Tag: New York

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Achieve

Our girl in the Big Apple

Mumbai model Scherezade Shroff was chosen from thousands of bloggers to represent India for Sunsilk Style Studio in New York.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Sherry ShroffShe’s anything but just a pretty face – a lawyer by qualification, a model by profession (she started modelling at age 16) and a marathon runner by choice, Scherezade Shroff was recently selected to represent India as part of Sunsilk Style Studio, an initiative in which Sunsilk flew 20 international bloggers to New York in May 2013.

Sherry – as Scherezade is more popularly known – was selected to represent the country from among thousands of fashion bloggers. “The girl they were looking for in each country had to fit the brief of a woman who had written her own story in life, had several different aspects to her personality and who was a fashion blogger,” Sherry told The Metrognome.

The initiative brought together fashion bloggers from 20 countries to spend four days in New York, during which they toured the city, attended workshops with the Sunsilk experts from the profession and participated in a photo shoot. On Day 1, the girls had a meet-the-others session, which helped break the ice – each girl had arrived in New York at different times, so there hadn’t been a proper catch-up session. “On Day 2, each girl was assigned an expert as per her hair type, and I was very lucky to have Jamal Hammadi – Shine Expert. We had the photo shoot with Anna Wolf and met with our expert for a discussion on hair,” Sherry explained. Each girl was also assigned a make-up person and wardrobe stylist, and the hair experts designed the girls’ looks in keeping with their hair requirements and what the shoot needed.

Sherry to the rescue

None of the other girls had a modelling background, and though they were avid fashion bloggers, none of them had ever participated in a photo shoot as a model before. “The shoot The photo shoot itself was designed to be fun, with a party theme and lots of fun props like blow-up cupcakes and an actual photo booth,” she said. “It didn’t seem like a photo shoot at all. But before it began, many of the girls came to me asking for tips on facing the camera. Yet once it got underway, despite the cameras, everybody had a blast! It was very relaxed and I think it was the funnest shoot I’ve ever been a part of,” she laughs.

Working with Jamal Hammadi

“I was very lucky to get Jamal, because he understood the problems of my hair perfectly. My hair is thick and difficult to manage because it gets dry and damaged pretty quickly. Plus it gets bigger and bigger in the Mumbai humidity,” Sherry explains. “I used to try taming it with oil, but washing off the oil took several tries and the problem just got worse. Jamal understood the problem and gave me a great haircut. He also recommended that I try avocado oil – it penetrated my hair quickly, it helped keep my hair in check and can you believe it, I actually shot with oiled hair? I couldn’t have imagined ever shooting with oiled hair!”

Even after her return to Mumbai on May 18, she is still surprised that her hair is behaving itself despite the humidity. “I don’t usually leave my hair open, but with Jamal’s haircut I actually can! I used to be very anti-oil and serum, but now Jamal’s advised me on the right oils to use,” Sherry explained.

Post the New York sojourn

“While I was still at New York, I did a lot of video blogs and updated my regular blog as well,” Sherry explained. “I am now working on editing these videos and uploading them one by one.”

More from Sherry’s New York visit:

 (Sherry video blogs at www.youtube.com/fashiontube and writes here. Pictures courtesy Scherezade Shroff)

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Outside In

Where is Home?

Most children experience several cultures growing up in different countries. Mumbaikars, however, develop a culture that is uniquely their own.
by Shweyta Mudgal

I was born in Mumbai, where I was raised until my early 20s. At 23, I moved to Los Angeles and at 24 to New York City. Ten years later, I now live in Singapore and call three cities my home – Mumbai, New York and Singapore, all at the same time – in descending order of the time I’ve spent living there.

By Fall this year, I will have moved out of Singapore back to Mumbai for another year or so, after which it will be time to return to NYC once again. As I write today, this is what the nomadic pattern of my life in the near future looks like.

There are no guarantees, however. Having been bitten by this ‘multiple homes’ bug, there may just be some diversions en route, should other cities offer interesting work/ life opportunities midway through this globe-trot itinerary and lure us (daughter, husband and I) to their shores.

The above path of my life thus far has brought me in direct contact, on a day-to-day basis, with three different cultures –

  • The First Culture (The Indian Culture): the one that I was born and raised in and will permanently seek allegiance to.
  • The Second Culture (The American Culture): the one that I believe I really grew up and found my true self in. Also the one where my daughter will permanently seek her allegiance.
  • The Third Culture (The Asian Culture): the one where we (daughter, husband and I) presently live.

Yet, I am not who you would call a pure TCK – a Third Culture Kid. For, according to its formal, sociological and anthropological description, “A third culture kid is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside their parents’ culture.” Since I moved out of my so-called ‘parents culture’ only after I turned 18, I am just another adult who’s lived in a few countries. My toddler, on the other hand, in her small span of life (of 21 months), is considered a TCK, who embarked on the third culture bandwagon as soon as she turned one. By the time she turns three, she would have lived in at least three different countries. Born an American, to Indian parents, she currently lives in Singapore. Plainly put, she flew before she walked.

Sociologist Ruth Hill Useem coined the term ‘Third Culture Kids’ in the early fifties. And interestingly, as I found through my research, the term was coined in India! It was here, after spending a year on two separate occasions with her three children, that the term was born. Initially the term ‘third culture’ referred to the process of learning how to relate to another culture. In time though, it started referring to children who accompany their parents into a different culture as Third Culture Kids” or TCKs.  Useem used this term because TCKs integrate aspects of their birth culture (the first culture) and the host culture (the second culture), creating a unique ‘third culture’, i.e their own shared way of life with others also living outside their passport cultures (the land they hold passports of).

