Showing posts with label Monsoon Summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monsoon Summer. Show all posts
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Dharavi Fish Market in the Monsoon
My favorite parts:
1) When I feel awkward because I see the guy whose fish I was filming staring at me at the end and I say something quickly like, oh.. sorry
2) Shortly after this was filmed, one of the larger catfish jumped out of the bin and swam away as it made a bid for freedom through the Monsoon puddles
Monday, July 2, 2012
Rain as an Equalizer?
I havent thought this through completely, but I wanted to get it down before I forget it/my internet stops working like everyone else's did.
The monsoons are back. (ask and ye shall receive...)
and with a vengeance.
Ada and I went to eat very close to our apartment, and then when we left 45 minutes later it was POURING. There is actually 1.5 ft of water outside of our building. So much for the leather flats I just ruined.
But as we were walking back and my massive black rain jacket appeared to protect me from the rain (somewhat), I was thinking about how the rain affects the city. We all stand under buildings, regardless of age, class, race, background etc. We all laugh about how CRAZY it is right now. We have the shift whatever plans we have and account for challenges along the way. Our clothes our soaked. And still there are smiles and laughter because it is FINALLY cooling down.
But then you turn and look at the people huddled in a store front, soaked and holding their belongings in their laps. Everything they own is being either ruined or soaked by the rain. A little girl in a soaked yellow dress watched wrappers floating through the streams falling from a pipe and into the sewage system. Her bare feet nearly invisible under the streams of brown water. Her mom was sitting huddled with her other children in the dark storefront, protecting them with her body.
I went home to my apartment and took off everything I was wearing that soaked through. It is all hanging in my clean, dry space.
I know that I have options. They are staring me in the face right now. But imagine spending an evening outside watching it flood and wondering how long you can sit in your space, shivering and wet before the waters reach you?
... I guess it's not an equalizer.
The monsoons are back. (ask and ye shall receive...)
and with a vengeance.
Ada and I went to eat very close to our apartment, and then when we left 45 minutes later it was POURING. There is actually 1.5 ft of water outside of our building. So much for the leather flats I just ruined.
But as we were walking back and my massive black rain jacket appeared to protect me from the rain (somewhat), I was thinking about how the rain affects the city. We all stand under buildings, regardless of age, class, race, background etc. We all laugh about how CRAZY it is right now. We have the shift whatever plans we have and account for challenges along the way. Our clothes our soaked. And still there are smiles and laughter because it is FINALLY cooling down.
But then you turn and look at the people huddled in a store front, soaked and holding their belongings in their laps. Everything they own is being either ruined or soaked by the rain. A little girl in a soaked yellow dress watched wrappers floating through the streams falling from a pipe and into the sewage system. Her bare feet nearly invisible under the streams of brown water. Her mom was sitting huddled with her other children in the dark storefront, protecting them with her body.
I went home to my apartment and took off everything I was wearing that soaked through. It is all hanging in my clean, dry space.
I know that I have options. They are staring me in the face right now. But imagine spending an evening outside watching it flood and wondering how long you can sit in your space, shivering and wet before the waters reach you?
... I guess it's not an equalizer.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Cities Through The Eyes of Another
The Monsoons are pouring down on us over here, folks. I think people were amused by me today. I was walking around in completely soaked through and trashed canvas slip on shoes that made squish squish noises when I carefully avoided puddles and avoided slipping down the street and a huge black rain jacket that was my Dad's but I took because I like it better than the women's ones that really dont keep you very dry at all. This giant black plastic bag basically ate me. I looked like an oversized version of one of the ravens that sit outside of my bathroom window and periodically startle us when they start calling. Oh, and also it's raaaaattthhherrr humid. So my glasses tend to fog up whenever I walk outside. It's a good look all around.
