Monday, January 30, 2012

Sunday family outing

There is  a difference between holiday makers and residents. If you happen to pass through Petersfield in Hampshire, you could plan to visit  the museum. If you are a resident, you have already been with school several times depending on how many children you have. You know that it is not worth the walk. If you live in Ankara , the Castle is where the Ramadan cannon is fired from and you would not bother to go there unless you want to have an evening raki therapy in one of the converted houses. The houses have old ethnic mills, scary dummies of local women with matted haired  and glassy eyes making flat bread with a long stick like rolling pins. Residents hardly go to the Wax Museum in London, for travelers and  holiday makers it is a must. 
 Residents 'live' in the place.  They go through the boring, humdrum parts of the cities they occupy. They know where to get the best simit, the best Cornish pasty in Yorkshire, and  the shortest short cut home. Travellers have to go to the most popular sunset cafes, the former pulls the curtains when the sun comes into the living room. Travellers take the scenic bus, residents drive home. They become comfortable with the place they spend time in. I remember, when we were in Hong Kong the resident 'gwalios' were the ones who read the paper on the ferry. They would have photos of themselves only in the first couple of months. Then familiarity sinks in, the journey on the ferry( however lovely it may sound) becomes a burden. You want to go home and have a shower , sit in front of the TV and start the evening. Travellers check their itinerary, count days, tick the places they have been and they are going to visit. It turns in to a 'token' life. Been there, seen it. Most of the time you really have to be there and see it to come home and watch TV.
' To be able to watch TV in the evening , we need to see Mumbai more'. I said to the rest of my family. They knew what was coming: yet another temple with  mummy. This time I am taking them to Global Pagoda on Gorai Creek. It is big, new, on the edge of a creek and there is a ferry  ride as well. It will take some time to get there. Everything does. The nearest anything is half an hour, forty minutes away. Ram our driver with a lovely red temple mark on his forehead came to pick us up and off we went. I wonder why the two hours in the car is more unbearable that going to Reading from Petersfield for example.  We sit in a comfortable people carrier, we have water, A.C, music, each other but it takes such a long time before we reach anywhere. We get bored with our conversation, with each other and still we are in that car.  We went through rows and rows of buildings, slums, hundreds of rickshaws, rickshaw repair places, dead ones, restaurants, fields, tall buildings, temples, churches, and we are still going. How many children with bare bottoms can we see in two hours? How many saris can my little  eye   encounter? We leave Greater Mumbai and turn left. There are hills on the right and salt pans on the left. There are small streets, small villages with colourful huts, one storey buildings, tiny village shops with millions of hanging tiny parcels, tuk tuks comfortably parked in front of these little huts waiting for their owner to take his children for a Sunday ride.

The whole place is new. Made in 1998. It is the biggest of its kind. One single wedged stone holds the dome. Nick nods, he is impressed. Kitty is getting tired and wants to head back.  The whole place is not complete, There is scaffolding everywhere, the shimmering bright gold is not gold but gold paint. It has dripped on the concrete floor, the doors are machine carved, the big fibre glass Buddha is newly built, wants to move his legs in to a more comfortable position.
 It is getting hot, we are getting hungry. Nick and Kitty have looked at all the pictures, stood and posed for me whenever and where ever I wanted; now, they want to go home. They have earned their Sunday afternoon peace.
 Only after I hit the big gong a couple of times. Then I can put a tick on this place in my Lonely planet book. Soon we will be residents here.

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