Elephant Festivals, The Lost Draw String Bag and a Visit to Slum Dog Millionaire Country

Ganpatty-The Elephant Festival

            The neighborhood where I live is pretty calm. During the day, you hear the regular shrieking horns and the shrill calls of hawkers peddling their goods and services. But by night, the honking reduces to a hush, the young children scuttling to school are tucked away in bed and neighborhood dwellers have retreated to the comforts of their apartments.

One of the many Ganesh Idols Throughout Mumbai this week

 

A Ganesh made out of flowers near the Matunga Flower Market

            That hasn’t been the case the past week. Every night, my neighborhood has turned into an outdoor street festival as Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra celebrate the Ganpati festival. Last week, a large flatbed truck was outside our hostel carrying a 10 foot wall of its speakers on its back. Behind the truck, a group of teenagers and adults danced to Punjabi pop songs. Later that night on a main street about 100 feet from my hostel, another group of festival goers danced to a drum line and threw red dye on each other.  On Sunday, thousands of people congregated at my favorite park to cast off their Ganesh idols into the ocean, a custom done after 1, 5 or 10 days of the festival. Taxis were crammed with children chanting “Ganpati” and clutching Ganesh idols. Limbs dangled from small delivery trucks as the trucks plodded their way to the park in the traffic jam. The main field of the park, usually a haven for soccer and cricket players, became a makeshift parking lot for taxis and cars. 

Have you ever seen a flatbed truck with a 10 foot high wall of speakers?

            The festival celebrates the birthday of Lord Ganesh, the god with an elephant head and human body. The festival was a purely family affair until the 1890s, when Lokmanya Tilak, an early Indian freedom fighter, made the holiday a public affair in hopes of promoting greater unity in Indian society.

Babba’s Bag

Baba and his exclusive B'nai Jeshurun drawstring bag

All I wanted was to look at a gorge in silence for 10 minutes. I was in a sour mood after vendors trying to sell me fake minerals and Indian tourists asking me to take a photo with them as if I were their favorite Bollywood actor.

            For five minutes I had the peace I wanted. I looked out onto the gorge, admiring its waterfall, and thinking about the Buddhist monks who had built the Ajanta caves next to the gorge about a thousand years ago. It was turning into one of those “Wow, I am so glad I came to India moments to study abroad.” Then Baba came.

            “Hey will you come to my village? It won’t cost any money,” he said with an impish smile, and gentle, innocent voice. He was a student at a local college and was returning from getting a haircut. He lived in a village on top of the gorge about a 10 minute walk from the gorge. 

            “I’m fine. I need to leave soon,” I quickly responded. I shifted my eyes back to the gorge to indicate to Baba I was not interested in visiting his village.

            “I promise no money involved.” 

            “I’m sorry I’m not interested.”

            Ten minutes later, I was swimming with Baba and little kids from his village in their local swimming hole. T

            “This is every traveler’s dream to go and see how locals actually live,” I thought as I walked past the shanties in Baba’s village.

            Every where I walked in the village, people called me “gora”, a word for white person. Baba said I was the first white person to ever visit their village.

            After a refreshing swim, Baba and I headed back to the gorge overlooking Ajanta. We spoke of how we would stay in touch and wished each other look in the future. Then Baba popped the question.

            “So, we will never see each other again, do you have a gift for me?”

            “No, I don’t have a gift for you.”

            “But I showed you my village. Please give me a gift so I can remember you.”

            “What do you want?”

            “Your shoes,” he said pointing at my sandals.

            I was shocked. Baba was supposed to be proof that there were strangers at Ajanta actually interested in getting to know me, that I was not just some potential customer. Swimming with the kids, walking around his village,  was it a piece of rehearsed theater, or a gesture of kindness?

            “No you can not have my sandals. Do you want 500 rupees?” I snapped back, annoyed with Baba’s request.

            “I do not want money,” he said.

            I shuffled through my bag looking for something to give to Baba. I finally settled on a draw string bag with my synagogue’s logo.

            “Will this bag do?”

            “Yes, thank you. I will remember you forever Gabriel,” he said.

            As I walked back to the gorge, Baba put his new bag on his over his shoulders. The empty bag gently fluttered in the pleasant breeze. Baba had a new bag to show off to his fellow villagers. I had a cracked confidence and a strong desire for a cold drink to wash down the taste of confusion Babba left with me.   

Village Boys cooling off

Cowabunga! I'm the fair skin blob in the background.

Dharavi-Slum Dog Millionaire Country

            Dharavi is famous around the world, because it is the slum where Slum Dog Millionaire is set.  Today I toured Dharavi with my advisor Smriti and the other international students and saw where 1 million of Mumbai’s residents live. It is the second largest slum in the world. Dharavi is referred to by its residents as the heart of Mumbai for a few reasons. It is situated in a prime location between the suburbs of Mahim and Sion and not terribly far from South Mumbai. Additionally, when seen from above it loosely resembles a heart shape.

            There are three distinct areas of Dharavi. There is an industrial section filled with plastic factories. The owners of the plastic factories do not live in the slum. They live out in the suburbs and according to our tour guide, drive around in fancy cars and look your typical upper class Indian. The factory workers though, are migrants from the states of Gujrat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh who toil for 10 hours a day in factories without wearing protective gear for a hefty salary of 150 rupees (about 3 dollars).  Scrap pickers pick up plastic from around the city and lug eight feet long sacks of plastic bag to the Dharavi on their heads. The plastic is then sorted, crushed and finally processed and then sold off to companies who use the material in materials such as plastic chairs and computer parts.

            The second area is a commercial district with a market and the third area is residential. Some parts of the slum were wide open and comfortable. Sun flooded in, children flitted around staring at different Ganpattis in between asking us for money, and bright pastel colored apartments dotted the landscape. But in other areas, the slum was narrow and dark. If you didn’t watch your head, you would have been hit by a low hanging beam and potentially lost your way in the slum’s labyrinth. 

Ajanta and Ellora Caves

I visited the Ajanta and Ellora Caves near Aurungabad a few backs. Ajanta is a series of Buddhist caves from about 1000 years ago. Ellora has Buddhist, Jain and Hindu caves. 

Ellora Caves

Ellora Caves

Kailasa Temple, Ellora Caves

Panaromic Shot of the Ajanta Caves

Sleeping Buddha at the Ajanta Caves

Cave Painting at Ajanta

 

           

Pune, Bombay's Great Rains and The Deadhead's Love of a random Ohio Governor

Arvind, Gaurav, Naval and me after enjoying some milkshakes

A Visit to Pune

            Before I discuss anything else, I must thank Anand Gupta  and his family for being fantastic hosts during my visit to Pune. In the midst of preparing for an engagement party (Anand’s older sister got engaged last week) and hosting a number of out of town guests, they made sure I was well fed and rested, tried teaching me Hindi and provided excellent advice for my future travels in India.

            Spending a few days with an Indian family reinforced my belief that underneath the surface differences between cultures such as language, dress and geography humans have the same fundamental tendencies. Anand’s mother and aunts spoke to me in Hindi hoping I would decipher the meaning of the sentence, the same way my grandfather hopes I will understand his requests in Yiddish. His grandfather sat quietly among his chattering children and grandchildren, with the same calm smile and watchful eye my grandmother has during large family gatherings. Like any good family gathering, the engagement party festivities went late into the night.  Me, Anand, his cousin and uncles finally plopped down on mattresses in his living room at about 1:00 a.m. 

After the party, Anand, his sister and his cousins did the ceremonies of Raksha Bandhan, because Anand was in the United States when the festival happened.

Anand's grandfather, Anand and his aunt before the party

Anand's sister wraps a bracelet around his arm as part of marking the Raksha Bandhan Festival

           Another highlight of the trip was meeting up Arvind, Gaurav and Naval, three friends who I met when I came here in December and the first picture of the post. Watch out for all of them. They are all impressive guys who will make an impact in their respective fields of linguistics (Arvind), medicine and nonprofits (Naval) and business and politics (Gaurav).

     

 Bombay's Great Rains

           

A public bus floats in a flooded street as walkers wade across the road

  

               I was warned of Bombay’s great rains. Minutes after I landed in Bombay, my advisor’s husband told me that during monsoon season the rains can be so heavy that people have to wade through the streets in waist high water. I hoped that would never happen to me.

            When I arrived at school this afternoon, it was raining steadily. By the time I left, it was pouring. I planned to wait out the storm and hitch a ride with a friend from the hostel. But another friend convinced me to walk home with him.

