First impressions of India

Phase 1: Confronting the stereotypes

Trying to get on a train on peak hour

In my first confrontation with the everyday outdoor life of Mumbai I was pretty shocked, mainly by 4 things: the skin color, their clothes, the amount of auto-rickshaws and the value for money.

It is a bizarre feeling to look around you in a restaurant, bar, mall or any open place and notice: I’m the whitest person in this whole place. And let me tell you, in spite of what Eliazar might say, I’m not really white! But I’ve never seen so many brown people and only brown in one same place.

Even after 1 month I still got shocked from time to time, 1 month is enough to do sightseeing and enjoy a place but it is not enough for freeing you from your own paradigms and especially not for being able to understand India- they’re just too different.

There are so many Indians and they live in such a big territory that they have been able to isolate their own world. If it wasn’t for Partition…

They are different from the West but the complicated part is that they are also so different between each other, between all types of Indians; each region seems to be like a separate country. They are divided by religions, by languages, by castes, by social level, education level and so on!

The next shock is how cheap you can get some things here that are considered luxuries in other countries, like renting a car WITH driver included for 8 hours and 80 km for less than 30 dollars!! I guess that covers up for some deficient basic services like enough trains for the amount of people using them or Starbucks (hehehe well, it’s basic for me!).

About auto-rickshaws I’ll talk another day, they are one of the funniest items in this country.

Little bit of a weird Welcoming

Margarita is the pigeon that sleeps outside my bathroom window. The first days when I came, she used to get scared every time I would step in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Now, after 3 months of my stay, she has gotten used to me being around,  and in my opinion she even likes the company.

The day I landed on Mumbai (16^th June 2009) everything seemed so alien. I’ve never been in a country so different to mine, I guess it’s because I’ve never set foot on the eastern hemisphere of the globe. I’ve never seen a rickshaw, women wearing sarees, men wearing lunghis or jungle animals strolling candidly in the middle of metropolitan roads.

The first night I slept in my new bedroom I couldn’t even close my eyes. I still cannot decide if the reason of my insomnia was jet lag, the unbearable heat, the insufferable stickiness of an air with 90% humidity, or just the newness of it all.

After an hour that I had finally managed to close my eyes, I woke up again startled at the sound of some water falling somewhere near me. In reflex, I jumped out of my bed. But apparently it was nothing; same as the distant echoes of chants, crackers, call to mosque for prayer. I don’t know how many hours I lay there in bed, eyes open, trying to identify all the different sounds in this new environment and wondering how could home’s sounds could be soo different in Mexico, Canada, France, and India…

Morning came and while I was still in that bridge between dreams and the real world, I started hearing some noises, soft, low whispers in a language unknown to me.  Drowsily I opened my eyes just the little bit enough to identify the source of the sounds. You can imagine my shock (the kind that comes right before a heart attack) at finding right in front of my face, two women in bright-colored sarees, looking intently down at me, speaking softly but intensely, I still don’t know about what and, to be frank, I didn’t really want to find out.

This welcome was just my introduction to the complete cultural shock that I was about to receive.

Travel Writer, Photographer, Model…

My professional life has come to an unavoidable trifurcation. My dream and goal has always been to be a writer. However, my life for the past 2 years has been dedicated (don’t ask me why) almost entirely to photography and traveling, with just the occasional articles and my intimate diary to keep the pen moving.

In the last month I was finally able to launch our own photography business along with my partner. With our limited investment potential we couldn’t afford hiring a model, for now. Guess what? Yes, the logical step in order to reduce costs was for me to become our model, besides the make-up artist, creative director, etc.

At first, I was not so happy with the idea. You know? My problem is the harder I try to keep focused on just one thing at a time, the more dispersed I get. Surprisingly, we ended up having lots of fun while shooting and experimenting all the different facades, expressions and looks that we could achieve with just one model and three lights. It is amazing! And our portfolio has started selling well!

Under the circumstances, I decided to stop fighting my nature and find the best way of doing the 3,000 things that I want, keeping contact with the 300+ people that I care so much about and put up with these 3 roles all at the same time. Why should I decide for just one out of these 3 paths that opportunity is presenting me?

It seems to me that multitasking is my destiny by decision. I just can’t stand still. I simply cannot sit in the same place, do the same thing, see the same people for too long.  That’s my sin, that’s my cross… I’ll turn it into my bliss.

Why not? After all I only have this ONE life, this ONE year, this ONE second to embrace, to travel, to write, to photograph and to love.

Hello world!

Saying hello from the chaotic city of Mumbai this time, on an effort to keep track of all the learning that has been taking place and will keep on going. Too many new and shocking experiences in a too short period.
Namaste!