Mumbai Moments October 30, 2008

Random thoughts, oddnesses, and observations

Motorcycles - I saw a family of four on one yesterday, no helmets. Check out this clip of a fellow riding a motorbike, no hands, talking on his cell phone, in Delhi.

Men holding hands in Priyadarshini Park (a huge family park and athletic facility on the Cumballa sea front) – I’ve seen this everywhere, and take it to be a straight-man phenomenon?

Mothballs as air fresheners – in the sinks of the high-end Globus washroom, in linen closets so the scent of camphor eases your journey into sleep

The head wiggle – Ask someone a question, and he or she may move their head side to side in a non-committal-looking way. I’m trying figure out the origins of this, and what it means, but I’m guessing it’s something like “maybe yes, maybe no”?

Watchmen – every residental building I’ve been to has one. Their job is to sit, and watch the comings and goings of a building, its tenants, and their visitors. What stories they could tell!

Store minders – here in Breach Candy, I walked to the local shack to buy tea and beer. The father offered to deliver a case to my uncle’s house. Which building are you in, he asked. Pushpa Milan, I said. Fifth floor, he asked. Er, yes, I said. Suite 55? he asked. Er, yes, I said. How did her know?! Like the watchman, everyone in the neighbourhood knows what’s going on.

Cow dung floors – not here, but uncle Aloysius. told me the story of a place in the country where the most hygenic way to prevent pests in the is to line the floor with dried cow dung. A good sleeping surface too, he pointed out.

W.I.T. jam – Women’s India Trust is a collective that makes pure, inexpensive products such as grapefruit marmalade. I’d like to learn more about them, but for now, here’s their web site.

Tower of Silence or cell phone tower? – I walked Mumbai’s Hanging Garden looking for the tower, but only caught side of a tall metal structure with guy wires. How do they get the deceased up there without a ladder, I asked myself in a moment of blondeness.

Goods Carrier, Horn OK Please – why do commercial vehicles have this message on their back? It’s tradition, says uncle

Cooking in mineral oil – uncle also tells me that some food outlets have maximized profits by adding mineral oil to their vats. I’d be interested to know how bad this is for you.

Cool yoga – it’s the new Hot! I saw a sign for this near Kemp’s Corners. How long before westerners catch onto this newest phenomenon out of steamy India?!

Hinglish - “Once perceived as the language of the downmarket, Hindi has become the language of the new cool,” reports Brunch, the Hindustan Times Sunday Magazine. This is a VERY big deal, as “there is no market a big as the Hindi heartland, and when a market is big, it demands its own language.” In other words, as mainstream advertising starts including Hindi language in its messages, it’s big business.

Blonde-free zone – Speaking of blondes, there ain’t none. This leads to a whole other aesthetic of beauty, and OMG the way women carry themselves in their silks and saris is stunning. I am awed by it, and wonder how North America could get so caught up in the appeal of tawdry, bimbo bleach-blondes.

Hercules bike – considered a “utility vehicle”, the archetypal Indian bicycle does not come in a ladies’ model because… ladies don’t ride them to deliver blocks of ice, flats of eggs or cans of milk. I want one.

Road builders – everyone works, and that includes elderly ladies who pat soft cement into place with their feet in roadworks, while their grandchildren play in the rubble metres away from Mumbai traffic.

Golden labs as status dogs – the gentle canine is the dog-of-choice for the upperclass. I frequently see their walkers lead them across six lanes of bustling Mumbai traffic.

Win-win situation – At the NGMA modern art gallery, Indians pay 10 rupees and foreigners pay 150 to enter. I put a Rs 50 note in front of the ticket taker and said, I’m Half Indian. He looked at me, took the note, and gave me an admission ticket. It’s only once I got inside that I looked at it and noticed he’d charged me the Indian rate. He gained  Rs40, and I saved 140! I like that.

Hot laptop – I don’t know if it’s the local climate (30 degree Celsius), the current adaptor, or my aging laptop, but once I’ve had it on for an hour or so, you could fry an egg on its underside. To compensate, I take the wire grille from the toaster oven (it’s got little legs that raise it up), rest the Presario on it and voila – low-tech cooling system

My grandmother’s brother’s son – (aka “Uncle Aloysius”) who encouraged me to come to India in the first place and has been an absolute marvel. I feel like family, thank you.

From American Express to Breach Candy October 28, 2008

When in doubt, sit it out

Deepika’s husband Emil travels to Byculla (a Mumba neighbourhood) six or seven days a week to help at the 65-year old family-run American Express Bakery. I find this interesting because I love baked goods, but also because Deepika’s family also has baking in their history. Her great-grandmum ran the Cheron Bakery in Burma before WWII, and Aloysius has written numberous stories on the wonderful, peaceful times they enjoyed in pre-invasion Rangoon (I’ll try to include a few later in the blog).

Emil gave me a tour of the building where his staff direct kneaded rounds of dough at each other across a ten-foot floured table, then press the loaves into square-edged pans to bake. I noticed that there two ovens and no ceiling fans, but the room was a pleasant temperature due to the high ceilings.

Today was to be my “tourist walk” day in Colaba.

Aloysius dropped me off at the Americican Express Bakery (where Emil had brought my walking shoes) in Byculla on the way to his factory at New (“Navi”) Bombay and I caught a southward public bus (B.E.S.T.) into the downtown area. Naturally, I told the conductor to let me off at Colaba as he took my 5 rupees, and naturally he forgot to. I ended up at the end of the line which was fortuitously located at the foot of St. John’s cathedral and inside the military zone.

“When in doubt, sit it out,” I reminded myself. I took a stone seat under a banyan tree, pulled out my Mumbai city map, and was quickly invited to tour the inside of the locked Anglican cathedral. Afterwards, I strolled the wide, shaded and pleasant road back the direction the bus had come, admiring the crisp officers on their military bicycles but knowing not to raise my camera.

On being ignored, and the scarcity of toilets

Colaba Causeway Road is typical Mumbai: jam-packed with life and traffic “…too busy going about their everyday lives to pay much attention to tourists” (as one guidebook aptly puts it). There’s a lot of freedom to be had in being ignored. No one pays you much attention except when you want it.

At a busy little veg cafe, for example, I was crammed into a booth table with a man and his three sons and – after quick acknowledgement – they ate their roti and I my palak paneer. One of the boys stared as I sipped my “cold coffee” (India’s version of iced coffee) and I passed his dad my leftover palak to share, as at 40 rupees ($1 CAD) it wasn’t worth packing around for the rest of the day. The city feels like a seat on a crowded bus: we all try to share and we might as well be civil about it.

Toilets are elusive, I’ve learned. They’re clean enough if you find one that’s maintained for 2 rupees a visit, but they’re far and few between. Unlike other (less dense) cities I’ve visited, no one is willing to let you use theirs, and you probably wouldn’t want to. Throughout the course of the day I was able to “tour” all kinds of toilets: public use at the Gateway of India tourist attraction (porcelain bowl set in ground, bucket and cup to use instead of toilet paper), semi-public at the Jehanjir Art Galley (as above, but more modern), and five-star exclusive at the Taj Mahal Hotel (two security gates and a purse search).

I tucked in and out of shoe, clothing and art shops most of the day, then – after a plateful of pakoras – decided a brisk seven-kilometre walk back to Aloysius’ home in Breach Candy was in order.

Shopping for a wife

“Hello, what is your name?”I looked to my right and a shortish man in glasses, shirt and trousers was striding energetically at my side. I was traveling along the wide promenade on South Mumbai’s Marine Drive and had been absorbed in taking in the setting sun, the couples and families, and the art-deco apartments.

“Jane,” I told him. I didn’t ask his. I knew from previous travels that a man coming up to a (foreign) women like this was not customary and that one should proceed with caution. That said, I knew I had a long walk ahead of me and welcomed the amusement of conversion.

He told me he worked for a property management company that bought apartment blocks like the ones we were passing, and converted them into rentals for middle- and upper-income buyers. Over the course of our walk he also shared that he was single, that he had dated foreign ladies in the past, and what did I think of Indian men?

