FRIENDS,
CHECK OUT THE INTERACTIVE BLOG FOR EDUCATORS AND STUDENTS!
Erica Bailin's American studens and my Indian students wanted an easy way to communicate. This is what we came up with...
www.bailinindia.blogspot.com
Help us cross cultures. We decided to let our life experiences write the curriculum for us!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Article on Mumbai...
What They Hate About Mumbai
By SUKETU MEHTA
MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.
Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.
Just as cinema is a mass dream of the audience, Mumbai is a mass dream of the peoples of South Asia. Bollywood movies are the most popular form of entertainment across the subcontinent. Through them, every Pakistani and Bangladeshi is familiar with the wedding-cake architecture of the Taj and the arc of the Gateway of India, symbols of the city that gives the industry its name. It is no wonder that one of the first things the Taliban did upon entering Kabul was to shut down the Bollywood video rental stores. The Taliban also banned, wouldn’t you know it, the keeping of songbirds.
Bollywood dream-makers are shaken. “I am ashamed to say this,” Amitabh Bachchan, superstar of a hundred action movies, wrote on his blog. “As the events of the terror attack unfolded in front of me, I did something for the first time and one that I had hoped never ever to be in a situation to do. Before retiring for the night, I pulled out my licensed .32 revolver, loaded it and put it under my pillow.”
Mumbai is a “soft target,” the terrorism analysts say. Anybody can walk into the hotels, the hospitals, the train stations, and start spraying with a machine gun. Where are the metal detectors, the random bag checks? In Mumbai, it’s impossible to control the crowd. In other cities, if there’s an explosion, people run away from it. In Mumbai, people run toward it — to help. Greater Mumbai takes in a million new residents a year. This is the problem, say the nativists. The city is just too hospitable. You let them in, and they break your heart.
In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.
And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land.
In 1993, Hindu mobs burned people alive in the streets — for the crime of being Muslim in Mumbai. Now these young Muslim men murdered people in front of their families — for the crime of visiting Mumbai. They attacked the luxury businessmen’s hotels. They attacked the open-air Cafe Leopold, where backpackers of the world refresh themselves with cheap beer out of three-foot-high towers before heading out into India. Their drunken revelry, their shameless flirting, must have offended the righteous believers in the jihad. They attacked the train station everyone calls V.T., the terminus for runaways and dreamers from all across India. And in the attack on the Chabad house, for the first time ever, it became dangerous to be Jewish in India.
The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and Australian teams have been shelved. Japanese and Western companies have closed their Mumbai offices and prohibited their employees from visiting the city. Tour groups are canceling long-planned trips.
But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.
If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?
So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. Stimulus doesn’t have to be just economic.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
What I will miss most
The people. The people, the people, the people. The people here are so good and so genuine. When you make a friend in India, you make a friend for life. They will go out of their way to make sure you are comfortable, happy, and safe. They will be your family. They will love you and guide you. Protect you and council you. They will heal your wounds and spoil you with good tea and good conversation. They will shower you with gifts. They will ask you to join them for five hour dinners and you will spend four of the five hours eating the delicious feast they have prepared. They will complement you and give you the truth. Even if I spent every minute of the rest of my life trying, I know I would NEVER be able to repay the kindness and goodness people have shared with me here. Indian people have given me a newfound appreciation for just being, enjoying, living, and loving. They have shared their piece of the world with me, and for that I am a better person. I will always remember, with gratitude, India. And it is because of you- you know who you are… thank you.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Okay people...
Yo! I know, I know, you are mad because I don't update my blog regularly (I'm obviously talking to the only person who cares, MOM). And when I do, I throw up a bunch of pics with NO story. Or a story with NO pics. DEAL with it! I mean, who has time to update a blog while attempting to soak up every waking moment India has to offer?
NOT I.
Enjoy the pics. I will try to give you a "rough cut" of each experience in the near future- hopefully before I return home to Arizona iced tea and big, fluffy couches (two things I miss).
"You are the hero of your own story..."
Bree
Friday, November 7, 2008
Just in case you were wondering...
In India...
1. Everyone wants to know if you have had your breakfast.
2. Keys open up multiple locks. My friend Jyotsna locked her keys in her car and used Lelu's keys to open her door. Not the same model, not the same brand, not the same car. Hmmm. My neighbor Meenakshi uses her house key to open up the front door to my house. Hmmm.
3. Auto Rickshaw drivers often drive barefoot. They like to take naps in their backseats on the side of the road as well.
4. People say, "I'll just come"- meaning, I will leave and come back in the future. My brain still battles with this. Aren't you already here?
5. Toilet paper doesn't go in the toilet. Nough said.
6. Toilet paper is unavailable 96% of the time. A bucket of water is in its place. Nough said.
7. If you say "no thanks" or politely refuse any type of dish, people automatically think you do not eat it ever.
Friend: Oh, you don't take chutney?
Me: No, I just don't want it right now.
Friend: Oh, you don't like chutney?
Me: No, I just don't feel like eating it right now.
Friend (to other friend): She doesn't eat chutney.
8. If you are 30 an unmarried, it is a national calamity.
9. Milk comes in plastic bags. You boil it, then let it cool before you drink it.
10. Nobody says "bless you" when you sneeze. An Indian sneeze is the loneliest sneeze!
11. If someone touches you with their foot on accident they will immediately touch their forehead and mouth in a small prayer of forgiveness. It is extremely rude to touch someone or kick something with your foot.
12. Indian men hold hands. Not because they are gay- they just do. Always have. It is common and comfortable for two men to walk arm in arm, hand in hand. Women as well.
13. Bathing areas are not separate from the toilet area. Bucket baths are most common, and you bathe in the same space as the toilet and the sink.
14. Staring is common and "curious stares" are not intended to be rude. People just openly look. For a really long time.
15. Most women use whitening cream. Here we are, toasting in tanning booths while Indians are smothering themselves in whitening cream routinely. The fairer, the better. Is something wrong with this picture?
16. Men pee anywhere and everywhere. The world is their toilet. Close your eyes when you go, well, anywhere!
17. Girls do not pluck their eyebrows. They go for "threading." This is where one woman takes a looong thread between her teeth, moves her neck back and fourth like a chicken, and ties knots around the hair with the thread then jerks them out of your head. It is really, really cool.
18. If you do not wax your arms people will ask you why you don't wax your arms.
19. People eat lunch between 3-4pm and eat dinner between 10-11pm.
20. The number one meal deal at McDonalds is the Veggie Burger. And McDonalds does not serve beef. And they deliver... on bikes!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Monkey Business
I busted these two naughty monkeys on the playground. Gettin down outside of class... bad monkeys!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Indian Wedding- BLAST!
No celebration, world-wide, could compare to a true, Indian wedding. These people go ALL OUT! Indian parents pride themselves on finding a good family and a good match for their children. When the big day comes, they couldn't be happier and they invite everyone, and I mean EVERYONE to share in their happiness. There are so many wedding "functions" prior to the actual event... The groom and his family are spoiled by the bride's family and showered with gifts and sweets. The bride is pampered by all of the women in her family with material, jewels, henna and polish. Everyone is running around like crazy, hopping from party to party, and this is BEFORE the formal wedding dinner, party and ceremony!
Unlike Americans, Indians party first then attend the personal ceremony afterward. So walking in to an Indian wedding means walking in to fun, feasts, and dancing. When I visited my first Indian wedding bash, I patiently anticipated the grooms arrival, who (on his own good time) finally showed up a few hours later! The best part was, I couldn't even see him coming because a few hundred people (the groom's guests) were paving the way for him on the dark roads. From a distance I could see the precession slowly making their way, I could hear the live drums ripping through the crowd, and I could feel the floor trembling. As the madness approached, I could faintly make out the silhouette of the groom from the torches which were being carried around him. Caught up in the moment were the singing and dancing party of people in front of the groom- the biggest street party I have ever witnessed! And behind the chaos sat the groom... on horseback! Dressed in all white from head to toe, he rode tall and proud behind his family and friends. He wore a stunning, white headpiece which covered his face, and wouldn't reveal himself until greeted by the bride's family.
After the grand entrance and a million traditions later, the groom (headpiece off) sat on stage waiting for the bride to come down the aisle. And suddenly there she was- looking like an Indian GODDESS! Her suit was covered in every kind of embroidery, design, jewel, gem, rhinestone, pattern you could think up. The jewelry... wow. Intense. Next thing you know her mom shoved me next to her and there I was, walking her down the aisle! I look scared as hell. I was totally self-conscious thinking, "Okay, I met her this morning, I don't know if this constitutes a friendship worthy of maid-of-honor status" but that was just my western mind rambling. My new-found Indian self realized, "Indians want to share their joy with everyone. These people have accepted me into their family." That last thought truly registered when I woke up the next morning in a bed with five of my new family members. The after-math of a wedding can be brutal- around 30 people sleeping under one roof. Personal space? Not in India!!!
To make a long story short, It was awesome. Check out the pics. :)
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