Room Games and Diamond Rain

The Mumbai Oddyssey begins.....

I sit on the third tier bed in our open-door A/C train car. It is amazingly quiet, and the only signal that we are moving is the gentle rocking back and forth of the car; its much like being at sea. When I laid down and curled under the covers, I was quick to notice my feet are the only ones on the train that stick out into the aisle. Its 6 am now, and our train gets in at 6:30; I am going to try to nap. This is going to be a long day.

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Today we met Rahat at the apartment. She is the president of the Women's Empowerment Front, and the first muslim woman I have met who has divorced her husband. Being the founder of an NGO and associated with many more in the Mumbai area, we hoped to pick her brain and learn something about the structure and power dynamics in these indian organizations.

We talked for hours aout where gender roles, religion, and civil liberties meet. What was so interesting to me in particular was the fact that even after divorcing her husband, Rahat still beleived that a man should have control over a woman to some extent, albiet very limited. While I think her definition of control is slightly different that what is brought to the American mind, there was still some aspect here which was twinged with traditional gender dynamics (on a side note, it took me a full five minutes to come up with that ambiguous phrase for fear of offending anyone. Thank you Wesleyan.). The conversation was very informative, and to say the least, thought provoking.

What was formerly known as the Prince of Whales museum was our next stop. Having left my student ID in New York (stupid idea), I had to pay 30x more than everyone else to get in. It held some ancient hindu and buddhist sculpture, indian painting, and tibetan jewelry and arts, along with some terrible 17th century european art. There was also some incredible ivory carvings from tusks of elephants. The entire surface of the tusk would have lattice-work adorning it, with intricate figurines carved within, compromising the core of the tusk.

Set in a beautiful old mansion or government building once built by the british, it seemed like a prime example of british colonialism in India; all indian culture, but english culture and language. Aspects of british culture are evident everywhere, but seem to be slightly hidden by the last 60 years of Indian independence.

From there we traveled to the Gate of India, a huge but somewhat unimpressive arch created by queen Victoria (?) when she visited India, a sort of gateway for her arrival and monument to her presence and the event. In the surrounding plaza were plenty of hawkers and stands, resteurants and cheap chatchke vendors. We stopped for an afternoon snack and a beer, and eventually made our way home for family dinner.

Following family dinner we decided to paint the town red and see some of the night life. After a few misteps (read fancy 30-somethings bar and creepy sports bar) we found the right place, a smokey club named Leopolds. Complete with a DJ spinning American music, a somewhat sketchy dance floor, and good indian bar food, it was exactly how we wanted to blow off some steam on saturday night. The one problem with Indian night life is that last call is at 12:30 and the bar closes at 1, unless the manager decides the night is fruitful enough to pay off the police and stay open until much later; it wasn't one of those nights.

Still, the end of the night came with dancing and one of the best interactions with an Indian we've had yet. As soon as the music ended and the bar was closing up shop, this large Indian man turns to us, noticing we are Americans, and decides we should all sing songs together. This was brought on by our continued protests for more tunes, and so we created them ourselves. The man bursts out into the Celine Dion titanic theme song wholeheartedly, and we can't help but join him. Upon the sad but entertaining ending to this song, he proclaims, "lets sing; backstreet boys, savage garden, ricky martin, anything!" I think we did one more, given not as epically as my heart will go on (but lets be honest, you can't be more epic than Celine Dion unless you are singing Bohemian Rhapsody or Don't Stop Beleiving). All in all, an exciting first day in Mumbai.

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Saturday after a night out started way too early; I feeli as if being done with breakfast by 9 am on the weekend is a crime. But we had a big day ahead of us, starting with an hour and a half long train ride. We were going out to a wayward province to meet Rahat and see an orphanage. She has connections with many NGOs such as this one, but wanted to show us one firsthand to give an idea to what a volunteer, if sent her way, could accomplish.

The local railcars are a completely different experience than the long-distance ones; riding first class is a must. People take chickens and huge peices of luggage in second class, and it is often packed so tightly you could not even manage to get off at your stop if you tried. And the doors to the car don't close, so people can breath and hang out of the car. A sad looking little girl with a baby slung around her neck came on at one stop, and walked around singing a sad hindi song and playing the spoons with to rocks to the beat. Its sad to know she is probably part of a raqueteering bracket and will not be allowed to reap most of the money she begs.

The ophanage, Amcha Ghar (translated as Our Home), was incredible. IT was run out of a woman's home with her husband and their many pets. Susheela currently has 32 girls living with her, ranging age from 4 to 18 years old. Not all of them are orphans; some still have one parent who is a sex worker or of some other unsuitable employment. As we were walking up the stairs the girls were singing a song to us and they all came up one by one and said their name and the grade they are in; it was one of the most inspiring welcomes we've had yet. Apparently there are hundreds and hundreds of applications to get into homes such as this one and not nearly as much room; these girls were lucky to be hand chosen.

So the next 5 hours were spent playing with the girls. They immediately dragged me to the kitchen to show me their pet turtles, and since they only had two, they kept a couple ceramic ones in water to keep them company. Taking pictures and playing and laughing was one of the most happy, inspiring, and beautiful afternoons of my life. There was no reason to feel sad for these orphans, they were being well fed and educated, and surrounded by so many friends. One of my favorite moments was playing with clay with a 12 year old. We made everything she wants to eat and get as presents on her 13th birthday, wich is next week. Leaving was hard, and none of us looked foreward to the trainride home, but all around were thankful for the amazing experiences of the day.