Starting work

29 Jan
Monday morning I felt like an excited pupil on the first day of school. I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast with the Smart Balance PB I brought from SF. Pankaj was late so I had more time to sit around being excited and a little nervous. Finally he came but I didn’t understand where he would be so I tried to get into the car of someone definitely other than him, until he showed himself across the street. He played tour guide a bit as we drove into town, particularly past the Dharavi slum, the biggest in India, if not Asia (sound familiar?).

Dharavi, even from the surface, is nothing short of astonishing, in many senses of the word. Astonishing poverty, filth, need, crowding, and trash. Children and adults clamoring for a single pot of water to bathe. People sleeping wherever there’s enough space to lie down. Naked babies wandering behind their sari-clad mothers, carrying bundles on their heads and backs at once. And, beyond all this, astonishing order and ingenuity and creativity. Dharavi is an entire economy unto itself, practically, with well defined crafts and trades creating a level of self-sufficiency we don’t see in most other places. There are recyclers, leather traders, tailors, launderers (dhobis), glass collectors, metalsmiths, rickshaw mechanics, cycle repairers, etc. The shacks have corrugated metal roofs and some sort of solid walls, at least three, and makeshift curtains of fabric rags. Many have something of a second floor, with a ladder leading up (a real second floor, not like Miles’s loft), where the ground floor is a shop of whatever business and the second floor is the home- entire families in something probably less than eight square feet, I’d estimate. Pankaj also explained that there are landlords (slumlords) who charge rent and manage affairs for entire areas of the slum. Some shacks actually have an address or some sort of name plaque; that’s the extent of formalized infrastructure that has sprung up here. Dharavi is enormous and dense on the outer perimeters, so I can only imagine what the interior is like—hopefully I’ll get a chance to see for myself during my time here.

Right on the other side of Dharavi is a main highway linking South Mumbai to the suburbs (I gather they are called suburbs because they are more residential, but certainly nothing like the suburbs we know at home, and they are still considered part of Mumbai proper… I’m still working out that nuance), and the new, shining and sparkly Bandra-Kurla Complex, basically a corporate office park that could easily compare to the same back home—tall glass buildings, broad clean roads, manicured lawns and fountains. I was surprised to see that a number of companies in the complex are domestic, actually. Such a contrast, this gleaming example of modernity and wealth next to the lowest of the low.

So- work, the office. I’m lucky that the office is in such a happening neighborhood downtown, Fort/Kala Ghoda, near to Colaba, the main tourist and retail drag, the main museums and galleries, and lots of colonial buildings. And, serendipitously, the office is literally next door to the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue. I come all the way across the world to get out of the Jewish profession and here I am right on top of a shule, go figure. Anyway, UDRI shares the top floor of an office building with the Kala Ghoda Association, another nonprofit (or as they say, public trust) which evidently does cultural events and preserves the heritage of the neighborhood. It’s airy and sunny, with ceiling fans and A/C, and glass doors that completely fit the stereotype of an architects’ office.

Benita is my main point person at UDRI, and she’s awesome, young, modern, leftist, smart, opinionated, funny. She’s an architect and runs the research and resource center, and from what I can, pretty much does everything- writes funding proposals, welcomes guests, organizes events, et al. Rosalind is older and manages the accounts and the office administration, and Nayana is young and the librarian. Every time someone says Rosalind, I think they are talking to me. Raj runs errands, serves tea, whatever other essentials are necessary. This is known as the “office boy.” I’m starting out reading their publications and getting caught up on their work and the current situation in Bombay. Rosalind took me to Churchgate to get my rail pass, which adds up to less than 30 cents a day, even as a first class ticket. I was grateful she was there to help me, I would have been completely lost without her- not only in finding the obscure corner of the station where the monthly pass windows are, but figuring out which pass to get, etc. To get into the station we went through a ‘subway’ (underpass) which is so hot and humid from the concentration of people, it’s nearly steamy. It’s lined with stall shops selling everything from tee-shirts and underwear to alcohol to snacks to housewares. Each shop has a guy standing in front yelling out the item for sale to try to attract passersby. Apparently 3 for 1 packages of men’s body spray/deodorant are very popular, along with a mosquito-killing contraption that looks like a plastic tennis racket with a metal grid. Instead of working like a fly swatter where you have to smash the bug, this delivers an electric shock to the mosquito so you only have to touch it, not trap it underneath. The guys poke them with scissors or little pieces of tinsel to make the shock sound, which is kind of like those little snap firecrackers kids like (except for my brother, who used to take them apart in order to build larger, more complex bombs and firecrackers during his early adolescent pyrotechnic phase).

So that time on the train it made much more sense to me what people were talking about with the crowding and such, although it was manageable. Various peddlers come around in the cars repeating “sss, sss” and whatever they’re selling, piled up on their heads or carried in heavy bundles. More often than not they’re not wearing shoes. Once I saw a tiny woman with boxes on her head, a bundle strapped to her front, and her baby tucked into her sari wrapped around her back. They just shake their stuff around and kinda get in your face until someone motions that they want to buy, or they go away if you just ignore them.

Other times on the train I’ve seen elderly blind couples (2 different ones, and both are extremely short) who sing songs to beg. Made me think of Homer, but apparently they sing old Bollywood movie songs. It’s amazing to me how they navigate through crowded trains stations and in and out of trains- it’s hard enough to do that with full sight. More people seem to give them some change than the other beggars. I don’t know what it is about an old blind couple that pulls the heartstrings even more than little filthy children, but it works.

That first day I was so pleased with myself for making it on the train alone, I stopped at a nicer looking clothing store, Friendship, on the way back home and bought a bunch of outfits. They took my measurements to tailor them- the salesguy kept giving me XXL and XL, although I kept saying they were too big, but I knew they would customize it and chances are most of the smaller sizes would have been too tight somewhere or another. Now I’ve been through 3 rounds of alterations and they still didn’t get them all right. Friendship terminated!