On a global note, TCKs naturally have plenty of positive attributes such as multilingualism and an objective outlook, and they are used to an intercultural lifestyle. Moving from country to country is routine for them and is usually accomplished with ease. They grow up within a globalised culture, marked by well-travelled parents and friends, international schools and vast future opportunities. They easily build relationships with all cultures, while not having full ownership of any. Elements from each culture they encounter get assimilated into their life experiences, making them well rounded, global citizens of the future.

There are flipsides to being a TCK, too. Sometimes, children that have lived in multiple countries through their growing years, lack a sense of home. While they absorb various cultures to make up their own ‘third culture’ they often miss an anchor-culture; something that they can root themselves to. Some kids that have been away from their ‘passport cultures’ for long, end up as cases where their passport belongs to a place that they can no longer relate or belong to. On repatriation, they suffer from a ‘reverse culture shock’ and/ or identity crisis and often pine to return to their adopted country.

Yet, the pros outnumber the cons in most cases. More often than not, TCKs have been found to be smarter, outspoken, more sociable, open, humorous, sensitive, non-discriminative and tolerant of other cultures, overall. They usually develop strong observation powers and cross cultural skills par excellence, due to constant immersion in newer surroundings that take them out of their comfort zones. They have been called ‘the prototype citizens of the future’, which directly translates to the thought that a childhood lived among many cultures would one day be the norm rather than the exception.

But so far, social scientists have conducted the TCK discussion only at a global level – in the macroscopic scheme of things. Try applying that theory on a microscopic level, to local cultures and our very own Mumbai, with its cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, ‘melting pot’-like credentials, offers itself up as a perfect example, breeding millions of local TCKs within!

As is common knowledge, Mumbai is a city of migrants. Its original inhabitants are the Kolis – the fishing community. Post-independence, the Parsis, Bhatias, Pathare Prabhus, East Indians and Muslims moved in. Most of Mumbai’s local Marathi community was formed by migrant workers from within Maharashtra, who came here to work in the textile mills. South Indians with their professional educational qualifications, flocked to the city, during the 60s and 70s, in search of white-collared jobs as clerks and typists. Some South Indian hoteliers such as the Shettys set up their Udipi joints here. Migrants from North India moved to the city to work as dhobis, newspaper vendors, milk suppliers and carpenters, while construction workers and banias came from the nearby states of Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Naturally as a result of this intra-national influx, a lot of the city’s children can be considered as local TCKs, albeit only at a more geographical, contextual level that lies within the nation’s boundaries. Growing up in Mumbai, it is not uncommon to find kids of Tamilian parents speak better Marathi, Hindi and English than Tamil. Or families in which the grandparents hail from Pakistan, the parents grew up in Punjab and the kids are growing up in Mumbai.

With India’s intra-ethnic society increasingly opening up, one can find several inter-caste marriages that result in diversely brought up children, who are exposed to multiple cultures from various parts of the country, passed on to them by their parents, while subsconsciously already being immersed in the third culture – the inherent culture of the city.  In Mumbai, as is evident one need not hail from a ‘Gujju’ household to be a good garba dancer or a ‘Punju’ background to be excellent at bhangra. Communal celebrations of iconic festivals such as Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Holi, Janmashtami and Christmas have shown over time the city’s cosmopolitan spirit in its inclusive participation; members of all religious faiths come together to celebrate these, irrespective of their individual cultures.

A child born in Mumbai, might start off being a member of a clique such as Hindi, Sindhi, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bihari, Tamil, Kannadiga, Malyali, Muslim, Parsi, Sikh, Christian, Jew and what not, based on their parents’ culture, yet by the time he/she has grown up, they would have had plenty of opportunity to modify and adapt this tag to create their own unique micro identity – of being a Mumbaikar. That identity, as one often finds these days, trumps over any specific regional affiliations, encompassing all diversity within its realm and instills a sense of belonging to the city/country as against a religion/faith. Sports such as cricket, with the introduction of the IPL, have helped segregate the large country on a geographic urban divide, fostering the emergence of newer identities that one seeks allegiance to – in this case, cities such as ‘Mumbai’ v/s ‘Delhi’.

When I was growing up in Mumbai, I was often asked the crude and grammatically confusing ‘What are you?’ question. No, not the kinds that would entail a pat ‘Umm…Can’t you see? I am a girl’ kind of an answer. But more like the kinds that warranted a ‘I am Gujarati/Marathi…’ type response. Being ‘Hindi-speaking’, that too from India’s centrally located state, Madhya Pradesh, didn’t help much. Adding to the confusion were my fluency in Marathi and looks that matched the Tamil best friend’s. Hence often my reply would be – “I am Hindi. My parents hail from MP but I am born and brought up in Mumbai.”

I went to a convent school and like many other kids growing up then, had Hindu, Muslim, Parsi, Sikh, Anglo-Indian and Jewish classmates. I had no idea then that I was developing my own sub-culture – each time I crossed my right hand over my head, chest and shoulders saying ‘In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit…Amen’ while I stood in a Hindu temple before a Ganesh idol. Or the other time, when I decided to join my Muslim friend in fasting for a day, for a God who didn’t exist in my home. To me it was an innocent, fun way to join my friend in doing what he did. And of course there was the lure of the yummy goodies that would be served in the evening to break the fast with.

