WhirledView

Poaching, Propaganda and, Maybe, Romance: A Memoir that Turned into a Novel

Diana Forrest abandons a bad marriage, rejoins the Foreign Service and is sent to counter Soviet disinformation in Tanzania, where bribery corrupts the socialist ideal and elephant lovers are battling ivory poachers.

Toggling between a diffident boss and a hard-to-please Ambassador in a country that turns out to be a media wasteland, Diana spends weekends in the bush, usually with a Tanzanian colleague, whom she probably likes too much. Safari life involves her with local hunters who aren't above petty poaching.  The worst of them is covering up the murder of a headman adamantly opposed to the ivory racket.

Diana will be on probation for a year.  Then what?  Even if she can stay in the Foreign Service, she may not.

Meanwhile, Diana is making friends: a pair of baboon-loving primatologists; an American visa officer who actually says “yes”; a beer-dispensing village nurse; a park ranger too honest for his own safety; a professor desperate to keep her daughter; a French social worker dreading the results of a lover’s HIVntest; a Tanzanian secretary married to a smuggler; a roots-seeking, African-American fashionista; an embittered Tanzania-born Pakistani in the transport business; and courtly old Suleiman, a safari chef, whose snores are as resonant as lions’ roaring.

Those lions aren’t bit players. They move things along, as do the elephants, hippos, wildebeest, impala, cape buffalo, warthogs, baboons and malaria mosquitoes.

There’s serious stuff in this slice of the diplomatic life, all wholly relevant in these days of Russian disinformation and a  revived Cold War.  But Poachers isn’t a tract. You see. You feel. You care. About the people. About the wildlife. About the resilience of the land.  And there you are, on the savannah, leaning happily against an old termite mound, far from your companions—and way too far from the loaded rifle....

Um...sorry. No lions attack. No elephants charge. Diana tells the story, but it isn’t only hers. Think of a knockout engagement ring: a major brilliant wonderfully enhanced by the smaller sparklers encircling it.

P.S.  There's lots of humor, too.

Available on Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble and on order through your local bookstore.

Uzbekistan Transitions in Moscow’s Shadow

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

When I arrived in Tashkent, the country was still officially mourning the the death of President Islam Karimov. Karimov, appointed Governor of the Uzbekistan SSR by Soviet President Gorbachev, parlayed that position into a brutal 25 year dictatorship over a newly independent country. The few ordinary people with whom I was able to manage a one-on-one chat in Tashkent (including the proverbial outspoken taxi driver with a sister living in the Bronx), mourned Karimov’s death because he had provided peace and stability without stinting on development. Others echoed that sentiment, which surprised me, but only at first. Without security, after all, both justice and happiness are fragile.

Unfortunately Karimov had also stayed in power by creating a durable climate of fear and repression, which led our Uzbek trip leaders to choose their words carefully and request that we not include them in group pictures. Even with Karimov gone, they couldn’t relax. Like all reasonably well-informed persons, they expected that a clone would inherit his power. But it could have been worse. The transition was being managed without violence.

Enter Vladimir

Then, just as a city that had been shut down for the customary period of mourning was about to get back to normal, Vladimir Putin arrived, supposedly making a condolence visit on his way home from a Group of 20 conclave. Thanks to his motorcades, the center of the city was closed to non-official vehicles, including tour buses. The result for my tour group? More days of “death marches” in full sun at temperatures in the high eighties to reach itinerary sites.

Most of us on the tour were suffering severe withdrawal pangs from the lack of public information sources in Tashkent. Anything resembling a newspaper is non-existent in Uzbekistan. Even BBC news on TV is tailored to avoid alarming censors. But the official line was that Vladimir had dropped in to say a sad farewell to his good friend Islam Karimov. No one swallowed that story, of course. Not our guides. Not the few locals we managed to speak to. Not my very savvy tour group. We all knew that Putin was there to make sure that those managing the transition to a new regime were sufficiently aware of Russia’s importance to the country’s (and their) well-being. The USSR might have disintegrated, but Moscow still expected to call the shots.

Sloughing Russian

Meanwhile, reminders of Russia’s role in post Silk Road Uzbeck history were constant and ubiquitous. Once written in an Arabic-like script, the Uzbek language had been switched to Cyrillic under the Russians, although the government is currently promoting the Roman script. The dizzying result is that “sign language” in Tashkent comes in both scripts. And because English is now being encouraged as a second language, many young people are no longer fluent in Russian. Nevertheless, my vocabulary of six or seven Russian phrases/words was very useful: Yes! No! Please! Thanks! Great! No matter! Cheers! Especially the latter. I rediscovered a taste for vodka, which flowed freely in this Muslim majority nation. (Uzbekistan is making some drinkable wine, too.)

Older adults, on the other hand, still find a good use for their knowledge of imperial Russian, especially when there’s business to be done. If you speak in Uzbek, I was told, you have to be emotionally effusive, which takes time. Using Russian allows you to be cold and efficient. My experience was a little different. Many of our hotels were run and staffed by Russians who treated guests as nuisances to be endured. Ditto the officials overseeing the immigration and customs process. They dallied over procedures and barked at impatient travelers. Again and again in Uzbekistan, I was reminded of the frustrations of trying to get things done in Soviet Moscow. By contrast, when I encountered Uzbeks in non-official contexts, helpfulness and friendliness were indeed the norm.

Putin Clones

Most amusingly, the persistent Russian influence is strongly reflected in the body language, male version, of ethnic Russians and young men of Uzbek-Russian parentage. They carry themselves like Vladimir Putin himself, gruff, sullen, aggressively masculine, Mafia-like. As a woman, I felt vaguely uneasy in their presence. The Uzbek mode, by contrast, was comforting.

Why should anyone be surprised? Several centuries in a stifling Russian bear hug was bound to leave its mark on Uzbek life, just as English colonial rule, though officially ended some sixty years ago, continues to influence culture and politics in India.

Proudly Independent

But even as Uzbeks were recognizing the passing of Islam Karimov, they were also in the midst of proudly celebrating 25 years of independence. That’s a quarter of a century of freedom from Russia. If Vladimir Putin thinks he can treat these proud people as little more than neo-serfs, existing mainly to enhance his own position on the world stage, he is sadly mistaken. Uzbeks come across as proudly aware of their ancient history and its profound intellectual contributions to world culture, especially in astronomy and mathematics.

Although China is promoting economic projects related to its efforts to revive trade along the old Silk Roads, it’s unlikely that modern Uzbekistan will submit any more willingly to Chinese dictation.

