‘People don’t drink enough tea in India’

That’s what Tea Board of India Chairman Basudev Banerjee says.

India is the largest producer of black tea, but from 2005 on, China has overtaken India as the largest exporter. In fact, though India exports about 200 million kg, it is behind Sri Lanka, Kenya, and China.

Indian tea exports consist of very high-value Darjeeling tea. My own favourite is Orange Pekoe which has an aroma that’s out of this world, absolutely refreshing. [click the logo for more info ]

Darjeeling enjoys a high level of demand in Britain, Europe , Japan and China.

We also export orthodox Assam and Nilgiri teas that are high value. On the other end of the spectrum there are very plain, low-end teas that are exported to markets such as Iraq.

Other countries claim to produce 'Darjeeling Tea' and that's led to a whole issue of patents. Click on the picture for an in-depth look at the pirated Darjeeling controversy.

One would think the Indians should have been proud of their great tea manufacturing tradition.
And the various ways in which tea is prepared here.
Hyderabadi tea.
Nilgiri tea.
The variously flavoured lemon teas.
Tibetan Tea
Iced tea, absolutely delicious and refreshing.

But do you know what Indian tea is losing out to?
COLAS!
The market shift is away from teas to consumption of colas!

Preposterous.

If you’re visiting my house this summer, all you’re gonna get is iced lemon tea.
Prepared from the best of Sikkim and Darjeeling gardens.

Indian Cricket -crikey

While I'm not actually a cricket fan,
here's a gift for those who like cricket and humour as well

Dirty Ball Game

The 31st of March.

Far more scary for Indian taxpayers than the Ides of March.

Ugh!

Cups of coffee consumed by department heads and their accountants must've run into a few hundred gallons.

I opened the door to somebody's work cabin

the yesterday only to be attacked by poisonous fumes.

the air was so thick with cigarette smoke you could cut it with a butter kinfe.

He was drawing hard on the coffin nails as he pored through figures, and more figures [sadly not the kind that exercises your eyeballs and gives other body parts a pleasant sensation - these figures seemd to give the poor man an affliction in in the general area that made contact with his state-of-the-art office chair!]

Filing income tax returns is seriously injurious to health.

It's time they put out a statutory warning .

On the other hand, NOT filling them out leads to even greater tribulations.

And maybe even MORE sharp shooting pains where the Indian Revenue Service grabs you if you don't pay up.

And that's a dirty ball game!

Man of Substance. Carl Sagan..Author, Astronomer

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

Here’s to you, Carl. You’ve been gone now for 10 years.

But you brought wonder to us.

You taught us that we don’t need to look to myths to find awe; that we don’t have to search for it in old stories of gods and heavens that never existed.

No, the wonder and the awe are right in front of us: In a flower, a butterfly, in all of nature. From the depths of the ocean to the vast reaches of outer space.

You taught us that reality is incredible, and that science is a way of thinking, and that it’s for everyone.

That each of us is literally made from the stuff of stars.

Thank you. I never met you, but your television serial aired by Doordarshan [the Indian tevlevsion service] changed my life, a long time ago.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Like the stars, you shine on.

Silly Indians?

Indians don’t know anything about cricket.

Really.
Cricket is an awfully English game.
A bunch of good-for-nothing Lord types would hang around all day
Tossing a ball around and taking care not to get their hands very dirty.
Of course, the game was appropriated by the effete ruling classes in India during the
Brit Raj.
The real good sports like football or like Kabbadi, where men get themselves rough and dirty, were of course shunned by the elite in India who wanted to mimic their white masters.

The Brits have packed up and vamoosed in 1947.
But the whole of Bureaucratic India would stand still whenever the cricket tests were on.
A poverty steeped nation losing several thousand man-days listening to the princes like Pataudi knocking the willow.
Then, of course came TV and the one-day cricket
And this World Cup thing.

And now you have Indians behaving most ridiculously.
Wanting to tonsure their team!
One day this Dhoni chap’s a hero, the next they want to lynch him!
Ha, Indians don’t know the first thing about cricket
That it’s supposed to be a gentleman’s game.
That it’s only a game.
They’re acting if the Indian army has lost a major campaign.

Silly, really.
After all, what’s in a game of cricket.
Except big business and big advertising.
And inflated egos…..

Bangalore travellers: Beware of Cheats

This is a travel advisory to all newbies who visit Bangalore.

If you want to travel to Chennai [Madras] by the much hyped ‘air-conditioned Volvo sleepers’, a journey that’s supposed to be completed in five and a half to six hours, watch out.

