East Eats West

Sculpting space

In recent years I have become more and more interested in sculptures because they create and sculpt a room, not merely ‘decorating’ it as sculptures occupy three dimensions. They add an extra dimension to a room and make empty air tangible. Sculptures also change with the angle of view and therefore can surprise one with new perspectives. Nevertheless, they are inert, fixed and static. But they can be brought alive.

Currently the Museum Rietberg in Zurich hosts antique Indian sculptures of Shiva Nataraja, the dancing god. As a major god Shiva not only creates space, he creates the world when dancing. In the sculptures depicting him dancing is frozen. But now the acclaimed and very famous Indian dancer Malavika Sarukkai tried to combine dancing with sculpting as she translated the sculptures of Shiva into her own choreography. Through her Shiva comes alive and so does the bronze sculptures exhibited. In a five part performance she evoked the five cosmic actions of Shiva: creation, sustenance, veiling, dissolution and benediction. In her traditional dance of the highest perfection she echoed the classical postures of the bronze sculptures in the museum and the marriage of dance and sculptures created a room of enchantment and divine bliss.

Traveling sanely through India by car

Picture: Travel in style and at ease through India (here an old Packard at a Rallye in Delhi).

Should you ever consider exploring the wild and beautiful Northwest of India by car, make sure you get a knowledgeable and trustworthy driver. And if he is on top educated and good company, you hit the bull’s eye! My driver Ram Kishor Dixit was such a rare character and he operates now his own tour company. Here is his website: http://www.pleasantindiatour.com/

Aishwarya Rai and Abishek Bachan's wedding pictures

 

The second most beautiful woman in the world, Aishwarya Raj from Bollywood fame, got very recently married to the son of another Bollywood idol, Bachan. Here are some pictures from people I know. Enjoy!  

Pictures courtesy of Faiza. Thanks!

Who is Hrithik Roshan?

Picture: Hrithik Roshan is Singapore (wearing a yellow top).

Ever heard about Hrithik Roshan? No? I met him two years ago in Singapore in the Grand Hyatt Hotel and did not know him back them. But I saw him again recently on Swiss TV in a Bollywood Movie: Hrithik Roshan is one of the upcoming Bollywood superstars with a status equal to Brad Pitt in Hollywood. My father even came on TV with Amitabh Bachchan, the other famous Bollywood actor, as he sat in the bar of the Grand Hyatt. As Bollywood movies are becoming increasingly popular in Switzerland with Bollywood-parties being hosted in Zurich and screenings of Indian movies in theatres, you will surely hear more of him. It takes a bit of time to get used to the movies, especially to their length of between three and four hours. Or to the fact that there is constant wind blowing also inside a house, or the frequent dancing, or the eclectic and colorful dressing in plastic clothes or the utter total beauty of the female movie stars.

PS: A good start into the magnificient world of Bollywood is “Sometimes happy, sometimes sad” with Shahrukh Khan and Amithabh Bachchan. Just have at least a generous four hours on your hand.

PSII: I first wrote that the guy in the yellow top was Shahrukh Khan, but I was corrected by an Indian friend of mine that he is not Shahrukh Khan. My apologies (but they do look similar, I think).

Movie clip of Indian camel-bull after copulation

Due to a request I am posting here a quite unique little movie clip: An Indian Camel-bull (just click) after copulation (3MB). Boy, he had fun...

