Mumbai greeted us with impenetrable smog, thirty three degrees celsius and ninetysomething degrees humidity. The smog combined with early morning fog veiled the entire city, so I could see nothing beyond the dock, terminal and members of local officialdom when the ship had tied up at Ballard Dock.
However, downtown Old Bombay (everyone over 40 still calls it that here) was only a short walk and a dollar taxi ride away. We had prepared a mountain of clearance paperwork at sea, so getting ashore was comparatively simple.
Mumbai with about 20 million inhabitants is one of the six largest metropoli in the world, and grows daily by about 300 rural families consiting of at least ten people (i.e. 3000 people each day), who mostly end up in shanty towns until one of the males finds work. A few thousand cars are added to the already conjested traffic every day or so, so things are somewhat lively...
Mumbai was built upon a series of islands, that are now linked by extensive reclamation and form a peninsula. Occupied since the Stone Age, it went through many hands (Hindi, Muslim, Portuguese, Engllish) before it gained independence as part of India, through tireless efforts of Mahatma Gandhi. Hinduism is the main faith, but Zoroastrians, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews and Christians make up approximately 15% of the total population. Most if not all of the marriages are arranged by parents for their offspring, however, divorce rates are almost nil. Everybody is religious, and public and private prayer is de rigeur and taken seriously.
There is too much to say about Bombay, the Internet and a few books will enlighten the interested reader much better than I could do.
But, I like to share a few personal experiences.
First of all getting around the city is an exercise in courage, whether one is a pedestrian or a passenger. The melee of buses, transport vehicles, mopeds, taxis, ox carts, bicycles, cars, hand drawn carts and regular cars is indescribably and totally chaotic, hardly contained by a few strategially located traffic lights. Horns blare without let up, and pedestrians weave their perilous way through the moving mass without any concern for their lives - Karma I guess. No one follows lane divisions, and death defying u-turns are common. A few round abouts sometimes force everyone into the same direction, but even there some impatient drivers cross from one side to the other without bothering to 'merging' or ceding right of way. Breathtaking...Sidewalks are not much better, one jostles,dodges and weaves through a never ending stream of people, all set to get somewhere in a hurry.
Beggars, although not overwhelmingly many, congregate magically, wherever a tourist bus appears, or a non local emerges from a taxi. Usually a young mother with a little crowd of raggedy dirty children, and a babe in arms asks for baksheesh. But, it is best NOT to give, despite the heartbreaking sights. Some beggars, intentionally crippled and horribly maimed, move about on tiny pallets and ply their trade. Street vendors with peacock feather fans, embroidered things, and small jewelled rugs crowd any newcomer.
But Mumbai is a a comparatively 'wealthy' city being the commercial centre of India. It has the largest port which handles half of the country's passenger traffic, a huge railway centre (working extremely efficiently), most financial institution including stockmarket and mint and a large array of corporate headquarters. The commuter trains alone deliver six million people to work every day. The trains run every 45 seconds, non stop. Standard of living is above average of the rest of India.
Some of the 'lower classes' such as the Tiffin Wallahs, have atracted the attention of international business schools, such as Harvard. There are about 400,000 hot lunches (tiffin in old Englsih) delivered door to downtown office and return every day. These 'delivery men' of tiffin wallahs work for about $6 a month per customer. They pick up hot lunches from house wives in the suburbs, load them on their carts, then carry the lunches via train to the main city railway station. There the tiffin boxes, all with an individual ID number, are resorted and handed over to the end-delivery wallahs. These reload them on their hand carts and service certain office buildings and their individual customers within. At 2 pm they pick the empties up and the process is carried out in reverse. The notable thing is: it's all verbal, there are no directions, there are no receipts, there are no lists, there are no names or addresses, there are no individual bills and: there is no more than 1 misdirected delivery in 18 million deliveries.
Six Sigma followers eat your heart out, this is a logistics marvel without equal in the world, even elsewhere in India. Harvard has 'borrowed' some of these mostly illiterate workers to try an fathom the secret of their effectiveness and unimaginable efficiency.
Another nugget for admiration is the work of the Dhobi Ghat men. The Dhobi Ghat is a public laundry with a difference, where hundreds of concrete wash tubs are clustered in several areas of town. I observed one of them from an overpass. Below me lays a mosaic of vats, all joined together, and filled with yellowish water which is changed once each morning. Men, and only men, wash the city's dirty linen here. They soak it, then beat it on the edge of the vats until any speck of dirt is gone (with a little help from gallons of bleach etc), wring it out, lug it to a roof somewhere and hang it up to dry. No pegs, they fasten the pieces by their edge in between twisted ropes or wires. Somewhere in the background another army of men, armed with charcoal fired irons, stands at the ready to iron all that. The whole laundry turn around takes a day, except when it rains during monsoon season, when it is returned shortly after a little spurt of sun appears. So what's the big deal? Its a laundry! The laundry is picked up daily at customers' homes (hospitals and hotels have ALL their laundry done here), or on traffic stops, without receipt or lists. It MAY have laundry marks. The cleaned pieces are delivered again without receipts or lists. But, at monthend, each customers gets an itemized bill per piece of laundry washed, and the bill is paid promptly. Absolutely NO paperwork, except for the final bill. The scale of the operation, involving tenths of thousands of pieces, thousands of wash tubs and hundreds of washers and ironers, is staggering. And again, all is based on trust and verbal communication, and it WORKS.
The architecture of Mumbai has some stupendous examples.
There is the magnificient Taj Hotel (even if built backwards with the real main entrance at the back door) which was subject to a terrorist attack a couple of years back, and is now undergoing extensive restauration. It looks somewhat like a totally crazy and oversized Chateau Lake Louise, but with oriental niches and balconies added in.
There are hundreds of Temples. There are the Towers of Silence (off limits for anyone but Parsi) where Zoroastrians deposit their dead, to be consumed by vultures (it takes three hours and only the bones are left). Parsi venerate nature, and to cremate a body or bury it would offend Fire or Earth. Actually a very eco-friendly way of deposing of dead, however for a western mind it appears somewhat strange. But urban sprawl etc is endangering the vultures, and apparently a vulture conservation project is in progress.
There are colonial buildings left over from the British Raj, such as Telegraph Office, High Court and especially VIctoria Terminus with its mix between Tudor and Victorian styles, immense and splendid. There is the spacious and airy Prince Of Wales Museum, designed by George Wittet. It houses an impressive collection of Indian miniature paintings. The attached samples are small details buried in these tiny marvels, and the attached photos each cover maybe an area one inch square.
There are also some absolutely exquisite traditional scultpures of Hindu Deities, of which there are many. All come with a mythology, that rivals Greek and Egyptian epics of Gods and Demi Gods, and has an added bonus, in that the Hindi Gods are rather a 'human' lot with many human characteristics. Benevolence, Viciousness, Love and Hate, Power, Betrayal, Incest, Heroism and Subservience all enliven the many stories.
But, there are also many shanty towns, or small dwellings squeezed in between other buildings, made of card board and tin, and covered with rags where the poor rural immigrants settle upon arrival.
There are the launching-pad style toilets, who offer no tissue, flushing water or sinks. Some have sinks, with a few pitchers and a barrel full of water beside it. Good luck!
Tuk Tuks are parked all over, several hundred thousand ancient Fiat taxis, each without working meter but with a mini shrine, either drive around or lay in wait, and garishly decorated and lit horse drawn carriages line the road in front of the Gateway to India, a Marble Arch type affair at the waterfront.
From the Gateway one can take a 45 minute ferryride to Elephant Island, where caves dating back to 300 BC with magnificient chambers carved out of the living rock house huge statues and reliefs of deities crafted in later centuries, as well as sacred Shrines.
The ride over is worth mentioning, as the old wooden ferries still have a 'division of duties' aboard. The helmsman atop the roof, communicates with the engine man via a string and a bell. With that, he signals to the poor sod, who has climbed into the hellishly hot engine room using knotted rope, using different number of tinkles, to indicate when to throw a giant manual throttle lever into forward, reverse, neutral or whatever else is required during docking maneuvres. Getting on and off as passenger is an athletic feat, as things like hand rails or gangways are unheard off, and one just climbs over ropes, tires, yawning spaces over murky waters, whatever to get on. Well, for $1.25 return it was a deal! The dock at Elephant Island is connected via 1.5 mile causeway to the island proper. Not to despair, there is a little railway, powered by a smoke belching little diesel locomotive, that carries one across for a fee of 20 cents return. To start the diesel, a large hand crank coaxed the oil dripping thing into life.
On Elephant Island one climbs 120 rocky steps, flanked by rows of vendor stalls, selling everything imaginable from carved nested elephants to metal statuettes of Shiva. One dodges the dozens of monkeys sniffing out a sandwich hidden in a tourist backback from a mile away. They bite. There are chaises, which are carried by four men seeming too skinny to carry anything heavier than a runway model, but the more weighty customers take advantage of the service, as even for an able bodied person the climb turns into a pilgrimage through a seemingly endless turkish steam bath by the time one reaches the caves entrance. It was worth a pound of sweat...the doric columns are impressive and the stone carvings make one wish to have read everything there is to know about the myriad of stories behind Hindu mythology.
Back in Mumbai, time to stroll and look at the display of Sarees, Punjabi suits, Kurtis, Pashminas and a multitude of tempting Eastern treasures. Hundreds of stores of different genre and quality, from street vendor stalls to the most exclusive ones in the elegant Taj Hotel at the waterfront. Prices of course go up from embarrasingly low to ridiculously high depending on location, quality of goods, etc etc and - air conditioning.
The most troubling circumstance is that the incessant scorching heat and humidity drives one into the airconditioned oases - with predictable results: I bought a silk saree, a couple of kurtis, and a couple of Punjabis. But, all at such incredibly low prices even after minimal bagaining (or fixed price in one of the 'better' stores) that the indulgence left only a miniscule dent in my budget.
The funny thing is, that the only REAL oasis, the Leopold Cafe on the main drag, was not air-conditioned, but instead sported a couple of security guards at the door, who ignored me. There I did my duty as a knowledge seeking visitor and sampled the local brew, Kingfisher Beer. Very good indeed, and totally germ free. Recommended!
I felt loath to leave this multifaceted city, full of life and wondrous sights. Two million people is a bit of a stretch, but I felt safe even at dusk (all alone dickering with determined taxi drivers), and there is so much to do and see that one could spend a lot of time here in discovering new things every day for a month or more.
