The Bleeding

"The blood of the villages is the cement by which the edifice of the cities is built." - Gandhi

Sure, Anglicized Gandhi also suffered the classic Western affliction of pastoral romanticism. The vagaries of the Industrial Revolution re-made village life in our collective consciousness: the farmer and his labour of land became a repository for shared dreams of the simple, the peaceful, the pure. Hot hours spent folded over a furrow (but outdoors! in the fresh air!) must have seemed a fine alternative to the burning white cauldrons of a metal factory for those drawn to emerging industrial centers.

As in so many things, India lives the old conflicts and contradictions between urban and rural well past where they shatter. Indian cities hold the global glitz of modern consumer capitalism, are are thus spectacular beacons drawing the scratching-hungry and poor forward, to promise and reward and lavish. The cities contain the late-night gamble of India as a modern state, for the villages and pre-industrial country fiefdoms could never have dreamed a nation as absurdly unlikely as India.

Yet Indian cities also, finally and unmistakably, uncloak the lie that Western lifestyles and development are without cost. A part of any Indian city, even any large town, is a visible manifestation of suffering. You first know you are approaching a city because the land suffers. For hundreds of kilometeres the sun will vomit a watery-yellow light through burning haze. Black scars ragged across barren fields, worried by centuries of plough; colour a luxury the land cannot afford. Concrete becomes the unvaried paint of the landscape: concrete and rusted wire fences enclose nothing but sunbleached dust and shit; concrete canals dry with rubble and stinking death, or, worse, trickling with toxic slag and ill children; concrete block tenements, exposed rebar and flaking paint squalor. Shacks accumulate around any fixed point: a wall, an ancient axed Banyan: corrugated steel, bamboo, nail-studded wood, rotting burlap sack scavenged or stolen and everything thrown together, hastily, before another can claim this space. Piles of filth as large as vehicles, all virulent and teaming. The smashed and forgotten economic projects that may have destroyed a family: an abandoned tanker-truck here, a bloated and dead cow there, an investment lost, we have nothing, we are finished.

So, as the lie of the city crawls in and settles: the Bleeding.

why i loved Mumbai

People seem really surprised that we enjoyed Mumbai so much. But it's pretty simple. Compared to Southern India, Mumbai had clean & wide streets, hidden sewers, garbage collection, beautiful colonial architecture, residents who are used to foreigners (way less stares for me), and McDonald's (4 months of eating basically the same Indian food will make anyone miss MickyD's). Even the street kids and dogs were fatter and cleaner than down south! We were able to chill out in coffee shops, go to the movie theater, visit museums and art galleries. I had wine for the first time in 4 months. I was finally able to find a shop that had the facilities for me to TRY a bra on, at the United Colors of Benetton store, LOL! Basically, we landed in a big city (biggest in the world if you are counting urban core/city proper population), that had food, culture, modern facilities and relatively clean air (thanks to the ocean breeze that blew the pollution inland to the suburbs).

I could have spent a full 10 days exploring the city neighbourhoods. We spent a morning wandering through, Kotachiwadi, the old Christian neighbourhood with winding warren like lane ways. It was incredible. The beautiful two-story wooden homes, mixed in with the concrete block communist style apartments, vendors galore, curious and welcoming residents. The neighbourhood we were staying in, the FORT, was full of old colonial mansions. Huge, beautiful old buildings in varying states of repair. Some had been converted into apartments, many now used for schools, and for some reason a large amount were now Indian and International bank headquarters. The hood had a mix of old and new. We could easily access cheap traditional Indian eateries or visit the fancy mid-range bar for some drinks in the evening. Shilo had a culinary delight---but I will let him tell you about it....I could barely watch him eat it, my stomach was churning, I rare event! Chowpatty beach was just as I expected...full of Indian families and groups of young people in the early evening. A fair was set up, think of our travelling fairs---how wretched and dodgy they are, and multiple this by 1000. It's only saving grace was the rides were a 1/10 of the size, they had to be...it was MAN powered! For the kiddie rides, just one carnie would grab the bars and whip on it, sending the kids flying......faces ranging from sheer terror, nausea and exhilaration. But the mini ferris wheel took 4 guys standing on it, stomping on one bar while simultaneously grabbing the overhead bar and hauling downwards. The riders would almost tip out of their seats.

