pune bombings

well they focused our minds
especially the eleven dead
...
though the fact the sunday papers are printed in advance
so there was no news the next day
nor any increase in security presence for a few days
made it a bit unreal
...
but as the bombs were definitely aimed at tourists... a german bakery in pune...
meant that when we got to agra we didn't stay in an obvious hotel in taj ganj
nor did we eat or hang out in the obvious rooftop restaurants
the fact it takes over 40 mins to get a cup of tea in the shantih lodge helped this decision
...
but agra
and now varanasi
are in different orbits to pune
which is mumbai
though we were in aurangabad when it happened
and that is definitely in mumbai's stretch
and there was no visible extra police there
...buyt its hard to judge because there are so many more guns in North India, than South
which is where we just came from
...

the maoists, by the way, are massacring unarmed soldiers, and i doubt that gets any foreign press
you wonder what could precipitate maoism in this country
a couple of very bad crises, one assumes
communism of the harsh russian chinese variety only ever came out of terrible crises
and this country might be exceedingly poor, but its always been that way
its not getting noticeably worse
and there's no first world war
or japanese invasion to really harden people's lives
and corruption is rife
but is it as rife as chiang kai shek's china?
which would seem to be the byword for a corrupt country
i.e.
you can't get much more corrupt than chiang's china

so my guess is this place will moulder along
getting very rich in parts
and barely changing in others
while the the banks in Dubai and the UAE have their coffers fillwed with the emptyings of many Indians who have filled their boots...
...
corruption
its invisible
i mean, i've no idea how corrupt Britain is
and the US, well, what most Europeans would consider to be political corruption is legal there
...
so how corrupt is corrupt?