Happy Diwali…or Divali…or Deepavali…the festival of lights

Yet again, tales abound about the origins and focus of the holiday (Celebrate Durga? Honor Krishna, who in his dwarf incarnation, vanquished Bali?  Welcome to your home Laxshmi, goddesss of wealth, who only delivers if you clean thoroughly (got that, Jonathan and Kelsey??...we do return home in 4 weeks…) Proclaim the victory of good over evil? Exalt inner light? Glorify the underlying reality of all things? Or maybe just paint the town crimson/saffron/lapis/lime/magenta for all of it? )  What we do know is that a few elements are ubiquitous: explosions of glowing lanterns, colored lights, mini oil lamps, stacks and stacks of sweets, and fireworks galore.

Most families do a puja (pooja?) –a prayer or blessing—before dinner on the first night, the next night some wives do a puja for their husbands asking Laxshmi to protect and provide, and on the third night, a sister might do a puja for her brother—the men return the favor with gifts of gold and diamonds (you on that one, John?) But traditions vary wildly. According to the newspaper, a tribe outside of Pune stacks up bales of hay which their bullocks jump over—given the pace these guys move through the streets, it would take an intervention from Durga to make that one happen!   Mangala tells me “Never believe anything you read in the Times of India!”  

The rangoli is another Divali tradition that seems pretty widespread, and it’s easy to see why.  An elaborate decoration in colored powders or sands, a rangoli can take hours to produce but will disappear with a breeze or a late monsoon rain, a bit like the Buddhist mandala, with which we were more familiar.  Last night we bought a couple of stencils and some bright powders after watching this fellow demonstrate. It's a bit tough to see from the picture, but the circles to his right are multi-colored sand designs, stencils scattered in front.

As it turns out, even with a ready-made pattern, this isn’t easy. We may start by practicing on the dining table before heading out to the street.  We don’t want to disappoint the crowd that is sure to gather…

 Here is a full-scale 10' wide rangoli at the entrance to a temple--no stencils used here. 

Roopa’s driver, Frances—a Christian—tells us Divali is all about shopping.  And he may have a point, given the plethora of ads, billboards, and sales up everywhere.  Divali accounts for the largest percentage of new cars sold in India each year.  A KPMG partner tells us that economists need to adjust their models to dampen the effect of “auspicious buying” and deal with the inevitable spike in purchasing that happens around this time.   Major corporations and small businesses distribute their bonuses, and domestic help expect baksheesh to come their way as well.  So, to get into the spirit of this side of Divali, last night we headed to Crawford Market—never ones to miss a shopping opportunity J

The cool of the evening on this festive eve of Divali brings out the best in everyone.   The market teems with last minute shoppers, hunting for lanterns, garlands, painted statues of Laxshmi and fireworks—so many fireworks!  A friend tells us likens them to the insects in India: enormous.  What Indians consider fit for personal consumption rival many American municipalities' shows on our 4^th of July.  All over Bombay, families take to their rooftops to light up the night sky;  sparks and ashes rein down everywhere.  The occasional errant rocket that zooms into a neighbor’s open window is brushed off with smiles on all sides, and a friendly, “No worries.  Happy Divali!”

All politics is local…and opportunistic.  The large banners and enormous lanterns hanging over the streets bear holiday greetings from Shiv Sena, a political party which runs on the platform of Marathi-first…and only.  All their materials from billboards to website appear only in Marathi, the local language of the state of Maharashtra.  Shiv Sena is responsible for the renaming of Victoria Train Station (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus--yes, that's a double H--in honor of the Maratha warrior) and Bombay (Mumbai);  Frances, a Christian from Goa, refuses to refer to these by their Marathi names—a personal protest against Shiv Sena’s xenophobic views.  They tend to be closely allied with the BJP, the controversial Hindu Nationalist party, and both parties have come under scrutiny for violence against non-Hindus.  On the local side, Frances is denied his dream of becoming a long-distance bus driver because the license for a non-Marathi resident would require too large a bribe.  

