OneWayTicket

Day 40: Ah, America

So, yes, here we are finally with the great Satan, in the land of the free, home of the brave.

What better place to await the halfway point of our trip than in the country that excites and infuriates the world. It makes you realise just how far your own country must travel, it makes you realise how far your own country has travelled, it makes you envious of all you don't have, it makes you grateful for all that you do.

I have seen no nation whose daily life is so governed by choice and first-touch marketing: The supermarket stocks more than 50 kinds of bread, 20 types of onions and "How you doin' today?" is the national anthem. Buying a pod of garlic or a pair of socks is an exercise in staying focussed. 

(Photo: A pair of socks was all we wanted)

Television is a window into the soul of a nation, I've always thought, and that's particularly evident in the US. There's something for everyone, and I mean everyone, and everything is slickly packaged. Yesterday morning, I determinedly flipped channels on the cable to see how many I could run through. I gave up at 400. Many were in Spanish, a reflection of the demographic change sweeping California.  

A sample of the headlines -- today a 48-year-old man is dead after a robber shot him, an 18-wheeler truck plowed into a school bus severely injuring three children and the bus driver, one of two Davids has won the American Idol, a front has brought in unusually cold weather (meaning, we need a light sweater), and, oh yes, there was something at the end about Barack Obama and the next American President.

The craze for reality shows has only grown, fuelling an endless line of imitators across the world, most irritatingly back home. The subjects are getting more outlandish as they desperately vie for attention from thrill-seeking audiences. Two days ago I saw "Farmer Wants a Wife," something about 15 city girls sent to a farm to woo, well, a farmer. If you could call the sight of grown women in denim shorts and pancaked faces running around trying to catch chickens amusing, I guess it was a riot.

Flip channel. Another reality show. An African-American dude with gold caps on his teeth, a gold necklace dangling around his neck and his hair twirled into deveil's horns, is saying, "Boy, is you banging!" on a VH-1 dating show that seems to be unfolding in the posh European enclave of Monte Carlo. A sultry woman with a low-cut dress is craving his affection. Will he grant it? (Photo: Ms Craving Attention and Mr He-Devil)  

Flip channel. Another reality show called "Flavour of Love." Sorry, can't stop to tell you what's that's about. Flip channel. An Amazon and her muscle-bound assistant are breathless extolling the virtues of a new fitness machine called the ab-contractor. The latest Consumer Reports -- the only US magazine that does not accept adveritising for fear of being partial to the consumer goods it so methodically dissects -- has a story on how the latest ab machine is useless and the advertising misleading. I'm not sure if that's the ab-contractor.

Flip channel. Ah, here's something we get in Bombay: the GOD channel. It's a Christian channel, but it's a little different from the love-faith-family-and-Christ focus it has back home. A "Jewish Voice" programme, something I've never seen before, is on. A neat, seemingly affable Jewish man is slowing feeding the we-are-under-attack mentality sweeping large swathes of America. He's talking of "Mozlems" burning forests in the US, Israel and Australia. "I spoke to the fire chief (somewhere in Australia he claimed) and he said there were devices attached to the phones of these Mozlems, these devices started the fires," he declared as an audience of retirees listened carefully. He went on to talk of an American Imam who he claimed said this to him: "We are planting our seed, we are breeding your women, and we have all the time." What was more bizarre was the applause that followed.

Then, a commerical break on GOD: "Read about it, Kamal Salim's story, In the Red Chair, exclusively for you. How a terrorist infiltrated America and then discovered Jesus and was delivered from evil. You'll understand the frightening plans Mozlem terrorists have for America, you'll understand how Jesus Christ can give us deliverance. Send $60, buy the book, help send medicines to the needy and help bring the Messiah back to the Jewish people."

Flip. Flip. Flip. Did the farmer get a wife?

C-SPAN3, where Senator Jack Reed is droning on about the nitty gritties of Iraq. "This is rapidly becoming not a fight against international terrorism, it is becoming a fight between various sectarian groups in Eyeraq (Iraq), and we are being drawn into it every day." But few watch C-SPAN, the equivalent of our Doordarshan Parliament channel. If you watch only television -- as a majority of Americans do -- it seems really hard to figure out what the important issues are for this country, and, consequently, the world. Newspapers are slowly dying in the US, that's as irrefutable as global warming. People now work long hours, the sacrosant weekend has long been invaded, and each job in middle America has many claimants? (Photo: Who has time for Time?)

Anyway, time to walk over to the mall and get some lunch.   

As you can tell, we haven't done much travelling this week in California (do two trips to the mall count?).

We've been taking a home break with my brother-in-law, relaxing at his apartment, cooking (we are parent figures as far as that goes), vacantly watching meaningless American television, and doing some shopping. That last is a big decision. Our trip has been a logistical breeze thus far because we've stuck to our two backpacks and one strolley. The wife -- admirable until now with her 8-kg backpack -- has finally succumbed to the sales at the great malls of America. She's been shopping for some clothes and that great female weakness -- shoes. So, we finally had to buy a small strolley, small enough though to now become our chief carry-on bag. So no great damage.  

Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX, as everyone calls it here, is our gateway for the most unstructured part of our trip -- into Costa Rica (for which we have no visa, only conflicting opinions on whether Indians can get one on arrival), Peru, Brazil and finally South Africa. LAX displayed none of the order and neatness of Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland or Vancouver. It was noisy, you could smell the loos and the people seemed to represent all the colours and races on earth.

Just after we landed (on Monday, five days ago), on the hour-long drive from LAX to Newport Beach, where the brother-in-law lives, we saw trash all along the medians of the 12-lane expressway. It was something of a shock after the depressingly pristine and almost-pristine surroundings of the cities we've visited since we left home. Ah yes, as we circled before landing, there was also this horrible grey smog hanging over LA, a vista of endless concrete.

Somehow, it all makes me feel a little better about Bombay meri jaan.

Ah, America.