Thursday 24th February
In the morning everything looks less disgusting. One really can get used to anything. I take a shower in the bathcloset, feeling better. The itching has gone, thank good Lord on the heavens. Or Vishnu, or Allah, since those seem to be more popular here. As a heathen I should be thankful to all, as I don't know whose jurisdiction I fall under. Perhaps it is allocated by district - whoever has the majority in a given area of my presence has to provide me with the guardian angel and all such. I pack my $3,000 worth of random equipment into my rolling laptop suitcase and we set out. I can't decide whether it's safer with me or at the room, but I'd rather fight for it than have it stolen behind my back. The sea is at the end of our street. It does not smell like sea. Luckily it does not smell like much at all. You can see the Gateway to India monument on the left, which was built to welcome King George, or Leopold, or Henry - I forget which. Right next to us is the fantabulous hotel Taj. Tara recounts the story behind it for us. A local rich Parsee was not admitted into one of the chi-chi hotels nearby, so he decided he can build a better one. The best hotel in the world. And he did. Except the construction workers had the plan turned around and the grand entrance with a beautiful park and a swimming pool is facing the street. The hotel's butt is facing the sea. The butt is still very nice.
Taj Hotel's butt
Taj is not better then Mariott though, the wireless is only for hotel guests. Pfffft. We find a nice little café, café Basilico. That's our base for the next four hours, reading, working on lectures and workshops we'll be doing at the DC School of Management and Technology in Kerala next week. It seems that this is the place where all tourists come hide and take a few deep breaths. It is very peaceful and laid back. I don't ever want to leave. In the afternoon we climb into a taxi and set out to find the Khoj Foundation, recommended by Meenakshee. All we know is that it is off of one of the main arteries in Mumbai and that it is opposite a koda auto dealership. By now I am entirely used to Indian way of driving. It seems like the most natural thing ever. Of course you zigzag between other cars until you fill every little opening. Of course there are six cars next to each other on one road. It's a big road. Of course cars have no side mirrors. They don't even make cars with side mirrors in India. The only cars that had side mirrors at some point (and now have holes after they were ripped off) were made elsewhere. Mumbai reminds me of Prague, I can't tell exactly why. It is the combination of wide busy roads lined with 3-4 stories tall buildings from the turn of the 20th century, and some socialist-looking architecture. Buildings are gray and streets dirty. That I find charming, none of that Vienna official-looking clean nonsense. There is a shiny shopping mall every now and then. Open markets with the usual shawls, flip flops, trinkets. It would be puppets, glass flowers, mugs in Prague. I see the koda dealership. Even that is Czech. After 15 minutes of driving back and forth on a stretch of 100 meters we convince the driver to let us out, we'll find it on our own. It is right there, we passed it a million times. The foundation is in a teensy building, in fact it looks like a converted garage. It is the most efficiently used space ever. How many people can fit into one garage? There are about 8 computers crammed right next to each other in the front part. Behind them, there is a sliding door, a round table with 4 chairs around it, just enough space that you can wedge yourself in there to sit. Behind the table are another three computers. A ladder goes upstairs, I imagine they must have been able to fit another twenty spots in there. Office is like a beehive, busting in seams with activity. I know that the foundation produces an insane amount of materials, works on dozens of different large scale projects. Some girls are sorting papers outside on the benches. We meet with "Dr. Jabed". He is also of the ex-journalist sort, like Meenakshee. Dr. Jabed is a handsome rugged man, wearing green khakis, a wife-beater with a mustard yellow shirt over it, and a string of black leather around his neck. He is restless, talking about seven things at once. He's a good catch, the foundation has very similar interests to ours, we will surely work together in future. From here we are on the way to the Mariott again. Yesss. We catch an autorickshaw. The roof above makes it feel safer than it actually is. All of them have ?'Don't touch me' written on the side. I imagine what must happen to one of these in a collision. A mashed tricycle. Tricycle sauteé. We have a meeting with two girls from a think-tank there. All meetings should be held at the Mariott. I clandestinely peak at my computer that I keep on a chair