India III: Land of the Free

MITHRIDATES

I'm sitting in the living room of my Gujarati host, thoroughly enjoying the kind hospitality he's offered to a complete stranger.

Host: Would you like some more Chai?
M: Oh, no thanks. It was great, but I've had plenty. Thank you.
H: But really, it's no problem at all . . .

And it wasn't. One quick nod in the direction of his wife and a couple of words in Gujarati (or was it Hindi?) was all it took. My host's mom went back in the kitchen and brewed up another pot of — truly delicious, no exaggeration here — Masala Chai. (I'm not much of a caffeinator, but I think I'm addicted to Mom's Masala Chai. Have to figure out how to get the right ingredients and make the stuff back home).

It seems like a great, traditional family life. Host works seven days a week while Wife and Mom stay at home every day and cook every meal, scrub every pot, and clean every room. I got to experience that home life for just a couple of days and it was delightful. Wife and Mom got up early every morning and made us Chai and breakfast; then they went shopping for fresh ingredients for the delicious dinner they cooked at night. Mom would be personally offended if you only had three servings, and so I ate until near-bursting. Host, as you might imagine, appeared to be struggling a bit with the "diet" he claimed to be on. I'd come home from sightseeing and watch some cricket with Host's dad, who seemed to live a life of complete leisure at this point and liked practicing English with his guest.

Host was married (by arrangement, of course) at 21; he's had the same career for ~25 years. As far as I can tell both parties seem happy with the, er, "arrangement" and I make no judgment on the process. Hell, it might have saved me a lot of trouble over the past 15 years if my parents had given me a bride at 21 instead of a sweater and a fancy dinner. And this was definitely par for the course in these parts. I talked to as many locals as I could on train rides and such, and by my accounts every one of them had their marriage arranged. And, like Host, they had all been working seven days a week in the same profession their whole adult lives. I had one memorable discussion with a pyschiatrist and a civil engineer in a sleeper class (no AC) cabin on a train from Bera to Abu Road.

Psychiatrist: So you're traveling on your own? Isn't it lonely?
M: Yeah, traveling alone. And it's not lonely. You meet people on the trains and in hostels. It's lots of fun. You meet more people this way.
P: In India we always travel with our families. Today I'm just coming back from a public hospital where I work once a week for extra money. We don't have time to travel alone. In India, if you leave your job to go travel it won't be there for you when you get back. We dream of traveling to other countries, but we can't afford it.
Engineer: In India we don't have personal freedom like in America. We have our job and we work every day. We don't travel around by ourselves. We live for our children and for our parents. We don't have choices in whom we marry, but we like it this way. Americans live for themselves, not their families.

Perhaps slightly exaggerating the state of affairs in America . . .

P: I had an arranged marriage at 22. Are you married?
M: No I'm still single.
P: How old are you?
M: 36.

I wish I had photographed the look of shock on my companions' faces.

E: Why aren't you married?!
P: He doesn't need to marry. He gets all the benefits of marriage without the costs. [laughter]

Well, not all the benefits. I have to figure out how to make my own Masala Chai.

P: How many girlfriends have you had? [girlish giggle]
M: Uh . . . more than one . . .
P: Ha. Political answer. In India, we like our lives, but we dream of promiscuity — of having lots of girlfriends.

Yeah, me too. I haven't had a date* worth the time in months . . .

P: Will you get married?
M: Yeah, sure, when I find the right girl.
P: Ha. In India everyone gets married at 21, 22. People don't even think if they can afford to raise a family. But everyone has to get married.
E: Are you worried about getting a job when you graduate?
M: No. The market's not great right now, but there are still more jobs than graduates in my field.
E: But unemployment is huge in America! Much worse than in India, I think.

A quick look out the window seemed to tell a different story about employment in the Indian countryside . . .

