So I head over to reality tours and get picked up in a SUV by a tour guide along with an American and Australian couple...We begin our drive first through the red light district, then the open laundry, and finally a two + hour guided walk through the slums of mumbai--Dharavi--the largest in all of Asia...A million plus people live here.
Lets complain because we don't have things our way...ready, set...go! damn, people actually live like this? what is this? oh, a conscience...that hurts...or something...I don't have real human emotions so I couldn't tell you...or something like that..
The red light district was brief but interesting. Our guide pointed out that there are 30 + thousand sex workers in Mumbai and 8 + thousand inhabit this area. He pointed out the woman who were sitting in small entrances on steps were the sex workers of the area...100-200 rupees (2 to 5 dollars) for a round...fortunately they do use protection from what our guide told us due to non-prfoit organizations aiming to educate the women against STDS...The phone booths in India are called STD booths...There is no connection between the two, by the way...
We then head to open laundry which is a mass laundry center that operates out in the open...All the clothes from hotels to homes to anywhere else gets sent here and its...pretty cool...The workers get paid something like 7,000 rupees a month and live in the area in makeshift shacks...Its more or less a big concrete conglomeration of hand washing expertise...I noticed quite a few people bathing along side the laundry as well which was no surprise...
To the slums...no cameras allowed...The first thing I noticed about the slums are they entirely what you expect and also the complete opposite.
Yeah, in some areas of the slums its a total hell hole. Smoggy, smoky, filthy, muddy, and rotting. Kill it or me or the perception or both to nothing to everything and bring me back to that place where I can feel everything is as it should because I know when I look out into the world it isn't. Burnt faces and ashy skin. How did this come to be? The whole place is like a dying animal, decaying and being overrun by various parasites that come in the form of crumbling infrastructure and heaping piles of never ending trash combined with a malnourished core...However, this is the recycling area, which isn't where people live--but rather work. People live here though, don't kid yourself. People live everywhere. Sleep on the trash and watch as the death overtakes your skin from the outside in.The homes exist in a congested set of ally ways that twist and turn in a cluttered state but surprisingly have cable TV and cost quite a bit of money to own in any context...Liquids of all sorts drip down silenty reassuring me America isn't such a bad place after all..Hopeless and hopefull looks by the old and young in brightly colored but stained sarais and these feelings man where are they coming from and am I supposed to act on them or what? Sensory depravation sounds good right about now..
Despite the appearance of the place, the people are just normal people. Sounds dumb but its true. Cab drivers, shop workers, street vendors, and everything else in between. Our guide, himself, lived in the slums and so you realize that living in the slums here doesn't make you a bum, a criminal, or a drug dealer. In fact, crime of all kinds is significantly lower in the slums than pretty much anywhere else in Mumbai. Cobala, where I was staying, is clean and extremely wealthy. However, it suffers more crime due to the tourism that exists in the area compared to the slums, according to our guide.
The slums are typically crime free because the place operates as a working community. People develop close bonds with one another and rely on each other to survive. Tightly knit community. You could tell just seeing how people interact with one another, as well as with us--the majority of which were happy and open hearted...I thought it was a good illustration that wealth doesn't buy happiness...A lot of laughter..Fat man hits the cricket ball over the buldings and everyone laughs. I apparently look like Bob Marley to more than one person...Little kids covered in dirt and playing in trash piles...reminds me of the Summit dump I used to frolic in as a kid..I played in a landfill growing up so that might explain a lot about my character...
However, the slums can be pretty hellish. Breathing in the air at the recycling area is rough on the lungs and you can feel it singe the back of your throat. We got to go into the shops with our guide, talk to people and see how they worked--taking various things apart, mechanical deconstruction, baking bread, making large blocks of soap, sofas, pottery, and so on...
You ever think about the insanity that you have to work to live. Shouldn't you just be able to live? Someone pointed that out to me today...most people feel otherwise...but most people live in a society which conditions them through trauma and fear so I operate with a skepticism..
Our guide took us up on the roofs of one of the buildings and I was just like jesus...look at this place, its fucking awful..It felt like an industrial version of hell. Smoke billowing over the entire place, a claustrophobic construction of rundown slapped together steel shacks, the sound of cracks and metallic collisions and endless mountains of burning smoking trash...There was no air, only thick grey smog...The slums seemed to go on for miles broken only by the bumper to bumper traffic of the circling concrete mumbai freeways...Grey. Smoke. Claustrophobic. Melting. Filth. Dirt. Poverty. The slums, in their expertise, generate something close to 500 million U.S. dollars worth of exports in Dharavi alone...
