Wonders of India: The Warehouse of Mr. Negi

dfast on January 7, 2011

New block-print duvet design

New block-print duvet design

We come to India to work.  No, seriously, we do.  It’s just that one happy part of our business is going to great places and buying beautiful things.  One of our favorite places is the warehouse of Mr. Negi.

antique mask from MahrashtraMr.Negi, a native of Siliguri (the jumping-off point in East India for Sikkim- see the last two blogs) used to have a tribal art and antique business in Nepal, but was forced to leave three years ago when the Maoists made life too difficult for non-Nepalese.  He moved his entire collection to a warehouse near Delhi, which is three delightful levels of dusty treasure of all descriptions.  What drew us to him originally was his Tibetan doors, and he has a substantial assortment of architectural oddities including totemic water buffalo gates and Tantric prayer shrines.   We can’t possibly haul such big pieces around in a moving shop, but we couldn’t resist two amazing masks.  One is recent, and from Sikkim: red-faced Mahakala, who turns the wheel of life and death.  It was used in temple dance festivals there.  The other is an antique from Maharastra. That is all Mr. Negi knew about it and we couldn’t find out wood-bowlanything more from the internet, but it’s an obvious masterpiece.  These are the only two we have.  If you would like to put in an offer on either, the starting price is listed below.

If you came to our sales last year, you might have noticed a large hand-carved bowl on the scarf table that we used for display.  We only had one, and we could’ve sold it many times over.  This year we have lots, in three sizes (which being individual hand-made pieces, vary.  The one pictured here is medium. Large are roughly 30″ to 36″ in diameter , and metal water potssmall are 12″ to 18″).  Prices for these and other things are also listed below.

On the topic of containers, we are also stocking far more of these old metal water jugs.  We sold out before most people had a chance to see them last year.

New in the store are two things (among many others) that caught our fancy: a very elegant display bowl carved from a single piece of wood, (approx. 20 inches high) from Nepal, and a curious figure that could be used as a “grump” receptacle.  Mr. GrumpsHad a bad day?  Is your kid having a bad day?  Well, transfer that negative energy to “Mr. Grumps”, and everyone will feel so much better!  They are from Nepal, and approx. 12 inches tall.

It would be far too exhaustive to post all of our new goods here. I’ll try to get more up on the web site.  Wood and metal objects, however interesting, aren’t our main business, and we have increased our selection of scarves (if you can believe it) and started a new line of duvet covers.  These we are very excited about, since they take hand block-printing to a block print designnew level.  We found Vikram in an exhaustive search of Sanganeer (the block printing capital of the world).  We were actually trying to find a legendary screen-printer, whose name we had and lost, who made designs like no one has seen before.  We never did find him, and decided to give up when we came across Vikram.  Vikram has a small production unit and only displays outside of India at the Maison d’Object juried show in Paris.  Katheryn nearly bit her arm off keeping our selection down to six designs.  The beauty of Vikram’s pieces is that they are all reversable, having a complimentary pattern on each side (as are the pillows).  All the sets are queen size, done on high-quality cambric cotton.

This year’s trip to Delhi was made all the more pleasant by the presence of our friend Boris.  We met Boris in Burma in 2005, and always get together with him in Bangkok where he has a business designing and producing décor goods for Europe.  With the drop in the value of the Euro, and the general economic down-turn on the continent Boris decided to come to India to see what could be sourced here.  He came with us to Mr. Negi’s, and loved the stuff, but since he requires uniform production on a much bigger scale, it wasn’t for him.  Then we accompanied him to Moradabad which is a city about four hours east of Delhi where much of the country’s metal work takes place.  Most of the goods weren’t what we were looking for, but we found tiffinwhere two of the things we love in India are made.  One is a stainless steel serving bowl with an electric-plated copper coating, which is given a hand-hammered finish. We have admired them in good-quality restaurants all over India.  The other is the “tiffin container”.  It is the “Indian lunch box”, a masterpiece of simplicity consisting of stacking stainless steel bowls which hold the curries, rice and rotis separate, and are all held together by a clamp which acts as a standhandle.  Now, what we could do is start producing our own line, and even have the stacking bowls done in different colours.  The question is are the Gulf Islands ready for it?

Price list:

Antique Maharashtra mask $460.

Bhutan Mahakala mask $250.

Wood bowls Large $75; Medium $50; Small $35.Mahakala Mask from Bhutan

Metal water pots $50.

Mr. Grumps Statues $40.

Stand carved from single piece of wood $180

Our shipment from India is just being finalized.  If you want first dibs on any of the above items, drop us an email, and we will hold them when they arrive in Vancouver in April.  Then we will arrange to have them shipped, picked up or delivered.  Shipping from Vancouver is extra.

We wish everybody all the best in the New Year,

Your Foreign Devil Correspondents,

David and Katheryn

Yuksom and Gorkhaland

dfast on November 29, 2010

mantra-detail

Sikkim has terrain as difficult to traverse as almost anywhere in the populated world: snowy passes and wild jungle-covered slopes plunging down to fast -flowing rivers.  Imagine it in the 17th C.  Then imagine the scene played out in a remote valley when one influential Buddhist misty-mountain-hdrLama and his small retinue completely by coincidence run into another respected teacher from the same school in Tibet!   They probably went off in different directions, in different years, and here they are in Yuksom.  Then who should appear from the only place that neither of them has been in the last few months, but another bearded lama from Tibet!  This, they all agree, is a very special sign indeed.  The local chieftain is happy to host and flatter his unlikely guests as they confer and chant and beat drums into the night. Finally all is clear: there will be a Buddhist Kingdom, the chieftain will be the Chogyal, the first ruler, and it’s capital will be Yuksom.

Yuksom today probably looks as unlikely a capital for a kingdom as it did in 1642.  It’s a dzo-portrait1beautiful town, just not very imperial.  The little traffic that there is on it’s one street has to make way for the dzo (yak/cattle hyrbids).  Each of the three wise lamas established a monastery there, and over the course of several days in Yuksom we visit all of them.  There isn’t all that much to do, which is one of the pleasures of the place.  The town is the starting point for Sikkim’s best-known trek – hence the pack-dzos – but we are far less ambitious than that.  The closest we get to mountaineering is the hike up to Dubdi Gompa, one of the three monasteries. It’s a delightful climb up through orchid-draped forest, and once again, as in Pemayangtse (last blog), a friendly local dog – wild-orchidsBuddy II – volunteers as our guide.  The main hall is locked when we arrive, but a monk calls the attendant on his cell phone and he lets us in.  Afterward we chat on a bench in the sun with the monk, who points out  a hill where the original monastary was.   It moved down here, the story goes, because of harassment by Yetis.

Gompa #2 is on a hill at the top of Yuksom’s main street, and #3 is a little further out of town at the spot where the first Chogyal’s coronation took place.  As per usual a new dog – Buddy III – shows us the way there.  We pass the small lake – draped with prayer flags – where the water for the ceremony was drawn from.  The “throne” itself – a stone bench – is massive-sacred-pineoutdoors under a massive cryptomeria pine.  With forests of prayer flags, moss-covered “mani” stones, some deserted temple buildings and Buddy III giving us “walkies”, it’s a wonderful afternoon.

It has turned rainy in Yuksom, which makes it easier to leave.  The only jeep out of here departs at 6:00 a.m. and follows a tortuous route through Tashiding and Legship to Jorethang.  Jorethang is on Sikkim’s southern border at only 600m and after the highlands it feels almost sultry.  It’s a brief blast, however, as we climb into the next jeep going to Darjeeling.  The distance is only 21 km, but it’s the back-door route to India’s best-known hill station, and the journey takes 2 1/2 hours and climbs 1700m.

fog-for-flickrThe first impression of Darjeeling is disappointing: a clogged, cachophonic street where we are dropped, grotty, smelly butcher shops and a grey, soupy cloud enveloping everything.  There is no way to make sense of Darjeeling from a map, since “up” and “down” are the important directions, but with a vague lead we have  of a recommended hotel near the “T.V. Tower”, we head off “up” into the fog, and eventually stumble across the Tranquility.  For the first time this trip we need to wear everything we own, and Katheryn even puts socks on her hands.  Sometimes the cloud parts and reveals glimpses of the valley and Jorethang far below, but mostly it is like being on a set of Jack the Ripper.

Virtually every business in Darjeeling pronounces itself as part of Gorkhaland.  We are officially in W. Bengal, the capital being Calcutta, but that it as foreign to here to Ethiopia, and everybody knows it.  There is a lot of antagonism to a perceived Bengali imperiousness, and for thirty years there has been a simmering conflict to form a separate state.  Things were more spinner-for-flickrviolent in the ’80’s and ’90’s, but even now there are two protest marches that we come across, and the ransacking of a separatist’s house that could possibly ignite  strikes and stone throwing.

