On our second day in Mumbai, we are drawn to the old city to visit the Gandhi Museum and other historic colonial-era buildings, which date from 1858-1947.
We quickly get into conversation with our taxi driver – about his life, his job, which he has been doing since 1961, and the city. Almost at our destination, we drive past a large glass building that stands out significantly from the other buildings in the city. Our driver knows all about it and tells us that the Ambani family lives there.
Arrival
From the cloudy, cold city of Cologne, we fly via Frankfurt to the tropical metropolis of Mumbai. Upon arrival at 2:00 AM local time, it is still 30°C. The streets of Mumbai are bustling with traffic, which our driver calmly comments on: “Mumbai never sleeps.”
Mumbai is the most important port city on the subcontinent and has approximately 20 million inhabitants. This incredible population density is palpable everywhere on the streets. Added to this are the extreme smells, which are as diverse as the variety of Indian spices.
During our nighttime drive from the airport, we notice the many Tuk Tuks – three-wheeled rickshaw taxis – parked for kilometers along the roadside, with the driver sleeping in almost every Tuk Tuk. Heads and feet often stick out of the vehicle. We pass the slum where the successful film “Slumdog Millionaire” was shot. The extreme poverty of many Indians is very evident here. To this day, it is not common in India to leave the caste into which one is born. This means education, certain career paths, or marriage into a higher caste remain closed. The journey from “Slumdog” to millionaire often remains a dream here.
Sightseeing in Mumbai
The hotel is very clean and spacious. By the pool, we get used to the heat and jet lag, and process our first impressions of the previous night. However, we can't stand being idle for long and set off on a small sightseeing trip. We travel for 30 minutes by tuk-tuk to the nearest attraction, the colonial Mount Mary Church. Cows, revered by Hindus as sacred animals, walk leisurely beside us and are a common sight in the noisy street traffic.
Arriving at Mount Mary Church, we are enchanted by the warm evening sun. We are promptly approached and asked for a selfie – and it doesn't stop there: After a look inside the Catholic church, we stroll down the hill to Taj Lands End: A surreal moonscape that serves as a meeting and viewing point for hundreds of Indians who watch the evening sunset there. As soon as we sit down, we are tapped on the shoulder and asked for another selfie. We take photos with complete strangers for a while and then continue along the promenade. It feels like we don't encounter a single other tourist.
Extremely poor meets extremely rich
After a brief search, we discover that Mukesh D. Ambani is the chairman of the conglomerate Reliance Industries. With a fortune of 40.1 billion dollars, Ambani is currently ranked 19th on Forbes Magazine's "World's Billionaires List."
At the end of 2010, Ambani moved into his private residence in the center of Mumbai, which we have just passed. The house is 173 meters high and offers 37,000 m2 of space across 27 floors. According to an Ambani spokesperson, construction costs are estimated to be between 50 and 70 million dollars.
For us, this radiant, futuristic building – surrounded by the noisy, dirty metropolis – is the personification of social inequality in India.
Mahatma Gandhi is considered an outstanding representative in the struggle for freedom against oppression and social injustice. Therefore, it was very important for us to visit the Gandhi Museum and gain personal insight into his life.
The Gandhi Museum, which we are now visiting, was Gandhi's headquarters from 1917 to 1934. Thus, this building also stands for the unique Indian struggle for freedom. Should you ever find yourself here, you will be able to read letters that Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hitler, Roosevelt, and Tolstoy.
Gandhi's living room and study are on the third floor. The original furnishings from that time are still preserved. It was here that Gandhi received his first spinning lessons
For him – and for all of India – spinning became a symbol of economic and political independence.
Spinning provided the poor in India with work and enabled them to produce their own clothes. It also became the basis for boycotting British clothing during colonial rule. As a sign of sovereignty, a spinning wheel still adorns the Indian national flag today.
After our visit to the museum, we continue walking through the wide streets of Mumbai. To our left is a cricket ground – for club members only, of course. To our right is Deutsche Bank, and all around us are hundreds of people on their way to the main train station – Victoria Terminus. Since the historic station is also on our sightseeing list, we give in to the current and let ourselves be carried along. We are rewarded, because when we arrive, the main station is illuminated with many colorful lights. We also venture a look inside and are impressed by the crowds of people and the architecture, but getting out again is not so easy.
Visit to a dyeing factory
On Tuesday, we will visit a natural dye house. Claudia Lanius established the contact during her last visit to India. The production site is like a small creative oasis in the middle of a bustling city. Silk and cotton fabrics are hand-dyed here with flowers from temples and other natural raw materials. Using various techniques, the fabric is dyed, steamed, dried, washed, dried again, ironed, and packaged. All by hand!
The production is impressive: it is not certified and certainly does not meet German standards, but it is colorful, creative, and joyful. The owner stands up for her employees and sees it as her entrepreneurial duty to pay fair wages.
For small productions like this, it is difficult to have themselves or their products certified, especially when the dye – collected flowers from temples – cannot be proven to come from certified organic cultivation, but are "merely" reused. Nevertheless, we are enthusiastic about the sustainable spirit that prevails here.
