"The Electric Mule" will be a regular posting to our front page and our  "Global Studies" People section.  The author is on a 5 month travel of Asia with his wife.  He will write from his unique perspective of his travels and offer non-sequiturs to current events in the world.

Hello to Everyone in Radioland:

This verbal frisbee cow-pie is being hurled into cyberspace from the polluted, traffic infested, land of the great Mahatma- a certain Mr. Gandhi, whose eye glasses made a spectacle of themselves this week while being auctioned in New York by a Mr. Otis of elevator fame. Life does have it's ups and downs- in the elevator business and in India. I have decided that life in India can be most accurately compared to Indian music- which is a slipping a sliding scale of constantly changing notes (unlike the 12 percent guaranteed by Mr. Bernie Madoff- who promised a constant payment on your investment, no matter what the vicissitudes of the stock market! Unfortunately, it turns out that Mr. Madoff had a slipping and sliding system of morality similar to Indian music!).

I have also come to another revelation about India. If I were ever to have a tombstone (which I won't, since fire is superior to worms and fish), it would read: 'to understand oneself, takes several lifetimes'-which of course would require reincarnation (not as evaporated milk but in a new form- perhaps as an insect or a politician). My new insight is, that to understand OTHER people would require thousands, or perhaps millions of reincarnations- which of course is what Hindus believe.  Ergo, the Hindus may have it figured out after all. One thing is certain, as the French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said: 'Hell is other people'.

The traffic and pollution in New Delhi causes people to have instant asthma attacks. A NY photographer on a travel shoot, told me that his asthma just flared up after 30 years. Another Indian female we know, who is a producer for New Delhi TV in London, had to rush her small son to the hospital last week with an asthma attack. Despite the fact that the city sits in the middle of the Gangetic plain, the particulants hover in the air like an ominous cosmic cloud from Vedic mythology- sometimes even blocking out the aggressive and scorching sun. The city has been torn to pieces by construction for a new metro system; the 20,000 new cars every month will be supplemented in two months by a $2400 car, 'the Nano' (with no pollution controls on it!). The drivers of buses, trucks, cars, scooters, and motorcycles remind one of the massive frenzied mating of a million Naga snake gods gone mad with carbon based lust. Every vehicle is scratched, dented, banged-up- no matter how old or new. Despite this, luxury cars like Mercedes and Bentleys are selling like hotcakes to the burgeoning middle and upper classes.

Then there is the new construction of apartments, factories, cities, worlds. Tomiyo and I went to two trade shows like week. We took a bus to the first one from the hotel behind our guest house in central New Delhi. It took 1 1/2 hours to get to the fairgrounds- a journey that should take 1/2 max under normal circumstances. On the way we saw computer parks, shopping malls, and gated communities of 20 and 30 story apartments rising up in the middle of farmer's fields satellite cities like something from an Antonioni movie- with names like 'Perot Systems', New Singapore City, Dreamland Complex etc. The trade fair building was immense- the size of several airplane hangers. The Indian government was expecting 25,000-30,000 visitors from abroad, but alas, despite the very 'Western' and 'professional' looking displays only 3,000 people (including yours truly), showed up. Apparently, the current situation in the USSA (as the Repugs refer to the US under Obama), is blowing back to S.E. Asia. It is all rather amazing.

New Delhi has a lot of beautiful trees, which take the edge off of the other less favorable aspects of the city. Our friend Mini Singh has a 3 story- multi-level guest house in the center of New Delhi and the other morning, while we were sitting having coffee and masala tea in his garden, he pointed out green pigeons in the trees above us. Apparently they had disappeared for a while, but they have reappeared. The pigeons have violet eyes. They are not as bright a green as the parrots one sees flying around every day, but they are amazing nevertheless. There is also a sleek gray and black crow that shows up every morning to be fed by Mini. He comes quite close to eat bread and he becomes indignant if he doesn't get fed. There are also monkeys flying around above our heads. They show up when the trees start to bear fruit. Mini has patios at various levels and he says that the monkeys wreak havoc on his sculpture, plants, water storage units, cable TV, Internet lines etc.- shaking the hell out of everything and having a high old time- while Mini's little chihuahua Bandido runs around barking at them below the trees.

India constantly amazes, revolts, excites, repulses, and enthralls.  Ultimately, the Western mind cannot wrap around this culture of thousands of years. 'East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet' (except at a railroad crossing! The wife of the NY travel photographer told me that she was told that to deal with India, one needed to remember the 2 'A's. I asked her what they were. She said:  'adapt, adjust, accommodate'. I told her I had a 4th 'A': 'alcohol'.

The next two days we will hunker down on the computer at Mini's. The festival of Holi is starting. It used to be innocent throwing of colored powder at friends. Now it is aggressive male attacks on females and anyone else in the vicinity with analine dyes, high powered pumps, and oil paint, which is sprayed on females (to get the wet T-shirt effect which is ubiquitous in every Hindu movie), and unsuspecting tourists.  No danke!

We have made contact with a few groups working with tribals, the impoverished, etc. We are off to Bangkok next week. Until next time, aux reservoir.

The Electric Mule
(This message was typed on a ancient Morse code telegraph system left
over from the era of the English Raj. It has been modified and
connected to an equally ancient Singer sewing machine. If one uses the
treadle and pumps hard enough, the system generates sufficient
electricity to send the message along a tangle of wires to the local ISP
(Indra-Shiva-Paravati cosmic connection) in Connaught Circle- two blocks
away, where hordes of modified bicycles are furiously pedaled to get the
signal up to a Sat-A-Lite. Never underestimate the ingenuity of people
in the 3rd world!).

copyright Ernest Gusella 2009