Living the Vida 5-Star

For our visit to Trivandrum (the actual name is a real mouth full of syllables, so if you want to try it, officially it's Thiruvananthapuram), and in the spirit of a continuing birthday present, Iowa Guru booked us a couple of nights in a 5-star hotel. It is an interesting experience. 

Mind you, we'd had some experience in this realm, in India. (I can't fathom the prices of such accommodations in the U.S. or Europe). The Four-Points Sheraton that we stayed in initially in Jaipur may have been 5-star, but it was, for the most part, just a nice hotel. (The staff was very friendly.) No, if you want a real 5-star experience in Rajasthan, you need to stay in a "heritage hotel". We haven't done that, but we've visited these places. Indeed, one, the Rambaugh Palace, is about a 10-15 minute walk from our flat. It's not as close as the slum area, but you can get just about everything in a 15' walk in Jaipur, from 17th century to 21st century, filthy rich to frighteningly poor. When Abba, Amy and Tom were here, we entered the cloistered precincts of the Rambaugh, taking the "champagne tour"--it concludes with a complimentary glass of champagne and some finger-foods to conclude, of course. These edifices, like many around Rajasthan, were once the palaces of the mighty and wealthy maharajas. You definitely get the vibe. Even the peacocks at Rambaugh palace seem a little more upscale. The lawn is manicured. Everything is meticulously clean (this is Rajasthan remember, where dust and grit come home to live). The indoor pool, the outdoor pool, the railway car restaurant, and the gold-plated room (with gold-plated service), all make you think that people here have money. A great place to pass through. 

Another Rajasthan 5-star experience is Samood Palace, located next to a small village about an hour drive outside of Jaipur. Approaching via the single lane road through the sleepy village, with its pigs and goats and kids (human), you wonder what must lie at the end. And, Indian style, you find a gorgeous palace. To enter, you climb steps, entering a new level of intimacy with the building (and formerly, the maharaja), creating the sense of cloister than one finds in these heritage hotels. (Indeed, the women were cloistered.) The sense of ease, of space, of quiet, makes the whole experience seem almost otherworldly. (See photos by Iowa Guru for a sense of the splendor.) 

Now, to the south. This hotel, a Taj, was not a heritage hotel, so it looked like a modern hotel. A large, clean, spacious lobby, poorly lit (why do they do that?). The room is nice, but small. A phone in the bathroom and glass shower doors give away that this is a classy place. The food was okay, but nothing to shout about. It had a nice workout room, with one guy who seemed to have a personal attendant to push the buttons on the remote control for the TV while the client continued his concentration on the slowly moving treadmill. The attendant later helped hold down the client's feet during sit-ups and mopped the client's mildly sweating brow when a little bead of sweat appeared. It all seems a bit weird to our middle-class, Midwestern sensibilities. However, the best amenity, and one that I wouldn't mind having available, was the swimming pool. Long enough for lap-swimming, perfect water temperature, and unused except by IG and me, it was a treat. The sun was a bit intense even around 9 a.m., but even 5-stars can't control everything. 

The one experience that I haven't enjoyed at any of these hotels is a sighting of any beautiful people. Jackie O. used to visit the maharaja in Udaipur (and a sweet spot it was), and one reads about beautifuls visiting Jodhpur or Jaipur. (Jaipur, of course, gets writers, but how many writers might one consider "beautiful people"? Really, they type all day and are generally unseen.) So, I'd hoped to see some really rich people, but rich people just don't seem to do a good job anymore of setting standards. So many lumpy people dressed so unimaginatively (and this coming from the Tim Gunn-antipode). Frankly, the rich disappoint in these 5-stars. I'm already to go F. Scott Fitzgerald on them, and I always finish all Ernest Hemingway. 

Oh, well, it was fun. Now back to reality.

Deciphering the Code

When my sister and brother-in-law where here visiting, Tom tried to figure out the traffic rules. Riffing off of his callings as a clinician and an IT guy, he attempted to discern the hidden code that governs users of the streets in Jaipur. As any reader of this blog will know, the usual rules of the road that we know from the U.S. are non-existent here. He came up with some plausible hypotheses, such as smaller vehicles defer to larger vehicles, but I don't think that he completed the project, and I fear his observed rules would find too many exceptions. I, too, have pondered this question for some months now, and perhaps because of the seeds that he planted in my brain, I have new hypothesis, or at least an analogy to better understand the workings (such as they are) of Jaipur traffic. 

