I wrote these notes sitting in a little shack on the beach of Gokarna. All these shacks are in violation of the law and are built on bribes instead of paying the prohibitive licensing fee demanded by the Karnataka government. I just finished a plate of Uppama, a delicious south Indian dish of ground lentils soaked in water and fried up with spices (like a mashed, fried idli with curry), and sat down to write these notes which I imagined I would later turn into a comprehensive description of South and North India. Here goes:

DISCLAIMER: My Sources

I talked only to small business owners who know some English, merely observed others.

Fellow educated passengers on trains, buses

GENERAL

National image: Face forward, eyes half closed looking squarely at the spiritual, inexplicable good fortune. “Good Fortune” symbolized by elegant goddess Laxmi and elephant-headed Ganesha in gold brocade.

Not romantic, that is, people don’t believe in their own right to recklessly enjoy the passion. A lot of restraint, a lot of shame waiting overhead – a note of pain ringing in the most celebratory music – Duty over all else. Little raw selfishness.

Women are like a caste of nuns who give and serve, settling into a powerful old age of pyramid respect. Men literally like a priest – respecting the aspiration to abstinence of sense pleasures.

Entertainment is 99% escapism.

This nation an odd quilt work of economic levels, exceptionally disjointed. Only projects with their foundation in the material interests of the people directly involved are bearing fruit. National government not accountable – obvious waste and corruption – infrastructure non-existent.

URBAN ENVIRONMENT

The switch from ancient biodegradable leaf and clay single use takeaway tea and food packages or serving units to plastic (shows lack of understanding / control of corporations by government). Most packaged good’s major selling point is the upwardly mobile people’s desire for modern-processed “purity” in a taint-conscious world of low public hygiene.

Garbage to street to cows to pigs to rivers is the ‘cowshit cycle.’ Dogs, flies, rats and dirty footwear the result. As in the rest of Asia shoes are for outside and flip flop sandals are prevalent. Logically pigs and cows not eaten as they are waste-eating scavengers. Ancient systems work for small villages, but on the town or small city level are a disaster. In large cities the ancient system of loose cows and pigs as public garbage disposal units is usually banned.

RELIGION

Mainly Hindu and Moslem.

Islam austere, communal, Arab-centric, political, new.

Hinduism not religion but The Indian Subcontinent’s way of life. Naturally interwoven with Vedic values. Supremely practical – gods grant wishes to their best supporters and all is done for personal gain (no pretense of self-sacrifice). Pilgrimage and all puja paid for. Obligations: must do all one can do to insure good fortune. Inborn tendency to blame all affliction or failure on the performance / destiny of the individual who fails or is afflicted. I don’t quite understand this perspective on destiny – seems the general public feeling is that all results flow logically from the actions taken, but specific individual people seem to express uncertainty and frustration (tending to blame their self?).

Islam – physical appearance of some portion of community shows free genetic exchange with larger Islamic world – less of a transplant than it appears, however.

Hindus universally seem to consider Moslems to be Pakistanis, violent, dogmatic, outsiders, intently antagonistic towards Hindus. In the extreme the Hindu holds the image of Vivikananda, World Conference of Religions in Chicago long ago (who addressed the American audience as “my brothers and sisters” and preached the universality of the core message of all major religions) as showing the Hindu’s tolerance and universality and see no such counterpart on Islam’s side.

The fact is, Hinduism by nature is continually expanding and inclusive of a variety of beliefs, some cornerstones seem immutable, however. These are:

- Taint, job compartmentalism, status, relationship to God, traditional hierarchy at least preserves caste, actually much more complex as an unwritten family clan-specific hierarchy continues unabated.

- Desire for power, spiritual, temporal behind much striving. Supernatural powers held aloft as the proof and often the goal of ascetic practices.

The new selfish man is emerging as fourth lifestyle option for a young Indian deciding who he/she wants to be. Naïve, otherwise forbidden sensual pleasure becomes possible by following the new ‘western’ model. I have observed that the traditional roles for men of my age are 1) the responsible family man 2) the Sadhu 3) the She-male and now the new number 4) our bachelor ‘material man or girl.’ Seems however that the endgame of the bachelor ‘material man’ is to eventually become the ‘family man.’ In the meanwhile being single opens up more opportunities: the intense selfishness of this option slowly gaining acceptance in Indian society. Nonetheless, these men and women of the new fourth option seem to be following a borrowed model (from ‘The West’) laid atop a fundamentally different value system – creates a unique new Indian system of value and behavior all its own for the bachelor material man and woman.

SOUTH AND NORTH

SOUTH – general prosperity. Heartland is Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Kerala, Karnataka. Some of these states have 100% literacy.

Women are more visible, publicly laugh and smile more, seen socializing among themselves in public, shame may be worn more lightly.

Many homes with walled compounds, larger, electricity, well or running water. Population density less, streets and public transport more open, personal space observed more. General levity (but also serious). But in the place of North Indian desperation or Eurofunk an underlying relaxation exists. Seemingly higher percentage have gone abroad as computer scientists.

NORTH (I observed Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) – Rank and file desperate poverty. People trying to keep cool. Of course my observations were all made during the hottest months of the year. Each day observed shouting, fistfights among lowest classes (but most fighters were in castes above the untouchable caste).

In the past the North was the Moslem stronghold of The Subcontinent, majority of Moslems in the North today seem to be working poor, most clearly so in cities where Hindus are the controlling majority: illiteracy is rife among the Moslems population.

Land- flat fields, trees and scrub changing to desert. Random hills in the flatness. In the far North rising up to the Himalayas and hillside, more trees, less people.

Always feels crowded, impossible number of people on the public buses, road, train. Noise, dust, pollution. Touching, pushing, no way to say excuse me, body heat. Street is a battleground – the senses assaulted.

Women terse, young girls absent, females seldom seen talking idly in public. Hindu or Moslem, women source of jealousy and distraction – must be ashamed of their beauty’s light. Dishonor washed away by blood. Women who killed selves stories haunt the conversation of foreigners traveling there.

TO BE WRITTEN:

- What Indians want to believe aboutt themselves (for example the kind of Indians who would come in contact with my writing).

- The physical appearance of people..