Free Thinking : The world
From New Delhi, writer Rana Dasgupta
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Melbourne
Apologies to all readers. I'm in Melbourne at present for the and have hardly seen an internet connection since I arrived.
I have walked the streets, however. As always that strange feeling of arriving in Western cities. Have all the people been lifted off by aliens, leaving only this eery quiet? Who is controlling the steady lines of black-dressed walkers in the main streets, whose pace never flags and whose personalities are suppressed beneath the order of things? Where are the singers, the greetings, the laughter, the fruit stalls, the conversations, desired or not? What strange machine generates this silent traffic, which seems to have no desire?
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How To Talk About Another Place
In this blog I've written a number of pieces about the events and energies surrounding me here in this city of Delhi. In the comments I've received, a few people have expressed dismay at the idea that India might become overtaken by Western styles and values. In my last piece on the preparations for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, for instance, "Ian" wrote the following:
"[The article] is not about the Commonwealth Games but about the culture clash between modern western ideas of what a city should be and traditional Indian values. Only if India is itself ashamed of the beggers and beasts should it remove them and it should do so without the spur of the Games."
In response, Fitz wrote:
"Yes we need a few more Ghandis back in the world!"
(Is there any great figure of the 20th century whose name is so consistently misspelt as Gandhi's?)
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Living With The Commonwealth Games
The Commonwealth Games will come to Delhi in 2010. This date provides a convenient target for the various authorities in charge of the city to complete major development projects.
The vast Akshardham temple has already opened on the banks of the Yamuna River, near to the site of the future Commonwealth Games Village. 100 acres of shanty housing and small-scale industrial and agricultural land were progressively taken over by the temple developers over the last decade. The pristine complex that now stands there is much better propaganda for the new India. Built to the most exacting standards by 7000 craftspeople from all over the country, the temple is huge and impossible to dismiss. If the architecture is not enough to impress the tens of thousands of visitors who arrive in 2010, its three exhibition halls offer hi-tech presentations (in several languages) of some of the highlights of Indian culture and religion.The temple is a symbol of the new city: hygienic and emptied of the organic past, monumentally modern, bristling with surveillance cameras and security, and inspired by a steely, expansionary, highly distilled ideal of Indian culture that can provide the logic and momentum for India's imagined global supremacy.
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Naked Power
In Andrew Meier's fascinating Russian travelogue, Black Earth, we find the following vignette from Moscow:
"Beyond lust and fear, Moscow breeds power. You cannot help feeling that you are trespassing in its path. Every effort is made to impress upon the populace its privileged proximity to the unlimited power of the state. This is not just state power as in other countries. This is not merely the pomp of officialdom, but the deliberate demonstration of the state’s power over the people, an ever-present slap in their face.
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Are Cities Born From Trauma?
A reader named Kala Rao made the following comment on an earlier post:
"London, New York and Paris retain a sense of their past; in a few years Shanghai,Beijing or Mumbai may completely erase theirs, apart from the few imperial buildings that stand there.
"London and Paris have been bombed in a war, and people who live there remember it vividly; most people who live in the new Asian cities have no comparable experience. In some ways that makes it more difficult for them to deal with a random act of terror."
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Would Cities Be Better Without Babies?
I've been entertained by the comments posted all over these Free Thinking blogs by "Jason" who says, amongst other things,
"Cities are bad ideas, people should live closer to nature, it is more sustainable. google thoreau and epicurus and learn more. Less people is the answer, more info at www.vhemt.org."
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Books Sold At Delhi Traffic Lights
Delih traffic lights are significant commercial zones. While the traffic lights count down their 120 seconds and fast people have to deal with stasis, the two-minute sellers leap to their trade of ornaments, magazines, household supplies, etc.
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I Have Seen The Future
Yesterday I went to Gurgaon for a day. Gurgaon is the town to the south of Delhi that has absorbed most of its overflow corporate energy. It is a new town, built for corporations and middle-classes to escape the chaotic memories of the city, and to provide enclosed modern living for the newly affluent.
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Things In Beirut Were Getting Back To Normal
This blog is concerned with the experience of the "global city". Does this include cities that have been destroyed? After all, living in destroyed, and partially destroyed, cities has been a common part of the urban experience in the last century.
The events of September 11, 2001 confronted everyone with the destruction of a part of a city, and what it means. It became clear what pitch of emotion could be attached to sites of destruction, and what accumulation of trauma there must be in the world just from the devastation of city infrastructure.
Continue reading "Things In Beirut Were Getting Back To Normal"
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How Does It Feel To Live In A Rising Place?
Today The Guardian had a about a bungalow in Delhi selling for ?17 million.
To live in Delhi now is to be subject to the pornography of numbers. People talk about rising property prices with awe, as if they gave an objective index of their feelings.
Continue reading "How Does It Feel To Live In A Rising Place?"
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What Does Progress Mean? - The Sequel
All of us Radio 3 bloggers began our ruminations with this same question. Some comments came back yesterday. Roberto C. Alvarez-Galloso commented on my post:
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