Metal Pipe, Camping, and Football: Feb 25 to Feb 28

On Saturday (2/25), I went with Sumit, a fellow CTARA Master’s student in his second year, to Bandhup—the neighborhood where I previously acquired bearings for my project—on the hunt for a metal pipe and some steel strips for my solar roaster prototype. The strips of steel would be easy to find, but the pipe would be a challenge. We were looking for a steel pipe of between 3” and 4” diameter and 8 feet long. One of the first shops we stopped at had a perfect pipe of 3.5” diameter. The only problem was that the owner would only sell us the whole 20-foot length, not just the 8 feet we needed. Thinking we could find something better, we forged on to shop after shop. Most of the shops we stopped at were collections of pipes, sheet metal, and angle steel of various shapes, sizes, and conditions. The shops were usually tall, and some had lofts at the back for sleeping or storage. Many hours and a couple glasses of sugar cane juice later, we found ourselves back at the initial shop to try and bargain with the owner to let us pay a premium for a 10-foot section of pipe. He refused, so we bought the whole 20 feet. We went back a few blocks away to where we had seen a sheet metal cutter and had him make some steel strips of the size we needed.

Next was transportation. We probably could have gotten away with carrying the steel strips (5 feet long, weighing a total of 17.4kg) in a rickshaw, but there was no chance we could carry the two 10-foot sections of pipe in such a small vehicle. Sumit talked for a long time with a couple people at the sheet metal shop and eventually one of them agreed to take us in his rickshaw-truck. This type of vehicle does not exist in the US—it has a very small cab in the front and a small but tall truck bed in the rear. Dehydrated and ready to come back to campus, we set off.

It was pretty squishy in the cab with two people, so Sumit and I decided to take turns standing in the back of the truck with the pipes and steel strips. Sumit stood the first leg back to the pipe shop; we parked across the street and the shop workers helped us carry the two pipes across the busy road to our vehicle. With the amount of traffic on this road, crossing on foot can be difficult, let alone with a huge metal pipe that has the potential to do some serious damage to cars if it is mishandled. Maybe for this reason, the cars let us cross fairly easily. I stood the next leg of the journey back up the hill 5km to the IIT campus. It was very hot with the sun beating down on me and not much of a breeze. We were moving fairly slowly due to the traffic mentioned above.

I got quite a few stares from vehicles behind us—some looked puzzled, many laughed—as I stood in the back of the truck, hanging on to the pipe and the top of the truck for support as we accelerated and hit potholes in the road. Some drivers did not even give me a second glance. Seeing a foreigner standing in the back of a truck with two large metal pipes was for some drivers an entertaining experience, something they will tell their friends about at the afternoon tea break. For others, it was simply one more crazy, unexpected thing that they saw in the fast-paced world of unexpected happenings that is Mumbai. This being no different than a flying bottle cap from a lime masala soda stand, they ignored my presence and kept driving, staring at the car ahead of them and honking, willing the mass of traffic to move faster. We finally made it back to campus and hauled the material up to my professor’s office, where it will sit on the floor until it is ready to go to the CTARA workshop. Our driver was excited to take pictures of us with the truck from multiple angles when Sumit asked if he could capture the moment for us. We had missed lunch in the mess, so we went to a canteen on campus for a couple dosas.

After thoroughly dehydrating myself on this successful outing to get a steel pipe and steel strips, I got ready to go on a one-night camping trip to Prabalgad Fort with some friends in the Energy Science and Engineering Department. The first bus was scheduled to leave campus at 6:30pm, the second at 8:15. My friend—the organizer of the trip—said we would take the second bus and told me to come around 7:30. I got going a few minutes late and rushed to bike across campus to the bus loading area, arriving at 7:45. I need to stop trying to be on time to everything; even when I think I am late, someone will always be later than me. The first bus left at 8:30 and the second at 9:30. It was about a two-hour drive, including a stop for gas. When a bus is rented in the US, it is assumed that the driver will get gas while there are not people on the bus, but I guess this rule also does not apply in India. This kind of minor inconvenience is not a big deal, and with the number of unexpected events in an average day in India, I doubt if many of the half-sleeping students on the bus noticed the stop.

Upon our arrival at 11:30 (dinner was to be provided at the campsite), I was surprised that we had to walk uphill for about 90 minutes to reach the camping area. Some people took out their phones for light, others of us were walking without lights. There seemed to be just enough lights in the group to harm everyone’s night vision but not enough lights to make sure everyone could see. We arrived to camp at 1:00am and ate dinner at 1:30. Dinner was chapatti, sabji, a yellow dish made from gram flour, rice, and dal. The yellow dish had a consistency of thick pudding and tasted very hearty. I was surprised to find out that it is the same yellow dish that is served in the mess that I have not eaten for more than a month because I do not like it. I guess the recipe they use in the mess must not be very good, because I asked for many helpings at my very late dinner at the campsite. I fell asleep knowing that I would have to wake up early to start hiking if I wanted any chance of avoiding the heat.

I started hiking with one other student around 8:00am the next morning after eating a small plate of poha for breakfast. I will let the pictures (at the end of the post) do most of the talking about the hiking—it was beautiful but unbearably hot after around 10:00am. On the way up from the campsite, there was a small village that we walked through to reach the foot of the trail. One interesting observation that reminded me of home was when we came across another group of two students at the end of the hike who were bored or taking a rest in the shade. What were they doing? Throwing stones at an old metal sign, of course—one that used to point in the direction of the fort ruins but had long since rusted away most of its useful information. I have done this after many a hike in the US. The satisfying “ding” that comes when you finally hit the sign never gets old. After these students left to explore the ruins, the other student I was hiking with and I took a seat where they had been and threw a few stones ourselves.

After a blazing descent of the mountain (this is referring to both the ~38°C temperature and the speed at which I was hiking), lunch was again served at the building near the camping area. It was the same food as dinner the night before and once again it was great. As we descended to the buses, one of the men who had served lunch passed us on his way up, carrying what looked like a 25kg sack of rice on his head and listening to music playing from his pocket over a low-quality cell phone speaker. This prompted a few realizations mid-stride. I had been too tired previously to stop and think, but this image stuck in my mind. I knew there was a community that lived near the campsite from having walked through it, but it did not hit me that they have to carry up the hill (a 90-minute walk) almost everything that they eat. This is in addition to carrying up the hill everything that the nearly 100 campers a day eat. There was no electricity in the village, and I made sure to purify my water before drinking it. The job of serving campers food and taking care of the campsite is not only a summer day job for these people, but likely a significant part of the income for their village. Is it good to support villages like this by visiting the campsite, or is serving a moving population a harmful cycle for the village? I could hardly make it through two days in a row of walking around in the heat of the day, but there are so many people in the country that live in this environment every day of the summer, every year. Granted they probably stay in the shade and rest during much of the hottest part of the day, but they have no fan to come back to on a campus covered in greenery like I do.

The next day, my Hostel 13 football team faced off Hostel 1 in the semifinal match. It was a hard-fought game and we prevailed 1-0, out lone goal coming in the second half of the match. Hostel 1 had a very good striker who did his best to break through our defense, but we stopped him from scoring. On to the finals!

On Tuesday, I was interviewed about my work at CTARA by Kara Morgan, a friend from Northeastern, for an environmental journalism organization called Planet Forward. Kara was on the same 2014 Northeastern summer trip to India that I attended. She did a great job organizing our conversation into a podcast, and you can check it out here: http://www.planetforward.org/idea/an-american-in-india