A Tolerant Tradition

Let’s go back to those ethnic Russians who remain in Uzbekistan and add a few more genes to the ethnic mix. One of our Uzbek guides was pure Arab, he said. The other was of Tajik descent. Both happily identified as Uzbek nationals. Historically, they insisted, ethnic and religious tolerance were key Uzbek traits arising partly from the cosmopolitanism of trade but also from the role of Sufism, which continues to dominate Muslim practice in the area. When it comes to religion, our guides insisted, “we are not fanatics.” The laws of the land, they said, are designed to prevent children from being propagandized before they are able to think straight. There are no religious schools, and children under the age of sixteen not allowed to pray in the mosque.

Anti-clericalism was Soviet policy, too, but it’s notable that an independent Uzbekistan has not reverted to a repressive version of Shariah law. When members of our tour group mentioned that some Uzbeks had been accused of promoting terrorism, our guides reminded us of the sizeable Uzbek minority in Taliban-ravaged Afghanistan.

Interestingly enough, although many of us had been attracted to the tour in order to see with our own eyes the elegant remnants of the past in the form of blue-tiled mosques, madrassas and mausoleums, there were few minarets or domes, which is to say, few newish mosques to be seen, as we passed, via bus and train, through towns and villages en route to Bukhara, Samarkand, Kiva, Urgench. What we saw were cotton fields ready for picking and tidy, comfortable looking villages. The absence of domineering mosques is ambiguous, of course. It may be that a repressed Salafism is seething unseen. Or it may mean that the easy-going Sufi tradition continues to dominate.

Appealing Modernity

In any event, as I traveled around with the group, I found myself infinitely more fascinated with a surprisingly prosperous contemporary Uzbekistan than with the beautiful, but too familiar monuments. I’d been told that Tashkent is a bore, not worth visiting, but I found it to be an utterly charming capital, full of parks and tree-lined avenues in harmony with the necessarily large bureaucratic buildings as well as the well-swept commercial streets. The female street sweepers, by the way, also reminded me of Moscow, especially their posture, hunched over old fashioned straw brooms.

I wouldn’t mind going back to Uzbekistan, but I’d go alone, traveling at my own pace, lingering to take tea with people, poking into quiet streets, doing all the things you have to do to really get to see into the heart of a place. But should you go, solo or with a group, remember to keep your papers in order. Some of our group wasted a lot of time straightening out glitches. Uzbekistan is still a post-Soviet police state, after all.

 

Iris Scamming: The American Visa Process

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

They’re everywhere among us, doing essential work, sending their kids to school, dreaming of something better, but statistics on undocumented immigrants are pretty fuzzy, which shouldn’t be surprising. Anyone who has entered the U.S. without papers is obviously not going to be jumping up and down and shouting, “Here I am. Come and count me! Come and get me!”

For the most part, in fact, the only undocumented entrants who are likely to come to notice are the small percentage who are stupid enough to run afoul of the law (or of their neighbors) once they’re safely far from the border. As a result, vote-seeking Republican xenophobes can turn the few into a norm and seek electoral support based on fear-mongering.

Conversely, in regard to foreigners who’ve entered the U.S. via a notoriously rigorous U.S. visa system, the statistics must surely be pretty complete, a well-maintained compendium of relevant information. Seems logical in a well-organized government, doesn’t it?
So I assumed, anyway, until a few days ago. That’s when Homeland Security Department officials confessed to Congress that they “don’t know” how many foreign visitors overstay their visas every year.

I had to read that twice. It seemed impossible. It seemed absurd. Getting a U.S. visa often involves the submission of countless documents in preparation for a torturous inquisition conducted by an eagle-eyed, hard-hearted, deeply skeptical official, to say nothing of a long wait, oftentimes under unpleasant conditions. Why would our immigration apparatus put so much effort into screening people wishing to study, travel or work in the U.S., in each case issuing a visa with an explicit expiry date, then turn the lucky entrants loose, to comply or not, according to whim—or artfully concealed original intent? Re the latter, surely by now the whole universe of prospective immigrants must know that once you enter the U.S. on any type of visa the odds are good that you can stay forever, undetected.

Here’s one possible explanation for the sloppy statistics: officialdom has so much faith in the thoroughness of its laborious screening process that what recipients do after they enter hardly matters. Back home? Still here? Who cares? The birth rate being what it is, good people are always welcome. Very touching.

Another explanation has to do with money. Serious exit processing would cost money, and no non-military agency in the U.S. is adequately funded. So, the great disappearing visa-holder scandal may be a consequence of short-sighted cost-cutting by a U.S. government that’s afraid to tax its citizens to pay for essential services responsibly rendered by well-trained professionals. Evidence of this: amongst other blatherings those red-faced officials undergoing a Congressional grilling very strenuously passed the buck. Airlines, they whined, are reluctant to accept the cost of screening departing visitors with any degree of seriousness—as if the job of handling departures belongs with the private sector in the first place. In fact, I’ve always been astonished that airline personnel are the only ones to examine (well, glance at) the travel documents of passengers departing the U.S. on international flights.

Above all, the excuse for losing track of non-immigrant visa holders leaned heavily on the great promise (and the current lack) of a screening system backed up by a storehouse of biometric data. Think cheat-proof—at least, for now—iris scans.

Iris scans. That’s the goal, and it will transform immigration statistics, according to hopeful immigration officials. Everyone will be accounted for.

Maybe so, but requiring iris-scans might not be so hot for tourism. Imagine how privacy-minded European tourists will react when they learn they’ll have to provide unique biodata info in order to visit New York or gaze into the depths of the Grand Canyon. The Taj Mahal or the Forbidden City anyone? For that matter, why should anyone of us trust the insidiously over-reaching U.S. government with such vital personal data? Not in this post Snowden age, anyway. Think of the many purposes to which unprincipled U.S. security officials might, in secrecy, put a collection of iris-scans? I, for one, am not in the least tempted to enable an iris-scan in order to to circumvent the time-consuming, TSA inspection line at the airport—and I stash my passport in a RFID-defeating envelope when I travel.

But wait. Maybe the paranoia is misplaced. Maybe we’re looking at another example of technological overreach, the romantic quest for an application-loaded, state-of-the-art, absolutely “perfect” system of the sort routinely proposed by private sector contractors enjoying cost plus deals fostered by Congressional enablers beholden to said contractors? The more complex the system the bigger the profit.

So let’s step back a bit. Was there really no way to keep track of visa holders before the iris-scanning became the solution du jour? Was it technologically impossible—or just not sexy enough, like maintenance? There’s never enough money, it seems, to maintain roads or bridges or schools in this country. Why? Because maintenance, like housekeeping, is boring. More accurately, it isn’t very lucrative when it comes to attracting big donors for the re-election campaign.

