Real Live Indians

I went over to my coworker’s house the other night for supper. She always brings food from home for lunch, and everyone always shares what they have brought. So I have sampled a lot her mom’s cooking. I always talk about how good it is because it is sooo nice to eat something for lunch that isn’t from a restaurant. She relayed my praises for a few weeks, and finally her mom offered to make me supper. Woo hoo!

While I was there, I also bought a few pieces of material to make shirts out of. Her mom stays at home during the day and started selling this cloth to keep herself occupied. A few weeks ago at the office I had commented on one of the other girl’s shirts, and she was like, oh, I bought the material from her mom. I asked if I could get some too, and then they invited me to come over. So I sat and sifted through the cloth that her mom was selling while her mom made me supper. I felt totally spoiled.

The cloth is funny, there is a collar already printed on the material, the tailor just cuts out the shirt and stitches it. I will have to find someone to make it for me- but I might ask my neighbor if she knows anyone good in the area. I don’t want to just walk up to a tailor, because I don’t know what they will charge or who around here is good. My friend said that it should cost 100-150 rupees to have someone stitch it. The material is so shiny.

The food was really good. Her mom was a very efficient cook too. She whipped out food like a professional. I think that everyone’s mom must cook like a professional here. Everyone talks about their mom’s cooking in this country, and everyone’s favorite restaurant is their mom’s kitchen. People just don’t talk reverentially in the same way about their mom’s cooking in the US.

I felt a little weird though. Apparently having me over to supper meant having me over and making supper for just me. The mom made a special meal for me, and we all hung out while I ate. The rest of the family all ate after I left. I am thinking that they normally just eat a bit later or something. Or, since they were having fish, maybe they didn’t want to eat while I was around.

Their apartment was really small. My coworker commented on it, on how small it must seem to me, but I was like, oh, it is about normal size, right? But she was right, it did seem awfully small to me. I don’t know where they sleep. 2 grown daughters and a mom. There was a couch like bed on one wall, and closets lining another wall, and a small kitchen and bathroom. No privacy. The apartment was probably not much bigger than the room I am living in all alone. It was really interesting to see how someone else lives here. I would be a very different person today if I had lived in a place like that with my mom and dad. Especially if I had lived in a place like thatwith my mom and dad. Especially if I had lived in a place like that with Mom and Dad through my 20s. No wonder people get married early here. (Not that everyone does nowadays.)

We walked over to see her auntie, to see if the auntie would stitch the shirts for me, because the auntie does some stitching, but the auntie’s neck has been hurting, so she said no. The auntie's house was in the next building on the ground floor- the floor was concrete and had lines painted on it like you would see in parking lot. So I don’t know how that building got put up or what the deal was. Her apartment was even smaller, possibly smaller than the space I live in, with a loft for her 2 boys to sleep in. And there was no bathroom. There was a communal bathroom at the end of the building. People live really differently. I mean, it wasn’t bad, it is just what you are used to, but it was really different.

It was funny, my friend’s mom sent me home with the extra daal(lentil stew), because my friend knows I like it a lot. The mom had been going to make something with curdfor me, but my coworker stopped her. This surprised me, because I have to remind my coworkers every time I order something that I don’t eat cheese, otherwise I get something with paneer in it. Mysteriously, sometimes they know that I don’t eat milk . . .? As I was leaving, they told me like 8 times to make sure I put the daal in the fridge when I got home or it would spoil. Don’t forget. It will go bad. You won’t be able to eat it. Put it away. Like I am not hip to the joys of refrigeration. They were really sweet, but I was like, yeah, I know. It will go bad. Got it. Fridge. Solid. I am totally on it.

I think I am going to come home with a bunch of new shirts. I bought 3 pieces of material from the mom, and I got 3 shirts from a store when I went wandering around on my day off a week or two ago, and I bought one the other day. Just a few weeks ago I was feeling sad because I hadn’t found any fun Indian shirts, now I have a bunch. I need a few more though. They are so cheap and are so good for the hot weather. I have become a shirt monster.

I was only going to get one piece of material from the mom, but I ended up with three. The pieces of cloth were only 50 rupees each. I started thinking, I should just get a bunch, they are only $1.25, and then a few more dollars to have them sewn. But then I was like, no, that would be rude. To buy too many pieces would be ostentatious. But there were a few that I liked. I had to figure out where the line was between “c’mon foreigner, you make more money than most people in this country, don’t be all cheap and not get 2 if you really like both” and “geez, why is she buying so many? I guess she must think these are really inexpensive. how much does she make, anyway?” Not that they were expecting me to buy more than one or anything. I think that if I had clearly liked just one, then that would have been fine, but there were a couple I was hovering over, and I didn’t want to be all tightfisted. But, again, I had just said, “oh I will take all of them,” that would have been really obnoxious. I think the line I went to was ok. Three seemed about right.

My friend showed me how to roll the pieces of chappati (bread) into little scoops so that I could stick daal into it and not make a mess eating with my fingers. That was exciting. Her mom said that I could come back and learn how to make daal. Hopefully I will have a chance to.

At work, during lunch, they think I am funny. I am not used to getting my fingers into my food, and when my fingers get greasy it really bugs me. So I think I come off as really fastidious, because I am so careful to keep my fingers clean and to use my silverware to move my food around.

My belly is very fat right now.

Ganpati II

Day 7 Worked all day, didn’t see much. On my way to the train station, though, I did see a group of guys beating on drums and marching through the street.

Day 8 I asked a few of my students about the Ganesh thing and where I should go. They warned me to avoid the main beach because it would be full of drunken crazy people. So maybe I will avoid it. I should be able to walk through my neighborhood over to where the office is and see some of the big statues being carried off to the sea though.

As I was walking home I saw a few of the neighborhood shrines to Ganesh. People were praying and chanting at them. It doesn’t seem that people necessarily have to take part in a regular ceremony to worship. It looked like people just went up and sang and gave offerings as they wanted to. So I don’t think there is a whole lot of organization regarding prayer, I think you just go up and pray whenever. But I did see some groups, and I know that a girl I work with had her whole family over for a puja(prayer), so there are organized services as well. Maybe the services are privately organized, you just get a group together and head out to the shrine?

One shrine had a pretty big statue of Ganesh, and lots of xmas lights all around and a speaker blaring music.

Another one had some smaller statues, but was way more posh looking, with a dripping waterfall and flowers all around.

Day 9 Again, I worked all day. While walking to work I saw a billboard telling me that some cement company wanted to wish me a Happy Ganesh Chapurthi. There was a picture of a smiling woman in a gold and red sari holding a decorative bowl full of pieces of cement. It was weird.

After work I walked over to Marine Drive to see if there was anything Ganesh related going on at Chowpatty Beach. The big day is Tuesday, but people have been doing smaller pujas all week. It didn’t look like there was anything happening though, so I just walked around Marine Drive looking at the view for a while, then went back to the train station.

