So many people in my life are struggling with either potentially compromising health issues or career problems - or both, sometimes compounded with tricky personal stuff to boot. It really seems to be a rough kind of life out there.

These days I wake up and try again and again each day to remind myself that, in fact, this seems to be the way life actually is. Life is suffering. In one way or another this is the truth - a Noble Truth in fact. Without reminding ourselves of this simple concept we can easily fall into an awful trap - believing that life can be any other way. Or, more damagingly, that life should be some other way. This is not to exclude joy or wellbeing - we can have that too, on many levels. As we change and the world around us changes however, even these things are transient - in themselves therefore potential sources of pain, discomfort, disappointment and suffering. Accepting this scenario as the likely reality is in many ways not only the path of least resistance but also a beginning of wisdom and a path to a fuller joy. Right now, to me this seems to be our reason here.

One way and another I have ended up back in Mysore again! After Dad and R left I stayed and am still here. I am of course practicing yoga - but am not with any of the teachers here, preferring instead to practice at home in my little apartment. It's very simple and Indian - complete with neighbours next door running a dairy operation. Cue calves being born in the night, 530am milking sessions and a lone sheep which will not shut up! Will be here until the end of May. Then it will be up to the North - to meet an old flatmate who is coming in for a bit of a travel around - starting and finishing in Mumbai. When she has gone home I will have a bit of solo trip into southern Gujarat.

In July and August I have arranged to do another internship in Jaipur, Rajasthan, with a similar Microfinance NGO to the one I spent time with in Hyderabad. Apparently it will have cooled off a little up there by that time. At the moment it is in the high 40sC. I will be very interested to gain a little insight into the different state of development that the Self Help Group model of MF has reached in Rajasthan. Andhra is the flagship state as far as this goes - elsewhere in the country it is relatively early days and Rajasthan is well known as one of the more culturally conservative states. So, a different context altogether. I will be working with the Centre for Microfinance in Jaipur. Anyone who fancies a visit while I am there will be more than welcome - though at the moment I am not sure of the accommodation situation. Obviously I am aiming to be comfortable...

Decisions decisions

Well, at the moment I am in the process of making a few decisions about the future...which means that as well as the next few weeks I am also thinking a bit longer term. This is a departure from the practice, assiduously cultivated over the last 2 years, of not thinking any further ahead than the next cup of tea.

I may be able to spend a bit more time working in the field of microfinance here in India, as I did late last year, but at the moment the arrangement is not set in stone. Should find out this weekend. Either way, the India trip is going to be over mid June since the Indian consulate in Colombo only gave me a 3 month visa...for reasons known only to themselves they had initially printed out and stuck into my passport a 6 month multi-entry, then thought better of it and amended the document by hand. Yawn. So, whatever happens I think this is going to be it for the travels, wanderings and full time loafing. As I said to my father, who was visiting here last week with my younger brother, I can feel a wave of expediency coming on. In the past this has been a good guide to my choices and motivation regarding work, living arrangements and so on.

Before leaving India I will make sure to knock off a couple of the big sights - otherwise what will I tell people I was doing? - and pack in some more yoga. At the moment back into rising at 530am for a couple of hours practice with a different teacher here - more chanting and meditation mixed in than I am used to, feels pretty good though I have to confess that, in true Western style, I am more interested in the physical side of yoga and will revert to previous practice style once I move on after June.

Coming into land from Colombo to Bangalore was a little disconcerting. The new Airbus that Air Sri Lanka are flying has the usual inflight map displaying where you are and when you'll arrive, but it also has a camera mounted on the nose cone, just above the front landing flood lights. So, you literally get to watch the plane come into land. This includes the drop through the clouds, the appearance in the distance of the minute, illuminated runway far ahead in the distance and also the tiny, constant adjustments to course that the pilot is making to keep this thing in a straight line. The fact that the aircon had played up on the plane, not really working and causing a delay in takeoff of an hour or so meant that, despite 2 months acclimatisation in Sri Lanka to high humidity and steamy temperatures, I was already sweating before my eyes strayed to the screen and noticed how the white lines shooting underneath the plane were doing a bit of weaving as well as shooting. And of course it's all happening pretty fast. Reality check. Getting those things onto the ground safely is a bit of a struggle. The reminder of impending arrival in India had begun some minutes earlier though, above the imperfect cloud cover. Whole blocks of the city seemed at one point to be flashing on and off in the darkness - power cuts rippling across this hub of hi-tech commerce. Where the power was on the shimmer of streetlights combined with the passing invisible clouds to resemble the skin of a cuttlefish, pulsing dots of light, fading and growing patches of colour, light and dark, some kind of magical bio-luminescent trick to distract and confuse.

