India is indeed one of the most unique place on earth not for its poverty threshold but for its truly democratic humanitarian value with absolute madness and chaos! Both being attracted to its spirituality and glamour of past history while being repelled by its pandemic of industrial waste dispose sites with millions of bugs, rats, and virus mutations, I was compelled to leave earlier before I probably would get seriously ill with some form of water born virus. Still, when I arrived in China last week while running away, I came down with a severe Indian Flu.

I arrived in Bombay International Airport while running away from Kenya’s League of Con Men. The airport in Kenya swamped with Indian Labor Forces in waiting lobby as labor exports returning home for breaks. I immediately made friend with one of the Indian lady who has a private fashion design shop in Nairobi. She told me her ancestors has been in Kenya for many generations and there are many Indian communities throughout other parts of Africa and Middle East. If I want to go to Kenya next time with safety, I better call her up for arrangements instead of putting the money in wrong hands. (at mean time, I have convinced myself that I won’t be in Africa again in this life time unless I know every single black priests in the region.) Indians have characteristics of being able to survive amongst other groups or races while keep a tight community among friends they know in various regions. They introduce each other to various job posts through word of mouth in their own community rather than place ads on paper. There are a huge group of Indian and Nepalese labors who are currently working in Doha and Dubai as taxi drivers and in hotel businesses. Because of this nature, they always get community warning and information faster than others races in case of riots, murders, or other regional crisis.

The kind Indian woman took me to a Krishna Temple for a room with a fan and three beds in a “posh” (trendy rich) neighborhood since I will be alone for a few days in India before I meet up with my volunteer groups in Delhi with Raja. They told me that there are lot of movie stars live in the area. The Temple serves one of the best, clean, vegetarian food in the region with very reasonable price for foreigners – 270 Rupee. The locals in the lower caste on the other hand usually spend 5 – 10 Rupee per meal in various remote villages. A normal breakfast usually ranges about 100 Rupee for foreigners while 10 Rupee for locals in a upgraded middle class restaurant. (but it’s usually not very clean) The places with some clean food for foreign tourists usually ask a price of 180 rupee for a meal with a bathroom stop. The destinations are usually 2 hours apart from each other.

Next day, I booked a Rainbow Tour with my crazy driver Irfan (who is a muslin in India who does not really practice the religion) to see Bombay. My tour guide was a very enthusiastic super friendly crazy Indian Lady. She is all about Ghangdi and his non violent resistance to foreign imperialism and formation of Indian cotton union. Then she explains that Indians only fight in non violent ways (which means they will loss every single invasion and wars to Pakistan probably and will try to figure out how to resist later when they have time to sort out what’s going on). We went to the Indian Gate which is always under some form of reconstruction under a huge transparent plastic veil. She then explained to me how they have send all the statues of former British Rulers to the Indian Zoo for exhibitions. She continued that there is nothing state own in India. They just subsidies poor kids to go to school while double the rates of school expenditure in private sector each year. Additionally, the roads are filled with potholes which are not fixed because there is no government projects that are currently working on it. They only fix the center high way since these are the only roads with stock share options. Basically, there is no social programs of any kind that is state own because Indians wants to be as capitalistic as possible and as democratic as possible.

As soon as the new skyscrapers are built in India from foreign investments or limited joint venture, the slum people would immediately move to the new area and surround every single exit with vendors or tents. Then they would make sure the garbage accumulate in front of each exit and streets for years. The stink in India is outrageous especially in summer season from April to Sept where rain water is mixed with 55 C daily, it’s a brewing ground of water born virus with the fastest mutation on earth and there is absolutely no cure for it since the viral mutation rate exceeds the ability of scientists could make cures for them. This is the site where the plagues will be starting next. It reminds me how Shakespeare used to describe the middle age British villages when they used to dump garbages from second floor onto the streets in the pot holes. It also reminds me how the Bubonic Plagues started with fermented garbage all over the place with no personal hygiene in Dark Ages. Because the Indians preach absolute freedom, the government police forces usually don’t remove any of the slum people by force nor do they throw people into jail unless they have killed someone. The co-existence between mixed jealousy, envy, friction, anger, are subdued by the theory of caste system in India where suffering in each life time is nothing but a lesson you must learn before you move to the next level in reincarnation. Such multiple emotions create a weird social structure in India. Majority of Indians actually rather begging for a living rather than thinking about what methods they could use to alter the perceptions of poverty in social infra structure as a common goal. Since according to Hinduism and Buddhism, violence will not get you anywhere other than being reborn into other animal forms for other sacrifices again before you are reborn to where you are currently in poverty, most people are rather peaceful. Their mind sets are constantly struggling between condemnation of material wealth in Jainism on earth while crave for material wealth that is being displayed to them in Western Society. Because of the tug of war inside of each of them, the growth rate in development in India is rather bizarre. The train stations basically are garbage dumping centers with the smell of urine in every direction. (the middle class Indians no longer take the trains to any where while only take flights due to the garbage crisis in the cities). The train stations also surrounded by city slums for new arrivals every day to join them from the country side looking for wealth in garbage piles with absolutely no training in job skills. The buses in India are all made from TaTa company that is usually extremely dirty and filled with thick bars. Very few foreigners would take such buses. We had such bus in 1970s in China, but all the buses have been transformed in last 10 years with public transportation renovation. India should no longer compare itself with China because the psychological basis of development is completely different. Additionally, these two countries have nothing in common other than population sizes. I must say Indians are a lot nicer than Chinese and they are a lot less materialistic than modern Chinese.

