Ghandi's Ashram, Textile Museum & Asif Ghandalf
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2007
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170
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Trip End
Ongoing
Ahmedabad,
Gujarat,
India
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Population: 4.52 million bopping head Indians
We left Munchi Baba at Hanuman Ghat in Udaipur and set off to the bus stand to get on our reserved bus that would take us to Gujarat's major city Ahmedabad (Amdavad). Whilst waiting for the bus i snapped a photo of a couple taking their little goat for a walk down the city street on a lead made from rope. They seemed very proud of the animal but i'm sure they'll eat it some day soon. I also saw guys making giant balls of string outside an egg shop and they were well happy when i took their picture, so many happy faces. All day we ate a variety of street snack food comprised of almonds, peanut brittle, bananas, popcorn and vegetable samosas. Most of the food is served on newspapers or in the little leaf bowls held together with toothpicks. We love giving the empty bowls and our banana peels to the sacred cows. A guy came around selling English language magazines and we were quite shocked to find out the horrible statistics in Frontline magazine from the Mumbai terrorist attacks just two and a half weeks ago
textiles
. The attacks were a series of ten coordinated terrorist attacks across Mumbai, India's financial capital and its largest city. The attacks, carried out by armed men using automatic weapons and grenades, began on 26 November and ended on 29 November. At least 173 people were killed and at least 308 were injured in the attacks. Among the dead were 30 foreign nationals from 10 countries. Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai and the hardest places hit were at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, and the backpacker's haunt of Leopolds Cafe. The Indian Government said that the attackers came from Pakistan, and their controllers were in Pakistan. Bastards. We were safe in Rajastan at the time of the attacks and won't let it deter us from travelling everywhere else in India although many foreigners have cancelled their plans for India and in particular, for Goa Xmas and New Years.
Then a pigeon shit on the magazine and on us from above blessing us with luck and prosperity i am sure.
The bus did a moving roll past us out on the busy main road so we had to kind of run after the door and lug our packs inside the bus whilst the bus was moving, like stunt women in an action flick. Once inside we found an overflowing bus, someone was in our seats and the conductor refused to move them despite us having paid for deluxe seats. We ended up sandwiched between some crusty men on the very back seat bandit chairs that didn't have the lever to tilt the seat back
young cricket players in street, Ricky Ponting?
. This meant we were sitting vertically upright for five and a half hours with people trampling all over our packs in the aisles whilst kids made faces and threw dried chickpeas from their bhuja mix at us from the sleeper cabins above. Some people had been on that bus for a very long time, days i think because a bus starts to get a humanity stench after too long and it was definitely stinking human here. Nice bus and all, but stink.The nightmarish bus crawled into Ahmedabad quite late at night so we hailed a rickshaw and made a bee-line straight for the cheapest hotel in the cluster of budget dumps in Regency Cinema Road. Dumpety-dump-dumps. We took the cheapest option at Hotel Vinus because all the rooms we looked at were bad and none get even a basic rating. Shockers. It's difficult to gauge a hotel room by it's price in India. You don't always get what you pay for, it's random. Some of the best quality places are cheap as chips and the more expensive joints are dives. There's no standard. The room at Vinus was horrendously filthy with bare wires and peeling paint but the many hotel staff were all old school classic men in traditional uniforms and got around like the guys from the television show "Fawlty Towers", the lumps (matresses) on the beds were 2 inches thick and the bricks (pillows) were charming. On the plus side we had a bell in our room that we would ring for room service or drinks and one of the guys would come running to the room. We buzzed for mango nectar drinks served in glass bottles then buzzed again for some stuffed naan bread and a bowl of clear vegetable broth (the only thing safe on the menu)
Gujarati thali @ Agashiye Restaurant
. The hotel guys tell us that Indians only order vegetable soup if they are in hospital sick. The toilet was a strange specimen of a hybrid style that had never been cleaned. It was like a squatty but has the western style base on it so we assume that you were supposed to get up on the seat and squat from a height. The idea is not to touch anything in the room, it's all a health hazard. Just after i had said "at least there's no rats in here", a little mouse came in from under the door and i had to chase it out twice. One time it was rustling around in our bhuja bag. We watched Indian Idol and Mr Bean's Xmas edition on the idiot box. For the first time in my life i realized i am just like Mr Bean the character and i am proud to be, it's a weird thing but my mannerisms are alot like his childish ways. The next morning the idea was to get out of the depressing room as quickly as possible so we drank chai tea (the cheaper brew of milk and suger with very few spices) out of cracked tea cups whilst the Fawlty Towers boys from downstairs loitered around. All the staff were very interested in us over breakfast and we ended up telling one of the more enthusiastic waiters how he could get an invitation visa to visit Australia and then gave him the idea that he could open up chai tea chain stores, Starbucks style all over Australia. We even got the calculator out and wrote him a business plan trying to work out how the salary would compare to what he would get in India
Muslim ear muff vendor, he's wearing them
. We read the matrimonial section of the newspaper where people were advertising to try and attract brides for their sons or grooms for their daughters for arranged marriages. Important things to put in your advertisement are whether or not there is a dowry or if caste was an issue, if the child is educated or beautiful or handsome, if the daughter was homely or issue-less, if they are a Hindu or not, if they are veg or non-veg or if they ate dairy products and if divorced, they always stated it was an innocent divorce (the son is not at fault). A daughter who is not a virgin is very difficult to find a husband for in India.
We went across the road and watched two Muslim guys, paan vendors (betel leaf combined with the areca nut and tobacco and spices like cardamom, saffron, (un)/roasted coconut pieces, various powders, cloves etc) who looked like twins with healthy, long beards make up some good paan and dish it out to eager locals, clearly a popular stand.
We took our last few breaths of clean air, got the lungs prepared then hit the streets to hail an autorickshaw. Lady luck was on our side ( i think this was because of the pigeon shitting on us incident in Udaipur). The driver he got was named Asif Ghandi and he was an absolute gem and spoke a fair amount of English. He looked like the wizard Ghandalf from the Lord Of The Rings series. We negotiated a day rate with him which was about AU$4 each for the day. Asif took us out and about in the city he is so proud of showing us all the landmarks and stopping for photos, a good driver too
spices
. There's many shrines all over the city and portable ones too in people's rickshaws. Most people have a small framed picture of their favourite deity in their pockets too. Keys, mobile phone, kids, deity..................don't leave home without it. We went to the eerie Dada Hari Wav, a beautiful water well and former meeting place built in 1499. We had the whole place to ourselves and Asif used his i'm-of-the-Muslim--faith-and-wearing-the-cap card to get us backstage passes to the small temples behind it by giving baksheesh to the guardian. The guardian guy showed us a vampire's cemetary type room where there were some tombs covered in fabric and light shards falling in rays about the room from tiny windows, creepy stuff.
Next, we went to the shining jewel of Ahmedabad, the Sabarmati Ashram that was Mahatma Ghandi's former headquarters. Ghandi was a major political and spiritual leader of India and his Sabarmati ashram was the scene of many events of the Indian independence movement.Gandhi made it his home from 1917 to 1930. While at the Ashram, Gandhi formed a school that focused on manual labour, agriculture, and literacy to advance his efforts for self-sufficiency. It was also from here on March 12, 1930 that Gandhi launched the famous Dandi march 241 miles from the Ashram (with 78 companions) in protest of the British Salt Law, which taxed Indian salt in an effort to promote sales of British salt in India. He was imprisoned for many years, on numerous occasions, in both South Africa and India
artworks
. Gandhi was a practitioner of non-violence and truth, and advocated that others do the same. The buildings themselves are not spectacular but we stayed for quite some time because there was lots of information about Ghandi's life as well as artworks and photographs and Gandhi quotations, letters and other relics like his walking stick and sandals in an exhibition . I love to look at his little saintly smiley face so i bought a photograph of him and a keyring. Got to love those spiritual souvenirs, can't wait to buy the postcard of Amma, the hugging mother's feet or the Sai Baba dashboard bopper head toy. We also bought Ghandi's autobiography "My Experiments With Truth". There were a few sudents around and all wanted to pracise their English, a couple of them asked for our autographs. In his life amongst many more important things, Ghandi was quoted as saying:
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
"Be the change that you want to see in the world."
