Backtracking

Oy, so far behind. Things have become substantially busier at work (my boss says substantially all the time) so it's been hard to find time to write. But oh, so much to tell!

So in lieu of a proper entry, the following is a list of snapshots which hopefully I'll further elaborate later on, in no particular order:

1. Starting WAY back: weekend trip in March to Vengurla, which began with laying on the floor of a 2nd class sleeper train car underneath a berth, proceeded as a fantastically romantic dream weekend on a perfect beach, and concluded with a second round of train floor sleeping.

2. Long weekend in Udaipur and Ahmedabad over Passover.

3. Weekend escape to Pune, featuring the final cricket world cup game between Australia and Sri Lanka, which we watched in a Café Coffee Day with its employees until 4 am. Then we got a ride home on the manager's motorcycle.

4. A list of systems that work, and systems that need improvement here. For instance, the chai and coffee wallahs on the interstate trains are brilliant. The bus conductor system is brilliant. The fact that nearly every shop and restaurant delivers is brilliant. The fact that foreign credit cards are not accepted on travel websites needs improvement. The bureaucracy of visa extension needs improvement. The proximity of hands and pelvises inherent in the overstuffing of public transportation vehicles DEFINITELY needs improvement.

5. Musings on urban life and the expat experience. As Dave Matthews said when I was in 9th grade, "it's not where you are but who you're with that really matters." The balance between depending on the kindness of strangers and paranoia over being targeted for advantage-taking.

6. A troubling incident with a rickshaw wallah days after I wrote in here that I no longer felt guilty haggling over the fare, which turned into a small scandal involving numerous construction workers and Mobile Creche teachers.

7. Big event at work, "Saving Mumbai's Public Open Spaces" in which the wrath of microsoft excel has shaved several months off of my life, and made me too busy to work more with Mobile Creches.

8. Weekend escape to Goa, with the remnants of the tourist season. Shopkeepers called out to us in Hebrew, and the ladies trolling the beach to sell henna and jewelry thought we were Israeli.
9. Leaving Bombay in a week! Travel plans, starting in Hampi, to Kerala, across to Varanasi, following the Ganges up to its mouth in the Himalayas.

10. Visa meshugas, leading me to accept defeat and change my return ticket. That's right, folks, I'll be back in the US of A on July 16th.

11. I finally weighed myself, after having a tailor take in my pants by 2.5 inches. I've lost nearly 10 kilos, or almost 25 pounds. And while I'm visibly thinner, it's still damn hard to find pants that fit.

12. My friends Samira and Dan got engaged, and all the girls got mehendi (henna) at Zenzi, a shmancy upscale bar in Bandra. I did both hands and my feet, but sadly it's mostly gone by now.

13. I was in a Bollywood movie, finally. Race, staring Bipasha Basu, Katrina Kaif, Anil Kapur, and Akshay Khanna. I was a cop. Seriously (but not like on Halloween those years). I knew it would be a long day and unglamorous, but I had no idea how existentially boring it would be.

14. I'm reading Shantaram, as recommended by so many people. I'm surprisingly into it, despite the ridiculously flowery language and absurd metaphors. "Her thick, black plait of hair was the rope by which a man might climb to heaven."

That should about do it for now. More soon, I hope! And anyone with job and/or apartment leads in SF, do let me know.

Self-inventory, Vol I

I'm not phased by crossing the street anymore. I weave around the cars without flinching, I push off from the sides of rickshaws and put my hand out authoritatively to indicate the driver's need to stop (in the face of my obviously superior entitlement to cross the street).

If I accidentally touch someone's foot or step on it, the gesture of asking forgiveness by reaching your fingers out towards the other person's body and then kissing your fingertips while wobbling your head comes to me pretty naturally.

I don't feel guilty about paying less to the taxi or rickshaw wallah if he drove the wrong way or did something else which inflated the fare.

I'm increasingly interested in continental food (which is a problem, because it's usually more expensive. Or McDonald's).

I think more about watching TV on a comfortable couch at home.

Most of my head space is taken up with thoughts of my upcoming travels, instead of the here and now in Mumbai. Only about 3 weeks left...

In other news, Benji left for Bangladesh (on a bus right now from Kolkata, as I type) on Sunday night, which was a rather sad goodbye. We were quite the spectacle at the airport, as open physical affection between opposite sexes is rare. Batya is in Ahmedabad for work for two weeks, and with Manor, Robbie, and Danie gone from here, it's just down to me and Erin. And then she goes to Goa next week for Shavuous and a JCC youth camp, which I don't think I can afford since I'm traveling there 2 weeks later, so I'll be the last one here. Crazy! Maybe I can finally go see those touristy places I've been meaning to visit.

Pics

Between the alternating breakdowns of my laptop and camera, it looks the prospect of uploading my pictures is low at best. So instead, I've decided to appropriate Benji's photos as my own (and in fact many of them I took myself), so you all can enjoy them too.

Last night we had a goodbye party for our dear Benji at Banana Bar's kareoke night. Erin and Batya so impressed the MC with their rendition of the Hindi song "It's the time to disco," they won the competition. Their prize? A full case of Hayward's Black beer. As for me, a salsa/flamenco dance to The Gipsy Kings' "Bambaleo" with Thoppil nearly dropped me onto a table during a low dip, but I redeemed myself with the sultry and bluesy "Black Velvet" by Alanna Myles. Maybe I should just give up on this whole world saving thing and become a lounge singer?

