An Englishman in Mumbai

Rat flashbacks

2011-11-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Let me introduce you to a phenomenon that afflicts people from Mumbai when they travel elsewhere – it’s particularly related to ex-pats (like me, when we go back to Britain).
It’s called ‘rat-flashback’.

Just like the person who takes an hallucinogenic drug one day, only to find s/he has ‘flashbacks’ weeks, even months later, so the ex-pat will continue to ‘see’ the rats that are so common in Mumbai - even after the ex-pat has travelled back to a rat-free village in a sleepy English market-town.

It’s creepy.

Rats love Mumbai

The thing is: rats are everywhere in Bombay. Mostly I experience them on the walk from Colaba centre late at night back home. Rats are nocturnal.

(I know, you’re asking: why does he walk??? Because I like to, that’s why. The streets are strangely quiet at 1am, and even the traders sleeping on the pavement by their stalls seem profoundly unconscious).

As I walk silently, a rat will suddenly emerge, like an indistinct speeding shadow, and, just as immediately, disappear into a hole - on their way to their own kind of work.
They are the parallel population of Bombay, doing their own thing, slipping along walls, sometimes looking like leaves blowing along, sometimes looking as highly-motivated as a missile.

The most common place to see rats is... er.... as they scurry along a greasy back-wall in a restaurant. They move amazingly purposefully, keeping in the groove of the right-angle of wall and floor, hoping to be ignored – and most of the time they are of course.

I remember three of us, staring (as each of us caught the other looking open-mouthed), at one rat in a restaurant, which ran in a swift and business-like fashion across the back-wall before disappearing again. The waiters (who are used to it perhaps?) did not notice.

You may think we all got up and left. Of course we did not. The fact is that rats are in all restaurants (bar the five-star hotels, I suppose), so… where else would one go?

My theory about the food in such restaurants is this: as the cooked food is generally served so hot, most germs are killed, so it’s – generally – safe to eat. The corollary is: never touch the uncooked food.

Living with rats

I myself am not too bothered about rodents. The visceral fear that some people have – of, say, a rat nipping at one’s bare toes under a café table, or even wandering across your bedsheets one night – doesn’t really affect me.

Wandering in the slums one day, I came across some spilt milk in the corner of a dank alleyway. There, an elderly grey bruiser was lapping at it. We looked at each other. In disgust, he turned away, to hide and wait until I had gone. I was sorry to have disturbed him.

(Incidentally, I am wondering if the milk had been left out deliberately, as an offering. This is what happens in temples in north India for example. And, rats don’t have such a bad press in India as in England or the US, where there are constantly tabloid horror stories about them eating the noses off unprotected babies etc! But, by contrast, as you probably know, in India they are often seen as a sacred animal).

However, even though I’m relatively unbothered about rats, I did draw the line at one which had clambered a tree outside an upper-floor apartment and made its way in to our living quarters. (When the maid heard about this, she said, almost with satisfaction: “Indian rat – very clever.” She then added, darkly: “Indian men – not clever” though that was clearly her rehearsing some internal, private issue of her own...). The maid and I worked together all day to try to find it and drive it out, but of course it was hopeless. What she suggested then I found vaguely laughable – but it worked.

Secure all the food in the house on upper shelving, then leave some loose food out, overnight, she suggested, because then it will take what it wants and depart.

Hmm. I said I thought poison might be better, but she found this unpalatable (see my previous posting on ‘Stray Dogs’, a post about why some Indians find killing pests problematic).

Strangely, it worked. Er, I think. How would one know?

Flashback

But… to my point, about ‘rat-flashback’.

Even though I’m not as bothered as some about the sight of rats, I did become mildly jittery. A quick passing shadow in an unlit corner, a small object brushing across my path at night, an unexpected movement in a dark room – all can still give me a start, as though it were really a rat, and I even get a shiver of fear.

But I honestly thought this shivery apprehension was a Mumbai-only phenomenon, and was due to – frankly – the huge amount of rats one is likely to encounter in the city. Surely, the reaction would fade once I was away from Mumbai - after, say, six months?

Hmm. But, back in England, it continues.
In the corner of my eye, at a theatre during the play, a man a few rows ahead suddenly moved his foot (which happened to be in a black shoe): and I jumped!

As I walked home one night, a passing car threw a light on to a hedge, just as a leaf at its base trembled in a breeze…

The weirdest is when my glasses catch a small quick dark reflection in the peripheral vision. Of course, it’s an illusion.
Each time though, I react…

There’s even the parallel audio phenomenon. I can wake in my bed in a friend’s house (in a nice English residential area) and, yes, hear that skittering sound that rats make in the walls. Mostly, it's another illusion, being really a curtain flapping at the window, but it can be a small shock.

It’s a not a debilitating state of course, and I’m not going crazy (I hope), but it is an interesting phenomenon – and quite long-lived apparently. I am told by other ex-pats that these ‘rat-flashbacks’ can go on for years...

Prakash spins Mumbai Fables

2011-07-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

Books about the ‘real’ Mumbai/Bombay are less available than one might think for such a major and interesting city.

I thought Gillian Tindall’s one (City Of Gold) was fascinating as an introduction to the area’s history (and full of quirky anecdotes that make trudging through history a little more bearable!).
Maximum City is of course the fashionable book about Bombay at the moment, but in essence it bears down on the salaciousness of the city as seen through one man’s eyes. At least that man is a very good journalist.
And the coffee-table book ‘Bombay The Cities Within’ (Dwivedi/Mehrotra) – the story of the building and continuous rebuilding of Bombay – is basically a book of fabulous photos.

New book

So Mumbai Fables by Gyan Prakash is welcome, simply because it’s nice to have a very authoritative voice talking about the story of modern Mumbai, and because his book does add something – a very well researched socio-political & cultural account of the history of the city over the last 200 years (and more).
Incidentally, ‘socio-political’ as a term sounds dry, but Prakash cleverly uses certain incidents in the life and times of Bombay/Mumbai to make his accounts all sound rather more gossipy – and thus entertaining… He even alludes to the popular films that describe the experience of the city’s underbelly.

But… it all doesn’t feel engaged enough.
Prakash himself appears to live now in the US, though he tells us he spent some of his childhood in Bombay. And it does feel like an expatriate’s book, as though he’s peering through a lens at the city, not actually experiencing it as part of it.

He prefers to stick to a procession of references to original documents, rather than do what we really want – tell us what it all means!
Okay, that would have to be only his opinion, but I for one would like to hear his opinion! Instead his author’s ‘vision’ is blurred, as he prefers to have his thoughts refracted through lumbering accounts of the city’s literature, art, and popular-journalism.

Frightened

Trouble is – as well – that he seems so frightened of going out on a limb with original personal interpretations that, when he can’t refer to any archive documentation, the book starts to limp. For example, his reflections on the city’s vast flea market, Chor Bazaar, are, well, blindingly obvious.

His attachment to quoting original documents is frankly one he resorts to as though it were a crutch. The endless (ENDLESS!!) account of the famous Nanavati ‘society’ trial of the late 1950s is way over the top. It’s as though a PhD history thesis (and we know how those doctorates are all about nosing through piles of dusty original references) had been inserted into the book.

The myths of Mumbai – the story of its gangster underworld for instance – are faithfully recounted from the sources… but does Prakash want to winkle out the deep truth that may be in the sources? Doesn’t seem to. You almost feel that his scholarly nature disallows him – he prefers to allude to the “tapestry of different, overlapping and contradictory experiences”.
Fair enough, but a historian needs to help us stand back and see the bigger pictures that form in the ‘tapestry’.

I wanted desperately to know the answers to certain questions – for instance, why (exactly, please!!) did Shiv Sena arise? Prakash gives us dates, times, serendipities, but, no, not deep interpretations.
Now and again, there are (you can sense them as a sub-text!) scholarly disputes over what he thinks someone meant by such-and-such, but, goodness!, such hair-splitting! Give me big, bold statements any day.

Maps

Oh… and by the way – an irritation. There’s not a decent map of the city in the whole book (outlines, yes - detailed map, no) which is a bit odd, don’t you think? We read of the city’s districts, and yet are left to imagine how the city’s districts and suburbs form a geography. Grrrrr!
I shall not mention the low-resolution, badly-printed photos, which are… a disgrace.

Okay, Mumbai Fables is scholarly, and, thankfully, gossipy enough to make it readable. I’m glad I’ve read it; and glad it exists.
In it the skeleton of the city is accounted for; but Mumbai’s living flesh is untouched by this book.

Good for Prakash for spending so much time studying in library archives; but he could have some more of his time just simply walking the city’s streets.

Links: Mumbai Fables (Princeton Press); Mumbai Fables - review on Middle Stage ; Mumbai Fables review on The Oxonian

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-02-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

The trick (for me) in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was to spot the join in the fusion of author Vikas Swarup’s idea of India and director Danny Boyle’s idea of India. You’d think, wouldn’t you?, that the gap between the two would have been pretty wide. After all, how could Danny Boyle (a guy from Manchester) know India in the way that Swarup does?

Fact is, though, it’s amazing how Indian the film feels. It’s not just that the boys speak in Hindi (with sub-titles) in the movie, or that there is a funny, imaginary Bollywood-style dance sequence at the end (the first real reference to Bollywood), but that Danny Boyle seems to have picked up, somehow, an empathy for the country he is depicting.

Maybe I’m over-stating it, but think how Slumdog echoes the attitudes in films in the present Indian film industry. Plots in films like say, Chak De, or Black, are sophisticated without being deep, and also build through setbacks to the ultimate feel-good catharsis. So does Slumdog.

Also, Boyle doesn’t make the big mistake that most Westerners do, about Mumbai, and Dharavi especially, of seeing poverty as meaning degradation. Most Mumbaikers I know (outside those in Government service, who just seem depressed most of the time!) are too busy trying to come up with the next Great Idea To Make Money to be wallowing in despair.

And Boyle also gets beauty right; there is so much beauty in children, in women, and even in men. This is not being patronising – this is a fact of Mumbai. Yep, the place has decay in its bones, but life is vigorous.
The train sequences are genius too. Somehow Danny Boyle seems to have instinctively realised that trains are a centre-point of existence in Mumbai… he just gets it! They are a public arena, where everything human takes place; they are sort-of like mobile public squares into which we all wander, and sit, and chat, an d eat, and sleep.

So, is it a film I recommend? Yes, I do, wholeheartedly.
Okay, it’s not very profound, there are no life-changing moral insights, and there are some scenes which are lack truthfulness even for fiction (I just don’t believe any Americans are as stupid as the ones in the Taj Mahal sequences, which makes the scenes an easy pop at America – it’s just for very cheap laughs I think) – but… for the fact that it will make the real India accessible to western audiences, I applaud it.

So, off-line, were there are any other aspects which just caught my eye?

Yes (bet you guessed there would be, huh?).

* Muslim Mumbai. What a lot of Western audiences won’t get is that Jamal and Salim, the two brothers, are Muslim in what is a predominantly Hindu city. Muslims make up a sizeable minority In Mumbai, and do well on many business and career levels, but, the bottom–line is that they are very often the poorest and most discriminated against in the city. In fact, one of the first scenes in the movie shows the tiny brothers’ parents being slaughtered in anti-Muslim riots – I would guess (I haven’t read Swarup’s book) that this is the pogrom of 1992, in which nearly a thousand Muslims died.
But this theme – a Muslim in Mumbai – fades away as the film progresses (though Salim’s last words are those a Muslim should say - ‘God is great’). I guess Boyle/Swarup does that deliberately… but I did wonder why it became under-played.

* The Taj Mahal. The two tiny brothers wander India on trains before ending up at the end of the tourist trail in Agra.
I just want to say as the two beggar boys cry out in wonder on seeing the TM for the first time there in front of them – is this Heaven?!! – that I identified with them completely at that moment. The Taj is a staggering, staggering place; and I feel sorry for Indians who get so used to it.
As a foreigner I have never become used to it. It is … Heaven.

* The actors. Well Dev Patel is fine, but I kinda forgot how good Anil Kapoor is. I have gotten used to seeing him in rather B-grade stuff, but as the quiz-show host he is great, and even outshines the always exemplary Irfan Khan.
Indians can never quite believe me when I tell them that the Indian film industry is almost totally ignored by Westerners – you’re more likely to see a Mexican or Japanese film at your local cinema/film-theatre in the US or France than an Indian one.

Now, I know a lot of this is to do with the length. A Western audience is not going to sit through three hours; they just won’t. But it’s a source of great frustration to me. How can I explain the fact that a fine and moving film like, say, Maqbool/Macbeth, is just not going to get exposure, even in an arthouse theatre, in the UK?
Trouble is, the English non-Asian audience still thinks Bollywood is wet saris in Switzerland, and won't take it seriously.
Slumdog is the nearest they are going to get to an 'Indian' movie – which is both heartening and depressing at the same time.

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A take on Aravind Adiga's White Tiger

2009-01-14T05:06:00.000-08:00

This is the story of a boy from the village, who becomes a driver, is sickened by India's rich class, murders his master, and yet then ‘graduates’ to become one of the "India Shining", an entrepreneur. That’s it in a nutshell, and it won the Man Booker Prize 2008.

Actually, it's not that good a book, being a little glib and very speedy (I read it in a day), but it is NOT just a pot-boiler; and for someone like me it was both evocative and provocative.

It addresses the question: why do India's servant classes accept the contempt and the oppression and even the hatred they daily receive from their employers?

Underclass

I've often been astounded with the nastiness in the ways that otherwise quite reasonable people (familiar acquaintances of mine in fact) treat their servants. It's quite eye-popping to observe a cultivated man suddenly act in a peremptory and outrageously angry with another human being - whom they obviously regard as little better than an insect (check out servants' living areas if you don't believe me - family pets are better treated). It's doubly shocking to think that these servants are paid a pittance. But, in fact, the most shocking thing is that happens everywhere in this - a democracy.
Now, I hear the objections from the India patriots: what about, they will say, the shocking record of America, where true equality came belatedly to black people - and less than fifty years ago? What about the horrors of Victorian London, only some one hundred & fifty years ago?
You (dear reader!) are right to object, of course... in a general sense. But I am talking about those Indian rich who profess total urbane sophistication but who yet seem to have TWO contrary belief systems in their heads, one expressing full egalitarianism and support for meritocracies, the other an extreme and almost totalitarian disregard for the masses.

(This weird mind-split can be very corrupting, and affects even visitors to India. I went round to an American's house in central Colaba, and there I found him talking in the most cruel and dismissive way about his maid, who as far as I could work out had been nothing but hard-working and loyal. He found my doubts and problems about the problems of employing such poor people laughable. Yet I have absolutely no doubt that, once he returns to America, he will return to being utterly classless and adopt a respectful attitude to all his fellow citizens).

Karma. Whatever.

In one of the 'Introduction To India'-type books that I bought on entering Mumbai, the writer put this attitude down to the legacy of caste and karma.
The theory in the book was that the rich believe (in their hearts, if not their minds) that they have been chosen by the Universe to be what they are - i.e. rich, and, having been chosen, are therefore provably better than the rest. The corollary is also true: that the poor are poor because the Universe gives them very little value. Poor and rich, so the Introduction claimed, then take on the valuation they appear to have divinely received.
I honestly cannot believe this. Yet... and the reason this book makes the claim I suppose ... there isn't a better theory around! It is quite a puzzle.

Sadly, while I felt Aravind Adiga got close to understanding both the driver's world and the rich man's world (quite a feat when you think what light years they are apart), and to explaining the main puzzle of 'why don't India's servants rebel?', it didn't help me with my own question - "why do the rich behave so badly?"
Now, I guess inherent beliefs about caste and karma do come into play with older people - but what about the new rich, those who have travelled extensively, those who are aware that people like me shudder at the blatantly inegalitarian relations they exhibit with their servants?

Strangely enough Adiga does play on one aspect of the rich, and makes it a metaphor for their outlook - their sleek, fat glossiness. (The rich in Britain and America are also well-rounded of course, but the nature of the extra pounds almost seems different somehow. The corpulence of the rich Anglo-Saxons seems an aberration, a failure to deal with prosperity properly, whereas the Indian rich wear fat as a badge of office. I've been continually surprised at how Indian aunties see the obesity of the new family toddler with pride (!) and not dismay.) This glossy fat is another way that the ostentatious rich mark themselves firmly off from the poor.

Review…

I seem to have wandered off the subject of reviewing White Tiger. Hmm. Back to the book.

The 'White Tiger' introduces us to a character who begins to realise and be sickened by the enormity of this social divide. The main character, Balram, takes matters into his own hands - despite the huge power of the system which seeks to confine him. (Interestingly, his main weapon is not his own courage or his righteous anger, but his ability to abandon his sense of family responsibility. In India, this is almost unthinkable, and makes him, like the amoral Richard III of Shakespeare, ‘himself alone’).

Actually though, I can’t think of much good about it as ‘literature’. Yes, the narrative sweeps one along (like so many best-sellers), and I can think of many plane-journeys on which I would have longed for this work. But – aren’t the characters just a little too wooden, and the scenes too predictable?

But… why doesn’t one just throw this book in the remainder pile with so many others?
Because: something nags at me.
The world Adiga talks of is, yes, the real world. It’s one I recognise and know from experience – I can fill in the gaps he leaves in his descriptions – it is the world of the dusty Mumbai street-corner, the stink of the drivers’ room, the shabby call-centre, the darkly-lit taxi office, and even the kitsch classical-style (sooooo ridiculous!), gated houses of the really rich Rich.
And into this real world comes a tiny whiff of gunshot, from Balram. He would never describe himself as a revolutionary, but his view is almost unique – because he decides to ignore The Universe. That’s pretty radical for India; and that is why this book nags at one.

Link: Review of White Tiger on ‘Middle Stage’

Dog Killing

2008-11-15T00:43:00.000-08:00

There are many stray dogs in Mumbai, most of which have a proprietorial air despite their starved and down-at-hell looks. They compete for the same food and resources (I suppose) as the poor street children.

Looking as though they have completely the right to be there, they will lie down in the middle of a busy pavement (or street sometimes) sunning themselves, or even settle in the corner of a stairwell in a public building having just wandered in.

The weird thing is that everybody will just walk round them, almost pretending that they are not there. Not a “shoo” or a kick to disturb them.

In fact, there is a tan dog that just seems to think it is a good idea to lie in the highway near Flora Fountain. And the taxi drivers – who care for nobody else - just drive round him...!

This is nothing similar to the British love of domestic pets. No one pets these animals, or feeds them, attends to them, or wants to care for them.
In my (admittedly limited) experience of households in Mumbai, it is mostly the upper classes that share the insane idea that it is good to keep a dog in the house; or indeed keep a dog at all.

So how to account for this apparent consideration given to those dogs who… well, frankly… are in the way…and not a little frightening?

I was about to put this down to the Mumbaiker’s great sense of insouciance until I learned one day that the black dog that lies around outside our building had bitten one of the drivers late one night. We all fussed around, bought some medicine, and bandaged the wound.

To my amazement however, the next morning I saw the black dog lounging in the lane as usual – completely undisturbed.

Rabies is still prevalent in India, and I couldn’t help but think of all the children who play in the lane. Presumably the dog would get them too – so we should DO something. You have to care, I thought.

The staff was amused by the thought that I could “contact the authorities”. What authorities?, they asked.

In frustration more than seriousness, I suggested: “Shall we organise a humane shooting of the dog if the authorities will not pick it up?” I asked this question of the security guards as I thought they might be a little more thoughtful – after all, after the children, they were next at risk.

They looked horrified. “Shoot it? No one can shoot it”.
“We would in England” I replied. The guards looked at me. I could see they were thinking what an unpleasant and dreadful place England must be.

And so, the dog is still there.
I take a very wide circle around it when I walk down that way.

What I had forgotten was the visceral, cultural, Hindu repulsion for wanton killing. The dog survives, because killing something is simply repulsive.
To commit such an act would be more damaging to someone than being bitten by the dog.

This aspect of India took its most manifest form was I was in the ‘slum’ one day, and a large bristly cockroach made an appearance in one of the homes. They’re quite quick, so I determined to stamp on it before it disappeared – but this was plainly not to be allowed. The lady of the house shook her head, and chased it out with a brush instead.
Afterwards I said to her – don’t you even lay traps for the rats that so often come in? No, she did not. Surely, you must slap the mosquitoes that settle on your skin? No, never, one drives them away with smoke. Surely, you spray fly-killer at least? No.
I was stunned. The disease brought into the slum by mosquitoes in particular causes havoc.

Later she confessed to me that she had once, years ago, killed a snake in a fit of fear, but that her culpability for its death haunted her even now.

Miserable Matheran - Mumbai's weekend break

2008-10-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

In the fairy-tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, everyone pretended that the king was fully clothed when in fact he was naked. It was a sort of mass delusion. Something similar it seems is occurring with the little hamlet of Matheran, a hill-station just a hundred kilometres from Mumbai. Everyone says how delightful it is. But, I come to tell you the truth. It is not. It is dull. Very dull.

Cool... in one way only

The main point about Matheran is that sited high up on a ridge in the Sahyadris. This makes it cool and tree-lined and leafy, and from certain exposed lookouts at its edges you have a good view of the valleys below. But, that’s it. That really is it.

Now, some folk talked to me about the Toy Train there, which circles higher and higher up the mountain taking you from the foothills up to the plateau on which the town rests. Okay, I said, I’m a grown-up, but I’ll try it.
And when we got to Nerul, the town on the plain below, just after midday, I did enquire about a ticket. But the man said: Ah, the next train is not for five hours sir. (Five hours? I thought this was the main attraction? What craziness is that?).
But, afterwards, I considered it a blessing that we did not take it; we found out that the little train takes two long hours to crawl up to the top. I mean, I like scenery – but not that much!
We took a taxi, and got there in fifteen minutes.

Pedestrianised

The second thing 'everyone' talks about is the “quaint” fact that only horses and hand-pulled rickshaws are allowed on Matheran’s lanes. I am not sure why there is this prejudice against motors. In fact, I thought a few putt-putts might be a boon, but maybe, because the roads are so dusty and badly maintained, no motorised rickshaw would last long on them anyway.

We duly mounted the horses that the hotel had sent for us. We were aching for an hour afterward.

A sunset... is just a sunset

When she was fit again, we set off to walk to a lookout point. You see, there is pretty much nothing else to do in Matheran but walk along lots and lots of meandering forest paths - as the centre basically consists of nothing a tiny “commercial” area, a couple of small lanes, hotels, and, well, that’s it.

I like walking, so this should have suited me. However, the maps are hardly exact, even the one in the excellent guidebook by Mr Utekar (much recommended), so getting lost is obviously meant to be part of the fun. If that is indeed the case, we had lots of fun.

Finally, we ended up with lots of other people at Sunset Point. Now, sunsets are rarely spectacular; mostly they are just sunsets. The one we attended was just that - an ordinary sunset. And I thought: if this were a Marine Drive sunset, I could now go for a drink at, say, Not Just Jazz.

On Sunset Point however, there is nothing left to do but the two-mile trudge back to the centre - in the dark.

Powdered

I could go on with the misery that is Matheran. If you are British, imagine being at Rhyl in March, or Calais.

Its soil is so red and dusty, that soon your face and clothes are caked with it. The kids are so bored they tease the horses. The food is abysmal; I had my worst-ever meal in Matheran (tip: never ask for a sizzler). The “historic” British-era bungalows are ugly, crumbling and on private land.

One shopkeeper confessed to me that even the chappals (for which Matheran is supposedly famous) are actually nearly all made in Mumbai, and shipped up. (Okay, the chikki is pretty good – but you can get that anywhere these days.)

Tukaram

Did I enjoy anything about Matheran?

Okay, one thing – Tukaram’s horses. Most of the horse-drivers hold the reins of the horses as they ride you along, for safety reasons I suppose. But Tukarram is a bit of an anarchist – to your complete surprise, he just lets you go, and, what’s more, then shouts at your horse if it shows like flagging, and urges it to gallop. To a born city slicker like me, the experience was pretty frightening – and exhilarating!

So, if you have the misfortune to find yourself in Matheran, seek out Tukaram. With his help, Matheran might turn out slightly less than Deadly Dull.

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Mumbai's sexiest

2008-10-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

I know this is entirely predictable, but sometimes that traditional heterosexual male in me just WON’T be suppressed…. so it came to me that there just seems to be no contest over who the sexiest looking women in Mumbai are.
Yep, it’s those airline lasses.

You turn up to the airport to take an internal flight, and the sight of the Kingfisher girls just slaps you in the face (metaphorically of course). Mostly because they are wearing a uniform/outfit that is such a dramatic slash of total red, top to very bottom, that they seem to be tearing slits across one’s eyeballs. See the photo on the right.
Now, I admit their pant-suits do at first have an unfortunate resemblance to the garb of a cheesy Las Vegas magician or circus performer with their glue-like fits, but if you’re willing to keep looking (and some of us are), you can overcome that hurdle.

These representatives of Mr Vijay Mallya (the multi-millionaire whose face is ever in the finance pages) may only represent a low-cost internal airline - but they glide around supremely confident, knowing that they are The Business. Their uniforms look freshly laundered and well-fitted, the short tight sleeves leave their arms bare from just above the elbow, and the matador-style thin jacket somehow doesn’t look as stupid as it usually does on most people; I suppose because they are nearly all incredibly slender. Yes indeed, here’s a shock: they may well be chosen for their looks…
They even walk like models around the concourse, as though they own it, with a leisurely luxurious lasciviousness, their two-inch heels (on otherwise strangely ‘sensible’ shoes) clacking on the terminal’s shiny floor. With the way that a confident woman does, they look right through their admirers. It’s crushing.
(The shoes incidentally are an odd match against all this bright red, being the colour of an orange-red sun. I do not howvere blame the girls themselves for this faux-pas. Of course not).

Poor Deccan

The Deccan Airline girls unfortunately come second to that Kingfisher vision. Whilst they too wear a red outfit, actually almost the same red to be frank (it’s even a little confusing), they have a more traditional look – sensible knee-length skirts and blazer. Somehow, although as good-looking, they contrast porlly with the more modern-looking Kingfisher army which manages to render them just dumpy-looking. It’s sad.

But I do have a soft spot for the Jet Airways ladies.
Their designer has been presented with a difficult colour code - a mournful blue as its defining hue, with a splash of mud-yellow only. But – it must be the fit surely? – the ladies do carry it off.
The cut and shape seem to be long, loose and tight all at the same time (how is that done?), and the crisp white shirt, with the long white collars, makes a statement peeping from underneath.
Again, they walk with extreme insouciance and grace, aware that they are the object of gazing all around … and a glimpse of white shirt as a trim on the short sleeves of their tunics plays it off beautifully.
Not as dramatic as Kingfisher, and duller in plumage, but they have subtlety for sure.

It certainly makes the long wait at the airport gates a little more enjoyable. You can watch the little dramas at the exits with a little more interest.

I like the airlines

By the way, don’t listen to the bad-mouths about the Indian internal airlines.
Of course they have problems. India is a huge country, and dealing with sizzling hot temperatures, lashing monsoon storms, and the mountain wastes up by the Himalayas would test any airline.
But I seem to get by using them; and was only let down badly once. If you want to fly cheaply, you have to take the downside of it (ie - read the small print!)
Of course, getting your money back after a cancellation can be a nightmare, but then… oh let’s not go on about that.
Back to the ladies.

What puzzles me is that in such a conservative country, it’s thought that their uniforms are acceptable.
Let’s face it – every other woman in officialdom is wearing saris or variations on salwar kameezes (does the national carrier’s stewardesses still wear saris? I can’t remember), so why are these attendants not? Instead they, the Kingfisher girls, are wearing very sexy tight pants. It’s a puzzle and in some parts of India would be regarded as, well, offensive.
Perhaps it’s seen as Western, Western being a term which is synonymous with ‘modern’. All airlines want to be modern, don’t they? Perhaps that’s it.

Incidentally, am I the only blogger to have written a hymn to these ladies?
I hope not. They deserve more fame than that.

**

By the way, what’s happened to the boys at Mumbai airport who used to seize your suitcases out of your hand, carry them to your car, and demand one-pound-sterling for their services (yes I know it’s a 1000% mark-up!)?
They seem no longer to be there. Have they been chased off?
It seems amazing if they have been. They were a nuisance, but somehow part of the whole welcome-to-Mumbai chaotic experience. Gone huh?

Modernity indeed. Who needs it?

Bombay Sweat

2007-09-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

It’s said that the Eskimos of the Arctic regions live and work so much with snow that they have over fifty-two words with which to describe it.
If this is true, then visitors to Mumbai, especially now in the summer months, must have a similar amount of words to describe the various types of sweat that this city grants to us.

Coming from England, where even on the hottest days, you might want to carry a jacket with you, and sweating is something you do only in a sauna, I have been amazed by how many ways a man can perspire.

Examples

There is the little tickly drop that starts at your neck, and slowly passes down the back of your spine, before dripping tantalizingly off the very end of your backbone. When it disappears, a new one starts again…
The frizzy ends of hair on the back of one’s head are usually the starting point for this little journey, so you can attempt to beat it by toweling the back of your head. And then you realise your neck is sweating too.

There is the middle-of-the-day sweat when the sun thumps down on your head while you are out walking. As it does so, your hair seems to thicken, and then it seems suddenly as if a thousand small moist creatures are conspiring to oil each strand, separate them out, and make them stand on end.
Funnily enough, this is not an unpleasant feeling, as you feel like a cake bubbling in an oven. It’s a sort of prickling sensation. I am sure that to feel like a cake cannot be a bad thing.

Then there is the embarrassing line or series of small dots that appears on your tee-shirt front (even though you have only walked a few yards from your taxi). This often occurs when you are about to bump into a smart friend (who travels everywhere by a/c of course).
It is pretty tiresome for men because the line forms just below one’s breasts, and seems to insinuate (to someone who might not know) the beginning of a sex-change process. I guess though it must be worse for women.
You can try to fold your arms and hide it – but everyone seems to know it’s there.
A variation on this is to get into a taxi for a long ride, and then realise that the seat covers have that familiar smooth consistency of arctic-flock material, and are double packed with nylon foam (why such unsuitable material?... I really don't know). This would be fine in Norway; but in Mumbai, it is a trap. Lean back on this seat for long, and the back of your shirt will have to wrung out and hung out to dry after twenty minutes; but, even if you sit forward, away from the back-rest, (but sit in that one position for too long), well, take it from me, the backside of your trousers will be soggy. Ugghh.

Nights can be bad. We all can guess how sticky it can be at 3am in Bombay in May, but imagine being English too – the sensation of being glued to one’s sheets by one’s own sweat is a new experience.

But the worst is the slow burn. In a non-AC restaurant, or a room without a fan, one’s forehead takes on a second, clammy layer, one’s face begins to turn scarlet, one’s eyelids even get heavy with damp…. until, finally, when the sides of one’s ears have become tiny rivulets of moisture, one has to run outside and seek the breezes of the Arabian Sea.

Prevention and Cure

There are many more variations.
But it is axiomatic that if I walk this city now – day or night – sooner or later the little pricks of liquid heat will come.

I bet you’re wondering about underarm sweat patches.
It’s an interesting question, because, for some reason – perhaps it’s the quality of the anti-perspirant sold here (is it super-strong to match local requirements?) – I don’t know anyone affected too much by them, which is odd isn’t it? Maybe it is also the type of humidity in Mumbai? Perhaps. I should research it.

Some of my Northern friends are clever enough now to make sure they prepare themselves for the Possibility of Sweat. They do this by reducing effort almost to nothing.
If they are going somewhere, they get ready slowly and easily, and never rush. They travel by a/c car; they do not walk even 200 yards. They arrive early at the smart hotel, just in case they need to cool off in the (usually freezing) bar. They never walk up the stairs.

But I must admit that, generally, this is not a solution for me. I refuse to allow the heat to curtail my desire to wander. This city is wonderful to meander around, and so much would be lost if strolling were denied to its visitors.

So I wear thin tee-shirts, I wear cotton shorts, I wear chappals, and I wear a Vietnamese jungle hat. I ignore the stares when I cool off at smart coffee shops. I look like someone from Lost (except for the muscles): it’s not pretty. But it makes me free.

Anyway, isn’t there something ridiculous about being in a tropical city and yet retreating constantly into the kind of temperature-controlled rooms that take igloos as standard for imitation?
Excessive AC is normal in posh environments here- but it’s just plain unnatural, surely?

So, as I’m in Mumbai, I have determined not to run away from Sweat – but to learn to embrace it. (Er, metaphorically).
Yes – and crazy as it sounds, it works. In England, the way to defeat the Cold of Winter is to see it as a companion, a stern and distant one, yes, but a companion. If you fear Cold, it will get into your bones and eat you.
Same with Sweat. If you can interpret the invasive discomfort as a welcome gesture from the city (no, I am not crazy!), actually, you can get along fine.

And – one advantage.

This morning I played tennis with Deepak. After half an hour, my T-shirt was drenched and I could barely see through the cascade of sweat-drops descending from my brow.
(He, on the other hand, was still tucked up in his tracksuit, and almost looking as though he could do with an extra warm-up. Amazing.)

But I felt great. I wasn’t just pretending to have a sweaty workout, this WAS a sweaty work out. The more the sweat flooded my brow, the more I felt virtuous. I must be doing something right, I thought.
And I didn’t have to go on no treadmill to do it with some personal trainer yelling at me.

However, the downside to extreme running about in the Bombay summer is the shower afterwards. The combination of exercise and highly humid heat has driven up one’s body temperature by a few degrees, at least temporarily… and no matter if you have a cold shower, you’ll still be sweating ten minutes later. In fact the very stupidity of putting on (warming) clothes immediately after your shower will make you torridly sweaty and hot all over again, thus negating the shower completely.
You have no choice but to sit in the dressing room, and wait for the body’s own cooling controls gradually to sort out the issue.

The trouble is that Deepak just thinks it’s all pretty funny. He’s already in the bar with a cold beer (which he doesn’t need).
And, because he is always unflappable, and never overheated, I guess my situation does look pretty funny to him at that.

**

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Bombay Railway

2007-09-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve been living here over a year now, but sometimes it takes another person’s view to make you see properly what’s been in front of your own eyes all this time.

By a weirdly long route, a DVD recording of Gerry Troyna’s recent BBC TV documentary about the railways in Bombay, called, er, “Bombay Railway” fell into my hands, and I just had to watch it – mostly cos I get a kick of watching something related to a city I know and then saying – “yes, I’ve been there!”
(I don’t know why I like doing this. This habit sounds a bit childish as I write it down… But if you live in Mumbai as I do, it happens a lot when you watch Bollywood. I spent most of the movie “Lage Raho Munnabhai” just identifying the backgrounds. Very irritating for the person watching it with me as it turned out later).

Information, Education, Entertainment

Anyway, the documentary, which is in two halves, Part One being called “Pressure” and Part Two being called "Dreams", is really a revelation, even for a resident like me. I should have known it would be because the film’s maker, Gerry Troyna, has been coming to the city on and off for twenty years, so he knows much about what the city is.

Actually, It’s a kind of old fashioned documentary in that it simply follows the lives of a dozen or so ordinary people whose livelihood is somehow entwined with the railways – from the train driver near retirement to a hawker who works the women’s carriages.
It’s also “old-fashioned” in that there is no hidden agenda or thesis to push, there is no interrogating of the participants, and, on the positive side, there is also a desire to capture just how happy ordinary people can be as well as how crushed they can get.
And all the time, there is a gentle drip-feed of facts and figures about the enormous industry that is the railways of Bombay (Did you know: that six million passengers daily use the city’s system, over just 300km of track? Stunning).
The documentary ends up giving you that famous combination of Information, Education and Entertainment. Which is just what I appreciate.

Railway essential

For Mumbaikers, the railway system is just plain essential. The shape of the city is like a long water-drop, and this makes the roads hugely congested. To drive from one end of the city to the other (which is about 30 kilometers) will easily take two hours. On a train it takes twenty minutes.
And in a city where fifty per cent of the inhabitants are so poor they live in slum conditions, it has the added advantage of being incredibly cheap.

The system is also just part of the landscape. Unlike London, where the railways are often hidden behind embankments or high concrete fences, these rail lines often run quite visibly alongside the main highways in the city. You can often be walking along, looking at the pavement (if there is one!) and look up, and there’s a train running parallel to you. Because the carriages are basically glorified cattle-transporters, without doors as such, many of the passengers will also be leaning out into the slipstream enjoying the cooling breeze. It looks a crazy thing to do, and, actually, there are lots of accidents.

(Somehow people don’t seem to get too worked up about the rate of accidents, strangely. Over three thousand people are knocked over and killed or fall off trains every year in Bombay, a statistic that would close down the national network in Britain, but there seems to be a belief here that it’s usually the victims’ own fault anyway. And that could be true. Because railway land is so open, and because Mumbaikers love a bit of risk, you’ll see people wandering all over the lines at all times of day, with some families even bedding down in small shelters by the lines. It’s a Health & Safety Inspector’s nightmare!)

In fact, the driver, whose story we follow in the film, admits, almost in passing and without self-pity, that he has driven his train into nearly seventy people during his career (many accidents are at night, in poor light). It is also his gruesome and statutory job to ensure that the body is removed form the line before the train can continue. But he shrugs his shoulders, albeit a little quietly, at the fact.
This rather blasé attitude can work to the city’ s advantage though, because it means it would take something huge to close down the network. Even the terrible floods of 26/7/2005, in which 500 people died, only saw the schedules suspended for … twenty-four hours!

If you do get a chance, this film has got to be worth seeing - whether you’re interested in railways, urban infrastructure, or simply how Mumbai keeps going.
The end of the documentary is brilliantly conceived as a Bollywood–style fantasy song and dance sequence on a fictional Bombay station, as dreamed up by the railway officer who is another of the figures in the film. Somehow the whole concept just gets the spirit of the Mumbai ‘thing’, whatever that is, and gets it just right.

Finally, the other great thing about this film is that it’s about the range of unnoticed people, whose efforts keep the railways so vital. There’s such a temptation in Bombay to concentrate on the pretty people, or the billionaires, or the politicians, but Gerry Troyna has just quietly selected the right people in his profile.
There’s the magistrate who holds his court for railway offenders on a station platform; there’s the guy who just wants to create a successful business selling food on the trains; there’s the street-kid who sleeps by the tracks – and more.
It’s his genius I think to have spotted these people, to have helped them relax enough to be filmed acting so naturally, and then woven them into being integral features of the bigger story – that of the railway system itself.

I know your chances of getting to see it are slim now (though it might turn up on Discovery – who knows), but honestly I should try to get to see it.
If anyone hears of where and when it’s playing in Mumbai, just let me know, or stick what you know in Comments.

**

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Links: BBC's webpage about 'Bombay Railway', and The film's Bollywood sequence "Chali Chali" -on YouTube

Eating with Fingers

2007-09-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing I have not got used to while living here it’s eating with my fingers. None of my Indian friends makes a big deal of my choice, and I think they even prefer I stick to cutlery, as then I don’t look so awkward or inept, which is just embarrassing for everyone.

(I should say that in Mumbai, among the professional and middle classes, nobody seems to care much anyway. If you go to someone’s house to eat dinner, half the folks will eat with their fingers, half will not, and nobody cares either way. Mumbai is a city that grants some freedom of action to its citizens.
If anything, in Mumbai, the overt prejudice can be against those who eat with their fingers. At four and five star restaurants or a very sophisticated dinner party, it would have to be a very confident person who would follow his or her inclination and eat with fingers).

Some ex-pat friends that I have, particularly those with NGOs, tell me however how liberating it is, how it brings us closer to the food that we eat, how sensual it is, and indeed how environmentally conscious it is – no nasty washing up liquid to have to use to wash cutlery (and if you use banana leaves instead of plates you get double green points!).
I do wonder however how they square up their washing of pots and pans – do they scour them with sand as some roadside food stalls do? Perhaps. I must ask them.

Anyway, I’ve tried it, but I don’t like it.
The biggest issue for me is probably the most trivial for others – and that is the thought of all that food getting squeezed up under my fingernails. Sad? Hmm, I guess you may be right, but we all have our issues.
The second thing is that, in most ordinary Mumbai restaurants, the water for washing one’s hands in is usually cold. Now, actually, the germ removal from a thorough scrubbing in cold water and soap is said to be around 90% - which is not bad. …What worries me is the other ten per cent of germs.
And after the meal, I can’t hack the greasy residue left on one’s fingers. Again, cold water and soap can eliminate most of that – but not all of it, and all I want to do is to find a hot water source and clean my hand thoroughly.
Are my feelings part of the slightly crazy Western obsession with hygiene? Or a perfectly permissible personal choice? I’m still considering.

It is one of those peculiar cultural impasses.

Indian friends say that it just seems prissy and affected to use cutlery – it just makes them uncomfortable.

I like to point out to them that cutlery washed in boiling hot water and detergent has a much higher rate of cleanliness than fingers ever can attain (apparently, it’s not just down to the temperature that things are washed in, but it's also due to the fact that steel cutlery is totally smooth, unlike human skin which has minute crevices) – but even those “facts” don’t convince them to change their minds at all.
Indeed, I suppose the upside of living here, vis a vis eating habits, is that it reinforces the need to wash one’s hands each and every time before eating, whether you’re having a quick bite or a meal. Since I started doing that, I’ve rarely been sick.

Of course at this point, someone wisely points out that Westerners in fact do often eat with their fingers – when they eat biscuits or pastries or sandwiches or potato chips.
Does it make sense if I say that such items, which are by nature non-sticky (well, mostly) do not fall into the same gluey category as say, a biryani? (The one exception to this rule that I can think of is those Americans who eat cheesy pizza slices with their fingers. I don’t understand that at all).
But, as the same person, again wisely, points out – you still have to deal with issue of unclean fingers touching the food you eat…
Er…yes. He’s quite right. Caught up in the web of my own logic there!

I think I should halt my ramblings at this point, while I consider the fact that there is nothing like seeing another culture to make you realise how weird and inconsistent your own is…

**

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Fading Glory of the Parsis

2007-08-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

Though Bombay is a city that is all-inclusive, that does not mean that there are not quite firm divisions between communities. These different communities may meet and barter on the street without differences, but back inside their homes they will pursue markedly distinct ways of life.

One of the most intriguing communities (to me) is the Parsi one. Parsis, aka Zoroastrians, are a religious group, originally from the area covered by the ancient Persian Empire, who started coming to India around 900 CE. In the nineteenth century their fortunes, in Bombay in particular, seemed to have taken a huge lift-off, and some of their members became very powerful.
The fact is that South Mumbai (the old part) is absolutely riddled with statues, and most of them seem to be of the great Parsi merchants and entrepreneurs who, alongside the British, virtually ran the city in the 1800s and early 1900s. Frozen in their monuments, they sit on stone thrones, and stare out at the city that seems to have been moulded by them.

However, what’s odd is that the Parsis’ status, influence, and even numbers, seem to have dwindled at an amazing speed over the last half-century. Their population in Bombay has almost halved since the Second World War. Certain individuals shine out, but mostly the Parsi tone in Bombay now appears to be one of faded glories.

The previous paragraph is of course a generalisation, but, if you want to see just how faded the glories can become, check out Mumbai’s painfully wilting Parsi History museum….

Museum unregarded
The Time Out Guide to Mumbai doesn’t even mention the FD Alpaiwalla Museum (though, oddly, it does mention the Khareghat housing estate, aka “colony”, in which the museum is located).
At first this would seem a strange omission – after all, the museum has some ancient artefacts, which it claims are nearly 4000 years old, and a beautiful sixteenth century carved gate from Gujarat, which alone would give it high prestige. And then there are also antiques from the Persia area, including stone tablets with cuneiform writing inscribed on them, which are fascinating. (Well, they are to me).
Despite its small size, just that of four large rooms, the museum has got some nice pieces.

But, the full story is that… it’s dingy, dilapidated and under-serviced.
The visitor’s book, speckled with age, told its own story – twenty entries in the last six months. And, certainly, I never saw another soul in the hour was there.

You begin to wonder who’s running it – and why they do so little to promote it…
It’s almost as though the committee/trustees/whatever prefer it that no one comes there!

For example –
There are no directions to the place inside or outside the housing colony.
There’s no sign on the front that outlines opening times, admission details, or contact information.
No photos are allowed (not even for a fee, as at most Indian museums).
There were no souvenirs on sale, nor information leaflets to be had.
There is no website (This really gets my goat. C’mon guys, this is the 21st century, and a webpage can cost you nothing. Just do it!)

The sweet lady who occupies the office next door reinforced that no photos were possible. Why?, I asked. Because the committee does not allow it. Why does the committee not allow it? She then completely confused me by saying that the exhibits were rotated from the main collection, as if that explained the policy somehow.
However, I was now intrigued and asked – so, what other exhibits are there that you have that I might want to see next time, and when does the next rotation cycle kick in?
She seemed nonplussed, as though the idea of my wanting to return was completely crazy, and then she said – ah, sorry, I don’t know, and there is no catalogue of artefacts anyway…
I was stunned.
She said apologetically: “There is no money. The government does not give grants”.
I thought: I’m not surprised – you do your very best neither to attract visitors nor to entertain them…

Whoever is on the committee should be awoken from their coma and get responsible. Now!

It actually could be rather good…

Because, the fact of the matter is that this could be a decent small museum with a unique selling point in that it is dedicated to a surprisingly influential but tiny community. And it has some interesting (ok, ok, they are a bit dry – but I liked them) displays.
One top attraction is the Mother goddess terracotta figurine dating back to 1800BCE – who has one hand cupped around one of her breasts in an oddly modern pose – and which is from Iran itself.

The great Parsi businessmen whose photos are on the wall – such as Nariman, Mehta (whom Zubin Mehta is a descendant of), Jamshedjee Jejeebhoy, Dadabhai Naoroji (who was elected as a British MP in 1892, believe it or not), Godrej, Tata, Modi, and Petit – must surely be staring down in huge disapproval. The priceless collection of porcelain, the furniture and the antiques are all just gathering dust, as far as I can see, and all those Parsi business instincts are being turned on their head.

(Just a side-note here. Parsis aren’t universally liked in Bombay even if they are respected. They got very pally with the British during the Raj, and became almost more British in their mannerisms and outlook than the British themselves. The well-off Parsi homes that I’ve seen do look as though they could be in Surrey! As a result, some Mumbaikers look askance at them, feeling they made a devil’s pact with the “oppressors” during the 1800s.)

There is also a practical need for this museum to be successful.
Parsis won’t need reminding that the Battle of Nehavand in 641 was nearly fatal for their religion and culture. The Muslim Arabs were in the ascendancy at that time and their blitzkrieg across the Middle East meant that it took just thirty years for them to overrun the old Assyrian Empire. Zoroastrianism has survived in that part of the world of course, but only in tiny clumps and under duress, and of the 120,000 Parsi/Zoroastrians left in the world, just under half are in Bombay, having originally come there as part of the Parsi diaspora. (A lot of them also went to China, which I only learnt thanks to the museum).

And now there is a similar crisis. As I said, their numbers are in big decline. You see, you can’t convert into the faith, and if a Parsi’s child is born of a mixed religion marriage then they are not allowed to be of the faith either. In a mobile and free-choice world, such rules spell possible disaster for the community. (There is dispute about who can become a Parsi - check the link below to the Wikipedia page).

See – another reason to get this museum up and properly running.

Donate the lot

Poor old Alpaiwalla. He put most of this collection together and then died in 1952 just before the museum opened, and now look at what’s happening.
Somehow, I think he’d be just as happy if the whole collection were handed over to Bombay’s main museum, the CSMS, which is doing a fine job under difficult circumstances. Surely, the trustees there would make a decent job of looking after it.
It just needs some courage from the apparently sleeping committee to go ahead and donate the lot asap.

______________

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Links
'Yahoo Travel' entry on the Alpaiwalla Museum
Wikpedia's Section on Parsis
UNESCO Project to preserve Parsi Heritage

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(Addendum -- Bet you never thought an Englishman could write a piece about Parsis without mentioning vultures, or the rite of The Tower of Silence, or Freddie Mercury…! )

Monsoon Myths

2007-08-31T09:57:00.000-07:00

Living as a foreigner, in any society I suppose and not just Mumbai, means that life is just one long series of startling revelations.
Because you are learning from scratch, you are constantly running up against a theory or sight previously unknown to you. What’s more, if you have a curious mind and want to ask “er, why is this so?”, somebody is usually there to give one (or more) explanations to you of what’s going on.
But – and it’s a Big But - the advantage of being an outsider is that you do not have the same in-built belief system as everyone around you. You have the advantage of being able to be sceptical of these so-called explanations.
And, having tested them, then you might rightly wonder if people’s explanations sometimes might contain no truth at all.

This is most evident in the case of The Monsoon, which comes here in the months June to August. You wouldn’t believe how many old wives’ tales there are, and how contradictory the pieces of advice can be…

Myth 1 - Swimming Is Bad for You in the Monsoon

The seas around Mumbai are probably not very healthy, so it’s advisable to bathe in swimming pools - at all times of the year. And because it’s also very hot in the monsoon (despite the grey skies and rain), I head out to the sports-club even more regularly at this time of year. It has an outdoor pool that is huge, so it’s very relaxing, and - for some reason - very empty during the monsoon months. My presumption was that people were worried about lightning striking, even though lightning is rare.

But when one day I told the man in the flat downstairs that I was going swimming, he got very agitated: “Don’t!” he said. “Think of all that pollution coming down from the skies!”
Now, he’s an intelligent man (though not, admittedly, a meteorologist) but I couldn’t help but wonder - what pollution? After all, the rain comes in from the southwest, from the lovely Arabian Sea. But then, he has the local knowledge….

After that, I spoke to a friend who has young children and she also said she avoided the pools. Why?, I asked. Because the high monsoon winds bring in spray from the sea and that gets in the pools, she said, and I cannot let the children risk catching what comes with it. But – what’s in the spray, exactly?

But, I suppose these fears, irrational or not, explained the lack of swimmers in the pool.

So I thought I should reproach the swimming-pool manager for his lack of care for his clients, and explained to him what had been said, and advised him that, if this were all true, he should shut the pool for the monsoon months.
He thanked me for my concern, but gently pointed out that the pool water – drenched as it was in cleaning chemicals and filters – was probably healthier than the air we breathe in this city.

So I asked him how he explained the paucity of swimmers. He
shrugged his shoulders: “Who knows why they think what they think,” he said.

Myth 2 Eating Fish (Not)

When we met a group of friends at a restaurant in early July, they immediately told us not to eat the fish.

Now one thing that is always enjoyable to me is to find a group of people who all adhere to a long-held and passionate - but quite irrational – belief; and then watch them as each try to explain the reasons for it to each other.
For example - people who believe passionately that wearing glasses weakens one’s eyesight even more (it doesn’t) come up with all kinds of amazing rationalisations for their belief and even start arguing with each other about their incorrect theories. It’s slightly crazy.
The fact is that often when people hold a belief that has been with them, probably since childhood, they never ask themselves – do I have real evidence for believing the thing that I believe?

Something similar happened at this table. Everyone had an opinion why not to eat fish in the monsoon. Here are a few of the opinions uttered….
*The fish is inedible because it is not fresh; and that is because it is not locally-caught in the monsoon, but in fact is shipped in, some said. (What’s wrong with that?, I wondered). They explained that the fish is not fresh because the local fishermen (the Kolis) are afraid of the fierce monsoon storms, so they stay in port.
(I thought I would check on this and later went to the Sassoon fish dock, and yes, it seemed to be true that there were no fishing boats around in July… yet a week later, on August 1st, suddenly all the boats were in the bay again. Admittedly, this was strange, and I haven’t worked out why yet. Anybody know?)
It still didn’t explain why eating fish at this time of year is bad. Unless you don’t like imported, frozen fish…

*No, said others, there are in fact fishermen out at sea, but they often net dead fish, which have been shaken upwards from the sea-bottom as the raging monsoon storms stir the seas, and then are taken in the catches. Restaurants, they said, use these old fish as much as the fresh fish.
(Personally, I thought this was ludicrous, but I’m no marine biologist.)

*Ah, said someone else, it’s not dead fish that are shaken up, but the very silt of the sea-bed (by the turbulent stormy seas). The seabed is massively polluted, they said, therefore the fish – which consume the stirred-up pollution – are poisonous. (Blimey!)

It was all very confusing, and yet sounded all very unlikely, despite the firm opinions.
The next day I checked the local fish-market, and the women were screaming their wares as usual (it gets to be quite a din in those market-halls) – so it looked like someone at least was going out to catch fish. No great dearth of locally-caught fish there, apparently.
I bought some, cooked it and tasted it. Seemed okay to me; but then maybe it will take a week or two before any effect takes place?

Nevertheless, at lunch today, at the sports-club, the café manager shook his head: “No sir, no fish on the menu for the next two months. It’s because of the monsoon, you see.”
Funnily enough, however, he couldn’t explain exactly why.

Myth 3 The Monsoon is a Good, er Bad Thing

Depending on whom you talk to, and the day you talk to them on, the monsoon is Good – or Bad. Strangely, people rarely consider it simply a bit of both, as you might think.

Of course in Mumbai, the monsoon can cause great damage to both life and property; the floods that resulted from the incessant rain in July 2005 led to the deaths of over 500 people in the city.
The danger from water-borne diseases also rises of course in flooded areas, and the incidence of malaria increases too because there are so many pools of standing water - which encourages mosquitoes to breed faster. Thus monsoon can be BAD.

But the same conditions on rainless days can also turn Mumbai into a sort of balmy English summer – fluffy, grey, and cooler than the usual Mumbai heat – a relief from the baking and sweaty sauna-like state of affairs that is the month of May. The rains also bring green back to the recreation grounds (the “maidans”) allowing the cricket pitches to re-grow. GOOD.

What is hard in this debate is to accept is the fearful state of the pavement-dwellers and in the slums.
Everywhere suddenly, in June, great swathes of blue stiff plastic are attached to the makeshift roofs, but it doesn’t provide anywhere near complete protection from the rain, and inside these tiny shelters/homes, the new insulation simply produces an intense breathlessness – forcing many to choose to sleep outside on the paths until the rains come to wake them, and then they crawl back inside their dwellings. What’s worse is that the really heavy rains will just flood and even sweep away homes. BAD.

But hardened Mumbaikers will also tell you that this is the great time for cheap holidays just a few miles outside the city. The rains make hiking in the hills possible, the rains make the landscape intense and green, the rains make river rafting possible on the main tributaries. If you don’t earn a lot – and the vast majority here do not – and you have time to take a holiday – and the vast majority here do not – the monsoon can give you a good reason for a weekend away. These holiday-starved city-dwellers yearn for monsoon. To them it is GOOD.

**

I guess we all have opinions and preferences. What’s odd, and you really do observe this when you are an outsider, is just how fierce and aggressive people can get in defending what are really quite weak positions. It makes you think about those "beliefs" you have back home too…

Addendum
One nicely weird fact is the contrast of the days pre-monsoon with the fortnight post-monsoon.
Before monsoon, some people are almost giddy with excitement, looking at the skies for rain-clouds (just as the English stop and smell the winter air for hints of coming snow). When the first drops plash down, they squeal: “I love the train; I love the rain!!”
But, two weeks later, the same people are miserable with the grey cloudy sameness of it all: “Monsoon. I hate Monsoon!” they whisper.

______________________

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Independence Day

2007-08-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

I must admit it was the oddest thing – while the world celebrated a very significant Indian Independence Day (“Sixty Years of Freedom!”), Mumbai remained, er, silent.
And, what’s more, it seemed that a lot of India did.

In fact, almost all the photos of Independence events that we saw in the newspapers here all seemed to come from other countries. There was the photo of the Nasdaq building in New York, bannered in the colours of the Indian flag - green white and orange. There was the India exhibition in London where NRIs and Indophiles were going mad. And even the French celebrated it through their India themed festival in Lille.
But very little here in India – BBC (India) only found two celebrations of note to report on! (See link at the end of this entry)

Of course, one of them was the Big Event in New Delhi, but in the rest of the country, including here in Mumbai, it seems it was muted. All I saw in my quick runs around the city was a small drill of the local police in cocked headwear, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
The biggest noise came from commercial interests, which saw an angle through which to sell their wares – Airtel commissioned a chauvinist song which accompanied their adverts, Baskin Robbins put together a patriotically coloured ice-cream, and the TV channels ran loads of relevant historical movies all themed around India’s struggle, with swirling flags in their promos to show just how heartfelt their commitment to the nation was. Etc etc.
But – on the street – zilch! (Though I forget – there were the boys at the traffic signals desperately trying to sell their reproduction flags, and obviously trade was not brisk, as I was eventually offered a flag at the rock-bottom price of one rupee).

The point is that, unlike South India (which dislikes the government’s apparent support for Hindi-language domination… because the South doesn’t speak Hindi much) or the northern border areas where there can be various sorts of unhappiness with the rule of New Delhi, Mumbai is quite patriotic. People stand for the national anthem in cinemas here quite enthusiastically. And of course, the Quit India movement started here. And on Republic Day, which was held in January, there was even a military fly-past at the city’s Chowpatty beach.

So what happened?
No one seems to know. The local newspapers were silent on the matter, and the local people I spoke to just shrugged their shoulders.

I can only guess.
Security must have been an issue - being the 60th Anniversary I suppose it was one terrorists must have thought about. In fact, for a week before, I found myself ducking round police barriers every time I went near the World Trade Centre in Colaba.
What’s more, there appears to be an undercurrent of bitterness in the city over how justice is served here. While the trial of the Muslim bombers behind the 1993 blasts here in Mumbai has recently come to an end (with a number of them receiving death sentences), there have been next to no convictions of the Hindu militants responsible for the many deaths of Muslims in what was essentially a pogrom during the ’93 Riots. As a consequence, there has been considerable growling by each side in recent days. So – that uneasiness in the city could have been a reason for a no-show of any official events.

But, apart from one minor piece of enthusiastic shouting at a college festival, which happened to be on the same day as Independence Day, there were no spontaneous shows of celebration on the street either… Very odd.

The rest of the world seemed more gung-ho about India’s Independence than did Mumbai. I’d be interested to know why.

Links: BBC Online report on Independence Day events

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Ladakh Tibetan Buddhism

2007-07-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

It is early July 2007. On the way to the village of Sumur in the region of Ladakh, driving across the rocky desert plain, we see men constructing a simple prayer gate across the road. It consists of just two tall poles, decorated with banners - but in the middle of this wilderness, any activity is remarkable. What is going on?
We are also surprised to find, on reaching Samstaling monastery, just outside the village, that some heavy road-mending machines are being employed to renew its battered old access-track. In a place where things do not change for decades, to see two such signs of activity is even more remarkable. A sense of excitement fills the air.
In the temple, a young, nervous monk tells us the cause of the commotion. The spiritual leader of his Buddhism – the Dalai Lama - is coming to visit here, within one month!

But does the Dalai Lama come to witness growth in local Buddhism – or the beginning of its slow death?

“Little Tibet”

Central Ladkah, on the far eastern side of the state of Jammu & Kashmir, is almost India’s most northerly point. Hidden behind two huge mountain ranges, in one of the world’s highest habitable regions, for centuries it was virtually untouched; the British, for instance, did not colonise here. But it is not a hospitable place for visitors anyway. For a start, its weather is weird.
For only two to three months of the year it has a growing season, when the sun bakes down on its desert landscape. For the rest of the year, it endures freezing cold and snow. Rainfall is minimal. The air is so thin here that visitors can often suffer altitude sickness. Unsurprisingly then, the population of this part of Ladakh is tiny - just barely over one hundred thousand.

Yet this small area, no bigger than England, is now the last free bastion of traditional Tibetan-style Buddhism, and it is for this, as well as the trekking opportunities, that tourists are coming in increasing numbers. The thirty or so great monasteries (known as gompas) that line the Indus valley in central Ladakh contain some of the finest and last-remaining treasures of the thousand year-old culture. And, unlike the situation in neighbouring Tibet, where it’s estimated the Chinese have destroyed nearly 6000 religious sites, the great monasteries of Ladakh are being preserved – partly due to tourist revenues.
But is tourism destroying or helping Ladakhi Buddhism?

Commercialism

Tsering is a young monk who has just completed his degree in education in Jammu. For extra funds to support his studies, he works in the summer as a guide, doing “the gompa tour”, with groups of tourists. In fact, his knowledge is essential to the tourist. Without people like him to do the explaining, the strange and beautiful art-works of the monasteries, with their depictions of literally hundreds of different deities, lords, disciples, great monks and manifestations of Buddha, would be incomprehensible.

We met Tsering as we were heading toward the Hemis Monastery Festival, probably the biggest and most well-attended religious festival in the region, when, for two days in June every year, monks dressed as various masked demons and deities enact the slow and mysterious dance-dramas of the tradition. Was he coming? we asked. He shook his head. No, he didn’t like it any more, he said - it was too commercial, with too many tourists.
This opinion shocked us. The festivals have been, from the time they started, the way in which the monks present religious stories to the local villagers and communities around them, and are solemn undertakings – how could this festival be “commercial”? Tsering told us we would see when we got there.
Are you pessimistic about the future of local Buddhism then? I asked him. He was quiet for a moment, and then explained that it was his vocation to settle again in Ladakh after his studies and teach the young people how properly to understand the Tibetan language (which is very similar to the local Ladakhi or ‘Bhoti’ tongue). Though the Buddha’s teachings were first expressed in India in Sanskrit, he said, subsequent Hindu and Muslim waves had caused that Indian tradition to be lost. The Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit original, he claimed, was now the only authentic language in which to understand the Buddha’s teachings – and without knowledge of the language, the truth would be lost a second time.
Was that really a possibility? I asked. He sighed, and then replied: “Our birth-rate is now so low – so families no longer give a younger son to the monasteries, as they used to. Where will the new monks come from? And without monks to carry out the rituals of life – what will happen to Ladakh? And the present Dalai Lama is an old man – what will happen to us all when he dies?”
We made our way to Hemis in sombre mood.