Both these ‘third culture’ acts were not of my parents’ culture – which was inherently ‘Hindu’. These were my own unique cultural adaptations, where I was integrating acts from my first culture (of being a Hindu) – of going to a temple or starving myself in the name of God and acts from my second culture (of the city) – of a Christian method of prayer or a Muslim religious Iftaar ceremony, to make my own unique third culture! It was a juxtaposition of cultures that I had happily accepted and made my own. In that sense, I and all those other kids who grew up like me, in multi-cultural Mumbai, are local Third Culture Kids.

That kind of upbringing perhaps created in me a fascination for the idea of living a multi-cultured life, not only on the microscopic but also the macroscopic level. And today, as things go, thanks to our current global mobility opportunity, I’ve been fortunate to pass it on, by raising a Third Culture Kid of my own.

I like the idea of having my toddler spend the early years of her life establishing and then breaking her own comfort zone while being a ‘cultural sponge’ and integrating elements of various cultures in her personality. I hope some day she counters the question, “Where are you from?” with yet another question, “Well, where should I start? I was born in…”

I’d like to see her growing up with the feeling that she belongs everywhere and yet nowhere in specific. That she is of the world and the world is her oyster. That she is able to experience it all and pick and choose what most resonates with her, to take that with her wherever she goes. That even though she will be raised a Third Culture Kid, she will have more than just three cultures to belong to. And hopefully soon, she will be joined my many more kids like her, who will know what it is like to have the best of both worlds…even if they don’t have just one that they can call their own, fully.

The adage ‘Home is where the heart is’ has never been truer and more literal than it is now. Today, it means that we carry our home(s) in our heart, wherever we go. And thankfully for multicultural/multi-home dwellers like us, there’s no baggage restriction on the number of homes that the heart can carry!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and is happy that no one asks her “What are you?” in Mumbai anymore!

(Pictures courtesy Shweyta Mudgal, clastcloudchurch.org, gulfnews.com) 

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Outside In

From ‘building gardens’ to building gardens

Shweyta Mudgal bats for pocket-sized green spaces in cities, which could transform the way Mumbai works, plays and indeed, relaxes.

When growing up in the 80s, in a co-operative housing society in Four Bungalows (in Mumbai’s Andheri West area), one always went ‘down’ to play. Our building, like most others built at the time, had a common recreational area, inappropriately termed as the ‘garden’. I say ‘inappropriate’ because, while it would always start out as a garden, this space would eventually succumb to the perils of constant foot traffic by the building’s younger residents, who used it to play everything from catch-and-cook to cricket.

For most of our formative years, this garden was anything but the ‘green lawn surface’ that it had started out to be. My clear memory of it is of a huge, central, roundish-oblongish-shaped, reddish-brown coloured area (on account of the soil in it), in which the little kids played their little games by day, and where the older ones held their night-time box cricket matches.

While small-scale outdoor games like playing marbles and spinning tops warranted flat surfaces such as concrete pavings, the garden’s spacious, landscaped terrain lent itself beautifully to team-oriented, physically-intensive sports such as football and cricket. Being centrally-situated, the living room window of all the 51 flats in the building looked down upon it, thus making it a perfect site for parental supervision aka snooping (the merits and demerits of which can be substantially argued thereof).

The ‘building garden’, as it is colloquially referred to in Mumbai lingo, serves as the first outdoor recreational interface that a mini Mumbaikar interacts with, easily adapting it to become his or her playground. Even today, since a majority of the city dwells vertically, in densely-packed residential buildings/housing societies, the concept of private front yards is naturally non-existent.

In such a scenario, communal ‘building gardens’ often double up as yards-cum-playgrounds for the city’s young ones. In the case of certain buildings, where the garden is off-limits for play (on account of its new role as a parking lot), one can still find children riding their bikes or scooters around it, manoeuvring their way through other strolling residents, circling its periphery. These ‘building gardens’ of Mumbai have always been central anchors of playtime for the young, and a personal pocket of open space for the elderly.

Mumbai also has its own share of neighbourhood parks, termed as ‘pocket parks’, that can be found scattered over its urban and suburban areas. Pocket parks (as the name clearly suggests) are small pockets of green spaces, open to the public, found interspersed within a city’s fabric, usually occupying small plots of land. These are not the types where one can play football or cricket (although lack of square-footage has never really hampered a desi cricketer!), but certainly the kinds where a game of ludo or scrabble can be enjoyed, if the weather permits. They operate more on the mantra of social relaxation – providing green horizons, benches to sit on, walking/jogging tracks and sometimes children’s play areas. At times, they may have a small monument or an art project housed in them, or even include partial weather-proof areas such as gazebos. They function as passive oases of cool and quiet, providing a source of welcome relief to the citizens in an otherwise hot and boisterous city.

New York City is a perfect example of an urbanised landscape that has over 250 comfortable pocket parks and public spaces, some with waterfalls, seating (movable tables and chairs as well as fixed bench-type seating), coffee kiosks etc. Most people intricately interact with these urban retreats by passing them to or from work or stumbling upon them when walking around their own neighbourhood. These serve the immediate local population as well as the transient tourist/visitor population.

In a residential neighbourhood, one can see locals resting here in the afternoons, reading their newspapers, supervising their playful children or engaging themselves in a game of chess, whereas in an office area, these become prime properties for lunch spots. In touristy areas, these offer an opportunity for shoppers to put down their shopping bags and rest awhile before continuing along, while for some passers-by, these provide a sense of visual relief in the scale of an otherwise towering concrete and glass jungle that is the city. Some of these pocket parks are privately owned, such as Gramercy Park, which is selectively accessible only to the people residing around it, who pay an annual fee towards its maintenance and have a key to it. The general public is not allowed in – although the sidewalks of the streets around the park are a popular jogging, strolling and dog-walking route.

Philadelphia provides a classic example of how pocket parks fight urban decay and crime. Resident groups here are revitalising their communities by reclaiming vacant land and establishing mini-parks there. This has not only helped them revive their blighted and desolate neighbourhoods, but has also spurred property sales on surrounding streets. Unattractive, neglected pieces of land that lacked the interests of developers in the past have successfully metamorphosed into small food-production urban farms that yield vegetables and fruits in the summer.

Pocket parks have been providing green spots of quiet refuge in otherwise urbanised cityscapes all over Europe as well. At times, they have evolved as urban transformations of wastelands, while at others they have come up as retrofits of a vacant lot or have been built into a new development project. In Denmark’s capital city Copenhagen for example, pocket parks are part of a larger strategy that aims to create green spots and connections in the city.

Copenhagen aspires to become the capital city with the best urban environment in the world by 2015. Enhancing their urban green is one of the tools they plan to employ for reaching this vision. The municipality plans to establish 14 pocket parks throughout the city before 2015 and plant 3,000 trees to create green streets and connections, in the hope that 90 per cent of all Copenhageners by 2015 can walk to a park, a beach or a harbour bath in less than 15 minutes.

In Tokyo, pocket parks – known as tsuji-hiroba – provide an even more compelling service. Designed with underground water tanks, the miniparks act as community meeting spots during emergencies such as fires or earthquakes.

In highly urbanised areas, where real estate prices are usually soaring through the roof and open space is always at a premium, pocket parks are excellent options for creating new public spaces without large-scale redevelopment. Unlike larger, traditional parks such as Central Park in NYC or Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, which are meant to serve the whole city, pocket parks are meant to serve just the people of the neighbourhood or even those of the street or the block.  Usually tucked away in inner-city areas, these specks of green contribute towards urban regeneration, providing areas where wildlife such as birds can establish a foothold. Unlike the public aspect of the city’s larger parks, pocket parks are designed keeping in mind the context of the neighbourhood or even just the lane that they are located in. Besides serving the local community, they also have the potential to benefit the overall urban climate. Communities with parks that meet their needs within walking distance are less likely to drive out of the city for nature experiences, thereby reducing pollution and traffic. Furthermore, pocket parks can potentially relieve pressure on the larger parks, thus allowing flexibility to devote larger areas of the parks to habitat and ecological functions.

In NYC, I have often seen pocket parks don various hats – they serve as perfect venues for summer fairs and community gardening efforts, second-hand thrift stalls and farmers markets. They swing little children on their carousels at times and intrigue passers-by enough to spend a few minutes staring down at engrossing games of chess. They make an ordinary sandwich seem gourmet because it’s being eaten outdoors on a park bench. They celebrate the sunshine and the afternoon breeze, much-needed after being cooped up in an air-conditioned conference room all morning long. They inspire creative tweets, because one types sitting under birds that are literally tweeting. They serve as perfect meditation spots and reading areas with the best kind of light to read in. Sometimes they come accompanied with the sound of water, that provides one with a transitory sense of escape from the city din. They inhabit innocent squeals coming from babies swinging in glee, that on a day going badly at the office, serve as perfect reminders of one’s real priorities in life. They let strangers sitting next to each other bond, albeit momentarily, in perfect harmony while syncing their heads to the tune of the saxophone played by the street musician.

In Mumbai, along with their universal roles of climate control and providing a green thumb to society, I envisage pocket parks as microcosmic representations of their communities, reflective of their culture and chaos. I imagine them housing Ganpati pandals in August with as much vigour as Christmas trees in December. They would throw community iftaar parties with as much enthusiasm as Lohri festivities. Here, neighbours could screen their own local film festivals through ‘open-air movie nights’, complete with picnic blankets and popcorn. Everyone and their driver would be welcome. Lovers would hold hands with aplomb, without having to fear unnecessary probing. At dawn, the park would host devoted yoga-aficionados and at dusk, serious star-gazers.

Pocket parks in suburban Mumbai neighbourhoods would double up as schools for street kids, giving them a more secure location for learning, as against the city’s footpaths, where they are presently located. Where possible, these pocket parks would evolve into mini urban farms giving gardening lessons to children, teaching them to grow their own herbs, vegetables and even fruits.

Pocket parks situated in office areas would function somewhat akin to outdoor culture cafes, providing free wifi for Mumbai’s office-goers. They would have ample areas of shade to reinvent Mumbai’s lunch breaks by bringing people across class, caste and creed together, to eat on long communal tables. They would transcend into multi-function culture hubs – commissioned and run by the city – open to the public, year-round, free-of-charge. These would showcase art installations, local music, street performances and jamming sessions, and provide a breeding ground for undiscovered talent. Occasionally, these pocket parks would host hawker fests/food bazars, on the lines of the ‘fun-n-fair’ concept that we all grew up with, where high-end restaurant stalls would be set up side-by-side with street-food vendors selling vada-pav/bhurji-pav/bhel puri and what-have-you. Every pocket park would plan and publish its own agenda in the form of a calendar of public events. One would have the option of walking into a pocket park to work, rest, read or simply sit and stare, watching the city go by.