We woke up late (truly enjoying this Sunday experience) and went to a series of film screenings in the Mumbai Museum of Modern Art. One of the film makers was there to answer our questions after the screenings, which was super cool. She talked about her experience as a film maker and how she picked her subjects -- ultimately deciding to include herself as one of the people she asked about their experience with film and cinema in the city. My favorite part of her response was about one of her subjects. There was a woman who was very clearly (despite my language barrier) charming and mischievous and wonderful. She just glowed with life and good humor. You wanted to be around her. And the director said that she picked this woman, despite her limited exposure to film, because she was so charismatic. It was clearly a good choice -- it made the film overall more engrossing.
It was fun to see the city in several different neighborhoods, through the eyes of different people who live here. There was the man washing old film to be recycled into collared shirts rather than the bangles they used to make with it. There were the men from distant villages living and working in the city as migrants -- finding work some days and not others, subjected to changes that come from strikes, and creating spaces of refuge within the city. There were stories and families and the reality of what life looks like outside of the glamourous spotlight of major film studios. What's not to like?
We all left feeling thoughtful and wandered through the rest of the exhibition before I left with two other students to find the only open bookstore in the area. We have official things to do tomorrow and I needed a notebook!
We dipped and ducked under plastic tarps meant to keep the rain off the vendor's roadside stands. Every few minutes one of them would tip and dump buckets of water onto the unfortunate soul standing under the tarp. The city was a lot darker without the sun. Men crowded into the corners of stores, avoiding the alleyways with streams of brown water and garbage flowing out of them. Sometimes all that you would see were the figures of children huddled together watching the rain from beneath their blankets. The same ones many of them will sleep on this evening on the same side walks.
In my determined march to the bookstore for a notebook, I found the same child that I ran into a few days ago. He cannot speak and instead mimes at you. I think he remembered me, despite the large ridiculous bird figure I'd become with the changing weather. I am determined to find him before I leave (perhaps on my last day?) and finally give him the rice he asks me for every time I see him.
The treck back was interesting. We fell into silence and just managed to get through the growing puddles and dodge the few cars that we saw on the streets to make it home before we were completely soaked through. It helps that I spent so much time making myself rain appropriate for this trip, no? (This was from yesterday, so I wasnt wearing the rainboots, but you get the idea. This group of women wearing beautiful saris and trying to cross the street with us yesterday kept smiling at me and pointing at my boots. It was fun!)
For now, the rain is welcome. There were still children playing in soccer tournaments this morning. I woke up to the persistant whistles of time-outs etc. ...Makes you feel a little lazy, not gonna lie.
It was also a day full of smiles. I have to admit, there are a number of things that I missed about home. Since being back and connected to the internet/able to communicate, it has been much better. This is really a very different world from anything I've ever experienced before (which was kinda the point of me coming here...) and I know I felt really lucky to have the friends/family I do have to keep me sane through some of these episodes. So thank you :) I love you all.
We woke up late (truly enjoying this Sunday experience) and went to a series of film screenings in the Mumbai Museum of Modern Art. One of the film makers was there to answer our questions after the screenings, which was super cool. She talked about her experience as a film maker and how she picked her subjects -- ultimately deciding to include herself as one of the people she asked about their experience with film and cinema in the city. My favorite part of her response was about one of her subjects. There was a woman who was very clearly (despite my language barrier) charming and mischievous and wonderful. She just glowed with life and good humor. You wanted to be around her. And the director said that she picked this woman, despite her limited exposure to film, because she was so charismatic. It was clearly a good choice -- it made the film overall more engrossing.
It was fun to see the city in several different neighborhoods, through the eyes of different people who live here. There was the man washing old film to be recycled into collared shirts rather than the bangles they used to make with it. There were the men from distant villages living and working in the city as migrants -- finding work some days and not others, subjected to changes that come from strikes, and creating spaces of refuge within the city. There were stories and families and the reality of what life looks like outside of the glamourous spotlight of major film studios. What's not to like?