I ran into yet another procession on my way to the station. A group of people was walking slowly down the street with a small well-decorated effigy of Ganesh. There were a few men playing drums for a larger group of guys who were dancing and jumping along. The women were in a group walking after the statue, wearing bright, pretty saris and talking and laughing.

The men were funny to watch. This must be a cultural thing, but a lot of the dance moves the guys were doing seemed like the movements you would normally see from a girl dancing at a club in the US. I am not really sure how else to describe it. I enjoyed that.

I went down to the end of the block to cross the street and, surprise surprise, hit another procession. Again with the big statue, this one was draped with all sorts of flower garlands. Again, the drums, and again, the pretty ladies.

I made it home without further incident. But I was reminded of this movie Kenneth and I watched a while ago, some Eastern European (Slovakian?) movie. One of the main characters is this ebullient, carefree guy, and he has a band that follows him around his whole life, over the course of all the years the movie covers, who constantly play this background music for the everlasting party that is his life. Imagine being the kind of guy who is so exciting to be with that a band wants to follow you around and keep the action going your whole life. Bombay is starting to feel like it is full of guys like that this week. Hmm. Well, actually, I guess that guy is Ganesh. Bombay is starting to feel like it is full of Ganesh this week, and Ganesh is a serious partier and isn’t taking no for an answer.

Day 10 Didn’t see much in the way of Ganeshness today. It was raining really hard when I left work so I took a rik home instead of exploring. I did drive by a statue of G that must have been 6 feet high fluorescent. The street it was on was lit up like crazy; it looked like there was a multicolored ceiling over the street as we sped by in the rain.

I thought there must be some big G thing going on tonight because I kept hearing roars and clapping as I sat in my house. I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on though, because it kept happening, and it sounded as though it was not moving, as a procession would be if it were going to the sea.

I went out to get some juice. The streets were deserted. Usually there is a ton of traffic buzzing along the bigger roads near where I live, but tonight I could trip across streets at will. Hmm. Strange. And hey, the restaurant on the corner that is always always packed full from 8pm on is practically deserted. Huh. As I walked to the store I saw a thick, tightly packed group of guys crowded around the front of a bar, focused on a television screen. Ah, the (thing that drops when you finally figure out something) dropped. (I forget the saying.) The guys were watching a cricket match. I think there have been some big ones this week, all over the front page. That is why there is universal oohing and aahing and clapping and screaming going on all over my neighborhood. You could literally hear how the match was going from the street.

Since the restaurant was deserted I went in and had some samosas with the 2 guys in Mumbai who apparently don’t care for cricket.

Day 11: Ganesh's Rising

I slept in, had the day off from work.

I went over to a friend’s house at about 4 to hang out and wait for the Ganesh festivities to begin. On the way to her house, we stopped and looked at a few Ganpatis, the Ganesh shrines that people had set up in their neighborhoods. We also walked by a loud procession of Ganesh goers, drums, dancing, idol, and all. I also started seeing people with red powder all over them, like I had seen at the park. There were a lot of people with red on them.

At the Ganpatis, we would walk in, my friend would make a reverence, and then people would give us candy. At the first big one, the G’s head had a light in it that made it change color as you watched. That was cool. The woman at the shrine gave us sugary rice with peanuts in it.

The next Ganpati was big and gold. Glorious and shiny. Up on a platform, it had one big G, one small G, some offerings and incense, and 2 small statues of rats. I asked why the rats? My friend told me that the rat is G’s animal, and that in the stories about him he rides around on a rat. There is another character, I think it is G’s brother, who rides around on a cobra. I observed that this must be a huge rat, like the rodents of unusual size in “The Princess Bride,” but she didn’t follow. Too specific a cultural reference, I guess. She also said that there is a temple in Mumbai to Ganesh that has an idol of the rat. Apparently, the best way to get through to Ganesh is by whispering your requests into the rat’s ear. G will hear you. The temple has huge lines year round.

The candy we got at the second place was peanut sweetness, deep fried coconut sugar, and rice/couscous stuff with hints of rosemary and peanut. I could have eaten the peanutty sweetness all day.

At the third place, no candy. There was a worship service going on, so we stood at the back listening to the singing. It surprised me how everyone knew all the words to the prayers they were singing. After the prayer, a guy came through the crowd with a flame, and women held their hands over the flame and then slicked their hair back. I don’t know what that means, and I forgot to ask.

I forgot to ask because right after I saw this, we went up to the shrine to take a look at the Ganesh. There were two large mermaids in all their mermaid glory spouting water and covering the elephant god’s flanks, and a big blue god reining above him. (his dad Shiva, I think) My eyes must have been huge. There was a lot going on all in one spot. I don’t really get the mermaids, exactly. What their significance is. They were a really unusual decoration. I guess someone just likes mermaids.

After that we went back to her apartment for a little while to wait for the evening to start. We watched some of the cricket match from last night, apparently it was a big match between India and Pakistan, for the world cup, or whatever it is in cricket. The team is a young team and no one expected them to get as far as they did, and India hasn’t won the cup since the early eighties. That was why everyone was so excited. India won.

(Sidebar: One of my coworkers was telling me a little about cricket. He started off by explaining that baseball is basically an over simplified version of cricket and rounders, and earned himself an evil glare. He got as far as telling me about how football is basically rugby, watered down, before I made him retreat. Really, not that I care about baseball or football, but still, there are limits.)

We also watched a little American pro wrestling, which, inexplicably, my friend likes. People are fun.

We went out at about 5:30. They were very concerned about losing me in the crowd, and held my hands and arms as we worked through the crowd or crossed streets. (I think I may have to go back to my theory that I possess some sort of idiot look to Indian people.)

We saw a procession heading off to the water with some medium sized Gs. My friend’s mom gave some candy to the idol as an offering, and was given back a handful of the stuff that everyone else had given mixed together. There were big pieces of sugar, and candy coated balls, and dried fruit. And twigs. I am not sure what the twigs were for.

We went over to the street where the idols were heading down to the water. There was a beach about 20 minutes away, and long processional routes for different parts of town were printed in the paper during the week so people would know where to go with their idols. I think the processional stuff started late afternoon, and probably went on until about 1 am. The procession was really long and moved really slowly.

For a while we stood near the water tent that my friend’s temple was running. They were handing out free cups of water to the crowd. Then we went over to the chai tent. They had these huge pots of chai- it took 5-6 men to move the pots over to the burner to heat the chai. You could have taken a bath in the pot of tea. There was a lot of chai.

Then we went over to the big event. Big crowds of people were standing on the side of the road, watching the parade of Ganeshes. Mobs of people were in the procession too, from all over the city. And this was just one procession, and not the biggest one. There are a lot of people in this city.

The statues were most often in the back of trucks, so you couldn’t see them until the truck had driven by, but the procession moved so slowly that you could easily walk up behind the truck and look at the statues.

The Ganeshes

were awesome.

He is on a rat!

The people were awesome too. I think that foreigners inspire the same sort of reaction that infants do in situations like this. Lot of people look at you, and they feel comfortable coming right up to you chatting. You are fair game. As I stood by the side of the road with my camera, trucks would drive by with groups of guys on the roof and in the back. They were drunk, cheerful, almost to the sea, and wanted their picture taken. One of them would wave and make a click click camera motion. So I would look up and point my camera, and they would all start yelling and waving their arms wildly around, I’d take their picture, and give a wave back and a thumbs up.

One group of guy was walking home from the beach and saw me with my camera and insisted that I take pictures of them mugging for the camera.

The guys in the truck also cheerfully hit me with paint as often as possible. They were doing it to everyone, but I was a good draw as a target.

I decided not to push my luck with the crowds and the beach, so I headed home at about 10. There was still a ton of stuff going on, crowds of people were still out and dancing in the street at my friend’s place, I saw a few loud celebrations from the train on the way home, and when I got to my neighborhood I found still more trucks loaded up with people and idols wandering the streets keeping the party going.

I went out of my way to check out one group coming up towards the main street. They were playing loud dance music and had lights flashing out all over the crowd- it was like a mobile discotheque. I had been going to just walk by, but there is something irresistible about drums and music and a bunch of people dancing. You can’t simply walk by and not go see what is going on.

After I got home and washed off, it took a little while to settle down. So I went through my pictures from the evening- of the 240 pictures I took, there were about 12 good ones. I was glad that there were that many. It is hard to take pictures of so many things moving around!

The Service Industry

More on Ganesh later this week.

For now:

I am at war with my maid.

The service industry in Bombay is huge, because labor is cheap. There are just so many people here. There are so many people that there are people who do everything. There are tea boys (tea wallahs): guys who brew tea on the street or in a stall. You can stand on the street and drink a glass, or have someone bring the tea up to your office is a little plastic cup. You can buy fresh juice, or have someone make you a vegetable sandwich or a snack on the street. Snacks include roasted corn, roasted nuts, or pani puri/bhel puri/sev puri, variations on a chex mix sort of thing they sell here that you eat with crackers (puri). I saw a group of guys hanging out around a banana wallah the other day, looking like a bunch of people hanging out at a bar. They were all clumped around the table talking, but instead of drinks in their hands they all had bananas, and they were on a street corner, not in a bar.

Guys walk the neighborhood streets with carts of vegetables, so you can just walk out your front door and get potatoes and onions. There are lots of little stands set up all over the place where people sell vegetables. Produce comes into the city by train first thing, at dawn. The veg sellers buy up the produce at the station and then fan out over the city.

I think the tifflin wallahs have come up before. (By the way, I think a good translation of tifflin is tupperware.)You can live out in the suburbs and have someone deliver a lunch made by your wife or your mom to your office.

There are lots of tailors here. Sometimes it is cheaper just to buy the fabric and have someone stitch you a shirt than it is to buy off the rack.

There are guys on the street who will shave you, fix your shoes, remove your corns. You can get a tattoo on the sidewalk (I’ve only seen that once).

You can buy any cheap plastic thing imaginable. Women come onto the trains with trays and boxes of clips, bracelets, earrings, stickers, fake tattoos, and cell phone holders. There are stalls full of cheap clothing and shoes, hundreds and hundreds of them, in my neighborhood and downtown.

There are thousands of guys in this city who are paid to be doormen, who stand in doorways during business hours opening doors and looking official. There are thousands of guys in this city who are paid to be watchmen, and who just hang out at building sites all night. There is a guy who is paid to hang out at the front gate of the building I live in. There is a guy who is paid to sit in a chair in front of the building I work in. (I have no idea what his function is. I thought doorman, but he doesn’t open doors or help with the elevator, and I have never once seen him ask anyone why they are entering the building. His function is a mystery to me, but he must get paid to do something, because he keeps showing up for work.)

There are thousands of men in this city who are paid to be drivers. Their job is to drive a person wherever they need to go, sit with the car and wait for that person, and then drive that person home. So the driver may just end up sitting in a car for 6-7 hours, waiting. And that is his day. I feel like that would drive me mad.

There are lots of beauty salons, where you can go get any number of things done to yourself.

I have seen groups of guys sitting around aimlessly breaking rocks at building sites. Groups of guys digging a hole, groups of guys mucking about in a hole, groups of guys filling in a hole. Groups of guys messing with the medians of roads, pulling up dividers and leaving them in the way of traffic. Some one must be paying them to do these projects. I don’t think they are being paid well though, because who would pay 15 guys to watch one guy use a shovel? Ah, labor is cheap.

Everyone can afford a delivery boy, so everyone delivers. The laundromat, the grocery store, every restaurant.

I have been uncomfortable in the department stores I have gone into because bands of clerks rove the sales floor trying to help you decide what to get. You can’t just browse. Someone has to help you look through the stuff. The salesmen just hover. (Until I actually have a question about something, then they are nowhere to be found.) One guy kept aggressively trying on saris at me, even though I didn’t want any. I fled one store in frustration because I couldn’t just poke around; I attracted too much attention. If I pulled something out to look at it and tried to put it back, I had to explain why I didn’t want it to someone. And then I would have to endure several other suggestions, and several appraisals of what size I might be. Ok, no. I don’t even want who love me doing that. (Apparently my “perfect size” is large. Thanks.)

I have gone into cafes with 8 tables and 7 waiters. You can get a rik or a taxi to take you around anywhere for pennies, or, at least, quarters.

The office I work in has cleaning ladies who come in a few times a day and an office boy, a guy to make copies, run errands, and stay late to close up the office.

And everyone has a maid here. Even the maids have maids, I think. No one washes there own dishes, or cleans their own toilet.

So how did I get a maid?

A few weeks after I got here my neighbor asked if I wanted a maid. As it happened, I had been dwelling on how gross my floor was and I was considering going out and buying a broom and finally sweeping it. I had also been thinking about how much I hate washing a load of clothes in the sink after working all day. So I thought, yeah, I would like a maid. But then I though that I might feel a little weird having someone do all that stuff for me. Then I thought, well, when in Rome. Then I thought, still, someone going through my stuff. Then I thought, what the hell.

She comes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I think that she is, like me, somewhat indifferent to sweeping. Still, she does a better job than I would, so that’s ok. She cleans the clothes, which I love, and makes the bed, which is always a surprise. It is always a surprise because I never know what my bed is going to look like. Sometimes the top sheet is spread out and tucked in, sometimes it is loose. Sometimes it is folded up at the foot of the bed, sometimes folded up at the head. Sometimes it has been washed and hung up to dry. I guess it just depends on her mood.

