Well, when my daughter found out last spring that she had received a Fulbright-Nehru fellowship to India to research the ephemeral art created for religious festivals, we knew that I would visit her at some point. She was allowed two weeks out of the country, and she picked SE Asia. I wasn’t initially thrilled with the idea, but she kept working on me and eventually I agreed. And I’m so glad I did. We saw and did wonderful things. So here goes!
After my very long trip from Greenville to Washington to Doha to Mumbai and a long wait for my luggage, Glenna greeted me at the airport about 4AM with a hug and “what took you so long?” You know you’re in India the moment you step out of the airport. There is a certain something that just says India. It’s mostly the smells—spices and something else--but also the sounds (including the characteristic way Indians speak English). This was familiar territory (my third trip, the other two to be blogged later).
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| Colorful Indian dress |
I hadn’t been to Mumbai before, and we were both excited to have me see her in her environment. Before setting out on the first day from her apartment in Bandra West, we slept about three hours, in my case uncomfortably on her very hard bed. Why haven’t the Indians discovered soft? After breakfast it was off to the tailor to drop off some fabrics and some clothes for alteration. I’ve never had a tailor! Glenna has gone crazy buying fabrics this year, and she has many beautiful kurtas (the tops that are worn over pants of some sort) and a gorgeous sari. I also brought back a lot of fabrics that she intends to use for furnishings. In my estimation the Indian women are very feminine. Part of that is the way they dress; for the most part they haven’t succumbed to the almost universal turn toward Western pants and tops.
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| Cane shredding machine |
We took the train down to Churchgate, the university area where Glenna spends her days. On the local trains there is a strict segregation. The women must travel in the women’s cars, so they are loaded but very colorful. It was lunch time so we had a vada pav, one of the most famous of the Mumbai street foods in a city known for its street foods. It’s a fried ball of potato and spices on a sweet bun with chutney. When we got back from SE Asia, we had another one. Very good. (I would normally say yummy, but I overdid it and that word is now verboten.) At another stand we tried a sugar cane juice which was too sweet and woody for my taste though it was fun to see the machines grinding up the cane to produce the juice.
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| Irani chai break |
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| Sitafal cream |
We took a long walk to the Fort area, stopping at a bookstore Glenna likes and eventually getting to the Britannia café where we had mishti doi, a fermented yogurt pudding-like dessert. Later we had Irani chai and traditional butter with bread as well as a cream roll at Kyani café. In the evening we had a sitafal cream made from a custard apple and quite delicious. We were trying several of her favorites all in one day!
As we walked we admired the architecture for which this area is known as well as an extended naval mural.
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| Mural at Naval Shipyards |
The Kala Ghoda arts festival was going on that day. This nine-day festival includes theater, cinema, literature, dance, walks, and a street festival, the part that we wandered through. There were lots of booths with vendors selling arts and crafts to benefit the poor. And there were plenty of street art installations which were attracting a lot of attention.
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| Symbol of the festival |
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| Chalk sidewalk art |
Just before sunset we headed out to Haji Ali Dargah, a mosque and tomb of Haji Ali located on a spit of land in the Mumbai harbor, reached only at low tide by a walkway. There were tons of people there, and it was fun to people watch as well as see the mosque. And, of course, Glenna got her requisite sundown pics (she’s addicted to them) as well as night lights pictures.
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| Entry to Haji Ali Dargah |
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| Me with the mosque in the background |
After a night of interrupted sleep (first the odd upstairs neighbor played hymns on his terribly out-of-tune piano about 4AM, then the blackbirds caused a ruckus, and then the nearby Catholic church blared its morning mass, figuring I guess that if the Muslims can have their call to prayer for all to hear, they can too), we were off to a dance and music workshop in which her dance class was participating. Glenna informally takes classes in drums, vocal, and dance at the University of Mumbai where her sponsor is a professor. The performances at the workshop were of folk dances using traditional rhythm and instruments from Assam, Chhattisgarh, and Punjab and were really enjoyable.
After lunch of crab soup, garlic prawns, and Bombay duck (a fish) at Mahesh (Glenna likes to take me to places she can’t afford!), we went down to Churchgate again to see a movie at the famous old art deco theater Metro. We chose Agneepath, a Bollywood movie completely in Hindi. Glenna is amazingly good at Hindi. After hearing her put a cab driver in his place in French in Marrakech, I now was hearing her bargain with rickshaw drivers and vendors trying to take advantage of two Westerners, not suspecting that one of them knows Hindi, even down to the tongue clicks showing disapproval. Quite amusing! Anyway, back to the movie. I, of course, know only a few words in Hindi, but the plots in Bollywood movies are always incredibly obvious, so I could follow it and actually enjoyed all three hours of the gore and dancing. It didn’t hurt that the two leads were nice to look at either.
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| Me in front of Gateway to India arch |
The famous Leopold Café was the next stop where we got gooey chocolate caramel brownies to take home. Then we walked over to the Gateway to India arch, a popular strolling spot. The arch was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to India in 1911 and is also the place from which the last British battalion left India on February 28, 1948. More street food (chicken and mutton kebabs in pita) before the long taxi ride back to Bandra and some sleep before our early morning flight to Aurungabad.
Glenna had saved Ajanta and Ellora caves for when I came. They are sets of caves built high in the hills not far from Aurungabad, the first set of 30 Buddhist caves in the 2nd c BCE through 6th c CE and the second set of 34 Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves from the 5th through 10th century CE. Both World Heritage sites, Ajanta is famous for its colorful frescoes and Ellora for the sculptures cut right out of the rock.
The caves at Ajanta are arrayed in a semicircle at various levels above the valley below. Considering their age, the wall paintings were truly amazing, and I even recognized a famous one from art history books.
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2nd c BCE paint remnants in Cave 10
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| Painting of Padmapani in Cave 1, the one I recognized |
The Ellora caves are side by side stretching over two kilometers. Cave 10, Vishvakarma, is interesting because its carved stone ceiling actually looks like wooden beams. The most spectacular of the Ellora caves is #16, also called Kailasa, recalling Mount Kailash in the Himalayas, the home of the Hindu god Shiva. This cave is carved from a single rock (now without its roof) and is twice the size of the Parthenon.
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Part of Kailasa, the spectacular cave
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The Aurungabad hotel where we stayed, Lemon Tree, is primarily used by businessmen with the rooms arrayed around the biggest hotel pool I have ever seen. It was a treat for Glenna who can’t afford such places as she travels around India this year.
After an early morning flight back to Mumbai, we were back to the apartment for only a few minutes and then out again because we were hungry. We had brunch at Salt Water, a contemporary café in Bandra West. Mumbai is a more international city than the rest of India. In this particular café no one was even wearing Indian clothes. The food was international with an Indian twist—and good. We spent the day in Bandra, walking over to the Arabian Sea (not much to look at there—mostly mud and rocks) and doing lots of errands and shopping in street markets and shops which Glenna frequents. Dinner that night was interrupted because she suddenly remembered that she had left a pot of water boiling on the stove. Yikes! When we got back, there was a quarter inch left in the pot.
What an adventurous trip to take with your lovely daughter.
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