Diwali

October 23 - Diwali

Diwali is a Hindu celebration of "light overcoming darkness" and "good overcoming evil".  It is celebrated with generosity (gift giving), bright lights (just like Christmas) and fireworks!  Lots of fireworks.  Did I say lots of fireworks?!  I have never seen anything like it!

Our day started with a pancake breakfast at Frank's and it was delicious!   Then Bapo, the administrator, took a box of goodies out to the edge of the playing field and distributed bags of chips and wrapped cookies to the 50 or 60 boys.  I went and got the wrapped semi-sweet Swiss chocolates from my room and also gave each boy and some of the staff a piece.  They thought the chocolates would be sweet, but you could see by the look on their faces that it was a bit of a shock.

Afterwards there was a lot of litter on the ground, so I asked Bapo to announce a contest.  The boys who came up with the most litter would win a prize.  In 15 minutes the grounds were clean.  Four boys got a tinker toy car for having the most litter, and five boys got 2 marbles each for honourable mention.  I can't believe what they will do for a marble!  What a hit!

It was laundry time and I helped the little Hoover out by dumping in buckets of water since the filler tube was so very slow.  Laundry washed and hung out to dry on the refurbished clothes line.  It's hot here so it didn't take long to air dry.  Oh, there is no dryer.

During the day, Carsen hangs out with the boys in the orphanage, plays soccer, rides a bike giving rides to kids, chases after geckos and moles or rats, and generally has a good time.  The kids love him and they all get along well.  And I am constantly accosted with "Uncle, uncle!"as they try to get another marble or a car out of me.

In the evening, Akash led us down to the neighbourhood colony for a meeting at Pastor Dillip's home.  A half hour before we got there, he had killed a cobra snake in the front yard. Apparently, they are quite plentiful in the grassy fields around here.  After the meeting, we were served a dish of sweetbread, nuts and a banana.  There were 48 people in the living room!  

It was around 8:00 p.m. when the fireworks started in earnest and we made our way to the rooftop to watch.  The entire skyline in every direction was lit up with fireworks and the sound of explosions.  It was like a war zone.  And it didn't just last for 20 minutes like we are accustomed to in Canada. This went on til after midnight!  The neighbourhood kids also had a stash of fireworks that we set off in the alley.  The local dogs were panting and running to find refuge, but there was none to be found.  

Then a neighbour invited a few of us into his home for banana milkshakes.  Wow! What an amazing evening.  Then we walked home in the dark, to the flashes and bangs of continuous fireworks displays to have a late supper and head for bed.  The sound of the ceiling fan and air conditioner helped mask the thunder and we slept like dead men.

Marbles, poles and pools

Wednesday October 22

What to do? I wandered around this morning and found a small group of boys playing marbles. That gave me an idea. I returned to my room and got a pocketful of marbles (konchi) and returned to the fence. I never knew marbles would cause such a riot. As I offered the players a few marbles, suddenly there was a deluge of bodies and arms reaching out for a marble! It's amazing how these little guys can squirm their fingers inside your clenched fist to extract a marble! So I tried to bring some order out of chaos and make them line up so I could distribute the marbles fairly. Then there was jostling for position and some boys got several marbles while others got none. The plaintive looks of the boys who were without sent me back to my room for some more, and finally a third trip until I had lost all my marbles!

Today was also a bit of a workday. A clothesline pole had pulled out of the ground and needed to be re-seated. It took awhile to find some digging tools, but when they arrived they came with 6 or 7 young men to handle them, dig the hole out and lift the pole back in place and fill around the base.  Not before I unstringing the lines attached to the other post, then restringing them for a fait accomplis.  There was a lot of laughter and fun during the process.  They certainly try hard to express themselves in English.

After the work, the boys wanted to go swimming. They would pay. I tried to explain we had never paid the day before when we had taken a few boys to a little water hole just outside the compound. They insisted it would cost 40 rupees each, 400 for 10 of us. Curious, I wondered where THAT was coming from. I followed them as they made their way to Papa Frank's. Now I knew where their ATM was. Fortunately, he was in a meeting and I just said, "Let's go!" They had a driver for the hostel jeep and away we went. Yup, to another location with an outdoor pool about 30x30 feet square and 5' deep at the deepest end. I couldn't see the bottom through the green water and I found it just a little slimy. Visibility less than two feet. We spent an hour there then went home for a shower...for safety.

Then it was nap-time after lunch and then watching the kids play some of their games, games I had never seen before. One game was fascinating...placing a short (4") stick on the ground with two pointed ends, then taking a club like stick about 30" long, smacking the short stick to make it bounce in the air and clubbing it in baseball fashion to send the short stick sailing into the field. It took Carsen a few tries to even get the stick off the ground, but eventually he did. But the skills of the other children were amazing!

And so another exciting day winds down as we wait for supper and then turn in. Tomorrow is Diwali and fireworks are already being discharged! It promises to be a loud day tomorrow.

Breakfast Eye Opener

Tuesday October 21

At 6:00 a.m. it's very peaceful.  A great time to sit and enjoy the cool of the day. A great time too, to collect ones thoughts and journal what's been happening...the highlights of the previous day, and look forward to the day to come.

This morning I went down to the dining hall for tea with the boys.  Well, sweet water if anything.  Then the process began for preparing breakfast.  A huge wok-like cauldron was placed on a gas-fired stand and the fire lit.  Oil was added, then some beans as it came to temperature.  A steel paddle was used to mix the beans as onions were added.  Then came the curry powders and salt.  Earlier some boys had been breaking up the now stiff rice from the previous evening and crumbling the chunks into a finer mixture.  Now this huge barrel of rice was pushed over to the sizzling wok on a steel-wheeled cart and rice was added and mixed up with the steel paddle.  Breakfast was ready to be doled out at the counter after the rice mixture was dumped back into the squat barrel and wheeled to the serving counter.  The cleanup bay is a tiled, sunken floor with taps about 4 feet off the floor and it is literally a walk-in sink!  It is about 10 x 20 feet in size and sunken about a foot below the rest of the kitchen floor.  It makes it easy to drag those gigantic pots into the "sink" for cleaning, and it generally takes two people to manhandle them and clean them.  All the eating utensils are made of stainless steel making them easier to clean. The boys get their plates filled at the counter and sit in order on the floor.  It was quite a production for 50 boys and it was hard to imagine feeding 500, three times a day.  And yes, it is rice, three times a day!  Sometimes potatoes and vegetables are added for a little variety, but that's it.

This Boy's Refuge and Girl's Home goes through 120,000 kg of rice in a year and 30,000 kg of vegetables for four servings a week, and 20,000 kg of lentils and 15,000 kg of wheat for making chipati's and 20,000 kg of miscellaneous items.  This feeds 510 boys and 625 girls.  Then there is over 100 staff members to factor in.  The annual financial commitment approaches $450,000.  It's amazing how much this has grown in less than 40 years and the number of lives that have been impacted and changed that are also now having an impact in India.

What a joy to sit with Frank and listen to the agony and the ecstasy over the years of development of this place.  It's really inspiring.

Some of the children have sponsors who provide monthly support.  So today we helped by handwriting their letters in English to their sponsors.  The children wrote letters in Hindi which were translated on computer into English.  Carsen and I, plus another dozen children who could write English, transposed the letters to the sponsors in handwriting. With that many helping, we waded through that stack of letters in less than two hours.  Whew!

Monday in Nagpur

Monday Oct.21

We arrived at Prem Sewa and were treated to a snack at 5 p.m.  A good thing for a diabetic.  Then at 8:00 p.m.we had supper at the regular time, visited a short while and off to bed.  In the morning, up and at 'em for breakfast of toast, muffins and coffee and then a tour of the facility.  It's always amazing how someone looks at an empty field of little value and "sees" something great and desirable down the road.

Frank Jeulich is like that.  He didn't intend on coming to India for this, but initially came to translate the Scriptures.  Prem Sewa started in 1977, in an open field with a primitive structure they called home.  Today, he has a beautiful facility with 510 boys (of the more than 1200 boys and staff that have passed through), with two playing fields, a clinic, a school up to Grade 10, dormitories, wash houses, large dining room, staff buildings and a chapel.  As I wandered through, I couldn't help but be amazed at how things had grown in 37 years.

