Jamaica - Impressions and Experiences

I decided to head to Jamaica for what seemed good reasons - It would be my last global travel before joining school, I didn't need a visa, and above all through some long connection a local village family would host me for 2 days. So I found myself on an Air Jamaica flight on a Friday evening from Miami heading to Montego Bay - Jamaica's second largest city and gaudy tourist hub.

Life in Jamaica is decidedly slow and relaxed living up to its stereo-typical view. I was picked at the airport by two guys (it was prearranged) who were drinking their beer while driving. We stopped on the way to eat Jerk Chicken and Rum Punch in a shack playing loud Reggae. Hot tropical air outside, small highways with houses on either side, guys drinking while driving - I felt great to be in 'real' Jamaica! :-) I was driven to Aunt D's house through a tropical rain forest called 'Fern Creek', near Ocho Rios. She lives with two (out of her eight) daughters and grandkids - the entire surrounding land is that of the family, and each member has built houses in the vicinity. At night you can hear the Crickets in the all encompassing forest and dogs barking loudly. I got up the next morning to explore the village, which didn't take more than about 20 minutes. There is one shop, a few houses and rest is the impossible greenery filling the gaps, overflowing with plants and fruit. The families grow their own meat (pigs, chicken), I tagged along to see them being fed.

That first day I visited 'the grandpa' who is 93 but taken care of, played with the kids who're always around, and went to the local bar - which is a little shack with people who all know each other hanging about drinking, playing with the dogs or playing dominoes. The sense of community can be felt - like any other place in the world besides America! Then they took me to Ocho Rios (the nearest city) with nothing but tourist traps and a couple of attractions. Many tourist knick-knack shops are surprisingly owned by Indians - true for other cities as well, as I'd later realize.

On Sunday I first took a roundtrip to Ocho Rios to climb the famous Dunn's River Falls - you climb inside the falls. We took a local taxi with six strangers squeezed in and the driver going at a mad pace. People were going to the Church all dressed up in a quaint British way (in dresses, hats with ribbons - sweating hard due to heat) :-) Christianity in a tropical rain forest looked as out of place as the cell phones, cable TV and the internet - which are all ubiquitous now!

Then I decided to head to Montego Bay - and one of the sisters (Josanne) in the huge family decided to accompany me. This was where I began to get a peek inside the Jamaican culture. From her, I learnt about the life of all the sisters - like the guidebooks wrote, its the norm for women to have a child when in their teens, change several partners and have children through different partners in their lifetime. The society is macho as women work harder and fend for the kids. I also learnt the Carribean mentality to swindle the tourists first hand. The first stage of building friendship ('I will accompany you and show you around), the second stage of generating pity ('We're very poor, we can't afford to go out') and finally establishing a relationship where you're paying for everything they'd like to experience - which is sadly nothing more than the Capitalist American Dream which god knows who sold to them. They want to eat at KFC, sip margaritas in Margaritaville (with huge TV screens), drive around in cabs and so forth. One funny episode was that I was first convinced to hire an expensive private cab (around $80 US) instead of public transportation from the village to Montego Bay by Josanne. When we arrived she asked me for the money and said she'll handle it. Later I learnt the cab driver was her cousin! I even found myself buying them all a round of drinks because the journey was tiring! - Yes, I was nicely ripped off Carribean style! :-)

The next couple of days I found myself doing the touristy things - hanging about at white sand crystal blue water beaches. The scenery was breathtaking, esp. in Negril which at one-time was a hippie hub but now a romantic stop for couples. I was constantly stalked by hustlers, quizzed by Rastafarians, and hounded by anybody who was around - all this living up to the expectations guide books build up for the solo woman traveller, alas! I tried talking to some locals to find out more about what they think of their country & situation.

More than 60% of the Jamaican economy is based on Tourism. Everything is overpriced for the tourists - and its simply not affordable by the locals. Largely, there is no industry to grow for majority of Jamaicans. Spending on education doesn't seem a big priority with several Jamaicans enrolling in nearby Cuban universities for a doctorate! This explains the mentality of YOU (the tourist) being viewed as their source of income. Later I stumbled upon a book written by two local professors analyzing the tourism industry and observing that the Jamaican government (like other Carribean governments) does not even acknowledge tourism as an industry that is their main source of income! They have no strategy, no plans, its not even on their agenda. No wonder rampant capitalism rules the industry with expensive resorts (by any standards) paying peanuts to Jamaicans working in them.

In hindsight, I'd realized when walking into any restaurant that the locals would look down at Josanne (giving her the 'What the hell are you doing here' vibe) and treat me very nicely - Its only natural in the scheme of things - they want the tourist money and know she's somehow managed to get a free ride.

Welcome to the Carribean!

And here are the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/guptakirti/200707Jamaica

Decisions and Uncertainty

Many of you who have faced choices -- sometimes equally good/bad ones -- but with a lot at stake, and have had to make a hard decision will empathize with these words:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

The Life of An Immigrant

What kinds of people migrate from one land to another? Some flock for greener pastures in search of a better living, some to escape war, some to simply make a living and of course some want to excel in whatever it is they are pursuing to learn or do in their transient existence on this planet. What I have learnt in the past few months of making small and big talk with shopkeepers, shuttle drivers, kiosk owners, waiters/waitresses and even my own relatives, is that their reasons may come in different shades of grey but are wholly centered on seeking some sort of “progress” in their own terms. It is essentially these reasons that define the path of the life of an immigrant and the society around them.

I am a part of the immigrant statistics as well. I grew up with strong aspirations and wanted to do research in the best possible places, I wanted to learn, travel, observe and understand different cultures and that led my path to America. It is not the same for everyone though. Mine is not even a touching journey of drudgery and toil that can move one to utter admiration for the staunch human nature of simply, endlessly and stubbornly striving for better, for progress. Whether it is the Ethiopian cab driver in Texas who is doing his part time M.B.A at the age of 50, or the Israeli boy driving a shuttle while studying architecture in San Diego, or the Syrian whose family escaped war and famine there and is now running a small knick-knack stall in the east coast, or my own mother's aunt who, with her one-year-old daughter arrived one winter day in a cold Canadian city, after her husband toiling in some revenue office; they all tell the same heart-rending story as those throng of people in the past century who arrived in huge ships over the cold waters of the Atlantic on Ellis Island.

These are the bulk of the hard-working immigrants who make North America. They labor hard for themselves and their families, while adding value to the society. And their own lives? What of that? It is but inevitable that the majority lives for yesterday and tomorrow. The quintessential example is my mother's aunt who is stuck in the values of her past but toiled at the same time for a better future for her sons and daughters. Her capability to think so little about herself in the whole scheme of things astonishes me. When she arrived on a cold Sunday evening with her one-year-old daughter in her arms to join her husband, she didn't quite know what she was in for. For one, minus 30 degrees did not register in her head until she went out for a walk the very next morning, and froze within minutes. Her husband who was already working had gone for his day job and having no idea what to do, she simply rushed back and didn't move for hours. Now, she tells us with a modest amused smile how that whole night she sat and knit a pair of gloves for herself, so she could step out and buy another, better pair the next morning. She prides over her now-grown eldest daughter whose innocent non-vocal demands such as silent stares at dolls used to compel the mother to walk for miles rather than taking the bus, to save enough coins and buy those little toys plus a smile on her daughter's face. She reminisces of those long nights when she used to type her husband's thesis while he brain-stormed and read out his ideas to her. Somehow, what always crowns these stories is the underlying anticipation towards the next trip home. It took my mother’s aunt and her husband eight years to save enough money to make that first trip home, to their small native town in northern India. They had had another son and a daughter by now and in all this time, they had taken it upon themselves to preserve their identity and culture as they remembered it, to pass on to their children. So fierce was the attempt that they failed to notice during their trips home over the years, how their own native land is slowly but decidedly going through waves of change.

India, after all, was a developing economy and a well positioned one. The middle class had been created and was advancing forward full-speed during these decades. I was growing up in the capital city and like any modern city, it had an air of progress and exposure towards cultures from all parts of the world. In this medley of development no one had time, indeed tolerance, towards retreating into our respective communities; such attitude was dismissed as being regressive. That, of course, was our view point and we held our secular society in high regard.

If my mother's aunt or anyone in her family is to read these words even today, they will be unable to comprehend what I am talking about. Their younger daughter, however, remembers some confusing parts of the trips back home. She remembers being made to change from her skirts/pants into Indian clothes (salwar-kamiz) during the transit stops in London airport, only to land in Delhi and to her consternation witness me and my sister running about in our shorts. She remembers finding it odd why we had all those shelves of books from other parts of the world, why we somehow never went to those traditional dance or singing classes like good "girls", why we were not strict vegetarians, why we never went to the temples or paid no regard to any rituals etc. As we all grew up, her elder brother and sister were put through the systematic and "respectable" process of an arranged marriage. Their respective beaus were also converted into devout believers of their chosen god and scriptures. Today, the grand children all go to "Hindi schools", rigorously attend all Indian functions, regularly visit religious events, and do all that is considered "Indian" by those who remember their country as what it was in their respective towns 50 or more years ago.

I suppose they keep content in the oasis that is their community but realize they need to preserve it ever more, and make all attempts to expand it through any ties possible, in particular familial ones. My aunt’s youngest daughter has had no such luck however. Pulled on different sides between her family and the general social peer pressures, she never quite managed to carve out her own comfortable space. Dating a black Canadian from a Jamaican culture has estranged her from her family, while the part of her Indian upbringing never allows her to be fully comfortable with such an alien and a wonderfully opposite culture either. Where the Indian Hindus believe being calm and mellow is a virtue, the Jamaicans are in loud favor of dance, music, drinking and smoking. From her devout experience and disciplined childhood memories of waking up at 5:00 am for meditation, she is now thrown in the midst of a carefree society that believes in celebrating every moment of life. From being made to believe that marriages are meant to last for a life time, she finds it hard to deal with her boyfriend's healthy, friendly relationship with his several Ex-es. Not really knowing what her identity is, she is driven to so much stress as to take up chain smoking. Nor is there any support for her but for those select couple of friends who have always stood by her. I hope she finds a way to be at peace with all these contradicting extremes that surround her, and discovers happiness in them. As for the others, I wonder till how long they will be able to fight against the tides of Oh-the-eternal-enemy -- Change!

Like I said, it takes all kinds to make an immigrant pool. They all have their own reasons that define their identities and destinies. Their stories stir us and remind us how, even after moving through continents and oceans for the sake of a better future, the need to feel "rooted" or sense of "belonging" to some context, culture, group or society sometimes overtakes the individuals and drives them to their self-made cocoons for a contrived feeling of preservation. It seems painful to go through times of transition for those breaking these boundaries, but from the obvious instinct so apparent in all of their stories -- that basic human nature aspiring towards progress and change – it is clear that the inevitable convergence to an open, mixed and an all embracing social blend can never be stifled.

Cinema Quotes

I almost completed writing a Statement of Purpose to apply to a Film Appreciation course in Pune, India, but never sent it in. Now there is no way of ever knowing whether they would have even accepted my motivated-but-perhaps-immature application. Still, the entire process made me watch some good cinema, think about what I appreciate about each film I watched and come up with a list of sorts that are a must-watch.

This would be a perfect time to share some nice quotes from the World of Cinema, from some of my favourite film makers.

"Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema." -- Andrei Tarkovsky

"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls." -- Ingmar Bergman

"I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it."
Federico Fellini [on Artistic Freedom]

"My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry." --Roberto Benigni

"In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director." --
Alfred Hitchcock

"One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that." -- Oliver Stone

And finally, sadly but inevitably, because I am Indian and I have my unfortunate exposure to the jarring, disturbing and convoluted world of Bollywood, I quote the king star of Bad_Hindi_Films:
"Cinema in India is like brushing your teeth in the morning. You can't escape it." -- Shahrukh Khan
[Alas, so true!]

And really finally, to conclude, something I believe in:
"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."

"If I had a little Money"

“Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you’re okay.
Money, it’s a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I’ll buy me a football team.”
-Pink Floyd

Some say there’s an ancient curse about getting everything you wish for. Others deny it. A significant class of immigrants in the Promised Land live, toil and labor in the hope and dream of striking gold. Now, it is a good thing to be ambitious. The progress of the human civilization is based on eternal quest for knowledge. The sole and primary quest for “money”, however, seems strangely vapid to some souls like me.

But I have a story to tell, perhaps even a moral to carve out. So I must introduce my characters…In one of the dingy parts of town lives a couple I know and whose friendship I cherish. The good natured fella is a music-loving buddy of mine, a carefree soul, an engineer by profession but a real estate buff by obsession. He buys, he sells, and dabbles in the property market. His wife hails from a family of merchants, rooted in the budding business state of their home country. Her father sold water pumps and made a lot of money. I doubt if she understood the meaning of the word “profession” leading from “education” as defined in today’s modern world, until only much later in life.

