India

On Funeral Rites and Getting Fucked Over

Although I’m extremely comfortable with ambiguity and open-endedness in film, I’m still wrestling with the women characters in Thithi, the recent Kannada film set in Nodekopplu village.

First let me say that the film is, as indicated by the number of national and international accolades, a “must watch!” (thanks Aamir). It belongs to a growing number of Indian films that are difficult to genre-ize and, as a result, often reduced to ‘art house’, which is actually a quite inaccurate description. Unlike the Western conceptualization of art house, Thithi transcends cultural and class in a way no Miramax film ever achieved. Its experimentalism comes from the slight tweaking of the everyday, a slowing down of the already slow village ecosystem to the point that humor organically emerges. Perhaps this is art house for those in the West with the attention span of a fly, but I think for the Indian audience, for whom most will have some connection, no matter how remote, to this setting, the humor is accessible and relatable. Similar to films like Sairat and Court, Thithi is composed of a cast of non-actors and unites a diverse cinema-going audience by offering the poignant wit that arises from place specific language and environment.

Thithi and Court share commonalities beyond the obviousness of a white haired elder for a central character. Mostly, the fluid intertwining of humor and tragedy which is, in fact, so well integrated that it is impossible to distinguish. But while Court is pointing to the absurdity of an arcane legal system, Thithi points to nothing. Or does it point to everything? I left the theater content with a four way intersection between humor, tragedy, nothing, and everything. But how does that intersection hold up in the context of the women of the film?

While we see that the woman of the village are sharp tongued, hardened, and no nonsense, they are given very little substance. Now, I’m not asking for any contrived portrayal of strong village women nor am I demanding some 30% reservation of plot given to women. Thithi is not about women, nor the relations between men and women in the village. But something happened for me after Abhi has sex with Cauvery, which is shortly after he has stolen sheep from her uncle.

Why has Abhi stolen sheep from the sheepherder? Because he drunkenly gambled away all the money his father, Thammana, gave him so that he could buy sheep for the Thithi celebration. None of Abhi’s actions are particularly good, quite the opposite in fact. But like every character in the film, we are endeared to him simply because of his human-ness. He’s not a bad kid, just a bored kid.

But by the time sex has occurred, even though it is assumed consensual, it is clear to me that multiple violations are occurring. Or, to put it in colloquial terms, some people in this film are getting fucked over. Kamalakka, the money lender, Cauvery, and of course Thammana.

Because we know Thammana’s story so well we understand the various ways in which he is getting fucked over by the reappearance of Gadappa. But because we don’t know much about Cauvery’s story, nor Kamalakka’s, I think most film goers will not think much of it. Which is perhaps why some reviews are able to say the following:

“Abhi offers little commentary on the matter of the inherited land; instead, he’s consumed by more youthful activities, which Reddy treats with an appropriately affectionate eye by not forcing the youngest heir into the film’s greater conflicts.”

a gentle, playful comedy set in a small village in Karnataka…featuring a wonderful ensemble of non-professional actors that transports you to an Asterixian village in Karnataka.

I found the film deeply comical but I do not think the words affectionate nor gentle have a place. It is deeply comical but also darkly comical. I keep returning to this question of whether Raam Reddy, the film director (who is clearly a genius), is in some way making a statement on gender in the village, in which case it is achieved through a non-statement or subtleties that can make us think quite deeply. For example Gadappa’s story about his wife (which may also only be a dream), which perhaps affected his relationship with his father (Century Gowda) and his relationship with life. But while he has, essentially, renounced society, his wife renounced life. And what of his game of Tiger and sheep? At what point does this carefree spirit become the Tiger of the whole plot and village for that matter? How does Gadappa, though unconsciously, orchestrate the thieving to take place by buying the sheep herding men their alcohol, to which the women ask, “But who will watch over the sheep?” I can’t help but wonder if the film is, in one small way, projecting an attitude of boys will be boys and men will be men.

By the time everyone is sitting down to the fine meal of mutton it is evident that some men have come out on top, others not, but every female character have been fucked over in some form or another. Now, I’m not saying that I want to see some form of justice delivered, but if this is to be a new cinematic take on the village, it is still an old take on gender in the village.

I also wonder if a film like Thihi could be created in which all central characters were women. What I’m trying to say is that in Thihi the characters are substantial enough, there need not be a presence of women to enhance or give a fuller picture of the male characters or their place within society. Could the same be achieved if it was a cast of women characters? Could an entire 120 minute film carry the same level of humor, irony, and rich character development without reference to husbands, children, or cooking? Although Thithi in many ways revolves around the story of a family, family relations and duties, it is at the same time not at all about the family. We see each generation of men as autonomous characters so that the film is almost an anti-statement about familial relations. Could the same humor or essence be achieved if the cast were women and not men? I have no doubt it could, and that such a director exists somewhere, but the question is whether such a film would receive the same kind of attention and reception as Thithi.

The not-so-discrete choice of being a pedestrian in Bangalore

P1050851

When the program director explained that discrete choice economics was part of the PhD program my first thought was no big deal. See, I assumed he meant ‘discreet’, as in we’d learn economics in an unobtrusive kind of way, and then I had this train of thought where my mind replaced ‘choice’ with ‘charm’ and I naturally thought of Buñuel’s bourgeoisie.

10 minutes into the course I realized my mistake and two weeks later concluded that the whole thing was utterly uncharming. Not only because I found myself failing the first problem set on ordered logits and unable to grasp fixed effects, but because I struggled to believe that transportation, my subject of study, could be understood through binaries (or multinomials), reduced to probability models, and described through principles of utilitarian theory. In the end I mastered these techniques, passed the class, and aborted discrete choice theory as a way of understanding an individual’s transportation decisions.