Right now there are about 50 boys here, while the others have gone away to homes of family and relatives for Diwali celebrations (festival of light).  We are told that it is quiet right now.  We are looking for things to do to help out where we can.

Because of Diwali, it is prudent to arrange for onward travel to Hyderabad, our next city.  At the train station, we discover the train is full around the three days we planned to travel, but there was a wait list for the third day of we wanted.  That put us behind schedule so we opted to see if we could get a confirmed ticket on a semi-sleeper bus to Hyderabad.  Yes, and we paid for 2 seats, 2320 rupees, a bargain!  On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at a clothing store and ordered Punjabi suits for Diane, Marci and Tanya.  They will sew them according to styles I had been entrusted with by the girls.  The men with us thought I had bargained a very good deal when one dress began at 3600 rupees and I finally ended up getting three for 4500 rupees.

We got back in time for a small nap and then supper.  Supper is usually at 8:00 p.m. when it is a little cooler.  It is hot here too, but not not as humid as Mumbai.  Supper was tandoori chicken, something I had never had before, and it was delicious.  Of course, every meal is regaled by Frank's sense of humour.

We have an early bedtime of 9:00 p.m.  Good night. 

Road to Nagpur

Saturday October 18 Road to Nagpur


Wide awake at 5:30!  I think Carsen got enough sleep by now.  I'm awakened by a honking horn at 5:23.  Typical.  We try to engage with families back home then hit the cafe at 6:00 a.m. opening.  You know it's hot when the back of your fingers and hands are perspiring by 7:00 a.m.!

Packing up, then heading out for a nearby mall, and maybe the bigger one about 25 minutes by taxi.  We'll see.  We have to be back at the hotel by 3 pm to get a taxi to haul our stuff to the Patel Bus Line, a sleeper coach.  To Carsen's delight!

We went to the local Reliance mall, much like Superstore and got a few groceries including a bottle of nice skin lotion.  Then on to the Palladium mall which is very, very upscale!  Lots of glitter and expensive name brand stores.  Not a place for me to shop!  But there was a McDonalds in the outer courtyard.  Hey, maybe a Big Mac with meat?!  Not a chance.  Reconstituted chicken with spices and no lettuce.  Not great.  But we did have a young lady of 19 sit at our table.  She has been flying since 16 years of age and is working towards a commercial pilot career.  What a delightful conversation with her.  We tried to give a Canada frisbee away to a couple of boys but they declined.  Instead, a young man sitting next to said he would accept it.  Was he ever happy.

We went to a big bazaar and checked out Punjabi suits, but the price reflected the upscale nature of the district and we left to go back to our hotel.

At the hotel, we booked for our return to Mumbai and also booked our airline tickets from Hyderabad to Mumbai in November.  Good thing.  The bus just won't cut it.  The hotel boys helped in getting our luggage to the street, and across the street to a taxi.  Crossing the street with luggage is a feat in itself.  Then the taxi cab was going to charge us 100 rupees to take us to the bus station.  The hotel boys argued about the exorbitant price demanding a fee of 60 rupees.  I said I would be happy to pay 80 and then gave the driver 100 when he dropped us off.  That's like a toonie!

