savor the flavor

that's what i keep telling myself anyway --- i'm alone again for another five days (total days alone = 10) but doing a much better job filling the time and not going crazy.

pictures: top one is a young girl cleaning laundry next to the tent where she lives on the sidewalk, middle is a woman on her way to sacrifice live chickens (hens? roosters? difference?) at the fishermen's temple i visited, bottom is the view from the karle caves (i climbed up the stairs on the right side of the image to get there)

on saturday i hired a car/driver and told him to just take me away from mumbai and get me out of the city - so he took me to these amazing caves and temples in the hills/small mountains outside the city. predictably, even though it was gorgeous when i woke up, it started pouring at soon as we got outside of the city, right when i started climbing slippery stone steps. less predictably, i came back with a really bad sunburn. you win some you lose some...although i'm not sure where the winning was between the rain and the sunburn...anyway it was fantastic to get out of the city and see GREEN and breathe fresh air and climb things and walk around. towards the end of the day my driver took me up to the top of this hill with a supposedly beautiful view of a lake and a dam and the hills --- and in typical Curtis family style, the fog rose with us as we drove and we couldn't see more than three feet off the lookout point once we got there. ahhh i love visiting places during monsoon/rainy season.

i don't know how to properly express how oppressive and aggressive mumbai feels - it truly feels like a constant battle in the city, no matter what's going on. to start, the air is incredibly heavy and thick with the heat and humidity and pollution. Add to that the constant noise of stray dogs and people and cars and the fact that the streets are always overcrowded and no one speaks english so every time you try to ask for something or go somewhere it's a battle to make yourself understood and taken together all the time everyday the city just starts to really feel ridiculously overwhelming. i feel exhausted at the end of every day, despite not usually having done that much - just getting there (wherever 'there' is) and back is an ordeal. it was amazing to get out for a little while.

i've also begun to haunt the restaurant across the street - ShreeJee's Vegetarian Wonders - going there for meals and chai and just sitting and reading and eating. it's surprisingly nice - i'd be tempted to write it off as being suspicious because its located so close to where i live and so far from nice areas of mumbai where most of the reliable restaurants/shops are, but it's one of the better/cleaner/cheaper places i've found. i like to just sit and people watch in the heat, although i will admit people watching is much less fun when all of the people you are watching are already watching you.... if you're curious about food, most places here are vegetarian, and it's only safe to eat meat/fish in nice restaurants. as i said when i came back from delhi, most of the food i usually associate with indian food in the states (chicken tikka masala, anything tandoori or served in saag) i have learned is from Rajasthan, or northern india - NOT mumbai. mumbai is more partial to peasant food b/c of the uber-impoverished majority, so food that's typical of mumbai is dal (served in the states as "lentil soup") - which is yellow and naturally pretty tasteless but they add spicy spicy peppers to give it flavor - the common cure for most food - served with plain white rice or roti/chappati (little pancake like things that are kind of rubbery and no where near as good as naan...or real bread, or actual pancakes...) usually i order a paneer (indian cheese) tikka masala gravy with butter naan, sometimes i mix it up with a mushroom tikka instead - those are basically creamy tomato sauces that are the least spicy of anything else on the menu. it's important to note that the spicy-ness scales here are soooo different from the states, they've killed their taste buds to the point that if you dare ask for something THEY think is spicy you will really really regret it. so i ask for no spice and still find it spicy.

overall the best foods i've had have been in my favorite two restaurants in mumbai - the rice boat ( the most amazingly sweet and creamy and delicious shrimp coconut curry i've ever imagined), and urban tadke (butter chicken that puts any chicken tikka masala or similar chicken dish to shame) - which even though i've only been here two months i've been to each of those place twice...and counting b/c i have yet to take the new roommates to them....hopefully i'll get one more meal at each before i go...

other than that i've been going to dance and yoga and reading and sleeping and taking care of whatever else i wanted to do. i'm particularly proud that tonight i went to this documentary/short film screening i randomly found a posting for online. the screening was at this high school in Mahim, which was a part of town that i was vaguely aware existed, and probably could've even pointed to on a map, but i'd never actually ventured into, and trying to get there and find it was was a great reminder of how narrow a slice of mumbai i've experienced/seen - even though i feel like i've been here forever and know my way around fairly well. the films were all very underwhelming (the final documentary was 75 minutes long and i probably would've cut 30 minutes from it --- not a good sign when it was a first time director who had worked his entire career previously as an editor...) but it was an adventure to try and find a strange building in a strange neighborhood and get in and around.

more later --

- h