Salaam Bombay!

As many of you know, we are headed back to the States tonight and have decided not to return to work in India come fall, so this will be our last posting--unless, of course, we hear clamoring for updates on central NJ.  And we are scheming to do another big trip this year, so stay tuned.   The last few days before we leave have been filled with…

Shopping at the markets:  At the Chor Bazaar (Thieves’ market) we head off in search of rare treasures and gifts--don’t get your hopes up, gang!  It can be overwhelming searching for just the right thing when at one moment, we’re passing men disassembling cars and the next we’re looking at anatomical models and then expensive imitation jewels for wedding season.  

We don’t know quite what to make of the hand trollies stacked high with boxes marked “made in China.” In a country where 80% of the population lives on less than $2.00/day, why do they import tons of small plasticky items from their cross–continent rival?

Street food:  Mumbai is famous for its chaat, and we’ve eaten our share of pani puri, but John has been seeking the perfect vada pav since we first arrived.  Imagine, if you will, a ball of mashed potato, deep-fat fried curbside and served in a small white bread roll which has been smeared with hot pepper and tamarind sauce—not for the faint of heart or those following the Atkins’ South Beach diet …John had two.  

Paan is another acquired taste.  This pop-in-your mouth post-dinner snack is described alternatively as a “breath freshener,” “digestif,” and  “addictive euphoria-inducing formulation with adverse health effects.”   While it increases the chances of oral cancer tenfold, and tastes like a mix of floor cleanser and DDT, every block offers the opportunity to partake.  It comes in multiple varieties—with/out tobacco, sweet/savory, illegal/tame—and everyone from restauranteer to street vendor is a pusher.  If it tasted even marginally better, we might be tempted by the beautiful displays, but the betel leaf has left us neither euphoric nor addicted. 

Another street food staple that has never really appealed to us is  sugar cane juice.  In our final days here, however, Mangala convinces us to give it a try.  Half the fun is watching the vendor feed the 6' stalks of cane into the crusher and slide glasses under the spout to catch the juice.  It comes plain, with mint, or ginger, and is a remarkably refreshing taste treat.

A final visit to British roots:  Driving through the center of Mumbai, we chance upon the ninth hole of a golf course.  Frances, Roopa, and Mangala assuage our incredulity by informing us that this is, of course, the Willingdon Club.  The next day, we’re invited for drinks with a member who serves on the Boards of Avasara and the Doon School, a prestigious all-boys school in the foothills of the Himalayas—the Eton of India.  We take a step onto the veranda and move back a century in time. 

Our host rings a small bell to call over a servant who takes our order and bring us fresh lime sodas and apple pie. The walls are covered with photographs of members past, golf tourney winners and dignitaries, but casual photography and cell phones aren’t allowed and until not long ago, neither were women, but the club has changed with the times and now there’s a women’s locker room; it features personal retiring lounges. We later discover that, despite all these British colonial trappings, the club was revolutionary when it was founded in 1918 by Lord Willingdon.  Turns out, he was not allowed to invite his Maharaja friends to any of Bombay “whites only” gentlemens’ clubs, so he opened his own.  The Willingdon Club was as one of India’s first gestures toward racial equality.  And while it remains an exclusive domain for the well-heeled, well-connected set of India, cricket--another vestige of colonial times--has become the great equalizer.   

Vivak, our host at Willingdon, loved cricket when he was at Doon and still plays to this day, and from what we’ve seen in our wanderings, it truly is the people’s game in India.  Small boys fashion bats from scrap wood and use rocks as wickets to play in the streets.  College men don their whites and take over city parks after classes are done for the day. And business men leave work early to practice batting in makeshift cages set up all over town.  




             Cricket is everywhere. 

We will miss Bombay but know returning is in our future.  We still have a few things to do here:


We have yet to ride in one of those shiny Taj carriages.

We still need photographic evidence of the giant--no, really GIANT...we're talking Buicks with wings--fruit bat.






And we have yet to purchase even one  "Big balloon! Very strong!" from the hawkers who greet us every morning with a loud slam on the taut surface.

It's hard to believe we'll be back in Princeton, NJ in 24 hours or that it is over 50 degrees cooler there... It's been an amazing trip; thank you all for coming along!  

Bombay flower market

Rise and shine!  Flower market opens at 4:30am, and we crawl out of bed before dawn to catch it in full swing.  As stumble into the dark and deserted streets, we wonder what in the Sam Hill we were thinking when we set the alarm.  The chai wallas are still asleep on our street in Colaba—that would be literally on our street, and  to get a cab, we have to step over the entry guard and a couple of neighborhood workers we recognize as they snooze on happily.   However, the wholesale flower and veggie market is clearly the place to be at sunrise.

Streets are crowded, baskets are brimming, and chai is warm and tasty.  Marigolds are sold by the kilo to local vendors who will spill them out on newspapers and sell them from sidewalks in neighborhoods all over town. 

Over the past two months, our olfactory senses have been overwhelmed:  burning garbage, human sweat and sewage, frying oil from street vendors, belching diesel trucks, acrid urine, and chemical fumes have assaulted us daily, but this morning, we take in the sweet smells of marigolds and jasmine, roses and ginger flowers.

After two hours of trying to identify vegetables we’ve never seen before, dodging sinewy men and ancient women carrying enormous bundles on their heads, we leave the area and head for an onion rava dosa at the Madras café.  

off to the country

We head off to see what we’re told is the “second largest fort” and the "second most important Jain temple" in India, but our drive through the countryside to get to each is anything but “second best.”  

                      

According to the recent census, 70% of Indians—or about 74 million people--live in the villages, and many of the conveniences enjoyed by modern city dwellers have yet to make it to rural areas—chief among these: plumbing.  Without this infrastructure, water is more a communal than personal experience.  

Each day, women, often with young children in tow and carrying a baby in a sling, converge at the village pump to chat and wait their turn to fill a large earthenware or stainless pot.  Done, they hoist the urns to their heads and balance them, hands free, for the walk home.  A lot is carried on the head over here, by both men and women, and not just in the villages.

In some of the villages, we’re told the use of the communal pump is allocated by caste, with higher castes having better pumping times.  

Even in the larger towns, water is precious and often runs only intermittently.  We are in Jaisalmer on a rare "water morning," and the narrow streets are covered with a web of hoses, as each family hooks up a pump to fill their large rooftop tank. 


Back in the village, farmers use bullocks to draw up water from wells and into an intricate set of canals to irrigate their fields. 

Tractors are rare, so most fields are plowed by hand by the husband with the wife following behind to sow the seeds.

The landscape changes drastically with the slightest shift in the water table—at one bend, a rocky, arid desert; around the next, a cultivated field of seemingly rich, fertile soil.  



Even in the harshest conditions, the saris sure beat Oshkosh b’Gosh overalls as a fashion statement.

Once we arrive at Kumbhalgarh Fort, it’s hard to believe it only got second. It was captured just once, by Akbar the Great, when he poisoned the water, but it was retaken two days later.  Maybe Akbar should have thought through the challenge of holding onto a fort on the top of a mountain with no water supply?    














This place is enormous; the surrounding walls measure 35km, and we pass on the opportunity to spend the two days our guidebook suggests it will take to circumnavigate. 







                                                      On to the runner-up Jain temples!

Every surface of these three, multi-storied temples is intricately carved with figures, flora, fauna and geometric designs.  We slip off our shoes, enter the great hall, stand agog for a few moments, before we are met by a stream of holy men who offer to take us on tour, be our personal guide, show us secrets.  We politely demur and believe we've eluded the phalanx, when around the next column, a tall priest in saffron robes greets us with a deep bow, and in the finest King's English, he informs us that he is the master priest of the temple and that we should, under no circumstance, give money to any other robed man.  He then asks if he may bless us and breaks into a chant that rises and falls for a full 5 minutes.  By the time he is done, a small crowd has gathered to watch him tie ribbons around our wrists and decorate our foreheads with small smudges of red powder, a blessing bindi.  Having been warned at previous Jain temples we have visited, "Do NOT pay the holy men!" we thank him for his efforts, mumble something about seeing him on the way out, and sneak off as he's being photographed with the next set of tourists.  We spend the next hour wandering the maze of columns, courtyards, and arcades in awe at the workmanship.


Nearly a week has passed without disaster befalling us, which we're taking as a sign that stiffing a holy man may not be as inauspicious as we feared.   And while both Kumbhalgarh Fort and Jain temples may be second in India, they're first in our book!

Full Moon Pooja

While British agent Colonel Tod described Udaipur in 1829 as the “most romantic spot on the continent of India,” once we arrive, it becomes clear that locals feel its true claim to fame is as the setting for Octopussy.

We have seen Jag Mandir glowing at sunset from the shoreline and decide if it’s good enough for 007, it’s worth the boatride out there, but our dreams of a martini—shaken, not stirred—are crushed when we are told it is closed for the next five nights, three in preparation for a lavish wedding, for which they appear to be welding a 5 story structure.

 

Dejected, we head back to our hotel, thinking we’ll have to settle for a gin and tonic staring at our island dream with sunset far in the distance. 




 But then we stumble on Puja/Pooja in Progress. 

We are aware tonight is full-moon but unprepared for the hundreds of mothers and daughters at the Gangaur ghat, all preparing small raffs with homemade candles.  

They use powdered dyes to tint rocks and color the candles, fruit, incense and rose petals are all part of the Pooja, as are the swastikas—a Hindu and Jain symbol for good luck which Hitler perverted.  These they shape from rice and wheat berries. 

Just as the sun sets and the moon rises, the women scramble to launch their creations, making gentle waves to send them from shore.  Some pray intently as their burning rafts float away; others giggle, wave and jump up and down, giddy at the sight. 

As always, we think we’re getting a handle on what’s happening, only to discover we have no real clue.  


































Given the care and intensity shown in the preparation, we’re surprised there isn’t more outrage when boys on the sidelines start diving in and doing cannonballs in an apparent effort to swamp the flotilla.

Meanwhile a few other boys swim over to break up a log jam of puja rafts, gently towing each into open water. We’re even more confused when a few of the women begin pelting painted stones at the boats they've just lovingly crafted and launched.  The goal seems to be to rock and roll but not ruin the shaky crafts.  

And, as usual, we are connecting dots to create an explanation that my have no bearing on the situation at hand.  What we do know is what we can sense, and the mood is electric.  




Clearly everyone enjoys a good Pooja--even the cows! 

John’s puja is answered later that evening with a lakeside gin and tonic under the moonlight and Kate finds Mewar Boat Company which offers tours of Lake Pichola, so we get our up close sunset view of the Jag Mandir the following evening.  

Next step:  watch Octopussy!