It's only a 1 hour flight and such a short trajectory allows easy appreciation of the contrasts between these two countries. Sri Lanka with, for the tourist at any rate, its veneer of normality, beauty and ease provided by lush tropical countryside, cute colourful beach side fishing villages, golden sand and shyly smiling, somewhat moribund locals and India with the squalor, energy, purpose, drabness and crush of hundreds of millions of souls tripping over each others' airport trolleys, talking on their mobile phones to get the price of BSE Sensex shares or the price of milk that the local dairy co-op is paying and trying to push in front of you. Both democracies, badly flawed at that as most seem to be, these two countries present to the world two very different versions of themselves. India really is an open book - even if someone wanted to try and control what comes out of this country, whatever committees and boards, authorities and panels, institutions and departments, rules, laws and regulations might be put in place wouldn't stand a hope of containing, shaping, controlling or stopping anything that originates from within these borders. With Sri Lanka on the other hand the tourist veneer mostly conceals the detail of a tragic and viciously conflicted island nation. Sinhala nationalism (ie racism) has reduced essentially the whole country to a state of desperate poverty of hope. Except for the few at the top of course. While the Gini co-efficient for the two countries might show that India has (somewhat) greater income distribution inequality (0.4 vs 0.45 - 1 is perfect income distribution), what Sri Lanka loses in unequal distribution it more than makes up for in the proportion of people stuck forever in the lower, though not extreme, reaches of income poverty. This is partially mitigated by the fact that almost everyone in Sri Lanka can read and write, something that only about 50% of Indians can do after the education system is finished with them (if it ever gets started). But it is the war, the elephant in the corner on holiday with you in Sri Lanka, which most clearly illustrates both the callousness of the Sri Lankan ruling elite and the indifference of the international community to this country where no material resources are on offer. An expatriot in the country of some 10 years or so recently told me a story of happenings just 2 hours north of the capital, events witnessed by the inhabitants of a muslim fishing village. These locals have begun to mount their own patrols in the jungle around their village because Sri Lankan Army soldiers from the base nearby have repeatedly come to the village at night while on patrol and abducted young women and girls. In the nearby jungle they are raped and then left to wander in the night. The villagers patrol with machetes. When they catch a soldier he is hacked to death.

Towards the end of one of their night patrols, meeting my dinner companion on the beach, these villagers told a story which explained why all schools on the island had been unexpectedly closed down a few days earlier. Being Muslim, and therefore Tamil, these people have connections to communities within the territory controlled by the LTTE. Last week the villagers were disturbed during their morning routines by Sri Lankan Air Force jets and gunships flying in low overhead from the sea. In pairs, over a period of about 4 hours these aircraft on bombing and strafing runs were apparently responding to information that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Pirapaharan, was hiding underneath a school somewhere. These jets were dropping bombs on schools and the helicopters were coming in to clean up after them. Obviously no advance warning was given. The next day, perhaps wisely as a precaution, the government ordered all schools on the island to close in case an angry LTTE cadre decided to strap on one of those special vests and go to work.

All this is neither to portray the government in a bad light versus the LTTE - who are equally poisonous, to put it bluntly - nor to suggest that this conflict is any worse than others in many places around the world. Indeed the whole story could be apocryphal. However the bottom line is that even if it is wrong or simply a rumour something identical could happen there and no-one would ever hear about it. That is how tight the vacuum of control is in Sri Lanka over information and access, freedom of speech and international scrutiny. The same thing would be reported and examined from every quarter in India - even if it could happen in the first place.

Back in the mix

So, Mysore has again been good. Was pretty washed out after the Hyderabad thing and the aborted travels in north Andhra - took a while to get sorted but the yoga has been good and have really enjoyed meeting new folk here as usual - some great Aussies and Canadians this time.

Off to Sri Lanka in a week, looking forward to some surf and beach.

Back on Facebook for those interested in such inanities.........

This blogging thing has dropped off a bit hasn't it.

I am back in Mysore for a few days now simply because up in northern Andhra things were so booked and busy I spent one afternoon 'touring' over a dozen hotels just to find a roof for the night - which I managed - and then spent 3 hours the next day to secure a berth on an overnight train. No need to force it so I hopped back here for a bit of peace and quiet. And it is quiet which is a blessing.

Such things reveal to me that though I may have more patience than ever previously (believe it or not), the stock is still very much exhaustible and even pulled into deficit sometimes which is, to be honest, a very unattractive place for patience to dwell.

