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| Los Angeles Diary by Daniel Lak |
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This is the American city that most resembles Delhi. Think Delhi. Think flyovers, car culture, traffic and people living in separate colonies, linked by highways. Of course, there are differences. Delhi has more tractors plying on its roads, at least at night. Los Angeles has the Pacific Ocean and Hollywood. But the City of Angels has nothing like the Delhi Metro. India’s capital took a great leap ahead of LA when the metro opened in 2005. In all of LA, there are two short underground rails and four commuter services. That’s it for more than 15 million people spread across a metropolitan area of more than 1,200 sq km. As for buses, forget it. Getting anywhere by bus can take hours, thanks to clotted car traffic along most major routes, all hours of night and day. There’s a reason for LA being a no man’s land for public transport. It’s because the car is king and it’s always been so.
This is the city that pioneered drive-in restaurants, drive-through banking and entire radio stations devoted to traffic reports. Infamously, the General Motors Company, with a little help from Firestone Tires and Standard Oil, bought the city’s network of electric tramlines in the 1930s and ripped them up. Afterwards, they sold GM diesel buses and gas-guzzling cars to a puzzled populace that was wondering how to get to work. It’s a bit like ceding mtnl to Reliance or Airtel and being taken aback when they start tearing down the overhead phone cables. You’d think LA residents might have put a stop to some of this over the years and demanded a subway system or at least that GM leave the trams alone. You’d be wrong. In 1968, people here were asked to vote on a big bond issue to raise money for an extensive subway and rail system and they rejected it. Overwhelmingly. To paraphrase the late Charlton Heston’s pro-gun slogan, the only way they’ll take their cars from them is to pry their cold dead hands off the steering wheel. Given the air quality on your average spring day in Los Angeles and some of the horrendous freeway pile-ups, that may not take too long. Delhiwallahs can stand tall around their Angeleno friends and counterparts these days. The Indian capital, at least, has a world-class metro.
Rants and Raves
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Nothing lasts forever though and LA’s traditional culture may be on its way out as the city’s demographics change beyond all recognition. Once this was a largely white metropolis with small Hispanic and Black minorities, with Hollywood, weapons manufacturing and oil the main industries. No more. These days LA is almost 50 per cent Spanish-speaking, with huge South and East Asian communities and more Canadians, Brits and other Europeans than any other city in the US. The mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is arguably the country’s most powerful Latino politician, part of a surging ethnic community that can no longer be taken for granted. Okay, he’s having a few problems with sex scandals and accusations of mismanagement but connoisseurs of politics—South Asian style—will know that these are mere mosquito bites to a burra saheb of Villaraigosa’s stature. Nor should the Latino surge in Los Angeles be seen as a "takeover" or "swamping local culture".
The entire state of California was once a part of Mexico and before that a colony of Spain. A war between the US and Mexico led to California becoming a US state in 1850, something Mexico has never been happy about. In recent decades, an insatiable demand for labour in California has attracted tens of millions of Mexicans and Central Americans to LA. Slowly but surely, they’re making it their city once again. Call it conquest by stealth if you like, the revenge of the cradle, but it’s a fascinating reassertion of history in an age when the past seems hardly to matter to many Americans. Viva Alta California.
Rants and Raves
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I was in the Los Angeles area to attend a conference called ‘Being India in the 21st Century’ at California State University. It was a fascinating event that was held—mysteriously—in a blue Egyptian style pyramid on the university’s leafy campus. My favourite talk was by Professor Sheba George of UCLA about the economics of aging among South Asian diasporas in America. I’m not kidding. It was spellbinding—especially the part where she spoke of her own parents’ plans to divide their time in retirement between LA and the family spread in Kerala. Now that, it seems to me, is creative thinking about life after 60.
Rants and Raves
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To Little India on our last day in Southern California for brunch of masala dosa and excellent sambar at the Udupi Palace in the LA suburb of Artesia. About a 100 Indian restaurants, sari shops and greengrocers line in the high street, hawking fragrant and silky imported wares from Spanish-style hacienda strip malls. But the highlight for me was a rather unintended pun. Little India’s medical centre has a neon sign telling us that health services within are provided by...Dr Stephen Curry.
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