Getting to be That Time

I just returned from another trip to Mumbai which has solidified its spot among my favorite places in the world.  This is the one city that is rich with the flavors of traditional India as well as everything you can find in the west.  Street dancers, gifted artists, fantastic food of all kinds, bright colors, beautiful views and stately architecture.  Bombay boasts some of everything the world has to offer inside its gargantuan boundaries.  I know New York has coined "the city that never sleeps" phrase but Mumbai really is about as lively as a city can be day and night.  It has everything from a vibrant nightlife in world class nightclubs to casual Sunday cricket games on dirt pitches off of the main roads (that draw hundreds of spectators from around the neighborhood).  The Sea-Link bridge, the remarkable coexistence of poverty and wealth, high rises lining 100 kilometers of ocean, trees shading cobble stone streets, beautiful old buildings in Churchgate and home to the people that make up the creative heart of India.  I have no doubt that the future of not only India but the world will continue to be influenced by Mumbai.  It really is a place to be experienced.

But after what feels like years of experiences my three months are nearly up.  As much as I will miss my life in India (nothing more than the loving relationships I've forged with my once distant and unknown relatives) I am ready to come home.  Of course I miss my family and friends but more than anything I am ready to start on life's next challenge.  As grand an experience as India has been one can only vacation for so long.  I feel as ready as I ever have to take the next (and biggest) step in my life and go from school to career.

It's funny to me how this feeling has crept up in the last month.  Last Spring leaving college seemed so daunting.  I did not feel ready to throw myself into the working world quite yet and I hadn't the slightest idea what graduate program would suit me.  I couldn't have imagined having this confidence I have now nine months ago and I can't pinpoint the exact source.  Somehow a winter spent in India has helped me find it; find the Alex that is going to take over for the one that just finished college.

What happened for me in India is hard to articulate.  I have spent time in Mexico, Sweden and Japan but no culture has fit me like India's has.  I have written about nearly everything qualitative that has happened to me from different cities and sights to scams and staring.  But all of those things have been what any American might experience and write about.  They have all undoubtedly had an impact on me but I think a little something more has happened to me here.

The feeling is hard to describe because it's brand new and it splashes over me in a wave then drains away in seconds.  This deep but fleeting connection to India is most powerful when I see someone that reminds me of my mother.  It happened to me once over a homemade dinner with welcoming strangers in a Delhi train station and every now and then at home when I see Seema with the girls.  This is the first time in my life that I am being reminded of my mom by others.  This probably hasn't happened to me in America because it would be near impossible to find a woman that looks, speaks and carries herself quite like my mother (let alone run into one in Fred Meyer).  It has taken 22 years and an extended stay in a country on the other side of the world for me to find this feeling.  It sounds so simple in writing but I can only say that such a potently welcoming feeling was worth flying around the world to experience.

All my life I have been saturated with white and black culture with pieces of Latino, East Asian and Native American mixed in.  India has been a fresh look into an entirely Un-American world of music, movies, languages, traditions, and customs.  I have soaked up as much as I can for now and I will use Skype, my i-Pod, Bollywood DVDs, Hindi classes and my mom's cooking to keep everything alive for as long as it takes me to come back.

Cultural Differences: Eating, Tea, Bollywood and Me

If someone put their mind to the task an entire volume of books could be written about the cultural differences between the U.S. and India; subtle and not so subtle.  I don't have that kind of expertise or patience but my 3 month stay has given me a few things to talk about.

Movies were one of the first big differences I noticed.  I love Bollywood movies but in a very different way than I love American movies.  If you were to put my favorite five Hollywood movies next to my favorite five Hindi movies I don't think there would be any similarities.  It's not just about my taste but about how and why movies are made in both countries.  After looking past all the idiosyncrasies (like no kissing out of onscreen wedlock) it seems the foundational difference between Bollywood and Hollywood is why people go to the movies.  In India they show up in droves to see their favorite heroes and heroines (yes this is what movie stars are called here) and a good number of fans will actually go see movies multiple times simply to boost their favorite hero's box office numbers.

People in India go to the movies to have fun; probably because everything about city life in India is so mentally exhausting.  The high temperature is never below 80, often in the 90's or above and AC is hard to come by.  Indian traffic is so chaotic and unpredictable that the morning commute alone could be as stressful as half a work day in America.  Most people, even those in the upper middle class, seem to be quite drained by everyday life and as a result aren't prone to pay money to see movies that stress them out any more.  Almost always they opt for singing and dancing (6 songs in every movie) and three hour a break from the grind of everyday life.

A lot of people in the U.S. also go to the movies to have fun, but a large portion go for other reasons.  Many people go to the movies to be scared by Freddie, Jason or that girl from the Ring.  Many more go to movies that revolve around turbulent and tragic circumstances (Road to Perdition, Mystic River) or raw accounts of modern day life like Training Day.  Some people in the U.S. actually pay money to go to The Hours or The Road and feel like crap for the whole day!  The English films currently playing in most of India are Tron Legacy and Harry Potter.  They happen to be raking in money in every city.  If any of the other movies I just listed were shown in India they would be epic flops.  To my knowledge the most recent genuine Hindi horror film was made a decade ago and that seems to be enough for this generation.


Not just the movies, everything is different in India.  The way people talk, work, drive, dress and even eat are as different they could possibly be from back home.  Just take eating as an example.  Here almost everything is eaten with the hands.  Sure most restaurants offer silverware if you ask, but most foods are meant to be eaten by hand and are actually more difficult to negotiate with knife and fork.  At this point I might have even had enough of the Indian Kool-Aid to believe that eating with your hands makes things taste better.  Of course most restaurants are also vegetarian, the level of spice in everything is sky-high and beef is strictly prohibited because cows have special religious significance for Hindus.  Finally, I should mention the most difficult adjustment for me eating in India; when meals are served.  I don't know about you but I'm pretty used to a standard eating schedule in the U.S. that goes something like this:

Step 1:  Have a bowl of cereal (or at least a banana) within 30 minutes of waking up.  (If waking up happens at 11:30am or later then I just skip to step 2).

Step 2:  Eat lunch sometime between 12 and 1.

Step 3:  Sit down for a big dinner at 6pm give or take a half an hour.

Step 4:  Late night snack if I'm still up around midnight

None of these things are set in stone but that is generally how my day is aligned when it comes to eating.  In India this has been turned completely upside down.  Most Indians don't eat breakfast; they have tea.  This cup of tea (and maybe a biscuit or two if you're lucky) is supposed to kill your appetite until lunch, which comes by 2pm at the earliest.  And big mistake if you don't fill yourself to the brim at lunchtime.  As far as my three month experience goes, dinner has never been served earlier than 7pm and often comes closer to 9 or 10!  I found out the hard way that almost all restaurants in Hyderabad are CLOSED from 4pm to 7pm.  That's not a joke.  95% of restaurants, that serve food in order to make a living, lock their doors and go Lord knows where from 4pm to 7pm every day of the week.

Tea is the foundation of this Indian eating schedule.  Tea breaks are taken strategically at least 3 times a day and for most Indians this balances out the wide gaps between meals.  Sadly, a cup of tea only buys me about 30 minutes before my stomach starts eating itself.  As a result I have been trained to carry excessive amounts of snacks and do research on nearby restaurant hours whenever I am traveling somewhere new.

The good part about this difference is that life doesn't die by 7pm during the week (like most places in the U.S.).  I'm not talking about downtown or the bars but rather every average neighborhood.  People from 3 to 80 years old are out in the streets eating, talking and laughing in groups until at least 11pm every night of the week.  The weather certainly plays a role in this, but even in the summer months your average U.S. neighborhood isn't quite so lively.  Must be a combination of late meals, hot weather, mom and pop shops and a generally warmer attitude toward neighbors and strangers.  All of the above are more difficult than you might imagine to get used to but things I know I will miss.

India in my shoes

Although I'm half Indian I don't really look it.  When I'm dressed up in traditional South Asian clothes I tend to look more like an Afghan Muslim than anything else (especially with the 10 day beard I have going).  Up north in Delhi folks are fairer and my features and skin blend in well with the crowd.  In Mumbai foreigners and people from mixed backgrounds are more common so I rarely get double takes on the street.  But in Hyderabad, even if I were to don a silk shirt, polyester slacks and leather sandals (standard attire) my light skin would give me away.  And when I walk down the street wearing Nike Frees, white Jordan basketball shorts and a KU shirt with a big Jayhawk on the back everyone looks at me like I'm from another planet.  Actually, not quite that much staring but I do have a good comparison for you.