But a solution loaded with bells and whistles and requiring years to develop and install—wow! Get the bidding under way! Never mind that overly complex systems do indeed take forever to develop, are very tricky to operate and have a crash-score well above boring workhorse solutions.

In fact, such a practical, bare bones system could probably (technologically speaking) have been put into place many many years ago. Picture it: Every visa has a number and an expiration date, and each visa (with vital associated data) is entered into a master log when issued. Thereafter, the visa number is noted when its possessor enters the U.S. And when he or she leaves. If the expiry date occurs with no record of extension or departure, a search is initiated. To make this system work, some additional office workers would be required and departures would have to be handled as seriously as entries, but the investment would surely be worthwhile. What we’ve got now is clearly a charade. Hypocrisy does not a healthy government make.

Would this simple system guarantee that no person of ill intent would ever manage to enter the country legally? No. Neither will iris scans, unless every person in the world is scanned and every police record is fed into the system and everyone managing the system is pure-as-the-driven-snow honest. You get the picture. A police state—and police states tend to be run by sadists, not saints.

Iris scan or iris scam, not the kind of country I want to live in.

 

The Ideal Man: Jim Thompson and the American Way of War - Book Review Essay

By Patricia H Kushlis

Not long after arriving in Bangkok in 1973 I heard the story of Jim Thompson’s strange disappearance in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands Easter Sunday 1967. This was the tragic tale of a prominent American businessman and former OSS officer who had founded the premier silk weaving company in Thailand at the end of WWII.  His company had brought a dying cottage industry in that country’s impoverished northeast - not just back to life - but to prominence in Thailand as well as, ultimately, throughout the world. 

By 1973, the mystery of Thompson’s disappearance was still unsolved. It remains thus today. Furthermore, it wasn’t until a few years later that his family decided to have him declared dead for legal and financial reasons.  That was, of course, a difficult emotional decision.

Yet the Thai Silk Company lived and lives on run by its talented and able staff.   Its designs and materials resulted in the most innovative and highest quality silk fabric sold in  Thailand.   Jim Thompson’s uniquely beautiful house – called the House on the Klong - which he had created from six traditional upcountry teak houses and set in a forest of tropical greenery next to one of Bangkok’s canals (klongs) was, and is, filled with antiques and artifacts he had collected during his decades living in Southeast Asia.(Above photos of Jim Thompson fabrics by PHKushlis, rose pillow cover, patterned dress, and four pillows, September 28, 2014 ).

An aside: This is not a travel post but, if you plan a trip to Bangkok, Jim Thompson’s beautiful house should be on your tour list as should the Thai Silk Company on Suriwong Rd.  

Thompson himself, though, was a mystery and that contributes to questions surrounding his disappearance. Joshua Kurlantzick’s The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War (John Wiley and Sons, 2011) tries hard to solve that mystery but in the end the trail runs cold.  The only thing we’re pretty sure of is that Thompson had a number of enemies as well as friends, was likely not eaten by wild tigers or other four legged predators then inhabiting the Cameron Highlands, did not commit suicide and would not have taken a fatal misstep and slipped into some ravine.

Instead, his body suddenly vanished without a trace.

So the question becomes and remains who “dunnit.” In short, until and unless the CIA opens its secret file on the Thompson case no one will ever know what the agency knew and the CIA itself will continue to be one of the suspects.   There are also other potential non-US government culprits but the CIA’s continued stone-walling just raises suspicions of an intelligence service accountable only to itself at the height of the Vietnam War – perhaps even silencing one of its own.

I’m not sure that the book’s title isn’t a bit of a misnomer because Thompson was far from “ideal” although one could certainly have called him an Ideals or Idealistic man.  I’m also not sure why the subtitle, “Jim Thompson and the American Way of War,” features so prominently except that Thompson, who had served in the OSS on the Thai border with Laos and Cambodia during World War II, had known, worked with and been largely sympathetic to the Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese nationalist leaders at that time and, unsurprisingly, disagreed vehemently with a post WWII US policy that sided with the then colonial powers thereafter ultimately thrusting the region into the fulcrum of an American led global militarily dominated anti-Communist crusade.

This costly war needn’t have happened if successive presidents had listened to people like Thompson, French journalist, Vietnam scholar and American academic Bernard Fall, Cornell University Professor  George Kahin and State Department official Paul Kattenburg. Kattenburg, like Thompson, had also served in the OSS.  Instead, these experts were shunted aside and ostracized as a result of their courage to speak out.

I had previously wondered if Thompson had been gay because he had been single so much of his life and kept his personal life to himself. This was, well, Bangkok, where sexual permissiveness and possibilities of all kinds were legion.  Kurlantzick set me straight on this one.  Not only was Thompson not gay but he had been briefly married and divorced to an American woman before his OSS assignment and perhaps more significantly while in Bangkok had become the lover of Irina Yost, Ambassador Charles Yost’s wife whom he had hoped to marry.  She, however, decided to stay with the Ambassador and their four children.  Later Thompson had short-term affairs with unnamed but apparently numerous diplomatic spouses including from the US Embassy.

US-Thai Relations too black and white

I am troubled by much of Kurlantzich’s characterizations of US-Thai relations during the 1950s and 1960s or that, in particular, the US should be so heavily blamed for causing successive military governments in Thailand to the detriment of promoting democratic governance. This criticism is simply too black and white and relying perhaps too heavily upon information from and about the businessman Willis Bird, a contemporary of Thompson’s who profited enormously from the US military build-up in Southeast Asia, and the Thai democracy leader Pridi Banonyong who was deposed in a military coup early on and spent the remainder of his life in exile.

I’d like to see State Department documents and Embassy reporting cables for additional parts of the story – documents Kurlantzich did not research.  What were the options? Was Thailand yet ready for multiparty government? And where did the royal family fit into all of this?  Strangely, Kurlantzich hardly mentions the Thai royal family at all – yet it was clear to me that the palace held important political strings as it operated from behind a veil of secrecy before, during and after my tenure in Bangkok – although that veil may not be as opaque today and the counsel as wise as during my time there from 1973-1975.

True, I wasn’t in Thailand during Jim Thompson's years there but neither was Kurlantzich.  Yet when I worked at the US Embassy – in a traditional Thai compound on Sathorn Tai as a member of the US Information Service staff – the US troop build-up was near or at its peak and the US military relationship with the Thai government rested on a handshake (or wai).

Beijing: the Beautiful and the Not So

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Who’d have thought it?  Come spring, Beijing’s inner circle is a horticulturalist’s delight.  Highways and boulevards turn into bowers of expertly pruned, flowering fruit trees, apple blossom white, pink plum, the shocking deep orange of peach trees. Commercial and residential buildings soar like whimsically-topped, glittery sculptures above gardens with manicured grass and masses of tall shade trees, interrupted by parking lots, of course.  The era of the bicycle is long gone in Beijing.  Autos rule the roads, often bumper to bumper, in fact. 

