Paint The Town Paan..

Step out your front door, it'll be there. Take a boat ride down the Ganga ('Ganges River'), it'll be there. Walk into a fancy looking Government office, you'd better believe it'll be there! Paan, otherwise known as betel nut, is as ubiquitous in Banaras as the holy cow! And no matter where you go you can be well assured that it won't be long before your eyes (and probably your feet) will stumble across a smattering of someone's most recent chewing session.

Paan is a chewing stimulant native to India and Pakistan and derives it's name from the Sanskrit word for 'leaf' or 'feather.' Due to it's psychoactive properties (most often tobacco) it's popular amongst hard working bicycle rickshaw wallas, auto rickshaw drivers, day laborers, taxi drivers, fruit sellers, tailers, fishermen, chai wallas, salesmen, water buffalo herders, businessmen, old ladies, ok, so it's pretty much popular amongst everyone. There's a pretty broad variety of Paan from the innexpensive to the slighty more pricey, but at its cheapest and nastiest it sells for only a couple of rupees (AU$0.08) per packet and once you've let it linger in your mouth for as long as you care to, it seems you can spit it out wherever the bloomin' hell you want.

I remember the first time I walked into my faculty building at Banaras Hindu University. The building is old and not particularly well cared for, but it's a university building and so it still looks big and official. As I walked inside the front doors, through the lobby area and began climbing the flights of stairs it was quite the shock to see that even inside a place as prestigious as BHU, the corners of every stair well, the end of every hallway and at the base of every window sill, the tell tail signature of someone offloading their Paan payload was still waiting there for the world to see.  

Sure it's gross, sure it's unhygienic, and sure it'll give you cancer, but the splatter often has a quiet charm about it if you're willing to accept it. It took me sometime to begin noticing but eventually I pulled out the camera and went for a walk to photograph some of the local "street art." This series represents just one 40 minute walk around my neighbourhood photographing the Paan stains in my local gullies. What this collection represents to me is that as long as there is Paan to be sold, there will be photographs to be taken.

Wild Foot At One..

"Running like a mad man down the center of the main road, with no shoes on, in the dead of night, in the south of India, that's what I was doing!" I replied. 

It was our lil Wild Foot's 1st birthday this past week and a large part of me is finding it terribly difficult to reconcile this with reality! One year old! Already! We call him Wild Foot because while he was still in the womb he would relentlessly try to kick the house down, and now that he's out in the big wide world nothing much at all has changed. We had a little 1st Birthday celebration for him with our family and the grandparents and at one point someone asked me what I was doing at this time 12 months earlier. That question sparked a memory of Wild Foot's birth which I had all but forgotten, and probably for good reason.

We live in Banaras which is in the North-East but had moved to Kerala, India's most southern state, a couple of months early in anticipation of the birth so that would could be close to Birth Village, one of India's only natural birth centres. We had an amazingly beautiful Home Birth from Little Feather in Australia and carried no desire to birth in a hospital, be it Australia or India (and especially not when you look at the stats of the ridiculously high rate of unnecessary C-Sections that happen in Indian Hospitals). So we were living in a lovely little house right in the center of Fort Cochin and had to regularly make a very bumpy 45minute trip in the back of an old Ambassador or Auto Rickshaw to the birth centre for our checkups. What became quite obvious was that at some point Wild Flower would be in labour and would need to make this journey, bumps and all, and that to first spend half an hour walking around town in search of a driver who would take us for a reasonable rate was simply not going to fly. Especially if she went into labour in the middle of the night! And so I went to work trying to find a reliable taxi driver (preferably with a decent set of wheels) who would agree to come, rain, hail or shine, and get us there in time!

One thing you quickly learn living in India is that just because someone looks you in the eye and promises you something, doesn't exactly mean that they mean it. Now look, I'm not going to get into debating the rightness or wrongness of this way of acting, but suffice to say it's a reality of life here and so when it comes to a taxi walla promising you that he will come to your house at any time, day or night, and take your pregnant wife to the 'hospital,' well, at best you've got about a 50/50 chance that he's telling the truth, at worst it's a bold faced lie. And so I hedged my bets and got 5 numbers, from 5 different drivers, promising big rupees if they would agree to keeping their phones on throughout the night and coming to get us when we needed them most.

And then one evening it happened; Wild Flower went into labour. Her contractions had been growing stronger over a number of hours and at some point she made the decision and it was time to go. So at a little bit after midnight I stepped out our front door into the warm Kerala night air, punched in the first of five phone numbers on my speed dial... and waited...

It's a funny feeling waiting for someone to answer the phone. You kind of expect that they're not going to answer on the first or even the second ring, but there's this moment that happens around the 4th and 5th ring, and when it happens you know it, and it's the moment of unexpectedly hearing another ring. The window in which you expect someone to pick up is closing, no ones going to answer you, and it feels like you've breathed in the pungent smell of failed expectations mixed with a dash of isolation.

