Parallels

Wednesday morning, we woke up and enjoyed a nice big breakfast of cereal, yogurt, toast, sausage, and various other items. For some reason something that I always find interesting about travelling is the mix of the familiar and the foreign. One of my favorite novel series from Stephen King, is The Dark Tower (this is a seven book series, which is actually not a horror story, but more sci-fi/adventure). In it, one of the main characters introduced in the second book, Eddie Dean ends up in a parallel, but somewhat post-apocalyptic America. He finds streets and highways that existed in his America, as well as brand names that he’s used to, and right next to them, things that never existed in his America. Coca Cola would be sitting next to “Boing Boing Soda”. Traveling abroad gives me the same type of sensation. As there are many brands your used to, next to ones you’ve never heard of. Equally surreal though, is when you find something that was obscure even in America, that you never would have expected elsewhere. Well sitting on the breakfast table was a circular cardboard container of Laughing Cow cheese. My grandmother used to always buy this. I liked it as a kid, just because it had a cool container, and individually wrapped pieces of cheese. So I’d always open some, though I don’t think I ever ate the whole thing, because I wasn’t big on cheese. I’d always thought that was just a regional brand around Wisconsin. I wouldn’t have expected to find that in Nashville, let alone Mumbai.  But there it was, alongside our toast, yogurt, ham and sausages. 

After breakfast we began to shower and get our clothes, hurrying before the water shut off for the day. As we started to select our clothing for the day, we came to a very frustrating realization. We were missing a bag of laundry from the service at the hotel in Cambodia. (most frustrating is they had asked us to review the checklist to ensure we received it all when they returned it to us, and we didn’t….). All of us lost several articles, which obviously won’t be feasible to get returned. So we decided we’d head out to buy some more. Just outside Kamalika and Jayant’s place is a vertical shopping center that includes Wal-Mart’s Indian arm, called “Easy Day.” (Again think back to the Dark Tower…) Basically the exact same as what a typical American WalMart is-same logos, signage etc. but different name (though the fine print on many tags will reference WalMart.)



New Friends



WalMart Shopping-Minnie and Kalyssa

The women enjoyed themselves quite a bit, and Minnie and Kalyssa picked out matching outfits, and I (who hate shopping) perused the men’s clothing area to grab a few more shirts. I grabbed a couple I liked, and put it in our cart. Natalie was somewhere else, and Kamalika looked at the shirt and gave a polite nod. Kalyssa came over next and saw the shirt, and shook her head and said “Dad, you are a fashion disaster.” This was followed by Natalie, who looked at it, and said “Uh-uh, you’re not buying that”, and handed it to Alexandra and told her to go put it back. (Kamalika later confided to Natalie that she hated it as well). So at this point, I let the professionals take over. They perused the EasyDay aisles, didn’t find much they liked, and suggested we got to the larger shopping mall.

We also grabbed a few snacks for the road (I had some Masala flavored Ruffles potato chips), and found our driver, and headed down the road to the R City Shopping mall. Most of the modern shopping malls in India (at least Dehli/Gurgaon and Mumbai) are large vertical complexes with 4-6 levels or so. Very modern glass/steel structures with all sorts of brand name advertising/banners in the windows. Very similar to the idea of starting with a Westfield Center, and making it into a rectangular cube of stores with a central atrium. Here we went to Lifewise which was more of a designer store, and found clothing for me that Natalie and Kamalika found more suitable, so I deferred to the experts, and passed along the credit card.

After a real workout of looking at clothes, we had worked up an appetite, and headed to a TGI Friday’s in the mall for lunch.

Random Courtyard we drove past

Following the lunch, we headed to the Kala Ghoda art district in Colaba (the southern tip of Mumbai) and visited the Jehangiri Art Gallery. We knew that Alexandra, being the avid painter and sketcher would enjoy this. We spent some time snaking through the art gallery perusing the many paintings. In many of the exhibitions, the painter was there. In the final painting exhibit we walked into, I glanced around the room, and one painting clearly caught my attention. It was a painting of Ghandi, in a most unusual form. Ghandi was painted in full form in the center of the picture. Behind him were about a dozen darker silhouettes of his head in a horizontal line along the background. Ghandi was holding some sort of a spear, and was standing on the body of a man, with the spear stabbing his body. I kept moving on to the other pictures, but kept coming back to this one. Obviously this is not the traditional characterization of Ghandi as a man of peace. I am certainly by no means a Ghandi expert. I read a little bit about his background before the trip, as it seemed like something I should be aware of (and due to his many accomplishments, I had a hard time developing the mental elevator pitch for “who was Ghandi?”), however, I didn’t think there was any sort of controversy/conspiracy theory around his life and times, that would have elicited a painting such as this.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Train Terminal

The artist that painted this picture noticed that it had succeeded in capturing my attention, so he came over and handed me a brochure. I asked him what the meaning of the painting was. His English was fairly limited and he motioned that I should read the brochure. He and Alexandra also had a bit of interaction about her passion for painting.

