I have been told the French were even more Jerman than the Germans. Naturally, my tender feelings have been injured and I have come to the conclusion that the only thing for me to do is to instantly pull up a couple of ferocious complaints. As luck would have it, this has to be the day when I am so content with life that I am beginning to suspect my wedded husband may have slipped something into my tea today morning.

But never you fear, Frenchmen. I cannot bring myself to babble about any of the current news items, so I write instead about an article in a not-so-fresh edition of OUTLOOK magazine: A fat lot of trouble. It's about the fat youth of India. I'm only mildly interested in the younger generations weight struggles, but the very first sentence strikes me as somewhat odd.

Burger-fattened youth should watch out.

What do you mean by that, Amba Batra Bakshi? Should the samosa-fattened youth not look out?

I cannot perceive the reason why Indians would stubbornly believe that the evil ingredient responsible for their ever-expanding waist size was the burger they shove into their mouth once a fortnight. It's not the aloo-stuffed paratha or puri for breakfast, the samosa for brunch or the Malai Kofta for lunch. Don't suspect the innocent sugar-chai with pakodas for tea and never ever fear detrimental consequences from your 11pm dinner. It's the AlooMcTikki you had three weeks ago that's to blame.

Quite so.

I peddled burgers once. It was my student's job and I loved it, because it filled the otherwise useless time-gap between school and party. Another burger-pimp's perk is the free grease you can load into your belly, which means that I had at least one burger per shift. Plus extras. It was the most unhealthy, splendid time ever, and yet my figure was only slightly less splendid and unexceptional as it is today. That's because I used to cycle back home. And my morrow started with a bowl of Bircher, not puri-subzi.

In India, oil can be purchased in tanks of 10 litres and I can't help but snicker with unbecoming naughtiness when some voluptuous woman pulls a heavy tank into her shopping cart already laden with such feists of ingenuity as Moong Dal, Aloo Burji and a can of rasgullah. Very Very oily oily tasty tasty. And yet it is the burgers and the pizza that have done in the Indian kid. Some sort of nasty post-colonial strike below at the belt.

Maybe people need to realize that the traditional food isn't made for the office-chair-fatiguing class of people. Unless you work out (in the field or the gym) you're not supposed to stuff your mouth with that fatty food all the time. But then... go blame it on the alien food since the indigenous stuff couldn't possibly be at fault. Or could it?
Though I cook Indian food almost daily, our oil usage does not exceed 2liters per six months. And yet it's tasty. At least, with the exception of a pretty blue little plant I purchased only two weeks ago, I haven't killed anyone yet. Not even with my food.

Hmmmm I am getting a very pleasant tingling sensation from nagging about totally useless topics important matters concerning all of humanity. No wait, actually, I'm hungry...

You can no longer hear it when I speak in English*, but it's true, still. I'm very, very German. And like most
all
most
all Germans, I have one hobby. Complaining. Why, Bismarck, the first Reichschancellor, knew that to be true! He called it Germany's National Sport. Complaining. And it outlasted everything. There is no pleasing for some people. And there is definitively no pleasing for Germans.

The only thing that stops Germany for being the perfect country with perfect weather is Germans. Complaining about not being allowed to enjoy tropical climate, a beach-front house being the ultimate German desire. That is because very few Germans have had to put up with the atrocious humidity of a beach-front house and the even more atrocious things it does to your furniture!

For me, I like the winter. But that's because I live in India. It is mandatory that I would have something to say about the heat, though - in my defense - I am the only German blogger in my small circle of German bloggers stationed in India who has not yet mentioned the "monkey heat", or Affenhitze, as we call it. That is because having spent two non-air/conned summers in Delhi, I really don't know what I should say about 33 degrees in Mumbai, which I find rather pleasant. It's cold at night, though. I have to use a blanket. Something should be done about it.

Ok. I don't know exactly where this blog entry might be going, but it's fun writing it. Because Hobby Number Two of all
most
all Germans is to find fault with themselves. That is, after they are done finding fault with others. That is why the "You are Germany"-campaign that was supposed to instill some pride for the Vaterland in Germans, was such a shocking disaster. Germans just did not seem to want to be Germany. They mocked the campaign. They hated it.
I couldn't tell why we are such fools, but I know that any amount of time in a country other than Germany will cure most of us from our disease. That is due to a phenomenon called long distance nationalism.