All traffic in Jaipur works in the same manner as pedestrian crowds in a confined space. 

In other words, think of a football stadium (think Kinnick, not Husky) emptying after a game. Smaller people weave in and out, while most people take turns allowing others to go, often in groups. Bigger people or those in a hurry receive deference, even if grudgingly granted. The slower walkers are passed by the faster ones. 

So in Jaipur, motorcyclists, who are small and almost always in a hurry, weave in and out quickly. The slower movers, like the camel and donkey carts or the guys hauling people or loads on bikes, move to the side and are passed by. Given the mulitple lanes (and there are always more lanes of traffic than any lane-lines would suggest), everyone can move at different speeds. In the city, nothing on the road moves very fast for very long.

Of course, this is not a program or an algorithm for pedestrian traffic or, according to my theory, Jaipur road traffic, but I think that it gives someone a better understanding of how it works. Not perfectly mind you--a high percentage of Jaipur vehicles have significant dents and dings in their bodies--but it does work. If someone has worked out the dynanics of crowd flows in an anarchic situation, like emptying a crowded pedestrian space, then they could probably model Jaipur road traffic, or as I think of it, anarchy in action. 

P.S. My sister offered no hypotheses about how it worked, but I did hear her gasp several times at what she thought were impending collisions. Thus she provided some interesting data about the system.  

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

C and I recently traveled to Nepal, her for a conference and me to get my visa stamped as having left India (we're not supposed to stay for more than 180 consecutive days). Walking along the corridor of the Katmandu airport after having just arrived, and before hitting the barrage of travel bureaucrats to review and stamp my papers, I took in the signage (apparently posted by some Russian vodka interest). I learned various things about Nepal ("gorgeous mountains", etc.), but one thing hit me that I hadn't realized. Nepal is the birthplace of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama of the Shakya clan. After I finished The Snow Leopard, I knew what I should read. 

I've actually read Siddhartha once before, and unlike many  readers, not in high school or college. I was an adult. I recall it to have been interesting and worthwhile but nothing that grabbed me by the lapels. Nevertheless, I'd see it at Rajat Books and thought that I should take another crack at it, since (I thought) India was the homeland of the Buddha, and the character Siddartha is a sort of alter-ego and acquaintance of the Enlightened One. Also, since Hedecki, C's fellow graduate student and our house guest 30 years ago, kept a small Buddhist shrine on our spare room and thereby spurred me to learn about Buddhism, I've kept reading and attempting to understand and (at least to some small extent) practice this way of living. 
 
I'm happy to report that the trip back into Siddartha proved worthwhile. Just for the sentences of  "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." makes the re-reading worthwhile. What a thought-provoking and challenging attitude! For those of you unacquainted with the premise of the book, it's set at the time of the Buddha, and the main character is the son of a Brahmin family who, like Buddha, finds his situation uneasy, and he goes to live the life of an ascetic. Moving  through life, he encounters the historical Buddha, but unlike his companion Govinda, he chooses to go his own path. Siddhartha's path takes him across the river by courtesy of the ferry man, and into the city and good graces of Kamela, the courtesan. Siddhartha continues to grow and learn as his life unfolds. Indeed, literary critics have dubbed this book a bildungsroman, a coming of age story, but Siddhartha learns and reflects not just through youth but into his advancing years. 

I must say that I benefited greatly, after completing the book, and reading the introduction for the 90th anniversary edition that Pico Iyer wrote. Iyer notes the book's effect on him as a youth, and he points to the spirit of rebelliousness and heroics that appeals to youth. But he points out something that resonates now with him and with me: the ending. The elder Siddartha as he gives an account of his life and learning at the end of the book, a perspective and accounting different from that of the Buddha, yet, I think, complementary. If you think about it, as an aging man of many worldly experiences, Siddhartha hints at a path that most of us must consider: that of finding some insight and repose in this world through the difficult issues of love, vocation, family, desire, foolishness, loss, and everything else. Some try to by-pass these issues by living as solitary, ascetic hermits, but I think that they deceive themselves if they think that they can run away from all of this world's challenges. As one can see clearly from the writings of the Christian Desert Fathers, even alone in the desert learn that our mind is populated by the world, by the thoughts, images, and desires that being-in-the-world compels upon us. I think that we must hope that by the end of our lives that we, too, can smile like the Siddarthas--both of them.

