Playing around
in Shivaji Nagar, Mumbai.
Essay writing
Interiors of the hostel to give you strength.
Digging into the archives at the TATA Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.
Making my way through the jungle of documents and animals at the gem of library in the Periyar Thidal, Chennai.
I guess most of you have been wondering if that Swedish girl was not supposed to do some research for her master thesis and not just go around taking photos using up Swedish government scholarship. Well I can tell you that I am multi-tasked! Since day 2 (first day was for getting out of the airport and find a place to sleep) I have been engaging in reading, talking and writing about quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in higher education in India and Tamil Nadu. I have dug into the principle of equality before the law and ways to reach real equality through special provisions for the historically discriminated segments of society. And:
The magic of deadlines!
If I was working on hard since I came here, that’s nothing from the last two weeks when I had a deadline to hold on to and an hour to send my so-far-finished work to my supervisor in Sweden. So much work has been done, so many things have been cleared out, so many places have been visited, so many new bus lines have been conquered and so much interesting people have been met!
Having to go out of the library to search for documents and persons, I have started to explore Chennai. I have been going by bus to places I didn’t know how to reach before. I have stumbled across archives just out of pure luck. I have met fighters for social justice and the anti-religious and anti-caste Periyar movement. I have met Mr. K.M. Vijayan who has filed petitions against the Tamil Nadu Reservation Act in the Supreme Court, and I have had the opportunity to meet the Chairman of the Tamil Nadu Backward Classes Commission Thiru M.S. Janarthanam and hear his highly interesting views on the judiciary and caste in Indian society from his experience as a practicioner of more than half a century in the Indian legal system.
When I came here I was firmly determined to keep all the politics and different opinions on reservations out of my essay as it was supposed to be purely legal. But I am starting to realize that it is more complicated than that, that there is no universal view of the existence and nature of the caste system and its operations in India today. Different groups argue differently on its importance in Indian society, and there are big battles fought from these different starting points on all levels in society, political, legal, occupational, in every-day life. I am starting to see that the battle between different interest groups and their relative power in Indian society also affects the legal issues, and that it is impossible to separate one from the other.
Vashi
Vashi was just two train stations away from home in Govandi. It is famous for its malls.
After passing the bridge again from where this photo is taken to go back, we see a young guy getting high on something he sniffs from a plastic bag. The grass glows of lush green, the rain and the humidity is permeating the air, the plants, you hair. The trains pass underneath.
Trapped
Suddenly it is there and you are stuck. The rain pours down and you should not move unless you want to get soaking wet within two seconds. Stuck under tree at Chembur station, Munmbai.
This time on my street in Chennai, only fifty metres from my house – can’t get my camera wet, just had to wait!
SPARROW
SPARROW is India’s first and probably South Asia’s only archive focused on preserving women’s history. Eminent women, ordinary women, artistic women, crazy women, lively women, intelligent women, transgender women, history on women, history written by women. Enter
the
Nest.
Fight!
In the archives, trying to preserve the photos and documents against Mumbai’s air (water and pollution, nasty combo…).
Bollywood posters from back in the days…
Condom ad. Old!
From _ to _.
Can you read?
There is always time and space for…
… chai. An excess in milk and sugar! Insomuch that I start to confuse tea with coffee (which is also an excess in milk and sugar…).
Bandra. East.
I see the river that was once the main river of Mumbai. Before, I guess it was of sparkling fresh water. Now it is full of dirt. You can see the tops of mountains of garbage that are heaped along the river sides. In the streets there is rubbish; in overfilled garbage trolleys, in heaps on the street, in front of people’s homes. There are cows, there are dogs, there are pigs, there are crows, and they all roam around and eat from the garbage. There is rubbish, there is contamination, there is dirt, there is mud, and this is what my eager eyes see when they look out from the bus window. I feel sorry for the people who are forced to live in this environment of contamination and neglect every day. But then, there is something more to it which you do not see at first. I see two children play around happily on one of the garbage mountains along the river as the rain starts to fall down, and as someone of the Nordic students from inside the bus starts to take photos of the children, a man in his middle ages next to them starts to pose sincerely with his two cows, waiting enough time to have proper photos taken of him. And as we roll in further and further with the bus, it becomes clear that it is not only we in the bus that are curious about our surroundings. Also curious eyes from the outside are trying to find out what is hiding there inside. Children are waving from down the street up to us, a woman inside a passing bus catches my eye through the double window glasses, a couple of young men standing by a motorbike wave frenetically, people waiting outside a shop peer curiously in line. Everyone told me to go to Bandra West. There the rich people live in their Bandra East, however, is a slum, and that interests me more. And I am happy that the interest and curiosity is mutual! Not only am I interested in the new surroundings, but so are also the children, the youngsters, the women, the men, and the elderly that inhabit this place we are visiting.