            Within two minutes, our feet were drenched in ankle deep puddles. Cars sprayed water as they drove past our school. Two blocks away from our school, the entrance to a train station was submerged under water. The street leading to my school, usually ruled by flower hawkers, fruit sellers, clothing vendors, and howling cars and motorcycles, was now the domain of walkers fleeing from the rain. The journey had a romantic charm. The pavement of the street, under a constant assault from tires and feet, could renew itself in the warm rain.  

Soldiering through the flooded streets

            The second half of the journey was Mumbai at its best-a symphony of chaos. When we hit the halfway mark, we entered a stretch where water was waist high. As scores of commuters trudged through the brown water, the scent of trash and storm water wafted through the air. As we waded down the sidewalks, we passed waterlogged city buses and taxis and people crossing the water filled streets to escape to areas with lower water levels. Eventually I crossed the street onto a bridge closed to traffic. On one side, the bridge was filled with walkers, while the other was clogged with buses, trucks and cars headed toward South Bombay. Drivers knew they were going nowhere and stood outside their cars underneath umbrellas, enjoying a moment of calm and relative stillness in city marked by constant struggle and noise. 

Nice and wet after a walk through the flooded streets

My shoes aren't usually this dark.

            I never understood Indians fascination with the monsoon rains until today. For me, the monsoon cut my summer short and was the source of too many grey days in an already disorienting and challenging environment. But as I walked through the water, climbed over street barriers and cleaned off in the shower, I began to understand the love of the rain. It provides a sense of relief and calm, a reason to slow down, relief for crops and a moment to be thankful for having a room, a warm meal and a home to go back to every night.

            James A. Rhode’s Biggest Fan 

            If you were to ask an average Ohioan who James A. Rhodes was, most would probably have no idea that he served four terms as a governor. The only reason I know who he was, is because LeBron James played most of his high school games at the University of Akron’s James A. Rhodes Arena and I drive on the James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway on my way to Ohio University.

            But to my international business professor, The Deadhead, Rhodes is a rock-star. A group presented a case study about Honda’s operations in North America, specifically their manufacturing plants in Ohio. Rhodes engineered the deal during the 1970s. 

            “James A. Rhodes is the smartest cookie in the world,” he said during class today. “He went to Japan in a private jet and knocked on every businessman’s door asking if they wanted to come to Ohio. He took a cactus-infested state and said it has to be turned into a green area. He made an area with nothing and that was part of the rust belt into something.”

            Ok, he may have embellished a bit here. Cacti are not native to Ohio and Honda’s manufacturing plants have not made the state an economic heavyweight. But The Deadhead’s praise of Rhodes definitely drove home the point to the class that American states, just like states in India, are willing to lure companies to their state with generous subsidies.

            The Deadhead ended our final lecture with some final nuggets of advice, analysis and predictions about the future of the country.

            He told students who are thinking of settling in Bombay and in the state of Maharashtra to pack up now before they get settled because of the ineffective state government.

            “My advices if you want to settle here- run away.”

            India may be a country on the rise, but he predicted a rough future ahead for the women in my class.

            “Girls will always be at a disadvantage. If a guy comes back at 4 in the morning, his parents will ask questions. His father might even be proud of him. But if a girl comes back that late people will say things.”

            He concluded by returning to a theme he addressed in one of our first lectures, Indian culture’s strong family bonds and children’s lifelong attachment to their parents.

            “We aren’t independent. We stick with our parents all our lives and we’re proud of it. My father didn’t tell me to f*** off at 18. He paid for my college, but I had to pay for MBA. We might talk about how progressive we are but if you go home and say I got a job and I’m moving in with my live in girlfriend....” He stopped talking and mimicked getting slapped.

            The Deadhead’s lectures were some of my favorite classes. To me they were more of anthropology class, Anthropology 200-Introduction to Indian Culture, than a business class. My mind trailed off when he got into the minutiae of negotiating an export deal. I was captivated though when he launched into a sermon about his encounters with the Russian mob or how he felt uncomfortable rearing his children in Germany. It provided one of the most direct windows into the thought process and cultural background of Indians that I have gotten here.  

Random pictures

Hanging out at the Global Pagoda, a replica of a Buddhist shrine in Burma. The Pagoda is in the northern suburbs of Mumbai

Ringing the Bell at The Global Pagoda

Hostelite Rishab leads a late night study session before an accounting exam

 

Rishab's chalkboard. It's normally a dresser

An elephant walking down the street in Pune