Attending an Indian Mega-Wedding in Hyderabad

Picture: The groom and bride after the wedding receiving the blessings

Have you seen movie Monsoon Wedding about an Indian wedding and were you also intrigued by the colors, the music, the beautiful dresses and the dancing? Ever since Monsoon Wedding I wanted to attend an Indian wedding. And luck had it that my dad asked me recently if he and I shall go to an Indian wedding; Ihe did not have to ask twice. So on Sunday the 30th of April, according to astrology a very auspicious and lucky day because it is the third day after the new moon, the daughter and son of two Indian business empires, the Satyam and Ramco Groups, were about to celebrate their marriage in Hyderabad. My father and I were picked up at 8.30am by a chauffeur and driven to the massive wedding tent outside the city of Hyderabad were hundreds of security-guards ushered us and the 20’000 invited guests to the entrance. After we passed the metal-detectors we were ushered to our VIP seats. As one of the few attending foreigners, I surprisingly met two other Swiss men from Holcim and Rieter, we were assigned VIP-seats close to the stage where we sat down on comfortable red cushions and we served drinks by ladies. At 9am the wedding got going. It consisted out of the Hindu blessing of the bride, than the welcoming of the groom into the family and finally the wedding ceremony followed by a sumptuous buffet. Exactly at 11.20am, the time determined by the astrologers as optimal, the groom got to see the until then hidden bride and tided the knot around her neck with a necklace, herewith completing the ceremony and making them a wed couple. Shortly before that 11.20am the Indian finance minister and some other high ministers arrived to attend the wedding and give their blessings. After the knot was literally tied the VIP guests stormed the stage to give their blessings and presents to the newly-wed couple. Through the skill full employment of my elbows and leveraging my size I managed to kneel down in front of the couple and appropriately hand-over the presents (and wished them a happy honey-moon to Switzerland, as our little country is the hot-spot for Indian honey-mooners). The whole wedding was over in less than five hours. This being my first Indian wedding I realized a few major differences to Western weddings. For example throughout the whole ceremony there was a constant noise-level and a buzz of activity in the audience as chairs were constantly brought-in and re-arranged in order to accommodate more and more people. Like everywhere in India the high number of people let to a lot of pushing and shoving that was enhanced by a plethora of photographers and film-teams capturing the wedding. As an Indian explained to me Indian weddings are not as focused and well-structured as Christian weddings with the ceremony dragging on for hours. This leads to more noise and chaos and there is never a moment of reflection or quietness as in Christian weddings. Apparently only Punjabi-weddings have a lot of dancing, singing and drinking, not Hyderabad weddings. Nevertheless the sheer size of the wedding was awe-inspiring and the attending women in their beautiful Saris and clad in gold and diamonds were simply breath-taking. The pictures I took are only a humble representation of their beauty due to the women’s reluctance to be pictures and the poor light in the tent. Not only was this the biggest wedding I ever attended, it was also the hottest as the Monsoon-heat was building up in India and the temperature reached 42° centigrade outside and probably more inside the tent. Because of that men only were shirts over their pants without ties, what a relief! See the pictures here.

Picture: The wedding tent for 20'000 people

On how to write a Bollywood script – the ingredients explained

 

Picture: A Bollywood poster of a King Kong adaptation (notice the bare-chested woman).

In sheer productivity of films Bollywood in Mumbai, the Indian equivalent of Hollywood, beats its American counterpart by length. But where Bollywood is quickly catching up with Hollywood is in steadily increasing production costs and the high number of flops: as in America making movies is a risky business. And as Hollywood has an iron-cast formula for action-movies the three hours Bollywood movies follow its own archetypical storyline again and again. An Indian businessman I met at a wedding explained to me the basic plot: you need a man and an attractive woman, one of them being poor but deeply in love with the other (orphans are popular). Then you need a villain in the form of an officer, gangster or rich man who tries to seduce the woman and lure her away from her lover with all sorts of tricks. As in American Wrestling-matches the villain seems to win at first but then through fighting and very importantly, lots of dancing, he is defeated by the pure-hearted and poor lover and the couple gets married. The storyline is insofar interesting as marriages even nowadays in India are arranged and love-based relationships are not common. My Indian friend told me that Bollywood movies are a form of escapism for the millions of poor Indians across the country and it is, besides TV, their only form of entertainment. With the cost of a movie-ticket of a fraction of a dollar, many Indians can indulge themselves every now and then with a movie. So far only very few movies from Indian directors, like Monsoon Wedding and Bend it like Beckham, have attracted an international audience but only after the movies’ length and number of dancing scenes were drastically reduced. But Bollywood also learns quickly from Hollywood and starts to copy US-blockbusters like King Kong and Fight Club. And compared to their Hollywood counterparts Bollywood stars need to act, dance and sing, also in action movies.

