Wednesday we had the possibility to enjoy a slow morning – we had only one meeting in the afternoon. We had breakfast, bread omelette and chai tea, at TISS cantine and read local newspapers. Mumbai Mirror (local “Expressen”) was the most entertaining one, with its horoscope and sex help parts. After breakfast some of us sat down to update this blog, while others went to do some fruit and Tiger-balm shopping.
Before our 2 o’clock meeting we had lunch at a nearby lunch/take away-restaurant Muktar’s. We all came there together, sat in different tables, were served different times and left separately.
Wednesdays meeting was at TISS at School of Median and Culture Studies, where we met Anjali Monteiro and K. P. Jayasankar, a couple, professors and documentary film makers. They showed us their film Naata (2003), which told us three separate stories. One about them selves, their love marriage across casts and religions, one about Dharavi, the most known slum in Mumbai, and one about two friends: one Muslim, one Hindu and their peace initiatives in Dharavi after 1992. After the film we talked lot about the Dharavi slum, which is also known from Slumdog Millionaire. However, the film shows entirely wrong picture of the slum. In the film there is not even one law following adult. In reality Dharavi is highly organized and extremely productive “mini-India”, where all the cultures meet and almost 200 languages are spoken and its according to them one of the safest parts of Mumbai.
We also got to meet some students of their Master program, who had just started their semester. The students had studied their bachelors in different fields and came from all around India. They showed us some of their works from last year and we had interesting discussions about them. They had made music videos and public service ads with theme women & safety to create awareness. Themes included rape, sexual abuses and wives “locked” inside their homes. The public service ads were really thought provoking and well made, as well as the music videos.
One of the school dogs sat through the meeting with us
After our meeting officially ended, we stayed and mingled with the students about the election results and about studying in Mumbai and Lund. Anahita had dinner and went Bollywood star spotting with an Indian student, while the rest of us went to see the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station, the biggest in the whole of Asia.
- Lund University and TISS coming together
After train station we had dinner – thalis – and went for a sightseeing walk in Fort, the area with old colonial style buildings. We walked past the High court, University of Mumbai’s main building and some other beautiful old buildings. In the end we ended up having beers at the same place as on Saturday.
When we got back to TISS, we were all so tired that we went straight to bed!
/Maari