A Busy Week

Last weekend was Holi, and we played colors with the kids on our street. Playing colors consists of colored powder, water, water guns, and water balloons. Being the rookies that we were, we only had a few water balloons and one water gun between the eight of us. The kids in the neighborhood had water guns that had reservoir tanks on their backs; we did not have a chance. When we were done playing the eight of us were pink, and I mean pink. My body looked like I had a bad sunburn on it- my elbows are still pink. We had it better than some other people though. When we went out we saw people that had colored powder all over them, it didn’t even look like water was used, just powder. The next day at school a few of the blondes had green, pink and purple in their hair, it actually looked really good!

Tuesday night we left for Mumbai as a program, and spent the next three days there. We had packed days full of speakers and sightseeing. We saw the dhobi ghat, which is like a Laundromat in Mumbai. People live in this area and their job is to wash clothes. It is enormous, and not a single article of clothing is ever lost. We also saw dharavi. If you have seen Slumdog Millionaire, dharavi is the slum that the main character is from. It is the largest slum in Asia, and instead of people leaving this slum for work, a lot of people come into it. The areas we saw were extremely organized and it is nothing like it is portrayed in the movie (but then again it’s a movie). Like any city today, people are moving out of Mumbai and going north to the suburbs. Dharavi is located north of Mumbai proper, and now this huge piece of land has become very valuable. The government is trying to rehabilitate the slums, but doing it in such a way that the developers can get as much profit out of the area as possible. They have proposed that everyone who has been in dharavi since 2000, and can prove that they have owned a home since then, will get housing. But they have not taken into consideration that most of these people live above their place of work, and by putting them in 20 story high rise they cannot run their business the same way they did before. There are many groups who are protesting this development, and trying to provide a better way to house these people and still keep their work in tact.

After dharavi we went to the Gateway of India, which is located on the Arabian Sea. It is also located right in front of the Taj Palace Hotel. It was an interesting contrast to go from a slum to a posh area of Mumbai. They were two very different worlds, and it shows you the stark contrast of people that exist in these large cities that we do not seem to see that much or at all at home. Our last big visit on the agenda was to a film institute in Film City (yes where they film Bollywood Movies). We spoke to a few of the professors there, and one of them was great. He talked to us about the differences between Indian story telling and American story telling. We base our story telling off of the Greek tragedies and comedies, and our stories having a beginning, middle, and end with a climax towards the end of the middle. Indian story telling is based off of the two major epics in India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are long, drawn out epics. He did not go into detail much about the differences because not many people have read those two epics. I would have liked to hear about it though, because I read them this past fall and loved them! If anyone gets a chance read them, R.K. Narayan has good translations of each epic!

Overall it was a jam-packed weekend, and we were constantly moving, but I really enjoyed Mumbai. It had a lot to offer, and I would love to go back at some point and look around some more!

the gateway of india



the dhobi ghat



Peace