Last night out in Mumbai: Ally and me; hair darker, minds wiser

I’m in my room surrounded by suitcases, and piles of things that are supposed to go in suitcases, feeling excited, disoriented, and sad, and grateful for the Fulbright’s generous excess baggage grant. I’ll be using it! (Blame the 24 ” rosewood Ganesha from Kerala that’s taking up one whole carry-on bag). So, I had it in mind to write some deep concluding thoughts tonight, but don’t have it in me. Maybe it’s because I don’t really feel like I’m leaving Mumbai. Somehow, it’s become Reality to me, and a pleasant reality at that (apart from the air quality, traffic, heat etc etc). It’s pleasant because I’ve made a good life here, despite early dire predictions to the contrary. I’ve done more good research than I imagined possible, wrote for the newspaper that is our family deity, traveled to beautiful and insane places. And most of all, I’ve made truly wonderful friends.

Wonderful friends

I want to thank all of you who read my blog and commented on it. Your kind words made me feel close to home even as I was very far away.

See you soon!

Abby

]]> http://abbysindia.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/bye-mumbai/feed/ 3 afr2114 IMG_2814 IMG_2823 http://abbysindia.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/my-favorite-things/ http://abbysindia.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/my-favorite-things/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 10:17:36 +0000 afr2114 http://abbysindia.wordpress.com/?p=527 ]]>

The bride and me

Last Friday, my research partner Daisy and I went to visit a family that we’ve gotten very close to over the past four months.  The family wanted us to attend one of the functions being held for their landlord’s daughter, who was having an all-out, three day Hindu wedding. That morning, the bride had undergone the haldi, or turmeric, ceremony, in which she was smeared with turmeric by her family. For beauty, I think, or good luck. But as it turned out, the bride wasn’t the only person whose color was of interest.

When we walked into the bride’s living room, everyone stared at us. One of the bride’s aunties prodded and pinched my upper arm, perhaps wondering if the whiteness would rub off.  Other guests, alerted to the spectacle, rushed in to see us.  Or me. Daisy, whose parents are from the Philippines, blends in here. People tend to think that she’s from Nepal or Nagaland. “I’m like your satellite,” Daisy said to me at one point, and I know what she meant.

In the evening, we went into the house to say goodbye to the bride, and found her sitting with female relatives performing a puja, or prayer ceremony, with a plate bearing a coconut. An older woman was chanting into a microphone, her voice carrying out to the male guests in the yard, where enormous cauldrons of food bubbled over giant cookstoves. When we walked into the room, everyone turned to look at us, and the woman stopped chanting and an auntie said something very insistent to me in Maharati.

“She wants you to sing a song to the bride,” our family’s daughter explained to me.

I told her that I couldn’t.

“You must!” she said.

Everyone stared at me expectantly. So I took the microphone and tried to think of a love song, succeeding only in summoning the lyrics to “Killing me Softly,” which didn’t seem like an appropriate choice for a 19-year old bride entering into an arranged marriage. Even though no one there spoke English. Then it came to me. “I’m going to sing a song from my favorite musical,” I said, and launched into “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music.

Standing there in that room, singing away, I realized something very strange. Not only was I at ease, but the surreal scene felt completely normal to me — from the lovely tumericked bride to the giant vat of goat simmering outside, to my own place in the day. That is, I felt normal as a strange glowing white alien channeling Julie Andrews for a roomful of women in saris.

Three weeks before heading home to New Jersey, I’m finally used to being a foreigner.

My favorite things

Little Lord Krishna

On Saturday night, I went to a party in Bandra held in a nice flat with a deck and air-conditioned living room. And of course, in the early stages of the night, everyone crammed themselves into the kitchen, with its counter full of booze, where it was hot and narrow and easy to make friends. There, I met a tall German guy wearing a vintage t-shirt featuring Pinocchio and cursive caption reading I grow. The German was already a little flushed from the heat or sangria and, defenses thus compromised, told me something he shouldn’t have:

“I’m helping to design an amusement park,” he said. An amusement park? Yes, a new theme park to be built an hour-and-a-half outside of Mumbai in the direction of Pune. But its location was, he assured me, secret.

We were soon joined by the German’s colleague, a forty-something guy from Los Angeles  with a slightly stunned expression: he was six weeks into a three-year contract in Mumbai, and couldn’t quite believe it. “Can you believe it?” he kept asking me. A former Disney employee, the guy is now working for an Indian company that he preferred not to name (and he didn’t want to be named either, so I’ll call him T). And the Indian company was making it impossible for him to design this theme park.

“So what’s the theme?” I asked him.

