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.

Follow up on my Obama-Victory Post

Just a quick post for now, but I wanted follow up my blog on President Obama’s victory by linking to an editorial in the New York Times. The article talks about the youth’s use of communication technology during Obama’s campaign. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/fashion/09boomers.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ). It is far less celebratory than my post, but my post was written amidst the euphoria of President Obama’s acceptance speech. I could have been writing about the return of the bubonic plague and the tone of the post would have still been pretty positive.
The Times labels my generation “Generation O”, and refers to Young Americans as “the ground troops of the campaign”. My mom pointed out that the effect of the youth and the internet was covered in the early stages of the campaign, but had not been touched on recently. I was really pleased to see that our contribution to the campaign was being recognized in as reputable a newspaper as the New York Times.
I should have a post on eating meat later on in the day so please check back if that sounds like something you’d be interested in.

Danny's Day in the Field

In my day I have worked on a golf course, installed underground irrigation systems, and at one point was the guy responsible for finding missing shoes at a major Toronto “sporting-lifestyle” store. Prior to this morning however, I had never been a farmhand. But as of 12 hours ago, I can officially say that there is some small part of Danny Austin that is a farmer. Hypothetically, if civilization crumbled and I was stranded with a friend who knew how to cultivate edible plants but for some reason didn’t know how to plant them, I just might survive.
This morning when the farm manager Mutuponde asked me whether I wanted to help out with planting in the fields I was pretty much priming myself for a good Internet cruise. My mornings in the office are spent corresponding with future guests, but there is always time to keep up-to-date on the latest news. I was going to try and find other overzealous Obama supporters and read their reactions to the election. I was going to read various previews of the Arsenal-Manchester United match taking place this afternoon in London. I was even planning on checking up on the latest Iron Man 2 script updates (apparently Terrence Howard has been replaced by Don Cheadle). However, once the offer to prove myself in the field came along, my internet-surfing itinerary was immediately a thing of the past.
My morning of farm work began with planting cardamom plants. Basically, any individual cardamom plant will provide a high yield of beans for five years. After those five years, most farmers will cut them down and replace them with new plants. If however, you pull a stock of cardamom out from the roots and replant it, a new stock with identical properties will grow directly next to it. You can therefore produce an entire crop of top-quality cardamom plants simply by monitoring what plants produce high yields or appear resistant to disease and replanting them. For the first hour and a half of my farming adventure I dug holes, and my boss’s daughter Maya would stick a six foot cardamom stock into the ground. It was such a fun change from sitting in an office that it made me feel like I should consider a change of careers. I thought to myself “Wow, I was born for this! I am such a great farmer!”
As it turns out though, when Mutuponde asked me if I wanted to help out with the farm work he declined to mention that after the first hour and a half I would have to kneel down with all my weight on the balls of my feet and plant young coffee plants for a full two hours more. It’s like playing leap-frog for two hours, but without any of the leaping or the hilarity of seeing grown adults acting like frogs. If you are like me and have a history of back problems, this ends up being incredibly painful. I should revise my earlier hypothetical end-of-civilization claim. It would appear that if I had to survive in a post-apocalyptic world by planting young coffee plants I would not last long. How anybody spends every day of their adult life crouched over in this position digging holes is beyond me. By the end of the morning I could barely move. I ended up spending a good portion of my afternoon lying in bed wondering when my Advil would kick in.
When I was in high school all of the supposed “tough guys” were obsessed with gangster rappers like 50 Cent. It turns out that they had it wrong. 50 Cent may have been able to sell crack on the mean streets of Brooklyn, but I do not think he would last one hour on a farmer’s field. Instead of baggy jeans and hooded sweat shirts, the teenage tough guys at my school should have been wearing overalls and straw hats if they wanted to prove how hardcore they really were.

Yes We Can? Nope....WE JUST DID!!!

Did they actually do it? Americans? The Americans who elected George W. Bush twice? The Americans who I have vilified as imperialists since I can remember knowing what "imperialist" meant? I find myself sitting here puzzled. They did it? America actually did it? Barack Obama is actually the 44th President of the United States?
I'm so used to major historical events involving the United States either being deplorable (Iraq) tragic (September 11th) or both (Katrina). But it feels like for the first time in my life, America truly rose to the occasion. They actually did it.
Americans got fed up with dishonest politicians. They got fed up of voting for the guy they'd want to have a beer with. They decided that the President of the Most Powerful Country in the World should be someone exceptional. And then they actually went ahead and voted en masse for the first African American President in history.
It almost doesn't make any sense. I've wanted to believe it was going to happen. I've told myself over and over again that it was going to happen. But it's sort of like being a girl who's dating a guy who constantly promises to make her dinner but always cancels....you get used to being disappointed. However, for the first time in my life, America delivered on its promise.
I think what makes it so special is that it feels as if my generation got the ball rolling on this one. We are so often criticized for being apolitical, but I think this is our victory. It was Facebook groups and Youtube videos that really made people stand up and pay attention to Obama. These are the tools of my generation. Would anyone have been able to watch Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention if it weren’t for people posting it all over the internet? How many students heard Obama’s name for the first time two years ago and then became inspired by his passionate words through Youtube?
These tools are different from organizing student protests like they did in the 1960s, but perhaps they are just as effective. Huge numbers of protesters showed up in 1999 to voice their discontent against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. In 2001, I joined tens of thousands of protesters in Quebec City to march the streets in protest of the Free Trade Area of the America. But these protests ultimately did not work. How could they inspire anybody when the mainstream media only showed the violent confrontations with riot police?
I genuinely believe that it was in response to this biased reporting that my generation turned to new-media. Through the Internet, we were able to communicate without the filters of CNN or FoxNews.
If you look at new-media in the last decade, it has evolved into a pretty powerful political instrument. Even "An Inconvenient Truth" was really nothing more than a Powerpoint Presentation. Al Gore is obviously not of my generation, but he represents the same phenomenon. When he could not spread his message through the conventional media, he informed the world about global warming through another outlet.
Between Youtube, Facebook, and the blogging community, I feel that the political left have become organized and are able to spread their message. Could Obama's campaign have happened four years ago? Or would FoxNews and CNN been too powerful? In 2004, John Kerry so brutally depicted as a coward in spite of being a war-hero with over 30 years of experience fighting for progressive social policies in the American Senate. Young Americans were not going to let that happen again. Bill O’Reilly’s criticisms of Barack Obama’s speeches and policies lost their power when millions of people are seeing those speeches first hand on Youtube.
It would be an exaggeration to claim that young people are entirely responsible for Obama’s presidency. But to say that we got the ball rolling is completely fair. His inspired words were delivered to computer screens around the country by a media-form that young people created and have used to give our political beliefs a voice.
The gut-wrenching disappointment of the 2004 election feels so long ago right now. I still am having a hard time believing this actually happened. Last night, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America. They did it. They actually did it!!!

The People's Party

I’ve never been one to criticize civic holidays. I may not always understand why I am getting a day off work, but the reasons behind the holiday are always less important than the free time it affords me. I don’t even try to understand why we have a “Family Day” in February while we only get one minute of silence on Remembrance Day in November. You would think that honouring our glorious dead would be more significant than extra recreational family-time during the coldest month of the year. But once February rolls around I couldn’t care less what the reason is, I am just happy for the paid holiday.

Well it turns out that this sort of cavalier attitude towards holidays doesn’t exist in India. It’s go big or go home when it comes to civic holidays. In the past week Indians have had three national holidays. The first day was for Gandhi’s birthday. If there is anyone out there who could possibly suggest that this is not a good reason for a holiday, I strongly suggest watching the Ben Kingsley movie and reconsidering. The second holiday was actually only in anticipation for the third day off and historically was set aside for workers to wash their tools and machines.

The third holiday, called Dussera, is the topic of this blog post. To put it in perspective, when I asked my ten-year old friend Maya why Dussera was celebrated she told me “Dussera is in celebration of Rama’s victory in the most amazing fight in the history of the world”. When I asked Maya’s mother for a more detailed explanation, she shrugged her shoulders and told me Maya pretty much had it right.

So Dussera is the celebration of this fellow Rama, and his epic defeat over his nemesis Ravana. From what I understand, Rama was the heir to the throne of Ayodyah and his name literally means “the perfect man”. In spite of being so perfect, his father granted a wish to one of his wives that her son Ravana would become king. Rama was therefore stripped of his right to the throne and sent into exile. Fortunately for Rama he had been a loving husband and brother, because Rama’s wife and younger brother decided to follow him into exile and live in the woods with him for 14 years. So I guess at least he wasn’t lonely.

Less fortunately for Rama, this fellow Ravana wasn’t satisfied with stealing Rama’s throne and forcing him to live in the woods. For some reason Ravana decided to kidnap Rama’s wife. I am not sure exactly what Ravana was trying to accomplish through this, but my guess is that Rama’s wife must have been exceptionally beautiful. Either that, or Ravana was just completely obsessed with making Rama’s life as pathetic as possible and greatly underestimated what sort of revenge Rama was capable of. For example, Ravana probably was not aware that Rama was capable of living a life of “perfect adherence to Dharma despite the harshest tests of life” (thank you Wikipedia). I have never considered kidnapping another man’s life, but I somehow think that if I was into that sort of thing I would avoid anyone who had literally never sinned. I don’t know that much about karma, but I know it would probably be on the perfect man’s side.

For the record, if you are beginning to find this post long please understand that I am trying to summarize India’s most important epic (The Ramayana) in three paragraphs. In an effort to make a long story short though, Rama raised an army of magical creatures and led them to battle against Ravana’s forces. Rama’s army managed to win the most destructive battle of all time, and in the Rama killed Ravana and is reunited with his kidnapped wife. Naturally, he then reclaimed his throne and apparently became Emperor of the world for the happiest eleven thousand years of all time.

Not a bad reason for a holiday in my opinion.

Madikeri, which normally has a population of 30 000 people, is swarmed with over 150 000 visitors during Dussera. I arrived at the festivities at 10 o’clock at night and was greeted by techno music blaring from fifteen speakers piled in a truck. The entire town was overflowing with dancing men. The entire town resembled the most insane and homo-erotic dance party I have ever seen. Every store was open from the time of my arrival until my departure at 4am and was surrounded by dancing teenage boys.

Periodically the music would stop and a procession of drummers emerge followed by giant floats depicting Rama’s army. Following the floats of course, would be another massive dance party.

I have never in my life seen so many men dancing. The women mostly congregated on the outskirts of the dancing with their families, but this did not stop the men from going absolutely wild. As I left I was told that all of the parties would eventually move behind floats to Madikeri’s central square where the dancing would continue until 8 in the morning. The procession was meant to symbolize Rama’s return to India, where massive celebrations met the return of the rightful king.

The Dussera celebrations completely defied every conventional Indian stereotype. The concept of Indians being conservative and quiet is quite clearly inaccurate. I have attended many Canada Day and New Year’s celebrations, but have never come close to seeing a party with as much enthusiasm as I witnessed on Dussera. It’s possible that Canadian history just doesn’t elicit the same hysteria as the greatest fight ever fought. I just can’t get that riled up over the eight minutes it took for the English to win on the Plains of Abraham. Either way, Dussera has raised my expectations of what a national holiday can be. Family Day is going to have a lot to live up to this February.