Bombay to Burgh

Maf kijiye, dear reader.  It’s been too long, and I can only still promise a massive screed currently under construction to bring us all up to date.

This morning after an early conference call with the CRY America Pittsburgh team back home, the sins of my colonialist ancestors were visited upon my gastrointestinal tract.

Well, that’s kind of an exaggeration.  To my knowledge, the Brits pressed only the unruliest of Scottish Highlanders (themselves an enemy of the empire) into service in India back during the raj, and these blokes probably came against their will.  And the dizziness and faltering stomach that I awoke with were nowhere near as bad as my last brush with India’s exotic bacterial flora (Google “gerogerigegege”).

Under Abhilash’s advice, I walked to Powai Hospital where a doctor saw me within minutes.  He gave a balance test, blood pressure reading and listened to my lungs, after he surveyed my symptoms.  I was prescribed with three medications sealed in mysterious-looking little foil packs (one read, ‘made in Himachal Pradesh’) with instructions to take one a day for three days until it subsides.  And, I’m under doctor’s orders to avoid street food and anything uncooked.  This is fine by me, as I leave for Calcutta by train tomorrow evening for my site visits, and I certainly don’t want to spoil the centerpiece of this trip with ill health that’s otherwise easily treatable.  Total cost of this visit (after which I am already feeling much better): $9 US.

Doc Prasad told me that the 20-bed Powai hospital was the first hospital in the region, having been here 35 years.  Back then, I imagine that Powai was much more overgrown with this quasi-jungle that encroaches upon the high-rise apartment buildings and highways.  The interior was not air-conditioned, but the exam room was.  This was a relief, as my dizziness peaked when I rounded the turn on the stairwell landing en route to the OPD (yes, that’s right Chad and Jeff) where a small shrine to Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, was nested in the wall.  Of course it came as little surprise that the staff was incredibly helpful and friendly.  India’s health care system - where it is delivered effectively - is on par with world-class standards in my experience thus far.  Sure, the waiting room might be open-air or the furniture a little dingy, but the treatment is top-notch. 

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2008: I was clearly mistaken below when I attributed the cash-flashing in the Lok Sabha to BSP, when in fact it was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who did the deed. Too many abbreviations that I wasn’t as attuned to not having yet been in the UN system, AKA the Domain of the Acronym. I’m not going to alter the post, but read on with discretion

Sigh.  Something turned up rotten in Delhi when, right in the house of parliament, a few MPs of the Bahujan Samaj Party produced bundles of cash with which they claimed the ruling UPA government had bribed them for their votes.  This happened hours before the UPA’s successful confidence vote, spurred by this pesky nuclear deal.  A cleverly wrought smear attempt by sore losers?  Airtight proof of UPA corruption?  You be the judge.  The voters of India likely will, too.

BSP are the socialist-leaning folks who purport to be the voice of the India’s marginalized scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and the indistinctly defined Other Backward Classes (I myself could probably argue status under this classification).  They like to decorate public space in Mumbai with dramatic bright-blue graffiti and their trademark elephant logo.  The tough-as-nails party president is a woman from Uttar Pradesh named Mayawati Kumari.  Interesting stuff, though I would question the catchiness of a party slogan like “the signs of the upper castes, let’s beat them down with our shoes.”

A longer entry about personal goings-on is forthcoming!

Trains are the fastest way to get around Mumbai.  They are also the most crowded, with over 6 million commuters traveling daily rail.  According to wikipedia, 3500 die annually from unsafe riding practices.  I’ve seen some of these practices: guys riding on top of the coaches or hanging out the coach doors seem to have either a deathwish or a unnatural dedication to punctuality.  There are two main lines – the Central Railway and the Western Railway - that run the entire length and breadth of the peninsula.  Sometimes it is confusing to keep the station stops on either railway straight, but people in the stations are generally pretty helpful when asked (Ed., like I should have done – read on below). 

Some newer trains are on the tracks this year, presumably replacing the rattier of the old-style cattle-cars that I rode in exlcusively last trip.  Though they are of nearly the same style and quality of the New York subway cars, they are no less crowded in the mornings.   I caught a pre-rush hour train yesterday morning but still found myself compressed into one of these new coaches on the way to work from Kanjurmarg Station to Chinchpokli Station.  Most of the riders disembarked at Dadar station, where the Western Railway connects, leaving me with about three stops to compose myself before walking a block and a half to office.  The people who ride these trains daily and manage to show up at work both ontime and looking kempt have my kudos.  Getting on a rush-hour train is like brawling in the narrow barspace at Gooski’s in Polish Hill; riding is easy enough if you don’t mind getting real familiar with your fellow man.  As I said in a post last trip, my involvement in the late-90s hardcore/metal scene and its associated sweaty, noisy, violent, packed shows prepared me in ways I never imagined for riding the Mumbai local trains. It’s hot and uncomfortable, but it’s not hell.  Everyone is reasonable and respectful to one another once on the train.  I’ve had pleasant conversations with the other riders and have met some interesting people.  Last trip, one guy standing in front of me even notified me that my phone was ringing.  He could feel it vibrating in my front pocket. 

Sometimes, Abhilash tells me there are fights.  I can’t imagine how this would work: One guy manages to free an arm to slug another rider, who in turn has nowhere to fall or even retreat.  It would have to be a short, one-sided altercation ending with a lot of pleading, or a prolonged and confined beatdown.  It reminds me of what my brother told me about a favorite activity of the Marines with whom he was stationed in Iraq in 2003: placing a scorpion and a camel spider inside of a small closed jar, then taking bets on which one would be sliced into pieces by the other first. 

The closest I came to an awkward encounter was coming home from work last week, when I was still insisting on the stupid idea of carrying my MacBook on the train in its Samsonsite laptop case (which is so impractical of a size for train travel here it’s laughable).  When I got the 15-pound bag down from the luggage rack, I lost control of it and it thudded corner-first into a small wiry guy’s chest.  He squinted at me in annoyance and made a low, sucking sound.  This cued the rest of the guys on the coach to turn their attention to the clumsy gora.  “Maf kijiye, maf kijiye, maf kijiye…” (forgive me) I said to him, trying to ingratiate myself in growing embarrassment as I moved carefully toward the coach exit.  He nodded at me and touched his chest and didn’t throw a punch, so I figured I got out of that scrape OK – no idea if basic Hindi actually saved my skin

(Suddenly, two days later…) 

I spoke too soon when I started this post early last week.  The train ride last Wednesday evening between Dadar and Andheri was a glimpse of hell, a screwup so royal it was nearly on the level of performance art.   I should clarify that it was entirely my own doing.  Any trouble that I get into in India is not India’s fault – it’s the result of my own stubborn self-reliance and persistent ignorance.  OK, end mea culpa. 

I was running late getting out of work, and I was to meet with Jeevan and a friend at a coffee shop in Juhu at around 8:00.  I figured that leaving at 6:30 and going straight away there would give me a little time buffer in case of misadventure, so I went to Chinchipokli station to catch a train to Dadar, where I would transfer to the Western Railway on to Andheri.  The three stops to Dadar were uneventful, and I bolted off the train and up the stairs to the ticket window to validate my railway coupons in the battered little stamp machines, so as to avoid being caught by the railway po-po if asked to produce my ticket.  These guys make sudden and unannounced visits to rail coaches; otherwise, I could not see why more people don’t simply steal rides on the train, what with all of the confusion.  When I got to the platform where the Andheri-bound trian was, I noticed that the LED sign above had a prefix of “BO”.  I thought nothing of this at the time.  It would prove to be a serious and nearly injurious liability. When the train rolled up to the platform where I stood amid a tense throng of work-weary men, it was already packed to the absolute gills.  There was the familiar but no less shocking sight of guys hanging out of the doorwells, some even jumping off as the cars whooshed past.  I’d ridden the rush hour train between Churchgate and Bandra before.  Very naively I thought I’d be able hack it this time as well.  The coach slowed to a stop and everyone began charging and shouting unintelligibly toward the door, from which nobody was making a real effort to detrain.  Something gripped me – call it what you will, boldness or folly.  I reached up through the crowd, who by this time were hooting, dozens of arms extended and gesturing frantically toward the door as the train was just about to take off again.  I grabbed the central partition bar in the doorway, hoisting myself up onto the threshold, where I was stymied by a mass of tired, dirty, pissed-off Mumbai commuters.

For a few seconds I hung there as the train rolled away slowly, then someone packed themselves in behind me, and another. And another, crushing me into the coach where I was surrounded on all sides by other riders.  Not one bit of personal space was left unviolated by someone else’s person.  I had the presence of mind to hoist my bag over my head, where it stayed for the duration of the trip.  I held it military-press style until my arms quivered and my teeth clenched with fatigue.  Despite the fact I checked my laptop in the office lockup again, the stupid thing was like carrying a loaded army duffle bag into a compact car.  I could feel glares from the other commuters as they eyed up this dumb firang who decided to “slum it” and take up valuable space.  “Mujhe Bharat pasand hai,” (“I like India!”) I mumbled sheepishly with a half smile to one young guy who was peering at me from under his sweaty bangs.  He just conitnued to stare.

“Where are you going?” said the wooly caterpillar-mustached guy next to me in thickly accented english.  By this time, due to circumstance of being slowly constricted by over 200 of my fellow men, I was getting increasingly defensive.  My own self-conciousness was coloring an uncomfortable but benign situation as something altogether sinister.  “Andheri,” I shot back nervously.  “This train is going to Borivali.  And you are on the wrong side of the car,” the guy said incredulously.  “It will be impossible for you to get down at Andheri.”  He motioned with an abbreviated nod of his head toward the other coach door, completely obscured with a crush of sweating bodies right out of Dante’s ‘Inferno.’  “Well, I’ll just get off at the next stop,” I said.  Funny thing at this point, as I realized that the conversation was not only between me and him, but between me and everyone in earshot.  “This is a fast train.  It won’t stop until Borivali, when you can get out on this side.  Why would you get on this train?  You should have gotten on the Andheri train.”  OK, OK.  So I get the point, I’m thinking.  I was not prepared for a kangaroo trial by my peers on top of feeling like a moron for not properly researching the schedules.  “You can jump out on this side, but you will have to cross the tracks,” he said, apparently totally serious about such a suicidal move.  “It is very dangerous.”  “Ahhhh, that’s not for me,” I said in disbelief, still trying to process the whole situation. But, they decided to help me out, as my mustached friend motioned for me to start toward the door once it was evident that I was not going to risk being sliced messily in two by a passing fast train.

The next 30 minutes was like being pushed through some kind of an alien birth canal – agonizing and exhausting.  Often I would move past someone one limb at a time, my chest cavity being squeezed with panic-inducing intensity by the rest of the mob I was pressing against.  My enitre body was covered in perspiration.  It soaked my clothing as if I had just ridden a water ride at Kennywood Park.  All that to move, literally, four feet.  When I reached the door, as the train began to slow, there where still three to four bodies separating me from the exit.  The fatigue stoked into excitement as everyone started hooting “chalo, chalo, chalo!” and I lunged along with the rest of the doorway crew toward the exit – where I collided with at least two guys who were getting on the train, knocking me right back where I started.  It was like a cartoon, and at this point I did begin to panic a little bit.  My right arm, caught in the straps of my bag, flailed behind me as my bag was being crowd-surfed by the doorway guys.  Then someone threw my bag off the train, snapping my arm forward along with it.  Then, someone threw me off the train.  I caromed off a few boarders before stumbling to a halt on the platform.  People were ogling me already, and I gave myself a comic, exaggerated preen before hoisting my bag on my shoulder and trudging through the station, dazed, to catch a rickshaw.  As I was working my way up the stairs, I caught myself making that annoying, repeated hissing noise that I’ve heard guys in the stations and on the street make (it sounds like “pss pss pss pss pss!”) at people coming my way.

After another 45 minutes of rickshaw travel, I made it to my meeting at Costa coffee in Juhu, a Starbucks-esque joint that mimicked the latter down to the logo design.  The first thing I did was excuse myself to change out of my sodden kurta into the shirt I’d brought along.  Thankfully, the place was air-condtioned but my new shirt was still nearly soaked by the time I finished cleaning up.  I had some ‘splainin’ to do about my tardiness – the ‘dumb gora out of Pittsburgh’ excuse is wearing thin.  After a coffee freezer (mercifully, not made with Nescafe – this, the coffee of choice in India, is far too weak to defend itself) I was nearly back to normal.

So dig this big crux: You don’t ride the rush hour suburban train in Bombay because you want to; you ride it because you have to.

Like my dad, I am a total gadget-head.  This becomes a liability when traveling in areas where toys are not easily replaced. 

Before I left for my Panchgani trip on Saturday morning, I opened my Swiss-Army brand flight bag ($49 at Target) to retrieve the beloved Leatherman multi-tool that I’d brought along just in case – again, there’s the ex-Boy Scout in me.  I had put in with my toiletries in the bag that I checked, and “secured” the whole bag with a TSA-approved lock – approved only because every single airport in the world has keys to open it.  Of course, my Leatherman was gone, most likely lifted by some no-good, born-insecure, rat soup-eatin’ baggage clerk either in the U.S. or here.  And I’m sure it wasn’t because they thought I was going to wreak some kind of havoc with a pair of pliers between Chhatripatri Shivaji Airport’s baggage claim and my cab. 

To put things in perspective, my luck could be worse: Bollywood (or as he prefers it, the Hindi film industry) titan Amitabh Bachchan, who is a national icon in India, seems to be getting the bum’s rush by airlines in the west on his current “Unforgettable” world tour.  Between the bumbling of British Airways and Air Canada, Big B is out half his baggage.  So I wonder if these ham-and-eggers in baggage claims realize that they are dealing with a guy who once caused a nation of nearly a billion to drop what they were doing and hold vigil while he recuperated from a near-fatal movie set accident.  Going from being all but revered in one context to being treated like Ravi Q. Public at the end of a 14-hour flight out of your hood must be a really odd sensation.   

In real news, Government of India is taking a trust vote today to see if the current United Progressive Alliance-led Lok Sabha (lower Parliament) will collapse in the wake of the left’s withdrawal of support over the Hyde Act nuclear deal.  Today Abhilash and I saw an anti-UPA billboard near office, with dramatic color photographs of opposition leaders captioned “Best of Luck UPA!”. 

Personal opinion, totally uninformed by hard economic fact and shot through with 7^th-grade idealism.  India’s focus should be on exploring renewable resources, as it should be in other parts of the power-hungry developing world.  Why create so much more poisonous waste in a region already beset with environmental challenges?  India has an opportunity to set an example for the rest of us in the “developed” world, both in terms of alternative energy and nuclear non-proliferation.  The newspapers here suggest that China, too, now has a small nuclear arsenal, which one can surmise is part of the reason why India wants its own M.A.D. safeguard.  Could this be the beginning of a sort of three-sided cold war in the seat of the world’s new economic empire?  Such exciting times for cub eschatologists. 

In sports news, my first cricket at-bat ended in a collision with a retaining wall made of sharp, volcanic stone in Panchgani.  So, I’ll be sitting out the forthcoming IPL season with an elbow :)  Today I registered for the Mumbai Marathon (the main reason being that a portion of the fee benefits CRY), which will be held in January, 2009.  I don’t think I’ll be here for that, but I may be able to arrange for a stand-in for the half-marathon - she knows who she is

Again, hats off to Wordpress for losing a saved post.  Take 2:

From the roiling streets of Bombay comes this tale of one goon who blew his stack over a traffic tie-up.  This in or around Vashi toll plaza, where we passed through Saturday morning en route out of the city.  Daily News and Analysis has the scoop:

VASHI: The police on Saturday arrested three men for the alleged murder of Rizwan Iyaatali Idrisi, who was stabbed and killed with a screwdriver in a fracas at the Vashi toll plaza on Friday afternoon.

Kharghar resident Rajkumar Namdev Patil, 30, and Belpada residents Vikas Yashwant Aaldar and Roshan Bhalchandra Mhatre, both 29, were picked up on Friday evening. “A fourth accused, Yogesh Ramdas Mhatre, 23, also a resident of Belpada, is still absconding,” ACP Purushottam Karad said on Saturday. The police could trace the accused because booth operators had noted down the car’s number.

Rizwan alias Raju, 25, and two of his friends, Anil Shinde and Nitin Suradkar, were going to Navi Mumbai in a taxi they had boarded at Ghatkopar on Friday. The three, who are billboard painters, got into a fight with the accused at the toll plaza. “The accused were in a Ford Ikon. When they tried to overtake Raju’s taxi at the plaza, he signalled to them to stop. This led to the quarrel,” police said.

The weapon that was used for the act has still not been recovered since it is with the accused Rajkumar Patil, the owner of the Ford Ikon, who is absconding. 

Raju, who was a daily wage-earner, is survived by his wife, two-year-old daughter and five-month-old son. 

To be fair, there’s not as much truly violent crime (at least not much that has been reported) as one would expect in a city of 18 million.  But occasional reminders that ya best protect ya neck can only help the rest of us just who are just trying to coexist peacefully.

Monsoon brings the critters out of the woodwork.  I’ve dealt with visitations from earthworms, dreaded mosquitoes, military-grade cockroaches, and the occasional freeloading lizard.  I like the lizards, though – they remind me of the color-changing pet anole named Jonny I kept as a kid.  He lasted some 5 years in captivity, and quite sadly died a bachelor.  Requiescat in pace.

Jonny was one badass reptile.  He would have torn the two-inch, coffee-colored Oriental cockroach I walked in on in the sitting room late Monday night limb from limb before cracking open its thorax with his jaws and feasting on it until morning.  India’s lizards have few fans.  When I tell Indian folks that I used to own a pet lizard, the reactions range from bewilderment to revulsion.  I don’t kill these bugs when I find them, though – in a way I am their guest, too.  I’ve seen many adverts for exterminator and pest control services throughout the city.  With 18 million human residents and probably billions more inhuman, I can’t see how these businesses could be at all effective.  But maybe that’s why they remain in business - the more you look for these varmints, the more you’ll find.

While ricking to work a couple weeks back, Abhilash told me an interesting about a famous Bombay snake-catcher named Salim.  If you find a snake in your home, you can SMS him on his mobile (!!!) and he’ll come right over to capture the snake.  When he has amassed enough snakes in storage, he takes the whole lot out to the forest and releases them.  He charges nothing for this service, but his reputation is such that the city supports him to some degree.

Moving lower on the food chain: fat, grey-brown rats scurry along the garbage-packed railbeds of Chinchpokli and Bandra stations, and in and out of the rain gutters in Powai.  They are both fascinating and horrifying to me.  Two years ago my roommate in Pittsburgh and I caught a pair of rats in our apartment after having sighted them and evidence of their extended nesting several times.  At the time, I likened the infestation to terrorism.  Here, it’s surprisingly easy to get used to seeing them darting around the street or station, though I wouldn’t want to come into contact with one.  We came close Wednesday night – Jeevan and I went to Pizza Hut (and yeah, I am aware of what cognitive dissonance this implies in light of my past commentary on the pervasiveness of the MNC, thanks in Harinandani Complex.  When we went to leave, a rat slightly larger than the ones that terrorized my apartment sat perched in her path to the driver’s side door of her little Maruti Alto, gnawing on what appeared to be a wad of styrofoam.  It wouldn’t even move until we got within about a foot of it.  Days ago, I was surprised by a guinea-pig sized specimen with salt-and-pepper fur that leaped out of a rain wash in front of Laxmi hotel and charged at me full-speed before veering away.  Strangely, I was more bemused than panicked.  Again, this past Tuesday, I stopped at the ticket window of Chinchpokli station near work in order to pick up the second-class pass that Abhilash had helped me to apply for my first day or so here.  I was having a tough time explaining to the clerk in gutter hindi/english that I was here to pick up my pass, and that he already had the photograph that he repeatedly asked me for.  Suddenly, in the window behind him appeared a rat, winding its tail lazily around the wrought iron bars.  Seeing this distracted me to the point where I trailed off and took a step backward.  At this point, an older, sari-clad lady walked past the window with a handful of documents, paying no more attention to the rat than if it were the office mascot.  Shaking my head in amazement, I validated my remaining railway coupons at the stamp machine and started back down the ramp to the platforms, resolving to try again tomorrow.

So expect the unexpected.  I find myself ever so gradually reverting back to an attitude I learned as a Boy Scout years ago: an acceptance of and respect for nature, though tempered with enough fear to stay clear of higher-vertebrate power trips.  It comes in handy during chance encounters with God’s creatures small and smaller.

My travel itinerary on behalf of CRY is just about set.  Looks like I’ll be heading eastward to Koraput District, in the state of Orissa.  Orissa is known for Odissi, a graceful and intricate classical dance form.  It’s also home to the Konark Sun Temple or “Black Pagoda”, an imposing monument dating back to 1278 A.D., though the racy carvings it is decorated with are pure medieval XXX.    

Unfortunately, as India’s poorest state with half its population below the poverty line, Orissa is also marked by slow development and a growing movement by Naxalites – Maoist insurgents who threaten to destabilize what government exists through armed action.  According to 2004 figures published in the East India Human Development report, 76% of men and 51% of women are literate, thought these means vary across districts.  The HDR calls Orissa “thinly populated, tribal-dominated, and one of the least-urbanized states.”  The national Public Distribution System (PDS), a government scheme contrived to provide food grains to below-poverty line (BPL) cardholders (kind of like welfare in the U.S.), is barely functioning here, with only about 5.2% usage.

And this is off the wall, but stay with me.  I had remembered something I’d read a while back about former Korn guitarist-cum-CCM artist Brian “Head” Welch having traveled to Orissa to start a Christian charity after he found salvation.  In this Rolling Stone interview, he makes the spurious claim that the Lodha, a tribe of cannibals, lives in the state.  Hmmm.

Perhaps if Sri “Head” had done some research past what the local authorites might have told him, he’d have found that this “cannibal” rap was likely fabricated by forces looking to further dehumanize an already marginalized tribal group.  This excerpt from a paper on eco-tourism in Orissa makes no mention of manhunting in its profile of the Lodha people:

LODHA: In Orissa, the Lodhas are concentrated in two areas, namely Morada and Suliapada in the Sadar subdivision of Mayurbhanj district. They are originally a Mundari speaking tribe. Their economy is subsistence oriented and depends upon the collection of minor forest produce, wage-earning and agricultural labour. The Lodha social organisation is characterised by patrilineal and totemistic clans, and most of the families are nuclear. Their marriages are usually post-pubescent and monogamous, although polygynous unions are not totally ruled out. Divorce and remarriage are socially permissible. In the socio-political domain, the Mukhia/Sardar plays the role of headman and the traditional village Panchayat is called Desh. The Lodhas are polytheists. Like other tribes, they have village deities, tutelary deities, ancestral cults, benevolent and malevolent spirits, and all of them constitute the supernatural constellation. The Lodhas observe a number of rituals and festivals throughout the year to gain the favour of spirits and the blessings of deities for their overall well-being.

Moreover, this JSTOR-hosted paper suggests definite villification of the Lodha tribals from a variety of actors, notably the British Administration, who in 1871 declared them to be a criminal tribes.  Hustlers, rustlers, violent criminals? Maybe, but it doesn’t look like they were cannibals.

Why take all the effort to refute these claims?  Because they impede understanding between people and cultures.  From one rock do-gooder to another: Get your facts straight before you go on the record.

(I should note that this latest post complements my good colleague Eric’s recent post on traffic in Addis Ababa!   Gora minds think alike, apparently

The autorickshaw I was riding in was moving along at a steady clip when we hit the guy who was crossing the street.  We had just passed the uber-modern Harinandani shopping complex, just after the rickshaw-wallah had extricated us from a traffic scrum near the main gate of India Institute of Technology.  The guy seemed unhurt, but I thought I was going to have a ringside seat to a stabbing.  He was frothing mad, hurling abuse at the exasperated wallah before stumbling away.

Violence, or the threat of it, is very real on these streets if you are not a sensibly assertive driver.  And it doesn’t seem to pay to be over-cautious, as you’d run just as much risk of causing an accident as you would being reckless.  Traveling by road much more on this trip has privied me to at least a half-dozen teeth-baring altercations between motorists, one overturned truck, a snarl on the eastern expressway caused by a rickshaw crash, and daredevil helmetless motorcyclists, who routinely cut and weave into the opposing lanes to avoid tie-ups.  No doubt I’ve inhaled untold amounts of toxins and particulate matter from the exhaust generated by the vehicles in these jams.  Someone here told me that breathing the air in Mumbai was comparable to smoking 10 cigarettes a day.  If only - you get all of the ill effects with none of the benefits out of that deal.  The sensation of lightheadedness I’ve experienced in the back of a gridlocked rick is not the pleasant, relaxing drift brought on by that first drag from a cig, or from any other illicit inhalant of choice for that matter.  And that’s saying nothing of the accompanying nausea.  I’m glad I quit smoking 3 years back – I need fully functioning cilia in order to deal with the air quality here.

Indian traffic queues up just like Indian folks do on foot, as when waiting in line for rail tickets.  That is to say, it clusters.  Monday (14 July) night driving home from Bandra past Powai Lake, seven disorderly lanes of traffic squeezed onto a road designed for barely four.  Cars literally scraped against one another to move onward, with drivers simply repositioning their bent mirrors and continuing on.

One of my favorite sights here are the women who ride mopeds or scooters, tearing through the streets right along with the guys, their mouths covered with scarves against the exhaust fumes and airborne dust and their colorful saris or salwars fluttering behind them.  The last time I was here I saw a group of 5 – 6 of them, which reminded me of a desi take on 70s girl-biker gang movies, like Jack Hill’s “Switchblade Sisters”.  The motorcycles here are strictly Hondas and Bajaj – no Harleys in sight, though Abhilash tells me that there are clubs of Harley Davison enthusiasts in India who ride the highways like cyclists in the U.S.  I have some Harley-riding friends in the states who had asked me both this time and last to try to get some photos of any hogs I come across, but I doubt if I’ll be able to oblige. 

Speaking of ‘shady movies’ – I am fascinated with the Hindi horror movie, “Saya”, which is advertised in some parts of town with the posters that flagrantly rip off “Evil Dead II” (see “Seven Churches…” entry).  There is no way that it’s on the same tier budget-wise as the Bollywood blockbusters like “Mehboob,” and “Love Story 2050” that have recently opened.  Hence, it’s probably right up my alley.  Asian horror movies are over-the-top as compared to American offerings, maybe second only to the golden age of Italian trash/horror (Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci et al).  I’ve never seen an Indian horror movie, but the excellent “Zinda Laash”, a late-1960s Pakistani retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula hinted at great future direction for the South Asian horror genre.  Check the trailer here.  (Incidentally - I would recommend the DVD version of this film over just about anything else available.  This is not a shill - it’s the best overall produced, presented, and perhaps the most historically important horror release I’ve had the pleasure to rent from the now-defunct Incredibly Strange Video, where it remained in the must-see queue for a while.  The DVD includes a brilliant documentary on the South Asian horror movie industry, which produced some ultra-cheap masala gore flicks from the 80s until the early 1990s, when it collapsed under the weight of market oversaturation and studio mismanagement.)   Browsing some titles at an online video store based in Lahore, Pakistan, called the Hot Spot Online confirms just how wacked South Asian cinema can get.  Descriptions of Pashtun-language films like “Haseena A-Bomb” suggest a serious John Waters affectation.  Accha laga!  I asked Abhilash on the way to work the other morning where I could see this picture, and he chuckled, saying that there’s no way I should go to see such a movie by myself.  The theater, called ‘Dreamland’ according to the poster, is in a rough part of town, apparently.  He also said that even though it’s a horror film, the theaters routinely intersplice pornographic short subjects between features.  It sounds like New York City’s seedy cinema-stocked 42^nd street of the 1970s has shifted east.  It also sounds to me like all the fixins’ for a violent assault, so I think I may have to reconsider.  Another movie, “One Clever Woman” looks totally Russ Meyer. 

Jeevan rolled her eyes when I asked where that one was playing, so I am sure that it would place me in the company of a similarly anti-social element.  I’ll just have to wait for the VCD.

Forgive the closing masala: “Ek Chatur Naar” also sort of looks like one of those trashy 70s movies like “I Spit on Your Grave” (AKA “Day of the Woman”), which purported to show a story of a degraded woman taking violent revenge on her assailants.  Of course, the exploitation element far outstripped any kind of “socially responsible message” of female empowerment.  There is one real-life set of kickass ladies who made the news here recently.  Star 20/20 cricketer and Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has a crack team of heavily armed lady guards defending his skin during his offseason back home in Ranchi, Jharkhand, in eastern India.  Kalashnikov-tastic!

That’s actually from a few days back.

Meanwhile, Manmohan Singh will approach congress for a confidence vote in the wake of the lef’t’s withdrawal from the coalition government over the Hyde Act nuclear deal, Times of India launches its ‘Teach India’ campaign to reach out-of school children, and some doctor got picked up while hitchhiking, stabbed 20 times and robbed of Rs. 20,000.  It’s a happening town, and I haven’t even reached the sports page.

Between my two visits to Mumbai, I’ve been to malls on more occasions than in the past year at home.  Thursday evening I went out for coffee with Jeevan, to a small restaurant in a mall in Juhu.  There was a movie theater there where we were to meet Pooja again because she had wanted to see “Jaane Tu, Ya Jaane Na” as a treat for having nearly completed her first week of school.  So , it was the second time in a week I’d seen the picture but good practice for my Hindi comprehension, as Jeevan was able to explain some parts for me even further.  I’ll be able to write on this movie as others have written about “Heart of Darkness” :).  One scene I’d not noticed the first time around was one in which the characters go to see a movie.  The shots of the theater looked suspiciously familiar, and Jeevan confirmed for me that it was filmed right in the theater where we were at that moment.  Talk about breaking the “fourth wall” – Bollywood just demolished it.

Mumbai’s malls are modern, they are just as expensive as their western counterparts, and they are definite no-bargaining zones.  To talk in class about the mushrooming consumer class and burgeoning GDP is one thing, but to see the five-level glass-clad palaces that have cropped up in response to demand in such a short time is rather remarkable.  Though the air-conditioning provides a nice break in this heat, I experience something of a cringe every time I enter one of these places.  It’s often cited that in India, only a small percentage are seeing the fruits of the past decade’s economic growth – mainly those within urban centers.  Development economists have said that if these trends continue, the cities in India will resemble California while the rural areas will smack of sub-saharan Africa.  But consider the city itself, from an urban planning perspective.  Mumbai is clamoring to be a world-class urban center, but there are significant needs not necessarily related to poverty that don’t seem to be addressed.  Like a kid who wants dessert first, general infrastructure is left for want while developments like these are greenlighted.  As I walked past signs in the mall’s windows advertising Tommy Hilfiger, D&G and Gucci, I was assailed by a strong aroma of raw sewage, probably from a broken pipe or backed up drain – that’s what made me think of all of this.  I have no idea what kind of tax dollars these malls bring into the municipal corporation, but using them to fix the sewerage and streets might be a top priority.

Friday post-work saw us back at Infiniti Mall, home of the TGIF from few entries back.  Here I met some friends of Jeevan who run a dance company specializing in classical forms like Kathak and Odissi as well as popular and folk styles.  Arunima Roy, herself a young Bengali woman, is co-owner and choreographer of the outfit.  She told me that she’s planning a huge dance performance for a charitable cause, and she wanted some pointers that I might be able to offer as having planned events for CRY America in Pittsburgh.  The numbers she was talking were far beyond anything I’d been involved with, but the fundamentals of publicity and getting strong sponsorship from the outset are important just the same in either case.  Over our meeting I had my second encounter with tofu in the form of a soya dosa from a South Indian restaurant in the food court.  The dosa was unlike others I’ve had – it seemed to be made out of rice paper.  And I had a Snapple mango cooler, which I just bought because the label appeared to be written in Arabic. 

Days later, the empty bottle became an efficient and economical cockroach trap for my intermittent and uninvited bed companion.

Saturday, Abhilash and I ran some errands around town.  After I got an international calling card form the Vodafone store, I accompanied Abhilash to the open-air fish market where I saw the dreaded pomme fritte in its freshest form.

The flies that swarmed and crawled over all of the fish were a little unsettling, but once cooked properly all the germs are killed.  Tangled masses of prawn, live catfish, and even sharks were for sale here. 

I snapped some shots and walked along the road past vegetable stalls of every variety. 

I stopped by the butcher shop where I had seen goats being herded a few days before.  One of those goats, chopped and eviscerated, now hung behind a partition at the front of the shop, drawing flies.  The butcher gave me permission to get a few pictures of his handiwork.   Note the marked Hermann Nitsch influence. 

I’m mostly vegetarian (I eat tuna, salmon, and am learning to tolerate India’s catches of the day, little tiny bones and all), but I’m also practical – it was an interesting sight that one doesn’t see in the US, where the meat-eating public is insulated from the reality of your burger’s origin.  Few wish to really consider their meals as recent graduates of Bovine U.  To cap off the afternoon, I got my pants from last trip hemmed.  If I am in the mood to wear flares, I’m all clear.  On the way back, Abhilash pointed out the Shiv Sena and BSP reading rooms, which looked like little bus stops decorated with political slogans and used for discussions of same.  I recalled that the former of the two is an ultra-right wing political party that often gets mention in the US press for their beef with the observance of Valentine’s Day in India - card shops are routinely burned by these guys during the “decadent western” celebration yearly.

Later in the day, I had a great meeting with another of Jeevan’s acquaintances.  He heads Corporate Social Responsibility for a firm, and was too interested in finding out more about CRY.  While talking things over chai and samosa in their green marble-floored bungalow, I got an SMS from Steshia about the night’s plans.  We wound up going to – of all places – Poison in the northwest suburb of Bandra, which I blogged about last trip.  After meeting up with Jeevan’s family for a homemade dinner of fish curry and to distribute yet more Pittsburghcentric gifts among her parents, aunt, and cousins, her brother drove the lot of us past the club, dropping me outside.  I guess I am somewhat of a regular at this place now, because this time I came prepared - with earplugs!  I met up with Stesh and some of her cousins and friends outside, and we paid the Rs. 2000 cover as a couple.  That worked out to about $23 US apiece for admission to Bombay’s hottest nightclub.  It was still a bit steep for me considering that booze tickets were included with the charge, and I don’t drink.  My compadres were happy with my leftovers, though :)The place was only half-full as we filed in but by midnight it was packed to near suburban-coach capacity.  Hanging out with people from work was a lot of fun, though the club had some puzzling idiosyncrasies that I noticed this time.  The DJs left bits of dead time between tunes, during which they’d announce quite politely things like “this next track is a Poison exclusive,” or “we’re going to get some Bollywood up for you all shortly…”  They spun their own cuts for the majority of the night, only getting into filmsongs after over an hour.  Even then, most were heavily remixed to the point where early-80s classics like Janbaaz’ “Pyar To, Pyar Lo” were turned from disco into pounding house-styled numbers, only the vocal track left intact.  The crowd was different than what I’d expected.  Since we were right in the middle of the floor I got to see that there were a lot of people there who looked a little old to be hanging out at such a dance club.  Some guys looked to be in their 60s – I was struck by an older gentleman who was standing onstage lighting up a Sherlock Holmes-style pipe.  Of a few other white folks (goras) in attendance, there was a blond guy, looked kind of like Vivian from “The Young Ones” minus the punk affectations.  He was dancing so frenziedly that one of our party who shall remain nameless to protect a reputation as an otherwise mild-mannered soul, had to physically shove him out of our area.  I think most of the other goras were from Europe, though.  I’ve had mixed luck trying to communicate to other foreigners here (the locals often speak better English), so I didn’t approach any of them to try and find out over the war-zone concussion of the cub’s sound system.  I again became the center of attention in our group when some older Bollywood song about white people came up – Stesh’s friends knew all the steps from the film, too, while I just played ‘item guy’.  The evening ended abruptly, with security running down the metal stairs that led down to the basement club and telling the DJs to kill the music.  “OK everyone - I guess that’s it for tonight,” said the head DJ before cutting off the system and turning up the club lights completely.  I thought it was some kind of an alert, but it looked as if they just lost track of time.  Stesh said that that’s the way it’s done normally, otherwise nobody leaves.

We parted from the group and boarded a rick back home.  Abhilash heated Maggi noodles on the kerosene cooker, with toast and an egg with green chillies, as a late meal.  We turned in shortly after and I awoke this morning to the sound of hymns sung by the Pentecostal prayer group next door and the hammer and whine of power tools from the indistinct construction projects going on around here.  I started the day with one of the small South Indian bananas that I got from the vendor.  It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Bombay, no monsoon rain until nearly evening.  Abhilash made dhal and fish fried in garlic paste, which we ate before he ran out to a party for a friend’s newborn baby, leaving me to finish catching up on the writing.  Now the rain spatters and splashes from the gutter to the narrow walkway outside the front door as I get ready for a comfortable night’s rest in the cool that it brings.

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