Chowpatty Beach

On Sunday nights Chowpatty Beach is the place to be. Even the last few weeks when the weather has been just sweltering, Chowpatty has been swarming with people on Sunday evening. As the sun starts to set over Malabar hill, families flock to the beach and settle in the sand, play with their children, wade in the water, eat snacks and ice cream, and enjoy the atmosphere of the crowd. Its almost like a mini festival every Sunday in celebration of the sunset and a day of rest. There are food vendors and man-powered rides under twinkling lights at one end of the beach. Balloon and piwheel sellers, chai boys, ice cream men and people selling other goodies like roasted nuts and corn roam through the crowds. Grown women play tag with their families, with saris trailing and bangles jangling. Some children venture out to wade in the ridiculously polluted, though cool, water of the bay. And everyone is just there, to be out and to be together. Its a very vibrant but comfortable place to spend a summer evening. As an added bonus, it is just a twnety minute walk from our flat. Here are a few photos from a week or so ago when John and I spent and evening out at Chowpatty:

These mats outside the food stalls are actually serviced by wait staff. They're beach restaurants. See the menu?

The man swinging from the top of this ride is powering it with nothing but his own weight and the help of gravity. There are about three guys to the wheel and they take turns spinning it.

The food and drink is a big attraction to Chowpatty Beach. You can smaple the delicacies of Mumbai street food:

If you're hot you can cool down with a technicolored ice slush:

But I prefer fresh mango juice from Bachelor's, the famous juice stall across the street:

Om...

I’ve been lucky enough to do my yoga practice in a pretty idyllic spot the last few months. My instructor, a young Indian woman called Samantha, teaches all over the city. One of the women she gives private instruction to lives in a beautiful bungalow in Worli, right on the seaside. The home actually has a lawn in the back, and a wooden terrace overlooking the rocky coast and the waters of the Arabian Sea. Twice a week she lets Samantha teach an open class there. It is an amazing setting for a yoga practice. We begin at 7 pm as the sun goes down, the breeze picks up, and the tide rolls in or out on steady waves.

Samantha is a good instructor who leads a challenging practice. My ability and love for yoga have grown a lot, even in working with her a short time. Her focus is on the asanas, the body positions, which doesn’t seem all that common with other yogis here in Mumbai. Some of the other branches of yogic practice—breathing, meditation, etc.—get a lot more attention here than in the U.S. (Which is quite cool. Walking down Marine Drive the other night we saw a man sitting in lotus, pinching his nostrils shut in an alternating rhythm.) So although Samantha’s classes are familiar to me, who was introduced to yoga in the west with our focus on the body, she does incorporate breathing exercises and chanting into all of her classes. I think this is quite rare in the U.S., although some of my readers could correct this assumption of mine if I’m wrong.

But like many Mumbaikers, Samantha is taking a short vacation during the end of May, after which she is actually setting up shop in her own space. No more traveling all over town to teach classes. And the studio will be quite close to our flat which I’m happy about. But I will definitely miss practicing at the idyllic bungalow! Om…

Mango Season

My favorite thing about being in India during the month of May is MANGOES! It is mango season here, and yum! They are absolutely delicious. I’ve never really enjoyed tropical fruits before, for obvious reasons. Every mango I’ve tasted before this had to fly thousands of miles before getting to me. No wonder they weren’t juicy and flavorful like the mangoes I’ve been eating here. Mango slices, mango juice, mango lassi, mango with ice cream—at home, on the street, in restaurants. So many different colors and varieties…mmm. Our good friend Rupak and his family gave us a whole box of Alphonso mangoes which have been the most delicious so far. When we get back to Mumbai in June after our trip home, I think mango season will be over. So I’m going to keep eating them every day until we leave! Yum yum!

Bombay Reading List

When I’m in a new place I really enjoy reading fiction set in and around that place. Since I have so much free time here, I have done a lot of reading! Books upon books have stacked up in our place—all sorts of novels, but especially a lot of works by Indian authors and stories set in India. I wanted to post a few recommendations of novels that feature Bombay for those of you who want to get a richer picture of the city from some people who can really write! If I come across any other books worth mentioning in the upcoming months, I’ll add them to the list as well.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is an extremely moving and well-written novel that explores the lives of the city’s poor immigrants, the living they make, the hardships they face, the people they meet and their ability to navigate the gray areas between hope and despair. The novel tells the story of two tailors who immigrate to Bombay during The Emergency years of the nineteen seventies. They find work with a young Parsi widow and befriend her tenant, a young engineering student. As they struggle to live in the sometimes welcoming, sometimes terrifying city of Bombay. If you enjoy this book, check out A Family Matter also by Mistry. This novel gives a rich depiction of Parsi life in 1970s Bombay. There are some very memorable scenes involving religion, superstition, bureaucracy, and community and mob mentality. In both novels Misty thoroughly and memorably depicts life in Bombay, the city becoming almost another character in the stories.