Cue extremely moody dealings with all encoutered in the public space - rickshaw drivers trying to squeeze a few rupees more out of me because they think the backpack looks heavy, hotel owners who try charging a tenner for a room worth about GBP1.50 and won't deign to make eye contact, fruit juice sellers who just want to sell you (tap) water with fruit fragrance included. Yes, even cinema staff who want to remove your carefully chosen snack and drink and force you to buy their revolting over-sweet drinks and whatnot. It was I, the very annoyed individual, who made a fool of myself in front of probably a hundred people plus in a cinema lobby in Hyderabad just the other day when confronted, tired, emotional and hungry, with just such a scenario I did not hold back, even though I should. Not very dignified. Indeed, not very dignified for two reasons - because unfortunately shouting actually gets you somewhere here a lot of the time which is not a good thing to have worked out and also because Indians by and large are acutely embarrassed by being harangued whether or not they have well and truly earned it. The fact that one can thus coerce and embarrass people with relative impunity is of course due to many different factors in Indian culture. After the fact it is easy to feel uncomfortable about these outbursts. However I console myself with a couple of rebuttals in mind. First, that for the most part I am more than respectful to people here even when they are taking the piss and second that when one does come across an instance of courtesy, kindness, respect or 'good service' (in inverted commas simply to distinguish it as being part of the management-speak which should be clearly recognised as a special compartment of English for describing things within the artifically constructed world of business English as opposed to actual English - where meaning can be traced back centuries and actually stands for something while pretending otherwise as opposed to seeming ethically neutral whilst being totally amoral) it is such a pleasant experience, makes everyone's day better and proves that some people are just bloody-minded, ignorant or simply desperate and you can't always work out which one in time to prevent yourself being a total dick.

So, in amongst it all I did manage a few days up near the Araku valley, at around 3000ft a little cooler and a lot greener than the plains of AP. Did some strolling around quiet valley roads, riding on local buses with weathered, dark, partially clothed tribal women with 3 or 4 large gold rings in each nostril, often with a child in a sling on their front and a couple of live chickens in hand and seemingly oblivious to the sideways glances of disgust/shame given them by good self-respectin' 16 year old Salwaar clad hindu girls going home from school, their perfectly black, oiled and plaited hair decked with the customary little strand of flowers on the hair clip at the back and contrasting with the greying frizz and disarray of the hill-women's fashion statements. Oh, and visited somehuge caves tucked away in the hills and 'discovered' by some Britisher in 1807, although of course humans had been living there for about 50,000 years before he came along.

So, Mysore for a few days. Spent another couple of hours in the rail booking office yesterday to secure a ticket to Tirupathi early January. There I will visit a friend from Hyderabad who is recovering from major surgery to fractures of the skull and jaws and also do a little pilgrimmage to Tirumala and see the temple of Lord Venkatesh - the richest in India. You can make a donation/do puja online. It is apparently the largest place of pilgrimmage in the world with over 100,000 people per day visiting and some 20,000 staff to 'coordinate' it all. After that it'll be time for a quick couple of weeks looking round Tamil Nadu before meeting Helen in Sri Lanka at the end of January. I've gotta get there first and sort the deluxe pad as a base for our surf mission. Seems that overall Mum and Helen are enjoying their Aussie hols again - getting to meet the locals www.couchsurfing.com style I thnk this time, although they do of course have their own house!

Had a lovely yoga practice this morn - has been months since I did ashtanga in a room with a few others and it was very pleasant. At the same time it made me appreciate the value of a period of practice on my own. Even though it gets a bit lonely sometimes!

No plans for the day - want to have a swim, maybe later. Have just been invited to lunch by random Aussies here so will take them up on that one.

Happy Christmas.

Rarely spotted - me!

Rarely spotted - me!
Originally uploaded by jakebarne

Am in the office today (gasp - dont think I've ever said that on a Sunday). This is a shot of me yesterday - went with a colleague to Golkonda Fort on the outskirts of Hyderabad. See Flickr (on my links) for few other images from last few weeks.

Still slaving here at www.apmas.org - trying to get the work finished but people keep asking me to do more and revise this and help with that. Staff here are so busy. Overstretched really.

Hyderabad is good, not sure where next.

Microfinance in action

Microfinance in action
Originally uploaded by jakebarne

is this woman:

A) Wondering about the best way to offset her flight emissions after the weekend in NY
B) Considering the merits of organic Kohlrabi or a 'Howie's' eco-friendly skateboarding hoody at GBP195
C) Fed up with being stereotyped by people who don't have a clue about trying to live on $1 per day
D) Contributing to a Self-Help Group micro-credit plan meeting

answers by email only please.

No prizes.

The lack of posting reflects a lack of time as opposed to lack of things to say. The internship is in full flow and the workload is easily enough to work 7 days a week, which I am doing.

Today I went for breakfast to the same hotel where, as I sat by a lobby pond of Koi Carp the other week I suddenly had my first nosebleed in a good few years. This time, although the food was good, the staff attentive and I got a much needed haircut the same edge of the unexpected and the unsettling crept in. It sounds weird but the toilet bowl swirled menacingly when I flushed it. I mean really! The other surprise was the amount of dust ingrained into my neck, scalp and hair from the 6 day field trip last week. When I got a haircut the guy sprayed water mist and rubbed my head down with a towel after the cut and I swear the towel was covered in grime. I had been washing of course, but this stuff is fine grained and had just got everywhere. It was very embarrassing. I don't normally burble excuses to strangers, but there I was...

What else? The work has been good if demanding. I am about to go to the villages in the south of the state again to conduct the research which I piloted last week. Should be doable in 6 days, if a little tight. I also did a short report for the NGO on the pilot of a small loan scheme dedicated to education funding loans. The idea is to use the SHG framework to supply credit for this specific purpose to rural communities. Everyone wants it to happen. Parents know desperately that education is the key to economic autonomy and are quite prepared to sacrifice almost everything to make sure their children get good schooling and more. However the route to a sustainable and affordable solution, necessarily involving the local banks, is not clear. The pilot was too small and rudimentary to draw many conclusions. I have to recommend a way forward.

Before leaving for the field trip on Wednesday night I need to finish a redraft of the NGO's strategic plan, and also complete the accompanying Action Plan. This is all very well, and I am of course receiving contributions from all departments, but the original document isn't very well written and time is tight. We need to give it to a senior manager from a large UK consultancy firm who is coming to do an organisational review (free) for 3 weeks from Nov 27. She will need to make sense of it and then assess if the NGO is up to the task or not. My feeling is that, yes it is, but the structure of the organisation needs to change and become more process driven rather than being so conventionally department oriented. But what do I know....I'm short of at least 1, possibly 2, degrees and about 5 years professional experience with regards such decisions.

But that is what happens when you leave the first career, which was unhealthy, to pursue a second on the other side of the world which itself ends up being unsuitable for a host of other reasons. I see that I am very much living a pattern of geographical and metier migration the crystallisation of which is unforeseeable and perhaps uncertain. Its hard for some people to reconcile such an outcome with an apparent bias from the start towards some kind of relatively conventional path, even if the route looked poorly marked at points. And in some ways it is conventional - dully so.

Felt another way I remind myself that each life is lived entirely differently to all others, when experienced personally, and our ability to really empathise and understand others is severely hampered by our conditioning and the power of the forces acting invisibly and unperceived on our lives. Forces on a grand scale, like climate change, and on a minutely personal level, like hormonal fluctuations, which we take so for granted, are in fact the things which in one way unite us and would seem to pull us together while at the same time they inexorably divide and insulate us from one another.

A lot of the dissonance in perspective between people, family members, friends, colleagues, is there because of a fundamental distinction in understanding; between those who at root feel that we can know what we do and why, and those who perceive a reality where such certainty of knowledge seems illusory and deceptive. This distinction draws people apart in another way too because it goes to the very heart of answering questions about personal identity. If you strip away work, friends and relatives individuals are immediately faced with a huge gap in self-understanding, even self acceptance. For most people this would seem to be a crisis of sorts. Even removing one of these elements can provoke extreme anxiety. Witness the number of us who in reality shudder at the thought of more than a couple of weeks off work, although it is never admitted (I hasten to add that I am not in this camp!).

Whichever way we see the world we are forced to live with an incipient knowledge of uncertainty and illusion, or put another way, boundless possibility and the tantalising chance of clarity. Each optic can be held close to the heart, either with love or a tight, tight grasp.

Settled in here now - and the weather has cooled off nicely. Working on editing the (overdue) annual report and also on a couple of proposals for small Impact Assessment studies while I am here.

I heard from several people that Hyderabad has the highest quality of life of any major Indian metropolitan area. True, it doesn't stink really and there is not too much begging and destitution visible. It doesn't have any pavements though, so walking around can get you regular clips round the elbow or ear from passing rickshaws.

I am installed in some style in fact on the very top of a 5 storey apartment block with a lovely room and ensuite which is part of, but separate from, where my boss and his family live. This is good because Banjara Hills rents are exhorbitant. As I am only really renting a room I get a reasonable rate - plus Mrs R makes breakfast for me every day which I get to enjoy with the Boss and his two cute kids.