How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion by Reza Aslan

In February we took a trip to the neighboring city of Ajmer, less than two hours by car from Jaipur. We went there to see the tomb (shrine) of Moinuddin Chishtī, the medieval Sufi saint.

We entered Ajmer, and it didn't look much different than any of the other cities and towns in Rajasthan. We pulled into a parking lot and called our contact, who was to guide us the site. In about ten minutes a man dressed in white with a white cap appeared. He bid us to follow him and we did. After walking about a block, cars were barred and even the ubiquitous motorcycles thinned. The street narrowed and become busy, almost crowded, and marked by men in white with caps, like our guide. I had not encountered such a concentration of Muslims since coming to India (although I had visited C's madrasa teacher training program in Delhi). Walking the narrow street crowded with Muslims, young and old, I felt as if I was in a movie, Bourne movie or Syriana. Not that I felt threatened (I didn't), but it reminded me of the significance of the Muslim presence in India and the world, a very considerable presence.  

As we approached the gates, our guide verred right, and we headed up a narrower lane, entering into a labyrinth of by-ways. We reached a small storefront where we left our shoes and cameras (with not small ttrepidation). We entered into the enclosure of the tomb area following our guide and eventually we came into the room of the tomb. Strewn with flowers and crowded with supplicants, our guide held a cloth over us and offered a blessing. We emerged and then we were shown the great pots where feasts were prepared for the needy. 

After leaving the shrine and the hospitality of our guide, who became our host by inviting us to his home and sharing tea and fried chicken with us, we went on a Pushkar and its Hindu temples (a story for another time). 

We in the U.S. know of religion, but we rarely see it displayed and practiced in the manner that one sees it in India. In India, Moslems are a minority, but a very large minority, and one that, at least within the country,  remains relatively peaceful. But then, that's true of Muslims everywhere. And Christians and Jews. Almost all are peaceful, but a few, a frightening few, become caught up on what Reza Aslan calls a "cosmic war". 

I read Aslan's book How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion (2009, 176p.) as a follow-up to Atran's book that I reviewed in my previous post at Taking Readings. If you were to read them both yourself, I would recommend reversing the order. Aslan's book--as one would expect from a veteran of the Iowa Writer's Workshop--reads easily and gives a quicker, more succinct overview of what has been happening in the current Muslim world, and well as in the world of the Old Testament and Bush's America. Aslan details a fact of life that we can too easily ignore: some people are drawn to cosmic wars, battles of good versus evil, us versus them. The early Jewish scriptures display a wrathful warrior God. Christians of a fundementalist persuasion, ignoring great themes of the New Testament, take up these ancient cries of righteouness and blood lust to make contemporary appeals to vanquish the heathens. Contemporary Judaism, especially within Israel and the West Bank, contains some of the same types of holy warriors. In all, these small but incredibly vocal band of holy warriors in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam make a scary lot. Only a few, of course, opt for terrorism as a means of realizing their holy orders, but even without such overt acts, they create a climate where tolerance and alternative faiths find it hard to get a footing. Alsan points, however, that out that many of the Muslim groups that we hear about, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others, have very limited, particular concerns (like the rights of Palestinians), and we Americans lump them all together at our peril.Not all are cosmic warriors.

One can't help leaving a book such as Aslan's without some sense of fear and despair, but we know that these are a minority of a minority who threaten violence. Most of us are more humble about divine intentions through either reasoned caution or courtesy of the demands of daily life. In any event, writers like Aslan help us to understand this wider world, and we should thank him for it. 

N.B. Besides his Iowa City/UI connection and his notoriety as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Aslan was a speaker at JLF, and I thought one of the pithier commentators on American politics. I hope that he keeps writing, as his voice adds a great deal to our understanding and the conversation that we must have. 

Cross-posted at Taking Readings