Back and Bleary Eyed

Finally, back from my travels. One of the more eventful trips I've taken recently, the script read like a Western except without cowboys. Succumbed to Delhi Belly on the final leg back to London so spent my first days in Europe holed up in bed instead of enjoying the profusion of cheese and wine I had promised myself when contemplating stuffed parantha and palak paneer for the umpteenth time. My waistline has a lot to thank India for. Anyway, I am in no condition to comment further at this stage, being barely able to open both eyes at once. Photos have, however, been downloaded and can be seen in the links section on the right. Happy viewing if you are interested.

Hiatus

I'm off to India tomorrow, all things permitting. With 24 hours to go I have

1) One refused credit card to deal with
2) One Eurostar ticket left to buy
3) No clothes washed
4) Nothing packed
5) Only the vaguest idea of the wedding location in Delhi
6) 4 speeches and an article to write
But lots of mindless optimism!

A likely hiatus in blogging is in the offing, but I expect that to be more than compensated for by the travellers tales that follow. In the meantime, have a wonderful summer!

Inverting the Impossible

Call it synchronicity or coincidence but I have a theory about books. They come to you at the right time. Sometimes a volume can lie on my shelf, forgotten or neglected, for years on end. Then, when I finally get round to reading it, I realise that if I had opened it even a month beforehand I could not have understood its message with the same profundity.

You might argue that people just leave things until they are interested in reading them. Then, lo and behold, they find their views magically reflected in the pages. But in many cases I simply have no idea - or even the wrong idea - about what a book is really going to be about before I've read it. How often do we buy something because of the back-page blurb only to discover that it bears little or no ressemblence to the content?

Anyway, to preface the remarks that follow I'd like to say I'm not religious in any orthodox way. I don't even have 'a' religion, per se. But I am fascinated by the search for truths, however unpleasant they may happen to be (I'm not afraid of the idea that God doesn't exist, like some agnostics, for example: I would just like to know one way or the other so I can live accordingly).

On a related note, I'm appalled by the relativist idea that all choice, in the end, is arbitrary. It is this idea, I think, that makes atheism so difficult to live with conceptually. Because it implies that nothing we do, say, think, or feel in this life has any intrinsic value. And when life loses its value then human beings find it very difficult to get out of bed. Just ask manic depressives.

Some people think that is nonsense. Indeed, they argue that arbitrary choice is actually liberating since it frees them from guilt, responsibility, and the burden of choosing well. For me, by contrast, free choice of this kind is no choice at all, since it merges into preference which is often no more than a physical response to one's environment. Which is fine, except that it makes me wonder what human beings have such heightened intelligence and emotions for, if they cannot be used for anything greater than improving our personal comfort.

Anyway, in the course of my reflections, I stumbled across a book called Shantaram: the real-life tale of an Australian convict and heroin addict who escapes from his high security prison to Bombay, where he acts in Bollywood, joins the mafia and ends up fighting for the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. (I know, it doesn't sound like a real story but just check out this guy's bio). I only decided to read it because I am going to India in a few weeks and someone I know recommended it.

I was expecting something like a memoir-version of The Beach. What I got was very different.

Some passages, in particular, I found highly persuasive and reminded me of conversations and experiences I had in the past with a vaguely sufistic friend at university. Here they are for your edification and critical commentary:

"The truth is found more often in music than it is in books of philosophy...the truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, moving toward God...There is no believing in God. We either know God, or we do not". .

Sound like inane spiritual gak of the type Westerners typically go to India to absorb? Read on.

Abdel Khader Khan, the mafia lord and slum baron, notes that certain things are knowable and real without being tangible. And that the opposite holds true for the facts and objects we consider concrete and verifiable.

He says, "the energy that actually animates the matter and the life that we think we see around us cannot be measured or weighed or even put into time, as we know it. In one form, that energy is photons of light. The smallest object is a universe of open space to them, and the entire universe is but a speck of dust . What we call the world is just an idea . and not a very good one, yet . From the point of view of the light, the photon of light that animates it, the universe that we know (ie the things that human beings perceive) is not real. Nothing is."

By contrast, "We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. W cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher....there is another reality, beyond what we see with our eyues. You have to feel your way into that reality with your heart. There is no other way":

I share this sentiment. Sometimes, a feeling takes you - I guess love for a person is one example - and transforms your heart, your actions, and your state of mind. It differs qualitively from your everyday understanding of the world, and is so intangible it is easy to believe that - when it drifts far away from you, or fades into your memory - that it did not, could not, exist. And yet when you experience it, it is overwhelmingly and completely real. More real, even, than the world that habitually surrounds us.

Views?

Censorship Saudi Style

I read quite a few amusing Saudi blogs recounting attempts by the authorities to stamp out 'vice'. Censorship is one of their biggest weapons in the pursuit of this goal. This goes so far as opening your mail and confiscating/defacing any inappropriate contents. One woman repeatedly got the adverts in her monthly edition of Vanity Fair blacked out with marker pen when they contained less than fully-covered women while even food shipped into the country is tasted (sorry, tested) to see whether its halal or not.

