumbai vehicle seems to have been wired directly to the accelerator, and if the traffic moves in jerks and fits, each jerk and fit is accompanied by a hoot or honk. But even that isn't an angry hoot here -- just a polite, "Friend, I'm here!". And so, everybody knows where everybody is and nobody gets hurt. I've seen no road rage.
Mumbai has a population density of about 29,000 per square kilometre (last time I counted). Compare that to my home, Johannesburg, with a population density of under 2000 per square k. So, how does Mumbai work at all?
The most scientific explanation I can think of is: magic.
I had a sublime moment walking among an intense, dense crowd on the beach last night. It was the big Ganesh festival. Giant idols being immersed in the sea. More people in one place than I've ever seen in my life. Chaos, I thought. And then, somehow, I wasn't bumping into people anymore. Guided perhaps by a wisp of incense, I found myself at one with the crowd. Tuned in.
Of course, then I started thinking about it, and started bumping into people again. There's little hope for the naturally ungraceful.
Bad journalism. (From me.)
Day 2 in Mumbai.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Packing it in.
I hate packing for a trip. A good reason to be smellyrich -- being
able to hire a professional packer.
I'm physically sore from a lack of sleep but can't help but lie in
bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking: at 00h20 on Wednesday morning,
I'll land in the most peopled city the planet has ever seen. I love
the idea of landing past midnight. I get to press my ear to the chest
of a sleeping giant. Magic.
By all reliable accounts, Mumbai is one of The Great Cities. Wild and
sophisticated and glam and rough and very, very intense.
I want it in me. In my tummy. On my tongue. Fucking with my head.
But now, sleep.
www.levdavid.com
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Love and television.
Is the one you love far from home? Are you feeling that awful
emptiness in the pit of your stomach? I've found the cure -- TV series
on DVD.
Of course, television has long been a trusted provider of symptomatic
relief from missing someone, as have movies on video and, more
recently, DVD. But the relatively new phenomenon of TV series on DVD
is exactly the hybrid cure we've been waiting for.
A movie is far too temporary. It's like a one-night stand, really.
Quick and intense, it ultimately leaves you with that horrible feeling
of unfulfilled longing once it's over. TV is far too inconsistent. And
there are advertisements. Fuck those advertisements. TV series on
TV... well, it's a passing friendship. The occasional "Hey! Let's grab
a cup of tea." But a TV series on DVD... it's almost like having the
one you love right there with you.
Live through the highs, the lows, the mundanity. For those of us with
day jobs, it probably takes up just about as much of your time as a
real relationship. And when you're done you get to put it back in the
box and on the shelf.
The West Wing, Season 6. Thank you, my love.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Branding the homeless....
...an idea whose time has come?
The key to happiness. We've found it.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Off to India!
Three things in my head.
1. A tongue terrorised by wasabi crackers (though willingly),
2. A brain exhausted from negotiating consular red tape (going on a
trip! tell you more later), and
3. The thought -- by Bob, the SABC Radio Newsperson, Hajara Something,
whom I heard on 5FM Music a couple of hours ago reporting from
Gallagher Estate, HAS to be told that no-one not worthy of
sterilisation thinks that that sing-song news presentation style
works. We're done with that, ma'am. Talk like a human.
(And a 4th thought -- my spelling's rubbish today.)
The Sound of Music's on e.tv. Is anybody else TFO'ed by Julie Andrews?
She should never have showed us her nipples.
About Me
-
- Name:Lev David
- Location:South Africa
Lev David is a writer and media consultant with a startlingly fresh approach to communicating your message. With words and ideas that are lean, precise and simply unstoppable, he has been smacking the mainstream media about the arse since he was 15. The world is a mess of messages. Cut through.