Street moments

We thought it might make for a nice change of pace to include a few shots of life on the street, many of them taken from the car/taxi/rickshaw as we ride along (hence the blur here and there--sorry).  

Here's a common sight:  three on a motorbike, daddy driving, sari-clad mama riding side-saddle with sleeping baby on her lap. About 50% of the time, the child appears to be all she is holding onto. 

In this case, no helmets.

Sometimes the bike has to carry larger families...at least this father of three has a helmet?

We weren't sure whether this man was shepherding his herd or just hitching a ride...

 

 

According to our friends here, Indians all over the country spend hours each night watching popular tv dramas and much of the following day talking about the calamities that unfolded the night before;  they seem to love their series as much as they love cricket!  Having a TV is clearly a high priority, as is finding a spot for one's satellite dish.

And here are a few of the signs on our daily route that never fail to brighten our day. 

 

And a personal favorite at the on-ramp to the new bridge that connects Bandra and central Bombay:

We've moved to Colaba!

Welcome to our new digs!  Our the top floor office apartment, just steps from the Taj and Gateway of India, is a change of scene to be sure--one that will spare us a 2+ hour daily commute from Bandra.  Traffic here is stunning;  it can easily take over an hour to move 5 km at rush hour, which seems to run steadily from about 8am-10pm  In any case, after a yummy morning coffee at Moshes directly downstairs, we spent part of the day wandering the neighborhood, checking out the Colaba Causeway and open air market.  The Causeway is a sidewalk lined with stalls and shops that sell all manner of trinket and treasure, from bangles and beads to sextants and shawls in "real, genuine, true, all pashmina."  I was tempted by an Angry Birds t-shirt, but anyone who shows real interest becomes entangled in long negotiations and intense bargaining, and I just didn't love the tee enough to go through that.

  For dinner, we popped around the corner to Bademiya's, an outdoor kebab stand like none other--really more of a mecca of meat in a city of veg retaurants.  The cooks take over a full block and line both sidewalks with plastic talbes and chairs. Crowds wait in the center of the road for a table to open, and drivers pull over, roll down their windows to order,  and await their mutton kebabs which they eat, sealed up in the AC of their cars.  At our table, we enjoyed the breeze off the Arabian sea, the cooler night air, and our first taste of butter chicken--delicious!

Divali begins Wednesday, and all the stores throughout Bombay have been ramping up for this Hindu--also national--holiday that honors Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.  In addition to its being the festival of lights, Diwali is also a particularly auspicious day for purchasing.  Big ticket items are particularly popular gifts, and billboards all over town encourage those still on the fence to take the plunge with such winning campaign slogans as,  "Sweets make you fat! Buy Electronics!"  Fireworks, kites, and colored lanterns of all shapes and sizes are on sale everywhere.  In the market, stalls have sprung up that offer vibrant powders and small plastic stencils for families to create their rangolis on their living room floors or sidewalks outside their homes.  A rangoli is an elaborate design that welcomes Lakshmi and generally brings good luck.  Friends tell us that the stencils are for the graphically-challenged.

The Spirit of Gandhi Lives

This past weekend, we took  an overnight train to Ahmedabad.  Not to be missed while there is the Gandhi Ashram, Gandhi’s home for over 15 years and origin of the 24 day, 240-mile Dandi March to protest the British Salt Tax.  This impressive act of civil disobedience started with 78 disciples on foot and ended with a crowd of more than 50,000.  This led to Gandhi’s arrest, and within a month, another 60,000 were arrested as well for breaking the Salt Laws.  Today, the Ashram is part-museum, part-home to Manav Sadhna, the sweetest little cult you'll ever want to meet.  

 Their motto is “Love all. Serve all,” and there seems to be plenty of both going on in this loosely affiliated coalition of NGO’s, volunteers, zealots, and Ashram dwellers.  It’s tough to make sense of the two days we spent with them, but here are a few of the highlights from our time there.

