Ah, mysterious India, ever in flux yet steadfastly the same! While greenbacks, terabytes and bushy-tailed MBAs woosh back and forth between Bangalore and Wall Street, the eructations of Tom Friedman speeding them across the Flat World like some kind of ill pneumatics, the doings of the superstitious masses still supply orientalists correspondents with fare for cutesiness and condescension. As Henry Chu sat barricaded at the crib contemplating his balls, Jonathan Allen of the New York Times was bravely setting off into Delhi’s diesel dawn to document the queer customs of the Hindoo:
the creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it’s a small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on parade.
After noting that the temple is inspired by Disneyland (“We visited five or six times. As tourists, I mean,” the temple’s PR officer clarifies), Allen goes on to, let’s see, analogize Indian temple-goers to people waiting for the toilet, and Indians in general to dogs, amongst whom he is like an unflappable elephant…
Wait, you think I’m making this up?
Here are the toilets:
The appeal of this might at first be lost on visitors to India, who are usually coming to see the country’s abundance of genuinely ancient buildings [say wha…? – ed.]; Indians, who are surrounded by them, will generally grab any opportunity to escape from all that decrepitude for the afternoon, ideally to a place with musical fountains. The crowds here aren’t pilgrims; they’re day trippers. (…)
And so, although Western tourists are welcome, they can expect to receive the occasional look of benign giggly bemusement, the same kind a gentleman receives upon joining the line for the ladies’ toilets. (…)
The dogs:
Sometimes the allegorical power of elephants is overestimated, as in the tableau which, according to the caption, claims that: “One problem elephants never face is the generation gap.”
The one that most strikes me is the creature shown “equipoised and nonchalant amidst barking dogs”; for the tourist sometimes overwhelmed by the colorful chaos of India, this could well be the most relevant elephant.(…)
Portrait of the author as a patient pachyderm:
People cut in line and tread on my toes, which strike me as things Bhagwan Swaminarayan would not do. It seems the combined efforts of the Akshardham’s robots, elephants and talking boats in relaying BAPS’s essential message of humble compassion may still not have been enough.
As I leave the temple, a horde of rickshaw drivers surrounds me, loudly and physically hustling for my business. I again try to adopt the posture of the unflappable elephant.
But unlike Henry and the hijras, this elephant has balls. Jonathan gets all New York on motherfuckers:
Then it occurs to me that that elephant must get ripped off all the time, and I argue furiously with the drivers until one of them relents and agrees to take me back to central Delhi on the meter.
Balls and all! Continue reading
First, I missed 
