Explorations Expanding

5 Feb – 9 Feb

Monday morning I got to work and saw that my suspicions were confirmed that my friend Paul had already made it to Bombay but I was missing him - in fact he’d been in town since Saturday morning. Luckily he was nearby and we caught each other online, so I left the office for a break and we had sugar cane juice, which is super yummy. We walked into the David Sassoon library and climbed up the spiral staircase all the way to the roof, which had a great view of Fort and Kala Ghoda, until we were busted by a staff person. There’s also a great balcony with wicker chaise lounges- if it weren’t for the heat and nastiness of the air quality, it would be a really nice place to sit and relax and read at the end of the day. Paul and I agreed to meet that night for dinner, so after work I headed down to the Taj and from there we walked down Colaba trying to find a Parsi restaurant Benita had told me about. We couldn’t find it, and ended up at a Lebanese/Irani place instead, which I imagine is fairly similar. Classic mistranslations on the menu were amusing. Listening to Paul’s tales of traveling made me stir crazy to get out beyond Bombay. All of India is just beyond my reach, beckoning to me- but I have to go to work every day so I can’t see her yet. Augh! His brand of independence and self-sufficiency is beyond me, though. I don’t think I could sustain an itinerant, unknown lifestyle for that long. Plus it’s just different for women, we can’t pull off the independence men can on the road, I think. Damn sexist safety issues. He also spoke about seeing his Seeds of Peace kids, and made me envious of that experience. Interesting how I’ve moved farther from the conflict resolution stuff… wonder if I’ll come back in that direction.

Tuesday Paul and I met for lunch and this time we did find Paradise, the Parsi restaurant on Colaba. I had really good tandoori fish and he had some sort of mutton in a white sauce. I freaked out when I ate something that I thought was the eye of the fish, since it was whole. Aiiiiiii I think I’ll stick to veg stuff more often.

Tuesday night I met Gautum from the expat list, who lives right around the corner. We went to Zenzi, a tres hip bar in Bandra on Waterfield Rd, joined eventually by Akshay, Nabil, and Danie. Nabil is new here, from DC, half Polish and half Tunisian, for an interesting look. He works with an ngo that does technical consulting for another ngos here. This ngo consulting model seems pretty prevalent. Zenzi is the type of place you could easily find in San Francisco, and the vibe reminded me a bit of the Enormous Room in Cambridge.

Thursday night when I got off the train there was lots of backed up traffic on the road in the market, and as I walked down I saw a parade which was the source of the blockage- a victory party for Shiv Sena. Their color is orange, so many of the participants had orange paste/paint shmeared on their faces and clothes, dancing and marching along. Besides a carriage float with the elected official and his family and right hand men, there were no less than 2 trucks blaring speakers with dance music, a drum line, a live percussion band, and hundreds of dancing, happy people. I wonder if some of the grown men were drunk, or if the party really does create that much excitement and frenzy amongst its followers. I was surprised that a Hindu fundamentalist party would have such a loud spectacle event, but I guess that’s all part of their charm. It’s also surprising that Santa Cruz, which seems to have a relatively small Hindu population (considering that this is India, first of all, but this was settled as a Portuguese Catholic colony), would elect this representative and then have such a large, public, literally traffic stopping event to celebrate it. The political system here is especially complex and difficult to crack.

Later Thursday night I went to Danie’s place off of Hill Rd in Bandra for a small birthday celebration for Erin- just them, Batya, Manor, Benji, and two Australian women- Alana and I missed the other one’s name. Danie lives in a cute studio apartment, we sat on the floor and ate lays potato chips and fruit. I tried Limca for the first time- it’s like sprite without the lemon, kinda interesting. Would be good with gin, and people say it’s good with fenny, the cashew liquor made in Goa. We ended up getting into an intense debate about the law of return in Israel and the question of its future Jewish character. Interesting to hear the range of perspectives, and to be in such a removed place from the contexts of Brandeis and Federation to talk about these heated issues. I appreciated the presence of respect in the debate, definitely a difference from Brandeis especially. And we all know that we’re here in India to be in India, and that our Jewishness led us here, regardless of our differing opinions on the issue at hand.

Throughout the week I had more interesting conversations with Benita about the need for UDRI to take a more intervening, grassroots approach, instead of the removed research they’ve done so far. I’m starting to get a better grasp on the issues, and I’m hoping that I can play a role, somehow, in that transformation. Friday morning I finally met Shumona, the AJWS country representative, and she had all kinds of good feedback to give about ways to come at the work, organize it, and move forward. We met at Barista on Colaba, which is like the Starbucks of India, really western with quoted expressions on the wall, orange color scheme, overpriced, etc.