Time flies like an Arrow

I am coming up on the end of my fourth month here in Mumbai, and I feel really blessed. I have learned so much and grown in many ways. The last couple of months have been jam-packed with activity for me, and I am painfully aware that I haven’t updated since September.

Since then, I visited a spectacular Buddhist pagoda, walked in a parade, learned a traditional dance, toured South India, and nearly deafened myself with Indian fireworks.

In the middle of September, I visited the Global Vipassana Pagoda. Completed in 2010, this pagoda contains the largest unsupported dome in the world. Compared the spectacular golden exterior, the pagoda’s interior is downright stark: a huge expanse of hardwood floor beneath a vast dome of concrete blocks. A guru sat with about 20 people in the center of the pagoda. People who wish to enter into the pagoda to meditate must stay for ten days, and they are forbidden from communicating in any manner, verbal or nonverbal.

Pagoda Exterior

At the end of September, I ventured with the other exchange students to Pune, a small town of about 3 million that’s four hours away. We went there for the Ganesha Chaturthi parade. Ganesha Chaturthi is one of the most popular Hindu holidays for Mumbaikars and Maharashtrans. The festival is celebrated with ten days of merry-making and worshipping Lord Ganesh. On the tenth day, the Ganesh idols—some no bigger than a loaf of bread, others thirty feet tall—are all immersed in a body of water. In Mumbai, it’s done at one of the beaches, but in Pune, Ganesh was immersed in a river cutting through the city.

All the exchange students wore traditional clothes for the occasion. The boys wore white kurtas and brightly colored turbans, and the girls wore a spectacular array of saris. We walked for four hours, a group of dancing women behind us and a line of enthusiastic drummers in front of us. Everyone wanted a picture of the foreigners in Indian clothes. I myself posed with a myriad of small children as their parents eagerly took pictures, and one of my friends gave an interview for the Times of India. It was a phenomenal afternoon!

Lord Ganesh

Me, doing the traditional Indian Tilt-a-Whirl dance

Dancers in the Parade

My computer battery is dying, so I will write about two other festivals, as well as my trip to South India, later.

Photo Credit--Miguel Ponce

I have really found my place here in Mumbai. It’s insanity, but it’s fun. Sometimes it’s frustrating, but life here is just so interesting and different, especially compared to my life in Wyoming. I can’t believe it’s almost half over…

Perpetual Motion

Some people are just better at enjoying the ride.

I’ve been in a downward spiral for the past week and a half, and it’s been very, very rough. Now well into my seventh week in India, I assumed that my troubles were over. My first month was difficult, but I grew, I adjusted, and I made peace with all the doubts and what-ifs. However, all the negativity has just been swarming me since the beginning of September. I keep asking myself, is India really the right place for me? Can I do this for 9 more months? Am I crazy for coming here? So many questions that have yet to be answered.

On Monday the 10^th, when I left school, I was in the same state I’d been for about a week: I was on the verge of tears. My kind, kind friends invited me out with them, but I declined, not wanting my bad mood to ruin their good time. Instead, I walked.

Lately, long walks have been the only thing capable of improving my mood. The sidewalks of Mumbai are all tiny disaster zones, home to the homeless, bed of mangy stray dogs, storefront for the entrepreneurial fruit seller, and toilet for the rest of the city. Needless to say, it’s quite necessary to keep your wits about you when you go for a walk. Concentrating on not going knee-deep in one of the open sewers is a really great way to get your mind off things, I’ll be perfectly honest.

So I walked. The sun blazed overhead as I walked passed familiar hang-outs, past landmarks, and past all things familiar until I was good and lost. Oddly, I had come upon a posh little bakery, so I went inside, ordered a bagel slathered in Nutella, and cried like an idiot for a few minutes. Doubt lay like a crushing burden on my shoulders. What was I doing in India? Why didn’t I choose someplace sane, someplace normal? I’ve been asking myself those questions so often that they’re starting to go stale. I only stayed for about thirty minutes—just enough time to eat, weep, and pay.

