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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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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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Tipping is not a city in China*

Shweyta Mudgal reaches tipping point – she learnt the hard way that tipping waiters is not always a great idea.

His first tip to me was – “Do not tip.” My dear friend and host, who had been living in Rotterdam, NL for the past two years now, insisted that I abide by the law of the land. More so as I was visiting him from The United States of America, also known as ‘Tip Heaven’ all over the world.

He further elaborated that Dutch waiters wait on you (when they finally do, that is), like they are doing you a favour. More often than not, they do not like their attention being sought. Flagging them down for the check is extremely difficult, hence one is better off walking up to the cashier to pay one’s bill than waiting for it to arrive at the table.

This behavioural trait, observed unanimously by many a foreigner on Dutch soil, intrigued me enough to probe further. Here’s what I found:

Some people attributed this wait-staff nonchalance to socio-political reasons; of the unwillingness of the Dutch to acknowledge the subservient position of waiting staff. The general belief was that the culture of tipping only fosters a master-slave relationship, ill-suited to this nation where people were meant to be social equals. Some others boil it down to being the natural consequence of a ‘tip-less culture’.

Since the Dutch government requires for all taxes and service charges to be included in the published prices of hotels, restaurants, cafes, nightclubs etc, it is not required of the customer to tip a certain percentage over the total amount on the check. Thus, the locals generally tend to leave behind coins or small change as a tip, if at all.

To me, this issue became the Dutch service industry’s equivalent of ‘What came first – the chicken or the egg?’ Had this culture of scarce or no tips come about because of the general lackadaisical service one experiences here, or was the Dutch waiter perpetually disinterested in serving patrons, because he knew there would be no tip at the end of it anyway?

Where I was travelling from, the United States, leaving a tip at a restaurant was probably as mandatory an aspect of eating out as was paying at the end of a meal. Tipping had flourished in the US as a social institution over the years.

It is common knowledge that American wait-staff make minimum wage and that tipping is used to subsidise their sub-standard pay at the workplace. So effectively, when one dines at a restaurant in the US, whether one is pleased with the service or not, leaving a tip equivalent to at least 15 to 20 per cent of the bill is the norm. This could be argued with, especially as the act of tipping is considered a discretionary one.

Yet most Americans will tell you that tips left behind are usually distributed to multiple employees of the restaurant. So even if your server screwed up your order or you spent half your dinner eating with one hand up trying to eternally vie for your server’s attention, it wouldn’t be fair to penalise the busboy, bartender, food runners, and other employees in the food chain, who depend on this money to make their living.

In fact, it is now commonplace for some American restaurants to add a ‘mandatory tip’, also known as ‘gratuity included’ to their customers’ cheques, especially for larger parties – say, a table of six or more. This notion itself causes quite a stir. For example, would a table of four adults and two babies be considered a table of six, even though the babies only sit at the table, but eat nothing? And is a restaurant justified in imposing a ‘mandatory’ tip on a meal, when essentially the customer should be free to exercise discretion in leaving as little or as much as he or she wishes to?

Compared to the US, most European nations fall somewhere in the ‘no-tip to low-tip’ zone. In most European countries, a flat service charge is usually included in the restaurant bill or the tip amount is most probably built into the menu pricing. Since the restaurant staff here, unlike their American counterparts, are generally well-paid, tips are only considered as a small ‘bonus’ meant to reward great service or for simplicity in rounding the total bill to a convenient number. Or, as I discovered to my surprise, for minding a restaurant toilet. Yes, while one can leave a table without a tip in Europe; good luck trying to leave a toilet without one!

It is not extraordinary for toilets, even those within restaurants to be manned by tip-seeking keepers. I remember getting sent back to my table from a restaurant toilet in Paris once to get some coins for the toilet-keeper’s ‘tip-dish’. That is when it dawned on me – in Europe, while table service seems to come free, toilet-service surely doesn’t. Pay to pee, one must!

In Asia, on the other hand, tipping can be a tricky matter.

In Chinese, Japanese and South Korean cultures, to leave a tip may be considered downright offensive and rude, while at times causing confusion and having the waiter come chasing after you to return the ‘extra money left on the table’.

