Chandigarh

Well if my last post was depressing, rest assured it has a happy ending. I'm now in Chandigarh, a city about four hours north of Delhi.

It's a great change from Delhi: Chandigarh is quite wealthy, and has the highest standard of living in all India. Its city was planned by a famous French designer, and is replete with gorgeous parks and spacious freeways.

Today my fantastic host and I visited the Rock Sculpture Garden, created from the scraps left over when Chandigarh was being built in the postwar period. It was an absolutely surreal trip into the designer's imagination, and I'll upload crazy pictures soon.

Oh, and my host and his family are deeply involved with and knowleageable about Indian politics, so talking to them has been a real treat for me.

The issue du jour in India is the Naxalite insurgents, who are Maoist ideologues that operate in very poor, rural areas in West Bengal (among other areas). Last week they managed to capture and briefly hold hostage an entire train full of people, and the central government has lost control of much of the Naxalite areas.

India is deparately trying to understand who they are, what they want, and how to stop them. A full page ad for the Times of India shows a close up on the weather-beaten pace of a poor Indian, with a rifle just poking out behind his shoulder. A small door is superimposed on his head. The caption: "What are they thinking?"