7 April - Kerala & Thiefs
Am missing DD who’s in Kerala right now, and where I was a mere 3 months ago though it seems a lifetime in terms of coming unhinged after period with no long breaks. I don’t think prison would be so bad in a day to day sort of way but the thought of not being able to cross an ocean or two would seriously send me spinning. So, DD is having heart of darkness trips down a lagoon every time she wants to leave the stunning Poovar Island resort and leave she must as I think it’s a bit boring in a safe tourist enclave within crazy country sort of way. In the meantime
I bond over India with a recent acquaintance who used to buy dope in Manali and travel down to Goa to sell it and thus pay for his stints out there. He’s so young that it seems incongruous that he would do this hippy thing but… what do I know. He brings me news of the fabled and much awaited new Grace Jones album (which should contain her cover of a song written by a friend of mine, the very apt ‘Queen of the Night’. Except that L. doesn’t really know where it’s at except that his company would distribute it. I instruct him to dig a little deeper. Talking of India, a drink with Y. who’s second generation Gujarati from fashion college London. We talk about what one could do there for job or activity and he says we’ve got it all askew because your average Indian youth would love Nando’s Chicken and that’s what we should sell him, get the franchise for. Uhm, I admit I had something a little more recherche’ in mind but he’s adamant. We then talk about how many times over we’d have to pay for anything given the amount of people who’d lay a claim to what we bought or demand cash to facilitate moving our business along (even local Indians get asked for backhanders if they want to get something totally legit as their own passport issued and it’s so endemic it’s bound to wear us westerners down. I keep arguing though that there are enough new businesses or ventures in India that despite the difficulties, it can be done and that there’s a version of this probably in every country. Some friends of mine who’ve lived in Mexico for years and years, had not water or electricity for weeks/months to their new house because they refused to pay backhanders for something they were entitled to. I think they sat it out for however long it took. If I know G & M well, I know G , I is extremely stubborn…. Bit like me really.
Y. then tells me his story about being accused of stealing 50R (30p at today’s rates) from an old man, whilst travelling on a bus on the way to Armitsar, where he was meant to stay inside the temple walls for a bit of spiritual holiday. Y. is very Indian looking but in possession of long hair and a fashion/London demeanour so they knew he was foreign. He never expected the crowd to turn on him though. He could understand Punjabi but didn’t’ speak it and by speaking in English enraged them even more. Some man slapped him 3 times, which he found unbelievably humiliating and then he was dragged to the police station by the seat of his trousers (“they gave me a wedgie!” he says incensed, if that’s possible when speaking in his inimitable , soft brummie accent). Here he quaked it a bit seeing how most people there were chained to the wall by an iron arm cuff. The police chief found his British passport and £4k in his bum bag (he was buying furniture and furnishings to ship back to London) and concluded that such a young man had no motive to steal 30p and let him go. By this point Y. was so traumatised by his kin’s betrayal, that sod the temple, he just made it back to civilization, or Mumbai, pronto.
I bond over India with a recent acquaintance who used to buy dope in Manali and travel down to Goa to sell it and thus pay for his stints out there. He’s so young that it seems incongruous that he would do this hippy thing but… what do I know. He brings me news of the fabled and much awaited new Grace Jones album (which should contain her cover of a song written by a friend of mine, the very apt ‘Queen of the Night’. Except that L. doesn’t really know where it’s at except that his company would distribute it. I instruct him to dig a little deeper. Talking of India, a drink with Y. who’s second generation Gujarati from fashion college London. We talk about what one could do there for job or activity and he says we’ve got it all askew because your average Indian youth would love Nando’s Chicken and that’s what we should sell him, get the franchise for. Uhm, I admit I had something a little more recherche’ in mind but he’s adamant. We then talk about how many times over we’d have to pay for anything given the amount of people who’d lay a claim to what we bought or demand cash to facilitate moving our business along (even local Indians get asked for backhanders if they want to get something totally legit as their own passport issued and it’s so endemic it’s bound to wear us westerners down. I keep arguing though that there are enough new businesses or ventures in India that despite the difficulties, it can be done and that there’s a version of this probably in every country. Some friends of mine who’ve lived in Mexico for years and years, had not water or electricity for weeks/months to their new house because they refused to pay backhanders for something they were entitled to. I think they sat it out for however long it took. If I know G & M well, I know G , I is extremely stubborn…. Bit like me really.
Y. then tells me his story about being accused of stealing 50R (30p at today’s rates) from an old man, whilst travelling on a bus on the way to Armitsar, where he was meant to stay inside the temple walls for a bit of spiritual holiday. Y. is very Indian looking but in possession of long hair and a fashion/London demeanour so they knew he was foreign. He never expected the crowd to turn on him though. He could understand Punjabi but didn’t’ speak it and by speaking in English enraged them even more. Some man slapped him 3 times, which he found unbelievably humiliating and then he was dragged to the police station by the seat of his trousers (“they gave me a wedgie!” he says incensed, if that’s possible when speaking in his inimitable , soft brummie accent). Here he quaked it a bit seeing how most people there were chained to the wall by an iron arm cuff. The police chief found his British passport and £4k in his bum bag (he was buying furniture and furnishings to ship back to London) and concluded that such a young man had no motive to steal 30p and let him go. By this point Y. was so traumatised by his kin’s betrayal, that sod the temple, he just made it back to civilization, or Mumbai, pronto.
Labels: Music
posted by Lisa Taylor @ 8:20 AM
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