Tag Archives: mumbai

Dodgy Poos and Cosmic Karma

Posted on April 1, 2010 | 1 Comment

Aside from the fact we’ve just spent two months in India and aside from the fact I am already familiar with Neasden, John is insisting we visit Little India. Whilst we are in Singapore.

I don’t want to visit Little India. I want to visit air-conditioning and malls and clean sparkling buildings. I want to get reacquainted with all these lovely things. Not with samosas.

‘Dude,’ I say, ‘you dragged me out of air-conditioning to see this? To see what exactly?’

Some skanky streets with skanky backpacker hostels on them? Because that seems to be about it. Even DisneyWorld could have knocked up a better Little India than this.

John asks if I’d rather be somewhere like a mall. He is being sarcastic and I narrow my eyes as if to say ‘no, I’m not that vacuous thank you very much’ but in fact I’m thinking YES. YES a mall. I want to be IN A MALL.

It is hot. I am bothered. I am bothered that John has made me get off an air-conditioned bus and deserted me on a street corner whilst he goes off to rummage for vinyl in an outdoor market. Leaving me with a child who won’t walk, who is now folding herself double screaming ‘I’m tired’ in the middle of the pavement AND who has as she so eloquently puts it ‘dodgy poos’. All in five thousand degrees and 400% humidity.

‘I need a poo,’ Alula announces. She puts on her thinking face. ‘I think I’ve done a dodgy poo.’

We can’t be in an air-conditioned mall with marble floored bathrooms and silk toilet paper. Oh no. We have to be in a replica of a Mumbai street with equivalent bathroom facilities. If we were actually in the real India – the big, grown up India – I would have no qualms about squatting her over the gutter by the side of the road but this is Singapore and you’d probably get hung, drawn and quartered for that here so instead I grab her hand and march her across the road (jaywalking – lesser FINE  – only $500SGD) and into a backpacker hostel. The staff wave us towards the back. I nudge open the door to the bathroom and Alula and I flinch in horror from the scene.  And then I flinch in horror at the mess she’s already made – never mind the state of the toilet…I manage to hoist her somehow over the bowl. She poos Armageddon style and then I look for toilet paper. There is none. Of course there is none. This is Little India.

Anyway, Alula leaves the place commando style. I have attempted to use the hose provided to get the worst of the dodgy poos off but it’s not been that successful because the water was cold and she almost hit the ceiling when I fired it at her.

‘I’m tired,’ she says as we start walking up the street.

John does his fatherly duty and picks her up and deposits her on his shoulders. I open my mouth to warn him about the danger that might represent then I shut my mouth again.

That’s called Karma baby.

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A slum – but not as you know it

Posted on March 30, 2010 | 4 Comments

Dharavi is the largest slum in Asia. It is 2sq kilometres and home to 1 million people. Yes you heard me, ONE million people. Not a one of them wearing converse, leggings and a dress from Gap. So my attempt to blend in is not working. People are staring at us like we’re another life form come to probe their planet.

We are on a walking tour of Dharavi. I have issues. Not least with the walking part. But mainly my issues are with the part where we pay money to go stare at poor people. It feels like an update on the Victorian practice of going to stare at the crazy people locked up in the Bedlam all in the name of entertainment. But I am doing it anyway because there’s no Curzon in Mumbai and I was bored. Just kidding. I am here because the money from the tours goes straight back into the local community via a community centre and a kindergarten. And because John said I had to.

The guide zig zags us through alleys so narrow only the faeces can run through it freely. The rubbish dump burns day and night. A toxic plastic smoke sears our lungs. Children use the place as their playground.

Yet for all its dirt and crammedness (it’s the most densely populated place on earth), Dharavi is a hive of activity and micro-industry and that’s what the tour is at pains to point out. This is not a slum as we would imagine one to be. Dharavi has an economy of around $800 million a year. Though the workers in the sweatshops earn about £1.20 for a twelve hour day. And these are literally sweat shops. Now I get why they’re called that. We stopped in a workshop where men were feeding ground up aluminium cans into hot lava, producing at the end of it all ingots of aluminium which get sold back to the canning factories so our coca cola can be reborn.

Over 250,000 Dharavi inhabitants are employed on recycling initiatives – from coke cans to paint tins and cooking oil vats.

We wandered through the Gujarati part of town. The part that looks like the garden section at homebase for all the thousands of flower pots. The guide asked if we had any questions. Yeah, I wanted to ask, is it hot enough?

We finished up with a visit to the community centre. There were lots of Dharavi inhabitants there learning English. We handed over our rupee notes. The equivalent of four days work to one of the people of Dharavi, then we took a taxi back to our fan cooled, maid-serviced, security-guarded, fully utilitied up flat and ate the lunch the cook had prepared and showered in clean water and lay down on freshly laundered sheets for a nap.

India makes me feel a lot of things – hot, tired, elated, frustrated, delighted, angry, stressed and relaxed. But mostly it makes me feel enormously lucky. And in equal measure…guilty.

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What not to wear

Posted on March 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

‘I can’t go. I have NOTHING to wear,’ I wail to John whilst rooting through my rucksack like a squirrel after winter nuts.

John can’t believe I’m worrying about fashion at a time like this.

‘I’m serious. I have NOTHING to wear. I can’t go.’ I repeat. It’s a calculated hysteria. I’m hoping this excuse will put paid to the plan to tour Dharavi tomorrow. Dharavi is not, as you might think from this little exchange, a palace, a temple or a Bollywood star’s mansion, it’s the largest slum in Asia.

That numnut from Grand Designs made possibly the worst documentary ever all about it and I wanted to smack him around the head with his unread copy of Shantaram. Clearly the man had not done his homework prior.  Unlike John, who hasn’t read Shantaram but who has read the Reality Tours website.

‘It said to dress modestly,’ John reminds me.

I stare at John and don’t say anything. It’s not like I dress like a ho but my bag is packed mainly with bikinis and a very cute shorts jumpsuit I got from Reiss. Not that appropriate for the open sewers of Dharavi.

‘What’s the longest thing you brought with you?’ he says sighing.

I’m wearing it. It’s a gap dress that falls to the knee. ‘It’s fairly modest.’ I say tugging at it (or it would be if I hadn’t somehow lost all my bras). It’s a lie. I do have something longer but it’s so see-through it may as well be the Emperor’s new clothes.

But I can’t accessorise this dress that I am wearing with my converse. I just can’t. It would be wrong. John reminds me it’s either accessorizing with the converse or having an excrement pedicure. I’m about to throw myself on the bed and tantrum when I remember there is a no photo policy on the tour. Which means that there would be no photographic evidence of the fashion crime I would be committing.

John is just relieved Alula isn’t coming too. As if one fashion obsessed female in the house isn’t enough. Yesterday she insisted on wearing her new blue flower dress underneath her pink skirt, underneath her purple butterfly dress. With the tutu on the top and then 3, yes you heard me right, 3 hats stacked like pancakes on her head. Imagine the fuss she would make about what to wear to Dharavi.

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Alula meet Mumbai

Posted on February 13, 2010 | 3 Comments

‘What did the lady want?’

‘She wanted money.

Why?

‘Because some people don’t have any money.’

‘Well why didn’t you give her some mummy?’

Alula has been in Mumbai less than 20 hours and it’s not the heat or the noise or the smells that have blown her away. It’s the dresses. She doesn’t see the poverty or the outstretched arms begging for alms. She just sees the blues and the pinks and the reds and the greens of the Saris and thinks she’s arrived at a Barbie fashion convention. You think I’m joking but right now she’s standing on the coffee table in a sunhat, a pink tutu and with freshly painted red toenails and is choreographing a dance off between her Barbie, herself and her my little pony.

So her question gives me pause because it’s a valid question. It’s valid in her world because she thinks money just comes out of machines (whenever I remember my pin number that is) so why on earth wouldn’t they have money?  And  I guess she’s a budding communist or something which will please her grandfather no end.

But it’s also a valid question for me because like everyone says, there is no place like India for realising the quintessential truth about the unfairness of life and how fortunate you are (yeah, yeah cliché-tastic) So really I should distribute some of the wealth as my little Stalin would like me to.  So why aren’t I?Why aren’t I reaching into my purse and pulling out the rupees?  Is it because I’m already immune to the begging and the deformed limbs and the burnt scaley skin of babes in arms? Is it because the aggression with which they prod at you makes me switch off? Is it that because you can’t help everybody so you decide it’s easier to not help anybody? Is it because as Pooja says, most of the money doesn’t go to them, it goes to the mafia bosses who run the whole begging industry? Or is it that I’m just a hard hearted bitch? What did the Buddha do? That’s what I want to know.

In the end I tell her, ‘Because mummy and daddy give money to organisations, not people.’ Which is true.

‘What are organisations?’

I look at John but he doesn’t throw any lifelines my way. So the conversation continues via ‘heducation what’s that?’ to ‘why don’t people have jobs?’ to ‘why is that man (the rickshaw driver) wearing that funny hat?’ – ‘because he’s a muslim’ – ‘what’s muslim?’ – ‘It’s a religion’ – ‘what’s a religion?’ – ‘it’s like a fairy tale’ (that was John that last one).

So that’s Alula’s first 12 hours in Mumbai.