This was the Indian middle class. (OK, sure, just a tiny slice of it upon which I'm basing my whole assessment). Apparently genuinely happy with their lives, but working all the time just to get their families by. No girlfriends, but an arranged marriage at an early (by my reckoning) age. Happy with India, but a desperate longing on their faces when talking about traveling to other countries. Happy with their marriages, but clearly wondering what it would be like to have had a girlfriend or two at some point in their lives. Content with the direction their lives went, but by their own admission they never really had much say in choosing that path.

India was a free country as far as the government was concerned. No one was restricting their movement or speech. And clearly the government wasn't restricting how many children they had (attempts at forced sterilization in the 1970s aside). But family life and culture (and let's face it, relative lack of wealth) had certainly put a clamp down on individual freedom.

Hey, maybe choice is overrated. Who cares if you get to pick your path as long as the path turns out OK?

(I do . . .)

*For the record that was not a date. And it certainly didn't lead to any promiscuity. But yes, it was worth the time. Wait, is everyone else reading this? Sorry about that . . .

PHUTATORIUS
First off, it cracks me up that you ended a post about marriage and freedom with "I do." Second: I dunno — sometimes I think I'd feel a lot freer if my parents lived in our house. They could look after the kids now and then, and I'd get out a lot more.

But you make some good points about freedom. There are all sorts of pressures and compulsions out there that make us less free — and they don't all come from government. I think some of the New Deal theorists made this point back in the day. We're fortunate in America that we (most of us, anyway) are in a position to care about freedom from government — for a lot of people, that's an abstraction and a luxury you don't have time for if you're living in grinding poverty. The state doesn't own you; your boss does.

Economic and social pressures don't carry the same weight as the whim of a sovereign state backed by a monopoly of force: in theory you can always tell your boss or your husband to take a hike. But as a practical matter, sometimes the consequences of asserting these freedoms are as severe and painful as facing the state and its guns. Try telling the Afghan woman the law says she can step out of her burqa into a pair of jeans.

It's a shame that so often we (broadly, meaning everyone) fight hard and win battles that confer a slice of freedom, only to find that there's some other Trope of Authority — God, family, the Man, Dr. Phil, the Invisible Hand — telling us what to do or say. To me it all reduces to two truths — you can call 'em laws if you want:

(1) No one can ever be completely free.
(2) The fact that we all have to live together on a big round rock with a scarcity of resources means there's an outer limit to the total amount of freedom we have to parse out.

India I: Same Basic Idea

MITHRIDATES
It's ten days after the Mumbai attacks and I'm sitting in my 2-tier AC berth, waiting for my first Indian train trip ever. It's a miracle I made it this far, what with the increased security these days at Mumbai Central.

Heading in to the station I was greeted with a "Security is Never Everyone's Problem" sign. Not sure what they were going for. But you could see they meant business. There was a column separating the main entrance: to the left were three metal detectors; to the right a big "Do Not Enter" sign. I walked through a metal detector that gave a loud beep as I passed through. But I was obviously no threat. The dozen or so security personnel camped out just inside the station didn't interrupt their discussions and milling about for one second. I stopped for a second just to make sure and looked back to see several people casually walking around the metal detectors through the out door. There would be no attacks today, my friends.

But here we are back on the train. For those of you unfamiliar, 2-tier AC is the second highest class of the nine different classes on Indian trains. Four berths on the right side enclosed by a curtain.

Travel Companion 1: Where are you from?
M: America
TC1: Oh, just like India!

His emphasis suggested he didn't doubt the veracity of his statement one bit. I, on the other hand, needed a bit of convincing. I had landed in the middle of last night at the decaying international airport and was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of dung that permeated the cabin even before the doors were opened. I'd been to Mumbai before, but I'd forgotten the smell. The overpowering, unavoidable smell of India. It took us over an hour by cab to cover the six miles to my hotel, located on a side street covered in dust, dirt, and people, animals, and dung of all stripe. Walking around the train station that morning I was confronted by numerous hotel touts and beggars, stepped over sleeping (rabid?) dogs, avoided cows, and learned to navigate through traffic that didn't know any rule of law. I ate a delicious lunch of Butter Chicken for a dollar at a local eatery, while an employee dusted the place on his hands and knees under the tables. I hadn't been there very long, but so far NOTHING about this place resembled my native land.

