Living in Mumbai--it's madness.

In the only Jewish studies class I ever took, my professor told me that the Hebrew Testament is full of the distrust of cities. I can see why. Cities have a mind of their own. They eat things and dissolve things, and turn people and buildings and trees and oceans into things they weren't before. Life is more difficult in a city, but it is also so much more interesting. There are things you forget and things you learn, and once you are consumed by a city its pretty hard to fight your way out again.

I can't imagine what these people would say if they came to Mumbai now. Actually, there was once a strong Jewish population here in Mumbai, one of the oldest and least accosted Jewish communities in the world. They were said to have come here after the destruction of one of the temples by Rome (first or second is undecided upon), and since then lived here in relative peace, absorbed by the world of many-faced gods. Now, or so my Holy Cow book tells me, most have moved to Israel, and the population here is almost none.

Mumbai is definitely one of those cities with a power to consume, absorb, elevate, and permanently change. The local trains are grated tin cans that shudder down the tracks, and people hang out the doors (that are never closed) and jump off as it is still moving. They fight to get on, and it is common to be blooded by entering and exiting the train. It's like the new version of a child's coming of age even--the day the boy enters the Men's car on the Mumbai local train, he is no longer in the world of women, where they push and yell, but understand--now he is in the world of men, where you fight and maim and rage just to get on and off and ride along the tracks--he is in the world of men as he travels with thousands of people in the tide of the city.

Women, luckily, we get to stay in the ladies car our whole life, and never have to go through the jarring experience of that violent ride. Though, the fisherwomen and the commuters, and the sellers and everyone else, wearing full saris and dressed like flowers, these women can throw a good punch, catch you at the door of the train, sling a good curse word in your direction, and--as I discovered--steal your phone out of your bag without you even noticing. There's less blood for sure, but probably just as much madness.

There's something carnal yet warped about living in this kind of city. Like it's full of ancient brutishness, but also a shrine to the mad god, part of a trance that the shaman goes on--part of a vision that makes no sense, yet somehow belongs in the grand scheme of a larger, less insane picture.

I was supposed to go to Bandstand today, just to go walking and exploring in my neighborhood. But I got busy with writing. I've been quite bad about blogging, but the internet comes in and out, and there are six of us sharing it. But I have been writing on my own computer. I'm preparing for Nano, and I'm journaling a lot there. I've also been playing an embarrassing amount of videogames, which make my neck hurt, but carry me far far away from this world for hours, and that makes me feel good when I need it. Doing this work is hard. It's hard in a different way from Korea, and it's easy in some ways--I don't always have to be on my toes teaching. But it is hard, and it taxes you. I take so long to get acclimated to a place, and I don't have much longer here. Twenty days, most of which will be working. I do have a couple weekend trips in mind, so I'm hoping to complete them, but I spend most of my energy on engaging with the students at the Khar school. Some of them have amazing stories.

Marc,one of our volunteers, is now working out at a gym that cost him five dollars for 3 months. He works out with Malesh, one of our students and construction/handy staff. Malesh lives, with his little sister, Parvati, at the school. He's learning how to cook. There used to be a group of orphans at the school. One of them cooked, but something happened, and he's disappeared. (I think it was something dishonorable, but it's not my business.) So now Malesh is learning to cook. He cooks good Maggi noodles, and he tells me so. (Like in every country I go to, I am a kind of food. This time, I'm noodles, of the same brand from whence Maggi-cube came). Malesh was found living under a boat a few years back, with Parvati, who was dying of TB. He survived by begging. They were in and out of homes of family, orphanages, hospitals, everything, until they settled in the school. Now he works out with a Canadian man who, at mid life, quit his banking job to follow his passions, and cooks ramen noodles for his little sister, who is no longer dying, and can cling to your shoulders for hours on end.

It's a pretty spectacular story, if you sit down to think about it. But these days, all the stories are like that, and in order not to be overwhelmed, I don't think about it too terribly much. It's odd, and kind of amazing, how people just become people as soon as they're right in front of you. Once you enter into a certain kind of relationship with someone, their story can fade into the background, and you are person to person. When it's teacher to student, or peer to peer, that's spectacular. But sometimes that's done on class lines, or racial lines, or other things--beggar to white girl, or man to woman (not always bad), or servant to master, or sometimes parent to child--you forget certain stories when you shouldn't. Interesting, how humanity can do that, and how much it can sway in either direction.

