RKS Literature: Easy American Victims: Inept and Unflappable Delhi Pickpocket (Salman Rushdie)

India can be a tough country for Americans, who are seen as walking dollar signs and, what as innocents abroad: legitimate targets, easy meat. Within hours of checking in at their five-star South Delhi hotel, they had been importuned, without ,leaving the grounds, by money changers offering them the best black rate in town for their greenbacks, vendors of semi-precious stones which could have been polished pebbles, taxi drivers whose cousins ran a marble factory nearby, by hotel lobby palmists, young men of and women of quality offering serious negotiable currency for their cameras and clothes, older men inquiring of Marco whether Madonna was, in the first place, educated, and in the second place, available, and if so, for what fee; and an elevator pickpocket who was at once incompetent and unflappable, so that when Marco pointed out his hand was in the wrong pocket, the fellow simply extracted the offending limb, smiled broadly and said with a disarming shrug. It is an overcrowded country. What to do, we are used to treating our neighbour’s pocket as our own.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: The United States the Real Victor in Vietnam (Salman Rushdie)

My idea was that the war in Indochina hadn’t ended at the time of the ignominious U.S. withdrawal. They’d left a wooden horse standing at the gates, and when the Indochinese accepted the gift, the real warriors of America-the big corporations, the sports culture of basketball and baseball, and of course rock’n roll-came swinging out of its belly and overran the place. Now in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi too, America stood revealed as the real victor. Indochina became just another consumer-serf of (and supplier of cheap labour to) Americana International. Almost every young Indochinese person wanted to eat, dress, bop and profit in the good old American way: MTV, Nike, McWorld. Where had soldiers had failed, U.S. values-that is greenbacks set to music-had triumphed.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

BEYOND PUPPYDOM: INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, EXPLORATIONS AND MAYHEM: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS: RORY’S TREATMENT PLAN OUTLINED

Dr. Skilos has an aura of trust and perhaps a bit too much garlic fumes! He outlined what he thought would be my treatment plan;

Meditation: To manage the racing thoughts clouding my brain I was to mediate four times a day, two in a learning how to meditate group. I was to learn that the here and now was what counted not what had been. Managing the catastrophe.

Individual counselling lessons: Three a day with Dr. Skilos and one of his colleagues Dr. Jennifer Blintzman. Why was I not acting “normal”. What was eating away at me and why.

Proper nutrition: Who doesn’t love Southeast Asian food but too much of me beloved chicken congee laced with MSG was bound to cause irritability. Simple poached food and plenty of fruits and vegetables. One thing for certain I do not think I could return to eating kibble.

Establishing a proper routine: My wild routine in Southeast Asia might have seemed fun. But irregular hours, parties and high living can be deleterious to a puppy. Three Alpine walks a day. Classical music hour after breakfast and jazz hour after dinner. Lights out at 22:00 hours. Up at 08:00.

One episode of Lassie and The Littlest Hobo each day: There can be inspiration in a quiet canine way without political intrigue and extreme danger.

Confrontational situationality; The final test of recovery would be a return trip to Singapore for a “boring” visit. If I could return to the old haunts of Singapore  frequented with Bobby Fong Jr. and the beautiful Amira and remain cool calm and collected that would mean evidence of improved mental health.

RKS Literature: WHY CAN ANYONE BE UNHAPPY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM? (Salman Rushdie)

They say, sir, that in the U, K. if a man does not have a job, the government gives him money. If he does not have a job, the government gives him money. If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a jopadpatti shack on the pavement but a solid construction. If he or his family is sick, the government pays for the hospital. If he can’t send his children to school, the government sends them free. And when he is old and useless, the government gives the good-for-nothing cash money every week for the rest of his life.

The idea that a government might behave in such a way seemed to offend Gieve’s sense of the natural order. When Darius confirmed the approximate accuracy of the assertions, the butler couldn’t stand it. He smacked his brow, shook his head, couldn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “In this case, sir, why is anyone I the U.K. ever unhappy?”