I left the restaurant and quickly realized that I was very lost. My perspective changed a little then—being lost wasn’t a misfortune, it was an opportunity. So I began to walk again, and each step soothed my heart and calmed my mind until I could barely remember what I had been upset about. Even though my sandals rubbed familiar sore spots on my feet, I started feeling happier. Even the people around me seemed to transform from a homogenous and intimidating sea of faces to a group of individuals who—quite like me—were simply trying to make their way in this often-overwhelming but entirely unique city. Feeling a little braver than I had felt in a very long time, I asked for directions to the train station (in Hindi, no less!) I could only understand the first line of instructions, so I would meander from street to street, stopping in interesting shops and just generally wandering. Being lost was somewhat cathartic. Not only did the long, warm afternoon allow me to explore the streets of Mumbai, but it also gave me time to go through the avenues of my fears, my worries, my hopes, and my goals. After asking about a dozen sleepy security guards, sari-clad, aunties, and eager young schoolboys in crisp blue uniforms, I was almost sad to see the station come into sight. In getting lost, I had found so much more than my way.

Mud, Sweat, and Tears

 

Mumbai is harsh, but Mumbai is also forgiving. Even though I've been here for a month, August 27 was my first day of school. And I was late. The day did not have a promising start: monsoon season has begun in earnest here, and it was pouring rain. I got up about 3 hours before I needed to leave, and I had a leisurely morning. By the time I left at 10:45, the streets had become rivers of filth. I waited at my bus stop with my umbrella, and a middle aged businessman leaped on a bus as traffic forced it to a halt. Assuming it was my bus, I followed him. This was my first mistake. The bus began to take me through the familiar route along Marve Road and past my church. I gave the ticket taker the usual fare for a ride to the train station: ten rupees. He gave me three in return. My second mistake was not realizing something was wrong then. Thanks to the rain, a thick layer of condensation covered the inside of the windows, turning familiar sights into a haze of color. I caught a glimpse of an empty granite pedestal and the tiniest hint of worry entered my brain: that didn't look at all familiar. Within 20 minutes, the ticket taker had asked me what I was still doing on the bus (in Hindi, of course). Fortunately, he thought the hopelessly lost and chronically stupid foreigner was a highly amusing sight, so he didn’t fine me.

The bus roared away as rain poured, and I wrestled with my umbrella for a few moments. I began to backtrack, fighting back tears as panic began to set in. A few things were now painfully clear to me.

1. I had no idea where I was, nor did I know where I needed to go.

2. I was lost in a bad neighborhood in a city where I don’t speak the language, and I did not have a cellphone.

3. I was going to be late for my first day of college.

The rain flooded the sewer ditches as I trudged up the road, washing murky brown water over my sandal-clad feet. Soon I was soaked up to my thighs. I felt deeply aware of the stares I was drawing in my current state, so I swallowed my growing hysteria and tried to look like I knew what I was doing. I tried to retrace the bus route with little success. My wet rubber sandals stuck to my feet with every step I took, and soon I had blisters that stung in the filthy water. Shortly, I found myself on a main road, but I had no idea which way to go to find the train station. Five rickshaw drivers refused to take me. I think the sixth one had some pity on me because, rather than taking me the long way, he took me to a foot bridge that went over the tracks and told me in broken English where to go from there. I got on my train at 12:10 for 12:30 college in hysterics.

Bandra station, where I get off the train to go to college, is a beautiful colonial building that houses what so many people find frustrating about India: cripplingly inefficient bureaucracy and people too fed up to care about consideration and  social contract. The downpour made it worse. A huge queue of people wrapped around the front of the station, with every last person waiting for a rickshaw. A bored and cranky police officer directed the rickshaws through two narrow lanes, shouting at queue-jumpers. We all waited meekly beneath our umbrellas as rickshaws came and went, two by two. A man completely eschewed the queue and hopped into one of the rickshaws in line, resulting in the police officer blocking the rickshaw and shouting at the passenger for a full two minutes. This little exchange stalled the already slow-moving line, and I felt acutely aware of my lateness. At long last, I caught a rickshaw to school. The stress of my morning finally reduced me to tears, and I snuffled through the five minute ride to the college.

When I arrived, I learned that classes had been canceled. Again.

I stumbled home that afternoon as a wet mess. My host grandmother, who doesn’t speak much English, was surprised to see me early. I gave her the abbreviated version: “I got lost.” She sympathetically offered me half of her tea (having only brewed enough for herself) and said simply, “It’s how you learn.” A fierce affection for my host family filled me because I’d been half-heartedly telling myself that all day.  Nothing could be truer.

Mumbai is a difficult place. It's hard to learn who you can trust, who you can rely on, how to stay out of trouble, and how to enjoy yourself. Difficulty fosters growth, however, and I have grown so much since my arrival here a month ago. If Monday's events had occurred even two weeks ago, I would be frustrated and defeated, and I'd probably beg my parents to bring me home. Now I can simply shake this off and learn from my mistake. I have nine months left to see the sights, meet the people, and understand the culture. I have only nine months left to learn Mumbai. Why waste it with feelings of frustration and despair? I have grown and I have learned, but I've barely begun.

Raksha Badnan and Janmashtami

I've finished my second week Mumbai, and I’m doing pretty well. To be perfectly honest, the homesickness hurts much more than I ever thought it could. It feels like the tiniest things—a song, food, certain actions or sayings—anything can remind me of the people and things I’ve left behind. The funniest thing is that I didn't think I was going to be homesick when I left in July (because I'm a moron.) The important thing is to stay busy and take everything one day at a time. If I think of this in terms of “9 and a half more months,” then I panic and think I can’t go that long feeling this way. However, if I think “Five more days until I start school,” or “2 more days until the next Rotary Meeting,” I can handle that. Baby steps, you know?

One of the questions people have asked me a ton (both here and in the USA) is, "Why did you pick India?" This process is a story for another day, but one thing that really appealed to me are all the festivals. The Hindu religion has a plethora of gods and goddesses, and pretty much every event here is a cause for a big celebration. I've experienced two festivals so far.

Raksha Badnan is the Indian festival of brothers and sisters. Families are extremely, extremely close here, so cousins are included in this festival. They get the entire day off from work and school for a 20 minute ceremony that must be done before 9 AM. In this ceremony, the sister ties a small bracelet made of red string and beads of gold or sandalwood around her brother's right wrist. This symbolizes that the sister looks to her brother for protection. She marks her brother's forehead with a paste made from saffron. She then waves a small plate bearing a candle, some spices, and some sweets around her brother's head. Finally, she feeds her brother one of the sweets by putting it into his mouth. At the end of the ceremony, the brother presents his sister with a gift of some kind. Here is a photo of my host mom, Falgooni, marking the forehead of her cousin. This festival took place on August 2nd.

The next festival I observed took place on August 10th. The festival is called Janmashtami, and it heralds the birth of an important Hindu god named Krishna. Krishna is a blue-skinned deity who is always depicted with a flute. His festival is celebrated in two ways. During the day time, the streets are flooded with trucks full of men who are all part of teams. These trucks are always surrounded by a horde of team members on motorcycles. What are these teams for, you ask? The tradition of the festival is an impressive and terrifying test of strength and daring. In this trial, a jar filled with yoghurt (and a coconut, for some reason) is suspended on a cord strung between two buildings. This cord can be as low as 15 feet and as high as 40 feet! These teams take turns making human pyramids in an attempt to get up to the jar and break it, showering the crowd with yoghurt.

Naturally, this is insanely dangerous, but it's great fun to watch. This event takes place all over the city on Janmashtami, and I got to watch a group of students do this activity. The environment is party-like: there is often a DJ, and the kids often are having too much fun dancing and spraying each other with hoses to get the task at hand finished quickly. The inhabitants of the surrounding apartments join in on the fun by impeding the teams' progress via showers of water balloons.

The second part of Janmashtami takes place at the dead of night, sort of like a Midnight Mass. We drove up into the mountains outside of Mumbai to visit a temple where I'm told a guru lived until he died 4 years ago. We don't spend time in the temple itself, but rather observe a ceremony in the small cinder block compound where the guru lived. We sit on blankets spread out on a linoleum patio around an altar that looks more like a throne. A cardboard cut-out of the late guru sits on the altar, completely adorned in necklaces of fragrant marigolds. Sacrifices of food and several curiosities sit near his feet on the altar. Several holy men clad in white sit on one side of the patio, and some older ladies in saris sit on the other side with us. The holy men read aloud together from a small book for half an hour. Their reading is like a chant--no pauses for breath, no inflection. Incense burns nearby and rain begins to fall in the pitch-dark jungle around us. It's very peaceful.