“That’s the problem.” he said. “There is no theme. Since you’re the writer, why don’t  you come up with some ideas?” So I told him that India is overloaded with a millennium or two of mystical gods and goddesses. Why not do a Hindu religion themed-park?

“We thought of that,” sighed T. “But it would be too offensive.” I pointed out that there are all sorts of playful television shows and movies featuring the gods here — a baby-blue Little Lord Krishna cavorting in a cartoon forest, little Lord Ganesha dancing around with singing mice.

T was shaking his head, “Look, we proposed doing a carousel where the kids could ride around on giant sitars and tabla drums, but the company said no, because it would be disrespectful to the instruments.”

This threw me, but not for long. How about a ride based on the Ramanaya, which is the story of the mortal hero Rama defeating the evil multi-armed demon Ravana and rescuing Sita, his  true love? How about a ride where you can ride the vehanas, the signature animals ridden by the Gods?

“We’ve got both,” he said. So wasn’t  Indian mythology the theme then?

“No,” said T. “Because the entrance to the park is Mumbai Main Street.” What! “Yes, the entrance to the park is Mumbai Main Street.”

And I pictured park employees dressed as beggars and vendors, and pits in the sidewalk, and rickshaws playfully careening into park guests. I imagined a Mumbai family of four piling into the Maruti and braving the traffic-crawl of Sion, and Bhandup, and all points east, and driving high up into the golden hills of the western ghats, and finally pulling into a  parking lot only to be greeted by a sign cheerily proclaiming, Welcome to Mumbai Main Street. I imagined leaving Mumbai only to reenter an idealized version of Mumbai… only what would that be? All I could think was that it would be smaller and cleaner, with a miniature Gateway of India.

“Well I guess that the theme park doesn’t need a theme,” I said. “Probably no one will notice.”

And T said, “Probably not.”

Outside Thane

Hurtling back on the train from Pune:

Bougainvillea slum,

Mystical cell phone ring.

Scraggle yard, blue tarp-slung concrete, crumble aluminum shack, crate-stacked go down

We wobble, heads tilt. Pity the ones who stand still.

We make a mad optimistic dash, grime be damned. We’ll drink coffee from an aluminum spout

Flavored with a sneeze.

Scarves ruffle, hair blows, and rubble, smoky-aired fields, a judas tree? The horn and track, caclunk caclank, a dull roar, heat.

The air is fresher than it will be all day.

In a dusty bed, I worried over slow declines. Better to go brilliantly, to cut back through morning.

Thank God for an empty blue seat.

Spindle orchard, looped barbed wire, power line tower. Dazzle, tawn — a sewage blast. Skeleton frames (the whole country is under construction).  A place no one bothered to clean up (different conception of public space; no sense of “the commons”). The DNA’s all rape, the Times is all burning — desperate women, dying birds, politicians un-tracked.

Better to shake out a white cloth,

Or to run across the earth,

Or to ride pillion on a motorcycle in a pink sari when you’re pushing 65.

You could buy those balls from that basket on that woman’s head, never knowing what they are. You could eat them! You could pay that blind man to sing you a song for a coin — he’ll sing it for you anyways! Aditya Burla group? Opposing train shock and blast.

The horizon is first dazzle, then mist.

Imagine slogan: Space is hard to get in India… but you can see it from the train.

More fun to read than the back of a cereal box

I’m back in Mumbai and am back in my daily routine, which begins with breakfast and an incredulous reading of “The Times of India.”  This morning’s lead article reports on a scandal that seems to involve cricket, but I cannot be certain because it is written in code, i.e., “On the last day of the IPL, a far more gripping — and consequential — behind-the-scenes battle saw the league’s architect and chief Lalit Modi being forcibly shown the door by BCCI.” Come again?

Then there is the usual Indian-who-died-outside-of-India article, today’s featuring an Indian who died in a deadly hot air-balloon crash in a United Arab Emirates desert. And there are the city’s daily catastrophes . Yesterday, an 11-year old boy died under the tires of an SUV. Why? “The police said probably the Tata Safari driver did not notice the children because there was no light on the street.”  This is the sort of article that makes me shout with rage over my cereal, much as my mother does daily when Republicans hold executive power. There should be lights on the streets! Mumbai drivers should NOT BLARE THEIR HORNS and accelerate to beat a pedestrian crossing the street. Is it any wonder that there seems to be a hit-and-run fatality or sari-stuck-in-motorbike fatality every day?

Next, I skim over the usual assortment of failing infrastructure articles — the housing society in ritzy Colaba that must pay for twenty tankers of water to be delivered daily, since the building is not adequately served by the  city’s water pipes. The cost is $30 per tank, which everyone finds exhorbitant. Water shortages are a big problem in Mumbai but, if you’re rich, there’s always a solution.

And then there are the articles that really destroy me — the graphic violence against women articles that appear every day. The railway staffer who was raped by her neighbor, also a railway employee, who taped the attack… and blackmailed her, ultimately extorting $9,000 by threatening to use the tape to “prove” to her husband they were having an affair. This crime merited an article — other crimes are condensed in the “India Digest box:”

• Teen raped, murdered. A teenaged girl was raped and killed in a mango orchard at Sargaon village in Orissa’s Balasore district on Sunday.
• Suicide over marriage: Unable to bear pressure from her parents to get married, a 13-year old girl allegedly committed suicide by drinking pesticide at Kaliachak in Bengal’s Malda district on Saturday night. Firoza Khatun studied in class V.

Sometimes, I go to the kitchen, get out the scissors, carefully cut out one of these articles, and stick in the file folder along with my collection of articles on surrogate mothers.  I have articles about eve-teasing (as they call sexual harassment here), and dowry burnings, and rapes, and joint suicides, and girls who poison their own parents in despair.  I have an article about a man who beat his wife and tied her to a tree — a ceremony to cure her infertility that, in fact, solved his problem another way….by killing her.  (Now he can get remarried.) I don’t know what I’m going to do with these articles, but I keep them.

And then I flip to the single page of international news, which is always eclectic. America has new high-speed missile!  British officials sorry for mocking pope! Naomi Campbell accused of accepting a blood diamond! “Hollywood execs plump for natural looking women again!” That one I read — as it turns out, after promulgating unrealistic standards of female beauty forever, Hollywood casting agents are now desperately hunting for women with un-augmented breasts for period films. Lately, they’ve had to turn to England and Australia because too many American actresses are like 23 year-old Heidi Montag, proud of her 10 cosmetic procedures.

It’s enough, I think turning the page, to make you think that there’s a global conspiracy against women… except that “The Times of India” is also sure to tell you all of the horrible things that can happen to men.

Finishing my muesli, I read a light piece on the latest wisdom from Stephen Hawking.  Hawking reasons that given the infinite number of star systems, there must be intelligent alien life somewhere in the universe… and that we should not attempt contact. Hawking warns that these intelligent aliens are probably eager to colonize and raid Earth, much as the Europeans did with America, saying, “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

And with that, I close the paper and start my Mumbai day.

Today's high in Delhi: 108 F

I don’t think that I really understood heat until these past few days in Delhi. Today’s high is 108 degrees farenheit — tomorrow’s high will be 110 degrees. I am, thankfully, staying with our old family friend Rasil, who has a cool old house built to withstand heat and a green garden. But still, I feel almost genetically unprepared for this climatic situation. This heat makes me feel faint, like one of those poor pale Ladies of the Raj, and weak in the knees. My body was, I think, I designed for the steppes of Russia, the winter cities of Lithuania, not for India.  (Although it’s hard to imagine anyone is enjoying what is the hottest Delhi April on record). Going outside can only be compared to hot hairdryer billowing in your face — and that’s when there’s wind blowing. Otherwise, you really do bake. The only thing to do is siesta repeatedly — before lunch, after lunch, until the sun goes down. I never thought that I’d say it, but I do miss those cool (89 degree) Mumbai afternoons.

Glamorous Anand: the main street near Dr. Patel's clinic

I was chatting with my sister this morning and she reminded me (with some irritation) that it’s been a month since I last updated this blog. Apologies to all loyal readers! It’s just been a pagal — that means “crazy” in Hindi, an extremely useful word — month. So, here’s a little round-up of what’s been doing:

WORK

In February, I made two journeys to Anand, the “Surrogacy Capital” of India. There, I met the famous Dr. Nayna Patel and a few surrogate mothers, and also an American couples picking up their newborn twins,  among several intending parents. Also, I’ve been continuing to visit with a group of surrogate mothers in an industrial city an hour north of Mumbai. It makes for a long hot sweaty dusty train journey and is, I’ve determined, a migraine trigger, but I’m finding out much more than I ever thought I would about what it’s like to be a surrogate mother. What is it like, you ask? Stay tuned for my novel: estimated publication date: May 2017.

My translator friend Neha on packed commuter train from Ahmedabad to Anand

View of street where some ladies I'm speaking to live, in that industrial city north of Mumbai

FUN

And I’ve also been having fun. Two weeks ago, I “played Holi.” Holi is a springtime festival that involves smearing friends with intensely colored pigments and drinking bhang, a  less-than-legal milky drink with mind-altering properties. I enjoyed the colors but the bhang… well, not so much.

Shortly thereafter, wonderful friend Alyssa arrived from New York in her tall boots. Many of us hadn’t seen boots here in Mumbai for well over six months. She also brought Guittard chocolate chips which we mangled into some cookie dough and baked in the toaster oven. The results were not perfect, but it was a nice thought. After spending a few quality days in Mumbai– during which time Alyssa got to experience the ravaging effects of an un-airconditioned cab in three hours of rush hour traffic, a dance performance in the Dharavi slum, and Mumbai street food (the clean kind, served in a restaurant) — we went to Udaipur, Rajasthan. There, we ate at a lakeside restaurant where Alyssa suspects she contracted a stomach virus. Still, she rallied and flew off to Jaipur, and I joined Fulbrighters from all around India for a three-day conference. Edifying talks and relaxation by the pool ensued. We finished our week in Rajasthan with a road trip to Kumbhalargh, an ancient fort perched high in the desert, and Ranakpur, an intricately-carved alabaster Jain temple.

Harbor by the Gateway of India: see, Mumbai can be pretty nice)

Fatima loves having her photo taken - in Dharavi (Alyssa photo)

Walking down into the Transit Camp, Dharavi (Alyssa photo)

Lake Pichola in Udaipur, with view of the Lake Palace Hotel: A nice change of scene

Alyssa and me in Udaipur (Alyssa photo)

Elephant beats rickshaw in height, but not speed (Udaipur)

Fulbrighter Rock band on Rajasthan road trip

Road trip team and Kumbalgarh Fort

NOW WHAT?

Now I’m back in Mumbai, which is steadily growing hotter and hotter. Last night, I took a rigorous American-style yoga class on the rooftop of a fancy Bandra gym and spa called Play, and am still in recovery-mode. (Hiding out in the apartment during the bright daylight hours makes for some muscle atrophying, that’s for sure.) I’m also researching a new post for the New York Times about being a Bollywood Extra, and may be an extra myself this weekend in the Bollywood version of “The Stepmom.” Apparently there is going to be a dance routine… about cancer? I’ll keep you posted. What else?  I’ve been cooking a lot — have mastered my homemade spaghetti sauce. I’ve been sending out resumes for next year (less said about that the better). On a more exciting note, I’m planning a trip with my cousin Ruby: we’re meeting in Delhi on April 1 and then heading north to Amritsar (home of the Sikh’s Golden Temple), Dharamsala (home of the Dalai Lama in exile), and for some hiking in a yet-to-be determined location in the Himalayas.

And good news! The Fulbright folks have approved my request for a two-week grant extension. This means I can stay in Mumbai until June 15, at which point I’ll begin flying home.

Thanks for reading!

Mumbai

February 23, 2010, 6:00 am

Sugar and Spice in Mumbai’s Desserts

Abby Rabinowitz A glass of sugarcane juice at the Gupta Juice Center.

Posts | City Guide

An evening stroll through Mumbai is the perfect time to sample the city’s signature desserts, many of which come in liquid form. Tucked away near tourist hot spots, you’ll find family-run stands that have been serving up local favorites for generations.

From Chowpatty Beach, walk across the pedestrian bridge to the New Kulfi Center (556 Marina Mansion, S.V.P. Road, Chowpatty; 91-22-2368-4291), which has been drawing crowds since 1960. Kulfi, an ice cream-like frozen dessert so dense it is nearly airless, is cut into narrow blocks, weighed on silver scales and served on a leaf. Out of 26 flavors, the popular favorite is plain clotted-cream, or malai (20 rupees, or about 43 cents, at 46 rupees to the dollar). The menu also includes tasty seasonal flavors like  sitafal, or custard apple (30 rupees), and even a sugar-free option. Vivek Tripathi, the owner of New Kulfi Center, ships his product — for trips up to 60 hours.

Just down the street from the Gateway of India, across from the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, is the Gupta Juice Center (A Block, Dhanraj Mahal, C.S.M. Marg; 91-22-2202-3124), which sells “hygienic” sugarcane juice. The owner Jiu Gupta explains that, unlike other vendors, his team scrubs the sugarcane clean and passes it through a stainless-steel press once (rather than several times). The result is a frothy yellow juice, its syrupy sweetness tempered by lemon, ginger and an optional dash of masala, giving it a kick of spice. Mr. Gupta’s father started the stand shortly after Indian independence, hence the patriotic 10 percent discount for defense personnel. But even without the deduction, a “Varanasi glass” runs at a very reasonable 16 rupees. (Eating street food in Mumbai carries some risk, but Gupta’s emphasis on cleanliness differs from the norm.)

