Diwali in Bomb- Bay
By popular demand, I am reprinting my travel journals from India for the winter of 2004-5
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Well, here it is, such as it is. Firang, you’re asking? Simply the word for foreigner. It could refer to the Indian people’s fear of foreigners; it could refer to me fearing other foreigners. Or myself. Or Foreigner. I guess it will depend on the day. Right now it is 11:13am in Mumbai, which is 11.5 hours ahead of CST in the U.S. Don’t let the encoding fool you. I’ll try not to let my body clock fool me.
India is just too big for just one posting, of course, so I’ll just take little drops from the ocean and give them to you a day at a time, web access permitting. When I fill up my digital camera card this weekend, I’ll begin to post some photos of my first week here. Week? Make that five days. Five crammed-packed-please-let-me-see-a-John-Hughes-film-on-tv- so-I-can-feel-normal-again-days. I’m just starting to inhale, and it’s only Wednesday.
It is also the 10th, the first day of the three day holiday known in India as Diwali– it’s a one-stop shopping sort of national event, with the family togetherness and gift giving of Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza, the party down atmosphere of New Years (which it is, based on the Hindi lunar calendar), and the intense pyromania of July 4th– give or take some damn near dynamite stick-sized firecrackers that make M-80s look like ladyfingers. I was walking down one of the winding streets of the Fort District yesterday and one of these things went off nearby– a notice in the paper warned that anyone using a contraband firecracker (having a blast volume of more than 125 dBs, how considerate of them) WILL be prosecuted. Well, 90% of the law is enforcement, and the delighted look on these kids’ faces as I staggered away from ground zero let me know that there wasn’t even a remote possibility that this was going to be a holiday with a volume level below a typical Who concert. Did I tell you I brought earplugs?
The whole holiday culminates on Friday the 12th this year with multiple rickety towers being built along Marine Dr, the seaside thoroughfare that overlooks the Arabian Sea. The US State Department’s website for travelers has a preciously paranoid bit that warns foreigners about this event: pyrotechnics and loud music, dehydration concerns, becoming disoriented in the swirling masses of people. Damn, I thought I already did Austin City Limits Festival this year.
The research for the article on Thali cuisine has been going so well that I might actually make it out of Indian heavier than I came, which might be some sort of benchmark for all of the people I’ve known who have traveled here. I had a serendipitous introduction on the flight from Amsterdam to a man I think of as the symbol of retired urbane Bombay bachelorhood. He is a retired mechanical engineer named Mr. Jain, who, because of his world travels to other countries for business, and the help he received from others when he was in my position, has decided to line me up with what he and his friends consider the best pure veg restaurants in Mumbai. If you aren’t familiar with pure veg and Thali, we’ll get to that a little later. As for me, I need to balance eating all these amazin’ vittles and I watching my girlish figure — I have a hot connection to Bollywood extradom!
Here’s the first, won’t be the last.
namaste.