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Warm crabs, dead cats

Posted on February 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Tupperware of crabs is warm in my hand. I am warm in the taxi. It is nearly midnight and the taxi (fecking surprise here) is lost. So lost that I think I might just try looking for the hatch and perhaps Sawyer to keep me company.  I am sick of taxi drivers waggling their heads and telling me yes, they know where they are going and then getting lost. If I empted the warm crab curry over his head I wonder what would happen. But I just wonder about it because I’ve read Shantaram and I don’t want to go to prison in India.

I know, you’re wondering why I am holding a Tupperware container of warm crabs in the back of a taxi at midnight in Bombay whilst we cruise the now emptying streets asking strangers the way to Pali Naka. Well so the hell do I.

I went earlier in the evening to meet one of the unLTD India award winners. She then took us home and fed us an eight course meal with crabs as le piece de resistance. This is my doggy bag on my overstuffed lap. Anyway she runs a programme that provides support to the night schools in Mumbai. These night schools are basically for young people from the slums like Dharavi who work all day and who then come at night to study to get their High School Equivalency (like GCSEs). With this certificate they can increase their chances of getting more highly paid work. Or just work. So we went to one of the night schools in a building so worn out it looked like it needed putting out of its misery.

And all the kids were bent over their work, scribbling away (actually they were momentarily bent over their work and then they were one and all staring at the weird white girl come a visting) and I felt so depressed all of a sudden. There were  fluorescent lights and crumbling walls and I knew that the kids had already worked a twelve hour day and were staring at me wondering what overprivileged planet I came from. And I was wondering the same thing to0 (white girl has eyes opened in India – it’s like a headline from the Onion).

Then we passed by hundreds of shacks on the way there. From two storey solid ones, to corrugated iron and plastic ones down to cardboard and tarpaulins stretched over the pavement to just people lying sleeping on sheets of newspaper. To finally people just lying stretched out on the pavement. And then we saw a kitten so newborn it was still covered in mucus. And it tumbled onto the pavement mewling and then fell under a car.

And now in a cab with my crabs. Lost. It all feels a bit much.

Guess that’s India for you.

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Learning to fit in

Posted on January 23, 2010 | 1 Comment

‘They think you’re easy.’

Huh. Ok. I wish Pooja had told me that that’s what Indian men think of Anglo Saxon women before bringing me to this dayglo ballroom where there are 453 Indian men in Armani suits and one Anglo Saxon woman. That one anglo saxon woman – in case you’re wondering – that’s me.

I scan the room. There are 13 chandeliers,  a band that reminds me of the wedding singer,  453 Indian men in Armani suits (or thereabouts), about 30 women in traditional Indian dress. And me (not in Indian dress. In Topshop dress).

‘Where is the bar?’ I ask Pooja.

When I ask for my drink the barman looks at me confused. I ask again. He frowns. Pooja leans forward and says ‘vodka and watermelon juice’ (when in Rome).

‘But that’s what I said.’

‘He doesn’t understand you.’

‘But I’m speaking English.’ If I annunciated any more I’d sound like the Queen. My accent is so clipped it’s practically buzzcut.

‘Yeah, not to him. Your accent is funny.’

I ponder this. If pooja wasn’t with me the only way I could get a bloody vodka would be to talk in such a way that I’d get arrested and charged with racism if I did it in the UK. Or pilloried like Jade.

With one double measure vodka down and one in my hand I feel much better about this situation. To be fair Pooj wasn’t talking about me per se when she said they thought I was easy. She was talking about the general perception of European women. But I’m feeling distinctly uneasy. Ironically.

I think momentarily about stepping onto the dance floor and doing a Pulp Fiction-esque dance. It would be really funny. Perhaps only to me though. Perhaps not to the security guards.  And wouldn’t do much to dispel Indian stereotypes of European women.

In the taxi I ask Pooja to teach me some Hindi.

Meera Naam Sarah Hai

She waggles her head. I copy. She bends over double laughing.

‘What? What’s so funny?’

It looks like I’m having a fit. She gets me to practice. I waggle again. Even the driver is laughing at me in the rear view mirror.

‘So I can’t speak bloody English without having the piss taken out of me and now I can’t speak bloody Hindi either.’

I keep practising the head wiggle.  We get to Leopolds. It’s a disappointment.

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Done the tattoo parlour. Next stop a wax.

Posted on January 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

I just had a bikini wax. It involved a butter knife, wax so hot I assume they climbed the nearest volcano and dipped their wax tub in a flowing lava bed to warm it up and two women. All behind a shower curtain.  You want to hear about the rest of my day?

I staggered like a drunk who’s just popped 10 vicodin out of bed at 10.45 this morning. I’m getting better. Yesterday was early afternoon. Day before that late afternoon.  I hopped in a rickshaw, the driver didn’t have a clue where anything was – Mt. Mary’s steps – no. John Baptist Road? – no. Domino’s Pizza (running out of landmarks) -no. It became clear they don’t do the Knowledge in India. Eventually we made it. I thought about asking for a discount for the time he spent getting lost then realised that wrangling over 3p was ungenerous of me.