In Japanese cultures, the act of handling money itself warrants an etiquette – something I’ve only recently learnt through a small episode at the local Japanese grocery store in Singapore. A few weeks ago, I found myself at the receiving end of a long hard stare in my fiscal transaction with an old Japanese female cashier. Somewhere between balancing the baby’s stroller and my multiple shopping bags, I fumbled in my purse and casually put some cash down on her table to pay my bill. It was when she did not pick it up, that it hit me. Something was wrong!

A conversation with a friend later revealed that I had belied the appropriate Japanese etiquette of money give-and-take. I should have been respectfully holding the note, with both my hands and instead of having kept it on the table for her to pick it up, it should directly have been handed over to her. Money kept on a table is only considered appropriate in the Japanese culture if placed within an envelope. And that, if at all, is the only way the Japanese would accept a tip.

Since then, having groomed myself into this cash-exchange etiquette, I now feel a pleasant vibe coming my way  each time I shop at the Japanese store. Following it up with a slight bow at the end almost always gets me a smile with a happy acknowledgement in return.

Almost all of the remaining SE Asian countries, as I have noticed on my recent travels, do not expect tips at restaurants. Although the influx of Westerners and global exposure is soon changing that, especially in the high-end restaurants in big touristy cities, it is still socially acceptable to not tip at all or leave small change/coins that one wants to get rid of, with the check.

In Singapore, for instance, one is not expected to tip at a restaurant, although one does end up paying a 10 per cent service charge, 4 per cent GST (Goods and Services Tax) and 1 per cent government tax on the bill. The service charge ends up in the owner’s pocket, from where it trickles down into the pockets of the restaurant workers, thus rendering the act of tipping by customers a redundant aspect of eating out here.

In India, tipping at restaurants has more recently come of age. I still have memories of coins being left behind in the ‘saunf’ container at Udipi restaurants, when I was growing up in the 80’s.

To the desi lower middle class, the concept of tipping might still mean leaving behind some ‘chhutta paisa’, but for the noveau-riche and upwardly mobile, it is becoming an integral aspect of the dining-out experience. In fact, one can often find examples of restaurant regulars tipping in advance to make sure they are well taken care of. TIPS does mean To Insure Prompt Service, after all.

A classic stereotypical example here would be of the global desi; one who has moved back after having lived abroad for a few years or the Non Resident Indian who visits once in a while and insists on tipping a credible percentage of the bill at a restaurant.

Having been there and done that, I have often been subjected to a “Don’t spoil it for the rest of us,” lecture by the residents (mostly my parents and/or friends living in India). A recent chat with a fellow NRI friend revealed that she had been through a similar experience, when she once tried to let a rickshawwallah in Hyderabad keep the change or left an unusually high tip at a local restaurant. Her argument was that the sum of money, while relatively insignificant to her, might be of a substantial value to the receiver. Both of us discussed how our generous gratuity-giving habits have landed us in trouble on our trips back to India. At various points, we have been accused of at least one of the following – driving up local inflation, causing a temporary imbalance in the everyday way of life and/or creating an increase in expectations for all travellers who follow, only because we were gracious tippers.

To all those desi skeptic friends of mine, I have just one thing to say:

T-I-P-S spelt backwards is S-P-I-T. If you spare the waiter of the former, the next time you visit, he’s going to make sure he serves you the latter. In this case, quite literally, what goes around, comes around! And that might not be worth it at all!

* ‘Tipping is not a city in China’ is one of many smart and quirky inscriptions found on tips jars all over the world, reminding customers that tips are welcome. Ironically though, tipping is not a custom in China.

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 once a thrifty tipper, she is now a generous one, thanks to her husband.

(Picture courtesy tippingresearch.com)

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Outside In

The colour of me

Shweyta Mudgal was thrilled to know that Americans coveted her skin colour – and then her ‘fair’-skinned daughter was born.

My grandmother has been dark-skinned all her life. The colour of milk chocolate!

Her daughter – my mother, has always been light-complexioned; alabaster-like, like the colour of daylight on a beautiful morning!

Me – when I was born I am told I was somewhere between ochre and honey. Until I decided to go out and ‘play in the sun’ every day, ending up a shade of burnt sienna for most of my childhood. Once the sun-play stopped and I moved out of India to the States, my colour lightened and became what it is now (as suggested by the make-up world) – wheatish medium-toned.

My daughter was born the colour of peaches and cream. Mixed together, in the exact proportion, to form a flawless light creamish-pink colour that I refer to as ‘baby blush.’ Over the course of the past 19 months of her life, she has managed to keep just enough sun under her skin to move on to more peach and less cream, in the process being labelled the “fairest one of them all” in the family palette.

Evidently, the skin-tone lineage in our family, studied over the cross-section of its surviving generations, clearly alternates between dark and light. For instance, in a picture taken standing between them, I am the brown vada between the light-coloured pavs that are my mother and daughter. No surprise then, in an openly in-your-face kind of society such as ours in India, I looked back confounded when faced with this recurring query throughout my childhood: “How come you are so dark while your mother is so fair?” (That my name also literally means ‘white’ in Sanskrit didn’t help at all. Really! What were you thinking, Mom?)

This oft-asked question had affected me enough, I am told, to have created one of the funniest childhood memories of my life. My juvenile brain had finally decided, one fine day, that the solution lay in mommy’s home-whipped white butter. She still cracks up when she recounts how she found me sitting on the kitchen floor with butter smeared all over my face one evening. All this, so I could be as fair as she was!

While the fascination with human skin colour has been of much interest and intrigue to Indians for eons (more so for women, the so-called ‘lighter sex’), it has taken on insane levels in some other Asian countries. Vietnam, for instance.

Creams, fairness gels, deodorants, soaps, moisturisers and even pills that make skin-lightening promises abound on the shelves of convenience stores and supermarkets alike, all over this country. In sultry, humid and 100 deg F (roughly 37 deg C) temperatures in Saigon, women can be seen covered head to toe (for no religious reason), dressed in jeans or slacks, face masks (that double up into anti-pollution and anti-sun barriers) and long-sleeved hand gloves – all in an attempt to shield their skin from the sun.

If you asked their darker Cambodian neighbours, they wondered: why the fuss? After all, they would ask, aren’t the Vietnamese already fair enough? Makes for a good pun, that phrase there, but the Vietnamese, on the other hand, will tell you, ‘fair enough’’ is not good enough!

The significance of being ‘white’ (bordering on albino-like sometimes, what with all the lightening products and procedures available in today’s market) in the cultural paradigm of Asian countries, is enormous. Not just on the socio-economic level but on a global identity level – where Asian women, in their quest for beauty, are trying to achieve the colour of their Caucasian counterparts. In Asia, ‘whiteness’ of the skin has always been directly proportional to beauty and affluence. A dark or tanned skin belonged to a worker toiling in the fields all day, thus reflecting poverty, physical hard work and a socially inferior status.

This obsessive pursuit of fairness leads to accidents, as well. For instance, in today’s day and age, with countless fairness products made available to them, women of the lower social strata in countries like Cambodia often resort to making uninformed choices. Partly due to their ignorance and partly due to the products’ unaffordability, they end up buying cheap skin lighteners, the application of which results in severe skin damage and even death in some cases, on account of their high mercury and/or lead content.

My analysis of this fairness craze has brought me to establish my own hypothesis – all we want is to be like our neighbours on the left. Take a look at the map of Asia – this pursuit of fairness starts from India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines, who wouldn’t mind going a few shades lighter, say, like the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese and South Koreans would prefer going still whiter like the neighbours on their left, the Japanese. And the Japanese, not content with their high rank on the Asian shade card, are vying for the Caucasian-like radiance of the Americans (the white Americans, to be specific).

The Americans, infamous for doing things diametrically opposite to the rest of the world, obviously wouldn’t mind bartering their ‘ivoriness’ for some ‘colour’, the pursuit of which leads them to natural or unnatural tanning practices. Tanning of the skin is their equivalent of ‘whiteness’ in Asians, in terms of desirability.