We carried on this like for a good hour (where I played at being absolutely oblivious to the not-so-subtle direction that the conversion was taking). I thought about the “Matrimonials” page I’d seen in the newspaper that morning: parents looking for a husband for their slim, educated, “fair” (that’s Indian for light-skinned) daughters. I guessed that to this 40-something bachelor, I fit the bill.

At Chowpatty Beach I felt the compelling need to explore a toilet, so I turned to him and told him I had to go in.

“I’ll wait for you,” he suggested.
“Er, I’ll be in there a while,” I said matter-of-factly.
“That’s okay,” he brightened, “I’ll wait”.
“This is me saying good-bye” I said firmly. I turned, paid my 2 rupees and disappeared into the stall.

What would Ekhardt Tolle say?

He was gone when I came out, so I continued towards Aloysius’s house and eventually passed the oft-mentioned Crosswords bookstore. Their toilets had been warmly recommended by cousin Deepika but I decided against a pre-emptive visit.

Not far past the shop, I approached the notoriously busy  in the Kemp’s Corners intersection and strategically positioned myself next to a tall fellow in a crisp white shirt and waited to shadow him as he crossed. He looked over at me I started to follow him, then we both quickly stepped back when a bus bore down on us.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t realize you were a foreigner – here, let me walk with you across.” Once again, I was glad for the escort. “Dev” told me he had seen me at Crosswords.

“Have you ever heard of Eckhardt Tolle?” he asked. He had been in the bookstore insisting that they stock more copies of this Vancouver-based writer’s self-help books, as he was a huge fan and believed more people should read the authour.  We wove our way around the garland-sellers, tailors and fruit stands and I learned that despite his education and clipped accent, Dev hadn’t traveled much and  said he hadn’t thought much of foreign ladies.
“You mean you’re not shopping for a wife?” I said doubtfully. Dev looked affronted.
“I am glad to meet you,” he said passionately, “And if we become friends over time that would be very nice, but why would you say such a thing?”

I laughed and we continued to the corner in the neighbourhood of Breach Candy where I was staying with Aloysius and where I now needed to turn. I extended my hand to Dev.

“Goodbye,” I said, “It was nice to meet you.” Dev stared at my hand, then shook it.“Would you like  to stay in touch?” he asked.
“Er, no thanks,” I said. I admit: Dev was handsome and intellectual but he was eight years younger, Hindu and though a very different fellow, he’d nonetheless used the same technique as the first fellow to meet this foreign lady.

Later, when I related the story of the two men to my astonished cousin, she blamed it on the Bollywood movies. “In the films, loose women are portrayed in Western dress and mannerisms. Then,” said Deepika, “When she’s met the ‘right man’ she changes her ways, wears a sari and becomes a wife.”

What kind of impression do I make, I asked myself. Am I invisibly Indian or acutely Western? Today I’d tasted a bit of both along with my palak and pakoras. I suspected that as my time in India lengthened, I’d become less of one and more of the other.

Tea, Thali and Bones on Malabar Hill October 26, 2008

John Irving joins us at the West India Auto Association

Deepika, Emil, Aloysius (my cousin, cousin’s husband, uncle respectively) and myself were enjoying a splendid Gujarat luncheon for Diwali at the posh WIAA (West India Automobile Association) on Malabar Hill Sunday, and I kept thinking about John Irving and the “Tower of Silence”.

If I’m not mistaken, the American contemporary authour wrote about the clubhouse in his novel Son of The Circus. I remember that the main protagonist – a surgeon from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children – was a guest at the club (even though he was Parsi) and there was some talk about human bones in the rose bushes behind the tennis courts. In the book, members were not keen that the Tower   (a tall structure where Parsi take their deceased up so that – according to custom – the vultures can deal with the remains) was nearby, as they’d always suspected something like this might disturb their afternoon tea.

In our case, about twelve of us were gathered around a table in the glassed-in, air-conditioned dining room, so bones in our vegetarian thali would not be a concern. Three of us chatted about Goa and writers and two women  – a financier and fellow-writer – listed a number of must-read Indian books and must-see Goan bookstores.

