One of the things that shocked me the most about India is that its cities are so radically different from the European concept of a city which I am accustomed to. Sure, there are buildings, there are crowds, there is noise - the ingredients are pretty much the same and yet i found the Indian cities I’ve visited unbearable for one single reason: there are literally no places to sit down and relax. I have wandered around for days in Bombay without finding one. The only place you can sit down and relax on is the sidewalk. Silence is a luxury Indians can’t afford. No, I have to put that some different way because it’s not true - the truth is Indians simply don’t appreciate silence. The most ‘famous’ eat café in Bombay is a place where you’ll sit packed with a few hundred other people with  minimal table space. There is hardly any view to the street. I haven’t seen a single chair on the street side in the whole of Bombay. One cannot attribute this to poverty – their television channels and their religion is the same. When they drive their cars they constantly honk. Not because its actually functional to honk - I am absolutely convinced  that they honk just because they love to honk. That comes as close to insanity as my imagination permits but I am sure it is true. The Indian cities are places that are as close to how I imagine a ‘Hell’ would be like I’d ever care to visit.

The good thing, however, is that I realize now that all my concepts about civilisation and culture are actually European by nature. I never really thought of it this way before but now I do. India is one of the few places in the world where you can get into touch with a civilisation that is radically different from the Judeo/Christian/Muslim Monotheistic European style one of which the USA and Australia are just variations. The basic values are everywhere the same: people respect personal space, respect silence, are scared of death, etc. etc.

India is quite a different pill. To give an example: one thing I like a lot about Turkey is that no matter how ‘lowly’ anyones job is the people do their job with pride. This is different in Holland where it’s usually quite apparent that people hate their jobs if they are ‘low’ jobs. In Turkey, however, even the street sweeper does his job with a certain pride. In India, however, everything is different because of the caste system.

You from birth belong to a certain caste and only the lowest of castes can do the ‘dirty work’.These lowest of castes, usually recognisable by not wearing any ‘hindu signs’, are educated in such a way that they have no self respect whatsoever. The whole concept of self-respect is simply alien to them. That of course has a flip-side: the whole concept of respect for others is pretty much alien to them as well. They will perhaps fear you, but they will never feel any respect for you since they are brought up with the idea that no one respects them.

For this reason alone, beggars and touts are extremely annoying in India. They have no idea what respect means. Usually made up of casteless people they will cheat, annoy, and fuck you over as long as they don’t break the law because the idea of prison scares them.

‘Normal’ jobs are done by people that belong to a caste. Now, that’s where the real problem starts. Because these people belong to a caste they feel they’re too good to perform any tasks they associate with ‘casteless’ work. In other words: cleaning! It is unbelievable: one comes to a small Hotel that has no less that 10 employees walking around just to find that all the hallways are dirty, that the rooms are dirty and that the sheets are dirty. In India, that is just common rule. What I can’t figure out, however, is why the hotel manager can’t simply hire a casteless person to clean up the place. Perhaps they are so direspected that they aren’t allowed inside Hotels, probably that’s the reason - which makes for an absurd situation, but then this country pretty much is the most absurd place I have ever been.

Personally this whole caste system is one of the most absurd examples of human stupidity I have ever encountered on this planet. I have no idea as to why all those ‘hippies’ and ‘alternative people’ love India so much other than that the place is so cheap even they can ‘live like Kings’ on their welfare checks, which after seeing Goa is pretty much a palpable theory as most of the ‘westerners’ living there are old hippies who couldn’t give a flying fuck about Indian culture and spent night after night eating cheap food and listening to bad german cover bands playing the same 20 bad coversongs of 70’s rock music…a disgusting sight that made me doubt about my previous idea’s of what ‘hell’ really looks like…