Rickshaw Run Over

Sorry it's been so long since I rapped at ya, but things have been pretty busy. See, I've been driving an auto-rickshaw from Hyderabad to Darjeeling, which basically means 2,200 km in a glorified and oddly shaped lawnmower. It was unforgettable, unbelievable, and a lot of other superlative adjectives that I'm too stunned to think of right now.

That photo is a triumphant finish-line shot of the Boondogglers with Sally, our noble steed, atop Tiger Hill, just outside of Darjeeling, on the morning after we completed the Rickshaw Run. Rogier, Benji, and I are wearing Nepalese yak-wool sweaters, and if you had been there, you would have seen, in the not-so-far-off distance, the peak of Mt. Kanchenjunga (8586 meters), the third highest mountain in the world, after Everest and K2. From the same lookout point you could see a very-distant tip of Everest on a clear day, but the Rickshaw Runners were mostly too busy drinking chai laced with Old Monk rum and doing fun tricks with our rickshaws, like doing donuts and purposefully flipping them to really take it in.

I will describe the whole trip in detail over the next few days, and you can follow our travels a little bit on the blog, www.boondogglers.wordpress.com. Everyone arrived safely, we partied it up, and now we're back in Bom.

Happy late New Year everyone! Take care!

Dharavi

"The Government doesn’t consult those it seeks to rehabilitate. You want to move me out of my house, but you won’t ask me where or how? Now they say they want to change Dharavi into Shanghai? Why don’t you change Dharavi into Bombay?"

- Jockin Arputham, founder of the National Slum Dwellers Association. 12/12/2006

A lot of people, most notably journalist Kalpana Sharma, in a 2000 book that she wrote, have referred to Dharavi as the "largest slum in Asia." Sharma's estimate of the population is 1,000,000 people spread over 178 hectares (0.69 square miles), but last week I went on a walk with a friend of mine who is a Ph. D. candidate in sociology from the University of Chicago, writing a dissertation on Dharavi, and she estimated that it could be as low as 500,000 people spread over about 350 hectares (1.35 square miles).



Opening up my "calculator" function in my accessories menu, here, and punching a few numbers, that works out to, at the densest: 19 square feet per person, and at the low end, and 75 square feet per person for personal and living space. I've heard it's actually not even the densest part of Bombay (Dadar and Kurla probably hold that distinction), but Dharavi is really unique because it was started as a massive squatters' colony. The people were, and mostly still are, living there illegally on government land to which they have no claim. The difference between Dharavi and lot of other squatter colonies around the city is that Dharavi really took hold and became permanent. In the government's never-ending campaign to drive slum-dwellers from the city limits, Dharavi became subject to the 1995 Slum Rehabilitation Scheme, a Mumbai-wide cooperation with private developers to get people out of their chawls (hovels) and into public housing.

This year marks the inauguration of a new initiative, specific to Dharavi, in which all residents who have lived in the slum since 1995 will be removed from their homes and put into high-rise public housing projects (we visited the inside of one with our tourguide's research assistant, a 17-year-old called Subramani -- it was rather small, but quite nice, with all the modern appliances and a pretty sturdy set-up, overall). Their land (not technically theirs at all) will be sold to private developers, who will build free replacement public housing on one half, and market-rate sale housing on the other half.

This poster is in protest of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority's actions, which many community members -- particularly those affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) -- disapprove, because they don't think the community has had enough say in the matter. It's a bit like the dispute over the East Baltimore neighborhood near Patterson Park that the city seized last year to build the new BioTech park (for those of my readers who are Baltimorons).

The parties who hear, see, and speak no evil, respectively, are the Maharashtra Parliament, the Maharashtra Land Authority, and the City Corporator's Office (torn), which consists in the local governing body of wards.



Here's a little boy, looking for evil...



Here are some popads, these crispy tortilla-like patties that come with my tiffin lunch can every day (more about that in my next post), drying in the sun after they are fried.



Until the 1960's, Dharavi was home to thousands of the untouchable leather-tanning caste, whose very livelihood is somewhat blasphemous, for obvious reasons, even though they only tan the hides of cows that die of natural causes, supposedly. Many of these tanners were also Muslims, and most of them came from Tamil Nadu. Since the 1960's, however, the tanning industry has moved on to Kurla, and what remains are dozens of leather retailers and finish-work shops. I had an extra hole punched in my belt, because lately I've been busting a sag, which is not acceptable professional attire at work, apparently.



These flags, I was told, were hung to celebrate the Muslim festival of "Id," but after some research, I found that "Id" just means "festival" in Arabic, so I'm not sure specifically what the holiday was. Any investigations are appreciated.



