Picto Diary-07, 08, 09 April 2024 - Mehrangarh Fort - Jodhpur,, Rajasthan

Above: Rambagh Palace Hotel Presidential Suite. Jaipur, Rajasthan. 07 April 2023

Image of Matriarch TIMDT, expendable bull elephant (Bishop) and Koessler family. Hotel, with nudge of TravelScope, doing a nice gesture for the family.

Above: Raas Chhatrasagar, Nimaz, District Pali, Rajasthan. 07 April 2024. (file image.

Overnight at this tony bird watching camp. I snoozed and missed the walk to the lake and dinner. After breakfast, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) passed on the village walk and talked to our guide, Raj, until an 11:00 AM departure for Jodhpur. Accommodations and food (at least breakfast, which is the only meal I took) were first class in every respect.

Above: Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 08 April 2024.

Five people. Baby hidden from view.

Above: Chinkara (Black Buck). Bilara, Rajasthan. 08 April 2024.

Above: Ajit Bhavan Palace Hotel. Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 08 April 2024.

Nice 'stash. Soldier on the right, too.

Above: Ajit Bhavan Hotel, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 08 April 2024.

It is always important to lock the door when you are leaving your hotel room.

Above: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 09 April 2024
Matriarch oversees her herd. Bull, kicked out of the herd, is allowed to take images.

Above: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 09 April 2024.
Granny and charges in tuk tuk.

Note:  In a strange scene that I did not witness:  a grandmother brought a one-year-old over to the tuk tuk and laid it in Roy's lap.  She told the Tuk Tuk driver that it was too hard for her to carry the infant up the quarter mile long, 200-foot elevation change ramp to the entrance to the fort.  Due to her respiratory problem, TIMDT had been granted special permission to ride the tuk tuk to the fort gate.  On arrival at the fort gate, the tuk tuk driver took the baby from Roy, sent Roy on her way, and waited for the grandmother to arrive to return the child.  As it was relayed to me, all this happened sans explanation, though there was probably some communication between the tuk tuk drive and the grandmother.

Shortly after entering the main gate of the plus five-hundred-year-old Rajput, Mehrangarh Fort, I stopped at a money exchange window to get some rupees for dollars. Boldly advertised on a sign in the window was the exchange rate: one dollar gets you 83 rupees. I carefully meted out five US twenties on the dealer's desk. The dealer confirmed the count and then pointed to another sign behind him which said: Small US bills, 82 rupees to the dollar. Twenties were apparently small bills. I smiled at the dealer, who remain stern faced. Bait and switch I thought to myself. I was only going to change one hundred dollars to get some tip money. I wasn't going to quibble over the reduced rate. So, sans complaint or protest, I completed the exchange and went on my way.

More amused than angry about having been had, I was impressed with the resourcefulness of the currency exchange operator. Having lived in "third world countries (Egypt, Lebanon, Philippines, and India) for eight years over the course of my life, I had experienced many situations where quick-witted service providers would find another way to apply a hoodwink premium to some transaction I had gullibly entered into. While living in Manila in the early 80's, our phone broke down. The phone company sent out a repairman who concluded the problem was electrical. He said he couldn't fix it. I told one of my employees at work about the seeming Catch 22. 'Well Steve," the employee said, "just ask the phone guy to fix the "electrical" problem. He'll do it for a few pesos, cash of course." I asked the phone company for another service call. The same phone repairman returned. I said, "Look, I know you are the phone guy, but can you fix the electrical problem for me? I'll give you thirty pesos." "Sure," he said. For sure I had been had, but the problem was solved... and not a lot of money had been involved. And, I felt more satisfied, than had, by the fact that my telephone now worked.

It has long been my private theory that the "resourcefulness" I had witnessed in India and the Philippines while engaging in small transactions correlated to the success of immigrants arriving in the US from those same countries. Check the below chart and note how Indian and Filipino immigrants' average incomes in the US are well above that of white Americans. Now, I have to be careful here. I am not saying these immigrants to the US get ahead by cheating. People who don't follow US laws and practices, over time, will be caught and punished. I am saying, though, that there is a quality found in certain third world country US immigrants that impels them to work a little bit harder, a little more resourcefully and cleverly, to get ahead. I applaud the success of America's Filipino and Indian immigrants. Whether my private theory is right or wrong, the below numbers don't lie. Bottom line: the US needs more resourceful, talented and "hungry" Indian and Filipino immigrants.

Above: Old Town Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 09 April 2024.
Scene at center shows an Islamic woman dressed in black chador.

India is fractured by a matrix of cultural fault lines, segments which include religion, caste, class and race/language. The British, during eighty-nine years of parliamentary rule, 1858 to 1847, managed to stich the various segments together by creating institutions such as railroads, civil service and an army of Indian sepoys reporting to British officers. Enter the Indian National Congress in 1885, colloquially the Congress Party, the first nationalist movement to arise in the British Empire. While Indian soldiers fought for the British in the two world wars, the push for India independence by the Congress Party gained strength. A lot of summarizing here, but finally on 15 August 1947, India was granted her independence by Britain.

The Indian leaders at the time of Independence were Mahatma Gandhi, the sainted champion of nonviolence as the successful key to colonial resistance, Jawaharlal Nehru, an Oxford educated, secular aesthete, Vallabhbhai Patel, a barrister and close associate of fellow Gujarati, Gandhi, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a secular, primarily English-speaking Muslim lawyer from Mumbai.

Britain was sapped at the end of World War II and realized the inevitability of her having to give up her "jewel in the crown," India, to independence. Even so, no one thought the experiment would work. The Brits, while looting India, had held together the polyglot cultural matrix that is India, but could Indians replace them? Churchill, who detested Gandhi, knew an independent India was an experiment doomed to fail. Jinnah, the self-appointed representative for India's Muslim community, then twenty-five percent of the Indian population, so doubted the success of a plan to forge an independent India absent the Brits that he, to Gandhi's great disappointment, insisted that Muslims be offered their own country. The discussions of independence were refereed by Britain's Louis Mountbatten, who try as he might to get Jinnah to reconsider breaking India apart, failed. Jinnah became the first prime minister of newly created Pakistan.

The boundaries between India and Pakistan were haphazardly drawn. An exodus of Indian Muslims moved north from south of the partition line to Pakistan and Hindus, moved from north to south. The sectarian violence between Muslims and Hindus that occurred as India was broken apart is well rehearsed having cost a staggering two million lives. This cataclysmic partition of India seemed to validate the expectations of naysayers like Churchill that the independence experiment was not going to work. Nehru and Patel, seemingly over their heads in running the new India had to call back Mountbatten to serve as a closet PM. Gandhi was assassinated only six months after Independence in January of 1948. His assassin was a Hindu nationalist upset about Gandhi's role in breaking India apart.

Somehow the Indian leaders, Nehru, and later his daughter Indira Gandhi, got India moving, albeit in a highly regulated, socialist, low growth mode. 2014: Enter Narendra Modi, former governor of the state of Gujarat, from a rival party to Congress, BJP, who introduced significant economic reforms. During Modi's leadership India's economic growth rate has averaged above 6%. She is self-sufficient in food production. She is due to have surpass Germany and Japan in economic output within four years. So, time heals all wounds. We have a success story, right? Not so fast. The ghost of Churchill lives on.

Having lived in India for three years during the 1970's and during our several trips to India over the last two decades, we have been well aware of India's sectarian fault lines. The largest fault line, of course, is between Hinduism and Islam. Today, Muslims (not all went north to Pakistan, now an Islamic Republic) number 200 million, the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia, and 15% of India's total population. Mostly, we have witnessed a go along get along relationship between Hindus and Muslims. We saw many examples in villages of Hindu and Muslim cooperation. In one village, the Muslim tailor would sew wedding garments precedent to a Hindu wedding, and, in another village, the Hindus ceded burial spots form their own burial grounds to Muslims. We noted, in one small town, Hindus and Muslims cooperating ensure the completion of a Hindu temple. It seems that this MO at the rural level, where sixty five percent of India's population is, is generally intact.

But, in confirming Hindu/Muslim cooperation at the village level, we weren't looking closely enough. A Hindu nationalist movement in India is on the rise in larger population areas. It makes itself manifest at religious festivals where rowdy young Hindus, sporting saffron-colored clothes and carrying swords, march through a Muslim neighborhood shouting pro Hindu slogans. They are met with Muslim boys throwing stones back at them. The government typically dampens the demonstrations as isolated phenomena. But the government is now run by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and many of its officials are vocal Hindu nationalists who were once part of the saffron shirted boys raising havoc in Muslim neighborhoods during religious festivals. The demonstrations have been growing more frequent in recent years and the response from BJP party head, and Indian PM, Modi, has been silence.

Since partition in 1947, notwithstanding the seeming cooperative spirit between Muslims and Hindus at the village level, the secular principles enshrined in India's constitution show decay. In 1992, Hindu extremists demolished a 16th century mosque in the city of Ayoda. Hindus ended up winning the legal battle by having the Supreme Court award them the land. A 2000 Islamic terror attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, conceived in Pakistan, didn't help matters on the sectarian front. The BJP brazenly uses anti-Islamic rhetoric to get votes. In 2022, in the BJP run state of Karnataka (Bangalore) authorities introduced rules to ban veils in schools, ban public prayers, ban the Muslim call to prayer and ban Muslim street traders from plying their wares near Hindu temples. At the extreme, speakers at public rallies in BJP run states have issued threats against Muslims, from mass rape to mass expulsion. Minority Christians and Sikhs have not been spared from this rise in Hindu nationalist rhetoric. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by one of her Sikh bodyguards as a response to anti Sikh pogroms initiated by Hindu nationalists.

Most Hindus in India are said to believe that the actions of the extremists are over the top. Also, the broader Muslim community has acted with restraint for the most part in the wake of Hindu surliness. But Modi's seeming indifference to rising anti Muslim rhetoric and demonstrations plays in the face of potential Muslim violent response. 1947 is a long way back, but not so far back that memory of severe secular violence between Hindus and Muslims is forgotten. India has progressed greatly in seventy-six years of independence. Still, Modi needs to be careful, that notwithstanding his successful leadership in spurring economic growth in India over the last ten years, he is not the catalyst to a sectarian cataclysm to prove Churchill right all along.

Above: Pal Haveli, Old City, Jodhpur. 09 April 2024.

14th century music performance, passed along the generations via matriarchal line. Vocal, dance, and instrumental: razan-hatta, bhapang.

Above: Indique Restaurant. Old Town, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. 09 April 2024

Addendum:

The hunger rate in the US is 16.67.%. Draw your own conclusions- probably does not include illegal, all or some.

Archbishop,
Naples, FL

Loved the pics. Elephant pic would look good in a frame.

Tony,
Park City, UT

I could go vegan too. Got any good lentil meal recipes to provide protein???

Nathans,
Orlando, FL

Good one.

Brand Man,
Ventura, CA

Steve,

I know we CAN do it, but should we?

Years ago, while at FranklinQuest, we bought a health spa (the National Institute of Fitness) in St. George that advocated vegetarianism and preferably veganism. I went vegan for a whole year. I was never healthier: lowered my blood pressure dramatically, lost 15% of body weight, my teeth were shockingly clean.

On the flip side, I was never so UNHAPPY. Meal time was nothing to look forward to—ever. My wife was miserable, trying to adapt to my ridiculous meal regimen. Almost cost me my marriage!

Eating good food for us is a major part of la joie de vivre. Then, I saw an article in the WSJ where some guru of veganism had left the faith. The reporter asked him, “How can you do this to all your adherents, i.e., preach veganism for 20 years and then overnight become a carnivore?” His answer: “Twenty years is a long time!”

Of our six children’s we have one daughter and a granddaughter who are recovering vegetarians. We have another daughter (in her forties) who is and has been a vegetarian since she was about five. Of all our children, she is probably the healthiest, but also the most unhappy with her life. I think there’s a lesson in that.

Best,

Apple Store,
Salt Lake City, UT

Steve.. Loved your write-up ire Delhi arrivals, past and present, and the development of India during the past 50 years which I observed on my visit 2 month ago. I look forward to seeing and reading more from your current visit with family. Just had my first day of skiing in Park City today and look forward to seeing you and Margaret upon your return, and hopefully skiing with you.

Espresso,
Washington, D.C.

Thanks Steve your comments on India’s food situation are appreciated. Another event not to be overlooked is the tremendous advancement in agricultural equipment. India played a significant roll in providing ag equipment to the third world beginning in the 1960s. Enjoy your trip and keep the reports coming.

The Monk,
Salina, UT