Walking around in the vicinity of my impersonal but comfortable hotel, I was astounded to find myself reminded of traditional Chinese paintings—mountain, forest, sky.  Clearly the ancient art of landscaping and the love of gardens hasn’t been lost.  Given the high initial cost of such extensive plantings and the equally high cost of impeccable annual maintenance, it’s also clear that the ruling Chinese Communist party intends make central Beijing into a showcase city, the perfect frame for the imperial elegance of the Forbidden City.

In fact, it was a bit too tidy for me, and the toddlers negotiating equipment in a little play area were almost too decorous, like the beautifully dressed little girls with big bows in their hair whom I’d encountered in Soviet Moscow’s parks so many years ago.  It was obvious they’d get a scolding if they muddied up their Mary Janes.  In Beijing, meanwhile, no candy wrappers took flight in the breeze, and although there were plenty of smokers, the sidewalks were miraculously free of cigarette butts.

However, my fairly brief meanderings on foot revealed a few departures from perfection.  I came across one trash can diver.  Also, a worried-looking cycle delivery man resting his legs on a park bench, having first stowed his shoes neatly underneath.  His thin old socks don't have holes, yet.  And the crowd milling around in front of the old Beijing railroad station was definitely less than middle class.  Families squatting amidst their bags and bundles looked as if they’d just arrived from the country, and there were even some beggars, caps removed and set bowl-like to receive contributions. 

Otherwise, most of the people I met on the street in that area of Beijing were nicely, even fashionably dressed, and the cars that purred by in a stream broken only by stop lights shimmered glossy and new in what passed for sunlight.  Of course, they were new, for the most part.  Maybe in ten years time traffic will contain a more normal mix, including old models and rust buckets.  And maybe today's new buildings, having been exposed to Beijing’s dirty air for a decade or more, will be more than a little grimy, too.    

Sensing a stage-prop quality to the Beijing I’d seen so far, I set myself to looking for something like unburnished  reality as I rode out of the city en route to one of the access points for the Great Wall.  Sure enough,  mile by mile from ground zero, the buildings got older, and even the newer ones were not nearly so tall or as exciting architecturally as those toward the center.  Shoe boxes standing on end.  Still, for the longest time, there was the redeeming presence of reasonably well-groomed greenery: trees pruned, hedges clipped. 

And then I saw it! A plastic bag caught in a chain link fence, the fence itself all tangled up in a half dead vine.  From that point on, nature in all its weedy indiscipline took over.  In vacant lots.  On cloverleaves between intersecting highways.  To right and left, this too: the usual detritus of urban life.  Old tires. Empty crates.  Battered-looking construction equipment.  Jumbles of old cabling.   And,  as I soon learned, away from the main arteries, that’s what Chinese roadsides generally look like.  Junk yards.  Equipment depots and lumber yards.  Garages and repair shops with battered vehicles on blocks.  Over time, I passed half- abandoned villages, roadside bars with shabbily-dressed old men playing cards just outside the door; uninviting eateries with motorcycles parked out front, motel-like flop houses for long distance truck drivers and the truly down and out. Clear evidence that not everyone is making it in modern China.

I also got a bird’s eye view of this left-behind China as my flight took off from  Beijing’s monstrously large new airport en route to Dunhuong via Xian.  There it was, just below: a great splotch of semi-industrial slums.  Warehouses and truck parks.  Vast accumulations of leaky oil drums.  Light industrial operations, some housed in brick buildings with a Dickensian look.  Dreary-looking apartment blocks.  Not a tree in sight.

And then, well before the plane reached cruising altitude, Beijing’s ugly secret disappeared.  We sliced through the smog into clear air and blue sky.

Which reminds me of the amusing sight that presented itself as my trans-Pacific flight was descending into Beijing.  The pollution blanket was firmly tucked around the city, which was invisible, except for a scattering of buildings tall enough to pierce through it. Some of those skyscrapers appeared to be residential.  Imagine!  Paying an astronomical price for a penthouse with no view—except, perhaps, into the distant living rooms of other penthouses with no view. Unfortunately, strapped into my seat for landing, I wasn’t able to take a picture.

That evening, as the sun was close to setting, I did take a photo from my hotel room.  Visibility was murky at best, which means there wasn’t much of a view for those inhabiting the somewhat lower, but still pricy levels of the new towers either!  And note:  I wasn’t shooting through a screen or through smudged glass.  The window was open, flooding the room with very dirty, but cooler air.  When I'd arrived it was unbearably hot, but housekeeping had informed me that it was much too early, being only the last week of March, to start up the air conditioning.

Nevertheless, I was lucky during my time in Beijing.  The sky was usually gray, the air more polluted than I would put up with on a daily basis, especially since I’m used to the perpetual azure of New Mexico, whose capital has the cleanest urban air in the U.S.  But by Beijing standards, the air wasn’t bad.  And sometimes, as in the photo above, the sky was blue!

But my Beijing guide didn't need blue skies to make her happy.  “The sun’s out!” she exclaimed one afternoon.  She looked ecstatic.   Now, usually, when the sun is shining brightly, there are shadows which translate into defined patches of cool shade.  Not that day.  Looking up, I couldn’t even tell where the sun was.  But the smog, obviously, had thinned.  The day was brighter.  Terrific!

Gray skies.  Day after day.  Very depressing.  Even in the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts the air was gray and hazy from tiny dust particles swept aloft by the lightest breezes.  But there was good news in the desert or so it seemed.  Approaching Urumqi from the South by road,  we drove through wind farms that stretched far beyond the horizon in all directions.  Some turbines appeared to be brand new, others as if they’d been abraded by years of sand storms.  This would have been a heartening sight, if we hadn’t just  traversed another area where oil was being  pumped out.

So which will it be, for energy, in China?  Oil or wind?  Well, there's not much oil, but something else is very plentiful.  Coal.

Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, it turns out, has terrible smog problems.  It’s located smack dab in the middle of coal mining country.  Coal, once extracted, has to be transported to points of use, but no problem! Urumqi is well served by railroads.  Surely the coal would travel by rail, I thought.  Wrong!  Mounded high, trussed in place under canvas, it’s carried in caravans of huge trucks, each belching soot-heavy exhaust, the kind of tail pipe emissions you never want to tailgate.

“Why?”I asked my guide of the moment. 

“Rail may be cleaner," he replied, “but road is cheaper.”

Here are the two companion pieces from my recent China trip, one on Lhasa (http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/06/red-flag-over-lhasa.htmlBeijing) and one on Kashgar (http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/05/kanishka-in-kashgar-a-report-from-the-fringes-of-the-chinese-empire.html)

 

 

Red Flags over Lhasa

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

 Also see two companion pieces:  http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/05/ kanishka-in-kashgar-a-report-from-the-fringes-of-the-chinese-empire.html and http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2014/06/beijing-the-beautiful-and-the-not-so.html

****

My trilingual Tibetan guide met me at the airport, an hour’s drive from Lhasa via a smooth new highway. (China has lots of smooth new highways.) The road runs along a braided river delivering snow and glacier melt to Tibet’s capital and largest city, which lies in a long, broad valley. 

“The Brahmaputra,” my guide said, which thrilled me.  I’d met this river before, way downstream. It carries life-sustaining water to points South and East, to Bangladesh, that is, and to Assam in India. 

The Brahmaputra (aka the Tsangpo in Chinese)  unites with the Ganges and flows eventually into the Bay of Bengal—which reminds me: China is also the source of the Ganges River, without which India’s northern heartland would be far less fertile.  The Mekong and the Indus rivers also arise in China.  Should Beijing decide to dam any or all of these rivers, much or all of South and Southeast Asia would be begging for fresh water. 

Eyeing a Greater Tibet

I wonder what China’s terms would be.  Draconian, if China’s present East and South China seas policy is indicative.  Hydraulic engineers in Delhi must have  nightmares. Leaders, too.  Would Delhi have to cede Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh, which Beijing already claims?  Many well-rooted peoples living in these border areas spring from Tibetan stock and  share Tibet’s Buddhist culture, which, Beijing claims, makes them fair game for absorption into China. 

That would not go over well with the locals.

I’ve  spent some time in Ladakh and in Arunachal Pradesh, personal travel in the former, diplomatic business in the latter. I’ve hiked in Bhutan and Nepal, too.  Never in these Tibet-influenced areas have I met one person who’d trade his or her current citizenship for the heavy-handed rule of Beijing.  This goes in spades for those whose parents and grandparents fled Mao’s eradication approach to Tibetan culture after 1959.  Subsequent Chinese regimes have been  subtler but equally set on eliminating cultural differentiators between Tibetans and Han.

Tibetans who live in the Tibet “Autonomous” Region and spill over into adjacent provinces, like Sichuan, would also prefer freedom from Beijing’s culture-blighting embrace, but voicing such dreams is dangerous.  That’s why so many monks (and at least one nun) have set themselves on fire.  Given Buddhism’s reverence for life, this is a very strong statement, so I decided to see  what I could see  for myself.  Is China the beneficent modernizing force it claims to be?  Or not?  Would my three day visit suffice for any insight at all?   

Not Many Prayer Flags

So, we were driving along the river toward Lhasa, a landscape of brown fields and pale green poplars contained by rapidly-rising mountains to either side.  It was midday.  Many farmers had interrupted their spring plowing to gather in twos or threes for lunch.  Very bucolic.  Especially the use of horses.  Not very modern. 

We’d passed clusters of farmhouses and some ordinary-looking villages, too, when suddenly I registered what I was seeing.  Flags.  Not the ubiquitous (as in normal Tibetan Buddhist locales)  strings of red-blue-green- &-yellow prayer flags that are meant to send waves of compassion to all beings.  Red flags.  Symbols of the People’s Republic of China.

“The farmers have to fly them,” my Tibetan guide said, his emphasis on the word that signifies compulsion.  He didn't elaborate.  It was clear where his loyalties lay—and more so, the next day, when he excused himself to prostrate three times before one of many golden images of Chenresig, the boddhisatva of compassion, while we were visiting Jokhang temple.  

In Lhasa, I soon discovered, those red flags were everywhere: marching along both sides of the boulevards, waving over store fronts, flying above multi-story buildings, adorning traffic circles, overwhelming the delicate pastels of fruit tree blossoms in the parks.  Red.  Red.  Red.  Although I was  in the capital of the Autonomous Region of Tibet, not once did I glimpse the distinctive flag that Tibetans unfurl so proudly when they are free to do so.  Even on the precincts of famous monasteries that should have been spider-webbed with prayer flags, the prayer flag count was modest—and the flag displayed on a staff rising from the highest point of the ultra-sacred Jokhang temple was the harsh  red banner of the People’s Republic of China.  The message was clear. Cling to your superstitions, but bow first and always to Beijing!   

Piety under Surveillance

Lhasa residents and country people making a pilgrimage to Lhasa may light butter lamps, they may twirl prayer wheels, huge or hand-held, and they may perform the two kilometer kora around the Potala, which is to say circumambulate clockwise, but they'd better be orderly about it.  The eyes of the Chinese authorities are always on the alert.  Within the center of the city, a small city, with a population of only 250,000, I came upon three large  Army compounds, in one of which, not quite concealed by its high walls, I glimpsed row on row of buildings that must have been barracks.  Their gates were imposing, even elegant.  They were also very wide—I could imagine armored personnel carriers zipping out quite handily—and always surmounted by a brazen red flag.  Very photogenic.  But I can’t show you any pix.   Even when I tried for a shot through the inky dark windows of our vehicle, my guide went into panic mode. 

“No pictures!” he rasped.  His voice trembled with terror.  No one could see through those windows. No one could have told whether I was fumbling with f-stops or blowing my nose.  But my guide’s fear was so extreme I lowered my camera. 

So Big Han Brother was watching.  Men and occasionally women in uniform were visible,  standing in the shade of this building or that, hovering just around the corner, strolling here and there in the old market area.  As with the red flags, once I’d noticed one officer, I saw them everywhere. But the no camera rule covered the security forces, too.  Very clever.  If  the watchers can’t be photographed, they don’t exist, do they?   

The Legibility Test

Meanwhile, store signs in the old Tibetan market neighborhood were delivering the same message I’d noted a few days before in the commercial districts  of Kashgar.      Because Lhasa too is located in an “autonomous” region, the local version of the shop’s name had to appear on all storefronts along with the relevant Chinese characters.  Ah—but which had primacy?  Which could be read with ease from a distance?  Not the Tibetan.  And my Tibetan guide, echoing my Uighur guide, complained of Tibetan neighborhoods destroyed to make way for wealthier Han store owners.  Even the primitive brick works along the river have Chinese proprietors, I discovered.  And, naturally, the big construction companies transforming the look of Lhasa are not Tibetan-owned either.    