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: I WANT TO BE IN AMERICA (Salman Rushdie)

I want to be in America, America where everyone’s like me, because everyone comes from somewhere else. All those histories, persecutions, massacres, piracies, slaveries; all those secret ceremonies, hanged witches, weeping wooden virgins and horned unyielding gods; all that yearning, hope, greed, excess, the whole lot adding up to a fabulous noisy historyless self-inventing citizenry of jumbles and confusions; all those variform mangling’s of English adding up to the livingest English in the world; and above everything else, all that smuggled-in music. The drums of Africa that once beat out messages across the giant landscape in which even the trees made music; for example when they absorbed water after a drought, listen and you’ll hear them, yikitaka, yikitaka yikitak. The Polish dances, the Italian weddings, the Zorba slithering Greeks. The drunken rhythm of the salsa saints. The cool heart music that heals our aching souls, and the hot democratic music that leaves a hole in the beat and makes our pants want to get up and dance.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: AN ISLAMIST FANATIC ADMONISHES HIS MURDER VICTIM A “SHAMELESS ATHIEST” (Orhan Pamuk)

Head scarves protect a woman from harassment rape and degradation. It’s the head scarf that gives women respect and a comfortable place in society. We’ve heard this from many women who’ve chosen later in life to cover themselves. Women like the old belly dancer Melhat Sandra. The veil saves women from the animal instincts of men in the street. It saves them the ordeal of entering beauty contests to compete with other women. They don’t have to live like sex objects, they don’t have to wear makeup all day. As the American Black Muslim professor Marvin King has already noted, if the celebrated film star Elizabeth Taylor had spent the last twenty years covered she would not have had to worry so much about being fat. She would not have ended up in a mental hospital.

Orhan Pamuk, “Snow”, 2002

RKS Literature: England an Ersatz America (Salman Rushdie)

Nowadays England is ersatz America, America’s delayed echo, America driving on the left. Sure, Jesse Garon Parker was white American trash who wanted to sing like a black boy, but the Beatles, for goodness sake, the Beatles are white English trash trying to sing like American girls. Crystals Ronettes Shirelles Chantels Chiffons Vandellas Marvelettes, why not wear some spangly dresses, boys, why not get some beehive hairdos instead of those loveable mop tops and have the sex change operation too, go the whole way, do it right.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: England an Ersatz America (Salman Rushdie)

Nowadays England is ersatz America, America’s delayed echo, America driving on the left. Sure, Jesse Garon Parker was white American trash who wanted to sing like a black boy, but the Beatles, for goodness sake, the Beatles are white English trash trying to sing like American girls. Crystals Ronettes Shirelles Chantels Chiffons Vandellas Marvelettes, why not wear some spangly dresses, boys, why not get some beehive hairdos instead of those loveable mop tops and have the sex change operation too, go the whole way, do it right.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: 1965 Air India Flight from Bombay to London: Like the Mayflower (Salman Rushdie)

Welcome aboard the Mayflower, he greets them, seizing their hands as they pass by his seat, the terrified uncomprehending peasants from remote inland villages on their way to desert kingdoms, the perspiration sprinkled young executives in cheap suits, the frowning chaperones of a veiled young bride fainting in a pink gharana with too much gold braid, the unwary young student on his way to a miserable four years in an English boarding school, and the children. There are children everywhere, children running in the aisles imitating the aircraft to the dismay of the cabin staff; or standing up on their seats grave-eyed and motionless, showing more than an adult understanding of the importance of this momentous day; or screaming like strapped-down lunatics at their fastened seatbelts; children dressed in spectacularly lumpy woolen jumpers in functional gray and navy blue, their very garments proclaiming their alienation from the new homes they have never seen, trumpeting the difficulty they will have adjusting to life in those lightless northern climes.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

BEYOND PUPPYDOM: INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, EXPLORATIONS AND MAYHEM: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AIRLIFTED TO SWITZERLAND FOR MEDICAL CARE

RORY DYLAN STEPHEN AIRLIFTED TO SWITZERLAND FOR MEDICAL CARE

Bob, Fay and Raffles were very concerned with my uncharacteristic behaviour. Not eating well, apathetic and reluctant to go out on my usual multitude of walks. It was the crying in my sleep and refusal to chase tennis balls that sounded the alarm bells.

Bob is not a psychologist, but it smelt not like teen spirit but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had undergone a kidnapping and was exposed to nefarious and murderous characters in foreign lands. I played along for strategic and safety reasons and it paid off as I was liberated safe and sound in Singapore. A small puppy in an oversized and sleazy Southeast Asian world.

Bob, Fay and Raffles transported to me via a leased executive jet to Alstätten, Switzerland to the famed (and outrageously expensive) Kay Nine Clinic specializing in psychiatric (OMG) care for dogs. We first met with Dr. Moutro Skilos the well-known author of a series of veterinarian centric papers on PTSD for dogs.

After two days of intake sessions where my story was provided in great detail, mostly through my Singapore Times articles detailing my ordeal, a two-week intensive therapy session plan was developed.

Bob, Fay and Raffles found accommodation in a deluxe former shepherd’s hut in the mountains proximate to the clinic and were to pick me up in two weeks and return home.

Wouldn’t you know it! My roommate was Giak a Cambodian landmine sniffing mutt who had his rear left leg blown off by a landmine in Cambodia. Could have very well have been me!