Yet it's funny what slips through the net. A good friend of mine, living in a rather conservative part of the country, decided she'd like to read Rushdie's The Satanic Verses to see what the fuss was all about (she later decided it was one of the worst books she'd ever read, but at least she got the chance to see for herself: personally, I think it's rather interesting, if on the long side). So she ordered a copy off Amazon. Much to her amazement it turned up, opened but UNTOUCHED, at her front door not long afterwards. Needless to say Rushdie, along with Danish bacon, is uber-haram in Saudi. So how had that happened?

Easy, said her father. Cute cover, no pictures, English title, illiterate vice-squad.

On a more serious note I firmly believe that there are few good philosophical reasons for allowing censorship on the grounds of blasphemy, or disrespect to religions. That is particularly true with respect to fiction, and art of all kinds. I will publish my views on this (and the Rushdie case) in greater depth soon.

All this was just an excuse to ask you to help protect the right to free speech by clicking on the icon of Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist being held hostage in Gaza. You can sign a petition calling for his release.

First Class Service

This should come as a warning to all those who believe that first class is always classier. Even though a first class booking on the Eurostar was barely more expensive than the bog-standard, perhaps because of the last-come first-screwed theory that operates in the internal market. Given that eurostar themselves don't deal too kindly with complaints (the eurotunnel went up in flames, causing six hour delays and the ambiance of a refugee camp in the departures hall, and I still didn't get reimbursed) I have decided to share my experience with the commuting public online.

In the twentyfirst century luxury is within reach of the multitude. Smoked salmon, champagne, and truffles are widely available in every branch of Sainsbury's. A 'trip of a lifetime' to Mauritius is now embarked on yearly by increasing hordes of Yuppie families, regardless of dire climate change predictions. And even students I know now upgrade to first class on the train. Deciding to get on this bandwagon at long last, I paid my 95 euros (one way) and waited expectantly for my first taste of cross-channel luxury. Certainly, I did not expect things to go less smoothly than in cattle class.

And yet.

I turned up 35minutes prior to departure, quite unhurried. This is a TRAIN after all, and in Belgium 10 minutes is normally enough to get you through security and passport control and into your carriage with a cup of coffee. On the English side of the Manche, however, things happen rather differently.

I arrived to find a chain of Chinese tourists sneaking across the concourse and up the stairs and tried to circumnavigate them by presenting my first class ticket at the 'business premier' check-in where noone was waiting. I was rudely rebuffed. I think it was the sandals...Back in the crush, I tried to follow some Chinese through to security but was told I had to stand back and wait. Finally, i was instructed to use a different machine which promptly ate my ticket and refused to give it back. Four other ticket machines joined in the general strike and pandemonium ensued on the platform. There were now 10 minutes to go until departure.

Gesturing to one of the flustered staff members, who was physically holding back a wave of agitated customers from entering the inner sanctum, I explained the situation. With a look of undisguised malevolence she said that someone would deal with me in due course - even though count-down was fast progressing. When she eventually released the ticket it turned out to be the portion from Brussels to London which, in the crush, I had mistakenly put in.

I was in the process of producing the right ticket when I saw another security guard making off with my suitcase. This had clearly been labelled a terrorist threat, situated, as it was, 2 metres from my person. After fending off the controled explosion of my possessions I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way to the xray. Never having had ANY problems with security on previous countless trips I was not prepared for the next stage of my first class treatment.

With time ticking by the man pulls over my suitcase for inspection and gruffly commands me to open it. I do so and he picks his way through the contents of my toilet bag VERY VERY S-L-O-W-L-Y. After five excruciating minutes I hear the final call for my train. By this time he has put the suitcase through the xray a second time and is talking jovially to the security woman at the screen. I indicate my watch with growing alarm and he drags himself over."Is there a problem?" I said. "My train is leaving NOW". You should have got here earlier, he snapped. "But what's the problem?" I continued, "My ticket is non flexible and non refundable". "That's your problem"' he replies, and proceeds to run some gadget over the WHEELS of all things, before putting the suitcase through the machine AGAIN, just for good measure.

Finally, he gives me the all clear. Cursing under my breath, I take over the operation myself and shove my possessions in left, right and centre, and ask whether I can be spirited to the front of the passport queue. A request he pretends to ignore until I kick up such a fuss that another guard volunteers to bring me through.

I make it onto the train with twenty seconds to spare but only get as far as coach one out of eleven. Dragging my suitcase across children's toys, elderly body parts and fat midriffs endears me to no-one in the carriage so I abandon it in Voiture 2 and make my way up the train. Passing the buffet car I am arrested in my tracks by two burly employees who ask me where the h*ll I think I'm going. When I mention coach eleven they look suspicious and demand to see my ticket and ID. Having already gone through security about a million times I can't quite see the point of this interrogation and am really feeling like a wanted criminal. Happily, their suspicions about my vagabond status remain unfounded and they let me through. I resolve to wear a business suit the next time to avoid a repeat scenario.

Eventually I find my seat. It was nice enough. I had a glass of champers, and read my book. But I couldn't help thinking that treatment was more fifth than first class.