next to me. Email, what a luxury! After the meeting I embark on another mission to find postcards. In vain. Not to be found even at the Mariott. Funny that. They do have pajminas and shawls though. A turquoise one addresses me and demands to go home with me. How can I say no. We take a cab back to the burrow - it takes over an hour. Mumbai is mind-blowingly gigantic. There is a centre every fifteen minutes. All the money of Bollywood mixed right in with all the shocking poverty of the slums. Millions of people live in slums in and around Bombay. Somebody constantly sticks their hands into the cab, asking for money, or selling baloons, flowers, candy, anything. It's a mystery to me how those millions of people survive each day. Tara meets us again, we set out for the Starlit Café, on the roof of one of the buildings on the bay. The Bay of Bombay. It is full moon, the harbor looks gorgeous. From up here you can't see or smell the garbage that swims around in the water. I order Murgh Baghdadi for dinner, it is delicious. Tara and Angar brought their friend along. Rojid is a fiction writer and a journalist. He has the most wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor. "I don't write, I just channel stimuli," he says. "It's not an art, I don't do it by choice, I can't help it. I am a sewer that this stuff just happens to go through." Engineer by training he claims he just decodes messages that were coded elsewhere. He doesn't believe in truth, in fact truth is not important at all. Truth does not belong to anyone, it is impersonal. So why care about it. It is the subjective that matters. I am mightily pleased. I want to listen to Rojid forever. Instead I finish my dinner and go to back to the burrow. This time I don't mind the hotel at all. In fact I find it very charming. My room is big and has a balcony with a table and two chairs. There is a pleasant breeze. One of the mushroom creations on the wall looks like a regal rider on a horse with an inflated belly. What more can one wish for. I fall asleep at eleven - close to unprecedented in my world. Ceiling fan is providing me with white noise more than anything.
Friday, 25th February
I wake up with a sore throat. I stand up, feeling dizzy. I walk to the balcony and peer down on the street, my hands are shaky. Not a good sign. Especially since I have to work with 250 kids for two days from Sunday on. Ooooof. I walk over to the bathcloset, somebody's behind the plastic divide - sort of a half wall. I contemplate whether to take a shower or wait. The person is not leaving anytime soon. Screw it, I take a shower. My cleansing is accompanied by the other person's violent vomiting, and genuinely meant cursing. I can survive, we smart travelers can handle anything. One breath at a time (one day at a time just seems so inconceivably long prospect). I go find Hillel at Café Basilico. An attempt at breakfast. Can't force the toast down. I stick to tea. Dabbling at work, not getting anywhere. At 11am we have a meeting with former Chief of the Police Force of Mumbai at Nehru Institute. The city smells of burnt rubber, dust, and a mix of decomposing food and fresh spices. Near the sea there is only one kind of smell though. It reeks of urine. Nehru Institute is a round sky-scraperish building. The Chief is very polished, outspoken, well mannered, if a bit defensive. He is a very imposing chief. I am mostly silent, my palms are sweating. I don't feel sleepy, but I'm not here either. Chief talks and talks, at least I take a lot of notes. Everything he says is discouraging and hopeless, India is one doomed paralyzed bureaucratic trap. Finally we part, thanking him for his motivational speech. In the elevator I remember I forgot to take a single picture of him. We proceed up again, posing around embarrassingly. Phew, down finally. On the way back we stop at the Taj Hotel, hoping to do some work. We fail. Sitting in the café I cannot connect to internet, and Hillel is dosing off behind his readings. After an hour or two of sustained efforts we give up. There is a large handcrafts supermarket around the corner. As if some higher power unleashed me after months of imprisonment, I dive into trinkets, bags, sarees, teas, anything and everything. I bought chachkes for everybody.
For dinner we venture to a local Parsee restaurant: Olympia. We get a special treatment: which means forks and clean glasses with mineral water. We retire to our modest premises early, after strolling through the street markets, and after another rice ordeal. A girl convinces me to go buy her a bag of rice, that turns out to be more of a twenty pound sack of a rice. She probably gets tourists here often enough - people in the market are pointing their fingers at me, grinning. Oh well. When we walk out, I notice the girl hands the rice over to some man and walks back to her spot on the street. Hmmm.
Saturday, 26th February
I wake up at 3:44am, one minute before my alarm clock goes off, as usual. Not that I usually wake up at 3:44am. I wake up before my alarm clock goes off. We are on our way to Kerala in the south. In the morning the ride to the airport takes only twenty minutes. I get a window seat on the plane and await Kerala landscape impatiently. I've heard so much about it. The true paradise on Earth. As the plane starts its descend, I see vast green forests with rivers spilling out, intertwining through the greenery as a giant silver spider web. There are mountains with a soft fog resting on top of them. Bridges look like hairpins on giant ponytails.
Descend to Cochin
On the way from the plane I am escorted by a young, rather handsome, gentleman, who is quite unfazed by the fact that I am walking with someone. He sets a pattern that I labeled the ?'Kerala phenomenon'. It goes like this, and it doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman: "Welcome to Kerala, ma'am. How old are you? Are you married? Why not? You're not ugly and you're too old!" Then he adds: "May I share something with you? You are very very attractive." All the while he is bobbing his head from left to right and I cannot help but think of Baboo from the Seinfeld episode, shaking his finger at Jerry after he got him deported back to Pakistan: "You're a bad man. You're very very bad." I try hard to control myself. The Kerala phenomenon is sometimes enriched by additional remarks or questions. One of the girls at the school we are about to go to in Kerala asked me most seriously: "Ma'am, are you a spinster?"
We are picked up by a driver from the hotel in Cochin where we're staying tonight. Everything is green beyond belief, all shrubs and trees, every stem of every living green thing, are in bloom. There are bright pink hydrangeas hanging off of fences, flowering magnolias, giant rhododendrons, from white to absolutely red. Streets are much better than anywhere else, everything seems clean and tidy. Certainly after Kolkata and Bombay. Our driver opines that it is because of the communist government Kerala had for a few election terms. Cochin has a small city feel to it. It may even be one, I wouldn't know. People here operate in lakhs and krores and seem to vastly exaggerate population numbers. I was told Mumbai has some twenty six million people and Bangalore about ten to twenty million (one to two krores). Cochin, our driver claims, has at least ten lakhs (a million), but it really looks like Liptovský Mikulá, spiced up with palm trees and orange soil to me. We get to our hotel, it's still early in the morning. We work for a few hours, then I embark on a tour of the city. I get two tour guides: the driver that the hotel called, and his friend, who actually speaks English. The two of them drag me around town for about three hours. We drive through the new town towards the backwaters, cross a bridge to an island. The backwaters are an inland sea - water from the ocean seeps up through the soil, creating salt water lakes connected with rivers and creeks. There are naval and military bases on the island that stretch to us from wherever eye can see. Hordes of soldiers armed up to their teeth guard alongside the tall walls. We cross another bridge to the old town of the city. My guides stop on the bridge and won't move until I take a picture. It's a port like any other, but they feel very proud of it. That's where oil tankers that carry oil from Mumbai oil fields are built. Or perhaps it was something else, I am not really listening that much. Finally we get to the old fort. That's where merchants, missionaries and all sorts of other colonial adventurers sailed in, building mansions, churches, synagogues. We get to the bay, battling our way through the thick trap of vendors. This area was the outer boundary of the Tsunami wave this past December. Cochin wasn't hit badly, only six people died, but many houses and businesses were swept away. We see fishermen with Chinese fishnets. They have an odd-looking large wooden machine where the poles serve as levers to lower the gigantic netting into the water and to pull it out. They yell at me when I want to walk on - I have to watch. OK, I watch. Fishermen pull out the netting with some 4-5 squiggly fish, not very impressive by any standards. Bad luck, they exclaim, and make me watch again their second, third, fourth attempt. No, I do not want to buy a fish. Or a bucket of fish, for that matter.
Cochin - fishermen raising the chinese fishnet
After I fight them off, I battle a vendor with jewelry of all sorts - I end up getting a pretty turquoise necklace with matching earings and anklet. The old city starts right on the beach - there is a remnant of the wall that surrounded the fort, colonial buildings, and most of all church upon church upon church. Unlike anywhere else I've been, all buildings are well maintained, everything is clean and colorful. My guides drive me from place to place, but I don't really feel like going into museums of all different sorts. They are panic - stricken. They have to drive me around for at least two hours and I have probably seen all there was to see already. To please them, I go inside to a Hindu temple turned into a museum with one of them. It has scenes from Mahabharatha and Ramayana on the walls, costumes, weapons, artifacts. The nicest thing about it is the little courtyard in the back. There you can pray to the God that removes all obstacles. I like that one. My guide, who has been accompanying tourists around town for years, is inside for the first time. At least I have achieved that. Next I am forced into a huge expensive handcrafts store. It is full of carpets, furniture, bronze statuettes, silver and gold. It is intimidating. I announce to everyone left and right that I am a student and cannot afford to buy anything. I do buy a ring in the end. A granite ring, no less. They are wicked good, these merchants. I stumble out as fast as I can. So does my worldliness and street-smartitness. I appease myself that I really needed a serious ring anyway. Liar, liar, pants on fire. When the boys finally drop me off at the hotel, I am happy to be alone in my room. I find out there is wireless connection in the business center, so I sit there perusing my email. I am discovered by DC Ravi, the founder of the business school up in the mountains we are going to tomorrow. The poor guy has traveled three hours up from Kottayam just to greet us, and was looking for us since two in the afternoon. Hillel is gone to see the inland sea. Ravi, as it turns out, spent seven years in Lowell, Mass., so we discuss Boston and environs. For a rich successful businessman he is extremely humble and shy. When Hillel comes back, he has to leave back for Kottayam almost immediately. We have dinner at the hotel. I venture outside on a sandals quest, I buy two pairs after trying about seven hundred pairs on. The store was already closed, they opened it up just for me when they saw me looking in.
Sunday 27th February 2005.
In the morning, I am picked up by a Prince on a white horse. Well, horses are about two hundred, and Hillel is picked up by the same Prince. But the facts remain: I got a prince and a white horse, just like in that Slovak fairy tale. That's the funny thing about Kerala. After centuries of being a merchants and sailors hub, people have funny names from all corners of the world. The jeep honks its way through Cochin and embarks on a four hour journey to the tiny village of Pallikkanum, where the DC School of Management and Technology resides. Countryside is beautiful. People cultivate rice paddies, bananas, tea, coffee, mangos, coconuts, and rubber. Business is not going well, Prince tells me that Malaysia is a tough competitor in the rubber market, and China in tea. The school was founded on a tea plantation that went bankrupt. DC Ravi bought some three hundred acres of land and decided to build a school there. I am an instant attraction in every village we pass through. Kids point their fingers at me and yell something excitedly, adults either smile or frown at me. Nobody looks away. I practice my ?'senile professor smile' - the sort of uncertain smile I developed for my students, or rather for adolescents that look like they might be my students. The driver is very amused, because I want to take pictures of the first banana tree I see, the first coconut tree, the backwaters, anything and everything. Our jeep starts climbing up to the mountains. I feel like Madonna in that Guy Ritchie BMW commercial- where she gets tossed and turned every which way on the back seat. But being a worldly and street-smart traveler that I am, I assume a nonchalant expression as if I commuted this way to work every day. I do good, except my knuckles are white from clutching the handle above the window and my hip joints hurt from shifting pressure from foot to foot in order not to be propelled into the front seat or out of the window. We cut curves like Michael Schumacher. Behind one of them, there is an odd looking large horse, or is it a mule? It's an elephant! I am all excited and demand to stop, taking pictures of course. Driver rolls his eyes: "It's just an elephant."
I calm down and on we go up and up. Road is carved into the mountain, serpentines are very narrow. Driving is much like in the city - the only precaution is increased honking. The view opens under us - fantastic mountains and deep valleys of rainforests, mostly untouched by anyone.