Over the course of a few days in Darjeeling we make the acquaintance of A.K. Lama, the head monk at Bhutia Busty Monastery, and he directs us to the Tibet Relief Center, where crafts and rugs are hand-made.  But apart from that and fading snatches of the once-glorious British Raj there isn’t much to keep us here and we head down the mountain to Kalimpong.  It is there we come across the best British anachronism yet: the Himalayan Hotel.

Kalimpong sits on the easiest access route between Tibet and India.  In 1904 the British wanted to consolidate their control over this strategic territory, loosely controlled by Tibet, so they sent Col. Francis Younghusband and a small band of soldiers to the border to instigate an “incident” which would give them the excuse to retaliate and annex it.  The problem that after flopping around in vain for some time and finding no opposition, Younghusband set off up the himalayan-for-flickrroad to Lhasa.  His firepower routed Tibetan horse troops at Xigatse, and he created an international incident by matching into Lhasa unopposed. The translator on that adventure was David McDonald, who built himself a bungalow in Kalimpong which became The Himalayan.  Over the year this fusty sitting room of stone and Himalayan oak has hosted the great mountaineering expeditions of Mallory and Irwin, Hillary and Tenzin, and an almanac of personalities and explorers.   Add to that  Kebe and Fast, who speak in studied snooty tones and drink G&Ts below the deen-dayal-for-flickrsigned photo of Alexandra David-Neel.

You know where to find more great photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet

And be sure nor to miss Katheryn’s latest video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5fM9aeQoq8

SIKKIM: Under Kangchendzonga

dfast on November 16, 2010

khangchendzonga-5

The border crossing into India is another of those little outposts which you feel represents banishment for the official working there.  Mr. L.A. Wadhia fusses irritably with the

Katheryn crossing the border

Katheryn crossing the border

“wrong”  answers on our forms (Port of Disembarkation?; flight number?):  he has the inner numbness of someone who has spent far too long taking what he knows to be ridiculous, seriously.

The stamp is officiously given,  and we are ushered by a hovering tout from there into a jeep (actually the Indian version: the Tata Sumo) going to the town of Siligiri, and then directly into another to Gangtok, Sikkim.  The good thing about traveling by jeep is that they fill up at the departure point, and don’t (usually) stop for additional riders until the destination.  The bad thing is the passengers are squeezed in tight, and except for the front seat have a limited view of the scenery.  Wejungle are, unfortunately, right in the back, and the scenery, as we ascend the valley of the Testa River, is amazing.

Sikkim is an Indian state tucked up between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan – how  can you go wrong with that?  With China demanding expensive and restrictive conditions on travel to Tibet, and Bhutan imposing a $200/day/person fee on a visit there, Sikkim appears to be our only oppurtunity to explore the area.  A special permit is required to enter Sikkim, but we obtain that relatively hassle-free at the border at Rangpo, while our jeep waits.  From there the road slithers dramatically onward and upward.  Rays of sun dice through a lush jungle of tree ferns, giant bamboo and flowering broad-leaves, and the river is frothing white far below.  winding-road-gangtok-to-pellingGangtok should really be approached by horse-caravan slowly ascending the ancient stone-paved trade route; we are 100 years too late for that.  The constant low-gear jostling to overtake crawling diesel lorries around dusty washed-out hair-pin corners may diminish the romance, but the trip from Siligiri now only takes five hours.

One hundred years ago Sikkim was an independent Buddhist kingdom ruled by a dynasty called the Chogyals.  The British had duplicitously lopped off territory including Darjeeling from their southern flank, but the Chogyals held their own against pressure from China, and the Raj, until Indira Gandhi’s India banished them in 1975 on the instigation of the now-majority Hindu population.  We are sitting in the garden of a hill-top monastery while a monk tells us this history. He is ethnically a Bhutia, who along with the Lepchas migrated from Tibet and brought Buddhism with them.  There still is, he says, a lot of resentment against India over the banishment of the Chogyal, who is now in Bhutan, and tension between the Bhuddist and Hindu populations occassionally flares into violence.  Like many of the “Tibetans” we talk to, he makes a face when we ask if he has travelled in the rest of India, and waves his hand as if getting rid of a bad smell.

And it really feels – especially with the permit formalities at the border – that we are in a gangtokdifferent country.  Gangtok, we concur, is the most pleasant Indian state capital that we know.  For one thing it is spread along a steep ridge at 1700 m, and from our balcony we have a clear view of the presence that dominates this entire state: Khangchendzonga, at 8,208 m the third highest mountain in the world.  Gangtok also has that most blessed and rare feature in a country over-run with vehicles and bullied by drivers with an incessant hand on the horn – a long pedestrian mall at the center of town.  But even better, the people are without exception sophisticated, kind, friendly and charming, and it doesn’t take long before we are in love.  Many Bengali tourists come up here from the plains for a cool-weather vacation, and where there are Bengali tourists there is great food.  Every masala dosa, every hot tandori roti taken with a view out across the valley – after the basic fare in Nepal – is a rapture.  It takes four days before Katheryn is able to walk the steep streets without wincing from her back injury, but we are happy to just rest up here after what seems like a lot of hard travel.

group-shot-of-the-flower-giving-kidsThe view is great from Gangtok, but the place to go for the real vista is Pelling, 110 km away, which means 6 hours by jeep.  One again it’s a mad spaghetti road through jungle and mountain, but the highlight has to be the rest-stop in Ravangla, where a group of kids run after us shouting “Auntie, Uncle, wait!”, and press bouquets of marigolds on us.

We get a room in Pelling where we don’t even have to roll out of bed for a sensational view.  The morning coffee on the balcony is perhaps the most spectacular we have ever had.  As if that wasn’t enough, a 1.5 km stroll deity-at-pemayangtseaway is Pemayangtse Gompa, one of Sikkim’s oldest monasteries, built in 1705.  The “Perfect Sublime Lotus” Gompa is probably as close as we will come to Tibet for now, so Marguerite, this one is for you.  There is no photography allowed inside the main gompa, but the walls are covered with 300-year-old paintings of deities, gurus and demons from the Nyingmapa branch of Tibetan Buddhism, and energetically-depicted statues of  Buddha and the Rimpoches are behind glass at the back.   The wooden floors are worn smooth under our bare feet and the smell of butter lamps and incense permeate the timbers.  By the thin light of the deeply-recessed windows we climb a creaky staircase to the upper level, where a deep drum interspersed clashing cymbals has been playing since we entered.  The drummer is in a room behind a curtain, so we sit on a ledge in an adjoining room and feel the vibrations pulse through the walls, the floor and ourselves.

buddy-and-chorten-at-rabdentse-ruinsThe second capital of the Chogyals is now just a ruin that can be seen on the spur of a hill just below the monastery, and we make friends with a pretty dog in the grounds who seems to want to guide us there.  Much of the route is through a forest reserve, where massive climbing ferns 10 feet high cascade down to the path.  Only thick stone walls remain from the old capital, but with soaring views in all directions including, of course, Khanchangdzonga you understand why they built here.

All of India is on one time zone, and as far east as we are it gets dark early, around five o’clock.  And at 2100 m, in November, when it gets dark it gets cool.  We get dressed up for the evening in long johns and down jackets, and head out to our new-found favorite tongbaplace for a tongba.  “Tongba” is a large pile of fermented millet served in a wooden tankard.  Hot water is poured on top, and the milky, slightly sour potion is sipped through a bamboo straw.  Tongba is found where ever Tibetans are throughout the Himalaya and it warms, rehydrates and gives a mild alcoholic buzz.  We find a delightful Tonga spot in Pelling, called the “Step Down” restaurant.  A dark stairway descends off the road into a room made out of rough planks with three rickety tables.  The only window has no glass, just a curtain of aging cloth.  The kitchen fills with locals and laughter and warm light, and our matron brings us the big wooden tankards with, possibly, the best tongba we have had yet.  The power fails and candles come out and I’ll happily take the Step Down any day.

For all of the latest videos, go to youtube and search for kebeandfast to see all the choices.

There are lots more great photos – and this time I’m not joking – by going to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/croquet

very-patient-traveling-companiongangtok-cyber-cafehdr4-khangchendzongapemayangtse-wooden-prayer-wheel

VARANASI: A DIP IN THE RIVER

dfast on January 31, 2010

The big story in India this January is the ‘Cold Wave’. Everybody knows the daily low temperature, how much it is below average, and the grim statistical death-count it has caused (643 and counting) . The cold moist air that comes down from the Himalayas creates a huge fog bank across the northern plains every evening as the temperature drops. Depending on conditions and where you are, the fog lingers into the afternoon, or doesn’t lift at all. Every year this throws transportation schedules into utter chaos. One couple we met waited 12 hours on the platform in Calcutta, and then learned their train was cancelled. We have been fortunate: both overnight trains we have had have been pretty much on time. But enduring the fog and cold is another matter.