I hurriedly ended the call and dialed in the 2nd phone number. Followed by the 3rd. Then the 4th. And finally the 5th. Pressing in those final numbers was a nervous moment but I remained optimistic because hey, surely 1 out of 5 has to come to the aid of a pretty pregnant lady! But I was wrong, 5 sets of phone numbers had all rung out!

I felt sick to my stomach. The dead quite streets of Fort Cochin did little to ease my nerves and I began redialing the numbers. All of them, again, nothing.

Now not wanting to worry a woman (who has just decided that it's time to go and deliver a baby) with the news that I might in fact have to carry her to the birth centre, I did the only think I could think of; I ran. I ran like a mad man down the center of the main road, with no shoes on, in the dead of night, in the south of India, searching for someone, anyone, who would take us where we needed to go, and as you'd expect, there was not a single soul on the road.

For what felt like an eternity (but was probably just the longest 15-20minutes of my life) I ran up and down every street I came to, feeling sick yet super charged, desperately praying that God would miraculously send a taxi around the next corner, but instead he sent me to the only building that still had the lights on, the local police station. I busted through the open doors and into a typical Indian Police scene; a whole bunch of men with large mustaches sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing. I hurriedly explained my situation to the stone faced police officer whose glazed over eyes told me that he could not have cared less about my plight and whose bulging cheeks told me that his mouth was full of Paan which he was in no way willing to spit out in order to talk to me. The officer sitting next to him nodded his head to the side, indicating the road to the side of the building, I looked at him again and he repeated to nod his head in that direction and I took off down the street, a mixture of sweat and curses pouring from my face.

Coming to the end of the street I could hear the sounds of music coming from a building only a short distance away. I ran towards the sound and minutes later came upon a guesthouse with a number of locals sitting around watching television and a beat up old Auto Rickshaw in the driveway. In that moment, that Auto was probably the greatest sight I'd seen in all my life! I ran up to the men, asked whose Rickshaw it was, then began to explain my predicament to the owner whilst he causally leaned back in his chair and lit up a cigarette. He said he would gladly take us... for a price. And when he told me his price (probably the same as what I'd pay for my family to fly back to Australia) I gave a nervous laugh, he knew he had me over a barrel and there was not much I could do about it, but still I postured. I told him I'd pay him about a third of what he offered and without waiting for a response walked over and sat in the back seat, a bargaining trick which only occasionally works, and he slowly and reluctantly stood up, took a long drag on his cigarette and told me to wait while he went inside to get his keys.

In those next moments as I sat waiting, worried how Wild Flower would cope being in labour and having to make this 45minute trip in the back of a beat up old Auto and not a taxi, my heart still pounding and still feeling short of breath, I began a silent dialogue with God. I began explaining the ridiculousness of everything that had just transpired (I guess I thought he needed to be reminded) and expressing some thankfulness that it seemed that at the very least we'd be leaving for the Birth Centre soon. Midway through this conversation I heard the familiar sound of my phone beginning to ring in my pocket and I assumed it was going to be Wild Flower, probably being more than a little concerned that her husband had disappeared off into the night, but it wasn't, the number on my screen was none other than that of missing Taxi walla #3 returning his missed call!

And wouldn't you know it, he was ringing to let me know that he was already on his way!

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that we made it to the Birth Centre and from that point on everything went smoothly (well.. mostly) and that the next day our cheeky, smiley, noisy, cuddly little man was born sporting a righteous looking Mohawk. He's been challenging and delightful and we love him to pieces! This story for you little man, and I'm so glad you're my son!

The Dream Mobile..

I've never really owned my own car before. Eight years ago my parents gave us their old car as a wedding gift but because I was young and cheap, I didn't want to pay the money to transfer it over into my name, so I've never really officially owned one.. but that's all about to change! Well.. sort of..

As you can see, the traffic around here is straight up chaos and it takes a while to really understand how it works. A few tips I've picked up are that nobody has ever shoulder checked in their life, side/revision mirrors are completely irrelevant and it doesn't matter who has right of way (from a Western's perspective) the largest vehicle with the most obnoxious driver has right of way at all times. Thus transporting my family of 4 on a motorbike (including my 4 month old Son) with no safety gear weighs on me a bit. I do it - and I feel confidence to do it - but I don't ever truly feel 100% great about it. However, with the intense congestion and completely under planned roads the thought of getting a car in this city would simply drive me mad.


So here enters Bessie..

Winnie has been talking about it for a while now and I've finally caught up to her in thinking that we should look into getting our own Auto Rickshaw. I took this one for a test drive the other day and am now completely hooked! Sadly this one was a bit too old and a bit too expensive (it would have cost a third of the purchase price just to transfer the registration from a public to private) so now we're crunching some numbers to see if we can come up with the money and are continuing the search for the perfect set of wheels! 

And the perfect paint job! 

Below is Winnie's vision (apparently she didn't buy into my idea of black with flames streaked down the side).

  

Soon all that will be left is to take up chewing Paan to master the truly authentic experience.