Shop Rite this is not

The Specialist K in the World

I’ve always been amazed by the prices at Nature’s Basket, the small, well-kept grocery store in Bandra meant for the expat and rich Mumbaiker. Here, for your amusement, is a price list for some popular imported American “luxury goods”:

Bag of Rold Gold pretzels: $5.35

Tostitos ‘Hint o’ Lime’: $6.31

Box of Rice Krispies: $8.31

Special K: $9.23

Pint of Hagen Daz: $13.39

Now, what really blows my mind is how far this money can go to buy other foods in Bandra. Instead of buying that box of Rice Krispies you could purchase 100 bananas, or 160 oranges, or 16 loaves of bread. Insane, right? Of course, that doesn’t hold a candle to my roommate Tina’s recent experience in a Starbucks in Dubai, where she purchased a Venti Sugarfree Vanilla Skim Latte. Cost? $20.

The Three Great Truths of India, as revealed by Signs

Guru who?

There is a mug in our kitchen that reads, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here… but it helps!“, which always makes me laugh, because that is one of three very true statements about Mumbai.

The second is a red  flashing road sign that proclaims, “Always wear helmet.“  My roommate  interprets this sign metaphorically — as in, “Always be prepared in India.” But I read this sign as profound practical wisdom that no one ever follows, even though you really need a helmet just to walk down the safely street here.

The third great truth of Mumbai — nay, India — is expressed by a Times of India newspaper headline that could really be applied to every other story in the paper: “Schedules go awry as system fails.”  Oh yes: that they do.

Right on, Signs.

Since you asked…

My new-and-improved feet

The other day I got an e-mail with a series of questions from my wonderful roommate in Brooklyn which made me realize how sketchy a picture of my Mumbai life I’ve given you guys. So, instead of writing a little essay about the endless renovation of the neighboring apartment that shares my bedroom wall (bang bang BANG) and how the workers nap on little cardboard pallets in our hallway, which expresses some sad social truths, I’ll answer Amanda’s questions about me, me, ME. Here goes!

I love reading your blog.  Have you had any thoughts about what you will do with it?

Oh, pshah! Nothing much (just use it as the basis of a bestselling book of personal essays in which a youngish writer finds love and professional fulfillment in Mumbai, India)

Can you tell how many hits you get on it??

It varies: 25 is a usual day, but 89 people read the blog on Friday December 4^th. Thanks readers!

Have you decided what you are doing for the break yet?  Will you be traveling with your parents?

I’ll begin my travels on December 11 when I leave Mumbai to stay with an old family friend in Delhi.  I’ll spend a few days in Delhi interviewing people for my project (the head of a nonprofit group concerned with womens’ rights, a fertility doctor and a few surrogate mothers), and then my parents arrive on December 17. After they recover from jetlag, we’ll be off on a trip around Rajasthan to see palaces, deserts and camels, and then we’ll go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. After that, we’ll fly to Mumbai, where Anna and Em will join us on January 2. My old British friend Lesley comes on January 4, and the parents fly home. Then the girls and I will vacation in Kerala and possibly Goa. Exciting!

Are you really busy?  Really unbusy??  More or less so than in Brooklyn? I’m asking a lot of questions.  I haven’t heard you answer this question on the blog though.  I just feel like I hear how slow it is to get things done.  But not how much time you actually spend working!  And since I am used to knowing your habits so well…

I am not working as hard as I did in Brooklyn. I tried to, at first, but the aforementioned slowness made the effort feel masochistic. In a good week here, I have one day where I feel like I’ve accomplished something concrete for my project. I have finally gotten access to a surrogacy clinic here in Mumbai, where I’ve interviewed two surrogate mothers. This took three weeks. On off-days I generally e-mail for appointments, e-mail people to try and find a translator, e-mail travel agents, and refresh my g-mail a lot. I’ve gotten better at waiting for replies and, when that fails, pestering strangers.

But after three months, I finally feel like my project has launched and I am making some career progress ( just in time for my vacation, but what can you do?). Neha, the friend I met in Ahmedabad, promises to be a great partner for interviewing women in nearby Anand (the surrogacy capital of India) and we’re planning a research trip for late January. I’ve also met a wonderful freelance documentary photographer who is interested in shooting the project. More good news is that I’m writing a blog post for the New York Times travel website Globespotters that will come out in early January — hurrah!

