And Another Thing II

If you think of the “environment” or let’s take a more specific example, the atmosphere, as a space in which we can store our pollution, the by-products of our consumption, then it’s easy to imagine it as a resource. Like a resource it's finite, keep putting things into the space and one day it will be full.

During this journey from the wealthiest countries in the world (UK, France, Switzerland), to the poorest (Nepal, India), I’ve become more convinced that the way we exploit our environment is just another facet of the global social injustice that has dogged the way this planet is governed since colonial times.

For over a century, richer countries have exploited the earth’s resources, providing a comfortable quality of life for their citizens at a disproportionate cost to the citizens of poorer countries. The exploitation of energy, oil, coal, mineral resources, timber, food crops, cotton, and more, has on the whole benefited the wealthy foreigners exploiting the commodity more than the country whose soil yields it.

So it is with the pollution-storing-environment resource. The beneficiaries who are fully exploiting this resource are the highly consumptive rich nations, who need a lot of rivers, sea, landfills and atmosphere to store the waste their high quality of life produces, and they are getting this globally shared resource for a knock down price. Free.

In the case of space to put the CO2 produced by energy consumption, the US and Europe has had more than 200 years of free rein, burning first their own forests to fuel the industrial revolution, then global coal and now oil reserves. And the situation continues to be exploited unevenly. The quality of each life in the US is using up that storage space over 3 times faster than the quality of each life in India.

And the impact of overusing this CO2 storage will be paid by developing countries. Climate change associated to manmade activities will impact the tropical countries most, where weather patterns are more susceptible to changes, and it will impact agricultural economies that rely on predictable climate to grow crops to feed themselves and earn foreign exchange with which they can give themselves a decent quality of life. Poor developing countries, not by accident, are almost always tropical and agricultural.

“Saving the Environment” is a confusing way of phrasing the problem. Firstly it distances people from the problem. A head teacher in India while congratulating me on this expedition told me “It’s great what you are doing. I love the environment, trees and all that, it would be a shame if we lost it all.” as though the environment is a nice-to-have bonus, something pretty to look at on the drive to work. Secondly it obfuscates the fact that it is humanity that will suffer not the trees. The jet stream will still blow (though no one knows for sure where), clouds will still form at the top of thermal columns of air, wildlife, animals and plants will quietly uncomplainingly adapt, migrate, evolve or die out.

And humans will have to adapt, migrate, evolve or die out too. The ones best suited to adapting and migrating will be the rich ones. The ones without the money or the liberty to move freely around the planet will face the choice between evolving, and where that’s not possible, dying out.

So once again a valuable resource is being disproportionately exploited by people in wealthy nations, leaving a disproportionately high cost for people in poor nations.

I’m becoming more convinced that the mechanism for “Saving the environment” is universally linked to creating global social justice in the world. The two things are mutually dependent. In order to responsibly manage the pollution-storage-space environment there has to be social justice, and managing the environment will prevent social injustice.

Equal education, equal access to healthcare and equal access to global resources. But seeing as we can’t even eradicate poverty in the world I really don’t think we have any chance. Thank god I’m not a poor Indian.

People criticise the environmental credentials of this journey, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. I’m bored of having the same discussions and clarifying confusions about “Biofuels: good or bad?” or “The Environmental Impact of Container Ships”. There’s a bigger point. Living in the UK and especially London, it’s impossible to escape wasteful consumption and being a “valuable member of society” (which actually means working somewhere in the industrialised cycle of turning resources into commodities and delivering them to consumers – and is presumably opposed to being a worthless member of society). By taking to the road and escaping that cycle by living in a truck, I believe, means I am contributing more towards creating a socially just world and therefore helping reduce the CO2 I’m responsible to an even greater degree than the act of running my bus on waste oils. A consumptive lifestyle, complicity with unfair resource exploitation is the root cause of a carbon intensive lifestyle and the fuel I put in my truck is only part of the picture.

In an interview this week I was asked what people can do to help the environment and I said, “I don’t know, they have to figure it out for themselves.” I’m not a role model with easy pithy consumable answers, and if I said they have to quit their jobs, let all their hire-purchase electronics be repossessed, move out of the city and plant tomatoes, most people would understandably think I’m even more of a naive idealist idiot than they already do.

Writing Conspiracy

I have been complicit in a conspiracy.

This week I attended the Ubud Writers and Readers conference. Ubud is Bali’s answer to Glastonbury and Brighton. More yoga centres and organic buddhas that you can shake an Ayurvedic bush at. The writers festival was largely attended by readers, typically Australian women of a certain age, and in many cases a certain size, anxious to rub shoulders with their favourite authors. The atmosphere of divorcees on holiday with their girlfriends, enjoying their new found HRT-stoked freedom to express and be creative, infected the halls with a joyous vigour. Even the glibness of sunglassed authorrs weren't enough to quell the spirit.