While most Westerners tan naturally by simply lying under the sun, usually by the pool, on the beach or on a lawn, the more popular method that Americans prefer is that of cosmetically tanning themselves indoors, on a bed or in a booth in a tanning salon. Either way, the tan is achieved by exposing one’s skin to UV radiation; the overexposure of which can adversely affect one’s health causing skin cancer (melanoma), cataracts, premature aging and wrinkling of the skin, etc.

Having sun-kissed skin is so highly coveted in the West, that to my surprise, I found myself at the receiving end of compliments, in school here, for being the colour that I am. It was ironic! To be appreciated for something that one had been chided for in their growing years, naturally felt wonderful!

To me, America became the land that loved and welcomed coloured skin, non-judgmentally. Granted, this nation was not always this colour-uncoded, going by its history, and that parts of it are still not as non-discriminatory. Yet, I found that overall, cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and several others celebrated their colour diversity. I had classmates, school staff and co-workers telling me they wished they had some of my colour. That for the first time, someone wanted to be – the colour of me!

The natural Asian tan was a coveted one in America. Here, hues of black, brown, tan, olive, yellow and white seemed to co-exist in harmony, often blurring lines and blending in with each other to create new shades. Black and white marriages yielded light brown babies, as did brown and white marriages. Yellow and white marriages resulted in white babies with Asian features, or vice versa. This was the Land of Colour, yet free of Colourism! Here, the Colour Code did not apply to me anymore. Finally, I had been set free!

Until the day my peaches-and-cream daughter was born. And I took her out for her first walk by the Hudson river. A much elder mother-daughter duo, probably of Asian origin, stopped to admire the little one. “She’s beautiful. And soooo fair!” they said as I smiled, opening my mouth to say, “Thanks!” and gracefully accept the compliment. Until they looked me up and down and added, “Is she your daughter?”

What can I say? I am always going to be her nanny!

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 loves being referred to as her daughter’s nanny by unsuspecting strangers. 

(Picture courtesy bellasugar.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

‘Do (not) talk to strangers’

Your mum’s been telling you this all your life: do not talk to strangers. But what happens when you do?
by Shweyta Mudgal

When I was moving out of my parents’ home in 2002, somewhere next to the bottle of homemade aam ka achaar that Mom had stealthily sneaked into my suitcase, she also made sure she planted a life lesson that she had been propagating to me all along: Do not talk to strangers! That’s ironic, considering I was going to a strange land, where I did not know anyone.

Naturally, she was worried. I had grown up in big bad Mumbai, after all. And now that I was moving to a bigger, badder place – Los Angeles – surely I would need to follow this dictum there too, she thought.

In just my first week in LA, as I discovered to my utter bewilderment, everyone spoke to everyone. Strangers greeted each other in elevators, often slipping in some small talk, depending on how long or short the ride was. Doormen talked to residents, inquiring about their pets, kids, marriage/divorces, etc. Pedestrians politely smiled at each other, even while crossing busy intersections in downtown LA. Bus drivers cheerily doled out “Good morning”s and “Have a nice day”s at passengers, often allowing those short by a few coins to ride free.

Taxi drivers chatted you up like you were their long-lost friend. Forgetful drivers nodded in appreciation at their four-wheeled counterparts, who let them cut lanes last-minute. And locals stopped to pore over your map and show you where Union Station was.

Yes, in Los Angeles, as I noticed, everyone spoke to everyone. This was the land of the Anti-Lesson! How was I, with my pre-conditioned suspicious mindset, ever going to live here?

He broke me in, gradually. I would see him every morning on my way to school. Big, black, bouncer-like. My first ever American stereotype. He was a security guard on duty at the loading dock of the industrial building, half a block from my loft. I must’ve been a stereotype for him as well: brown, bespectacled, bohemian, en route to school each morning with my hippie bag slung across my torso and architectural building model in one hand.

Clearly my stubborn, ingrained standoffishness must have given away the fact that I was a newbie in the hood. For every time he tried to say something beyond, “Good morning,” I would walk past hurriedly, pretending to have not heard him. Obviously, I’d had years of practice, brushing off strangers in Mumbai.