Until now. My recent move to Bangalore and life as a pedestrian in this lawless land of piecemeal concrete and reckless driving has brought about a new kind of discrete choice economics.

Every night as I walk home from a neighboring Nagar I play a little (discreet) game with myself. The game is essentially based on whether I can accurately predict my decision to walk on the street or the footpath (the more common term for sidewalk), based on a set of observed variables, the most common being:

no footpath
an obstruction on the footpath
a broken footpath
non working street lights
an obstruction on the side of the street
shit (literal and figurative) on the side of the street
crazy-mad traffic.

Those are, for the time being, my working set of ‘external’ or independent variables. They arise unpredictably in the sense that I can walk 10 steps on a footpath and then halfway through my 11th step realize that this forward trajectory will not be possible once I begin that 12th. I must make a choice, a decision, quickly. And this decision, that is to walk forward on the footpath or transition to the street OR, conversely, to move from the street to the footpath, is based on this set of observable variables in which I must maximize my utility of being able to walk without being severely hurt or killed.

I’d like to think that my discrete (or rational) choice is ‘scientifically’ objective in the sense that it is based more on a mechanical, bodily reaction than self-reflection or subjective judgement as to where I should be walking.

I’d also like to think that this mental game satisfies most criteria for discrete choice model formation. For example, given that discrete choice is based in probability, it operates under the assumption that there is missing information. Meaning that my decision is based on observable as well as unobservable factors. Like those above my head. A coconut tree waiting to drop a big one on me, a bird’s nest of illegal wiring waiting to blow. These do not knowingly factor into my split second decision of footpath or street, but maybe they unconsciously do. As I write, I also realize that there are the ‘internal’ or imposed variables that I’ve created for myself. Two examples are:

whether or not I’ve worn closed or open shoes.
How late I am to get to where I need to go (and thus how much risk am I willing to take?).

I suppose hardcore modelers might challenge my desire to call my game an exercise in discrete choice theory. For example, the requirement that all categories are mutually exclusive is questioned when one considers that in several instances the footpath is the street and vice versa. After all, during rush hour, two wheelers drive on the footpath to avoid the gridlock traffic on the street. Cars park on the footpath and so, for pedestrians, the street becomes the footpath. I would have to ask a statistician, but I suspect this ambiguity might pose challenges for quantitatively minded.

In any case, I suspect that this small, insignificant game is one that over one million people, mostly women and the elderly, play here in Bangalore on a daily basis, most likely unknowingly and unwillingly. My guess is that people are less conscious of it then I am, and certainly more accepting of it.

IMG_7233 (1)

While the experience can be at times satirical, even surreal, unlike Buñel’s sextet, no aspect of this is imagined. The other week there were three separate accounts of women, all women, who tripped (on a pothole or uneven pavement) while walking and were killed by an approaching vehicle. In fact, the transportation situation in Bangalore is increasingly dire and it is the pedestrian population that is literally the worse hit. Being a pedestrian has allowed me to brush up on some of those long forgotten principles behind discrete choice theory but the best of probability models will not solve this mounting crisis. My advisor has recently starting using the acronym TINTA–There Is No Technocratic Answer. I’m pretty sure that is the best framework to have come from any economist in decades.

What does Modi mean by ‘women led growth’?

Women are the latest target in Modi’s attempt to regain his political mojo. While Modi is not the first politician in or outside India to call attention to the societal benefits of women in leadership roles, his justification is seasoned with that distinctly Hindu right, BJP ideology:

“A country is always empowered by its women. It is she who is different roles—as a mother, a sister and a wife nurtures citizens and these empowered citizens then play a role in building up an empowered society and country.”

Let me pause while I vomit and come back to express how offensive this is, or should be.

First, it operates under the assumption that there are three, and only three, roles that constitute or define women and all are in relation to the family. By default, the modus operandi of women is to nurture, nurture the individual who, under this care of mother, sister and/or wife will become an empowered citizen. Under the guise of empowerment and gender, Modi is putting forth two very patriarchal ideologies.

The transfer of nurture[ing] from woman to individual is not a closed circle for this conduit of nurturing is never circulated back to the woman. In fact, in many instances the only thing that is empowered is capitalism. Nurturing is passed from mother, sister, wife to individual and that individual, in turn, becomes a part of the productive labor force, which, in turn, produces the conditions needed to maintain a capitalist nation-state. This energy flow is of course one classic basis for the work of feminist economists who try to quantify the economic value of a society structured around unpaid nurturing.
In Modi’s scenario, woman is not considered a citizen. Of course Modi would dispute such a claim at face value but a nuanced reading of the statement suggests no direct relationship between nurturing a citizen and being a citizen. Nurturing an adorable puppy so that it can develop into a well domesticated dog does not, by default, make me a dog as well.

If political actions speak as loud as political rhetoric than we can assume that Modi’s parlance of “building an empowered country” translates into building a powerful nation-state, viz a viz strong military (just look at the new budget), robust private sector, and nurturing FDI. In other words, empowering a patriarchal, paternal model of capitalist democracy.

At present, most of Modi’s tangible execution of empowerment has not benefited any members of society beyond the business elites who, as desirable citizens, are fit to build an empowered nation-state, which essentially means the ability to shape global economics and geopolitics. For this to occur, the traditional capitalist-patriarchy structure needs to survive and again that structure begins with a household structure in which mothers, sisters and wives nurture. Increasingly, women are permitted to be part of that productive labor force, so long as it does not take away from their role as nurturer, nor their role as the upholding the modesty of the household and the nation.