The way the railway lines run mean we don’t arrive directly in Varanasi from Calcutta, but at a junction called Mughal Serai. Mughal Serai is a rubbish pit of a town, and one of my least favorite places in India. The clamour of drivers trying to get us into their auto for the 13 km trip to Varanasi starts as soon as we hit the platform, and increases in volume and decreases in price the further into the station we get. The ruse is to get you into the vehicle at any price, and then put up such a fuss at the destination that you give them more . The benefit of arriving from Mughal Serai – in the morning at least – is that we get dropped at the end of the bridge over the Ganges River, and hire a boat to row us the final 2 km to our guest house.

We are wrapped up in all the clothing we have to guard against the morning chill, and bundle into the bow of a wooden dory. It ‘s a huge relief as our boatman, Muna, pulls away from the hassle and hustle of the road. All that jarring cacophony is replaced by the rhythmic squawk of the rope oarlocks, and the yammering gulls trailing a neighboring boat who are throwing them snacks. The fantastic curve of the river fades into the fog as we slowly row towards the place called both The City of Light and The City of Death. It is a timeless vista: on our left the bank is completely deserted; on the right stone steps continue the rise from the river into an idiosyncratic geometry of palaces, temples and houses. A beautiful scene unfolds as we near our landing, Scindia Ghat: washer women are holding up long lengths of bright sarees to dry, forming a multi-coloured mandala.

Our business begins later that day as it always does: with warm greetings and sweet chai. Everyone is seated on the floor wrapped in balaclavas and blankets, and we are in down jackets. With the new moon approaching, we are told, there is a conjunction of three events: the kite festival, Maha Sankrati; the festival of Mauni Ama Vaysa ; and a solar eclipse. The kite festival traditionally marks the end of the cold season, but this year there is no end in sight. Our host Ajit, as a responsible member of the community, has already given 100 blankets to the poor. His mother, he says, has made it known that no one who comes will be sent away without one, so porters are constantly coming in with more bundles. In between this philanthropy piles of silk scarves are unfurled at our feet, and bed spreads, and cushion covers, and tea is served, and food, and more tea.

No work takes place on Maha Sankrati – everyone is flying kites. The next day is the new moon, and with the festival and a solar eclipse it is a major event. Where we are the eclipse will only be partial, but it is still regarded as ill-omened. Most businesses are closed, and the superstitious will require purification rituals afterwards. Since the Ganges is perceived as the ultimate purifier, it is a big day at the ghats. Many of the crowd are villagers from the surrounding area, and they have been gathering since morning. An important part of the ritual of this festival is the giving of alms. Professional beggars, snake handlers, the handicapped and the poor line most of the approaches to the river, and receive, typically, a sprinkling of special rice, “khichori”, from the pilgrims. After their dunk in the river, many worshipers also leave their clothes behind to be picked through later. Ajit tells us that some of the wealthy even leave gold bangles and Rolexes behind. It is also a day to give clothing to the poor of an untouchable caste, and they walk through the streets of the old city, making their request with a half-sung half-shouted rhyming verse. By the time the moon has moved away from the sun – about 2:30 – there are tens of thousands of people along the banks of the Ganges River. More are ferried in over-packed launches to the other side, a wide sand bank, where it is much easier to get into the water. We have left the impossibly –congested ghats for the space afforded by a boat. From this perspective the crowd changes from a collection of individuals – some singing, some dressing, some just waiting – into a single flowing creature, a river in itself. This is India, and the river and the city and the country always has something more to throw at you. As we are rowed along in front of the worshipers, the body of a young boy floats past – the boatman has to raise his oar to avoid it. He is face down, and there will be no answers to who he was or where he came from. It is a startling sight, but I have to think of it as the boatman does: meaningless, now that the life is gone; more matter, returning to the water, the earth, or the fire. So life goes on. And so much life goes on that there is no time to pause; the crowd chants, and surges, and submerged in the water purification is given.

The other topic, besides the “Cold Wave”, that everybody is talking about is the “Price Increase”. It came up in Calcutta, when I was negotiating for a leather bag, and the dealer’s first line was “sugar is twice as expensive!”. In Varanasi it is the same: cotton is forty percent more than last year; and silk yarn has gone from 1600/rupees a kilo to 2400. Everyone is pointing fingers, but in general it comes down to two things. One is good: a general increase in wealth in the country. And one is bad: hoarding by speculators, and the newly-created futures market for agricultural commodities. The merchants that we deal with in India operate on small margins, but have always been (like us) very reluctant to raise their prices. This year they have no choice, and we willingly pay them more. In the case of one of the products most dear to us, the price has increased almost 40%. These are the silk scarves and shawls from Varanasi that we call in our display “Simply the finest hand weaving we can find”. They are extremely beautiful, intricate hand-woven silk made by a Muslim community outside the city. When we started buying them eight years ago, there were over 70 weaves making them.  Because of our special relationship, the price remained unchanged until this year, even though the art is dying out. This year there are only 12 weavers left, and with the price of silk at record levels, the increase was unavoidable. We have decided to keep our price the same, on these masterpieces for one more year. But this is your last chance! After this, they may not be available, at any cost.

For a video of the festival, check out this:Mauna Festival

You can see more of our Varanasi videos: The Boatman Rows us to the City of Death , Silk and Chai , Gadaulia Crossing and Our Front Yard (and they are getting better all the time!) or all of them by going to youtube, and searching for: kebeandfast

There are, of course, lots of photos on flickr.  Just go to our website: https://www.kebeandfast.com and click the flickr link.

JAIPUR: THE BAGRU PRINTS

dfast on January 23, 2009

Back in Jaipur we are relieved that the cold wave which is killing people across North India hasn’t settled in here too harshly. The days are clear and sunny, around 20C, and at night it goes down to a bearable 8 or 9. Contrasting this to your reports from Canada – minus 50 with the wind in Winnipeg; too much snow one of our to drive on the upper levels in Vancouver – I guess we shouldn’t complain.

Our order here, already late, was supposed to be finished when we arrived. Far from it. Only a few samples from the hundreds of duvets we ordered are ready. At first glance they look good- the seams are serged, at least. But of the four pieces we are shown, three have problems. On one the pattern has been applied horizontally rather than vertically; on another the pattern on the pillow shams runs at a different direction to the duvet cover; and the pattern on another is one that we didn’t order at all. We had hoped to wrap up the business in Jaipur in a couple of selecting cushion coversdays and get the shipment on its way – but this doesn’t inspire confidence.

On the positive side we have caught the problems early, and they can be fine-tuned. We also have more goods to select, and now we can spend more time at the production centers and talk with the people there. We’ve already mentioned Sanganeer, where the “Moghul” block-print designs are bagru sai dryingproduced. Now we are able to make a trip to the village of Bagru, where another style of printing, which our merchant calls “Bhooti” comes from.

In many ways Bagru is like a million other small towns in this country: directly on the fault line where the tectonic plate of the old India runs up against the new. Electricity has brought light and refrigeration, but also amplified noise on every corner; new wealth has created comfort and commerce, but development is rushed, shoddy, and buildings are hideously ugly; water mains are coming, but meanwhile the roads are all ripped up, and look like they have been for a long time. Living in the middle of this slurry of one of our designs and the cow at the gatesmodernity is the Old Village, where livestock are part of the landscape and no woman walks out without her face completely covered. Like the town, not much has changed over the generations in the manufacture of Bagru block prints, except it now happens in a concrete and cinder-block warehouse. As if to emphasize my point about the co-existence of the old and the new, a cow is stabled just inside the factory gate. On the other hand, the cow might not be as much of a cultural leftover as a part of the production process. A small team has gathered to shepherd us through the facility including Dilip the production manager and his assistant Farooq. None of us has a very good grasp of the others’ language, so the Q & A is done by committee. Many of our queries in the midle of making a designland haphazardly in places no one seems interested or able to look for them, but I do gather that cow dung is used in one of the rinsing procedures. All the colours, in fact, are produced with natural dyes which, among other things, is a big benefit to the heath of the workers. 

Unlike the “Moghul” sets from Sanganeer, where colour is applied to the block and the block is stamped on the fabric, herethrowing saw-dust onto the gum they use a “resist-dye” procedure. First the block is dipped into a gum solution, and then the pattern is stamped on the fabric. Then a mixture of sand and saw-dust is sprinkled over the sheet, which adheres to the gum. The sheet is cleaned off and dyed, with the colour permeating everything not covered by the gum/saw-dust mixture. The same process is then repeated for another pattern and another colour. The effect is quite different from the refined look of our other prints. The Bagru prints are strong and bold, with a simplicity that belies the skill and time it takes to make them.

 back of a Calcutta bus

KALI-TASTROPHES

Our plans are tossed into turmoil when the only train between Jaipur and Varanasi is canceled due to the foggy weather on the plains. This means we have to go by road to Delhi, and take a train from there. That vast metropolis starts to congeal about us when we are still 50 kilometers away, around about Gurgoan.school girl in a difficult world Growth has been so fast in Gurgoan that no one knows how many people are here, whether it’s 2 million or 10 million, only that the population has so far out-paced infrastructure and resources that even the model high-rises that are everywhere get only two hours of water per day, and 60% of electricity is pirated from the wires. In Noida farmers have made big money from selling to property developers, but the urban/rural divide is still stark. This last week a girl was sitting with her boyfriend parked at the side of the highway, when she was attacked and gang-raped by thirteen locals. The first reporters to the village encountered some extraordinary attitudes, including the head man saying: what’s the big deal; it was only a rape; and the grandmother of one of the accused: they shouldn’t have had a chance to rape her; she was acting indecently and should have been stoned, first.

boats and kitesThe trip to Varanasi is uneventful, and there we have two tasks. The first is checking up on another of our orders, which is (deja vu) supposed to be ready to go. We always like to visit Ajit, but this time he has neglected to finish some of the seams inside his duvet covers. This will take another ten days.  In the meantime it is the national kite-flying festival, known locally as “khicchiri”.  In our photos, the spots in the sky aren’t specks on the lens, but kites.  In a play on words, the local name for the festival is also that of a dish made with rolled David and Vaune's Kalirice, and we are privileged to share it in another extraordinary meal from the kitchen of Ajit’s household. 

The second task is to find a statue for our friends David and Vaune. The parameters they set are quite wide, but Kali is at the top of the list. Kali is a very interesting and enigmatic figure. She is often called the dark, horrible aspect of the Goddess, a symbol of death and destruction. She has a garland of skulls around her neck, a severed head in one hand, a sword in another, and a skull to drink the blood from in another. And yet many texts refer to her as very beautiful, and she dances on the prostrate form of her lover, Shiva, who is obviously enjoying himself. Varanasi is the city of Shiva par excellence, and being a place of death there are many Kali shrines manikarnika ghathere. We find a nice cast-bronze figure in the market, and Katheryn decides it will add significance if it is blessed at one of the shrines . There are three that I know of on the way down to the Manikarnika Ghat, the famous open-air cremation site on the banks of the Ganges. The first one is managed by a guy we have known for years. He is also a fairly heavy user of a certain sacramental herb favoured by Shiva, and is apparently unavailable somewhere in the back. black kali on the stepsThe second is a statue set in a wall on a steep flight of stone steps. In the dark, if it wet, the garbage and cow shit on the steps becomes so slippery and hazardous we have knick-named it “The Stair of Death”. Today the image is covered with a sari, with only the eyes peeking out. When we ask someone if we can unwrap it, just for a second, the response is so emphatic we figure we should just leave it alone. The third shrine is open, and there is Kali is all her black-faced, red-tongued glory. We take a couple of snaps. Since we are nearly at the river, and there are still five hours before our train goes, we decide to take up one of the touts yelling,”Boat! Boat!” krishna the boatmanand have a row on the Ganges.  Krishna is our boatman, and, as ever, the light is extraordinary in one of the most amazing places in the world.

The first Kali shrine is open when we return, but our friend is still nowhere in sight. By this time we have to think about catching our train to the real city of Kali – Calcutta. Back at our hotel we log onto the Indian Railways website, and find out our train is running 8 hours late. Rather than spend the night on a platform in Varanasi station – a grim prospect – we take a room, and set the alarm for early. I still can’t sleep, and repeatedly phone the info line for updates. At 6:00am I am told it is due at 8:35. At 7 the message is the same, so we get to the station by 8:00. The shock comes when we are told that our train has already left!  This is a significant blow, in a number of ways. We have flights booked from Calcutta to Bangkok the next morning, and now the next scheduled train, even if it is on time, probably won’t get us there. I never thought that with 36 hours to do a 14 hr. trip we wouldn’t make it, but now that is a distinct possibility. To make sure the authorities know that this is not our fault, I dial the info # and give it to the clerk. He has a mini-tiradegood luck with the guy on the end of the line telling him the train which left ½ hr. ago isn’t there yet. But this doesn’t help us, not even with getting a refund. The rules state that if you miss your train, you can get a 50% refund within the first three hours. It seems self-evident to everyone we talk to that a) the train has been missed and b) the refund will be 50%.  But my hackles are fully up, and I end up bouncing around the station like a pin-ball trying to make my case for a full refund to the proper authority. All my avenues lead to one Man, the Big Boss, the Station Master. But he won’t be in until 10:00. Officially. Who know’s, they say (meaning: he can do whatever he likes) maybe 10:30. In the meantime, my 3 hours of 50% refund grace expire at 10:25, after which the penalty is 70%. And we still have no way of getting to Calcutta. I suggest to someone we could take a bus. He is shocked. “The road!” he says, “You will not make it!”  The only possible flight is routed back through Delhi, and is more expensive than our Bangkok tickets. The one concession I manage to wring out of the station underlings is that they will honour the 50% refund until after I have talked to the Station Manager. Finally my sleep-deprived, emotionally-exhausted brain has a good idea: we can change our Bangkok flights! With some of the pressure off, I go in for my interview with the Big Boss. He is sympathetic, but about a full refund he spreads his hands. “Even I” he says, “can do nothing.” He also assures me he will pull some strings, and get us berths on an otherwise-full train this afternoon.

It isn’t until we are in the taxi travelling the marvelous early-morning streets of Calcutta to the airport, and checked in and on our plane that we finally feel that Kali, the destroyer, has taken her sacrifice and is done with us. David and Vaune be warned: that’s one spunky lady you are getting! 

Check out more of our photos, like the view from the taxi below, by going to https://www.kebeandfast.com and clicking EXPLORE.

on the way to the airport

PALITANA:49,000 STEPS TO FREEDOM

dfast on January 8, 2009

The time has come to check out of our comfortable sanctuary in the City of God Hotel, and leave Dui. Early morning at the bus station just outside the city walls is the usual scene: a smoldering garbage fire; a skinny dirty puppy scratches his fleas; a sweeper raises a cloud of dust; the urine from a low broken wall; jangly Bollywood music from somebody’s cell phone.  An Indian bus stand is not an attractive place, and this is a tiny one at the end of the line, almost bucolic compared to a larger town. We are on our way to Palitana, and have to change buses in a place called Talaja. When our bus arrives we attack it with the aggressiveness we are accustomed to, and it is almost shocking that we burst in it unimpeded, and it is nearly empty. Not only that, but it is a relatively new bus, and the seats are in pretty good condition. This is a good thing because the road is not. We average under thirty kilometers an hour, dodging pot holes and overtaking ox-carts, on the 120 km to Talaja. There is a Palitana bus pulling out as soon as we get to Talaja, and this one is definitely left over from the old fleet. It’s a rivet-popping 40 km to Palitana, with a decibel- level so high it is impossible to talk to each other.

Palitana makes a convenient stop-over on the way back to Ahmedabad, but it also a well known Jain pilgrimage site.  The Jain religion was founded at almost the same time as the Buddhists, in the 6th century B.C.  Jains look to inspiration to a series of Tirthankaras, literally “stream-crossers” who lived exemplary lives and laid down a very detailed body of teachings and precepts. They are strictly vegetarian, and are so averse to the taking of life that some of the more dedicated still sweep the path in front of them, so as to not step on a bug, and wear face masks to avoid inhaling flies.  Many Jains belong to the merchant class, and are prominent in banking and the gem industry, so Jain temples are usually well taken care of. With so much money around, it’s not surprising that the base of Palitana hill is a circus of beggars and touts and “dhoolie” carriers descending on us, even before our auto rickshaw stops. A “dhoolie” is a seat suspended from a stout bamboo pole; basically a simple palaquin carried by two porters up the hill. The dhoolie guys are especially persistent, and keep soliciting as we climb. The staircase is broad and even and packed with people even though it isn’t a special festival or holiday. There are many families, obviously city raised, with digital video cameras and designer sunglasses, but there are also barefoot pilgrims clad in white cotton. There are no other foreigners. For the most part we keep our heads down and trudge, like everybody else. The descending dhoolies shout at you to make way, and a surprising number of young men and women are running down the stairs.

Near the top of the hill we stop for a rest, and spot an old section of trail off to the side. It might not be the original stair – this hill had temples two thousand years ago – but when we leave the commotion of the main trail to follow it we enter a different time.  The trail is paved with worn, uneven rocks, and there is no one else on it. Scrub acacia, cactus and thorns are slowly overgrowing it – in another hundred years it may be impassible. All alone, with bird-song replacing the din of garrulous groups of young men, it is possible to imagine what a pilgrim experience climbing this hill over the centuries.