We all left feeling thoughtful and wandered through the rest of the exhibition before I left with two other students to find the only open bookstore in the area. We have official things to do tomorrow and I needed a notebook!
We dipped and ducked under plastic tarps meant to keep the rain off the vendor's roadside stands. Every few minutes one of them would tip and dump buckets of water onto the unfortunate soul standing under the tarp. The city was a lot darker without the sun. Men crowded into the corners of stores, avoiding the alleyways with streams of brown water and garbage flowing out of them. Sometimes all that you would see were the figures of children huddled together watching the rain from beneath their blankets. The same ones many of them will sleep on this evening on the same side walks.
In my determined march to the bookstore for a notebook, I found the same child that I ran into a few days ago. He cannot speak and instead mimes at you. I think he remembered me, despite the large ridiculous bird figure I'd become with the changing weather. I am determined to find him before I leave (perhaps on my last day?) and finally give him the rice he asks me for every time I see him.
The treck back was interesting. We fell into silence and just managed to get through the growing puddles and dodge the few cars that we saw on the streets to make it home before we were completely soaked through. It helps that I spent so much time making myself rain appropriate for this trip, no? (This was from yesterday, so I wasnt wearing the rainboots, but you get the idea. This group of women wearing beautiful saris and trying to cross the street with us yesterday kept smiling at me and pointing at my boots. It was fun!)
For now, the rain is welcome. There were still children playing in soccer tournaments this morning. I woke up to the persistant whistles of time-outs etc. ...Makes you feel a little lazy, not gonna lie.
It was also a day full of smiles. I have to admit, there are a number of things that I missed about home. Since being back and connected to the internet/able to communicate, it has been much better. This is really a very different world from anything I've ever experienced before (which was kinda the point of me coming here...) and I know I felt really lucky to have the friends/family I do have to keep me sane through some of these episodes. So thank you :) I love you all.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Promises of Rain
The rains are starting. Yesterday when we climbed back down from the Kanheri Caves in the national park in the center of Bombay we felt a few cooling droplets hit our faces. It was a great contrast -- we sat on black stone on top of the largest of the hills and cooked -- the stones absorbed so much heat! But the rain on our faces made the experience worth it. For the first day this week, we were sitting outside and we were drenched in sweat, threatening to collapse.
We navigated our way back down the old, worn stairs of the mountaintops where monks built caves and buddhist figures stare out at you from the darkness. I was wearing a pair of very treacherous, flowing black gaucho pants and sandals which wasnt ideal for the climb down the steeper parts. Still, this wasnt as frightening as the morning experience we had when we tried to cross the equivalent of a 3 lane highway exit ramp and were almost mowed down by a bus coming very fast, running 5 lanes of traffic and going in the opposite direction... directly into oncoming traffic.... (we were saved by my paranoia and a loud series of unsavory language also from me... clearly keeping it classy here). Driving to the park was also an adventure... we distracted ourselves from the fact that we actually put our lives in the driver's hands as we sped between cars, trucks, buses, autorickshaws, motorcycles, bicyclists, etc. on the high way.
It has cooled down quite a bit since the clouds came. Sun still makes a regular appearance, but this is better. Or, at least, I like it better. I know this is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for-moment, if nothing else than because my morning walk brought me through piles of sludge and dark mysteries on the side walk that I had to very carefully avoid or else wipe out in. (I managed to avoid slipping... but it was pretty disgusting and I dread the day that I fall in the sludge, regardless of what it is)
It was nice to walk alone this morning. I can imagine my Dad freaking out while he reads that (dont worry, Dad, I was fine). I found a place that sells coffee (it was getting weird... cutting my habit down from 2-3 cups a day to nothing felt a little off. I think I've reached my mother's level of coffee love: I look forward to my first cup of it every day) and really smiled like a cat when I saw that I could choose the location that my coffee was grown. Yes. I had coffee from Bolivian cooperatives. Does this make me a fair-trade-shade-grown-vegan-hipster/fresa as Francisco calls me? Yes. Yes it does. Was it worth it? Yes. Yes it was. And no, for the record, I am still not a vegan (despite a 3 day experiment when I first got home just to make Zak and Cole and all of the other vegan friends I now seem to have happy that I had at least tried...)
