Hello 2010, Goodbye Bombay

Before I know it the 31st has hit us and I’m dipping out of the office to be packed 5 to the car with Shivang and his friends on what is supposed to be a 2.5 hour road trip to Daman, a town on the ocean, where we will meet others for a party. After we break free of the sluggish Bombay traffic and it begins to get dark we hit a stand still. The guys jump out and walk forward to discover the reason returning to report 20 km of backed up traffic. We join a dozen or so vehicles in bumping over the median to continue going the wrong direction in the opposite lane. When this too becomes jammed we have to pile out and fill a trench with stones in order to return to the proper side where traffic is moving again. We dodge chicken trucks and flatbeds, trundle along the shoulder of the road at high speeds, and zoom between cargo trucks until we are stopped again. The opposite lane is again clear so we test our luck and join other vehicles jumping the median for a quick shot ahead. When traffic slows here also we are hemmed in for frustrating 15 minutes before we can return to the proper side to again weave through heavy vehicles painted colorfully, a pickup with steel milk canisters stacked in the back, and cars stuffed full of passengers. After hours of sitting in traffic things finally start moving and we speed through the clear miles to arrive at the party just as fireworks signal midnight. We celebrate and dance to Hindi and English hits until 4am snacking on veg. appetizers and drinking a few mysteriously pink shots. A full meal is served before we crash out in hotel rooms. In the morning we eat a lazy breakfast by the beach before braving the traffic back to Mumbai.


I’m back to work with the goofy YV team getting revved up for the upcoming venture cycle. We take a two day retreat to a donor’s farm house where we revise curriculum and activities, do planning and have serious strategy discussions. We are fueled constantly by chai breaking only to walk to a nearby river where we wade and splash each other. My colleagues each have amazing stories and I’m lucky enough to hear some of them in the down time between meetings.


Back in Mumbai I sit in on a joint Seeds of Peace and YV event. Pakistani and Indian high school aged kids who have attended summer camp in Maine meet again in Mumbai and visit some of our Venturers. I join them to play with a soccer club for kids from Cuff Parade then struggle to follow the flow of conversation in Hindi where the Seeds answered kid’s questions about Pakistan and spoke about the importance of distinguishing between governments and people.

While I’ve been having all these amazing experiences I’ve also been trying to make a difficult decision as I’ve been offered a job with a small organization in the Dominican Republic called COPA. The run schools and clinics in villages on the south coast near Barahona and the offer of a management position doing direct field work is hard to pass up. Once the official offer is in I make the tough decision to leave India. I’ll go to Ahmadabad for the kite festival on January 13th as planned then fly back to San Francisco to get my visa for the DR.


My last week or so in Mumbai is a blur of export surplus shopping, dinner with friends at good Indian and horrible to middling continental restaurants, snacks on the street and evenings chatting with my roommates, little victories of train rides by myself and exchanges in Hindi with rickshaw drivers. These are the things that make it hardest to leave and make me sure I’ll want to return to India as soon as the opportunity presents itself.


I pack up at the PG and meet friends for a goodbye dinner. I catch a day train with Chitra’s mom who was visiting and now will return to Ahmadabad. My big suitcase and I are back in transition.