«       »
January 6th 2008 by Tina
Magnificent Mumbai

Posted under India

After waiting almost two hours on the tarmac at O’Hare for our plane to be de-iced, we were off on a rather uneventful eighteen-hour journey to Mumbai (formerly Bombay). We enjoyed the spiciest and most delicious Indian airplane food; in one meal, I ate a pepper (which looked like a green bean) that set off a four alarm fire in my mouth. As the plane touched down at Mumbai International Airport, two friendly Indian women gave us homemade chapati (Indian flatbread, similar to a tortilla) after Aaron helped them with their bags. Before we had even set foot on Indian soil, we felt warmly welcomed.

We had decided to use some of our Marriott hotel points to ease our way back into the hostel world. We took a taxi from the airport and checked into the Renaissance Marriott Hotel around 3:00am. The hotel was posh and luxurious – a perfect haven for sleeping off our jet lag. When we re-surfaced two days later, we were ecstatic about exploring Mumbai.

City sidewalks lined with shacks and tents. Streets congested with incessantly honking taxis that look, feel and smell fifty years old; commercial trucks in candy-bright colors, loaded well beyond capacity; bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles (some carrying a husband, wife AND two children) weaving fearlessly through the gridlock. Street vendors selling roasted nuts, fresh squeezed juices, shoes, textiles, cheap jewelry and clothing, perfume, small electronics, toiletries, and flavored tobacco. Women, in colorful saris, conversing on sunny lawns. Homeless families, tattered and filthy, sprawled out on sidewalks and hovering around fires. Men in turbans with unshorn beards. Women in burqa collecting little girls in sleek black braids and school uniforms. Fruit and vegetable stands. Beggar children with desperate faces and practiced persistence. Stray dogs scrounging for food in piles of refuse. Free-roaming sacred cows. Man-powered carts, piled high with boxes. Balloon sellers. Casual cricket matches. Vibrant, bustling markets. Barefoot road workers. An exploding population entangled and entwined in the kaleidoscopic chaos of Mumbai. In the two days that we spent wandering the crowded streets of Colaba in the southern peninsula, our senses were overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells of India. We were immediately captivated by its throbbing pulse and found ourselves insatiably drawn toward the magnetic, colorful culture.

Though many people opt for Western-style dress, there are enough flowing saris in every color of the rainbow and men in robes equally vibrant to keep my head spinning, as if in a dream, following the wings of butterflies. Many women and some men don the traditional Bindi (colored dot between their eyebrows), which we have learned can symbolize many different things such as beauty, self-sacrifice, a meditative focal point, etc. I think they’re stunning and exotic and I want one! One thing that I find interesting about the saris is that, while India is perceived as a conservatively dressed nation, many saris, particularly those worn my middle-aged women, expose almost the entire midriff, from the top of the ribcage to the waistline. The sari is made of a single piece of cloth, usually five meters in length, and is wrapped around the body. It is worn with a fitted blouse with elbow-length sleeves but all of the blouses stop at the top of the ribcage. Personally, I might opt for a longer blouse, especially if the alternative is flaunting a mid-section that has seen many more chapatis than sit-ups.

We ate enough Indian food in Africa to develop a whirlwind romance with the cuisine and just a few days in India have transformed that romance into a healthy obsession. Much of the Indian population is vegetarian so almost all restaurants cater to the “veggiesaurus”. If you have a plain vanilla palate, you’d be best to pack your power bars and peanut butter and jelly for India. The mouthwatering dishes are loaded with spices (cumin, coriander, saffron), in varying degrees of heat, and slathered in rich, creamy, savory and sweet sauces. They are served with fresh baked flatbread (chapati, roti or naan) and steaming basmati rice and there is plenty of sauce left over for dipping! Our favorite dishes are made with paneer, which is an unfermented cheese with a texture and flavor similar to tofu. Many Indian restaurants serve thali, a sampling of several vegetarian dishes served in individual small bowls or sectioned plates. We first tried it at a restaurant called Chetana in Mumbai. We were presented with a large metal plate and about fifteen small metal bowls. The servers then came, one after another, ladling colorful and aromatic vegetarian stews into each bowl, followed by chapati, rice, sweets, and offers of buttermilk, traditional spiced beverages and fresh squeezed juices. Aaron ordered an indigenous Indian beverage, called Jal Jeera, which is made of lime juice, cumin, mint and rock salt. It was a little chunky for our taste but interesting. We wasted no time in devouring the smorgasbord at our fingertips. Each spoonful was an explosion of flavor that shocked our taste buds with a uniquely spiced pleasure. We felt like royalty with an entire staff fawning over every detail of our experience, enthusiastically describing each dish, recommending delicious combinations, and trying to refill our little bowls with more steaming curries. Thali was amazing and we can’t wait to have more!

The poverty in Mumbai, home to more than 18 million people and Asia’s largest slums, is daunting and it is very much in your face. Major city streets are lined with shacks so tiny that most daily activities are performed in front of the shack for all the world to see. Meals are prepared over small fires. Children bathe in metal basins. Dishes are washed. Handicrafts are made. Services are performed. Elderly people lounge the days away. Everyone is outside! Many of the ramshackle dwellings have small lofts above, no wider than a double bed, which sleep entire families. Laundry is hung to dry on lines between trees on a city sidewalk. Some people have only tents as their shelter – a length of plastic tarp or canvas propped up with poles or attached to a cement wall – while many others sleep on the street, rolled in a blanket among piles of trash. A few of the more disgusting occurrences of public human behavior include spitting (and I mean both women and men hocking up phlegm from the depths of their sinuses) and public urination – we see this daily.

On the first day, we walked by a family – mother, grandmother, two young children around six or seven years of age – sprawled out over the sidewalk on a random street corner. The little boy, stark naked and filthy, squealed and ran crying across the sidewalk to his mother’s arms. The grandmother, lying on her side on the dirty cement, opened her bloodshot eyes and then closed them again. Most startling, however, was the little girl, lying face down, motionless, on a dingy mat, naked from the waist down with flies crawling all over her. The sight of her made me gasp. Everyone just walked by. So did we. I looked for them the next day, planning to give them some money, but we never saw them.

The poverty in Mumbai is heart-wrenching because of its magnitude and its vastness but mostly because, here, poverty has a face and it’s staring right at you on every street. We have encountered many beggars, mostly children and elderly, but the intensity still pales in comparison to Egypt. The children are most aggressive and I always wonder what kind of people those beggar children will grow into. Despite of the dire circumstances of the people, there is absolutely no sense of menace. We have felt completely safe at all times. I have carried my purse and walked with my camera exposed with no fear or apprehension. The Indian people have been warm, friendly and eager to please. We like them very much. Even the taxi drivers have been honest and pleasant. We find the collective madness of this multicultural metropolis both intriguing and addicting. We are so enamored with this fascinating country, in fact, that we are already making arrangements to extend our stay from three weeks to a month and it still won’t be enough. From here, we are headed north to Rajasthan and back to hostels and public transportation, which will undoubtedly inspire new dramas and adventures. Strangely, we actually prefer the crazy hostel world over the sterile, sheltered comfort of fancy hotels. We feel like we get a better sense of average everyday life in a place when we’re not living above it.

Comments Off on Magnificent Mumbai

Comments are closed.