Live To Win

Mum and Dad left early this morning, marking a neat month since i first landed in India. Sitting in a dirty dive hotel in the mayhemic (sure it's a word) Pahar Ganj district of Delhi, with a cold beer, i thought i'd compile a quick list of my favourite moments so far. So to go with it there are also some of my favourite photographs. Yes, photographs! Mitch - 1, Technology - 0, hahaha. So without further undulating delay. My father Clive has also been tiring of the constant attention that we attract in public places. One afternoon as we were walking through the metro station, a middle aged business man had craned his neck around so far in wonderment, while still walking forwards, that he walked into a wall. Dad and I started clowning when another two young guys were checking us out. Dad preens his moustache and swings an imaginary handbag, like a predatory prostitute sizing up a beat. I comically slip over on the stairs and bang my head on the handrail. Later on the packed ...

1. Traffic To an outside Western eye, Indian traffic is a life-threatening spectacle of unexplainable near-misses, complete anarchy, and confusing politeness. Cars, Buses, Trucks, Motorcycles, Scooters, Auto-Rickshaws, Cycle-Rickshaws, Bicycles, and Pedestrians both Human and Animal safely share wide stretches of tarmac, seemingly without following any obvious set of rules and yet without incident. How is this possible? To answer this, we must first analyse what it is that the Western eye has been taught to appreciate as the fundamentals of safe traffic management, and what this says about the societies in which these fundamentals exist. In Australia, we have a strong body of traffic laws, accompanied by signs and symbols which relay powerful messages subconsciously. STOP signs. Traffic lights coloured in Red and Green. Lane markers which definitively split the road into independant sections. And so on. The adherence to these directives/laws is of course ensured by th...