And here, we have what I found to be the most fascinating part of Dharavi, the back-lanes of the industrial section. Despite being a "slum," Dharavi offers none of the indigence or abjection that word implies to western ears. Instead, you see productivity everywhere, and as a result, the area has a surprisingly wide array of incomes. This is why, for those of you who were wondering private developers are actually able to sell market-rate housing alongside public projects in a "slum".

Along one lane, we saw and spoke to Bihari workers in a factory shop that recycled ball-point pens. This guy is shovelling literally thousands of pens into an enormous machine that eats them and spits them out as little pellets of plastic, then separates the ink. The room reeked of ink, a smell I'd never really experienced before, and it was strange. The workers wore rubber galoshes and elbow-length gloves.




Clockwise from top left:
- A worker looking out from a welding shop during his break.
- A vacant soap-mixing vat in a chemical shop. The smell was clean and sterile, so I deemed black and white art-style appropriate.
- Welding shop, lit an eerie pale blue-green
- Subramani walking past three enormous sacks of discarded and re-collected audio tape (like, the kind from casettes). A guy poked his head out as I walked by, pointed to the sacks and said, "You see this? 45,000 Rupees." I wasn't sure if he was making an offer, telling me the price, or merely illustrating the fact that some things that others consider trash can actually be quite valuable. I walked on.





Another welding shop:



National Slum Dwellers Association, Dharavi branch.



Thanks for reading.

Now, all of you go support the Boondogglers in the Rickshaw Run!

Some Other Things that I've been Eating

This lovely dish is not, as you may have guessed, green eggs and anything. It is called hara bhara kebab, and what it is made of, I know not. I'm guessing peas. Maybe some spinach. It's really spicy. It's delicious. Janki and I ate it, with Dhruv in tow, on the roof of the Strand Hotel, at the cafe.



This man is making pani puri, which is a crispy hollow puff of wheat flour, filled with water and peas and lentils and stuff like that. I don't eat pani puri from just anybody (this guy is no exception) because it would give me the runs something terrible because it's made with local water, usually. Instead, I got me a couple of vada pav, which are like Whitecastle burgers, only with a potato chickpea patty covered in delicious green chutney inside the bun, instead of rancid horsemeat and rotten cheese. What I'm saying is, they're the same size as Whitecastle burgers.

They look like this. It was too dark for me to photograph my own vada pav.

Janki also has been raving about the Breach Candy Sandwich, as she calls it, for some time. You get it at this food stall called "Right Place" in the Breach Candy neighborhood of central Bombay. It's a toasted triple-decker vegetarian sandwich made with potatoes, capsicum (which means green peppers in Indian), onions, cheese, and a liberal slathering of grasshopper-green chutney. It looks like this...



And gets smeared with this...



And ends up looking like this...



But here I go again, stealing Janki's thunder again. Read more about the Breach Candy sandwich on Janki's food blog, which makes me hungry even after eating a whole sandwich 5 minutes ago.



In addition, if anyone is interested in seeing more pictures of markets and bazaars in Bombay, here's a whole blog devoted to them. Those of you who are thinking about clicking that link, ask yourself again, "Are you really interested in that?".

Chor Bazaar

I was looking for goofy old records and maybe some ironic Indian t-shirts. Janki was looking for old Bollywood posters. We went on Saturday to chor bazaar, the thieves' market, and found some cool stuff. One of the coolest things was that the main street you wander in the chor bazaar is called "Mutton Street," but also lots of brasswork, antique clocks, old scuffed-up cameras, antique furniture, spare mechanics parts, refurbishing shops that sell tinkered fans, TVs, radios, exercise equipment, old snuffboxes and cigarette cases, dusty sculptures, trinkets, toys, and junk of all time. It's a huge outdoor thrift store, and when we arrived on the Saturday afternoon, it felt like all the shop-owners were drugged -- no one approached us and hawked, no one shouted for us to come into their stores. Instead, we wandered at our own pace and looked and photographed and bought a few things. It was -- I dunno -- relaxing.

Janki looking for Bollywood posters...



endless trinkets, souvenirs, figuerines, knick-knacks, tchotchkes, hodge-podge, bric-a-brac, and piggly-wiggly...







And outside in the street, grime only slightly thicker than the regular Bombay, but cut by the elegance of the Raudat Tahera mosque...




and the occasional burst of color (saris drying on the line)...


Down a different street, a big tangle of pipes, which never fails to excite the engineer that lurks in me...



And any kind of hand-drill you could want...



Then back up another side street, where children sit on windowsills, flying kites...





Nice place, that chor bazaar.

