Tag: writing

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My Desi Heart: Intro

Allahabad, 1965

I was born in India in 1957.  The youngest of four siblings in an American missionary family from small town North Dakota and Minnesota. We were evangelicals. Conservative in a Protestant theology heavily influenced by the Holiness movement of the 19th century. Small sect Methodism that believed all sinners could be completely ‘sanctified’ or perfect, in their lifetimes. Among other things of course. 

I was born in the southern Tamil temple city of Madurai but we lived 850 kilometers northwest in a Kanarese speaking area of what is now the Indian state of Karnataka. Dad’s employer, the Oriental Missionary Society or OMS, had established a bible training college in the town of Gadag, famous for producing one of classical Indian music’s noblest performers, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, and a lively printing industry. 

Dad taught theology and related subjects to young Christian men and women from the surrounding areas. He regularly preached at outdoor revival meetings with his colleagues and students. Mom helped out wherever she was needed, sometimes as the bookkeeper for the college, sometimes she would join the pastors’ wives in their rural evangelizing campaigns but mostly she raised us kids.  

They had landed in Bombay after a long voyage across several oceans from New York in February 1952. They were appointed to join another American family, The Davises, who had two boys round about the same age as my two brothers, and a jolly, tubby spinster from Baltimore, Mary Ella Taylor. 

Mike my oldest brother was 5. Gregg, next up was 3. My sister Rebecca would arrive 3 years later, in 1955 and I brought up the rear in ‘57. There is a good case to be made that another sister was stillborn before I came along. 

We lived on the campus of the Karnataka Bible Seminary, whose red brick buildings dated back several decades. It was well shaded at least in the front part and served as a safe, walled but sprawling little world for me to explore as a kid.  

We were generally happy and normal. Among our subcultured circle of missionaries anyway. In fact, compared with the Davises,  mom and dad were liberal youngsters, which did cause ongoing friction between them over the years.  As is the wont of every child what they see in their homes they project onto the entire Universe.  There was nothing different about us. We all believed broadly the same things about the Bible and God and Jesus. We shared a barebone existence with few physical comforts. It was simple, filled with good food, devotions, trips to exotic places like the temples of Hampi, Shravanabelagola and the beaches of Karwar. Of course, “we” in these instances refers to other OMS missionaries or white folk in India more broadly.  

It was impossible not to notice that most everyone else around us and among us did not believe these things. But then, that was the whole point of our landing up in rural southern India. To try to get as many of them as possible to come over to our team.  A spiritual kabaddi match. 

Only recently have I begun to distance myself from the lived experience of my childhood. To look at it not from within but from a distance of 60 year; and from the outside. How did this rural, poor family from Minnesota end up in the villages of central India, speaking strange tongues and eating strange food? Why?  What was going on in India at the time? And how did being surrounded by religion and spirituality, in the home or everywhere you went in India, and speaking Kanarese simultaneously as fluidly as English and having Indian friends to whom I was closer than to my brothers who were away in boarding school?

What does /did this niche childhood-–Minnesota, Holiness Methodists, missionaries, newly Independent India, bilingual communication–influence who I am today?   

This is about that.  

India has been an indivisible aspect of my life since 10 July 1957. At times some have found it irritating and maddening.  Others have seen it as fascinating and exotic. Most just shrug, especially now in this tiny world we live in, in the 2020s.   

My connection to India is something I’ve always loved but haven’t known how to incorporate into my story. Or stories. It depended on the audience of course, as all stories do. My wives have felt threatened by India which is so easy to love in comparison with a real complex woman. So, there is shame and protection mixed in with my love of India. I’m sure many, including myself, thought I would outgrow my romantic childhood when I became an adult and that its influence would settle into a manageable and quaint curry now and then and perhaps one grand tour with the family when the kids are old enough to enjoy an adventure.  

But it hasn’t happened that way. The older I got the more attached and fascinated by and in love with the place I become.  I chose to study Hindi rather than Latin or French in high school. At the University of Minnesota, I jumped from majoring in Anthropology and Journalism and English before settling on South Asian Studies and History. I studied Urdu as well as Hindi. I spent a year after university studying in Lahore Pakistan. I was thinking of doing a PhD on one of the most important figures in modern South Asian Islam, Maulana Maududi. But then I got a job with the UN in Islamabad and began a career that took me around the world. India faded into the background for those years but never died.  

I began blogs about South Asian music and wrote a novel set in Pakistan. I read books on the caste system, Tamil anti-Brahmanism, Aurangzeb and the film industry, travelled and photographed across India whenever I could, did an ongoing deep dive into south Asian music and film and wrote a weekly column on the subject for an Indian online paper. I was asked to write a history of the Pakistani movie industry and now I’m thinking of leading tours to the sub-continent.   

