Old Goa

Old Goa:

When we arrived in Goa, we stayed in a city called Ponda.  It's the town where Shweta was born.  Though her mom and dad lived in Kolhapur, as is typical in India, her mom Mrudula, returned home to stay with her parents as Shweta's birth neared.  Mrudula's brother Navin and sister Urmila live in Ponda with their spouses, so it was an obvious place for us to stay a couple of nights and spend time with family.

Here's the view out the window of our hotel room.

Our first day in Goa, our driver took us out to see Old Goa.  Like Mumbai, Goa was originally settled by Portuguese traders.  When the Portuguese came here, they brought Christianity with them, often using brutal Inquisition tactics and atrocities to forcibly convert both the locals and Portuguese who were running amok here.

The Portuguese conquered Goa in 1510, building churches, establishing trade, and generally doing what you'd do in a colonized port.  Over time however, Old Goa's lack of sanitation and warm climate led to repeated cholera and other epidemics.  To the point that Old Goa was just too difficult to live.  In 1759, the Portuguese abandoned Old Goa and moved their capital to neighboring Panjim, which remains the state capital of Goa.

The first is the Basilica of Bom Jesus (Good Jesus in Portuguese), built in 1605:

Still in use today, the building's brownish exterior colour is due to the laterite bricks that most buildings in Goa are built from.  In the case of this cathedral, the Portuguese guy who led the "restoration" of it, believed that removing the plaster from the brick would make the structure more resistant to erosion, when in fact the opposite is true.  Point being that all of the buildings we're going to see in Old Goa are constructed from these mined, laterite bricks.  The others just have plaster and paint layered on top.

Interestingly Francis Xavier's body is interned inside the cathedral.

Across the street from Francis Xavier cathedral is a large complex which contains a cathedral dedicated to Francis of Assisi.  This cathedral was built in 1661.  It is clearly no longer in use.  When you walk inside, the cathedral has been emptied and you're only allowed to walk around small roped off areas:

Adjacent to the Francis of Assisi cathedral is a small church dedicated to Saint Catherine.

Less than a mile from the Basilica of Bom Jesus, you can climb a narrow road and see a number of other Catholic buildings, including a convent, and most interestingly, the decaying Church of Saint Augustine, which was built in 1597.  Here you can see what happens to laterite when left to the monsoons, heat, and humidity of this area.  This photo is taken looking at what would have been the facade.  What remains is the right tower.

Here are some other photos of the decaying structure.  Interestingly, the church contained it's own small convent.

Finally, we visited the Church of Our Lady of the Mount.  In no way is this a spectacular structure; however, it's view over the valley, and in particular all of the buildings that I've previously discussed is amazing.

Looking at the buildings that rise above the trees, nearest to us, you can see all of the buildings that we'd previously visited.

Tour of Mumbai - Dhobi Ghat

If you weren't convinced by my last post about how hard the working class works here in India, check this out.  This is Shweta, me and our guide for the Dhobi Ghat.  He's a 3rd generation worker in Mumbai's biggest laundry.  Here we're standing at the front gate:

This is the Mumbai laundry.  Obviously not all of the city's laundry is done here, but a large amount still is.  You can't imagine how hot and humid it is in this laundry.  Each of the cement stalls that you see in the picture below is the wash area that one person uses to run their daily washing.  This first picture gives you some idea as to how the city just keeps growing around it:

Each of these folks lives and works in the laundry.  They have small rooms adjacent to their washing location where they live, surrounded by the massive humidity and heat going on around them.

When you go in to some of the tunnels nestled inside the complex, you enter the area where the real heat happens - ironing and boiled washing of clothes.

The ironing is done with fire heated, heavy, iron irons.  The people doing ironing typically iron 300 garments a day for 1 rupee per garment.  That's something like $4.25 for a full day's work.

The boiling of clothes is part of a re-use program.  There are organizations here that collect garments from people who no longer want them, have them cleaned in a boiling/caustic water solution, and then sell them on at drastically reduced prices to people who can't afford new items.

So, when you enter in to this ironing/boiling tunnel, the temperature goes sky high and the air quality hits rock bottom.  You're surrounded by burning wood and smoke.

Despite all the hard work, heat, and what we in North America would view as totally unacceptable conditions, these folks still manage to have fun and maintain a community relationship.

Here's a photo with me and one of the community kids in their large common area.  I was told that he liked to be in photos, so I figured, why not lift him up and have some fun.  Every night, folks gather here to cook food, socialize and eat.

Tour of Mumbai - Dabbawalas of Mumbai

One of the really interesting things we saw on our tour of Mumbai was the Dabbawalas (deliverers of boxed lunches).  These guys run a business that connects a Mumbai office worker with his/her lunch that was prepared back in their home. 

