Bombay Marathon
Thought for the post:
So I guess I’ve come to a point where posting is becoming a little less frequent, and it seems like more of a chore (judging from my other Indicorps Fellows blogs, it seems like this is pretty common). I think this probably happens to every blog - I’m definitely there now, about 6 months after this blog started. I guess early on everything was new to me and it was fun to share it… now it seems like I’m in the grunt phase of my project and I just have a ton of stuff to get done and I’m not doing a whole lot of new and exciting stuff (it’s new and exciting to me, but I don’t think you’d think so by reading it)… I’ve gotten a bunch of emails and a couple of calls in the past few days asking if I’m ok since my last post was about typhoid and I hadn’t posted that I’ve gotten better… stupid move on my part.
I got over the Typhoid… In total I was sick for about a month… As soon as I didn’t have a fever for 2 days, I declared myself well enough to go to Bombay for the marathon, where I’d played a part in 10 kids from a rural area being able to come to Bombay to run the marathon. Everything was really really awesome.
On my way into Bombay, I picked up a newspaper (The Times of India), and saw this article about our kids on the back page of the paper:
I guess reading it gives you an idea about what we were trying to do, but as is typical of the Times of India, it’s riddled with inaccuracies, and they apparently did a lot of investigative reporting about Waifad (that is all completely inaccurate) without asking us, but I guess I’m doing a little bit of biting the hand that feeds, because it was really nice of them to write an article about our kids. I think the Hitavada and DNA also put out similar articles, but I didn’t get a chance to see them. We were really hoping for some coverage in Hindi or Marathi newspapers so that the kids (& their folks) could understand what was written but I don’t think we got any.
In Bombay, everything took a lot longer than I had budgeted for, especially transportation… When you have 12 people in 3 taxis and I’m in the first one telling the other taxis to follow me (at times I was the only one that knew directions), it doesn’t work… And none of the village kids have cellphones, so coordination was tough… We tried the “follow that taxi” thing several times, with disastrous results. We didn’t get to do everything I thought we could, but it didn’t really matter because we had such a blast with everything we did do.
why it’s hard to follow a particular taxi in Bombay:
picture was taken from the top of a double-decker bus
So the first day, we spent a ton of time registering for the marathon and looking for food, then we walked around the city showing a lot of the old architecture including the train station VT (Victoria Terminus)…
We then went to see the movie “Guru,” about a guy from a small village who makes it big in Bombay… I had high expectations for the movie, which were met entirely until the last 10 minutes, which was a huge let-down. Also, I felt like there were a few story-lines which were needlessly added in to make it a typical Hindi 3-hour movie… If you’ve seen the movie, I’m talking about Vidya Balan’s role in particular… could’ve cut atleast 30 mins there and lost almost none of the story… Anyway, the kids really enjoyed it… We then went back to our hotel, the Red Shield House (run by the Salvation Army), which was right behind the Taj Mahal hotel in Colaba, and proved to be the source of many bad jokes… While it was right behind the Taj, it was NOTHING like the Taj… We paid 150rs ($3.40, or like 1% of what the Taj would’ve cost) per bed, including breakfast. Damn good deal, but no sheets or even a lock on our door (well there was a lock but you could pull the door open even if it was locked)… Kind of like a hostel though, and from what I understand its the only hostel-like place to stay in Bombay. There were a lot of foreigners.
The next morning, we got up super-early because we were supposed to be interviewed by a few news channels before the marathon… We didn’t really know where we were going in the marathon and the kids ended up getting into the holding area to start the marathon and couldn’t get to the press, and me and Savitri thought it’d be dumb if just we were on, so we decided to hold off on the interviews until after the marathon. We did, however, get press access, so we were right at the starting line with all of the reporters and cameras, which was kind of cool. We saw everyone pass RIGHT in front of us, including all of the celebrities that I didn’t care about, but I totally missed seeing all of the kids from Waifad and my Indicorps friends that were running.