Shades of Kashgar and Urumqui!  In Lhasa, too, posters and billboards caught the eye and delivered the Beijing line wherever the locals could be expected to congregate.  I saw them outside the Jokhang Temple.  I saw them in the old market, whose picturesque concentration of open-front shops displaying Tibetan goods invites tourist photography, thereby “proving” to the world that Tibetan culture survives.  Most egregiously, where the kora route around the Potala runs through a little park, a series of posters stands ready to ambush the pious: kitchy versions of Chinese scrolls featuring artsy brushwork, blossoms, pines,  long-gowned scholars and/or neatly-dresssed, attentive children.  My guide translated for me.  The theme, mostly in Chinese, was harmony, harmony, harmony.  And more harmony. 

Hmmmm.  Seems to me that so much harping on good will and cooperation between Han and Tibetan suggests a serious lack thereof.   And maybe the cute little sermons also meant to serve as a warning to Tibetans with dangerously “splitist” thoughts.  In short, behave!

Amnesia via Urban Renewal

Another propaganda theme redundantly hammered in was development, often via “before” and “after” billboards contrasting shabby old neighborhoods with the glittery glass towers of the high (in Tibet: just higher) rise future.  Their ubiquity in Lhasa (and every other city I visited) suggested that many locals might prefer elements of an unreconstructed city.  We know from scattered protests thgroughout China that they'd definitely like better compensation for forced removals.

In Tibet, as elsewhere, there’s big money to be made in redevelopment, but the development-is-good-for-you message seemed especially strident in minority areas like Kashgar and Lhasa.  Perhaps the authorities believe that the mental traces of a resistant culture will be easier to erase once the physical reminders are gone.  In any event, it's good security policy to break up concentrations of suspect peoples.  Meanwhile, if Tibetans are so pleased with the Beijing-imposed modernizing of their old city, why are all the preachy billboards necessary?

Perhaps my biggest surprise in Lhasa had nothing to do with China.  It was my own strongly negative reaction to the Potala, which used to be the Dalai Lama’s palace and the seat of governance for a theocratic state.  On the one hand, topping a pimple of a hill in the center of the city, it was smaller than I expected.  The usual camera angles magnify its height.  On the other hand, it would have been a monstrous imposition on the small, low city that Lhasa certainly was in 1959, when the Red army arrived in force and the current Dalai Lama and so many other Tibetans fled to India. 

Shades of the Vatican! I thought.  Hardly a proper place for a spiritual leader to live.  Should Tibet ever be free and independent (which is unlikely) or even truly autonomous (which is only remotely possible), the best outcome would allow the Potala to remain as a museum, while the returned or new Dalai Lama is housed more simply and appropriately.  The days of profligate, luxury-loving princes of the church or sect are over, as even the new Pope in Rome knows. 

And here's one of the perks of clerical privilege.  Only the common people have to groan their way up to the top, step by step, on foot.  VIPs (including the Dalai Lama in his heyday) arrive by car at an entry on the unseen side.  Is that why we always get photos of the one  elevation?

Whatever its function in the future, however, the unique structure that is the Potala will never again preside over Lhasa as it once did.  The new buildings are unimpressive compared to the skyscrapers in China’s mega-cities, but they are inexorably changing the scale of the city.  The Potala will not dominate; it will be surrounded, encircled, caged.

The Inhuman Factor

And yet, for all the gratuitous red flags and the rapid, dramatic altering of skylines, what stuck me most profoundly in Lhasa and elsewhere during my visit to China wasn’t this mushrooming of office buildings, residential towers and luxury hotels (the latest in Beijing plans to bill itself as a seven star destination!), but the lack of vivacity on the ground.  China is wealthy now.  The predictable architectural symbols of wealth are proliferating, but where’s the noise, the buzz, the laughter in public places?  Where’s the bustle?  Where’s the exuberance?  Where’s the spark of electricity that passes from stranger to stranger in cities where people are free to express themselves? 

In New York or London or New Delhi or Tokyo you walk down the street and you are part of one mini drama after another.  It’s exciting.   No so in China.  Especially not so in the “autonomous” regions.  Beijing has created order—and shopping malls (my favorite in Beijing is the Big Boom mall for furnishing your chic, new, multi-million-yuan apartment).  So the deal is this: the emergent middle class is free to spend money like crazy, so long as it keeps its collective mouth shut.  Now Beijing is trying to impose that order and those values on its "minority" peoples.  Maybe if Beijing created more good jobs and serious spending power for Tibetans and Uighurs, they would be less restive.

Postscript

In addition to indulging my political curiosity while I was in China, I ticked off a number of important tourist sites—the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, etc.—and visited some less familiar places that awed me with their finesse and beauty, especially the Buddhist caves in Dunhuang and Turpan.  I couldn't photograph the interior of any cliff-hanging caves, but here's a photo of a musician,  who added enchantment to a lovely oasis in the desert.  Yet, all too often as I moved around China, the human element was lacking.  Served everywhere by dutiful functionaries following procedure perfectly, people whose eyes never sparkled while their lips produced the prescribed smile, I've never felt so lonely and isolated, even in other situations where lack of a shared language complicated communication.  Fortunately,  I’d arranged for guides whose time and attention I didn't have to share.  Each was almost over prepared with a long, fact-filled official spiel for every site, but each was also delighted to scrap the script and engage in candid, private conversation on politics, religion, personal goals, whatever.  They smiled.  They laughed!  The Chinese, I'd been told, recoil from touch, but I got farewell hugs at several airports.  I thank them.

Of course, there’s life in China, the intellectual and creative sort as well as the human sort, but it seems to have retreated underground, where it’s safe from the authorities.  As a result, all the new construction seemed rather ghoulish to me, like fingernails growing from the digits of a corpse that belongs, not to the Chinese people, or the Tibetans, or the Uighurs, who are all forced to play dead, but to the all-suffocating party that rules. 

That said, I'll end with a more soothing image that was hard to come by, since photography (sigh!) was also largely forbidden in temples.

 

Sochi Ho: Some Sensible Words of Warning Before You Go

By Patricia H Kushlis

The US State Department recently issued a travel advisory to American citizens planning to attend the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia in February and March.  Often the media ignores or fails to publish the Department’s Travel Advisories.  This one’s circulation, however, has received relatively widespread coverage – from Fox News to the New York Times almost as soon as it hit the web.  

State’s Advisory contains practical information for first time vistors to Russia and reminders to more seasoned ones particularly those traveling to the troubled Northern Caucasus where Sochi is located.

My advice: if this is a trip you plan to undertake, print the advisory out before you head off, take a copy with you, heed its contents, and watch the website for updates.  The information will have been coordinated with the US Embassy Consular Section in Moscow. And a special unit from the US Consular Section (tough but likely busy duty?) will be at the Games to help American citizens in distress. 