But I was intrigued.

M: Uh, yeah, kind of like India. But how do you mean?
TC1: Democracy. Same basic idea. You can say what you want!

And there we had it. And I have to admit, I was kind of touched. India might be poorer, denser, older, smellier, but it was a democracy, with basic political freedom. And, legally, for the most part, you really could say what you want. And go where you want. And do what you want. My traveling companion, unlike his Chinese counterpart, for example, was free — and he cherished his freedom.

So India was, after all, just like America, right? There's something to be said for political freedom. And they had it. The train started rolling and I looked out at the India countryside and felt a certain kinship with my Indian companion.

The next day in Ahmedabad, Gujarat I was confronted on the sidewalk by a shirtless beggar carrying what looked like a diseased and near lifeless naked baby. He chased me down the sidewalk thrusting the baby in my direction while the pedestrians on the crowded sidewalk looked on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Several sources — don't know if they're reliable — say these beggars are run by gangs who disfigure the babies intentionally to get more sympathy and then collect anything the beggars gather. Whether that's true or not, they were on most street corners and more wretched and desperate than anything you can find in the US. And there are thousands, millions, tens (hundreds?) of millions equally impoverished.

So maybe there is more to defining a country than political freedom.

I'm not the first person to write about India, but the next several posts are going to cover what I saw, as honestly as I can. The point isn't to point out how awful or wonderful the country is, or ours is by comparison. But it won't be a gushing "your country is so wonderful!" travel blog. I'm not trying to convince you to go or to stay away. Apologies if anyone gets offended by my candid observations about their country. I know this is just one man's observations seen through his uniquely biased eye. But they'll be honest observations and you'll get the good with the bad.

We've got several juicy topics to cover: Indian man on the street thoughts on war with Pakistan, Leopards raiding villages, cow shit, crushing poverty, delicious food, how individual freedom gets crushed but not by the government, living streets, impenetrable forts, and more!

PHUTATORIUS
Glad to have you back, Mithridates. Did your namesake ever make it into India, or was he always stabbing westward?

Just a couple thoughts:

First, on panhandlers. You have to feel that, like most competitive occupations, the best are the most assertive — and the assertive are often the least scrupulous. The thing is, when you're just giving someone money (as opposed to purchasing something) you want it to go to someone who deserves it. They can "deserve" it by serving up some kind of shtick, like the guys at Fenway who play drums on overturned buckets, or the guy in Uptown Manhattan back in the day who would tell Michael Jackson-as-pedophile jokes. Or they can "deserve" it by needing it the most. You have to figure the weakest, the hungriest, the most needy aren't throwing the best elbows to get into your view. Anyway, it sounds like a long way from Harvard Square, where it's the teenager who got into a fight with her parents about the lip ring, so she ran away on some silly romantic trip with her boyfriend and his acoustic guitar. It all makes me want to scream, starting with PUNK ROCKERS DON'T PLAY ACOUSTIC GUITARS! But anyway.

Second, if you had to choose: would you prefer prosperity without freedom, or freedom without prosperity?

MITHRIDATES
First, I'm clearly not getting the point across. These people are nothing like any beggars I've seen anywhere in the US. It's just a different ball game. They are hands down the most wretched people I have ever seen (OK, fair enough, I've never been to Congo training camp for child soldiers). And if you're in an open auto-rickshaw they'll corner you at an intersection and paw you. If you give them something a crowd will come after you. You can't help but pity them, but who knows what disease you might get by touching them. It's a horrifically awful situation. Worse for them than you, for sure . . .

Second, you're implying this is the choice and that these people are "free" and just lack prosperity. They might be free in the Hayek, Constitution of Liberty sense, as in the government isn't depriving them of anything. But any other meaning of the word doesn't apply. They have nowhere to go, no opportunity, no one who cares about them, and by some accounts they are enslaved by gangs who control the beggars. That's no freedom and no prosperity.

But we're going to tackle individual freedom in India in a later post.