Heading Off

Im heading out of Mumbai for the weekend again. Diwali day off tomorrow so early start.. Train back to Goa to visit the south my motorbike. Have been in a good routine here including an evening walk home after work 40 min along the beach and a morning jog. The humidity has dropped and much more comfortable. I have decided that you could live quite comfortably on the beach. The high water mark has everything.. All manner of food, wrappings, tooth paste, tooth brushes, clothes, syringes, condoms. etc You would never really need to shop if you dont mind reusing...
I have been hanging out at the Iskon Hari Krishna temple quite a bit in the evenings. Just 30 yards from where Im staying, it is very beautiful and has lots of chanting and incense You can also eat, Govinda restraunt (highly recommend!!) or from their food court. Well worth a visit if you are in Mumbai.

Happy Diwali!!!

Everyone is going a bit nuts here at the moment. It is Dawali season, crackers going off everywhere, people singing and dancing in strange places and lots of beautiful Puja (sand/rice/salt) drawings on the ground. Have to be careful not to stomp in a clumsy aussie way through them.
Puja

Im starting to run out of time here. I am visiting a few other Universties early next week and will just be at SNDT for another 3 days to write report, then off to Rajistan. I have been having a few meetings here with people from Social Inclusion regards potential for student exchange which could be a great thing for some of our Social Work students. My host veena has headed off to see her family so I wont see her again here. We have been having lots of lunches and gatherings in the lead up to Diwali which usually break into song, sometimes dance.

typical lunches form the Uni canteen: watermelon juice, lassi, noodles, thali..

A few pics

Women selling flowers. She was so excited seeing her picture in the camera, ran about showing all her friends

Girls selling fruit in Mumbai Jungle park

View of Taj hotel (site of terrorist attacks) en route to elephanta caves.

Checking out elephanta caves with a couple of fellas from Kerala

My working week

We start work a bit later here, which I have gotten into the swing of. Rather than rising before 7 and getting organised for 20k bike ride to work, I am awoken by the chiming of the temple bells across the road. When they ring 8 times I get up, call down for a bit of brekky, Chai and omlett toast sir!! And off to work by rickshaw at 9.25 for a 9.30 start. Very sedentary and I think my fitness has gone to the dogs. Ive started running a bit but it is so muggy I end up sweating about 10 buckets, drink loads of water and get bad calve cramps, which I think must be something to do with electrolytes. This morning I think the bell ringer got it wrong and I got to work an hour early and had to wait an hour before I could get in..

Last week I gave a few lectures and attended a conference on Afro-Asian philosophy. What has Afro-Asian philosophy got to do with my work you ask?? Well, a focus of the conference was rights, particularly in the context of womens rights and the impact of growing islamic fundamentalism, but the rights issues are transferable to disability or whatever. Some of the panel discussions got very heated. The discussion is really about whether the western notions of universal rights are transferable to a eastern context. Having this debate in a philosophical context is really interesting as the discussions are rooted in the philosophic traditions. There is not agreement about this issue with one school arguing that there are no absolute values/rights and all is context based and thus cultural/religious gender etc considerations important. The other school arguing that even without absolute measures you can have aspirational values to which all should subscribe regardless of context. Very interesting and I do have a better understanding of how importantly the critique of Western scholarship/cultural influence is viewed. Based largely on the central role spirituality plays in Indian society, which is seen as being absent in Western discourse.
My presentations went well. I gave 2 to staff in education and development, and one for students in the Masters Social Inclusion program. The student lecture was about social inclusion in an Australian context. The students were really interested and asked loads of questions. It freaks people here out when I tell them that Australia is twice the size of India and has the population of Mumbai. Helps explain issues of regional exclusion. The staff sessions went well also with a fair bit of discussion about the similarities and differences in the Higher Ed systems and inclusion.