Hurray for free world trade! Will you reap what you sow? who the fuck knows. My guess is neo-conservatives are reincarnated as Indian slum children...So I try to be compassionate towards everyone...even Dick Cheney...somehow...one love is one love, right? Don't fall back on it just because you don't like dick...
We stopped in a slum neighborhood and were offered some slum chi. Everyone in the group declined but me. Our guide, myself, and a slum dweller drank chai while I could sense the look of concern from our group directed my way for drinking the tea. The American man told me afterwords he was weary about me drinking the chai. He was a Christian (he was) business type who worked in Dubai..Very formal and proper...proper...proper...Sort of young...I'm not trying to judge--maybe paint a picture of some sorts...collared shirt...I'm a piece of shit, don't listen to me, I superficially judge people, I apologize in advance but I hold a certain justification you can't deny...Until you look at the big picture and then its just, "shut the fuck up Jerry." Dude was cool though...what was I saying about one love?
ANYWAY.
There was obviously a lot more to the slums than what I've written here but it was an experience and its not something that you can really explain. Its like the feelings, thoughts, and perception. The words I can type out to convey it are sort of pointless...
POVERTY. SHIT. Big heaping piles of shit. but people still find a way to be happy...weird...life is paradox and I can't get...it.
I have shit load of shit and these dudes ain't got nothing! or the shit they do have sucks! ...or rather...The economic disparity in comparison is quite appalling and relatively speaking, it creates a brief gap in the stream of conscious that allows for a humbling state of honest introspection thus facilitating a greater comprehension of the global human condition...
...feel free to shoot me in the face with a shotgun..The blast alone would probably only sever half my bullshit...
I get shit faced drunk with some french, german, and Indian people. We talk about stuff that seemed meaningful at the time but probably wasn't. I'm kidding. It was. You always have shit to talk about with people when traveling and its cool...social boundaries just aren't important here and I love that...I mean, I'm still a neurotic, socially retarded sycophant with a increasingly deadly messiah complex looming over the edge of sanity but even this thing I call "me" had something worth saying...I connect...I hear about a three day trance festival in goa...ticket booked...time to blow up the outside world..
The next day I wake up and start walking. This filthy Indian kid about my age or older comes up while I'm walking down the street and starts talking to me. He looks like he hasn't showered in about four weeks. His hair is matted, clothes are torn, finger nails are largely over grown, teeth are horrible crooked, sticking out in all directions and his gums look like someone took a razor blade to them or something--all cut up and its painful to look at. I think he may be rotting before my very blue eyes...Looking at the picture I posted of him and I on facebook this description seems like an over exaggeration but I don't totally think it was...
He starts following me around and talking to me. I have this policy about people where I try to be genuinely friendly and open until they do something (such as try and sell me something or manipulate me). He doesn't do this, however, he just tells me he's been trying to sell post cards and it hasn't been working and that he just wants to talk.
Mannn...your teeth...but okay....
He gets a little too close to me when he talks and I'm afraid he's going to spit on me unleashing poison or something... his mouth is just really a mess, I can't stress that enough. I feel bad making that a point..but its the truth...So I try to just let him be and I don't have a real reason to push him away besides my own discomfort so fuck it.. He tells me he doesn't know how old he is, maybe 20, and that his whole family died in an Earthquake in Rajahstan...I don't know if any of this is true or he just wanted to make me feel sympathetic towards him but thats what he told me anyway...at this point I'm still hoping he will leave me alone after a while. I engage but really only on a superficial level. After all, I'm American and rich...I don't have to listen to poor Indian people....I wasn't consciously thinking this but I feel my conditioning was telling me it underneath...enough of that bullshit I realize...Theres no reason to push this dude away, hes my age and he wants to hang out and isn't asking for money...fuck it, I've been alone for a while, I could use a friend for the day considering I leave for Goa in 10 hours...Alright, dude, welcome to the circle of Jerry's friends, I exclude no one...You can be poor, brown, black, white, green, purple, gay, straight, bi, insane, addicted to meth--crack--Seinfeld...be a republican, democrat, nihilist, atheist, christian, jain, muslim, sihk, follower of David Koresh or the guy who enjoyed kool aid on too deep of a level, CIA, NSA, military dictator, George Bush, homeless, president of this territory or whatever--fuck it, its all good--so long as you're genuinely friendly to me in the moment you can be my life long friend...Thats my policy...Its been that for a while but I'd like to go on the record and say it officially...Everyone is a friend of me and I do my best to be forgiving and compassionate of past mistakes...Its only the moment anyway and since we're all one what am I supposed to do...Judge you??? Doesn't make much sense, does it...? judge not lest you be judged first...I get it...can we finish the fucking movie already? I'm out of popcorn....just a ride...