The first group of our kids to finish the half-marathon did so in about 1 hour 45 minutes, which is really good timing… One of the guys was complaining about how shoes were slowing him down and he was wishing he had ran barefoot. He had a ton of blisters from wearing shoes, I guess he just wasn’t used to them:
First 4 + me and Savitri (That’s a W for Waifad I’m holding up, I don’t think the other guys got it)
The rest of the guys and girls came shortly afterwards… Ujwala (who I cooked with and had lots of fun with the first time I went to Waifad) had us all totally scared because we were waiting at the finish line and we didn’t see her for an hour after everyone else had crossed. We went a little crazy searching for her, asking race officials to help etc… In the end we got a phonecall from her asking where we were - turns out she had gone way past us and gotten her certificate and everything. We missed our interviews on CNN-IBN and Aaj Tak during this time, which would’ve been nice so that the kids parent’s could see them on TV.
After a long nap, we went to Chowpatty beach… Just sort of hung out and enjoyed the place, sang lots of songs and had a generally great time.
We were supposed to wake up super early and leave immediately for Essel World the next morning… Essel World, is like the Disney World of India (but much smaller)… We ended up getting up kind of late, and then the kids wanted to take so many pictures of themselves in Bombay - we spent about an hour at the Gateway of India taking pictures:
Kids w/ Gateway of India in background
Everyone w/ Taj Hotel in background
Then, after a taxi ride (which took really long because we lost 2 of the taxis behind us), bus ride, train ride, rickshaw ride, and a ferry ride, we finally reached Essel World (took much longer than anticipated). Big thanks to Subhash Chandra from the Zee group (which owns the park) and my uncle who made the connection to him, because we got HOOKED UP at the park!
Throughout my weekend in Bombay, I felt like a celebrity that was treating my marathon buddies that don’t have much to an extravagantly good time, spending more and doing more than my parents would have done for me… Throughout the trip, I was a little unsure of how I felt about this… like was it too much for these kids who’ve spent their whole lives on a farm with not a lot of money to come to Bombay and have us pay for everything they needed and let them order 3 ice-creams after dinner if they wanted? I totally kept on thinking of Oprah Winfrey’s $40 million school for 150 kids in Africa, where she treats the kids as if they were her own… We definitely weren’t going crazy or anything, we ate at relatively cheap places and took public transportation for the most part, but it still seemed like I might not actually be making a difference in their lives, just giving them a momentary great time that they’ll remember forever. Anyway, as the weekend progressed I got over it - I think seeing the joy that they all experienced and the love that they had for those of us that made it possible was awesome… maybe not everything you do has to be sustainable and make a lasting impact, and maybe this trip to Bombay did make a positive lasting impact on the guys… I sure hope so. Or maybe this is just an indication of what I’ll be like as a grandfather.
Anyway, where I’m going with this is - our Essel World experience was out of this world. Zee hooked us up with a VIP escort to take us around the park, so we didn’t have to wait in any lines or pay for anything. Our escort knew that these were kids from a village and everything would be new to them, and made he it his mission to help them experience as much as they could in our short amount of time there. I was a little sick from the running around of the past few days, but I think the energy that the kids had sort of took me over the hump and I wanted to do everything with them…
Among many other firsts that weekend… it was their first time on a boat:
on a roller coaster:
in bumper cars, bowling, and ice skating:
Everyone fell a bunch of times while ice skating, but they had a total blast, and it was great to see them hold on to each other. I sort of love this I’ll help you while you help me, and if we fall we’ll both fall thing… (though this usually just meant that everyone fell together):
Here’s all of us when it was time to go (I was extremely sad):
The guy in the yellow shirt is Godfrey, our amazing escort (even called the next day to check that we had a great time!). I can’t say enough great things about the Essel/Zee Group for making the Essel World trip possible.
One thing to note is that Indians are often really serious when you take their pictures, and it’s hard to get them to smile for a camera… I never had that problem this weekend, and I don’t really know how to describe it, but I feel like these smiles were so incredibly genuine… it made me feel great (and really sad to leave)… The kids deserved it for their dedication to the marathon over the past couple of months (waking up at 5 and running for an hour before you farm all day doesn’t sound easy to me)… I was really happy to play a part in making it possible for them - I now know what it means when some of my fellows talk about “their kids.”
and I love this sign on the road in Bombay:
