The first thing I did after getting up was go and search for an internet place to check on scores. I was told that internet places outside the hotel would be opening at 7:00, but when I went to look everything was closed. A gentleman told me he could take me to a place, but we walked a couple hundred meters to a place that ended up being closed. What’s worse, the entire path was along this seriously smelly sewage line that I had to endure all the way up and back. I was about to go back to the hotel when I saw a guy sitting in front of a closed internet shop (actually more of a 10-foot-wide self storage space than a shop) that he agreed to open up for me and charge 20 rupees an hour. I got my scores, and I got to follow the last 10 minutes of the Texas-Nevada game.
This morning we visited the Agra Fort, which is across town from the Taj Mahal. This was a fort that was constructed many centuries ago and has a lot of amazing things going for it, but I think what we were all most impressed with were its resident monkeys. As soon as we got inside the gate we saw a bunch of monkeys that were perched up on the walls and were sliding down the cables on the walls.
Later on, a small group of us got to have a much closer encounter with the monkeys. Professor Konana noticed Jack taking a bunch of pictures of the monkeys, and he said that you could make a Dr. Seuss book out of that. For the rest of the day he was tormenting Jack with his little verse:
Jack snapped a monkey
Jack chased a monkey
Jack likes the monkey
Jack made new friends
On the way back Kevin started talking with Professor Konana about Konana’s cover story that had just appeared in the India news magazine Frontline. They went back and forth about the role of democracy in India’s development (or lack thereof). It’s been fascinating being on this trip with Professor Konana because of the perspective he brings. He displays this really inspiring passion when he talks about the things he loves about India, and if he wants to relate to you something he thinks is exciting about India you’d better pull up a chair and enjoy taking it all in. At the same time, his disappointments with his homeland are pretty obvious, and he isn’t afraid to let you know about them. When he was talking with Kevin and me, he saw a hillside with trash scattered across it, and he went off about why do people have to make such a mess of things. When I saw him at the museum in Mumbai, he said that it was a shame that the museum didn’t really tell a story and a museum somewhere else would have done a much better job. When I asked him about why they’re constantly interrupting cricket matches for commercials, he said that that would never happen in the United States.
I think his is a very honest approach to something you care deeply about. If you accept that it’s impossible to behave dispassionately toward something you’re extremely close to, then there seem to be two possible outlooks. One is to portray everything as being great whether or not it actually is. We’ve seen a lot of that since we’ve been here—people want to tell you the good stuff and either ignore the bad or portray it as good. You also see it all the time with American politics. Democrats in the late 1990’s who were defending President Clinton and Republicans who are now trying to defend Tom DeLay seem to have this problem admitting to anything the least bit wrong with the person they’re defending, which leads to cynicism and polarization.
The other approach is to call attention to both the things you find praiseworthy and the things you find lacking. If you’re a little more honest, it’s tougher to get drug down into these indefensible positions that are viewed with such skepticism (“Everything is perfect with India”; “So-and-so is just being targeted by the opposition”), but if you’re not careful you may find yourself too ambivalent toward this thing you’re supposed to love. Like with me and the Aggies. I love A&M to death, but the things that I find wrong with it run the risk of invalidating, in my mind, the things that make it so great. So a little bit of perspective is in order with either outlook, which itself can be extremely difficult.
Anyway, the perspective people here take on India has been very eye opening. We have heard people being blindly positive about things that obviously are not perfect (the kinds of things that Professor Konana is trying to call attention to), but I think that positive attitude comes from a collective pride in their institutions. In America we’re so used to people openly complaining about things, especially right now when everybody’s mad at either 51% or 49% of the electorate. Much of it is constructive, but it seems that a lot of it comes from an unwillingness to take ownership in what we hold in common. It’s said that you get the government that you deserve, but most people choose to interpret that as “I’m stuck with the government that everyone else deserves.” In America we’ve always got people writing off whatever Congress is up to, and since the presidential election we’ve had the blue states essentially saying that the red states are not part of “their” America (or vice versa). Those are extreme examples, but they follow from a somewhat universal attitude. India has the opposite problem of being rosy without exception, but at least they take ownership, which I think is where the extreme optimism comes from. Meanwhile, we Americans tend to be able to speak universally negatively because certain things, especially the goings on in Washington, are not anything we want to be close enough to to be invested in. It’s just a theory, and of course it’s a huge generalization, but it is strange how differently people here talk about certain things.
When we got back to Delhi, Kevin, Zach, Beth, and I went to a place called Rodeo, which articulates the Indian concept of what a Texan restaurant should be. There were saddles at the bar, and the waiters wore cowboy attire. We had a pitcher of margaritas, which actually turned out to be very good.
I was wearing my cricket jersey, which seemed to make the people at Rodeo pretty happy. I watched some of the test match there and shared some of my revelations about cricket. At one point I said that the fielders don’t really do anything in cricket, and Zach said, “Well, they do more than they do in baseball.” I just about lost it. I made the contention, which I believe is right, that even if you concede that nothing happens in baseball (which is preposterous) you can’t really say that anything more happens in cricket. It’s just a different kind of nothing. Which leads to all kinds of problems when a follower of one sport tries to watch the other.
As I first tried to watch cricket, I was primarily put off by two things: the ease of scoring and the fact that an out is celebrated like a grand slam. Presumably, a cricket fan watching baseball for the first time would get peeved at how commonplace outs are and how people celebrate after scoring a single run. Whereas we see the pitcher in a defensive manner, the batter in cricket is in a lot of ways more of a defensive player. He must preserve his at bat and protect the wickets from the attacks of the bowler. The cricket bowler, on the other hand, may view his job just as a baseball batter would: “Chances are I’m going to be unsuccessful with this bowl (in this at bat), but if I can get an out (score a run) some small percentage of the time then I will have helped my team immensely.” When you switch the payoffs like that from offense to defense, it’s very hard to understand the other sport. That may be the key leap of faith you need to make with cricket. Just accept that scoring runs is easy, which is of course easier said than done. I talk a good game, but I still struggle some when actually watching cricket.
After the Rodeo we went shopping. I bought a book on the history of the alphabet, and then we went to a sports shop that contained the holy grail of India souvenirs.
Since I got my cricket jersey I have wanted to buy some for a couple other people, and I was in luck. This place had them for only 250 rupees. Then Kevin bought a hat that was too small for 50 rupees. And then I saw it. As I was scanning the shelves behind the counter I spotted the object of my unrealized desires and the reason that I had brought a suitcase that could fit a baby giraffe. I looked at the shop owner and asked, “Hey, how much are those cricket bats?” He said they ran from 800 to 2000 rupees, so I got the cheapest one I could for 790. Then I got a ball for 150, and I was in business. I didn’t ever really think about what I was going to get for myself, and now I’m glad, because this cricket bat is better than anything I could have thought of. And it just barely fits in my suitcase—another centimeter and I’d have to mail it home.
Tonight was our final dinner. I got to talk to Richa’s parents and aunt, which was great. After the dinner, I ended up in the lobby of the hotel at about 1:00 in the morning, talking with Shinji and Lili. Lili and I just kind of interviewed Shinji, who was voted the “mystery man” earlier in the night. I got him to divulge the entire contents of his luggage, and he reflected on his own approach to this trip. He said he was selfish for going out on his own so much, which Lili and I told him was ridiculous. He couldn’t be less concerned about making sure the rest of us are paying attention to his priorities, as the rest of us generally are. On his third week he’s volunteering for a few days at the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, which shows just how selfish he is.
The food of the day was the mushroom biscuit appetizers at the party.
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