In the meantime, I reviewed the brochure, but couldn’t get much of an answer. It seemed that his argument was simply that he wanted to paint something that would evoke a reaction in people and get them to think about things differently than what they normally would. Similarly, he had another picture with someone stabbing a Hindu god that lay dead . The pamphlet referenced Hinduism in a comment that in India, there are “33 crore gods that exist in the mouth of a cow…”(note, a crore is ten million) So clearly his perspective is fairly negative towards religion. I couldn’t find anything that indicated why he thought this way of Ghandi, or the Hindu gods. He then went on to complain about some other art association that kicked him out because of his work.

This whole exhibit irritated me, probably deeply. I support free speech in general, so he is free to say/do what he wants (at least under American law, which of course has no bearing here, but I think Indian law is pretty similar in that respect. But I’m also free to react. If you’re going to paint something that controversial, you should have a clear and intelligent argument to support it. If your going to paint something to be provocative and controversial, just to annoy people, that’s just irritating. It reminds me of the guy in the US that set up the art exhibit where you had to walk on the American flag to view the exhibit. Seemingly just to create a stir…that is what this exhibit seemed to be.

At Jehnagiri Mall

However…I’ve now devoted several paragraphs of my blog, and an hour or two of thought processing on this issue, so I guess he met his objective…

After the art gallery, we stopped at a gift shop for more souvenirs. This was one of many government run shops (called Cottage Industries Emporium). The nice side of this is that all the items have fixed prices/no negotiation. The downside is, all the employees are essentially government workers. So there’s not a lot of enthusiasm for selling. At the point we walked in, it was 15 minutes to closing, which they reminded us several times about. Nonetheless, we ended up walking out with quite a bit that now needs a place in our luggage.

From here, we went to what was a bit of an eerie site for me: The India gate, and the Taj Mahal hotel. They looked the same as the last time I was here, 4 years ago. A large Victorian arch, and a beautiful 5 star hotel. The only difference from four years ago, was the significantly increased security. There is now a crowd control fence around the entire gateway area, with metal detectors and guards allowing people in and out at only one point. This is India’s ground zero of 26/11, the three day long attack that held the entire city captive beginning November 26, 2008. I looked at the once again beautiful Taj Mahal hotel, but in my mind kept seeing the flames leaping from the windows, and people crawling out of them to escape the fire and gunshots, all of which I watched play out on the news 4 years ago. The nightmare played out across the city here, and at the Oberoi, Café Leopold, the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus, and a few other locations. Now it was once again a beautiful site to see along the ocean front, restored to its prior glory, while the one gunman captured alive sits in jail awaiting a trial. After admiring the outside, we decided to pay a brief visit to the inside (…but only to use the facilities.)

Gateway to India

At this point, we headed over to Marine drive, also known as the Queen’s Necklace (due to the semi circle of street lights around the cove that when lit resemnble a jeweled necklace. We had planned to spend only a few minutes here, but once we got out of the car, and took in the sights of the bay as dusk was settling, Kalyssa, Minnie, and Spiky began having quite a good time running around, dancing, and playing on the walkway, so we ended up hanging out here for a good bit of time. Kalyssa had taught Minnie a two person hand-clapping game, and they had a great time doing it over and over again while Spiky did his best to get in the way.

We began getting hungry, and it was late in the evening. I had suggested that we go to a Thali restaurant. This was something that Kamalika introduced me to on my last trip to India, and I found absolutely fantastic. We debated going to one that was right down the street, or heading back to the area around Kamalika’s house (a 1-2 hour drive depending on traffic), and decided to keep the kids awake for dinner, it would be better to eat first, then drive. So we headed over to Samrat Restaurant. Jayant was originally going to join us, but unfortunately was stuck on the other side of town, and was dealing with horrendous traffic, and was not able to make it.

As we walked in, the restaurant was fairly empty, however there were more than half a dozen wait-staff waiting at the ready along the perimeter. We sat down, and all of us ordered the Thali. At this point, each of us was given a 16 inch pan, and about 8 small metal bowls around it. A waiter came and offered us a choice of sweets. I chose the Gulab Jamun (this time without a deceptive terra cotta dish under it) and the mango yogurt. From this point on, there was a continual assembly line of waiters with trays of food, and they would come by and spoon it into each of the dishes. Additionally, they would continue to bring various types of Indian bread to be eaten along with all of the other items. Every time a bowl began to run low, someone would come by and refill it. As expected, I ate quite a bit, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Kalyssa for the first time of the whole trip, lost her sense of gastronomic adventure, and only picked at some of the more basic items. Natalie ate quite a bit, but found it all much more spicy than what she typically likes, and Alexandra held her own.



Thali at Samrat



At this point, we were all stuffed and tired, and decided to head back to the homestead and turn in. We pulled up to the house, and when I looked in the backseet, Allie was sound asleep leaning against the window, Kalyssa was sound asleep leaning against Allie, and Minnie was sound asleep lying against Kalyssa. The site was absolutely priceless. I grabbed the camera to take a picture, but before I could get a good one, they woke up and began to move. As we went inside, we made the decision that we would sleep in a bit the next morning to let ourselves get a little more caught up on our sleep.