Winning Oscar awards for the film “Slumdog millionaire” has created a lot of excitement and discussion in the Indian media. One worthy politician has trashed the film makers for so poorly portraying India and the Indians that he feared it would adversely affect the tourism industry in the coming years! On the other hand there are some who feel that the film would promote tourism - just as the “Dhobi ghats” of Mahalaxmi in Mumbai is a “must see” tourist spot - many foreign tourists would want to visit the Dharavi slums for first hand experience of the human excrement and filth as seen in the film! Some feel that the tourist rush to these slums would become so great that smart entrepreneurs would soon set up artificial slums in many cities as tourist attractions! All the states would be on competition mode to set up slums by offering attractive incentives to set up slums for the tourists! To spend a day in the slum would become an integral part of the tourist itinerary! Come to think of it, a high official of the British Government recently spent a night in a thatched cow shed in Sultanpur in UP, literally sleeping with a cow! Since he had for company a high profile young and upcoming Congress leader sharing the cow shed, one wonders, weather the thatched cow shed was after all, air conditioned for the comfort of the high profile occupants! The authorities must have made it sure (by washing out the cow’s stomach and starving it) that during the short time the dignitaries shared the thatched shed with the lucky cow; it did not drop massive quantities of dung and offend them!
Recently, I met a middle aged French couple in the Rajdhani Express, while I was traveling from Bangalore to Delhi. This couple had visited many places in India during the past one month and was on their way back to Delhi to catch a flight to Paris at midnight the next day. They had somehow got confused about the arrival time in Delhi and took the train because they thought that it would reach Delhi the next evening by 5 PM well before the departure of their plane at midnight. When I told them that the train would be reaching Delhi only the day after, at 5 AM, they were shocked because they would then miss their flight to Paris. However, I suggested to him that, they could get down at Secunderabad in the morning next day and catch a flight to Delhi so that they did not have to miss the flight to Paris. He did as I suggested and I hope he reached Paris without further hassles! The confusion arose because people told him that Rajdhani Express was a prestigious fast train with limited number of stops and he mentally calculated the time to cover a distance of about 2400KM to be not more than 24 hours at the most! Trains in France should not take more than 10 to 12 hours to cover this distance!
The Frenchman told me that he lived in Marseilles and that he was a professor in the University. His wife had a fascination for India from her childhood and she believed that she was a Hindu in her past life and had lived in India! She had always wanted to visit the holy places of India and they decided to come on a tour after long planning. They visited many places including Kashi, Allahabad, Rishikesh, Hardwar, Puttaparathi, Pondicherry, Kochi etc. He talked about their most horrible experience in Kashi of seeing half burnt human bodies floating in the holy river Ganga, the head turning with the waves this way and that way as though the bodies still had life in them! After that experience his wife was not very sure that she was an Indian Hindu in her past life!
Some months ago I hired a taxi in Delhi to go to Mathura and Vrindavan. My friends in Delhi had warned my wife about the unruly behavior of the “Pandas” or the guides in Vrindavan. I had told the driver that I was not interested to engage any guide or Panda to show me around, and that he should take me to the temples in both the places. As we turned from the highway, a few kilometers from Vrindavan shrine the Pandas tried to stop the car. The driver told us that he would not enter into any argument with the Pandas because he feared that he and his vehicle would be harmed if he supported us. These rough and fierce looking goons were very intimidating and threatening and we had great difficulty in shaking them off. They become very querulous and dangerous when they find that the outsider would not budge. It is the same experience in Pushkar in Rajasthan, Kashi in UP, or Rameswarom in Tamil Nadu. I wonder what impressions our esteemed foreign tourist would take home after such experiences. I suppose one should not see a foreignhand in all that is going wrong in our dear India!!