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
"Each one prays to God according to his own light."
"There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes."
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history."
"Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice
Fawlty Towers lads
. It is within everyone.""I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could"
"If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide."
"It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity."
"The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different."
"Where there is love there is life."
"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
"My life is my message"
and many more wonderful messages for us, an incredible human to have walked the Earth.
Mahatma Ghandi, we salute you.
We went to the City Museum where the highlight was a kite museum the world's largest incense stick, some rocket ship tips and some strange contemporary art. Indians love to fly their kites off the rooftops and each year in January there is a very cool kite festival called Makar Sakranti that looks like lots of fun. The whole city is up on the rooftops and i believe the idea is to cut the strings off your neighbours kites by attaching shards of glass to your kite and using it as a weapon. All over the city we saw people making and dying kite string on the side of the road. It made us want to fly our 100 foot tail rainbow dragon kite, we miss it and i'm sure she's itching to fly. Some people call it a giant pride flag
My LIfe Is My Message
. At home, we like to use it to crash people's wedding photos. We were glad to see our first signs of Christmas coming considering it is only two weeks away. There were quite a few families selling red and white Santa hats with pom poms on the ends from the side of the road on a bridge. They are quite the fashion accessory around here. We really miss the Xmas lead up, lights, shopping, seasonal stone fruits, carols and decorated tree. I guess it will have to be Mariah Carey's Christmas Album on the ipod again.
The day with Asif Ghandi was wrapped up with him inviting us to his private home to meet his wife Hanefa and daughter Elisa and to share a meal. He wouldn't take no for an answer so we ended up at his place sitting on a grass reed mat on his floor eating a delicious meal of the best in India chapatti and curries and drinking well spiced masala chai. They also showed us their foreign coin collection and some photographs. The family shares one bedroom, the kitchen runs on gas bottles and they were in the business of drying beef jerky because there was little pieces of raw meat clung up on ropes all over the house. As we did the short tour Asif's wife kept saying something and i think it could be translated as "mind your head on the jerky, i'm trying to dry it". Asif also runs a public phone box to supplement his rickshaw driving, the little businessman he is. Asif tried to get us to come around again to meet his sister and when we declined he promised to put his whole day aside the next day to take us around and has now reached the status of our substitute father, bless his little heart
Ghandi
. He even negotiated the big energy zapping, push and shove line up at the train station for us and helped get us tickets on the Mumbai bound train after the ticket master had told us the train was full. Queues are for foreigners only, Indians don't line up, there's way too many of them for that amount of order. We were in a line for a counter that said it was for people with disabilities, freedom fighters and foreign tourists but it was the first time any tourist had ever bought their ticket there and there was lots of confusion. That night we went to the Law Garden Night Market which was way further away than we thought and had stalls selling glittering wares from the Kutch and Saurashtra. There was lots of intensely mirrored wall hangings and blouses and lots of the richly decorated chaniyas, the long traditional skirts. We were disappointed that alot of it was machine made and tacky looking, there were virtually none of the antique embroideries i like but i did snap up some patches for my market shop. The whole experience was tainted by a filthy, young child who had no shoes or shirt and a huge swollen mass of a hump growing from his back. A horrendous disease. I gave the kid a small amount of shrapnel coins because he looked hungry but he wouldn't leave us alone and would walk next to or behind us tugging on our clothes as we walked and moving between us. It sounds bad but we raised our voices and shook our heads but he wouldn't go or be quiet. This was the most persistent beggar we have come across
Nadine poses with giant fruit
. He followed us for about an hour then we caved and bought him a 10 rupees sandwich off the street. That's one way to get your dinner. There are way too many hungry kids to buy them all dinner.We were very keen to sample one of the famous Gujarati thalis, the traditional all-you-can-eat vegetarian meal that all the locals eat. They seem to be different everywhere we go. We only had one night in Gujarat left and being the foodies that we are, we left nothing to chance and ate out at a restaurant described as Ahmedabad's finest dining experience, Agashiye, located on the rooftop of the mansion called The House Of MG. The location itself was impressive because we found out later that the little champion Mahatma Ghandi himself had stayed there when he first arrived from South Africa. Luckily for us they were specialists in the thali dish. The experience on the candle-lit terrace was, well, very fine.
