Gokarna: Half-Moon Beach

Folks who know me know I'm not much of a beach guy: after a few lazy days restlessness and boredom set in and I turn to my #1 diversion: pestering Day. Half-Moon Beach was different; we spent 15 lovely days there (ten more than planned) with not a twitch.

Half-Moon is a six kilometer beach-walk from the nearest mid-sized town. There are no utilities or electricity, and water is drawn up every morning from a well. A small banana and coconut grove lines the beach and shades the mud and thatch huts we glady called home.

The place we stayed is still a functioning rural Indian farm. The ancient matriarch, Makileh, spoke only Karnada and a mad grunting-screech called farmspeak. A tiny woman, she was simply the most hardworking person I've ever encountered; every hour of a lifetime of twenty-hour days toiled across her face, and her skin stretched like time over bone and cabled muscle. Her fashion sense predated 'civilised' Hindu conservatism: we were treated to nightly oil-lamp lit National Geographic moments as she sat half naked, cackling and snorting, grinding fresh sprouts into dough in a huge old granite mortar and pestle.

Her and Day seemed to share some kind of mysterious feminine affinity, perhaps a knowledge strong, hardworking women everywhere share: they would laugh and chuckle together over nothing. Makileh enjoyed this almost as much as she loved scaring the shit out of me during my evening piss: blundering out of the hut in the three AM moonlight I would look over to see her bedded on the ground a few paces away. Silently she would turn to me and stab a wickedly hooked razor scythe in my direction, then burst into a crazy fucking laugh, roll over and fall asleep. I knew she bedded there to guard our hut and was showing me the knife as a way of saying: "See, useless, you're safe.", but the uncompromising violence of the gesture is still with me.

The lack of utilites, combined with Makileh's scythe, meant that Half-Moon was graciously saved from becoming yet another trance/rave party hangout in the long line of blown-out and wasted beaches that stretches from North Goa down the Konkan Coast. Just one beach over (but centuries away) a ten day rave was polluting everything in sight, and occasionally a group of young and incredibly high partgoers would stagger past. The kids these days have moved on from smoking chillums and waxing poetic about prana: we're talking three to four day ketamine binges that leave semi-permanent psychotic dissassociation. One especially obnoxious dude named 'Brocolli' (no shit) had the charming habit of standing at the head of the beach, stripping and screaming lunatic hell with his eyes rolled back in his head. Thankfully, he vanished, and his guitar case washed up on the beach a day or so later.

Israeli travellers seem to have corned the market on this kind of shit. Forced into a mandatory three-year military stint and raised in a nation surrounded by hostile neighbours, India is the destination of choice for Israeli youth to let it hang for the first time. And hang it they do, to the point that the Israeli and Indian government changed visa requirements to make it tougher to renew. The Indian westcoast has TWO Israeli-funded mental hospitals set up specifically to help young Israelis who indulged a little much. And -dig it- there's even a mental hospital in Tel Aviv set up to LOOK like the beaches of Goa.

All this, of course, played a role in our selection of beach destination. The most unwanted list ran like this, from worst to best: beach resort; raver beach; hippie beach; quiet beach.

Half-Moon was ideal.

hampi update

Hi all,

Just arrived in Hampi. We spent 2 weeks in Gokarna, in a mud hut on a small beach with simple restaruants but no electricity or phone. WONDERFUL!

We are having major difficulties with viruses on our memory card and USB memory stick from the internet cafes for the photo editing and posting..... Any suggestions are welcome.

more later, after the irritation of almost losing all our photos dissipates.

xoxo
day

traveller's rant #3

The long way around to a simple point: there is much talk among backpackers of discovering 'untouristed' locations. A place is thought to lose its authenticity, become somehow less 'real', when the wheelie-bagging group tours arrive. Alot of this can be dismissed as simple snobbery, but there is also a kind of colonial holdover, with galavanting young Westerners keen to find a nostalgic version of a mythologized culture preserved intact and unsullied somewhere, exclusively for their viewing enjoyment...a crystalized culture that is -hopefully- naively capitalist and therefore cheap. This leads to 'indigenous tourist camps' springing up everywhere, where locals are paid a pittance to dress up and 'act traditional' for bus upon sweaty bus. Tourists get a satisfying photo of a woman with giant lip rings; she will use the extra money (if she's lucky) to pay for a satellite dish in a mud-floored thatch hut. So what we get is the illusion of tradition.

But culture isn't static. The priest accepting morning puja offerings while checking cricket scores on his cellphone is as authenticly 'Indian' as the young tough on the bus in gangster knock-offs memorizing Eminem. People who seek out 'untouristy' places miss the point: it is precisely where cultures collide, where ancient Hindu paganism (for example) meets Coca-Cola and they thrash around in the muck for a bit, that any sort of 'authenticity' develops.

