Holy Threads

On Belgian television, a sizeable proportion, if not encroaching upon a small majority, of the advertisements are for laundry detergents, and specifically those that make you clothes as white as the purest of snowfalls from heaven, because, god forbid, the greatest of all sins is to be seen in public with a dirty shirt, or even worse, for I know, a hole. Somehow, at nearly any given point, at least one article of clothing of mine has a hole that “shouldn’t” be there or, as I like to say, I often “wear my food so that you don’t need to ask me what I had for dinner.” Apparently, by now, I should know better judging from the looks I receive when I dare to walk the streets of the über-bleached and for sure, no holes in one’s shirt. Bringing me to one of life’s funny, little ironies.

After a breakfast of chole, which was a first for me, I started my day, walking towards the Gateway to India, thinking I would hit the caves of Elephanta first. However, along the way, weaving my way through the harkers and barkers of wares, services, and asking for alms, I gave in to a friendly face. Sishta, from Bangalore began in the usual way here of asking where I was from. Somehow everyone seems to know that I’m not from India...go figure. Anyway, because of a rather non-pushy mannerism, I gave in to him and engaged in the conversation, which from my limited experience, almost never ends free of charge once you begin it.

So, we chatted it up, and “luck” would have it, Sishta was a tour guide...imagine my surprise. He walked me up to the moorings of about twenty idle boats, having talked up Elephanta for the past ten minutes, then looks at me sheepishly, with a slightly-lilting head movement that Indians do that I will never be able to imitate, and says, “but, you can’t see the island very well in the morning, too much fog, you need to come back later.” But, “lucky” for me, Sishta had a solution...imagine my surprise.

So, we turned around and began walking back towards the hustle and bustle of the Colaba streets and he told me of a “tour” he could offer, which was basically getting me a cab and sending me along with the cabbie on a scavenger hunt of about fifteen destinations, which I agreed to since for sure I could not do this on my own in one day. After handing me off to Rajan, from Agra (have yet to meet someone from Mumbai yet), we were on our way through the teeming madness that is the streets of Mumbai. I have decided that the only formula that I can come up with is: to multiple the chaos, sounds, traffic, and street activity of Naples times that of Istanbul, then cube that sum. That might approximate Mumbai, maybe. If you have ever been to one of those two cities, you can begin to appreciate the absurdity of that formula, though it is rather accurate I think.

First stop, a view into one of the slums at washing time. This is what I saw at 9 am today, Mumbai time. There are parallel scenes in Bertolucci’s Little Buddha in which Keanu Reeves as Siddhartha (and, I will admit that I quite like his performance), the yet-to-be-awakened Buddha and that of two of the three re-incarnations of Lama Norbu, two little boys, one Nepalese and one American, “encounter the poor” for the first time. For Siddhartha, he breaks his father’s ban on him leaving the be-jeweled and protected life within the confine of the palace walls and dodges into the slums of his father’s capital city, while the latter are running wildly through the backstreets of Katmandu, fighting over a hand-held computer game. Both run into the respective slums of the time, but the cinematic shots are the same scene, the poor have not changed in Time, nor Space.

Walking through the streets this morning into the Mumbai slum was just that, a jolt out of Time and Space. I say this mainly because I had no prior reference point on which to hang this piece of mental laundry than that images from the movie, which I now see was no movie set, but probably an actual side-street of Katmandu.

This is the communal washing and bathing place for approximately 15,000 people per toilet.

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SORRY

After visiting other sites including a Jain temple in the wealthy neighborhood on Malabar Hill (which is what all of the families are at the Antwerp International School), viewing the hanging gardens (much less impressive than I imagine those of Babylon of old), the entrance to the Zoroasteran “Towers of Silence,” where the corpses of the ever-dwindling Parsi adherents are laid to the elements for the vultures to eat, the Gandhi House and Museum (more on that in a separate post), and several other places, we stopped in front of the Regal Cinema, where I sought refuge yesterday during a deluge, and there was Sishta, waiting smilingly for us.

He wanted me to go to one last place before dropping me off at the ferry landing in order to go to the caves, as the fog had lifted (and, more on that in a separate post), an emporium (imagine my surprise), where apparently Bill Clinton, Hillary, and Chelsea had visited. It was upscale, and this being my first couple of days in India, I had no intention on buying anything, but went in to be polite. However, it did not really matter if I had wanted to. I had made it in about ten feet before the floor manager came up to me and said, “can I help you,” but not like “can I help you find something nice to buy?” but rather, “can I help you find the door?” He gave me a once over (actually a twice and a thrice over, shaking his head indignantly), and guess what, the shirt I was wearing was pretty ratty as I had planned on going hiking on the island first and my shoes looked pretty much like I had just been walking through the slums, as I noticed then at that moment they were all barefoot on nice, afghan rugs in the store, all with very clean clothes and very clean feet.

I mumbled something along the lines of “no, I had just come in to look.” I turned, wanted to head back to the door, and before I could count to three, Mr. Manager had finagled his way between me and the stairs opposite the entrance leading up to the even nicer gallery, placing his body in such a way that I could not go up, even if I had wanted to, and he said, “there’s nothing up there,” barely dropping the “for you.” So, the security guard let me out. Sishta, who had been waiting outside for me, asked what had happened, and I said I wasn’t interested to avoid causing him embarrassment for bringing such a customer to them. As we were walking back in the car, Sishta took hold of the hem of my shirt and said, “Mr. Robert, what happened to your shirt, did you know that you have several holes in the back?”