We are at war over the little table. The first time she came, she rearranged all the furniture except the bed, I guess assuming that I didn’t know where it was all supposed to go. When I put it all back where I wanted it, she pretty much left it alone, except for the chair and little table. Every single time she comes she hauls the table into the corner, and puts the chair by the fridge. Every single time I come home, I drag the table and chair back into the middle of the room by the bed so I can put my feet up while I eat. There are no words exchanged in this steady conflict, so I don’t see us breaking our impasse. She can’t stay in my room all day waiting for me to get home so she can guard the table from me, and I can’t stay home during the day when she is there to protect the table’s right to be in middle of the room. And so the table continues to go back and forth, across no man’s land, like the child of divorced parents, never sure where is going to go next, or where it belongs. Will it be in the corner for Christmas? Or by the bed?

Sometimes she rearranges my food and I can’t find my tea. I can’t imagine that she thinks it is useful to me for her to move all my food around, so it must be that she is trying to distract me, as though if I am too busy looking for my tea I won’t have time to move the table back. But my apartment is very small, and eventually I find my tea, and then I go move the table.

Today I came home and she had moved all my moisturizers and creams from my bedstand over to the food table, by the hot plate. Why? What does that even mean?

I love that she does my laundry. I love not doing my laundry, especially since I had been doing it by hand. There are no laundromats here, only drycleaners. After washing my clothes for a week when I first got here, I took a load to the drycleaners. And so, I have had my underwear dry cleaned. But that was expensive, so I love that it gets done now.

She washes it and puts it on a drying rack in the bathroom. The laundry takes a little while to dry in the monsoon season, so I move the rack out into the bedroom so it gets the benefit of the fan while I am home. She doesn’t know that I move it, because I am always careful to put it back in the bathroom before she comes. Ha, she thinks it stays in the bathroom all the time.

It has been really hot the past few days, even at night. I can tell that the weather has been drier because my clothes dried really fast today. Usually they are mostly dry but damp in places the morning after they are washed. Today they were crispy and dry before I went to bed. It has been hot.

It will be hard to come home and have to sweep my own floor again. Oh, wait. No. It will be hard to come home and live with a floor that never gets swept again. I wonder if she wants to come to the US with me. She can live in my closet.

I really do hate sweeping. I remember one weekend my old roommate Nate went out of town. I felt like cleaning the apartment, so I dusted and swept and everything. When he came home he was so surprised by the vacuumed carpet that he checked my room, to make sure I hadn’t moved out.

Ganesh!

Ganpati Chaturthi is going on right now. It is this big festival for Ganesh, the god with the elephant head. It is his birthday. Ganpati is big in Mumbai, it is one of the biggest festivals all year. It isn’t in other parts of India. Different areas celebrate different things.

The festival starts, or started this year, on September 15th, and goes to September 25th. The first day people put up statues of Ganesh, and they have loud, exuberant prayer sessions called pujas for 10 days. One of my SAT kids said that the big days were 2, 5, 7, and 10, with 10 being the finale. On the tenth day eveyone takes their statues and goes down to the water and throws them in. Everyone has been telling me that it will be really really crowded and awful and that I should stay home, or at least not go alone. But I will probably go anyway. I mean, c’mon.

September 15, Day 1 Thought there would be a lot going on, didn’t see anything.

Day 2 Worked downtown. Didn’t see anything.

Day 3 Worked at the office in my neighborhood. Around 5 pm, this procession starts going by the office. It was kind of far away, but still sort of loud, so my SAT kid and I got up and looked out the window. After waiting for a few minutes, we saw men on horses ride by, lots of different groups of guys in different uniforms with funny hats, groups of men marching and dancing together in white uniforms, or in white shirts with red pajama bottoms, or in sequined, sparkly uniforms, groups of women dancing together with bright colorful saris on and teams of teenagers doing some sort of backwards forwards march step all playing some sort of cymbal thing. They were all adherents to a particular guru. You could tell because 6-7 times, a mini float with a huge photo of the guru was pushed intermittently along with the dancing crowd. The mini floats had a square base, and projecting up from the back was a huge piece of wood coming straight up with the guy’s picture on it. Sometimes he was in Indian wear, with an orange cloth draped around him, sometimes he was in a Western button up white shirt with black pants. It was funny to see people chanting praise to a guy dressed in business casual.

The organizers of the parade wanted to make sure everyone had something to dance to, so there were also 5-6 trucks that went along with the crowd with huge speakers stacked along the bed of the truck, blaring music. When my kid and I tried to get back to work, we couldn’t. We were 2 feet away from each other and couldn’t hear one another. It was crazy. I have never seen anything like it.

They completely blocked traffic on one side of a major street for almost 2 hours during rush hour. It was a really long procession, but my kid said that was nothing compared to Day 10.

My kid also scoffed at all the people, and said that these gurus just go on tv and start preaching and people send them money. Crores and crores of money. (A crore is 1000 lahks. A lakh is 10,000 rupees.) I said we had the same thing in the US.

Day 4 Nothing happened today.

Day 5 Traffic got stopped while I was in the ric on my way to work. We all had to sit and wait while a small procession cut across traffic. It is hard to see in the picture. A bunch of horse drawn fairy tale carriages, all silver with pretty birds on the sides, and full of women in sparkly clothing, crossed the road, with lots of music and people walking alongside. It was really bizarre to hear celebration music and see a bunch of pretty carriages slogging across morning traffic on the dusty road.

I was going to go to a “puja,” a prayer service, tonight for Ganpati, but I got stuck at work and couldn’t go. Maybe I will be able to hit one later in the week.

On my walk home, I was drawn to a loud drum beat and people singing. There was a truck playing music on the side of the road, and some guys rhythmically beating on drums, and a bunch of other guys jumping and dancing around. They looked like they were having fun.

Day 6 My day off. I went to a nature park. More on that later. As I was leaving the park, I rode through a kid’s playground right near a river. There was a puja going on. There were lots of people gathered around tables praying to statues of Ganesh. The statues were garishly painted, and decorated with lots of sparkly stuff, and draped with garlands of orange flowers. The worshippers were chanting and shaking strings of cymbals. The people I was with told me about how the statues will all be taken down to the water and thrown in on the 9th day, 10th day or 11th day. The 10th day. No, 11th. 9th. I think it is the 10th. Anyway, next Tuesday.

A bunch of the guys walking back to their cars from the puja had red all over their shirts. One thing that people do is water throwing, hitting each other with water with dye in it. I think that people use water guns too. I am not sure what it means. Water is big with the Ganesh thing though.

Later, as I was walking home from the train station, I heard a big procession drumming and chanting through one of the neighborhoods.

That evening, I went to the Bandstand, a walkway by the sea near my house. I saw another puja going on at the end of the walkway. Lots of people were down by the water, chanting and singing to Ganesh, and several people were holding the plaster statues of Ganesh. The statues are not too big, you could hold one comfortably from hand to elbow, and then it would stand as high your neck. People were telling me that there is a huge one that costs a ton of money that gets thrown in at Jujopady(?) Beach, about two km from where I live.

Later, as I was sitting at a cafe, a car went by blaring music, with a few girls dancing along after it. Twenty minutes after that, a procession went by with loud drumming and a medium sized float featuring Ganesh.

Then, as I was walking home I saw another procession, a group of guys with drums marching down to the puja. Wow.