While modesty has a very firm place in the constructed imaginary of ‘traditional’ Hinduism mythology where women like Sita and Draupidi are revered for maintaining their modesty in the direst of circumstances, because in today’s context a woman’s place might be both reproductive and productive (read: nurturing and income generating) it is paramount that modesty is upheld. Because if modesty is not upheld, it suggests that nurturing might be threatened.

Just look at so many of the legal discourses pertaining to women. Most have a basis in modesty. Laws around stalking, teasing, harassment originate from “outraging the modesty of woman” (see Section 354, 354D, 509 of the Nirbhaya Act). Not ‘a woman’, not women-as-individual-citizens but rather “modesty of woman.” I’d argue this is Mother India modesty or modesty of an imagined universal mother, sister, wife. This is further exemplified in workplace documents founded on protecting women workers (not dignity or rights of women in the workplace but perhaps the dignity of the company), accusations of rape (where in some instances, women undergo virginity testing to, essentially, determine if she was ‘modest’ before the attack), and even in rape prevention campaigns where men are encouraged to think of every woman they see as being someone’s mother or sister (but not a wife!).

Anti rape protest copy

Photo credit here.

My lamentation is not new, a refrain of many feminists, even non-feminists in India, but in this current global climate of frightening nationalism, religious, racial, caste intolerance, the sacrifice of social welfare for military growth, it is important to carefully read the nuances within the message of women led development (note in several instances of Modi’s speech, growth and development are used interchangeably), who is espousing it and why.

I am certainly for women led development, but not under such conditions. I believe Modi’s vision of women led development is one of carefully packaged patriarchy. His vision of an empowered country is one in which the nurturing of citizens by mothers, sisters, and wives will be reciprocated back to the that mother, sister, wife only in the form of laws and policies that protect the collective image of women as modest, women as nurturer, but do not empower her as an individual citizen. Perhaps my reading of Modi comes across as too Western a reading of what conditions should constitute women led development; I hope not. Modi is not the only political leader to have a double tongue when it comes to this subject, and thankfully India is ripe with activists, public intellectuals, and individual citizens who will challenge him on this.

Wheels and Tracks

Same destination but different mode. Why one would chose train over bus travel in India–anywhere for that matter*–hardly warrants explanation. But let me try. I finished Paul Theroux’s The Grand Railway Bazaar while traveling from Delhi to Bombay, down the coast of Maharashtra and yes, eventually to Goa. It was a mixed modes approach of bus, rail, and one flight.

Reading a travel book while traveling is obviously cliché, but then to read a travel book while performing the regiment of everyday life is possibly to induce despair. Although my two week hiatus hardly compares to Theroux’s half year journey, it did allow me to reflect on a few things that have been brewing for some time, such as the gendered nature of adventure travel (and writing) and how the interior spaces of India’s overnight buses compare to the train journeys.

Inner-urban transportation in India is pretty gendered, from the subtle hand-painted portrait-of-a-lady on the side of Mumbai’s crumbling yet delightfully efficient suburban rail system to the ‘women on wheels’ pink taxis. Light rail and metro systems have whole compartments reserved for ‘ladies.’ In Delhi, this is indicated by a Barbie pink coloured sign complete with your classic stick-figure-in-a-dress and white flowers blooming around her body.

But inside the compartment of the long distance trains, gender differentiation evaporates. Of course there is the list outside the car, dutifully telling the name, sex, and age of each passenger, but within the car your cubicle of six berths, geometrically lined up and magically suspended by some cable that has been carrying the weight of human travellers since Gandhi, has no explicit demarcation for gender, personal space, and perhaps even class for the matter.**

What is it about this temporary communal space, a space within a contained vessel in motion, that allows things like concern for personal security to evaporate? I tried bringing up this question several times while doing research interviews with those who work in the field of urban public transportation. No one had ever given it much thought, and with the exception of times of social upheaval, no one could think of an instance when a woman rail passenger had been violated, nor any public demand for gender segregated compartments.

It is hard to convey the feeling of this tiny, 50 square foot, six berth space that is created on the long distances trains. A similar feeling does not exist on overnight buses, or international flights. I’ve tried to identify certain qualities–the freedom to move within and between cars, the open doors, the tiny table at the end of the lower berth where one can set their namkeen, chai, oily IRCTC breakfast. Is it the fact that there is a communal space? That everyone starts the journey sitting on the lower berth, a padded rectangle that eventually becomes someone’s bed and ends up in some contorted position with a wad of of stiff wool blanket wrapped around some part of the body? Is it the sounds and smells outside the rail station, the situated historicalness of rail travel itself? While there are a great number of rail travelogues, I’m hard pressed to think of any involving buses (that aren’t tied to some self-depreciating, down and out character), and certainly none written by women.

*I suppose in the US you could argue that there is hardly a lesser evil between Amtrak and Greyhound.

** Of course the compartments are organised according to class, but unlike air travel, where a curtain and several stewards and stewardesses are strategically placed to ensure no trespassing between first class, silver elite, gold and the masses in economy class.

Dream Spheres and Urban Development

When she first told me her apartment complex was off NICE road I thought I heard ‘a nice road’. “Oh, great!” I replied, trying to show enthusiasm for surface pavement, “But what is the name?”

“NICE”, she said again, “The toll road, about 3 kilometers from Electronic City.”

There is a lot of ambiguity in India but I can’t say the same for subtlety, especially when it comes to new development. California County, Wall Street II, Prestigious White Meadows, Dream City…these are just a handful of communities I have come across in the past week.