I want you to picture one of those guys that does street performing in your city.  I know you know this particular guy because I've seen variations on him all up and down the west coast.  In Seattle he's at Pike's Place, in Portland at Saturday Market, San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf and Venice Beach or Santa Monica Pier LA.  He's the fully clothed guy who looks like he's been spray-painted silver or gold from head to toe.  He's usually on a box posing as a statue until someone gives him money to burst into action/dance.  Now I want you to imagine taking the dog for a walk around your neighborhood early one morning.  You turn the first corner and see this guy--in full costume--walk right past you.  Now, this would be someone you had seen before under rare and select circumstances but most likely never in your neighborhood.  This is exactly how people look at me when I go to the store, the movies, walk through the park, anything in the neighborhood.  I'm not something they've never seen before but I'm someone they've never seen in this particular context.

My Block

I have been in India for nine weeks now and spent the bulk of that time in Hyderabad.  I'm not sure why but I have yet to devote a post to everyday life in this apartment or on this block that I spend so much time in and around.  In spite of how normal most things seem at this point in my stay I will do my best to recapture the hyper-observant state of mind I was in some 60 days back.

I stay with my cousins on the 4th floor of an apartment building in an older section of the city.  The harsh conditions of 120+ degree heat in summers, torrential downpours during monsoon season and everything else that an Indian city has in excess (dust, gas fumes and at least five gazillion pigeons) leave this building looking much older than it really is.

The ground floor is a parking area that is meticulously arranged to fit every vehicle without wasting a single square foot of space.  Land in this part of the city is valuable and as they say "they ain't making any more of it."  The garage area is corralled with a 5 foot concrete wall and three gates.  Two security guards split the 24 hour duty of keeping cars in and unwanted guests out.  As far as I can tell they are both very gentle guys that don't have to means or will to say no to anyone.  Nonetheless their presence seems to successfully impede sales people and pan handlers.  They share a small living area in the center of the garage and in spite of everyone's constant discouragement they continue to rise and enthusiastically salute all residents as we enter and exit the premises.

Just outside the gates is a wild road shared by stray dogs, cars, three-wheeled autos running on lawn mower engines, old fashioned bikes, scooters, food stands, bullock carts and people. Next door to our building is a temple that utilizes loudspeakers and bells to infiltrate every inch of our apartment with its religious ceremonies that run for hours every morning and evening.  Across the street are a variety of shops that sell groceries, stationary, hot food and toiletries.

It's a welcome change to have mom and pop stores for everything within walking distance versus the monstrosities we have back home.  Everyone on the block knows Pilo and as a result of me tagging along with him a good amount of people on the block know me too.  I can walk right across the street and get fresh eggs in the morning.  The shop owner doesn't speak much English but the first time I came in by myself he pulled a big packet from under the counter and dropped it in front of me.  It was a scholarly article written by a PhD in Biology and he pointed to one of the authors and said "my son."  Very proud parent.

At the corner of our block is an intersection which among other things is home to a paan shop, an Irani cafe and a man selling bananas fresh off the branch (30 Rupees for a dozen).  A paan shop in India is actually a tiny stand and yes spelled with two a's (nothing to do with kitchenware).  Paan is an after dinner treat that people eat to freshen their breath and help with digestion.  It's composed of a betel leaf wrapped around areca nut, lime paste and what tastes like a smattering of crunchy, minty herbs.  This package is meant to sit in your mouth for about a half an hour and some folks seem to like adding tobacco to it.  These stands also peddle cigarettes.

Irani cafes are all over town and despite their notoriously shabby appearances and dirt cheap prices they make the best chai tea around.  They also sell fist-sized triangles that are breaded and deep fried with potatoes, spices and a select few vegetables stuffed into the center.  These filling snacks are called samosas and sell for about 4 or 5 rupees each (that's about a dime).  I try to avoid buying too many by keeping in mind how fast they must be lining my arteries.  Other such temptations lie down the street with the man making fresh potato chips in a big bucket of grease and a slew of confectioners churning out biscuits that must have a quarter stick of butter in every bite.

