So, on my last day off, after heading dowstairs to my beloved Laxmi veggie restaurant for a fresh grape, pineapple and mango juice; I wondered off to my local shopping area. I mentioned that I live in a suburb, quite a distance out of the main city, with my two roomies Melissa and Che. Our area is right by a lake and has everything we would want far as food and shopping. As it was a Sunday, the streets were pretty bare in Mumbai terms. I just cruised around poking my head into stores and markets. Low and behold, I stumbled upon Yoko Sizzlers and discovered a culinary phenomenon.....Japanese/ India cuisine. Japanese and India cuisine...together!!!! Those two things are a match made in heaven and I am signing my name as the witness of their holy union.
Why is it that all food just tastes better here? Even Italian food tastes better here. Weird, but really, I'm not questioning it. I'm just going with the flow of mango juice and happily growing out of my clothes.
Things have been busy. My internet has been down. Generally things are moving ahead. I still teach two classes of the "Year Long Program" (OYP) students for 2-2.5 hours a day each. I now teach Shiamak's professional company once a week and I teach two contemp classes for his regular school. I write and exam and mark 60 exam papers for the students every two weeks and I create a new ballet class for them every two weeks as well. Classes run 6 days a week. I'm working my butt off; but whatever, it is what it is. I don't work as hard as the dancers in the company who often take class in the day, teach in the evening and rehearse into the wee hours of the morning so...I feel happy about that.
Mumbiaians seem to be workers. They also know how to party. Che ran smack into a wedding celebration on his rickshaw ride home the other day. The whole street was closed down for it and he said that people were dancing like CRAZY in the streets. He mentioned seeing men dancing with their chests touching, shaking their whole body and smiling and yelling at each other. Someone caught sight of him and, of course, pulled him out of his rickshaw to join in the celebration.
We really notice that there is less self consiousness here than in Canada. That is fun because it means that students try things, fall over, giggle, make noises, tease each other and generally express themselves freely. They absolutely get me really laughing everyday. Getting them to be free and expressive is not a problem. The tricky thing is helping them to take responsibility for their learning and not depend on us all of the time to tell them exactly what to do. Getting them to genuinely make connections between ideas and bring their own knowledge to dance movement is coming very slowly. But, they are all in their early 20's and I probably struggled with the same things at that age.
I decided to go to the beach today after teaching (Juhu Beach). I stayed about 20 minutes as it only took about 10 minutes before I was totally mauled by vendors, beggars, people who wanted to take my photo and men who wanted my number. In a way, it's going to be strange to go back to Canada and just be a regular person and not treated like such a special prize all of the time. Getting out of that situation was easy. Just a head nod gets a rickshaw and "chello Powai" is all it takes to get me back home. Well.....that plus about 1.5 hours waiting in traffic. 20 minutes at the beach was enough to feel totally swamped and ready for some alone time.
Quickly, for those who haven't been here or who haven't heard all about it, here are some very regular sights here that one would never see in Canada:
-families of 3 or 4 all on one motorbike with the woman riding side sadle. Only the driver wears a helmet here.
-Mansions, condos, apartments, shanty towns and people sleeping on the side of the highway. EVERYWHERE!
-Palm trees
-fresh fruit, fresh fruit, fresh fruit
-many rickshaws weaving through traffic and honking.
-traffic lights that really are only used to light up the city
-a city train that carries 6.8 million people every day. People jump on and off before it stops so that people can actually get on and off.
- beautiful, colourful saris on most of the women
Oh and...me with a big belly stuffing my face with tasty Indian scrumptiousness.
I forgot an important component of my camera, so can't post photos. But, I've posted some from my roomies.
No comments:
Post a Comment