In terms of my daily routine (if you can call it that), I do feel pretty busy between meals out and drinks with friends, going to the gym, buying groceries and cooking them, taking twice-weekly Hindi lessons and writing.  Overall, my life is both leisurely and immediate, in that it’s almost impossible to plan anything more than a few hours in advance. This is an India thing: if you are invited to dinner, you’ll often be asked that very morning. So, on a given Monday,  I don’t know who I’ll meet up with and what I’ll do that week, which is certainly a change from the packed social calendars we all tend to keep in New York. At first I found that discomfiting, but I’ve calmed down a bit. Lately, one of the things I like most about living in Mumbai is how unpredictable my life is here — anything can happen and whatever happens will certainly be interesting.

On a side note, I watch much less television here because our couch is deeply uncomfortable (think church pew) and the only vaguely watchable show is Friends, and I have seen enough of Ross Geller to last me a lifetime. What were those writers thinking? I am looking forward to my parents’ arrival and the delivery of Madmen Season 1. Oh, and I read at least two novels a week here. Right now I’m reading Paul Auster’s new book Invisible which, for some unknown reason, actually appeared in paperback at the local Crossword, India’s answer to Barnes and Noble.  It’s pretty good.

And that’s it! Let me know if you have more questions… and thanks to everyone for reading!

The Bandra Post Office

Donkey visits apartment building in Valsad, Gujarat

It took me a good three months to decide to finally find the post office in Mumbai. Something about the whole thing seemed insurmountable (after all, it’s hard enough to get myself to the post office in Brooklyn Heights). I expected that I would find incomprehensible bureaucracy at the post office, if I found the place at all.

As it turns out, the post office is only a five minute rickshaw ride from my home, around the corner from a big modern department store. It’s a ramshackle colonial building with a sign that reads “Bandra Post and Telegraph Office,” and features dusty window ledges and surly clerks who responded to my hopeful “Do you speak English?” with a scowl and “Nahi. Hindi!” Still I managed to mail my letters, the whole process feeling so archaic that when my roommate later told me that local letters are delivered via pony (“The ponies are kept out behind the post office — didn’t you see them?”), I believed her.

Month 3:Liking Mumbai

My pottery class: another reason I like Mumbai

The unimaginable has happened: I like Mumbai. I had this revelation just a few days ago, after a week away in Gujarat. I suppose that some of my newfound liking has to do with coming back to the apartment and that part of it has to do with how cosmopolitan Mumbai is compared to Gujarat, a dry state that doesn’t serve much meat either. But then again, a month ago on a return flight, I actually wept to see the aluminum roofs of the slums from the air. Also, I really liked the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad, with its cool weather and improbably large, gainfully employed camels.  I even thought about moving there for a while, until I thought to myself, “I like Mumbai.”

Sunday night, I shared the good news with my friend Jay, who grew up here, and he said, “Well, maybe you should write that on your blog.”

According to Jay, I have portrayed Mumbai in a less-than-flattering light and therefore have contributed to, in my own small way, the horrific portrait of the city painted by director Danny Boyle  in Slumdog Millionaire and  Suketu Mehta in Maximum City, a nonfiction book so relentlessly critical of Mumbai that I put it down unfinished last spring, fearful I was moving to a living hell. In interviews, Mehta said that he didn’t realize that his view of the city was so negative and I didn’t realize that mine was either, although of course calling someplace a post-apocalyptic Paris is never very nice.

Talking with Jay about my blog made me feel obscurely guilty and I wasn’t sure why. After all, I described the city as I saw it in those early entries, which is surely what a personal essayist is supposed to do.  Jay agreed, but pointed out the problem (and probable source of my guilt). The problem is since there are so few portrayals of Mumbai in the west, each is very powerful. The problem is that when outsiders write about this city, they see it through alien eyes. Of course, Suketu Mehta has more to answer to than I do, given readership levels, but I still feel the need to clarify my view of this city.

When I got to Mumbai, I saw everything through my American eyes: dirt, traffic, pollution, poverty, slums, shit, broken sidewalks, begging children, begging adults, stray dogs, shimmering heat, grey rain. And now I am seeing the city through eyes familiar with what a city looks like in a developing country. And I’m seeing it with the hazy familiarity that sets in when you’ve seen a street a dozen times.  Now, I can dream my way to the local bookstore that same way I used to dream myself down Clinton Street in Brooklyn, noticing the light, noticing people, but mostly just thinking my thoughts which are less Oh my God those men are staring at me! Is it because I’m white? Is my chest showing too much? Oh my God that dog is scratching itself. How will I ever cross this street? I’m going to die here now or get cancer from this fucking exhaust because India has an irresponsible elite and corrupt government that doesn’t care about the air people breathe! Oh I am sweating so much! I am dehydrated but if I buy water here the man will cheat me, but if I don’t get water I’ll get a migraine. And are more like, I hope they have the new Sarah Waters novel.