As we had been told when booking the sleeper coach, we were there before 3:30 p.m.  Finally, at 4:15, after sitting at the curb in the sun, a small taxi pulls up and three of us were told to get in.  Luggage was tied to the roof carrier and Deepak, Carsen and I squeezed into the back seat,  Deepak is a young banker who speaks good English and became our interpreter.  He was taking the same bus to Nagpur.  Apparently the two decker buses were discouraged from coming into city centre because of the traffic congestion.  I think there was more to it.  The taxi dropped us off in a quiet neighbourhood in West Mumbai with narrower streets and large trees I. The boulevard, a lot more difficult to negotiate than the wider city streets.  There we stood at the sidewalk as the taxi drove away.  No taxi, no bus, no instructions.  After 10 minutes a minivan pulls to the curb, passengers dismount, and it pulls halfway into the street and stops.  Our bus line guide shows up and tells us to put our bags on board.  We are going to meet,the sleeper coach somewhere further along.  And we do, but the bus helper who handles the luggage is now insisting on getting paid 100 rupees for handling our luggage.  Well, I already knew from earlier conversations that they could charge 20 rupees per bag, so I took my stand and held to the legal price!  The sleeper coach was nice.  Top bunk, double bed size, Windows and curtains on the aisle and window side.  Soon it became dark and we slept until first light.  With the air conditioning on, it got quite cool in the night.  I pulled in my hoodie, got out a crib quilt from my main pack and used my daypack as a pillow.  Sometime in the night I heard a slight pop, but took no real notice.  Later in the morning as we were rummaging for snacks, I discovered that the skin lotion bottle had popped it's cap and there was a lot of creamy stuff smeared on the contents of my day pack.  Well, that was enough to set Carsen into hysterical laughter.  But our day dragged on and on.  We had been told that it was a 12 hour bus ride, but then it became 15, then 18.  The bus actually took off on some pretty winding, rough back roads.  Four-wheeling through the wilderness in a sleeper coach wasn't what we signed on for.  About 166 km. from Nagpur, we were asked to change buses to another sleeper coach in much worse shape because our bus was sick.  Well, the second coach was already pretty much filled and we squeezed onto the edge of a lower bunk.  This bus seemed a lot slower especially going uphill.  Then it began stopping frequently to let people off.  The last 9 km took us about 30 minutes to travel and we arrived at the Nagpur central bus station at 4:00 p.m.  By the time our ride came, our trip was 25 hours, averaging a high rate of speed of 24 km/hr.  Conclusion?  NOT making that bus trip again.

Mumbai, India

 Thursday October 16

From the airport to our hotel was only a 30 minute taxi ride, prepaid at the taxi stand.  Rates aren't  negotiated with the driver. Mumbai is one of those cities that never sleeps.  I can't believe how many people were up at 3:00 a.m.

Coming through airport security took longer than it should.  Once at the immigration counter, we were sent back to find and fill out an immigration card.  No one was handing them out and we had to scrounge around to find one For each of us at another counter, then fill it out, loan my pen, get back in line, get our picture taken and proceed to the next centre of chaos to get our luggage.  You can imagine the din waiting for luggage at the carousel with 300+ people from a 747-400 aircraft!  Eventually all three cases arrived and we are off to customs. We turn in our card and that was it...a breeze, no inspections or questions.  Then off to the taxi counter.  I expected the taxi trip would be over an hour, but it was half that.  There is a 20% surcharge for "after dark" taxis.  Ours was a fee of 1000 rupees.  That's $20 Canadian.

The hotel doesn't have much curb appeal, but the room is clean and has a ceiling fan.  The temperature was 31C when we arrived at the airport.  I think it only goes up from there.  Carsen and I sleep until 8:30, shower and go for breakfast in the rooftop restaurant.  A thin cheese omelette and thin pieces of white toast and instant coffee.  Not quite ready for Indian fare for breakfast.

After breakfast, we prepared our water bottles with a purification tablet, stuff a few gifts into our day packs and set out to find a SIM card and Chowpatty beach.  Indian security stipulates that foreigners cannot simply purchase a SIM card without a local resident vouching for them from the city of purchase.  Well, forget the SIM card for now!

Onward to the beach, about 4 city blocks away.  The sidewalks are crowded with people and the traffic is congested and noisy.  Everyone seems to be talking with blaring horns!  On the way, we come across a young mother with a tiny baby girl, tiny and thin.  We knelt beside her to see her baby and left her with a crib quilt and 50 rupees. On our return trip, I notice the quilt was folded up on a piece of plastic to form a small mattress for the baby.  The temperature by noon is 36 C with high humidity!

Onward to the beach again.  Funny that in a city of maybe 20 million we should bump into the same helpful man that had led us to the shop where they sold SIM cards!  Again, he gave helpful directions to Chowpatty beach.  A beach with hardly a person on it! Wide, expansive, a few garbage collectors, a few people in the shade of large, sprawling trees, but no sun tanners or swimmers.  There were people sitting In the shade on the short sea wall so we followed suit.  Eventually, a couple gave us directions to the "food court".  We hiked towards the location, watched some young men playing some kind of tag game and then continued to the food court area, the famous food court area mentioned on the Internet. Typically,we were accosted by menu brandishing men trying to coax us to their stall for bhel puri.  It seemed like that was the special of the day everywhere!  After wandering through the food court on the sandy beach, we decided on cheese pizza and pineapple juice.  Not quite ready for some of the stuff we saw.  We sat near some college students who helped us with some more Hindi vocabulary.  The pizza sauce was spicier than ours in Canada.  I shared some of mine  with a young man who wandered into the dining area.  He was high on something and the other stall owners tried to shoo him away.  Oh, well.

The walk back through traffic was a bit nerve racking.  Our landmarks were still in place and we arrived back at our hotel exhausted and wet from the heat.  Showers and a little sleep until 7 p.m.  Then off to scrounge an evening meal.

After a very bland dinner, Carsen and I walked a different direction from the hotel through a few street markets until the shop owners and street vendors began wrapping up and closing down their shops.  Then to bed at 10:00 p.m., wide awake at 1:00 a.m., and 3:00 a.m. and again at 5:30 a.m. To the sound of the Muslim call to prayer.  Gotta get my clock flipped over by 12.5 hours!

Friday October 17

Breakfast was tasty this morning in the form of an omelette sandwich and a lime drink.  Caught up on news from home as the cafe has good a good internet signal.  Then we went in search of the bus station, eventually getting to it after getting several conflicting directions.  We kept getting passed off to "Enquiries", but there was no one there at that wicket.  No wonder!  The agent was wandering around talking on his cell.  Eventually, frustrated, he sent us outside the terminal to a competitor bus line that actually went all the way to Nagpur.  A young man led the way to the alternate bus and we found out there was no empty bus available until Saturday.  We booked our trip and paid a deposit to hold our spot.

After the bus booking ordeal, we took a cab back to base camp, flopped on our twin beds in the nine by ten room exhausted from the heat and humidity.  Carsen kept on sleeping, so I went to find an outlet for a SIM card for my phone.  I didn't think it would start a war!  I started at the front desk asking for a recommendation as to where I could locate a dealer.  They gave me their card and wrote the name of Jimmy Collections.  They even called him and said he would be watching for me on the sidewalk.  With clear (?) directions I headed out, actually asking several more people along the way.  I came to the Vodaphone shop and I asked for Jimmy Collections.  Yes, yes, right here.  There is a process here that must be followed.  Two photos and photocopy of passport and visa.  So we hop on his motorbike to go to a digital Photoshop and then a photocopy shop and back to the store.  We fill in the required information, including a local contact person (the hotel).  I leave the shop understanding the phone will be registered in about 4 hours once the paperwork is submitted.  Half way back to the hotel, I am met by Sunil from the hotel and another man who had gone to the hotel to get me.  He was Jimmy Collections!  He insisted I go back to the shop and told me to repeat what I had said in my first introduction.  "Are you Jimmy Collections?"  Yes, yes.  The the shouting began.  Jimmy was from the adjacent shop!  It sported a small print "Jimmy Collections" sign painted on the wall!  It was clearly a case of stolen identity to make a sale.  As the shouting grew louder, people began to gather and it became quite a spectacle.  Jimmy offers me a 50% discount, but I had already paid and the process had already started.  Sunil wobbled his head as the shouting volume increased and we slipped out as a police vehicle was arriving.  I went back at 9 p.m. and finally had my phone activated.  What an ordeal!

Still couldn't wake Carsen up so I walked along the sidewalk, checking out the vendors and stopped where a crowd had gathered around a sandwich vendor.  I watched with fascination as the two gentlemen deftly made THICK vegetarian sandwiches with sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, beets and onions.  I bought two for 80 cents!  Got them back to the room and woke Carsen up to eat.  There doesn't seem to be places where one can get chicken or beef or bacon.  Well, time for Carsen and I to catch up on some sleep!