I heard there is a staff meeting this week. I thought 'couple of hours on Wednesday'. Think again. We are all going to the residential training centre, 2 hours drive away, for 3 entire days from Thursday! One of my fellow spectators at the 4th Military World Games on Saturday remarked, as we watched the 84kg division semi-final between North Korea and the USA, that Indians don't necessarily excel at sport. This is mainly because in a country where so many still struggle to feed themselves priorities dont tend to lie in the 'making yourself a better person' column. Rather they sit firmly in the 'making and keeping yourself a person' category. So entertainment more usually focuses on food and, of course, talking.

All of which makes me look forward with (shall we say) interest to the next few days.

Micro Finance, Mega Bucks

Nearby the plush houses...
Originally uploaded by jakebarne

As I sit here at APMAS (Andhra Pradesh Womens' Self Help Society) editing their annual report whilst trying to keep up with the inevitable deluge of acronyms for which the NGO sector is famous, but also keeping an eye as ever on world events, I noticed this article in the FT about the Microfinance sector. It brought to mind a discussion I had with one of my colleagues here yesterday. My question was could the current credit squeeze, or something like it in the future, impact borrowers within Self Help Groups (SHGs) here in India? The answer seems to be no. For the moment. This is because, while private sector funding is undoubtedly sizable as a portion of total capital inflows to the sector, much of the seed capital available for institution building and outright lending within the sector comes from NGOs or state owned lenders. The hope for the future, and in a few cases the reality now, is that these institutions, which bridge the gap between major lenders and the small SHGs, are self sustaining both managerially and financially. The FT article gets to the very heart of the issue by asking if a project which began as poverty alleviation - in other words a Social Capital building/aid exercise - can really remain true to its original aims if corporations (and even financial 'institutions' like hedge funds) begin to become a part of the sector infrastructure. In a future where it is hoped by some, and perhaps feared by others, that lenders like Venture Capitalists and other speculators are the primary source of capital to such a sector I think the likelihood of the vicissitudes of global capital markets directly, and harshly, impacting these extremely poor sectors of the population is high. Just because they can make a profit doesn't entitle these organisations to take over. That would be like confusing development with growth all over again.

Butter and Mashed Bananas

Metropole
Originally uploaded by jakebarne

OK so now I'm in Hyderabad/Cyberabad. Staying in Banjara Hills, the wealthy bit replete with huge MALL, supermarket which would not be at all out of place in St John's Wood, Tommy Hilfiger shop and many-a-Merc swooshing about. Ya still got ya one stumped beggars hanging around and seeming whole families living under bus shelters at the foot of the stairs to the MALL mind.

Today I am traipsing around the centre of Hyd. May not do it again tho as there is even less charm than in Bangalore to this central area. Add to that the tetchy nature of the Urdu speaking community here, mid Ramadan, and you have one seething sunny sooty and very noisy city.

Got talking to Rajid at my hotel last night, a recruiter here for a few days who began trying to get me a job as an economic consultant until I pointed out that I know very little about India's economy and only a little more about economics. That said he got out the laptop and gave me a ppt presentation on Bihar, the poorest state in India where per capita GDP is just over Rs6400 PER YEAR and almost 20% of household heads have zero education. Add in the fact that the economy is 80% rural, with attendant massive year on year growth variation, and realise that 50% of the roads are unsealed and you have a kind of super-under developed state. All fairly common knowledge I'm sure. To put some of that in perspective though, Indian GDP per capita for the whole country is only Rs25000 per year. That's my budget per month.

After my customary wander around this latest city today I am going to see Butter and Mashed Banana at the Ravindra Bharathi Theatre ("...almost a landmark"). This is thanks to S, one of my yoga classmates from Mysore, who is a theatre professional and knows lots of folk from that sphere in India. I just gotta get to the theatre and 'ask for Rohini' to get my seat

Colonel Yogi and Plate Tectonics

'Trample the weak. Hurdle the dead.'

This is the latest in a series of T shirt slogans which, over the years, have caught my eye. Reminds me of a birthday present given to a friend of mine in London one year - an inspirational bit of comic-book style illustration, clearly modelled on Fantastic Four type stuff - with the attention grabbing 'I will take down all who stand before me'.

Nothing, however, has yet topped my all time favourite, spotted on the streets of Dayton, Ohio, of all places back in 1993. 'Stop Plate Tectonics' could only have manifested in a university town seriously dedicated to intoxication of various kinds. It is perhaps the most ironic statement I will ever come across. I still savour it.

On another note, I just listened to Nirvana while reading an interview with Margaret Thatcher from 1971 in the Guardian. Such seemingly incongruent and contrasting bedfellows made for a surprisingly complete experience. A woman the same age as the Queen, who came to Parliament in 1959 and became the first ever female leader of a Western nation, tussling with a journalist wearing a sports jacket and tie, backed by a band who were born out of economic alienation and rage inspired by hopelessness; a lack of hope bestowed from the mast of an economic doctrine to which the then Education Secretary would later firmly nail her colours.

On the subject of Facebook - I am thoroughly sick of and repulsed by the whole thing now and have deleted my profile. Ha! Something with such a rapid rise can have only one way to go. Jaldi jaldi!

That ole identity thing

Sometimes this stuff can be slippery right? There I am just browsing the newspapers online and this article unexpectedly gave me a jolt - a part of me actually cares whether or not the All Blacks win the world cup rugby in France. This is less about rugby of course and more about the whole concept of where I feel home is. Looks like I'm split.

I can imagine barracking for the ABs, going nuts as they scrap near the tryline in the last five minutes of a final where they need a converted try to take the prize - they would deserve it; they play great rugby, still, even though we know they can be beaten like everyone else. There is still something special about the team and what it represents. That's not to say that Kiwis are enamoured with their number 1 national icon in the way they once were. Living the rugby of the 50s, 60s and 70s as it happened, fully aware of the aura and mystique the teams embodied in the amateur era, and watching the pros grind out results and star performances for 6 figure compensation are night and day in many ways. In an country once a byword for egalitarianism the concept has been hollowed out and replaced by deunionised free markets. Commercialism may attempt to conflate pride, passion and raw determination with digital broadcast revenues but it always rings hollow - perhaps particularly so when commentators like Murray Mexted get in on the act. We are left then with mere remnants of emotional ties to things like sports teams in such cultural environments. These attachments run deep though and if push comes to shove, and I can find a TV to watch, I will lap up the coming matches.

The tricky bit comes though if England manage an (unlikely) face off with the ABs. I still enjoy the novelty of glimpsing my two passports when I reach into the money belt securely stashed at home here but think little about what they represent, as emblems of belonging, tribal affiliation, right of entry and sanctuary, who I am. A NZ friend of mine recently joked that just because I hold a NZ passport doesn't mean I'm a kiwi - but of course it does. So who would I cheer for in a crunch match? It's finely balanced and I qualify my answer by saying that it pertains solely to the narrow context of international rugby; whoever plays the best rugby. Of course this is likely to be the ABs. Doesn't mean to say I'm about to throw away that slightly ragged, scuffed and well travelled maroon book.

dateline Mysore

I am on the verge of buying a really nice camera - in the meantime here are a few photos of just prior to leaving NZ - a domestic view of Wellington - and a flavour of the road here on a trip out to see nature...cows and fruit truck carnage.

Fag end of the mangos

I feel fortunate to have caught the very end of the mango season. Anyone who knows me may recollect that they are my favourite fruit, indeed along with Teriyaki Tuna steak they are my favourite food of all. If I had to live on just two things those would do fine.

There are lots of varieties to choose from - over 270 apparently - and there are even mango festivals to be witnessed. This is after all the native place of the mango. I wondered out loud if one might find the kind of festival where sloshing around in the pulp, perhaps clad only in a dhoti, would be the form. Of course someone immediately said that to do so in a country where millions barely survive might not be exactly ethical. Yawn.

Feels good to be back here in booming yet somehow relatively laid back Mysore. They are putting in an airport here as we speak and the place is moving on apace with all available land being built on at frantic speed. New restaurants and supermarkets have opened all over the place and the traffic is noticeably thicker even compared to 8 months ago. So is the pollution.

I chatted with P in Wellington about the concept of off setting one's carbon emissions and then the conversation meandered onto giving money to beggars in India. Although previously I have never done this anywhere, this time I am making an exception. We talked about what beggars might do with their money and concluded that it is up to them of course. They can either use it to get absolutely blotto - like the guy I stood next to for a while yesterday at a bus stop in town who was slumped, perhaps ominously, in the recovery position on the smooth cement of the shelter; he was just breathing, though not enough to disturb the flies that peppered his grubby red t shirt and filthy beige trousers which fell almost open around his hips. I had seen him before, in much the same state, though slumped in the middle of the road, last year. Another option for the revenue stream is of course to pay their 'protectors' of which I'm sure there are many here. Finally I thought of the old lady with 3 fingers who crouched almost invisible in a corner of a stair well leading to the dentist a friend of mine used last year. As you pass the fingers they emerge from the half light and if you glance up an impression of dusty blue cloth wrapped around a tired, old and hungry face can prick the conscience. Maybe she can buy Rs10 of carbon offset.

I am currently about 50% deaf. Mainly thanks to the effects of a very clogged up face. Wellington had a revolting cold going around and I seem to have been contaminated - damned cities. After two flights yesterday, from Napier then Auckland to Sydney, my Eustachian tubes simply cannot stand the heat.