The old section of trail doesn’t last long enough, and the final ascent is past big walls and through heavy gates. The reality was that a site this isolated had to have formidable defenses. There are literally hundreds of temples on the hill, but the main one is dedicated to the Tirthankara Adinath. Ropes and barriers channel the devotees into the shrine, which for them is the culmination of them climb. The brief second they are allowed in front of the idol is meaningless for me, and K. and I climb up the temple as far as we can get to get a view.  In fact we end up right on the temple spire, where stone work is going on.  Down below the courtyard is full of pilgrims, who gather after the visit to the shrine to eat, rest, pray or visit.

A fork in the path leads to another section of the hill, where the temples are less important and the crowds are far thinner. From here, after scampering up to the top of more temples, we get even better views. Going down we fall into step with a young man, Mukesh, accompanying his friend. Mukesh is fascinated that two people from a distant country would be on the Palitana hill. He is genuinely happy for us, that we would get the blessings for making the pilgrimage to the top. His friend, however, is on a much more serious quest. According to their beliefs, if the hill is climbed seven times in two days, without taking food or drinking water,  Mukti, or freedom, is obtained. The temple is only open 6:30am to 7:30pm and our round trip took three hours. That is why people are running down. That is why there are numerous white robed devotees, barely able to walk, supported on the shoulders of friends and family. For Mukesh’s friend, this is the last descent, and although he is obviously exhausted, he is doing well. It wouldn’t be hard to die of heat stroke undertaking such a grueling challenge and we have seen a number of people lying on the ground in obvious distress. After just one climb, our legs are screaming for days. It seems impossible to me that someone could do this seven times – that is 49,000 steps! But then the important thing, for more than physical conditioning, is to have faith.

 

 

AND ON TO CHITTOR

It is four straight days of bus travel from Palitano to Chittor, including New Year’s Eve spent in a little place near the Rajasthani /Gujarati border called Dungapur. There is no reason to go to Dungapur unless you are staying at the Udai Bilas Palace – actually a Maharaja’s hunting retreat converted into a hotel. We tried, but there was no room at the palace, so we had to settle for the seriously down-market option of a $10 place in town. Being New Year’s Eve,   the occasion demanded at least a token extravagance so we went back to the palace for drinks on their lawn by the pool, where the cost of two beers matched our room’s tariff. It was a pleasant evening, pretending to be privileged, rubbing shoulders with the other guests who would not be able to comprehend the place we were actually staying.

Our down-loaded guide book describes Chittor as “the greatest fort in Rajasthan”; and that is no small claim. It seems as we travel that every hill top in the state has been fortified, and is dripping with crumbing battlements. Chittor is impressive for its size – it is built on a flat top hill and the area enclosed by its walls is 28 sq. km.  Inside there are the obligatory atmospheric and photogenic ruined temples and palaces.  What it is most famous for, however, is the unaccountable fact that it was taken in battle so frequently, and the resulting “jauhar”.   In the Rajasthan of the middle ages, losing a battle didn’t merely mean raising a white flag and surrendering. When all hope seemed lost,  honour demanded the performance of “jauhar”. The warriors would all ride out to certain death, and the women would light a huge fire and throw themselves into it. The last time this happened was 1534, but after a string of defeats, I can see why they gave the custom up.

For a tour guide we have engaged Kailash, mainly because he has an auto rickshaw and the area is too large to cover on foot. When Kailash was a kid, nearly everyone lived inside the city walls, and he talks about growing up here with understandable nostalgia. In general I hate being saddled with any sort of guide, but Kailash does a good job of staying out of the way as we clamber about ruined and rebuilt temples, palaces and battlements. The most famous monument in Chittor is the Jayastambha a  “victory tower” (there were some) built in 1468, but my favorite part  is the great eastern gate, the “Surajpol” (Gate of the Sun). The modern town of Chittorgarh sprawls on the west side of the hill and we, like everybody else, entered the fort through what was once the “back door”. Surajpol is now a grand, deserted melancholy ruin.  The plain below, where so many battles were fought, is covered with fields (including, according to Kailash, opium poppies), and the great road up, once contested by the troops of the Mogul Emperor and suicidal Rajput warriors is now a rough track used by village women.

Stay tuned for more travels in India, and check out more photos by going to https://www.kebeandfast.com and click EXPLORE.

Your Foreign Devil Correspondent

EIGHT DAYS TO DIU

dfast on December 21, 2008

With our business orders placed in Jaipur, Delhi and Varanasi, we are
now in the “Let’s go somewhere until they are completed” part of the
trip. Last year we skipped this phase, trusting they would do what they said (and some did), and went straight into the “Let’s go to the best beach in the world”* phase. *(See our archived blog “WHERE THE GIANT DUM DUM TREES GROW”). While we wait for the orders our destination is ghost fortquirky, like the Andamans, but not as distant.

The 1500’s were a good century for Portugal. Maybe their last good century. They were discovering that Asia offered lots of potential for exploitation, and, OK, there weren’t the cities of gold and the mountains of silver that the Spanish were cashing in on in the Americas, but those might still be out there, and in the meantime there was lots of other good stuff like silk and spices and slaves. In the long and perilous journey to get to Asia, one of the most important locations for them to secure was Diu, a little island off the tip of a
peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea, on the western edge of India. Along with two other strategic enclaves down the Indian coast – Goa and Daman – Diu remained a Portuguese possession until India “liberated” it in 1961.

The Portuguese left Diu the usual sinister-looking forts and thick city gates protected with icons of the saints, the massive basilicas much too large for a tropical village, their whitewash blistering and moldy from too many monsoons, a few old families with flowery and flowing names – and lots of bars selling port and cheap beer. The last point
is especially important, considering that Diu is surrounded by Gujarat, a state of over 50 million people, in which the sale of alcohol is prohibited. Not only that, but Diu also has the lowest taxes on booze in India, making it a bastion of cold beer in a large dry land. It is probably a good thing that Diu isn’t easy to get to. It is almost impossible to access without going through Ahmedabad, a vast, grim metropolis of close to 5 million, and in my opinion the loudest city in India. But there is one way.

Once a week a train leaves Dehra Dun in the Himalayan foothills, passes through Jaipur and terminates in Dwarka, on the south coast of Gujarat, about 300km west of Diu. Given the state of the roads, that would be three tolerable days on buses. The problem is that the berths on this train are full, and we are “wait-listed” to #6 and #7. The train is scheduled to leave Jaipur at 7:15 pm., but we won’t know our status until the “reservation chart” has been prepared – about 2 hours before departure. We check out of our hotel at noon, and I am quite optimistic that over a couple of thousand kms at least nine people will somehow not make their sleeper. When we phone the station the charts are in – and we didn’t make it. We are still W/L #1 and 2. Now the question is whether to get on the train and hope that two people will cancel at this station, and risk spending 20 hours sitting in cattle class, or refund the tickets and try another approach. I make one last-ditch journey to the station to see if I can plead/pull strings with someone, but to no avail. We make the decision to cancel the tickets – and do the journey to Diu one day at a time, by bus.

Day 1. Udaipur. 9 ½ hrs. That wasn’t so bad! They weren’t kidding when they said it was a deluxe bus, and even I have enough room to stretch my legs. The road is great – a divided highway – almost all the way, and the bus doesn’t stop every 100 m for every roadside flag-down. The lunch stop is clean-enough looking to actually contemplate eating in, and we are for the most part spared the litany of bus grievances that usually afflict us. We have phoned ahead and reserved a room at the Panorama Hotel – recommended by our friend Peter who was just there – and it is quite lovely.

Udaipur is built around a lake, and our room has a view of one of its arms – which unfortunately is drying up due to a couple of years of bad monsoons – and the arches and temples beyond. An extravagant Maharajah, Udai Singh, started a tradition of palace building, culminating in the famous gleaming-white Lake Palace in 1754, superbly aloof on its own island. You might recognize it from the Bond film Octopussy, where is served as the redoubt of a harem of scantily-clad ninja babes. The film for that reason alone is a cult here, and sure enough, our restaurant is showing it when we go up to the roof for dinner. Having just come with a maniac from the station, Roger Moore’s rocket-propelled auto-rickshaw ride through town doesn’t seem too far from the truth.

Day 2. Udaipur. Too nice to leave. We’ve been in Udaipur before, but it’s far more pleasant wandering around town looking for photo-ops than getting on another bus.

Day 3 and 4. Ahmedabad. 5 ½ hrs. Yes, we are in the City of Noise. The main drag is the totally-inappropriately named Relief Rd, and our hotel is just off it. The last time we were here our room actually rattled due to the traffic. Now we have gone a little more upscale, and it is worth it. Since we are in the textile business, and since our hotel is alright, we decide to see if there is anything in this town we might be interested in. Ahm’bad, after all, is the capital of the state where much of our tribal embroidery comes from. We visit a night market and find a lot of cheap-quality knock-offs, but also some old and/or good pieces. The prices start out astronomically high, but competition is so keen that they quickly come down to absurdly cheap. I’m not interested in doing business this way, and no one, of course, has any of the commercial licenses necessary for exporting, so K buys a couple of blouses and we leave.

