Mumbai
I Like the Way You Move
When I first mentioned to my friend from Mumbai that I was going to spend Sundays at the Dharavi Shelter working on art projects with kids, he scoffed at me. A Sunday, especially a slightly hungover one, in the middle of the Indian Summer, in the middle of a slum? He grew up in Mumbai, and yet, at 29, had never been to Dharavi. He had better things to do. When I finally dragged him to come with me last week, after months of convincing, his reaction took us both by complete surprise. No matter how you feel, how bad your day was, how much the heartbreak hurts, there is something about a child who doesn’t have much yet whose smile is the size of the universe, that gets you inside. My friend made himself right at home, sitting on the floor with the children and teaching them how to paint dil se — from their hearts. I think I’ll be seeing him there every Sunday…..
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Cricket or Controversy
Glitz and glamour is back in Mumbai as Lakme Fashion Week rolls into the season of the Indian Premier League, or the IPL. The IPL is a Twenty20 cricket competition that includes 8 teams, or franchises, consisting of the top cricket players from all over the world. The third season of the IPL started in India on 12 March 2010 and is due to last over a period of 45 days. As mostly everything else in India, the IPL is very heavily influenced by Bollywood. Bollywood actresses Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta are both co-owners of IPL Teams, and Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan is the owner of the ever-popular Kolkata Knight Riders team. All 55 matches will be followed by an afterparty and fashion show, organized by Bollywood star Arjun Rampal and his wife. The IPL Opening Party included all of the main Bollywood stars, and randomly, Lionel Ritchie and Akon. I went to a match last Saturday and Bollywood music played almost the entire time as cheerleaders danced to the tunes and the crowd went wild singing the songs and cheering on their teams.
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Country of Contradictions
India is the land of paradox and contradictions: ostentatious wealth and extreme poverty, deep-rooted tradition and modernity, religion and secular consumerism. Although this isn’t quite related to Bollywood, I wanted to comment on this conflict that I found omnipresent in Mumbai and around the nation. Every time I am impressed by how progressive Mumbai seems to have become, I am reminded just how much this modernity does not permeate the whole of the city and of the nation. It is still very much a country still learning how to straddle its classes and its worlds. It is common for people in Mumbai to have a daily maid who does the cleaning, cooking, washing etc. The standard monthly rate the maids charge is 1500 rupees, roughly $30. It is also common to possess a driver that can navigate the mean streets of Mumbai. He is always on call, and can work late in the night and early in the morning for hours on end. His standard monthly rate is about 7000 rupees, or $155. Then I think of the top restaurants and nightclubs in the city, where a standard drink can cost $20 and entry $60. Lakme Fashion Week draws international designers and the Indian Premier League draws international cricket stars in a nation where baby-throwing festivals still exist in the rural villages. People sleep in the streets outside of Shilpa Shetty’s new club named, unpretentiously, “Royalty,” and Fashion Week spends 10 million rupees on alcohol alone for the Grey Goose Lounge.
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Slumdog
It was the Oscar winning movie that couldn’t help but make the world fall in love. Given the success of Slumdog Millionaire, Dharavi was naturally my first foray into the vast slum life of this grand city. Even though I had already been working with slum kids at the Akanksha Centers, I thought it was important to explore their lives in the slum itself, to see firsthand where they came from and to understand their worlds. The Dharavi slum remains the largest slum in Asia, and with over 1 million people clustered in 1 square mile, it is the only slum that you can see from the moon. There are numerous tourist agencies that operate there and offer guided walks through the area. The tour guides explain that their mission is to show visitors that the slum is not filled with a lazy and apathetic people, but rather a hard-working community that collaborates to live another day. There are over 10,000 different industries in the slum, from the traditional pottery and textile industries to an increasingly large recycling industry that processes recyclable waste from other parts of Mumbai. Dharavi exports goods around the world, with the total turnover estimated to be around 650 million US Dollars per year. The men in the slums work 10 hour days, melting aluminum and plastic, without even masks to protect against the fumes. The women wash empty kerosene cans in boiling hot water from dawn until dusk, without gloves to shield them from burn. And they do this for a mere 150 to 200 rupees a day. To give you a first-hand sense of the disparity in Bombay, I was at a friend’s birthday party on Marine Drive where her Indian boyfriend bought the table a 21,000 rupee bottle of champagne. The bill for 6, which he covered, was over 100,000 rupees. In 2 hours. Sans food. Most people wouldn’t see that amount in their lives.
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Be The Change
Akanksha Foundation
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Up to four awards will be available to pursue projects around an aspect of international contemporary or popular music as a cultural force for expression. Preference will be given to creative projects that are conveyed in a dynamic fashion and are accompanied by a feasible plan. In addition to presenting unique projects on music as a global force for mutual understanding. Deadline to apply is March 1, 2012.