Last week there was a big article in the paper about how the major wanted to ban the Ganesh statues from being thrown into the water, because all that plaster and crap pollutes the water. Then a few days later there was an article about how the major had backed down from her(I think it was a her) plan. Nice try major. No dice.

I made a breakthrough with the “Cafe on the Corner,” one of the coffee shops near where I live. They now know that I order a vegan (wegan) shake and that I sometimes get sandwiches.
Further bulletins as events warrant

Elephanta Island

Elephanta Island is an hour’s boat ride away from downtown Bombay. On the island is a Hindu shrine, series of caves that are carved out of solid bedrock. The caves date back to the 8th century, and the island has been used as a stopping point for lots of different seafaring explorers over the centuries, so people have been going there for a long time..

The main attraction is the big cave at the top of the hill. You go up the 1km walkway, past the group of guys who offer to carry you up the hill in a chair, (odd) through a gauntlet of shills selling tourist crap (some of which I bought) to the sites.

I am acclimating to the prices here. The entrance fee at the top of the hill is 250 rps. I was scandalized at the price, man they really get you coming and going, don’t they. I was surprised that the guidebook hadn’t warned me. When I checked later, I did notice a note saying that the entrance fee was $5. But $5 doesn’t seem so bad; they actually charged me 250. . . oh, wait. Yeah, that is about $5. Ah. My wallet is going to have a rough homecoming, I think.

The sculpture in the main cave was cool. The cave is a large hall with a bunch of pillars in it, carved, I remind you, out of solid bedrock. There was a Trimurti, a three faced sculpture of the head of a Hindu god. It is as tall as a double decker bus, the guidebook says. (other guidebook specifies 6 meters) The guidebook also says that the faces are Shiva in 3 of his forms: creator (regular Shiva), preserver (as a female), and destroyer (with a ‘stache). My GMAT class, however, begs to differ. They say that the faces are of 3 of the big gods, Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. They said that no one pays as much attention to Brahma, he just creates. Shiva, as the destroyer, people leave alone. Vishnu is the big one, because he is in charge of management. He deals with the day to day stuff. He is the one people name their kids after. I believe my class, after all it is their religion.

The head is huge. It lurks ominously in the back of the cave.

There is a shrine to the right of the cave. There are a bunch of guardians carved into the rock around it. The shrine itself, in the center, is a simple cylindrical pillar about a meter and a half high. People burn candles on it and leave flowers around it. The pillar is called a lingam, and is the phallic form of Shiva (or somebody). This makes me giggle disrespectfully.

There are a bunch of other cool statues and carvings around the cave. I am now reading a book called “Ka” which retells the stories of Hindu mythology, so soon I will understand what Shiva and co are up to in the pictures. Whatever they are doing, it seems to involve a lot of dancing. Also, Shiva has a legion of dwarf helpers. He leans on them occasionally in the sculpture. That seems really random to me.

Many of the beautiful carvings have arms and legs missing or are badly damaged in other ways. When the Portuguese were in charge the soldiers came out to Elephanta and used the carvings for target practice. Idiots.

The name Elephanta is from the Portuguese for, well, for Elephant. There used to be a stone statue of an Elephant on the island, but it fell apart in 1814. It was reconstructed a while ago and is in some museum now.

(I feel a little like I am doing a 3rd grade report on Elephanta Island. All the info I have here is cribbed from the guidebooks, so it is like what passes for research when you are in 3rd grade. Need to write a report on the habits of the opossum? the life of Mark Twain? industries in Africa? Global warming? Weaving? Pie? Pull out the encyclopedia and paraphrase the entry. Maybe I should just go to Wikipedia and cut and paste the entry on Elephanta Island.)

I loved getting out of the city and into some greenery for a while. I took many deep breaths of the clean(er) air.

There were lots of monkeys on the island. Lots. I saw them scampering around, frolicking with each other through the vegetation. They are in no way afraid of humans. People have been coming to the island for a long time, I think. Also, the huge influx of tourists doesn’t help- too many people feed the monkeys. You can even buy bananas to feed them. I didn’t because I don’t think it is a good idea to feed them, but they were awfully cute eating the bananas that other people bought them.

The problem with feeding the monkeys is that then they associate tourists with food. As I was walking around the side of the hill to look at some smaller caves, I came up against a monkey who was charging people, terrorizing them off the path. The group of women in front of me was yelling and running away from it, trying to shoo it out of the way. I had been keeping back, wondering what to do, when a friendly couple came up. The guy started explaining to me that you just need to know how to deal with the monkeys, that they are basically harmless and that maybe if you give them a little food they will back off. He had dealt with them many, many times before in a variety of situations. There are 264 species of monkey. This particular monkey is of the family Cercopithecidae, probably genus macaca, species radiata. They don’t want to hurt you, they are just hungry. Some monkeys are treated very reverentially in India, because they are seen as incarnations of the god Hanuman. Then he offered to get out a little food and give it to the terrorist monkey to get the it off the path for everyone, so that we could all pass safely by an not get bitten by the monkey with all the scary diseases in it’s mouth.

At least, that is what I assume he said. I couldn’t actually understand a word he was saying, because he spoke no English. However, even after I made it clear that I couldn’t understand him, by smiling and shaking my head and saying “I only speak English,” he continued talking to me energetically, and at great length. So I am guessing that he was saying all the nice things about monkeys, not enthusiastically telling me about his favorite way of cooking potatoes or something.

He got out a bag of snacks. The monkey, understanding only as much of his speech as I had, but cobbling together an equal grasp of the intent, jumped him. The guy had just reached into his bag when the monkey leapt up to his arm and started ripping at the guy’s bag. Guy’s wife abandons him at this point. After a quick tussle, the monkey gets the snack bag into its hands and shreds it all over the path, and started shoving the cheesy puff things into its mouth, growling at the other monkeys to stay away. I think the guy was nice, not bright. I think the monkey was bright, not nice.

On my way back a whole family of monkeys was hanging out in the middle of another part of the path. I gave them a wide berth, doing my best impression of a person who has no food. They eyed me a little, but ended up just rolling around scratching their bellies.

On the boat ride back to the city, I sat near the prow of the boat and let myself get splashed by the water that flew up when the boat hit a particularly big wave. That was fun. Not so fun was when the couple across from me got seasick. They were both sitting very-very still and quiet, then all of a sudden the girl jumped up and ran to the side and started throwing up. She threw up so much, she must have lost everything she had eaten for the past 3 days. Quickly, as if in sympathy, her boyfriend joined her, directly on my other side. I felt a little in the way, with the two of them puking their guts out on either side of me, so I got up and took one of their seats. We switched back after a while, when they were done. I offered the girl a mint.

You get a nice view of the Gateway and the Taj Mahal hotel from the water. The boat was tippy though.

Before heading home, I checked out a few stores downtown, offending the staff and the patrons with my sea and sweat stinkiness. I figured whatever, I have had to smell plenty of Indians on the trains. It’s coming back around baby! Take that Bombay! Bam!