All this time, the woman tear leaves off a plant and pluck petals from fragrant pink lotuses. At the stroke of midnight, they begin to sing, and everyone takes a tambourine and joins in. The plant parts are set before the guru's image, along with small brass items that I've never seen before. The singing continues as one of the holy men blows on a conch shell, causing a deep sound to reverberate through the night. The holy men go into the compound as the singing continues, and they painstakingly bathe a small golden idol of Krishna with spoonfuls of water. They come out with a plate containing three burning candles and rice. The others wave the plate around the cardboard cut-out's head in the same manner as the Raksha Badnan ceremony. People fan the smoke on themselves. After this, everyone continues singing for another half hour. The singing is cacaphonic and repetitive, but after several rounds, an ancient, energetic beauty begins to emerge from the music. Finally, the ceremony is finished and people partake of the food sacrifices. Janmashtami ends at about 1:30 AM.

Brave New World

Well, I’m in Mumbai, and the heat and humidity are a little uncomfortable. It’s a steady 85 F, and no relief is offered by the constant presence of rain clouds. Air conditioning is not run in the daytime and excessive bathing is discouraged. At night, merciful AC soon thwarts itself as my hosts like to keep their home at what feels like a steady 40 F while they sleep. Overall, it’s a little hard to get comfortable.

Traveling around this vast, vibrant city is an adventure in itself. As a result of the British Raj, vehicles are all driven on the left side of the road with the driver’s seat on the right. I’m pathetically grateful that the rules of my exchange forbid driving, because I would be terrified to do so here. Two rules exist on the streets of Mumbai: 1# Right of way is determined by size of vehicle. 2# If you yield to anything smaller than your vehicle, you are a n00b and deserve to be punished thusly. Traffic is a cacophony of horns, but no driver seems especially stressed which I find impressive. Road rage is nonexistent. I imagine if any driver stopped to yell out his window, his vehicle would simply be pushed along in the ever-present flow of traffic. God help the man who leaps from his car to threaten another driver.

Car is my favorite way to see the city mainly due to the air conditioning and the smell (or the merciful lack thereof.) My host mom applies steady pressure to the horn as we dart between giant, brightly-painted dump trucks and motorcycles with 3+ riders. Usually, it is a man with a small toddler standing on the seat in front of him, balancing precariously between his arms. A woman wearing a sari sits behind him, riding sidesaddle. They are all either in bare feet or flip-flops, but weirdly enough, one of them is wearing a helmet sometimes. I can’t keep amusement off my face as we enter the red light district, crawling through traffic. Sari-clad drag queens proposition people riding in rickshaws. Traffic picks up again, and we’re off, passing by rows of shops inside shanties. These stores range from gyms to print shops, all set up under a few square meters of corrugated metal roof.

You don’t see as much traveling by rickshaw, but you definitely experience more. Before I elaborate, a rickshaw in India looks like this:

The open sides let every scent through: every bit of diesel exhaust and every staggering wave of heat rising off mountains of garbage stacked on the roadsides. My host brother, Krishna, sticks his head out the window to reprimand an impatient motorcyclist honking behind us. A beggar with no hands sticks his wilting arms through my side, his stumps clumsily clasping a plastic cup. He almost loses it as the rickshaw rockets off again. I can barely hear Krishna talk over the roar of the motor as rain begins to fall on us.

Crossing the street in Mumbai is, quite frankly, the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Vehicles never slow, as yielding is a sign of weakness and weakness must be stamped out, so you must cross one lane at a time, pausing as traffic rushes around you, trying not to go deaf as all the world honks impatiently at you.

No Place Like Home: A Statistical Comparison

Mumbai/Bombay, Marashtra, India


Area: 603 sq km/233 sq mi

Elevation: 14 m/46 ft

Population: 18,414,288


Density: 20,694 per sq km/53,600 per sq mi

Wyoming, USA


Area: 253,348 sq km/97,814 sq mi

Elevation (average): 2040 m/6,700 ft

Population: 568,158

Density: 2.26 per km/5.85 per sq mi