Travelog - Italy and Germany 2006

Wow Milano!

It was the evening of the 4th of October and I was playing pool in Nottingham. I knew I had to stop drinking as I needed to drive to London Stansted airport 130 miles away and its illegal to drink and drive not to mention extremely dangerous. So I got drunk, staggered home in a stupor, barely slept for an hour, jumped into my car and drove away at 3 in the morning. It was a feeling, a feeling of resignation to fate, a feeling of self loathing for not being able to stop drinking and yeah a sense of pristine fear that any minute anything might happen.

And the winding dark roads of A1 continued till I reached the airport, for the first time in ages I thanked God for my safety and got onto the flight to Milan-Bergamo airport. There was a pig of an Italian guy sitting next to me and I don’t talk to men, so I napped. Bergamo airport is a standard box sized cheap airport when my passport control lasted exactly 2 seconds, yeah the power of the British passport. On reaching my hotel, rather call it my jail cell in Milan City centre, I called my brother-in-law and planned to meet him at 4 in the evening at the central station and go around and paint the town red.

Pizzaaaaaa...

Well it has to be isn’t it? Went to a pizzeria close by and had the most authentic pizza with olives, capers and jalapenos, nearly died it was so spicy!!! Even for an Indian!

Power of Globalisation

Milan central train station was a massive imposing old building that is all Romanic from outside and all commercial chic inside with the largest rotating bill boards with the prettiest faces I have seen in an area of public transport. When will Secunderabad train station be like this?
Anyway, met my bro in law and both of had a good laugh about the power of globalisation. Atu Chennai itu Nottingham madhyalo meeting in Milan.

We went to see the famous Milan Cathedral Duomo; it was breath taking in magnitude yet so calm and serene. There were so many wonderful paintings I wished I could be an appreciator of art. Went to sit near a statue of Leonardo Da Vinci and get inspired for invention but it turns out his statue wasn’t photogenic so we left it to move onto the fashion streets of Milan. It was chic chic chic all the way, streets of close shops of one world famous brand next the another - Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Prada, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Versace, Hogan and a million others. I found a tunic for the staggering amount of ten thousand euros!!! I took a picture of it.

The next day I set out on my own to explore the city and instinctively went back to the cathedral like God was calling me. Indeed he was I spent the most calm 2 hours of my life in the duomo and then moved on to get trashed! I wanted to do Milan on foot, I did Milan on beer!

History repeats itself, I was drunk again but I guess that history repeats itself pretty much every night for me. Staggered to the hotel at 12 slept for 2 hrs and yeah another bus to Bergamo airport. But this time I am going into the good hands of dear Sam, who like a true friend was there at Frankfurt Hahn airport, with his car, water and apples. It was almost instinctive he knew the state I would come in. We had a fine drive through the German autobahns with fine views of German countryside with difficult to pronounce villages like Ludwigshafen, Neiderkostenz, Hunsrückhöhenstraße over to Darmstadt.

Welcome to South India...

Once I landed in Sam's house, inspite of the plans to go to Frankfurt book fair where India was the flavour, I parked myself and did not move at all. Dosas, kandi podi, sambar, shoe shopping, burning hindi dvds, packing avakays, some pool in the evening where Sam kicked my ass. Sam told me about the importance of getting married and how I might struggle in India after getting used to European life, all valid yet strangely not indefatigable.

Then off to Dusseldorf in a super fast white Deutsche Bahn train with a mouse like engine. It was a very beautiful train indeed, like our first class compartments with doors separating coupes and the route parallel to the Rhine river all the way with beautiful villages peppered on the other side each owning their own long mast boats. More importantly, I had for company in the coupe, a German girl called Marcy with humongous breasts who liked to show them and knew I like them too. She took my email and left in Cologne. Wow if I get the job in Dusseldorf and she gets in touch... dream on!

