Exploring This Rich City

I have been so blessed over the past week to have a new window into my city nearly every day.  I attended a ladies group at the pastor's house on Thursday and enjoyed a morning in a beautifully renovated old home down a tiny lane, reminiscent of the lane houses in Shanghai.  Each woman was lovely, and the food and the conversation were absolutely worthwhile.  But so too was the chance to spend time with people outside my normal expat circle of the consulate and the school.

I went shopping for the Marine Ball with a few friends on Friday.  We looked at saris, lehengas, and gowns.  The embroidery, the brocade, the crystals and mirrors artfully covering these unique pieces were stunning.

We observed Columbus Day, Navratri, and Dussehra earlier this week by watching late night dancing in the streets.  Bank holidays in either India or the United States are consulate holidays as well, so Dave and I took the opportunity to check out some new parts of town.

There were school events, workshops teaching me approaches to literacy, and maker spaces where my children used a vast array of bits and pieces to create a vast array of things - a potion for Halloween, a wagon which could pull all three of them, and a table complete with money box for selling baked goods.  Their imaginations went wild.

Also, Lilly and I had the opportunity to walk through Dhobi Ghat and then meet some dabba wallas, two of Bombay's most unique activities.  We went on a sun-filled morning with a fascinating guide and a camera for each of us.

Dhobi Ghat is the largest outdoor laundry in the world.  People have been washing the city's clothes here for over 140 years, in exactly the same buildings and tubs.  If your shirt says Made in India, then it likely received its pre-wash at Dhobi Ghat.  This website offers a great summary of this remarkable place, but takes a much darker view of the enterprise than our guide, who focused on the ingenuity, creativity, and strong heritage embodied by the many people hard at work within Dhobi Ghat.

Many name brands send their clothes to Dhobi Ghat to be pre-washed, distressed in the dryers, or neatly pressed for shipping.

The workers in Dhobi Ghat spend a lot of time in the water, and cover themselves in coconut oil at the end of every day to protect their skin.

Washing the city's clothes requires tremendous shoulder strength, both for flogging the clothes in the tubs and for hanging them overhead.

Clothespins costs many and don't last very long.  The people of Dhobi Ghat excel at economy, not using anything they do not need.

 And why invest in a new iron when the old coal model still works just fine?

The dabba walas, also unique to Mumbai, deliver home cooked food from a student or worker's home to their school or office across the city through a very intricate but essentially simple process.  They have been studied by Harvard Business School, Forbes Magazine, and numerous Fortune 500 companies for their efficiency practices, yet most of the dabba walas are illiterate and have no management practices outside of their work.  Follow the links above for more information, because the process is fascinating, and because this is Lilly's new career plan - to be paid for riding her bike would be a dream come true.