So I suppose part of my new liking for Mumbai has to do with how, these days, I can  jump in a rickshaw and tell the driver, Rasta putta hai, which means, “I know the way.” It has to do with the comfort of coming home to my roommates and slapping on the princess tiara we wear to make Indian-related complaints. And it has to do with having friends here because, of course, how can you like a city where you don’t have friends. So, I like Mumbai. As for loving it… well, there’s still six months to go.

Adventures in Gujarat: Photos!

My wedding outfit. Thanks to Meera for encouraging me to buy it back in Kerala. It really did come in handy!

Long time no write! Sorry friends. My excuse is that I was away for a week in Gujarat, the state north of Mumbai, having all sorts of fun. First, I went to a wedding in Junagadh with my roommates, Ally and Tina, via a 14-hour overnight train ride. We explored the old fort with the young couple, Anna and T, and then embarked on the 12 + hour wedding celebration. Afterwards, I went to Ahmedabad to meet my translator Neha, who hosted me with great kindness and served up a Thanksgiving dinner of iddly and sampar (lentil puffs and vegetable stew). And then I took the train to Valsad to see Aussie friend Clancy, who’s doing a public health project in the villages. Results: I love the Indian train system, and I finally understand that Mumbai is my oh-so cosmopolitan home.

I promise a proper update soon. Until then, please feel free to check out the photos on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=128136&id=501012917&l=9e847d9245

Stargazing in India

On Tuesday, I spent the night staring up at the stars with some expat friends and Mumbai’s amateur astronomy club. We got together in a field a few hours north of the city to see the Leonid Meteor shower, which happens every year when the earth intercepts dust sloughed off by the Tempel-Tuttle Comet, but was supposed to be particularly memorable this year — perhaps, some dared to hope, like the brilliant shower of 1833 when the sky was alive with falling stars.

Leonid Meteor Shower of 1833 in North America

Alas, it was not. And so one day, I may remember how we lay all night in a rocky field on a blanket in the cool damp as the constellations wheeled overhead at a strange angle, the occasional meteor tracing its fiery course across the dark sky. But what I’ll mostly remember is how we got to those stars and back again: via the Mumbai suburban rail system at rush hour.

The Ladies Compartment at rush hour

Guided by a part-time telescope dealer, we left Mumbai for the village of Vangani at the dangerous hour of 5 o’clock. I stood with a group of women on the platform and prepared to board one of three “ladies compartments,” watching in awe as a few ladies pulled themselves up into the carriage as the train sailed past the platform. When it slowed to a halt, everyone else hurled themselves towards the open doors with the desperation of war refugees escaping a doomed city. Still, my friends and I managed to find space on two benches, wedged between irritated commuters in a car that grew more crowded as the train traveled north — that grew into its own cottage industry, with barefoot peasant women threading flowers into garlands on the floor, girls reading textbooks one-handed, and jewelry vendors wending through the crowd with their jangling boards.  As the trip dragged on, more and more women dozed off to sleep, looking wilted in the heat. At Ambernath, we tried to board a connecting train but were shunted aside by women with baskets, children, and fierce elbows — and the train left without us, passengers clinging to the sides.

A relatively empty compartment at rush hour

By the time we reached the club’s rented farmhouse, I felt tired to the point of desperation, but somehow stayed awake all through a midnight trilingual astronomy lecture and the meteor shower until 5 a.m., when the Big Dipper rose and we caught a commuter train back to the city. How did I stay awake? Sheer delight at lying on my back and staring up at the stars after two sickly weeks spent staring up at my bedroom ceiling. And sheer delight at remembering other nights spent stargazing in California, Colorado, and New Jersey — at connecting with that stargazing version of myself who seems to be perpetually 13, dreaming of Mars and love  and distant lands.

The Leonids in some magical Asian elsewhere

But I think that there is something particularly stirring about stargazing just outside a 19 million-person megalopolis, even if there’s too much smog to see the Milky Way.  Lying there surrounded by Indian astronomy enthusiasts, backs pressed against the rocky earth,  I thought of the Mumbai ladies who like to stand in the train’s open doors, backs  to the crowd. Wind whipping through their scarves,  they look out and away — drinking in all the space they can find.

Leaving Mumbai

Sick in India: A Grand Tradition

This week, I finally got sick in India. Not the minor kind of running-to-the-bathroom sick or the devastating airlift-you-to-Singapore sick, but a moderate kind of sick. That is, after an evening with a fever and bad stomach, I spent four days lying around the apartment in a state of achy fatigue along with — because I am a terrible patient and have trouble with unstructured time — depression, ennui, and existential angst. Why am in India? I wondered. What is the purpose of my life? Should I take the LSATs? It wasn’t pretty.