While I must confess I was having a hard time unearthing his thick African-American accent beyond his “Good Morning’, my Anti-Stranger sensor had also naturally gone off. No wonder I was giving him the ‘Smile and Scoot’ attitude. Until that one morning.

I was late for a design jury at school. Half-walking, half-sprinting, I had barely crossed the street, trying to balance a physical building model in one hand and drawings in another, when it started pouring out of nowhere. (If you’ve known architecture students, you might be aware that they guard their building models with their life, giving it priority over anything else. There are just too many sleepless nights at stake there.)

I ducked into the nearest building for cover, coming face-to-face with Mr. Big Black Bouncer-like, standing where he always did – at the entrance of his loading dock. We greeted each other politely and then an awkward pause followed. He could tell I was running late; I could tell he wanted to help.

“Not so sunny after all, are you now, California?” , the sarcastic voice in my head grumbled.

Voice in head sure must have been loud, because he offered, “Here, take my umbrella. It’s one of those big ones, enough to keep you and your junk nicely covered through this rain.”

“Thank you. That is so gracious of you. But I’ll be okay. The rain will subside in a bit, I am sure. I’ll just wait.”

“As you wish, dear. But something tells me you’re running late today. Besides, this one ain’t gonna stop soon. Like the monsoon you have back home.”

I looked at the time, as head and heart quickly concurred. “Okay, I’ll take it. Thanks a lot. I’ll bring it back tomorrow, I promise.”

“Yup, I’ll be here. Have a good one. Stay dry!” and he went back to his business.

I walked over to the dock the next morning with a box of donuts to say thanks and return his umbrella. He had saved my day, after all.

He was nowhere around. His stand-in told me he had called in sick that morning. “Must have caught a cold from the shower yesterday. Someone stole his umbrella. So he ended up going home drenched last night.”

“What? No! He lent it to me…I….” I began to blabber.

Mr. Big Black Bouncer-like made an appearance from the back, chuckling at the serious look on my face. “Relax, girl. He’s playing with you,” he said.

Relieved, I smiled. The ice was broken. We chatted briefly over a quick donut, until I left with a “See you tomorrow!”

And just like that, slowly but surely began my process of unlearning Mom’s lifelong lesson, thanks to my first American stranger-friend!

Whoever said that strangers are just friends waiting to happen, must have met several Mr. Big Black Bouncer-like’s in his lifetime.

That day onwards, I began to let my guard down, bit-by-bit, taking my chances and letting strangers into my life.

I learnt to greet people I didn’t know, wondering how it would be to do the same back home in Mumbai. I began holding doors open for strangers and walking through those held for me, making it a courteous habit that I could carry with me wherever I went in the world.

I smiled at random faces that met my eye and struck up conversations whenever I had the chance, wondering if I’d raise some suspicious eyebrows when I did the same in Mumbai. I chatted with passengers who shared my seat on a bus or a train, wondering if impromptu conversations such as these could ever occur between random strangers in a Mumbai local train or a BEST bus.

I “Good Morning”ed and ‘Hello, how are you?”ed taxi-drivers, often striking up interesting conversations with them during the ride, wondering why I’d never started a rickshaw or a taxi ride in Mumbai with a “Kaise ho bhaiyya?” before.

While the process of unlearning this lifelong lesson hasn’t been easy, it has certainly been a very liberating one, bringing to the fore fun impromptu conversations, amusing light-hearted exchanges and positive vibes from strangers.

Most people I know were raised, like me – to believe that one should not talk to strangers. I’d highly recommend the opposite. Talk to them. Smile at them. Share a joke or two. While it probably won’t take too much effort on your end, it might just make their day easier!

P.S: Mom – If you’re reading this, sorry, but you know when the US Customs Officer threw out the aam ka achaar from my bag at LAX? It seems like he may have tossed out your lesson with it, too! I love you!

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 sometimes, she tries to listen to her mother.

(Featured image courtesy datingadvicefromagirl.com) 

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