Mumbai was incredibly expensive. We could still find deals, but the modern restaurants, bars, and shops were priced equivalent if not more than at home. Our budget double from the South. But we weren't being too frugal either...We shared a beer at the "place to be seen at" in Mumbai, a posh open air rooftop hotel lounge. White leather chairs and sofas around glass coffee tables, swift, curt service and prices to match, but the view was great and we got to eat all the potatoe chips we wanted! An apartment in the downtown core of Mumbai is more expensive than in Manhattan. YUP, you heard me. There are some ultra rich folks living amongst the slum dwellers. Over 50% of Mumbai's population lives in slums...so its not all shits and giggles, but we sure enjoyed ourselves!


Our hood!

Our hotel...we thought it was closed for renos at first!

Me talking with one of the locals, he is explaining what the residents are drying in the sun and what they use them for. The ladies called me in and showed me how they cook this certain type of lentils.

Quaint Kotachiwadi home.

Kotachiwadi.

Garbage collection, Indian style.

The cinema we went to, art deco galore!

The freaky ferris wheel. In this shot, they are loading the seats so there are only two guys standing near the middle to turn the thing.

Chowpatty beach at sunset, the lumps in the sand are garbage---don't get to excited, this is STILL India, folks. The sea water here is literally TOXIC. No swimming or even toe dipping for us, but it didn't stop the locals!

Who loves MUMBAI????

We do. We are both wishing we had some more time here, three days and four nights was simply not enough. Though the budget and time insists we move on! So off to see the carved caves of Ellore and Ajanta for a few days, and then (finally) we head into Rajasthan! it's been 38C and muggy here, I am just a tiny bit apprehensive of the heat to come in the desert! I think an umbrella will be an absolute MUST to see the sights....just another thing to add to my already overburdened load!
More on our Mumbai visit to come!
xoxo
day

Labour

I find it helpful to find a theme around which to take photos, rather than just looking for the random good shots. One of the themes I'm working on as we travel is labour.

Human labour is India's antique coal-burning engine: its been around forever, its not glamorous, no-one wants to talk about it much, it has many negative consequences, but man is it stolid and reliable. For every Bangalorean tech-worker there must be a pyramid of thousands of labourers who make his day possible.

Lets start with the roads. In Canada, our roads are laid on crushed gravel. Ever wonder where that comes from? It comes from gravel pits where huge front-loaders feed bucketfulls of raw gravel into massive crushing machines that spit out smaller crushed gravel, that is then loaded into other crushing machines, etc. Then the finished product is loaded into dumptrucks and taken to site. Simple.

In India, there is a man with a pick. Or, better, thousands of men with picks. They will all be incredibly skinny, wiry, clothed in a threadbare lungi and a soiled tanktop. They will all be barefoot, or at most wearing simple sandals. The only thing that will really vary is their age: from teen right up to grey-haired grandpa. There are no Safety Regulations, no WCB...and if there is, the beaurocrats are well paid to look away when the pick-head from one man's tool flies off and imbeds itself in the skull of the fourteen year old boy working next to him.

They will chip away at the raw rocks until they are small enough to be loaded, by hand, into a truck. The truck will drive the rock to site. There, along the highway and forever one step from death, more men will smash and chip the rock even smaller, to lets say two inches across. Then women, dressed in full-length saris in the angry heat and fume, will scoop a load of crushed gravel into a wicker basket, place it on their heads, walk whatever distance necessary, and spread out the gravel. This will continue for every fresh meter of sealed road, every long kilometer.

There is absolutely no concern for speed or efficiency. In an economy where labour is so cheap, and the unemployed so many, it is far less expensive to pay thousands of hands a pittance to do the work of one modern machine. Further, the workers themselves have zero reason to desire efficiency: this is their only work, and they may consider themselves damn lucky to have it. A big, fast, sexy Western machine could mean the end of their entire extended family's only income.

I don't have any photos of roadbuilders yet. I'm working on it. The following photos are of labourers constructing a granite retaining wall beneath a temple in Hampi. Notice their 'protective' workwear. Notice also that each stone is far too heavy to lift, so it must be wrestled, inch by inch, into position...after first being winched (again by hand) up to the top of the wall on that tottering pulley apparatus next to them. In Canada stones this large would be placed by machine. I was there around an hour, but I nearly saw a man lose his leg when the stone slipped out of its chains. While they are not permitted to actually dig (using tools is 'man's work'), the women form a kind of earth-moving chain gang. It was around 11:00Am and 35C.





In Canada, we use a lawnmower to cut grass. In India, you hire a group of five or six poor men and women, and tell them to bring their own scythe. You will then have a hand-cut lawn. Jobs like this are referred to as 'people-helping' jobs because they employ so many. The last stat I could find claimed that India's National Daily Average Income was around fifty rupees per day, or a touch over a dollar.



Another common 'people-helping' job is street-sweeping. This profession has been around long enough to have its own caste varna. In my experience, if you ask any university educated middle-class Indian whether caste still exists in India he or she will flatly deny it, or at least understate its contemporary import. What won't be mentioned is that the multitude of ancient castes have essentailly been collapsed and solidified into two far more familiar ones: the Haves and the Ain't Gots. And (surprise!) the old-skool caste impoverished fall neatly into the 21st Century Ain't Gots, except now they lack even the small cultural and social security once gained from belonging to a caste community. We're over that now; move on. You're traditions are backward. Bring your family to the city and make money: drive a rickshaw. (I'm not arguing for caste segregation...just comparing its likeness to class.)


A peculiar aspect of labour in India is its infinite divisability. What a Westerner may consider 'one job' an Indian can easlily subdivide into four or five. Take the chai-wallah (vendor), for example. It's maybe a two-person job: one to make the chai and one to deal with customers. But at some chai shops there's one employee to take your order. He then tells another man, who takes your money and tells the tea-maker himself. Another guy will give you change, and yet another will finally hand over your hot chai. There! Five people employed.

Physical labour dominates Indian industry, from the large tea manufacturers who still use old women to sort their leaves by hand, to the simple street conconut vendor, to the production of jaggery (hard suger/molasses candy) from ground sugarcane:









Ten points for you if you guessed the logging truck in the above photo wasn't loaded by a machine. And as an aside, the locals we were standing with guessed it was loaded to over three times its capacity. Now that's efficiency!

Hampi: An Incomplete Photo Essay

Four weeks already. As Day mentioned tomorrow we move Northward, first into steamy mess of Mumbai, then up into the Arabian intrigue of Rajastan, India's princely desert state (where it is rumoured to be around 40C...at least the tourists will have vacated and prices may be cheaper...).

A long-term trip develops its own rhythms. Ours seems to form roughly around several weeks of 'sight-oriented' exhausting zaniness punctuated by cooling extended stays. We find it important to allow time for doing nothing so the experiences of travel - the bizarreness, assaults and curiosities- are able to sediment and stick. Hampi provided this refuge:






Not that Hampi itself isn't sacred and bizarre: the traditional abode of Hanuman the Monkey God, the region features prominently in the ancient Sanscrit epic the Ramayana. Rama (Vishnu incarnated in human form) requests Hanuman's help in defeating Ravana, a demon-god who has captured Rama's girlfriend, Sita, and carried her to his lair in Sri Lanka. Hanuman grows to massive proportion, spans the ocean to Lanka in three steps, reduces to normal size and spies on Ravana, providing Rama with valuable intelligence for the impending war. Hanuman comes to represent the virtues of loyalty, sacrifice, agility, strength. (The first photo below shows two stickers of Hanuman stuck to my water-bottle; the second a temple entrance and an encounter.)



To understand Hanuman's mythical character simply imagine he is a loyal Western dog, a valued companion. The dog in India, however, is a filthy disgusting beast that will lie around all day pretending to be calm and placid, then turn into a sly violent attacker around sundown. I've taken to carrying a walking/beating stick during my Hampi hill wanderings; I've named it 'Walter' in honour of the fat, belligerent jerk in the movie The Big Lebowski: "Mark it zero, Smokie!". Walter and I have at last count, cracked the skulls of no fewer than three mongrels: twice because they were making feints and nips at me, once because they were about to eviscerate a little German Weiner dog the (vain) owner of the guesthouse has. Is there a more satisfying sound than the hollow 'THUNK' that comes from nearly braining an attacking beast in self-defense? I dunno.

Poetry. Twenty-something very urban Londoner to me: "Hey Moses, whats up with carrying the stick?" Me: "Use your imagination." No more than thirty minutes later there is a commotion, some frenzied barking, then cries for help. We round a cluster of boulders to find Mr. Wise-ass stranded on top of a smallish rock, a mean prick of a dog at the ready. Mr. Wise-ass is hopping up and down slightly, both hands stuffed down his shorts and clutching his balls. No shit! We must have laughed for close to an hour...then we helped him down.

On a hill opposite our guesthouse is Hanuman's Temple, where some of the the photos above and below were taken. Its a beautiful spot to relax and enjoy a tranquil sunset...as soon as you've conspired with the monkeys to push the evolutionary-challenged didgerydoo-and-drum-banging simpletons off the precipice. Yeah, then its real nice: one can even take a photo and enjoy the quiet company of one's spouse. And yes, those are big sweat-stains on my belly: one works up a solid sweat climbing thousands of steps in 35C heat, and then ruthlessly annihilating morons who mistake music for banging things and making belching noises.








Hanuman is also, of course, the protector-diety of every climber who finds himself way-out and whimpering twenty feet above the granite, hands greasy and slick in the choking heat, two moves away from the top (but will that flake hold?), with a freight-train of images smashing from his guts to his brain and back again: "OK maybe only an ankle if I fall straight, but if I twist sideways that's bad...maybe they can carry me the two miles to the dirt track...to get a rickshaw to the hospital...but whats the fucking hospital like?! It's fucking India: they'll probably just eat me! Oh shit its hot! Move the pad!...". And so on.

As Hanuman saves the shit-scared climber, so the geologic fortifications of the area itself helped save southern Hinduism. The temples and forts we spent four weeks living amongst held, in the 16th Century, India's largest population south of the Gangetic Basin and an army to match. One of the highlights are the Elephant Stables, from which the Hindu kings would call forth massive and well-armoured war-elephants:


But Hampi's formidable geographic advantage probably contributed to its destruction: convinced of his own impregnability, the king pissed off both his neighbours, and chose to fight a war on two fronts: one against the Portugeuse to the South, another with the Muslim North. A classic fuck-up of statesmanship.

What else of four weeks? Much bouldering, until the inevitable Hampi heat-induced lethargy set in around a week ago. Afternoons spent reading on the hammock. Yoga. Learning how to ride a motorbike on the backroads. Watching and learning about rice and banana cultivation. Dayna in full "Nurse-mode", helping heal infected cuts and wounds, bellyaches, fevers. Feeling the occassional midnight thunderstorms sweep across the valley, anticipating the mist that would fall on us through holes torn by monkeys in the thatch roof. Carefully crossing rice paddies at dusk, tired from climbing, knowing that cobras emerge from the rocks every evening to feed on frogs. Jumping back startled at the sight of one, then watching it move soundlessly away; that strange motion-without-motion that holds so much hypnotic power. Observing the streetlife of a quiet rural Indian village, how mother's carry young ones into the street to pee, then carefully bathe them:


And finally, a parting shot: Day hard at work slogging through "Trains at a Glance", (ha!) the massive schedule-book of Indian Railways. So love, what's the best connection to Mumbai?