Goa Breakfast Spot

Weekend in Goa

I hopped an overnight train to Goa for a weekend trip on Friday night. Sleeper on the train very relaxing and comfortable. Would have had a great sleep if not for the guy snoring his head off above me. Jumped on the back of a little motorbike driven by a guy called Anthony for the 70k trip to beach side Baga. Lots of people of Portuguese descent with names like Frank and Anthony which I don't quite get, but must be some reason for it.. Bought Anthony some lunch when we arrived which he bagged to take back to his family.

Goa was great. Not peak season so not too busy, but very much the tourists playground. Lots of beachside restaurants and bars, about 90% indian tourists and most of the rest Russian which surprised me. They travel on charter flights from Moscow and mostly look like bronzed beach gods, except they cant swim. Quite nice surf but no board hire and I was the only one bodysurfing on the beach. There is a busy industry on the beach of bracelet sales, jet boat hire, para gliding etc. I found a relatively quite spot of beach to swim, read and chat with a group of young fellas hiring the beach beds. They were all from different parts of India, slept in the kitchen of the bosses beachside restraunt shack which they were in the process of reconstructng for the coming busy season. All alongh the beach there were new bamboo and thach bars and sleeping shacks being constructed and the place will apparently be bedlam in a month. The young men were really nice and I felt quite safe leaving them to look after my wallet and things while I swam, which turned out to be the right hunch as they looked after me, and they want me to come back to stay when there restraunt is up and running(which I may try to do).

Hired a motorbike for a day, which took a 1 minute transaction involving no forms, lisences deposits.. Just handed over $7 and see you tomorrow. It was great being free to ride along the coast, checked out some old portuguese forts and a few beaches. the roads are realitively good in Goa and the trafic reasonably light so pretty safe riding.

Met lots of nice people travelling for the weekend including a lovely young woman from Kyrgyzstan who has been doing voluntary work in nepal and wants me to see if she can volunteer in Gujarat school. Really not that keen heading back to the crowds of mumbai from tropical beachside semi paradise.. Still had to be done; comfortable but no sleep on the train and no snoring to blame. Arrived 6.00 am at Dadar station, humid and already teeming with crowds, walking over to the suburban line across crowded, smelly wet muck covered lane, pushing into a crowded train with bag on head so as to fit in.. Sort of feeling like an old hand, coming back into Mumbai, but then got off train at the wrong stop so stuffing around before getting to hotel and heading, a bit tired to work to give a sparkling presentation to the SNDT staff.

Quiet Saturday arvo at a suburban train station. Who said Indians don't like sport? Getting on and off the train is like a rugby scrum..

Spent Friday on an outreach visit to Gujarat villiages with my host Veena and centre manager Parul. Normally they travel by train but we were taking a load of stuff for kids so went with a driver. I was dreading the drive based on last experinece getting out of Mumbai by road but it wasnt too bad. National trunk road to Dehli is wide, multi laned and not too many animals, ox carts etc. I still wouldnt want to drive, lanes are ignored(I suspect they just dont have the experince with lanes, or may be something cultural like queueing issues), and vehicles drive down the wrong side, even on the highway. At one sage our driver saw a jam ahead so cut across the median strip, to the far side of the oncoming lane, followed by a procession of copycats. We played chicken with oncoming vehicles for a while, until the jam was passed, then created a new traffic jam as we, and our followers tried to get back on the right side of the road.. go figure..

The creche and school we visited are amongst small villages, well away from services like power, water, medical etc but in very nice countryside. The school facilities are very sparce as they receive very little funding. I took a load of crayons and pads which was a hit, but wished to do more. One 10 yo blind boy at the school had no access to any type of learning, other than singing songs.

Kids at creche














Hate to play favourites, but the nicest smile in the school


Also attended a women's group meeting. The group pool resources to get bank accounts for small cottage industries. Started with a beautiful song on the porch sung by 15 women, singing about womens empowerment. Unfortunatly the meeting turned sour as a group leader had apparently not been banking funds and refusing to repay, so the meeting turned fairly bitter.

Me squatting with staff from the outreach centre