oh my word. india is chaos. all the rumors you’ve ever heard are true. got to the mumbai airport at 3 am and immediately started dropping water weight. it is 40 degrees (celcius) and 100% humidity. wandered around outside for a while looking for this guy who was supposed to pick me up. i am very lucky to be staying here in mumbai with the mother of a friend of my dad, or something like that. well, eventually the guy showed up, and took me to this elderly lady’s house. its quite nice – i have a little apartment to myself and she insists on cooking meals for me and she even did my laundry. she is rather overprotective – she gave me a cell phone to carry around and she keeps calling me to see if i am ok and to remind me of all the bad things that could happen to me. the first night i told her that i hung out the door of the commuter train to catch the breeze and she basically had a heart attack. truth is i did do that, because riding the commuter train here is insane and that is the only way to stay sane. its actually pretty fun. the train doors stay open, because they physically couldn’t close – there are 20 times more people on the train than there should be. when it comes to a stop at a station everyone is so desperate to get on that they just charge in – pushing, grunting and knocking people over. its impossible to get off when you want to unless you’re hanging out the door to begin with. “my house” is about 45 minutes from downtown on this train, in the “nicer” part of mumbai. nicer is relative, as no one in the area has probably ever heard of or experienced an air conditioner and there are still goats and garbage in the streets.
first day i went downtown and saw the gateway to india, a huge archway erected by the british just before they left. across the street is the taj mahal hotel, site of a terrible terrorist attacks a few years ago. i ducked in there for some air conditioning.
they call mumbai “london on acid.” i presume the acid relates to the frenetic traffic patterns. or the urgency with which people are trying to sell things. but its actually a lot like london. there are countless impressive colonial buildings throughout downtown mumbai. there is a clocktower that is at least as big as big ben. and a massive colonial era train station (the busiest train station in asia) that was initially named after queen victoria (now it has a marathi – thats the language here – name that is about 200 letters long) i walked around all day, as i did the next day, when i went to a huge open air laundry facility where all mumbai’s clothes go to get washed by hand. amazing.
i also went to the haji ali mosque which is out in the ocean, connected to land by a long cement bridge that is lined with beggars. close by is a huge hindu temple devoted to the hindu goddess of wealth, where everyone buys flowers and reverently goes through all kinds of motions all along the km long street leading up to the temple. then once one gets inside, an obese and hairy shirtless guy irreverently grabs the ornate flower decorations and coconuts and whatnot and tosses them into a trough in front of the idol while the devotees cross themselves. craziness. also crazy was the restroom situation there- i really needed to go, but shoes had come off at the entrance- and like all indian restrooms there was a half inch of urine on the ground. but i really needed to go.
wandered through the slums, got completely lost, took a random bus that i thought was going the right direction but it wasn’t – i love it. eventually found my way to a pennisula called malabar where mumbai’s movers and shakers live (like its bollywood movie stars). went into a huge jain temple. the jain symbol is the swastika. to be fair, they had it first. but its rather odd being in a building full of elephant statues and mystical priest weirdo guys and scented candles that is adorned with swastikas. also, at the end of this peninsula is a pedestrian only area called banganga tank. it is full of hundreds of little hindu shrines, and the tank is a pool of water surrounded by ghats (steps into the water) where little kids are swimming and rituals with flowers are going on and whatnot. according to hinduism its the center of the world. and here i thought that distinction belonged to boston. on second thought i guess the center of the world and the hub of the universe could be at different places. anyways, it was a cool place. also went down to where the slums meet the ocean there – the water is horridly foul and there is garbage and sewer washing into it. and there were mentally deranged old men swimming in the sewer and they started coming after me so i left. this is india.
almost done. then i went to chowpatty beach which is the hangout of choice for young lovers. wish i had a girlfriend to walk along the beach with (is crying to himself). i drowned my feelings by eating. these little crispy balls of fried goodness called puri that the break a hole in and put lentils, chutney, lemon juice, wonderful paste, yogurt etc. you eat it and then they make you another. its fantastic. basically everything here is fantastic except for the extreme heat and the horrible chaffing that results from the sweat and multiple days of walking all day. but i won’t go into detail on that.
