Mumbaiking: First Days Back in India

Kate and I on the plane going to Mumbai,
Tata ISES interns 2010!

Back in India! After over 24 hours of commuting by plane, I finally arrived back at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. The ride was way longer than I remember it being last summer. Despite the length and extreme time difference of nine and a half hours from Ohio, I was surging with energy as soon as we began our descent into the megacity.

Mahim - Mumbai

The moment I stepped out of the airport, the feeling of strange familiarity swept over me. I could actually smell that I was back in India. There are distinct smells of India for me. Given that most of India is so hot and humid, especially the parts I have been to it could be that the smells are enhanced by the heat and moisture. The combination of both good and bad smells—like rotting trash, cow dung and thick smog mixed with aromas of incense, frying food and boiling chai—seem to mesh together to fill the air with a spicey musty scent. I can’t really describe it much better than that, and I am not sure if those things were causing the air by the airport to smell that way that night, but I definitely sensed that same smell in the air that I had only experienced here. A driver met me and the other three interns outside and within a few minutes, we were zooming through the streets of Bombay. It was pretty overwhelming feeling of excitement and melancholy. I was thrilled to be back; I began recognizing a few sights and kept pointing things out to the others (Kate, Marie and Neda are their names, although at this point Neda had separated and went with some friends for the night). I actually felt a little annoying, but didn’t want to hold back information and tried to uplift the mood since it was the middle of the night. I stared out at the urban landscape, scattered with rotting Bombay architecture, next to shiny new skyscrapers and business buildings. Rickshaws zoomed by, huge trucks marked “Tata” on the back above the weird expression “Horn OK Please” rode alongside us, along with funky taxis painted black and yellow with personalized expressions on the back windshield. It was after 1am though, so the streets were relatively quiet. After over an hour of driving and getting lost from our very quiet and confused driver, we arrived at a fancy guest house where a young Indian men welcomed us and brought our bags to our rooms and even gave us sandwiches with Coca Cola. It was nearing 3am and we itching to sleep, but I think out of courtesy we all just accepted and managed to each eat a sandwich half. It was funny, because then the guys interpreted that we were very hungry and brought us another full plate of sandwiches! To hell with manners!

Mumbai Colors

We woke up the next morning with just four hours of sleep and ready to take on Mumbai in an attempt to conquer jet lag. I was ready to run around, but after a slow start, we only managed a short walk in the blistering heat. Since monsoons have not begun yet in Mumbai, some days, like this day, can melt you. Within 20 minutes I was sopping in sweat. I ignored it thought, as I was so preoccupied with the streets filled with people and buzzing rickshaw engine sounds. “Why wasn’t anyone else sweating under the blistering sun,” we kept asking ourselves. As soon as we made it to a main road, I recognized the area. We walked to the nearby train station, Mahim Junction, and crossed over the tracks where we saw just a glance at a small entrance to Dharavi. I stared at it from the bridge cross-way. I couldn’t believe that I was back here, staring down at the largest slum in Asia once again. It should not be some attraction for tourists like me, but everytime I saw it I was intrigued and wanted to explore. Dharavi is a basti (slum) area and it is only about .67 square miles large and holds over 1 million residents (10 lakhs in Indian counting). It is an unauthorized basti, meaning it does not have government permission to exist or formal recognition to hold the land it does.

