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August 25, 2003
Raining applesManali's apple harvest season has been in full swing for the last week or two. Tents for apple packing are everywhere, as are porters carrying huge baskets of apples on their backs for sorting.
This year is a good one for Apples after the last couple of bad years when the crop dropped to record lows. At blossom time it was all looking promising, but there was a bit of a scare in April when a cold snap killed a lot of the delicate flowers. In spite of this, and thanks to a good monsoon with plenty of doses of sunshine, the trees are as full as I have ever seen them, some of the fuller ones have massive clumps of apples that seem about to snap the branches.
One friend I know who collected only 80 boxes last year expects to pick more than 300 boxes this year. But their is a sting in the tail of the bumper crop; prices. The large harvest has brought market forces into play, and one local grower who went to Delhi to see what prices were reports that they may be as low as 30-40 percent of last year, meaning that after expenses for trucks etc are paid, many growers will actually be left with less cash in their pockets than last year. Some are considering selling the excess locally, which wont incur trucking costs and may just get them more of a profit.
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August 20, 2003
BarbersOne of the great pleasures of life in India is not having to shave yourself, a job I find tedious in the extreme. Once again I broke one of the cardinal rules of getting a shave the other day by letting a kid too young to shave himself shave me. His boss, who is one of my favourite barbers in India was busy tying plaits into the hair of an Israeli girl, so I drew the short straw. While he didnŐt actually cut me, my face looked and felt as if someone had gone over it with sandpaper. A shave with the boss is entirely painless and leaves you feeling totally refreshed. The shave is usually finished off with a prolonged head and face massage.
There is an art to choosing a barber in India, and there are certain rules that hold true.
Not too young: If he doesnŐt shave himself, how can he shave you well? This is true about 95 percent of the time. There are exceptions, and one 14 year old in Rewalsar gave me one of the best shaves I've ever had. His father was a barber and he had been shaving customers since he was about 6.
Not too old: depends on the 'look' of the guy. look him in the eye and ask yourself; do you trust this guy with a sharp blade at your neck? Some of IndiaŐs best barbers can be the old guys, but some are a bit shaky and past their prime, and a barber with twitchy hands can be extremely unnerving.
Beards: A barber with an unkempt beard is unlikely to be a good idea. He obviously hates shaving and isnŐt going to give the job 100% A barber with an obsessively trimmed bear is an extremely good bet. (see vanity) There are exceptions, and one of the guys in Manali's Manu Market is world class, even though his beard never appears to benefit from his own expertise.
A vain streak: Barbers with a big streak of vanity is probably as good as they get. Anyone who spends as much time tweaking his own moustache in the mirror as he does working on you is probably going to take pride in his work. My favourite barber seems to look at himself in the mirror constantly and stops to adjust any hair out of place. Shaving takes longer, but you know its going to be good.
Kashmiri barbers: My only experience of Kashmiri barbers was in Srinagar, and after 3 or 4 goes at different places, I gave up after a lot of pain. 14 years of militancy have reduced tourist numbers to nothing, and many militant outfits 'encourage' men to grow beards according to Islamic tradition. Thus the barbers of Kashmir are well, well out of practice. In any case, the prices they ask are outrageous.
Location, location, location: donŐt be deceived by how flash the shop is. The best barbers invariably donŐt do flash, and the premises of the very best often just comprise a chair and a mirror in the street
Your optimal barber is aged somewhere between 30 an 55, sports a large and elegant moustache (in Rajastan they are incredulous when you tell them you want your moustache shaved) with which he keeps fiddling, and has a long queue at his shop or chair.
Never argue about price with a barber. If he asks too much; go elsewhere. Do you really want a guy who you've just bargained down to half to hold a blade to your neck?
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Monsoon daysThere always seems to be a day during monsoon in Himachal when you realise that the start of the long downhill to winter has begun. For most of the rainy season the weather remains relatively warm, however heavy the downpour gets. Warm enough to stay in a t shirt and light trousers even at night. But then, sometime in August comes a day when you feel just chilly enough to put on a jumper, and that usually means the hot weather will slowly disappear, giving way to the warm, dry days and cold nights of September.
After slashing down all morning, the weather lifted enough for a couple of hours of scorching sun in mid afternoon, and then the cloud descended to cover everything with a clammy mist. Then comes the rain; a hard insistent drizzle that somehow lets you know it wont be stopping anytime soon, and that you might as well give up on any plans that involved being outdoors.
And that, for foreigners and Indians alike in this hill state, is the beauty of the monsoon. The rains are a natural break in activity, a reason to sit and watch rather than doing. A lot of the local people take to long afternoon naps, while the tourists sit and play cards, or talk and smoke while watching the pounding rain from guest house verandahs and balconies. Sometimes a couple of days pass with scarcely a break in the downpour. The sound of the rain itself is hypnotic and soothing; a constant patter on leaves and tin roofs replacing the usual backdrop of the Manalsu river. The wide balconies of the local houses seem to have been designed specifically to provide a comfortable view of the clouds drifting by below you, the sheets of water on the Deodar of the ancient forest opposite us.
Soon the rains will be over and there will be crystal clear skies and the explosion of growth that culminates in the ripening of the Charas plants and the descent of vast numbers of Italians on the Kulu Valley to sample the 'cream' of this years crop. the moist air will give way to dry as the green slowly turns to brown, and the cold creeps in day by day until the snow comes in January.
Another year in the Kulu Valley.
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August 15, 2003
Bad month for US cultural ImperialismSales of soft drinks, especially those of Pepsi and Coca cola continue to plummett following the recent revelations that drinks produced by these firms contain large amounts of pesticides and other chemicals including DDT. In the initial furore, The Indian parliament itself directed that its canteen remove all fizzy pop produced by these manufacturers pending tests, and the Defence dept did much the same.
In Manali, a protest was organised by a local Youth Federation to demand a ban on the drinks, and such protests occurred all over the country. Initially, Coke and Pepsi seemed unfazed, thinking a denial - plus a little smearing of the lab that conducted the tests - would be enough to clear their names. But alas for them, it wasn't so simple.
In the last few months 2 similar studies have brought the issue of food safety in India into sharp focus; that bottled mineral water contained similar chemicals, and more disturbingly that a Coca Cola bottling plant in Kerala was producing a by-product of chemical sludge rich in heavy metals, and then palming it off to local farmers as a 'free' fertiliser - for which it is apparently useless. the local people in the area of the plant also complained that the bottling plant was hogging all the water available and polluting the water table.
Although Cokes dismissive attitude seemed to work in the Kerala case, it was woefully inadequate to counter the latest charges. The central Government have initiated a full series of tests on the quality of these drinks, and many state governments have commissioned their own studies.
Both Coke and Pepsi have attacked the CSE, who produced the study, as incapable of accurately testing their drinks - a charge that has failed to stick. In statements to the National press, the delhi based) CSE have said that the soft drink manufacturers are not the primary target, but more an illustration of the scale of the problem and the lack of coherent regulation of food and drink in India. the CSE for its part is relishing the fight, which is just the sort of thing for which it was set up in 1981. For many, it as seen as a new champion of the masses against the twin evils of inert Government and MNCs - short for Multi National Corporations.
India has always had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the MNCs that come here to do business since PV Narasimba Rao first began the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990s. The current ruling party, the BJP, were largely antagonistic toward foreign companies while in opposition, but far more pragmatic when in power. Within the party opinions are split with the more right wing Hindu fundamentalists still anti MNC, and the modernisers wary but realistic.
In Bangalore a few years ago, where the BJP formed the city government, a Kentucky fried chicken outlet was closed because health inspectors had found four flies in the kitchen. Most Indians, and visiting foreigners realise that a kitchen without flies is a near impossibliity in India, and so the joke ran that perhaps the health inspectors were concerned that they had not found ENOUGH flies. Everybody saw it for what it was; the BJP taking an opportunistic swing at a Multi National company.
The concern is not only with foreign companies gaining significant economic and political power in India, but also the cultural invasion of largely American so-called culture that comes with it - and it is this to which the hardliners of the BJP and RSS principally object. Coke, Pepsi and KFC are seen as corrupters of traditional Indian values by encouraging through their image and advertising lifestyles that are incompatible with traditional India.
This of course is exactly what these companies do the world over; using the notions of freedom and fun that are supposed to epitomise life in the US to sell fizzy sugary water to aspiring Americans of the world. While the Nouveau middle classes of India lap up this image through all pervasive advertising by cricket heros such as Sachin Tendulkar, the Swadeshi crowd see it as a threat to the stability of the family and a general lack of respect.
Still others object to MNCs because of the serious lack of scrutiny and regulation to which they are subjected. India's regulatory framework for such things is notoriously full of holes, and the endemic corruption makes it easy for MNCs with fat wallets to get officials to look the other way. The most serious and obvious example was the callous disregard Union Carbide had to safety at it Bhopal plant, leading to the loss of thousands of lives, and tens of thousands of serious injuries when the plant suffered a release of massive amounts of toxic gas in 1984. Justice for the people of Bhopal has been little and far too late, and the laxity is a good indicator to many of the low standards the Indian government expects of MNCs.
India had an Enron scandal of its own long before the company became a byword for malpractice elsewhere. The Dabhol power plant in Maharastra was supposed to be a model of future cooperation between MNCs and the Indian Government, but the whole thing turned sour as Enron tried to sell the plant to ease its financial troubles and reneged on many of the deals it had made. The losers, as always, were the local people for whom the plant had represented such hope. Many had invested in shops and businesses to service the plant, and were left with massive debts and no means of paying them.
At least at one level of culture, their is good reason to worry about MNCs taking over Indian business. Until the arrival of Pepsi and Coke, India had a thriving and diverse soft drinks sector of its own run by Indiginous companies producing a huge range of drinks including Cola. Once the MNCs hit the scene, they bought out everything they could get their hands on, and their sophisticated marketing campaigns did for the rest. It is still possible to buy mango flavoured Slice, but it is now owned by Pepsi, Just as the popular Limca is owned by Coca Cola. The entire Indian soft drink industry is now owned by these two firms, with the exception of the South west of the country, which has retained many of its small soft drink producers against all the odds.
Both companies were found guilty last year of allowing their distributors to paint adverts on the rocks lining the road to the Rohtang Pass from Manali. The principal objections came from geologists who see the rocks as important to research, but again a significant number of ordinary people were delighted as the hideous adverts were a major detriment to the beauty of the landscape. Although the companies concerned were fined by the High Court, the fines were by MNC standards derisory; a few thousand pounds at most.
All of the past misdemeanors of Coke and Pepsi plus those of other MNCs are coming back to haunt them with this latest case, and it is hard to see that all the furore will die down in a hurry, especially it has caught the imagination of an MNC weary public. The two purveyors of fizzy brown water and saccharin culture will have a long way to go to patch up their precious, damaged image, perhaps losing some of their arrogance and poorly veiled contempt for Indian consumers and Indian society along the way.
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Fighting the rubbishThe Himachal Pradesh government have finally taken drastic action against the piles of rubbish that are disfiguring the environment of this beautifull hill state. Although plastic bags were banned by the local authorities in Manali a few years ago, shops gradually began to use them again and the powers that be did little to enforce the rule. This BBC article reports that the Congress led state Government have now made it a criminal offence to possess, use or store plastic bags on pain of a seven year max jail term or 1 lakh (100,000) rupee fine.This makes the sentence for possessing a bag the same as posssessing or selling large quantities of the charas (hash) that grows wild here.
