In Kalyan

Today is Dusshera, the last day of Navratri. Hindus celebrate the triumph of good over evil by saying a prayer to the goddess Durga. Last Friday was Gudi Parwa, the Maratha New Year. (Marathas are not a religion, they are a cultural and ethnic group, majority Hindu.) Next Friday is Good Friday. Every week brings a new religious holiday.

If I haven't posted a lot lately, it's because I've moved to Kalyan, where my grandparents live, for the week. Kalyan is one of Mumbai's suburbs. Like much of Mumbai, even some of the posher districts, Kalyan suffers from a water shortage. Every morning my grandfather wakes up at 6:30 am to fill our daily ration of drinking water, which ends at 8:30. Some days, when the shortage is especially tight, the water ends earlier than that. It doesn't arrive in drinkable condition. He puts it through a complicated filter system that renders it suitable for cooking and drinking. After all, most of Mumbai's water has been contaminated with sewage due to mixups in the vast drainage system, and the hijacking and subversion of water mains by Mumbai's squatters. As a result, Bombay's running water is a joke. For several years now, the Bombay Municipal Corpotation has been talking up an ambitious scheme to get drinkable water into at least half of Mumbai's homes, but the planned cost keeps going up and it's unlikely this will happen anytime soon.

The power cuts out periodically. When I came here six years ago, the water went out once a day, sometimes for hours at a time. The fans and lights shut off, so did the elevator. (Often leaving people trapped, somewhat horribly, between floors.) Now the power outages occur according to a schedule, and a generator powers the lights and the fans. My grandparents have even installed air conditioners in the bedrooms.

In almost all respects, the quality of life in Kalyan has improved dramatically since I was last here, except for the occasional smell of sewage that wafts in through the open windows. My grandparents say it comes from the newly-constructed public bathroom close to their house. This is probably the case. Public toilets, from what I hear, are a truly frightening affair. The other culprits include the heat and the squatters. Much of Mumbai's population lives without regular access to toilets. This means, of course, that any open field becomes game. As Kalyan's permanent population has exploded, so has the transient population. The open area across from my grandparents' very nice house is a mess of garbage and human waste, with an open drain in the middle of it all.

Alas, this is the situation in much of Mumbai. My cousin told me, shortly after I arrived, that "the sewage system in Bombay is not too happening." She should know. A few years ago, during record monsoon rains, she was stranded on her way home from work by a flood that came up to her taxi's windows and then a little bit higher. She watched through the rolled-up glass as the bloated bodies of rats, dogs and even humans floated by.

When she says "not too happening," that is a humorous understatement.