“You must read Amidav Ghosh,” exclaimed writer Rupa Chinai. “He wrote Glass Palace and The Sea of Poppies”. She told me they could be found at the Mandovi Hotel and Bookshop or The Reading Habit in Panjim; or Literati in Calangute. I’d also been by advised to read Jhumpa Laihri (The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth), Sudha Murthy (The Dollar Bahu, How I Taught My Grandmother To Read, Wise And Otherwise) and Anjana Appachana (Listen To Me Now).

Like many people I talked to about Goa, Rupa’s eyes sparkled when she talked about the small southern state. She’s travelled and written about many parts of India (especially the northeast) but has fond memories of sipping tea at the Mondavi Hotel.

“I must admit, I envy you a little bit,” she confessed of my upcoming sequester in my uncle’s Povorim house. She gave me a steady gaze and then, “I think you’re going to like it there.”

Coming from a writer, those were potent words. I’ve been fortunate to meet other literati, including freelancer Dilip D’Souza. He’s written on travel for a number of international newspapers, and keeps a blog called Death Ends Fun (named after a bumpersticker he saw in the U.S.).

This all feels very … kismet. I would love nothing more than to tuck in with a community of writers once I tuck into Aloysius’s house in Bardez. I’ll sip tea on the veranda, walk to bookstores, and sample thalis at nearby cafes. I trust the only bones I’ll see are the ones that will slowly take on flesh as they grow into stories and books.

Week, Withered, Swollen, Selfish October 24, 2008

A week in India and I feel withered and swollen at the same time

“Withered” because – compared to the women of all ages wrapped in beautiful silks and saris, toting children and purposeful packages – I am a dried up, visiting spinster.  My western clothes of high-tech fibre have gone brittle in the October heat. I have packed all the wrong clothes and ignored the advice of my friends (“don’t bring anything – you can buy it there”). I know nothing.

“Travel is very humbling,” I said to Deepika this morning. She was beautiful with her hair knotted at the back of her head and a patterned cotton top over her child-bearing belly. She made me cardamom-scented Goan porridge and left with a purpose.

“Swollen” because either I’ve gained weight from all the meals cook Lena has prepared (without any cycling to compensate), or I’m retaining water. As Deepika puts it: I come from a country where I don’t need to sweat. It’s true: my skin has been hot and dry even as my hands, feet and belly have swelled with all the cold tea I’ve poured down my throat.

“Selfish”? While people here work and work and work and work, I justify the luxury of a six-month stay in India and work hiatus by calling myself a “writer”. I lounge, shop and eat. I sleep, stare and stroll. I listen to the shouts of tomato-cart men, boys learning cricket and women calling for taxis. I wonder how I will fulfill my purpose here. I’m scared and lethargic.

And I know nothing.

Candie’s, Cold Coffee, and Saint Andrew’s Church October 23, 2008

Thoughts on travel and otherness in Pali Hill

I sit at “Candie’s” – a sandwich and pastry cafe in the tory neighbourhood of Pali Hill. I’ve been walking and shopping this area for the past few days – and as each day passes (I’ve been in India for almost a week now) my exploratory circles widen. By Saturday, I hope to make it to Breach Candy and Byculla; Sunday, South Mumbai – downtown. Soon I’ll be ready to hire a taxi, board a train, maybe even ride a bus.

For now, I settle for a cafe in a quiet part of town. My chicken tikka sandwich is basically a hotdog bun with nuggets of seasoned chicken, but it’s the accompanying potato chips that get me: they’re light, crispy and warmed by the 30 degree celsius air. My “cold coffee” comes in a clear plastic cup lined with a swirl of chocolate and garnished with a bendy straw tied in a bow.

Surrounded by coconut trees, cobblestoned streets and palacial highrises, I marvel at the dusty prettiness of the place, and my place in it. I’ve been experiencing a feeling of familiar comfort for the past few days and it’s been a challenge putting my finger on what exactly is going on.

Wandering the handpainted script of the wooden crosses in Bandra West’s St. Andrew’s church cemetary earlier in the day, I read names that reverberated – like a tolling bell – with names from my own family history – D’Souza, D’Cruz, Pinto, Rodrigues.

It’s surreal, really. For ten years, I’ve flown to, visited and soaked in the hot, exotic culture of other peoples’ family legacy. As a tourist, I’ve entered their cemetaries and  museums and wandered their streets.

Now, here in Mumbai’s historic Bandra West neighbourhood, I continuously meet my own ancestors’ spirits. The streets I walk, the churches I enter, the names I see are not “other” – they’re partly mine, and I’m partly theirs. I have their name, and they have mine.

With my dark hair tied back and a knee-length skirt, I fit in, like family. No one stops to stare at the sunglassed tourist, and vendors in the Varoda Cross market quote me local prices. When I ask for directions, women point the way and ask who I’m visiting.

“Family,” I say motioning to Deepika and Emil’s place, “Cousins and an uncle.”
“Where are you from?” they ask, noticing my Canadian accent.
“Vancouver,” I say, “and here… I guess.”

They’ll nod, as if to say, yes – we’ve been expecting you, what took you so long to come home to India? My throat contracts a little, and the sadness and longing of my grandmother’s letters to her eldest son, my father, come to mind. She wished him all success in his new homeland, but she missed him with all her heart.

Am I being melodramatic (as my mother might suggest), or am I experiencing something core? The heart doesn’t lie, a voice says inside me. And something here – no matter how small or unfamiliar – belongs to me. And I to it.

A Brief History of Bandra October 22, 2008

I didn’t expect the Portuguese Inquisition

Mumbai waits uneasily as Raj Thackery does a day in jail. He’s in custody in a Bandra jail, no less. A few blocks away, Deepika and I hole up in her flat. She’s decided to play it safe and not go into work today, and I stay home so she doesn’t worry.

In response to my questions on the fort, engineering college and St. Mary’s church, she passed me one of her father’s books – it uses three entire chapters to describe Bandra’s history. Devotional language aside, the book seems passionate and thorough in its breadth.

I finally receive an answer on how a bunch of Indians came to have Portuguese names. I learn that it relates to the fort, the college and the church. And it relates to me.

Almost 10 million people currently live in the “megametropolis” of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), and a few of them are my relatives. They settled and lived in the city’s first suburb, Bandra West, about twenty kilometres north of what is now the city core. The Bandra (or Bandura, “water blocked along the creek”) area came into the possession of the Portuguese around 1534. They built the Bacaim fort in 1536 to secure the land at the head of the Mithi River, and invited the growing numbers of Christian converts to worship within its walls.

About 1549 father Francis Xavier (later to become Saint Francis) travelled up the coast from Goa (where he’d arrived seven years earlier) to establish a Jesuit community. The local Muslims and Marathas didn’t take kindly to the Christian’s foreign practices, especially something later referred to as the Inquisition.

Nonetheless, Correa notes that – with the exception of the Muslims – just about everyone in Bandra was a  Christian by the 16th century, and that many of the Indians who converted took on the names of the priests who baptised them. A priest might baptise all the inhabitants of a particular hamlet in the area, and accordingly they would all have the same name – D’Souza, D’Cruz, Pinto, Rodrigues.

After the Portuguese gifted the region (and its major attraction, Mount Saint Mary bascilica) to the British as a wedding present in 1775, the residents continued their Christian worship as they welcomed British infrastructure: railways, schooling and self government. The rural area become educated and sophisticated – so much so that English-speaking descendants of the original residents identified themselves as “Bombay East Indians” to separate themselves not just from the out-country Eurasian immigrants, but the out-of-state Indians as well.

With the addition of a Bandra airport to its existing seaport, Bombay became India’s first commerical city. Originally a collection of seven islands, Bombay accommodated its growing population (and the growing interest in Bandra’s basilica) by building a linking causeway. More people travelled up and down the islands, more people moved to Bandra and by 1947 – the year of India’s independence from
England – the suburb was (as Correa puts it) a cosmopolitan “mixture of castes and creeds” including  Hindus, Muslims, Parsi and Jews.