The Maharaja Bus terminus is the place where you get hooked.

A nice chap will lead you to the ‘Friends Travel Agency’.

Look, I was accompanied by a Kannada speaking Tamil local.
The tout spoke to him so convincingly in Tamil, that the guy told me that I’d probably be in safe hands.

So we went to the Friends Travel Agency. It’s a small shop right near the bus station.
I had to catch an early morning train at the Madras Central Station.

We were assured by the agent at the counter that the bus would drop us off at Madras Central Railway station at 5:30 am or even before that. We were to report to the counter at 10 pm. The bus would leave at 10:30 pm. Passengers were charged Rs 500 each.

At 10 pm, we were escorted to GEE PEE Travels no 9, KSRTC Bus Terminus, Tank Bund road, Bangalore. The earlier ‘tickets’ were exchanged for ‘travelling passes’. We were again assured that passengers for Madras Central would be dropped off at the station.

At 10:40 pm we were asked to board a white van and were driven to a place which was near the Bangalore Race Course. We were asked to wait for the bus. This wasn’t a bus stop, but a road-side. One Volvo was already parked there. It was bound for Hyderabad.

At about 11:15, our Volvo finally rolls in. But it’s not time to board yet. The cleaner, starts, washing the windshield.

By 11:45, it’s clear that we are about nine passengers and the bus isn’t going to budge unless they rope in a few more. By midnight, the passengers begin getting restive and phone the head office on the numbers given. After a while, the driver switches the air-conditioning on, and asks passengers to board the bus, and then disappears.

Finally, at 1:15, with some more people gleaned from another service, the bus, marked Zuber transport, leaves. At this time, the staffer from GP travels assures passengers that the bus will make up time and get us into Chennai Central by 7 am.

The next morning, at 7 am we were still travelling through the outskirts of the outskirts of Chennai.

At 8:15, the bus pulls up at a ‘contract bus stand’, nownere near the railway station. The driver refuses to budge further. He says, I don’t take orders from Gee Pee. My owner is different. My mandate is to reach you here.

There’s a mad scramble as people are desperate to find vehicles to get them to their destinations. Autos charge triple rates. It cost me Rs 150 to get to the railway station to catch my train.

Later on, on the train, I look at the ‘travelling pass’. There’s no signature. The destination has a scrawl that reads ‘Chemi’ the time of departure has a scrawl that reads 12h, it could be a 12 pm if you stretch it, but it certainly doesn’t look like a 10:30. Bus number 2776. Now the ‘cash receipt cum travelling pass’ has conveniently no amount entered after the ‘Rs’.

None of these details could be checked at the time, because they exchanged the first ticket for a green card ‘pass’ and bustled us into the ‘transport vehicle’ with such courtesy and efficiency and speed. As a piece of evidence, the ‘pass’ is worthless.

Of course, these people aren’t going to get away with it.
My student friends who so honestly were taken in, will be paying a friendly visit to ‘friends travels’. Soon.

Watch this space for developments.


[BTW the photo is one I took waiting for the bus that night. it was on the wall of the Bangalore Turf club.]

Bangalore Cheats!

Hi!

I'm writing this from a cyber cafe in Howrah
the railway station of the City of Joy.

To all those innocents who think that the south is safer than the North,
Well, you're hallucinating.

Please beware of touts who infest the Maharaja Bus stand
if you want to book Volvo air-conditioned buses.

I'll give you all the gory details about my new experiences in

Bangalore and Chennai
which shows up the cities as being not only unfriendly
but visitor unfriendly... infested with rogues....

Bihar has far less predators than these rat-infested places
and I do mean the ones that have two legs

How hunger can Hijack Planet Earth

The most significant item of news in recent times is not India's Being trounced by Bangladesh in a totally non-important game of cricket.

Nor is it the escalating violence in Iraq, or the Iran missile crisis that is as scary as this headline:

Bees dying by the thousands in Florida.

Florida is orange country.

Bees are vital for pollination.

to turn orange blossoms into the sun-kissed oranges that are so essential for orange juice and the fruit processing industry.

Now, bees are dying...

Imagine, a world without bees.

Without fruit.

Without grain.

Without fruit processing.

Without agriculture....

Hunger is more scary than any nuclear arms race.

But still, dying bees are less important than a Worl Cup cricket match.

Talk about priorities!

