Travels with Tavish

On the first day of March, I went with Shahnawaz and Akshay to a friend of Akshay’s housewarming party. The family of five was moving into an apartment located a couple neighborhoods away from campus. We took the local train and had to transfer once at Kurla station. We only rode the train one stop after transferring at Kurla, but during this short ride I got the best “Indian Massage” I have had yet. Also called a “Mumbai Massage,” this is an endearing term for the feeling of being incredibly squished while standing up on the train. I have been on crowded buses and subways in the US, but nothing compares to this ride, not even the other crowded rides I have taken in India. My arms were above my head holding onto the handles and it would not have been possible for me to reach into my pockets if I had needed to. Though pickpockets thrive in crowds, it was much too crowded for a pickpocket to be at his best. The doors on the local trains do not close, so if a train crowded there a...

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 a...