The Gujarati thali lived up to it's reputation as being a celebration of tastes evidenced by the multiple flavour sensations that erupt as you progress through the dish. There is a whole process to eating the thali and we were given instructions in English before we took our table just in case we made fools of ourselves and brought down the establishment's good name during the meal. Did the faded Afghani pants and beaten up Birkenstocks give us away again? Cutlery is not used at all. You use your right hand for eating and your left hand to help yourself to food placed on the table
statue in garden
. The waiters washed our hands for us with an antique teapot and bowl before and after the meal. You squeeze lemon between your fingers to remove odours. The napkin is not meant for wiping your hands during the meal, it is for drying them after washing. The thali is the most balanced meal amongst all Indian cuisines and is served on a kansa plate which is made from an alloy of five different metals. Apparently eating from this plate is good for your memory and purifies your blood. The whole thing is quite stylish and kitsch. We were seated at low coffee tables under a giant, moving mobile of colourful Indian deities hanging from the roof for the starters which were farsan, savoury breads with chutney and they kept bringing more refills out because we thought this was the main dish and wanted to get our moneys worth, the piglets. After we stopped eating and realised that there was another section to the restaurant (they didn't tell us that one in the brochure) we were escorted through to start the thali. Waiters attacked us from all angles bringing out various tools, pots, dishes and little bowls, there was about six guys around us at one point. All the waiters were boys from the neighbouring village. We refused the water (unfiltered) but each time a guy would take it away, a new jug of it would appear straight away. They were watching our every move, a little bit spooky but we're getting used to the staring situation now. First you had the roti bread that is made into pockets to scoop the vegetables
paan vendors stand on Regency Cinema Street
. Roti can be dipped in the dal, rich lentil soup or khadi, a seasoned yoghurt and gram flour preparation. Salted Chhas, buttermilk accompany the meal. The center dish has chutneys, home made pickles, white butter and jaggary. There was a sweet dish of hot rice pudding enjoyed alongside the meal and also the raita, a yoghurt based curd that acted as a tongue tickler between the courses. A kachumber, salad of fresh vegetables and raw fruit was also on the plate. Next we moved on to the rice and khichdi, a split lentil dish rich in protein and more dal. A waiter poured a good helping of ghee over this which we devoured using the crispy pappadoms. We couldn't really keep up with protocol and ended up getting adventurous and mixing all the food up together for the ultimate flavour experience. Being sauce and condiment people we really appreciated all the little extras avaliable to spruce up the thali. We were served a sour tasting lassi concoction to drink. Desert was homemade ice-cream and paan (beetle nut) along with a range of mukhwas, mint flavoured crunchy chips and grated coconut that you ate by filling the leaf with all the ingredients and adding a sprinkle of menthol powder then chewing the whole thing. The paan clears your mouth of any lingering tastes and acts as a digestive. It is beyond us why the Indian thali craze hasn't reached restaurants all over the world, it's a good social meal to have, a nice little business idea. Shares in thalis i say.At most places it is really cheap at around 25to 35rupees for the whole thali
homeless guy selliing Santa hats