Just to pile on the pressure my shoulder is still sore as from aikido - torn ligament in the AC joint - which means that all strong exertion of the shoulder is OUT for another month.

So, with a cold and a sore shoulder I am still very happy to be on my travels - I enjoyed Wellington even though it was cold and wet; there be life! - and waking up on a Sydney morning never seems to lose its charm. Catching up with R and T who have a very cute new baby, Lily, and today having lunch with Tara and a clairvoyant friend of hers - maybe I should try and find out if 'anyone' has advice for my trip to India.

FT.com loses the thread

Gideon -

I gotta say that after an entry like that YOU almost deserve to get nuked - or your editor does (only joking btw)!

Your little sketch is so simplistic it astounds me. I think the FT offices must be a little too comfortable and cosy. Your journalistic specs are misting up mate, perhaps your talents are better deployed on matters less gritty than nuclear 'terrorism'.

First of all no serious commentator thinks it likely that a fullscale nuclear device could be detonated by a group of Jihadis. As you well know the real risk is of a so called 'dirty bomb'. Now THAT is not so far outside the bounds of possibility is it?

"Niall Ferguson, a history professor at Harvard, recently wrote that nuclear terrorism in London was the one “high probability, high impact” threat that “fills me with dread”. He is of course talking about the dirty bomb scenario.

Time to rewrite your article already.

This next point might stick in the gullet a little - but I invite you to compare and contrast remarks and policy decisions of two well known political and religious extremists - Pres GWB and Pres Ahmadinejad. Having done so I defy you to be disingenuous enough to tell me there are not close similarities in general tone, levels of belligerence and intransigence as well as apparent gross stupidity between the two.

Ahmadinejad believes that the US is Satan incarnate. GWB believes in the Creation. Ahmadinejad wants to (if you believe the best known translations) wipe Israel off the map. GWB already has 'wiped' Iraq and Afghanistan off the map and may be about to put the boot in to Iran, no doubt with some kind of 'surgical' strike.

Tell me who you think is more 'unstable' or 'millenarian'. Close call isn't it.

You seem to imply that the issue of fissile material emanating from some corner of the former USSR is under control. I invite you to listen to recent World Service reportage on this very subject. That stuff is turning up in cow and pig sheds right across what used to be known as Soviet Central Asia, and some of it is definitely being trafficked - as per senior representatives of the IAEA who are trying to locate the dastardly little stashes.

As a final thought, North Korea, it is worth mentioning, has just done the Deal of the Century. They are still on the map because they have nuclear weapons already. They beat the US to the punch. They appear to have done a smart deal - they will be left alone if they stop building more. Bizarrely, Kim Jong-Il, as sane as they come according to Madeleine Albright, may be the sanest of the little trio we consider here. Scary isn't it.

Or maybe it just doesn't look that way from where you sit.

Kind regards

Jake

Wellington times

I have been doing a spot of volunteering here in Wellington - just basic stuff for the local foodbank run by the City Mission and also helping out with organisation at the Red Cross here for the First Aid courses they teach as fund raisers.

As the film festival began today I took in Rescue Dawn, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Christian Bale. This is easily the most commercial of Herzog's films that I have seen - the other being Wild Blue Yonder and Grizzly Man. Shot in super saturated retro flavoured high contrast jungle colour Rescue seems to tell the story of Dieter Dengler who, whilst flying his first combat mission as a US Navy pilot, a secret bombing mission over the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos, is shot down and subsequently captured by guerrilla fighters below (nowadays they might of course be called 'Terrists'). I say apparently because this really is not a film containing any deep message on the political level. Even the simple stuff like War is Hell is left aside. The story sticks close to Dieter through his multi month sweat drenched ordeal.

It's a kind of Deer Hunter lite. The two films share key elements; the way Dieter leads the rag tag pack of POWs to escape and supports the one comrade who ends up accompanying him into the jungle odyssey which awaits; Bale's realist and pragmatist hero with just enough wildness in his own heart to keep him on the right side of sanity (most of the time anyway).

So it seems a simple story, 'inspired by true events' from the life of Dieter D. Incidentally that particular trope seems to be too ripe to resist since Spielberg used it as an excuse to tell a pack of lies about the Israeli death squads in Munich. But anyway...so we spend a lot of time in the jungle with Dieter. And how beautiful it is to be there. This film does justice to the natural world of South East Asia and contrasts this beauty and its brooding massiveness with the flailing, desperate humans deep beneath the triple canopy. The density and impenetrability of the bush is almost like another character on screen, swiping, entangling and felling the actors in this story of a simple desire to survive.