Today, a new causeway is underway. The massive bridge I saw from the Aguada Fort’s ruins will link the curved point of Bandra West to Whorli to the south. It will be called the “West Island Freeway” and by all appearances, the residents think it will be terrific.

Heritage of Mount Mary, by Msgr. Francis Correa, St. Paul’s Press Training School, 23rd Road, TPS III, Bandra, Mumbai 40050, 2004

Mumbai City Map, Eicher Goodearth Limited, International Print-O-Pac Limited, New Delhi, 2004 (ISBN 81-87780-12-6)

“City under Siege, Mumbai shuts down” October 21, 2008

When the going gets tough, the newly-arrived and completely oblivious get…coffee

“It’s something Mumbai had not seen for eight years – a near-total shutdown. As news of Raj Thackeray’s arrest in Ratnagiri spread, taxis and rickshaws went off the roads, schools declared a holiday and most business establishments stayed shut.”
– Front page, Hindustan Times

Unbeknownst to myself, the city of Mumbai, and the neighbourhood of Bandra (where I was staying) were experiencing a complete shutdown. At the centre of it, Raj Thackery, leader of the right-wing Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) party had – in a show of anti-outsider sentiment – apparently incited his followers to attack a group of innocent railway recruitment candidates who had traveled to Mumbai from north India to write exams.

Four candidates were killed, and – when Thackeray was arrested shortly thereafter – MNS supporters took to the streets. According to the Hindustan Times, “Along the Western Express Highway [the same one I'd arrived on just a few days previous], the protestors stoned vehicles, burnt tyres, disrupted traffic and attacked policemen on duty.”

In fact, the damage included a torched police van, 38 buses set on fire, 40 private cars damaged by stone-throwing, 354 taxis damaged, 60 auto-rickshaws damaged (4 completely torched), one bus stop set on fire, and 6 transit drivers injured – among others.

From what I understand, Raj and his party were sending a message to the mostly North Indian-originating rail, bus, taxi and auto-rickshaw transit drivers that they were taking jobs away from “locals” and they and their kind should get out of Mumbai.

My cousin Deepika was incredulous when she came home early from work (“early” being 5pm, as – like many Mumbai workers – she and her husband usually don’t usually leave work until 7 or 8, in time for a 9pm dinner).

“Where have you been?!” she exclaimed, “Did you not notice that the streets were deserted?” She had been frantically trying to contact me via her cook Lena, who had come by the apartment in the afternoon to grab me but didn’t know enough English (or I, Hindi) to communicate that the city was under siege, and I should stay put.

To the contrary – short of frequenting a train station or shopping mall, I’d slipped away while she spoke animatedly on her cellphone, and spent the afternoon doing exactly what one shouldn’t be doing when a political terrorist and his ilk are running amok mere kilometres away – I was wandering the seaside promenade, surveying a ruined fort, gawking at transportation infrastructure, and sampling superb Indian-grown coffee in the lobby of the five-star Taj Lands End hotel.

Across the road and outside its air-conditioned walls, an imposing fifteen-storey structure of another ruin prompted me to ask my server what had happened to it. “Monsoons?” I prompted, feeling a little smug and wise as the season was just finishing and I’d learned that many buildings and roads required seasonal repair after the summer rains.

“No,” she replied, looking out the window, “Bomb.”

“It used to be the Sea Rock Sheraton and a very famous and popular hotel. It was attacked by terrorists almost ten years ago…” She looked down to where I sat with my cup and saucer and fancy cookies. “Perhaps you heard about it?”

I made a mental note to Google it when I got back, and left the hotel to take shady side roads back to the apartment. I felt comfortably lost until I reached an idyllic intersection with a corner store, small park and Citibank. That’s odd, I thought, I’m absolutely in the right neighbourhood, but I don’t remember this intersection being so…quiet. I followed the Mehboob Film Studio wall to the St. Raque Road corner, then to the laneway in front of Deepika and Emil’s building.

That’s where Deepika caught me breezing in, and that’s when I learned that transit workers had emptied the streets because their lives were in danger. Deepika – eight months pregnant – told me that her taxi driver had parked his metered vehicle and borrowed a friend’s car so he could help her get home safely from work.

