A wedding in Rajasthan

An indian friend studying at JNU invited me to his sister's wedding. Northern Rajasthan, a village of very few thousands people. I've learnt in these three days about India more than in the last three months. I've learnt from seeing rituals, dances and chants I could hardly understand beyond grabbing them in some snaps and movies, I've learnt from my friends who come from that same kind of villages and who study and know what cosmopolitan life looks like - how it renders that rich heritage very controversial -, I've learnt from the people who stuck to me as I quickly became the main attraction of the wedding, the white italo-french with the camera.
I understad it requires a lot of knowledge to understand every single passage of what went on for those 3 days. It is complicated and I was happy just being struck by the beauty of faces, costumes and the hospitality of people. their sincere and warm way of laughting. Everything looked very new to me, and very appealing to sense (all of them). I'll add only two things to this: women live in a kind for underworld, yet have great fun - the few occasions I found myself alone in their company, it was all about great laughter -, and people looked happy, everyone did. It is maybe because of the wedding, or maybe because of the life they have...I do not know. Still, I was seduced by it all.

The holy cow's silent emancipation series 2

The holy cow's silent emancipation series 1

tutti i diritti su questa foto sono di POLIS (R)

Sunday morning and my Ray-Ban (r)

Some very rich Delhiites you recognise when it comes to ordering something in a café, or even better, in a lounge bar. There is a specific and special kind of affluent delhiite who cannot refrain from showing off, piling up pretentious amendments to the menu. You can easily find three women at Barista Crème in South Ex. Part 1 in New Delhi, the first asking with a Queen’s English very much pinched accent: a very cold drink but with “less ice”; the second, slightly older, opting for a cappuccino “extra sweet, please, I mean with extra sweet but not white sugar” and the third one, a middle-aged woman, asking for an amaretto flavoured cappuccino with cream, but with “a generous hazelnut chocolate fudge in a separate glass”, almost a fetish with which to indulge for a little half an hour of sheer pleasure, pouring the precious liquid little by little in the extra-large cup of coffee.

This morning it was the third time I went to that bar, one of the best where to get a very nice hot drink in a freezing sunny Sunday morning in Delhi. Under a deep blue sky (how long since last time I saw one, instead of the grey and misty pollution cap?) I was hiding my face under my 70s fake Ray-Ban sunglasses paid 200 rupies (not even 4 euros). I felt cosy and warm in my jacket, the sun hitting my face.

Then I sat at a table and I opened my Sunday HT (Hindustan Times). I usually read The Hindu, an independent high-brow and very good daily paper, yet my newspaper reseller decided it is not worth having it only for me and (I guess) few other high-brow people with fake Ray-Ban sunglasses on Sunday mornings - so he doesn’t have it any more. What a pity, though. Now I have to cross the ring road using the pedestrian subway and get to South Ex. Par 2…hard life indeed.

Anyways, on page nine (nothing to do with page 3 of the Sun, trust me) I found the photo portrait of a nice old lady, i.e. Sheila Dikshit, the Chief Minister of Delhi…for the last nine years. The header goes like this: “9 years in office ‘I admit that it gets boring occasionally’”. She’ll face the electorate once more next year. She’s planning to go to the voters with the achievements of the last 9 years.

How can’t you love this country on Sunday mornings, and the rest of the week as well?

Benares by pictures

Here you are some pictures of Benares. Hope my last post did not shock anyone (apart from me, ahah).
News of the last minute: eventually my camera got repaired, I'll be posting more pictures for you very soon.
enjoy the holiest of hindu city and the holiest of hindu rivers

Benares, or On Death and Life

I spent the last 3 days in Benares.
This city is exceptional starting with its name. In fact is has two well known: Benares and Varanasi, one in Sanskrit and one in Hindi. The it is also called Kashi, "the luminous", since the times of the Rigveda.
Well, it is luminous. The first impression I had was all about light: walking through the narrows street and finally seeing the very sacred Ganga through a vault was quite impressive. Inner peace and openness of space struck me. Then I saw people bathing and swimming in the water. The atmosphere was inspiring, relaxed. Almost weightless. All of a sudden, I felt very well.
Is this what you are supposed to experience visiting the holiest city of north India? Is this the very much spoken about spirituality India is famous for? Is that it, and all of it?

