Ahmedabad Limited, part 1

Numerous readers have written in wondering what has happened to our expedition's publication. The truth of the matter, is that our staff is not only alive, but has been very busy conducting important research that will, if things go as planned, comprise a special four part issue on Ahmedabad, India. We now return to our narrative where it left off...

Some people wonder what it would be like to live on a spaceship. We are all passengers, according to Bucky Fuller, on the sun-orbiting Spaceship Earth. I have recently relocated from one compartment of the ship to another, from Israel to India, and my coordinates in this sphere have changed, phase shifting my daylight by three hours.



Lots of Israelis come to India to travel. Gal tells me that he backpacked through India in 1992. Once, an Indian man, most impressed with the number of Israelis he had met, asked him how many Israelis there are. Gal said about 6 million, to which the man replied: "Not in India, I mean how many are there in the whole world?" That's how many Israelis come to India. Most come after completing their army service, and working to save some money. Why do so many come? We'll have to conduct further field research -- it's too early to say. One reason might be that Israel is so small, and the folks who live there aren't warmly welcomed in their neighbors' countries. Na'amah says most Israelis are here to party, which might very well be true. Some of them were really, really, obnoxious on the plane. I've also met some very sweet ones. For the time being, I'm totally clear of the Israeli backpacker route.

Every place on Earth has its own smell. When I arrived in Tel-Aviv, things smelled familiarly Israeli. Like accents, or the smells of individual people, we don't notice these things unless we encounter something really foreign, or somehow manage to pay particularly close attention. Perhaps it's the food, the soil, the material and energy inputs of a place -- who knows. In the Mumbai airport, my nose felt like I was in India again.

I have an eight hour layover in Mumbai. Unfortunately, I'm awesomely tired, jet-lagged, and slightly sick, so I spend about five hours curled up in a cafe upstairs, eating, drinking, sleeping, and napping. There are worse fates, I suppose. The irony, of course, is that my cold came on in Israel, but I've gotten better in India. Last time I was in India with Yotam and Naomi, we all got sick, and I think one of our problems was that we didn't eat enough. One can never eat enough.




The airport in Mumbai is surrounded by what appears to me to be a large shantytown. You can see in some of the aerial views of Mumbai this very organic structure creeping between the apartment blocks. It comes right up to the airport wall, where it comes to a hard stop. You can see many small children flying kites. In fact, the trees and houses around the airport, and the green on the Ahmedabad airport, are papered with tiny, colorful, handmade kites. It seems everyone dreams of flying. According to my sources, I just missed a huge kite festival, the biggest in the world, by just a few days.



Ahmedabad is the capital of the Indian state Gujarat, and was the home of Gandhi. Reliable sources inform me that most Indian people you meet outside of India are Gujarati, who are well known the world over as accomplished traders and business people. Vik's, in Berkeley, is Gujarati, and at the Mumbai airport I met two Gujaratis who live in Mozambique.



At the Ahmedabad airport, I was picked up by Dipak, Shyamal & Bhumika's driver, who saved me from two very persistent Indian taxi operators. Shyamal is Shalin's older brother, whom we met in issue #3 of Phases Crossed, and Bhumika is his wife. They are both very sweet, and I had met them both in Berkeley last summer. Together, they own & operate a fashion design shop called Shyamal & Bhumika, which we'll cover in an upcoming fashion and textile technology edition of Phases Crossed.



You can see in this traffic photo that things in Ahmedabad can get pretty hectic, not to mention smoggy. According to Bucky, life creates anti-entropy, and wealth self-replicates -- a fundamental law of the universe. Technology and knowledge compound, giving us more with less. So many motorcycles equals so much wealth! And now Tata has a $2500 USD automobile, the world's cheapest car. Bucky didn't account for the problems with the environment we have the world over, though, as we asymptotically approach what some might call a technological singularity. Maybe the singularity is something else...



I've been adopted into Shalin's family -- there's simply no other way to describe it. Above, our intrepid explorer with his new parents, dressed for a wedding (stay tuned for an upcoming special matrimonial edition of Phases Crossed.) My new brother, sister, grand-parents, cousins, and parents are unbelievably sweet and kind. Now I understand why Shalin is so nice. Shalin and I both agree that his grandmother is particularly cute (pictured at left).



Like any good grandmother, her encouragement to continue eating never stop. Through careful research, I've determined that the probability P, that I am encouraged to eat is a function: P=f(time into meal, rate of eating, food on plate), where y = (1-t) * 1/r * (1-f).




I'm staying in Shalin's room (pictured above, alongside a neighborhood street). He has an old 33600 bps modem on the floor by his (old) computer. Respect. Below are pictures of the house, and the family cook making something delicious.




Everyone, his brother & sister-in law (Shyamal & Bhumika), his father's parents, his parents -- all live in a really nice house with some servants. Gujarati food is incredible, and like Southern US cooking, is a bit sweeter. For dinner the first night we had some south Indian food, plus some sweets, and a Western casserole dish. They also have the best Masala Chai I've ever had in my entire life, which is now changed forever.



Here are some photos of the house and garden. This is a green tea plant. It smells... unbelievable. Shalin's grandfather, the head of the household, says I have a keen sense of smell.



Why? We walked into the garden, and I went on about its keen aroma, and asked him excitedly what in the garden smelled so nice. He laughed and said it was his hair. Well, yup.

Did I mention that they have the best Chai in the world here, in this house? Every time I am offered some, I take it. One morning, I had some for breakfast, and the grandfather (who was once a rockstar cricket player for India), said he had put some of the green tea into the Chai. I observed that it tasted like lemongrass. Ah, it turns out it is lemongrass green tea. Maybe I do have a good nose, after all.