Our hero is out of his depth but gains a fingernail of purchase on the rim of survival against huge odds and just hangs on. Bale, not always convincing previously although perhaps the scripts were to blame anorexia-like starvation notwithstanding, carries this role brilliantly. It is not a film of gravitas and neither is his acting; he and Herzog have struck the right balance. Dieter comes across as a robust and singly determined individual, but also human and full of compassion. He understands human frailty and Bale shows us this in the way Dieter comes across as a man who seems, to his benefit, to be not quite grown up. The little boy who wanted so desperately to be a pilot is getting the adventure he might just have been looking for but it's 20C hotter than he wanted, the machetes are viciously sharp and snakes and worms don't really taste that good it turns out.

Finally there is a happy ending and this doesn't spoil the film because it's not a thriller or even an action movie in many ways. The 'action' is intentionally muted. It is replaced instead by the small minute by minute dramas of the crash and initial evasion, escape and survival in the jungle and the desperate descent into madness of the other POWs.

This is a surprisingly kind film, set in a war zone. We hate neither the captors nor the captured and there is no sledgehammer of condemnation being wielded. That has been done before and will no doubt be done again. Herzog and Bale have trodden a very fine line in telling this story and end up guiding the film into unusual territory.

Bitchin

There is a huge lump on my shoulder. But that is what happens when you land on it doing a 'roll' in Aikido that is more of a self inflicted 'spear tackle' (as it is technically known in rugby speak here). Thankfully much Hypericum, Arnica and Rhus Tox are doing the trick and hopefully the lump will subside quickly. Because Aikido is fun. Possibly because it is a little bit dangerous.

In other news I have just eaten 4 gold kiwi fruit for breakfast and wondered again what hit the Pentagon on Sept 11st. Next up it's pancakes with vegemite.

Cultural boob

So, apart from nearly going to the wrong venue (if you happen to know Wellington you will know immediately what a dick I am for trying to go to the 25,000 seat Cake Tin/Westpac stadium rather than the 4000 seat TSB Arena) and then being unable to find a car park and nearly missing the whole thing my audience with HHDL all went according to plan. At least from my side of things.

While my preparations were all cool, level headed non-attachment and included waking up too late to consider walking into town, then nearly missing a meeting I had at 11am due to not being able to find a parking space (something that was to happen for a second time just a short time later the same day), not having a watch to know how much time I had and then realising that I hadn't enough change for the Pay and Display so necessitating a brief but enjoyable mid-city jog to and from the nearest ATM then in and out of the nearest 24/7, the DL had clearly found himself in disarray that morning following our meeting at the airport on Monday night.

He took his seat calmly enough, raised as it was on a stage and gilded in Tibetan reds and golds, but I could tell from the surfeit of nonchalance in the way he casually softened up the expectant audience with one anecdote after another about what, exactly, he likes to carry in his maroon shoulder bag that he was clearly rattled. However he soon got over his nerves and pulled it together to begin his discourse: World Peace - a Human Approach.

Basically the meat of it was this - World peace depends on cultivating compassion, while at the same time realising that sometimes action is preferable to just looking on with compassion. Where is this compassion to come from? Well, apparently (and here's the Human bit), the seed of compassion is best sown in the strong emotional ties that can be fostered between baby and mother. To illustrate this the Dalai Lama recounted an old family tale from the childhood of his father.

As a boy his father had been very close to his own mother. This woman, the grandmother of the Dalai Lama (pronounced dally laama round these parts), had cultivated an very strong bond with her children, thus ensuring a supportive and solid family structure and environment. Her children would not want for the attention of their mother. A deep spring of compassion and love would flow within the family, eventually manifesting among other things in the person of the 14th Dalai Lama himself. Just how strongly the bond between mother and child had been spun could be seen from the fact that the young boy would rush home after a hard day in the fields and demand to be taken to his mother's breast, there to suckle. Even though there was no milk to be had as it had been 10 years since this birth.

It was these last two concrete details which kind of took the sheen off the moment really. True to form the Lama chuckled good naturedly at his own joke, as is the wont of the Lamas I have thus far encountered. Unfortunately, this being New Zealand, not too many other members of the audience felt inclined to share in his sprightly mirth. I felt a wave of discomfort wash back and forward around me, like a wave in a bath tub filled with 4000 people where you kind of slap the surface and watch the ripples rebound off the sides, to and fro.

This passed after a few moments luckily.

I elected to leave before the final questions but these apparently included one asking for his views on euthanasia and another asking whether or not being in a committed (or presumably any) relationship is a barrier to becoming enlightened. The answer to this last one was apparently a diplomatic 'yes'.