A Treatise on Europe: Swedish Comedy

Sometimes you can’t predict what living in a rainforest will teach you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned that I miss out on living in North America, it is European national stereotypes. We’ve got our stereotype that Europeans as a whole are culture snobs with awkward-looking haircuts, but generally speaking most of us don’t know enough Europeans to have stereotypes about specific nationalities (the French being the exception, obviously). But in recent weeks I have become enlightened. It turns out that there is a whole plethora of hilarious national stereotyping going on that I wasn’t aware of. I don’t necessarily agree with all of these stereotypes, but the stated purpose of this blog is to educate the masses and as I do not support censorship I really have no choice but to pass this information on. I’ll start with what I’ve learned about Sweden.
The first thing I learned was that Swedish people are universally known for being unfunny. This came as a shock to me because the Swedish people I’ve seen all look so cool and Mats Sundin was a hero to me growing up. But then I realized that these two observations were completely unrelated to their sense of humor and might in fact prove the validity of this stereotype. In terms of how cool they look, I really only see “normal” Swedish people at the winter Olympics snowboarding events. The reason they look cool is that they’re always incredibly attractive (this is not meant to imply that people who are not incredibly attractive can’t look cool, because there’s lots of ugly people I would love to hang out with, i.e. the guy who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings) and are snowboarders, which in general is a good look. Now I’m going to speak in generalizations here, but the attractiveness that I associate with Swedes is probably an indicator of how unfunny they are. I mean, how many physically attractive comedians can you actually name? And honestly, can anybody actually name a Swedish comedian?
The British are obviously known for their comedy (although I think that Russell Brand guy is pretty lame). There aren’t that many French comedians I can name, but I remember the movie Bogus with Gerard Dipardieu having some funny moments. Also, I happen to think mimes are hysterical, so the French have that going for them. When I searched the term “German comedy” in Wikipedia it claimed there were 39 pages. I could only actually find one page, but somewhere out there are 38 more pages, which in my opinion is a lot of pages. But when I opened an article on Swedish humor in The Local, which is apparently an English language online Swedish News publication, this is what it had to say about Swedish comedy:

Swedes might often come across as a rather amusing lot. But as a rule, their idiosyncrasies raise a bigger smile than their comic timing.
When it comes to comedy, the Swedes are usually deemed a rather sober lot. But scratch the surface and you find a rich seam of ribaldry.

Now I’ve got no problem with rich seams of ribaldry, but this description doesn’t exactly make Sweden sound like a nation of Richard Pryors.
I should note that I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Not everyone needs to be dropping wisecracks all over the place. By all means Sweden should keep doing what it’s doing and continue producing classy hockey players who will provide steady leadership to teams in troubled times (I’m referring to Mats Sundin here and not Daniel Alfredsson, who in my opinion is a bit of a prick). I’m just relieved that if I ever have to pick a European country to see a comedy festival I can cross Sweden off the list.
So there’s your first lesson in stereotypes that Europeans (not me, I’m just the messenger) have of each other. Sweden’s not that funny. I hope this information is useful to you.

The Fallout from Mumbai

Writing about my initial reaction to the terror attacks in Mumbai last week was easy. The vast majority of people worldwide are horrified by acts of mass-murder. To post about the reactions of Indians I spoke to, I simply needed to relate fears similar to those that I myself was experiencing. Over the next few days however, I tried and failed to write a follow-up post about how those reactions were evolving.
The Indians who I manage at the Rainforest Retreat are mostly born and raised on rural farms. Although they are brilliant at farm work and are caring and often charismatic with guests (in spite of massive language barriers), they are not educated in International Affairs. In the days following the Mumbai attack, their response changed from one of sadness to one of anger towards Pakistan. None of my staff are religious fundamentalists. They are an assortment of Hindus and Christians, and they live happily in close quarters. Not once have I heard one of them speak derogatorily towards Muslims. Religion seems to be a matter of personal belief, and Coorg is known as being a beacon of religious understanding. The anger they expressed towards Pakistan was deeply rooted and frightening.
My trekking-guide Ravi approached myself and two Dutch guests at dinner and excitedly informed me that India would soon be marching its army towards the Pakistani border. It was later related to me that many of the staff regretted that India had not gone to war with Pakistan over Kashmir in the earlier years of the decade. The staff’s initial sadness at seeing their countrymen murdered was replaced by a sense of anticipation.
The next day I decided to check with my bosses about the fallout from the attack. Their response was markedly different. They completely dismissed the notion that a war with Pakistan was anywhere near imminent, and explained that India’s news services have become increasingly sensationalist in recent years. It recalls the rapid rise in influence of right-wing pundits in the year immediately following September 11th. India, just like America, suffers from a news-media that manipulates it’s reporting in order to further a certain agenda. Much of the news in Coorg comes from Tamil Nadu, a state that is renowned for its deep distrust of Muslims (and other religions other than Tamil, which are seen as being foreign and a threat to the state’s Tamil traditions). Many of the Western opinions that I have read seem to be based more on these media reports and the subsequent reactions of their audience that the reactions of educated Indians.
In Madikeri, thousands of Indian congregated on December 3rd to show solidarity with those in Mumbai and to express their disapproval of terrorism. From what I have read in the Indian Free Press (based in Mysore), these demonstrations against terrorism are becoming more and more common. The fears I expressed in my last post about terrorism’s potential success (in demoralizing Indians and their faith in the government) appears to be being countered by mass condemnations of terrorism.
All of this brings me to an article by Eliot Friedman that was published in the New York Times on December 2nd. In the article, Friedman rightly praises the Pakistani government’s response to the terrorist attacks and promises of co-operation. He then raises a point which I find to be quite poignant. Recalling the mass protests against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, Friedman reasons that the Pakistani people have the ability to mobilize quickly and “express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective”. Friedman argues that the Pakistani people must at some point stand up and demonstrate their disapproval of the terrorists who are murdering innocent people.
As a good liberal I obviously believe that the hate that causes terrorism is bred by an unjust socio-economic system. But I also know that the vast majority of Muslims (even those who come from the exact same situations as terrorists) do not storm foreign cities and murder innocent people. I know this, but my Indian staff do not. How powerful a message would it send if this peaceful majority met en masse and full-heartedly denounced the acts of mass-terrorism being perpetrated by those who claimed to represent their interests.
I am not so naïve as to suggest that a mass-demonstration against terrorism in Pakistan would stop future terrorist acts from being committed altogether or resolve the hatred between the two countries. The suicide bombers who attempted to kill Benazir Bhutto proved that the peaceful majority could not silence the violent minority. But given the response of my Indian staff to Pakistan’s involvement in the terrorist attacks, a demonstration of this sort could certainly begin to aid the relations between the two countries. There is certainly a deep hate that I cannot fully comprehend between the two countries, but if relations are to improve in any way than it is possible that the Pakistani people must show Indians that the attack on Mumbai was not done in their name.

The Mumbai Terrorist Attack

As gunfights rage on around the Jewish Outreach Centre in Mumbai and the Taj Hotel has only recently been declared to be under army control, I thought that I might offer my thoughts on the terror that was unleashed on Mumbai two nights ago.

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai yesterday night bear little resemblance to the other major international terror attacks since 9/11. In part this comes down to the method of violence used. It is perhaps a sad reflection on the state of the world that I have become de-sensitized to the horrors of suicide bombers. But something about this attack felt much more brutal. The attackers apparently arrived in speedboats close to the Gateway of India (where Mumbai’s tourist district is centered). Some of the men carried AK-47s, while others were armed with explosive devices for strategic locations and others carried grenades to fight the authorities.

The Daily Telegraph described the tactic as trying to imitate ghazwa, a tactic used by the Prophet Mohammed to destabilize political authority in Mecca. “The tactic consists of surprise no-holds-barred attacks simultaneously launched against a caravan or settlement with the aim of demoralising the enemy and hastening his capitulation”. The attacks on Mumbai recalled the devastation of the tragic massacres at Virginia Tech or Colombine more than the bomb attacks on London, Madrid, or even the commuter train attacks that previously hit Mumbai in 2006.

It is the level of organization of this imitation-ghazwa that is most disconcerting. Indians I have spoken to all seem much more concerned with the attack in Mumbai than they did with the bombings in Delhi, Jaipur, or Bangalore earlier this year. The consensus appears to be that the level of organization was too great to have been justifiably missed by Indian anti-terrorism officials. In a country with over a billion people it will always be difficult to isolate and monitor the miniscule minority who are prone to violence. Stopping one person from blowing up themselves and several dozen innocent bystanders is nearly impossible. But the scale of this attack was so large that there is little excuse for the Indian Intelligence agencies being caught unaware.

The planning that must have gone into this attack is astounding. Weapons would have had to have been purchased and deployed while manpower was recruited. The route of attack would have had to be studied and then related to the hundreds of men involved in carrying it out. For India’s government and anti-terrorism team to have been completely ignorant to this attack’s development represents, as MJ Akbar wrote today in The Guardian, “a collapse of governance”.

It seems to be the government and police’s failure that most frightens the Indians I have spoken with. Terrorism and violence are not new occurrences in India. Since achieving independence in 1947 the country has dealt with violent uprisings and terrorists from across the country. Throughout the recent wave of terrorism however the government’s response has seemed particularly inept. After every attack, top politicians promise that the perpetrators of the violence will be sought out and punished. Two months later however, there is inevitably another attack. If the goal of terrorism is political and is meant to destabilize authority, the lack of confidence in the government that appears to be growing among Indians may very much prove that the terrorist’s tactics are succeeding. It is this growing concern that seems to scare my Indian colleagues most of all.

I will end this post for today on that sobering thought. Fortunately, in tomorrow’s follow-up post I will explore the reaction to the Mumbai terrorist attacks Mumbai in 2006 and how India’s resilience throughout history suggests that the picture may not in fact be so grim.

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"The White Tiger" Review

It has been a long time since I wrote about a book without following a rigid set of essay guidelines. This is the first time in five years of writing about literature that I will not be referencing post-colonial or third-wave feminist theories in an effort to explain the hidden meaning of a character’s subconscious intentions. Bear with me as I fight my inner English-major instincts and attempt to review The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
Since being awarded the 2008 Man Booker Prize The White Tiger has been nearly impossible to find in Indian bookshops. I had scoured the walls of bookshops from Mysore to Pondicherry in an effort to purchase a copy, but each store could offer only apologies. Fortunately guests visiting my retreat were encountering the same problems so when I finally found a copy in Chennai I was able to read the book with absolutely no pre-conceptions. For the record, if you are hoping for the same luxury this would be a good place to stop reading.
The White Tiger tells the story of Balram as he writes a series of letters to the Premier of China explaining his rise from a humble tea-shop worker in rural India to a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore. It sounds like an inspiring concept for a story, if not particularly original. However, the entire book is filled with such an overwhelming cynicism towards both the “new India” of Bangalore and the “old India” of Balram’s rural upbringing that a reader with little knowledge of Indian culture would be left rather disgusted with the values of the country.
I learned long ago not to suggest that a likeable character is integral to good literature (after receiving a low mark for an essay written about why I hated Wuthering Heights). Balram never once comes across as endearing, but the character was so funny that his questionable morality was not what turned me off The White Tiger. From the beginning of Balram’s story he is absolutely never able to “catch a break” but because the narration is done by the character in retrospect he maintains his sense of humour. He excels at school but is forced to drop out and work in a tea shop to pay off family debts. He is mistreated by the family he is hired to drive and by the other servants they employ, while his family at home demands that every rupee he earns be sent home. Throughout all of this, Balram’s narration maintains a self-deprecating element that kept me laughing.
Adiga demonstrates the hardships of growing up without money or connections in India, and ultimately seems to want his reader to question whether or not Balram is justified in murdering his employers and stealing their money. This crime is revealed by Balram in the first chapter, and this technique works effectively to make the reader view all of the employers’ actions through the lens of this crime. In scenes where it seemed that Balram’s severe mistreatment was inescapable I could not help but support his decision to murder.
However, my issue with The White Tiger lies in the feeling that Balram was meant to represent the hardships and morality of all of “dark India” (the rural and poor) while his employers were meant to represent all of the rich. Adiga writes with an anger that seems intent on deconstructing the portrayal of “India Rising” that we are often exposed to in the West. The text does not allow for an alternative reality to Balram’s. It seems to suggest that all Indians, whether rich or poor, are amoral in their pursuit of the wealth this “New India” promises. No character is willing to offer a helping hand. The only character from the West is completely repulsed by India and the country takes a significant toll on her. This might be meant as a reflection of Westerners’ inability to recognize the beauty of Indian culture. However, when it seems that no other character possesses this ability either, the Westerner’s distaste begins to feel justified.
While Adiga’s writing is viciously humorous, his apparent loathing for modern India seems misplaced. Why does he feel such a strong need to dispel notions of the new Indian prosperity? I have yet to read an article about India’s economic rise that has neglected to mention the poor. India’s rise is not portrayed as being anywhere near complete but there is a growing middle class who are escaping the bonds servitude and poverty. There is absolutely work that still needs to be done to help the poor attain security from hunger and disease but to suggest that all Indians are only self-interested is in my opinion inaccurate and insulting. I see proof of Indian generosity every day when Indian guests tip my staff more than any Western guest. I see proof when my tour-guide will not accept a cookie for himself, but will gladly accept a gift for any of the children who live amongst the staff. I saw proof when I was sick in Pondicherry and an Indian rickshaw driver drove me to my hotel free of charge.
Adiga’s writing style is captivating, as Balram’s narration mixes the aforementioned humour with rising tension throughout the narrative. However, after I finished I was left feeling that Indians should feel deeply concerned that the voters for the Booker Prize chose to have millions of readers around the world be exposed to this biased portrayal of their culture. The White Tiger could have been salvaged if it had offered any sort of solution to the problems it described. But Adiga did not rise to this challenge and The White Tiger, instead of presenting a message of hope to those caught in the system it condemns, came across as a bitter and cynical attack on a nation with a diversity of cultures and traditions that deserved much better.

Sports that are named after insects...

If there is one thing I understand it is passionate sports fans. For all intents and purposes there is no reason why I should allow my temperament to be influenced by the success and failures of a North-London based soccer team on a weekly basis. But if Arsenal loses I am devastated. The same goes for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors and Blue Jays. During the Olympics I am an emotional wreck. Sports that I pay no attention to for almost four years at a time can nearly bring me to tears. An Argentine grandfather is enough to make me vulnerable to heart break if Argentina underperforms at the World Cup.

I mention all of this only to make clear that I am not judgmental of the lunacy that often accompanies supporting a sports club. Being a real fan requires a level of irrationality I can absolutely relate to.

And yet, I simply cannot rap my head around India’s obsession with cricket. When I arrived in Chennai last week I had every intention of sitting in a coffee shop and studying for my GRE test. It took me exactly twenty minutes to realize this would be completely and utterly impossible. I had somehow managed to be unaware of the cricket test match being played between India and England. I say “somehow” because had I looked at the front cover of any Indian newspaper or taken notice of the hordes of men crowded around television sets across the country, this oversight would never have occurred.

Every coffee shop in Chennai was packed with people skipping work to watch England bat, while the windows of these shops were lined with people unable to pay for coffee but still wanting to watch the match. I am sure that an Indian arriving in Canada during our run to the Olympic hockey gold medal would have been just as baffled as I was, but a game of hockey only lasts three hours! A cricket test match is at least eight hours a day for five excruciating days. Imagine the sort of psychological damage that would be inflicted if you had to watch a forty hour baseball game. It would be absolutely intolerable.

Furthermore, one thing I have noticed is that almost all reminders of British colonialism are reviled in most areas of India. But cricket, the most British of all sports, somehow transcends this hatred. The British invented cricket, practiced for several centuries, and then exported the game to its colonies where they would prove their superiority by defeating the natives. Perhaps the importance of the match against the British can be traced to a need disprove the superiority of the former colonizers. If this is the case, then I will admit that this would be an acceptable explanation.

While trying to determine the circumference of a circle for the first time since I decided to study English, the rules of cricket were explained to me by a pleasant Indian fellow named Kumar. It turns out it’s really not as complicated as I had been led to believe. Basically, every team has ten batters and those batters hit the ball for as many points as they can. A batter earns points by running back and forth between two sticks (called wickets) once they hit the ball. Each batter bats continually and earns as many points as possible until the fielding team gets them out. A batter can become out by hitting a ball in the air that is caught, or if the pitcher hits the sticks with the ball when he pitches. As far as I can tell this is all that happens….for forty hours.

I should also note that the most traditional form of cricket involves playing five of these five day test matches. Therefore, you would play 25 days (or 200 hours) of cricket and I assume they would call it a super-cricket although I cannot be sure.

