Bringing the Rains

            I’ve been in Mumbai now since the 11^th night (really, the 12^th morning). And it seems as though the anticipation of my arrival—and my arrival itself—has spurred on the rains in Mumbai. Every year in India, from June through August, certain cities experience the “monsoon season,” or rainy season. During this time, residents don their water-resistant shoes, stuff their umbrellas in their bags, and walk around the city prepared for rain to come at any moment. The rain is celebrated in Mumbai and other cities because it is the one time of the year the region gets a consistent amount of year; it cools down the normally sweaty region, and farmers depend on this rain for their crops. Having a “rainy season” is so ingrained in residents’ minds that it is hard to imagine seasons otherwise; when my mother first arrived in Michigan to complete her post-doctoral degree, she asked when the rainy season was and was bewildered when she realized there wasn’t one!

            Anyway, the past couple of years, it seems that Mumbai did not get much rain in the summer. Every other summer that I have visited, however, the rains seem to have come in full force. Yesterday, Neil and I set out for our first NGO visit, to the Akshara women’s center (Akshara means “limitless” in Hindi). After some fruitless calls and emails to the organization from the U.S., we figured it was about time to just start going to NGOs in person. We initially planned to go by train with my cousin, Kirtana, who was going to show us the ropes with the Mumbai public transit system. She suddenly found out a little later that she got an interview with a company that very day, however, an interview that she had to go to. Using the public transit system might not give us enough time for her to make her interview. Our uncle loaned his car out to us, and we set out to drive to Dadar.

            When we got to the building, it seemed pretty residential. Confusedly, we walked up to the fifth floor, and on the apartment door was painted a single word, “Akshara.” We knocked, and explained to the man at the door in our rusty Hindi that we were here to work on a project. We were ushered in, and a woman explained to us that this was actually the accounting office (!!), not the programs office of Akshara. The man in the tiny office was actually a chai-walla, or tea maker, and he brought us glasses of water as we sat.

            We made a pretty quick exit, and after a long, fifteen minute struggle of full cabs driving past us in the pouring rain, finally found a free cab who was willing to take us to Akshara’s programming office. We sat happily for fifteen minutes, but finally the cab driver stopped—in front of a flooded street where the water stood knee-high!! It was fun (for me at least) for a few minutes. After twenty minutes of wading through the rain, not so much. See image below. 

Flooded street in Dadar

When we made it to the Akshara programming office, wet and sweaty, we were told that the organization was centered around violence towards women and activism in that regard, not women’s property rights! Alas. Baby steps, baby steps.