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| Women's India Trust (WIT) - Mumbai |
Yesterday we
spent in the splendor of rest -- adjusting our internal clocks -- resting up
for this pilgrimage of India.
So for our
"official" Day 2 we travel by bus -- Mat and I laid claim to the back
row as he can then shift from one side of the bus to the other efficiently to
film as our guides show us landmarks along the way. The back of the bus is both
a blessing (for the space and accessibility) and a curse (as it has proven to be
the bumpiest part of this transport).
Mani Bhavan
http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org
After we
journeyed south for an hour, our first stop was Mani Bhavan - the site where
Gandhi led many of his political movements in India. A guide led us though
where Gandhi lived while visiting Mumbai, which was also the place that Martin
Luther King Jr. insisted on staying while he was in India.
While visiting
Mani Bhavan, I discovered that as I had lifted out of my bus seat, the back of
the kurta I'm wearing (a long Indian dress shirt) had torn. So I walked
through the museum with a gaping flap (which everyone noticed except my own
husband).
Women’s India Trust
http://www.wit.org.in
Between tour
stops, I found my sewing kit and worked on the flap in my wardrobe as we traversed
the streets of Mumbai to visit to the Women's India Trust. When we
reached the first of many social projects we're visiting on this tour, I had
already sewn the gaping kurta hole completely shut, however primitive my
stitches may look. Perhaps I didn't want my handiwork to look too skillful or
they might've felt compelled to put me to work there. :) This cooperative
offers training and employment for women who cannot work traditional hours or
who do not have any education or skills. We were greeted by the teacher
trainees that led us through various child development projects -- from
creating hand painted journals to origami and puppetry. All of these
teaching tools were made with reclaimed materials and we all marveled at their
ingenuity with plastic bottles, egg shells, newspapers and such. Teacher
trainees are educated for a year at the WIT but this facility provides many
types of training and even offers a resident 2 year nursing program. We
were treated to quite a tasty vegetarian meal provided by the organization as
part of our visit.. As we left, just as we leave everywhere, we are advised to
use the facilities-- today especially as we head south now to Kolhapur.
This city is over the mountains we could see in the distance, through Pune and a
good eight hour drive.
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| The chaos of traffic in the city |
The streets are
full of motorcycles, scooters, people, stray dogs, and moving waves of
traffic-- both people and vehicles of every size and shape imaginable. Some of
these transports are quite colorful and loaded from one end to the other with
the people of India. Rides are commonly shared on scooters; others hang out the
sides of the city metro train-- there are so many creative ways of traveling in
and out of the city. Sometimes the whole family rides on one scooter --mother,
father, and two small children sandwiched between them riding into the
sunset.
It's now dusk, and everything out the window seems like a strange
hallucination of a Dali-esque world with a post-apocalyptic backdrop. As
we attempt to drift off to sleep, the bus lurches forward and sudden stops are
not unusual. The feeling is best summed up by my back of the bus
seatmate/husband who exclaimed, "the cuteness of being flung around like a
rubber chicken has worn off." Sweet dreams and hold on tight.
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