First Forays

A light rain is falling over midday Bombay (as all the locals call it, ‘Mumbai’ apparently only used by official sources and foreigners), and the air is a lot cooler than yesterday. There are still plenty of people in the streets though, along with the omnipresent yellow-and-black auto-rickshaws. Traffic here appears to be, as expected, completely chaotic, with right-of-way being determined – at all but the larger, manned or signaled junctions – by whoever gets their nose out first.

There are people everywhere, at all times of day and night, and the juxtaposition of rich and poor is startling: on the same street corner there will be sunglass-wearing playboys and film stars alongside orphan beggars and disfigured cripples in rags. Of course, the extreme poverty of Bombay’s infamous slums is well-known, but it’s the closeness of it all which is so unexpected. However, with all these different social strata having to squeeze into the same packed streets, the place is alive with dynamism and energy. The continual hustle and bustle is even reminiscent of the non-stop streets of Lower Manhattan (another locale where the use of the car horn is inescapable).

Last night I went for a walk with my friend Guarav along the seafront ‘promenade’ (the Anglicisms everywhere are hard for me to ignore, and are a mixture of oddly incongruous and a little quaint) of Bandra, the relatively well-off suburb where I’m staying. The numerous lights of the fishing boats in the ocean made it seem as if there was another city lurking across the bay, whilst the shoreline itself was little more than a dirty swathe of rubbish being lapped by even dirtier water. Whilst there are plenty of signs and posters entreating the locals not to litter, spit, or otherwise pollute the neighbourhoods, these are generally ignored except in a few tourist-friendly locations, where police are on hand to enforce them. You quickly get used to the amazing array of smells, ranging from the succulent to the repulsive, but the sea-breeze was consistent enough to freshen the air. We even managed to run into an ex-Miss India on the beachside, just a hundred yards or so from a cluster of especially pitiful beggars – just another example of how intertwined the various worlds of the city can be.

Anyway, the rain is now little more than a drizzle, so I’d best be getting out. I need an Indian SIM-card, a haircut (it’s pretty hot and humid), and a toothbrush, before heading downtown to have a look around. Let’s go see if I can figure out the transport system.