I get my hair cut at a spot on the corner also.  The price is right at $1 and as you might expect I never know what I'm going to get.  What I end up with is clearly more dependent on the barber's mood than what I attempt to ask for/mime.

The more time I spend thinking how to close this out the more things I think of so I'm just going to end it here for now.

Bollywood Wedding

During my stay in Bombay I was lucky enough to attend an Indian wedding.  Now I know that weddings in general are pretty much a guaranteed good time, but when it comes to maximizing the fun involved India must take the cake.  Spring break is literally the most comparable event that comes to mind for me.  Of course in this case most people had to work during the day but that didn't seem to phase anyone in my cousin's crew of friends.  I was only here for the 3 day grand finale, but prior to that were four full nights of house parties 'til 4am.  4+3 = a full on, one week party.


The first night I was here, Friday, the wedding party faithfuls took over a local bar/restaurant that seemed to be walking distance from almost everyone's house.  Before this the women spent the afternoon applying mehndi (henna) designs to their hands and feet.  At first I assumed this process was very lengthy and tiring because no women showed up to the bar that night.  That may be half true but in retrospect I realize that this dive bar has absulutely zero appeal to any woman within miles.  I've been there three times so far and the average age is approximately 40 and the average number of women sighted is 0.

Saturday morning those closest to the couple traveled to the local courthouse to legally register Faisal and Kumud as husband and wife.  After finishing the paperwork we moved to a family residence for a brief religious ceremony and food.  Everyone was dressed in their Indian best (even I brought a formal kurta and matching pants for the occassion).  By evening the majority of us were packed onto a chartered bus and taken to a resort in the hills above Mumbai.  Here everyone spent the better part of 36 hours eating, drinking, talking, dancing and singing.  Roughly four hours were reserved for sleeping.

Overall I don't think the bride and groom could have been more charismatic.  They lived up to their role as stars of the show and then some.  They had the DJ going until 3am and had him back on the tables by 9am the next morning.  Even the photographer was partying with us.

By Sunday afternoon I found myself acquainted with nearly all 100 people in attendance and friends with a good half of them.  No one person knew everyone person there and that might be part of what made everyone so welcoming.  As far as I'm concerned this is the only way to do a wedding.

Post-Script:
No pictures because my camera decided to continue its stay at the resort in the hills without me

MUMBAI

After about a month in Hyderabad and a week in Delhi I have found my way to Mumbai; the most exciting city in India.  I'm staying with my cousin Amor, his wife Nell and their new baby Coco.  They just moved into a new flat 2 days before I arrived so apart from a couple of mattresses it's still pretty bare.  We are on the 6th floor of a building with a great view of the ocean in one of the interior suburbs of Mumbai.

As different as Delhi and Hyderabad were, Mumbai is even further removed from both.  Although I was aware that Bollywood was here like Hollywood is in L.A. I didn't anticipate how similar the two cities would be.  Mumbai is Los Angeles in so many ways.  The size, the beaches, the weather, the smog, the long workdays made longer by the traffic, the media and movie industries and the people.  Perhaps most of all the fact that the disparity between rich and poor is as evident as the sun in the sky and simply a part of everyday life, but this is true to an extent in every Indian city.

My first night in town Amor and I went to a nearby restaurant/bar in the early evening.  Outside was of course the street which has cars, auto-rickshaws, small shops, food stands, apartment complexes, security guards, homeless and regular folks.  Funny thing, apart from the auto-rickshaws the scene bore a striking resemblance to a certain Sunset Boulevard 8,000 miles away.  But this truth didn't dawn on me until after we went inside.

The place was very new and aptly called "wtf!"  The music was fresh and trendy as was the decor and the crowd.  I felt like I had walked into a different world, more specifically a bar in West Hollywood.  Amor told me that a lot of media people were around (this I had gathered for myself) but he also told me how to spot them:  They are the loud ones that are looking around the room for people looking at them.  That last sentence is paraphrased because I don't think anyone could put it much better than that.  The environment was a lot of fun but probably very similar to the scene Amor and his friends had been consumed with all week.  After enough friends arrived we shifted to a more hole-in-the-wall spot that was a lot less chic and a lot more relaxed.  Felt like the ideal place to unwind and enjoy the company of friends without the chance of awkwardly running into "that obnoxious guy" from work on your hard earned Friday night.  Most of the people I have met so far are creative, unique, lively and long time subscribers to the work-hard, play-hard philosophy.  I have yet to meet an engineer which is strange considering that I've met them in swarms everywhere else that I've been in India. 

That section of restaurants and clubs is to the south of our place so today I decided to go for a walk in the other direction and found an entirely different city.  Just north of our apartment building along the beach is a fishing village.  After about 100 yards of pavement I ran into narrow cobblestone alleyways that snaked through a labyrinth of storefronts and shacks.  The buildings were all painted in very bright colors and the beach air mixed with a throng of pungent smells.

This area of town couldn't be more different than what is just a few miles south along the same road, which made me again think of L.A.  At Occidental I was walking distance from the largest collection of Armenians outside of Armenia in Glendale, an entirely Latino community with storefronts covered in Spanish along York Blvd. and an artsy/yuppie community in Eagle Rock.

That kind of racial diversity isn't so evident here, but the income differences from one block to the next are greater than perhaps anywhere else in the world.  Ocean-view highrises line the street with many residents driving BMW's, rocking designer jeans and spending 500 Rupees on dinner at Dominos.  Directly below them on the beach are shacks of corrugated metal piled on top of one another where residents likely spend less than 500 Rupees on food in a month.

Delhi and Agra

Traveling in the north of India is a completely different experience than the south; most of all in January.  Hyderabad is unseasonably cool with lows around 60 and highs near 80 while Delhi was in the 50's during the day and just a few degrees above freezing in the coldest time of the night.  Also keep in mind that in India you actually feel the weather all the time (most places don't have heat including my hotel room and tour bus).

Along with the weather Delhi was different from Hyderabad in almost every way.  The food is not spicy like the south, there were many more tourists, locals had fairer complexions, the bazaars were more grand, the roads were larger and more structured and the city itself was noticeably bigger.  On top of all that the demeanor of northern people is a little gruff and less friendly than in the south.  The difference in size and feel between Hyderabad and Delhi is not unlike that of Portland and Philadelphia back in America.  Perfect example is asking for the nearest ATM.  In Hyderabad this simple question usually prompts an answer with a lot of pointing, hand signals and empathetic facial expressions (even if the helpful stranger can't speak English).  In Delhi I had trouble getting much more than a dirty look, a grunt and a vague directional head movement.

Along with the cultural differences I had to be a little more cautious in Delhi.  Everyone I spoke to about my plans was sure to warn me about thieves, pick pockets and overall less-than-friendly behavior in Delhi.  After I saw the heavy metal chains that my hotel used to lock the main door along with a 24/7 security guard the idea of caution began to sink in.  I was also told not to unlock my door inside the hotel in the night for any reason unless I was expecting something specific to be delivered.  Although I had no issues with this I met a 26 year-old Romanian woman on one of my tours who told me her door had been tried 3 times in 3 nights!  Like me she had also been in India for one month but after hearing some of her stories I'm surprised she survived long enough to share them with me.  I thought I had been gullible in my first week.  On her first trip in an auto she paid her driver 1,500 Rupees.  That is roughly the amount an auto driver should earn in 3 full days work (not half an hour).

But anyway, Delhi really wasn't so scary.  I took two guided tours in four days, one of Delhi and one that took me to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.  Everything I saw had some value, but if you threw all of the sights I saw on one side of a scale and the Taj on the other it isn't even close.  The Taj Mahal is about as grand a sight as you could ever hope to see.  Sometimes things that are ultra-famous end up being a let down in person but I assure you this does not fall into that category.  Even the gate that acts as a veil hiding the Taj Mahal from sight is epic enough to be a tourist attraction unto itself.

In addition to my formal touring I was lucky enough to again spend some time with a local.  I got to spend one of my days in Delhi with my mom's childhood best friend Seema.  Although she isn't technically in my family I felt as though she was upon meeting her.  She and my mom lost touch for over 20 years ago when my mom went to the U.S. and they only recently tracked one another down.  They will be seeing each other for the first time in 30 years when my mom visits India this summer.  Pretty wild to think about.  She was more than happy to take me out to eat and to shop in some great spots and of course tell me a few old stories.

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