Kumar tried to explain what exactly he loved so much about cricket, and offered this theory (which is expanded on by me).While cricket is believed to be the second most popular sport in the world 90% of the worldwide cricket revenue comes from India. English and Australian cricketers are currently fighting desperately for the right to play in the Indian Premier League as the salaries are significantly higher in the IPL than in the West. Cricket represents the complete opposite of every other major sport. Kumar acknowledged to me that part of cricket’s appeal to Indians is that it is the one sport where India is most powerful. It is quite empowering for Indians to see successful Western athletes moving to India in order to make a living as it represents the fact that India presents opportunities that the West cannot. Cricket’s popularity in India has really exploded over the last twenty five years, and it could be said that India’s rise to power in the cricket world echoes the rise of economic opportunity for India. It is the only sport that accurately reflects India’s improving position in the world. This theory doesn’t necessarily explain how anyone can actually overcome the tedium of watching cricket for eight hours, but it does offer a frame of reference for why the game itself might hold some attraction.

Whether you buy this theory or not I am going to keep on exploring the inner Indian psyche in an effort to figure this cricket thing out. I can’t promise any conclusive results and it seems unlikely that I will become a cricket convert. However, to give cricket its due I definitely don’t think it is as stupid as golf and that’s got to count for something.

About those meat-consumption posts.....

Do you know what is awesome? Setting yourself a public deadline of posting three blogs exploring meat-consumption in three days before realizing that you had twenty school children arriving at your resort 12 hours later.

Do you know what is even more awesome? Setting yourself a public deadline of three posts on meat-consumption in three days before realizing that you had twenty school children arriving at your resort twelve hours later and then having to travel halfway across India to write your GREs three days later.

My apologies to the readers who were looking forward to reading about my opinions on meat-consumption. I will get back to it later in the week. Today however, I am going to post one for the sports-lovers out there.

The one thing everyone is talking about these days....

Most of my job involves interacting with tourists. I am responsible for some accounting as well as all of the bookings for our guesthouses, but a large part of my job also involves spending a lot of time hanging out with guests. This results in me having many of the same conversations again and again. I have learned that most travelers seem to really hate Delhi but love Hampi and the entire state of Kerala. Politically it seems that almost every traveler is concerned about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and most people will back down on criticizing Canada for the seal hunt as soon as I get defensive.
However, by far the most common conversation I have had with tourists revolves around one thing. Meat. Whether the tourists are vegetarian, vegan, or devoted carnivore like me, they all want to talk about meat. People are obsessed with it. The vegetarians want to know if I have seen the error in my ways and have sworn off meat forever. The carnivores want to know what type of meat I miss the most (obviously beef). Two nights ago President Obama was elected as the first African American President in history, and I ended up talking about the one time the Rainforest Retreat’s cook served pork even though the only guests were Israeli. Last night I discussed the fact that in India mutton is actually goat as opposed to sheep. I have no idea what animal mutton is in Canada, but I acted surprised because this seemed like the right thing to do.

It is far easier to be vegetarian in India than it is in Canada. Part of the reason I hate vegetarian restaurants in Toronto is that everything seems to be a vegetarian version of a meat product. A veggie-burger is inevitably going to disappoint because I associate a hamburger with a juicy piece of beef nestled gloriously between two buns. In India however, the vegetarian dishes are not pretending to be anything they are not. They are vegetables mixed with spices and at the Rainforest Retreat they can often divine. Therefore, most meals are not spent thinking about how much better what I am eating would be if it was beef.

All of this meat-talk began to make me think about whether I myself cold actually convert to vegetarianism. The inhumane aspects of meat processing are nothing new to me. I have no problem spending an extra dollar or two on a free range chicken and frankly, this is as far as I am willing to go. I happen to think meat is delicious (and easy to cook), and if it weren’t for pork chops my university diet would have consisted mostly of pasta and mayonnaise. From a political perspective I think there are other issues that my time would be better spent being outraged at. I read a book recently about chocolate production and I think trying to help out the child-slaves responsible for chocolate production in Cote D’Ivoire is more important than a bunch of cows. Not that I am actively helping these children at all, but I do try and avoid chocolate whenever possible.

Given how much of my life is now spent discussing meat, I feel as if this would be a good time to look into some of the issues surrounding meat production and consumption worldwide. With the global food crisis in full effect, what we eat and how it is produced is becoming more and more important. Beginning tomorrow, this blog will be devoted to a three-part series investigating various issues involving meat production I have been exposed to while in India. So if you are in to that sort of thing, please check it out.