100 Days!

The pictures are of the Gateway of India and the Taj Hotel, followed by me in front of the 3 headed Shiva (god) bust at elephanta, then the durga pooja, and finally the Ravana that was burnt.

Not that I am counting but I just wanted to know so I went back to July 10th when I arrived and counted 100 days to today (October 17, 2008).

This blog will just tell what I have been up to and answer a few of the questions people leave as comments.

First my activities, I saw my first Hindi movie since the last blog; although I didn’t understand the dialogue I understood the story. It was called Kidnap and was about some billionaire’s daughter getting kidnapped then her dad is sent on a wild goose chase to find clues and such. I really didn’t have anything to compare it to so I enjoyed the movie but other people said it was bad so I guess it was bad. I don’t know if I have mentioned it but movies in India are a pretty sweet deal. You can get the ticket for about $2.40 and the popcorn and pop for $1.75. What would you expect at that price? While you get a sick theater where the seats recline (just the back so it’s not quite a lazy-boy but it’s comfy) and the seats are assigned on the ticket but you tell ticket guy before where you want to sit so you don’t have to wander around the theater scouting out the best seats only to have them stolen right before you go to sit. Anyways theaters are pretty ill here and they have to be, the average Indian sees way more movies per year (in theaters) than any Canadian I know and with Bollywood pumping out a new movie every week they have to see the movies fast.

On October 8th I had a good day although I was forced out of my comfort zone a few times. First I met up with a few exchange students and we went to the Elephanta caves which are some coves on an island 10km off the main island. You catch a boat from the gateway of India and take a 45 minute ride to the caves. Unfortunately they take advantage of tourists majorly there. For entry into the caves Indians pay 10Rs and foreigners pay 250Rs. No joke 25x what the Indians pay. That is only like $5.50 but still it is the principle. I guess it is a UNESCO world heritage site though. We also got to see the Gateway of India from the water which was pretty neat. Near the caves there were monkeys that were perfectly adapted to all the people there, they knew humans are afraid and took advantage of it. One Indian guy I saw was chased by a monkey and was forced to throw his bag containing a souvenir up in the air to distract the monkey.

The same day I went with my host family to a Durga Pooja it is some god with multiple arms that is a woman. What we did there was just offer gifts to the god and ate some food. I can’t believe how grand the idols of the gods are here it is insane.

On that same day I was invited to do this dancing thing. It is called Dandiya and it is like dancing with sticks that is sort of like line dancing but it looks like you are in combat with the other person with sticks. First I went to some big open area and there were many people dancing. This dancing is part of the festival navratri which means 9 nights roughly. What the festival entails is dancing for 9 nights, although I only danced for one night. What the dancing entails is swinging the stick with your left hand and contacting the other persons stick then with the right stick, then clapping the 2 sticks together and finally hitting both your sticks with the other persons 2 sticks and doing a spin. People said I was good but I know what I look like when dancing and it is not a pretty sight. After the big open space dancing with sticks a couple friends took me to a street dandiya dancing on one of their friend’s streets. I was already pretty tired so I asked not to dance but when the people there saw me I had to dance. This was a circle dandiya where after every round you change partners as there are 2 circles going around in opposite directions. The people who organized this event went crazy when they saw me and were like whistling and yelling “FROM CANADA” then everyone looked at me and cheered it was weird. When I was dancing it was like people forgot how to dance because they were like a deer in the headlights or they wanted to do something stupid to impress the foreigner. I was just about to leave and the organizers said no don’t leave and they called me up to the stage and said I was the chief guest. They made me make a speech and I gave out prizes, I got a rose and a sweet pen out of the deal so it was ok though. So I went from not wanting to dance to chief guest and dancing till my feet were red, actually my feet were red and I had to walk some of the way home without sandals. When you are out of your comfort zone that is what defines you as a person so this experience was good for me even if I didn’t think so at the time.

The next day was a holiday so I slept in a little but my room heats up way too much in the morning to sleep in too long. It is really way to hot these days I hear this is the worst part of the year. Yesterday was a high of like 37 C and low of 24 C; the low is still too hot. This day I went to the burning of a huge wooden person called Ravana. Ravana is the enemy in the Hindu epic poem the Ramayana and is a dude with 10 heads or something like that. So to show the defeat of Ravana they have a huge play then at the end they burn the Ravana and he has fire crackers and such everywhere, it was pretty impressive. What was more impressive was how man people were there. I still can’t get over how many people live here. After the burning of the Ravana there was a massive speech of a political party that is huge in Maharashtra, I did not stay for that because I went out for dinner with my host family and because politics can be dangerous here. There were bus loads of people going to hear the speech that were all very patriotic and extreme. That political party in insane, I don’t want to judge them too harshly but they think everyone in Bombay should be Maharashtran or at least be able to speak Marathi and they are particularly against the North Indians from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. I have heard of some of the things that the extremists do which include going up to cab drivers (who are generally from UP or Bihar) and asking them to speak Marathi if the cab drivers can’t then they will beat up the cab driver and the cab. Just yesterday extremist from the political party rioted at Railway examination centers where North Indians were taking examinations to work for the Railroad and prevented 6000 North Indians from taking the exam. They claimed inadequate representation of locals in the railroad industry as their justification for the riots. So there was just a speech, no riot, on the holiday but there was an insane police presence at the park where it was at. Like I said we went out for dinner that night, while we went out to the “suburbs” and while out there we locked the keys in the car so we needed to take the ½ hour dive back home in a cab and then take the other car to pick up the car with locked keys. Also the watchman at the building tried to pick our lock with a ruler which ended up breaking inside the gap between the window and door. I thought it was funny but others didn’t. Now we have half a ruler in our car door.

I will try to zip through the next few days because some people feel the blog is too long. I arranged volunteer work for myself at a NGO designed to uplift street children through sport and education, so I will probably start that pretty soon. There was a big Rotary meeting with the District Governor and I was to go there. I was out much of the day then I took a train to the closest station and proceeded to walk in the complete opposite direction of where I was supposed to be going. I ended up walking about 20 or more minutes in the wrong way and was just in the process of asking a cab driver where to go when the President’s wife pulled up in a cab and took me with her. It worked out well but I was still late. It is weird normally I would be worried about that stuff in Canada but here it is not that big of a deal. I know I will show up and guaranteed, even if you are an hour late, you won’t be the last one there. There was a birthday party for one of the exchange students I went to on the Saturday night. It was really fun. Next day I got up and did some volunteer work with a Rotaract club which entailed taking old people out who are in a Salvation Army old age home. So we gave them basics like toothpaste and soap then took them in a bus to a couple nice locations like a garden and a beach. It was weird because they all had western names like George and some had tattoos on their arms of crosses. I wanted to know their past but was unsure if they wanted to tell it because they may have been forced to change religions or names due to the Portuguese or British. It was good to see old people happy though. I played soccer the other day in the dirt. The next day I went to the planetarium and some art exhibits. In the last few days I also worked on Hindi, went to a travel museum, and went to a German movie (Sophie Scholl (spelling?)) with the Germans about some girl who was spreading information against Hitler and when she was caught and punished. It was in German with English sub titles but it was still powerful. Just a couple days ago I went to Bandra (nice shopping area). I didn’t buy anything but I had a memorable moment for the wrong reasons. I was in a Rickshaw and a eunuch came up and was asking for money then he/she saw us and was really weird. Of course I was closest to him/her so he/she was like I love you and touching my leg and stuff. It was terrible but where else could that happen other than Thailand I guess. Just a hint for the eunuch next time: if you want to be a girl try not to have facial hair. My host mom told me that if you are mean to them they may spit on you so I didn’t do anything but Jens was pretty angry at it. Also my host mom said that if you see a dead eunuch it is good luck. What is also weird is it is good luck to have a bird poop on your head. I find this funny what is good luck here would suck in Canada. Also in India you see people walking through the streets with a dead body sometimes (I’ve only seen 3) they are on a stretcher decorated with flowers and stuff, but if a eunuch dies then people just drag the eunuch standing up to their resting place. Like if you are helping someone off the sports field who just had a serious leg injury in both legs. I haven’t seen that and don’t think I will, the chances are low.

That is pretty much it for what I’ve been up to. The next post I will answer questions that people have posted in the comments section so if you want to ask a question you can this post.
Also I would like to wish my dad a Happy Birthday! Just so you know this is your gift, a blog entry.

Still loving every moment,
-Allen