Moments

My Colombiana friend Angela (jaaaaaaa!) had her birthday last Saturday and we decided to have a party at Tropicana. What could be possible better than a salsa birthday! Angela is the girl pointing her own nose out to Koji.















We also had our new Mexican friend Jennifer, an ESL student at Rice who loves dancing and is not at all eccentric. Dancing with Koji at the left. Amanda and Elise, two of Angela's neighbors also showed up.

And here's a great picture below with a two-headed Angela.

Maximum City: Bombay lost and found
Suketu Mehta

There was only one feeling I had after putting this book down: stunned. How could anyone ever write a non-fictional masterpiece of investigative and ethnographic writing such as this? And what a venue! Bombay: with it's teeming masses, ever tethering on a brink of chaos, plagued by communalism, gang wars, crime, prostitution, poverty and decadence of every kind, still manages to survive and thrive. The book is one writer's attempt to rediscover the city of his childhood, and what really makes it work.

Bombay reminds me, a suburban kid, of crowded trains, noisy markets, religious riots, massive festivals. But what actually goes on behind the scenes?

I grew up in a suburb of Bombay. Ours was a primarily Hindu locality, separated by a main road from a Muslim neighborhood. The muslim neighborhood had a mosque in it. The muezzin did a beautiful azaan every morning at 6:30am or so. Shortly after, when I was walking to school I used to pass by a ton of people performing their morning prayers on a side street. To this day, the azaan anywhere in the world, even here in Houston, Texas, brings back memories of home.

I don't really remember my first Ramadan, but I do have a story.

It was evening, close to sundown, on a busy Bombay street. I was about 12. My mom and I were returning home from somewhere in downtown when we pass through in an autorickshaw through one of the big Muslim localities. The streets were chockful of people shopping and waiting for sundown, tons and tons of food vendors getting ready to satiate thousands of fasting folks. Kababs were being barbecued all around, the aroma was tantalizing, hypnotic. We get stuck in a traffic jam.

We are hungry, the kebabs beckon.

"Those smell really good"

"I know, I wish we could eat those".

"Why can't we, mom?"

"Are you nuts? We're Hindu, moreover Brahmins, we're not supposed to eat that!"

"Why?"

"It's beef, I'm sure!"

"Oh, ok".

Five minutes later

"I'm hungry"

"So am I"

"Those smell really good"

My mom and I look at each other, our greedy eyes meet and we detect the saliva almost drooling over from each other's mouths.

"Please just don't tell your dad".