Then I was piled in another rickshaw, sandwiched between two people I’ve just met who work for Ashoka. When you’re sandwiched in a rickshaw it’s like being the spam in a sandwich where you have taken both palms and flattened the bread down. But in this instance it’s actually quite comforting because it’s like having air bags on both sides.  I love the way they drive. It’s insane. I used to think that if you learnt to drive in South East London you could drive anywhere – including Baghdad but now I’m rethinking that. I wouldn’t drive in Mumbai if you told me that Alex Skarsgard and Javier Bardem were going to be at the end of the road waiting for me. Or a pot of gold. No way. It’s mental. The rules seem to be thus:

-          There is no side to drive on – you drive on whichever the hell side of the road you like

-          If you are a rickshaw driver you OWN the road

-          You have to beep your horn the entire journey or you lose

-           There’s a point system for how many pedestrians you can mow down and the winner gets dinner for two at the Taj

Yet for all the craziness there’s no road rage. If this was London and people were cutting you up, overtaking on the inside, bumping into pedestrians and beeping at you for not running a red there would be blood. The rage would be apoplectic and dangerous and deadly. But here, not so much as a middle finger or a snarl. Just head waggles. I love that.

I was taken to a restaurant that’s like the Indian version of Wimpy. Or the BHS cafe my mum used to take me to when I was a kid. And we chatted about evaluation.  I’ve been in Mumbai 48 hours and I’m sitting discussing monitoring and evaluation and youth led social action. That’s me. Dedicated to the cause.

After lunch I go to the waxing place. After that  I wish I had popped 10 vicodin.

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Getting tattoos in Mumbai

Posted on January 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

I have just been to a tattoo parlour in Mumbai. Not just any old tattoo parlour- ‘Al’s tattoo and cappuccino parlour’.  I got a tattoo done. Of a bald eagle on my right shoulder blade with the words ‘don’t worry about a thing’ underneath.

Are you kidding? Of course I didn’t get a tattoo.

An American girl staying with Pooja is getting one though and I thought I would go along with her to check she knew what hepatitis was. Also I have decided that I am going to say ‘yes’ to everything. Except to the question ‘so you want a tattoo too?’

On the way there we walked (really I have found that you don’t walk in Mumbai– you leap, dodge, jump, hop and skitter) past a church which had a big sign outside saying ‘who of you by worrying is going to add a single hour to his life?’ and I liked that even though it was bible speak. However, thinking on it, I’m not sure it’s that sage advice.  Worrying about getting a tattoo in Mumbai  might not add an hour to your life, but getting a tattoo could very well subtract a few.

We checked where they got the needles from. They told us they come sealed in plastic and are all clean and new. But I’ve seen the bit in Slumdog where they fill up the water bottles from the tap and superglue them shut .  Just saying. Then we asked about the measurement for a circle – that’s right a circle – and the tattoo man said ‘so 4 inches by 3 inches’. Now, I’m no mathematician but that would make an oval I think. If I were her I’d be concerned.

I’m approaching 13 hours in Mumbai and I’m not yet sick and I’ve visited a tattoo parlour.  So far it’s getting lots of ticks in the yes box. Here are my two favourite things so far: auto rickshaws are like kamikaze bumper cars on an enormous track going head to head with buses and pedestrians and cars but they cost about 20p a ride – a pretty damn exhilarating one at that. Imagine jumping in a black cab to soho and being charged 20p. And here’s the next best thing – Rich and Pooj have a lady who comes in every day, every single day to clean up all their mess and cook them dinner- and all my mess too. I mean. That’s staff. They have a housekeeper. They never have to cook or clean ever again. I want one. I realise that makes me sound like Veruca Salt but I want one.

What else, it’s the middle of the city but the sounds of animals are all around – birds, dogs, mosquitoes (the Avon didn’t seem to repel them). You know that film ‘I am Legend’ where NY turns all Serengeti in three years and Will Smith saves the world for the what? Fifth time? I reckon if everyone in Mumbai overnight became a flesh eating zombie then this city would take about three days to become a jungle.

And finally, it’s HOT. I love it. I was meant to live somewhere hot. Last week I was sitting in 7 layers (2 thermal) inside next to a fire, with a blanket wrapped round me. Now I am sleeping in knickers and a vest under a fan. Let the mosquitos bite me. They can have me. Every inch of me. I would gladly accept a life of itching over a life of hypothermia.

Can I live here? Well, too early to tell. But if I don’t become roadkill in the next few days I’ll let you know.

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