If you enjoy magic realism (in the vein of Murakami, Garcia Marquez, et al) like I do, then I recommend Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. It is the story of Saleem Sinai, born at midnight on August 15, 1947, the exact date and time of India’s independence. The coincidence of his birth links Saleem inextricably to the birth and trajectory of the young nation. The special hour of his birth also has unexpected consequences: he is given telepathic powers that allow him to communicate with all of “midnight’s children” born in the initial hour of India’s independence. As Rushdie lets Saleem tell his story, he paints a picture of post-partition India and Pakistan that is both serious and comedic. I just finished this novel and really enjoyed it, often chuckling aloud at the clever observations and dark humor of this fantastical tale. (On a personal note, I especially enjoyed reading it while living here in Mumbai as Rushdie references many places and events that I have experienced myself. Saleem grows up just up the road from our neighborhood in Breach Candy and thus references many of the landmarks that John and I use to orient ourselves on a daily basis.)

Baumgartner’s Bombay by Anita Desai is the story of Hugo Baumgartner, a German-born Jew who, after leaving his home country, finds a home of sorts in Bombay. Always an outsider, Baumgartner is closest to his many adopted cats, and his only routine task is scavenging in the city and visiting tea shops to collect scraps for them. His sole human confidante is Lotte, an ex-cabaret dancer and German expatriate, until he unexpectedly meets a young German hippie whose presence in his life has profound results. Desai is an incredibly talented writer who is able to string words together in moving and delightful ways. I highly recommend her books to anyone who dapples in writing—there is a lot to learn from reading her work. Her descriptions of Bombay are very vivid and her characters complex and believable. ( I also recommend her novel Clear Light of Day, a character-driven story which takes place in the outskirts of Delhi.)

Of course I feel obligated to mention Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. This adventure tale of an escaped Australian convict navigating the Bombay underworld is immensely popular with travelers here. You can’t go a week without seeing a well-thumbed copy in the hands of some backpacker carrying an overstuffed rucksack. This fast-paced tale is semi-autobiographical but officially labeled a work of fiction. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I have to admit that I was not as enamored with this book as many people I’ve talked to were, and in fact I didn’t even finish it. I found the writing style a bit amateurish and personally I don’t have much patience for pop-philosophizing which seeps up through the tale from time to time. That said, there is always a time and place for a quick and easy adventure book, and in conversation I hear more rave reviews than harsh criticisms. And if you’re one of those people who has to read the book before seeing the movie, now is the time to pick up Shantaram. Word on the street is that Johnny Depp has bought the rights to the story and hired an Indian director to shoot the film starring Depp in the lead role.

So if you have some free time or are looking for a good read, check out some of these Bombay novels. And feel free to post your reviews as comments on this page. I would love to hear the impressions of other readers!

It's the Heat AND the Humidity

Phew. It’s getting really hot here. Like most Midwesterners I pride myself on my ability to withstand extreme weather. Builds character and all that. But man! It’s getting hot and its only going to get hotter until the monsoon brings rain and a (slight) cooling effect. Most of us have experienced that cliché, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity…” Well, this afternoon after about five minutes of walking through Colaba, I was convinced that both heat and humidity were likely to kill me if I didn’t sit down and gulp some water. Every day now is like the hottest, most humid day in an Iowa July. Actually, to describe it, I find myself thinking about the extreme cold of Midwest winters. You Minnesotans will know what I’m talking about. When I lived in Minneapolis and had to walk to work in the dead of winter, there were mornings when my snot would freeze immediately upon stepping out the door. Here it’s getting so hot and humid that if I have to go out for something in the afternoon, whether its groceries or relief from cabin fever, my eyelids start sweating as soon as I hit the pavement/dirt of Doongarshi Road.

We do have an air conditioner in our flat, but most of the time a ceiling fan on high is enough to keep us comfortable at home. But I think of all the people who live and work without even the luxury of a ceiling fan…what do they do? Well, they sweat. They’re just hot. And it’s okay. We have a tendency to want to over-heat and over-cool ourselves when we get a little uncomfortable. Needless to say, the fancy hotels and high-end restaurants here are absolutely frigid. But for the banana man and chaiwallah who set up shop outside St. Elizabeth Hospital down the street, a blue plastic tarp is enough to provide some relief from the midday heat. Suspended from the wall and supported by two long sticks, a simple shady lean-to provides enough relief that they still sip that piping hot chai! Though when the sun sets in the evening and the breeze starts to pick up off of the Arabian Sea, all of Mumbai lets out a nice long sigh.