. We paid about 300rupees for the deluxe style at the restaurant but that's still just over AU$10 and cheaper than a counter meal at an Aussie pub these days. A good deal and a nice evening out after roughing it on the road. We seem to go from extreme to extreme. From decadent rooftop dining to sleeping on a brick pillow on a mattress that smells of urine in a concrete prison cell of a room with a fear of mice crawling over your body. And that is the very long story of the Gujarati thali.Ahmedabad is a good place (a very fine place) to tuk tuk around in because it's a mixture of old and new and remarkably cosmopolitan. It also has very few tourists (we saw none) and a rich Muslim history. Asif the rickshaw hero insisted on picking us up early in the morning and taking us to see his local Muslim mosque which was quite impressive and rivalled the larger ones we saw in Morocco, no idea what it was called but it was very fine. There were the alters facing mecca (very fine), a water pond (very fine) and large pillars holding the whole thing up. Asif was proud to be showing the foreigners off to his prayer buddies and at one point he grabbed a bundle of peacock feathers that are meant for smudging smoke and whacked us with them on each shoulder. We felt very fine. We took it that this was a good thing and we were accepted there. Asif was a such a jolly chap and would point out every possible cow, hotel, landmark, garden bed, pile of rubbish, temple and restaurant we passed all the while exclaiming "very fine, it's very fine"
making paan
. We had to nod in agreementAhmedabad is home to the world's finest textile museum and part of the reason we had made the stop there. The museum is a private collection of antique and modern Indian textiles. The galleries are housed in a haveli constructed of old village houses with wonderful woodcarving. The house and peaceful gardens were some of the best design work i have ever seen, very organic and earthy and to think it is in the middle of a dirty, polluted city. The work presented in the well preserved textile galleries was absolutely beautiful, elaborate and impossibly extravagant and we were shown around for a good two hour, complimentary tour. There was a bonus part of the tour which included a part called Invisible Presence: Images and Deities Of Indian Gods. This was an indoor and outdoor exhibit exploring depictions of Indian gods and i found them breathtakingly beautiful and erotic. The most beautiful sculptures of gods were ingeniously lit with lighting to highlight their beauty and make a dramatic impact on the observer. There was one giant dancing Shiva that was very difficult to take your eye off, wonderful and very moving. I also liked that there was peacocks and squirrels roaming the gardens and green parrots flying around the space. The guide never even asked for donations and we were most grateful this work has been preserved and that we were able to view it. The embroidery work is an important part of India's history and is a dying art as machine looms take over the work that the weavers used to do
the old village haveli used to make up the museum
. A fabulous museum.We spent a good afternoon wandering around Ravivari market which is a crazy flea market of produce, animals, modern gadgets, $2 shop crap, junk, trashy imported clothing, crockery, fabric and gadgets. The streets, gutters and sidewalks were chock-a-block filled with vendors selling anything and everything imaginable from combs and saris to sugar cane juice and underwear, Britany Spears belt buckles and spices to creepy crawly pool cleaners (no-one has swimming pools), corn cobs to giant papaya fruit. Our favourite guy was the muslim selling ear muffs and the guy who was spruiking with what looked like a merkin (pubic wig for all those out of the loop) in his hand. We were the only foreigners there and of course attracted alot of attention. Everybody wanted their photo taken and to take ours. It was lots of fun chatting to everybody but also quite exhausting in the frenzy and we ended up with a wacky stalker fond of westerners on our way home. We collected the packs and had our last cup of masala chai with the Fawlty Towers lads before meeting back up with Asif Ghandi Ghandalf the champion and saying our sad good-byes at the train station.
What a wonderful, friendly, smogged out city and relatively hassle free because they haven't worked out ways to scrounge money from the tourist pocket yet, it's too polluted for people to stay here.
I smoke beedi cigarettes now which is tobacco rolled into leaves by local villagers. I only smoke about six a day which is an improvement on the Marlboros.
I must say in the words of the greatest rickshaw driver in India, i feel very, very fine.
Now, the sleeper train to Mumbai