So the rains are starting. Our professor made an interesting opening statement about them a few days ago. He said, this is the perfect time to be in Mumbai because you'll see the city as it struggles to survive. .... that's going to be interesting. I'm a little worried about what that actually means. I guess we'll see what happens.
But it had me thinking this morning about the value of rain and the sort of cleaning out (or not...) that it does of the city. I am LOVING the nearly 10 degree drop in temperature, making walking outside not an instant sweat bath. It is cleaning in that way. I'm scared of what it will do to the traffic since people dont really seem to look where they are driving anyway, and now they wont be able to see us super well through the sheets of rain... (I am even more worried about the first night we actually manage to go out in the city. I am half way through Super Freakonomics, and was just made paranoid to the fact that more people die walking home drunk than from drunk driving. Not that I plan on walking home drunk, but this is a serious concern for being out in this city at night and walking around. Looks like its time for me to find a way to draw even more attention to myself... neon yellow jumpsuits, anyone??)
But the rain has an equalizing element to it, that I think will be interesting to think about alongside all of the inequalities that I am having such a hard time mentally processing and dealing with. I honestly feel like I shut off my emotions and leave them at the door the moment I leave my key at the desk downstairs in the building I'm living in. I see the beautiful but completely decrepit colonial mansion across the street that I have dubbed the "Jumanji house,"the women in colorful saris who perch on the curb across the street next to the smashed front windshield that has lived on the sidewalk for who knows how long, and the grocery store with a restaurant of sorts that alternates between smelling very appealing and very very terrible depending on the hour and it just sinks in how sheltered I am within even the living space I have here. Dont get me wrong, I am BEYOND grateful to have running water, a shower, and a very clean place to live. But I am well aware how weird this is too.
Really, let's be honest here. It's the little kids. And I think they know I am internally a sucker for little kids. They stare up at me and I feel like I have to stare at them from behind a steel mask to keep myself from reacting or offering them anything. I dont even let myself speak -- it's that moment of being a foreigner and knowing that you cant escape being foreign and being unsure that its worth speaking and revealing where you are from anyway. Kudos to the kid this morning, he tried me in English, Hindi AND GERMAN. I almost cracked... I know it will only get worse if I hand them anything... at least until the end of my trip. Then maybe I can be nice and try not to promptly burst into tears when I realize how little I as one person in this space right here and right now can do for them.
So the promises I see with the rain:
Maybe it will be easier to deal with everything mentally - the constant sensory overload, dodging cars at all hours of the day, ignoring the people who stare without stopping, the kids, the smells the EVERYTHING this city really is a Maximum city in every way.
I am grateful to have found my quiet coffee place this morning. I suspect I will take refuge from the rain there frequently when I want to remember the smells of home. There really is nothing like Latin American coffee to bring you back.
We navigated our way back down the old, worn stairs of the mountaintops where monks built caves and buddhist figures stare out at you from the darkness. I was wearing a pair of very treacherous, flowing black gaucho pants and sandals which wasnt ideal for the climb down the steeper parts. Still, this wasnt as frightening as the morning experience we had when we tried to cross the equivalent of a 3 lane highway exit ramp and were almost mowed down by a bus coming very fast, running 5 lanes of traffic and going in the opposite direction... directly into oncoming traffic.... (we were saved by my paranoia and a loud series of unsavory language also from me... clearly keeping it classy here). Driving to the park was also an adventure... we distracted ourselves from the fact that we actually put our lives in the driver's hands as we sped between cars, trucks, buses, autorickshaws, motorcycles, bicyclists, etc. on the high way.
