Living it up in Mumbai

Trip Start Mar 03, 2008
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Trip End Mar 31, 2008


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Where I stayed
Sea Shore Hotel
(Mumbai (Bombay) hotels)

Flag of India  ,
Friday, March 28, 2008

This highly congested city of over 16 million people is very cosmopolitain and modern yet with plenty of pockets of traditional Indian culture evident in the various areas and suburbs.  Whilst the streets are relatively clean compared to the rest of India and people use the pavements as there are pavements which are fairly maintained, half the people here live in slums contrasted with a growing wealth in other parts of the city.  That said the slum dwellers, who come from all over the country as economic migrants, escaping floods, drought, crop failure, persecution or just to earn an extra 10 rupees a day (12 pence) to send to their family, have a thriving community who all contribute to the economy and one of the largest slums is thought to turnover US$650 million anually from activity within it's confines alone including export of goods manufactured there!  There were two slums just in and near Colaba (an upmarket part of town where tourists flock) and it was painful to see the cobbled together shacks in which people live six or more to a room and the beaches just on the edge of the slum were ankle deep in rubbish (which people sort through and recycle for money) and used as the communal toilet - I could see several men just squatting on the edge of the water.  Having read Shantaram though I had a much better appreciation for the communal harmony of these places although it doesn't make it any less right, especially when towering above the slums were modern high rise offices and luxury appartments.

I spent the day rediscovering Colaba and near by Kala Ghoda which is the where the main museums and British Raj legacy are based.  I even discovered the old Iraqi synagogue in this area.  Back in Colaba, I popped into one of the best hotels in the city, the Taj Mahal hotel built by the Tata family (who are important industrialists in India and now globally as I'm sure you know) to visit the bookshop there and somehow the grandeur of the dining room and the smell of the buffet there tempted me.  Once I'd wrestled with the idea of spending £16 on lunch there (equivalent to my weekly spend on food in India), I devoured a huge and delicious lunch which was comparable to any of the best lunches I've had in top London restaurants.  I took tea with a nice Parsi (descendants of Persian Zoroastrians and important business people in colonial India) lady who was visiting from Pune.  That evening I wandered over to the Chabad Centre (run by religious Lubavitch Rabbi and his wife) for a Sabbath meal.  I'd met the Rabbi and his wife three years earlier when they were based in another building.  I always like it when I travel and find a Chabad House welcoming me for a nice kosher meal for Shabbat... David Sassoon Library
David Sassoon Library
 it's like a home from home (a bit religious but still) and that's the point of it.

My second day in Bombay, I took a local bus (you see how confident I am now in the city) over to Malabar Hill, which is the upmarket part of the city to visit the Hanging Gardens - a pretty garden overlooking Chowpatty Beach and the long coastal curve Marine Drive with its high rise buildings and 5 star hotels.  Then I spent a while at the little but fascinating Gandhi museum where Gandhi had in fact lived before I lunched in the Cream Centre buzzing with plump middle-class families out for Saturday lunch.  I finished it off with a very expensive cup of tea in the air-conditioned Hilton Oberoi Towers.  That evening a guy came to the hotel and the hotel manager summoned me and they asked if I'd like to be in a Bollywood movie (they always need westerners as extras) but I'd already got appointments at a beauty salon the next day so beauty won out!

So my final day, I wandered some more, took some flowers to the Rabbi's wife in Chabad House where I spent some time on their free but painfully slow internet, then I bought my only additions to my luggage for this trip in the shape of two tiffin boxes and two masala spice boxes, before heading over to a top salon in Colaba for a facial, haircut and manicure all for £16.  My last dinner in India was at Chabad House as they'd  invited me back.

So that's it.... after a dosa breakfast the next day, I spent a hot, noisy, lung-clogging 90 minutes getting to the airport in a taxi and caught my flight home.

Now I'm back in my London suburbs, I'm having the usual difficulty readjusting to the extreme quiet in Finchley, the clean pavements, the expensive and sanitised supermarkets and a soft bed.

India is definitely changing in the towns and cities, even if it's just that everyone (even people in slums!) seems to have a mobile phone these days and some of them even have cameras.  But it will take a very long time for India to resemble anything like Western societies and economies, which is probably a good thing - anyway they'd all have to learn what a bin is used for first!  Seriously though, India will probably continue in its duality, with the poor in the countryside getting poorer and suffering the effects of global warming on their crops and availability of water and therefore their rural lives and the white-collar workers getting more affluent and fatter (food/fat equals wealth) and maybe seeing materialism replacing religion and family values.

But no doubt, I'll be back!
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