But: "Oh, what about the McDonaldization of the world? What about the West's creeping, insatiable drive to turn diversity into monoculture? And ohmygod what about capitalism!?" I call bullshit. As low-fruit examples: I've seen kids in Nike shirts pushing goats through fields to slaughter. I've seen countless shrines dedicated to innumerable dieties decorated with ghee, sandalwood paste, milk, popcans, car-hood ornaments, plastic soldiers, banana leaves, flowers, movie posters, and all kinds of cultural effluvia. The sky-is-falling monoculture fear is, I suspect, perpetrated by folks with their own political agendas who refuse to aknowledge the dynamism and resilience inherent in non-Western cultures. That shit ABSORBS, man. That shit sucks up Coca-Cola and spits it out as Hanuman the Monkey God's favourite bitch. And the undercurrent of the argument is more menacing: the foriegn culture, it is inferred, is too weak/slow/dull/backward to protect itself from the great power we have unleashed...now only we, as the creators, can go back in and decide what is 'good' for another people and culture. We must save them. They're helpless.

So yeah, its an entirely new-wave colonial position masquerading as lefty social concern, and obviously full of much crap...just like trying to avoid touristy places cuz you're such a cultural explorer...

sjj

Shrines

There are shrines everywhere in India. Crucial components include a carved diety and/or lingam, a trident (for Shiva) some food, flower and fruit offerings, candles, and assorted kitschy waste. Those familiar with my sculptural work will understand my enjoyment of these bizarre little constructions, and why I'm accumulating quite a collection of shrine-images.

Lovely Ladies: The Hijras.

The images above are of Cochin's New Years Day Parade, including the Hijras.

Before moving on to the main subject of this post, we first need to be frank and cut through some PC bullshit: Indian men are, for the most part, complete pigs when it comes to gender relations. I'm sure there are a myriad of sophisticated socio-political justifications for this, none of which I really give a shit about.

Men here routinely get away with throwing acid or burning oil on their wives so they can be divorced without shame and the male can collect another fat dowry from another unlucky wife (more than 6000 REPORTED cases in 2005). A male child is universally hoped for, so much so that infant daughters are murdered or sold by families who cannot bear the 'burden'. Again, statistics are understandably hard to come by.

Today in the Times of India I read about two females who were brutally assaulted by a mob of 40+ pissed off dudes. The reason? The ladies were (shock!) in a pub without male company. The list of prohibited behaviors for women seems endless. In the South at least (this may be different in the Northern cities) women cannot dance, drink, or smoke. They are rarely seen outside after dark. They cannot leave their father's home until a marriage is arranged, at which point they're passed to a suitable male like so much property. Women who argue for their share of property after divorce are murdered. The rate of sexual assault is incredibly high, and even when reported, punishment is often nil, as clearly it must be "the woman's fault" for "putting herself in that position".

Men, incredibly sexually repressed but also infinitely more powerful, go through an extended period of adolescence well into their late twenties. Similar to Latin American machismo but much more acute, a woman is either a wife or a whore...unless she's Western, in which case she must be a whore. Dayna is astounding in her ability to deal with the constant tit-staring, oggling, etc. It was incredibly difficult for me not to completely smash the motherfucker sitting behind us on the bus who, persistently over the course of several hours, decided it would be cool to try and stuff his toes up Dayna's ass. We switched spots; he followed. He relented only when Dayna asked that I reach behind and snap his fucking ankle, which I was more than happy to do. That was the worst example so far, but the feeling of being surrounded by a bunch of horny, slimy, idiotic pigs is constant.

So imagine what it must be like to be gay in India. Homosexuality is, of course, illegal. Prosecution is rare but harrassment, violence, and ostracism are not. One loophole created out of necessity are the Hijras, or transvestites. Historically, Hijras were hermaphrodites and eunuchs (some castrated forcibly) who were part of the huge harems of princes and emporers. Today, dressing up like a woman (even if that's really not your thing) is the only way for a gay male to be seen in public. As for being female and gay in India...I really have no idea as the subject is so taboo its impossible to find information. It cannot be easy.

Interestingly, trans and poly gendered indentities are well represented in Hindu myth. Many dieties, including the macho Shiva, are able to morph across gender lines in various avatars. Indian folklore stories involve a character dressing as a woman and the confusion it causes.

These pictures are of Hijras in the New Years Day Parade in Cochin, Kerala. The parade was the most complete example of 'cultural hybridity; I've ever witnessed. As one local put it; "This is the one time we feel free, without boundries." Secular, Christain, Hindu, Halloween, Christmas, etc were all present, sometimes in a single costume.

A Little Financial Perspective.

Lets say the camera I'm carrying around is worth $2000.00 CDN. That's around 80,000.00 Indian National Rupees. The bellboy makes 1000.00 INR per month, which means he could live off the camera for more than six years.

Lets say that again. He could live off the camera I'm carrying for more than six years.

I walk around everywhere taking photos. I'm not in constant fear. I may get robbed, I may not. But the mere fact that I haven't says something incredible about human nature.

I can only hope that, were tables turned, I would behave with as much restraint.

Traveller's Rant #2.

Put on some fucking shoes. Locals take thier shoes OFF inside homes and at temples to keep the street filth OUT. Walking around like a fake sadhu barefoot everywhere kinda defeats the purpose, dontchathink?

And no, no-one really thinks you're 'going local'. Spare me.