Indians are known to work very well in large groups with team working spirits while having large family ties. They all have strong family values and usually are very close to each other in time of crisis. Their upper class tend to be more spiritual than other communities around the world while they continue to be wealthy. Most of the Indians are now doing rather well abroad in various countries by their hard working ethics and honesty. They also love to mock other white societies for they have no spiritual values retained in them. Indian values are truly very different from Western values. When you strongly insert survival of the fittest value in vertical selfish market growth into an Indian system, the two contradiction in values creates a weird sense of humor in India which pulls the rich and poor even farther apart in a non violent drama. The only way for Indian upper class tried to remove itself from the madness around them is to receive education from British Boarding School and stay abroad while sending money home from various countries. Obviously, developing India is almost impossible because they don’t like Western Models while such models have been proven to be successful in Hong Kong and Singapore.

As I decided to leave for Goa for a trip, I paid 800 rupee for several check points. There is not much law on traffic lights either. Irfan and I went through 20 red lights in the morning hours while there is no traffic jam yet near Bombay. There are about 12 billion Indian labors and farmers live in 1930s while the rest of the Indians try to find anyway possible to make money abroad with made up lies about their relatives abroad in any country. From village to village, it’s truly amazing that no money has titrated to any of these places for reconstruction from government supports due to absolute capitalism with absolute freedom. The only places have had some development were beach resort towns where no Indians would hang out since the water is rather murky and they are not really into staying on beach all day getting tans. Goa is the Christian Town of India where they decorated the Christ as the fat golden white king. The near by villages are just as dirty as the city slums while the places without villages are absolutely beautiful with rolling green hills and forever stretching rice fields. India is amazingly green filled with water every where in wet seasons or dry seasons. And they have not really developed a system to support car development yet.

I was very happy to have an awesome TV set in Goa’s three star hotel where I could watch 50 channels. I immediately fall madly in love with Indian MTV where they told me the Indians are currently doing an experiment on how long they could keep industrial waste piled up without cleaning them. The Indians are apparently very enthusiastic about showing the world what does not work rather than wanting to show the world what does work. So, with 100% community support and ultra patriotic nationalism, they are moving forward with nuclear talks. Instead of creating a strong boarder control against Pakistan, the Indians decided to talk to Pakistan with open board trading while smuggling terrorists on agenda as a humor. The strange thing though is that the Indians refuse to sale anything with “diet” label in movie theaters. The clothing in the mall is about 15000 rupee which is 3 months of average salary for Indians. When Indians talking about average salary, it usually means 25 – 50 rupee per day for the 12 billion of Indians while 5000 rupee per month for the computer geeks in the city, and 15000 rupee per day for Ballywood dancers or million rupee per day for upper class industrialists. Strangely enough, they can live peacefully together with slum next to the skyscrapers with higher end offices among industrial wastes piled on streets. There are very few expensive cars and the roads are in awful conditions. Mr TaTa has the largest share of Indian Market in making bus, cars, and various steel machines. Every Indian is talking about the common wealth game in 2010. Currently, they are building both the Bombay International Airport, New Bombay Development Zone, Delhi International Airport, and the New Delhi Development Zone from even more money from the West Investments. Obviously, none of the 12 billion people can benefit from any of the developments and will continue to live as beggars because they they totally believe suffering is a just cause.