I still don't like mosquitoes though...but I do my best not to kill them...but goddamnit I just want to genocide all those fuckers...patience...is...a...virtue...
This slum kid tells me his name is "Walkie-talkie" because he is always walking and talking...makes sense I suppose...After a while of listening to him jabber and saying a few words here and there myself I say what the hell and officially accept him as a pal of mine
He helps me out in buying a new phone and after a while the social barriers between him and I melt and I stop looking at him as this slum kid trying to get money out of me and more as a friend. We talk about various stuff and laugh over this and that...He insisted in talking to all the clerks for me in the languages of Marati or Gujarati which made it easier for me so I appreciated the help. He even tried to bargain for me in getting the price down
I wish I could tell you all what this was like. But I can't. This kid may as well have been my brother for how close he got to me...I've had other cases like this...but its like...People are just people...and if I need to explain that anymore than you aren't seeing my point...Its beyond profound and beyond description...Its taking everything you know and turning it on its head...oh shit, we're all just people! holy fuck!
I befriend this homeless heroin addict in Charlottesville this summer and after talking to him for a while I was like...hmm..this guy is just a person like my parents are just people, like my friends are just people...it seems the only thing that divides them all are the mental constructs in my head...I like bums and drug addicts...probably because I have social anxiety or one of my other psychotic complexes but i find a certain honesty in them the rest of the population denies..not lacks..but denies. i like honesty. i like people who can relate to being fucked in the hea. So you took way too many drugs, lost your wife, kids, job, and ability to stay clean (in both sense of the word)? Alright! Wanna be friends!?
I like these people because they're very accepting. They've been torched by life and at the end of the day all that bullshit in them that exists in a lot of mainstream people has been ripped off. Maybe I just feel more at peace around them or I don't know but I like people who have experienced reality. I do my best not to succumb to my hatred but when I do I find it always spilling over towards those living on "Fantasy Island"...watching shadows on the cave mistaking them for objects or...something like that..but we're all one so I try to look at myself when I find myself being critical of those around me...
It was pretty funny from my perspective how this whole thing unfolded between Walkie talkie and I. It took us an hour ten minutes to set my phone situation up and afterwords I bought him and myself some omelets from a street vender for under a dollar.
I asked him, "Well, what do you wanna do?" since at this point I figured I would just hang out with him for the rest of the day, he was entertaining enough...Walkie-Talkie just gives me a grin with his gnarled mouth and shrugs...He was content just following me around it seems...
I go, "Well, you wanna show me where you live?" in hopes that I can get an interesting look into the street of life of homeless Indians on a deeper level...
Normally I don't like doing this sort of thing with Indian people but this is different for one reason. This kid was following me around and he wasn't asking for money. In every other case, Indian people want you to follow them somewhere or they just follow you asking for money. He was doing neither and I was like, I'm not giving this kid money but if he wants to hang out with me thats fine I'm not going to push him away just because it looks like a hand grenade went off in his mouth...Thats probably mean to say but you know, living on the street you get fucked when it comes to dental care so I'm just trying to paint a picture with some colorful language--not take any personal swipes...
The fact he didn't try an take me anywhere was enough for me to realize he was safe to chill with. Always be weary when people want to take you somewhere--its a hustle 99% of the time I've found...This kid was just bored and I think he was defeated from his failure in selling post cards...
Marx talks about how in capitalism, human relations get boiled down to mere market relations...This wasn't the case..I'm happy. Isms are isms are isms and isms...its an "I" than a "S" than "M" than "S"...It doesn't matter...all that matters is how you treat others...the linguistic semantic relation is POINTLESS. Stop thinking-its for the best, really, I mean that...Just exist and perceive.
