Salaam Bombay - The Insanity Continues
"Utho! Get up!"
It's 4:30 and some crazy man is going around, telling people to wake up at this untimely hour. It's almost as bad as Mammi repeatedly screaming my name on Saturday mornings, demanding I get out of bed when that's the last thing I want to do. Within five minutes, the bathroom is flooded by very aggressive women wanting to get ahead everyone else. People are already washing their bedsheets, slapping their wet clothes against the concrete which probably woke up the people that still managed to continue sleeping. I'm semi-awake at this point, and even though I don't consider myself part of the 99% percent of the desi population that drinks chai, I decide to succumb to it's warmth and suprisingly filling sweetness.
The day didn't start until 8 am when the protestors headed out to the InterContinental Hotel. They were outside the hotel's gates, some of them were chaining themselves to the metal railing. Kate and I had other plans, as being potentially arrested wasn't on my agenda anyways. Rachna suggested that we go inside the hotel and under some pretext, sit in the lobby and inform the individuals outside of what was going on. According to our story, Kate's father was participating in the conference, and we were waiting for him to come out and have lunch with us. The fun part was talking to people without them actually knowing why we were there. Initially, we sat down in an area that was also occupied by the lady that was organizing the conference. She gave us some information on what was going on that day and who was speaking, like the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, a certain Shri Ram Vilas Paswan. We also managed to get some information out of two individuals representing the Italian Trade Commission, as Italy was the partner country for the conference. Our subtle inquiries didn't always have fruitful results. There was a guy with a huge camera and hence was presumably a member of the press but I couldn't decipher who he was with. There were two other men that were sitting near us in the lobby. It turned out that they were travel agents, and they ended up giving us a huge list of places to visit in Bombay. The Union Minister showed up only after we had left the hotel and joined the protestors outside. Kate, Tony, Jen, and Diana couldn't participate proactively since they weren't Indian citizens and could possibly get deported were they arrested. Fortunately for me, that wasn't a problem. And no, I didn't get arrested, even though there was a group of policemen and policewomen keeping a watch on our (very large) group of supporters. Finally, when the Union Minister's posse did approach the gate to the hotel (an hour after his expected arrival, go figure) he stopped on the road, got out, and walked towards us, accompanied by a multitude of security personel and flashing cameras. We had caught his attention.
I didn't hear what was said at the time because of the crowd that was densely packed around the center of activity. But after the minister had spoken everyone clapped, so I figured something positive had come out of the short interaction. Later, I found out he had made certain claims/promises such as Dow should clean up the Union Carbide factory site, the water contaminated families should be compensated along with the gas affected families, etc. I wasn't terribly impressed; he's a politician, and that's what politicians do best. I believe the success of the event was getting him to talk to the survivors and getting media coverage as a result of his political status. The next morning's paper had a huge picture of three hands chained to a metal railing. No story, but a picture. Some coverage is better than none at all, right?
We used the extremely efficient local train system to travel back and forth from the hotel and wherever else we needed to go. Men were strictly prohibited from riding the ladies' section of the train, something I witnessed when a man was running toward the train and happened to get on our compartment. Almost immediately a group of women stepped forward and demanded he get off the already speeding train. As soon as the next stop arrived, he was promptly pushed off, and I felt a slight wave of sympathy for the poor chap. Having a separate compartment for females didn't excuse us from being nudged, pushed, and bruised in general, not to mention pressed flat against at least five different bodies at a time. Whoever said females were demure had obviously never ridden in the ladies compartment of the Western Railways train.
By the third day in Ambedkar Hall, I'd gotten to know a few families quite well. Nafisa, her brother "Shoaib Akhtar", and I spent a lot of time talking to each other. Two sisters, Yasmeen and Nasreen wore matching green suits and kept insisting that I wear their nice clothes, because the white salwar that was brown by this point just wasn't doing it for me. That morning I had woken up before the other volunteers and managed to squeeze in a bath at 5 am when the crowd of women was not terribly dense. While I was attempting to update my journal in the pre-dawn light, one of the older women with a honey-sweet raspy voice volunteered to braid my hair. I agreed (there was no reason not to), but wasn't expecting her to actually comb it. The pain of detangling my unwashed locks reminded me of the good ol' days when Mammi used to fix my hair every morning and put those huge, currently unpopular yellow ribbons in it. When my hair was throroughly combed and tightly braided, I felt like a young girl getting ready for school. More importantly, I felt a strong sense of acceptance in this community I was going to be in for six months. After the goodbyes and see-you-in-Bhopals, only a few people remained. Our train to Jalgaon was not this night, but the next. We had a whole day and a half to explore the city. So that's what we did, and the Bombay that I saw was so different from anything I'd ever seen before...
It's 4:30 and some crazy man is going around, telling people to wake up at this untimely hour. It's almost as bad as Mammi repeatedly screaming my name on Saturday mornings, demanding I get out of bed when that's the last thing I want to do. Within five minutes, the bathroom is flooded by very aggressive women wanting to get ahead everyone else. People are already washing their bedsheets, slapping their wet clothes against the concrete which probably woke up the people that still managed to continue sleeping. I'm semi-awake at this point, and even though I don't consider myself part of the 99% percent of the desi population that drinks chai, I decide to succumb to it's warmth and suprisingly filling sweetness.
The day didn't start until 8 am when the protestors headed out to the InterContinental Hotel. They were outside the hotel's gates, some of them were chaining themselves to the metal railing. Kate and I had other plans, as being potentially arrested wasn't on my agenda anyways. Rachna suggested that we go inside the hotel and under some pretext, sit in the lobby and inform the individuals outside of what was going on. According to our story, Kate's father was participating in the conference, and we were waiting for him to come out and have lunch with us. The fun part was talking to people without them actually knowing why we were there. Initially, we sat down in an area that was also occupied by the lady that was organizing the conference. She gave us some information on what was going on that day and who was speaking, like the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, a certain Shri Ram Vilas Paswan. We also managed to get some information out of two individuals representing the Italian Trade Commission, as Italy was the partner country for the conference. Our subtle inquiries didn't always have fruitful results. There was a guy with a huge camera and hence was presumably a member of the press but I couldn't decipher who he was with. There were two other men that were sitting near us in the lobby. It turned out that they were travel agents, and they ended up giving us a huge list of places to visit in Bombay. The Union Minister showed up only after we had left the hotel and joined the protestors outside. Kate, Tony, Jen, and Diana couldn't participate proactively since they weren't Indian citizens and could possibly get deported were they arrested. Fortunately for me, that wasn't a problem. And no, I didn't get arrested, even though there was a group of policemen and policewomen keeping a watch on our (very large) group of supporters. Finally, when the Union Minister's posse did approach the gate to the hotel (an hour after his expected arrival, go figure) he stopped on the road, got out, and walked towards us, accompanied by a multitude of security personel and flashing cameras. We had caught his attention.
I didn't hear what was said at the time because of the crowd that was densely packed around the center of activity. But after the minister had spoken everyone clapped, so I figured something positive had come out of the short interaction. Later, I found out he had made certain claims/promises such as Dow should clean up the Union Carbide factory site, the water contaminated families should be compensated along with the gas affected families, etc. I wasn't terribly impressed; he's a politician, and that's what politicians do best. I believe the success of the event was getting him to talk to the survivors and getting media coverage as a result of his political status. The next morning's paper had a huge picture of three hands chained to a metal railing. No story, but a picture. Some coverage is better than none at all, right?
We used the extremely efficient local train system to travel back and forth from the hotel and wherever else we needed to go. Men were strictly prohibited from riding the ladies' section of the train, something I witnessed when a man was running toward the train and happened to get on our compartment. Almost immediately a group of women stepped forward and demanded he get off the already speeding train. As soon as the next stop arrived, he was promptly pushed off, and I felt a slight wave of sympathy for the poor chap. Having a separate compartment for females didn't excuse us from being nudged, pushed, and bruised in general, not to mention pressed flat against at least five different bodies at a time. Whoever said females were demure had obviously never ridden in the ladies compartment of the Western Railways train.
By the third day in Ambedkar Hall, I'd gotten to know a few families quite well. Nafisa, her brother "Shoaib Akhtar", and I spent a lot of time talking to each other. Two sisters, Yasmeen and Nasreen wore matching green suits and kept insisting that I wear their nice clothes, because the white salwar that was brown by this point just wasn't doing it for me. That morning I had woken up before the other volunteers and managed to squeeze in a bath at 5 am when the crowd of women was not terribly dense. While I was attempting to update my journal in the pre-dawn light, one of the older women with a honey-sweet raspy voice volunteered to braid my hair. I agreed (there was no reason not to), but wasn't expecting her to actually comb it. The pain of detangling my unwashed locks reminded me of the good ol' days when Mammi used to fix my hair every morning and put those huge, currently unpopular yellow ribbons in it. When my hair was throroughly combed and tightly braided, I felt like a young girl getting ready for school. More importantly, I felt a strong sense of acceptance in this community I was going to be in for six months. After the goodbyes and see-you-in-Bhopals, only a few people remained. Our train to Jalgaon was not this night, but the next. We had a whole day and a half to explore the city. So that's what we did, and the Bombay that I saw was so different from anything I'd ever seen before...
posted by Pragya | 9:27 AM
1 Comments:
your memoirs are very reminiscent of a fine balance...good job on fighting the politics and the politicians btw
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