Good Morning Mr. Taylor

"Yes yes! Please come!"
The words ring out with a thick Indian accent, as I catch, out of the corner of my eye, the figure bustling about the one room apartment. I'm bent over, still half asleep, struggling to remove my sandals before I enter the room.

"Chapatti? You want chapatti?" the over-excited voice rings out again.

At this point I've managed to make my way inside, and take a chair next to Zach. We exchange knowing smiles, happily but wearily accepting our breakfast fate.

"Toast! Have toast!" booms Mr. Taylor, smiling from ear to ear as he sets down a small metal plate piled high with whitebread toast, easily half a loaf.

Mr. Taylor must be in his late fifties, but moves like a twenty two year old office intern who's had too many cups of coffee.

"Eggs yes? Double-fry? Double-fry?"

"Yes, double-fry please, Mr. Taylor." we both say, and I recall the first day we had eggs and I had foolishly asked for single-fry, receiving two eggs that had nice crisp undersides with copious amounts of uncooked whites on top.

Mr. Taylor frenetically moves about the kitchen area, not in fact doing anything, simply hovering about his wife as she prepares the eggs. Mrs. Taylor is his opposite: quiet, calm and somewhat stoic in her manner. I sometimes think that I catch her rolling her eyes at her husband's antics, though I'm not quite sure.

"Yes yes! Have more toast! Apply the butter! Apply the butter!"
Zach and I smile at each other again, 'apply the butter' has become our signature phrase of reference when telling others about our breakfast host, or when simply joking amongst ourselves.

"Here! Yes! More chappati!" he leans, kippah almost falling off of his head, to place the pancake-shaped Indian bread on our plates.

We sigh again, lacking the energy to fend off the onslaught of food. For the first couple of weeks we tried to convey to Mr. Taylor, both verbally and non-verbally, that each of us simply can't eat five chappatis, eight slices of toast, two eggs, two cups of chai and two bananas each morning. We discovered that the best strategy is to leave things on the plate when we can't eat any more, and upon third and forth servings make the universal 'too full' motion, simultaneously leaning back and rubbing our stomachs.

Zach is convinced that Mr. Taylor is just a very well intentioned obessive compulsive Indian. Couple this with a Jewish background and you've got a killer combination. While we've been enjoying our time in the homestay, Zach and I both acknowledge how difficult it can be to deal with our overzealous host each morning. This weekend we move into our own flat in a suburb of Bombay called Bandra, and each morning when we have eggs and toast, we will apply the butter, keeping Mr. Taylor in mind.

Working like a steer. (Or maybe not.)

I began working at my partner NGO this past week, and it is immediately apparent that working in India is not separate from living in India; things move at a different (often seemingly slower) pace, interacting and communicating with people takes somewhat large amounts of effort and patience, and even when you don't have a specific task, it's tiring.
I guess I might first clarify what it is that I'm doing here. I have been partnered with a non-governmental organization called Saloka, meaning amity in Hindi. The project's main goal is to promote communal harmony in Bombay through conflict resolution and peace education. I am set to take on a number of tasks while I'm here, but as of right now, I am simply reading materials on the history of the Hindu/Muslim conflict here in India, as well as reading evaluations and annual reports from my NGO to increase organizational knowledge and really wrap my head around what exactly it means to do conflict resolution work.
This is stimulating, but not quite as stimulating as going into the field today and observing a school visit conducted by the organization. I went with a number of people from Saloka to a secular Muslim girls school, where the main language spoken was Urdu, but the sessions were conducted in Hindi. As such, a lot of my energy was spent trying to understand the basic idea of what was happening in the sessions conceptually, aside from simply observing the way the group dynamic existed during the sessions. While I felt that my time was fruitful one way or another, (at the very least to increase my language skill) I'm excited to be doing English medium school visits in the next couple of weeks.
The definite high point of the day though was after a session ended, one class sang the Indian national anthem. After they were finished, a couple of the girls start whispering and looking at me. At this point I was used to getting this kind of reaction, as being a white male in a Muslim girls school is like wearing a flourescent green velvet tuxedo at a bar mitzvah. They continued to chat though, and then started to say something to the people from the organization. Apparently, they wanted to hear my own national anthem. I was shocked, embarrassed, and even somewhat honored all in the same moment. I hadn't sang the national anthem in probably over a decade, but somehow managed to come up with a reasonably listenable rendition of the star spangled banner for a group of 30 ten year old Muslim girls, after which they laughed and clapped emphatically. I blushed as they continued to laugh, and was told after that they loved it. One of the people from Saloka said that even though I was just observing from the sidelines all day, my presence there was important, if only for the students to see and relate to a foreigner. A famous physicist once said that you can't observe a situation without changing it, and I'm finding that in India I will have to find a way to observe with positive effects, even if it means more national anthems.

Not quite a New York commute...

So everything goes well here in Bombay. The five of us here seem to be settling in, or at least as much as you can settle into India. While I've mentioned to others that my experience here has been distinct in that it hasn't been nearly as harsh as my previous experiences with Indian cities in terms of noise, pollution, and most notably visible poverty, the truth of the matter is that even these seemingly lower levels don't neccesarily make the experience easier.

Living in a city in the West can wear a person down, I feel, and living in a city in the developing world, as opposed to passing through, is just plain hard, there's no two ways about it. The key, I've found, is to focus on the positive interactions that one has with the culture, and to laugh when you can. Attitude is everything, and a positive one goes a long way here. And so goes the story of my commute.

Commuting in Bombay is always an adventure. Whether it be the seemingly crazy taxi drivers that always somehow get you there without a scratch (though sometimes without your lunch as well) or the overcrowded trains with people hanging out the sides, getting anywhere here requires patience and little bit of city instinct that New York prepared me for well. My choice mode of transport here is the bus. I don't why, but I somehow find it charming.

Today, as I caught the bus going uptown on my way home, it starts to pull away (as Bombay buses are wont to do) as I grabbed the side handle, my body still fully in the street. I had been waiting pretty long for the bus though, and was not going to be defeated. I grabbed, I ran, and I leapt onto the number six bus as it yanked my flying body fully into the turmoil of a Bombay commute.

Mission accomplished, the hard part is over, right? Not quite. A half hour passes, and as my stop nears, I start to slink my way between people towards the front of the bus. Alas, I had not started early enough, and as the bus stopped I was still trying to politely say excuse me in Hindi to the woman blocking my way. My stop long gone, I wrangled myself right to the front door, trying to figure out what to do. The next stop wasn't for a really good while, and I was determined, like a real commuter, to avoid the pricey cabs at all costs.

'What would an Indian do?,' I thought to myself. As the bus approached a pool of traffic and began to decline in speed, I took what looked like my only chance at the slowest point, and jumped off the bus, hitting the ground running as did. I wasn't running fast enough though, as my momentum half a second later hurled me into a tumble in the middle of the street. So I did what any good commuter making the ultimate commuting faux paus would do, I made a quick recovery with minimal damage (just my scuffed jeans) and minimal embarrasment (just a couple of Indians laughing at the goofy Westerner), and determined to keep my attitude positive, smiled and walked on home. Lesson learned: just because an Indian can commute hardcore style in Bombay doesn't mean that I can. Till my next adventure, peace and love to all.

Arrival in the City of Dreams

Hello to all and welcome!
Allow me to introduce myself and my situation. My name is Rafi Santo and I am keeping this blog to document my time living here in India, in the City of Dreams, Bombay. I was sent here through a great organization called American Jewish World Service. (Great because it's providing me with the rewarding oppotunity of being here, greater because it helps out nonprofits throughout the developing world to create sustainable change.) While I'm here I will be living in and involved with the unique community of Indian Jews that exists here, and I will be working with a project called Salokha (meaning friendship in Hindi) that does conflict resolution and communal harmony work to counteract animosity that exists in this city and country between Hindus and Muslims.
This blog exists to allow anyone interested to have a window into what it might be like to live, work, and travel in India. Aside from this, it exists for me to express (and sometimes vent) my own experiences in this crazy city. In a pinch, it will also let those who care about me on the other side of the ocean know that I'm still alive and kickin' in a country where that's the only way to live. So until my next post, be well and be happy.

From the Land of Rickshaws and Rain (Vol. 2)

Below is a letter a wrote home on my third night in Bombay. Enjoy.


Dearest family, friends, teachers, and miscellaneous loved ones,
Greetings from Bombay! I only arrived here about two nights ago and already so much has happened, so much has been seen and such connections have been made. It's somewhat hard deciding where to start, but I guess I'll begin by saying that I have arrived safe and sound, my flight was long and arduous but fine, and I'm thrilled to be back in India. The same goes for the rest of the folks in my program, though some have already been confronted with, and thankfully overcome, their first dose of the culture shock that this country so generously doles out.

I must say though, as I compare my reentry to this country through the port of Bombay to my initial experiences last year in New Delhi, I feel that India has in fact been somewhat stingy in providing us with its aformentioned copious and intense amounts of culture shock. Where are the constant blaring horns and streets fully lined with garbage? What about the overcrowded sidewalks rife with claustraphobia? Where is the entirely unbreathable air? Where are the lepers, beggers, and otherwise handicapped individuals following us for blocks on end asking for change? And what about the streets merchants that so love to harrass Westerners to the point that we'll buy their low quality goods simply to get them to leave us alone? Not here, at least not to the extent that I experienced them in my previous travels to so many other cities in India. It almost seems as if Bombay is a country a ll its own, or at the very least a diet version of the India of yesteryear. Even as I try to tell my fellow travelors what a comparatively pleasant experience they're having , I realize that one cannot know this difference easily through stories and language; only the medium of experience can truly tell the tale.

Not that I'm complaining per se, but I had prepared myself for Bombay as I remembered the rest of India. I hadn't imagined an Indianized version of New York, which is very much what it feels like. Cosmopolitan is the word of choice, and I really believe that the two cities have much in common. One can walk down the street with a great deal of anonymity, even as a Westerner, as people here are so busy that they don't have the time to harrass you. There is a great deal of culture, from the center of the Indian film world, Bollywood, to large cinemas playing Western movies. There are nightclubs and bars, restaurants offering an extensive array of cuisines(except, unfortunately, Japanese), and art galleries galore. (I've even been to one already!) Shumona, our organization's in-country representative, said that she would introduce me to the apparantly thri ving Bombay Photographic Society, a community that she has interacted with in the past. All of these things excite me, as I fully intend on exploring all of these subcultures during my time here.

Somehow I doubt, though, that any of these will be as inviting as the one subculture our group has been invited into already, that being the unique Jewish community of Bombay. While we have been here for less than three days, the group already feels like we have a deep connection to this small but devoted group of people. Our organization had originally planned to arrange homestays in Jewish families, and had hoped a possible connection could be forged between the American Jewish community and the indiginous Jews of Bombay. It seems that their hope has already been and will likely continue to be fulfilled.

On our first day in the city we were invited to Friday night dinner in the home of one of most respected men in the community, and he extended to us a permanent invitation to his home on Shabbat and all holidays. Originally from Baghdad, this man has lived in Bombay for over seventy years in the same home. When he invited us back to his home it was no 'come back any time,' but a deep and serious look into each of our eyes that told us just how sincere his generosity is. It is this kind of sincerity, generosity, and devotion to community that seem characterize much of this small group. These people clearly have much pride in their heritage as Jewish people, and I feel that India, a country that is almost inherently religious and communal, is one of the only places in the world that can foster this kind of strength in community.

In any case, our being welcomed into this community just barely after we stepped off the plane has indeed been a boon for our adjustment to the city. For though this experience has been a bit easier for us than some other possible encounters we could have had, even a 'low carb' India is still India nonetheless, and India is never without a good bit of difficult learning about the harsh realities of the world. I imagine that Bombay certainly has plenty of these realities that we have yet to experience, and I am glad that our feet are firmly planted in a solid community so that when the monsoon winds do in fact blow hard, we won't be blown away with them.

may you all be well and happy,

Rafi