Travel 2013: Mumbai

HORN OK PLEASE, written on many trucks as a plea to notify the driver of intent to pass -- click for more pictures

5.20 - Mumbai, first impressions
Slums packed right up to the boundary of the airport, intense eye contact from male passersby, brightly colored traditional women's clothing, tropical plants and air that feels like an oven.  A thick mix of smog and humidity blankets the city.  Big trucks and buses that say HORN OK PLEASE on the back.  Many tuk tuks / autorickshaws buzz past driven by persistent shoeless men.

The smells of development - burning plastic, construction materials, underregulated vehicular exhaust - hint at a country eager to catch up in the global rat race to success and happiness.

Licia at India Gate - click for more photos

5.20
Spicy mango chutney and white processed, individually wrapped cheese on toast, with a juicy alfonso mango, banana cut into museli with warm milk which is somehow, deliciously, more like the consistency of oatmeal, a small cup of coffee with sugar and Tropicana pomegranate juice.  This was my first meal in India, prepared by a friend's mom, Uma, in her house in a northern suburb of Mumbai.  After, she gave us a tour of her shrine, just off the kitchen in their third floor apartment, naming off deities and gurus, "in Hindu households you always find a place for God," she says.

Uma hired a driver who drove us around for an air conditioned view of many sights of southern Mumbai - starting with the India Gate.  Built to commemorate British colonialization, there is no visible or audible hint of any hard feelings. There were lots of people, apparently kids are on school holiday.  Someone with a plastic film camera shot our picture.

We are objects of interest here.  Men stare penetratingly and make me wonder what they're looking for.  Sometimes they break eye contact first if I am able to convey no emotion on my face - a tough exterior which fights my U.S. reflexive smile as a response to two gazes meeting.  Their eyes don't betray anything I can read as desire to connect - no clear compassion, niceness, or willingness to stop for a chat.  I want to see how his expression changes as if I start conversation.

We crossed the street to the Taj hotel, now famous as the survivor of 2008 terrorist attacks.  We took refuge from the intense heat to a restaurant that overlooks the Gate inside the hotel had some traditional chaat (street food/snacks) served gourmet. When Uma insisted on paying, she said the mandate of "treating guests as your God."