A 70th Birthday Gift



View from Kamalika/Jayant's Terrace

Thursday we had all agreed and planned on leaving around 10:00am, giving ourselves some extra time to get ready on our last morning in India. Our flight out of India was at an ungodly 4:00am the subsequent morning, so we also figured we could use the extra sleep, since we’d be up all night. (We planned on leaving for the airport sometime between 12:00 and 1:00am. We all woke up and slowly began moving. We enjoyed another home cooked breakfast, this time with some Indian rice to go along with it, which was fantastic. We all also had several cups of coffee to try and get the day kickstarted. We finally started rolling into the shower, and Kamalika let us know that we’d need to use the buckets to bathe with since it was past the time of water availability. However, one of us unthinkingly tried a faucet, and water came out, so we all quickly tried to get our showers in while it was available. Alexandra was the last one in, and a few moments after getting in, the pressure dropped, as the water began to shut off. She quickly tried to finish up with what little was still dribbling out of the tap. In typical Ziemann fashion, though we had expected to get out at 10:00, it was close to an hour later that we finally left.

 Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharah Vastu Sangrahalya fka Prince of Wales Museum



We drove back towards south Mumbai, and started the day with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharah Vastu Sangrahalya. (Please repeat that 3 times fast….ok, you’ll get a star if you can say it even one time slow!) This is more commonly known by its previous name: The Prince of Wales Museum. This is a fairly large museum with natural history, local archeological items, paintings, and more. Everything is geared towards the area in and around India. One of the things I really liked about this one, is that many of the ancient stone carvings (some dating as far back as a few hundred years BC) are completely out in the open where you can look closely, and touch them. As we purchased the tickets, they informed us that we couldn’t bring our water, or bags with us. So Kamalika called our driver and asked him to come back so we could drop these in the car. I went out to wait for the car with Minnie and Kalyssa. While we were waiting, they continued to play their handclapping game. Another local girl that was in the area and around their same age, came over and began watching very intently, focusing on the different claps left hand, right hand, left hand, left hand, left hand, back hand to front hand…. After several minutes, I thought perhaps the girl that was watching would like to learn, so I asked the girls, why not show her how to do it. The two girls were paused and considered, it, then I saw a hesitancy come across Minnie’s face, as she realized what I hadn’t quite. As the game then stopped, the girl started asking where we were from, and introduced herself as something that sounded like Buon, (oddly enough, that’s the word for 4 in Khmer I learned a week earlier!) and then asked our names. She spoke very limited English, but was very courteous and confident. After the introductions were done however, and now that there was no game to watch, her real interest in us became apparent, as she began to ask for money. She was a beggar.

Pillar from 100 BC

In urban India, it is impossible to go out and about and not see some of the beggars on the street. They are extremely aggressive, usually knocking on windows of cars stopped at lights, or persistently following people from home they are asking money. India has similar problems to what has been found in the US, that many of these individuals have realized they can make more money simply by asking for it, than by actually doing something productive for it. Its also common place to do things such as borrow babies to walk the streets begging with to tug further at the heartstrings of the generous tourist. An additional issue is that once you give to one beggar, it can create a situation, were several more will come out of the woodwork, expecting money, as well. As heart breaking as it can be, the best thing to do is simply ignore them. At this point, with this girl, since we had already been talking, I, somewhat annoyed, said, “no.”

Finally the driver arrived back, we dropped our extra belongings in the car, and went into the museum. All the girls enjoyed the natural history section, which featured hundreds of species of real animals that had been stuffed, from frogs to rhinoceroses and whales. Allie in particular found the paintings of interest. Here they had little easels set up, and Allie contributed her own drawing to the collection and left it on the easel.

Shah Spiky!

After the museum, Kamalika took us across the street to one of her favorite hangouts since she was in college: Café Mondegar. This was a western style brewpub with lots of offerings on the menu including Indian and Western dishes, along with pitchers of beer, and nonstop Rock/Pop songs from the 80s playing on the jukebox. I heard Roxette, Madonna, Wham!, Cutting Crew, Debbie Gibson, and many other artists from my childhood. The food as well was awesome, though the wait staff was a little confused. We had ordered a pitcher of beer with 2 mugs (for Kamalika and I-Nat was sticking to water for the time being) and instead they poured 2 pitchers…I was tempted to simply accept the challenge, but instead we behaved, and sent back the second one.

Flower Bracelet Hawker Oustide Mondy's

Dhobi Ghat--Laundry Vats

After, lunch we made brief stops at a few other tourist sites. First was the Laundry Vats. This may seem like a strange attraction, but it is a very popular one in Mumbai. Many of the hotels and businesses use the vats for their laundry service. These are dozens of square cement vats, where laundry is done by hand. There are hundreds of garments hanging over the vats to dry in the wind, and during the earlier part of the day you can see each of these filled with people flinging laundry and scrubbing it on washboards. The operation is supposed to be amazingly efficient---laundry rarely if ever gets lost or confused. There is a small terrace from which one can view the laundry vats, and we stood for a few minutes taking pictures. While we were doing this a group of young guys standing behind us tapped Alexandra’s shoulder, and asked if they could take her picture.

Tomb of Haji Ali (Low Tide)

After this, we visited the tomb of Haji Ali. This was a memorial to a Muslim pilgrim to the Hajj, who passed away on his return trip while at sea, and was buried at sea in a box. Later he was sainted, and years later, the box was found not too far from the coast of Mumbai, and a mosque was then built on the site. There is a walkway that leads to the mosque however at high tide, it is completely submerged, and the mosque becomes an island.

After this we began the long drive back to the northern part of Mumbai. Tonight was a special night, as it was Kamalika’s mother’s birthday, and we were invited to join in the celebration. On the way back, we passed a walkway that looked out on the open Indian ocean. There were beautiful waves crashing as they approached the coast, Kamalika asked if we wanted to stop for a few photos, so we did. There is something that is just amazingly soothing from watching ocean waves. With the cacophony of car horns behind us in urban Mumbai, sitting and watching the ocean crash took us away to an entirely different plane of tranquility. After another 20 minutes or so here, we got in the car and moved on.

Northern Mumbai Shopping Area/(and Doctors Office)

At this point, we had one of our party, with a very minor medical issue that had arisen, but we decided to stop and see a doctor. Kamalika recommended hers, and we stopped on the way back north. In a city that is as densely populated as Mumbai, doctor’s offices as well, have a bit of a different feel, than what we were used to in America. The waiting room was about 8 feet by 6 feet and had about 6 people sitting in it plus a receptionist at a very small desk. Shoes were not allowed, so we left ours at the door. The back wall had a small door. When we came in, Kamalika spoke to the receptionist, and within 3 minutes one patient came out, and we were invited directly in. The door led directly into the only examination room, which was roughly 7 feet by 5 feet. The examination table against the wall reached from one end to the other. To the left, the doctor sat in a small chair against the sidewall, touching both the examination table and the opposite wall. He asked us a few questions, and gave us a prescription, and most amazingly, said that he would not charge us anything. We headed down the shopping area to the pharmacy and picked up the prescription for around $5. (I have had this particular prescription in the US, and I believe it is typically over $100. Enter the whole justification behind medical tourism).

This same shopping area had some good touristy shops, so Kamalika brought us over there to help us add to our growing piles of souvenirs. I think we spent an hour and a half in one shop. It was a rather large shop, and (as with many places in the malls there, they seemed to have quite a few employees helping out with security, or simply assisting the customers. Natalie told me how much she liked this, as one of them had dedicated himself to maintaining her pile of souvenirs so that she didn’t need to continue carrying them around… That’s just wonderful I thought. As I sat and watched my bank account draining, Kamalika asked what time it was. It was ten to 8:00. She jumped in reaction, “oh my, we are late for my mother’s dinner.” With that, we quickly tried to wrap up our purchases, and get out of the store. The plan had been to stop at Kamalika’s home, freshen up, and change, but we quickly cut that plan down to heading straight to the restaurant.

Kamalika and Jayant had attempted to make reservations at a place called Urban Tadka, however they would not accept reservations, and gave us a tremendously long wait time to seat us. So we changed the venue to an Asian restaurant called The Bowl House. Here we had the tremendous opportunity to meet Kamalika’s parents and sister, and dine with them in celebration of her mother’s 70th birthday. The day had been long, and the girls were already starting to fade (Kalyssa fell asleep in a booth at another table), but we had some good conversations with the rest of the family, and shared a few drinks as well. This dinner was for Kamalika's mother.  However, after the great times that we had over the last 3 days, this really felt like it was us that was getting a gift.  Jayant and Kamalika were tremendously gracious and overly generous hosts in every way, and to share this special evening with them and their family was a great honor, and really added to the experience of the whole trip (and we swear to the both of them, that it will be on our consience until we can return the favor one day!).  As I've mentioned in earlier posts, the intention of this trip was for our daughters to get immersed in various cultures around the world, and this was a perfect finale to the Indian leg of this excursion.

Happy Birthday!

After dinner, we headed back to Jayant and Kamalika’s home for the final time, and began packing up our bags. Now that we had more souvenir’s we needed to do some major reorganizing. We unpacked about half of our suitcases, and repacked them to try and organize as best possible. While going through this process, an interesting thing happened. We found a clear plastic bag with some clothes in it….the missing clothes that we had thought were left in Cambodia. Suddenly it all became clear. We had some clothes that were dirty in Cambodia, that didn’t get sent to laundry. I had put them in a plastic bag and put them in one of our miscellaneous suitcases, since I knew we wouldn’t be wearing the dirty clothes until they got cleaned. So now it appeared that they didn’t lose our laundry after all!

Packed up Again!

Once we finished packing our clothes, we arranged our suitcases by the door, ready to head to the airport. Both of us dreaded the fact that we knew tonight, there would be very little if any sleeping going on.