Taj Mahal and Agra

I was on a train for twenty two hours to get here. It didn't feel that long, in a dirty but comfortable sleeper car, dozing and not eating, chugging along as the train wobbled over the tracks through rural India. It gets cold at night. We met two wonderful Hare Krishna women from Mauritius, who gave us banana chips and were so very very kind. We got danced on by a begging eunuch, and I didn't give him/her enough money. We disembarked with a man who sat across from us, found out the proper price for a rickshaw, and he helped us to haggle for a correct one. The man who drove our rickshaw gave us an epic speech from the bottom of his heart about how he would never cheat us because he was an ambassador of his city. I paid him extra because I was so impressed with his sincerity. Our hotel had no problems--a slight hitch because the room was more upscale than anticipated, but it changed from 8 dollars to 12--so it's not a big deal. Its a beautiful, comfortable place with a garden restaurant.

It is the final day of Navaratri today, and the streets are full of processing Durga statues. As we walked home from our day of sight seeing, we were painted with pink and green powder--powder that will never come out of our clothes, but feels authentic and wild. I love it. It smells like chemicals and gunpowder. It smells like power and devotion.

We saw the sun rise at the Taj. It is extremely impressive. White columns, perfectly inlaid jewels, the entire Quran written word by word across its walls--all perfectly symetrical--no mistakes at all. The men were pushy and disgusting--and not once did I call them out for "Un-Islamic behavior." (I asked if they were Muslim men first.) I thought that would bring on mass giggles, but in fact it actually worked. Telling a man angrily to lower his eyes in the presence of a religious woman had some sway. The second time I yelled I just flat out said "Would you do that to your mother?" And he walked away quite shamefully.

At Agra fort, however, we had a guide. The fort is amazing. I'm short on time so it is not possible to describe how intricate, varying and remarkable the place was. I saw the place were Jahanara lived, one of the women  in my Sufi paper, and the place where her father was imprisoned by his son--to do nothing but stare at the reflection of his Taj Mahal in the face of a diamond. That was the punishment given to him by his stern, conservative son, Aurengzeb, who took the throne after many agreed that Shah Jahan had spent too much money and run the country into the ground--in spending excessive funds on the Taj Mahal.

The guide kept the horny men with cell phone cameras away, but it felt safer for families to approach. We took photos with old couples and babies, and families who introduced the entire extended group. Many were also tourists. The fort had within it multiple palaces and resting places for the kings, queens, and princesses. It had an intricate water system, and some rooms were even air conditioned and heated. Unlike the Taj, which is all white marble, the fort varied in style depending on who had built the rooms. It was magnificent.

We're going to the Taj again tomorrow for sunset, and then we have no other real plans. The train leaves early on Tuesday, and we should be home in time for work on Wednesday. What a magnificent time... I am so glad someone convinced me to come here. I wasn't planning on it at all.

Hello, India.

Trying to do everything about this past week will be absolutely impossible. It doesn't feel like a week. It feels longer and shorter. Longer because it's so different. Shorter because it's been much less stressful and exhausting than a week at a Korean school. (Of course, back then... the weeks went fast at the beginning as well.)

On Sunday, my first day here, the volunteers and I went to Elephanta Island, an island that is known for its temple caves. They weren't spectacular, but they were pretty interesting--teeming with people in the heat, I was dripping sweat, and I had to take things in very slowly, because I was so exhausted. The walkway up was lined with trinket stalls. Some of the most beautiful carvings and works of art were barely ten dollars. The walkway was covered with a woven blue tarp, and everything under it had a blue glow to it.

At school, the kids are wild. I can deal with it, once I act patiently. It's a lot of energy, but it's not as demanding as it used to be, I think. This isn't my first time, and anyway, there are a few of us, so I don't have to teach every class of the day, and rarely do I have to do it alone.

We are right by the ocean. The buildings are squished together. Everything is dirty. Everything smells. Everything is colorful. Everything is exciting. Everything is busy. Autorickshaws are the best. They seat three people, and they are basically bikes--three wheeled motorcycles. And they run crazy through the streets. (Which are on the opposite side, by the way. That's hard to remember.)

Anyway... there's barely anything to say. I've been moseying along. Doing what I've been told to do--taking everything in and trying not to judge it. So far I'm enjoying things, but the heat takes the edge off of everything. Nothing is spectacular, nothing is miserable, because it's just too hot to really make a big deal out of anything.

:D