But I must say, Indian people are the most friendly people I have met with the desire to help each other. Indians also have strong sense of humor. They would rather become paid beggars or scavengers in the cities rather than find a self reliant solution to change the social infra structure according to their own psychological and economic conditions. The would follow the agenda where the Western developers have set for them to make sure nothing really works at all because development in countries with extreme poverty and large farming crowds can’t use direct capitalism approaches in the first stage of development. I totally believe the Indians know how to clean their own places since they seem to be able to clean the hotels where I stayed very well with pays; yet they would rather live in completely run down place in their own home while they hangout on the streets as if there is nothing need to be done.

Shortly, I moved to Delhi for another tour in Jaipur and Agra. Mobs of beggars were chasing around the tourists from various countries. The admission fee for Indians to Taj Mahal is 20 Rupee while they charge foreigners for 750 Rupee. The beggars are non violent yet can be quiet annoying. They know they can’t get anything from the tourists from past experiences. They do it because they want to demonstrate the true Indian spirit. If they keep on begging without realizing that they could fix their own problems, they won’t get any where other than sinking even lower in life with violence eventually no matter how hard they preach peace and calmness in their nature.

STD is not common in Indian communities. Yet they publish the number so high in their news paper to mimic the Western Jokes to make sure they are fighting against it. With such a traditional society, you can’t seriously have prostitutes with AIDs as a pandemic especially knowing AIDs came from war zones and raping mostly in random sex act. I am glad I am not going to volunteer there just to look stupid. Additionally, Indians made their phone booth as STD booth while they posted Kingfisher as their Beer Company that supports Airlines.

The Indians are very spiritually awakened in comparison to the rest of the world population in developing nations. Yet, they seem to prefer to live in the humor of war and poverty rather than trying to use strategies or regulations to fix their own problems. The don’t lock people up; they don’t leash there dogs; in fact, they change the diet on the dogs so all of them are vegetarian dogs. They let the rats, pigs, cows, monkeys all wandering around in mud pot holes with stinky water among garbage piles to co exist. They don’t force feed them either since they don’t eat animals. Everything looks so chaotically peaceful, it’s amusing!

Delhi has many sections. Some of it is high end hotel district with embassies that’s absolutely clean and green. Some of it is nothing but skyscrapers in posh area. Some of it has nothing but middle class communes with stripped buildings. Some of it has nothing but vendors with chaotic traffics on narrow streets. In fact, it’s very strange in live in India and remain to be sane.

I had to leave Delhi immediately while I was staying in a three star hotel, my bathroom is covered with fruit flies and mosquitos in 10s of thousands in number because the vent was open. The mosquitos were 1/2 the size of dragonflies while the rats were the size of cats. There are cockroaches all over the places as well. If the Indians refuse to clean after themselves with industrial waste, there is no point for me to clean after them once every 50 years while I volunteer for projects. They will return to where they were the minute I leave the area. There is no point for me to tell them what to do if they don’t want to do it by their choice or if they don’t see it as a problem in their own development.

I lost my passport in Goa, the hotel manager rushed my passport to the airport and immediately delivered to me to Bombay. It shows that there are still honesty among Indians no matter how desperate they might feel economically.

Until today, I still can’t figure out what exactly the Indians are trying to demonstrate to the world. Since the British and American pumped more money into India than China and there are way less corruptions in India since there are moral restrains. Where the did the money go?

Additionally, India is a holy place. My sleeping bag was mysterious teleported from my hotel room to the car I hired which I was suspected it to be stolen. A book cover from Melbourne with blue color was mysteriously changed to San Francisco cover with orange color while I was sleeping in a room. Lama was chanting besides the yogi, and the two of them are shifting thought patterns in 4th dimension in various places with Karmapa.

India is an unique case in which the world can’t probably truly understand! They would rather die to demonstrate a point of suffering rather than being alive living in mutual killing for survival. Yet, I truly don’t feel that I can live among piled up industrial waste with human feces. So, I decide to leave early!

In conclusion, India is developing in a strange pattern. The computer industry might develop 600% per year with mr Tata’ s Steel Company. 12 billion labor force and farmers are developing less than 0.6% per year and still live in 1930s. It’s indeed, very amusing! I love it when they keep telling you that they want to teach you a lesson; except that as a Chinese, I have gone through all of their stages and more myself.

Best Regards

Ruth Waung