I would like for you all to wake up and since I'm still asleep I hope you will return the favor my way since I don't have all the answers and I still need help...just a sidenote...I actually need a lot of help with this--if any of you are more evolved, please, psychically project your enlightened awareness into my limited conscious experience and awaken my third eye...I'll give you 200 rupees and willing to bargain...
Walkie Talkie agrees to take me to his home (or lack their of) and I ask him how much a cab costs and he told me "no, no, no, no we take the train!"
Alright, so we head to the station and I buy a ticket for 8 rupees (he already had one) and we hop on the train and head North...He liked me a lot and did certain things like stick his arm out to prevent me from getting run over by taxi drivers who he claimed were drunk or from falling off the train--which doesn't have doors, just an open passage way you can hang of off. Good times. This kid is like my brother at this point...No separation, just different form and karma...
Life is stupid (and genius). The buddha said when you see how the whole thing works you will stick your head back and laugh. Storm-ji, my professor, mentioned the importance of laughing at yourself...I mean, man, this whole thing is a joke..Its hurts but its still funny....Divine tragic comedy...Its almost over tho so don't worry...The cycle is juuuusssssttt about ending....and it speeds up at the peak too.
This kid takes me down the street of a Rajahstani slum strip which is intermixed with the neighboring community and is therefore not technically a slum in that it functions seperate from the rest of Mumbai....but its a slum no bullshit..
Once again, seeing how these people live...I don't know how to describe it...I'll try something short. Multi-colored shacks supported with wood and ribbed sheet metal. Some have doors, some only have three walls and open directly into the street. A lot of have T.V.s and satellite dishes--but not running water. Some people sleep outside, some inside. Lots of naked children and emaciated animals (cats, dogs, goats) and a good deal of trash. A fire used for cooking here and there. A cluttered mess of color, filthy metal, and shoddy objects...People who look like they've been through a lot. I see a kitten that weighs probably two pounds--looks like its starving to death and its terrified to be alive..Cats have a hard time here...dogs wipe them out quickly..I saw a cat in Jaislamer that's leg bone was totally snapped and the leg hung limp...a lot of street dogs have this problem too from the fighting..its tough man..
Think about all the times you get pist off when something in your life situation doesn't go well...I'm always complaining over stupid shit...I'm so glad I am who I am and not living in these slums...
Walkie-talkie shows me where he lives--the corner of a street next to a tree...that sucks...Some other people are sleeping on blankets and there is a campfire for cooking...Thats the thing about Indian cities--you can have campfires on every street corner...It gets cold and people die. It gets warm and people die. Sickness comes and people die. The weather is mild and people die.
This is the wrong world. This is the wrong world. This is the wrong world.
People keep dying. Life keeps striving. You don't care about an ant. The universe doesn't care about people. Seriously.
Its over...Its over...Its just beginning dude...
Walkie-talkie helps me finish my shopping (blanket, toothbrush, and shampoo) and then takes me back to the train station. I bid him farewell and gave him some cash. He didn't ever ask me for money once and he was hanging out with me for like five hours...it was also christmas so whatever, I must have made his day...He told me he was going to use it to buy a shoe shining kit to make money...He told me, earlier, that he gets by on 300 ruppees a week for food--thats 6 bucks about? He spends that much and eats for a week...Vegetables and chapati...
I wish I could create the words to explain to you all what it was like hanging out with him...To make friends with an Indian slum kid...cool experience...
Goodbye, Walkie-Talkie, nice to meet you, brother! I gave him my e-mail address so a friend of his who knows how to use a computer can send me something...who knows...hopefully not naked pictures...I can say I wouldn't be surprised however.
Separate from everything I've written is this: Life takes everything from you, including you and it sucks, rips and tears, and all thats left is the real you at the end. Why am I writing this you ask?
Because I'm fucking pissed off I'm losing things that I want. I want this. I gotta make it happen, gotta make it happen. GOTTA MAKE IT HAPPPEN. GOTTA MAKE IT HAPPEN. GOTTA MAKE IT FUCKING HAPPEN! I can't just fucking be. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger. I'm screaming. I'm fucking screaming inside you just can't see it. Well, maybe you can...But you have to look past your own turmoil...
