In a Mumbai greenmarket, David Farley hunts for the Indian city’s most precious commodity. From World Hum:
As soon as I closed the door of the cab and told the driver where I wanted to go, an uninvited visitor leaned in my window. “Opium? Weed? Charlie?” he asked. “You like the Charlie?” Before I could open my mouth, my driver barked a few terse sentiments and put his foot on the gas pedal, launching us into the miasma of concrete, steel and perpetual honking that is the Mumbai road system.
“That man,” said my driver. “He’s bad. Don’t buy nothing from him.”
I felt a slight sense of relief. This cab driver and I had known each other for less than a minute, but it seemed he had my back, shielding me from the cacophony of unsolicited sales pitches that I’ve had to endure since arriving in the city.
“First time in India?” he queried, the question I’d already been asked about 17 times in the 36 hours since my plane touched down in this city. Yes, it was my first time. And before he could ask me the predictable sequel, I answered: “I’m not sure what I think of India yet. It’s just so … chaotic.” More:
In Kathmandu, capital of the hippy trail in the 1960s, an old car is more than just an old car. In AFP [via The Smart Set]
Naresh Shrestha’s small Mercedes-Benz bus first rolled into Kathmandu sometime in the heady 1970s, laden with hippies completing the arduous overland journey from Europe.
Today the sturdy vehicle still plies the streets of the Nepalese capital — a reminder of the days before cheap air fares, when budget travelers took weeks or even months to get to Asia.
Once they had arrived, many sold their vans and buses to fund their time in Kathmandu, where the mix of Hindu and Buddhist cultures, and the cheap drugs, often proved irresistible.
For Shrestha, his battered German-built bus is perfect for its current job, ferrying passengers between Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, just a few kilometers (miles) away.
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Beneath the idyll of a paradise called Goa, a grim, gritty picture of a state scorched by corruption and apathy. Sudeep Chakravarti with photographer Satish Bate in Hindustan Times:
On a cool evening in mid-October, a hundred or so people, mostly Goan – teachers, writers, painters, journalists, businesspersons, fashion designers and lawyers – stood near one of Atanassio Monserrate’s two large villas near Panjim.
They held candles; an emphatic circle of light. I was there too, wax from a temperamental candle blistering my fingers.
It seemed a small price to pay. After all, I didn’t join in the singing of we-shall-overcome, or impassioned speech-making.
My fingers had not been severed with a chopper, as happened to a Goan lawyer the previous night. Nor had I been severely beaten about the head, as had a young Goan professor of history, as he dined on chicken xacuti with this lawyer friend at a modest Panjim restaurant. It’s why we had all gathered in civil outrage.
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How the Afghan heroin trade is fuelling the Taliban insurgency. In The Independent, UK, Jerome Starkey reports from Kunduz:
The heroin flooding Britain’s streets is threatening the lives of UK troops in Afghanistan, an Independent investigation can reveal.
Russian gangsters who smuggle drugs into Britain are buying cheap heroin from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns. Smugglers told The Independent how Russian arms dealers meet Taliban drug lords at a bazaar near the old Afghan-Soviet border, deep in Tajikistan’s desert. The bazaar exists solely to trade Afghan drugs for Russian guns – and sometimes a bit of sex on the side.
The drugs are destined for Britain’s streets. The guns go straight to the Taliban front line.
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Adventurous travellers have found many things in Goa. Innocent escape was never one of them. Ian Jack in The Guardian, UK:
Fiona MacKeown was by no means the first parent of a large family to travel from a rambling home in rural western England, in the middle of a damp winter, and see what Goa had to offer by way of diversion. Evelyn Waugh had six children (a seventh died in infancy); Fiona MacKeown had nine (eight since February 15, when her 15-year-old daughter Scarlett Keeling was found dead on the beach at Anjuna). Waugh travelled from Piers Court, a Georgian mansion in Gloucestershire. MacKeown came from a huddle of caravans near Bideford, Devon, a home summarised as “a mountain of old tyres … empty beer bottles … and rubbish” by Wednesday’s Daily Mail. But the bigger difference is that Waugh left his children behind.