India is not fading away like it was supposed to.  

Many of my kind (Missionary Kids from India and Pakistan) break into song when asked by Indians to explain ourselves.   

Mera juta hai Japani 

Yeh Patloon Englstani 

Sar pe lal topi Russi 

Phir bhi dil hai hindustani 

(I wear Japanese shoes and English trousers, The red hat on my head is Russian but still my heart is Indian)  

It’s a hackneyed trope but does capture the essence. 

My first blog I named, the Washerman’s Dog which is the English version of another famous Indian aphorism: na ghar ka na ghat ka, dhobi ka kuta (neither of the ghat nor the home, the washerman’s dog) 

Both sets of lyrics resonate with me. I do feel homeless in a way, neither from here nor there. But also completely blended in with India.  

Hence, it seems appropriate to name this column, My Desi Heart. A place where I’ll explore the story of my love-affair with the sub-continent. 

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The Silent One

After a breakfast of cold TBJ (toast butter jam) at one of the several ‘hippie cafes’ that line the narrow tarmac road running along Puri’s beachfront, I walked down to the station to buy a newspaper.  When I arrived, I was informed that as today is the day after Republic Day there are no papers. 

On my way back to the café I stopped to observe a sadhu who was holding court outside a colourfully decorated, low-ceilinged temple not far from the entrance to the station. 

He was toking up when I arrived. The chilam was offered to me but I declined. A group of rickshaw walas and assorted young men squatted in a semi circle near him. Each drew deep on the pipe as it made the rounds. 

I asked them if they weren’t afraid that the police would round them up. 

This has been purchased under a government license. No problem. 

A man with rotting teeth told me that smoking hash was essential to the people’s daily existence.  Some people eat  paan, others smoke ganja, some like bhang, others charas. Its all for digestion of the food.  It is necessary. 

I reply that I get paranoid when I smoke it.  

They all laugh. Their tired red eyes remain motionless while their faces move in different ways.   Like all addicts, they agree that moderation is the attitude to be employed. But they exclude themselves from their own advice with a shrug of the shoulders. 

I am told the sadhu has not spoken for 12 years.   

He has four more to go before his vow is complete. 

I wonder if he will still remember how to form words after 16 years of silence. 

He communicates through gestures and a penetrating gaze but cracks an engaging smile once in a while. His sidekick, also a sanyasi, seems to have sworn the opposite vow: to talk as much as he can in as short a space as possible. 

He interprets the silent one’s flailing arms and pointing fingers.  He details their recent past and spells out their future intentions. (They are headed to Nepal, next). The sidekick tells of fabulous bright silver coins and good charas in Kashmir.  

We sleep wherever we find a spot. A sanyasi has no home.  

Do you travel by foot, I ask. 

He laughs.  No. No. No. We are sanyasis. We go by train.  Whoever has heard of a sadhu paying for his travel? 

As I leave, the silent one pinches some ashes from his smoldering fire and signals that I should smear some on my forehead, which I do.  

Sidekick then rattles, Now swallow the rest. 

I hesitate but do he says.  I walk away with a gritty taste in my mouth. 

This piece was written in January 1989 while on a holiday in eastern India. The image is called ‘Mussoorie baba’ It is NOT a portrait of the Silent One of Puri, but of a wanderer I met in the hill station , Mussoorie, where I did my pre-university education in a storied boarding school. Such men could be classified as sadhus or sanyasis but are more endearingly referred to as baba. The former terms have a spiritual connotation; that one’s wandering is part of one’s spiritual practice. Baba on the other hand is a more generic term for men who amble around the countryside with no precise motive or destination. It is also sometimes used to refer to young boys. I was referred to as Nate baba, while growing up, by many older Indians.

The photo was one of the first of mine to be published by a company in the Twin Cities that published brochures for churches!

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The final nail? Trusk do away with USAID

The decision by Trump/Musk to do away with USAID should be a development we are not surprised by. But I am.  It does not bode well for millions of people and communities around the world whose American tax-payer-funded assistance will cease. But its certainly, a huge nail in the nearly completed coffin of the aid sector as we know it. 

The move to disappear stand-alone aid agencies is not new.  Canada did it. Boris Johnson did it. And it happened here in Australia in 2013 when a pugnacious let’s-move-back- to-the-past Prime Minister mandated the death of AusAID.  