Day 5. Junagadh. 7 hrs. I was dreading this one, but it was alright. Up until now we have been leaving from heavily-touristed towns, and finding information in the bus stations was easy. Ahm’bad’s station is a big mess. I know enough Hindi that I can make out place names on buses when they come in, but with Gujarati I am totally lost. This means that everybody else knows where a bus is going before we do, and can get on it and get the seats first. We have to abandon taking two buses because by the time we get on they are full. The good thing is that we’ve made some allies, and a kid selling newspapers tips me off that the bus backing in is going to Junagadh. K piles in with the shoulder bags to get seats, and I follow with the packs. On the better buses, luggage can be stowed in the compartments underneath. On these, anything less than a motorcycle, say, or a herd of goats (which would go on top) comes inside. My pack doesn’t fit into the narrow roof rack, so it has to go on the floor in front of me. Even with this cramping the already-cramped leg room, it’s not a bad trip.

Day 6. Junagadh. Exceptional architecture lies all over this town like crumpled up chip bags. An eccentric Maharajah (is there another kind?) built extravagantly in the 19th C, and his creations are in that distinctly-Indian state of disrepair that is part decomposition and part incorporation into something else. The truly great buildings, like the spiraling lines and bubbling domes of the Mahabat Muqbara mosque, the Archeological Survey of India has declared protected, which means they are only benignly neglected. The others don’t fare so well. The towering, horseshoe-shaped city gate, which wouldn’t be out of place fronting a fountain on an Italian plaza, is occupied by squatter families who live a few steps away from the highway in rooms that were once (on one wing) for the palace guard, and (on the other) their horses. As we wander through the streets we stumble on a square of grand four-story buildings – the tallest in town – that look like they belong in Whitehall, but which are now encroached upon by tailors and mechanics – and even for them the upper stories are too run down to use. People aren’t used to foreign faces here, and everywhere we are greeted by smiles and kids calling out their text-book English phrases. K makes the observation that a group of sari-clad young women who giggle and say “Hi!” are black, with frizzy hair. Soon we are seeing local “blacks” everywhere. When we are back in our room I do a Google search (in case that went by so quickly that you missed it – for the first time in all our travels we have wifi in our room. In Junagadh! Our swish hotel is actually a christmas present from Marianne – Thanks again! ) and discover that many blacks came to this part of India from Ethiopia and East Africa to work in some capacity for the Maharajahs. They are called Sidis, and now dress and talk like the locals, although even after 200 years inter-community marriage is uncommon.

Day 7. Somnath. The roads are starting to get bad, but at least the distances are short. Today we came down to the sea, past the dividing line where the betel palms of the dry interior give way to the coconut palm of the coast.

Speaking of displaced peoples, Somnath plays one of the most important roles in history. A thousand years ago a massive temple stood here, and over the course of centuries it had grown incredibly rich. In 1024 an Afghan ruler, Mahmud of Ghazni, decided for the glory of Allah he would sack this famed temple. Whatever Allah got out of it, Mahmud did very well. He returned to Ghazni with a mile-long ox-cart train of loot, and more importantly for our story, the entire captured population of the area – some 30,000 people- as slaves. When Mahmud died his kingdom descended into turmoil, and his slaves simply walked away. They’ve been walking ever since, with different branches going in different directions, who we collectively know as Roma, or Gypsies.

Over the centuries the temple was rebuilt, and re-destroyed. The last time it happened was at the hands of that old scoundrel, the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb, in 1706, and it stayed that way until 1950. In my opinion, they should have left it. I guess it’s a faithful reproduction, but as reproductions always do, it looks fake. What draws pilgrims here, however, is not the architecture, but the “jyorti-linga” inside. There are 12 of these strange icons in various temples in India, which are said to be self-created, to have manifested from nothing. After a thorough security pat-down at the temple gate, we are allowed to see it. I have seen a few of the other jyortis, and like them this is a very unusual object. It actually looks more like a torso than a linga, and it has a kind of stylized face that seems to be looking at you.

Everywhere we have been off the beaten path in Gujarat, people are fantastically friendly. The best part of Somnath (now that the ruin is gone) is the beach. It’s a happy carnival, even if the beach itself is unattractive and covered with garbage. It’s here that we meet Raju and his handler, Abdul. We can’t resist a ride on the garishly dolled-up camel, even though, when Abdul goads Raju into a trot, it’s the most uncomfortable stretch of transportation that we’ve had yet.

Day 8. Diu. 2 ½ hrs. Diu is a charming place. Unlike its big sister Goa, the foreign tourist scene has had a minimal impact on this out-of-the-way spot. Part of the reason is that the beaches leave something to be desired, although we haven’t done the full tour yet. This is the holiday in India part of the trip, and we are treating it that way. We start the day with a coffee on our balcony, looking out over neem and palm trees to St. Paul’s church. Then we find food, wander around the picturesque old city, and finish with cold beers on a roof top with our friend Peter. It may not be sleigh-rides and sitting on Santa’s knee, but I am quite happy to spend Christmas this way. And on that note: Seasons Greetings to you all, may your Christmas be joyful and may good things come in the New Year!

You Foreign Devil Corespondent

Don’t forget to check out more pictures at https://www.kebeandfast.com and click EXPLORE.

INDIA: SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS

dfast on December 7, 2008

 

Heaven, Heaven is a place

A place where nothing,

Nothing ever happens

David Byrne

Events never stand still for long in this part of the world.  Entering India from anywhere, even if it’s just walking over the border from Sonauli, Nepal, like we have done, is like getting caught up in a maelstrom.  And that’s when nothing particularly special is happening.  Last week, as we were on an overnight train from Varanasi to Delhi, a group of terrorists stormed our old stomping ground in Colaba, Bombay, and went on a killing spree around the neighbourhood we are so fond of (including the Gokul, where we bought beer, and where a bomb was found).  Like much of the country, we watched events unfold with a horrified fascination, flipping from channel to channel as reporters tried to coax meaningful tidbits of information from a story that was exploding around them like a mushroom cloud.  We were staying in the Tibetan Colony in Delhi, which in these circumstances is about the best place to be, since our little burgundy-robed community is hardly a prime target for someone who has a grudge against the “Crusader/ Zionist/Hindu” axis.  Nevertheless, we went about our business as usual, riding the metro to Pahar Ganj to change money, and going to see our scarf suppliers, Parmindar and Amrita, at their place in Patel Nagar. 

Pahar Ganj, the noisy bustling market opposite the New Pahar GanjDelhi train station, had been the victim of a bomb blast last year.  The security response was to put in a walk-through metal detector, the kind that is used in airports.  It is still there, and it is still as futile a device for protecting the market as a mop and a pail is for stopping a tsunami.  Cycle rickshaws, scooters and even cars just zip past it, and pedestrians ignore it all together.   Sometimes we walk through it because it’s the only space available in the crush of the street, and the poor thing bleeps dutifully into the cacophony, and no one gives a second glance.  As we were about to leave through the forlorn security gate a reporter from the Times of India and her photographer approached us, and asked a few questions about our reaction to the situation.  Were we afraid?  Would we change our plans because of the events?  They were talking to an Italian tour group who were catching the next flight home…  Well, that’s just not our style.  We weren’t planning to go to Bombay on this trip, but if we were, we wouldn’t change our plans.  Fear-based reactions to an event make things much worse than the event itself.  We coddle this idea of security which is an illusion, that we can somehow control the big boot of fate that is stomping all around us.  Like the French tourist who left Bombay because of the attacks, came to Jaipur (where we are now), and died falling off the palace wall.  Maybe we were a bit too vociferous for the reporter.  Instead of the front page spread we anticipated, we didn’t even make the entertainment section in the paper the next day.

Understandable, in retrospect.  Last Saturday was also the state election in Delhi, so there was a lot to write about.  For the last 8 years the Congress Party has held power in the Capital District.  This in itself is almost enough to doom them, since Indians are notorious for their “anti-incumbency” pattern, voting for a different set of scoundrels every time as if it will change anything.  In this case, however, our little burgundy-robed community was watching closely.  The Tibetan Colony, as it is known, was established as an illegal squat on unwanted land in 1959.  It has grown into a small but prosperous and well-organized community, even though only a few of the residents has citizenship, and all the properties that are bought and sold and rented don’t officially exist.  Delhi is to host the 2010 Commonwealth games, and this site was to have been torn down for one of the venues.  Last year when we were here everyone was quite pessimistic.   But since then the pending case has been settled, and the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, assured the Tibetans they could stay.  The new fear is that if the BJP win, who are unabashedly pro-Hindu, the colony’s fate may once more be up in the air.  But enough of serious subjects with grave consequences.