The road ends when we come to the plantations, it is dirt road from now on. I shake off all my pretense and hold on to anything available. People up in the small villages are marked by lifelong hard work. They are shrunken and dry, bent towards the land they are working. They look at us with suspicion. We take the last curve and descend towards the school. It is gorgeous. White buildings with red slate roofs are perched on a mountain side. The view is breath-taking. As we get out of the car, life on campus stops. They have been expecting us, in fact they cancelled school for three days because of us. Normally students would be in the classrooms, even though it's Sunday. They study for twenty five days non-stop, then go home for five days. They have classes from eight in the morning until ten at night. We are encircled by curious students. Two of them take a lead, they will be taking care of us while we are here. We proceed to meet the faculty. Most of them are very young guys, probably handpicked by DC Ravi himself. Students are mostly from Kerala and mostly Christian. Devotedly so, although that doesn't make them uptight or in-your-face converters. Just kind and considerate to the core. I have never encountered such a thing in a student body of any sort. We are taken by the faculty to the cafeteria for lunch. There we'll discuss plans for the next few days. We walk in, I freeze and a cold sweat pours over me. I didn't realize I will have to eat with my hands. It's rice for lunch. And not the sticky rice that would at least cooperate with my new clumsy feeding vessel. It's the Basmati rice, where every grain is neatly separated. Few deep breaths. I talk about work, while trying to shake off the rice and the sauce that now cover my arm almost up to my elbow, probably much of my face, and all of the table. Everybody slurps and smacks and I cannot think one straight thought. Everybody is finished with their lunch, while I have barely made a dimple in my pile. They politely wait for me another fourty five minutes or so, finally I give up. We agree to meet in the evening. Sudeep and Nidhin, our students-caretakers, take us to the guesthouse. It is all the way on the top of the campus, one has to climb there on a steep path. It has a stunning view. I review sheets for tomorrow's workshops, brief moment of panic when one document just won't open. I retype it at the speed of lightning. Then we meet with faculty again for a few hours, come up with a schedule, print out materials. In the evening I have to face the dinner again. Second time it is not so unnatural to dip hand into delicious spicy sauces around. It comes with naan, that is easier than rice. I am offered silverware (I assume it is because otherwise they feel obliged to wait for an eternity for me to finish), but I refuse. After all, it is the best training for my worliness and street smartitness. If I can eat with my hands, I will survive anywhere. Resolve. Sudeep and Nidhin come to fetch us - they have rallied troops of students to meet us in the Activity Center. That is a nice open hut with a roof, with pleasant breeze rushing through, overlooking the mountains. Here they gather every evening to study, chat, sing, work on projects, practice for art shows. The informal gathering does not translate into Indian. We have an effect of a student repellent - they disperse in a thin line around the walls of the center. We say a few words and try to mingle with the students. That is quite a challenge. I am terrified just thinking about tomorrow's workshops. If they won't participate, I'm done for. Sudeep and Nidhin escort us to the guesthouse (it is too dangerous for us to walk alone those 80-100 meters aparently). I left a light on and windows wide open. How smart and worldly is that? My room is filled with fist-sized tsikadas, there are a few giant spiders and a plethora of buzzing and crawling insect world everywhere. I attempt to work on my computer. There is a bird up near the ceiling. It is chirping and fluttering around. I am convinced I see a tarantula on the ceiling, too. I try to convince myself that those don't live in India, but it doesn't help much. I shut the lights off, keeping only my computer on. The screen attracts attacks of all sorts, something rather large hits me in the head. The brave adventurer dives for cover. I spend good fifteen minutes under a sheet and a blanket contemplating my next move. I shut the computer off, listen to the buzzing quiet down. The rainforest outside is alive with all sorts of sounds. I shake the last bugs off my bed, wrap myself in the blanket tightly (if tarantula bites me through it, will I die instantly?) and I stare into space paranoidly for a good while before I finally fall asleep.