Tsering was right about the festival. Though there were many Ladakhis squeezed into the square in the centre of the monastery, they were all forced to sit on the ground in the sun. All of the shaded side of the square was “reserved” for tourists, nearly all of them rich Europeans in designer sunglasses, who sat in a specially guarded grandstand, cameras at the ready.
Instead of an authentic ritual, the performance had the air of one of those sad ‘cultural’ events enacted in a luxury hotel. It felt all wrong.

Gompa tourism

Is the Buddhist establishment itself to blame for commercialism? Do places like Hemis invite their own downfall?
For five days, another Ladakhi - Dawa - accompanied us round the monasteries. A devout Buddhist, in each temple, he would join his hands and prostrate himself. Yet he told us he was disgusted by the way the monasteries now sought “admission fees” from tourists. (In most gompas, it was true, one monk always seemed to produce a ticket book, and would demand a fee of around 25 rupees.)
But why not? we asked Dawa. The wall paintings are often in poor repair, and though the very dry air in this region will preserve them a little longer than in most climates, we were happy to contribute to their upkeep. In the offering bowls before the Buddha statues in each temple, it was clear others thought like us – alongside 5 or 10 rupee notes from the faithful were often US dollar-bills. But Dawa only frowned, and said that no one had ever asked for money years ago when he was a boy.

There is a dilemma here. Should the monasteries be solely for silent and spiritual devotions? Should they cut themselves off, and refuse to admit tourists? Or are these superb buildings the heritage of all of us, Buddhist or non-Buddhist?

The gompas in Ladakh are most often in remote and isolated sites.
One thinks of Basgo, which, only a few years ago, could only be reached by a tortuous and dusty donkey-track that climbed the edge of a mountainside for two kilometres.
One thinks of Lamarayu, which you can see across the desert from miles away, as it perches high on its craggy peak.
Or inaccessible, mysterious Phugtal, which is near no roads at all and can only be reached by hard hiking. The founders of these sites deliberately built them to be as secluded from the rest of the world as possible.

Yet… Basgo now has built a mortorable road up the steep hillside, which now can take tourists to within a hundred yards of the temples; Lamarayu even has a brand spanking new “guest-house” and café for visitors; and Phugtal is now listed as a popular stopover point on one of the area’s trekking routes.
The monasteries are the richer for it, and can make the repairs that have been needed for centuries – but they are not as ‘unworldly’ as they used to be.

In Basgo gompa, an old monk indicates to us he would like a lift down the mountain. We are happy to oblige, but before setting out, he asks us to take tea and tsampa (ground barley) with him in his cell. The cell comprises both a small stone room, barely big enough for his mattress, and a tiny open balcony-area where are stored some of the sacred texts, and which (by the way) just happens to have a superb view over the snow-topped mountain range. (I must admit I kept thinking how freezing in winter it must be for him here!).
Before tea is finished, I sense he is anxious about something, and it appears he can’t find his key in order to lock up his room. I can’t help but laugh: no burglar is ever going to bother climbing all this way for what few possessions he has… surely? But he grimaces at me, and I know what his thought is – tourists, few as they are, will take anything.

Fragile Ladakh

Buddhism in Ladkah is a fragile flower. The very isolation of this area (the nearest train station to Leh is two days away over the mountains), and the fact that the military authorities kept this place closed to the rest of the world until as little as thirty years ago, protected the unique customs and culture as though they were in a sealed compartment.
Unlike Nepal, where Buddhism has a history of competing with another, dominant religion, Buddhism in central Ladakh has had it easy. The minority Muslim population has never attempted to do anything more than keep a low profile and maintain a peaceful co-existence, and apart from a few ill-judged incidents over the past decades, that tacit agreement has held. Buddhism here has not faced a strong challenge since the time of Aurangzeb; and it is not prepared for it.

Almost to prove the point, authorities admit that the fantastic lure of easy tourism money has upset the balance of the ancient communities here. NGOs such as the ISEC, which is based in Leh, has been set up to try to give support to the old ways, but admit that the trend is against their work – that “modern” thinking is inexorably taking hold. At one of their workshops, an old man illustrates what is going on… first he chants and sings to himself as he fingers the prayer-beads in his hands; then he stops and puts down the beads; and then starts to make a similar but different action, that of texting on a mobile phone. His point is clear – the new ways are supplanting the old ways.
But – at the same workshop – it was admitted that more government money is coming into Ladakh to sustain this new economy of tourism. New housing, new water supplies and new roads are signs of that.
However Dawa and I were able to contribute a story that showed how this money, welcome as it is, is sometimes misplaced. Dawa and I had visited a group of chortens (whitewashed, Ladakhi versions of sacred stupa-style shrines) in Hunder village in the Nubra Valley. Now, it is essential to Buddhists that they walk clockwise round sacred sites… yet someone had built a new tarmac path right through the centre of this group! I was surprised, and asked Dawa, how this could happen? He shook his head: “Only one developer could do this – a developer who is not Ladakhi…”

The Future

The landscape and the heritage of Ladakh are proving a strong a pull for the rest of the world. The hushed, often dark and remote temples with their fantastic depictions and marvellous treasures are so romantic and so exotic that the tourists – some 20,000 a year - will continue to arrive in droves, no matter how primitive the infrastructure is (and it is bad; some of the B-grade hotels are truly dreadful, and the shed that is Leh airport is chaotically disorganised).
What’s more, the appeal of the landscape with its truly stunning forms and unique profiles contributes to the tourists’ sense of satisfaction – even a drive of two hours from one gompa to the next can hardly be tedious when you have such incredible natural visions before you.

Next month, the Dalai Lama too will see those same landscapes, and there is no doubt that, despite the changes wrought by modernity, the vast majority of the population of Ladakh will still turn out to see him, and attend his teachings.
But it will be a time of reflection. The seventy-two year-old leader is hale and hearty, but he must know that the real future of his religion is now in the hands of this present generation. How will they handle it?

Modern times

In one monastery, we heard the profoundly moving tones of a traditional “gyaling” pipe being played. As we climbed up the stone steps, it seemed to become the sound of the mountain itself, yet, inside the small temple at the top, we realised it was just a young monk, “practising” as he said. Then I noticed his MP3 Player. What had he been listening to before – was it Hindi film music perhaps? Or classic western rock? Or even Buddhist chants perhaps? He seemed surprised that I had not realised what to him could be the one and only response: “I listen to Ladakhi folk-music, the music of my people”.
Maybe there is a lesson in that incident – the trappings of modernity don’t necessarily mean you abandon your roots.
But the next twenty to thirty years will surely be crucial for Ladkah.

{A version of this article first appeared in the Hindustan Times}

**

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Sources & Links
Dalai Lama's Website, Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG), and Ladakh Buddhist Association (Wikipedia entry)

Incidentally, getting to Central Ladakh is tough, unless you fly - even then bad weather will halt flights. A bus service runs from Manali in Himachal Pradesh – but takes 2 days and the road is mostly closed October to May! The nearest railhead is at Jammu – from where it is another 2-day road-journey via Srinagar. So - good luck.

Sex on The Beach

2007-06-21T02:53:00.000-07:00

I had only been in the city a short time, when I went to the far north end of Mumbai, to a slightly touristy seaside resort called Uttan. After a late afternoon shack-meal, I went to rest on the beach where lots of local people were also milling about, enjoying the waves, at the end of their working day.
I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but I realised that there was something unusual (unusual for me, anyway) going on. And then I realised – although lots of women were in the water, none over the age of ten was wearing a swimsuit or bikini. Nearly all of them were “swimming” in their ordinary clothes. This was new to me.

Later a European girl came to the beach, pulled off her sarong (revealing a bikini) and plunged into the sea. This sight so pleased a group of men that they stood in a clump near her clothes waiting for her to come out again: a diverting way to pass the time for them, with a sort of show to come, I suppose. Sadly for them, she must have been a fitness freak, for she hadn’t come out after fifteen minutes, at which point they got bored and wandered away.

So… I first came to learn – bikinis and swimsuits are not a common sight even in hip Mumbai. Modern and modernising it may be, a huge tourist destination too, but the city has not yet embraced the female swimsuit.

But questions remained.
I suppose the thinking is that bikinis invite unwanted male attention/lust, so are women on the beach, in fact, much less lusted after if they wear clothes? (It’s not such a daft question – see further down).
What happens at public swimming pools? What do women wear? The same thing?
And, where are Indian women at in the evolution of swimming-as-fun? In many countries, sea-swimming is just seen as plain stupid (what, they ask, is the point of it anyway?), while in the Far East, a woman, fully clothed or not, who went swimming would be very badly regarded. Mumbai is very feminist compared to many places – so how do women here feel about swimming?

(Of course, this is not to forget the Big Question – are swimsuits so great anyway? Looked at objectively after all, they are mostly designed purely for the Male Gaze, and not much else. Having said that, all the girlfriends I’ve ever had say they like the sense of freedom and the tan possibilities that bikinis provide.

But it’s also as well to remember that it’s not just Europeans that have revealing clothes. Women’s ordinary clothes in India can be provocative to a European, even if Indians are not aware of it. A woman in a sari or chaniya choli – a combination of a skirt and a very tight breast & shoulder-hugging blouse, that leaves much of the trunk naked – may not be aware of it, but to a Western man her body can be eye-poppingly sexy, even when she is thinking she is being modest. It’s all about what you are … not ... used to! Ironic, isn’t it?
Women from minority religions like Christianity or Islam are much less likely to wear stomach-revealing clothes of course.)

Onwards!

Now, the swimming pool test is fairly easy to answer, as there are two huge water-parks in Mumbai – Water Kingdom in Gorai and Suraj Water Park in Thane. At these both, the rule is simple – “Woman Must Wear Swimwear….”
In other words, whereas in England you would have a rule against wearing swimsuits that are too skimpy, here women have to be ordered out of day-clothes and into swimwear! For an Englishman like me, this was a surprising and curious reversal of the usual instruction.
This rule however can still cause confusion and embarrassment, so the parks go even further – and say the “swimwear” must be composed of nylon or lycra fabric. This has now stopped all the women who wanted to turn up in cut-off jeans.

So, what (say all the non-Indians) are women wearing then?
The answer is that they wear a compromise - an outfit of sleeved T-shirt and cycling shorts (or what look like cycling shorts), which in essence efficiently covers up much of the body.
Both the main water parks do quite nicely out of this confusion, as they sell a “designer” version of this combination for a nice price to anyone who turns up with the incorrect apparel. If you are keen on buying a similar outfit yourself, they have hit the high street, and you can buy them on Mumbai's so-called “Fashion Street” (near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus).
Now, I never quite got the bottom of this (ho ho), but it’s unclear if bikinis are frowned upon or not. What is clear is that all the women I spoke to would never wear one anyway in a such a “public” place as a water park – first and foremost because of the unwanted leers of the young men, who, they say, would gather round them in numbers and maybe start to display that kind of behaviour known here as "Eve teasing".
However, in hotel pools – both luxury and family ones – I have seen bikinis. I presume that this is because there are less likely to be leers, and a greater sense of “protection”, in hotels.

Which leaves us… where….?

Well, the T-shirt & lycra shorts combination is: clearly the most efficient swimming gear (a similar outfit is worn by professional swimmers after all); is obviously better protection against the sun; and serves quite well to ward off too much staring. Some women I spoke to have also remarked that in bikinis, they feel they are being “marked down” if they have less than perfectly fashionable bodies, so they opt for the shirt&shorts as a way to escape all that nonsense.
In other words, the combo makes sense. It makes special sense in India, even if it has not got to the beach yet.

The bikini, on the other hand, is not meant to be sensible anyway. It is really a kind of personal statement, and, as I’ve remarked elsewhere, has – in an obscure way – become tied in with women’s equality, in that woman can now feel they can wear what they want, be as sexual as they want and behave as they want. The bikini says “I can be as sexual as a man”. However, it is an odd way to have to say it. The bikini is at the end of an odd and slightly random evolutionary strain in the women’s personal freedom movement in the West. It may or may not ever be “needed” in that way in Mumbai.

What do you think?

**

Just a Final Thought…
One of the main reasons for all this discussion is the presence of testosterone-driven young men who can make life so difficult for the women who are the objects of their desire.
But, sadly, you can’t seem to stop testosterone.
It almost doesn’t matter what women wear or don’t wear, because the beach or waterside is a fun place, and young men’s lust-levels will always soar in such a place.
Bikinis, head-to-toe one-pieces, burkhas – they only makes degrees of difference in warding off the male gaze.

A friend of mine wrote the piece below after going to Goa – where he too observed young women bathing in full clothes in the sea. As you’ll see though, it did not stop him “appreciating” what he saw.

________________________________

The Beach
The older sisters, dressed in full shalwar kameez, stand out in the ocean – up to their thighs – stiffly monitoring their excitable young siblings, who rush near them and
back to them in the playing waves. To my foreign eyes, it’s a surprise: only those who wish to secretly commit suicide, or those who are absent-minded to the point of eccentricity, would want to walk into the sea fully clothed.
Even from this distance, their clothes shine electric blue and dazzling red against the grey-ish water.

Sometimes though, the yank of the sea’s undertow pulls these dignified young ladies with it, and these women feel their knees being twisted by the force and their bodies sucked sideways, and, resist the water as they will, they are still toppled down into the spume, are lost to sight a moment, and then re-appear - shock and embarrassment and pleasure alike on their dripping, emerging faces, not sure if their position has been offended or just joked with.

But they have undergone a sea change. Their hair, previously in dry, untidy strands, is transformed - now sleek and sable-shiny-black and pasted to their glistening, salty skin. Their blouses, before shapeless and billowing, now stick to them like seaweed to a nude rock; and their white teeth shine from damp, excited smiles as their little brothers and sisters tease them.

But do these decorous young women know how each curve and run of their nubile bodies is now revealed by the clinging wet-tight material they wear?
What was a concealing cover, hiding what should be hidden (bare shoulders and the shapes of breasts and the firmness of her belly), now seems suddenly over-stretched, straining to hold in the breathing bodily forms beneath. Her new appearance belies her.It says: this is no shy modest young woman, but one abandoned to pleasure.
The sticky wisps of hair that fall coquettishly in her confusion further betray her.

This is also the Bollywood transformation... from virgin to seductress, instantly, in a shower of rain, yet not requiring an inch of nakedness.
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Links: Suraj Water Park

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Telephone incommuncation

2007-06-20T07:05:00.001-07:00

As you go around in a different culture, many things that were puzzling to you at first either become explained or … well, you just get used to them. You accept them.
In fact, you accept them so much that you forget you had to learn them.
And yet, it’s just worth remembering what some of these things were… and here’s one.

The telephone greeting

When the phone rings, an Englishman will pick it up and say: “Hello”.
The word hello is here not just a greeting but also a way of establishing that you can be heard, and that you are ready to converse, and that you now expect the person to explain why they have called.

But in Mumbai, at first, it just led to confusion.

This was the sequence…
•    Usually, the person who has phoned will respond to my first hello with their hello.(I now expect them to tell me why they phoned).
Instead, there is silence.
•    I break the silence by trying to be encouraging and I repeat: “Yes… hello!”
This is a mistake, as the voice at the other end is thrown by this, and seems to question the air around them, with a very odd and vague “Hello?” back again.
•    Of course, I am now thinking that the connection is very poor and that s/he can’t hear me properly, so it is my turn to be puzzled: “Yes, can you hear me? “Hello… hello…”
•    Guess what… My caller says (you guessed it), nothing at first, and then tentatively says “Hello? Hello?”
•    At which point, I used to think I was dealing with a crazed call-centre employee with nothing better to do – and I put the phone down.

The right way to say hello

For a long while - as this dialogue occurred time after time - I thought I had a dodgy phone; and I even called the phone company to ask if there might be a problem with it.

What was even odder is that this phone-etiquette misunderstanding was often with tradesmen, that is to say, men who surely must survive by their ability to use the phone.
(So, my second interpretation – that it must be someone illiterate or unused to the phone who was going through this odd dance of greeting – was in fact quite wrong.)

It was a friend of mine who had to put me right.

The sequence - they told me - should be that, after the first two hellos are said, it is then up to me (yes, me) to say: “Yes. Tell me!” and only then will the phone-caller reveal why they have rung you.

I don’t know why the form of phone-greeting is so different to that of England.

All I know is that this is how it is in Mumbai, and that is now how I do it.

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Bollywood vs... Hollywood?

2007-06-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to explain this, but sometimes one gets tricked by Mumbai’s own description of itself.
Mumbaikers, rich or poor, are so, well, self-conscious of their place on the globe, and so aware of the fact that their city has such an international profile, that you get slowly into thinking – yes, this is indeed an International City.
After all, the English-language papers more often that not feature world news on the front page, the big poster hoardings are more often than not featuring global brands such as Levis etc, and the huge new skyscrapers make the place resemble Chicago (on a hot day!).

And then suddenly, something happens to bring you up short and make you reconsider that view… And then you realise that Mumbai is not just like other places. In Mumbai they do their things their own way (sometimes). It is unique.

The incident that made me think this is quite trivial really – but telling.
The Hindustan Times was carrying a piece on racism against black people in the city, and quoted theatre director Alyque Padamsee as saying “I blame Hollywood films – they portray black men as uncultured cannibals living in trees.” This was such a bizarrely wrong-headed statement that I thought I had misread it. While Hollywood definitely has issues, this was the statement of a man who surely has not seen a Hollywood film in fifty years! What recent film do you know that portrays black people that way?

Now, how could this be? Padamsee is not only a cultured man, he is also media-savvy too, with a background in advertising. How could he have come up with such a skewed idea of American films? I now prefer to think he must have been quoted “out of context”; but then arises the thought – how could the paper have allowed such a muddle-headed remark to be printed anyway?

We talked about this in a bar, and, after much talk, we think we may have solved the conundrum.
And here’s our answer: Indians, generally, and unlike the rest of the world, don’t really count Hollywood large on their horizons. So their image of its films might well indeed be vague.

After all, it is interesting to reflect that India might well be the only country left in the world where Hollywood does not rule in local cinema halls. Across the country, Hollywood plays a poor second to India’s own film industry, aka Bollywood.
(Of course, Hollywood is making certain inroads, particularly here in Mumbai where multiplexes are springing up; American blockbusters are beautifully suited to the multiplex environment with its sensurround experience. However Bollywood too is now turning out some beautifully crafted and tense films that can beat Hollywood in that multiplex strategy.)

You see, what I thought was that, because Mumbai has the reputation of being an international city, that then you’d get to see here all the world films that you’d get in say Manchester, or Berlin or Tokyo. But I’ve often been astonished at how hard it is to see a “decent” or important international film here. For example, even “Borat”, which I was much looking forward to, has not got a release here, while the chances of seeing a foreign-language film are virtually nil.
In fact, Bollywood rules, because the cinema mangers know that that is what audiences want to see.
And, in this area, film going, Mumbaikers rarely look very much outside their own indigenous movies.

Please don’t think that I am making a value judgement. In fact, I think it is rather pleasing that Mumbai’s filmgoers are bucking the globalisation trend. They prefer homegrown movies, and that’s fine (if unexpected).

So, to go back to the point.
How could a reputable commentator like Padamsee be so wrong about Hollywood?

"Well, because in this city" – said my friends in the bar – "Hollywood is the outsider. Bollywood is what matters! Hollywood is an interesting diversion, but it's not the main interest for Mumbai film-goers, not by a long shot."

And that - probably - explains it.

**
Links: Hollywood and Bollywood Compared (Blog)

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Spooked by the Suburbs

2007-06-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

Mumbai – whatever you think of it – can never be described as sterile. Most of it has all the life and hustle of a city bursting at the edges, and is almost overwhelming.
But then one visits the district of 'Hiranandani Gardens'. By contrast, it can seem spooky… and a little discomfiting.

It was when I went to Powai, one of the Mumbai’s northernmost suburbs that I came across the elite district of Hiranandani Gardens, which lies off the main highway there.
At first, it was hard to believe my eyes. Hiranandani Gardens is about a mile square: a square mile of pristine urban development. It looked like a huge wedding cake made of marzipan straight out of the shop; or like a combination of ancient Rome and a modern shopping mall.

There were huge, pastel-coloured buildings adorned with neo-classical pillars or Grecian pediments. There were wide, clean uncluttered roads (with no potholes!). There were luxury shops. There were road signs requesting that motorists desist from using their car-horns (and people were obeying…). There were landscaped, tidy public gardens. There were street-names like “Central Avenue” and “High Street”, and, behind imperial gates, there were dazzlingly bright apartment blocks called “Olympia” and “Tivoli”.
I have seen something like this before. But it was in the gated communities of super-rich America.

