Capitalism, Scientology, and Black Metal in Delhi

Hello all.

So I touched down after a 15 hour flight in Delhi, India a couple of nights ago. It's largely as I remember it. The smog is bad, the traffic is worse, and even at night when walking around out of doors it feels as if someone left the oven door open at full blast just as you happened to walk into range. Plus there's many different species of large and dangerous looking bugs, a stray dog population larger than that of the city in which I live back in the states, and the commonplace rolling blackout that threatens this blog post even as I write it. That being noted, there is something positive to be said for a city of millions that collectively believes the best way to dispose of sewage is that it be put it into large open canals that run straight through major residential areas, and in many ways, I very much like this place, although there are constant affronts to my (admittedly debilitatingly) Western sensibilities. However, I have found that what doesn't kill me in fact does make me stronger (or maybe ill for two or three days at most), and a nice extended stay in India is a sure fire way to go back home and wonder to yourself if we haven't been living in the adult equivalent of a daycare center, that has completely rid us of any sort of humanity on the level that delivered us, after thousands upon thousands of years of development, into the shopping malls in which we live our lives back in the states.

First off, I enjoy the fact that despite the fact that the city seems at any moment ready to implode, it hangs together with an insane energy that is omnipresent; you can feel it in the air. Just crossing through the constant whizzing, honking traffic while on foot here is an ubiquitous adventure that never lets one slip into the dreamy sense of separationism that we experience at home. Back there, the freeways and the residential areas are fairly neatly separated, and one never really gets the satistfaction of having a routine trip to the market become a game of Frogger with rather dire consequences stemming from showing timidity or accomodation; you simply have to know where you're going all the time and beeline it there, and always, always act like you know what you're doing. In this way, traffic in India seems to breed agency in the pedestrian, and consequently the drivers appear much less likely to run anyone over, as the foot traffic doesn't freeze up as soon as they see a truck carrying plywood and other random building materials speeding towards them at 50 miles an hour. Rather, you stick your hand out like it would be possible to stop the truck dead cold using nothing but the palm of your hand, and somehow you get the right of way. Try that back in the States; I did last year after an extended stay here and damn near got killed by some idiot who would rather hit me than make a split second decision. And that's just one of many ways that the chaos of this place, I think, engenders a sense of self confidence that we don't get with our sterilized little crosswalks and traffic lights at home. Plus, people here know how to use the car horn properly: rather than it being a "hey, fuck you asshole!" type of thing it's more of a friendly "I'm here so don't hit me, I'm about to pass you by driving into oncoming traffic". Where I'm from, in Texas, half the drivers would have brandished shotguns and blown themselves to hell by now with the amount of honking and crazy yet singlemindedly brilliant driving here. These people are the best (and worst) drivers in the world, I'm sure of it. And they're cool as shit about it; I never see anyone getting road rage, even in the craziest traffic situations (as in the routine event of driving the wrong way into oncoming traffic on a freeway, as my rickshaw driver did this morning when he realized he had missed his turnoff). Add to it the fact that no other country on earth has to dodge as much livestock on their way to work in the morning, and you've got a special situation on your hands. Let's hope the Indians never come up with their own version of Nascar; not only will they blow any southern-fried hillbilly speed junkie right back to Tallahassee with his tail between his legs, but they'll make the whole thing interesting to watch, and then god help us all; there's enough spectator sports in our lives as it is.