A brief visit to Hyderabad in India

Picture: The Chowmahalla Marble Palace in Hyderabad 

At first sight Hyderabad is not a pretty city with its poor infrastructure, dirt, beggars and many traffic jams. But it looks back on a rich history and a few historical sites remain that are interesting to see. The most outstanding one is the Chowmahalla white marble palace of the former Nizam-rulers of the then biggest Indian kingdom. If you ever look for the archetypical palace from thousand and one night, the lofty and spacious Chowmahalla Durbar Hall with its 19 Belgian chandeliers is it: its strict geometry, the high ceiling with spacious windows and the white marble allow light to disperse freely and create an impression of grandeur. Outside the palace features a fairy-tale courtyard with wide buildings circumventing a modest garden. The palace was built in the 18th century by the Muslim Asaf Jahi dynasty and until today Hyderabad is a Muslim stronghold. Besides Chowmahalla Hyderabad offers mind-boggling jewelry shops going back to the glorious days of the Golconda gem-mines that produced some of the world’s most outstanding diamonds like for example the Jacobite-stone. Some of the splendid jewelry dating back to the splendid days of Golconda, before it was conquered by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, can be seen in the Nizam-Jewelry collection at the Salar Jung Museum and is definitely worth a visit. Besides the Chowmahalla palace one can visit the Golconda Fort, or what remains of it after the Mughal Aurangzeb destroyed it for the sake of controlling the local gem-mines. There is also a imposing mosque called Mecca Majid because of the few stones from Mecca incorporated in the building. So is Hyderabad, the local Hindu Times newspaper calls the city Hyperabad, a tourist destination? No, not really, but if you like buying jewelry and gold, you are really close to Mecca! See the pics here

Hyderabad and Indian business process outsourcing

Hyderabad is famous in the West for its call-centers and BPO-centers (business process outsourcing) that are beside Bangalore and Chennai the heart of the Indian economic wonder. A financial officer of a BPO-company told me, jokingly, that initially the BPO-boom started because many Indian parents sought higher education in the USA in order to increase their offspring’s chances for a good marriage-partner and increase their dowry. Whatever the initial motivation was, the young Indians today are seeking wealth and a good job and the industry is booming because of cost-driven outsourcing from the USA and Europe. Hyderabad, also dubbed Cyberabad, is a major economical center in India but the city surprises with its poor infrastructure and terrible traffic-congestions. Somehow has the administration not been able or not been willing, as there are still many Communists in the government opposing privatization, to catch up with the economic boom. Despite poor infrastructure the original call-centers for big international companies Hyderabad’s BPO-services have moved up the value-chain and offer nowadays a wide array of services from decision-making to research and development. The financial officer told me that for example the management consultants McKinsey send their presentations-outlines to Hyderabad where over night an army of Indians put together the PowerPoint presentations in English. Also can medical doctors send in their taped-reports and they get typed overnight into Word and sent back. More and more banks nowadays also have company reports and due diligences done in India. India’s advantages are the well-educated workforce and their ability to communicate in English. Even though China is trying to catch up in BPO, workers still lack English language skills therefore hampering development. Let’s hope that India learns a trick or two from China about infrastructure development.

Going back to India, despite

Even though I swore on upon my return from India never to go back again, here I am on an Indian Airlines Airbus A320 that has clearly its best day behind it. The reason for my return is simple: the promise of a truly gigantic Indian wedding of the granddaughter of a business partner of my father. The upside is that these older plane has surprisingly lots of leg-room and I conquered a row for myself without any nosy neighbor. There are a few oddities about the flight: First, except about four women there are only men on the flight. The second oddity is that I am the only Western in the economy class. And the third oddity is that the Indian are eager to press the service call button to hail the exasperated flight attendants. And fourth there is an elderly Indian with a woolen sweater and a woolen ski-hat sitting in front of me and reminding me that once in Hyderabad I will be faced with over 40 degrees centigrade. Welcome back to India, EastEatsWest!