Varanasi turned into the place where the strongest taboos I inherited since I'm born (from...let's say 'western culture'?) came to be challenged. And violently so.
This is because Varanasi is the place where a Hindu is supposed to die to escape the cycle of death and life linked to reincarnation. It is the place where cremations are done. That is for a Hindu, I guess, even if I don't know. The Indian friends to whom I told I was going there would say it is not a good place to go for tourism.
What I experienced (and still experience the days after) is the loss of coordinates about life and death, their physical separateness, that border/wall/line western culture (let me say it and bear with me) is possibly both build on and fond of. The loss of the border lines between the two was then the critical break point. My deepest taboo about death, the way I conceive it in relation to life were reversed and confused. This because I cannot understand why you would "wash" or "purify", or swim, drink, plunge yourself in the same water where corpse float, few hundred meters far form you. Still, that is my problem, those who do it are not bothered at all, they enjoy their time in the water. The feeling of sickness I got from that is a lack of understanding, a cultural gap. It is also very difficult to bridge. Not every human being has a natural repulsion with respect to death, particularly dead body, or parts of it, be it cremated or floating in your river. Not more so if the contact with that is daily and direct, the Ganga being the sacred cradle for it all.

How to conciliate the vision of burning places, where you see piles of big black wooden chops and the profile of skeleton wrapped in the flames after due rituals have being carried out and that one of the ghats where children play in the Ganga, people shave and bath under the beautiful light of December's sun?

I'm definitely left with strong images, even stronger cultural challenges and a memorable week-end in which my deepest beliefs about human nature were put into discussion. That was India in one extreme go: the opposites which are not opposed, the contradiction which is not a contradiction and a conception of time, purity and beauty very far away from what I recognise as familiar. India is not easy, but whose problem is this?

Shimla, the Indian Switzerland

I'm late updating my page!
let's start from Shimla then... the summer capital of the British Raj, now the capital of Himachal Pradesh in the North-West Himalayas.

Those witty Britons had chosen a very charming place indeed where to spend their summer. Perfect to cool down body temprature, much less effective in with colonising moods, the Vice-Roy chose this city built at some 2130 meters on the level of the sea to rule British India during the long Indian summers from 1864 onwards. The telegraph and the railway did the rest, I guess.
This is the middle of nowhere, 5 hours (115km) by train on a narrow rail track leaving the plain in Chandighar, the capital of Punjab, and reaching Shimla shifting from one peak to the other.
In British times it was named the "Queen of Hills".
I did feel a bit in some Swiss summer resort, people wearing very smartly, no dust, empty streets, cottage-like architecture and churches all over.






very civilesed indeed, gosh, maybe to much for my new Delhiite civic ethos



but how relaxing and charming is this? big breakfast and little walk up-hill with sage encounters on the way up




Of course we wouldn't be in India without a fantastic, thriving, caotic and crowded market




But we wouldn't either be in British India former capital without discovering the Vice-Roy had an enchanting Scottish-baroque castle built on the peak of the mountain. It is absolutely amaizing to see how you can have British style flower gardens and oaks and all that is needed to forget to be in India. Also, in this very same surreal Scottish castle the Partition between Pakistan and Inda was signed in 1947.



But some Indians had very good relationships with English people, look for instance Jawaharlal Nerhu having a great laugth with Lady Mountbatten and her husband, the last Viceroy of British India



back to reality both in time and space, here is the next Home Minister of India, as he told me. Well, maybe not the very next one but this guy, a politician from Shimla, knew of international politics a real awful lot. Unfortunately, we shared only two dozen of english words, but the chat was great anyways.




Next episode in Rajasthan...more soon and on

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