Emil came in soon after that, and my coffee felt bitter in my stomach as we gathered around the television and watched police lead a smug Thackery from the courthouse to spend a single night in jail.

Hello, Mumbai October 17, 2008

There’ll be no bike camping in Bandra West

“How was your flight?” Uncle Aloysius asked me, passing my bags to his driver. I looked at him incomprehensively, not understanding a word he said.

He’d directed the driver to park his car under the lone tree at the Mumbai International Airport. Not only did I foolishly make a move for the driver’s side (the vehicles are right-hand drive), but I’d also stepped towards the front passenger seat.

Uncle motioned that I join him in the back and gave directions to the driver in Hindi. He then turned to me and continued to speak, only I could barely understand him.

This didn’t make sense, I thought to myself. We’d been corresponding by email – in fluent English – for seven years. In the emails he’d explained how we were related (he was the son of my grandmother’s brother), described his ancestral home in Goa (where I’d be living for the next six months), and urged me to come visit (to meet relatives, learn about my family history, and write a book).

Aloysius had kind, jovial eyes and I watched his face carefully as he spoke. As our car honked and bumpered up and around bicycles, motorcycles, taxis, and trucks on the southbound Western Express Highway I began to make sense of his words. He was speaking English – British-tinged, in fact – and I couldn’t easily understand him because I wasn’t used to the way he spoke.

His daughther Deepika (at whose home I’d stay for two weeks) later explained that her happy, healthy, extremely sharp seventy-four-year old dad had a bit of a growth in his vocal chord area that may have made it difficult for me to understand, but it just took a bit of getting used to.

She showed me my room in her and husband Emil’s third floor suite, and this bike-camp traveller marveled at the luxury of it: a queen-size mattress on a handcarved frame; a private western-style ensuite bathroom; and a balcony overlooking a cobblestoned laneway. A two-foot tall basil plant scented the sun-warmed deck and bright yellow orioles hid in the shading coconut trees.

Over lunch, Aloysius and Deepika explained that we were in a neighbourhood called “Bandra West” about twenty kilometres north of downtown (“South”) Mumbai. You could say the middle-to-upper class seaside area was Mumbai’s first suburb in that when the British arrived in Bandra in 1775 to assume sovereignty from the Portuguese, its communities of Christians and their churches were already well established (see A Brief History of Bandra West).

Our families and their Bandra neighbours were probably among the first to be baptized under the sponsorship of our Portuguese missionaries, and accordingly took on their names: Aloysius’s last name was D’Souza, Deepika’s married name was Carhavallo, and it appears my ancesters paid homage to a certain Father Rodrigues.

After my uncle returned home, I hunkered down with a couple of locally-written history books, a road atlas of the Mumbai area, and the sound of children lighting Diwali-season firecrackers down on the laneway.

Grateful like a nun October 14, 2008

A few days to departure, and I am calm and thankful like a cloistered nun

Slowly, meditatively, I make preparations to enter the Catholic former colony of Goa. Both my Austrian-born mother and my Burma-born father were brought up Roman Catholic so by default, I guess I have that wired in me too. I was baptised, tasted the body of Christ, and wondered why his body was draped in black cloth on Good Friday.

In Goa I’ll be surrounded by Catholicosity for the next six months, so I better get used to it.  Like a Christian, I do feel blessings surround me, like dandilion fluff . I stand and wonder how I can express my gratitude even as I am stunted and still with old habits and recalcitrance. I do what I can – offer company, connection and diversions to those around me – and now it all falls quiet. It’s between me , my heart and the universe I suppose.

If I pray it is for comfort and magic. I ask for good bone-shaking surprises and little moments of tea. Simple things, and ones I can handle. I pray that my gut-wrenching life lessons of the past have lessoned and now immense beauty and joy have room to flourish.

Mostly I pray for and give thanks for peace and calm – a friend’s company, a lovely yellow leaf, warmed apple pie with rich vanilla yogurt.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. That’s not a Catholic holiday, but I’ll observe it anyways.