 “So, how’s the shopping going?” you ask.  Well…  It’s been a frenzied circus of out-of-control extravagance.  Bucking the trend of belt-tightening and penny-pinching in the face of looming global financial catastrophe, we have hit India like a monsoon of dollar bills.  It’s part of the Kebe and Fast plan for economic recovery – similar to Stephen Harper’s: we take a healthy surplus from last year and run it into a free-spending orgy of a deficit.  The good news – for all our loyal shoppers out there – is that we are getting great stuff, and lots of it.  The Nepal shipment has already arrived in Vancouver, and with the generous help of Robert and Nicole* and Marianne and David, has been safely cleared and stored.  *(A footnote: We are unbelievably pissed off that R and N’s trip to Asia, where at some point we were to meet up, has been the victim of the PAD blockade of Bangkok’s airport.  These were the same demonstrators we met  two blogs ago; how could they do that to us?) 

Our first Indian stop was Varanasi.  For the first time in all of our visits here, we decided to stay outside of the noisy carnival of the old city.  What we didn’t take into account was the advent of Wedding Season.  As with everything here, an Indian wedding is not a subdued, timid intimate affair.  Usually the number of guests is in the hundreds or thousands, and the venue is an expensive hotel, a “marriage hall” or a “farm” outside the city center.  Which is exactly where our hotel happened to be.  Our first night we had weddings in stereo, coming from the hotel courtyard where the tents, the buffet and the band were set up, and from a location behind our room.  When we went to see our merchant Ajit the next day, he was in worse shape than us.  The height of Wedding Season is six weeks in Dec. and Jan. when the astrological configurations are favourable, and during that time, he said, he was invited to a different wedding every day.  Most he turned down, but for some the connection was too close/too influential to be avoided.  The later was the case with the politician’s family the night before, which he was still sleeping off.  A few days later it was a case of the former: a family friend who pedaled around the old city selling milk from jugs on the back of his bicycle.  He was by no means well-to-do, but had invited 1500 people to his daughter’s wedding.  Much of the cost for these extravagances is defrayed by the guests, who leave an envelope with a donation, but this man had cut the catering corners so fine that it appeared the event would run out of food – which would be a major loss of face.  Ajit and some others had to leave on a mission to replenish the supplies and save the situation.  It’s one of those near-disasters every wedding seems to have, and reminds me of last summer when we were set up in the middle of our sale on Denman Is., where our display tables had apparently been double-booked for a wedding, and only some frantic running around averted a disaster.

With Ajit we stocked up on a number of our staples, including a duvet set we designed to be even more robust than last year, and some of the specialties of the area like the zardozi work.

We changed hotels after our first night, and I have to admit it was nice to be away from the hype and intensity of the old city.  For one thing we didn’t have the barrage of touts targeting us everywhere, from the sleazy whispers of “hash” in the alleys to the smarmy solicitations of “see my silk factory” to the interminable “Hello, boat?” along the ghats.  It is a fact of life you get used to and can generally brush off quite easily, but once in a while you come across one that just floors you.  At the train station in Kandy, Sri Lanka, for instance, a vendor of stuffed toys yelled out at us “Hello Small Chicken!”, and now, walking down the crowded Gowdalia market Katheryn was approached with the line “Hello Madam.  Undergarments looking?”

Now I am sitting in the very pleasant garden of our hotel in Jaipur.  As of this year Jaipur has become the major source for our goods, since a number of other suppliers have consistently disappointed us with the quality of their work.  We made a small order with Kishor last year and were very pleased by it, so this year we have gone a little crazy.  Jaipur is the clearing house for much of the textiles and jewelry that comes out of Rajastan, Gujurat, and Pakistan, and we have stocked up on the wall hangings made with salvaged pieces of old clothing that are so endlessly fascinating.  Kishor and his family come from Sind province in Pakistan, and were Hindu hold-outs there for 25 years after partition.  His father is an authority on traditional tribal embroidery, and has pieces in his collection which are fantastic, but far out of our price range.  What we did get is far more Zari, the metallic-thread embroidery which comes from Baluchistan, on the Afghan border.   It is such impressive work it should be in the “for collectors only” category, but even though the good stuff is over 20 years old, it is still relatively plentiful, and therefore affordable.  Jaipur is also the center of the block-print universe, and it seems perverse we didn’t pick up more of it earlier.  Perhaps we were just reacting to the glut of faux-peasant skirts and warriors-on-camels bedspreads that have for so long been the standard of the back-packer entrepreneur.  What Kishor has done is dip into the vocabulary of 17th C Moghul architecture, particularly the inlaid marble work, and made blocks from these motifs.  We visited the studio where the work is done, south of the city, and while it would be romantic to say it was a village of mud huts in the desert, the reality is that the village has come to the city.  The workshops are bright and spacious, and the block makers and printers are Muslim men.

With Kishor’s help we have designed some new product lines for 2009.  Probably the one we are most excited about Kishor calls “Moghul” work.  We have selected seven patterns of this to be made into king and queen duvet sets with shams, on the best Indian cotton that he has, as well as table cloths and napkins with the same designs.  One of the things about block-print, to the untrained eye, is that it can look like machine print.  This is like comparing a poster to a painting.  The “Blue Cornflower” pattern, for instance, requires the use of five different blocks, applied by hand, for every flower on the sheet.

This is our last day in Jaipur, and tomorrow another adventure begins.  We are heading into the deep south of Gujurat, into  a little-visited area called the Kathiawar peninsula.  Stay tuned for more.

Your foreign devil correspondent.

A Turn in the South

dfast on February 14, 2008

all the girls

Unlike Delhi, Bombay turns on the charm from the moment we arrive. Well, several moments after we arrive, let’s say, and give us time to get past the taxi-wallahs circling like vultures for easy pickings. But when we find one who will actually use his meter, with the window down and the warm coastal air broadcasting the fruit stall, the fish market, the diesel and the incense, it’s good to be back.

Soon we are in Fort, the area where we are staying. We turn beside the red-brick heap of CST railway terminus, looking more like a cathedralCST terminus than a train station, and we alight under the big palm trees in front of the GPO. It is easier to walk through the alleys of Fort than to drive. Our hotel, the Modern, is in the middle of the stationery and printing guilds, and there is a paper shop on the ground floor. We have really just come to Bombay for a break from the bleakness and cold of the north, and to eat. Most of the restaurants we know are in Colaba, and so after a small rest we set out on foot. There is constant throbbing activity in the narrow streets. A work crew in flip-flops is tearing up the pavement with pick-axe and shovel, and the porters hauling wooden carts loaded with boxes of computer paper, or carrying stacks of office furniture on their head jostle around the gaping holes. By the time we get to Horniman Circle the architecture is grand Victorian and Edwardian, but so many millions of lives have passed through the buildings that all Englishness has leached out, and it reminds me of the street dog I saw who dining in Colabaobviously had some pedigree in his past, perhaps Springer Spaniel, but who now scratched his fleas like everybody else. Bombay is the beginning of the Indian South, and we go for Southern food – crispy dosas so long they don’t fit on your plate, and plump steamed idlies and their fried complements, vadas, served with a thin mild tomato curry called sambar and rich coconut chutney.

Usually we avoid the big tourist attractions. They are where the touts and the hassles are, and usually we have seen them already. But this feels like a holiday, and we buy tickets for the launch to Elephanta Is., an hour out into the port. Elephanta is the site of a huge cave temple, 1500 years old, filled with some of the most powerful and sublime sculpture found anywhere in India. It isn’t a natural cave, but a temple carved from the solid rock. Everything is meant to make the viewer feel small, from the guardian figures leaning on heavy maces to the forest of tall thick pillars receding into the dark interior. The centerpiece is the massive three-faced Shiva Trimurti, personifying the creator, the destroyerguardian figure and the preserver, half-hidden in the shadows in the back. All the surrounding walls are also carved in highly-defined images from the Shiva story: Nataraja doing his famous cosmic dance; Ardhanari, half man, half woman, showing the unity of opposites; Shiva, his wife Parvati, and Nandi, his faithful bull; the violent, angry form of Shiva Tandava. Despite the echoing shouts of families on a picnic outing and the giggles of young men gettingdeep in the cave their pictures taken by cell phone in front of the Trimurti, the cave is brooding and evocative.

After 4 days in Bombay, we have an early morning train to Baroda, and leave our room at 5 a.m. It is no more than a hundred meters from the door of the Modern to the main street where we can catch a cab, but in the dark pre-dawn silence and chill we count 51 street-sleepers, tucked in doorways, prone on carts, all wrapped head to toe in eerie white sheets.