Tandoori Thanksgiving

The Indian enthusiasm for eating, I should think, goes quite well with the spirit of Thanksgiving. And after all, wasn't it the Indians who invented Thanksgiving? Why don't they celebrate the holiday already? Am I missing something, people?

For some reason, Deval my boss (pictured above) who doesn't like being called my "boss," even though that's what he is, got homesick for Thanksgiving this year (he's a native Texan) and decided the Dasra team should take a day off and eat a massive amount of food. I was promised a whole tandoori chicken to gorge myself on (this is a land where "non-veg" is actually a category on restaurant menus -- as if we're the exception), and I was excited about photographing that neon-red chikkin-skin. But alas, I got regular roasted chicken. I am very thankful, however, because that chicken was delicious, as was the rest of the food, which is pictured below.

clockwise from left: cheese plate, roast chicken, stuffing, mashed-sweet-potato-pineapple-marshmallow-concoction (my own contribution), butter cookies...



clockwise from left: cheese plate, chicken, green bean casserole, mashed taters, cranberry sauce, more mashed taters, paneer tikka (highlighted), stuffing, sweet-potato-delicious, butter cookies...





my third plate:



good camaraderie enjoyed by all:





dessert:





another thing i'm thankful for is this.

i'm not thankful, at all, for this.

Hope you all had a delicious Thanksgiving meal, and a nice time with family and friends. I missed you all.

-R

Off-Spinners and Ghost Houses

"Cricket to us was more than play, It was a worship in the summer sun. "
-Edmund Blunden

Every Saturday and Sunday on the Oval, a huge grassy green in front of Bombay University and the High Coutry, hundreds of locals get together and play dozens of games of cricket, almost continuously from about 10 am until sundown. At the edges of the park, club cricketers put on their starched whites and play official matches (one of them, when I was watching the other day with my friend Dani, was wearing a Steelers cap, but had no idea what I was talking about when I grabbed him and asked him about it) with referees and stuff, but for the most part it's informal, really cramped (and somewhat dangerous because of the fast-moving errant balls), but a lot of fun to watch.

It's called "The Oval" and a lot of famous cricketers, I'm told, including Dilip Vengkarsar, a famous Indian batsman (hitter) grew up playing there. Cricket grounds are called "Maidans". Trivial Matters, another Bandra-based blogger (he's got much better pics than I do, but then, he's got a better camera than I do) posted a fantastic entry about the Oval and the Mahalaxmi Race Course with some cool photos. Check it here.



I won't go into the rules of cricket for all you despicable Americans who don't understand it, but suffice to say it's become dear to me. I can pinpoint the moment. I was watching the West Indies vs. India match in the ICC this year (that's a big int'l competition, though not as big as the World Cup or the Ashes, which is going on right now), and towards the end, when the Windies were down by about 50 with 3 wickets, I turned to Vana and said, "This is a close game!" to which he replied, "Oh, Robbie, no it isn't... You see, they have wickets." What he meant was, since Windies had enough guys remaining the hole, they could start batting less conservatively, hitting more boundries, without worrying too much about getting their fly-balls caught. It was at that point that I understood the deep strategy involved in cricket, and it reminded me of baseball's complicated number-game (counting pitches, batting order, slugging percentages, intentional walks, etc) and how much I love keeping box scores at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, even though I don't follow baseball nearly as much as a lot of my friends do. That, however, is partly an act of protest against George Steinbrenner and his fiendish empire, Jim Leyland's disloyal opportunism, and other such villainy, but alas, it's another story.

Here's a ferocious bowler:


A hapless batter...



A rising star...



And a team of champions...



Very relaxing place, the Oval Maidan, and one of Bombay's most charming sights.

The other amazing place I've been to is Janki's grandmother's house in Malabar Hill, which is a tree-filled, classy area near the governor's mansion, across the back bay from downtown. Janki's house is, undoubtedly, a bhooth bungalow, a ghost house. I've shot it in sepia as proof:



It's an enormous old mansion built from the ruins of Janki's family' ruined shipping fortune. Thirteen people live there, plus a dozen or so servants, and some of them are ghosts (I met a few). There are grand arches with vines, but no munkies, and chunks falling off now and again...



There is a catering company that fries up potato chips and chalabas in the hallway, on a landing, for about 14 hours a day, and the light shines down the hallway...



Rickety old balconies...



There's much more to this house, and lots of stories and feuds to go along with this, but I don't want to write too much about it because it's Janki's thunder, and not mine to steal. Let's just say that any of you Hopkins writers out there who have read her stories about Bombay and the house and its charm and mystery -- they're all true. We have to make her write a novel about it someday.

Up next, Tandoori Thanksgiving and the Theives' Market. Stay tuned.