Like many former British colonies, English street names and districts are common in urban India (e.g. Richmond Town, Frazier Town) but it seems, to me at least, that there might be a correlation between the liberalization of India’s economy and the rise in gated communities that make literal references to lifestyles specific to particular geographies. J. Naigar’s and John Stallmeyer’s excellent works on Bangalore helped me understand the city’s explosive growth, particularly in terms of human population and kilometers of land but neither prepared me for the flood of speculative real estate development I have encountered.

Some highlights below:

-Billboards testimonials. These are particularly popular along Bellary Road, from the airport into the city, but also on any toll road—such as the NICE ring road. These testimonials include a picture of an individual in some expressive gesture, such as a head cocked to one side. “I chose to relocate from _______ to Bangalore, and it was the wisest decision I’ve ever made.” A simple, straightforward affirmation. The logic of someone beyond middle age. It seems to recall Bangalore’s former identity as a ‘pensioner’s paradise’, namely because of the year-round good weather. The word is relocate, but the assumption is retire. Retire and invest.

-Radio. “Ooh gawd, Shriti,” begins one radio ad I heard approximately every five minutes for one entire weekend, “I’ve missed the real estate expo and now I’m back to driving all across the city looking at places.”

“Don’t worry Ashita, the expo has been extended for one week more!” Like all classic infomercials, we are told to ‘hurry’ because this ‘opportunity’ ‘won’t last.’

Another personal favorite is one in which a metaphor between finding the perfect wife and finding the perfect property is utilized. By doing his research, and refusing to settle for anything less than perfect, the man gets both the woman and the two-bedroom flat.

Or, here are some favorite snippets from the August 23^rd real estate section of the Times of India (Bangalore edition):

Toast, Cereals and Conversations: Nitesh Cape Cod is located just off the Sarjapur-Marathahalli Ring Road and within walking distance of leading IT offices.

-Niteshestates.com

Get ready to Start your Second Innings at your Own British Colonial Bungalow (sic): Fresh forest oxygen; Zero carbon footprint

-legacyhomes.in

Innovative aquafront: Where happiness Reflects. Exactly Facing the Lake

-innovativeconstructions.in

-Comment: This is not EXACTLY what I would call a Lake, nor is it exactly attractive.

Neo Bangalore—An Address you can flaunt about

Your property can help you fulfill your dreams, just like your family.

-HSBC

Even since my trip here last summer I feel what was a craze has now become an epidemic. That said, it’s hard to know what is aggressive advertising and what is reality. As an employee working in Electronics City, I’m amidst the target population of this advertising. And yet real estate has yet to become the topic of any lunchtime conversation. So is this ‘Exactly facing the Lake’ this ‘Toast, Cereals and Conversation’ a myth?

Regardless of whether or not Innovative aquafront actually faces a lake the reality of this city is uneven development. Bangalorians often talk about how just 20 years back all this area was scrubland. Aside from being called a pensioner’s paradise, Bangalore was also—and is still somewhat—referred to as India’s ‘Garden City’, an image the real estate industry loves to invoke. But can the legend of Bangalore’s garden paradise peacefully co-exist with the reality of high population growth? Can the city successfully attract people, development, and maintain ‘pristine natural surroundings’?

The directions for getting to my co-worker’s apartment were simple. After getting off the NICE toll road I was to turn left at the petrol station and continue down the winding road until I arrived at ‘Sabah Sunscape’.

The thing was, after a few hundred yards from the petrol station the road went from paved, to dirt, and then back to paved. We passed cows, pockets of dense forest, and area cleared for future development. We came to a fork in the road. The driver stopped a man in a white dhoti who seemed to be walking without purpose. “Where is Sabah Sunscape?” he asked in Kannada. The man gestured straight with a good deal of indifference. After a few minutes we came to a gate and two high rises. I got out of the rickshaw and walked toward the security station on the other side of the gate and told the guard the name of my friend. He checked the roster and shook his head. No one of that name lived there. After a few minutes of debate we solved the problem. I was at Sabah Sunbeam, NOT Sabah Sunscape. I walked back to the rickshaw. We continued driving until we finally arrived at an even larger gate set between two concrete pillars. We had arrived at Sabah Sunscape.

Later that night, coming back to Electronics City, I started to wonder what makes a city. If Electronics City does not include electronics manufacturing nor does it constitute an actual city, why does it have the name that it does? Electronics City is supposedly the ‘place’ that put Bangalore in the global marketplace, but for the first 15 years of existence it was considered to be outside the city. Now, Bangalore’s development stretches even further south. Was Sabah Sunscape and its environs really part of this Bangalore city? Historically, Bangalore has always been a low-density city. But that did not mean, I thought to myself, that some gated high-rise apartments located in the middle of nowhere could be part of the city, even if the city boundary will eventually give way and include it. Then again, what right did I, a child of Detroit, have to conclude what is urban and what is not?

Is urban the same thing as city? What is a city anyway?

Sometimes my grandfather likes to tell us about the first house he and my grandmother bought. The street on which the house was built wasn’t completed; they were the first homeowners on the block and because of this, my grandmother got to name the street. She chose ‘Devonshire’ because she thought is sounded very sophisticated.

It’s easy to be cynical of the HSBC quote about family and property, but the fact is that for many people this relationship and its connection to something loosely defined as a dream is very much a reality. Cities are also spaces/places of dreams, or where people go to fulfill something that might be described of a dream. Cities are constantly expanding in order to accommodate all those individuals, all those families, and all those dreams. So, I suppose when I think of it that way I can accept Sobha Sunscape as part of Bangalore and yet, when it comes to the reality of this piecemeal development, these self-contained bio-spheres of swimming pools and tennis courts cropping up in the middle of nowhere, claiming to have the amenities of both urban and suburban life I can’t help but think that these real estate dreams must be destroyed, as the future of the city depends on it.

