Doggie Singles Party!

That's what the Dog A'Fair felt like.

Anybody that know's me well knows that I'm not fond of dogs at all. I don't like over-friendly Man's Best Friends. I can deal with small dogs, but I have a difficult time being around any dog that has the ability to maul me (okay, jump on me and knock me down). So I wasn't sure if I had made the correct choice in allowing Zahir to take me the dog festival at the Radio Club.

But I will be the first to admit that I enjoyed photographing the dogs. All the dogs were on leashes, and for the most part, the dogs were more concerned with doing a little speed sniffing...er, I mean speed dating rather than bothering an unfamiliar human.



For more of my photos from the Dog A'Fair, go to www.flickr.com/alithanawalla

After the dog festival, I met up with Samira and her friend Gunjan at Kala Ghoda in an attempt to do some shopping for gifts. It took as about five minutes to realize it was a lost cause. A street art festival on a Sunday afternoon? I think everybody in all of Bombay was there. So we just started walking away from the festival. Because there were so many people, we were finding it difficult to hold the conversation, so we stopped in a little alley. As we started talking, a guy started banging on a drum and a little girl, probably six or seven years old, started doing somersaults.

Street Performer 01 from Ali Thanawalla on Vimeo.

Then she climbed up the poles and started traversing the tight rope as the man continued to bang on the drum. As you can see from the video below, there was also an element of call and response between the two.

Tight Roping Street Performer from Ali Thanawalla on Vimeo.

I read that the terrific weather that the Bay Area has been spoiled with since I left will be overtaken by rain in the next day or two. I hope Mother Nature gets it all out of its system by the time I get back next Monday. I'm getting used to nice weather and I'm not looking forward to returning to rain. Please proceed to collectively curse at me.

A Day of Remembrance

I must warn you, the theme of the day was a bit sad. Some might say morbid.

On Friday, my aunt told me that she wanted to go to her grandmother's grave, as yesterday was the anniversary of her passing. My Badi Nani (Great Grandmother) passed in 1994, two years before my mom. I was 10 when Badi Nani passed, but I still remember spending time with her when my mom and I would stay with her and my grandmother.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I had been to Badi Nani's grave.

We stopped to pick up pre-made flower arrangements from a custom flower shop. Once we got to the cemetery, before we could lay the flowers, place the incense or pray, we had to get someone to pour water on the grave. Once we placed the flower arrangement over the grave, my aunt lit incense and each of us placed two or three sticks in the grave.

Day of Remembrance from Ali Thanawalla on Vimeo.

A few other family distance family members were buried in the same cemetary, so we went around to all of them and placed some loose flowers and incense on them.

I know this is going to sound weird to some of you, but I'm glad I got to experience this.

In the evening, I went with my aunt and cousin to the memorial service for my cousin's friend's mom, which I mentioned in an earlier blog post. It was a much smaller, low key service than the one we had for my mom. There were no speeches at this service. Anybody that wanted to pay their respects was allowed to come by and see the family. My cousin's friend was surprisingly composed. She cried a little bit during the prayer towards the end. My cousin and I were just trying to keep her friend's spirits high by making her smile and/or laugh.

One week left on my trip. Still have a lot of things to do and a few family members to visit. I think Samira and I are going to go back to the Kala Ghoda Festival today and look at the crafts to see if there is anything worth buying.

Bring on the World Cup...of Cricket

Good morning everyone. It's actually almost 3pm here on Thursday, but most of you will be reading this as you wake up.

Not feeling too good right now. I think I ate some bad food last night. Wasn't a pretty scene last night. But I slept off the bug and I feel better today. Decided to stay home and take it easy. My aunt and cousin have gone out for lunch.

Anyway, before my near-death experience last night, per my request, Zahir took me to a spot on Marine Drive I had been eyeing for a couple days. As evidence by the video a posted last week, Marine Drive a long stretch of road. From the far end, you can see all the major Government and office buildings. But this year, there is a new character in the Marine Drive skyline: Wankhede Stadium. New in the sense, the lights are on in the evening because construction crews are making last minute round-theclock preparations for the Cricket World Cup which is starting on the 19th. So just about evening since I've been here, the lights have been on. Below is a 30 second exposure.



On Tuesday, my aunt and I went to the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. Kala Ghoda is a big artsy area in the middle of South Bombay with lots of old British-built buildings. The festival was your typical street fair. There were booths where people were selling crafts, there was entertainment for kids. People were taking photos with statues and shrines built for the festival. And there was a large stage set up for dancing and plays. From about 5pm to 10pm, there were a number of performances. My aunt and I watched three performances.







After the festival, we stopped so that my family could buy some snacks from one of the street vendors. These guys were popular. They were making Bhel Puri and Sev Puri. And it wasn't that expensive. My aunt, cousin and friend all ate two helpings and the total for all three of them came to 70 rupees. That's literally a $1.50. And that was pretty much their dinner for the evening. That's not too shabby if you ask me.



Alrighty, like I said, I'm supposed to be taking it easy today, so I'm going to go do a little reading and take a nap before everyone gets home.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

I haven't blogged in a few days, partly because things have slowed down and I haven't done much of anything worth writing about. But also, I caught a case of Writer's Block, which tends to happen to me after a few days of writing. I love to write (I originally got into journalism to write) but I can't do it consistently enough to make a career out of it.

Anyway, yesterday was an interesting day. The events led to a lot of retrospective thinking.

At about 9am yesterday, my aunts cell phone rang. It was in her bedroom, but we were in the living room talking, so I ran to get it for her. It was my cousin Samira's best friend. From the moment she answered the phone, my aunt knew something was wrong, so she went into Samira's room and woke her up.

About two minutes later, Samira came out of her room and told us that her best friend's mom had just died. Samira's friend had just left home and was on the train headed for work when she herself got the call that her mom had died. She wasn't sick. So within the time she had left the house and 9am, something had happened to her mom. It's amazing that your life can change that dramatically that quickly.

The original plan was for all of us to go to Samira's friends house, but eventually, I ended up going to Zahir's office, while Samira and my aunt spent the entire day at her friend's house. A big part of me wanted to go because this friend had helped me just this past weekend look for gifts for friends. Even though I don't know her that well, I do know that she's a sweet girl. But I also knew that since I didn't really know the family, it wasn't my place. Samira and my aunt picked me up at 7:30 and that's when they told me that the lady had suffered a stroke and passed away on the way to the hospital.

For those that don't know, my mom suffered a stroke and died in 1996. So this whole situation really got me thinking about how the whole episode unfolded for me, and if it had happened like it happened to Samira's friend, how would I have reacted. Back then, I was unbelievably close with my mom. If she were still alive today, I imagine we'd be just as close. I can't even begin to imagine my reaction if, while on a packed BART train, I got a call from my dad or a friend telling me my mom had collapsed and died just like that. The idea that it could all be over so quickly, to me, defies logic.

Anyway, enough of the depressing rambling. Back to our regularly scheduled programming: Photos!

Today, we went to Bandra to take care of errands so we stopped by the Mount Mary church for a few minutes. Simply beautiful. There are two parts of the church. Across the street from the main building is the statue of Mary. The statue is encased above a small chapel. This first photo is of the chapel and the case containing the statue of Mary.



This is the main building. The front entrance was closed, so I couldn't go in.



While waiting for my family to finish their business, I stopped to admire the palm trees.



Two nights ago, we went to Colaba to do some shopping. We passed by the woman on the way to a shop. On the way back, I stopped for a minute. I had hoped to catch someone giving her some money.



I didn't post anything about our weekend road trip to Lavasa, a hill station 4-5 hours outside of Bombay. I'll keep it brief. It was magnificent. Because it was secluded from the city, there wasn't much smog. I felt like it was a combination of Lake Tahoe and Anderson Lake County Park in Morgan Hill.





Well, that's all for now. Hope everyone enjoys the Super Bowl. It's not on TV here this year (Ten Sports used to broadcast it, as recently as two years ago), so I'm going to have to try to stream it online. Gotta wake up at 5am on Monday here. I'm rooting for the Steelers for two reasons. 1. I grew up hating the Packers, so despite the fact that Aaron Rodgers is their QB, I can't root for them. 2. Despite his numerous stupid personal decisions, I'm a huge Roethlisberger fan. The guy just finds ways to win games.