On the way to the Open House Day of the bioRe® Foundation
For us, the journey continues to the province of Madhya Pradesh, to Indore. There, the annual Open House Day of the bioRe® Foundation takes place. Together with the other participants (mainly buyers of bioRe® organic cotton and employees of Remei AG), we travel together to the Foundation's camp.
bioRe® was founded in 1997 as an independent non-profit foundation and is managed by an independent board of trustees. The goal of bioRe® is to support farming families in the organic cultivation of cotton in Tanzania and India so that they can sustainably improve their livelihoods. The foundation creates space for development, supports agricultural productivity and biodiversity, and addresses the basic needs of farming families.
Remei AG, based in Switzerland, coordinates the production of sustainable textiles made from bioRe® cotton and oversees the production process from the size chart to delivery.
From research projects to cotton cultivation
We visit the bioRe® Training Center, where farmers are trained in organic cotton cultivation and work continuously to improve cultivation techniques.
This includes research projects such as the seed project: The aim here is to provide farmers with high-quality, organic, and non-GMO seeds. In a long-term system comparison, the bioRe® Foundation has found that organic cotton is competitive with GMO cultivation. Over a period of ten years, organic and conventional agriculture (with genetically modified seeds) were compared. It turned out that genetically modified cotton is more productive, but comes with higher production costs.
In field trials, the research team also tested various ecological methods with the farmers, such as biological pest control. The systematic involvement of farmers in the field trials enables practical knowledge transfer.
We are proudly presented with the study results and the foundation's values and challenges during a tour of the Training Center. We are guided through the demo fields and visit their own weaving mill, which was established as an employment measure for the women of the organic cotton farmers. Then, we are introduced to the most diverse methods of compost production.
Next, we continue by bus from the demo field to one of the "real" fields in the village of Kawada.
Here, the entire village awaits us in their finest attire! Every farmer and their yield is recorded and tracked by the foundation, which also enables you, as a customer, to trace the cotton in every bioRe® T-shirt back to the farmer. At www.remai.ch, you can enter the "Traceability Code" found on your sewn-in label. Online, you can then trace the journey of your garment from the cultivation of organic cotton through all production stages to the finished product.
After a lunch break in the field, we drive to the next village, Kakadkhodri.
It is a small, colorful village, through which a pleasant breeze blows. Chairs and a sunshade are ready for us. A group of women explain their tasks in organic cotton cultivation, which mainly involve various types of pest control.
To maintain soil fertility and minimize pest infestation compared to monocultures, organic farming includes continuous crop rotation. This means that after the cotton harvest, farmers grow other crops (e.g., soybeans). This keeps the soil healthy and provides the farming families with a secondary income. We are sent off with two traditional songs.
Back at the camp, we take some time to look around by ourselves, buy a scarf in the weaving mill, and rest a bit in the tent. To conclude the day, a traditional vegetarian dinner is prepared for us on the meadow.
Visiting two schools
On the second day, we set off alone for the village of Talapura, where the school that LANIUS funds through the sale of charity shirts is located.
Claudia Lanius has visited the school before. At that time, the building's walls were still made of clay. Now – three years later – we marvel at the new stone building. It is larger and has two classrooms. The teacher is still the same and has been joined by another teacher to support the second classroom.
We are thrilled to witness this development live! The entire village welcomes us, we attend classes and get to meet the owner of the land on which the school was built for free.
For the small children from the surrounding villages, this school is the only opportunity for education – and thus offers an alternative to farm work and rural life. Since 2006, the bioRe® Foundation has been supporting children in rural areas of India who would otherwise not have access to education.
On the way to the next school, the bioRe® Public School, we meet a group of women who have already covered hundreds of kilometers with their camels, children, and goats - on their way to new pastures for the animals.
The bioRe® Public School in the village of Ojhara-Gopalpura is funded by the Swiss company Coop. The school not only teaches children from primary to secondary school but also trains automotive and electrical technicians and offers sewing and computer classes.
A hospital on wheels
The next stop is the bioRe® Mobile Health Unit, a hospital on wheels that has just stopped in a village square. Everyone is welcome to take a quick look inside. There isn't much space in the bus. We see a doctor showing a man and his son an X-ray of the child's arm and explaining that the arm is broken.
Since 2006, the health bus has provided basic medical care to the community in rural India. Local doctors accompany the bus to the villages and offer diagnostic services. In addition, special health days are held where diseases can be specifically treated.
Organic Cotton Ginning Factory
The last item on our itinerary on the way to the airport is the ginning factory. Here, cotton from the surrounding cultivation areas arrives and is sorted by variety, piled up in huge mounds, chopped, ginned, and pressed into bales. It's a wonderful experience to stand among these white mountains of organic cotton.
After a long bus journey to the airport in Indore, from Indore to Mumbai, and from Mumbai to Frankfurt, we were quite surprised to encounter the first costumed revellers at Frankfurt train station at 8 a.m., heading to Cologne Central Station, as it was November 11th, the start of the carnival season in Cologne. How diverse the world truly is.