A Series of Unexpected Events

Apparently my blog is worth mention in a local blog filter meta-site: http://www.blogbharti.com/kuffir/india/32-flavors-and-then-some/.

So maybe the Bollywood thing isn't working out, but at least I can be a blog celebrity. Thanks to Akshay for sending me the link!

In other news: something must be in the air today, because a whole slew of weird/uncanny/inexplicably Indian things happened:

1. I lost an earring, of my favorite pair that somehow I've managed to lose and recover in such disparate places as Prague, Somerville, San Francisco, and Udaipur, Rajasthan. Turns out it was stuck in my hair (which is crazy long, for those of you following along from home).

2. (background note: a few weeks ago I started volunteering with a 2nd NGO, Mobile Creches, which runs childcare centers on construction sites to serve the children of the workers who set up slums on the periphery of the sites. As it turns out, the NGO is run by a fellow Brandeis grad,who also was an ethics and coexistence student fellow. I go to the centers to do basic data collection, but I get to play with the kids and they are fantastic.) So today I went back to the Versova site in Andheri W for nothing short of the 3rd time. For some reason it just takes much longer there to get through each kid's info- but this time the head teacher dispatched sentries into the slum to retrieve the mothers, so we could get more info right from the source. Kinda crazy to meet a bunch of these women who are my age, or younger, with children, and with years of manual labor in the beating sun evident in the look of their skin and shape. As soon as I came in my favorite kiddie, Puja, the most talkative, animated, and tall 2 year old I've ever seen, immediately ran to me and jumped into my lap. I could feel the wetness of her tushy. Later one mother came in with a wee little baby- maybe 5 months- and I got to hold him. No diapers here either, but kohl around the eyes and another dot on the chest, and nail polish on the fingers and toes- for a baby boy. He started falling asleep in my arms, it was excruciatingly adorable. I haven't held a baby that little, I think, since I met my little cousin Julian for the first time at another cousin, Michelle's wedding. I didn't even realize how much I miss it.

3. On the train home, a young woman came into my carriage who is Angelina Jolie's Indian avatar. Looks just like her. I couldn't stop staring.

4. Coming out of Santa Cruz station, there was a family huddled together, and the father was holding a baby girl out at arms' length. First I was struck by her outfit- a bright, hot pink ruffly frilly dress. Lots of little kids seem to wear outfits for day to day activities that I would expect kids in the States only to wear for super fancy occasions. Anyway, then I realized the reason he was holding her at arms' length is that she was peeing. Just suspended there in the air, peeing on the floor of the station overpass (or flyover, as they say). Between this sight, and the kids at the creche today, I was reminded of the Great Sri Lankan Peeing Incident of 2002, in which I was holding my host family's baby niece (to whom I was referred to as White Auntie Jocelyn, as if there was another Auntie Jocelyn and they needed to make a distinction), and she peed all over my legs, right through her cloth diaper. On the upside, at least South Asia's contribution to global warming does not include solid waste in the form of millions of disposable diapers.

5. Finally, on the walk home from the station I saw a cowboy. A white guy, wearing a great big cowboy hat, button down shirt, and tight jeans. Speaking perfect Hindi. I'm still speechless.

Yet another example of the absurdity that is India

An airplane got stuck on a city street. Sadly, by the time I heard about it, it was moved and I didn't get a chance to see it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6620461.stm

In today's Times of India

At work today, I'm doing my usual thing, reading the newspaper over a nice lunch of veg pulav with raita and veg gravy (basically peas and potatoes in tomato curry sauce). And then all of a sudden, amidst the stories of various messes with slum rehabilitation schemes, special economic zones, Iraq, Iran, missing children, shame of the Indian cricket team, etc etc- this appears:

Dalit couple burnt alive
Sangareddy (AP)
A Dalit couple was on Thursday burnt alive after being tied to a tree here for allegedly practising black magic.
Pandla Saila, 70, and his wife Pochamma, 65, of Olli Timmaipally village were set ablaze by their relatives and some villagers after they accused the duo of practising sorcery. A few incidents, including the death of a buffalo of Pandla Rajaiah and ailment of a girl in their kinship, were attributed to their black magic. The couple was tied to the tree and beaten up before they were burnt alive, said DSP R B Naik, who visited the crime scene.

(Dalit, by the way, is another name for the "untouchable" caste, also known as "backwards castes." Gandhiji encouraged use of the word Dalit as it is more humanizing than calling people untouchable or backwards. Good ol' Gandhi.)

TII. This is India.

And it's also the new department store I went to yesterday with prices nearly as high as American malls, with sparkling new tile floors and frigid air conditioning. It's also the beggar boy who sleeps spooning a stray dog on the floor in a main train station downtown, directly downwind of the bathrooms. It's also the benchmark of the Indian economy passing $3 trillion (that's just play money, seriously. Trillions??). It's also celebrating the lifting of the mango export restrictions. (Go get some Alphonso mangos, people. They will change your life.) It's also an elephant with a swastika tattoo in its ear. It's also using the internet for free at a movie theatre after seeing An Inconvenient Truth on Wednesday night. It's also the filth caked on the skin of the children I see at the Mobile Creche centers on construction sites around the city. It's also the burn victims flailing their amputated limbs on the walkway to Haji Ali mosque. It's also a pure veg Italian restaurant that also serves nachos, quesadillas, and guacamole when avocado is not "closed."

It is 32 flavors, and then some.