Well I made the critical although understandable mistake of venturing out from my hidden box this evening. Hunger drove me forth, freedom kept me out. Okay maybe that is a bit embellished, but it sure sounds better than: I went out because I was too lazy to cook and had to walk home through a vast mob of politically charged groupies. Actually I was out most of the day teaching at Thiravalur, and I should say that I had a wonderful experience there teaching a group of first rate pastors who not only were capable of answering most of my questions but were familiar enough with the catechism to quote from it. Upon returning home I contemplated the contents of my icebox. After deep reflection I decided that although they were all virtuous enough in and of themselves there was little I could do towards a proper meal with eggs, frozen chicken breasts and a box of Oreos. By the way if anyone has a recipe that includes those three ingredients and nothing else please send it along I’m sure I’ll make use of it. So I sought to forage among the natives. At first I tried a place down the road from my house called the Tangerine that supposedly serves American style food. It is good but calling it American is like calling Taco Bell Mexican. That place was closed due to some holiday. So it was on to the Italian place, the Bella Ciao.
Now I have to say that long long ago I decided that I am not Italian, I will never fool anyone into thinking that I am Italian, and I am certainly am not going to attempt to pronounce the name of Italian foods especially since the correct pronunciation seldom has anything to do with the correct spelling. Therefore what I ordered was garlic bread and chicken served with a lemon butter sauce, what I got was an Italian meal far more appetizing than that particular description implies. This is probably why people insist on using the Italian names anyway because the English just doesn’t sound as good.
It was after I finished my meal and attempted to get home that I really found myself in the midst of a mess. Living downtown within half a mile not only of a very public and fashionable beach but also within walking distances of the University of Madras and many of the state and city government buildings does have a few draw backs. My driver made it about a third of the way back to my flat when he told me I would have to get out and walk the rest of the way since all the rest of the roads were closed off. There was a huge gathering of people who supported a certain political party. The symbol of which is a fist within a circle grabbing a torch, which has the resemblance in my mind to the iconic 70s? black fist symbol. What exactly they were doing I am not sure. There was this huge mass of people, imagine Hwy 53 in Eau Claire absolutely jam packed with people for at least three miles probably further walking on one side up the road and on the other side down the road. As far as I could tell they did nothing other than walk whichever way they happened to be walking. And it wasn’t as if there was a larger amount of people going in either direction. The crowd heading one way seemed just as big as the crowd heading the other way. They weren’t shouting or chanting anything. They weren’t holding signs. They weren’t rowdy or aggressive. They were simply walking. They weren’t exactly quite but they weren’t any louder than you would expect of a mass of people at a state fair or awaiting the arrival of a Fourth of July parade. They were almost every single one of them dressed in yellow shirts emblazoned with the fist of power, but other than that you would not have known they were there for political reasons at all.
I did speak briefly with a man who came from Pondicherry. Pondichery is a city to the south of Chennai where the French held sway for a long time. This proved to be the undoing of our mutual communication since the man knew French but only a few words in English and I know more Telugu and Tamil (total together about 6 words I think) than I do French. Other than that I simply slipped in amongst them relatively unnoticed and followed the wide and broad way till I found the narrower one leading home. Whence I slipped into my cement abode wondering if I shouldn’t try to mix my chicken and eggs after all, since although the Italian meal was delicious I was already hungry again.
Concerning the political parties in India – Which one in specific was out in the streets tonight, I do not remember. I know the symbol and would probably recognize a picture of the man at its head since there are certainly pictures of him around the city. Also Kumar, our driver, told me the name of both the party and the candidate last week, but I cannot recall it now. The vast majority of political parties seem to be named specifically so that they can be reduce to three letters, such as the BJP or the INC or the NCP etc. The most famous and probably the most widely support of the Indian political parties is called Indian National Congress, but is often referred to simply as Congress. This means an American has to be careful in explaining our government to Indians since if you mention congress they assume you are talking about a political party rather than one branch of the government. Congress (the Indian political party) dates back even before the time of Nehru and Gandhi who were both major forces in Congress and was basically established for the sake of winning Independence from the British Empire. It was therefore a party made up of people of vastly different political and religious beliefs held together by the single common goal of gaining Indian Independence. It was assumed by many that after independence was won Congress would fall apart into political parties consisting of equally minded constituents. But it never did, creating in India in essence what would have happened if the members of the Continental Congress had maintained a united front despite vastly different political ideologies. Although there have been some splits over the years. Recently I believe a group left because of the Nuclear Deal with the United States. However this party still remains the most dominant political party in India at least with regard to amount of votes received on the national level.
Probably the second biggest political party in India is the BJP often referred to as the Peoples Party roughly translated the letters BJP stands for India’s People Union. From the little I now about this party they stand for some good things as far as India is concerned, they are a very nationalistic party, but their real problem at least from my point of view is their close association with the RSS. The RSS is generally all about restoring India to only Hinduism and have been suspected in many violent acts, including Gandhi’s assignation. Beyond these two parties there are three other national parties.
On a state level, the politics quickly breakdown to an unbelievable amount of parties. The general prevailing idea seems to be if you want to run for government start your own party. Wikipedia list a total of 45 Indian political parties on a state level, and I think that is rather a conservative number. The party rally I walked through today was for a state level party, lead by a former Bollywood actor, which as it turns out is a fairly common theme in India. Or course I’m not going to criticize them for this particular characteristic since one of our greatest presidents was a former actor, and from everything I have read Arnold certainly seems to be a doing a good job of it over there in California. Maybe we out to follow India’s lead and get more actors elected to public office. How about Will Smith? David Duchovny? Tea Leoni? There you go David and Tea could run on the same ticket, then we get not only the first female VP but also the first Husband-Wife team. It would save on what the tax payers have to pay for the president’s health insurance anyway.
-Matt