I for my part had volunteered to get a free pass, avoiding the $350 ticket price, in exchange for helping out by setting up projectors at some of the presentations. Luckily for me, none of the workshops I had been allocated to, (How to write erotic fiction, How to read erotic fiction, and How to buy erotic fiction) needed to be enhanced with the use of a PowerPoint presentation. So aside from the extra shifts I helped out with, I really had nothing to do but pick the seminars I wanted to attend.

Along with my free pass I was also clutching a secret agenda. The idea of writing a book about my adventure is taking hold and this I figured would be a good place to figure out how to write a book and schmooze with publishers and agents.

I can safely say that the knowledge i need to write the erotic sections of the book I now have safely covered, but as for the rest of it I’m still hugely confused. The process of getting an agent and submitting to a publisher is a little less vague, and the faces and names of potential contacts might be one degree of separation closer now, but I only realised what the big question I wanted answering was at the end of the final session.

Daniel DeCruz, an Australian author who has written a runaway best seller about teenagers screwing and taking drugs in some party town down under (I forget where), was asked if he’d made any money from his book.

“A little bit.” He answered meekly.

So my question surfaced just as the moderator thanked everyone and drew the conference to a close. For a moment the burning urge to halt the ending and shout my question to the stage came close to overwhelming me, but instead I joined the conspiracy of silence that I realised all the other aspiring authors were complicit in from the start.

My question would have been; “So how do you sit at a computer day after day, without earning a penny, for months on end, knowing that you have maybe a 5% chance of getting anything but rejections letters back from publishers, and that if your book does get published and miraculously becomes a runaway success you might make ‘a little bit’ for all your efforts?”

I shared this with Christina who is in the throes of writing her first book, and she too realised this was also the question she’d been wanting answered all along. After the festival, she posed it to her editor on a skype call. The answer of course was obvious.

“Don’t ask that question Christina, ever.”

The Essence of Yoga

You’re no one in Ubud if you don’t do Yoga. Sadly I’m a yoga-phobe, afflicted by the fear of Yoga after a traumatic experience the first time I tried it. I’m going to share this horrific moment with you on my blog for the first time ever, in the hope that it will help me overcome my fear.

The first time I went to Yoga was with a housemate Chiara from Kentish Town. She convinced me that it was amazing and that I would see the light, so I pulled on my tracksuit and trainers and off we went to the community centre around the corner.

The instructor was tall and thin, with a voice that seemed theatrically soft, and a 1000-yard stare that looked beyond me as he welcomed me into his class with hands clenched in prayer. I instantly recognised these characteristics as that of a heavy stoner, which reduced my anxiety about the impending effort of exercise I’d been dreading. Much later I would learn this was actually the gaze and stance of the enlightened.

And so we took our places on the mats and started lifting our hands, bending over, lying down and various combinations of these poses; Lying down with our hands up, bending over while lying down, and lifting our hands while bent over. I looked across at Chiara to share a smirk at our inability and gracelessness, only to see a look of total concentration had taken over her face and furrowed her brow.

Starved of an accomplice with whom to snigger I too turned my attention to breathing and bending. Plank to Cobra, Namaste Hands and Mountain Pose. But after a just few moments of these body folds and exhalations, a new preoccupation descended on me. With my buttocks raised in the air while bending, lying and lifting my hands I felt a fart wrestling its way through my bowls on its way to the surface. I clenched down firmly on my coccyx, imagining the shock and condemnation Chiara and the teacher would give me if I let one fly in the midst of this sacred workout.

For a few moments I soldiered on, holding back the gaseous floodgates. Wincing with all my might in Warrior Two, Downward Dog and Lunge, I held on, but my grip was loosening, and I knew it was just a matter of time. Finally as I went from Cat to Cow there was nothing I could do and out it came. Like a trumpet fanfare at a jousting contest, the pitch changing musically as I arched my back, the noise filled the room, drowning out the earnest sounds of nasal inhalations. My eyes shot left and right looking for an escape, perhaps there would be enough confusion over its origins if I played it cool.

“Good Andy” said the instructor soothingly, quelling any doubt the noises origins. “Your body is expelling negative energy.”

‘Huh? What?’ I thought, my blush fading as Chiara confirmed the acceptability of my fart with a sweet smile that would have been just as appropriate if I had offered her a bite of my chocolate ice cream. ‘It’s Ok to fart? Well thank God for that,’ I mused, ‘cos there’s more itching to come out’.

Over the next few moves I relaxed my sphincter into the poses and emitted the ripest of peaches into the shared atmosphere of the hall, contented and calmed by the satisfaction that I was really overcoming my western inhibitions in the pursuit of Yogic truth. To hold back, after all, was to hold on to negative energy, anti-zen, yang, or was it ying, whichever the black one was.