Though HGs is in Greater Mumbai, it does not seem like Mumbai. There were no rubbish piles. There were no pavement dwellers. There was no one sleeping on a wall. There were no street-side vegetable vendors. The roadside drains (four feet deep!) were unblocked and empty of debris. I didn’t see a rickshaw, or a rat.
At night, the happy inhabitants can sally out to spend their money in the numerous international shops and restaurants, and at the well-heeled entertainment centre.

Where on Earth was I? This was surely not Mumbai.
Mumbai, love it or loathe it, is filthy, squashed, vibrant, decaying, noisy, diverse and, above all, chaotic.
You can guess at my amazement.

The internet tells me that this district was created by the Hiranandani brothers, who are both very rich indeed. They flattened the hills that dot this area, and then built this impressive small-town to cater to their fellow rich.
I learned, not to my surprise, that they are also involved in building in the huge 23-Marina building in Dubai.

It was also they who brought in India’s hardest-working architect, Hafeez Contractor, who brought with him his trademark faux-Italian arches, cornices and domes. (Poor Hafeez is in that strange position of being incredibly popular with his clients, but despised by some of his more sniffy peers, who compare him to the deadhead populist architects in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.)
But even if you think Hafeez is the best thing ever, you do have to ask the questions - why do the buildings have almost no relation to the shape of the lands around them? And why are they so un-Indian?

A man who was walking round with me hissed his displeasure. “Look at this! The people who live here are lots of NRIs and Americans who don’t want to know they are in India… They want to pretend they are in London or Milan!”

And then, even more bitterly, he said: “Why are the street-names in English? Where are the Hindi or Marathi street-names?”
He carried on: “And Where are the mosques, the temples, the roadside shrines… the cinemas?!!”
I suddenly realized he was right. No matter how much I looked, I couldn’t find any religious institutions or film-houses. In a country where religion and Bollywood are second nature to the vast majority, it was spooky to observe a complete absence of them.

But the poor are still there. My companion took me to the edge of the district, where suddenly, round a corner, you hit a jhopadpatti. The black liquid of untreated sewage spreads along its alleyways, and the ragged children play in the dust.
Now, it’s not unusual in Bombay to find this contrast of rich and poor – in fact it is common – but having seen what I had already seen I had assumed the poor here had been “moved on”, as they often are in this city.
I was told that a legal battle to resist eviction by the slum-dwellers had turned into a political contest, so – for now – they were staying. But its clear the facilities of the town do not extend to them.

What is one to make of all this? I wandered some more.

I went into the public garden (called “Nirvana Park”), which is a copy of a Japanese-style space with pools full of carp, little half-moon bridges across the water feature and ultra-tidy lawns. The young courting-couples were obviously at home; they seemed happy. And yet, as I looked around, I saw nothing Indian at all in the features of the place, not even the face of a Ganesh or a swastik.

A hundred yards away, there is a tall black obelisk - in HGs’ “Central Square”. Now I must admit I didn’t quite understand all the images at its base, which are not explained, but I could make out the gist of one. It shows a contented paterfamilias who sits and reads the paper as his children play ball behind him. I guess it was trying to sum up the area: reinforcing the idea that this is a Happy Community.

**

That night I watched that spooky movie ‘Stepford Wives’ on the TV – that’s the one where the “perfect” community is created by the men there, who also turn their beautiful wives into absolutely submissive robots.
And it rang a bell for me. The fake classical architecture of Stepford, the “happy community”, its disturbingly spotless streets – all reminded me of… Hiranandani Gardens.
But – that’s a film.

Maybe the Hiranandanis are right?
After all, what’s wrong with cleanliness and order? On their website, the brothers even list one of their achievements as being the first builders to bring copper plumbing to India. You feel that they are trying to clean up India, which is worthy enough.
And, you know, Mumbai has had enough of inter-communal tension and strife – maybe their brand of money-led secularism is the way forward instead? Will their new-rich make India Shining?
And, following that line of thought - why shouldn’t therefore their new India look more international than Hindustani?

I’m still thinking about this.

**
Links: Hiranandani Gardens, and Hafeez Contractor’s website, plus Stepford Wives

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Sex on The Streets

2007-05-31T05:41:00.002-07:00

If anything is confusing to the long-term visitor in Mumbai, it’s the question of sex.

Within weeks of my arriving here, it became clear that, in public, Mumbaikers generally like to behave modestly. Women wear pants, very rarely skirts; they wear sleeved blouses, rarely showing bare shoulders; very few couples hold hands or kiss when out strolling (though men-friends do hold hands – but that’s another story).
What’s more, those who break these norms get stared at quite hard.

In this atmosphere, it seemed almost predictable when a newspaper reported that one young actress had turned down a film role because she would have had to do a kissing scene (yes, not a lovemaking scene, or semi-nude scene, but a kissing scene...). Indeed, the Bollywood movies I have seen are almost brilliantly imaginative in the way they manage to be about love and love affairs, and remain virtually sexless!

My impression is that in India generally, sex seems only to be appropriate in private. (Let’s not get into the ancient-erotic-temple-sculptures discussion. The Indians I speak to seem faintly embarrassed by their forebears’ enthusiasm for erotica, and by foreigners' rather obvious and salacious interest in such).

And yet… here in Mumbai, India’s most modern city, things seem to be different – at least somewhat. A different kind of attitude to Sex (or the temptation of it) seems openly omnipresent in this city.

The most obvious example is that Mumbai’s red-light area, in the Falkland Road & Kamathipura districts, slap bang in the centre of the city, is (I’m told) the largest in Asia. From their doorways, the girls are even more blatant in their gaze than those in Amsterdam.

It’s also true that western attitudes toward sex are inexorably finding their own comfort zones in this, India’s most cosmopolitan city.
Inside the walls of expensive nightclubs and luxury hotels, starlets and fashionistas will flash arms, shoulders, legs and cleavage. (The local newspapers are often on hand to make sure their flesh gets extra exposure, in their party pages).
Quite a few brave young students will even experiment out of doors - with tight jeans and bare-shoulder halter-tops.

As for the media, well, the promise of glamorous, if less accessible sex, is given lots of space in, oddly, the leading liberal newspapers.
These papers contrive to get a dozen or so pictures of pretty girls (a good percentage of them being American film stars in bikinis or other revealing clothes), into their “Entertainment Sections” every day.

Incidentally, it strikes me as very odd indeed that it is the liberal newspapers (which in this country are the heavyweight English-language dailies) that are the ones to be peddling girlie pix of the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears in pouting poses. It’s as though the British Guardian had a special section called “Half-Naked Girls!”; and it’s just one of the contradictions in this city that the thoughtful papers should want to display their liberal attitudes in this way…
What’s more ‘The Doctor Says’ sex-advice pages in these papers are almost as blush-makingly frank as anything in European women’s mags.

Meanwhile, in the city’s main art gallery, the Jehangir, sexual images are quite openly part of nearly every show (though there was one arrest a few months ago when one objector thought things had Gone Too Far).

Well? You say. So what? Not so different to Manchester!
Well, not quite.
You see, it’s that the contrast between what happens in public life and what happens in private life that is so wide here. Sex is everywhere, but under constraint.

One instance should serve to illustrate this contradiction. Openly sold on the newsstands (see pic above), there are lots of magazines with misleadingly inviting young women (wearing just bra and pants) on their covers. However these fleshy and raunchy covers are just teases: the images in their inside pages are as innocent as spring lambs.
(… more on girlie magazines below.)

For in fact there is great sexual conservatism here in what is said and done publicly.

For example…
For the most part even very educated young men and women are disturbingly giggly about sex; it is clear that many have little experience of close relationships before they are married or the significance of sex in life.
The kinds of adverts and posters we are used to in say London or Rome, which use alluring women as objects to sell products, are much fewer here. (One of the few exceptions to this rule is the kind of poster used for Bollywood B-movies, which uses the same kind of kitsch sex appeal as did the Hollywood posters in the fifties. No one seems to object to those though!)
Bars and clubs and resto-bars hardly ever employ the pretty women that they would do if they were in Britain. Most waiters and bar-staff are men. “Dance-bars”, which were banned from the city last year, did have women dancers – but they were modestly clad in full dress. (These bars were only banned because men were spending too much money in them).
Public art, which in Europe would feature lots of nakedness, is stylistically much more monumental here. I can only think of two public statue groups featuring nudity, and they are over a century old, and from the British Victorian “classical” tradition.

Yet, in contrast, as I’ve said, a very vocal combination of the intelligentsia and the “filmy”/arty classes is calling for more openness, and seems to be challenging those conventions, though also while paying a degree of lip-service to them at the same time.
Mumbai leads London in the size of this kind of gap between fantasy and reality.
The oddest thing of all is that when a model in next-to-nothing is used in magazines and papers here, she is, nine times out of ten… a blonde European. How schizophrenic is that?

Incidentally, before you ask, I have never, except once, seen a nude-girls magazine on sale here, even on the street-stalls.
The one exception occurred when I glimpsed the edge of what looked like a film magazine at a newsstand. I was quite surprised to realize it was an effort at pornography, albeit fairly tame and confused, with its combination of juvenile smutty jokes, topless European models gazing out of windows (not fully nude of course) and, strangely, health advice.
What was clear right away was that, in England, it would have barely raised a few snickers even among fourteen-year-old boys. Yet, as the newsvendor embarrassedly took it from my hand (and offered me The Economist instead!), I realised that it was quite a risqué magazine for Mumbai.
I never saw poor pathetic ‘Temptation’ (I noticed that that issue was Volume 1, Number 1) ever again.

Meanwhile, in the expensive bookshops in the city, where the middle-class men go, there is a new trend in trying to supply this thirst for soft-porn.
First, bizarrely, is the number of glossy, up-market lingerie magazines! This presumably is a supposedly “legitimate” way to sell images of half-dressed women.
Secondly, I’m afraid I do have to report that imported Brit "men's mags" such as FHM, which are now on sale in these expensive bookshops, are supplying the adolescent male’s desire for provocative women. The panting teenager will have to pay the price though – at a hefty Rs 450, these Brit mags cost ten times what the ordinary Indian mag costs – so this recourse is only open to the very well-off.

(Yes, yes, I’m sure there must be lots of under-the-counter pornography that I have not come across. Apparently internet porn is very popular here too. But I’m only reporting what I can see on the public surface of Mumbai society).

**

Where there are people testing the boundaries, there must be a conflict and then resolution, right?

A certain tension certainly seems present in Mumbai, though quite how serious the city’s “moral guardians” are in forcing their point across is actually now open to doubt.

(In the rest of the country, the moral guardians seem to be able to raise quite a lot of heat whenever they see matters that they regard as offensive to Indian standards.
In fact, recently the government turned against the idea of sex education for 10-12 year-olds in school and has banned it. And, although cable TV recently expanded hugely, there is already a crackdown on channels that concentrate on broadcasting shows with models in skimpy clothes – one such has even been banned.)

But, in Mumbai, generally, no one (as far as I can tell) is getting too upset. Even the leading political party in the city, the Shiv Sena, once a byword for strict standards, appears (for now) to be making a kind of peace with the liberal pacesetters here. It would be interesting to try to figure out why.
Perhaps the way in which young people have such a stake in this city – with their thriving music and clubbing scenes, their involvement in Bollywood and in the financial markets, their vigorous artistic life, as well as their openness to the idea of sex (if not always the practice of sex) – is holding the balance? Perhaps.
The city’s future too, with its yearning for riches, glossy status symbols and internationalism in its dealings, appears to mean a drive toward liberalism is likely – at least for now.

It’s odd how this city does so often remind one of Victorian London. Not just in the contrast of rich and poor, and between great beauty and terrible ugliness, but also in this ambivalent relationship with sex.
How will Mumbai move on this issue? It will be interesting to watch how the game goes.

++

ADDENDUM (Later)
Some people have said they don't get what my standpoint on sex in this article is. They try to make me strike an attitude. Do I approve of the fact that sex is only appropriate in private in Mumbai? Do I think women in the West are exploited - but respected in India? Do I think girlie mags are a Bad Thing? Am I a liberal or a conservative? Do I support or want to discourage sex before marriage?
Well, I'm quite pleased people should be confused.
The idea of the blog is to report (hopefully without prejudice or favour) what I see, and try ot make some thoughtful guesses (it's up to you to say if I have plumped for the right answers). Then, try to compare what I see with my own culture back home so that my target readers (both European and Indian people who travel) can understand what I'm trying to describe.

So, the answer is: I hope I have no standpoint but that of the interested observer.

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Posting in Mumbai

2007-05-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

In England, I like sometimes to send a parcel of T-shirts and books to my nephews in Italy. I put the stuff in a small cardboard box, wrap it in brown paper, take it to any post office, sign a small customs chit, and pay the postage. From home and back again the operation takes ten minutes.

But here in India, it’s different. Here, on my first occasion of trying, it took me half a day…I kid you not. Not for the last time was I to be astounded at how involved and laborious certain processes can be in the sub-continent.

The first puzzle arose at the local Post Office. They didn’t like the brown paper I had wrapped the parcel in. The paper? I said. What’s wrong with the paper?
It has to be a “special wrapping”, said the counter-clerk stubbornly – and she refused to allow me to send it.

An Indian friend and I scoured the stationery shops. Everyone, from friends to shopkeepers, was confused by this “special wrapping” demand, and, very unsurely, I eventually settled on some laminated paper.
No, said the counter-clerk again, that’s not it. Her description of the wrapping and my ability to understand what she was describing clashed.
Impasse.

So I decided to try the main Post Office in the centre of Mumbai – the one next to CS Railway Terminus.
The Mumbai GPO is a huge, imposing Victorian building with a giant dome on top. It is as big, and with as many nooks and crannies, as Notre Dame Cathedral – somewhere in there it is quite possible an Indian Quasimodo lurks. It is a monument to Trans-National Communication. It is gloomy and it makes one feel small, and it has floors to which No Unauthorised Person is ever allowed. And, in the main foyer, there are over thirty counters – so, someone in some part of this impressive building must sell this elusive wrapping. Surely?

As soon as I arrived outside the GPO I was under surveillance.
Someone like me is a dead give-away to the practised eye of the Bombay hawker.

Wondering doubtfully which massive entrance I should take (and a little concerned that I would even be allowed in, as the security guard was eyeing me suspiciously), I was halted by a man who had run across from the other side of the street. He took my parcel from me.
He knew what I wanted: Wrapping, right? For an international parcel, I said. Of course, he said.
At last!

He led me across the busy road. Under the shade of a huge banyan tree, and directly facing the GPO, were a dozen men, each seated at a small table. These, I gathered, were “package-wallahs”.
My man sat down at his table, expertly folded down the cardboard on my parcel, and grabbed a length of thin cotton cloth sacking, which he measured out around my parcel.
This was the special wrapping. Who would have known?
(And what was so important about it?)
I was about to thank him and pay for the material, when he pulled out a large sewing needle… and proceeded to sew the cloth tightly around the parcel.
Sew? I was dumbfounded.
Is sticky tape disallowed? Is sticky tape illegal maybe?
But, in Mumbai, you don’t question anything. There is a reason for everything. You may not know it - or ever know it – but there is a reason.
He made large looping stitches, and pulled them tight.
He handed the wrapped parcel back. Thirty rupees, he said. I paid up.

Now – you’d think the day was over. All I had to do was take my correctly wrapped parcel to a counter, and all would be done. In a trice, maybe, I hoped.
Nope.

The help desk in the GPO was vacant. Of the thirty counters, half were also vacant, and the rest were pressed with anxious jostling queues. But then, a man who was staring at me said – next building, third floor. This was, as it turned out, good advice.
(One thing I have discovered about Mumbaikers is that, if they offer advice, it’s worth listening. But don’t ASK them for advice; that will only lead to confusion. I’ll explain that conundrum another time.
Conversely, in London, if someone had offered me advice, I would have been suspicious immediately.)

But following the advice one gets is not always easy.
For, in Mumbai, signs are an optional extra. The Indian way is to ask for directions, time and time again, gradually narrowing down to your search until you reach your final destination. It is a good way of meeting people, and is a demonstration, if one needed it, of just how friendly Mumbai folk are. Of course, this method may mean a few wrong turnings, but then the signage method is hardly perfect either, is it?
Fifteen minutes later, having explored many of the inner bye-ways of the GPO labyrinth, and having made my way up three flights of dirty and dingy stairs, I was in the ‘Foreign Parcel Export Department’. Piles of packages (all in “special wrapping”, which reassured me) lined long ancient wooden tables, the sort of tables that seem to be a part of all post office delivery rooms all over the world.

I was directed into a high steel cage in which were a number of desks, at which sat my next interviewers. A ‘Customs Postal Appraiser’ – I presume, for so it said on the nameplate over the door into the cage – gave me a customs form to fill out, in triplicate.
But he was most puzzled by my parcel. “The wrapping…?” he said. Of course my heart sank. Not Again.
But, no. This was a different problem.
“Why is your parcel wrapped? How can I see inside it when it is wrapped?”
Well, it was a good question, and I had no answer.

He explained patiently, as to a child. As a customs officer, he had to examine the contents of the parcel.
But, couldn’t he just, well, believe what I told him was in it? I asked in a small voice. He smiled grimly.
A man was summoned (there’s always a man to do these small menial things) who sliced along the stitching with a knife. The customs officer pulled out the T-shirts inside, and then stuffed them back again.
I got dejected. How would I get the parcel stitched again?

OK, he said, and he stamped the customs form. As I turned to leave with my wrecked package, he looked puzzled again. Give it to the man, he said, he will stitch it again; you cannot send it like that! He was finding my behaviour as bizarre as I was finding his. Sure enough, the man wordlessly stitched the whole thing up again.
In the meantime, the form had been passed to the desk opposite my officer’s, where my officer said a woman who wasn’t there would examine it.
I was asked to sit.

In this intervening period of rest and relaxation, I pondered why the business was being conducted inside a cage. I supposed suspect packages must be stored in it at night, but it seemed impolite to ask.
What was strange though was how filthy and dusty the place was. The small windows, seemingly unwashed for years, admitted only a little grey light, and on the horizontal bars of the square grilles that made up the cage were thick dust-balls. The desks and the people were clean enough, and the place seemed well used, so the dirt remained a mystery.

As time passed, and we waited for the woman who wasn’t there, the whole experience was beginning to seem like a story dreamed up by Kafka. I wondered if I might wait for days.

Ten minutes later the woman who wasn’t there arrived, and, after a conference, the form was approved. The form came back to my officer who signed the parcel – and then stamped it for good measure.
I got up to leave. He shook his head. No – not yet!

The wrapper-man returned, and took out a long knife and scraped a large blob of an ugly, black, shiny tar-like material onto its end. Staring at me, he then heated the mass over a flame, which was burning thickly at the end of what looked like a Roman candle firework.
I watched. What would happen next? Torture…?

But instead, he started to wipe portions of the black-stuff, now hot and plastic, onto the corners of my parcel, onto the parts where the stitching had been ended off. That done, he picked up a metal stamp, and impressed its image on the cooling but still viscous tar. He looked at me.
My parcel was now completely, officially, and Without Question, securely wrapped. Using a method ten centuries old.

I think I was so impressed by this procedure, I must have appeared a little nonplussed. So the man thrust the parcel in my hand; indicated to me to pick up the (stamped) forms, and pointed me to the postage counter in the next department. He hadn’t said a word the whole time.

The man at the postage desk was by contrast very friendly and smiled a lot at what I said. It became clear he didn’t understand my English, and even less my baby-Hindi, but then what difference did that make? He knew his job anyway!
Carefully, he noted the address that I’d written on the customs form. He slowly transcribed it onto his computer’s database.
He weighed my parcel.
He sought a barcode from the computer, which then dutifully printed a barcode label.
He stuck the barcode label to the parcel.
He signed the parcel.
He stamped it.
He charged me 470 rupees for the postage. As I handed him the money I noticed my hands were sooty-black, from accidentally touching the tar blobs. He politely tried not to notice.
I asked him, after he gave me the change, what else I had to do? He smiled, shrugged his shoulders. What else could be done?

So it was over. An hour from reaching the GPO, I had finally got my parcel into worldwide transit. A triumph!

I seemed to need rest at this point, so I sat down by the only other person in the room, a woman who was trying to send packages to Australia.
“What,” I asked her “is the purpose of the men who sat outside the Post Office at tables wrapping the parcels… if one only has to have them re-opened for Customs?”
She obviously pitied me, but said she knew nothing of the “package-wallahs”. She had had her parcels sewn here, in this office. What else would one do?
Where was I from?, she asked. I told her I came from a place where it took only five minutes to send a parcel. I don’t think she believed me.

**

There are more questions than answers in Mumbai, though it is a mistake to think that there are that many fewer answers. There are quite a lot of answers; it’s just that it takes a while to get at them.
And, in the strange way that India gets to you, the whole meandering process of trying to discover the answers, not to mention the lanes it will take you along and the intriguing people it will put you in touch with, is one of the most enjoyable things you can undertake here.
With that in mind, I resolved to go right back to the package-wallahs and get some answers.

Then I thought: I’ve been sorting this out since 9am - and it’s now 1pm.
And then I thought: Maybe I’ll see them tomorrow.
Tomorrow will do.

ADDENDUM
My brother emailed me a couple of months later to say he received the parcel. “Loved the packing”, he said. “The kids loved it too. We couldn’t quite believe it when we saw it. But, you don’t need to go to all that trouble, you know.”

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Toilets (2) - and Spitting

2007-05-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

There is a political joke here, which goes like this...
Q. What's the difference between American democracy and Indian democracy?
A. In America, you can kiss in public, but not pee in public. In India you can't kiss in public - but you can pee in public!

Like a lot of seemingly feeble witticisms, in fact that joke has a lot of truth to it. (If you don’t believe me about India and kissing, just put the phrase "richard gere and shilpa shetty" into Google. Go on, do it now).

Open Urination, unlike "open defecation" which I mentioned in my last blog, gets very little attention in conversations at parties I attend, yet I actually think it is a subject more demanding of attention.

In Mumbai, men think very little of finding a convenient stretch of wall and relieving themselves - and at almost any time of day and in open view.
(Men in Britain tend to wait until the late hours of Saturday, when they are staggering back home from the pub, before doing anything like that…). The stink that accompanies the most favoured stretches of wall in Mumbai is pretty rank; the cloud of flies that one has to navigate is also truly unpleasant.

Yet, here again, I do have an ounce of sympathy with men. (I have never seen a woman do this incidentally).
Whilst public toilets appear to be more frequent than I thought they would be in this hard-up city, they seem none of them to be free. Which I think odd.
After all, in a city where a very poor man may earn as little as Rs 100 ($2) a day, I would guess he is really not going to want to spend two rupees to use a urinal. If you/the government wants men to use toilets, make them free.
It’s hard to know what men would do in England if conveniences were not free. I shudder to think.

Er… not that there are urinals in many of the Mumbai public toilets that I’ve used so far anyway! The fact is that the conveniences consist usually of private stalls and showers, and no urinals. I can understand why. If you can urinate into the nearest ditch, why would you trudge across the road to pay to use an "expensive" convenience?

Even more bizarrely (this no one can explain, I’m sure), many small ‘desi’ restaurants, which have a washbowl to wash one’s hands in, have no toilet! So, a man cannot even nip into a food-joint (as one might in London or New York) for fast relief.
I'm still puzzled why desi restaurants have no toilet though.

So … what should a man do?

**

Just a final quirky thought on this – and again, I’d appreciate the view of Someone Who Knows.

I’ve just finished Rohinton Mistry’s wonderful book set in Bombay ‘Such A Long Journey’. In it, one of the characters, who rather wishes people would stop urinating on the stretch of wall outside his home, persuades an artist to paint pictures of religious figures on the wall. The plan works. Sure, enough, out of respect, men thereafter leave his wall alone.
Well, strike me, but in fact there are many, many walls in Bombay on which figure paintings, tiles and drawings of gods and icons from nearly all of Mumbai’s religions. Are they too being cleverly “protected” by their owners?
Now, was it a trend before Mistry’s book came out? Or did Mistry’s writing inspire it? Someone tell me!

In a further twist, I began to notice that stairwells had also similar arrangements of sacred images along their walls. But why, in this instance? It’s doubtful that men would urinate there, inside a building.
Was it simply India's inherent desire to be devout?
Or, and I believe I am on the right track here, could it be another Rohinton-Mistry trick?
You see, Mumbai is plagued by men who love to spit. They chew a fragarant and intoxicating mix of leaves and spices, called paan, in a similar way to the cowboys who had their "chewing tobacco". As the excess liquid builds up in the mouth, they feel the urge to spit it out, as you'd guess.
Strangely however, they often like to spit the superfluous fluid out not just on to the floor but often toward an upright structure, mostly a wall, or - don't ask me why - the sides of a corner recess on a stairwell landing in a block of flats. In housing complexes, the consequent splash of spit creates a rather familiar garish dark red colouration on the walls (betel leaf, one of the ingredients, turns the mouth crimson when chewed).
Not surprisingly, spitting this guck on a wall outside your neighbour's front door is regarded in some quarters as a tad unsociable, not to say objectionable.
In fact, now I think about it, why does anyone do it at all?

Anyway, to get to the point, I was wondering whether the sacred images on the stairwell walls have a similar protective purpose - to ward off spitters. For who but a complete heathen would spit on such a wall?

Fascinatingly enough, the creators of these talismans know their enemy well. They deliberately place images from all the religions they can think of - a Hindu god might be there, alongside an image of Jesus, plus a depiction of the mosque in Mecca, and a portrait of one of the Sikh prophets. All bases covered.
Well, nearly. There are apparently not quite enough Buddhists, Jains or Parsis in the city however to make it statistically worthwhile to put up images from those religions. I guess so anyway... because I have never seen such.

Well, as usual, I think I'm guessing too much. I shall stop now. But if someone can put me right, please do. Comment away!

It’s a great city, this, isn’t it??!!

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Bottoms at The Sea

2007-05-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

Every morning at seven, I get up to look at my view of the sea. In a high-rise I may live, but it does overlook the Harbour bay of Bombay, and at that time the sun is reflecting off the water.

It is also reflecting off about fifty bare bottoms.

You see, at this time of the morning the men from the nearby housing complex take an easy stroll down to the rocks that make up the sliver of coastline here, and, in a nice relaxed fashion, squat and make their toilet facing the waves. After ten minutes (sometimes more) of meditative motions, they wash in one of the rock-pools, and head off to work. It’s a good way to start the day.
There’s no embarrassment, though each man will give his neighbour a correct space. A few will be more modest than the others by hunkering down near the swampy bushes, but many are as exposed as they can be as they squat down right out at the point where the waves are coming in.
The people who live in my block are, of course, furious. Some, from the safety of our compound, even hurl small pebbles at the men to discourage them – but the men take little notice.

I suppose I too should be outraged.

However, to tell the truth, I don’t much care. When I asked one of the men why he did it, he told me that the complex’s “toilets stink” (which is true) and that, anyway, he liked to come out here in the morning air.
To be honest, I also couldn’t see much harm in it. The water of the bay ebbs and flows, and around noon, all the men’s droppings are submerged – and then carried away as the waters ebb in the afternoon.
As for the offence to my sensibilities… I’ve seen worse things at sea, as the saying goes. I must admit I’d read VS Naipaul’s ‘Area of Darkness’ in which he claims to be disgusted by men defecating by the side of the road, but then I must say I think Naipaul is sometimes a bit pompous.

But then, one day, I got roundly ticked off.

Apparently “open defecation” (the most widely-used term for this in India) is a Bad Thing. At a party (where else would one talk loudly about faeces?) I was told by a rather upset woman that open defecation in fields in rural India polluted water-courses and caused a terrible toll in cases of diarrhoea and children’s diseases.
I had not known this.

But I did wonder – what is the difference between human excreta and animal excreta? Is human excrement in fields so much worse than animal? I did not like to ask her.
This issue is relevant, as the government – according to the newspapers – intends to make India “open-defecation free” by 2012. They will be providing literally millions of domestic toilets. The sanitary-ware industry in this country must be jumping for joy.

Now, I hope I’m not quite stupid. In areas where human beings live densely together, good sanitation is of course absolutely essential for community health. And, if villagers excrete into a pool, then I can see that will pollute water.
But if a farmer and his family excrete using a field latrine-area and then dig soil over the results, what is the issue? And if a few men take their morning toilet on the sea-line, will that really foul up an (already filthy!) bay of Bombay?

Really, I would like to know the answer. I searched on the internet for quite a long-time, wading through reports knee-deep in… well… facts, but not for the first time, the internet could not find me an exact answer. Can someone explain why ALL open defecation is bad?

And for my next blog topic: ...urination!

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You Staring at Me?

2007-05-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

One should never be confused by Mumbai’s international status into thinking that it is an international city where international behaviour applies.
For instance – in Mumbai, staring at people is not only OK, it is part of the scenery.

Imagine me, fresh off the plane. A security guard at the airport is staring at me, but with no expression (friendly or otherwise) on his face.
Now, a stare in England is an invitation to an interchange of some sort, or, if prolonged a few seconds, a sign of aggression.
I lock stares with him, but he doesn’t look away or change his expression. This is now becoming (for me) a serious standoff. Angered (I’d had a long flight…) I challenge him: “Do you have a problem of some sort with me?” Only then does he look away, saying nothing. Moment over.

Now I look back, I realise that the poor security guard must have thought I was crazy, or had taken an extra dose of testosterone that morning. Because his blank staring – which in a British pub might have led to a fight – is just something people in Bombay do. They stare quite openly at one, as a matter of course.
I suppose they might stare longer at someone who is foreign, or a woman who has bare shoulders, for curiosity value, but they just like to stare at people. And that’s it.

This cultural misunderstanding can lead to almost comic moments.
In one supermarket, I caught a man staring at me. As we were both stuck in checkouts, there was nothing else to do, and I stared back at him. His face was unflinching, and I thought I could detect a whiff of hostility, so I changed from stare to glare. By now ten seconds had passed. He didn’t alter his face.
I was getting annoyed, but in a spirit of Gandhigiri, decided to smile. Then to cock my head in puzzlement. Then to raise my eyebrows. Not one reaction from him as he simply continued to bore his gaze into my face; and now we were (I thought) into a game of chicken – who will drop the stare first?
After thirty seconds, he slowly looked to one side.
Had I won? To be honest, I think not. He’d obviously grown bored of my features, and, unembarassedly, moved on. It had all been a storm in my own teacup.
Yet, in England or America, this would have been a match of aggression, two stags locking horns.

An American woman I know now has her own technique. If she can be bothered (it would be too exhausting to do it on all occasions), she smiles – and smiles – and smiles – until her interchange is met also with a smile.
Because Indians stare in such an unconcerned way, she says when the eventual smile comes back, it is almost a smile of surprise, as though to say: “me? You’re smiling at me? Well I do like that!”
Needless to say, she restricts herself in this performance to children, the old and to women…

So, how does a reserved Englishman cope with being stared at? What I would have called the obvious response, which is to nod in recognition of someone’s interest or to say, American-style, “Hiya! How are you this good morning?” and walk on, is simply inappropriate. No one is trying to engage with you, so to respond as though they were is seen as odd.

No, what I do now is largely try to ignore it in the nicest possible way. Walking the pavements, passing through the tunnels of stares, is at first difficult – it doesn’t come naturally to me. Yet one does it, albeit with one’s English mind still ticking over and thinking “gosh, I hope I’m not offending anyone by not returning his or her looks…”

++

Just one postscript to this.
When I discussed this issue with a young woman I know, she bowed forward and covered her head in her hands. Then she looked up and said patiently, “You simply don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, do you? In any culture, we have to deal with this sort of thing every minute of every day.”
Ah, I said.

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How To Spoil a Great Museum

2007-05-01T00:58:00.000-07:00

On arriving in Mumbai’s arts quarter, one of the most powerful prods to the imagination of the visitor is the sight of a beautiful domed building hidden away in its grounds, behind high railings and a veil of trees. In its reserved position and with its strange, evocative mix of architectural styles, ‘Saracenic’ and British-Gothic, it is suggestive of a concealed palace of secret treasures.
And in fact the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sanghralaya (aka the Prince of Wales Museum), for that is what it is, is just that. But, oh, how one wishes it were more than… just that!

Let me, first of all, explain that the CS Museum is a marvel.
Whatever one’s reservations, to approach up the drive to that lovely dome in the sunlight is a joy.
To enter the marbled lobby and look upwards one hundred feet through another two floors and into the bowl of the dome is to savour a fine architect’s vision.
The study of the exquisite miniature-paintings exhibited here would make a very long journey totally worthwhile for any art-lover.
To wander at liberty and be so close to centuries-old statues of serene stone gods and bodhisattvas (found the length of the sub-continent from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas) turns dull history into an hypnotic experience.
To be so close to the incredibly intricate jewellery pieces and ornate weaponry is to make one wonder deeply at the care in workmanship.
So, yes, I would advise that you go.

Most of the time, you’ll have the place much to yourself too. Dirt-cheap prices for Indians mean that (whenever I go anyway) there will be always some local teenagers or bored tourists from Delhi hanging about, but the 300 rupees ($6) price for non-Indians seems to put off quite a few foreigners, which is a shame.
The audio guide too is rather well-scripted and voiced, with just enough background facts to keep the informed expert listening, but enough colourful description to keep the casual visitor interested too.

But the fact is that a lot of people I’ve spoken to simply don’t rate the museum’s collection.
Certainly it’s undervalued, I think, by the leading guidebooks, which damn it with faint praise. Fodor’s India virtually dismisses it, with just two lines on the collection, while even ‘Time Out Mumbai’ can only squeeze out two sentences (in fact, it has more to say about the displays at the tiny Money Museum in Fort…!)

If the museum’s collection is so good, why is it so, well, unappreciated? Why such disaffection? Well, there’s a can of worms… I think I can point up some problems.

Let me give you an example of why visitors are turned off. As I said, the delicate miniature paintings of India are to die for. Some of these pictures (many of which are here) easily stand comparison, in my humble opinion, with the output of the pre-Raphael Italian schools. You could easily spend a couple of hours at CS enjoying these depictions of life, so delicately and so finely and so gorgeously observed they are.
Well, you could. But you won’t.
Sadly, in the miniatures gallery the lighting (which amounts to a few yellowing fluorescent tubes) is so understated, i.e. dim!, that one’s eyes are tired after just thirty minutes with all one’s peering and squinting. What’s more, thick yellow drapes on the windows prevent any natural light entering.
Now of course, even I realise that harsh direct lighting would damage these fragile things (though, annoyingly, there is no apologetic sign to explain that); but modern techniques of lighting do also mean that, with a little will, it is possible to help the art-lover actually see the details of what s/he is looking at - without damaging the works.
So - the CS Museum is either incredibly poorly funded, or there is a lack of modern thinking among the trustees.

The maddening thing is that, in an extension to this very same building, the Khandalavala Wing (endowed by a former chairman of the museum) shows just how modern approaches to museums can make the difficult look easy. Intelligent settings and appropriate lighting there make that section, small as it is, incredibly welcoming.
Even in the marginalised Pre-History gallery the cleverly planned lighting of the Assyrian reliefs shows thoughtfulness.
And the visiting exhibitions in the Premchand Roychand Gallery on the far side of the East Wing are often innovative.
But where is the inspiration for the way in which the bulk of the main collection is presented?

And don’t talk to me about the Ratan Tata European Paintings Gallery. The shabby frames, the peeling paintings, the huge ugly fans and the cracking walls in this gallery – which includes some Constables believe it or not – would disgrace a provincial gallery in Pune, let alone here in the foremost museum one of the greatest cities on earth. Frankly, I think that that gallery should be put out of its misery, like an animal in pain – if no one is prepared to rescue it, its paintings should be donated elsewhere and the room simply closed.

But also what came across to me as a foreigner, and marks the major disparity between how this gallery presented itself and what I am used to back home in Europe, is that the possibilities of attracting, exciting and gripping the visitor seem to be ignored!

For example… The labelling of the works is often not only uninformative, except perhaps to an art-historian, but even missing. Unless you’re an expert, you often have to guess what it is that you are looking at.

For example… The splendid gardens, which contain colourful beds of flowers and a number of (apparently) fine oriental statues, are roped off. No one was able to explain why, or how long this situation would continue.

For example… Certain sections of the gallery seem to be closed for renovation at any one time. But do you think the unsuspecting visitor would be told this before paying over any money? Nope.

For example... The totally out of date website, which seems to have been last refreshed ten years ago, and has virtually NO information on it. Please, folks! This is the twenty-first century - when a child can make a website at virtually no cost. Can't you?

For example… The gift shop. Now, don’t get me wrong. I too despise galleries where there is more attention and space given over to Money than to Art, but there has to be a balance. The visitor seeks, when going to the gift shop, a memory of a wonderful day. In the CS Museum gift shop, which is isn’t large enough to hold a dozen people, there are a few untidily arranged and expensive-looking art-books for sale - and a mere thirty cards! (Incidentally, some of these cards show works from other museums, annoyingly). Is it really so impossible to get in a professional photographer and create a wider selection of cards?
And if you seek refreshment in the midst of your hours here? At many major galleries – even the nearby Jehangir – you might find a small café, or at least a vending machine. Not here. You’d better have brought a bottle of water, cos there’s nothing.

What is one to make of all this? Do the managers of the museum not care to exploit the cash-resource of their visitors, which is at their very fingertips, or do they really not think about visitors’ needs, or, as I suspect, is there so little creative thinking that customer service is seen as an expensive luxury?
I suspect that the reason the place is not teeming with visitors, as it should be given the treasures on show, is because of this attitude toward the visitor.

The museum is a fabulous effort of conservation. But gone are the days when museums could just be the preserve of the curators. Nowadays, they belong to the public too.
And if money is the root of the problem, then a major appeal (of which there was no sign) is in order.

There will be, I hope, many people who wish to tell me how wrong I am in my assessment. And, at the risk of contradicting myself, I hope they do.

The point I am hoping to make is that there are some wonderful pieces here, including the very building itself. A visitor to Mumbai would be foolish not to put aside an afternoon, and even a day, to go around.
But the flaws niggle at the visitor like annoying mosquitoes, in the end making the experience much, much less than it could be.

**

A final note.
On one of my visits, time passed by almost without me noticing so engrossed I was, and the attendants were turning off the lights and ushering people out before I even realised the bell had gone. As I left the huge white staircase to cross the lobby and leave, the sun was just starting to go down, and, to my left, its last orange rays were entering through the windows of the Statuary Hall, where the lights were already off. In the half-light, the statues had mutated into unfamiliar shapes.
There is something oddly affecting about empty rooms in a museum, and in this instance it was even more so. The statues, some more than a millennium old, standing mute, being forsaken for the night, were twisting and turning (or appearing to) as the dying sunlight moved over or by them, changing.
What a spell was being weaved there!

And it’s epiphanies like that which remind you that… niggling as their flaws may be, the great museums with their great collections do have a power in them – and it’s a crying shame to see such wonders neglected.

Links: Museum Website, and Excellent Intro to the Museum Collection even though it lacks some details (on The Bharat website)

++
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Trailed by Shop Assistants

2007-04-30T07:38:00.000-07:00

While in England shop assistants may ignore you, and in Spain they may snarl at you (just for asking a question!), and in France they may just look down on you and in America they may pounce on you, in India… they just follow you. And often, not just one, but two or three of them.

It can only be, I suppose, because labour is cheap here. Stores seem to be as stocked as much with assistants as with products.
And I suppose assistants are told they must be at their customers’ beck and call. Often, when the shops I have been in are not that busy, I get an assistant, or two, all to myself.

I walk in, I smile. They smile. I give a little look that says in the universal-shrug-speak, “Just looking!”. I think the exchange of shopper and shop assistant is over, so I start to wander around and gaze. But someone is on my tail. I turn right. They turn right. I stop to look at a shelf of goods. They stop. A shadow of a shop assistant. Or two. Never quite in my personal space, they remain five or six feet away. I verbalize again to them: “Just looking”. But they continue to lurk.
Oddly, sometimes, they refuse look at me, even as they dog my footsteps, which gives one the strange sensation that this is all just a science-fiction. Perhaps I am invisible, but they can sense and follow my presence.
It is even odder, when, as I am looking at, say, shelves of CDs, they continue to stand next to me - right in the way of the next shelf - so that I must go round them in order to see the next row of discs.

I used to wonder if they thought I was a potential shoplifter, whom they must keep a deliberate eye on. Maybe tourists, I thought, are known for being untrustworthy. It’s possible…
In fact, entertaining this thought that I was under suspicion once got me so annoyed that in one shop I walked quicker and quicker and quicker, and then stopped abruptly. The poor assistant, rushing to keep up, couldn’t help but whiz straight on past me.
I’m ashamed to admit that when she regained her position – five feet behind me – I continued my tease by spuriously turning left and then right to see her keep up with me before finally turning 180-degrees to face her directly. However, I’m glad I didn’t confront her at this point, because, yes, after all, she was just doing her job. Does her boss tell her to be on hand for customers at all times? And if she had simply, albeit efficiently, stood in a corner and followed me only with her eyes, her boss probably would have scolded her. Right?

But who needs such close attention? Well, some people obviously. The old and the infirm do.
But does the haughty lady, who does not lift a finger for herself, but who forces the shop assistant to lift the tiniest things off the shelf for her perusal? I doubt she needs the attention; it might in fact do her some good to do something for herself.

Of course, it is, if that is its intention, a successful way of combating shoplifting. It is even more useful as a form of job-creation. Perhaps it is not as daft as it seems.

It was the same when I went to a nursery to buy some plants for one of the many people who let me stay at their home while I was looking for an apartment.
First there was one guy, then two, then as I wandered around the rows of ivy a manager was called over, and finally a fourth man appeared. I was the only customer in this little field off the edge of a city park where they sold plants. But still, four guys were on hand to help me shop. Indians’ natural curiosity, plus the propensity to assist - and the fact that there was nothing, at that moment, better for these guys to do - meant that I couldn’t fail to be helped.
But in this instance, it did turn out that there were four functions to be performed. When I asked one of them, “Do you have jasmine here? You know, the white flower with the strong, sweet smell?” (I didn’t even think then that it is one of the most prolific flowers of the country, the smell of which probably kick-started the Indian aromatherapy industry), it took all four to produce the necessary reactions. One of them sniggered outright; another smiled slowly and said something in Marathi to the old one (who then went to get me the plant); and the fourth said to me politely, “Sir. This is India. You ask me if I know jasmine...?”

(With thanks to LLP for nearly all the input).

**

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Reverse Racism - & Contempt for Servants

2007-04-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

One thing the European visitor notices almost immediately is that his skin-colour will mark him out for special treatment. You might say that that would be blindingly obvious, but the fact is that India is one of the world's leading nations (in the top twelve states in terms of GDP, believe it or not) - so it has no reason to be over-respectful to the outsider. So, I was surprised.

But, frankly what is more interesting, is that, while it might also be said that class-distinctions among Europeans are gradually disappearing (though Europe has much to learn in this respect from the Australians and Americans), a person’s class seems to me a disproportionately major factor among Mumbaikers.
And in one of the world’s most established democracies, that observation struck me as being very curious. More later...

Back to colour. Here in Mumbai, there are both advantages and disadvantages to being a white foreigner.
As an Indian friend coyly said, after I was charged ‘foreigner price’ for mangoes: “You are, I’m afraid, a victim of your colour.” Very amusing.
But one can forgive it I suppose. It’s true that prices are regularly a third of what I would pay back home, so I can afford ‘foreigner price’. In fact it becomes a sort of tax for living in a country I love living in… and taxes are inevitable.

What is less easy to take is the reverse – what might be deemed by some as an ‘advantage’ but in fact is something that just feels rather creepy: it’s the obsequious behaviour of flunkies in opulent hotels and expensive shops.
Examples: the fawning displayed by shop assistants in rich people’s department stores; the self-debasing eagerness of some lift attendants in well-off apartment blocks; the humble, self-effacing way subordinates just accept the open contempt of their employers.
Now, it’s not just the foreigners who get all this bowing and scraping stuff. Peons will debase themselves as much before members of the Indian professional classes.

To a Westerner, who will often be a firm political egalitarian, this obsequiousness just appears like a lack of self-respect from these employees, or, worse, an unmanly fear of the 'boss'; in fact, this kind of behaviour appears to be simply demeaning to the person exhibiting it, and, well, just plain sad.
(Yes, yes, I know, some visitors, like me, are quite flattered by this excessively boot-licking attention at first. Believe me, it just gets tiring to have to deal with it after a while though).

So... why do (some) Mumbaiker working-class people do it?
After all, they are a minority. Out on the streets, at roadside vendors’ stalls, in small cafes, in independent shops, in government offices even (!), there is no such behaviour. Mumbaikers here can be as rude and as peremptory as any other folk on Earth!

No, the toadying that I refer to most often occurs in places that the well-off and/or the professional classes inhabit. Why?
Are the assistants told to behave like this by their managers? But then... are the managers stuck in some ancient past where “kow-towing to a master” was demanded? And do they think most modern foreigners find it pleasant?

It struck me (though I know very little about how caste actually works), that these assistants might just be observing the rules of caste, they being lower-caste, those they serve being upper-caste. But then why bother scraping to a tourist like me? Tourists are not from a higher caste (are they?). Tourists are from no caste at all – surely.
I guess that’s where one’s white-skin might play a role; and if colour does play a part, then such behaviour really is truly unpleasant – it’s a sort of reverse racism that does neither party (those who behave obsequiously, and indeed those who accept it) any credit.

However. Some people I have spoken to say that it’s more than just obsequiousness before Foreign Riches, but also has undertones of the colonial past – and that some Indians find it difficult to shake off memories of the days of the sahibs. Could that be possible? If so, I find it truly odd – as it is now some sixty long years after the bitter Independence strggle.

But… and here I might be getting into really hot water… let me point the finger elsewhere to explain at least part of this behaviour.

From what I see on the streets of Mumbai or in the more expensive homes and restaurants of the city, there are members of the Indian professional classes who seem to have little ability to communicate with members of the lower classes.
I have been shocked by the rudeness and arrogance shown by otherwise extraordinarily cultivated people toward their own servants or to shop assistants or waiters. In the US, in ninety per cent of cases, those people would have not been allowed to get away with it, as the abusers would quickly have been equal measure back.
Don’t forget, when I say ‘professional classes’ I mean people like dentists, or small-businessmen, or teachers – that is to say, relatively ordinary folk. Yet, sometimes, I have been so embarrassed that I have had to look away when they are so curt and harsh and rude to their ‘inferiors’ – which, to the shame of all, seems somehow acceptable.

And, do you know what I think is at the root of this bad behaviour? (Oh dear, here I get into more trouble). My answer: widespread use of domestic servants.
I can think of very few other democracies where the ordinary middle-classes have full-time domestic help (usually ‘maids’) as a matter of course.
Sure, in Britain, a middle-class home might have a cleaner who comes in part-time, but even in America, it is only the upper middle-class that will have live-in servants. But here in Mumbai these maids or ‘boys’ are common to many households, even quite ordinary ones. They are often brought in from rural India, or the city’s slums, and are on long hours and very meagre wages (which is why they can be afforded in the first place of course).

The trouble is that because these servants are often so badly trained, poorly-paid and so lowly, the people in the household, including older children, often feel they can be openly contemptuous of them. (Though, there are exceptions to this rule, where some servants are treated like members of the family; that is true too, I admit).
These servants, who have few options open to them, are often cowed by their employers’ arrogance and abuse.

This kind of relationship seems to me an unhealthy one all round, and yet it seems to be a defining characteristic for how certain other exchanges take place outside the home and in Indian society at large.
For example, as this particular wheel turns, you can see how it manifests itself in industrial companies, where I have seen managers rant and rave at unhappy and powerless employees for hours – all the while accusing their employees of not showing initiative (as if they dared!).
I leave it to sociologists to suggest how much such powerlessness affects a man’s or a woman’s attitudes. But it must have some effect.

So… here is a final (I hope interesting) thought – wouldn’t it be better, in the drive toward a truly equal and classless society in Mumbai, if the middle classes learnt to stop looking down on someone simply because he or she is employed by them, and started to wash their own socks?

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Mumbai’s rubbish

2007-04-25T02:48:00.000-07:00

I seem to remember that security businesses regularly warn people in England that they should be aware what they throw into their rubbish – because someone somewhere is probably sifting through it, looking for ‘sensitive’ information.
But here in Mumbai, that warning is superfluous. It is a simple fact of life that, every day, someone is searching, by hand, through my rubbish - I can see him or her doing it from my window. And so it is with the waste of every resident of the city.

Mumbai is a city of recycling. As soon as I throw a plastic carrier bag, some spoiled tin-foil, or an old newspaper, or even a used battery into the kitchen bin, the housekeeper will retrieve it. Usually, she tuts at me, annoyed that valuable material is being wantonly discarded, and asks me not to repeat my thoughtlessness.
Early on in our relationship, the housekeeper also made it clear that one of the perks of her job was that she got first dibs on other discarded things – from old combs to greying shirts. So now, she keeps various plastic bags in her cupboard; and into each she sieves the various unwanted items until there is enough in one to make it worth her taking to one of the various dealers.
This is the first level of domestic recycling.

The second level consists of a man who walks up and down outside our building each morning, crying, in a sing-song way, something that sounds like “o my cheeky boy” (sooner or later, I will ask for a translation, but, right now, I’m enjoying the incongruity of this odd call…). He gives immediate cash for newspaper, tin, cardboard, bottles, wood, etc on the spot.
However, the housekeeper will not use him, saying darkly that his prices are cheating prices; but he is the easy option if you want a quick return.

The third level belongs to the women who collect all our rubbish and sweep the stairwells.
Once they have amassed the apartment block’s rubbish and it is deposited in the rubbish cabin (which stands next to one of the block’s perimeter walls), they then have liberty to sort through it.

From my high-rise flat, I look down and watch their work. What can be left, I wonder, after the housekeeper’s previous sift? You’d be amazed. Bits of fabric, paper-clips, empty biro pens, rubber door-stops, old but whole vegetables, used yoghurt pots – all are grist to this mill.
The cleaning women are on to a good thing too – the professional classes who inhabit these flats have lots to throw away.
(They have their angry moments though. I witnessed a stand-up argument in which a sweeper was criticising one housekeeper who was failing to sort her flat’s rubbish into wet/organic matter and dry matter. As the sweeper said, it wasn’t very nice for her to have to pick through old bones as well as everything else. I took her point).

The casual visitor to Bombay can also witness this kind of recycling in action. The visitor will often see children or poor women carrying huge, white plastic-fabric sacks, sometimes as big as themselves, along the streets. Well, these bags are either full of accumulated rubbish (from businesses or homes), and are being carried to a central point for a thorough picking, or are full of already picked material (e.g. rags) being taken to a dealer.
It is one of the hardest sights for a foreigner to face – on a roadside, an arthritic, filthy & silent old woman, surrounded by half a dozen or so of those large packages of smelling waste, is slowly gouging and poking into the mess in order to find tiny re-sellables.

**

And what happens to this stuff then? Has the city such a well heeled, or responsibly civic side, that it can afford huge plants to recycle these materials?
Er, no. It tries – but it could never cope with all.
Interested in where the recycled rubbish goes?
One of the most illuminating trips a visitor to the city can take is one to the slum-district of Dharavi. A tour company called Reality Tours will undertake to show you, for a few hundred rupees, the multiplicity of cottage industries in this deprived part of town. As you wander through alley after alley (though – be warned - an alley will often serve double as a sewer-ditch here), it is fascinating to see how this so-called slum acts as the digestive system of the city.
It is like being in the depths of Dickens’ Victorian London. As you peer into what appears to be dark and broken workshops, you see thick and sooty faces, sweating at their tasks: renovating old paint tins and oil-drums, which are being scrubbed clean (one shudders at the amount of lead these labourers must be taking in); dead computer-drives and used hypodermic syringes (yuk) are being hammered into fragments, for later shredding into tiny plastic chips; domestic batteries are being snapped in two, the metals sorted; shoe-soles remoulded – and so all this detritus becomes ready for re-use.

In an almost casual aside, your guide will tell you that so efficient (and cheap, and uninterested in expensive health & safety rules, no doubt) is Dharavi that much of Europe’s used plastic goods are shipped here, broken up, and exported back to the West as raw material.

It’s a sort of recycling Heaven… well, you couldn’t call it Heaven… a recycling Hell.
If I recommend one thing that all visitors to Bombay should do, this tour is it.

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The funny thing is that there is a sly, self-deprecating joke that Mumbaikers make about the millions of voracious rats and the crows here. It is also a comment on the city’s overwhelmed refuse service. “Without the rats and crows” they smile “who would clean up the city?”

And now you know the answer. The rag pickers… and the labourers of Dharavi. What I am wondering is: what is the human cost of all this messing about in filth?

Links: Reality Tours of Dharavi and BBC report on Dharavi
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The Locked Gardens of Mumbai

2007-04-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am determined, in these entries, not to believe the popular myths about Mumbai or India unless I find evidence proving them true.
One profile of India says that it is a Land of Inflexible Rules laid down by invisible bureaucrats, seemingly incomprehensible diktats, whose rhyme and reason has long disappeared into history – but which nobody can be bothered to update or challenge. And so the Rules live on.

Take the case of public gardens.
In this hot crowded city, where green space is at a premium, cultivated gardens and parks are… amazingly… shut during the hottest hours of the day, just when they are most needed. No one seems to know why.

Mumbai is studded with gardens and small parks. Some are fairly sorry affairs, but some are really very inviting. The one on Bhulabhai Desai Road is a long cool stretch of green running alongside the sea line at Breach Candy; the ‘Residents Garden’ on Cuffe Parade has some luxurious plants and sleepy places to laze; the one by Charni Road has a delightful play area; the one at CST railway station has an extraordinary statue; BPT Gardens have an amazing collection of plants; Priyadarshini park (by the sea, again) by Malabar Hill has a jogging track; and so on and so on.

But in fact, all the gardens mentioned, and nine out of ten of Mumbai’s other numerous gardens that I’ve been able to check out, are closed for over four hours in the middle of the day. From 11am to 3.30pm, locks guard their precious trees and shrubs from visitors. Why? What on earth is it all about?
(And don’t talk to me about the lovely flowerbed gardens at the Prince of Wales Museum. They are shut – completely. Irritating little ribbons mark off the gardens from any visitor, who is only ever allowed to observe from a distance. Maddening.)

One honourable exception is the Horniman Circle Garden, which remains open through the lunch hour. And so it should. The office-weary heroes of this area, the financial district, are surely desperate for somewhere to shake the a/c out of their clothes, and just relax away from the computer.
And not just them. Tourists, footsore after trekking around the streets of Fort, take a break and eat some chaat here under the shade of the tall trees. In the heat of the day (and don’t forget… it’s hot all year round here), to have somewhere to stop and cool off is worth its weight in gold.
If The Horniman Garden authorities can allow it, why not others?

At first, I thought this closed-when-most-needed idea must be just a ploy by lazy park officials. At Priyadarshini Park, where parkies sat around in chairs chatting inside as I banged on the gate outside, I was ready for an argument. Even more so, when some lycra-clad lovelies could be seen in the distance on the joggers’ track. “And why are they here, and not the rest of us?” - “They are in an official club” was the smug answer. (Do you remember me saying there’s a usually a rule but it’s hard to know it? Also, the reasoning behind that rule escapes me).

So what’s it all about? No official has yet explained to me the reason. Theories from acquaintances spring up, and then die – for want of sustenance.
Could it be to stop pavement-dwellers sneaking in and building tarpaulin tents for themselves? (But then what’s to stop them doing that at 4pm?)
Perhaps many of the gardens are privately owned, and don’t want the public in? (But why then let the public in at all?)
Is it that the cost of paying for the places to be manned by guards at that time is too high? (Nope – one of the most infuriating things is to see the clumps of men in brown overalls lounging about inside doing very little).

It’s an exasperating mystery – and I would welcome any answers from those who know. It’s one thing that puzzles visitors immensely.

Perhaps a campaign could be started – Free the Mumbai Gardens!

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Links: Mumbai Municipal Parks & Gardens Department

Mumbai’s Thing about Hitler

2007-03-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest slaps in the face that a European visitor to India experiences is the all-pervading presence of the swastik – what we foreigners perceive as the Nazis’ swastika. The first few times I came across it, on the gates of a college, on the back of a truck, and in a prominent place in a shop, it chilled my blood. Of course it was obvious quite quickly, even to me, that the symbol was not being used here in the same way as in Europe, but, still, my upbringing means I and many others in the West have a visceral and intense reaction as soon as it is seen, and it didn’t feel good in my first days to see it around the place so much.

What’s more…. perhaps the confusion between the European and the Indian significance of the swastik (which actually originated in India, is a long-established religious emblem of good fortune, and which Hitler stole, for his own movement’s use) might contribute to why, strangely to me, there seems to be an inordinate amount of interest here in Hitler’s philosophy …

I’m not talking about the crass right-wing politicians in India who say rather silly approving things about Hitler – after all, that happens in Europe too, sadly.
No, it's more than just the statements of rather ignorant politicians. For example, in Gujarat, the neighbouring state to this one, the school textbooks referred to Hitler the Hero. (However, as you can imagine, there was eventually some objection to that).

Indeed, even on the shelves of the trendy modern bookshops in this city you can see displayed prominently ‘Mein Kampf’ (Hitler’s autobiography, written by him when he was a young revolutionary, and in which he first outlined his views). To my surprise, I learnt that it is on quite a few local bookshops’ ‘constantly-selling’ list.
In fact, quite a few Indian publishing houses (of which two, Jaico Books – which specialises in New Age works surprisingly! - and Embassy Books, are based in Mumbai) compete to produce in-print versions of Mein Kampf. Interestingly, all the versions I saw use the 1939 edition (Patrick Murphy’s translation) – without any modern preface to give it a post-1945 historical context!
Then there was the bizarre incident of the restaurant that opened here in Greater Mumbai in the summer of 2006 – as “a tribute to General Hitler” (see Hindustan Times, August 21, ‘06). The owner of ‘Hitler’s Cross’, as it was called, was quoted as saying “we named it after the general Hitler, and we hope our customers gobble up our food just as he gobbled up countries”. Eh?? As you can imagine, I was incredulous, and wondered what naivety/ignorance could be behind this ‘reasoning’. (As it was, the big newspapers had a field day going after this man, and he later had to change the name.)

Soon after this incident, the Times of India (Oct 29 2006, pg 4) quoted a charity worker who was mentioning, approvingly, one of Hitler’s maxims about being independent. The man, who was being feted as a community hero by the paper, went on to say that Mein Kampf was his “favourite book” which he read in Marathi translation. The report added (without any other comment!), “...like Hitler, he too is a vegetarian teetotaller”.

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What on earth does it all add up to? Well, as usual, I’d love any reader’s thoughts on why they think this happens, but I’m beginning to think it’s an interesting example of just how wide the gap between India and Europe really is.

Here are a few guesses on why some ordinary Indians have a soft spot for Hitler.

*First, and obviously, the swastik. Hitler’s German race theories postulated an Aryan root for Germans. The modern peoples of north India are (believe it or not) descended from the same Aryan stock, because the Aryans migrated into the Indian sub-continent… which is why in fact Hitler adopted the swastik – an authentic Aryan symbol. Indian people love the swastik, and so did Hitler, so, maybe some ignorant people think this is a reason to admire Adolf? Maybe.
Incidentally, a recent move by German politicians to try to have the swastika outlawed in the European Union countries was greeted with outrage by … guess who… European Hindus!
The fact that Hitler was a vegetarian, like so many Hindus, only adds to this sense of approval.

*Secondly, though Indians did fight in the Second World War on the side of the Allies (and lost a helluva lot of soldiers incidentally), they were reluctant allies. Indians were part of the British Empire at the time and had to follow Britain into the war, at a time when many Indians actually desperately wanted independence from what they saw as the equally tyrannical regime of the Brits. Perhaps, perhaps, Indians who opposed Britain saw a ‘friend’ in Hitler, who also was fighting the British?
Certainly, he is admired by those same silly Indian politicians I referred to earlier as a Man Who Achieved Things.

*Thirdly, many of the Mumbaikers that I have come across have a fierce sense of Individualism, which is, I suppose, why they make great entrepreneurs.
So, despite the fact that government here is largely paternalistic, many men (and more and more women) sincerely believe they can find success through their own individual strength of will. That attitude is of course echoed in the language of right-wing zealots… such as Hitler.
For example, another hugely popular right-wing book here is Ayn Rand’s 'The Fountainhead', which can be found in every bookshop. Her book (published in 1943) is also a hymn to the power of the Individual who cares nothing for Society as a whole. It’d be interesting to see statistics, but Rand is seen as pretty old-fashioned in Europe, while here, yup, her books are still being bought in numbers, presumably as life-guides.

*Lastly – and I don’t know how many Indians will agree with this – maybe Hitler is a bit of a remote figure to them.
Most Europeans nowadays don’t feel threatened by the figures of Attila The Hun, or indeed Napoleon, even though in their own centuries, they were regarded with horror by anyone who wasn’t on their side. Well, maybe distance, as well as time, softens images. Perhaps Hitler (“general Hitler”) whose appalling activities were carried out largely in Europe is not someone who registers too largely with ordinary Indians?
Indeed, while news of Hitler’s atrocities were trickling out of post-war Europe in 1945-7, India had its own terrible history – when hundreds of thousands were dying and being slaughtered in the mess of Independence and Partition. So maybe Indians had other things to worry about then than Hitler.
And of course, there are also very few Jews today in Bombay to remind Mumbaikers of Hitler’s genocidal actions. Despite the fact that this is a city that has huge public endowments from the Jewish Sassoon family, many of the Jewish inhabitants have left – including the Sassoons themselves – and the two main synagogues have comparatively small congregations.
(As a sidebar on this point, one of the objectors who was quoted as opposing the Hitler’s Cross restaurant said – “even restaurants in Germany do not have such a name” as though it seriously might be possible! It just shows how out of touch with European feelings the man was).