We are stopping in Baroda for one reason: our logo. The seductive little prince reclining so assuredly and luxuriously at the top of this page is the son of the Gaekwad of Baroda. ‘Gaekwad’ is a honorific meaning ruler, prince, king, and Baroda was the capital of the state he ruled. Now it is a city of over a million people, but it seems today we are the only whites – it is Christmas Eve, and Baroda is well off of any tourist trail. The palace is further than I anticipated, and when we finally get there it is closed. The gate is open and there is a watchman and a ticket taker, and we can see parts of the palace just down the drive, but we are forbidden from even taking a photo from a distance. Just one more of those crazy-making Indian moments.

ruin at ChampanerWe have been in big Asian cities for the better part of 2 months, and I have read of a place near here, Champaner, a UN World Heritage site, that sounds like it might be nice and rural for a change. To get there, of course, involves the jam-packed rattle-trap buses I’m sure we have told you about before. Although it is only 60 km away, no one understands “Champaner”. I quickly figure out I have to ask for “Pavagadh”. They are both essentially the same place, but Champaner refers to the ruins of mosques no one but culture mavens and the UN cares about, whereas Pavagadh is a Kali temple on top of a big hill that draws worshippers from far and wide. There is even a cable car running up the mountain, but it has collapsed once already in 2003. Some of the old cars have found their way incorporated into tea shops in the village.

 

the MihrabThe ruined mosques are from the 15th and 16th C, and are notable because of the strong Hindu elements found in them. Whether it is because the workers and craftsmen who made them were Hindu, and simply executed their commissions in the style they were familiar with; ormosque interior whether the stones and pillars were harvested from existing temples, and modified to avoid any iconography; or whether the rulers were so far out in the Hindu hinterland, so far from the mainstream of Islamic convention that they were “going Native” – we were unable to find out. I like to think that it was the latter, and that, like the British after them, they sometimes went a little off the eccentric deep end, and were unable to keep the country and the culture from being absorbed into everything they did.

 

Huge walls and fortifications surround the base of the mountain. The bus stand and some tea shops clutter up across the moat, from where jeeps depart for Pavagadh Manchi, 5 km up the mountain, where our hotel is. Somehow we manage to squeeze into a jeep with our packs – not so easy, since they won’t leave until 16 people are aboard. More medieval gates and ruined walls are passed on the way up to where the cable car terminus is. A man is eating his lunch in the open back door of a van, unaware or unconcerned that a large langur monkey is on the roof directly above him. Beside them a donkey is eating a newspaper. Our room is in a state-run hotel, and although somewhat institutional, it has a balcony with a fabulous view over the plains.

 

All the bustle of Pavagadh is directed at the Kali temple, so when we go back down the mountain we are virtually alone poking around the walls of the citadelruined mosques. Flocks of parrots fly screeching through the trees and minarets. The bounty of UNESCO is apparent in the handicap access ramps and watered grass of the main monuments, but not much overflow seems to have made it to the village of Champaner, squat and untidy within the huge fortifications of the citadel. We come in through a back gate, now overgrown with acacia, that once held out a Mogul army. A kid wearing only a dirty t-shirt stops dead in a lane when he sees us, and then hurries off to his doorstep and the protective folds of his mother’s sari. She gives us a dazzling smile. The main street is absurdly wide, given that water buffalo are virtually the only traffic that it sees, and we take a tea from a small shop and sit in the middle of the road and watch the village life unfold.Champaner main street

 

60 km from Champaner is the even smaller village of Jambugodha, reached by a bus that is even more crowded. After 20 km I get a cheek-hold on a seat with 3 others. A hundred years ago this area of western India was divided up into dozens of “Native States”, ruled by a Prince, Raja or Maharaja ( the British refused to call them “Kings”). Jambugodha was one such state, and the Maharaja’s hunting lodge has been converted, according to our guide book into a “simple and enchantingly peaceful” hotel. Not many guests arrive here on the local bus. Village women arein Jambugodha village selling vegetables and hunks of goat in the dust by the side of the road when we get off, and direct us out of town with a wave of the hand. With our packs on we walk and walk, and then turn onto a dirt road and walk some more. Katheryn is dehydrated and perhaps a little grumpy when we finally arrive at the “palace”. The reservation I made never made it to the staff, but the saving grace is that the current Prince himself, Yuvraj Karmaveersinh, comes out to greet us, assures us that a room is available, and wishes me a happy birthday.

 

Because it is a special occasion I am not concerned at the cost, but it is poor value for what we get. A tour group from Italy shows up later, and we meet a woman who is fed up with her tour, the hotel and pretty much all of India. “I have a dog”, she says, “and yes, she is very spoiled, but she would not go in the bathroom here!”

 

The trip from Jambugodha back to Baroda is notable for one thing: perhaps, in many years of crowded travel in crowded countries, I have jeep from Jambugodhanever been on anything this crowded. It is an Indian-made Tata jeep, and looks like it was designed from building blocks; there are no rounded lines on it at all. It is sitting in the shade of a tree when we reach the tarmac-ed road, and a re-organization immediately begins to fit us in. The packs, for a start, are placed loosely on the hood in front of the window, along with a sack of rice. We are wedged in the second row. In front are 6 people, the smallest sitting next to the driver with the stick-shift between her legs. People pile in, and on. At one point we are aware of 33 people traveling in this vehicle with seats for 12.

 

Even so, we make good time getting back to Baroda, and with several hours to go before our evening train to we decide to go try the Gaekwad’s palace once again. This time we have success.Lakshmi Vilas Palace

Subscribing to the economic orthodoxy of the time, the Prince of Baroda decided to help his subjects through a particularly devastating famine by using the vast wealth he had collected from them in taxation to employ them to build him a sumptuous palace. Given that it was such a good cause, no expense was spared. He had marble imported from Italy, and crystal from Belgium. He modeled his fountains after Versaille, and his architecture from Mars. Some of the most mosaic detailbeautiful works, however, are the mosaics, done in an Indo-Byzantium-Romantic style executed in gold tiles. The most impressive mosaic of the lot is a larger-than-life tableau outside on the front wall.

The Gaekwad was only in his position of wealth and power by the grace of a single chance event, and this mosaic illustrates the story. His uncle was the ruler of the State of Baroda, and when he died the Gaekwad was on the dispossessed side of the family, making a living from farming. The ruler’s immediate heir, however, was old, childless, and according to the British agent a proper rogue, so a plan was concocted that would make it acceptable to the people to see the Gaekwad put on the throne. There was one condition: that the child his wife was pregnant with was a boy. The symbolism tells us that his wife, like Sati in the Ramayana, passed the test; the child was a boy (the prince of our logo) the farmer became ruler, and the British had an ally for the rest of their days.The Gaekwad's story

An apology, an update

dfast on February 12, 2008

Cop writing the report of our theftWe apologize to our concerned and faithful readers for not keeping up to date with the blog. There are at least two reasons for this. One is that an unfortunate incident occurred on the train from Delhi to Varanasi back on Jan. 2. We had just boarded and were settling ourselves into our compartment, and chatting with the couple we were sharing it with. They had a 2-year-old who was doing an orangutan imitation, and a valise that was the size of a small car, and so in trying to move ourselves and our luggage in, we put a small shoulder bag on the top bunk. More commotion ensued, the conductor came, an empty neighbouring compartment became available, and in the process of moving our gear over we noticed that the shoulder bag on the top bunk was gone.

The bag contained some of our electronics, including the palm pilot, the portable hard drive, our MP3 player and the small digital camera. Except for the camera, none of the other items were much good to whoever took them, for one thing because the cords and chargers were all proprietary, and were in another bag. The police were summoned, and Katheryn joined a posse of rifle-toting guards cruising the train in the vain hope that something might be spotted. It was to no avail, and we took stock of our loses. We still had our SLR, and although we were having fun shooting videos with the digital, it wasn’t indispensable. We could also live without the tunes, although Katheryn had spent many hours selecting a good sound-track before we left. The hard drive was a big loss. It was the back-up for all of our photo and text files, and contained all of the high-resolution pictures we had taken up to that point. Fortunately we didn’t lose any pictures, as they had just been uploaded onto Flickr. Now we will have to burn CD’s to back up our photos, which is deterioration-prone and time-consuming. The palm pilot was an integral part of our data system, and we had all of our addresses and contact information on it, as well as information on costs, distances, where we stopped for lunch etc. We also used it to type the blog entries. It was a huge improvement to working in internet cafes, with the expense, the noise, and the power cuts and computer malfunctions. Without it, we have lost a lot of the incentive to write.

Another reason for falling behind is that for most of the last month we have been in one of the most technologically-removed places on our trip. Look up the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in an atlas. It took us 4 days by boat to get there from Calcutta, and then we went another half day to Havelock Island. There actually is internet capability there, theoretically, although only once did we succeed in sending an email. Alas, we had to simply dispair at the idea of sitting in front of a computer, and instead concentrate on marvelous Radha Nagar beach, or the sublime snorkeling at Elephant Beach.

Anyway, we are now back in Bangkok, where keyboards work and the connections are fast, so we will make an effort to get the story up to date. Stay tuned for the next episode, and don’t hesitate to write us and let us know how you are doing!

Page 1 of 2
1 2