On our second day in Mumbai, we head to the old town to visit the Gandhi Museum and other historic buildings from the colonial period, which lasted from 1858 to 1947.
We quickly start talking to our taxi driver about his life, the job he has been doing since 1961, and the city. Almost at our destination, we drive past a large glass building that stands out clearly from the other buildings in the city. Our driver knows about it and tells us that the Ambani family lives there.
Arrival
We fly from cold, dreary Cologne via Frankfurt to the tropical city of Mumbai. When we get outside, it's still 30°C at 2:00 a.m. local time. The streets of Mumbai are busy, and our driver calmly comments: "Mumbai never sleeps."
Mumbai is the most important port city on the subcontinent and has a population of around 20 million. This incredible population density can be felt everywhere on the streets. Added to this are the extreme smells, which are as diverse as the variety of Indian spices.
On our night drive from the airport, we notice the many tuk tuks - rickshaw taxis on three wheels that are parked for miles on the side of the road, and in almost every tuk tuk the driver spends the night. Heads and feet often stick out of the car. We pass the slum where the successful film "Slumdog Millionaire" was shot. The extreme poverty of many Indians is very clear here. To this day, it is not common in India to leave the caste into which one is born. This means that education, certain career paths, or marriage into a higher caste remain closed. The path from "slumdog" to millionaire often remains a dream here.
Sightseeing in Mumbai
The hotel is very clean and spacious. At the pool we get used to the heat, the time change and process the first impressions of the previous night. But we can't stand being idle for long and set off on a little sightseeing trip. It takes us 30 minutes by tuk tuk to get to the nearest attraction, the colonial church of Mount Mary. Cows, which are worshipped as holy animals by Hindus, walk comfortably beside us and are not an uncommon sight in the noisy traffic.
When we arrive at Mount Mary Church, we are thrilled by the warm evening sun. We are immediately approached and asked for a selfie - and it doesn't stop there: After a look inside the Catholic church, we walk down the hill to Taj Lands End: a surreal lunar landscape that serves as a meeting and viewing point for hundreds of Indians who come there to watch the evening sunset. 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 meet a single tourist.
Extremely poor meets extremely rich
After a quick research, we find out that Mukesh D. Ambani is the CEO 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 house in the center of Mumbai, which we just drove past. The house is 173 meters high and offers 37,000 m2 of space on 27 floors. According to a spokesman for Ambani, the construction costs are between 50 and 70 million dollars.
For us, this shining, futuristic building – surrounded by the noisy, dirty city – is the epitome of social inequality in India.
Mahatma Gandhi is considered an outstanding representative of the freedom struggle against oppression and social injustice. It was therefore very important to us to visit the Gandhi Museum and gain a personal insight into his life.
The Gandhi Museum, which we are now visiting, was Gandhi's headquarters from 1917 to 1934. This building also represents the unique Indian freedom struggle. If you ever find yourself here, you will be able to read letters that Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hitler, Roosevelt and Tolstoy.
Gandhi's living and study room is on the second floor. The furnishings from that time are still in their original state. 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 gave the poor in India a job and enabled them to make their own clothes. Spinning also became the basis for boycotting British clothing during colonial rule. As a symbol of sovereignty, a spinning wheel still adorns the Indian national flag today.
After our visit to the museum, we continue walking through the big streets of Mumbai. To our left is a cricket pitch - only for club members, of course, to our right is the Deutsche Bank, and around us hundreds of people on their way to the main station - the Victoria Terminus. Since the historic station is also on our sightseeing list, we give in to the pull and let ourselves drift. We are rewarded, because when we arrive, the main station is illuminated with lots of colorful lights. We dare to take a look inside and are amazed by the many people and the architecture, but getting out again is not that easy.
Visit to a dyeing factory
On Tuesday we visit a natural dyeing factory. Claudia Lanius made contact with them on her last visit to India. The production is like a small creative oasis in the middle of a bustling city. Silk and cotton fabrics are dyed by hand with flowers from the temples and other natural raw materials. The fabric is dyed, steamed, dried, washed and dried again, ironed and packaged using a variety of techniques. All by hand!
The production is impressive: it is not certified and it certainly does not meet German standards, but it is colorful, creative and full of life. The owner stands up for her employees and, as an entrepreneur, sees it as her duty to pay fair wages.