Heritage?

The word heritage use to make me yawn. I associated it with visiting my grandparent’s house as a child where the perfectly preserved 1950s interior was equally dull as it was formal. Almost all socializing took place in the dimly lit front living room; I’d stare out the window, to the street, and wonder how long before I’d be excused from listening to stories about the past so that I could go outside and play.

For fear of making you yawn, I’ll refrain from further descriptions of this domestic interior and conclude by saying that I always thought heritage was something for people stuck in the past. It was what academics got into just before they decided to retire.

These past three months I’ve had many opportunities to think about heritage. The first began at the conference of Critical Heritage in Gothenburg, Sweden and continued when I left Sweden and went to India. Ironically, as soon as I arrived in the ‘field’ to, in fact, research a heritage landscape, I almost immediately forgot about heritage as a discourse. See, I was so busy enjoying the heritage that organically makes its way into everyday life—sunset from Hamakuta Hill, wading in the Tungabhadra River along side the shore temple, finding remnants of 400 year old clay pots on a cricket field—that I failed to do what all good researchers emphasize—write immediately!

Now I’m home and have no choice but try to make sense of my observations. As I reflect on the meaning of heritage, I can’t help but think of an overly simplified interpretation of Lacan’s mirror stage. The child, prior to this stage, does not recognize itself as separate from the mother. Similarly, I found that most residents in Anegundi (the village I did most my research in) do not see heritage as distinct from their landscape or daily life. Like the child’s relationship to the breast, heritage is nourishment that comes naturally; it is within, around, and never completely separate from the individual, the community, or the landscape.

Now I’m not suggesting that residents of Anegundi have the mental capacity of a breast-fed child, I’m trying to emphasize that symbolic moment when the child is placed in front of the mirror and forced to recognize that it is autonomous yet dependent on the mother. There is something beyond the mother and the child, a social order (for Lacan this would be language) that establishes and maintains this rupture. Just as the mirror affirms that mother and child are not one, the mirror affirms that heritage and community heritage/heritage and landscape can be separated, controlled, and pivoted against one another.

The heritage that was once within is now external, available to the international organization, the national government, the state government, the department of tourism…the American doctoral student, to be freely consumed, interpreted, and repositioned accordingly. Heritage becomes an economic driver that must be regulated, marketed, and even protected from the very people it lives within.

I’m new to the academic study of heritage. I have no literature review on which to base my assumptions, only impressions. Another impression I have is that international dialogue about heritage is similar to dialogue about international development–overtly colonial in belief and approach. Like colonialism, development and heritage are about management. There is a right approach and a wrong approach and it is the economically stronger countries that determine how economically weaker countries should manage their heritage so that they don’t destroy it.

This leads me to another word I’ve spent some time thinking about: inheritance. Inheritance is a word that divides families and inspires soap operas to run for multiple years. It is also a word that is related to heritage. When a family member dies, the inheritance, if any, is divided, but not always equally. In America I hear the word inheritance more than I hear the word heritage. We inherited the right to own land–that is our freedom, our legacy, and our interpretation of democracy. It is the heritage of a national ideology and it is meant to appeal both to the collective history of the nation and our personal right to participate in it.

It makes me queasy.

Unfortunately, I lost my notebook (damn you Delta airlines!) with all the CRUCIAL notes I wrote regarding my impressions of heritage in these two very different locations. So, I’ll now proceed to trail off with a few scattered words that I’m hoping will help inspire to me begin this monolith of a project write-up.

Culture

Value

Intellectual property

(What is the relationship between heritage, culture, value, and intellectual property? Is intellectual property the ‘value’ of culture? Is heritage a property so to speak? Would recognizing it as property be the best way to ‘conserve’ heritage? Does the conservation of culture make heritage (like, if I put culture in the oven and set a timer, does it become heritage)?

At the Gothenburg conference there was an afternoon session with a wonderful speaker named Tracey Ireland she used a lot of really interesting words in relation to each other. Here are a few:

Archaeology as place making:

“memory archive”

Archeological landscape Archeology as site of focus Symbolic site types…linking to cultural memory.

“Spatial inscription”

How old does heritage have to be?

(Contrast between old and new, does it inevitably suggest that some kind of ‘progress’ is happening? When heritage and development work together are we advocating to preserve the past, move forward, and eradicate the middle?)

There was also this guy Michael Falser:

Object to agency

De/Re…political terms…a constant process of renegotiation.

Decolonization then becomes an act of recolonization

Cultural performance vs. historical reenactment.

Rights approach vs systems approach

Throw public history into that mix.

On erasure…there is no global and no local.

(Okay, on this last point I want to say that I am sick, SICK of talking about global and local, even if it is to talk about how there is no global and no local. We need to stop wasting our breath, and our brain cells on this. I would argue it’s more useful to talk about private and public space. Maybe I will talk about this more in my next post.)

Lastly, let me leave you with a few more thoughts I have (at random)

I don’t think anyone in heritage discourse is talking about Iris Marion Young’s ideas about inclusiveness and democracy.
Sameness and difference…does heritage emphasize one over the other or both simultaneously? Heritage, well, in the UNESCO context is about the inscription of ‘universal’ values. It’s universal until the individual sites become sites of difference as the daily life of people living in the site is sacrificed in the name of the universal value. What values are universal? I think this is where Young would add to the discussion.
Conceptual vs every day life.
Heritage–>tradition–>‘freezing’ of culture so that it can be represented.