Dark underbelly surfaces

India is known for it's middle-class hypocrisy. We pretend that we are 'morally' pure. We pretend that sex doesn't happen. And we pretend that we're die-hard heterosexuals. Ha!!!

So the case about the Sikkim police guard who shot his mates after a boozing session only proves what we’ve known all along. That the men in the Indian security forces have sex with other men. The boy was about to be ‘sodomised’ by four other mates, and so he got hold of a gun and shot them.

Fact, most Indian guys are sexually ambivalent. After all, when most of middle class male [north] India can’t even speak to a girl unless she’s brought to the house as a bride, what’dya expect? The good Indian boy has a mother, a sister, a wife, and a grandmother, and an aunt, but not a girlfriend. So, whenever he can, the good policeman mounts whatever’s available …

the bbc story

the times of India story

Hymen’s day

MARCH ON THE WOMEN!

Every year, the eighth of March comes clamouring by in Non-Government organisation India. “Non-Government Organisations” refers to societies and trusts set up to do social work, and they operate primarily on Government or international funding.

The term for these entities, in Hindi, the ‘national’ language, is swayam-sevi sanstha. Swayam means self. Sevi means serving. Sanstha means organisation. The word is a double-edged sword, and very apt as well. Swayam-sevi, can mean ‘voluntary’ or ‘self-serving’. Most organisations are both.

And so, as in the past decade, international Women’s day was largely ‘observed’ with breast beating, wailing, and the Gucci-gartered self-proclaimed saviours of women once again ranted and raved about how everything and its brother were responsible for the ‘exploitation of women’.

Rubbish. Some of the recently made Indian laws are so badly skewered against men, that a day may come when no successful man may want to get married! One example, the so called ‘anti-dowry’ legislation stipulates that in if a woman is perceived as being bodily harmed within the first seven years of marriage, her statement to the police will be considered as paramount evidence. In other words, whatever she says will be gospel. Even if the woman basically is telling a bare-faced lie. There have been several cases, where the brother of the bride is the extortionist, threatening the husband of dire consequences unless he coughs up given sum.

All this ‘female foeticide’ hype and ‘don’t disclose the sex of a foetus’ bad laws. Eyewash. Oriental societies the world over prefer male children. It’s a fact of life.

All the hogwash just won’t work unless the heartland of India -- the great unwashed rural masses -- let their girls out of their houses, educate them, and let them have boyfriends and risk pre-marital sex.

As long as India sets an unduly high premium on the virginity of its women, and lives in a culture of shame and hypocrisy on matters sexual, the girl child will remain a liability, and the female foetus will continue to be rubbed off.

Women are still treated as ‘property’ and the state of her hymen is still integral to her father’s and grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s and brother’s honour

It’s only when the rural Indian woman can really own her own body, when she can make choices as to whom she will marry and on what terms, when she has the freedom to wear a short skirt or a backless choli or a bikini on the beach, when she can flirt or ‘sow wild oats’ like the men, that all this female foeticide and dowry rot will stop.

.And that’s a day not coming soon

And the self-serving hypocritical middle class women ‘social workers’ rushing around to nowhere with their moralistic blinkers firmly in place will continue to exploit ‘Women’s day’ for profit.

India poised… what poise?

‘India Poised’ is the new slogan manufactured by the old lady of Bori Bunder turned Media Baroness.

Poised, my foot! Its India Muddled we have to contend with.

India is going through a tough time, really.

The chaos on the streets in any small town reflects Indian the turmoil in the Great Indian mindset.

Driving along the roads of Patna in Bihar is like living in several times zones at the same time. You will have the huge spanky SUVs and luxury cars , the Chevrolets, Opal Astras rubbing shoulders with the sturdy box-like Vauxhall-clones the Ambassadors.

There are horse-drawn carts, bullock-carts, human powered Pedi cabs [rickshaws], tractors and trailers, trucks, buses of every size and description…

Being young in middle class India is just as chaotic.

The joint family is breaking up, there are new aspirations, the head of the household finds himself redundant and obsolete, the caste barriers are crashing. Even the security of government jobs is melting away.

Brahmins find that their bosses are low-caste men, whom they would not have at the same table just a generation away. In the villages, the Rajputs desperately try to keep the lower castes in line using brute force if necessary.

The young are trying to battle with so many new concepts: marriage by choice, early career planning, the right to express their own sexuality, no matter how ‘alternative it is…..

INDIANS EAT DOGS

AND rats. And snails. And frogs. And bats.And rabbits. And pigeons. And fish.

