Snapshot 3.
On 18 and 19 January the Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai hosted a film festival about people with disabilities. I noticed it in the film section of Time Out, and decided to attend.
The audience consisted mostly of people who are concerned about disabled people for a variety of reasons.. The festival was called The Way We Live!, and it was a traveling version of a festival held in Munich every two years. In addition to Germany and India, films were from UK, US, Poland, Burkina Faso, New Zealand and France. All except the French film had English subtitles, so language wasn't a problem. A few stood out:

The 2 Polish films: “A Life to Live” a look at teaching blind children to be more independent, was very moving. The dedication of the teachers and excitement and challenges for the children really came through. “Till Death Do Us Part”— is a film documenting the lives of 2 men, one physically and one intellectually disabled, who find that in living with and caring for each other they are able to live independently in the world.

“Hands Away” – is a 3-minute German film showing children and youngsters moving to music. They are creative, free and uninhibited by any 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts'. From a movement perspective, it's terrific and heartfelt.

“King Gimp”—one of the longest films, is about Dan, a young man with “severe physical impairment” (I think CP, but I'm not sure) whose mom supports him every step of the way to his independence and participation in the world. Dan wrote the film, documenting his experiences in regular school, his discovery of art, and university. With a lot of struggle he is successful in all. The story is simply told from Dan's perspective, and incredibly inspiring.

All the films are celebrations of the good that's happening in the world of disabilities. We need more of this.

Snapshot 4
Women Travelers: Staying at the YWCA is terrific. In addition to being the cleanest place in India, it's also a great meeting place for women travelers. Both alone and in couples, these are generally intelligent, caring, thoughtful women.

I've met Doris, a German historian, traveling with Magdalena, a journalist working with public radio in Berlin. They were wonderful to talk with, well traveled, leaned to the left, and cared very much about the state of the world. At the same table I met Trupti, a woman from Ahmedabad, a lecturer in English at the government university. She is one of Canada's failures—she had emigrated there, lived in Toronto and finally, after struggling and not being able to get work that would actually further her career and being unwilling to take menial jobs just to get “Canadian experience”, she returned home. She is happy to be back.

Mariah is an Israeli who lived in the US for 20 years and then returned home. She travels quite a bit, and comes to India regularly to visit certain spiritual teachers. She knew about Andrew Cohen and the community in Massachusetts, and was fascinated to discover I had been Andrew's student. I may attend a satsang with her on Wednesday morning.

On a bus I wasn't supposed to be on in Manwa I met Fiona, a photographer from Toronto. We had a great conversation and will get together again. She may accompany me to visit the NGO Saathi.

Snapshot 5:
Sunday, 22 Jan: I am at a thanksgiving ceremony being held by the congregation of Beth-El Synagogue (Mumbai) to express their gratitude to Rabbi Marvin Tokayer and friends. During the floods this past summer, the synagogue's torahs were destroyed, and Rabbi Tokayer and his synagogue donated 2 torahs to Beth-El. A little later I will write a fuller description of my experiences with the Jewish community here, but for now I relate the following:
One of the men hosting the event—it was held at the weekend home of a prestigious family—is an Indian Jew who now lives in New York. When I asked him what is his take on the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—the cultural wing of BJP, and whose founder admired Hitler), he replied: “SS”. We had a brief conversation, but that was the nutshell version and immediate response. I have become aware of the RSS only because my very sweet Hindi teacher, an 83-year old man, is an ardent follower. But there is virtually no good publicity about them except what they themselves generate. They were instrumental in shutting down the filming of “Water” in Varanasi (Saltzman, Devyani, Shooting Water, Key Porter Books, Toronto 2005), and helped inflame the riots in Gujarat in 2002 (see Amnesty International report: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA200012005).

So much happens. Life pulses at a very high rate here.