It is difficult for small productions like this to get themselves or their products certified, especially when the dye - flowers collected from temples - does not come from certified organic farming, but is "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
We continue on to Indore in the province of Madhya Pradesh. The annual Open House Day of the bioRe® Foundation takes place there. Together with the other participants (mostly buyers of bioRe® organic cotton and employees of Remei AG) we drive 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 aim of bioRe® is to support farming families in organic cotton cultivation in Tanzania and India so that they can sustainably improve their livelihoods. The foundation creates space for development, supports the productivity and biodiversity of agriculture and takes care of the basic needs of farming families.
Remei AG, based in Switzerland, coordinates the production of sustainable textiles made from bioRe® cotton and accompanies the production process from the measurement chart to delivery.
From research projects to cotton cultivation
We visit the bioRe® Training Center, where farmers are trained in the cultivation of organic cotton and work is constantly being done to improve cultivation techniques.
These include research projects such as the seed project: the aim here is to be able to provide farmers with high-quality, organic and genetically modified seed. In a long-term system comparison, the bioRe® Foundation found that organic cotton is competitive with genetically modified cultivation. Over a period of ten years, organic and conventional farming (with genetically modified seed) were compared. It turned out that genetically modified cotton is more productive, but is associated 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 the farmers in the field trials enables practical knowledge to be imparted.
The results of the study and the foundation's values and challenges are proudly presented to us during a tour of the training center. We are led through the demo fields and visit the company's own weaving mill, which was founded as a job creation measure for the wives of organic cotton farmers. We are then introduced to the various ways of producing compost.
We continue by bus from the demo field to one of the “real” fields in the village of Kawada.
The whole village is waiting for us in the finest threads! Every farmer and his yield is recorded and tracked by the foundation, which also makes it possible for 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" that you will find on your sewn-in label. You can then trace the path of your garment online, from the cultivation of the 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 with a pleasant breeze blowing through it. Chairs and a sunshade are available for us. A group of women explain to us their tasks in growing organic cotton, which mainly involve various types of pest control.
In order to maintain soil fertility and to minimize pest infestation compared to monocultures, organic farming involves continuous crop rotation. This means that farmers grow other crops (e.g. soy) after the cotton harvest. This keeps the soil healthy and provides a secondary source of income for the farming families. We are bid farewell with two traditional songs.
Once back at camp, we take a look around alone, buy a scarf from the weaving mill and rest a bit in the tent. At the end of the day, a traditional vegetarian dinner is prepared for us on the meadow.
Visiting two schools
On the second day we set off alone to the village of Talapura, where the school is located that LANIUS finances through the sale of charity shirts.
Claudia Lanius has visited the school before. At that time, the walls of the building were still made of clay. Now - three years later - we can marvel at the new building made of stone. It is larger and has two classrooms. The teacher is still the same and has another teacher to support the second classroom.
We are thrilled to be able to see this development first hand! The whole village welcomes us, we take part in the lessons and get to know the owner of the land on which the school was built for free.
For the young children from the surrounding villages, this school is the only opportunity for education - and thus offers an alternative to field work and rural life. Since 2006, the bioRe® Foundation has been supporting children in rural areas of India who would otherwise have no access to education.
On the way to the next school, the bioRe® Public School, we meet a group of women who have already traveled hundreds of kilometers with their camels, children and goats - on the way to new pastures for the animals.
The bioRe® Public School in the village of Ojhara-Gopalpura is financed by the Swiss company Coop. The school not only teaches children from first grade to high school, but also trains car 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 allowed to take a quick look inside. There isn't much room in the bus. We see a doctor showing a man and his son an X-ray of the child's arm and making it clear that the arm is broken.
Since 2006, the health bus has been providing basic medical care to the community in rural India. Local doctors accompany the bus to the villages and offer diagnostic options. In addition, special health days are held where illnesses can be treated specifically.
Organic Cotton Ginning Factory
The last stop on our journey to the airport is the ginning factory. This is where the cotton from the surrounding growing areas arrives and is piled up on huge mountains, separated by type, chopped, ginned and pressed into bales. It is a wonderful experience to stand among these white mountains of organic cotton.
After a long journey by bus to the airport in Indore, from Indore to Mumbai and from Mumbai to Frankfurt, we were amazed to meet the first costumed revelers at the train station in Frankfurt at 8 a.m. on their way to Cologne Central Station, because it was November 11th, the start of the carnival season in Cologne. How diverse the world is.