These pocket parks, whether located in Mumbai’s suburbs or in its office areas, would frame the quintessential postcard of this city’s spirit. They have the potential of being our largest socio-urban experiment yet – for the people, by the people and most importantly, of the people! After all, a city has the capability of providing something for everybody, only because and only when it is created by everybody, isn’t it?

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and confesses that she could not stop the utopian urban designer in her from taking over while writing this post. 

(Pictures courtesy momaboard.com, pps.org, flickriver.com, streeteditors.com)

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Outside In

It all comes out in the wash

Shweyta Mudgal talks about doing her own laundry in NY and why this chore is a record of our culture.

The first apartment lease that I ever signed was for a large one-bedroom, pre-war (built before WWII) apartment, in a brownstone, in Astoria, Queens; one of five boroughs of New York City. The apartment was spacious and abundantly lit by the morning sun. It had a fire escape stair that doubled up as its own private make-shift balcony overlooking the quaint little backyard of an old Italian couple living next door.

Their backyard had a long clothesline slashed diagonally across itself, which worked on a noisy wheel pulley system, dispensing the line inch by inch to hang more clothes on until all its running length was consumed by wet laundry. Each morning, as I’d gulp down my coffee in a hurry to make my train in time, I’d hear the pulley creaking and knew the old lady was standing on her porch, ready to hang the day’s wash. Every evening when I’d come back home from work, I’d hear the same creaking again and I knew she was retracting the dried clothes off the line.

Almost as a daily ritual, she would press her nose into her dry sheets, as if inhaling some sort of scent, before pulling them down from the line into her laundry hamper.

I, of course, only did my laundry on weekends. As is the case with most pre-war buildings in the area, my lease contract specifically spelt out a ‘No washer/dryer’ clause, on grounds of wear and tear from too much soap on the 100-year-old pipes. Many buildings like mine discouraged residents from the same, worried about the stress the washing machines would exert on the building’s water infrastructure, the risk of leaks, water backlogging into bathtubs, etc.  I was one of the many ‘private laundry-less’ tenants in NYC, who lugged our bags of dirty laundry to wash it in public laundromats. Whoever said, “Do not wash your dirty linen in public” was definitely not a New Yorker!

The Great Depression of the 1930s rendered private washing machines unaffordable in the US, hence steering Americans towards communal laundry practices. Self-service laundromats popped up all over the city, becoming integral elements of the New York cityscape. Even after the Great Depression, when washing machines found their way back into the list of ‘must-have appliances’ in American households, laundromats still remained indispensable for many a New Yorker. Most apartments (especially in Manhattan) were small, space being at a premium, and old buildings such as mine did not allow washers/dryers in homes, for reasons stated above.

In that scenario, public laundromats provided a tremendous degree of convenience – of putting clean clothes within relative reach of anyone for a reasonable fee, thus achieving the level of social institutions in NYC.

Many laundromats in the city stay open for 24 hours, conveniently accommodating even the most rigorous of work schedules. With their usual self-serve, coin-operated, washer/dryer facilities, they also offer a reasonably-priced wash-and-fold service, often with free pickup and delivery. For people who hate doing laundry (and most people I know fall in that category) this is a clear win-win! In an otherwise DIY (Do It Yourself) society, the comfort of having your laundry picked up, washed, folded in an impeccably professional fashion and delivered to your doorstep without causing a huge dent in your pocket, was nothing short of a blessing.

Yet, every weekend, I did my laundry myself in the laundromat located half a block from my place. I wasn’t ashamed to confess that I loved doing my own laundry. Having hardly ever done it in my life up until then, there was a novelty to this chore. It gave me a strange sense of rejuvenation and gratification, allowing me to completely immerse myself into the social fabric of my street.

My close friend, who was also my roommate at the time, and I did our laundry together at the laundromat. We would lug our dirty clothes in huge laundry bags armed with a few ‘quarters’ that had been collected in our common jar. After putting our clothes into the washers, inserting the appropriate number of coins and setting our desired wash-cycles, we would go run errands nearby for the next hour or so. Sometimes, a delay in getting back would find us staring down in frustration at our wet laundry that had already been unloaded by the next-in-line, impatient user.

Next, we would put our freshly-washed clothes into one of the humongous dryers with dryer sheets, set to our preferred drying option. Once again, the number of quarters inserted in the machines would determine the length of drying time. With another hour or so to kill, until the clothes would be dry and ready to fold, we would vamoose again for more errands. On our return, it was time to unload and fold the clothes on the communal folding tables next to other customers. Sometimes we would chat with them, at others we would watch the Spanish soap opera unfold its suspense on the TV while we neatly folded our clothes away.

The laundromat was its own little socio-cultural hub, bringing together neighbours living within a certain radius, all of who came from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds, to do a task as private as washing their laundry, together in public. It functioned as a storefront for various sales and purchases, lost and found, local community activities, greetings, exchanges and conversations, all of which took place through its public pin-up board. The Laundromat Project is a classic example of how laundromats have served as catalysts for change, empowering neighbourhoods and communities through art.

Unfortunately, the increasing gentrification of New York City has led to the slow disappearance of some of these neighbourhood laundromats. Escalated rents and other business chains are soon driving out these mom-and-pop-run businesses one by one from the city’s streetscape. Photographers/filmmakers such as the Snorri Brothers are trying to revive this dying institution by creating an awareness towards it through their photography book titled ‘Laundromat‘ which depicts facades of these dying breeds all across NYC.

The best part of doing one’s laundry as I did back then, was its quick turnaround time, thanks to the electric dryer. That, and the convenience aspect of it, were probably the only things it had going for itself. For one could easily point out the multiple disadvantages such as high energy bills, huge carbon footprints, reduced lifespan of clothing, overheating leading to duller looking fabrics, and shrinkage. This is perhaps why, while both washers and dryers can be considered luxury appliances in most parts of the world, the idea of using a washer has been more globally acceptable than that of a dryer.

Motivated by environmental concerns and skyrocketing energy costs, American and Canadian consumers are re-evaluating their drying habits. In some communities here, outdoor clotheslines have been banned for years, on account of being eyesores that risk the prospect of driving down real estate value. This ordinance is now being challenged and overturned by members of a loose global network of people, rallying around the “right to dry”. ‘Project Laundry List‘ is a nonprofit that has helped to fight anti-clothesline ordinances in many North American neighborhoods, often by passing city or state legislation that invalidates such ordinances. Websites such as www.right2dry.org go as far as to instigate even the First Family of the US to line dry their clothes occasionally on the White House lawn, so as to help set an example for all Americans to go this energy-independent route.

In this battle of the ‘energy-efficient’ system v/s the ‘time-efficient’ one, while there is no clear winner yet, one can argue that the latter definitely appeals more to city dwellers who are forever trying to find the 25th hour in their day. Most New Yorkers would still prefer going the washer/dryer way and getting the job done in a couple of hours, as against going the manual way and turning it into a two-day affair. For starters, they don’t have the time (to wait for their laundry to air-dry) nor the space (to hang it). It is not unheard-of among Americans to own two-to-three weeks worth of undergarments just so they could space out their laundry days a bit further.

In most other countries where it is culturally and climatically possible to dry one’s laundry outdoors, electric dryers are popular only in the upper middle/higher class of society. In fact, it is the lack of appliances such as these that creates urban poetry; making clotheslines into an inseparable part of the urban landscape. Laundry hung on clotheslines has reached the status of unsung wonder, as in the case of Venice, Italy for example. Here, one finds plenty of tourists, artists and professional photographers walking around sketching or snapping pictures of laundry, elevating this otherwise mundane yet universal phenomenon, considered an essential chore by many, into great works of art.

Laundry hung outdoors speaks volumes – it tells stories of people’s lives, their tastes and habits. It can be used as an exploratory tool into anthropology across cultures, as is done by New York-based photographer Sivan Askayo’s long term project titled ‘Intimacy under the wires‘. To quote from her personal site, “This project reveals images of laundry both intimate and unconfined while their snoopy character makes laundry, a seemingly prosaic subject, all that more intriguing.” So far, Askayo has traveled all over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Madrid, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Buenos Aires and London, capturing pictures of clothing hung out to dry, standing under the lines, with her camera looking up at them.

Closer to home, one finds the dhobi ghats – the world’s largest outdoor laundry in Mumbai’s Mahalaxmi area, serving as a source  of inspiration to countless artists/filmmakers/researchers and photographers, who have spent long hours capturing scenes from the city’s open-air laundromat. Over the years it has become a must-visit sight on the bucket-list of many a tourist in this city. Rows of concrete wash-stones each fed individually through the intricately-woven plumbing network on this site, offer up an interesting analogy with modern-day office cubes that are wired similarly for laptops, phones and personal computers. For over 150 years now, the service of picking up dirty laundry, washing it and returning it neatly pressed, has been carried out here, for a small fee.

The dhobi’s modern-day fears have evolved on two grounds – the first being that India’s economic growth has brought disposable income into many households, making it feasible for them to own their own washing machines, thus rendering the dhobi redundant; the second being that the dhobi ghat occupies prime land in south Mumbai which could potentially be bought by developers to make way for luxury flats, depriving this age-old trade of its livelihood.

Laundry done Singaporean-style can also add a new leaf in the chapter of global line-drying. For starters, here, the term ‘clothes-line’ has a new meaning and a form, too. It is called a ‘gala’, which can essentially be described as a multicoloured pole that sticks out of apartment windows, usually at 90 degrees to the facade, over which damp clothes are pinned down using cloth pegs or pins. Traditional Singaporeans employ a ‘teko’, a naturally sturdy bamboo pole that serves the purpose equally well.

Scores of such poles with wet fluttering clothes on them, jutting out of tiny windows of most Singaporean HDB (Housing and Development Board) high-rises, make the building facades appear like a huge concrete porcupine of sorts. Not only are they aesthetically unappealing but there is also a chance that, if not anchored properly, they may come crashing down on unsuspecting pedestrians below. Due to the uncertainty in the Singaporean weather year-long, these poles can be retracted to dry clothes indoors, as well.