The sentence sounds Draconian, but anything short of this would probably have no effect at all. A couple of well executed test cases may stick in the public mind. While a lot of people here do the best they can to dispose of rubbish (often by burning), many - especially those from outside the state - have little regard for what makes the place such a tourist attraction, and walk scarcely a few paces from their front door to empty piles of garbage into the nearest river or piece of forest they can find. How rigourous they are with the enforcement remains to be seen, but hopefully it may go some way to getting rid of the bags that infest the forests and rivers.
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August 3, 2003
Fussy cow Our landlords cow, Lali, is, apparently, a fussy eater. She is usually given the families leftover food, but is very fussy and won't eat lemons or chillies. To the point of picking them out and nudging them to one side.
Yesterday the milk was really sour - more like fluid cheese than milk - and our landlord was a bit stumped for the reason. He found out this morning from his wife, who usually feeds and milks Lali. Cows around here are fed with leftover food, but also with "grass" which round here is the generic word for anything green that grows out of the ground and has been cut down to feed the cow; often it is actually grass, but other times its the stubble from crops, or simply weeds. She had fed the cow 4 times yesterday with the green leafy part of the potato plant, which is apparently OK in small doses, but not in the amount she ate yeaterday, hence the sour milk. You live and learn. Todays milk, and hence Chai, was back to its usual high standards.
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August 2, 2003
They're out to get you Someone else was obviously intrigued by the US military's interest in his site, and has come up with this excellent page; A visual essay on acronymic meaning.
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Barbarians at the gate A quick glance through the statistics for this website recently showed a number of hits from some unusual visitors; "state.gov" (US state department) and "nipr.mil" (some part of the US military). The first thought was that the US spooks were trawling the web and probing the darker corners of Neoncarrot for evidence of nefarious Al Qa'ida communications, or the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden (or I suppose the truth about JFK). Or perhaps, given the State departments (and UK governments) appalling record on reasearch in the deceitful "dodgy dossier" that justified the illegal invasion of Iraq, they were going to plagiarise some Neoncarrot material to place before the UN to pave the way for all out war on India. Or maybe the spices Mr Singh the Tandoori chicken vendor in Manu market uses contravene some International chemical weapons treaty and they wanted to send in the inspectors to fully document his cache.
A closer look at the stats revealed, however, that they were looking (unsurprisingly) at reference pages on India.
The US military were apparently interested in India in brief. The page hit was made a few days before General Richard "Blockhead" Myers, the Chairman of the US joint chiefs of Staff was due in India for a military liason visit, raising the intriguing possibility that the General had perhaps had this page as a briefing paper in advance of the visit, and was now fully conversant with the nature of the dowry system, the fact India is big and the variety of traffic on the roads. Being American and therefore unable to recall the names of Foreign leaders (unless they were on his hit list), he could also have learned the names of the PM and President. Or possibly they just needed to find out exactly where India was.
The US state department visited the Glossary of Indian terms page on more than one occasion. Maybe they have taken a cut on the dictionary budget to help pay in advance for the coming invasions of Syria or Iran, or perhaps Colin Powell needed clarification of whether Mr Vajpayee was being insulting when he said Namaste when they last met.
The appearance of such visitors on the site makes it extremely tempting to serve them up a custom page solely for their consumption, laced with a little of the disinformation they are so fond of dishing out themselves. Maybe a glossary listing a traditional Indian greeting such as Mata chaud or chaudo might liven up Jaswant Singh's next visit to the White House.
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Party's overAfter a rainy night, the funsters of the Manali police department decided enough was enough, and today trotted out past the village in large numbers to put a halt to the festivities at the "3 day party" after just one day.
The parties used to be held far enough away that even the cops would have a hard time finding them, but the new breed of rather lazy tourists seem to seek convenience rather than adventure, and so all parties are held a convenient walk from the nearest Schnitzel outlet, naturally making it easier for the boys in Khaki to spoil the fun. Doubtless it wont be many years before McDonalds will be seeking to open a franchise at the Bahang full moon party.
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Party time?A party in the middle of the monsoon season? Unwise; 4am and its pissing down.
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