Dusseldorf is a beautiful city with an old town with old Germanic buildings housing government offices of the federal state of Noord-Rijnland-Westfalen. One of the most striking features I found in Germany was the greenery in living; I mean greenery in lifestyle. Rural areas are green anyway (as seen from the aircraft) but even urban areas. Parks everywhere, wide roads with trees on both sides, more parks. Dusseldorf is a major city in the most industrialised area of Germany and it has parks everywhere. I wonder where are the land mafia like the ones in Mumbai or Hyderabad? I was waiting for my interview in the lobby, and the receptionist was like... why are you sitting here, why don’t you take a walk in Hofgarten (a park right next to E.ON headquarters and the river Rhine)?

Wo Weeze ist? Where is Weeze?

Anyway, interview went ok but am certain I won’t get the call for the second round so went into town and got drunk on German beers again before I tool off to another cheap airport called Dusseldorf-Weeze. This village Weeze is closer to Netherlands than it is to Dusseldorf, what a ride on the bus through the darkest winding roads leading out of Dusseldorf towards the Dutch border. It was surreal as I was expecting soldiers to stop the bus shouting ‘Achtung! Achtung!’ in harsh voices and dragging all non-white people. Oh sorry this is 2006 and that doesn’t happen anymore and there are no borders between Netherlands and Germany and hence no soldiers, thank God for that. At the Weeze airport which was more like a shed followed by a small terminal building, I went to the duty free store and found that Marlboro lights were just 38 euros which was 40% of what it costs in the UK. On a British passport I can carry 16 cartons apparently but I bought 8 only. Will sell in the UK and make a small profit. Everyone does that why cant I?

These cheap airports are cheap and cheap airlines are cheap. Their business model may sound great but ultimately it costs the same, if you count the hard costs of buses to far off airports, extra charge for baggage, food and drink and intangibles in frustrations in time spent in travel and lack of information. This flight was supposed to take off 10pm but calmly landed at 10.40 with nobody telling us what happened to the flight. As it was the last flight of the day (of the massive number of 8 that go from that airport), the airport was very silent. We heard some noises then, a couple of kids ran to the end of the waiting hall and were excitedly saying in Dutch 'Daddy, daddy the flight is coming'. It reminded of late nights in Indian Railway stations where the train turns up at it own time, nobody knows where it is, the authorities are absent and then suddenly children run 'nanna nanna train vacchestondi' and a slow powerful locomotive with a blinding light hums into the platform.

At last airborne again, homeward bound and a pretty young thing in the next seat. Sam told me that Germans are interesting in our culture etc so I struck up a conversation with her. I said something about death if I remember correctly and she was immediately like 'Are you a Hindu, is it your culture which keeps you at peace with life and death?' and I was like yes! namaste, you can only do what you can and leave the rest to karma and continued with language peppered with Hindu mystic words while desperately trying to remember the last time I went to a temple. Unfortunately Dorothy has a boyfriend but we exchanged numbers and will meet each other if I get the job or some other reason am in Dusseldorf!

Well that’s all guys, 5 days of actions, observations, chats, food, pool, flights, trains, cars, autobahns, brother in law and Sam! Now back to the shit!

See photos in photos.yahoo.com/nishbabs Album: Italy and Germany 2006

Open letter to all Indians on Independence day

My Dear Indians,

I am glad to congratulate you for your independence from us. As much as we guys love your curry, I think it was a good decision for us to let you go free. I am going to take full credit for 'giving' you democracy, a disciplined military, law and a unified India which didn’t exist before we came into the picture. And yeah, how can we forget cricket? Something to entertain your otherwise dreary moth-ridden lives.

Now that it’s been 59 years, how are you faring? Don’t you miss the days of yore? I say you did ok. Better than the pakis of course. We, here in the Blighty, miss it a lot. We still print newspaper reports where we fondly would like to remember India as we left it, snake charmers, people travelling on roof tops of coal trains, yogis with large beards and little children picking rags. Just watch our history channel, we continually ignore our imperialistic excesses in your country and call the Germans butchers and take a moral high ground.
Ah, you must have grown as a nation by now - corruption free, pollution free with more achievements than just IT from two cities and a bomb. Surely there must be more. You must have made your peace with Pakistan, engaged with China, alleviated poverty, ran services for the citizen's benefit. I hope to God that people still don’t die with every drop of rain. I hope all of you are a bit more sensitive when you see a child picking rags than going to school, I hope you are all 'citizens' now than a me-myself-and-my-family sort.
I think now that its been a long time and you are also turning a bit rich, I think its time we get to know each other. So may be some of our students can intern in your country's large corporations than just visit Varanasi to 'discover' themselves and then get bladdered in Goa. may be we can start watching Bollywood a little more than just watching whatever that comes of Hollywood. May be we look at India as a massive market than just a low cost labour. And may be some of us can recognise that India is right now the third largest foreign investor in the UK!