The first few screamers were met with sympathetic and knowing smiles by the other students, but as the smell started to take hold, and the flow of my bad chi showed no sign of abating, resignation and then irritation took hold of the facial expressions around me. Even the instructor’s calm voice started to crack with irritation as my negative essences reached the front of the room and overpowered the essential oil burner.

Chiara shot me a glare of disapproval, which I misread as concern, so I responded with a gaze of serene profundity, to reassure her that I was sincerely bubbling my way towards enlightenment.

By the time I had expelled all my negative life-force the hall had a hum of natural spirit to it which was making even me wince. The instructor, unable to open the security locks on the windows, decided to end the class early and was obliged to part refund the other students. I was relieved the bending and lying down had come to an end, because as well as draining my internal chakras, I’d also worked up quite a sweat and my muscles were ready to give up.

Chiara didn’t speak to me for the walk home and in the wake of her admonishment I’ve never been able to face Yoga again.

Launch

From the minute I put the glider bag on my back I’m tasting every one of its sensations. The coarseness of the shoulder straps, the weight pushing down on my back, the extra burn in my thighs on the steps up to launch. Under a heightened tone of quelled excitement everything slows enough to be savoured. I unfold the upside down wing onto the ground, reaching in to grab a wing-tip, feeling the crispy fabric in my fingers and the promise of flight my mind associates with its texture. Stepping backwards, the white underside reveals itself to me and the sky as it unconcertinas out, bold and proud, unashamed of the space it needs. I spread out the other side and wings full scale spikes my anticipation.

My hand slips around the end of the lines, where they are connected to the stitched woven risers that will clip into my harness. Their reassuring strength is rough against my bare fingers. One at a time I clear the lines, untangling them with gentle pulls, or quick jerks, a tinge of pleasure coming from my familiarity with the deft task of judging how to deal with each knot in turn.

To prepare the wing for launch I have to stretch it out fully above the ground, like a kite, and check the lines while it flies. I reach through the collection of coloured lines, grabbing the appropriate ones in each hand, sitting familiarly in between my fingers.

During the launch my right hand will pull the glider up into the air, and I’ll fight to hold my ground against its pull. This is the hand that joins the glider and wind’s conspiracy against me. They will tug me when the wind is strong and I will have to yank them when it’s weak. My left hand is the rein with which I tame the dragon spirit of the wing’s unruly behaviour. It steers, and slows the glider’s eagerness, and when I am caught out or off balance it will save me by killing the wing back to the ground.

The air on the back of my neck guides me to wait for the right cycle of the breeze, just a gust is all I need for now, a few seconds worth. As it comes I start the puppeteering and the openings at the front of the wing catch the breeze, rising, unevenly pulling open adjacent cells, accelerating skywards like leaping salmon vying with each other. The wing stretches out its folds as air snakes sideways in-between the double skin inflating it to form its aerofoil shape. As soon as it’s lifted just clear of the earth and fully unfolded I’m resisting its strong pull, already putting pressure into the reins to hold it and leaning back from it. I scan the fabric, brightness filling my retina, but I’m looking for the lines, each one even and spaced, ordered and un-knotted. The wing’s ready and wants to fly. I’m awed by the thought of this, and have to fight the excitement as much as the wind. I pull in with my rein fully to bring it back down to earth, conceding a step towards it’s pull as it nestles into a neat arc on the ground with the cells all evenly open ready to catch the wind when launching.

I push my hips forwards bringing the caribiner of my harness closer to the lines and clip in with a satisfying click. “You are now the pilot in command of this aircraft”, the distant echo of a voice from my first flight still sends shivers of pride through me as I do this. I loop my hands through the brake handles that I will use after the launch when I’m in flight, and those words feel even more genuine now after a year of flying. I attach the speed bar connections checking they are free, double check my buckles and look at the wing, still in its arc wrapped around me, the leading edge raised into the breeze, the open cells quivering with readiness.

I’m fighting the urge to go now. I’m seconds away from being in the air. The launch will take less than 5 seconds if timed and executed right, but I have to tame the eagerness and pick the right moment or it won’t lift cleanly and I’ll have to abort or risk a dangerous launch.
I nestle myself in the centre of the open wing, breathe, smelling the humidity in the air, and wait for the wind’s cycle to start. The breeze comes and goes and as I feel it rising again I seize the moment and pull to lift the wing, slowly at first, but quickly responding to my touch. With the reins I hold back the speed, stepping into the pull, reducing the pressure, balancing position, velocity, force. My eyes scour for clues of how the wing might chose to misbehave, but any visible signs are pre-empted by my harness’s grip on my shoulder straps telling me to sidestep under the shifting centre.

The glow of knowing its going according to expectation flashes behind my concentration.

The wing is open, off the ground, perfectly curved and rising. I add some pressure to the reins, fighting its urge over shoot. Only in the air can the wing adopt its natural state, smooth, un-creased, a curved shape that is only true to itself in the freedom of the sky. As its pull on my body becomes more vertical than horizontal I release both hands, and pull gently on the handles looped around my wrists, my thumb and fingers open so they can’t slip out. This is the moment when flying takes over from standing; even though I’m still on the ground my weight is now shifting from the ground to the air. I’m entering the sky.

The wing is overhead now. My eyes are looking up, but my concentration is listening the sensations of my body, arms and legs. I spin to face the cliff edge ducking the lines as I turn, stepping towards the ground’s end at the same time, playing with the force of the lines, my speed towards the edge, and the distance before the abyss. I’m sending my weight forwards, towards the drop, committed, pushing towards it, accelerating, sure that speed is now more important to me than the ground under my boots. In two steps my heaving paces have become a smooth fast run oblivious to the discomfort of the leg straps pulling me up into the harness. Against my legs’ push the final release from the ground take the last ounces of my weight from my the soles of my feet and I swing back weightlessly into the harness as the earth’s edge glides past below me and I’m in the air, flying.

The Road to Jakarta

I’ve had a religious moment. In fact I’ve decided that the whole journey from KL to Jakarta has been a religious moment.

Right from the start it seemed unclear if travelling overland and sea from KL to Jakarta was even possible. From the start the only certainty was the flying “You should take the plane.” the ticket girl told me as I bought a one way ferry ticket to Batam “For less than 50 euro” pressing her point.

“I don’t like to fly” I tried to explain, hearing the voice of the A-Team’s BA Baracus finishing the sentence in my head “...you fool!” His meaty finger pointing at me, reminding me of what an idiot I must seem.

Why would any sane person not like to fly? The single serving sterile meals, the unique feel of the seat reclining button, the reassuring softness of the hostess call tone, the sexual allure of the cabin crew uniforms, and the glossy aspirations of the in flight magazine. Like a retarded Luddite the flyphobes must be afraid of technology. Afraid of crashing? That’s such an 80’s fear. In the age of budget airlines, where as Air Asia’s tag line puts it, “Now everyone can fly”, no one is afraid to fly anymore, and if they are, they get over it. My fear is that everyone will.

Batam is a small island 45minutes from Singapore by high speed ferry. It’s part of Indonesia, and as I clear immigration, I ask if there is a ferry to Sumatra. There is, it leaves at 7am. It’s already 9pm. I see a taxi, a cheap hotel, a food court, fend off a prostitute that follows me up to the door of my room, sleep, then I see another taxi and another high speed ferry.

In that short time I already know that I like Indonesians. They laugh hysterically at me because of my towering height. The laughter is so infectious that I can’t get upset or defensive. And I am twice the height of most of the people I meet. It is funny. I joke back about how short they are, and the laughter triples.

The ferry takes four hours, I’m told. Eight hours later it lands in Sumatra. “Is this Canburu?” I ask. The town I’m looking for is actually called Pekan Boru, but I still haven’t seen it written and my phonetic mimicking is accurate enough to be understood. It’s a bus ride away. The bus is full. My pack is loaded onto the roof, and I stand in the open doorway feeling the cool air and sporting a congratulatory smile on how gritty I must look. After 20minutes bouncing over potholes, avoiding the vomiting passenger to my right, the whipping long grass to my left and the chain smoking drivers-mate who darts urgently through the non-existent gaps between bodies collecting baggage money, I try to ask how long the journey to Canburu will take. It’s a question that requires some miming, pointing at my watch, up and down the road, but with both hands tightly wrapped in a death grip around parts of the bus framework that I think can hold my weight during the violent veering it takes another 10 minutes before I’m understood.

The answer comes much faster than the question. “Three”.

We arrive at 3? No, that was when we left. Three more minutes? I muse optimistically. But it sinks in that the missing word is “hours” and sure enough four hours later I un-curl my fingers from the rusted door frame and relearn the use of my legs as the bus pulls up in Pekan Boru.

“Where are you going?” asks the drivers-mate.
“Jakarta” I reply.
“Taxi, airport, fly” he instructs.
“No I don’t like to fly” I’m a fool.

There is a bus to Jakarta I learn. How long does it take? Two. Two? That’s not so bad. I just did Three and survived, what’s another Two? But the ticket costs more than the flight from Singapore. I shop around and find a cheaper ticket and in the process decipher that the Two in this case is days. I sink.

There’s a lot of moving and fuss to get me into a seat. People are dislodged from seats with more leg room by the ticket agent. Interfering seatbacks are rightended, there’s is much laughing at my height and inability to fit in the first few seats I try. But eventually I wedge myself into the window seat next to Irfan who offers me a clove cigarette as he lights one up for himself. A small celebration goes around the bus that I’ve been able to fit.

After asking my name Irfan second question is about my religion. I ponder my predicament and as if to explain why I’m 20 minutes in to a 48 hour bus ride which could have been over in 75 minutes 2 days ago, for less money, I tell him “I’m a Rationalist, and quite extreme.” My arms are waving frenetically trying not to drown in the irony.
“Like Christian?” he asks confused.
“No Rationalist. It’s very different” I declare sternly. He accepts it and later when he asks why I didn't fly from Pekan Boru to Jakarta I tell him that it’s against my religion. Another passenger asks for my favourite number so he can buy a lottery ticket. He asks me if I want to buy one. “No thanks, my religion prevents me” I declare proudly. I then try to explain that only gambling where the odds are against you is forbidden, but the language barrier is too much and I admit defeat leaving the impression of Rationalism must be a pious joyless religion.

By now Irfan has adjourned everyone on the bus about me. At a rest-stop, while the waiter lays out 10 dishes in front of me to choose from in the pay-as-you-eat and I finally understand the pay-as-you-eat system, I hear Irfan at the table behind me saying “Inglis” and “London”, and turn to find him and eight other men staring at me nodding. I make out other words “Switz” about my Taiwanese Rolex and “nokia” about my phone accompanied by more nodding, before one cracks a quick quip and laughter erupts as they point at my long legs coiled up by the low seat. I’m all elbows and knees, and I can’t help laughing too.

Irfan has also told everyone I’m running out of rupees, a feat made easier by being charmingly stiffed every time I have to pay for something. The other passengers buy me tea and water bottles, pass me biscuits and dried fish. The only way I feel I can return their generosity is by accepting and ingesting all gifts. By the time I wake to dawn for the second time on the bus my feet are swollen like my grandmothers, and my arse is numb, but religiously clenched.

Perched on stools in the aisle, a woman is sleeping against my legs, while her husband’s head rests on my shoulder, his long hair tickling my neck, as their baby’s legs rest motionless on my lap. My seat back has broken so we are all four reclined into the lap of the mother and child in the seat behind me.

I wrestle my way to the front of the bus to sit with the driver and drivers-mate hoping this first change in posture for 10 hours might stem the Deep Vein Thrombosis and atrophy which must by now surely be inevitable. They take turns to touch my legs and discuss how they are more solid than expected. More jokes are thrown forward from the first four rows. In return, they offer me donuts for breakfast. I relish the stomach blocking carbohydrates as payment for the entertainment my freakish body provides.

The driver and mate light up simultaneously, their nicotine craving synched like menstrual cycles. The mate assiduously watches the road for mopeds and trucks, as well as potential passengers to cram on to the full bus, calling out “Java Java Java” to the most disinterested bystanders before waving the driver on or urgently calling a stop. The driver in the meantime is developing an unhealthy obsession with my legs. Between them and the comedy video playing above his head the road ahead is becoming an irritating distraction.

I use my distracting legs to clamber over the aisle passengers back to seat 18 and recline into the bosom of the mother behind me to discover she is breast feeding. She smiles down at me.

At the next road stop an old man and I have a amiable conversation, me in English, him in Indonesian, which concludes abruptly when I say that I’d prefer to walk off my swollen feet than have a massage, and only as we both nod thoughtfully at this am I filled with the suspicion that we’ve almost certainly been talking on two totally divergent topics.

Later with Irfan’s translating help, another man tells me that the Police at a previous stop had asked him if I was from Pakistan, but he’d told them I was from England and a religion other than Muslim. Perhaps the beard or the cricketers build raised suspicion? I suddenly appreciated the value of surrendering my privacy to this group of travellers, while a twinge of suspicion descended over the easiness of Indonesia.

The bus rolls on to the ferry for Java eight hours ahead of schedule, and for the first time in days the pathetic air conditioning vent above my head is replaced with the feel of a real breeze on my skin, Sun fills the horizon and my eyes. I’m sleepless but feel reborn as I stare at blue sea. For a few seconds I seriously entertain jumping into the water from the 3rd storey of the ferry. I’m already such a physical freak, that eccentric behaviour would surprise no one.

It was almost a teary goodbye at Jakarta, with most of the passengers staying on for the following 36 hours to the east of Java. I waved to everyone and again laughter erupted as I clouted my head on the DVD player above the door.

But I stepped off the bus with more than just a bruise on my head. I stepped off, not quite with God in my heart, but a sense of purpose and cohesion which I’ve been struggling to find for a while. The God in my religion would be Truth, a concept just as confused and indefinable as it is in any other religion. On my road to Damascus, via Jakarta, I’ve realised that I’ve been developing practices of worship, rules and creeds during the last 12 months on the road, and even longer before that. By thinking of my Rationalist, Reductionist ideology as a religion, I can justify my strange extremist behaviour; Eco busses, anti-consumerism, social justice, fear of flying. It’s all becomes unified under the banner of a religion. It’s what I believe, my faith. Best of all, if I err from my ideology, then I’m an inexcusable hypocrite, whereas erring from my religion makes me a sinner, forgivable and human.

India, it's a dump

One of the questions I always get asked in interviews by journalists trying to ferret out some drama to my journey is “What was the worst part of the trip?” I have vowed that from now on I will always answer that question with these 4 words. “India, it’s a dump.” And here’s why:

A university professor I shared a platform with at a talk I gave is worried about the next generation of Indians, and told me that any bright Indian student wouldn’t for a minute dream of becoming a teacher. There is no sense in which it’s a valued profession, one your overbearing Indian mother could be proud of, and it’s badly paid. There’s no appreciation that serving India’s future generation is noble and worthy, he said. Being a doctor is respected, not because of the altruism of the profession, helping to heal the sick, but because it’s a good earner.

I’ve met very few Indians interested in community, or making their country better. For instance among the 300 young volunteers that come daily to help at the orphanages and projects of Calcutta, there is rarely a single Indian youth.

So as the clever Indian 20-somethings seek out their MBA programmes and the lucrative corporate jobs in the booming economy that follows graduation, there is no chance their skills will liven the next generation of kids from poorer classes.

Of all the developing countries I’ve been to, the divide between rich and poor here is the most obscene I’ve ever seen - reminiscent of feudal Europe of the middle ages. It isn’t just that large wealth is in the hands of a tiny number of super rich, it’s that there is a whole strata of wealthy middle class, that live unfazed and accepting of the squalor of poverty around them, which I find so troubling. They use the flimsiest excuses to justify their disengagement, waving their responsibility to help because these people are “drug addicts” or “prostitutes”, and that “Begging is the easiest job in the world” and “shouldn’t be encouraged”.

Having tried cleaning windscreens at traffic lights during college, which is only one step up from begging, I can tell you it’s not an easy job, and it should be discouraged by helping people out of poverty so they have alternatives to prostitution and drugs to medicate the nihilism.

Despite the far left spectrum of Indian politics, (Communist, Maoist, Marxist, even a healthy quorum of Leninists!), the door that government provides as a mechanism for creating a fairer society is firmly shut here. When I’ve asked about politicians motivated by ideals, the reaction is laughter. Either the voters are fools for believing the politicians are truly altruistic, or the politicians are fools for thinking they can make a difference. The system is so weighted toward corruption that any good intentions are undermined as you climb the political ladder. Consequently power and moral authority are mutually exclusive.

So who could blame anyone for not wanting to be a low paid school teacher, or joining the Stagno-cratic Civil Service, the IAS (Indian Administration Service), working in the strangled atmosphere where initiation and change is cause for constructive dismissal. Forget about the dismal pay, even a motivated ideologue would have their initiative put down at every opportunity, and soon realise they are serving as the active arm of the politicians self interest and greed, often visibly in conflict with the needs of the population.

But where has the change-activism and idealism of Ghandi’s era gone? I’ve looked for it here and apart from a few very unique individuals, the only sign I found were amongst the activists fighting for Bhopal justice, a cause so scandalously unfair even Indians can’t stand by and watch it evaporate. But things here are so screwed up I’d expect to see young idealistic university students marching against corruption? Where are the political agitators calling for a week-long baksheesh strike? The only idealism of the next generation is BMWism.

Perhaps it would help if the media were more worried about the corruption in the affairs-of-state than in the IPL Cricket League? Where are the journalistic exposés of corrupt governance? They wouldn’t be hard to dig up. Sadly the media is co-opted into the corruption, according to a retired media sales executive I met, who told me how news media is funded not by sales, but almost exclusively by advertisers with an agenda they expect to see reflected in the news' content. Editorial lines are constrained by the business motives of the News Barron owners.

I could tell you about the astounding intellect of engineering under-graduates, and the fox-like savvy of street kids, but to romanticise Indian’s ingenuity is no more helpful that eulogising over “beautiful colours”, vibrancy, and spicy food in the tourist brochures. It doesn’t compensate for the national lack of compassion. Perhaps it's is caused by the host of tragic tales in India that seem to touch everybody’s lives. Whether it's the tailor in Pushkar who lost his job and his home over a clerical error and never got it back, my lawyer who spent 3 years bed ridden with an illness, or my paraglider guru who was locked up for 2 years by the Air Force he served in, to "cool his heels". It’s a country that dishes out cruelty with casual indifference. The result is a population that is tolerant, but psychologically vaccinated against compassion, and ready to dish out more indifference to the next generation. So in an environment immune from sympathy the only sensible option left is to isolate yourself from the hardship and the ugliness of poverty by personal wealth acquisition. A good survival-of-the-fittest strategy which, after all, is what the developed nations have been doing to poor countries since the start of globalisation in the colonial era.

But it’s an ugly strategy, which deserves to be criticised. India has made me squirm on all levels; The piss-stinking streets that assails my nostrils, as much as the blinkered world-view of the allegedly educated Mercedes-Benz yuppies. While national pride is worn so ardently on the uniform of police officers, they conduct traffic yards from naked street kids playing in sewerage. Like the Emperor’s New Clothes, no one dares to say that this country has much more to be ashamed of than it has to be proud of. During 15 years of travelling, to over 50 countries, I’ve never been to a country that has so reviled me that I hope I will never to see it again.

But still I believe in India. It’s ripe for reform. Out of the Greed is Good, Reagan and Thatcher era, the new social enterprise political ideals of Clinton and Blair were born. India is on the cusp of finding its own “third way”. One that will create a fairer future by building better and compulsory education for all, and a wider culture of social mobility that will eventually kill, or at least reduce, the wealth divide.

In both India and the West, business pass money politicians. But there’s a big difference between aligning yourself with a political leader you believe in, compared with buying them off with cash and hookers. What if Indian businesses, lead by Indians with experience of working in the West, start to support change leaders? With open and transparent campaign contributions? In the CEO of a construction firm sponsoring me, and other senior managers I’ve met who have returned from time working in the West, I see an irritation with the system. At their fingertips they have the resources, imagination and maybe the inclination to stage a coup.

What if a young new leader found a voice with their clean funding on a platform or education and reform. Imagine that candidate coming to office. They’d have the energising authority to reform every corner of Indian politics and welfare. It would kick start a rebuilding of faith in the system. Their first action might be to implement ISO9000 in every IAS office followed by a 300% pay rise for every civil servant, easily paid for by sacking 75% of them. Surely being asleep on the job, reading the paper, or taking 4 hour lunch breaks are sackable offences, even in the IAS, so it shouldn’t be too hard finding grounds to reduce the staff to a quarter. If necessary pension them off to avoid a riot. But this breed of politicians could make the IAS, and above all the education system, accountable and attractive alternatives to business for smart young minds. Good pay, good career trajectories, and autonomy for those with talent and clean hands. The frou frou dinner parties of Indian homes would resonate with “Your son is teacher Mrs Singh?! Well we must introduce him to our daughter, she works for the government you know!”

I’ve made many friends here, people that have given me their love and support through possibly the toughest time of my life, and it’s hard to think how they will interpret the contradiction that I’ve found Indians uncompassionate after they have taken me into their hearts, offered me companionship to warm my soul, beds to sleep in and food to burp. To them I say thank you for your friendship, I value it deeply and though I may not show it, I'll keep you close to my heart, always. Please don’t be offended that I don’t like your country, instead come and visit me in England. Now that’s a dump...

An Unquestionably Good Soap Opera

She asks me for a ride on the bicycle, but she’s too short to reach the pedals, so I put her on the handle bars and as I’m circling the car park I can feel the fleas in her hair and dress biting my arms. She’s one of the street sleepers that live under the flyover bridge across from where I’m parked with a dozen other families.

I don’t know her name, but Reema is a beautiful name so lets pretend it's Reema. Reema’s family is probably from the countryside, if they were from the city her family would have a small home in one of the waterless tenement blocks of the city. Instead she sleeps on a blanket laid over the uneven paving stones, next to the gutter, and by a few bushels which are home to a few rats. Maybe she’s eight years old.

I tell her I’m going to give her some soap for her dress to wash out the grime and make the frilly lace collar less of a perfect habitat for lice. But, I warn sternly, I expect to see it clean. She nods dutifully. I pick up a bar of clothes soap and keep it in my pocket until I see her again. She is excited and rushes off. A while later I see her as I’m cycling past, and she runs into the road in her underpants and vest shouting and pointing that her dress is drying. I feel flush. I have done some good. Unquestionable, unchallengeable good. It’s the best kind of good. No downside. Perfect. And consequently I am a good person. Today I have done enough to earn a daily membership to the human race.

And the next day she knocks at the door with the dress on, clean, as clean as the grime stained fabric could ever be gotten, and a proud smile that would melt any heart.

I hatch a plan. Emami, the company that gave me biodiesel also make soaps. It’s the same reaction produces biodiesel as well as soap. A few bars from their factory them would be nothing to them, maybe even some end-of-line stuff? Factory seconds? I remember the boss of the Emami group gave me his card, its nestled in my wallet. And what if I could get him to set up a scheme whereby employees dish it out on a regular basis. The plan can’t fail. I compose the email. Pomp, urgency, flattery. He can’t say no. Send.

The plan fails. He doesn’t say no, or yes. He just doesn’t reply, despite calls and more emails. He’s out of town, and I’ll be gone before he’s back.

Calcutta has hand pumps on almost every street, so water isn’t a problem but for the large community of street sleepers the expense of soap is a luxury they could use some help with. This is too good an idea to fall now.

I hatch plan B. I speak to a friend who runs a high end retail store. But it turns out they don’t sell soaps bars. Plan B is looking shaky. I wish Plan A had worked. My friend is polite about my scheme but he finds a kind way to advise me that a lot of these street sleepers are into prostitution, child prostitution, drugs, and some are “gaylords”. If I give them soap, they’ll just sell it and buy drugs. I really wish Plan A had worked. It’s not the first time I’ve been patronised this week, but this time it matters so I swallow it, smile and reply full of understanding and respectful nods.
“The people that sleep near the bus are families, not mafia, there are no charras pipes burning at night like there are on Sudder Street.” I counter. “And I can’t imagine them getting much drugs for the four rupees [eight US cents] that a bar of soap sells for. So even if they are gaylords and drug addicts, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if they were washed gaylords and drug addicts, less likely to contract and spread Weils diseases from the rat piss?” I could have said urine, but I throw in the final swear in the hope it gives me a gritty street authority.
“Oh the rats here are very clean”, he assures me, but out of politeness agrees to help me out at the weekend. In the meantime Reema keeps asking me for more soap. I’m beginning to suspect that she has me pegged as a soft touch, and that irritates me. “You promised me soap!” she demands. “I’m working on it” but she doesn’t understand the delay.

I could get the soap from the local grocery store, and dish it out, but that would be the beginning and end of it. I’d like to co-opt this friend and get him to see these are vulnerable people for whom a bar of soap is an essential luxury they’d otherwise forgo. My hope is I can persuade him that this is something that should be done on a fortnightly basis. If I could persuade him, he’s the sort of guy that would persuade others.

But in the meantime I buy 20 bars of body soap, and 20 bars of clothes soap. As I walk over to the traffic island the rumour spreads that the tall white guy has finally got some soap. I’m mobbed by pleading hands, sorrowful frowns and whining voices. I just see a mess of little fingers, old fingers, female fingers. The same kids that were dancing and giggling to the solar disco are now acting out the pain of their existence, needing only whatever it is in my bag to heal them. The insincerity of adopting this Dickensian role irks me even more, but it's so ingrained that they can’t it even though we know each other.

Reema is the first pair of hands I sink a couple of bars into. After I give out a few more bars her hands are out again. “No I haven’t had any” she insists. I’m angry she takes me for such a fool, and frustrated by how hard it is to physically distribute and spread around the soap so no one is left out. I give up, and try again at night, but the mobbing is just as bad. I end the night locked in the bus with about 10 of the original 40 bars left and a mute lady making a grunting noise at the door. Despite stripping off and taking a good shower somehow the fleas make it in to my bed.

In Mauritania, a Spanish couple I was travelling with, Maria and Juan, pulled a football from the boot of their car, in a quiet desert village with 3 kids milling about in the central sandy open area. It took about 60 seconds after that first kick for the pitch to fill with over 30 kids, appearing from all directions. And less than a minute more before the pretence of a game totally vanished and the wrestling match to get ownership of the ball had begun in earnest. To their credit Juan and Maria managed to wade in and stop the match after only two or three minutes of all out rioting child carnage. Considering the violence of the scuffle it’s a testament to the hardiness of Mauritanian kids that so few of them were bleeding. Maria and Juan opened up the boot of the car once again and started dispensing plasters and bandages along with a healthy dose of admonishment. Unfortunately the clamour for medicines caused a second even more violent riot which involved a fair few adults too.

Eventually, three hours later and after quelling several more riots, they presented the remains of the punctured football to the smallest kid with the most injuries, who promptly steeled himself for the final riot that would centre on him as soon as we'd driven out of the village.

After a moment to reflect, my anger turns on myself. Why am I surprised that I was mobbed? How can I begrudge them the soap I’ve bought them because they didn’t form an orderly line, with pleases and thank-yous. They didn’t fulfil my fantasy of grateful urchins allowing me to relish my moment of unchallengeable goodness. How arrogant. If I’d been in their bare feet (they don’t have shoes) I’d be snatching the soap bars out of the bag. I allowed my friend’s paranoia that the bars will be sold instead of used, to grip me. How stupid.

But my ego aside, the problem remains; how can I do it so that I spread what I have around, so that the most vulnerable get them and no one gets hurt in the scramble. I toy with buying ink to stain fingernails of recipients, setting up a table, somewhere in the bus is a clipborad, and laugh at the over complication. Better to spend the ink money on more soap and give it to the wrong people.

And that’s it, the best solution I can come up with; buy too much and give it out scattergun knowing that at least some will hit the mark even if some might miss. We’re only talking about cheap soap here. And anyway how can it miss? If it washes someone’s body after they’ve slept on the street then its hit. It’s arguably good, not quite unquestionably good, but still not bad. Perhaps they’ll give me half a day’s membership of humanity for that?

And at least I’ve had a practice run ready to take my friend out tomorrow, but I know Plan B is headed the way of Plan A. I read a great quote “In India, sometimes you have to surrender to before you can win”, but I’d add that sometimes, you just have to surrender.