Hey, that's the beauty of this vast sub-continent. Real Indian food isn't vegetarian and cooked in exotic spices. no sir. That's the over-promoted, over-hyped elitist, upper caste, upper class fare. Real India - the land that belongs to the people who build those palaces and ensure that the wheels of the Indian Yatra keep turning, has an entirely different menu.

Here's a small slice of what I have experienced personally.

Roasted dog meat on spits in Nagaland. Spiced dog curry and roast in Shillong, where I studied [briefly] for the priesthood. Chutney made from caterpillars in the Jaintia hills. Delicious rice cooked in pigs' blood [jaddoh] in the Khasi hills.

Field rat roast that tastes so much like tandoori chicken in Sasaram, Barbigha, and Maner in Bihar.

Bat stew in Palamu, Jharkhand. Wild snails either boiled or roasted, in several places. Frog legs in Calcutta and Kerala. Snake fry in Dumka, which I mistook for fish. And grasshopper fried in garlic in a picnic in the Khasi hills.

The underlying reason for the unrest and the socialtensions and violence we witness in India is the fact that only one 'culture' is promoted and every other way of life, especially the real traditions of the tribals and the labouring people are being supressed.

Why should we feel ashamed of our true traditions?

India is too big to be squashed into 'one culture'

when in India, try the real cuisine, it tastes better than the 5-star stuff.

There's no such thing as 'Indian culture'

I'm sick and tired of ignorant middle-class loudmouths moaning and groaning about how 'Indian culture' is being 'polluted' or 'attacked' or whatever.

The list of alien things that are suposed to 'attack' the pristine culture are endless: Beauty pageants, Hollywood movies, men and women who decide that they prefer to love and live with people of the same sex as they are, men and women who decide they want to follow a different religious philosophy and convert to Christianity or Islam, western style clothes ...

Most of these morons don't understand culture at all. They want to impose a particular kind of North Indian Hindu Culture, one especially convenient to middle class and castiest considerations on the populace. Ask them what their so-caled Indian Culture is, and you'll be treated to a fantasy where everyone is subservient to the local semi-literate, superstitious, unscientific pundit. Where women are kept in their place, and where the poor 'lower castes' are back to where they belong.

Culture evolves. there are over a hundred languages in india, and a hundred different cultures. Viva la difference!

Spring Fever

Today, while North India celebrates Holi, a sort of Bachhalian festival
It's also the Chinese Valentine's day...

Today is the Festival of lanterns, ending the New Year festivities
of the year of the Golden Pig..

Thousands of floating lanterns with prayers for finding love and romance
will flow down several rivers and streams in China.

The Floating lantern festival usually coincides with the Holi festival in India
because they are both held on the full moon day in almanacs that are based on lunar
calculations...

BUSHY JOKE

[WARNING: THIS QUOP HAS PROBABLY GROWN LONG AND SHAGGY HAIRS BY NOW, BUT I LIKE ITS NEW AVATAR...]

While visiting India , George Bush is invited to tea with Indian President Abdul Kalam.
He asks Kalam what his leadership philosophy is.
He says that it is to surround himself with intelligent people.

Bush asks how he knows if they're intelligent.
"I do so by asking them the right questions," says the Kalam. "Allow me to demonstrate."
Bush watches as Kalam phones Manmohan Singh and says, "Mr. Prime Minister, please answer this question: your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or sister. Who is it?"
Manmohan immediately responds, "It's me, Sir!"
"Correct. Thank you and good-bye, sir," says the Kalam.
He hangs up and says, "Did you get that, Mr. Bush?"
Bush nods: "Yes Mr. President.Thanks a lot. I'll definitely be using that!"

Bush, upon returning to Washington, decides he'd better put the Condo leeza Rice to the test. Bush summons her to the White House and says, "Condoleeza, I wonder if you can answer a question for me."
"Why, of course, sir. What's on your mind?"
Bush poses the question: "Uhh, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"
Rice was puzzled and finally asks, "Can I think about it and get backto you?"
Bush agrees, and Rice leaves.
Rice immediately calls a meeting of senior senators, and they puzzle over the question for several hours, but nobody can come up with an answer.
Finally, in desperation, Rice calls Colin Powell and explains the problem. "Mr. Powell, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, andthis child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"Powell answers immediately, "It's me, of course."

Much relieved, Rice rushes back to the White House, finds George Bush, and exclaims, "I know the answer, sir! I know who it is. It's our Colin Powell!"

And Bush replies in disgust, "Wrong, it's Manmohan Singh!"