This Is India Podcast 2
Welcome back!
This is the second podcast in the This Is India collection. It tells of Cesca and my journey high above the sweltering plains of India to the mountain retreat of Ooty. We recorded it last night and both really enjoyed revisiting what was one of the most pleasant sections of our trek around this enormous country.
Ooty holds the envious position of being high enough to be cold by Indian standards, but still within the heart of the country that it overlooks. It has a a very famous train service, upon which the dedicated crews work tirelessly to bring tourists, locals and travellers alike up and down from the plains of Kerala to the high station at Ooty. The people here, completely the most English influenced of Indian peoples, dress uniquely, worship in their own way and all exhibit the strength that high station living gifts those who endlessly pitch their lungs against the thinning air.
We hope you enjoy it and as before we have setup a slideshow of pictures of our time there that we will refer to as we talk on.
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The story of a simple Buddhist priest travelling from India to China in the 5th Century doesn’t sound like something that would make for an interesting novel, but the after effects of this solitary man’s journey still reverberate today. In all parts of the far east, the name Bodhidharma is still very well known. In Japan, for example, little girls have Bodhidharma key-chains and all sorts of other cultural influences and footprints can be found. And not only in the geek fringes or the religious halls, no his is a visage often seen in paintings; most of the time shown as an old priest with a particularly fierce expression of concentration, and it is for this ability that he was most highly prized. Bodhidharma didn’t bring Buddhism to China or Japan, but he started a school of Buddhist thought that spoke to something deep inside the Eastern people that heard it. Spoke to their marrow with a simple and unselfish message of compassion, dedication and submission.
This effect changed them forever.
“Can you take us to this hotel please?” I asked the tuk tuk driver.
He shook his head, “No, that hotel burned down.”
“Burned down? I just spoke to them on the phone…”
He held his hands apart and looked slightly hurt that I was doubting him, “Hotel closed,” he insisted, “I take you to one much better.”
Time for the Bad Cop.
In India, catching a tuk tuk and negotiating the fare – or even the simple existence of the destination – is a national pastime. Not one driver, in three months, took us where we wanted to go without comment, argument or an all out fight. At first, this grates on the nerves and then you cant help but be brought down by it. Then you feel victimised for being western and (relatively) rich. You start to think that they are all out to get you personally. However, it is none of these; it is an official sport. Take it as a sport, a sparring match, and you suddenly find it fun.
And you develop tactics.
Our tactic is to use the old Good Cop, Bad Cop routine, but with a twist. The twist being that I, the large white man in slightly military clothing, am not the bad cop. Cesca is. There is something about confident English women that is like Kryptonite to a tuk tuk driver. We sometimes really played it up. Cesca would fake anger at the guy and then I would step in and take his side.
“But Darling,” I would plead, “he has to earn a living, I am sure he is not ripping us off.” I would then give the driver a look, one I practiced, which said ‘Hey buddy, look at this, I have an angry white women here. I know you need to rip us off, you know I know, but please let’s just defuse this bomb before it goes off and we both look embarrassed’. It was a kind of shared-trauma pleading look.
Worked 90% of the time. The 10% is a story for later…
It was very easy to feel a little guilty about such behaviour, but honestly this is just part of the game as well. There is no White Man’s Burden, I didn’t owe anyone being “gouged” (the travelers term for rip off rides).
Cesca looked the guy in the eye and scowled – something she is very good at, “We want to go to this one please?” She said proffering the Lonely Planet aloft.
This guy was not cracking, “I not take you to that one,” he said.
Time for Phase Two. Read More
Before we start, I should add a caveat to this article. I am a philosopher and a Daoist. As such, I suppose, I am not the best person to judge. I offer only my own understanding of the form, which is limited. I do not claim to have a “monopoly on the truth”, nor to be a teacher. Any mistakes are my own. But since, as we shall see, Daoism is mysterious — I can hardly be blamed for that!
Introduction
I am often asked, “Just what is Daoism?”
This is a natural enough question, as since I “came out” as a Daoist many people have been genuinely interested. What the question really asks is, “Please can you encapsulate the concepts of Daoism into a single sentence and communicate that to me?” The person then normally looks a little askance as I singularly fail in the attempt:
“Well,” I begin, “it’s, er…”
“Yes?” they ask, waiting on my answer, clearly forming the opinion that I cant be a very serious Daoist without being able to enunciate at least that.
“It’s complicated…” I manage after a ruminating struggle, made plain on my face.
These are not particularly comforting moments in my life. I once attempted to write an answer for a work colleague and accidentally sent him a blank email with the subject, “Daoism is…”
He wrote back, “Are you trying to make a point, or did you miss off the text?”
I wasn’t, but I wish I had thought to do so. I could then create an email that reads:
Subject: What is Daoism?
(THIS MESSAGE IS LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK)
A few weekends ago my airsoft brothers and I were players at the TA Event’s, “The Chernarus Conflict”. This was a 24 hour Milsim game using the, freshly revised, BattleSim rules developed by Iain of TA Events.
To those of you who play computer games, the country of Chernarus may ring a few bells. As anyone who loves the Arma series of games from Bohemia Interactive will tell you Chernarus, or Black Russia, is a fictional post-USSR country somewhere in the East that is used as the main game location. TA Events have licensed the entire storyline from Bohemia meaning that players at the event could sign up to the various factions found in the series. When someone says that you should get out from behind the keyboard and get some exercise, these events enable you to re live the brilliant, in-depth storyline for (almost) real. A detailed account of the factions and background to the event can be found here and it has a very professional depth to it not usually available to airsofters.
When Cesca first showed me the drawing plans for the UCS garden at RHS Malvern, I knew that it was going to be special. But nothing could prepare me for the final result. More a large scale high-art installation than a garden; it is playful, fun and definitely sending a message that we can all understand.
I have been reading a book recently, called “The World Without Us ‚” in it the author, Alan Weisman, writes of how nature – that pervasive force – would take over after we are gone. Concrete would fall down, buildings would crumble under vines and the remains of humanity would disappear; and quicker than you would imagine. Of course, for us Daoists we don’t see the human and so called “natural” worlds as different at all. They are all parts of the same thing; and it is only human arrogance that distinguishes us and our achievements. When we see meta,l and we think that it is not a “natural” substance, we forget that we stand upon a 50 trillion ton ball of the same stuff. Given the size of the Universe, our small scratches on that metal ball amount to a glint of light in a million years of sunshine, but we don’t see it that way. We still think we are in control. As Weisman shows in his book – that is the ultimate illusion.
And so it is with the UCS garden, losing control leads to organic growth and non-human cycles of birth and decay taking back the ground. Returning to the rhythm all of its own. It wont be rushed, it is like the blowing playful wind, and as gardeners we might conduct this orchestra briefly, but we hardly could claim control of it.
We work with it.
Bangalore is a strange place because it is just like cities at home. Almost slap bang in the middle of India, it sits like a jigsaw piece put in the wrong box. To some, it is the epitome of the “two tier” society outsiders see when they look this country. But that is just in mean economic terms, and when you actually get here you soon realise that Western ideas of how society structures itself into two halves down purely how much cash is in your account is the worst of models. It just doesn’t work in India; there is another dimension to the whole thing, a special dimension of multi-layered religious and social tiers laying next to each other for a thousand years. Most of the time, India provides a refreshing change for visitors. How much money you have does not define you and your world.
And then you come to Bangalore…
