The Cubeland Chronicles

I remember the early days of the coffee boom, late eighties early nineties when Seattle grunge and the coffee shop atmosphere was all the rage. In San Antonio and Houston a few hip coffee shops popped up. Candlelight in SA and a nice place in the Museum District in Houston. Of course, there was no wifi yet, so they were nice places to order a cup of Joe and curl up with a good book. Or play a video game on my oversized, underpowered laptop with about as much free memory as a gnats brain.

But within a few short years Starbucks stores were popping up on every corner and all the little independent coffee shops were put out of business. The honeymoon with Starbucks actually lasted a long time, considering. But today, I sense the reverse happening. As if there is a large cultural backlash against the mega-corp, no matter how much good they claim to do.

I’m in San Antonio for the day. I pulled up Yelp to see if there were any independents in town. San Antonio is kind of a cultural laggard, but also somewhat of a bell-weather, in the sense that when something happens in San Antonio, it’s already happened everywhere else. (I don’t notice these things in Austin, as Austin is usually years ahead of San Antonio.) And so, I was very surprised to see a long list of independent coffee houses here. I’m sitting in a pretty classy joint right now. The wifi is free–unlike Starbucks–and the coffee is good. It’s a clean, modern looking place, in a kind of anti-Starbucks vein. It’s nice to see.

Anyone else notice this happening in your town?

The day before yesterday I received yet another email about my recent writings on India. Kim, the author, has graciously agreed to let me post the letter in toto. He makes some excellent points about India and my perception of the country, or rather, he points out some of the faults in my perception of the country. Here it is:

Sadly, embarrassedly true.

BUT—and here’s where you are quite myopic—you’re judging India from a narrow American point of view. You equate cleanliness, good infrastructure, lack of bureaucracy, etc, with progressiveness. And, from some perspectives, you may be right. But that’s just material/industrial progressiveness (on the other side of which is a myriad of damaging problems—fractured communities, gaps between haves and have-nots, an exploited environment, etc.). And that’s not the entire story.

First, it’s not true that Indians don’t care or are complacent, as if that were a cultural genetic problem. The majority of us do care. Hindu philosophy preaches cleanliness next to godliness. The problem is that the task appears too gargantuan to handle in the middle of our attempts to survive. Anyone who has lived in India (as opposed to visiting India) knows that it’s like going to war everyday as we fight our way from dawn to dusk—dealing with traffic, bureaucracy, overcrowded workplaces, poor salaries (so you feel unappreciated), rising prices, etc. It is mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. This isn’t an excuse. It simply means that this is the kind of society most of us were born into—we inherited it. It’s easy to praise the British legacy of railways and bridges and forget that they ignored rural India (which is the largest part of the country). That lack of emphasis created a massive influx into the major cities, thus exacerbating and even causing most of the problems.

In the U.S, for example, you could live quite comfortably in a town of 50,000 to 100,000—good universities (therefore decent fine arts performances, global speakers, and other educative programming), car dealerships, malls, Thai restaurants, parks and recreation events, good doctors, hospitals, etc. In India, that’s little better than a village and everyone wants to get the hell out of Dodge and head to Mumbai or any of the other metropoli!

In other words, it isn’t easy to find an incentive to clear up the mess, which would take a herculean effort (no exaggeration)!

BUT—we should make that herculean effort, no question. And the largest impediment to that is the lack of education. For all the Nobel Laureates, scientists, philosophers, etc. that India has produced the sad fact is that millions of Indians are impoverished and uneducated. Here are some depressing statistics from a few years ago:

average number of students per teacher: 220
- people partaking of higher education: 1 person out of every 14,000
- number of pupils at the City Montessori school in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, 2002:
26,312 pupils (world record) [GBoWR]
- number of Indians going as students to Britain: 17,000 per year
- number of Indians going as students to the US: 14,000 per year

people below poverty line: about 260 million (acc. to AB Vajpayee feb 04)
- poor living in India: one quarter of the world’s poor [BBC Aug 04]
- people living on less than 1 Euro per day (50-55 Rs) 2004: about 30 % of population
- * number of people in India living on less than 50 pence per day: about 300 million
[BBC News Night, Oct 2006]
- number of people living in slums: 150 million [BBC 15 sep 2004]
- people in Mumbai living in shanty towns, open spaces, or on pavements: 50% of
Mumbai’s population [BBC, Nov 2005]
- world’s largest slum: located in Mumbai; Dharavi, 432 acres
- number of inhabited buildings declared as dangerous or dilapidated in Mumbai:
19,000 [BBC; Sep 2005]
- number of children in India who die before the age of 5: 63 out of 1000 according
to UN report [BBC; Sep 2005]
- children under 3 years of age in Orissa severely malnourished: 21 % (Feb 04, acc to
National Family Health Survey); or 3.8 % (acc. to data collected by the state)
- tribal children below the age of six who have died of malnourishment-related causes
in 15 districts of Maharashtra: 9,000 (between Apr 2003 and May 2004)
- number of street children in Delhi: 150,000 estimate [BBC; Sep 2005]

Now, before you think this is an excuse (and before you suggest that these problems were caused by complacency), I’d like to inform you that it isn’t easy to locate the sources responsible for these facts. It is also a fact that India is trying. There have been significant improvements to the numbers of people being offered education opportunities, but it is difficult to overcome centuries of tradition and ignorance. We had recycling systems among ALL levels of society (most of them because it was profitable to do so) long before the term became popular. We have three times the number of people in less than a third of the space than in the U.S., but guess which country has caused more harm (BY FAR) to the environment??! So although America’s streets may be cleaner, relatively speaking, its greenhouse gases and carbon footprints have rendered the environment less clean than almost any other country (and this despite the smog of Mumbai and other cities). There are free hospitals and comparatively low healthcare costs in India, which isn’t true in the U.S. And which country has exploited sweatshop opportunities in so-called third world countries (thus adding to the problems—young women and children should be in school, not seduced into low-paying sweatshops just so Americans can wear Nikes)??? You see, there are many ways to define the causes of the so-called “mess.”

All this isn’t to suggest that the British are solely responsible for the situation, but it does contextualize the problem, whereas your gut-reaction betrays a lack of deeper understanding and sounds like the analysis of a freshman social psychologist! You claim you’ve been there, done it. What—a few weeks or months (whatever) in a subcontinent as vast, complex, and vibrant as India and you feel empowered to make snap judgments?! We who have spent lifetimes in India still don’t understand much of it. And, yes, we’re embarrassed by the mess. You would argue that then we should have done something about it. But India is still a young nation, barely 60 years old as an independent republic. It will take time, patience, and education to reverse the situation. And, yes, it will not happen in your lifetime—of that I too am certain. As if that’s some kind of hallowed benchmark—your lifetime!!

Why do Americans want everything NOW? And in the drive to acquire it “now,” American societies care little about the long-term effects—witness the economic, cultural, and environmental mess. Everything they do suggests that they think of Time as an opponent to be attacked, diced into slices, and controlled so they can apportion and assign tasks to every minute of the day–the American work ethic, they say. It seems to be different in countries with ancient cultures–they have a more friendly perspective of Time, are more willing to meander along with it. They don’t see it in terms of hours and minutes or even days; after billions of yesterdays they know there’s always another tomorrow. It is no accident that Americans have the least national holidays of any country, less vacation time than most, and are constantly fiddling with Daylight Saving Time like children afraid of the dark!

But India will emerge from the age of Kali. How do I know? Because, despite your derisive characterizations of it, there is a renewed sense of vigor and energy in the country, which will continue to grow because the pride of Indians is growing now that the world community is taking notice. Whether or not you believe it, India is a world player if only for the fact that the world community thinks it is. Once you raise the level of expectations, people rise to meet it—any kindergarten teacher will tell you that! It isn’t a coincidence that the Kerala you praise so much also has the highest literacy rate in the country. And that’s how I know—because eventually the next few generations of Indians will become better educated and they will eventually carry India into a new society.

There is something else, which is the other side of the story that I referred to at the beginning. As in all things Indian there are two sides to every coin—tradition, which can sometimes be an impediment to new ideas, can also be a unifying foundation for change. Indian societies (one almost has to use the plural in India for it is many things all at once) are built on a firm base of mythology, religion, and community. Sometimes they cause fissures but eventually they shift back into solidity. These force fields invigorate the national conscience (and collective unconscious) because they are cultural bonds; people feel connected to one another—uneasily sometimes, but connected all the same. There’s strength in numbers and in the knowledge that we are not alone.

American societies draw their strength from pride in individual pursuits, which is why Americans treasure privacy among all other things. Once their tenuous communal moorings are cut they become alienated, lost, and disaffected; probably why you left your business behind to wander the world in search of cultures to criticize!

And, of this I am certain—it will take India less than 100 years. In 225 years as a nation the U.S. is doing what? Fighting wars on several fronts; endangering the environment more than any other nation; existing complacently while more than 40 million people have no health insurance; claiming improvements in race relations in the midst of hundreds of examples to the contrary every day, as if the presence of a black president is a magic wand to dispel decades of appaling racial hatred! Is this what you call “America living up to its ideals?” These are American ideals? Greed which has caused its financial systems to run amok? Arrogance that it can build other nations into its false image of democracy (where elections are stolen and career politicians use cheap fear-mongering tactics to hold on to power and where a political party gloats because it now has the one vote that will allow it to be an obstructionist)? These are American ideals? Where homelessness and poverty lurk in the fringes of the richest society in the world? It’s just a façade, Mr. Kelley, this so-called ideal state that you feel gives you the right to criticize others.

So Mr. Sean Paul Kelley, in response to your disingenuous invitation to call you “a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that,” I will do precisely that!

Kim and I had a nice chat and I’ll post my reply soon.

I got an email from someone very upset with the things I have said about India. Here’s the email in question, my reply is below:

Mr Kelley: I would appreciate it if you could let me know how long you spent in India and if you made any friends there. Looking at the photos of your trip you obviously enjoyed it-Lions of Gir, Rajasthan an’ all that but your observations as per your subsequent writings showed that you did not really like India or Indians.. To me you are like the ‘alternate’ who goes to Kolkata, looks around for a hotel for $4 a night, eats at the roadside eatery, gets hash cheaply, dresses like an Indian with Kurta and/or Dhoti and then heads off to Benares or Rishikesh or wherever for a ‘Spiritual Experience’ After the great trip, which is duly notched up against a claim that will be made in the future “I have been ‘Everywhere’ etc” . On your return to America, after seeing emaciated rickshaw pullers, it would have been comforting to see the well fed obese compatriots and was time to jot down those memories, while still fresh, of observations like the ’shitty’ hotel you stayed in (no mention of room price) lack of hot water-rats-cockroaches-pavement dwellers-corruption - on and on and on ad nauseam.

You did mention that you stayed at the Taj-that would’ve set you back maybe $500 a night but you then said that you didn’t like ‘outside’ the Taj because of the rubbish, smells etc. I’m sure a well travelled man like you would be aware that if only one fifth of the third world’s population could enjoy the same sanitary conditions that we do that there would be no fresh water available for drinking. You, having travelled to 47 countries, no doubt are aware of the achievements and shortcomings of each of them. I note also that you tell us that you are a ‘good public speaker’ and are available for hire. During your India trip you would have picked up little gems for your talks like; a birth takes place every 1.25 seconds-20 people are killed in road accidents every hour-40 per week die in rail accidents-snakebites 4000 a year-43% of NASA staff are Indians-about the same at Microsoft-Indian input with the LHC considerable-have nuclear capability-and many people pee and shit in the streets.

India is not only Mumbai, Kolkata or Delhi-it is Leh, Ladakh, Arunachal, Nagaland, Assam Meghalaya-the great rivers, the Brahmaputra, Luhit,Siang, Bhorelli-places you haven’t been and as long as you have your narrow, negative views are as well being left off your travel itinerary. Stick to the poorer areas of the big cities, you seem to gather more material there for your ‘insights’ We are all aware of this country’s strengths and weaknesses-two minute wonders like yourself, Shand and others make observations are largely uninformed and negative. I’m tired spouting off on this subject-I hope that your last visit to India was literally just that.

Sincerely,

LB

LB,

I appreciate you taking the time to write me on a subject you obviously care very much about. I will do my best to answer your questions honestly and fully.

Time spent in India? I have visited India three times, for a total of about five months travel in the country. I’ve visited the majority of Indian States, but alas, never made it to Calcutta.

There is no doubt that I am hard on India in my criticisms. But the reason I am hard on India is because India is one of those countries that is larger than itself. In a sense, India is an idea, and that idea was born out of the Independence Struggle and Gandhi’s high ideals. I happen to think India is not living up to those ideals, not at home and not abroad. And that is why I am exceptionally hard on India. Of course, I am equally hard on America–as even the most cursory examination of my writings would reveal. I would encourage you to dig around in the archives and see for yourself.

As for being an ‘alternate’ there is certainly an element of truth to this. Although, I did not visited Benares or Rishikesh. I did not visit an Ashram whilst in India and I did not visit the country for a spiritual experience. That was never my intention. While in India, which again, even a cursory glance at my archives would reveal, I did make friends–and I had friends in India already before my visit, my travels were not solely limited to slumming. I spend time with a very wealthy family in Calicut and saw how both halves lived. I spent time with an MP on a previous trip–a MP from a reactionary Hindu party, I hasten to add. And I spent lots of time on my first two trips with Indian Muslims. I’ve sat in the sand with a Sadhu talking about Indian politics and conversed with an Indian Mulsim sufi on the meaning of life. I chatted with an Indian farmer about his crop and the faliing Monsoons and dined in a five star restaurant with a ‘gentleman farmer’ discussing the verities of the cardamom crop. And yes, I witnessed first hand the squalor and casual brutality of the urban poor, time and time again. All of these are the sum of India. Not its poverty and certainly not its squalor.

But the filfth and lack of infrastructure simply cannot be denied as a serious obstacle to economic growth. And my discussions with people and study of the Indian budget make it clear that large scale infrastructure development is not in the cards. This is a tremendous pity for India. It will also keep India underdeveloped.

I’m certain you are mistaken about me staying in the Taj. It would have set me back $500 a night and that was very clearly $500 a night I didn’t have to spend. I’ve seen the Taj in Bombay. And I probably wrote about seeing it, but I certainly never stayed in it. Not sure where you got that idea, again, look in my Indian archives and see for yourself.

I appreciate you sharing the ‘little gems’ such as: “a birth takes place every 1.25 seconds-20 people are killed in road accidents every hour-40 per week die in rail accidents-snakebites 4000 a year-43% of NASA staff are Indians-about the same at Microsoft.” I was roughly aware of these facts. The question I would put to you is this: what have all those educated Indians brought back to India? Again, this is one of my most severe beefs with India. Indians and India’s cheerleaders, love to throw quotes like these around. But never answer the quesiton that with all this education, all this international experience, why is India still one of the lowest countries when it comes to human development? Why hasn’t this changed? And why isn’t it changing?

India has a idea of itself. But like America it doesn’t live up to those ideals. And isn’t it right and good of we citizens of the world to hold nations of high ideals up to those selfsame principles? Is it not right to hold their feet to the fire, so to speak?

I eagerly await your response.

After the zombies ruined my breakfast this morning I decided I should recite the few remaining outside my window some poetry:

We All Must Die, by Horace:

Alas, dear friend, the fleeting years
In everlasting circles run,
In vain you spend your vows and prayers,
They roll, and ever will roll on.

Should zombies each rising morn
On cruel Pluto’s altar dye,
Should costly loads of incense burn,
Their fumes ascending to the sky:

You could not gain a moment’s breath
Or move the haughty ghoul below
Nor would inexorable death
Defer an hour the fatal blow.

In vain we shun the din of war,
And terrors of the stormy main,
In vain with anxious breasts we fear
Unwholesome Zombie’s sultry reign;

We all must view the Stygian flood
That silent cuts the dreary plains,
And Cruel Solanum’s bloody brood
Condemned to everduring pains.

Your shady groves, your pleasing wife,
And fruitful fields, my dearest friend,
You’ll leave together with your life:
Alone the cypress

After your death, the lavish heir
Will quickly drive away his woe;
The wine you kept with so much care
Along the marble floor shall flow.

Sean Paul ducked behind the door, but then peeked back around at a half dozen shambling and armed ghouls. All were pasty and pale.

“FTW?” he mumbled, “Reyes, when did zombies start carrying guns?”

Reyes shook his head, his neck fat wobbling like jello, and said, “dumbass, those aren’t zombies, that’s the NRA’s board of directors!”

There is a reason Americans detest lawyers. But the reasons to include the bankers in this category keep growing. Take today for example and a conversation I had at a local BofA branch.

“I’d like to cash this check,” I said to the teller.

“Do you have an account with us,” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not? Would you like one?”

“No thank you. BofA is too big for me. I prefer local.” (What I was really thinking was a long string of four letter words.)

“Okay, can you sign here. And put your thumbprint here,” he said. (I’ve long since given up trying to protest the thumb print thing. But it is an odious practice.)

“That’ll be a six dollar charge by the way.”

“Excuse me?”

“Six dollars.”

“When did you start charging people $6 for cashing a check drawn on your bank? What, do you think you’re check cashing place now? Talk about cheezy and underhanded. Trying to cheat Americans out of every last penny they earn?”

“It’s bank policy, sir,” he said.

“You’re bank policy is a joke. You receive billions from TARP and even more from the Fed in zero interest loans and you wonder why Americans hate you?”

So, I grabbed my check and walked out the door. I motored over to my bank and asked them if they had the same policy:

“No, we don’t. Any check drawn on this bank is free to cash.”

When did banks start charging a fee to cash checks drawn on that self-same bank? We really are through the looking glass here. Of course, the people who are hurt here are the poor–people who don’t have a bank account, or another bank, like I had, to go too.

Bankers really are the new gangsters.

A little bathroom humor from Guadaljara. And no, it’s not what you think.

The seven year-old niece sits on the couch with wet hair, a puppy dog smirk swaddled in a blanket. Mother and I talk about my plans, the future.

“So, you got a job. How long will you be there?” she asks.

“Six months, maybe ten, depends on how much I can save.”

“And where are you going next?”

“I don’t know, Mom, it’s really a terrible dilemma,” I tell her.

“Sure, terrible indeed,” she smiles. Mom and I have grown into a mutually supporting friendship over the last two years. And it certainly has been timely. We spent several years not speaking to each other, both too stubborn to admit that we were remotely more similar in our temperaments than either cared to admit. Mom stood on principle and I stood on petulance. But even as a thirty-something I learned a great deal from her example. Never the touchy-feeley type, her actions proved love and support. Mom always taught by example. Would that I had seen this sooner. But now, she’s more supportive of my endeavors than I ever imagined.

“It’s your life,” she always says, “live it and enjoy it.” Her actions back up her words.

“I keep thinking I need to go see penguins. Head down through Central America, then South America and finally Antarctica. But you know what Mom? My heart just isn’t in it. Sure, I need to hit below the equator. But Latin America isn’t for me.”

“But you had fun in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, right? And as I recall, surfing in Mexico was a blast,” she says.

“No doubt. But my internal compass just points East, hard East, too. Not necessarily the Far East,” I said, waving off her next comment, “but just East. Somewhere between Istanbul and Beijing, or Java in the South to Mongolia in the North. Something keeps dragging my heart that way, my thoughts, my ideas,” I say.

“You and the East,” she nods her head up and down. “That complicates things doesn’t it?”

“You’ve always been good with the understatement, Mom, haven’t you?”

“You remember how much I cried the day you flew off to South Korea?” she asks.

“Yeah, I remember. I was really surprised.”

“I felt like I was watching Paul leave for Vietnam. He had something in him about Asia as well. And so did your grandfather. He fought in the Korean War. I was scared. Nibbi men tend to get shot up or killed in Asia like your Uncle Paul,” she tells me.

“I can’t explain it, Mom, there is just something there for me. I feel more alive there than anywhere else. I’m engaged. I’m always fascinated. And I wake up in the morning never knowing what is going to happen that day,” I told her.

“Ghosts,” she whispers as the shadow of an old grief walks across her face. I fumble, uncomfortably, in my cigarette box for a smoke. The seven year old scowls at me.

“What are you looking at, little one?” I asked.

“I want to know when you are going to buy a house. Get a wife. Be normal!” she says.

“Gigi!” she says to my Mom, all a-smirk, “Grandpa says he’s irresponsible.”

I shake my head. And poke her.

“Chessa!” my mom says, “you’re uncle is a traveler. What’s normal for him is not normal for others.”

Elise, the nine-year old walks into the room, rubbing her eyes.

“Nothing about Uncle Sean Paul is normal,” she blurts as she slams the door to the bathroom.

Who could disagree with that assessment?

“So, can you tell me your two best qualities?” the interviewer asked.

“First, I’m persistent. I never give up. I’m like a pit bull with a bone. No one is going to take it away from me,” I said.

“Second, I excel at creative problem solving,” I said. “Throw up brick wall, force me to deal with a gatekeeper, and I am going to find away around both, or blow ‘em up. And walk right through,” I said. (I was interviewing for a sales position.)

The interviewer nods. Scribbles some shit in his notepad, purses his lips in a half smile and nods at me again.

I think to myself, “Hell, I got this one locked up. I rock!”

“So, what are two weak points you have?” He asks.

“First, my filter is broken. I tend to say what I think, as I am thinking it. The whole ‘think first, speak second’ thing doesn’t work for me anymore.”

The interviewer’s eyes widened in shock. “And, second?”

“Second, I expect more original questions out of interviewers, especially at high profile and creative software companies,” I said.

Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

Here’s one from today I liked: jobs that have to do with mountains. As long as you’r enot blowing them up, and you find one, please let me know. I love me some mountains. Preferably with a beach in front of them, but hey, as I am stuck in cubicle-land, I’m not picky these days.

Alas, sometimes the searches are very strange: compare and contrast Singapore and Somalia? Really? Really? Why? One’s in Africa, the other in Asia at the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula. One is highly organized and prosperous, the other is desperately poor and chaotic. Not to mention a failed state. And you needed google to tell you this?