The Moskow Vector - reading Ludlum in Bombay trains

Today I finished "The Moscow Vector," my first Robert Ludlum novel, just before I had to get off at the Andheri train station. I started reading it just three days ago when I had to wait for my laundry to finish in one of the other apartments. The 18 AIESEC trainees in Sagar City, the apartment complex in which we are staying share three apartments and one laundry machine. So when I heard it was free I grabbed all my dirty clothes and took an elev ator up to the 15th floor, where the third apartment is located. I dropped my laundry in the machine, pressed the button which announced it would take 57 minutes for the washing cycle to complete and went down again.

An hour later I returned upstairs, eager to pick up my clean laundry, but to my surprise it still said I had to wait 14 more minutes. So, slightly narky - I was very tired and it was close to midnight - I took the elevator down again and waited. 15 minutes later: upstairs again. The display still said 10 minutes. Like everything else in India, things tend to not go as or take a lot more time than I straight thinking Western guy like me expects.  So I decided to wait around in the other apartment for the machine to finish. This was the moment that I saw Ludlum's book lying around. Being a reading junky I started reading the first chapter and got hooked. It took just two chapters and another twenty minutes for my stuff to get ready and to immerse myself in a world of spies, handsome American journalists slash undercover CIA agents and a deadly bio-weapon wreaking havoc in the upper echelons of world politics. 

The fact that I spent the next days reading until three in the morning and on my daily commutes is not really interesting. The plot of the book definitely didn't deserve the term 'novel'. But as I was coming near the end, and things were unfolding along familiar lines (deadly encounters, deceit, treason, near deadly escapes and whatnot) I noticed a change in my interest in what I was reading on those pages. Instead of reading about heroism and determination I found myself  reading about a certain way of looking at the world. Let's call it an American way of looking at the world. A world that requires a strong moral compass, strong physical abilities and attractiveness and determined evil opponents whom deserve no mercy. 

This is where the twist of this little post unfolds. Reading about all these square jawed Americans saving the world, while my own person was surrounded by a packed congregration of Indian commuters somewhere on the Western Metropolitan train tracks made me feel... angry - to be honest - about all of that cowboy bravado that was splattered across the book's pages. Just looking around me made the whole story so disconnected to the daily reality that people are faced with here. Sure, bioweapons, terrorism, world politics, geopolitical power play is exciting stuff and it's very good that there are people looking out for our safety. But it just does not connect to anything here... It felt so... boastful. 

The terrorism in India is quite ugly. The Bombay trains were bombed during rush hour not that long ago. There still trying to apprehend those responsible. Recently there was a horrible bombing in Hyderabad, a big city south east from here. The police and the government are clamping down hard on terrorism. But an Indian novel in the same style as Ludlum about all that would just seem... ridiculous. I have to think more about what exactly it is that makes this note worthy. But I share this little thought here today anyway. Perhaps just to remind my self that the American way of doing things is not the only way, that their logic, although pervasive is not universal, and that realizing this, just realizing that logic has different perspectives, is something noteworthy.