There is no home away from home. We soon find fault with other places as well. I think every German who spends some time in India (without making use of mindexpanding drugs) ends up complaining bitterly about the shocking state of repairs. I actually wrote a whole series about it! Why? Because, priding ourselves on our German accuracy and purrfect nature, we now find fault with the things that are not quite as neat as we imagine them to be back home. We call the handyman to drill a couple of holes into our wall, and not only does his drilling machine dismantle half-way through the process, spewing metal pieces, no! When we show him where else he is supposed to drill, he dryly points out that the little pin we've managed to plonk into the wall does a fantastic job, and until it falls off, he need not drill a pucca (proper) hole. Right? We wouldn't be wery Jerman if we did not blog about that!

But you don't know these things as long as you are in Germany, wanting to get out. You can only see the evils around you, and it would not occur to you that there could be The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in every country. That is why, each time I am back in Germany, the number one word I hear is Scheisse. People have not yet discovered that the grass on the other side, though greener, is just as inedible as on this side, so they pass their time complaining about everything, liberally seasoning their ramblings with Scheisse here and Scheisse there. I have lost track with the many recent changes in German Grammar and Spelling rules, but I am quite sure according to the new rules it is grammatically incorrect to make any German sentence without using the word Scheisse at least once.

Sadly, we are alone with our wery Jerman capacity for self-loathing and the cynical attitude that goes along with it. That is why, when we wander the world mocking everything and everyone, we keep meeting people who don't seem to be amused. We never fail to not understand this, of course. It's odd to us, when we are so in tune with all that is negative about us and our environment, to meet people who love themselves and their country and who play their national anthem before each movie. I suspect we might not meet in the middle - those who always find fault and those who never accept any. Life's a bitch. And I am very hungry, so I must go in search of food. That is never easy, because - being so wery Jerman - I only know what I don't want to eat. Naturally, I'll find fault with every food item in my kitchen. But that's just me. I'll have a cookie, probably.**

*Indians love to comment on the Indian accent I aquired. They mean it as a compliment. Not quite. Not for me. When I'm done with India, I'll have to have a stop-over in the land of bad weather and worse cuisine: Britain. To get rid of the accent and stop saying "no" at the end of each sentence. Which - shockingly - I do. No?
But then, my dear Indians, the only English that is more distressing than Indian English is English pronounced by Germans. It sounds so gauche!

**As I found out later, there were no cookies. So I had a cup of cold chocolate milk. Which was ... I am faltering here... quite good, actually.

Indians don't like the Slumdog, and they are still not done saying so even six weeks after its release.

Some Indians think that Slumdog shows India in a bad light. The BigB is one of them. He thought Slumdog Millionaire unjustly focused on the murky underbelly of India, thereby doing the country great mischief.

Others thought that Slumdog trivializes poverty, partly because it uses poverty to entertain and partly because it shows a young boy without resources making it big. Naturally, this is utter rubbish and should not be done. First of all, overflowing bosoms in Swarowsky-embellished Lehengas are much more entertaining, and secondly the Slumdog stays where he belongs. Else, who will drive my rickshaw tomorrow?

Still others believe that Slumdog is the same old Western Rubbish of how the White Man in his senility views India. Charming balderdash, no more.

And there are those Indians who think that Slumdog is so full of logical bloomers that it should never have been allowed to see the light of day darkness of movie halls.

Though the reasons for disliking Slumdog Millionaire may be varied, most agree on one thing: That India in its complexity surpasses the mental capabilities of The Westerner and that, therefore, he is unable to produce anything of value regarding India. It either shows too much poverty or too much kitsch or too much call-center or too much of all-of-the-above. It never shows true India.

Bollywood does. Bollywood not only shows true India, but it also does great work in showing the True West.

For one thing, British school children very often sing the Indian National Anthem at school, and they did so beautifully in K3G. I cannot help but think that if Boyle had chosen to depict his slumdogs sing the British National Anthem, a newly formed Jana Mana Gana Sene would have rearranged his facial features with gusto. But then, that's different. Indian kids don't sing other country's anthems. British kids do.

While Indian slumchildren rarely boast of British accents, hospital staff in Australia speaks Hindi quite fluently.

White Women never wear more than strips of red latex barely covering their pubic hair, as correctly shown in blockbusters such as Om Shanti Om. White Women also want to be old Big B's girlfriends and they stick to underwear while strutting around in his apartment. Also, most Australian White Women's vocabulary does not extent beyond "Sorry?", but at least they wear hot pants to make up for their lack of intelligence. Bollywoodmovies (and the Indian media in general) are doing their best to portray the White Woman as a generously lubricated hole on two shapely legs, always willing, never dressed, always sensual, never particularly smart with the notable exception of the pretty Blonde in Rang De Basanti.

