Category: Volunteering

I’ve always been a very visual learner. When learning a new place, it is no different. Cross-referencing my physical experience of moving through a city with the visual representation of the journey on a map is important to me.

I had an idea of the location of my guest house before leaving, but only an idea. Addresses in India follow different syntax than what I am accustomed to, and many addresses include items like “nearby this prominent location” or “opposite of this building you will hopefully already know or be able to locate”. Building numbers and street names don’t’ seem to be used much, if it all.

At 11:30pm, it was a dark ride and over an hour’s drive from the airport. I’m not really sure the path we took, but traffic was not bad. As we got closer, the cab driver would stop and ask people on the street about the location of my guest house, or at least the hospital it was said to be nearby. I checked in, notified my contacts I had safely arrived, and was asleep by 1:30.

Thursday, First Day

I looked out of my 6^th floor window in the morning to look at the suburb of New Panvel. There were some nearby hills, a lake, and some cows grazing in a grassy triangle between the street and the highway. After a breakfast and couple quick phone conversations, it was determined that I would be changing residence to a more central location in Mumbai. I packed up my things, had a quick lunch, and took a taxi to Vashi station to meet Sheetal, our artistic consultant/coordinator, wardrobe supervisor, charge painter, etc.

During our drizzly cab ride to join Jinal and Toral, who are working in production and stage management on Maya, Sheetal and I discussed a work plan. There was so much sensory information from the streets we passed along that it was difficult to focus. There were different styles of architecture and plant life. There was the constant (literally) honking of horns as cars, trucks, motorcles, scooters, rickshaws, hand drawn carts, and pedestrians wove the fabric of traffic. In many cases, traffic lanes and signals are merely a suggestion of what one might do if so inclined.

We collected Jinal and Toral and looked at one of our two prospective workspaces. It was in an office in South Mumbai, not far from the beautiful Nariman Point. It was very clean, carpeted and formal, and the hours were restricted to 9-6. It’s pretty difficult to stay tidy when sculpting clay, using papier mache, etc. After the tour, we all agreed that it wasn’t optimal. The artistic process doesn’t always easily conform to a business day schedule. Sometimes the work you are doing suddenly takes off late in the day, and you would be a fool to stop working because of an external and arbitrary stop time…especially on the condensed time frame we are on.

With my wet bags up on the rack of the taxi, the four of us proceeded along the waterfront to Worli Sea Face and the home of Shaheen Mistri, founder and CEO of Teach For India. After meeting Raju, a former student of Sheetal and a recent arts school graduate, the five us stepped through each of the masks and puppets needed, the materials required and so on. After a delicious meal of dal, rice, and vegetable dishes, I moved my belongings into a room at Shaheen’s place.

Shop til you Drop

The next day was shopping day. or more like an education day.  Either way you look at it, it was ALL day.

My new trusty sidekick Raju took me all around streets and streets of markets. I think we were in Crawford Market. Each street of stalls is sort of thematic: “Plastics”,  “Stationery”, “Machine parts”, etc. Traffic is of course insane, and the horns remained constant. Social relationships were at play, it was very clear, though I don’t know who was which part. it took quite some time to break out of the spell of it and remember what things I was looking for. Most vendors spoke Marathi or Hindi, and very few spoke a little English. I still only have only the most general idea where we were most of the time.

After dodging crumbling pavements and suspicious pools of water for sometime, we entered a primarily Muslim neighborhood. Here was much more of a ‘junk store’ approach. It reminded me of a parallel experience in years ago in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where at the time there were many stores of collected junk for resale under awkward lighting. All this junk, however, is laid out in the street on tarps and such. According to Raju, all of it is second hand and/or stolen. This was in the Chor Bazaar (“Thief Bazaar”). Raju reminded me to watch my pockets.
At 1:30, the muezzin started calling, and the street was about to close for prayer. We caught a cab as soon as we could and got out of the neighborhood before it was impossible. We ventured forth and north to Dadar. This is where I will be working, close to the Dadar West train station.  We grabbed lunch from a restaurant to go— really I suppose it was a food stand. Samosa chaat, a noodle roti and something else potatoey. It was all very good (though the next day Sheetal chided Raju for giving my untrained stomach street food).  The work space is a little small, but accessible at all hours and surrounded by other markets. It will be awesome!

We looked for more materials—it just takes sooo long! I was simultaneously taking note of, well, everything. The sounds, the signs, the traffic, the experience of being the only person who looks like me in a group of thousands, what materials are common in US but hard to find here, what materials are in both but with radically different names, and what the Indians like to use. Which is apparently thermocol. That’s styrofoam. There’s a lot of thermocol that has been intricately shaped and is often used for a variety of festivals. I may be learning some new materials!

With things still running a bit slowly, and with all my senses still being assaulted, we took the train up to Mahim Junction to look at the baskets woven on the street. We commissioned a full sphere basket as a test as an armature for sculpting some of the helmet masks. We had at least and hour before it would be ready, so we took the train two stops back down to Dadar. Traveling back to Dadar was more hectic because of rush hour. The trains doors are left open, and many people sort of hang out the sides. New Yorkers: if you think you know the stress of a rush hour subway, think again. Mumbai has you on this one.

Suddenly the purchasing mojo sort of kicked in and things were found without too much trouble. Hooray! We dropped it off at the workspace.  Once back in Dadar, we were suddenly able to find many materials we wanted right away. The reward of the day!

We closed up the studio and went once more to the train to collect our new basket. As we let several overcrowded trains pass in the hope of a less populated car, Raju told me that he had once seen a drunk man climb on top of the train because it was so crowded. However, he hit the power line and was dead on the ground in six seconds. His entire person was aflame.

We took a cab.

The basket collected and the day ended, we traveled back to Worli Sea Face for some food and rest.

Setting it all up

The next day was full of plotting out work schedules for each day and setting up the studio. A well-organized workspace cannot be beat! Having experienced a bit of what was available in the markets, I tried to determine with what material each masks could be made. Sheetal brought me some powdered clay – I had never used it before and was dubious. As Raju painted some of the thermocol pieces created by another artist on the project, I managed to figure it out (I think). And now the first mask is underway!

Rest easy

The following day I took off from studio work to change residence again. Now I am locate just between Worli and Dadar in Prabhadevi. A quick walk around yesterday afternoon yielded the location of Starbucks (and therefore internet) and thus I am able to write this all now. I don’t know how often my workload will permit blogging, but I will try to keep you all updated at least with a couple of pictures now and then!