Finally - here’s a question for you…. I don’t feel afraid of any book, nor would I ban one; but what would you think of a Bombay book-club that put ‘Mein Kampf’ on its reading list?
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Links: Jaico Books and Reuters News Video report – Hitler’s Cross

Beggars - to give or not to give?

2007-02-19T08:14:00.000-08:00

One of the first things that visitors to Bombay assume is that you will be permanently accosted by hordes of beggars.
Actually, this simply isn’t true. It’s a very old-fashioned view of India. I have come across few beggars in Bombay, and they are all, so far, harmless, and by and large will leave you alone once you have given, whether the amount is small or not, or when they know you are definitely not going to give.
But beggars do exist – and what is a rich foreigner to do about the distressing poverty they live in? Believe it or not, the foreigners that I know do worry about this question quite a lot.
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The few beggars that I come across seem to fall into three categories.
The first kind are to be found near The Gateway, or Not Just Jazz By The Bay (café bar) on Marine Drive, or places where tourists hang out.
These beggars are raggedly-dressed small boys and small girls, whose wretched state (not to mention their sometimes astonishing beauty) will tug at the tourists’ heart-strings. They can be quite amazingly dogged (one six year old must have accompanied me once for a quarter of a mile, talking to me the whole time). Working the same patch as the kids and equally dogged, (surprisingly, considering their state), are the maimed – youths without legs or arms.
I’m told that these kids are often the children of migrants to the city, who are going through the first phase of migrating to Bombay – a poverty-stricken one when they are sleeping on the pavements. Or, they could be runaways. I found it at first stunning to think that these tiny children could be self-sufficient, but it turns out to be true in some cases. There are hostels for some of the ‘railway children’, but often they must find their food for themselves.

The second type of beggars I have observed are the young women (sometimes with babies) who hang around intersections waiting for the lights to turn red, when they will weave among the stopped cars, tapping on windows, asking for money.
Incidentally, the hijras (men who dress in women’s clothes, and who often have had themselves castrated) also do the tapping on the window stuff. I don’t know why, but they seem to be a little more uptight about it all than the women; I guess because they are more often than not also touting for work as prostitutes… at least round Mahalaxmi that seems the case.

And lastly, there are the traditional beggars – usually old men or women who can be found sitting at street corners, often in the blazing sun, just hoping patiently and sadly for alms.
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So – what’s the issue you ask? Why not give two rupees or five rupees (three US cents), which is as much as is expected, and move on?
In fact, this is easy enough. In the old days, if you gave to one, you would be surrounded by many. Now, with the beggars so few in number, that is not a problem in Bombay.

But now comes in the crazy logic of Charitable Giving. And, over very expensive dinners, foreigners discuss what to do. In the way that people do when they dicuss humanity at large and/or economics, it is brutally cold.
First issue at the table (usually voiced by Americans, whose very fibre philosophically opposes untested social welfare systems) is: surely we are just perpetuating the culture of begging? If nobody gives, they say, then the poor would go off and find other work (and by implication, “other work” is better for society than begging… - though I often wonder whether that includes prostitution and gangsterism. Surely… not?).
Second issue is the Europeans’ concern. Guilty over their colonial past, they do not wish to appear as the sahibs any more, and they think that to give would be only to perpetuate another issue – that the White Face means Patronage. Terrified of being accused of being patronising, they would (bizarrely) prefer not to give to the poor beggar.

And then all the other theories and objections pour on…: some say that the maimed and the children are often controlled and exploited by cruel adults, so they never see the money they earn anyway; that it’s disgusting that very young babies (who should be asleep) are touted round as pity-rousers by the heartless young women – these definitely (say the mothers at the table) should NOT be encouraged!; and meanwhile others claim that the old beggars, unable to contribute to a family income, are often forced out on street corners by their unpleasant relatives – which, again, they say, is a practice not to be encouraged.

(What I call the ‘Londoner objection’ – that beggars are all somehow making a fortune anyway – and the Not Our Problem objection – which usually boils down to ”the locals don’t give so why should we?” – are both so patently incorrect in this city, that happily they are never raised).

So – says one voice at the table – then we should Do Nothing? This obviously is not an answer either. Foreigners in India can afford to help, and most are, believe it or not, genuinely compassionate when they see the real poor of India.

How about the tithe idea? says the American Christian Socialist at this little gathering (the 'tithe' is where one automatically gives ten per cent of one’s income to caring institutions). This suggestion usually ends up in a rather unpleasantly circular conversation about how inefficiently, corruptly or badly a lot of charitable institutions in the city are run, and about how it’s pointless giving to them.
(I personally would be interested in what anyone reading this article would recommend as an efficient and worthy charity in Bombay. If you have ideas, perhaps you’d make a mention in the Comments?).

OK, says another speaker. Then the Muslim way is best – you give alms simply because it is your duty to be open-handed and caring to the less privileged, and you should not think too hard about what the end result might be. But the Westernised people here, at this table, raised on a business model of welfare, reject this completely.

Incidentally, one lady – whom I find charming, in that she has thought this through so carefully – has solved the problem in her own way by giving out biscuit-bars. The beggar kids often complain of being hungry, so she thinks the biscuits are the best solution. She even scoured the shops looking for HEALTHY biscuits as she did not want to engender a sugar habit in them! However, she was brought up sharply by her driver, who told her that the kids would be forced to sell them (as they are still in their wrappers) and the money would still have to be handed over to their ‘guardians’. So - and I tell you no lie - she now carefully unwraps the biscuits each time she gives them out, which makes them unsellable, which ensures the kids get to eat them…
(However, another foreigner whom I know still frowns even on this – as she says it still perpetuates the dependence cycle, even though it is not money).

And thus the dinner table usually breaks up (after expensive coffee liqueurs) - with the problem unresolved !
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So… what do I do?
Well, it’s an incomplete answer and doesn’t satisfy all the objections above – but here is my response. I give to the Railway Children (a charity for India, based in England – its credentials appear to be all one could ask for).
I never give to anyone who asks. This might seem weird – but that means I make it a point of honour to give on all occasions to the old people and the maimed (or whoever) crouching on the street undemandingly waiting for alms. All those who ask, i.e. the kids, hijras, young women with babies and even the maimed, get nothing… well, except biscuits(!), when I have them.
It isn’t very satisfactory as a solution of course. And because it is so very unsatisfactory, I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment – and just give to whom I like, and do whatever I feel!

Anyone else do anything else? I’d honestly be interested to know. Stick a comment on…
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Links
Railway Children Charity

When men whip themselves with knives

2007-02-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

The contrasts that central Bombay can throw up are almost too many and too obvious to mention, but one of the biggest is the huge disparity between the modern & inspirational streets of the west side of the city and the traditional & ignored districts that are mostly on the east side of the city.

No more than a mile or so from the sleek, glass, 21st century Stock Exchange is Dongri.

Dongri is a devout and emotional Muslim district. It is poor and ignored by tourists – not another European face did I see there. During the Islamic month of Muharram, I came to be walking Dongri’s hot hot streets (and this is January!), looking for the traditional scaled-down representations of the tomb of Imam Hussain that usually line the streets of Shia areas across the world on Muharram’s tenth day, Ashura (which is an official holiday in India). Hussain was the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and the third Imam of Islam.
But, in a whirl of events, I came to be where I never thought modern Bombay would ever lead me.

The tombs, made of plywood and then covered in gorgeous cloth, line the sides of the streets. Men and women sit (separately of course) at side-street cafes.
But, judging by the shouts and drums from a distance away, the big event seemed to be elsewhere.
When the drummers drum in Bombay, it is such a compelling sound that it just draws you. When such passion is in the air, as they beat incessantly at the huge barrel-skins, who would not want to find its source?
Following the sound, I came to high walls that seemed to hold beyond them a communal hall. So many people, mostly dressed in black – both men and women – were trying to get in and out the entrances, it was a crush to get through them to the spectacle inside. Though some men were wary of me, yet there were some pushing me forward in the forceful but kind way that Indian people do to curious strangers.

I have no idea what it was I was then seeing… In that first space hundreds of men were crammed into a covered hall no bigger than a tennis court. Above the melee you could see some thirty or so furled banners held high and representations of the Imam’s tomb, travelling in a waving, shaking procession in furious continuous circles.

Someone explained above the din that Ashura remembers the day that the Imam and his followers were surrounded and slaughtered at Karbala, which was about as much as I could understand of what he said (my knowledge of the history of Islam is poor, sadly), so I think what I was seeing was the battle flags being readied and the re-enacted frenzy of the warriors of that great struggle of almost fourteen centuries ago.

Shoved back into the street, where there were now perhaps thousands of spectators looking down on the scene from balconies, scaffolding, the tops of walls, as well as at ground level where they lined the passage-ways, I was pushed into other doorway (a man rushed up to me: “be careful of your belongings!”, and rushed away again) where it seemed that most of them were women (again, top to toe in sweating black).. Was I in a women’s section?
Sensing my confusion, a woman seized me (she did not use half-measures) and jabbed me forward and more forward into the pressed clumps of women watching the main event. Eventually, now almost at the front of this group, jammed in a soft hot mass of female flesh (I could only wonder that, as a foreigner, perhaps I was regarded as sexless, because no one seemed to object), I could see clearly was happening.

We were looking into a high and open courtyard with just a thin piece of roof to hold off the sun. If it had been a car-park, it would have held no more than twenty cars. Again, there was not a square inch of space in it to be had.
The arena was a swirling sea of men in black, with some figures and objects making laboured swaying circular processions through the scrum of people. Two “characters” were on horseback (incredibly placid horses when you think about it) – one looked like a Roman centurion in red, his face painted in black, and one was a shaven-headed man with a sword aloft. A costumed group of three were crowded on a tiny board (though who or what was carrying this platform I could not see) and were also taking part in the endless round. Curiously, three or four babies, costumed in green silk, were being held aloft and jiggled for the crowds. Not surprisingly, one of these babies was screaming at terror at the noise and confusion of it all, not to mention the drop beneath it, but no one paid it much mind.What it all signified, I am sorry to say I do not know…

The steaming heat of my squashed position was getting too much… so I hassled and squeezed-by and retreated, when a lady at the back took me aside. It was impossible to hear all she had to say against the drums and noise, but she explained about the line of Imams (and the lineage of prophets, including Jesus) and that the man in red was the enemy at Karbala – “a terrorist.” The babies, she added, were to remind us of the women and children that were massacred in the attack, including Hussain’s own baby son. And, knowing exactly the political implications, she stopped and held my wrist tight and made the point clear: “we are not friends to terrorist….”
I suppose that moment was true Bombay - a city that will come up with a modern debate against the background of an ancient pageant.
In a cooler corner by one of the back walls, I managed to hide. The stares were fewer now, because another development unfolded and took attention away from me… Teenage boys, chests bare, smeared in blood, drifted past. By me was a small stall on which was stocked a large number of medical dressings, from which the boys would take one or two and wrap them round their wounds, while a man with a water-tank dispenser periodically squirted liquid over them. Of course, I couldn’t see or guess at why they had blood on them – I wondered if it was just youthful over-enthusiasm while taking part in ‘the battle’?

But now it became clear. A space opened up in the press and some of the twenty-something young men, also bare-chested, formed a rough circle. They were holding short chains, at the end of which was a clump of three curved attack-knives. Cautiously they swung them to and fro (the drums hammering, and watching men striking the tops of their heads with each beat) and then they would fling the knives full circle over their shoulders to thud against their backs – whereupon the flesh is immediately clean cut, and blood squirts off the skin in tiny droplets. They were flagellating themselves with knives. Again and again. And the floor gradually became as soupy as that in a butcher's shop.
Curiously, in my first walkings, I’d seen the knife-grinders in the streets, all busy sharpening these dagger objects. Naively I had thought they were ceremonial weapons only.

As you would guess I would, I thought – it’s got to be a trick… surely they are making it so that only the flat sides of the knives are striking? One further look told me that that was not true. What’s more, the flagellators were joined by other young men, who, with a single knife in their hands, rocked back and forth, before with a final flick, cruelly running the knife’s sharpened blade along their own scalps in a line to their foreheads – from where blood would run down and daub their faces, and leave their hair stickily bloody.
The spectators watched with admiration at this devotion and courage. Many had their cameras at the ready (the contrasts of Bombay!) to take photos of these young heroes.
And when the older men felt they had had enough, and stopped them from continuing, still these young men often crept back into the ring, bypassing their elders, to continue the self-torture.

I suppose one can be sensible about it all, and say that the knives only seem to cut the surface of the flesh, they do not break through to the muscle, and they do not go low enough to harm the kidneys. From what I saw, no permanent damage is done, though some boys showed the evidence of the previous year – old weals, looking like small twigs trapped beneath the skin. And the older men were there and watchful to see no ‘excesses’.
Of course I can only say what I saw. Some tell me I saw just a mild manifestation of Muharram. But I know one young man was weeping with the shock as he continued to bleed.I’m a foreigner – I leave it to anyone who has the knowledge, and cares to post, to do the explanation of what happening.

Oh Bombay!
You know, it’s a heck of a shock to be in a shiny air-conditioned international coffee-shop at breakfast surrounded by stock-brokers (wondering in a dull way what French pastry to buy) and an hour later to see a whole community gather to remember its ancient past and history and traditions and beliefs – and all with overwhelming commitment to what is before them. And then, let’s not forget, to see men’s faces warping with the pain of what they are doing to themselves.

Is it good for me to be so confused by this city?

Bombay Drivers and their Horns

2007-01-28T01:04:00.000-08:00

The demands that Bombay traffic places on drivers are something special. Although this is a major international city, even the main streets can be rutted with potholes (especially after the monsoon, when the rains simply force up the poorly-laid tarmac) making driving, er, fairly bumpy. Road-markings are often not in evidence, though, if you’re lucky, a central line of stones may suggest the median. At Regal Roundabout in Colaba, one of the busiest in the city, I was surprised to see no markings, yet there are stop-lights at three points around it. Moral: keep your eyes peeled. Pedestrians and bicyclists wander and wobble and zig zag along the roads at will, knowing cars will have to slow and swerve around them. It’s like an eternal game of chicken.
At traffic lights, the above factors make for a curious herding of the cars, all elbowing for position, forcing themselves forward into the tiniest of gaps, with as much order as cows at a closed farm-gate bunching and jostling and eager to be milked.

However, if drivers have some excuse for confusion because of the lack of ... let’s call it... infrastructure, then they have none for their traffic-discipline.

In a sense, it matters little if a cyclist cuts across a bus. If he were to be crushed by that bus, it’s unlikely anyone else would be hurt. It would be his own stupid fault. (But nearly everyone, oddly, will blame the bus-driver).
But the cyclist’s behaviour is in fact typical of the behaviour of... most of the motorists too. With utter indifference and without hesitation, they cut into the traffic flow from side-streets, they move from lane to lane at will (well, if there were lanes), and they come so close to each other that you can feel your paintwork warmed by the friction of air. (A lot of cars have their wing-mirrors folded in – a wise precaution, cos otherwise they’re liable to be smacked off). What to me looks like, at most, a two-lane highway, is, to the Mumbai driver, a four or possibly five-lane highway (depending on if s/he cares to drive on the wrong side of the road). All this is truly scary, which is why most visitors or ex-pats are driven by a Mumbaiker.

But you begin to realise two salient things after a few months on these apparently-suicidal roads.
First – the incessant, crazy horn-blowing has a purpose. Second – there are some incredibly good drivers on these roads….

The Mumbai police (and the local noise environmentalists) have this mad idea that the horn-blowing should stop. I agree it does seem random (I watched one taxi driver, stopped at a red-light, in the front row, sounding his horn the whole time. I give up on that one). But, if you watch carefully, you’ll know it’s an essential safety tactic.
Say you’re trying to pass someone – and you know he could swerve irrationally at any moment, you need to tell him, loudly, you’re at his side – sound horn. If some guy is walking in the street (pavements are often unusable, and slow to walk on), you have to tell him you’re there – sound horn. If you’re about to squeeze through the narrowest of gaps, you don’t need any other car to start thinking of doing the same – sound horn. In fact, if a motorist/pedestrian/handcart DOESN’T hear a horn, they will behave completely as if there were no one else on the street, and be mighty offended as you almost run into them.

I know what you’re thinking – if EVERYONE behaved courteously, even legally, no horn and no insane manoeuvering would be necessary. But, in my opinion – all that would then happen is that traffic simply would not flow. This is a very tiny peninsula and there are a lot of cars and few good roads. If Mumbai drivers behaved according to, say, British codes of driving, it would take four hours to drive the length of the city - instead of the present two. Believe it or not, these bunching twitchy drivers are what keeps the city moving. And most drivers do trust (with a little prayer to Ganesh) that the OTHER drivers around them do understand these Bombay-style Rules of The Road, and they proceed happily along
(Which isn’t to say that it isn’t dangerous – some of the young drivers especially seem to think that 60mph in this car-glutted city is a reasonable speed. Deaths happen.)

All of which… and here’s a contradiction… means there’s some absolutely brilliant and skilful drivers in this city. If you come to Bombay, and you’re not too scared to watch, just check out some of the tightest, nerveless driving in the world. But don’t think too long about it, or you wouldn’t do anything but walk.
And, whatever you do – DON’T tell your driver to lay off the horn, no matter how much your ears bleed from the noise. They’re trying to save your life.

The strange case of the Ear-Men

2007-01-22T22:25:00.000-08:00

Walking south along the sea-wall from the Gateway of India, one quickly passes the monumental Taj Mahal Hotel – five-starred opulence. Shockingly quickly (at least to my Western eyes) the hotel-scene then changes. Just like so much of India there is no subtle blending; there is, instead, immediate contrast. Lining the street now come the two and three-star backpacker hotels – the cheapest and best way to wake up and see the bay of Bombay from old Colaba. In this stretch, in the heat of summertime anyway, it is virtually the only place to see Europeans strolling on the street.

Which could explain the unusual confidence trick (at least I assume it is one) going on there.

This is what happens.

As I walk (towards the Radio Club as a matter of fact), a casual young man coming towards me expresses surprise. Excuse me, he says, there is, he gesticulates, something sticking to the hair on the side of my head, or perhaps to my ear – something very unappealing, he seems to suggest.
It could be bird-droppings from the trees overhead, I wonder, and am grateful to the young man for his thoughtfulness.
He reaches, and his fingers brush around (and then, it seems, inside?) my right ear, and then seem to gather whatever it is. He shows me what he is now holding – a two-inch long string of an unpleasant material that looks like mucus, or phlegm.
I am astonished.

But suddenly fear comes over me, when I see what implement he has used to root out this objectionable stuff... a four-inch long steel needle. It is a chilling sight. Was that needle in my ear? Did he seek to puncture my ear-drum? Where did he suddenly get this tool?

Panic gets the better of me, and all I want to do is get away... I push him off, ignoring his apparently amazed protestations... anger and a heart banging at the rib-cage are all I feel.
Yards from him, I slow down, and examine my ear... but for what? A pin-prick of blood? Some object left there by sleight of hand? Or... is there really there a residue of that sap-like jelly? Nothing. But there is the shadow noise of his hand moving across my head; a slight echo still, in my ear, of his fingers – and it makes me uneasy. Am I damaged and don’t yet know it?

Later that day, another boy stops me – in the same street – and motions that he too has seen something in my hair. And the next day. And the next. All different young men.

Could these young men be distant cousins of the old men who sit on roadside-corners or outside railway stations waiting for passing trade and who use similar pins to remove collected ear-wax? In other words, are these young men touting for similar wax-extraction jobs?
(Don't ask me why anyone would consent to having their ears poked about with by these ear-men young or not. Whenever I ask about it, people say - to clean one's ears. Well, of course! But - is a flannel or a cotton bud not enough that India should need professionals? Or is ear-wax such a major problem here?)

By now, I realise that it is some sort of trick by these young men. But, what is it?
Or, is it an original way of attempting to start a conversation with a tourist, which then could lead to some more lucrative task?
But.... if they are legitimate ear-wax removers – what on earth makes them think a Westerner would consent to have an unregulated operator perform such a task? Do they ever get a tourist to agree to having it done?

Questions, questions.