Anyone can direct you to Badshah (152/156 L T Marg; 91-22-2342-1943), which opened across from Crawford Market in 1905. Badshah is Mumbai’s favorite source of falooda, an exotic (for westerners at least) beverage made of milk, flavored syrup, clear vermicelli and glutinous basil seeds, topped off with a scoop of ice cream. The Royal Falooda (36 rupees), perfumed with rose syrup, is surprisingly refreshing — for an extra shot of sweetness, stir up the syrup from the bottom of your glass. Badshah also offers salty snacks and seating on two levels.

Ask the Sexpert

Friends, I have been remiss in not sharing what is perhaps the most intriguing daily column in The Mumbai Mirror. I am referring to “Ask the Sexpert” written by Dr. Watsa, an irascible doctor who offers scathing, tough-love advice to Mumbaikers suffering from an array of sexual and relationship woes. This morning’s entries were so insightful that I must share them here:

***

I am 15 years old and extremely confused. I have fallen in true love with a girl. However, I am not sexually attracted to her. Instead, I am attracted to another girl. I tried asking the first girl, but she says her career is more important. Please help. Who do I ask out?

Nobody! You are still too young and immature to make a decision. Wait till you are 21. As of now, go study, play, and be good friends with both. You are naïve. Did you not know that you have to pursue a girl till she turns around and hooks you?

My problem is that I think too much about sex
In spite of wanting to divert my mind from it, I start fantasising and start masturbating. I do it atleast two to three times a day, almost every alternate day. I feel there’s some problem with me. Another problem is that I am unable to last for more than a minute. Will it be a problem in the future once I get married? Please help.

You would not be a man if you didn’t think about sex. What you need to do is to control your runaway emotions and get on with being somebody in life. Masturbation will not get you there. Divert your mind with exercise, hobbies, etc. It won’t harm if you are under control.

***

You tell them Watsa!

For more, head to: http://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.aspx?page=section&sectid=17

Gyatri / photo by Ally Reeves

These days, I’ve been running around in deep work-mode which, after months of not knowing where to start, has been deeply satisfying.  And in the course of reporting little stories for the NYT blog or for my own project, I’m seeing more of India than ever. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the work that women do here. Not the wealthy, educated women, who are doctors, lawyers and bankers (and who have an easier time of it than working women at home, since household help comes so cheaply). Instead, I’ve been thinking about lower-middle class women, and poor women, and the work that they do.

Back in January, a German visitor pointed out something obvious that I hadn’t seen, “Have you ever noticed how all the ordinary jobs held by women in the West, like being a hairdresser or a waitress, are all held by men?” And it’s true. Women here are not hairdressers or wait-staff, except in fancy hotels or restaurants.  At our local vegetable market, only one vendor in fifty is a woman. Most shops are manned by men. And so I began to wonder, what can an uneducated woman do here, apart from being a maid or a surrogate mother?

Here’s what I began to notice: in Delhi, slender women in bright cotton saris carry baskets full of concrete rubble on their heads, walking along half-constructed roads. Women in the Dharavi slum make pappardams, a round salty cracker that is dried on overturned baskets on the footpaths, where children run by kicking up dust and rats slink (Dickensian, but true). And women work behind the scenes in factories, and take piecework in their apartments, stitching beads onto silk or doing other fancywork. In Munnar,  high in the hills of Kerala, we saw women from Tamil Nadu working in the tea plantation fields, picking tender leaves off green bushes and carrying them down the mountain in sacks (one of which I tried to lift, but couldn’t quite).

Last week, I went to the big flower market at Dadar Station with Mano, my Hindi teacher, who had kindly agreed to translate. The flower market is a stunning place, a narrow lane below a flyover where the sharp smell of marigolds overrides the traffic fumes and where vendors sell roses by the kilo. As we walked there from the station, we passed people selling bangles wrapped in plastic, CDs, shirts, and then, under the flyover, a man and woman selling flowers. Their goods were spread out on a battered blue tarp — pale green bel leaves for the worship of Shiva and strands of jasmine blossoms that cost 20 cents each.

The man told us that they had come from Badlapur, two hours north of Mumbai by the first express train, which they catch at 2:30  each morning. The woman’s name was Gyatri and she told us that she’d never known her parents. Since early childhood, she’d woken up before dawn and gone to the fields, where anyone can go, and picked flowers there. She doesn’t have a last name.