Eventually I went back to Churchgate and waited for my train. As the train pulled up, before it even had a chance to stop, the men were streaming towards it and jumping in. They looked like filings being pulled along by a magnet, they way the shoved onto the train as it came into the station. I assume they were competing for seats. The other four ladies and I watched in slight amusement, and then once the train had finally come to a complete halt, we filed primly onto our ladies first class car, calmly settled into our seats, and put our feet up on the empty benches across the aisle.

But ah, the karma. My smugness about being able to just walk into the train came back around to bite me. When we got to my station, three entire football teams disguised as short, fat Indian women tried to get onto the train as I was trying to get off. I got jostled, pushed, whacked in the nose, and eventually had to shove off from the train with my feet to get through the women onto the platform. Another train victim and I complained to each other about the battering ram of women all the way out of the station.

*
Speaking of karma types things, I had a GMAT class brainstorm an essay topic the other day. Basically, the topic was ‘in any enterprise, the process is more important than the product.’ They read it, and almost all together said “yeah, karma” (or some other term that I can’t remember). I asked what they meant, and they said that there is this Hindu belief that the way you do something is more important than the thing you do. It was so obvious to them, it was such an essential idea, that they basically had nothing else to say on the subject. They just said, yep. It is. They weren’t really even able to discuss it. So I was like, uh, ok then. Good example. Next topic.

Shopping

My neighborhood, Bandra, is known for its shopping. So on my day off this week, I wandered through the boutiques and departments stores in Bandra.

At one store I bought a salwar kameez, an outfit that consists of a long kurta, (a shirt) a dupatta, (a scarf) and salwars (pants). The shirt is a long tunic, to your knees or mid shin. The scarf is worn sort of like a backwards boa- looped across your front and over your shoulders. The pants are made of simple light cloth, and have either straight legs, pantaloony, puffy legs, or, most common, close, fitted legs with ankles that come in tightly and keep going about half a meter past the end of your foot, so you have to bunch them up. Mine fall into the last category. I might try to see if I can convince a tailor to modify them for me, because I don’t like the tight feel of them. The outfit is really comfy besides that though. The salwar kameez is what Indian women wear as traditional garb when not wearing saris. (There are also lots of women in Western clothing too.)

I don’t think I am going to buy a sari, because I don’t think I would ever wear it. The salwar I can maybe get away with, sort of, but the sari would just look silly. Also, if I wore it in Seattle, it would feel as though I were wearing a sign saying “I have been to India and you haven’t. You know, because I am wearing this sari. Why aren’t you wearing yours? Oh, that’s right. You probably don’t have one. India.” Just painting all that onto a piece of cardboard and hanging it around my neck would be cheaper and easier.

I had some unsuccessful ventures into a few other stores, then I hit my new favorite place. My old favorite place was Fab India, this great little boutique with lots of simple cotton shirts, or kurtis. (like the kurtas, only shorter- so I can wear them like shirts.) New favorite place has a bunch of simply made clothing too, and it is all made by “women working to make themselves economically independent.” Clothing with a social message! Super! I better buy a lot so as to keep those poor women employed! I ended up buying 4 skirts, 2 shirts and a pair of pants. Stuff was on sale. If anyone wants anything, let me know. The large just about fit me, so they are about a 10. The medium shirts were about right for me, but close fitting. I could do a large. The ladies working there were really excited about the pile of clothes I walked out with. They nodded kindly when I pulled out a skirt to buy, and grinned when I pulled out three more. I think they are probably going to build a pit in the road out in front of the store in hopes of catching me again. They threw in a purse for free.

While I was in the store I started to feel a little silly as I kept putting things into my pile. I didn’t want to seem ostentatious or greedy. You know, fat American buying up all the stuff. . . . So I, (and I am a little embarrassed about this), I actually started pretending to be buying things for other people. Like, I held up a pair the pants and mimed that I was trying to imagine if they would fit someone else, when really I had seen the pants when I had first come in and had been plotting to buy them for myself for 20 minutes, thinking about what size would fit me, what color I wanted. When trying to decide on red or turquoise for the elephant skirt, I had a whole conversation with the sales lady about my friend and what she would like. Oh god. My imaginary friend. Because the skirt was for me! Me! Greedy Evelyn. I felt like such a fraud. And the sales women. They must have been thinking, “Mmm, that nice American lady with all the friends. What a nice lady, buying presents for all her friends. She has lots of friends. Funny that all her friends are the same size as her though. Oh well, I guess that is just what size Americans are.” I think I am going to go put on all my skirts.

But really, the salwar kameez I bought at a department store cost 1500 rps. Everything I bought from the socially conscious store cost 1200 rps.

The long straight skirts come in grey with blue, green, dark pink and yellow with brown. The funny skirts come in cow: green and red. elephant: bright turquiose, bright brown, and red. The pants were red, blue, yellow, and I think a few other colors. The shirts are simple kurtis, if you want one, give me a sense of what color and I will try to find something. I will go back and get more if anyone wants anything. I will go back just for the hell of it, probably. Just let me know.

Then, after having a snack at home, I went out to the fair.

There is this huge fair that happens in Bandra once a year. The Mt Mary Fair, out of the Mt Mary Cathedral and Scenic Lookout at the top of the hill that makes up half of Bandra.

I decided to walk up through the fair at the base of the hill (near my house) and go up the hill past the stalls and rides and see what the church looks like during the fair, then walk down the hill behind the church and come out along the shore. Where the road hits the shore is a cafe that will sell me a yummy vegan drink, (which, actually, I am drinking as I write this- so you know I made it to the cafe.)

I have been a little skeptical about this fair. The music starts around 3-4 and stops at around 9:30, and I can hear it blaring all the way at my house. I had been expecting loud, annoying Hindi film music from the fair, because that music is everywhere here. So I was looking forward to an irritating, though novel, experience. However, they choose to play classic American hits from the eighties and nineties mixed with random dance hits, which is an irritating experience that any American who has ever gone to a fair has had. A sample from last night: the “it was the summer of ’69” (whoever sang that) as a dance remix, that lovely lovely lumps song from last year, and “Eye of the Tiger.” Maybe the music people learned their craft in the US or something. Or maybe this is really just the same fair that travels around the US, and it turns out that it actually travels around the entire world, spreading it’s mediocrity. Or maybe there are international standards and procedures on what music you can play at fairs. Who knows.

Braving the music, I started walking through the fair. It was bloody awful. All the cheapest crap in India was there. It was like the guys who sell the junk on the tables outside the train station called all their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ cousins and neighbors. I hadn’t realized how deep into the neighborhood the fair went. There were loud people aggressively selling terrible junk all the way along the road, all the way up to the church, plus there were a bunch of carnival rides set up in school yards and fields. (you know the kind. going too fast, with the rusty bolts and a drunk operator) About halfway up, stalls selling the assorted junk turned into stalls selling wax figures, candles and small bouquets that you could buy to bring into the church to give as an offering.