He came to Goa in December 1952. “The scenery [is] delicious … the people soft and friendly,” he wrote to his wife.
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In The Sunday Times, UK, Dean Nelson meets Fiona MacKeown:
It is hard to classify MacKeown. Her children’s names – including Merlin, Kisangel, Isis Celeste and Trinity Willow – suggest mellow hippiedom. But she defines herself as a gypsy; when she sought planning permission to put caravans on her land she was backed by the Romany council. She is unconventional but when she says she was naive rather than negligent, I believe her. Those who have seen her with her children were struck by how bright, well mannered and affectionate they are.
With her brood of children, MacKeown would receive about £25,000 a year in benefits. In order to pay for the Goan holiday she told me she had saved £200 a week for months by living frugally – buying only rice to supplement the family’s home-grown vegetables and buying clothes for the children only from charity shops. Eventually they had about £7,000 for the trip, topped up by selling a pony for £1,000. It was a tiny budget for a six-month holiday once the flights for nine had been paid for.
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Andrew Buncombe, The Independent’s Asia correspondent, on his blog Asian (con)Fusion:
Last week, at a cafe in Anjuna Beach that specialises in organic food, the mother of Scarlett Keeling showed me some photographs that I didn’t really want to see.
The photographs were taken during the first post-mortem tests carried out on Scarlett and unlike the written report itself, the photographs revealed the true extent of the teenager’s injuries. The pictures showed a huge bruise above one eye, a series of bruises on her legs and shins, red marks around the genital area and, most shocking of all, a picture of Scarlett’s face.
Because police claimed they did know who she was when her body was found, the pathologists had cut open her face to enable access to her teeth and to take a dental imprint to obtain her identity. They had then crudely sewn it back up. What was left looked like an horrendous, clown-like smile stitched across the teenager’s face.
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As Fiona Mackeown, mother of Scarlett Keeling, the 15-year-old British teenager murdered on Goa’s beach on February 18, demands a high-level inquiry, Amanda Merritt, whose brother died there, tells why she’s convinced he was killed too. In Timesonline, UK:
After a year of trying to piece together what had happened to her brother, Merritt has recently succeeded in persuading the Indian police to reinvestigate his death. At first – like Scarlett – he was dismissed as just another hedonistic tourist. But Merritt believes he was targeted and killed by members of Goa’s criminal underworld.
Stephen, who had travelled alone in Asia several times as part of a masters degree in Chinese theatre studies, had been taking a December holiday alone in Goa and intended to be away for two weeks. He planned to spend Christmas with his two daughters and had already wrapped their presents.
On December 12 his body was found hanging from a tree, a woman’s sari around his neck, in a village 200 miles from Goa.
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Drug dealers blamed for rising death toll in India’s hippy paradise
Jeremy Page in The Times, UK:
Since the 1960s, when the first hippies arrived with their tie-dye and LSD, Goa has been renowned for its pristine beaches, cosmopolitan atmosphere and plentiful supply of narcotics.
But the suspected rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling, a 15-year-old British girl found dead last month on the famous Anjuna beach, has now shattered the Indian state’s reputation as a “hippy paradise”, free of worldly evils.
Goan officials and many long term foreign residents were quick to blame Fiona MacKeown, Scarlett’s mother, for leaving her alone in Anjuna. They insist that the place is no more dangerous than other popular beach resorts.
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Briton ‘witnessed sex attack on Scarlett Keeling’
A British man has told The Times that he saw an Indian barman apparently sexually assaulting Scarlett Keeling less than two hours before the 15-year-old British girl’s half-naked body was found on a beach in Goa.
The witness, who asked not to be identified, said that the attack took place after Scarlett left Lui’s bar on Anjuna Beach high on a cocktail of LSD, Ecstasy and cocaine at 5am on February 18.
More in timesonline, UK:
