A breath of fresh air

Riding through Delhi, crossing the new Bandra Sea Link bridge, Aditya and Aruna were surprised by the haziness of the skyscrapers across the bay. Pollution may be up, but as far as I'm concerned 2 weeks in Bombay was a breath of fresh air.

Our train to Delhi was great. It was nice traveling with friends, especially friends that pick up Chacha Chaudhuri comic books for me to practice reading Hindi, not to mention bring food that is not deep-fried in oil.

Our visit to Mumbai was mainly to look into the possibilities of collaborating with Pukar (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), an organization that Aditya had worked with before going to MIT. We were also interested in meeting other people in various organizations that might have perspectives on the questions we are asking.

Pukar really began as a platform for people in Mumbai to do research in the city of Mumbai. The day we arrived was a book release of a book called Why Loiter which was interesting but long. The space it was in, however, was fascinating - Studio X, which is Mumbai's new chapter of a new network of spaces across major cities in the world. It is clearly well-funded given their space is in a very expensive area, and very large. And after an hour or so of listening to some audio visual exhibits they had it became clear that it was out of my league, and out of the league of any other poor people I know.

If you take the studio x concept and scale it down and then rehash it to the context of the urban poor rather than the "best minds of the world" it gives an idea of what we are thinking for our workshop space. But more with a focus on making things that are practical, makeable, and beneficial to the poor. As much as we are looking to put it in the most needy area, Studio X's are put in the 'liveliest historic downtowns', so for them maybe you just need to have the right amoung of rent money (and maybe know a few people), our entry into a community is much more about gradual trust and relationship building with the locals - the users of the space.

A picture from the book release at Mumbai's studio x.

After the book release we went on a street food forage. Aditya and Aruna have talked up the street food here enough and since Delhi and Agra had little more than deep-fried treats, I was certainly up for it. We had bhel puri, sev puri, sandwiches (a la bombay), grabbed a pao from the Yazdani bakery as it closed, had some chicken rolls, and cocunut water. Not bad. This exercise was also excellent for gauging the general rise in prices in Bombay. Food aside, the rent prices I was hearing were ridiculous - flats over New York rates.

Aditya remembering what Bombay tastes like from a street cocunut water vendor. (that is my camera case, actually just an old sock, making its appearance at the bottom of the picture.)