Street children trawl the streets day and night asking not for money – but for food and water, sometimes even clothes. Young moms walk about carrying bare-bottomed babies with scaly skin and lifeless limbs asking not for money – but baby formula from the chemist around the corner. We found ourselves distinguishing between varying degrees of desperation – you can’t give to everyone, so give to the ones who really are on the verge of cutting out.
It surprises me that the urge to copulate doesn’t fade in the midst of such abject poverty; that sex isn’t the absolute LAST thing on people’s mind. But Eimer pointed out that babies bring in more money from the tourists. But I wonder, do the babies really pay for themselves and bring in extra still for the parents? Not if mom’s milk dries up; baby formula costs 500 rupees/tin.
On the other end of the spectrum are the designer labels, the plush hotels, the classy cocktail lounges, the heady nightclubs. But on the wide pavement beside the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, you will see women with matted hair and torn clothing stretched out beside their children, nothing shielding bony bodies from the hard concrete. And when you stumble out of a nightclub at 2am, the scrawny 6 year old girl with the mischievous grin will be there waiting to see if the drunken wealthy are more generous than their sober counterparts.
I was really looking forward to a weekend in Mumbai, as I’m currently reading the autobiographical Shantaram, a riveting epic written by an Australian who escaped from a maximum security prison and made his way to Bombay, where he lived in a slum for two years, survived an Indian prison, ended up in the Mumbai mafia and effectively became part of the city’s eclectic fabric. The city itself is one of the book’s most prominent characters and I was eager to put a face to its name and check out all its local haunts.
We start Saturday off at the Gateway of India monument, which is perched right on the water by the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Apparently, this is the place to be spotted if you’re interested in being a gora (white) extra in a Bollywood flick, but alas, none of the camera clicking Indians who approach us turn out to be casting agents.
We spend the morning on a 2.5 hour tour of the tourist hot spots. I like our driver – he has a wide, genuine smile and comparatively good English. I think we are overcharged, but I don’t mind because there’s no trickery involved. We settle on a price at the start and that’s that.
At the outdoor laundry, I get to witness the beating that clothes here endure when they are cleaned. When I recently complained that all my laundered clothes come back to me stretched, stained and smelling of charcoal, an expat who’s been out here for 3+ years explained that he intends to ball up and throw away all his clothes when he leaves. It seems that nothing survives the brutality of Indian clothes washing – and now I see why!
After the laundry, we speed along Marine Drive past Chowpatty Beach – water so filthy that even the locals won’t brave a dip – to a bustling Jain temple. The intricately hand-painted walls are rich in colour and seem to tell a thousand tales that are very much beyond my scope of knowledge. The temple is surprisingly tourist-friendly, and we are encouraged rather than expressly forbidden to take photographs. It makes for a strange sensation, snapping pics of people deep in prayer.
Next stop, the hanging gardens of Malabar Hill from which we get a wide if hazy view of the city. I love the topiary animals (check out the humps on these Indian cows!) and the little lady who lived in a shoe’s house.
A little ways down from the garden are the Towers of Silence where reportedly, the Zoroastrian Parsi community hangs out its dead for the vultures to feed on as earth, fire and water are too sacred to allow for the more traditional methods of body disposal (burial/cremation/up the river and out to sea).
In Gandhi’s museum, amidst many interesting posters, photographs, dioramas and documents, I find a letter from Gandhi to Hitler, asking him to stop the war. How many other letters of this nature did Hitler receive (and ignore) from leaders around the world, I wonder?
I really enjoy spending the remainder of the day walking around Bombay’s Fort & Bazaar areas. Lots of distinctive buildings, including one very different Victoria train station. And finally a synagogue! It is a bright blue building with interior to match and the caretaker, a sweet old man, shows us photos of him with all the foreign Jews who’ve come to visit over the years. I find it strange that he tries to sell us kippot and challah covers on Shabbat though…
Saturday night is party time in Mumbai and Eimer and I are more than happy to join the fray of cosmopolitan Mumbaikers out on the town. From cocktails at the swanky Taj Mahal Palace Hotel to drinks at the Indus Bar, to shots and dancing at the Red Light Lounge, we find that in comparison to the hip young Indians, we are rather conservatively & casually dressed!
Slow start on Sunday finds us at the Haji Ali Mosque, which becomes an island when the tide is high, and by the neighbouring Malahaxmi Temple, we hear loud thumping vibrant Indian music and take a turn here and there through winding alleys to investigate. And thus we happen upon a gaggle of children dancing, jumping and play-fighting on a raised concrete platform that is also home to two massive speakers (stolen? or donated by a benevolent film producer/mafia don/nightclub owner?)
The children are poor and evidently live in the tin shacks that line the water behind their concrete dance floor, but they are having a grand old time. The music is loud and full of life, and the laughing children play their creative games with an energy to match the thumping bass of the speakers.
We spend a good 20 minutes enjoying the music and the children’s wellbeing. I am relieved to have found some genuine happiness amidst the poverty. Of course, it all comes back to the varying degrees…these children seem to be well-nourished, and what a set of speakers!
We laze about the rest of the afternoon, lunching and people-watching at Leopold’s, and shopping along Colaba Causeway. Some chai at the Taj Mahal Palace to round out the weekend and we leave Mumbai wondering if those 3 stunning women in burqas at the Taj Mahal were really all married to that one unattractive fellow.
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