finally posted some pics!

some pics (captions and comments coming) posted on my picasa web album.

while there is always so much to write about, the sensations, thoughts and experiences often new, a choice must be made at some point. so this post, had it not been a picture announcement, would may otherwise be called rickshaw-wallah

the rain poured down, soaking my legs, even as the tight carriage cover kept most of the monsoon at bay from my body. it poured down your back, drenching you, dripping off your calves - a sight that is associated with seeing the city, as you bicycle my weight through curving streets in lucknow. on this occasion, you were taking my roommate and me home after dinner in huzragange. dropped friend off at his house near the subji-munde (vegetable market), down a very dark street, through the intersection where we should have made a right instead of going straight, you pedaled as it sprinkled and then outright rained.

the previously negotiated price was 20 r (about $0.50), but I easily succumbed to my desire to give more (what's another fifty cents to me?) and gave 40 (the equivalent of a dollar). i don't know, maybe i should have given more, but i just grabbed what i could out of my backpack. my payment usually is correlated with age -- the older the man, the more i give. one very thin grandfather, clearly had parkinsons, and was shaking as he slowly hauled me to shree-ram tower - mobile phone mecca. i gave him a little more than a dollar, though the "true cost" according to my friends would be ten, five rupees or less - depending on one's hindi speaking ability, brown-ness of skin, and passion for haggling.

the rickshaws are generally one-speed bicycles, and the wallahs often have to throw their weight down onto every pedal stroke, so inefficient is this mode of transportation. that and, well, americans aaaare a little bit bigger and heavier than the average indian, that's for sure. one of the men in the aiis (american institute for indian studies) program is, i think the medical term is "grossly obese", but quite round, if you will. sometimes when he and his roommate are trying to go home from school, the wallahs will demand extra payment or insist that he be in his own rickshaw. it's admittedly a funny sight seeing two rickshaws go by at once: one with a thin effeminate mediterranean-colored man; the other holding a very large, curly headed and bearded white man; and every indian on the road stopping what they are doing to stare.

i've been told that rickshaw wallahs are typically some of the poorest of the poor. to be honest, i don't really know what that means. when i told my roommates i gave grandpa parkinsons 50 rupees, they guffawed and said - that's more than he'll make all day. some graphic representation of wealth distribution in the world that mary sent out once, depicted a fairly linear curve from poorest to richest. i thought it was misleading, b/c the guy was arguing that "hey look how equal things are now", but the middle of the line was set at surviving on $1/day.

and of course, i just read an article entitled "neomillionaries" in frontline that said "the number of the super rich - defined as people with more than $30 million - increased by 8.8% to 103,320." other info, gleaned from teaching soc 1:

the top 1% of wealth owners nearly 40% of net worth, and nearly 50% of financial
assets in thelate 1980's and 1990's. During this same period, the top 1% enjoyed
two thirds of all increases in household financial wealth, and movement into the
top segments of the distribution was nearly nonexistent. Moreover, while
inequalities of wealth were consistently more extreme throughout Europe for
many decades, by the early 1990s,the United States had surpassed
all industrial societies in the extent of inequality of family wealth.

Presumably India is not classified as an industrial society, so who knows how it stacks up in the inequality rankings. It's deceiving though, because India's increasing millionaire class, has been profiting from neoliberal market expansion, as well as access to work in the entrepreneurial and uber-corporate west. that is to say, while there is an extreme wealth differential in Indians, it's particularly stark as an American, how the average American stacks up to (at least the median?) Indian subsisting on $1/day. (am i considered average in terms of american income? questions i should know the answer to....) when i nearly everyday ride a rickshaw, and count my rupees to not get "ripped off" or "taken advantage of b/c we're foreigners", i think about these types of things, and allow for random change lying between couch cushions back home to make up for whatever "extra" i spend on transportation and services.

rickshaw wallah,
weaving in between speeding motorcycles,
green and yellow auto-rickshaws,
small suzuki mini-vehicles,
and the occasional
high-class white (type of car to be inserted later)...

a handmotion signalling a turn,
into
.......what feels like for my western-trained highway line abiding self,
sure death or disaster.

the honking ceaseless
no pattern to discern
except it's always always ongoing,
frequently held down into a screeeching
whiz pasing you by
at times, i feel the need to plug my ears

rickshaw wallah
where do you sleep
besides on your own two-person laminated cushion?
where do you go to
escape the rain

the rain that always comes
knocks down trees (right in front of my building blocking the entire road)
and makes electricity outages
that much more frequent

what does the rickshaw wallah think pulling indulged westerners
riding around no worries apparent