Also, in "The West" male nurses are welcome to make advances to female patients in hospitals without ever earning a sexual harassment lawsuit. That is because the White Woman really enjoys being fondled by Abhishek Bachchan, who - like most nurses - lives in a beach-front apartment.

Drug dealers are invariably Jamaican-hat-wearing White dimwits, and some of them live in Delhi - very close to brothels which are staffed with lusty White Women, not Indians. Indian girls don't do that. They are at home learning the full Indian Thali.

I'm so glad we talked about it.

____________________
Please do not take this entry seriously. While it is upsetting that Western women are constantly used to satisfy certain needs, I really couldn't care less about how they are portrayed in Indian movies. I love movies, but I live in the real world. I'm cool with it. I just wanted to ridicule all those fanatic Slumdog-critics because I got bored with this whole topic.

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

Well said.

*Machchar = Hindi/Urdu, mosquito

Though TEHELKA does not appear to be able to handle subscriptions (I receive between three and zero magazines per week), they do write articles about remarkable topics, such as an anthology published through an initiative of Avahan (India AIDS foundation backed by Bill and Melinda Gates). This act of graciousness is called AIDS Sutra and contains sixteen essays to do with HIV/AIDS authored by reputed Indian writers.

Sadly, the book has not received much attention so far - much less anyway than the hugely popular Condom-Ringtone sponsored - again - by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Even so, I picked it up about a month ago and did not regret it. For the most part, AIDS Sutra is a horrifying collection of facts you'll wish to un-know. Apart from AIDS in India I learnt about a society so intrinsically layered that you cannot even reach some of the tucked-away folds, not without getting your fingers dirty with the slime of disintegration, disfigurment and disrespect.

The other day I sat in my beloved women's compartment and read one of the stories about an Andhra village which survives - if not entirely - at least to a large part on prostitution, with women charging Rs. 50 "per shot", sneering at those women across the river who are not descendents of a long line of esteemed devadasis, thus going by a rate of Rs. 30. I looked up from these disturbing pages and surveyed the faces of my fellow passengers. And I wondered: Which one? As I passed by another station platform with an enormous crowd I wondered: Which one?
(Once you read the essay about the largely invisible sex workers in Mumbai, you are likely to ponder the same question. How is it that such amazingly large parts of society go entirely unnoticed? If I wanted to, I could live out my entire life in India without ever paying attention.)

I remember a woman from Bangalore. She used to work Brigade Road, clad in dull Western clothes with scary make-up and a worn expression on her face. Sometimes I observed her talking to what could only have been clients. If my untrained eye could spot her, she must have been very visible to the police as well, which makes me wonder whether Bangalore Police adopts similarly punishing methods as Mumbai Police, described unwaveringly by Sonia Faleiro in what I perceived to be the most gruelling story, partly because it picked up where Maximum City (Chapter One, "Power") let off.

At times, reading AIDS Sutra made me feel like a voyeuristic pervert snorkeling the depravity of humanity, shopping miserable lives, feeding on unimaginable suffering. But it is rewarding still. Apart from my contribution to Avahan (proceeds of the book flow back into the pool) there is a sense of social awakening. Not so much in the sense that one has been a staunch believer in the flowers and the bees, suddenly realising that even a country like India is painted with a lot more shades of muddy brown than vibrant colours forever thrown into your face. But rather because these things are never talked about. You just don't get to know this stuff. And one ought to.
I felt that most stories (with the notable exception of Kiran Desai's slightly condescending tone) are written with empathy. They may shock, but they always, always sensitize.

I therefore hope that many more people may read AIDS Sutra, write about it in their blogs, write newspaper articles and reviews about it. If for nothing else, at least to put government programmes into perspective, like the 2004 programme whereby 100.000 HIV-positive persons are to receive free ART-treatment (antiretroviral therapy, a three-stage cocktail of medicines capable of prolonging an infected person's life by 15 to 20 years). Reading AIDS Sutra, I wondered where this programme works? Where it reaches? Because it as pretty plain where it does not.

So. Go read.

___________________________
Another notable organisation is InfoChange India whose quarterly publication Agenda is a collection of essays, interviews and case studies highlighting one topic per issue. Amongst these is HIV/AIDS. The entire magazine is available online (free of charge) and can also be ordered/purchased from Headquarters Delhi.
HIV/AIDS: Big Questions