India: Lessons in inspiration, poverty and death

India- as always - was incredible: incredibly heart-wrenching, incredibly impactful, incredibly “India.” Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is a far more cosmopolitan, up-to-date city that some of the other parts of India that I’ve visited. And it has fantastic architecture left over from the British rule. But that is just the prettier backdrop for the same unbelievable poverty that is India. What a mass of humanity... everywhere you look there are people – and more people – and more people. It seems impossible to real impact any meaningful changes in this country in the face of that many people. Our three days in India brought powerful lesson on poverty and dying....Just a few of the scavenges we did:
#1: High Court: We went to watch court proceedings in the High Court. The lawyers still wear the English-style black gowns (like graduation gowns) over their suits but no longer wear the funny white wigs like the barristers in England still do. All legal proceedings are conducted in English and we watch a series of docket calls and argument on various motions. Very interesting. # 2: Inspiration: We also went to the house where Gandhi lived and where he was living when he was shot. His room is still exactly as it was when he lived there… his sleeping pallet, his spinning wheel, his books. All over the walls are photos from his life and some of his most inspiring quotes. There is also a copy of the letters that he wrote to Hitler and to President Roosevelt during World War II, begging both men to help avoid war and suffering. It was so inspiring to be right there: where Gandhi walked and slept and ate.
# 3: Dying ceremony No. 1: Cremation: We were supposed to observe a Hindu cremation ceremony. And.. unbelievably.. we did!! There is something miraculous about any event being listed as a potential scavenge in the book – because suddenly it becomes not only possible but actually do-able. Normally it would never occur to me to try and attend a perfect stranger’s funeral. But then Bill prints it as a scavenge and off we set for the largest crematorium in Mumbai. In the Hindu religion, once you die you are reincarnated. So a dead body is not very important as the soul has already moved on. The preferred method of burial is cremation and you can choose either an open air wooden pit or a furnace-like cremation. This crematorium offered both options. When we arrived, no-one spoke English and I have no idea who they thought we were, but they treated us like arriving royalty. We first got a tour of the open-air fire pits and then the owner of the facility took us into the furnace area. A funeral was in full swing. We were led right up to the front and told to stand right next to the body (the family members all smiled at us and made room for us to stand right at the front). It was very unnerving as suddenly we were an intimate part of this elderly lady’s funeral. Her body was laid out on a bamboo stretcher and two “priests” pressed what looked like un-leaven dough on her forehead and into her mouth, put flowers in her nose and between each of her toes and then poured thick cream on her face. Then her sons came forward and kissed her feet and a large clay pot of water was smashed on the ground. The pot breaking was the end of the ceremony and suddenly a door opened in the wall and her body was pushed into an open fire and burned. As a Westerner, I have to admit to being fairly freaked out… but it was also mesmerizingly interesting to watch a Hindu funeral up close.
# 4: Dying Ceremony No 2: Another scavenger was to visit the Tower of Silence which is an area in Mumbai where a certain sect of Hindus take their dead and leave the bodies for the crows to eat the flesh. You cannot actually go into that part but I took a photo of one of the circling crows because it seemed so odd to know that this bird had just been feeding on human bodies.
#5: Lessons in Poverty: The scavenge was to take a tour of the largest slum in Mumbai. Once again, since it was a scavenge, what would normally seem to be impossible, became a valid option. Natasha and David tracked down a very nice man who did walking tours of the slums and we hired him to take us the following day. We met Tessy at Café Leopold (which is a hip café in the center of Mumbai that still has bullet holes in the wall from where it was shot up during the terrorist attack in 2008) and he started the tour by taking us on the local train out to the slum. The train station alone was an experience. The slum houses 1.2 million people in an area that is the size of a large park. Each home is like a 10X 10 space in which 6-8 people live. They own nothing: no beds, no blankets, no pillows, nothing. We got to actually go into the homes, meet the people, walk through the streets (if you can call mud alleyways a “street”) and see exactly how the people live. There is one large garbage pile area and - since it is the only open area in the slums - it is filled with kids playing cricket and running around. Yes, you read that right… the kids’ playground is the garbage pit. And they play there without any shoes (as they don’t own any) and limited clothes. The average daily wage for the slum dwellers is less than $2 per day. It was an amazing and humbling experience.
We are now off to Instabul for two days... I have been to Instanbul before and really liked it. Also really looking forward to being in a more Western and modern city for change...and one with cooler weather than the sweltering heat of India.