Now, there was a time when the engineers were highly rated in the new world order. They had stock options, their virtual banks were flowing and the adrenalin was pumping. It was during such times my two characters fell in love. They had a brief courtship, shared some thoughts and dreams and then got married. But fate plays unpredictable tricks…soon enough the stock market tumbled; the simple engineer lost his job and the virtual as well as the real bank balances were reduced to shambles. The wife turned bitter, she cursed her stars, first secretly and then openly, she started expressing her lament on having crushed the desire of marrying a diamond merchant instead. Oh they could have lived in a villa, a big bungalow, and traveled the world. Sometimes people cling more closely to their dreams when they are about to lose them forever, in an attempt to save them or perhaps to live the last of them. Thus, more than ever before, she took fiercely to her fantasies and laments about her price, his estate and one hundred servants. This started taking a toll on my good natured friend, for he loved his wife so. He wanted to fulfill every dream of hers.

And when the opportunity came, he took it. It so happened that from his modest salary, my friend had managed to scoop out enough amounts to buy a humble abode. Soon luck favored him again, the real estate prices rocketed up, he took advantage of the opportunity and sold his little place for big sums. Bravo, Kudos! One must always be appreciated for being an opportunist. Those who do not grab it suffer their own loss. What happened then? Did he then move his sweetheart to a more refreshing home? Or did they set out to explore the whole world, the exotic lands? Or perhaps he and his wife finally made the honeymoon trip they had not managed yet? Er…not quite. A slight change of plans here. No, in fact, they decided to do the Smarter Thing. He invested his newfound profits elsewhere. He bought more property in cheaper parts of the country. And then he sold those. And then sold more and bought more. The cycle continues. Little by little, the rabbits run to dig their holes forgetting the sun. And when at last the work is done, they don't sit down, since it's time to dig another one. Such is the worthy, unrelenting spirit of the toiling humans.

Year after year, I see them building their stock little by little. I see them cutting their budgets, the only plans they make is driving to country sides to buy petrol pumps or partner in restaurants. In every visit to their plain and modest place that speaks the essence of the drudgery and grind of their story, I get to hear their grandiose plans to eventually retire on a ranch, to live with horses and other kinds of live-stock. To embark upon glamorous cruises when they are old, and to even vacation in mansions by the beach when they have stocked up enough money. One day I even heard a touching fancy of buying an island in the Bermuda, just like the so-and-so latest-and-greatest movie star.

When do they decide enough is enough? When do they balance their accounts, make their compromises and actually start to live their transient lives?

Such are the thoughts and wonders of simple and unsophisticated souls like yours truly who co-exist in the same world; who are driven by acquiring some success and satisfaction out of their small time professions, some of us retreat into the life styles made possible by their reasonable compensations, others pursue our joys in the ways we can. If we want to travel and experience the exotic lands, we take the dirt road, we camp, cut our budgets. If we want to live by the beach, we just decide to cut our pockets. But we survive. No, one may even venture to say, we live.

“Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world”
-ABBA

My Favourite "Religious" Quotes

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
-Robert A. Heinlein

I’ve never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
-Robert A. Heinlein (Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land)

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-Bertrand Russell

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.
-Mark Twain

Which is it: Is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?
-Friedrich Nietzsche

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
-George Bernard Shaw

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.
-Aldous Huxley

The Hidden Fortress - film by Akiro Kurosawa

The epic story, the bold scenes, the work of a master. I have been recently introduced to Japanese cinema and how! Kurosawa the genius. Since I am no film expert, it is hard to appreciate him fully since I have not seen other films of the times to compare against. However, not knowing much wouldn't stop one from vaguely noticing other directors are impacted from his work.

It was interesting to hear George Lucas comment on The Hidden Fortress, stating the blaring obvious fact I nearly missed -- the film is beautifully told by the eyes of two idiots, the two lowest characters in the film...the peasant thieves who are after greed of gold and have no business with the real story on the scene. A bold princess behing enemy lines somehow being traded across into safer zones so that she can rebuild her empire. Ring a bell? Yes thats also the story of the Star Wars princess. The thing though, that Lucas says he was inspired from was telling the story from the eyes of two lowest characters - in his case the two robots R2-D2! :)

Is there also some Bollywood Masala film out there based on this Kurosawa epic? Does anyone know?