The normal course of operations here is:

1. The office worker leaves for work around 7:30am, likely getting on a train.
2. Someone in the worker's home, prepares their lunch and leaves it for the Dabbawalas
3. A Dabbawala picks up the lunch, marks it with the information of where it came from and where to deliver it.
4. The Dabbawala delivers that lunch and many others to a train, maybe around 10am.  The Dabbawalas load all the dabbas (lunch boxes) on to their dedicated train car.
5. The train shipment is delivered to Mumbai and the Dabbawalas move it to their distribution points around the city, like the one shown above.
6. Each of the lunches is then moved to the appropriate delivery driver.  Once the driver has all his dabbas (I still don't understand how he knows how he's got all the dabbas he's supposed to deliver - I asked, but the only answer I got was "he just knows"), he leaves the distribution point and delivers the dabbas to the office workers.
7. At the end of the day, the Dabbawalas reverse everything that they've already done, returning the empty dabbas back to the home that they originated from.

Whether it's on bikes, with carts, or on foot, these guys are working their asses off to deliver thousands of lunches, for very little money.  Much like many people in India. 

As a side note, it has to be said that the people who do the physical work in this country work incredibly hard and don't look like they do much complaining.  Send the average North American kid here to India and they'd crumble in hours. 

Tour of Mumbai - Victoria Station and Municipal Building

Shweta signed us up for a full day, guided tour of Mumbai.  The tour was just us, a driver and a tour guide, so we had a great opportunity to ask many questions and tailor the tour to our specific needs.

We started things out with a visit to Victoria Train Station, or now renamed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.  These name changes are very common here in Mumbai.  Prior to India's independence, there was a very, very strong British presence in Mumbai.  So, there's understandably a large desire to erase as much British naming and statues from the city as possible.

This station serves somewhere in the range of 3 to 5 million people per day.  It's amazing to see the amount of humankind that blasts through here.  Here are a few photos of the station.  This, like other British built train stations, is designed to make a statement - multi-part vaulting, all kinds of original carvings on the outside, including a statue of Queen Victoria that has since been removed from the side of the building.  Apparently the statue snapped in half when it was removed from the building and no one is too sure exactly where it is today (reportedly it's somewhere on the black market).

  

Here's an example of the carvings on the outside of the building.  There are many different India native animals that can be found carved in to the structure:

On the opposite side of the street from Victoria station is the municipal building, also designed by Frederick Stevens:

Note the statue out front.  This statue is of Pherozeshah Mehta, who was the first native to be highly successful at law in Mumbai.  He did this in the late 19th century, at a time when he would have been arguing cases against British lawyers and in front of British judges.  Mehta played a major role in politics in Mumbai, thus his rightful place in front of a building that he dominated for much of his professional life.

Colaba Market

Monday morning before meeting up with Ranjana and Shekhar, Shweta and I took a little walk from the hotel to the Colaba market.  This market is what'd you'd expect from the typical Indian street market - narrow roads, many people, and a huge variety of items for sale.

Here's the local bike shop, with the crew working their way through your normal every day bike maintenance, like truing wheels and fixing flats:

Deep, the guy in orange on the right, was very happy to tell me about why he's a Modi supporter and took some interest in my bike collection.  After exchanging some stories, we continued to tour the market.  Not too much to find here, though the looks that Shweta's above the knees, North American dress garnered were a pretty clear signal that the outfits needed some adjustment toward the more conservative side of things.

Lunch at Leopold's

Shweta arrived here early Monday morning.  Shweta's cousin Ranjana and her husband came by to pick us up around noon and took us for lunch and a brief tour of Mumbai.

Before lunch, we went to the Jehangir Art gallery where we got to see some great art, including a set of paintings that the artist had done entirely in natural dyes.  In a different exhibit, the artist, Madhu Jalli, was nice enough to introduce himself.  He created these sculptures of Aamir Khan, a famous Indian actor.  Each of the sculptures is a different character from one of Khan's movies.  To make these, Madhu studied as many angles as he could from each film, and then built out each structure.  It was great to meet him and get some quick photos:

We had lunch at Leopold's, one of the highly frequented expat spots in Mumbai.  Here, they have a different way of serving a pitcher of beer, namely this tap that they bring to your table.  The center column is filled with ice, which I can see being pretty handy as the summer approaches here in India.

After the tour, we headed back to the Deshpande's where they've been nice enough to give us a room in their home and been amazing hosts.  I feel very blessed for all the hospitality that Shweta's family has shown me.  Shweta and I have re-learned just how great Indian's are at hosting.

"You Just Want Pictures, But Won't Feed Her"

Here's an instance of my local ignorance causing a little upset.

We walked up to this cow and woman in south Mumbai.  Keep in mind, south Mumbai is the most expensive real estate in India.  So, seeing a cow tied to a tree and a woman seemingly getting some additional grass together for the cow was rather unexpected.  I wasn't too sure why this woman had a cow here, but with it being such a unique situation, I figured, I'd take a photo.

Once I'd taken the photo, the woman sprang up and made a point to Shweta (in Marati) that all we want to do was take photos of the cow, without feeding it. 

Turns out that the deal here is that I was supposed to pay the woman some money to buy grass from her.  Then I would feed the grass to the cow, ideally improving my karma.  Opportunity lost.