Subjective Scale

Scale has different meanings according to disciplines, trades, and livelihoods. Thanks to words such as capitalism and globalization, scale is increasingly prevalent in everyday discourse. ‘Scaling up’, ‘scaling down’, and ‘scales of influence,’ are all phrases that help us better imagine and produce dichotomies such as global and local.

Scale is a crucial word in the field of cartography. I’d argue it was perhaps the most important contribution to 15^th and 16^th century navigation, making this first wave of globalization possible. Scale can be a map’s greatest asset, and its greatest curse. The ability to see an entire city, an entire country, even the world has great psychological consequences on the human mind. Seeing it all feels manageable, even conquerable. Having a scale of 1:1 is of course impossible for that is reality; and so, as we increase scale, we are in many ways decreasing reality.

Lately I’ve been very disappointed with the maps I’ve used. I find them ill preludes to my experience. Let me put this in context.

Because I’ve been traveling this past month I’ve had many opportunities to use maps. Those given to me by hotels and tourist centers highlight attractions, list restaurants, and have a colorful border of various advertisements. Such maps focus on the imagined city center, or the assumed destination of tourists. Visual techniques such as a bright colors, large circles, and street names in large fonts help navigate the visitor to the center, reiterating it as a bustling yet legible place to the outsider.

The first tourist map I received last month was of Gotenburg, Sweden. To cover the area under observation (the far reachings of the city’s public transit), the map had eight folds and seemed dauntingly huge.

Because of bad rains I chose to use the highly efficient tram, which went north, then east through a tunnel carved out from a small elevation and eventually more north to where the conference was being held. One evening the sun came out for the first time. I decided I’d walk from the conference back to the hotel, thinking it would take at least an hour.

I passed through part of the Gotenburg University full of small gardens. No one lives here, but each has a little shed-like structure, and small patio with a picnic table. As I was walked by, I could see many families preparing their evening meal. I then descended a bit, passed through another residential area and eventually arrived at the main commercial area.

The entire walk took a little less than 20 minutes, or roughly twice the amount of time it did by tram. I didn’t use the tram after that, the University seemed as though it was right around the block.

Now, I should mention that I’m actually pretty terrible at reading maps. As in, I generally don’t. I’m more of a glance-er; I wander until my doubt trumps my intuition. It is at this point that I look for some street sign and then quickly glance at the map to try and find that same road. Once I do, I look to see if it runs in the direction I want to go. If it does, I almost immediately put the map away. This strategy is highly problematic. Because I almost never check cross streets it usually happens that I’m on the right road but on the other side of town.

In other words, I am scale-diffecient.

When I arrived to Bangalore airport the first thing I did was ask for a map from the information center. From the hotel I took a cab to one of the hotels that made up the border of the map—the one advertising non a/c rooms for 600 rupees and South Indian breakfast (hello sambar!). I arrived around three am, turned on the fan, and passed out.

The next morning, I decided I’d walk to the central train station to get train tickets for my next destination. A few problems erupted. The only address on the hotel advertisement said “near Minerva Circle.” I could locate Bangalore City Railway Station but I had no idea where to look for Minerva Circle.

I went to the man at the front desk and asked where Minerva Circle was. He couldn’t find it. He passed the map to the next person. He said south, it was somewhere south of the gardens. Together we found something circular—a roundabout in fact. Yes, that was probably Minerva Circle. I looked at the icon for the Bangalore City Railway Station. The distance was about the length of my index fingernail.

“Oh, that will be easy,” I said. “I will start walking.”

“No no no no”, he told me. “Far, very far. Auto madam auto.”

Because I’m used to people assuming I’d rather take a rickshaw than walking, I decided to dismiss his opinion as ridiculous.

I started off at 1pm with a positive attitude. I’d relearn the different horn pitches of urban India, the friendly honk from the menacing honk from the caution honk, and retrain my eyes to look both down and forward for anything and everything that may come in front of me.

But by 2pm I was beginning to feel like not much progress had been made. I was afraid to pull out the map because as soon as I looked like I was walking without certainty, I was sure the rickshaw drivers would spot me as a vulture spots something dead, they’d descend upon me with their exuberant rates, and I was certain this should be a less than 50 rupee ride.

By 3pm I was beginning to get frustrated. I pulled out the map to look at the scale…only there was none! Just in big letters MAP NOT DRAWN TO SCALE.

Well I’ll be damned. I didn’t know mapmakers were as careless as me.

I stopped at a chai stall. “Excuse me but am heading in the right direction to Bangalore City Rail?”

“Okay okay madam. Auto.”

“No, not auto. Walking.”

“No madam, far, very . Auto Auto.”

“How far?”

“Very far.”

“How far is very far?”

“Seven kilometers.”

That’s impossible. I thought to myself. He obviously has never walked it and doesn’t know what he is talking about. “Seven kilometer this direction, right?”

“Hai Hai. This road, straight straight, till the end.”

And so I did. Till it was 5pm. Okay. So maybe it really was seven kilometers from the chai stall. Or maybe it felt like seven kilometers because Indian sidewalks are in perpetual crises, uncertain if they are actually part of the road, a cleverly disguised storm water system, or an extension of an individual shop. As a result, walking one kilometer often feels like two or three.

Let me not keep you in suspense. I finally reached the station at 5:30pm. My arrival felt like a much greater achievement than I’d originally anticipated. After buying the train ticket in question I walked over to the bus terminal, determined to get back to ‘near Minerva Circle’ by public transit. There were no maps, no scales, but it was definitely still an adventure.