Gandhi’s dictum, “There cannot be any culture without sanitary culture,” is clearly on target what with 80% of all disease in the developing work due to lack access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.  

In 1969, Ishwarbhai Patel, known as "Mr. Toilet" founded The Environmental Sanitation Institute which has been doing its level best since then to bring sanitary practices to India.  

It has trained thousands of community leaders in the villages on the art of toilet construction and use as well as basic practices of sanitation.  They have an on-site “toilet garden” with full-size models of each of their 13 toilet designs.

They gave us a set of technical documents as a parting gift, so for all of you “do it yourselfers” out there, we’re happy to share. 

Much of our time here, we have no idea what is to occur next.  Plans are made in Hindi or Gujarati, and we’re off.  We’re told at 7pm that we’re going to pray with a school and find ourselves wandering through a poor neighborhood at sunset and coming into a courtyard where 200 girls are already gathered in the dark.  We’re ushered to the dais where we sit, as the girls begin a 20-minute chant, sometimes accompanied by drums and finger cymbals, other times a capella.  At one point, the chant seamlessly moves into parts of the Lord’s Prayer in English. 

At the close, Nandini, our fearless leader and one of the chief educators at ESI, addresses the girls with humor and songs—and in graphic detail—about the art of cleaning themselves and caring for their villages. As he tells us, “there’s no room for shyness here.”   Turns out all the males on the dais are expected to address the girls, so John makes his first foray into public speaking in India, which Nandini translates into Gujarati since all the girls here are from the villages, and their Hindi is iffy.  

Then we tour their kitchen which has the largest pressure cooker on the planet--how else would the cook dal for 200?










Here’s one of the dorm rooms; each sleeps 16.  All bedding and personal possessions are rolled up each morning and stored in another room until that night.  Warm waves, curious looks and huge smiles sent us on our way.

Off to the Seva Café, which seems to be the watering hold of the Manav Sadhna crowd.  The concept is simple if radical—eat, enjoy and, if the spirit moves you, "pay it forward" so the next person can do the same.  Cooked and served by volunteers, the food arrives without a menu, pricelist or a bill at the end of the meal; everything here relies on donation.  Jayesh Patel, the spiritual leader and son of Mr. Toilet (thus his nickname, “Baby Toilet”) holds forth for 30 minutes in Hindi and some English about his core beliefs in love and service; Mangala says it may have been a bit of blessing that we don’t understand Hindi.  He’s clearly inspirational, and his belief in the power of grassroots change in society have been transformative for many. 

We met one of his disciples, who finished a prestigious degree in engineering and business, and after a couple of years doing quantitative investment for a hedge fund in Bombay, felt he was pursuing a meaningless life.  He and his wife both gave up high paying jobs and now do volunteer work throughout Gujarat; he talked about the joy he gets from sweeping and cleaning the slums. 

Built from metal mesh and rubble from homes demolished to widen the road, this one-room school house was an act of love and hard work on the part of 100 families who live in the slum and the petite gal from Texas who volunteers as their teacher.  It has a garden and compost pit.  

Manav Sadhna encourages volunteers to take up any project that speaks to them.  One fellow hands out Smile Cards that urge people to “Give away one of your possessions RIGHT NOW!”  or “Make a pot of chai and serve it to night watchmen,” or “Give your maid a surprise paid day off!”  Another, who practices traditional medicine in California, lives in a leper community and runs leadership groups for girls. 

Here's a gal in the computer room of the community center that Manav Sadhna built in the middle of the slum.  The center is used for weddings and big celebrations such as Diwali, and even has a dental clinic; the x-ray machine is powered by a generator in the room.







And then there’s the auto rickshaw walla, Uday, who has tricked out his vehicle with a fan, library, and snack bin--he gives us cookie packets to hand out to children en route.  He pins fabric hearts and smiley faces on his riders’ clothing and operates his meterless rick on donations only.

The generosity of everyone yet again overwhelms us—multiple times this weekend, we are served a meal, invited to sit and talk, or driven to see a community center, nursery program, or hand-built school in the heart of the slum.  Time isn’t about managing the schedule or TO DO list; it is about connecting with each person in the moment.  As one fellow tells us, with friends “there is no waiting,” and everyone is instantly a friend by virtue of simply being there. 

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Transportation this past week

Rickshaws & driving:  last night on the way to the train station in Ahmedabad, as I am laughing about the alacrity of our rick driver who is successfully dodging the flurry of on-coming traffic, which includes a truck, multiple motorcycles--several without their lights on—a phalanx of bicycles, and 3 or 4 cows, Mangala turns to me, and with mock frustration, quips, “When is she going to internalize this!? This is driving in India!” She’s right, of course, not only is lane driving the exception--apparently a driving school in Delhi tells its students the practice is patently unsafe—but driving against traffic is clearly the norm.  How many times have you wanted to nip down a one-way street to save yourself some time and a headache?  Ah, you’d have no such worries here!  

These tiny three-wheeled rickshaws are cheap, efficient, flip over easily for quick repairs, and fill every crack in traffic like water.  Many have been converted to burn compressed natural gas to reduce air pollution, and the drivers are the calmest people we’ve ever met.  However, miracles that they are, our recent experience of inter-city driving—the 40km round trip from Ahmedabad to Adalaj Vav to see the step well with three in the back--rivaled the pigeon pose for Kate and tested John’s replaced hip. 

 

Trains: We spring for 3-tier AC sleeper for the 450km 9hour train ride from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.   Trains in India have a seemingly infinite number of classes, from unreserved benches to first class cabins with wait staff.  Mangala and Saurabh are kind enough to give John the upper bunk so his feet can extend into the corridor with comfort--for both John and passersby.  

There’s a festive, communal mood at boarding—people eating and sharing dinner, foodwallas selling masala pizza, ice cream and warm water--and then, as if by some signal unknown to the westerners, everyone moves en mass to convert seats into 3-tier bunk beds, climb into their lairs, draw the curtains for a little reading before being rocked sleep.  Here's our effort to add a video to the blog...wish us luck!

Ferry:  The chaos and noise of Bombay drops away on our ferry to Alibaug where we have room to move without being pawed for change, offered postcards, blessings for a rupee, or a city tour guide.  

The breeze is refreshing, steady and cool 

after the monsoon rains.  The boat weaves its way through huge freighters and cargo ships for an open water crossing to Alibaug.  On the return, we sip hot chai, watch the distant lightening over the mud brown water, and enjoy a beautiful view of the Taj and the Gateway of India.

Trucks: While many American truckers seems to personalize their semis with mud flaps, the Indians decorate theirs with streamers, garlands, flashing lights, dolls, and all manner of paint jobs from grill to tail lights, but they signal solidarity with a hand-lettered “Honk OK Please” which appears on the back of every truck.  A rough translation:  I probably can’t see you, and there’s no way I’m looking backwards anyway, so please let me know if you’re there. And the rest of traffic happily complies with a continuous cacophony of toots, beeps, and long leans on the horns.  Truckers often paint colorful arrows pointing in both directions, since they know they’ll be passed on either side. 

Planes:Met by one of Kingfisher’s personal check-in wallas at the departure gate, we breeze into the International Airport of Aurangabad.  It’s unclear what other nations they serve, but millionaire owner Vijay Mallya has found a perfect synergy in beer, booze, and airplanes.  At the airport, they haven’t quite worked out the food court, however, and once inside the terminal,  nary a snack was to be had and certainly no beer, being a dry day and all.  And in this International airport serving a city of a million people, every flight starts with the passengers ambling across the tarmac.

