Miss Adventures

I’m finally back to work after three restful weeks back in the States. Besides traveling around and seeing family and friends, I had the chance to while away a few afternoons in some national and state parks, including Wakulla Springs, where I saw alligators grinning in the sun, and Sagamore Hill, the former home of President Theodore Roosevelt. October in Central Park was such a wonder - crisp, cool, on the verge of autumnal metamorphosis - that we even spent an hour one afternoon in a rowboat on the Lake.

Now, after having felt the first chill of fall in more than 14 months, I’ve returned to an incredibly temperate and languid Bombay. It’s post-holiday time here (I missed Diwali and Eid-al-Ramzan festivities), but it’s approaching wedding season. Soon all the cricket lawns lining Marine Drive will be alight in candles and torchieres and festooned with marigolds.
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September Ho Gaya…September is gone. And I didn’t even have much time to blog. I did some traveling - again to the Golden Triangle (see below) - went to a film shoot (see my last post), attended the Elle Decor India Design Awards, and also found time to check out the Ganpati Visarjan (immersion) on Chowpatty Beach. For a brief moment, totally unrelated to my Bollywood filming, I was even offered a part in an Indian soap opera! Sadly, that didn’t work out because of timing. But I’ll still keep my hat in the ring for future opportunities.

All of that and work - including full-time and freelance editorial stuff - has not really allowed me to blog lately. Still, I wanted to share some stories and pictures because October will be even busier.
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Much has been made about a possible link-up between Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan, two of Bollywood’s biggest stars of the moment. As I’ve mentioned before, Rani is on a hot streak, having had hits with Black (a remake of the Miracle Worker) and the recent Mangal Pandey, as well as lighter fare like Hum Tum. Until recently, Abhishek has really only been known as Amitabh Bachchan’s son. But, he too has become an actor in his own right, most notably (for me, at least) in Bunty aur Babli, a Bonnie and Clyde-type caper that paired him with Rani. Their on-screen chemistry is incredible, a fact that has tabloids squawking about an off-screen romance between the two. (They haven’t even admitted to dating and already the film rags are discussing their marriage. Ah..the world of Hindi cinema…in which the only goal in life is to get married.)
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As Indian states go, Gujarat has a long way to go before becoming tourist friendly. It may be the homeland of many a global Indian (the Patel clan comes from there), but it’s lacking in some of the things that draw tourists, namely the Taj Mahal and alcohol.

Nevertheless, as Gujarat borders on Maharashtra, we decided to pay a weekend visit. Mind you, we didn’t go to the cities like Ahmedabad (home to Gandhi’s erstwhile ashram) or even to Surat. Instead, we flew into Rajkot and drove an hour to the village of Wankaner, a dusty, but bustling village and home to the Wankaner Palace.

Like most former Raj palaces, Wankaner has tried to position itself as a heritage hotel. A friend of ours had stayed there sometime back (”I’m personal friends with the Raj,” she said), so we figured we’d book. The idea sounded quirky enough, and we were under the impression that we’d be staying in the Ranjit Villas - in a real Maharaja’s palace! When we arrived, however, we found we were the only guests at the Motiwadi Royal Oasis, the summer residence of the Wankaners, just 2km away. As we would also discover, no one (other than, perhaps, close personal friends) is allowed to stay in the actual palace - the former Maharaja, Raj, and their family still live there - and no one even stays at the Royal Residency, as parts of it are still under renovation as a result of damage from the Bhuj earthquake.
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No matter what the raging controversy is about the new film about Mangal Pandey, whether it was too harshly anti-British or that Pandey, India’s first so-called freedom fighter, was blasphemously portrayed as a having a relationship with a nautch girl, the picture was a pleasure to watch. I went to the film with approximately 20 other Hindi learners last night, and was really pleased with the quality of the film, from the costumes and acting to the fight scenes and the dialogue (even though I wasn’t able to understand the poetry of the Hindi – mein seekh rahi hoon!) True, the dance scenes probably have no business being in a film about such a serious subject, but I found that they were a welcome break from the tense dialogue. Plus, how can you hate a movie in which Rani Mukherjee plays the nautch girl? Her raspy voice is cool and she’s got more substance to her than most of the other Bollywood actresses.
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The first thing I thought of when reading this front-page story in the Times of India today was, “Couldn’t they have let the poor thing live somewhere in the country?”

As I’ve said before, animal rights have a long way to go in this country. Full text of the “hobra,” an animal oddity similar to a liger, continues…
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I’ve often mused at the title of “I’m Not Rappaport,” the play-then-film about two men from varying backgrounds coming to terms with the ravages of old age. Even though I’ve never seen the play or the film, I was always tickled each time the phrase was used as the punchline of any dumb joke. After yesterday, however, I can kind of say I know what I’m talking about.

“I’m Not Bajirao” is the Bombayite take on the play, wherein an aged Parsi and his Marathi counterpart drone on about old age, the good old days, jokes, family, etc. The play has been running off-and-on for years in Bombay - Anthony likened it to the Shear Madness of Bombay, and thus something we should probably see. So, last evening, we caught a performance at the Tata Theatre, part of the NCPA, an arts complex I’ve lauded before.
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Three days after record-breaking rains brought Bombay to a halt, I’m finally beginning to hear about my friends’ and colleagues’ unbelieveable journeys. South Bombay, as I’ve mentioned before, got hit with 7 inches of rain on Tuesday, but, save for the lack of bustle, it looked pretty normal on Wednesday. On the other hand, the suburbs saw a lot of death and destruction.
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Well, I’m still pretty high and dry here in Bombay. But now I see that the international papers have caught on to our little rain problem. So, it must be a big deal.

Actually, it rained about seven inches in 24 hous in South Bombay. The suburbs, on the other hand, got 27 inches of rain!! Too crazy.

Again, Anthony and I are fine. But it seems the stories are still developing. So if you want to keep track, check out Google News or do your own search:

Nine hours later and…it’s still raining! No flooding where I am, but most of the city is shut down. I guess this is the equivalent of a blizzard, so I’ll concede that flooding is inevitable at this point.

News about the Monsoon:

• Maharashtra rains leave many dead [BBC News]
• Rains bring life to standstill in Mumbai[Mid Day]
• Rains wreak havoc in Mumbai; 150 killed in Konkan[Times of India]
• What’s in store today[Mumbai Mirror]
• Monsoon brings Mumbai to halt [Business Standard]
• Heavy monsoon rains cause travel chaos in Bombay [Reuters]

I’ve been pretty unimpressed by the monsoon so far. Sure, it came in with a bang. Then again, the flooding has happened mostly in the suburbs, not in the city.

In fact, the weather in Bombay has been mostly overcast with occasional sun and sprinkles. The locals said that the rains had “regularized,” meaning that they were coming mostly at night instead of haphazardly during the day. There was a time last week when a colleague of mine was convinced she wouldn’t really need an umbrella for the rest of the season.

Monsoon is really just another name for a weather pattern, a storm. Even when it pours, it never really thunders. I was inappropriately worried about the monsoon shortly before it came, but now I realize that it’s nothing to be scared of.

“Thunder never happens when it’s raining…” Today, that changed.
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Until last week, visiting museums in this country has been a mostly unsatisfying experience. Luckily, we stumbled upon the last day of a week-long exhibit at the Jehangir Gallery entitled “Revisualising India.” Included in the show were pieces from the Osian’s Archive & Library of Cinema and Popular Arts, an auction house and archive center in New Delhi. On display were hundreds of vintage, painted Bollywood posters, photographs from film sets from the 1920s, Ravi Varma lithographs, political posters depicting Gandhi, Nehru, and other folk heroes, art deco style travel posters of Indian destinations, and - for some reason - several Communist-era film posters from Poland and expressive marionettes from Indonesia.
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In case you missed it, MTV launched its newest offspring the other day:
MTV Desi [press release]
From my Bombay-entrenched perspective, I’m surprised that it’s taken so long to put together the channel. Why not just beam MTV India into homes? Well, other than the fact that the VJs here go in and out of Hindi and English (Hinglish) so quickly and with so much slang, you can’t wait for the next video/movie ad to come on. The other problem is that most of the “videos” that are played here are basically musical snippets from up-and-coming Hindi films, many of whch will take a while to reach the DVD stores in Jackson Heights and elsewhere. At least MTV India plays music - I don’t think regular MTV has played a video in about 10 years.

I’ve made some really cool Bollywood/Indi Pop mixes for some of my friends back home that I’ll get in the mail one of these days. In the meantime, if you’ve got DirecTV and money to burn, take a look at MTV Desi. Alternately, here are links to some artists currently on my headphones. Yes, try as I might to avoid it, I have succumbed to the desi dance ishtyle!
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Tired of bland veg curries and dals? Think sheekh kebabs are the only non-veg contribution to Indian cuisine? Then, check out Goa. Thanks to the Portuguese, who left their Euro-Christian tastes for meat, Goan menus include beef and the ever-popular goan sausage. Being on the coast and blessed with wide rivers and creeks, Goan chefs also make the most of the bounty of the sea, with shrimp, lobster, and freshwater fish figuring prominently into daily specials and family feasts. And, although Goan cuisine is not that well-known, even outside of western India, one of its dishes has come to be a staple of curry shops round the world: the dreaded, but oft devoured, vindaloo.
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Why would anyone want to visit Goa, the ultimate beach destination in India, during the middle of the monsoons? I’m sure a lot of people will be asking that when I tell them that Anthony and I visited there last weekend, a good two to three weeks into the rainy season. But, around these parts, going to Goa at this time of year is one the best kept secrets. There are a number of air and hotel packages, the tourists are gone, and the rains revive the foliage to a lush green.
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If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’m a sucker for anthropomorphic humor. That kind of stuff is easy to find in the New Yorker, and luckily the mag in online.

I’m a little late posting this, but I only read this article over the long weekend, as I was tucking into back issues of all of my magazines while I enjoyed a vacation in Goa…more on that later.

Hope everyone in the U.S. and all you Ami-expats had a happy 4th.

As I’m sitting here at about 3:15 on Saturday afternoon, the skies are overcast, the peepul and palm trees are swaying, and the rain is taking a short coffee break before coming back to work.

The monsoons have arrived in Mumbai, and it has now rained every day since last Saturday, when the showers finally broke. There have been occasional breaks in the weather, and the sun, though masked behind some cloud-like milkiness, even came out for about half an hour yesterday. But, then, the rains will just start again, like someone turning on the faucet: heavy, windy, and capable of flooding highways and homes.
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Now that summer has ushered in the monsoon, there seems to be hardly any justification for India to use sun-baked haziness as a reason to be blinded by Sania Mirza’s incredible mediocrity.

Anytime that the young Indian tennis star plays, it’s a national obsession - at least as far as Indian newspaper editors are concerned. Stories about Sania help break up the monotony of articles on Sachin Tendulkar’s waning abilities and soccer game results that are more than a day old (thanks to the time difference at press time). So, of course, when the 18-year old phenom played at Wimbledon’s Centre Court yesterday, all eyes - and media outlets - were on her.
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Bombay is extremely lucky. The rains finally started here on Saturday, albeit late. These rains were to start on June 10, then June 14. Then, mid-morning Saturday, a little thunder rolled in. And with it, a brief respite from the blazing sun. Can you believe that there hasn’t been any measurable daytime rain in the city since November 2?

The monsoon weather pattern is certainly curious. Right now, we’re getting premonsoon showers. These are the types of gentle rains that keep you in bed late on a Sunday morning. I’m nervous for when the real monsoon arrives, when Mumbai streets turn to lakes and umbrellas are useless. I hear that’s what happens. Though, people, especially fellow expats who after years here are still squeamish about India, sometimes exaggerate.

For months, expats had been telling me about how horrible the weather in May would be. I had heard that it would be unbearably hot, so hot that my nostrils would burn to breathe in the afternoon air. It was pretty warm on some days, though no hotter than a July afternoon in downtown Washington, DC. In fact, I believe that it was hotter on the U.S. East Coast last week than it was here. Thank god for those Arabian Sea breezes.

Too bad the rest of this country isn’t as fortunate. Central and Western India has been experiencing a horrible heat wave. In fact, temperatures reached 51 (123.9) degrees yesterday! I hope the rest of India doesn’t have to wait too long for some heat relief.

Bombay can be extremely noisy, crowded, and inhospitable at times. But, at other times, you stumble across these tranquil little neighborhoods. One such place is Walkeshwar. Adjacent to glitzy high-rise apartments and old-money bungalows, Walkeshwar is a fisherman’s village on the top of tony Malabar Hill. There, the stone houses are incredibly modest, the alleys are shoulder-width, and the families are probably packed two to three to a home. But there’s also this serenity that, to me, evoked a bit of dead-end lanes in Venice during medieval days. There was a meditative stillness.

The central focus of Walkeshwar is Banganga Tank, a large pool that is said to have evolved when Ram, searching for water, shot an arrow into the earth. The resulting trickle created this “tank,” which is considered holy to Hindus. It is used for funereal rites and, during the sweltering Bombay days, also makes a great swimming hole for the locals.

I didn’t so much stumble upon Walkeshwar/Banganga as seek it out. Anthony had visited there some months before when I was down with jaundice. And, a few friends had also told me about it. As the monsoon was quickly approaching - and another out-of-towner was looking to do some sightseeing - we went there last Saturday.
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