A Miracle on Chowpatty Beach.

The Gateway of India.

One day, my French friend Hubert and I decided to go to one of Bombay’s most popular beaches: Chowpatty Beach. We were greeted by thousands of people eating, drinking, laughing, children riding on tiny motorbikes and playing with monster balloons in the sand, mothers chatting in circles, teenagers sharing pani puri and whole families taking walks along the neon-lid beach. Above all we could hear the cheesiest music. Enya and Beethoven alike were being reinvented on a psychedelic-sounding keyboard. We had some Bhelpuri (spicy rice crisp type things) and walked over to the water.

In the distance, we saw a fake castle, decorated with Christmas lights and in front of it, a stage. We discovered that in fact, the keyboard reinventions were being produced live. Some massive venue had been built for the occasion. We walked into a space as big as a stadium filled with chairs, hundreds of people sitting on them and bible-distributing volunteers.

We sat down and listened. A fat conductor/moderator/keyboard piano player was leading a choir of about 40 pink-clothed 20-something year olds. They were good. I was impressed by the solos and overall sound but just as appalled by the music’s flat cliché. A newly composed song, “I’m so, so proud to be an Indian,” featured lyrics such as “In a world filled with so much suffering, let’s make peace together.” The song was followed by several Christmas carols.

Nobody sitting around me seemed too impressed. I was actually captured more by the spectators’ lack of reaction than the pieces themselves. No motion of approval, critique or acknowledgment aside from the occasional, very sparse applause here and there.

When the not-too-humble conductor man announced that they were about to begin their final piece for the night, Hubert and I decided to make our way out of there. Having successfully maneuvered around without being handed a bible, we were on the beach once more. The thousands of beach dwellers appeared as ignorant of the massive spectacle taking place right next to them as before. Just as we strolled over to the toxic waterfront whose waves pushed all kinds of rubbish back and forth, the fat concert-conductor lost it.

“What an awesome concert, you will agree!” he screamed into the mic. “And God gave his blessing,” he continued, his now manic-sounding voice carrying effortlessly over hundreds of meters and beach visitors’ chats towards us, “when He sent this white dove that descended on this girl’s head!”

I turned my head away from the violated waterfront towards the fake castle stage.

“This is HIS sign that HE approves and gives his blessing!” the man’s voice was about to crack. Apparently, a white dove had miraculously descended on the solo singer’s head during her last line of the final act.

“Praise to the Almighty!” the man cried.

I translated the miracle to Hubert who did not understand a word of the mad yelling and we both cursed ourselves for having missed such a miracle. Nobody else on the beach seemed to have heard, understood or cared. And after not too long, soothed by the sight, smell and sound of bouncy children blowing bubbles, secret lovers holding hands and the glimmering, faint lights of the skyline (the “queen’s necklace”) on both sides of Chowpatty beach, I forgot as well.

Chowpatty Beach.

Of Monkeys and Caves

The intentive monkey, Elephanta Island, Bombay Feet, Elephanta Island, Bombay

Feet, Elephanta Island, Bombay

Bombay's Harbor.

The Nativity Scene on the Side of the Road

Christmas is approaching and glipses of it flicker through Bombay’s awesome mishmash of cultures and religions. As I write this, in fact, I can hear someone in my Chuim Village play Christmas songs on full volume — the cheezy kind (“Last Christmas”) and even some of the more classy stuff (“Let It Snow”). I always find it very interesting being away from home for Christmas, not only being away from my family (kind of used to that by now) but also being away from the stereotype of a snowy or at least rainy Christmas with sweaters, hats, gloves, pine trees and candles.

Last year, I spent Christmas in Nairobi, peeking over a wall to see our Maasai neighbors slaughter and skin a goat. The Maasai are the greatest ethnic group in Kenya — warriors. Though in the city, they lived in traditional huts and owned cattle, but there was a stark generational contrast: the young Maasai were wearing jeans and Nike shoes; the elder ones’ dresses were made out of traditional cloth. Six men were routinely taking apart the goat. They had drained the blood into a bucket. When they saw my voyeurish head peek over the wall, they invited me to come over and sip some blood. I said thank you, but no thank you. I was already invited to another Christmas goat slaughtering. We were going to leave any minute now. Respectfully, they smiled and nodded at me and continued to cut through skin, flesh and bones with their machetes. The goat’s heart, they gave to a little child who ran off with it, bringing the precious piece for the women to cook.

This year, I shall be in Cambodia with my mother (so stay tuned!), but the pre-Christmas-y time, I am spending in Mumbai’s polluted city heat that is surely killing me (I have acquired a miner’s caugh) and simultaneously intoxicating me to a degree of spiritual stonedness. 

As I walked through Bandra yesterday, I saw a man who was squatting on the side of the road cutting a woven line of straw. When I walked past him, I realized that he was cutting the roof of Jesus’ barn. Yes, miniature figures of all the relevant characters in the nativity scene, the three kings, baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, a bunch of goats and spectators, were all chilling on the sidewalk, between pieces of scrap and rubbish, only half a meter away from the daily rickshaw madness. 

I watched a young girl admire the figures. She pointed at one of them and looked up to her mother with a puzzled expression. She did not seem to know Jesus and co. The mother wiggled her head and smiled.

Just meters away from the nativity scene, exaggeratedly decorated fake Christmas trees spilled onto the street from two or three shops. I entered one of those stores. Some abnoxious Santa Clause song was blasting through the speakers onto the tacky depictions of Jesus on the cross and self-help books on how to find the Lord.

When I had successfully fled the place, I finally realized that I was in a Christian part of town. There was a convent on one side of the street, a gigantic cathedral on the other. In awe but also somewhat disturbed, I stood for a while, watching Indian men trying to sell flashy garlands and red-and-white Santa hats to passers-by, while the untouched convent’s strict architecture majestically resided behind their makeshift shops. The salesmen’s urgency to sell their Christmas memorabilia on the street stood in grotesque contrast to the religious seriousness behind them. One was mocking the other and the result was absurd.

This hypocritical love affair between religion and commercialism, of course, is even more predominant in Western countries, and it is one of the reasons I myself am not religious. But this is the beauty of Mumbai to me: Just as you think it cannot get any more overwhelmingly and artificially commercial, you have left the cathedral behind you, walked towards the water and discovered this scene of true serenity: