Travel 2013: Mumbai

People living in shacks and cooking over fire, taken out of a room with A/C and a flatscreen TV - click for more photos

5.21 - Mumbai

The first thing I smell in the morning is the faint but definitive thick scent of burning plastic.  The hard bed provided a balance of comfort and support to sleep well and not have an achy back.  We had the luxury of air conditioning for most of the night, but waking up without it means hot, frizzy hair and a grease-shined face.

Colonization here by the British is much different than it was in the U.S.  At least the way I see it, most Indians don’t bear physical resemblance to the British, whereas the majority of U.S. citizens have European descent – at least for now, before “latinos” take over the majority position.

My sister and I are staying at my friend’s parent’s (and grandparent’s) house, who own their own business.  They have a nice, clean, new car (where, by the way back seat belts are not compulsory and therefore do not have a hole to click it in to) and a big apartment – not crowded with stuff or technology. A wooden swing is the living/dining room separator – bars on the windows on the third floor.  Our temporary bedroom looks out to the construction of another neighboring tower. 

Uma asked us first thing in the morning what we’re doing still lounging in bed – “come out and make yourself at home.” She then proceeded to sweep the room and the rest of the house with a  small, short natural fiber broom. Breakfast was idly (kind of a soft rice paddy) and tomato coconut chutney; we talked about how globalization and development is, in the man of the house’s words “eroding the character of India.”

We took a $2 A/C bus with a TV and “tequila” song playing to downtown Mumbai. Building stories are propped up with bamboo and rebar sticking out like candles on the birthday cake for a 200 year old.  Extreme poverty butts up to the roadside: garbage, stray dogs, naked children squatting in the dirt.  The periodic rivers are littered with brightly colored plastic wrappers picked at by tall, leggy white shorebirds.  We mostly receive unabashed staring, kids’ warm, dark, curious eyes included, though not all are as friendly.