Russia has changed greatly since it became the successor state to the Soviet Union in 1991 and certainly since the Moscow Olympics in 1980 - but still not all is sweetness and light.  

Laying out the welcome mat

Putting aside politics – and whatever one thinks of President (for life?) Vladimir Putin – the country, for the most part, will lay out the welcome mat to Olympic athletes and guests:  Much international prestige rides on the conduct of successful games.  Besides the Russians are proud of their own athletic prowess especially in winter sports and want to come off as winners (who can blame them) in the international spotlight:  sports and international politics intermingle in the Russian psyche.

Furthermore, Sochi itself is a long time domestic Black Sea tourist destination for Russians seeking refuge in a less harsh climate – namely the chance to bask in the sun - dating back to the days of the Czars and the country wants to develop it into a popular international resort. 

If there’s one thing that Russia will do to make the Games go off without a hitch is impose tight security.  American counter-terrorism experts may grouse that they have not been involved – at least that’s what Fox News reported – but expect the Russian Federation’s police-state security experts to do everything they can to keep the sites protected from potential terrorist acts.  That doesn’t mean they won’t happen:  remember Atlanta, Munich and for that matter the 2013 Boston Marathon (which if US counter terrorism experts had been in closer contact with their Russian counterparts perhaps could have been avoided).

Inevitable politics

The dilemma is that the Olympics, regardless of location, are natural attractions to groups and individuals intent upon making political statements before an international audience of millions.  This stage doesn’t come their way all that often. Such statements have been made through peaceful demonstrations or occasionally premeditated acts of murder.  Those who make them are looking for front page headlines and top of the news coverage.

The Russian government is fighting jut the latest round of the Chechen rebellion since the Soviet Union collapsed.  Sochi is very much a piece of the troubled North Caucasus.

The Russian authorities succeeded in regaining power in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, only to have the conflict spread to neighboring regions like Dagistan and among other ethnic Caucasian minorities - like a vial of mercury dropped on the floor. 

Two suicide attacks in Volgograd – Russia's transportation hub into the North Caucasus - in December followed by the accidental traffic death in Moscow of a major Chechen leader just show how acts of domestic terrorism are not far away.  The Boston Marathon murders last April by two radicalized Chechen young men just show how far the troubles can reach.

Delhi's Marvelous Metro and What's Missing

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Delhi was still the smallish, palimpsest city the British handed over to independent India when I first lived here.  I fell in love with the whole of it: the convoluted lanes of old Delhi; the impressive remnants of earlier civilizations; the garden-like beauty of the area now called Lutyen’s Delhi for the architect who designed an add-on to replace Calcutta as capital of the Raj; the Jumna River, lovely at dawn, but even then blackened by sewage; the purple-blossomed jacaranda trees at the height of the hot season; the intoxicating coolness  of the first rains of monsoon.  I read history.  I studied Hindi. I bicycled everywhere.

Things Change

Coming back, again and again, over the years, I saw Delhi change, old bungalows razed, skyscrapers shooting up, residential colonies proliferating, slums ditto, especially on the other side of the river,  traffic clogging the roads and spewing plumes of exhaust that mixed with cook fire soot to create a smog that made  breathing suicidal. Seeing Delhi evolve, I saw mostly loss and mourned.  Like most people who fall in love, I’d wanted nothing to change. I drifted through Delhi like a maiden in a Moghul miniature yearning for an unretrievable lover.

But cities are like people.  The richly experienced don’t want to be sixteen again.  As for cities, without change they stagnate or die.  At best, they become quaint tourist traps.  A city that’s confident and full of vitality, however, can preserve a generous taste of history while building boldly for the future.  This, by and large, is what Delhi is doing, I think, and the ever-expanding Metro system makes the contemporary version work, despite the everlasting nuisance of the construction process.   

Metro Makes a Difference

The river’s still a disgrace.  Slums continue to grow.  Too much farmland has sprouted satellite towns with soaring buildings or sprawling residential colonies for the moderately or outrageously better off.  The sky seldom yields the least hint of blue, but the worst has been reversed:  the air is much cleaner, which is good for everyone’s health.  Buses run on natural gas.  Cars, trucks and auto rickshaws no longer spew inky exhaust.   And the declaredly green Metro system keeps tens of thousands of vehicles off the streets. I did a quick count of the motorcycles and cars parked at one line’s terminus:  nearly a thousand two-wheelers and about eighty sedans.  In fact, something like eighteen Metro stations are served by parking lots where space fills as soon as it empties. Metro may be scorned by the upper classes and it’s irrelevant to the poorest of the poor, but it’s a great boon to the exploding, upwardly mobile lower-middle and middle-middle classes presumed to be transforming India.

My Metro Plan

Visiting Delhi this time, I hoped to let my time-eroded city-of-the-past go. If I couldn’t warmly embrace the new one, I might at least depart with sympathy for Delhi’s latest avatar.  Metro, burrowing underground at the center, surfacing at the periphery, would serve as my updated Garuda.  My plan was this: at the end of each of the many-colored lines  ̶  red, blue, yellow, violet, etc., I’d disembark and survey the outer edges of the city; zipping along underground, I’d play sociologist, learning what I could of and from my fellow passengers.   And there’d be this advantage, too: it’s the height of the hot season (over 43 C. equals over 110 F.) and Metro is delightfully cool.    

What’s instantly clear is how Metro knits this vast urbanization (some 20 million and growing) into a single city.  (Well, sort of, as I note  in concluding.) Meanwhile, most everything’s accessible quickly and quite affordably, especially for commuting workers or students with a monthly pass.  And after you’ve climbed a hundred steps or ridden the occasional escalator (elevators always available) to the superheated surface, you’ll find an armada of auto rickshaws to take you the last mile.  You might find some old fashioned taxis, too, but one of the huge changes in Delhi is the shrinkage in the fleet of yellow-roofed Ambassadors  trolling the streets for passengers.  The taxi driver who transported me and my luggage from airport to hotel was bitter.  Metro’s destroying his business, he grumbled.  Often, these past few days, I’ve wished I could avert incipient heat exhaustion and reduce general sweatiness by hailing a taxi and asking the cabbie to turn on the AC.  There’s another lost pleasure for those with rupees enough for real taxis.  By cab you can feast your eyes on the vistas and tree-lined streets of New Delhi.  You may also get caught in the all-day gridlock of Old Delhi.

Old and New Juxtoposed

But emerging into the sunlight via Metro provides some amazing collage-like moments.  My favorite so far was the vision of an elegant red sandstone tower thrusting up through the greenery shortly after we’d surfaced on the yellow line heading to the mushrooming city of Gurgaon.  It was the 236 foot tall Qtub Minar, dating to the 13^th century, when a Muslim ruler caused it to be built of stone pillaged from a much earlier Hindu temple, some of which also survives.  Different, but equally dramatic: the 108 foot polychrome of the monkey god Hanuman that looms over the  Karol Bagh station.

Talk about the palimpsest process!  In Delhi the past is always poking through.  Via surviving buildings and ruins.  Via design motifs.  Via music and all else that goes into culture. Compare the busy composition of ancient reliefs showing dancers and drummers with the frantic choreography of Hindi film, for example.   Only the most obtuse observer concludes that the past is dead in this city.  And beyond the tangibles of history stand the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, supposedly sited hereabouts, whose themes continue to capture the popular imagination.

The Technical Details

So the Japanese picked a winner in the 1990s, when they underwrote a $6.2 billion project with a 60% loan.  Statistics for phases I and II, now complete, are as follows:  trackage of 128 kilometers; 35 underground stations, one the second deepest in the world; 142 stations in all; fleet of 280 trains, each carrying 2290 passengers, 240 seated, but often packing in hundreds more, or so my own crushed-in experience suggests; train frequency about every five-six minutes; wonderfully clear signage. Technologically, the Delhi Metro planners borrowed globally to build a “world class,” earthquake-proof facility that currently serves 2.2 million riders daily and makes a profit, which means the loan is being repaid.

Up-to-dateness means a lot of things.  You can recharge your cell phone while a Metro train is underway  ̶  if you aren’t talking or texting, as so many people do, flabby-waisted matrons with bulging handbags on their laps as well as school boys weighed down by book-filled backpacks.  During one trip I found myself near a little family, the wife seated, the man standing over her, ear buds implanted, listening to music, I suppose.  A toddler shuttled between them, whining.  Daddy picked up the child, planted one bud in his child’s ear and presto! a smile of delight and little hands beating time to the music.  Contemporary fatherhood on Metro.

Security Matters

There are other signs of the times, too.  This is a dangerous world, and entering the very busy Rajiv Chawk station I passed by a guard balancing his machine gun on a low wall of sand bags.  In addition, at every station my carry-ons were xrayed while I was wanded by a female officer in khaki.   Re security, Metro also offers this protection from more conventional threats: no high speed capsules to be trapped in.  Cars connect all but seamlessly.  A single corridor runs continuously from train’s head to train’s tail.

Metro trains and stations are reputed to be wholly safe for women travelling alone.  (The same can’t be said for all exit neighborhoods late at night.  Delhi dailies highlight the horror stories.) What’s more, although women may and do ride in any car, a whole car on every train is for women only. Normally I distance myself from gender segregation, but ladies’ cars (with boarding points designated by  ̶  ugh!  ̶  pink signs) tend to be less cram-jammed.  Bye-bye principles.  Hello comfort.   

Still, brutal as the crush in the rest of the train may get, young or even middle-aged men are usually quick to cede a seat to pregnant women and or to frail old men.  Once, for that matter, a very chivalrous, very ancient gentleman rose to give his seat to this younger, but far from girlish strap-hanger.  No way could I accept his seat, but his gallantry shamed a paunchy young man into getting to his feet. That seat I happily occupied. 

Other, more innovative points of etiquette have evolved on Metro.  For instance, it may seem that no seats are available, but a row of seated women will scootch together to make room for a couple of female standees.  What does this tell you about women’s instinct to make the world a better place for everyone? 

 Gorgeous Girls

Meanwhile, what’s the younger generation coming to, fashion-wise, according to my Metro survey?  Pierced noses are out: no diamonds flashing above a nostril. Bindhis on the forehead are out, too.  No red dots.  No sparkly pasties.  And tight jeans are in for the college crowd.  Tops run the gamut from tees to smocks, none of which  need to cover the arms or tush anymore, though cleavage is clearly not in.  School girls are more likely to wear the traditional salwar-kamiz.  But their tunics don’t billow.  They skim the body, and baggy trousers have been replaced by Nehru-style churidars or tights.  And not black tights either.  Red tights.  Neon pink tights.  Cyan and emerald green tights.  The influence of Bollywood, perhaps?   As for the long scarves/dopattas  that used to be worn with a kamiz, forget it. Hair-covering and breast-draping are out, except for the occasional village woman on some errand in the city for which she's likely to have dolled herself up in a sequined sari no city girl would be caught dead in.  In so far as the village belle is entering an alien world, the glitter might be seen as battle dress.  Good for her.

During all these miles I’ve covered on Metro, I’ve encountered only one woman in an old fashioned black burqa, but even she was not fully conforming.  For safety’s sake, or to see the world around her, she’d thrown up the face flap.  And then there was the slender girl wearing jeans and a nicely shaped shirt, a combination which (to my Western eyes) looked great on her beautiful body, although she'd also looped a scruffy scarf incongruously  around her neck.  The purpose of the scarf emerged as she left the train.  She swirled it rapidly over head and hair so only her eyes were visible.  Would the neighborhood mullahs be satisfied?  Not likely. 

No Peacocks

Male attire on Metro is pretty boring: jeans for the young, creased trousers for the rest, usually paired with a drip-dry shirt, the uniform of the not-so-affluent white collar worker in the summer.  Each trip I'd see a few men who looked to be skilled workers in rumpled, well worn pants and faded shirts or jersies,  and once a  group of three farmers climbed aboard at an outlying station.  Dressed in dhoties instead of trousers, long kurtas and towel-like head-wraps, they spoke in the loud, nasal voices characteristic of the country side.  Did they leave their oxen in the parking lot when they boarded Metro?

What's Missing

I’m not being snide here.  I’ve reached the crux of the matter.  Metro is very impressive technologically.  It’s obviously very popular, too, with office workers, with tradition-scorning students and solid-looking middle-class women.  But here’s my question: although Metro is theoretically accessible to people in poorer colonies and/or slums on either side of the river and even to some fairly rural areas, most riders seem to be doing all right economically.  Maybe the poor and those doing low- or no-skilled work consider themselves well-served by buses and commuter trains.  But wouldn't they also flock to speedy, air-conditioned metro, if the fare were more affordable?  On the other hand, fare-lowering and class-mixing (especially during crush hours) might not please the current clientele and would surely hurt the apparently in-the-black bottom line.

Mass transit is a necessity in a megacity world.  But how to do it right? Indian railroads were built on a not-exactly-dead class system, as airline fares prove.  Pay more.  Travel very comfortably.  Pay less and be grateful to get where you need to go.  Metro  appears to be democratic.  Everyone pays the same.  But some people are being left out.

Which means my long romanticized Delhi of the past and today’s Delhi aren’t so different. Much to appreciate.  Much to mull over.