Even crazier are shopping malls, which are popping up all over Delhi, Mumbai, and other locales all over India by the day. These types of places are pretty fancy, even by Southern California standards, and they are wholly and completely out of place on the Indian landscape (or any landscape, for that matter, but that's another story). Catering to a growing middle class with newly exchanged dollars to rupees to blow on high-end consumer crap, the dichotomies exhibited by these malls are a capitalist's wet dream: Inside the air-conditioned and highly glossed (and advertised!) interiors, young and hip Indian couples stroll hand in hand (gasp), trying much too hard to imitate a Tommy Hilfiger advert while up and up families lug around bags and bags of consumer items while their screaming kids demand sweets and prattle endlessly on cell phones (sound familiar?). Outside, of course, you're right back in the thick of it, with stray dogs prowling the ramshackle parking lot, transients asleep on the sidewalks, and underpaid security guards eyeing the whole debacle with a thinnly veiled contempt that makes you want to get the hell out of there fast. The divide between rich and poor in a country such as this is so visible and so contrasting that it makes your head spin. I mean, I spend a lot of time in LA and things are just as bad there (in a relative sense: think Beverly Hills and then think Inglewood), but it's not nearly as visible, and the visbility makes one absolutely unable to ignore the fact that the wholesale capitalists are bending all of us over on a daily basis. Things are no different here. I think that anyone with a very high income in this country (including myself, unfortunately and relatively) has to walk a thin line convincing himself that he shouldn't have just died in his sleep for winding up so much more privileged than so many around him. Don't take me the wrong way here, I'm not up for devloving back to some turn of the century cry for proletariat revolution, but we need some real checks and balances and perhaps a good council of level-headed and non-wealth addicted individuals to lay it down about what is and what isn't necessary for the good of all humanity and then just run with what they say, luxury goods be damned. But hey, all of you unabashed capitalists, feel free to argue with me about the free market and survival of the fittest and what not, but don't do it where the cycle rickshaw-wallas can hear you: those guys will be pissed.

That being said, it's still really funny to take in the whole ultra-consumeristic spectacle, which I did for a while today just for kicks. I went to a place called Ansel Plaza and strolled around for a bit, taking in the scene, which was disorienting to say the least. As I may have let on a moment ago, shopping malls are not my thing, especially so in such a poor country, but that's not to say I can't take them with a post-modern voyeuristic grain of salt and enjoy the spectacle of late capitalism seducing otherwise normal people into a type of giddy myxamytosis. And this mall really had it all, all the usual trappings of shopping mall hell with a few fun twists of which I will divulge here. First, I ran into a kid wearing a Burzum t-shirt, dragging along his sari-clad girlfriend with an angry look on his face. I was taken aback, I mean, I have the same t-shirt in my bag but I'm the only other person I've seen wearing it in public, but before I could snap myself out of it and run back and ask him where he gets his black metal records in Delhi (a larger research interest of mine), I looked ahead and saw a large crowd of well to-do Indians being talked at by none other than an enthusiastic young devotee of the L. Ron Hubbard variety, i.e. a Scientologist for those out there not up on your New Age quackery vernacular. I stopped for a moment, taking it in; a family was being asked to take a free "stress-test" (or rather, fill out a book order form sating which of the 3000+ Hubbard titles you would like to purchase today, with an option to buy more whenever your kids can afford it), and daddy-ji was scratching his chin in absorbed concentration as the young neophyte bubbled on about happiness and love and whatnot. And this is in a country that has taken the nutty yet charismatic guru-type and elevated it into a high art form, so Hubbard should glad he's at least making inroads; without those guys paving the gilded steps Crowley would never have gotten his foot into the door of the Orientalist Black Magick party, as he himself took a thing or two from the streetcorner sadhu in his day. But back to the mall. The starry-eyed orator caught me looking on and was about to extend the invitation, but I ran for the nearest exit door, I'd had quite enough thanks. I thought, as I usually do with Scientologists, about asking them if they knew much more about the life and times of L. Ron the great and his wife-stealing, money embezzling, black magic dabbling ways, but then thought better of it: each person, while not an island, must still make their own choices and forge their own paths, and mine led me down the street towards a small roadside stall where a cheery old man in a dhoti sold me two ripe mangoes for 15 cents. When I ordered in Hindi, saying "Namaste sahab, mujhe do aam chahiye", he was delighted, replying to me "Bahut aacha! Hindi aati hai sahab!". And yes, it did come to me, and yes I am trying, and yes, I love this insane and throughly worldly place, so much so that I may never come home again. As long as I can avoid the shopping malls, I'll be doing just fine. More soon, kiddos.