Well. I'm at peace right now after typing that. Everything I type, I'm not attached to it---no, I lie..I am but I'm trying not to be...
My last hour in Mumbai I'm sitting overlooking the gateway of India and this guy comes up to me and gives me a lecture on how...wait...this, what I'm about to type, is a Bill Hicks quote...but its pretty much what this guy told me...actually, its exactly what the guy told me...so rather than use his words im using a simple copy and paste of a quote that says the same thing.. "all matter is energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively...There is no such thing as death--life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves..."
This dude seemed to stress to me that I, me, my awareness, not jerry walsh, but the awareness behind Jerry walsh is the source of all creation...because, this awareness is in you as well...behind your identity...and everything you perceive is a reflection....A REFLECTION...far out...We exchanged e-mails and he told me to give up expectations and realize I am right where I need to be...This plane of existence, he told me, isn't the totality, just a piece, theres more out there....I'm not making this up, this dude was real. I was open eye meditating too when he came up to me...I didn't look different from anyone else...odd...naht.
Goa is...laid back...I arrive on christmas afternoon and my guesthouse family made us all a home cooked meal with meat, vegetables, bread, sweets, and wine...Delicious..I spent christmas with Russians, Danish, French and Indians in the jungle...makes sense...I think...
Went down to the beach and swam in the Arabian sea and watched the sun set...whoa...nuff said on that...Its paradise outside but I'm still me inside and thats the greatest epiphany yet. I'm still fucking me. I'm still uncomfortable, neurotic, and paranoid. I'm still scared. I still feel incomplete a lot of the time. But thats all good. Thats amazing in fact. I knew that it was all here and now...wherever here and now is, regardless...but now that I'm really starting to experience that its all coming full circle...any day now...
The next today of days: Rented a bicycle..Biked around the jungle roads of Goa...Went up to a fort that overlooked the beaches...beautiful...found a beach and went swimming...met an Italian and American who discussed with me the importance of waking up out of the mind control world we live in. They told me there are no coincidences and the whole thing is scripted...The dude also told me that I represent hope to him because of how I see things...He was quite cynical but he told me..."Jer, you're on the right path, you're right where you need to be. You think it was a coincidence we met? FUCK no, bro! Just keep going with it and don't get sucked into the bullshit. I'm too sucked into the bullshit but with you, we have a chance!"
This guy was 32 years old. Used to work on wall street really high up but due to what he said was a gram of coke a day habit combined with xanax, alcohol, anti-depressants, weed, beta blockers and like three or four things he was consuming just to deal with the stress of the job he quit. He said that he was in part responsible for the economic meltdown that occurred recently but it was just by "doing his job" he wound up quitting right before everything crashed. When he quit he quit all the drugs cold turkey...but he said that he would go back and do it all over again if he had the chance to...I didn't quite understand that one but whatever...
He was really adamant about breaking out of the system and for people to "wake up" so to speak and he held on really tightly to this idea that the whole world is being run by some kind of an illuminati organization based on what he saw behind the scenes when in the "rat race" as he put it...He offered me some hash but I declined, telling him it makes me paranoid and has given me panic attacks in the past. He then told me I shouldn't be drinking if thats the case...he said weed is sort of the key to expanding your mind and seeing past yourself. I was like, yeah, I know, but it also makes me go personally insane so I avoid it.
I don't buy the whole theory about world social control like he suggests. I think people do this to themselves out of ignorance and no one is really in charge...The universe is too big for one person to have it all under wraps...not to mention everybody dies and with my views on death you aren't in control unless you stop dying. In which case you live in total surrender of the moment...Control is weakness. True Power is surrender. Thats how I see it at least. Ego isn't real control..
However, this guy was coming from cut throat business so I can understand where his perspective was coming from and I appreciated hearing someone else rant rather than having it come from me for a change of pace.
Well that was interesting. They bought me some kingfisher so that was cool.
Well, I'm trying with all this. We shall see what happens I suppose...Keep spiraling out...The whole thing is scripted, eh? So, uh...play your part? worlds a stage...we are actors...but we are all each others...weird...
"I laugh cause' theres nothing to say"
.....
"Take care of yourselves! Take care of yourselves! and take care of someone else!" -George Carlin
...
I'm heading to Sunburn Music Festival 2010 in a moment--cool. This is the 2009 promotional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIIEGu911Fo
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