Threads that are golden

Post Mumbai, the second stop in hot, dusty far off Aurangabad was definitely interesting. Quite a change from urban Mumbai! It's a city with a small, but nice and new, single terminal airport and a large surrounding population spread out around it, but it is definitely not a modern city like Mumbai. It was an old fortress city, a stronghold of some importance because of the lookout towers posted on high hills, giving the strategic vantage point over the surrounding valleys in battles. You can see the old gates as you drive in and there are still beautiful crumbling walls all around.

The first thing I noticed on the way from the airport was tons of goats. Herds of goats everywhere! All other kinds of animals too but goats seem to be running the place. People were dressed differently due to a stronger Muslim presence there, so ladies were almost always covered and the call to prayer rang out every night and morning. I find hearing the chants drifting through the evening air each night quite lovely. 

Our travel agency was hesitant about us going there, but I was emphatic about wanting to go and I am glad I held out! If I had known about the region's other attractions- like the giant and impressive fort not 30 kilometers way- I'd possible have stayed longer to see that too- because who knows when I will be back in Aurangabad again! A short stay of three nights, with two full days pre-planned, didn't leave too much room for free discovery but I still felt good about the time spent.

The primary reason for my visit to this place is to see two ancient temple complexes, the Ajanta and Ellora caves. Both are UNESCO world heritage sites, both have Hindu and Buddhist temples (one has Jain temples as well) and both involve travel through rural parts of India to reach. From Aurangabad, Ajanta is nearly three hours away through farmland and then up into mountains. Ellora is closer, only about 45 minutes away, but also via rural routes.

While in Aurangabad, I also visited the Paithani Sari shop, which is famous for the very elaborate, hand made saris. Some are made with thread made from actual gold or silver, usually for weddings. People make them by hand, and they are truly a wonder to behold. While in the shop, a large family was wedding sari shopping, so I saw sari after beautiful sari laid out, in true Indian show-them-everything, and with-a-grand-flourish style. These saris impress me far more than the white western wedding dress (did you know: in India white is the mourning color widows wear?) with all of their varied gorgeous colors and designs.

The saris were a bonus, but I was really there to see the work of skilled weavers found only in that area of the country. The weaving is a dying art, as only three men alive knew how to do it and one recently passed away. Of the remaining two, one is very old and cannot leave his house, and the other is also elderly.

The hand looming is very time consuming and no young people take it up, as there are easier ways of making things and earning monies. As a result, the fine work is very limited and hard to find, and within 10 years or so, it's possible that no one alive will know how to make them, and the examples we do have will be more like museum pieces than things people use. I purchased a beautiful patterned weave of the shapes carved into the ceilings at Ajanta- it felt very special to be able to do that after waiting to see Ajanta for so long. 

There was a crazy hail storm that felled over 100 large trees which smashed cars, houses and took out power lines- which will take months to fix given how far from any major cities it is- leaving people with no electricity. We came across the wreckage on our way back from the Ajanta, and it looked as if it had snowed- hail the size of baseballs all over the ground. Rural people had been taken completely by surprise and stood with mouths agape on the sides of road, barefoot and stricken.

Massive trees blocked the roads, and villagers young and old were either dragging the smaller ones to the side to allow traffic to pass, or hacking off branches and bits from the larger, unmovable trees one at a time with machetes. The women would carry bundles of branches away from the roads on their heads. The ground was steaming and white and though the people were harried and dogs were dedicatedly nosing about, all of the white cows just stood there, unruffled, still and strangely serene.

The guide was saying how lucky we were to have been up at the caves during the storm (which would have shattered the windshield and had caused lots of accidents.) In the three hours of mostly dead-stop traffic on the way back, I worried a lot about the people who were living out of pitched tents made from old saris in the fields- no shelter and their slum tents and all they had destroyed by one passing storm. People often die in these kinds of storms from blows to the head with the giant hail- but those storms don't usually happen in that part of India. In 50 years time, Mr. Singh had never seen anything like it and he too was in awe.

1. Picture of seated Buddha in Ajanta caves- notice how the arm is broken off, and you can see the brown stone on the outside, then the geodes and semi precious stones forming inside the arm.

2. Close up of the crystals in the arm- beautiful

3. Part of the story of Buddha's life depicted- Mara's daughters, dancing to tempt Buddha out of his meditation to prevent him from reaching enlightenment. 

Ajanta Caves

Ajanta caves temple complex is a horse shoe shaped ring of about 30 Buddhist and HIndu monasteries and temples. Think of it as a campus of sorts- when the monsoon season came, the monks retired there, as it was cool and on the path of pilgrims. The dry gorge below filled with water from a monsoon waterfall that formed from the rains, so there was greenery, coolness from the humidity, and the peaceful sound of running water (as well as a fresh water source) perfect for spiritual contemplation.

They are quite well preserved because they were only re-discovered in the early 1800s by the British during a land survey. Local people had always known of them, but never visited or spoke of it to outsiders, believing the place to be haunted by spirits. The caves had been untouched for centuries, and the dense forest had grown back and covered them completely. Because of this, they are one of the only examples of Indian paintings from this early in history. The earliest caves were built as early as second century BC and the latest were around 6th century AD. They have some of the oldest Buddhist religious art in India, and are famous for their ornate carvings and naturally colored cave paintings, which still survive today.  

When you read "caves" you might be picturing dark, dank ancient abandoned places in the middle of rural nowhere. Although they are called "caves" they aren't real caves by the true definition, they are actually temples carved from the top down out of sheer rock face- most from a single giant rock. The "caves" are carved into the interior of the rock, which is why it is called a cave, but it resembles a temple in every other way- pillars, high domed ceilings, intricate carvings, as if done out of wood. In fact, some of the temples have fake rock ''rafters" or shapings of wood carved from the rock, to make it look like a wooden structure. 

Ajanta is the farthest away from Aurangabad, so it takes almost three hours to get there. Then, a shuttle bus to the bottom, where you take stone stairs up up and up to the temple complex, high above everything. And when you're on the way you're thinking it's a bit of a pain, but when you get there, it's so worth it.

Imagining life then, a thrumming Buddhist community living, educating themselves, working tirelessly on these temples from the top down, perfectly carved and hewn painstakingly out of rock face- it's spectacular. The views of the valley are wild and breathless and you feel how truly natural it is, and how almost supernatural and spiritually charged the place seems to be. The waterfalls pouring into the gorge in monsoon, and the bathing pools below and rivers rushing out must have been like a dream.

In my pictures above you can see:

1. A far off shot of the horse shoe shape, and barely discernible entrances to the caves.

2. Columns carved out from within the cave

3. A picture of the GIANT stupa with views of the patterned ceiling

4 & 5. Examples of very ornate exterior carvings- note the window to let in light

6. The inside of a temple- note the high lofty rafters, the Buddha figure, the huge stupa, and the columns on the sides- there is a horseshoe shaped walkthrough all throughout, with gorgeous cavings on the walls, pictures in my next post.

Final shots, Mumbai. From the top:

1. Back street boys: taken on a side street in the Jewish quarter, with a Hindu temple in the background, two old dudes are calmly chatting in front of a pink building while another stands lazily around. What you can't see is why liked it. Imagine you are next to one of the busiest train station exits, in a city with millions of people. Human traffic mayhem, full steam ahead, occurs now. People, scooters, bicycles, cars, motorcycles, go all willy nilly in small snaking alley ways as narrow as the streets in old Rome but far more crowded with shops, stalls, heat, and everything else. And yet, this shot just looks like a quiet little place... and for those two, so it is.

2. The Magen David Synagogue: one of the many synagogues built by David Sassoon, an extremely wealthy lawyer guy who was responsible for the business/shipping contracts for the opium and textile trade between Iraq, Britain and India. (You can imagine that was lucrative.) He built things all over town, relocated to London later in life, and married into the Rothschild family. His son is a Baronet in London, and many of his projects live on in Mumbai as some of the city's most beautiful heritage items. Not bad.

3. Holy cows: these white cows are moseying around on a trash pile. Venerated beings, they mosey at leisure.

4. High rise: through laundry drying on the roof at Dhobi Ghat.

Ganesh

The Amazing Mumbai Dabbawallahs!

I had watched a documentary once on the amazing courier system of the Dabbawallahs, so I was very excited to go to the train station in Mumbai at lunch hour and see them in action. Streams of human clad in white poured from the station, pulled to the side, got organized, and off they went! I took some pictures of their bikes and the tiffin containers. 

But what do they do? Basically, within a two hour period, men bicycle to over 200,000 homes (sometimes in the farthest reaches of the sprawling city of Mumbai!) to pick up and promptly courier freshly cooked meals to the husbands, sons or family members at their work place. This way they can eat fresh made food from their own home, every day. This involves complicated hand offs and a perfect system for coding which one goes where and to whom. Even more impressive: most of the dabbawallahs are illiterate, and each man carries a whole bunch of large canisters (within which there are smaller circular canisters called tiffins which keep the items separate and hot!) but the margin of error is slim to none. 

Other people have explained it better than I can:

Each day in Mumbai 4000 men in white outfits and matching hats transport 175,000 lunches across the big city. They retrieve the tiffens (lunch containers) of food from mothers and wives, and bring them (by foot, train, bicycle and even carried on top of their heads) to the office buildings of waiting husbands and sons. The Dabbawallas have been doing this since the late 1800s. Despite the unsophisticated mode of transport, the lunches always arrive on time (the error rate is 1 in every 16 million transactions). 

You've gotta watch this short documentary from the same website, it's pretty amazing to see what these guys do! I also included a screenshot of the decoding system above, here is a note from another site explaining it:

The diagram above depicts a sample set of icons that are marked on a 'dabba'. These icons help to identify the pickup and delivery points and also contain codes that help the different groups of 'dabbawallas' to identify their set of 'dabbas' at each leg of the journey. These icons have been evolved because of the need of berivity. Also many of the 'dabbawallas' are illiterate and cannot follow written names and addresses, but the icon system - of symbols and colour codes - works for all. Since each set of 'dabbawallas' transport the 'dabbas' for only a part of the journey, these icons also help the sorting of the 'dabbas' at each juncture before they make the onward journey.

Who put the Nag in Champa?

An incense that my brother, Jade and I have loved for years is Nag Champa. Walking through the Hanging Gardens in Mumbai, a delicious smelling tree with beautiful flowers appeared. An Indian woman told me that the flower is Champa. "Because it has an incredibly sweet smell, Indians use it many things, like the incense," and she was quite surprised when I completed the sentence at the same time she did, saying "Nag Champa."

I described the beautiful blue and white box with red lettering and told her that we have a big box at home. She pointed at the tree and said, "Now you know where 'champa' comes from, obviously the flower. But do you know where is the 'nag'?" I did not know where is the nag, so she proceeded to tell me.

Pointing to the bottom of the tree, she said, "You see there, it is an entanglement of roots. A snake, called 'nag' will burrow down into the roots and dart out to snare its prey. So, not many people wanting to go near there! So now you know that 'nag' is for the snake, and 'champa' is for the flower."

Dhobi Ghat

While in Mumbai, we visited the Dhobi Ghat, named after the clothes washers, the Dhobis who wash laundry (for people, hotels, hospitals, you name it!) in the open air laundry. All open air laundry is referred to thusly, and usually you will see steps leading down to a riverbank or body of water. In this case, we visited an inner city ghat in Mumbai, where within an enclosure of slum structures on the outside, there are steps leading down into outdoor cement pits. Men do loads of laundry by filling the pits with water and whatever washing agent they need, then scrubbing, rinsing, and beating the clothes against the sides on the flagstone before sending them off to dry. 

They call the area a slum, because a lot of it is like shanty town- piecemeal living structures created from all sorts of things. Although the community does not live in houses like we're used to (with four walls connected to doors, ceilings, etc) they do have what I would consider modern basics in their makeshift but fully equipped small living spaces: electricity, light, cooking area, running water, shelter, furniture, etc. I have certainly seen places where that was not true! I did not see the bathroom area but I imagine it is as basic as it can get, sewage removal questionable, possibly manual in some parts of the community. They have a small school for the kids, which was full of children when I was there. The thing I find hard to imagine is fitting a whole family in there, which they do. The weather never gets cold enough to need a heater but I'm sure the semi-open air living structures are better than fully enclosed, heat trapping cement buildings when it gets to the truly hot and humid season.

First city in India: Mumbai. 5 nights here to recover from jet lag and acclimate to India. It's been okay-- aside from dropping into three hours of black hole sleep each afternoon around 4 or 5 after a morning of touring. Missing out on seeing the city at dusk seems worth it to get steady on my feet for the remaining five weeks.

The first day didn't really count since arrival time was so late- basically just went straight to bed.  The second day was a sleep in day, but the warm, hazy afternoon included a venture to a couple of clothing places.

The first, Fab India, I had heard about from my yoga teacher. I was in search of some cotton pants and tops that were suitable for both climate and temple. The selection was both plentiful and educational. They leave you be in Fab India, much like a western store, so I was in there for two hours trying to figure out what the separate items of clothing were and what went with what: kurtas, dupattas, salwars, churidars, stoles, etc.  The various styles of pants, from balloon legged to legging with a baggy crotch, had my outfit-selecting prowess comically stymied. 

Even more comical was the next place, where the sales style was the opposite of hands-off Fab India. Upon entrance to the store, a man immediately greeted me, escorted me to the back, and before I could say yes no or how do you do, towers of tunics, hordes of harem pants, legions of leggings with matching shirt outfits appeared. He stacked my arms full of technicolor floral printed, bedazzled, extremely colorful patterned clothing and ushered me into a dressing room. I drew the line at the mint chiffon skirt coupled with jeweled halter top get up, but was able to see it temptingly laid out in all its splendor!

By the end of that experience I left the store with two harem pants (wanted) and two... other items that I seriously doubt shall ever see the light of day whilst worn upon my person. One is a slightly too big long sleeved tunic looking flower covered techincolor dream come true. The other is a not altogether displeasing green, peach, and pink sleeveless knee length tunic with split down each side, with an impressive piped cream colored bib thing that is fully bedazzled with white and pink rhinestones. The technicolor dream paired with my bright teal harem pants is truly, a treat to behold. I could have said no but honestly, the whole experience was so crazy (and hilarious and fun) that I just bought the things without even trying to bargain, knowing there was no chance I'd actually be wearing them. 

Yellow for Thursday

The Gates of Mercy

This is the first synagogue in Mumbai, built 1796. Judaism is a minority religion in India, but there has long been a Jewish community, with no history of antisemitism. There were a few primary communities spread out over the continent: Cochin Jews, the first community, who were mostly refugees from neighboring countries, Spanish Jews that came over during the Portuguese trading times, and the group known as Bene Israel.  

Back in the day, a fleet of trading ships was shipwrecked off the coast of Mumbai. Most people died, but members of seven families from Judea lived. The Hindu people from that time helped them recover and bury their dead, and adopted them into the community where they settled down and stayed, which is how the Bene Israel Jews ended up in India. 

Fast forward to much later, when, during a Brit/Indian war, two brothers were captured in India and scheduled for execution as prisoners of war. Before execution, a person's name, caste and other identifying information was recited publicly. Since they were not Indian, their caste was read as "Bene Israel" or, Children of Israel. When the king's wife heard this, she forbid him to execute the brothers because that caste was mentioned in the Quaran, and she didn't want to be held responsible for any wrongful deaths. They were released accordingly.