It has cooled down quite a bit since the clouds came. Sun still makes a regular appearance, but this is better. Or, at least, I like it better. I know this is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for-moment, if nothing else than because my morning walk brought me through piles of sludge and dark mysteries on the side walk that I had to very carefully avoid or else wipe out in. (I managed to avoid slipping... but it was pretty disgusting and I dread the day that I fall in the sludge, regardless of what it is)
It was nice to walk alone this morning. I can imagine my Dad freaking out while he reads that (dont worry, Dad, I was fine). I found a place that sells coffee (it was getting weird... cutting my habit down from 2-3 cups a day to nothing felt a little off. I think I've reached my mother's level of coffee love: I look forward to my first cup of it every day) and really smiled like a cat when I saw that I could choose the location that my coffee was grown. Yes. I had coffee from Bolivian cooperatives. Does this make me a fair-trade-shade-grown-vegan-hipster/fresa as Francisco calls me? Yes. Yes it does. Was it worth it? Yes. Yes it was. And no, for the record, I am still not a vegan (despite a 3 day experiment when I first got home just to make Zak and Cole and all of the other vegan friends I now seem to have happy that I had at least tried...)
So the rains are starting. Our professor made an interesting opening statement about them a few days ago. He said, this is the perfect time to be in Mumbai because you'll see the city as it struggles to survive. .... that's going to be interesting. I'm a little worried about what that actually means. I guess we'll see what happens.
But it had me thinking this morning about the value of rain and the sort of cleaning out (or not...) that it does of the city. I am LOVING the nearly 10 degree drop in temperature, making walking outside not an instant sweat bath. It is cleaning in that way. I'm scared of what it will do to the traffic since people dont really seem to look where they are driving anyway, and now they wont be able to see us super well through the sheets of rain... (I am even more worried about the first night we actually manage to go out in the city. I am half way through Super Freakonomics, and was just made paranoid to the fact that more people die walking home drunk than from drunk driving. Not that I plan on walking home drunk, but this is a serious concern for being out in this city at night and walking around. Looks like its time for me to find a way to draw even more attention to myself... neon yellow jumpsuits, anyone??)
But the rain has an equalizing element to it, that I think will be interesting to think about alongside all of the inequalities that I am having such a hard time mentally processing and dealing with. I honestly feel like I shut off my emotions and leave them at the door the moment I leave my key at the desk downstairs in the building I'm living in. I see the beautiful but completely decrepit colonial mansion across the street that I have dubbed the "Jumanji house,"the women in colorful saris who perch on the curb across the street next to the smashed front windshield that has lived on the sidewalk for who knows how long, and the grocery store with a restaurant of sorts that alternates between smelling very appealing and very very terrible depending on the hour and it just sinks in how sheltered I am within even the living space I have here. Dont get me wrong, I am BEYOND grateful to have running water, a shower, and a very clean place to live. But I am well aware how weird this is too.
Really, let's be honest here. It's the little kids. And I think they know I am internally a sucker for little kids. They stare up at me and I feel like I have to stare at them from behind a steel mask to keep myself from reacting or offering them anything. I dont even let myself speak -- it's that moment of being a foreigner and knowing that you cant escape being foreign and being unsure that its worth speaking and revealing where you are from anyway. Kudos to the kid this morning, he tried me in English, Hindi AND GERMAN. I almost cracked... I know it will only get worse if I hand them anything... at least until the end of my trip. Then maybe I can be nice and try not to promptly burst into tears when I realize how little I as one person in this space right here and right now can do for them.
So the promises I see with the rain:
Maybe it will be easier to deal with everything mentally - the constant sensory overload, dodging cars at all hours of the day, ignoring the people who stare without stopping, the kids, the smells the EVERYTHING this city really is a Maximum city in every way.
I am grateful to have found my quiet coffee place this morning. I suspect I will take refuge from the rain there frequently when I want to remember the smells of home. There really is nothing like Latin American coffee to bring you back.
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