Sincerely,
Your Brit Master

Europe Losing?

Europe Losing?

Europe is an old continent, steeped in its history and except for the last 50 years or so, its primacy in world matters, economic and social orders. This item will discuss the 'except for the last 50 years' part of Europe's history and its effects on the continent.

Luxembourg government changes constitution to block Mittal steel's takeover bid!
Chinese bra wars threaten Blair China trade talks
Danish cartoons upset Muslim World
Powergen pulls back call centres from India due to customer backlash
Nottingham university linguistics department yet to offer Mandarin

If one analyses the underlying theme in all these headlines, one can see Europe's distinct lack of understanding of the current world order. So what does Europe seem to want? A homogenous, agnostic, mono chromatic, local as opposed to global and a sexually uninhibited society? There is nothing wrong with it. As a matter of fact, I totally believe that Europe will be a much better place if this condition was prevalent than what is. But it would be luxury if what I want is also what I have.

The problem here is not that Europe is racist/monolingual/protectionist society but its inability to change itself for the realities of the world. What is even worse is that Europe seems to be blind to the effects and is quite content suffering with the consequences. It thinks it can have what it wants.

There has been a DTI report recently that UK is losing out on its investment possibilities in India because of its false perception that India is just a low cost labour market and thereby losing out on strategic intellectual capital that India offers and not to mention a market of 1.1 billion. One in 100 births in the UK happen at home under no medical supervision due to the shortages of midwives and nurses, yet the home office refuses to issue work permits to nurses abroad. Volkswagen has been thinking for nearly three years now to invest in India and in the meantime Hyundai, Ford Motor Company, Proton, Skoda and a lot more have already had their presence in India. Denmark just lost a market of 1.1 billion Indians because of their callous expression of ‘freedom of speech’.

What we see here is not just an inability to gauge the world order and its levers, but an incorrigible degree of complacence which is hurting Europe’s interests. It has already lost to China as a market leader and conservative estimates put India to surpass EU by 2015. Its now or never to Europe to wake up to work with countries outside Western Europe in a more equitable fashion.

Is there something that can be done? Education would help. I am not talking education as taught in schools. That syllabus is a product of same callousness I have been highlighting. I am talking people of non-European origin helping their European counterparts understand the real world and help them engage the countries for the mutual benefit of both Europe and outside. This needs to start at a grass root level with people looking at other cultures in a non-monochromatic charity mindset but in a more equitable fashion in terms of trade, professionalism and education. Studies show 70% of British people have friends only in their race i.e. a white British will have only white friends, a brown British will have only brown friends. Culture can start changing from here at a more fundamental level. Studies show the desegregation in American schools achieved empathy and understanding of black and white cultures and helped foster a much stronger America and an America that understands the world much better because it understands all elements within itself.

Europe is losing its engagement levers with the rest of the world and it has to wake up and wake up now.

Reservation or No Reservation

This has been a debate in India for centuries where middle and upper classes have been generous to the lower classes but there has always been a glass ceiling which the lower classes are not allowed to breach. All these protests are of the same fundamental nature. Lowly government jobs, undergraduation is ok but not in the highest educational institutions of the country.

What the politicians need to know is that this is a strong cultural sentiment and work with it and help primary education and let the lower classes 'qualify' to breach both the glass ceiling and upper caste sentiments. If Reservations are implemented in its current shape and current form, it will polarise the country and I, for one, am not either voting congress or going to a 'lower' class doctor because I am not sure if he is 'qualified' enough!