One edge of Dharavi

What is always hard to see though that is immediately apparent in Mumbai is the widespread poverty. I was eager to see it, as it was some sort of affirmation for my presence since I came to India to study and enact methods of poverty alleviation. Yet, my honest eagerness was countered with shame, as we had just spent so many resources flying half way across the world. No one ever forgets or escapes the poverty of Mumbai. It is part of its landscape. Seeing Dharavi reminded me of this, as it was just one of many slum neighborhoods in Mumbai. The city is actually composed of over 55% slums. The night before, we drove past dozens of people sleeping on the sides of the road, some resting on top of benches, cars, metal containers, or just laying on a thin blanket on the ground or the concrete itself. On the right we would see rows of nice shops, large illuminated advertisements and business buildings, and on the left would be shanty slum housing made of scrap metal, tarps, old Coca-Cola banners and cheap concrete. Sometimes, the slums would be right next door to modern looking structures. The juxtaposition of the two different worlds is what makes Mumbai so intriguing for even its own residents. Standing at the foot of Dharavi, I was reminded of the organized chaos of the bastis. They were not all just piles of trash with people running around desperately searching for food and water. They actually have closer resemblance to neighborhoods. There were shops and stores, chaiwallahs, places for worship, families living together; there was some order to the basti social system. As we learned in my Globalization in India and Global Poverty courses this past semester, this is the product of neglect. If the poor don’t have access to formal needs that is affordable on their level, they will create it themselves with the informal. It is the same with ghettos in any country. So instead of staring ahead at Dharavi like it was a sad picture of desperation (which some aspects may still be), I stood in wonder of its complexity; of all the informal work and actions that were going on to maintain and operate the Dharavi system that was the largest slum in Asia.

Later in the afternoon, we moved to a completely different neighborhood of Mumbai: Colaba Causeway in South Mumbai. It is funny how tourists are dumped off here and expect to find “the real Bombay.” It is so different than most other neighborhoods. Last year I remember not seeing the different so clearly, but this time it was like black and white to me. For one, there were no rickshaws, only taxis and cars. There were more Western and American institutions, like CitiBank, McDonalds, Regal Cinemas and

tons of hip restaurants with beer and Western food. We were put into this super fancy YWCA hotel thatcosted Rs. 2000/- per night (note, the highest price I paid for a room last summer was in Kolkata for Rs. 500/- per night and this was expensive to me). We had a driver take us there. This one was nicer; he showed us important landmarks like temples, neighborhoods and movie star’s houses. He was also patient with my crappy Hindi and spoke with us. It was nice to be driven and to have air conditioning-but I was itching to hop on the trains and have the excitement of figuring things out on my own. Unfortunately though, after that not much happened for the rest of the day as we battled jet lag and heat, except for a nice night walk to McDonalds for frozen yogurt (I gave in. . .) and to the Gateway to India and Taj Hotel. We were so close to going swimming at the Taj until we got caught!

Taj Hotel

The next day we spent in our orientation. I will get into that next post when I talk more on

Tata and the work I am doing here. After the orientation though I was able to meet up with my friend Eddie and some of my other friends from Berkeley who are new group members of Haath Mein Sehat, the group I had visited last summer. I was worried that I wasn’t going to get to see them while I was in Mumbai, but sure enough I found them! It was fun to finally take the train alone and find them in Bandra, an area north of South Mumbai crammed with shops and markets. It was so weird to see Eddie in India again. The strangest part was that it felt normal. This is where I saw him last summer and as ambitious travelers, it doesn’t feel all that surprising to see each other in foreign lands. After India, I will only see him for a day in Ohio in August, then he goes to Brazil for a semester and then to Africa for the Peace Corps. It was good to catch up and conent with someone who loves this place even more than I do. We hopped in a rickshaw (my first so far!) and wound up at a rooftop “Shisha” bar taking hookah hits and enjoying beautiful Hindi music from a live band playing tablahs (well known Indian

drums). We exchanged some funny stories and I heard all about the reactions of the new group members to India, I felt so happy to be with other cool Berkeley students such an awesome place. I knew that the summer held so many crazy situations for all of us. I also felt compelled to stay in Mumbai! Afterwards, we wound up in some strange bar with American posters and American 80s music. It was awesome! We requested Lady Gaga, something they searched for and tried to figure out for almost 20 minutes. It was great to get my only night of drinking and socializing at a bar in for the summer since I was going to be in the eastern state of Jharkhand for the rest of the summer, a dry state with no alcohol.

I was ready to take on the summer after that. It was good to connect with HMS before leaving, since they were the only people I knew in India last summer and I had some of my first experiences here with them. Now I am eager to get on that plane and head to Jamshedpur for the summer. Who knows what I am getting myself into. . .

Streetside