In most other countries, exterior clotheslines of apartments are sensibly strung parallel to the length of the windows, like in India. Apartments in Mumbai often have clothes-lines strung indoors under the ceiling (in their kitchens or common passage areas) and outdoors below or sometimes over the window, for both indoor and/or outdoor drying as determined by the weather. Newer high profile apartments being built off late in the city come equipped with special concealed ‘drying areas’ that do not interfere with the aesthetics of the building, usually provided off of the ‘servants area’.

Evidently, much effort is made to conceal the public exhibitionism of laundry in certain cultures, where it is considered intrusive with the urban aesthetic, even though it makes for an integral act in daily housekeeping.

All that comes out in the wash after this laundry-talk, is that a routine, everyday task such as the act of doing laundry, studied across different cultures, ceases to be just a task any more. It offers itself up as a perfect example of a mundane activity with underlying meaning that has transcended to new heights in socio-political landscapes worldwide. It has often inspired the art world, shaken the political one and iconised the architectural one.

This simple act alone has caused consumers to re-think their conveniences and opt for greener solutions, governments to re-draft ordinances, it has been an unusual source of cultural insight to artists, and offered itself up as a brilliant case study for urban design. It has the power to bring together neighbours over a picket fence as much as in a public laundromat.

To some, it may be a source of endless boredom, but to others it brings a calming sense of quotidian liturgy. Come to think of it, I think I’ve cracked the code on why my old Italian neighbour smelt her sheets each time she picked them off the line in her yard – it was her way of soaking in the sun long after it was gone!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com and is at the receiving end of much envy from her American friends off late for hardly being able to remember the last time she did her own laundry!

(Pictures courtesy tropicalisland.de, foothillappliance.com, blogs.mtvswitch.org, bugbitten.com)

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Outside In

Americanisms and I

How can you blow your nose in public? But in America, it’s a habit much better than sniffling in public.
by Shweyta Mudgal

First he went all “Aaaachooooo…”, turning to sneeze in his shirt sleeve, being courteous and all. He even followed it up nicely with a prompt, apologetic, “Excuse me.” But then he went and undid the good manner with a big, loud, rather obstreperous act of blowing his nose in public. Thankfully, he used a tissue, so we didn’t see anything, but we heard it all. He may as well have wrapped up the meeting with a finger stuffed up his nose trying to unclog his nasal passage.

I found this behaviour uncouth and just didn’t get it. How could my boss, a higher-up in the ranks, well-travelled, super-cultured, highly professionally-decorated, Ivy-leaguer and partner in one of the top ten architectural firms in the world, be caught blowing his nose in public? An act that you would think, is better off conducted in the private confines of a restroom, far from public eye or ear.

While I tried hard to mask my disgust, there was nothing remotely perturbing about this public-mucus-evacuation-coupled-with-unwelcome-snorts to anyone else in this American office. Everyone who had heard him went about their business as though nothing had happened. An American colleague later clarified that she, like most of her other childhood buddies, was taught, that sniffling is a bad habit, hence one should blow their nose ASAP to avoid the same.

Fair enough. Although quite unfair on the ears that have to go through the torture, I must say.

I figured that would probably make me the odd one out, in this primarily American office, reacting differently to this Snot Issue. Until my fresh-off-the-boat Japanese coworker showed up at my desk, nodding his head in mega disapproval at what would be considered socially offensive behaviour in his native Japan.

This dichotomy of good and bad Manners, which changes from one culture to the other all over the world, has always intrigued me.

In my books, blowing a snot wad in public, which is an across-the-board, commonplace occurence in the US, can safely be classified as an Americanism; i.e a trait typical of an American.

Yet another noteworthy American-ism that first took me aback was: sitting in an office with the feet up on the desk. Usually prevalent among those higher-up on the ladder, this is not an unheard-of phenomenon in the American workplace. There have even been quite a few POTUS (Presidents of The United States) caught on camera in this act; resting their feet on the Oval office desk during meetings with the Chief of Staff, etc.

While in some cultures (Thai, Korean, Arab, specifically) it is considered inappropriate and disrespectful to show others the bottoms of one’s shoes, for most Indians (especially devout Hindus) this would clearly amount to blasphemy. For India is a land where every thing is of some divine value. Work is worship; as is almost everything else. Even a mistaken brush of the foot with any animate or inanimate object, entails an immediate obeisance with folded hands to make amends, lest the Hindu pantheon of Gods unfurl its fury on you.

However, seen from an American boss’s perspective, this act of kicking one’s feet up on a desk at the end of a long workday is meant to insinuate his friendly, warm, ‘one-of-you-guys’ image with the subordinates.

Most Americanisms that have walked into my life over the last decade have become an inherent aspect of my overall persona now; some knowingly, others subconsciously.

Some of these Americanisms have been behavioural:

“Excuse me”ing my way carefully through packed public spaces or saying “I am sorry” in the event of a slightest brush past a random shoulder. Both of which prove to be completely useless in some parts of the world, yet work as perfect peacemakers in others.

Some have been verbal:

Greeting most people with a “Hey, how’s it going?” or applauding the baby’s smallest achievement with a “Good job!” every now and then. (Hardcore American lingo, yet now commonly used all over the world.)

Some Americanisms seemed plausible, right from the start:

Referring to everyone by their first names, irrespective of age, especially at the office. What a great leveller! The liberation one feels, being on a first-name basis with one’s colleagues, old or young, is far more satisfying than having to carry around the presumptuous baggage of colonial remnants such as “Sir”, “Madam” or a “ji” at the end of their name, still prevalent in the quintessential Indian workplace.

Some Americanisms surprised me:

Having to be politically and religiously correct and wish everyone “Happy holidays!” over “Merry Christmas”? That just didn’t sound right after all those years of convent schooling. Yet I saw the reason behind it and went with the flow.

Some Americanisms I conveniently switch in and out of:

The accent, for instance, which turns on and off like a switch, depending on who I am talking to. Some words though, have stuck forever; ‘Schedule’ will never be ‘shed-yule’ again, just as ‘Water’ won’t sound right without rolling the R in it.

And then there are some Americanisms that the cultured desi in me still stubbornly resists from integrating into my system:

Such as blowing my nose in public or putting my feet up on the desk!

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com. And yes, she does blow her nose and put up her feet on the desk when no one’s looking!

(Featured image courtesy bestandworst.com) 

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Outside In

“Oh, sorry, but I have to go….”

Is invading one’s ‘personal space’ a phenomenon unique to Mumbai? Shweyta Mudgal found far-flung Cambodia guilty of the same crime.

He: “How old is she?”

Me: (looking at Z-star who could easily pass off to be two or older) “A year and a half.”

He: “Only one?”

Me: (Wow, is she coming across as such a brat already?) “Yes, she is the only one.”

He: When you have one more?

Me: Umm..What? (More like a ‘What just happened kind of a WHAT?’)

He: You should have more baby.

Me: (Sheepish smile) Sure! Oh, sorry, but I have to go….

And just like that I vamoosed out of the store, dodging for the tenth time probably, another conversation that could’ve gone down the ‘personal’ route, in this country full of inquisitive locals – Cambodia.

Each time I’d had this kind of an episode, in the past one week of being here, it had always been with a local I’d just met. Not even two minutes into the conversation, I’d been asked when I was planning on having Baby No. 2. Interestingly ‘If’ I was planning on it or not, did not seem like an option. And my answer had always been an amused, reassuring, “Sure!” after which I’d fled, hoping to become a face in the crowd of crazy two-wheeler traffic on the busy streets of Cambodia.

The Khmer (Cambodians) are a simple, warm, happy, self-contented, generous lot. An immensely likeable clan that seems to have no apparent notions of modern-day personal space invasion. Perhaps it’s their genuine innocence; being a by-product of a culture that is largely untouched by Western exposure, thus bereft of modern-world spatial concepts, such as personal space. They nonchalantly inquire off of strangers; information that in most cultures, may be regarded as personal and hence, not-to-be-revealed. They are not trying to probe, they are just following what they think is the acceptable course of social norm.

Growing up in India, one masters the art of answering all sorts of personal questions; about one’s own life and even that of others sometimes. Hubster notes, it all starts when strangers/random neighbours feel the need to inquire about your (and your neighbours) examination scores. On the non-academia side there are the “When are you getting married? When are you having kids? When is your little daughter going to have a brother or a sister?” kind of endless inquisitions that one is faced with, depending on what stage of life they are at.

To a point, I could handle this inquiry into my personal life while I lived there (mostly by virtue of a theory of diversion – routing the conversation to another topic altogether, gradually fleeing the scene with a time-constraint excuse. “Oh Sorry Uncle, but I have to go….” It always works!). And of course, it helped that I was brought up being answerable only to my parents (as against in some other cases, the extended families/elderly neighbors etc), which made it really easy to disregard, sometimes impolitely so, any such over-the-top inquisition.

The line between a personal question and a public one; questions that should not be asked v/s those that can be, is a blurry one. And since public speculation in India is always at an all-time high, how one deals with these can sometimes matter.

Moving out of India to the United States threw this enormous gush of personal space in my face. Perhaps much more than what I needed. Here, neighbors didn’t care who I was, who I went out with or what I wore. The only time they’d acknowledge me is when we were forced to spend some time behind closed doors together – in elevators. (Although I have taken many an elevator ride, up Manhattan high-rises, with quiet, screen-staring copassengers, who will just not talk! Carrying around an animal or a baby helps break that ice, I’ve noticed). While this ‘I am-too-busy-to-care-about-you’ attitude can be largely liberating, at times, it can also make one miss the friendly next door Aunty who could bring you comfort food when you’re sick and home alone, taking back some personal dope from you in return.

Having spent the last decade of my life in my city of true liberty – NYC, has naturally altered my patience with respect to answering personal questions. Occasional trips back to India from there, over the years, would be short and sweet, although they did entail some brushing up of the art of fielding personal inquiries.

But now, with my current ‘tri-city-living-cum-global-nomad-lifetsyle’, various cultures of the world fling themselves upon me regularly, causing a confusing juxtapositioned web, that in classic Hindi movie dialogue-of-dislocation style, makes me go “Main kahan hoon?” every other week. And so, I am caught off-guard when a trip to some foreign land throws at me more intimate questions than what I’ve faced growing up in India.

Even now, there seems to be only one best exit strategy – my most tried and tested theory of diversion, followed by an “Oh, sorry, but I have to go….”

A Mumbaikar by birth and a New Yorker by choice, recently-turned global nomad Shweyta Mudgal is currently based out of Singapore. An airport designer by day, she moonlights as a writer. ‘Outside In’ is a weekly series of expat diaries, reflecting her perspective of life and travel, from the outside-in. She also blogs at www.shweyta.blogspot.com.

 (Picture courtesy stockpicturesforeveryone.com)

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