Trip to Alibaug

A 45-minute ferry and at least one, maybe two or three worlds away from Bombay, sits Alibaug, home to world-class architect and Avasara designer, Bijoy Jain (google this guy and check out the "India by Design" article on him).   Jungle canopy not skyscrapers, small plots of rice not slum shanty towns, women drying shrimp on the pavement or carrying bundles of firewood on their heads not scurrying to work in saris and sneakers--we sure aren't in Kansas anymore!   Our rickshaw veers onto a dirt path driveway lined with banyan trees to a compound of peace, where Bijoy lives.  

He invites us to join a communal lunch and spends some time hearing our thoughts about school design, before taking us on a tour of his open-air studio.  Under a single tin shed roof, a couple of architects tap on their Macbooks,  a carpenter planes a 8’ square rosewood coffee table,  one caner weaves a reed seat for a Danish chair while another carves the wood frame for a custom chaise, and nearby metal workers forge locks and hinges.  

On one side sits a full-scale mock ups of a window and a teak bathtub, and everywhere are models on all different scales.  

Sam, Bijoy’s right-hand man and friend of Roopa & Cubas, explains that the workmen are the real designers.  Some of the workers are skilled in traditional crafts from generations back, others arrive knowing only that it’s a great place to work, and they learn.  Bijoy says he’s cut back on architects because they can’t keep up with the workmen who finish whole projects before the drawings are even done. The architects stay an average of 2-3 years, the workmen spend their lives.   As Sam notes, designing isn’t drawing, it’s seeing, and these workers see everything.  Their untutored drawing skills are phenomenal!  Bijoy describes a rich symbiosis that's keeping history alive; he says he's learned a ton about traditional craftsmanship from his workers, and in turn, he and his architects have engaged in some pretty sophisticated research to uncover lost techniques which they, in turn, teach to the workers. 

We’ve laughed with many of you about Bijoy's design which involves his constructing progressively larger models until a full house appears, but we saw him take this to a new extreme.  He and his crew spent a week on a site, setting up poles for supports and mesh fabric for walls to design a house compound that worked for the site-specific topography, light, existing trees and rocks.  The clients joined them there for lunch, walked through their prospective home and talked out some of their questions and concerns. Bijoy insists there was no better way to deal with a complex site, the careful measuring needed, and confused clients in such a time-efficient manner without a full-scale model in place from which to work.   This process may prove a challenge for their next project, a sky scraper, but just imagine the possibilities for any upcoming developments where you live!   And while we spend a lot of our time noting the surprising juxtapositions and quirky contradictions we're seeing, the one consistency we continue to encounter has been the unrivaled generosity of the people we meet--from those who give up whole afternoons to be with us or invite us to a meal or offer us directions or a ride or useful advice, we have found the warmth and kindness of the Indian people we have met most humbling.  Bijoy and Sam were certainly no exception.

Ajanta & Ellora

We blasted out of Bombay for 2 days to Aurangabad to see the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Ajanta and Ellora.  Carved straight into basalt, Ajanta consists of 29 all-Buddhist caves that were carved and elaborately painted between 200BCE-400AD. 

 Ellora is a later, more extensive collection of 17 Hindu, 12 Buddhist and 5 Jain caves (600AD-1000AD)  The “world’s largest monolithic sculpture" is the Temple of Kailasa.  Just so it's clear, they began with a solid mountain, started carving down into the rock, and left anything that didn't look like a temple--talk about working in negative space!   Seven thousand laborers removed more than 200,000 tons of rock over 150 years--so how many rock tons/laborer does that make?  We'd read about it, and as you can imagine, we were agog seeing it in person. 

What we weren’t prepared for, however, was the curiosity and attention directed at us: Hello! Hello! What is your name? Where are you from? This last one seemed almost rhetorical until I was asked if I came from Japan.  Our celebrity status extended to scores of requests for photos....of us.  The two of us on our own.  The two of us with their friends.  The two of us with their children. Videos of us. A 25-year-old hipster even whipped out his cell for a close up.  Who knew we rated right up there with a Heritage site!? 

 

Oh, and did I mention the monkeys...?