First weekend in Mumbai

I spent my first weekend in India out exploring the city of Mumbai. I was fortunate enough to have an awesome driver, Murgan, with me to show me all the sites of Mumbai and provide a personal insight into the city that only someone who has spent a lifetime in a city would have.

I spent the last three days seeing a lot of North Mumbai and Downtown Mumbai. Some of the places and things I saw most people visit when they come to Mumbai: Amitabh, Abhisheik and Ashwarya Bachan's houses, Haji Ali Dargah, Sidi Vinayak Mandir, Juhu Beach, Chowpatty Beach, Gate of India, Taj Hotel, Victoria Terminal, Fort Bandra, and The Malls.

One of the places I went to, I don't think many people make a point to see when they come to Mumbai: Chota Kashmir Garden. I would not have seen this place either had it not been for Murgun. We were at Chota Kashmir Garden on Friday, Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday in India. The park was filled with couples and families despite the heat. It was probably at least 90 degrees out that day. After visiting the park, I asked Murgan why anyone would come out to the park when it was so hot and not that fantastic of a park. Murgan explained that this was a "Relax Point" for the city dwellers of Mumbai. Many of the young single people living in Mumbai share flats with several roommates to make living in the city affordable, this park provides a place for them to go to spend time with their significant others and get out of the city. Hearing this made seeing the one couple breaking up earlier at the park earlier even funnier than it had been before.

Although its something you know you will see, you can not prepare yourself for is the extreme poverty that is everywhere in India. When we started out on Friday morning one of the fist things we drove by were a group of shacks near the road. I asked Murgan where the slums where in Mumbai. His very frank answer was that the "Slum Points" are everywhere in Mumbai. Over the course of the next few days I found that this was very true. The "Slum Points" and poverty are not something you have to look for in Mumbai- they are everywhere. The slums are not just confined to consolidated blocks or areas. Poverty is on the sidewalk, or lack of sidewalk. In North Mumbai you will notice that along some streets there are no sidewalks- just street directly meeting shop, or make shift dwelling. Murgan was able to explain how this very gradually came to be- people would start by setting up a tarp on a sidewalk to make a place to sleep that offered protection from the ground, the next month the person would construct a tarp as roof, as they got more money they would construct walls and maybe start a business of some sort. By the time they were done although not equipped with running water or electricity, what this person had was pretty sturdy considering it started as a tarp. Time and the influx of people into Mumbai (about 29,000 per square kilometer) has lead to many of the sidewalks being completely unrecognizable as sidewalks.

The sidewalk phenomenon is not something you will find in downtown Mumbai. Downtown Mumbai as described by Murgan is the "Hi-fi" part of town. Condos and flats are extremely expensive to purchase here. As we drove around downtown on our way to The Gate of India, I noticed that I lot of the buildings were extremely run down. I asked Murgan why things were so run down if they were worth so much and expensive to rent or buy. He explained that in the early 80s India was very corrupt and tenants were being treated very unfairly in Downtown Mumbai. Indira Gandhi introduced something along the lines of what we know as "Rent Controlled Apartments." As an artifact of this, there are people renting apartments in downtown Mumbai for 200 rupees a month, the price two people would pay to eat dinner at a diner. Because of this building owners can not afford to maintain these buildings for the rent they are getting and they can't kick out the tenants that are paying a ridiculously little amount of rent- so the buildings become run down to the point of being uninhabitable. Yes, there are a lot of poor people in Mumbai, but there are a lot of poor people all over the world. A lot of what I have seen in terms of makeshift/failing-infrastructure, liter/trash and poverty is similar to what I saw when I went to Ecuador last year (I'll post those pictures shortly).

One thing that I had never seen is the prevalence of people begging, not the semi-able bodied beggars I had seen in other places, people begging that were blind, or missing limbs, or disfigured or impaired physically in some way. This is something I knew I would see while in Mumbai, but actually seeing this, I was not prepared for how utterly unable I was to help these people in that moment. Knowing that the impairment that these people have had been orchestrated for the sole purpose of generating revenue was gut wrenching. The path to Haji Ali Dargah is a 3/4 mile long walkway from downtown Mumbai to the Dargah. The path is filled with people walking to and from the Daragh. On the side of the path you walk back on you will see one of these pour souls begging for money every 15 to 20 feet. Near the middle of the path there is a group of beggars lying in a circular formation with each of their missing appendages on display, chanting "Wah-wah, Wah-wah, Wha-wah," as people walk by. For the rest of my life I will remember seeing and hearing this group of men lying in a circle and chanting.

CODA

I have gotten a couple of derisive comments about this blog being negative and one sided. To this all I can say is, it is one-sided, it's my side, this blog is a first hand account of things I have seen while in Mumbai for the last week, that is the only side I can write about. It was not written with any negativity because I don't feel negatively about the experience that I have had thus far in India. The experiences I have recounted: going through customs, working along side the emerging Indian-middle class, having lunch with co-workers and sightseeing in North Mumbai and Downtown Mumbai were encountered as someone that is living and working in India. I am not trying to be Christiane Amanpour, I don't want to expose anything, I have no agenda to convey. I am only trying to convey as honestly and objectively as possible the things that I have found funny, sad, interesting, or disturbing in the time I have been here.