Holi!

      People across India and the world celebrated Holi. The celebration in the neighborhood, or society, that I am staying in began Saturday night. My host mother and my roommate and I were all invited to the bonfire ceremony.The ceremony was the construction of the goddess Holi with wood, leaves, etc. and her subsequent burning. Holi is a phoenix goddess. Hindus who worship her during this ceremony are symbolically giving her their woes and evils, and in her fire she burns them, transforming them into a new season of blessings. Holi also coincides with the change of season, from the rainy season into the hot season, or from winter to summer, where Nature is born again, new sprouts raise up, animals are born, etc.
      At the ceremony there are usually also drums, and once the fire is lit, each participant makes offerings to and prays to Holi. This is done by walking around Holi, the fire, in a clockwise circle once, and then tossing the offering, be it a coconut, food, papers, etc. into the fire. Some participants also pour water on the ground as they walk around the circle. As the participants walked around the fire, an older male family member would shout, in Marathi "End to Corruption" and then the rest of the family and participants would make a fist, open them mouth slightly, and quickly put the top of their fists on and off of their mouth, to make a noise signifying agreement.
      The next morning the children of our society invited my roommate and I to another art of the Holi celebration- water play. At 7:00am armed with green water squirt guns and two packets of water guns my roommate and I entered into battle. For over an hour the children played, and everyone got soaked. Having changed our clothes we went to classes. While Maharashtra, the state Pune is located in, usually practices color play for Holi five days after the water play, some people play with colors the day after the fire ceremony, as do most Northern Indians. During lunch and after classes we were pelted with rangoli colors. The college campus on which we attend classes is next door to another college, and so all on BMCC Road and FC Road Alliance students and Ferguson College students played Holi, throwing colors on each other, and water. I had a great time and I felt renew. Holi, to me, is a beautiful celebration of life.

                     
                                                     Photo Courtesy of Lily Stern

                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                        

Mumbai

          This past Wednesday the Alliance program took a trip to Mumbai for the week. Though I have always considered myself a city person, because I was born and raised in New York City and am currently living in Washington D.C., Mumbai overwhelmed me. The sheer number of people and things was more than I have ever experienced at one time in one place before. Aside from the sensory overload, some social and economic aspects of Mumbai proved surprising to me and my mostly American sensibilities. Yet, after a deeper investigation of the city, I also learned of a number of similarities between Mumbai and my hometown. Yet again, to get a fair sense of any city I prefer not to compare cities with each other.

            The first evening the group arrived in Mumbai a few of my fellow students and I walked to the Gateway of India and then to and into the Taj Mahal Hotel. During that excursion my jaw literally dropped at the opulence and wealth on display in the Hotel. On the walk back from the Taj Mahal Hotel to the YWCA Hotel where we were staying, and which was rather nice, we passed by some shanties and some poorly dressed people living in them, selling some wares nearby them on the side of the road, and others with a few blankets sleeping underneath a close by tree. This instance of economic disparity is unfortunately common around the globe, so it in itself was not very surprising. I was unsettled by the proximity of the disparity. Most American cities are highly segregated along class and socioeconomic lines. There, again unfortunately, exists a negative image of poor people in the minds of some upper class people which causes such socioeconomic segregation in American cities. Furthermore, ghettos are part of the structure of many American cities. While Mumbai is home to one of the biggest slums in India, the amount of urban poor living in some of the wealthiest areas of Mumbai was interesting.

            The group also spent a day visiting Dharavi. The vibrancy, industry, and population density of Dharavi stood with me, as well as its dearth of a sanitation infrastructure, and transportation infrastructure. The interaction the group had with members of the LEARN organization and our visits to a recycling plant and a potter’s home and workshop left me with some very positive impressions of the community  in Dharavi. The amazing stories of the obstacles some women in the LEARN organization faced in their efforts to organize, fight for their rights, and for equality will never leave me. Such instances left me with a feeling for the strength, determination, and intelligence women in Dharavi have. Similarly, the work I saw and learned that men do in recycling and pottery also left me with a sense of the knowledge, skills, and strength of the men in Dharavi. I have never experienced a community with so many contradictions as I have of Dharavi. While so many of the people living in Dharavi are industrious and intelligent, the basic infrastructure for toilets, for trash, and for transportation is almost nonexistent. Everything is cleaned, moved, and handled by hand. Such conditions left odors of human urine and feces in many parts of the community.

            Furthermore, the discussion the group had with a professor on the last day of the visit about Dharavi enriched my understanding of the community. I instantly related the history of Mumbai going from a mill city to a mall city and its relevance in the current fight the people of Dharavi are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods to the gentrification process happening in both New York and Washington DC. The professor noted that 50% of the population of Mumbai live on 6% of the land. Most of this 50% can be accounted for by Dharavi, and almost all of the people of Dharavi don’t own their land, but are legally seen as squatting on city land. The current push towards moving people into vertical slums and the problems and attempts at solutions to these problems hit me on a global scale. The effects of globalization on Mumbai, influencing it to seek to become an “international city,” are similar to the process cities in America, Europe, China, and Japan underwent and in a different way are undergoing now. Ultimately, learning about this global phenomenon left me asking more questions about its causes and solutions to problems people face because of it.

                          

                                             
                                                  Photo Courtesy of Isabel King

Goa

It’s Friday, February 21^st and at 8:45PM Kate, Angela, and I are sitting outside on a stone bench on Paud Road waiting for a bus, which we booked online a week in advance for 1350 rupees each, round-trip, to Goa. After catching a minibus to the bus actually going to Goa we are sleepy, but after the twelve-hour, three-pit stop, bumpy, noisy bus ride to Goa, when we arrive at the taxi stand, we’re still sleepy.

After the pricey autorickshaw ride to Anjuyna beach we arrive at the Red Door Hostel, which was brand new and very hospitable, two hours before check in at 11:00AM. We drop off our bags and get some tea and eggs at a café right down the road. Several showers later, the entire group of Alliance students, fifteen or so, all meet up at the beach and have a relaxing, fun filled day in the water. Along the road to the beach we see cows walking and roaming about freely, a Catholic church, a Hindu temple, and lots of shops. The shopkeepers, as well as jewelry sellers, ice cream sellers, fruit sellers, drum sellers, café workers, and men offering foot and leg massages persistently vie for sales from the tourists on the beach. The tourists hanging out at the beach were mostly Russians, and so almost all of the local salespeople spoke Russian, and many signs were in Russian.

The influence and influx of East Europeans to Goa was even more apparent at the night market we went to for dinner. The hundreds of shops haphazardly lined up, selling scarves, clothes, shoes, jewelry, bags, spices, food, and almost anything else one can imagine, even chair hammocks, were frequented mostly by Russian, Ukrainian, French, German, and British people, as well as by Indian Goaians and Tibetans. A significant number of shopkeepers at the night market were European as well. This immigration, according to my tabla (an Indian drum) instructor was because of the poor economic conditions many East Europeans face in their home countries.

After a second day at the beach, we all headed back to Pune on Sunday night, for a long day of Monday classes; but Goa was worth it!