We’re on the Road to Nowhere

I know in my last post I argued there’s no such thing as developed and undeveloped, which, as Vince Carducci rightfully observed in his comment, is more an attempt to think beyond that particular dichotomy than suggest that some kind of global quality of life has been achieved. I’d like to take up this theme again, perhaps challenge my own previous argument through a discussion on roads in Karnataka.

Right now I’m watching NDTV as I get ready to leave Bangalore. This evening’s topic is Why is Road Development Off Track? The central question posed by the news program to the audience and interviewees is why roads are not being built as fast as the state government has promised.

Apparently, in 2010, the Karnataka government suggested that the state had the capacity to build 20 kilometers of roads. However, by 2011, it was found that only five kilometers of road are built a day.

Now, I’m coming at this with a lot of bias. Part of which is due to being a pedestrian for the past four days in the forever expanding city of Bangalore. Trying to get from point A to point B has proved nearly impossible. The problem I’ve found is that here, roads seem to sputter and die. Or they become new roads with new names or new roads with no names, or new roads that, suddenly, simply stop being roads without any warning so that everything seems to be in a constant, present state of construction.

But my road angst extends much further than Bangalore as I inevitably associate road development with motor vehicles and thus things like traffic, suburbs, and pollution.

But roads are also what help us live; better roads can mean better access to schools, to hospitals…to clean drinking water. And, of course, construction employees many people and the idea of greater connectivity often boosts ideas of improved qualities of life.

But without knowing where they are going, whom they are connecting, isn’t it pointless to be asking why a certain number of kilometers are or aren’t being built?

Le me return to this news program I’m watching. I don’t mean to stereotype, but it seems Indians, (at least of the civil service government variety) love, I mean l-o-v-e numbers. I find that the response to any inquiry regarding the progress of a project is met with a series of numbers so that in 2006 it cost this much to build one kilometer of road with cement costing some number and this many people were employed to mix the cement and this many were employed to lay the cement and the total number of roads built was this number and if we compare that to the number of roads built in, say Tamil Nadu in 2007 than we will find a difference of this many kilometers and considering Tamil Nadu is this many square kilometers big and Karnataka is this many square kilometers big than it makes sense that this number fewer of roads was built in 2009 but not in 2010…wait, what were talking about?

This is certainly how the various interviews with various people working in road construction are going so that I think the only thing I’ve caught so far is that 18000 kilometers of road were built from 2010-2011. Again, this apparently works out to roughly five kilometers a day.

“Could 20 kilometers of road be built a day?” The inquisitive newscaster asks Russell Waugh of Leighton Contractors.

“Certainly,” the Aussie-accented Waugh replies. It seems to him there is no reason Karnataka cannot not nor should not be constructing 20 kilometers of road a day.

But why do 20 kilometers of road need to be built a day? Where are these roads being built and where are they going? (Trust me, if there was a telephone number to call in, I’d be dialing it right now).

These questions seem entirely absent from the discussion. Meanwhile, I shudder at the thought of more roads being constructed in Bangalore. I’m imagining that scene in Disney’s Fantasia where Mickey takes the wand without permission and begins multiplying everything so that the buckets of water keep dumping and dumping until the sorcerer’s studio is soon underwater.

It is here that I rethink this question of development. The American Highway Act of 1956 was certainly a fantastic gesture of infrastructure sorcery. The problem is roads cost much more to upkeep than they do to keep. That, my friends, is my abbreviated version of how we got suburban sprawl (I’ve left out many chapters of course). But is it appropriate to ask other countries to take note of this tale of development, development without question, without foresight?

Now there is a commercial break. But the question we are left to muse over during this three minute interlude is whether the inability to acquire land quickly enough is in fact that the greatest barrier to building 20 kilometers of roads a day.

Wait. Acquire what land? From whom?

We return. Mukund Sapre explains that roads are an acceptable reason to acquire land from people, (like farmers), “as long as compensation is given respectfully.”

Praveen Kumar chimes in, calling this “Reasonable rehabilitation.” In his opinion, “it’s not that difficult [to acquire land].”

I’m now not thinking about roads but that forever unanswerable question of what is the value of land? Can anyone ever be reasonably rehabilitated at a fixed cost? What happens to people who don’t have any official land title?

I could give you 101 reasons why road development is off track. But, I’m not sure how long it will take to get to the Bangalore City train station in this kind of traffic and I’ve got a 10:00pm train to catch.

India Revisited

I’ve decided to take my distrust of linear narratives to heart and not care about the backlog of comments I want to transform into posts. So, I skip my follow up on Oslo waterfront development (which has the makings of a seriously juicy update), my thoughts on the recent conference of Critical Heritage, backtrack from the incredible meeting I had with Equations in Bangalore today, and revisit two days ago, when I arrived back in India after a one and half year hiatus. Forgive me as I descend into typical semi-nauseating, self-reflective travel writing and muse a bit over my reintroduction to India.

As I walked the seven kilometers to the Bangalore City Railway Station I realized just how much India had changed me, not in that om shanti kind of way, but in terms of perspective, outlooks, and, of course, urban planning. For example, it was India that taught me the pointlessness of dichotomies. Those moments walking in the street, when an ox pulling a man on a flatbed wagon overtakes you, only to be immediately eclipsed by a bloated SUV or seeing a woman bent over, sweeping the entrance to an upscale shopping mall with a broom made of panni no longer affect me as they once did. Even as I write this, I feel slightly uncomfortable articulating these descriptions; just the act of writing them encourages me to reiterate dichotomies of development. You see, they aren’t. They just are. So while these encounters still make me pause, I no longer muse over what we obsessively call developed and undeveloped. As far as I’m concerned there is no development, no advancement, only change.