After an hour or two of introspection, it became clear that the only way to survive four days in bed with sanity and life goals intact was sheer escapism. So I downloaded three episodes of “Glee,” watched “The Proposal” for a third time (thank you Sandra Bullock!) and read like a maniac. If you haven’t read it already, run out and get  David Benioff’s “City of Thieves,” which follows two unlikely friends on an unlikely quest to obtain ten eggs during the WWII Siege of Leningrad. Amazing stuff. Less amazing but adequately diverting were two “glittering Regency romances” donated by an expat friend, “The Veiled Bride” and “Lady Jane’s Physician,” which transported me back to a bawdier version of Jane Austen’s England and reminded me of the importance of defending my virtue at all costs, except where craggy true loves are concerned. And finally, I finished Margaret McMillan’s history “Women of the Raj,” which tells how  British women in whalebone corsets and woolen underwear managed to survive the Indian climate, not to mention mutinies and cobras.

Throughout, I was struck by how much the Women of the Raj are like the Women of Expatia  — how many of their experiences resonate with our experiences a hundred years later: the shock of arriving in Bombay, with its mad confusion of people, colors, smells, traffic, oxen. The homesickness. The ennui. The constant socializing to distract from homesickness and ennui. The male-female ratio at parties being in the female favor (British women used to come to India to find husbands in droves — they were called “The Fishing Fleet”). The alienation.  The wonder.  And the fact that ladies back then also got sick in no time at all, for many of the same reasons we do: weird germs, extreme climate, disease-bearing mosquitoes, bad water, food prepared in dubious circumstances. Of course, the consequences for them were far worse than for us because they didn’t have antibiotics or Gatorade. And of course, there are a million ways in which my experiences are completely un-Raj: I am not part of a ruling nation; I can date Indians; I don’t have to ride in bullock carts.

But still, there was something strangely comforting reading “Women of the Raj” in bed, the heat shimmering outside the window.  Maybe it was the idea that getting sick in India is a timeless rite of passage — an inevitability. Or maybe it was the stories of the women who rode elephants up mountains, or who glided down rivers, or who climbed the Himalayas in long skirts — good stories for daydreaming on, no matter what century you’re sick in.

Easy Hindi for the Tourist

Here are some phrases taken from a handbook purchased in Mumbai that outline dialogue which may be useful when speaking to your servant. Ghori Princess Abby reads directly from “Easy HIndi for the Tourist” which claims to be published in 1996 and updated in 2006, though its phrases carry more of an “1886″ Raj-like air. Easy Hindi for the Tourist details practices (traveling with large guns) which are now illegal in India and includes such golden phrases as ” Is the bullock cart comfortable?” and ” I want to get a Tiger!” — Ally Reeves (Roommate and Producer)

Fall Back, India

India's rogue time zone

Last Sunday,  as America set its clocks back one hour to adjust for Daylight saving time, India’s clock hands budged not at all. So now we are 10 1/2 hours ahead of New York, 11 1/2 hours ahead of Kansas City, and a poetic 13 1/2 hours ahead of San Francisco. Frankly, I find this to be somewhat irritating, as I have just gotten good at subtracting 9 1/2 from every hour of the day. And I’ve become curious about India’s strange half-hour head-start on America all over again.

Does India have a 30-minute time difference out of sheer perversity or is there some rational reason for this subtraction nightmare? I asked a few of my Indian friends here (testily). and they told me (defensively) that India is narrow enough to only need one time zone and that the half-hour represents a democratic compromise. Also, they pointed out, India is not the only country with this tricksy time, which is true: Iran, Central Australia, Venezuela, and remote parts of Canada are also 30 minutes removed from near neighbors. Rogue Nepal is 15 minutes behind neighboring Bangladesh. Why? About.com explains:

“The twenty four time zones of the world are based on fifteen degree increments of longitude. This is so because the earth takes twenty four hours to rotate and there are 360 degrees of longitude, so 360 divided by 24 equals 15. Thus, in one hour the sun moves across fifteen degrees of longitude. The offset time zones of the world were designed to better coordinate noon as the point in the day when the sun is at its highest point in the sky.”

But that sunny goal is not achieved by much of India which, with its single time zone, sees the sun rising a full two hours earlier in the east than in far west. This has led to disputes, bemoaning of a costly use of electricity in some regions, and a (failed) initiative to divide India into three time zones. As for Daylight Savings Time, India used it briefly during WWII but nowadays, it’s only used by some IT companies sensitive to the needs of outsourcing, which is presumably very confusing for Dell employees.

As for me, this temporal shift has left me feeling just a little further away from home.