At the top of the hill, about 200 meters from the church, the flow of people clogged and stopped. Policemen started roping off the crowd into groups. Then every few minutes the police would let a group through to line up at one or the other of the church’s entrances. There were 2 lines to get into at the various entrances- offerings or no offerings. I got into the no offerings line because: 1- I had no offering. 2- It was moving way faster.

So the crowd and I got shuffled down a long walkway, through a metal detector, and under a bunch of large signs warning the faithful to beware of pickpockets and to watch their children. I was wary of pickpockets so I watched the children.

All this was way more than I was expecting. There are a lot of Catholics here.

In the church, the offerings people were filtering through the shrine area up at the front of the church, putting their flowers and candles all over the huge golden calf.

Ok, not really a golden calf. (reference- when Moses came down, broke tablets, was pissed that his people had created a big image to worship. Graven images, etc) It really felt like idol worship though. What was actually there was a huge heart of roses and the usual image of Mary with babe in a shell, a big colorful version of the plaster thing that is on the neighborhood weird Catholic lady’s front lawn.

The people from the slow line were laying down their offerings individually up at the shrine, which was why that line was taking so long. The people in the non offerings line who had offerings were allowed to toss their offerings into large plastic crates that, I guess, served as intermediaries between these less pious pilgrims and Mary. Volunteers shooed away those who wanted to stand and pray, trying to move the warm crush of people along. So I went with the crowd to the exit. The whole production made me feel very foreign.

On the other side of the church, all the way down the hill behind the church to the shore was more wax stuff, more crap. I bought a few bead necklaces for 10rps each. I can’t seem to get the hang of bargaining. I paid whatever the sales man told me the stuff cost, a cardinal sin over here. I just couldn’t make myself bargain. I mean really, 25 cents each. I also bought a knit scarf. The sales man assured me that he sells these scarves down in Colaba (the downtown tourist district) for 110-120 rps, so he was giving me a very good deal at 60 rps. So wow, that was really nice of him. :) Either way, I hate bargaining so I paid the 60 for the scarf. I do believe his claim that he sells down in Colaba though, his English was a lot better than I would have expected.

Favorite piece of crap for sale at the fair- Glow in the dark rosary beads.
Honorable Mention- Life size effigies of the baby Jesus, presumably to burn as an offering to Mary. I wonder if she appreciates that, people burning little versions of her baby. These Catholics are such pagans.
*
Something that people talk about here is “quality of people.” My neighbors warned me about the fair by telling me about the Low Quality People who showed up to it. And the other day a principal was quoted in the paper as saying that his school was going downhill and needed “students from better families.” Now, we have the same ideas in the US, but we don’t have the same terms. For example, the only equivalent term that I can think of for Low Quality People is “white trash.” And a principal would never allow himorherself to get quoted in the paper as having said “We need fewer white trash students.” This idea of “types of people” seems to be a more acceptable concept here. Again though, I think we do have the same idea in the US, we just can’t talk about it the same way. Much as I may not like to admit it, it isn’t as though I don’t know what my neighbors mean when they say Low Quality People. Maybe I will start wearing a VIP pin around, in case anyone is wondering where I stand.

Handi

September 4th was Lord Krishna’s birthday. One of the stories about him is that as a mischievous child he would break open the handi pot and drink the butter milk from inside it. The handi pot is a short, squat pot with a little lipped opening at the top. It is hung like a pinata for the festival (I don’t know if it is normally hung up or if it is just for the celebration) and people try to break it like Krishna did. It is hung up high, and people have to form a pyramid to get someone high enough to crack the pot with their head.

Big groups of people get ready for this, and different handis around the city have different prizes attached to them. People form teams and practice getting into pyramids. So 20 people might be standing at the first layer, and they hold up 10-15 people, and they hold up 7-8 people, and so on so that the top person is way high off the ground trying to break the pot.

Newspapers the next day had the stats on how many deaths, how many injuries. Only one death, and really the fatality came from a guy being drunk and falling off a balcony during the festivities, so no one can really blame Krishna for that. About 300 injuries though. All in good fun.

I tried to find some links to local pictures of the event, but couldn't get the internet to give me anything. Oh well. There were some good pictures in the paper of clusters of people holding up clusters of other people. And people falling off towers of people.

Exploring Downtown

I went downtown to see some more stuff that my inconsistent guidebook suggests seeing.

First was the Gateway to India, a monument built to commemorate the visit of some British king and as a testament to the durability of the British Empire 24 years before it got kicked out.

Big, impressive. Cool to see. I went on August 15, Independence Day. There were a ton of people around, hanging out, buying ice cream, looking at the water. There wasn’t really anything organized going on for Independence Day though, which surprised me. I think that there were some parades or some solemn flag raisings or some such earlier in the day, but if there were, they were low key. I didn’t see anything. The only overt Independence Day thing I experienced all day was when I got hijacked by some flag pinning people who were asking for donations at the train station. That was irritating. I was walking though the train station when a woman skillfully slid in front of me, half pinned a small paper flag to my shirt, and asked me for 100 rps. I thought, wow, $2.50 for a small piece of paper. Hmm, . . . no. I’ll go to 50 rps ($1.25) but not more, especially since everyone else is probably being hit up for more like 10 rps. So I said 50. We went back and forth, 100, -50. 100, 100. -50, and so on. Finally I said No Thank You and started to walk away. She stopped me and said, no, no, 50 is ok. So I turned around, pulled out my wallet, and handed her 50. Now with the 50 in her hand, she pins the flag to my shirt, and then, still holding the flag and my shirt, says, ok, ok, now 100. I go to take back my 50 and to take off the flag, and she says, no, no ok. She looked irritated, and I expect so did I. But as least I got a flag. And I gained the knowledge that I had to avoid the flag trickers on my way back.

So, anyway, I went and saw the Gateway. Beside the Gateway is the Taj Mahal Hotel. It is a big, pretty hotel that everyone talks about. The deal with the hotel is this: There once was a huge steel magnate named Tata. He created an enormous empire and amassed vast amounts of money, and when you walk around Bombay today you still see his name plastered everywhere. Back in the day, this Tata was denied entry into the British owned hotels, because he was Parsi, not British. So he angrily built a huge, majestic expensive hotel to sleep in. The advantage of his hotel is that it ignores the color of your skin and looks only at the color of your money. His hotel is still standing, but most of the old British ones are gone. All the guidebooks point out this irony, how he had the last laugh. Good for Tata.

I have my own little theory about why Tata was the last one standing. Maybe all those other hotels just died away, as the guidebooks suggest, and it just happens that this hotel is the only one left from the old days, but my guess is that Tata went around systematically buying up all those bastard hotels that wouldn’t let him in and shut them down. I mean, if you are pissed off enough about not getting into a hotel to go and built your own, then you are pissed off enough to make damn sure no one else ever goes to any of those other hotels ever again as well. He doesn’t sound like the forgive and forget type.

His grand hotel is still extremely expensive and exclusive, charging deluxe Western prices for the rooms. The rooms come with a free bottle of wine- unlike at the rooms at the Marriott, where the rooms apparently come with a free teddy bear.

I checked out though the lobby of the hotel, it was lovely, but not astounding. The doorman had on a crisp white uniform and a funny hat. I wanted to take a picture of him, but as I lingered in the doorway, he grumpily chased off a group of Japanese tourists taking pictures of themselves on the front steps, so I figured I probably shouldn’t try it. So I cooled off in the air conditioned halls looking at the shops for a while. I don’t know why the people in the lobby didn’t stop me from wandering around; I am sure the doorman would have. I definitely didn’t look like I was staying there, or like I had the kind of money that you need to have to shop in those shops. Maybe the lobby people were nicer or more apathetic than the doorman.

Next I walked down the stone walled water front beside the Gateway and in front of the hotel. As I was walking, a guy came up and motioned to my ear. What? He motioned again. Oh god, is there some scary yucky bug in my ear? Ack! I checked to see if there was something there, but I didn’t feel anything. He motioned again and made a movement to check my ear. Holding onto my purse, I let him look. Next thing I knew he had a long pin in my ear and was cleaning out my ear wax. Then I realized that he had been asking if he could clean my ears out for me. Ah, I read about these guys. The ear cleaners on the walkway by the Gateway of India. Suddenly he was pulling out gross gobs of ear wax and chiding me on how dangerous it is to have so much wax in there. Ew, but I totally clean my ears out! Then he hands me this card explaining that he is a qualified ear cleaner and how much it costs, 250 rps per ear. Can I clean your other ear? Sure, but I am not paying more than 250 total. He continues talking, and I keep saying in reply to whatever he says, I am not paying more than 250. I look at the card, it is for some guy who is 35 years old. The guy cleaning my ear can’t be more that 20. Sigh, whatever. He keeps telling me about the importance of ear cleanliness. When he finishes, he says, Ok, 500. Huh, no, I said no more than 250. 500. 250. 450. 300. We go on. He looks very sad and reproachful. Oh, god, fine. 400. I’m already a little worn down by the flag bargaining earlier today. I take out a 500, and ask him for the 100 rps change before I hand off my money. Oh, ok. He goes over to another group of ear cleaners, and they scrape together some change. 80. No, I said 100. But it’s 80. Yeah, it is. 80 is not 100. He goes back and there is a bunch of talking and searching. At this point I figure that either they really don’t have another 20, or they have put at least 20 rupees effort into pretending to look for 20 rupees, so I decide to call it even and take the 80. At least my ears are clean now.

The ear cleaning reminded me of the little crucifixes that my mom was collecting- some of them had little spoony scrapers on the end, so you could clean your ears at church. And Katie got me a Hello Kitty ear scraper in Japan, same idea. I think I prefer the idea of plastic little spoon scrapers going into my ears over the idea of scary needle going in. Either way, I will stick to q-tips in the future. Way cheaper.

Since I am talking about ear wax, I will include here 2 more ear was related items.
1. I think my ears produce more wax in a hot climate.
2. There was this neat thing that my old roommate Nate showed me for cleaning out ear wax that didn’t involve needles or scrapers or anything scary. They were these long funnels made of cloth, and they were starched or something so they stood up straight. You put the small end of the funnel into your ear and lay sideways so the funnel is pointing up. Then you light the other end and the magical forces of nature pull the ear wax up into the funnel. Then when the cloth had burned most of the way down, you take it out and snuff the cinders, and the wax is in the funnel, not your ear.

Now I am done talking about ear wax.

After that I tried to go to the Prince of Wales museum, but it was closed for the holiday. So I went across downtown, to the base of Marine Drive, Nariman Point, to look at the view. I have talked about MD before, the north end is Chowpatty Beach, the south end is Nariman Point. Some of the most expensive real estate is down here, New York City type rents. Again, there were lots of people hanging out, looking at the water, enjoying the holiday. I sat and looked out for a while, but too many beggars came up to bother me, so eventually I just walked back to the train and went home.

On my way to the train station I caught that quintessentially Indian scene, cricket being played on the Maidan. This time on the litter free Maidan, with some university buildings in the background, and sparkling white cricket players. (Who decided that cricket needed to be played in white uniforms? What masochist chose this hell for cricket players, and for the people who do the laundry of the cricket players? Ah, wait, I know. Some bleach salesman.) The fences around the Maidan, or park, were dotted with spectators. It is funny, I think that Indian guys are pathologically incapable of walking by a cricket game. They have to stop and see what is going on, and get caught, like moths around a lantern.

The next Thursday I went back down and hit the museum. One funny thing- for Indians, the museum costs 15 rps. For foreigners, it costs 300. Plus as 30 rp fee for bringing in your camera.

There were a lot of sculptures and small paintings. Lots of gods as subject matter. Not worth coming to Bombay for, but worth seeing if you are here.

The first thing up is a sculpture of a guy who was fighting his brother for the right to rule the kingdom, I think in somewhere south. (It doesn’t seem as though all of India has traditionally been one state. There have been lots of small kingdoms. John Keay wrote a very good history of India that I am reading right now, and it looks like for most of the past 2500 years, only 7 groups have, at some point, held dominion over more than half the subcontinent, and those groups variously held sway for well less than half of that time period.) So the brothers fought. They met in battle, and the bigger one caught up the other, and had him up in the air. He was going to throw his brother to the ground and kill him, but realized what he was doing, and that it was all for transitory power in this world, and that is wasn’t the right thing to do. He put his brother down, renounced power, went into the woods, and meditated. He was so devoted that vines grew up all over him, which is what is drawn all over his legs and arms.

Lady on a swing. I think she is the consort of a god, and the god is hiding in the foliage.

More Art.

Afterwards I went around the corner to the Jehangir art museum. Very small, but free. While I was there I found Cafe Samovar, which I had read an article about recently. It was a big art folk hang out for decades. The cafe is funny. In the sixties, a woman just took over a corridor in the museum and started selling tea and biscuits.

The J museum is trying to kick them out so they can use the space for storage. I don’t know if she has a lease or what, it is perfectly possible in this city that she could have just decided to put the cafe in and gotten an illegal water and electric hook up and started up a business that way. It seems like one not uncommon way to get land here is simply to claim it. But her position must be somewhat tenuous, since the museum might be able to make her leave. I was glad I found it.

One thing that stuck with me from the article that I read about the cafe was how, back in her youth, this woman was a card carrying communist. She and her husband were big political activists. Then her husband fell out with the party leaders. But she was still a member. When she got pregnant, the party made her get an abortion, on the grounds that she couldn’t carry the child of a traitor. It strikes me as odd that this wouldn’t suggest to someone that it may be time to change political parties. But I don’t know what else was going on, so I guess it isn’t my place to have an opinion either way.

The waiter is clearly excited for me to take his picture.