Before I came to India I had very marked opinions on things, things like the informal economy and capitalism—even recycling. It was black and white in my opinion. The informal economy disfavors women (as in a woman who informally works in family shop is very unlikely to receive pay) or that capitalism exploits marginal workers. Recycling should be practiced as it is in Germany and Switzerland—organized, state regulated, three bins in all public places. Although I might still have such opinions, I recognize their limits and their flaws. The informal economy is more welcoming than the formal because jobs are created not from the top down but from the bottom up. Indeed the relationship between formal and informal is neither dichotomous nor parasitic. The informal organizes around the formal’s shortcomings, for example informal buses that provide services to people who do not live on formal transit lines.

Not having a state-structured recycling program gives way to a highly efficient informal system of recycling where the value of discarded objects is subjectively considered. It is more labor intensive which, in turn, creates more jobs.

In both these examples, it’s not a question of development that I want to consider, but a question of rights and a question respect. The problem with the informal recycling structure is that this work falls to the lowest of socio-economic classes who often have little alternative. The problem with this informal labor is that these workers have no job security, no assurance of health benefits.

Capitalism in India seems to offer more outlets for job diversity than previous models. Now, I feel like I’m about to shoot myself when I write this, but subjective experience seems to suggest that capitalism means young people have more alternatives for employment than those of their parents. Let me briefly muse over capitalism of the worst kind—multinational corporate domination. When IT software companies come to Chennai and Bangalore they often employ women who might otherwise struggle to find work outside the family business. By offering such jobs, new freedoms, such as having a personal income, are created. True, like many people in India, these women may share their salary with the family; but there is an undeniable sense of worth that comes from receiving an income. This in turn encourages women to cultivate an identity that might have otherwise been impossible. In this case I would argue that gender stereotypes are both reimagined and reaffirmed—particularly through the encouragement of consumerist behaviors. For example, public space can still be very gendered in India. Malls—the very embodiment of Western capitalism—may be the only space in which such women feel comfortable expressing their identity.

In short, India disrupted any possible conclusions I could make about the world around me. In the past, I blamed Deconstruction for making me into a frustratingly relative thinker, but my time in Chennai sent me adrift upon an expansive sea of theoretical doubt.

The second thing India taught me was to think about what the word infrastructure means, what it is and how we use it. Living in a gridded society, it is easy to take infrastructure for granted. While it’s impossible not to marvel at sights such as the Brooklyn Bridge or strain your neck as you search for the top of buildings, in cities like Chennai, thinking about infrastructure is overwhelming…where does one start? The mosquito problem in this city is so intense because of all the stagnant water. But how does one lay a drainage system in a city that is already built? Again, the temptation is to present this question of infrastructure in terms of developed/undeveloped but I think to do so is to grossly misrepresent and simplify something of almost beautiful complexity.

People are a relatively efficient species. When there is perceived to be a lack, people will compensate in some way. They will create their own sewers, their own electric grid. This is why I keep coming back to India’s urban areas. Because it challenges me to rethink process, change and human nature.

Simulated History: Sidewalks and Streetscapes

One of my favorite moments of urban life is walking down a quiet street and listening to my shoes hit the pavement. The sound is a softer version of the clop clop I associate with horses and I’m inevitably transported to the 19th century; I imagine walking on down an uneven, dimly lit sidewalk that runs parallel to a car-less street.

Dekalb Avenue

I find the best shoe-on-sidewalk sounds are produced in the oldest parts of the city. Cobblestone in parts of the West Village and D.U.M.B.O are delightful; Fort Greene’s combination of granite sidewalks and brownstones is the best. My fantasy of Victorian England lasts about a block, or roughly 350 feet, when I’m interrupted by Myrtle Avenue.

Mrytle Avenue

The majority of New York City’s sidewalks are made of grey concrete with a 5×5 scoring and a steel-faced concrete curb roughly six inches deep. This layout provides ample room for pedestrian foot traffic, isolates those pedestrians from vehicle traffic, and generally produces a muffled, dull sound. While I certainly appreciate the sidewalks of New York City, the majority of them are uninspiring.

The city’s Design Commission is in charge of designating distinctive sidewalks, or sidewalks that enhance the overall street design and help preserve the historic character of an area. Distinctive sidewalks must pass the engineering test of maintaining structural integrity and being slip resistant. Until recently, I was pretty sure distinctive sidewalks could also be identified by how well my shoes mimic horse hooves.

But I was wrong. Confusion erupted while walking down Clermont Avenue. I was looking at the stoops, decorative ironwork, and dreaming of London. But something was missing. THERE WAS NO NOISE. I looked down on the sidewalk. Wait a minute. Was that really granite?

I came home and went to Design Commission’s webpage. To my horror, I learned that distinctive sidewalks “may include the proposed use, in historic neighborhoods, of tinted concrete to simulate bluestone or granite.” My conclusion: cities are increasingly using the term historic preservation to describe nostalgic delusion. If I hadn’t been listening for that clop clop would I have assumed I was walking on a granite sidewalk? I think I would have and I’m still trying to decide if that’s okay.

In his post, The Geometry of Nowhere, Mathieu Helie points out that the 19th century sidewalks weren’t actually meant for people, but as the transitional space between buildings and streets. Sidewalks still serve this function in many cities throughout the world, it is a space for street vendors and motorcycles; foot traffic competes with hooves and wheeled traffic.

19th Century London streetscape

Chennai Streetscape

So maybe I should just get over my disgust for pseudo historic sidewalks, my nostalgia for the 19th century sidewalk is misplaced anyway. Either way, here are some sidewalks: