Ahmedabad...progressive tradition

Swaminarayan Mandir Lakupur

 How is it possible to value the old while modernizing for the present? Ahmedabad's citizens are asking just that of their council representatives and via the opinion pages of their daily newspapers.  This is a city of 6 million and growing fast. The buildings are a conglomeration of 14th century Islamic architecture, Persian, British influence, Raja extravagance, slumdog poverty, Hindu, Jain, Christian, Buddhist, you name it. So while Ahmedabad as a whole is modernizing, they are maintaining the buildings of the Old City by refurbishing inwardly without destroying the surface.

Apparently this is an old city who self-divided into self-contained neighborhoods with separate wells and pols. Each doorway led to a specific cult, religion, trade, with a latticed face room above the open door, pol, to allow or warn others. The city has contracted with many of these pol neighborhoods, so heritage walks can be conducted through homes. One Hindu community of 300 family members has reaped the benefits of daily, 365 days a year, walks through their homes and streets by having indoor plumbing. 

So we are taking advantage of this and touring with 13 Sri Lankan architectural students who are keeping silent about their foreignness, so as to pay Indian prices.  We notice what they notice. They notice the French wood frames tucked into the Islamic bird feeders.  So we interact with the Maned Chowk vegetable vendors, the Jumma Masjjid mosque, ragamuffin Ragasthan gypsies trying to fit in with the influx of rural Gujarats. No hostilities, just open doors and smiles. For their way of life is valued enough to be seen without judgment.

Pol over the open doorway

Our Sri Lankan architectual friends

Don't leave the condo... Chennai

Our airbnb condo could be anywhere. We have a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, kitchen, and living area overlooking the neighbors wide open backyard. We are ac, internet, 500 tv channels, fresh water delivered weekly. Our condo is on the second floor, B minus as C calls it. The other buildings are A and C.  Three squat buildings with paved parking for motorcycles and cars. Families walk their pooches. Dominos pizza delivers. And Uber is a favorite mode of traveling while doing business. 

But follow the paved parking to the street and it changes abruptly. Sidewalks are inbetween non'existant and started but never finished to sand poured and left to scatter. Walking is at your own risk in Chennai. The two lane road accommodates 4 and even 5 vehicles at times. Motorcycles and tuctucs push through with just a hair´s breath inbetween cars. Horns bellow. Cars inch in between what could have been a sidewalk and now usuable lane.  Motorcyclists jump the only noticeable curb and skim past a congested area. It is chaos. Total chaos.  C says he has driven in every country, over 40 countries, but he wouldn´t take the responsibility of driving in India.  It´s unpleasant driving. And it´s very unpleasant walking.  

There are times that I want to take a tuctuc for just a quarter of a block, so I won´t have to step over sludge, dodge a car, shake sand out of my shoe, jump over an open yet not finished government sewar line.  

I like walking. I´m a strong walker. I like walking city streets, parks, beaches, around mosques and temples, through forests, even malls. But this is not walking. This is survival. Take one half step past a broken tile and into the street or over exposed wires, and it´s an Indian hit and run.  Chennai is a city of 12 million and it just may be too big for me.

Romantic comedy in Chennai called Kadhalum Kadandhu Pogum

Romantic comedies have a language all their own.  First there is the female. Strong, headstrong, serious about living life to it's fullest, altering from her parent's lives, but usually supported by a father who has been won over by the new university graduate.

Then you have the male.  Sometimes a rogue, sometimes dapper, always handsome, never attached to a woman, a man's man who keeps the company of other men by drinking, kids like him, he takes young men under his wing to teach them the art of survival, has a heart of gold, and a sense of humor as long as you don't make him angry. In this case, he is the enforcer for the Tamil Mafia. 

She moves to the city for the dream job, enjoys life with her female roommates until the music changes and the boss is carted away by the police, her job is belly up, she has to move to a small apartment without letting her parents know, HE lives in the apartment across the way, she interviews for new jobs but has to deal wtih potential bosses propositioning her, ridiculing her, and never hiring her. 

It's not a love match. It's a friendship for two unlikely people who learn to respect and care for one another without loosing touch with who they truly are.  Do they end up together? Of course not. Were we to think this was a romantic twosome? Never. But did the director include a Bollywood dance number, a couple of fight scenes, wonderful wardrobe changes, a thoroughly sanitized and clean India? You bet.

It's 103 degrees out most days, and a day at the movies whether it's Tamil, Hindi, or English just didn't matter.  Staying out of the hot sun was going to be the magic. Who would have thought that showing up two hours early for the movie, watching couples and groups eat, talk, and play arcade games, as well as see a lovely Tamil movie would be the added bonus.

Brahmin Hindu Temple in Fort Kochi, India

  Sree Varadendra Kalyana Mandapan is a huge golden colored solid walled structure that covers 6 square blocks of any major city. Handmade brass ornaments and fittings from the 1500's follow the roof line. This is "upper caste Brahmin" says Rahim.  "Four doors. Only for upper Brahmin's," and he points to the "hindus only" sign.  Even within the Brahmin caste, there seems to be levels; are these castes as well? I need to study more.

  
The lower Brahmin's attend an older and much smaller Hindu Temple across the street. And the poorest of the poor attend a temple, down a back alley, so dilapidated I assumed it was rubble.  The oil lamps in the upper Hindu temple are 10 -12 feet tall and polished nightly to remove the drippings from the devotional oil burning.  The four doors, one on each side of this mini-village are open to the world, so we can peek in but never enter. The everyday people's oil lamp across the street is 7 feet and obviously used but is protected within the smaller temple that is open only in the mornings and the evenings.  The oil lamp at the poorest temple is outside the temple and is crusted with years of monsoons and intense heat as well as the black oil used to honor and to request favors.
  
Rasheed definitely has a take. His voice lowers to a whisper when he shows us the wooden hovels built inbetween spaces once used as gardening sheds for the upper Brahmins and now used as homes for a family.  We stand at the west door of the Brahmin's Temple and he reads the poster announcing dance classes for young children while well-dressed young girls show up with their fathers for these classes. The fathers nod as I say hello but quickly dismiss us; this is their private sanctuary and we will never belong. The Brahmin's elephant is chained and housed in quarters not far from the north gate in a stable with 500 year old teak beams. The upper caste Brahmin's private nursery school with 9 classrooms are across the street from a private park and fountain used only once a year and only by the Brahmins.  This is absolute luxury in an area of extreme poverty. Men selling handfuls of wood outside a vegetable stand is the norm. Buying a school notebook and uniform for the average citizen is weighed against eating well for a week. But the Brahmin's flaunt what they have. They literally walk over not around street vendors.

It's an interesting phenomenom, for I am obviously new to this sitatuion.  Altars with gods and oil lamps are scattered and worshipped throughout this area, but the large imposing building is used by just a few. It's almost like they keep their doors open to let others see what they cannot have - quiet shadded sanctuary to read a newspaper or pass time chitchatting, classes, a gym, a clean temple, even small concession stands.)

Slumdog in Kerala, part 2

T is a thin stately gentlemen living in one of the wooden shacks towards the rear and further away from the creek's toilet.  He says this area has been here for 48 years. The government leaves them alone and they leave the government alone now. 

He is hoping for foreign help, for "Kerala builds only for the navy." He points to the row of pink apartments and then to a barbed wire strung low to the ground. "Government owns."  

Rashid has been here many times. He keeps a canister on his TV and everyday he adds a 10 or 20 rupie note. "I don't have much, but I give."  Rashid, T, everyone is looking for an answer.  T tells me of Rebecca who is honchoing more toilets, Sarah who is working with the Germans, Lydia from GVI. The issues are many from funding, to taking on responsibility, to follow through, to getting the land perked and septic tanks built, and working with the government without dealing with the politics or bribes or confiscation issues.  This is a horrendous situation.  And it is our first glimpse into what we will probably witness time and again during the next few months.  

(Additional photos will be added soon)

But it's not just in India.  While we sit here overlooking a tree lined mountain near the tea plantations in Munnar, we speak of the slums in LA, SF, Mexico DF, Oaxaca, Rio, Nairobi, Quito.  It's a worldwide situation. People left the countryside and farming and smaller community tribes decades ago looking for a better way of life, and milllions haven't found it.  We go to these slums not to punish ourselves but to remember the human condition upfront. Unobstructive responsibility  and follow through are in the back of our minds. Personally, it's been over a year now since we have been part of a wide thinking community.  It's time.

Slumdog photo

G wants me to see the roof that fell in during the last mansoon.  Q wants me to see where she is sleeping now.  Bags normally used for cement are woven into white plastic bags amd corrugated awning material leaving eight inch gaps in which G has learned to manuever under.  It's a shambly mess.  There are jagged gaps in the roof large enough for a cat or child to come through.  The floor is a muddy mess with a rocky cemented asphalt patch upon which G sleeps.  It's criminal. It's no way for a human to live.  

Rahim brings us here for we have seen how the wealthy of Kerala and Fort Kochi live. We are living the tourist life of viewing temples, beaches, backwaters, mosques, city life, country life, synagaouges, tea plantations, all available to us for we have money in our pockets and time.  He knows we want a full picture and Kerala's picture is not complete without viewing the "Slumdog" as Rahim calls it.  So we are here to witness the multistoried government apartments built on government land to house families working for the government or military and the slums across the street.  The contrast is disturbing. Large clean pink buildings along the beach face a bank of bushes and trees and weeds partially hiding the 50+ homes all sharing two ramshackled toilets hanging over the polluted stream.  

G has lived here for most of her 20 years. She has a job cleaning in the city and returns to this at night, for this is where her mother lives. Her mother, Q, knows this is no way to live, but where to go, how to get there, when, and how leaves this illiterate woman lost. Q is a lively energetic woman who smiles as she shows me the other 3 rooms with mostly solid roof. Over the years she has accumulated a bed, numbers of chairs, etc and the kitchen area she keeps as clean as possible for the rats are huge and she says she is too old to fight them now. This is a pity!  

More women come to greet us and share their living situations.  None are better. None are worse. 

(More photos will be added soon)

The Dutch have built 4 corrugated tin houses for four families. The front doors remain open and we are invited in. This family has built a series of 3/4 walls within the house. A fan whirls in the living area where mom and two kids watch TV on the cement floor. Dad is sleeping on the floor of the next room for it is cooler than the one piece of furnititure in the house, the bed.  The kitchen area is a shelf with stacks of pans and plates but the cooking is done out back in a pit.  There is a 2 inch gap along the wall and roof line so air can circulate, but in this sweltering tropical heat, it also allows mosquitos to make life hell.  The Dutch say they will build four more homes. But these homes do not have toileting areas. Everyone walks through the sludge and rocks to the river or to one of the two plumbed sheds built by a German company.  It's a start. 

The Dutch hopefully will build more. The Germans will build more tanks and facilities. GVI, a British NGO has a "gap" program for volunteers taking 1-12 months off to work with the children and schools in this area.  Foreign expats living in the Fort Kochi area have been speaking about doing something regarding housing and sanitation here for years.  All these things are good starts, but it's been decades and G and Q and all the other people we meet today are still living here. The government does nothing.  In fact, the government owns the land these slum dwellers live on and the fear of bettering the property and bringing in the governemtn to confiscate the land is mentioned.  

Kathryn Boo has written the finest book on slum dwelling. I read it a year ago, but I never thought I would see it, live it, breathe it.  

Kerala's Backwater Country

Kodamthuruth is about as far away from the big city life of Fort Kochi as you can get. It's a small water town paddeled by punt canoe. We're here for only a few days living with Manu and his family. Hundreds of palm trees, a slight wind blowing at times, ducks quacking, various types of herons and egets and eagles fly overhead.  One partially paved road. Hundreds of miles of waterways with people living on canals instead of streets.

Sugu is our boatman with a PhD in water. He paddles or poles us for hours and hours in the evenings through the smallest canals leading to the rice paddies that do double duty, with the assist of pump houses, as tiger prawn beds. In the early morning hours he paddles us to the newer canals of homes and fishermen who are collecting last nights bounties or early morning fish from the Chinese Fishing nets

People are people wherever we go. While we look into the metal containers to see what kind and how many, fishermen are ready to pose for a photo but first they straighten their shirt or take off their turban or reach in to grab two of the bigger fish to be in the photo.  Women on the shore, just a few feet from us, smile and wave inbetween doing the laundry or watching the kids. Canoes passing us have a word for Sugu and do the Indian head jiggle to us to give consent to a photo. 

This is tranquility times ten. Reflections of the palm trees on the water are only slightly rippling. The 24/7 chanting from the mosque's loudspeaders, hammering from across the lagoon, birds coo cooing, and children's voices are the distant background nosie. And then the phone rings.  In the middle of a canal with eagles soaring and colorfully thick kingfishers posing, the mobile phone rings. We can only guess what's happening since our communication witht Sugu is in single word sentences, so we assume it's his wife asking him to pick up dinner. 

This is not a happy place - Dhoby Khana in Fort Kochi

It's difficult to enjoy an exciting outing when it's +95 degrees and so humid that dripping sweat with a slight breeze supplied from C lips doesn't help.  Not even Rahim's whispers of "harijan are a very low caste, very low" at the Dhoby Khana's Vannar Sangham  perks my interest.  That is until I enter the actual wash house. Long stalls of individual cemented washbasins are handled by men and women standing on 6 inch platforms bent over and scrubbing uniforms, thwacking sheets, or ironing shirts using 16 pound old fashioned irons with live coconut shells burning inside so as to keep the iron hot and the shorts, sheets and uniforms crisp.  

These are the Harijans who launder by hand for todays hotels, restaurants, the navy and local households.  The harijan caste were subjugated to do laundry in the 1500's when the Portuguese military, who were now the ruling class took over in southern Kerala, India.  Six hundred years later, harijan families are still doing laundry by hand.  Yes, there are schools so many of the newly educated will have more opportunities.  But there are still thousands of harijans forced into this industry.  Rahim says, "look around.  mostly old."  This is not a happy place. It is still slave labor for there are no other options "for they are harijans."  So I wonder if the next educated generation will purchase washing machines, dry cleaning business, be accountants for the business, or will they go another route.   

Anise and Henry in the Kerala Jungle

Anise is watchful. She knows one wrong move and it's over. But the tempatation is killing her.  She's been working on her stance for months now.  Put the chin up, the back straight, keep those black coal eyes half shut. He'll come around.  

Henry, on the other hand, is a pouncer. He knows what he wants and he likes to go after it when he can. When he was smaller, he had to be careful. He'd cautiously approach one step at a time. Sometimes he pace was too slow, but not now. 

In the twilight hours of the open air bathroom, the same play re-enacts daily.  We wait and see who will succeed. Will it be Anise the lizard or Henry the giant spider?