In Mumbai, there are slums everywhere. As soon as the aeroplane is about to touch down, you see them. Vast areas of small small constructions of blue plastic, cardboards, metal and bricks put together into a winding maze. Even in the centrest centre, there are slums. In Govandi where I was living in Mumbai, there was also a huge slum. If you would go off the local train track just to the west instead of the east, you would find yourself in one of the biggest and most dangerous (?) of Mumbai’s slums. Approxiamtely 55% of Mumbai’s twelve-million population live in slums that were constructed without such things as permissions, city planning or sanitation systems.
In the Bandra East slum there is potable water supply (which streams in this huge tube!) but it is limited to only some hours per day. Normally, you have to queue to get some for your whole family.
And no home has its own toilet. One share common toilets, like this one. Hygiene is difficult to maintain, and people are living crammed into verys small places. One room can be inhabited by a family of sixteen persons! However, there is a curiosity and warmth of the Bandra slum that fills me with hope. There are engaged health workers there that we visit at their clinic for women, I talk to a school girl that just like me writes in arabic letters and recognizes my last name and ask me if I don’t know those people as they must be my relatives, we talk to a young man who sells fish from a bag he carries on his head, I shake hands with another, and I photograph a little boy who is unfailing continuing to wave from me from the other side of the river for at least half an hour, in sign language making me understand that he wants to be pictured, and two other children who run to us in the rain just to be photographed. The interest is mutual and there is joy, and it makes it all very beautiful.
Shivaji Nagar Slum. Only a few minutes away from home
Mainstreet.
The sidewalk is watertubes.
Goats.
Sidestreet.
We take the rickshaw to Shivaji Nagar. It is close. As night falls, the different mosques start singing in different pitches and in different different rhythms. There is so much people, there is sometimes pavement, sometimes mud. There is sometimes electricity, sometimes dark. There are shops, there are homes. There is a child peeping out from the living-room door and there is a man selling turnips and I buy one.
V-talks
They were brilliant!!! The absolute best part was all the different orgasm moans illustrated by one of the fabolous indian actresses – the clit moan (a soft in-the-mouth sound), the vaginal moan (a deep in-the-throat sound), the combo, clit-vaginal moan. The almost moan (a circling sound), the right on it moan (a deeper definite sound), the elegant moan (a sophisticated laughing sound), the Grace Slick moan (a rock singing sound), the WASP moan (no sound), the Jewish moan (“No. No.”), the African-American moan (“Oh shit!”), the Irish Catholic moan (“Forgive me.”), the mountaintop moan (yodeling sound), the baby moan (googie googie googie goo sound), the doggy moan (a panting sound), the uninhibited militant bisexual moan (a deep, aggressive, pounding sound), the machine-gun moan, the tortured Zen moan (a twisted hungry sound), the Diva moan (a high operatic note), the college moan (“I should be studying. I should be studying.”), and finally, the surprise triple orgasm moan (intense, multifaceted, climactic moan). Way to go!!
Night out
I suspected that it maybe was not ideal to go out clubbing in salwar kameez or any other Indian traditional wrap – and luck I am a foreigner, otherwise I would not have been able to get in! We saw jeans and small tops, girls in dresses that finished above (!) the knee, we saw mini-skirts and exposed legs (!), we saw people sipping alcohol on the street, we saw drunk girls, and we stared with our eyes wide open.
Home =:= International Institute for Population Science >//< Mumbai.
Only for foreign students, of course.
This is my room. I have a TV!
Reminder in the hallway at the university hostel.
India 