Everywhere it has happened it has had a similar effect.  The quantum and impact of the ‘aid’ decreases dramatically. Experts with decades of experience and knowledge are turfed out and replaced by graduates and bland bureaucrats with no interest in the subject matter. When Australia did its downsizing over a decade ago, the budget for international aid had been growing steadily and significantly every few years. Both parties, pledged to make Australia a good global citizen and set a target of .7 GNI (gross national income) to be the annual goal.  This would have taken Australia from a medium sized supporter of community development and humanitarian response to the major leagues.   

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Britain in 1997, he removed the ’Aid’ office from the Foreign Office and created a separate and well-funded agency which dominated the sector for the next 15 years. DFID, as it was known (Department for International Development) was very well funded, filled with recognised technical experts and championed new ideas. It was the thought leader of the global sector, respected by all for its commitment to addressing some of the inherent problems that exist in such an agency. 

USAID was the Daddy Warbucks of the industry. The agency with the deepest pockets, largest infrastructure and a pioneer in the financing of major infrastructure projects like dams and roads that were critical for countries to building their sense of nationhood and post-colonial economies.  It had its political constraints imposed by Republicans (no support to abortion or reproductive services, for example) but it was so big these things got lost in the shuffle.

As a kid in India, one of the regular features on the landscape were American men sporting crewcuts and white shirts running around in the most remote places laying the groundwork for or directing the building of such projects.  I attended school with several kids whose parents were in India or Bangladesh or Burma or Ceylon for a few years, working for USAID or the Canadian aid agency on these massive projects. 

It seems those days are now gone forever.  I lament not the white men and crewcuts or even the massive projects, but that governments no longer consider soft power and aid to be something of value. And the implicit if unspoken belief that poverty can be defeated. And that the ‘West’ has a degree of responsibility for taking steps to reduce that poverty and vulnerability. 

DFID is no more. BJ smooshed it back into the Foreign Office and its budget was stripped to support other brilliant schemes like sending asylum seekers to imaginary camps in Rwanda. And to support other underfunded Tory projects. Where if once was a beacon, Britain’s aid program, like so much else in the UK, is flickering candle in a rainstorm.  Canada means well but has lost its importance as an aid donor.   

Australia, flying high with billions of dollars and ambitious plans to support climate change around the world, is now a sick, in-house joke.  Rather than .7% of GNI, the aid budget represents .19% GNI! The lowest level since the 1950s! It’s important presence in South Asia, Africa, and SE Asia has disappeared. It’s only significant programs are in Papua New Guinea (former colony) and a few other Pacific Island nations.  Its priority is pro-business and infrastructure. Issues like public health, agricultural support, education support or humanitarian response is as thin as the storyline the politicos spin in front of the cameras. 

For well over a decade now, Interntional non-governmental organisations (INGOS) have been struggling to find a reason to stay alive.  This is a long and inglorious story of strategic blindness, consolidation and refusal to face the reality of a changing world.   In this way, perhaps Trump’s bull-in-a-China shop approach will finally bring on the crisis that will at last bring reality crashing through the cubicle partitions. That could be good. But the damage will be massive and the chances of it leading to anything but chaos and corruption, extremely low.

More likely what we will see is the aid budget going to support Trusk designed projects (Trump hotels in Myanmar, rocket ships for Kazakstan, oil drilling in South Sudan, shopping malls and data farms in Greenland). And huge disruption to the financial viability of INGOs around the world that have built themselves into large often-bloated institutions whose main source of revenue is USAID. Which is now shuttered. 

I just tapped in “USAID.gov”  

Stay tuned for further developments on this front. 

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Letter from Dushanbe

Rudaki Square, Dushanbe

LETTER FROM DUSHANBE 
 
There are two things that could kill you in Tajikistan these days. The first is a massive earthquake. Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian republics with a population of six million, is the place where four major mountain ranges meet as the Indian subcontinent inexorably crushes and grinds northwards into Europe. You feel the earth tremor here almost every week: sometimes just a low quiver; at others a quick chiropractic snap that rattles your windows and creaks the walls. 

The second way you can be deprived of your life is to be slammed by a vehicle with tinted windows (could be a Jeep Cherokee, could be a tiny Lada 1500) whizzing dangerously through the shaded intersections of Rudaki Avenue, equally scornful of traffic signals and pedestrians as of the sour-faced militia that hang thick as bats along the main drags of the capital, Dushanbe. Not too long ago the odds on being kidnapped and then murdered, or shot in the crossfire of street fights were definitely better than the first two scenarios. 
 
So, on the face of it, things have improved in Tajikistan. Gangsters may be bad drivers but at least snipers aren’t drawing a bead on you when you go shopping. Tajikistan’s society fell apart the same moment the Soviet Union declared itself null and void. Seventy years of communist wall papering had done nothing but thinly cover the rifts that had been cracking across the landscape for centuries. Northern Tajiks, long the “blessed ones” of the political system began to squabble with uppity, uncouth Southerners. Democrats from Dushanbe and Islamicists from the isolated, honey producing Karategin valley joined forces against Communist party hacks. Ethnic Uzbeks, Russians and Germans were attacked, harassed and forced to quit the country. Fighting broke out in the streets of Dushanbe and carried on for five years. Tens of thousands of Tajiks fled into Afghanistan (could there be a worse place on earth to seek refuge?) as hundreds of thousands more became displaced within the country. 

Tajikistan, like many other recently independent states, is one of the lost nations of our world. Though not yet a failed state, Tajikistan is falling with increasing velocity towards the bottom of the misery stakes. It has always been a poor country and except for a couple of centuries a millennium ago, when Tajiks were the undisputed rulers of this part of the world, holding the northern borders of the first Islamic Persian empire, the Tajik people have always been lesser partners in the power arrangements of Central Asia. The fabled cities of Bukhara (ascetic and spare), and Samarkand (opulent and gregarious), are their proudest contribution to world civilization. But with the gradual loss of the northern realms to Turkic tribes the Tajiks were unequivocally usurped and subjugated to a life of cultural domination and political irrelevance. Until, that is, 1924, when the new Soviet state carved out a Tajik Autonomous Region. For the first time the Tajiks began to imagine themselves as a distinct national group. The Tajiks’ feelings toward the Soviet Union were, not unnaturally, largely positive. They were grateful for bringing them into the world. And being part of a sprawling powerful Union gave the tiny land-locked country much greater security and prosperity than it would have been able to acquire on its own. If there was any doubt about what their fate could have been without the Soviet Union, one only has to glance south of the border to the basket case called Afghanistan. Ten years ago, when Tajikistan followed the general trend and declared its independence the occasion was a cheerless event. Those once fond feelings have given way to bitterness and regret. The civil war that broke out almost immediately achieved little of positive consequence. The industry, farms and orchards of the most dependent economy of the former Soviet Union (40% of the budget had come in direct subsidy from Moscow) fell into utter neglect and disrepair. Nothing was produced and very little grown. Factories stood as empty as the revolutionary slogans that had suddenly fallen out of vogue. Bazaars were deserted. Restaurants were beyond imagination. Since an UN-brokered peace settlement four years ago Tajikistan has struggled to find its way in the big bad frightening world marketplace. It will be years before the people of this country enjoy the standard of living they had as Soviets when time extended securely into the future and holidays in Georgia were assured. 
 
Ten years after independence there remains little warm feeling for the capitalist, free market and democratic jargon their leaders mouth each day in the smudgy, thin, state-controlled newspapers. Hunger and poverty are growing in Tajikistan. The World Bank estimates that 96% of the people live on less than $28 a month. More than a third live on less than $5. Forty one percent of children under five years of age are seriously malnourished and weigh less than children their age in all except the poorest countries. Basic buying power is the issue in this country. Most Tajiks don’t have any. There is no work and what is available pays a paltry sum. Many agriculture workers working the old state and collective cotton farms have not seen a wage for three years. In most households outside of the capital (and increasingly here as well) the day’s meal is a loaf of round naan bread and tea. Russians, once the prime beneficiaries of the system, but now among the poorest, have taken to stewing dogs in some urban centers. Poverty can be measured in any number of ways. But if you calculate the degree to which a people’s standard of living has fallen (evaporated nearly overnight) then the collapse of most of the Soviet-dependent societies has produced one of the cruelest forms of privation. Recently I visited the home of a deaf pensioner who receives a small donation of American wheat flour and vegetable oil. The effects of a stroke twist his face. His flat, on the first floor of a concrete tower on the outskirts of Dushanbe, is shabby and dark. His trousers are pinned together and his shirt collar is worn; old spectacles off kilter. “I used to be a highly skilled type setter at a publishing house. Now all I can do is cry.” As I left the building I recalled what one man said to me when I asked him what he thought of the new world order. “The Russians used to say ‘We’ll screw you but then we’ll feed you.’ Now we are being fucked but there’s no food.” 

This piece appeared first on the blog Hackwriters in 2003

I lived and worked in Dushanbe, Tajikistan between 1999-2001. Dushanbe is the Tajik word for the second day of the week, (Tuesday) and was named for a historical weekly Tuesday market that had been held in the area for centuries. During the Soviet era the city was known as Stalinabad (1929-1961). With the ‘thaw’ that followed the death of Josef Stalin, the ancient historical name was reinstated.