Luvverly Jubbly,
No more yearnings for enlightened motherland than the average member of the Indian Congress, but a yearning for truly enlightened people, rather than these by-the-numbers dreadlocked and pashmina-clad pseudo-hippies that have infected Pushkar like warts on the hand of Shiva. This being a holy city, there is an above average number of those who seek inner peace, presumably by sticking their head so far up their arse as to block out the traffic noise. Of course, to denote yourself as one of these, you have to dress like a clown who got drunk one night and dressed himself from the Oxfam rejects bin, then pour fertiliser and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil on your hair until you look like Wurzel Gummage (feel free to correct spelling) after a bhang lassi and a good fisting whilst plugged into the mains. You then have to spend your entire time looking as fucking miserable as possible, as if reaching the place where you can finally indulge your cut and paste spiritual bullshit like nowhere else wasn’t quite enough, or maybe it’s just that there’s some real and devout spirituality here, and you finally got to realise that it’s only in deepest agnostic/lapsed Anglican Surrey that you may have been able to wear that air of smugness that comes from looking like someone who’s dropped out the system, man. Maybe they have just realised that they have now become part of another system, and their entire pretension to subversion of capitalism has been subverted by capitalism itself, with every other Indian flogging them beads, incense, pashminas and salwar kameez, at three times the retail price.
I was going to get started on the Israelis, but I just won’t..I just won’t…
TATA for now
Well, that’s another route to spiritual enlightenment crossed off my list. I suppose, at least they get to wear natty rags and chime hand symbols together and stuff.