4 July 2011

JORDAN:

Male crossdressers in India are traditionally considered witches who would curse you if you did not give them money. Somebody explained this to me after I met one on the train (and they presumably cursed me). Most people actually seemed to be giving this guy money, which is very unusual for beggars, so I take it this belief is relatively thriving. What's even funnier is that the local friend who explained this to me lamented that now folks who weren't even real witches were taking advantage of this and doing it just for the money.

On the subject of trains, you should know two things: on average, 3500 people die every year (or ~10/day) riding the Mumbai train system (which is even more ridiculous because there's basically 2 lines). This is probably because of gross overcrowding and the fact that the doors on the train don't shut. During peak hours, you'll see as many as 7 people hanging out of a typical train door with one foot in the train and one hand grasping the door frame. The culture is to run and jump on and off trains as they're still moving.

Second thing: trains are split up by gender, so there are special cars just for women. Despite that these are a minority of the cars, they're still much less crowded, forcing the overcrowding on the rest of the trains to be even more severe. I understand that women risk more assault on a train car here than in the States, but for what it's worth, I think somebody ought to consider how the policy of gender-separated cars is helping contribute to the body count.

Chabad has been a lovely refuge to eat and just hang out with friendly people each Friday. One of the kids we met there has been doing an internship with an NGO for a year focusing on rehabilitating drug addicts. We'd been told by folks in the office that drug addiction wasn't really a problem, but this guy argued that most folks don't even recognize it who don't work with it. He described addictions to certain substances that make you lose your limbs or fingers in certain, distinguishable ways. When he described this, it clicked for me, because we've seen a ton of folks like this, mostly beggars, and never really known what to attribute it to. The  number of folks here with some sort of strange physical deformity is much higher here than in the States. 

This is a shot of a woman I'm guessing had the kind of drug addiction our Chabad friend told us about. Notice the fingers. Sorry for that really depressing picture. We'll have pictures of temples and amusement park animals up soon.

SHIRA: 

Happy 4^th of July!  We’re missing our favorite fireworks displays and (vegetarian) barbeques right now and instead celebrating by getting sick again.  We’re going to have to work on this.

Yesterday we went to Gorai Island which is a small island about an hour north of city center.  It contains two things.  One: a Buddhist temple which includes the largest unsupported dome in the world.  Two: a combination amusement park and water park.  This to us seemed like a strange combination, but we were originally going to go for it!  In order to get to the island you have to take a ferry off of a tiny dock surrounded by what is probably the stinkiest water in the world.  From there you take a small ferry that blasts Indian music at you until you reach the island 20 minutes or so later.  We went to the temple first, and I’m glad we did because this is when Jordan first told me he wasn’t feeling so hot.  We saw a little paintings gallery that showed the life and times of Buddha and skipped over the movie that wasn’t in English.  We got to go inside the dome briefly and see the meditation that was happening there.  All together a pretty fun excursion. 

We only have one more weekend in Mumbai!  This is pretty crazy to me.  I can hardly believe that we’ve already lived here as long as we have and there’s still quite a bit we’d like to see! 

1 July 2011

Happy Canada Day everyone! 

Life in India has come to a bit of a plateau.  We have a schedule that we pretty much follow every day and we have settled into a pattern of living here.  There haven’t been too many developments here in India.  We have a project due on Friday that both Jordan and I have put a lot of working into, and I think we’ll both feel relief once it is presented and approved. 

On the bed bugs front we have arrived at a sort of a fake success.  Having visited several chemists (pharmacies) who look at us like we’re speaking a Martian language or as if we’re raging alcoholics when all we want is rubbing alcohol to kill bed bugs, we have abandoned this strategy.  [We even looked rubbing alcohol up by several different names, but one chemist who spoke especially good English told us that it is not a product that we’ll find here.]  We spoke to our hotel staff who immediately transferred us to a new room and are supposedly cleaning our old room in case we want to return.  Tonight we’re sending off all of our clothes to be laundered.  Again.  Perhaps I shall buy some cheap spirits and spray the room (and especially our luggage), but if we can avoid having everything smell like vodka this would be preferable!

With two weeks left until our out-of-Mumbai travels commence, I think we’re just trying to make the best of what is now a short stay.  We’re finishing up our internship projects and hopefully cementing some new friendships.  Of course, during this time we’re also going to have to finalize our travel plans as well as cram in all the Bombay experiences that we haven’t yet had.  Tomorrow we’re going shopping with Nida and exploring Bandra, a northern suburb of Mumbai.  Sunday we’ll probably visit an Island in Mumbai with temples and other fun things.

We are constantly amused and interested by romancing in India.  We were talking to one of our new co-interns who was pulled over after kissing her boyfriend in the car!  (Neither she nor the boyfriend was driving).  What’s more is that we learned that male Indian police are not allowed to speak to women.

Tonight is Friday which means Chabad.  I think both Jordan and I are looking forward to a home-cooked meal and some good company.