Archive for the ‘India’ Category

Funny Indian room instructions

No Comments
Posted 25 Jan 2011 — by Harry
Category India

I found this as I was looking through my hard drive. Some great instructions for use of the room in a classy little dive motel somewhere in Tamil Nadu, India:

Excuse the blur – it’s transcribed below.

  1. When you are sleeping, switch off the lights. But wait until you’re asleep first…
  2. Don’t deposit waste in the bathroom. Then where?
  3. Keep bed and pillow from burning. Spontaneous combustion is a problem in these parts.
  4. The use of iron box prohibited in the room, also high watt machines. What? What? Get out.
  5. Do not alter the place of cot and table. It knows where it belongs.
  6. Lock the door when you go out. Or someone might sneak in and malpractice your shit.
  7. Do not use bed sheet as cloth. Pretend it’s a rhinoceros.
  8. Switch off the lights when you go out. So we can malpractice in the dark.
  9. You will be responsible for all the malpractices. All of them!
  10. Do not place bed on the floor. Perhaps the ceiling? No, don’t alter its place!

Technorati Tags:

Tags:

Memories of India

No Comments
Posted 25 Jan 2011 — by Harry
Category Bollywood, India

I must admit my last blog about India sounded as if I’d soured a wonderful chapter in my life, and I would like to take time to remember My Mumbai in detail. The whole of India, as I love her, and as she loved me.

Louda

Parked in the shade on our way around the south

Louda, my bike, rode me around the South and up to Mumbai. I came with Laura – who was the bike’s namesake, when mispronounced with an Indian percussive Laura’s ‘r’ that sounds like a ‘d’ turned it into the Hindi word for cock. Laura had asked me to name the bike after her – a fair trade because it was bought on money from her in exchange for a laptop which she did not yet posess. So Louda she was. Read More

Technorati Tags: , ,

Tags: , ,

India = Epic win.

2 Comments
Posted 09 Jun 2010 — by Harry
Category India, Rants, Travel

The Mumbai was becoming invasive. It sneaks into every fold of skin, into armpits, it trickles down down back fat into bum cracks under ball sacks it festers, soaking flesh as gaping pores ooze a smelly slick of sweat that sticks the city stench to the skin. Mumbaikars desperately seek out sanctuaries of air-conditioned bliss only to find that as the sweat evaporates, it leaves smudgy black grime and salt crystals that crush, itch and irritate even into the fitful, frustrating, sleepless nights.

I had to get out. The city seemed to want me gone, as if it had risen its temperature to fight me off like an infection, and the bureaucracy had developed a sudden resistance to foreign bodies like mine. Like an immune system, with single-mindedness they are purging foreigners from their midst, but to argue with a government peon is much like having a debate with a white blood cell.

The FRRO filing system

This cheery chap is tasked with making sure his own job is always necessary. This is a real photo of the FRRO.

I went back into the Foreigner’s Regional Registration Office to get my permission to leave the country. I’d been there the day earlier to be excused for overstaying my visa by two days. I had showed them my ticket and passport, and they sent me away, telling me I needed to come back with my proof of address, a letter explaining why I was leaving late, and a letter to verify that I should have been allowed into India in the first place. Read More

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Tags: , , , , ,

Indian efficiency? Pull the other one!

4 Comments
Posted 20 Apr 2010 — by Harry
Category Bollywood, India, Rants

My problem with life in India is that it’s simultaneously too hard and too easy. The easy bits are getting main roles in films, getting into A-list parties, and staying out of jail for drunken, unlicensed, uninsured, helmet-less motorbike riding only costs about 6 Aussie dollars. But the stress and frustration associated with something simple like buying coffee or getting dressed can cause me to vibrate and clench until I pop a valve.

I just went looking for Sony Pix to do an audition. I plugged “Sony Pix Mumbai” into Google maps and got a hit:

So I rode to the designated dot with the help of my occasionally awesome but frequently annoying GPS guided phone, to find the dot was on a big pile of crappy nothingness.

I checked the map again and again, and came to the reluctant conclusion that someone had actually bothered to go to Google Maps to place a marker, but had not bothered putting it in the right place.

I rack my brains every time this happens, trying to deduce the mentality that leads someone to make such an effort with a result that is worse than had they just done nothing (I fixed it).

On my way home, I stopped for coffee at Baristas. I pulled my bike up to the curb, kicked out the side-stand, switched it off, got off, pulled my helmet off and when I started walking away the security guard, who’d been sitting there watching me the whole time said: “You can’t park here”

Read More

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Tags: , , , , , ,

Archbishop fishing for faith

1 Comment
Posted 01 Apr 2010 — by Harry
Category India, Rants

He hates athiests and loves hair dye

Archbishop Anthony Fisher today decided to let the world know that he’s rather stupid. He used his inaugural Easter message to blame atheism for the ills of the 20th century, namely Nazism, Stalinism and Pol-Pottery.

What a dull cookie – particularly owing to the fact that he belongs to a church that is currently headed by someone who belonged to he Hitler youth and may have protected child molesters.

The reference to Nazism is regrettable, but it gets worse. He’s been so absorbed in his faith for so long he doesn’t realise: People don’t believe in Christianity because logic seems to indicate that a creator set up an intricate set of rules and laws that govern the natural universe and then occasionally breaks them for us if we ask him; they believe because that makes them feel good.

I was at the police station this afternoon complaining about bureaucracy to Khan, my friend and mechanic. Khan had found my motorbike at the police station, it’d been stolen a few months earlier – and we were trying to get it back. I was having difficulty proving that it was my bike, and the police were having difficulty explaining why they had it in the first place.

Read More

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Tags: , , , ,

The Lord’s Army: The Shiv Sena

5 Comments
Posted 30 Mar 2010 — by Harry
Category Bollywood, India, Rants

"A burning bus? Perhaps over there."

There exists in Mumbai a nearsighted and rather unpleasant bunch of radicals who revile my very existence within their beautiful city. They want foreign actors out of Bollywood (that’s me).

They are the Shiv Sena – Lord Shiva’s Army  and the MNS – political groups by name, violently quarrelsome by nature.

It behooves a writer to remain apprised of the legal ramifications of writing anything at all in India, because sedition laws are arbitrarily enforced and rather ambiguously defined as anything that “excites or attempts to excite hatred contempt or dissaffection“( - Wikipedia)

If anyone reading this gets excited or feels a smidge of contempt, then I’m going to jail for life – so please don’t. Sedition, in my opinion, is the most dangerous law in India – for exposure of real wrongs often leads detention or expulsion, as was the case with my friend who wrote of the Dalit murders in Gujarat and was summarily deported.

Let’s be mindful of that and carry on…

Bal Thackeray started the Shiv Sena and ran for a while a respectable right-wing, religious political party concerned with supporting the local Marathi people in whose state Mumbai stands. He was about ensuring jobs, health systems, pensions and education exclusively to Marathis, his ‘Sons of the Soil’.

They have a hard-line Hindu and regional agenda, and dislike all things non-Marathi – including shop signs spelled in English.

Read More

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bindass – A campaign of recklessness

3 Comments
Posted 25 Feb 2010 — by Harry
Category India, Rants

A UTV channel in India called Bindass recently released an advertising campaign which appears to indicate that being an atheist is on par with not being serious about one’s career, doing drugs and being a slut.

What does being Bindass mean to you?

http://www.bindass.com/post/utv-bindass-what-i-am/

Thanks to Manushka for the heads up on this issue:

Manushka: Intelligent eye-candy to stop traffic.

She’s a very dear friend who is serious about her career(s), very chaste and abhors drugs. She’s also an avowed atheist – she doesn’t even believe in a single god. She also shared with me a rather interesting article which showed research has linked IQ with Liberalism, Atheism and sexual exclusivity in men (not women). Nicely done!

The point of the campaign appears to be: “Just because I watch this channel doesn’t mean that I’m a reprobate.”

Read More

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Intriguing India

6 Comments
Posted 19 Feb 2010 — by Harry
Category India, Travel

I was feeling disconnected from the world because my fancy new phone was out of credit. I went to a Nokia dealer in a spanky new shiny mall and asked him if he sold Vodafone credit.

“Do you want to do it the easy way or the hard way?” He asked.

Bewildered, I gave the predictable response: “The easy way.”

“Not possible” he replied.

“Okay, the hard way then.” I acquiesced, feeling sure we were already doing it the hard way.

“Where is your phone from” he asked.

“Mumbai” I said.

“Not possible.” Read More

Technorati Tags:

Tags: