Indian Phone Booth (from 2 weeks ago in Mumbai)

click to enlarge

Dinner on a rooftop with a view of the palaces and temples

puppet show

Jack with a Nazi motorcycle, now on exhibit

outside a hotel (the sprayed on logos, not)...

Outside Araungabad - A seriously fortified Daulatabad

Daulatabad was one of, or maybe the greatest, of Deccan forts. It was fortified with triple walls (nerdy friends: think of Minis Tirith in LOTR), moats, both dry and wet, cannon batteries, impregnable gates, and walkways and stairs that are nearly impossible to walk now on foot, let alone while riding a horse or an elephant. Daultabad also sat on a high hill that gave the defenders plenty of advance warning. Probably the best part of the visit to the fort was a) no western tourists; and b) all the young Indian student-tourists (mostly fron the universitiewanted to talk, and even trade email addresses.

Click all the images to enlarge.

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Rajasthani dance performance in Udaipur

The Bahratiyal Lok Kala Museum holds a Rajasthani folk dance performance with music in a stone courtyard every night at dusk. We attended one last night, and it was a gas--not too long, with interesting music and some gone dancing.

The music was was rooted with a hand-pumped harmonium (like the one I saw Allen Ginsberg play in my class in Bellingham in 1977), a tabla, other drums whose names I don't know, and a variety of cymbals and shakers.

Some of the more "Out" parts of the performance included live coals transferred from a brazier to a bowl with a guy's front teeth, a woman walking on broken glass as she balanced 9 heavy clay pots on her head and danced, and a particularly demented puppet/marionette performance where the puppet took off its head and then juggled it, rolled on it, spun it with his feet, and reattached it. Here are some photos from the show. We'll try to upload a video too--but that is always shaky due to the power spikes and brown-outs.

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Hare Krishna!

[Udaipur, Rajasthan, Wednesday 3/24/2010]




I`ve been hearing the Krishna Mantra all day long (it must be a festival day). I`ve always loved the mantra since I first heard it way back when:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
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Jack Brummet and the Rajasthani Danny DeVito

Jack in a craft shop with the self-proclaimed

"Rajasthani Danny DeVito" - click to enlarge

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Claire Brummet and Colin Whitchelo, fodder for the papparazzi?

Keelin also starred in numerous photos--click to enlarge


It may be because western tourists are in very short supply right now, this being the hot season (we were almost the only westerners in somewhat obscure Aurangabad...but now, reaching Udaipur, there are a lot of Germans). Or maybe it's because Claire and Colin are lovable and photogenic (which they are). But when we visited the Ellora Caves, every one wanted a picture taken with Claire and Colin. Colin thinks they posed for around fifty pictures that day.


Even a geezer like me was approached by many Indians and posed for photos; they wanted to say hello. At least five or six asked for my email address. All the college students I talked to at our fort visit wanted to know about life in the USA, and what we thought of India ("I LOVE it" I told them). They would, to a person, tell us 16 days was not nearly long enough to see such a wide and diverse and historic country--"you need to visit at least six months!" And they're probably right. Fortunately, my daughter Claire and BF Colin Whitchelo will be here a couple of months--they like that very much. I know for sure, like Arnold said, "I'll be back." (Note: when they ask where I'm from, the one thing that seems to register is if I tell them north of California, and south of Alaska).


I am blown away by the kindness and warmth (and awesome head bobbing!) of the Indian people--all of them...in traditional dress, in western dress, of whatever caste or religion. It helps of course, that far more of them speak English than in any country in which I've traveled. We can actually talk and connect. I don't know if it is their deep faith, or the tolerance they've developed amongst their many religions, but when you spend a little time with the people, it's not surprising what a hotbed of religion this is, or why Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the other hundreds of religions germinated and flourished here. You know, as Sarah Palin said "that hopey changey stuff"--like, say, Gandhi!


Maybe Claire and Colin remind them of someone else?




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Monkeys in Ellora

...click images to enlarge...

I have never seen monkeys (or any of our other cousins) that were not in captivity before this--an excellent topper to our visit to The Ellora Caves.

These are called hanuman langur in Hindi and sometimes Grey Langurs. They walk on all fours. I don't know much about them, but monkeys are a little bit scary when there is not a window or cage between us.




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In Mumbai: Seeing Love, Sex, and Dhoka by Dibakar Banerjee

Our last night in Mumbai we went to see a new Bollywood film--Love, Sex, and Dhoka, by Dibakar Banerjee...you can see a trailer for the movie here.

As you know, Indians love movies, and Bollywood cranks them out by--literally-the thousands. We were at a bit of a disadvantage, since, while the film did have an English title, it was in Hindi.

The movie opened with the usual announcements about turning off your cell phone and talking during the movie. The last announcement was about terrorism (a recurring and sometimes spooky theme in our visit):

In the event of an explosion,please help the injured
before you exit the auditorium.

The audience was more subdued than we expected, and almost all in their 20's and 30's. The movie itself was a series of interlocking stories, including a fascinating one based around a closed circuit camera system installed in a store and one (pixeled out) sex scene it captures. It was pretty funny (although we missed most of the non-visual jokes). The other stories were about two film students that fall in love while their parents oppose them. A pop star is wasted by a woman he spurned because she wouldn't come across. I'll admit it was not fully comprehensible, due to my extreme Hindi deficiency, but it was fun nonetheless. A review I read in the Mumbai Times the next day said this is a groundbreaking film for the post-modern generation. I'll have to take his word on that. I am looking forward to watching a dubbed or subtitled DVD version when I get back to America. (Note: unlike in Greece or Turkey, Indians call in the United States or USA (like they do in Mexico).
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My Traveling Partners

Keelin Curran, Colin Whitcheloe, and Claire Brummet
at a fortification wall at a massive Fort we visited


Keelin standing at the sea wall with the Bay
of Bengal behind her



Claire and Colin with a pitcher of beer at
Leopolds in Mumbai. They--and many other
watering holes serve these silly "beer towers"
instead of pitchers

Live from Aurangabad: Faces No. 149 - Four scratchboard portraits

click to enlarge

I drew...um, scratched...these faces on the plane ride this morning from Mumbai to Aurangabad. We had another brutal day of sleep. After going to bed after midnight, the four of us had to get up at 4 am to get on the plane. The plane was, of course, delayed, and we got into our hotel around am. This gave us an hour and a half to "freshen up" before our driver arrived to take us to the stunningly beautiful caves at the archaeological site, the Ellora Caves, about which more tomorrow.
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Visiting Bombay High Court, where Ghandi told the Brits to take a hike

This beautiful building was completed in November 1878--it
is four floors, many very utilitarian courtrooms, and some gorgeous ones.

The Bombay High Court is one of the oldest Courts in India. It is the Appellate court over the States of Maharashtra, Goa , Daman and Diu. 75 judges and many hundreds of attorneys work there.

We actually got to sit in on some trials and hearings, and visited the courtroom where Gandhi underwent a famous trial and defied the British overlords. That courtroom was gorgeous--spare, but artfully designed. He was jailed then, for like two years, but there is now a large framed photograph of him on the wall.

The trials were pretty interesting. All attorneys wear suits under black robes and white ties. Everyone holds, shares, and passes around huge volumes of documents and papers. There were computers around but little sign they helped to abate the massive volume of paperwork.

It was also the first time I've seen carbon paper in use in about thirty years!
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Dharavi - a three hour 100 degree walk through the `slumdog` slum

Notice the mosque with its stately minarets in the midst of the rubble.

There are also Hindi and other churches in the slum, as well as medical

clinics, and other services

We went on a harrowing, sometimes heart-breaking tour of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai today. It was a guided tour, with proceeds going to a most joyous school, which we visited at the end. Over one million people live in an area roughly the size of Central Park, which they say makes this the densest "city" in the world. Most of the slums--that hold half of Bombay's people--are much smaller.

It was better and worse than we expected. Single room dwellings line both sides of tiny back streets, with kitchens and bedrooms coexisting in roughly 100 square feet or so, with up to ten people in each. Most of the alleys/streets were about three feet wide, and everything anyone uses, eats, drinks, etc., is hauled in on your back. The dwellings have no electricity or plumbing. There are community toilets--unplumbed. You must bring water when you use them. There are both open (and some closed) drains and sewers, all of which drain into a large channel at the edge of Dharavi (which empties into the Arabian Sea about two miles "downstream").

There are central water sites scattered throughout Dharavi--everyone must go get the water for their family. You fill metal buckets with drinking water and bring them to your place. You also own a large barrel near the waterspout--this is for your family baths and washing (because a barrel would take up too much room in a 100 square foot dwelling with eight people inside).

As depressing and hopeless as it seemed, there are a few signs of hope. there is an increasingly large recycling industry, processing recyclable waste from other parts of Mumbai. There are something like 15,000 single-room factories there. Some of them are doing incredibly toxic operations right among the living quarters.

We toured plastic, paper, and even metal recycling factories. Factories doesn't do it justice--we saw an aluminum recycling operation in a high ceilinged room, maybe 20 x 30 feet. It had two forges. After people had washed aluminum cans (beer, Coke, etc.), they were dried, and then fed into buckets in forges. When melted, the aluminum was poured into molds that created six pound aluminum ingots. These are transported--like everything else--via someone's back--out to the highway and sold back to the canneries, breweries, and soda plants that made them in the first place. And the cycle begins again...

I think you can see some apartment buildings in the photos above. These are on the edge of Dharavi, and are built on razed slum dwellings. Because of these illegal mini-factories, some people are actually able to move into small apartments. Our tour guide claimed that in ten years those apartments would cover what was the slum. That is hard to believe. These apartments remind me of some of the worst projects in Bed Sty or Harlem in NYC in the 70`s. Nonetheless, they are an exponential leap from the slum rooms. However, they are a hard sell too--in the slums, there is no rent, no electric or water or sewer bill. You don`t buy paint or light bulbs. The 100 rupees (two or three dollars) you make in recycling, tanning leather, or sewing don`t go very far outside the slum.

And despite the disease, the smell, the rubble, and grinding poverty, there was some hope--we saw children in a Muslim school joyously shouting their numbers from 1 to 100 (in English of course). We saw many smiles, and some laughter. Many kids shook our hands and wanted to say hello. Most adults ignored us, but many would smile and joke. The other slums have no work available, and hard and dirty as the work is, it gave the people in Dharavi some sort of leg up. There were doctors around.

As terrible as things are, there is at least a shred of hope. I don't know what we can do to help the people of Dharavi, but I hope we somehow can. There are possibilities and some glimmer of hope if they can just get a little more help. Let's face it--their money comes from being seriously exploited by companies manufacturing without health and safety regulation, no taxation (this is almost all underground) and paying wages one fifth of what they would pay in other places. Isn't there some kind of middle ground for benevolent capitalists...or is that an oxymoron?

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