ASIA EMERGING

Gregory & Elisabeth Benford

We left February 17, 2007 on a considerable, month-long trip,starting with Hong Kong, where we caught the Lunar New YearCelebration (Chinese New Year). Then on to Colombo, Sri Lanka,to visit Arthur Clarke. Arthur has post polio syndrome and thusvery little memory or energy. He turns 90 this December andwants to keep in touch with the outer world, mostly through theInternet. He has few friends left in Colombo.

Arthur took us to the Swimming Club for lunch, a sunny oceanclub left over from the British days (commonly called the Raj).Members swam in the pool and enjoyed buffet lunch. It feltsomehow right to watch the Indian Ocean curl in, breaking on therocks, and speak of space: the last, greatest ocean.

Elisabeth, Arthur C. Clarke, and Greg in ACC’s home study in Colombo.

Our hotel with a similar ocean view, the Galle Face, is theoldest grand Raj hotel east of the Suez Canal, dating frombefore the Civil War, and reeks of atmosphere. On the verandahwe daily dug into a good Lankan breakfast: string hoppers ofwoven rice, rich curry of meat and potatoes, idli (small steamedrice cakes), dosas (rice crepes) with various fillings,pappadums – cause for lascivious hunger. The full Englishbreakfast was also available.

Greg in front of the back lawn of the Galle Face Hotel. Note the crow-chasing man wielding a slingshot and defending the verandah.

Sri Lanka sits a few degrees from the equator and was namedSerendip long ago by the Arabs, for its fortunate circumstances.Not all is fortunate now, though. The civil war between theSinhalese government and the fascist Tamil Tigers (much lessthan 1% of the population; Tamils are 18%) has now run 23 years,killing hundreds of thousands.

Since the Galle Face is next to the British High Commandcompound, and just down the street from the presidentialresidence and various embassies, not-so-subtle security lurkseverywhere. Armed guards carefully inspect entering people andvehicles at all the government compounds. A heavy machine gun ona nearby tower peered over us as we swam in the pool. This wasserious business, and Elisabeth didn’t dare take a photo!

Arthur mused, “All this effort, all this death, when we could bebuilding the staging area for a seaborne space elevator.” In TheFountains of Paradise he had moved the island five degrees southso it could sit on the equator to facilitate the enterprise.

INDIA

We flew to Chennai (Madras) to link up with a tour by ZegrahmExpeditions. After a couple of days exploring the city, andgetting over some culture shock (like the beggar child whospread-eagled herself against the car window as we left theairport), we flew south to Madurai to see some fantastic Hindutemples, and do some shopping.

Elisabeth in front of a temple in a small lake in Madurai.

Below is one of the seven large polychrome towers of one ofsouth India’s largest Hindu temple complex, the Shri Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar Temple. Madurai is in the state of Tamil Nadu,where this site is much venerated. As in the Sri LankanBuddhist temples, visitors to Hindu temples must leave shoes atthe entrance.

A polychrome tower in Shri Meenakshi-Sundareshwarar Temple.

India and Sri Lanka are third-world countries. Throughout thetrip, we were struck by the traffic noise, the disorder, theroadside trash, the tiny retail shops (as we had seen in China),and generally primitive-appearing lifestyle. Water trucksdeliver drinking water to people even in Mahatma Gandhi’sBrahmin (high caste) former neighborhood in Bombay. Everywherepeople were doing by hand what we in the advanced nations dowith machines.

People still head-carry burdens (in Bologna, Italy, a Medievalcity, everyone uses wheeled shopping carts). Local deliveriesare routinely by bicycle, hand carts, or animal-drawn carts(horse, camel, buffalo). We saw stacks of dried cow-patties(fuel for cooking) on roadsides in Delhi within blocks of theseat of government of this global power.

Typical roadside scene: a grazing goat, wheeled carts full of nuts,and one with strings of brightly colored chewing tobacco packetsamidst the general disorder and litter.

Cow-pattie drying (left), and storage. Note the decorated storage bin.We also saw small thatched-roof shacks used for storage.

Keep in mind, however, that we did not see an accurate cross-section of each community, although tour members asked for thebus tours to drive through ‘good’ sections of towns. In SriLanka, the road to Colombo from the airport was a chaotic,commercialized mess, and nothing like the quiet of ArthurClarke’s residential neighborhood.

Elisabeth spent a lot of time shooting ‘guerilla’ photos fromthe bus; otherwise, we would have pictures mainly of old fortsand temples.

Indian women float like butterflies, in colorful saris orsalwar-kameez outfits (long tunic and scarf over long pants),walking with grace and perfect posture through the dirt andchaos and traffic. Elisabeth couldn’t take enough photos of thecontrast this makes in the landscape.

According to one of our guides, the sari is the ‘official’ dress ofIndia. Even women engaged in hard physical labor wear saris; there areno work clothes, not even hats! Women harvested mustard seed with handsickles, or carried loads of bricks, as above, (on their heads) orpatted cow dung into large patties while wearing bright colored saris.Women in the cashew nut factory all wore the company uniform sari.State monument and street sweepers also wear sari uniforms (pink, inJaipur). Chinese peasants have it easier; they wear big straw hats andsensible pants suits in the fields.

Indian men’s clothes are more westernized. In the south theywear untucked shirts over trousers or sarongs. In Delhi it wasvirtually all western shirts and trousers (suits for the wealthymen in big hotels).

Wearing fancy saris, two women weigh food in an antique balance scaleoutside the central food marketplace in Goa.

The women on the tour forayed into the clothing shops andemerged with long tunics, scarves, and floppy pants.Californians have a great advantage over Easterners; we can wearthe bright colors! We all went home with groaning bags ofIndian clothes and crafts, mostly very inexpensive (if you don’tcount the trip cost!).

Then south by bus to the coast, where our French ship, LeLevant, ushered us into elegant staterooms and well coordinatedprograms. Great food, careful handling, generally superb.Elisabeth was pleased to speak French to the crewmembers and nothave to eat Indian food all the time. Greg had spent twoprevious month-long trips to India, roughing it around thenorth, largely on his own. Time to take it easy!

Le Levant docked in Vilijam, in Kerala state. In the foreground is thefish market. Note the working women in saris; some with umbrellas.

Around the southern point of India we went, sailing along thewest coast states of Kerala and Karnataka. We stopped each dayat a port town, went onshore for experiences — farming, rubberplantation, fruit harvesting, cashew nut processing, plus theinevitable temples, churches, local architecture, and even asynagogue from 1568. Heat, humidity, rich smells. And souvenirhawkers!

Al fresco laundry in a river a few miles inland. Note that the rockface is scored and numbered to keep clients separate.

Cochin was especially interesting; the state of Kerala hashosted international visitors for millennia, including Jews

after the Diaspora, Arabs, Dutch, Portuguese, and finally theBritish.

Just up the street from the Synagogue; note the ‘Jew Town’ sign.This is not politically incorrect, merely precise.

We watched antiquated Indian fishing techniques, using big dipnets (‘Chinese’ nets), and circular throw nets just as Greg oncedid on the Gulf Coast, and his relatives still do. But here theyget little fish and crabs, with shrimp the best haul, and fewper cast. The entire coast is fished out; a marine naturalistcommented on the many undersized fish in the markets.

Black kites circle a raised Chinese net. A counterweight of rocksallows the men to lower the net to the bottom of the channel.

One oddity was the mud-fishing by poor women who walked neck-deep through the muddy water, towing empty aluminum water jugs.They massage the bottom sludge with their feet, feeling the mudsmelt that hide there. When one stirs under a foot, they canpropel the thrashing, palm-sized smelt up with their feet, grabit in hand, and pop it into their jugs. With plastic bags overtheir hair to keep off sun and water, they earnestly work theirway in teams along the bay. The smelt they catch are smallerthan their palms.

Cast fishing off the coast of Cochin.

Women mud-fishing with their feet in Cochin.

Greg tried a milk-white ‘toddy’ that smelled of raw rubber, butwas fermented coconut palm sap. A toddy-wallah climbs the palmperiodically to harvest the sap, using a ladle. Fierce, sharp,warming the belly: nature’s cocktail. This is not the same ascoconut water drunk with a straw right from the freshly openedcoconut. The latter is available everywhere; in the shell, fromcarts and small roadside stands.

Stalls selling coconuts, fruit, and flowers are common all over thesouth of India. This one is in Bombay.

In houseboats, we cruised Cochin’s backwaters, passing extensive ricepaddies and small agricultural settlements.

At a beachfront hotel in Goa, a former Portuguese colony andinternationally popular resort, Greg bodysurfed the warm wavesof the Arabian Sea, which was much like the Gulf Coast ofAlabama. Elisabeth tried the swimming pool instead.

Goan buildings are brightly colored, with white trim. The sign is inPortuguese.

The tour left the ship in Bombay harbor and moved to theimposing and historic Taj Palace Hotel. Southern India isdisorganized and dusty, but there aren't quite so many people,either. The north never lets you forget what it means to travelin a nation of 1.2 billion. Even in an over-air-conditioned roomin a giant hotel you hear mad beeping outside from the cars—thehorn is a basic tool, used to announce overtaking someone.

Commuter trains are so crowded that men working in the city have tohave their lunches delivered separately by lunch-wallahs; hundreds ofthousands are collected, delivered, and returned home every day!

The Taj Palace Hotel, the small boats harbor, and the Gate of India,an 18th century stone archway. The tower behind the Gate is the Bombaystock market. Our room faced the harbor.

The carved caves of Elephanta Island, just across the bay byferry, were mysterious. The Portuguese blasted some of thecarvings with rifles since they were ancient religious images ofShiva, Krishna, etc.; insults to Christ. But they didn’t dareattack temples very much. The Brits wisely left religion aloneentirely.

The caves of Elephanta Island were carved out of the local sandstoneand may be 1500 years old. The carvings are mostly of Shiva, theHindu goddess of destruction.

We stayed in Taj chain hotels when not cruising; top of theline. Swimming pools, wireless, fine food, plentiful staff. Thepools are tiled in blue, rely on the sun for heating, and keepone fresh, though not all have a heavy machine gun brooding overthem. Elsewhere this luxury would isolate you, but in India it’sa good idea. The wear and tear of travel, especially overland,is large.

The “cobra roads” are rocky, traffic a nightmare (and oppositehanded), while everything runs on IST— Indian Standard Time,which becomes Indian Stretchable Time. Very modest roadimprovement from Greg’s two earlier trips- 22 and 10 years ago.

The moist heat penetrates to the bone. Crowds are huge, povertylurks everywhere. Education is better in the south, thoughpolitical power is in the north. When Indians laud theirdiversity, they really mean their many religions and castes;there were few black or oriental faces.

Slums are permanent fixtures; in Bombay they had street numbers. Theseline the railroad tracks; in other towns they line river banks. Notethe crowded commuter train in the background.

We flew to Jaipur, the pink city, and saw the 16th C.astronomical observatory, used to get accurate planetary orbitinformation, about the same time that Kepler was figuring outelliptical orbits in Poland. Women there wear very colorful deepred saris that work well with their dark, smooth skin.

Imagine larger-than life copies of scientific instruments, and youhave the Jantar Mantar Observatory, built by the astronomer Sawai JaiSingh in 1730. The marble is precisely inscribed with measurements.

Jaipur was very exotic; also lots of beggars and monkeys. Jaipur-Agra-Delhi is India’s main tourist triangle, so they’re waiting for us.

Life is lived on the streets of the old pink walled city of Jaipur.Here vegetable vendors work just outside the family’s tent.

Amber Fort is a spectacular abandoned city built on a ridge outside ofJaipur by a Mughal emperor. Note the women in green saris (r); theycarry trays of rubbish and building supplies on their heads.

Onward then, in grinding bus trips to Agra and the Taj —indescribably beautiful, so we won’t. It still seems odd toGreg, despite two earlier, month-long trips to India, that themost beautiful building in the world is a tomb. Ethereal in itsgrace, hanging in the sky like a vision. Yet it’s about death,and the perpetual wish for eternal life. There’s even acremation ghat nearby on the river.

The carved and inlaid marble apartment in Agra Fort where the Tajbuilder and deposed Mughal emperor Shah Jehan was imprisoned by hisson. He could see his wife Mumtaz’s tomb from the windows.

A local guide, Shika, in her salwar-kameez, at the Hall of Audiencesat Fatephpur Sikri, an abandoned Mughal sandstone city near Agra.

Everywhere springs a colorful profusion of temples, religiousicons and symbolism. The opiate of India is indeed religion. Itand China alone have religions with reincarnation, the cycle oftime supposedly going back infinitely far. Buddhism came fromIndia and caught on better in China. These two vast, ancientsocieties withstood the centuries by keeping down innovation, solife was much the same from one millennium to the next.Centuries slid by with little to mark them beyond the feuding ofmaharajahs. Maybe that’s key to why the wheel of life idea worksso well there. Notably, one of the few diehards supporting theSteady State theory in cosmology is Wickramsingh, a Brahmin;maybe he feels a cultural resonance.

Looking much like one of the outer gates of the Taj, Sikandra is themausoleum for another Mughal emperor, Sha Jahan’s grandfather, Akbar.

The air was thick with mortality. Tombs of emperors loom overtraffic roundabouts, abandoned forts of red sandstone standready to defend shopping malls, street names reflect dynastiesthat lasted centuries. You see in passing turbaned Sikhs andsleek Bengalis, dark and beautiful Tamil women from the moistsouth, Rajputs ablaze with jewelry, raw Kashmiris smelling ofuntanned leather, uniformed soldiers clumping by, black-cloaked

Muslim women, peasants hauling bullock-drawn freight from thescorched Punjab plains.

Beggar children know to murmur key words—“mummy,” “hungry,”“please,” “baby”—in soft despairing tones to snare the hurryingstranger. They and the hawkers throng the tour buses and sites,earning their keep with lifted palms, to live in the shantytownsof packing cases and rusty tin that line bustling avenues.Gandhi said the voice of the people was the voice of God, but itwas hard to see a divine element in the grinding poverty.

Beggar woman in Madurai rests after Mahatma Gandhi’s room in Bombay.combing her hair.

At an ordinary town’s edge is the usual rubble: vacant-eyedchildren, vivid plastic bits, sagging shacks that shade listlessadults, dogs bent or crippled, scrawny chickens pecking throughlitter, ugly sweet smells from stagnant ditches, brown fruitpeelings awaiting a passing pig, cow patties drying on a wall.Some women seemed at ease as they squatted to soap themselvesand then their clothes in rain puddles. Misery hangs in the air.One sees stories drifting by in a single glimpse: a sick dogeating withered grass, a twisted leg, an ancient brown womansquatting so that she could lift her matted sari away from theroad, to relieve herself while she watched traffic withglittering eyes.

Yet there was beauty, too. Pied wagtail birds flitting, theireager grace somehow heartening.

India’s socialist beginnings served them poorly as populationswelled. Delhi started in their 1947 independence with 250,000;now it has 14 million, thanks to the huge bureaucracy, and aflood of immigrants fleeing Pakistan after partition. Theirconstitution wrote in ‘preferences’ (job quotas) for the lower

castes, rules which were slated to go away in a generation, butnow seem permanent. Political pressure expands them steadily,recently adding “tribes” (ethnicities)—and many politicalparties based on these favors want to do more. A useful lessonon affirmative action taken to extremes.

The many newspapers in English have a curiously vague tone. Theysay “communal disturbances” for the incessant Muslim-Hindustrife. Most news is written in passive voice—as Orwell observeda half century ago, to evade responsibility. Criticism of the USis common. One whole page advocated taking the Internet’s basiccontrols away from the US, which makes access free to all, andhanding it to the UN or some other body. The subtext seems to beto first internationalize, then tax it.

Delhi is a powerhouse.

View from our hotel room, at the Delhi Taj Palace, facing the largeforest embedded by the Brits in the new southern half of town (‘New’Delhi), with its broad avenues, open green lawns, and large buildingsof state.

The Victorian houses have arched doorways twelve feet high, asif awaiting a family of acrobats who would need to walk betweenrooms while still stacked on each other’s shoulders. Indeed,India’s survival is acrobatic at times. They have come throughthe hard decades of socialist poverty and, since the early1990s, are finally emerging, using market forces to get jobs anddecent conditions throughout the land. There is still an oceanof poverty, and nothing will work if family size doesn’t drop;over half of the country is under 25 years old.

Old Delhi: Chandi Chowk bazaar. New Delhi: acres of lawns and

broad boulevards.

India views technological problems quite differently. Theyimport 60% of their energy needs and 90% of their oil. TheEnergy Minister announced while we were there that India willquadruple its coal burning by 2030, shrugging off the entireidea of carbon restriction as a method to restrain climatechange—even though, in the tropics, they have the most at risk.Greg tries to explain this to climate scientists at home whohold with the prohibition-only stance, but they cannot grasp howdifferently the developing nations see the problem. Basically,those countries think it’s up to the prosperous nations to fixit. Similarly, the Indian space program sees itself as a rivalto China, not to the US or Europe. It will be amusing ifaudacious moves in space come from Asia as a regionalcompetition, just as the US-USSR contest drove the firstdecades.

In Delhi one easily gets the point of Kenneth Galbraith’sremark, that India is ‘a functioning anarchy’. Mahasweta Devi’smore literary take is that India walks “hand in hand with thenew millennium, whistling a tune from the dawn of time.” So thenation of Gandhi has nuclear weapons.

The trip had run 25 days and we were ready to go home, after astop in Singapore for business. The dusty Delhi airport is likea Mexican one of 30 years ago. Crowds massed at the entrances tocanyons of barren, bare concrete, without even any shops. Incomparison, our few days in Singapore were dramatic: it’s clean,prosperous, orderly. Another Brit colony, rich in history.

For $22 US Greg had a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar of the famousRaffles Hotel -- mahogany, teak, fans flapping from the ceiling --which boasts a museum about its own history.

The Singapore botanical gardens were our high point — lush tropicalzones, a wonderful orchid garden, exotic birds.

Greg looked into moving to Singapore an intellectual propertybiotech company he co-owns, because it’s far easier to defendproperty there than in lawyer-plagued USA. The Singaporegovernment even gives grants to get high tech into the country.He had explored this in India, only to learn that,realistically, it would take a year of bureaucratic delay, to bedodged only by generous baksheesh. Sobering.

Singapore is known for its tough-minded policies; the sign inthe airport says that the penalty for illegal drug smuggling isdeath. Though they’ve repealed the strict laws againstlittering, spitting etc., it’s nothing like free-wheeling HongKong, where sari-clad Indian prostitutes accosted Greg outsideour hotel, offering services that fell in price within secondsas he brushed them off. In a supposedly communist country! ButSingapore is culturally diverse, with an educated population.Try having a cogent conversation about local economics with ataxi driver anyplace else!

Riverwalk, a district of jazz clubs and restaurants at the site of theold central food market. is a little bit of cleaned-up past at thefeet of the skyscrapers of the new Singapore.

After 28 days, we headed home. This glance into four verydifferent former British colonies had revealed much, seen fromthe American angle. Everywhere the press of crowds reminds thatthe US is a rather under-populated land – and the price ofletting that change. Passing through a village, thousands offaces stare back—people just sitting, with nothing much to do.

Of them, Singapore and Hong Kong are far more polished andprosperous, perhaps because they blend Chinese and othercultures well. Sri Lanka is a beautiful land, but India promisesthe most for the future. Dusty, disorderly, corrupt, yes—butvast and powerful, when it can decide what to do. These nationsare the newest addition to what Greg calls the Anglo SaxonEmpire—one of culture, not class or race—and could become thetrue leader of all Asia. Greg hopes they do; Elisabeth thinksthey are hag-ridden with superstition, astrology, religion, anda staggering population, and are not ready for a great leapforward.

Photo Gallery follows:

A rickshaw ride in Old Delhi. An Elephanta Island monkey.

Indians decorate their trucks! Hand shelling cashews at the

factory in a sari-uniform.

A vast laundry in central Bombay; using hand labor and sunlightinstead of washing machines and dryers.

Elephant polo, anyone? Celebrating Holi day with

face decorations, in Goa