The Shores of India
Nov. 3, 2007
Bombay, India
India, at last. That legendary land which is the quintessence of all things exotic and foreign, like an unexpected green god who turns up at the dinner table with eight arms and glittering ruby eyes -- Shiva, with his necklace of skulls -- performing the dance that created the universe.
It’s a place reputed to be almost supernatural in its strangeness. All my life I’ve dreamed of coming here, believing that you can’t really call yourself a traveler until you have this jewel in your crown. When I first started traveling as a young man, this was the ultimate destination -- the end of the long trail through the world.
My first sight of India is that of a towering cloud bank over the coast, rising eight miles high or so in brilliant white with a wide cloud top that gives the appearance of a flat roof over a vast temple. Then, from my jet window, I see a rainbow plunging into green canyons and mountains that run far out of sight. These certainly seem to be auspicious signs...
Then, rearing up from the green comes a forest of hundreds of rotting high rise apartments -- streaked diarrhea brown and smoggy gray -- with the earth rushing up to reveal people scrambling by the thousands on the streets below and a landslide of slums tumbling for miles past the airport. This is Bombay, baby -- or Mumbai, if you like -- one of the biggest cities in the world.
The Baby in the Street
Nov. 3, 2007
Bombay, India
The first thing I see as my taxi rounds the corner from the airport is a baby crawling just a foot from the curb of a five-lane highway where thousands of three-wheeled tuk-tuks and old beater Fiat taxis stampede in a mad rush.
The baby’s family is chatting on the sidewalk; their ramshackle home, built of old junk, spills to the edge of the curb like a tipped-over trash can. No one is paying the baby a lick of attention as we speed by, but it looks happy enough, crawling around in the grime.
I practically jump out of my skin on the hour-long ride into town. The sensory overload of sight, sounds and smells seems almost too much to bear. The route looks like it’s been through an aerial bombardment, with people lounging without a care in the filth and trash lining the tin roofs of their homes and along the crumbling sidewalks.
But these are some of the better homes, because soon there are warrens of slums with kids running naked through dirt lanes, and then the homeless street people, propped up against weary old walls with all their possessions spread out on the sidewalk. There looks to be thousands of these folks, bedding down for the night on the sticky, black sidewalks. I see toddlers playing in the street who can’t be more than four years old, jumping around amid the reckless traffic that rips past in a river of rolling metal.
And there are no traffic rules here, by the way -- we run red lights and blast through intersections in a game of ‘chicken’ that’s standard operating procedure here. As in Cairo, lane dividers and traffic lights are meaningless.
Being a rookie here, I’ve opted not to stay at an $8 per night guesthouse out in the urban boondocks because I think the lower end of Bombay might be a bit overwhelming. Instead, I’m roosting at a three-star hotel, tucked into a side street in the Fort district.
Yet even here, there are people sleeping on the street just outside the door. Here in the gathering darkness is a young mother, as thin as a beggar’s chicken with the look of a kicked dog in her eyes. At her feet are her two daughters, a baby and a three-year-old, sleeping on rags and a mat of cardboard. It pierces my heart, knowing that they are the same age as my granddaughters.
Determined to eat as little meat as possible (on the advice of some Indian travelers), I find an all-veg restaurant and have a meal of curried veggies and ginger-garlic rice for about $2.50 -- the price of a cup of coffee back home.
Outside, I give a coin to an old man in rags and he offers me a blessing. I perceive that he is some kind of monk or guru. He scrutinizes the coin and makes a bow with clasped hands and beams with a pure inner fire, his eyes lighting up with an incandescent spirit. For a moment I bathe in his brilliant inner light.
“Thanks,” I mumble. “Have a good one.” Turning, I walk off into the darkness.
Land of the Helpful Harrys
Nov. 4, 2007
Bombay, India
There’s nothing like getting lost on the streets of old Bombay at night to make a chap feel electrifyingly alive -- especially when it a pounding downpour unloads just when you’re at the point of despair.
I walk the streets from dawn to way past dark, joining the throng of millions. How many people, no one seems to know. Officially, Bombay has a population of 15 million, but one restaurateur tells me there are an additional 25 million undocumented residents for a total of 40 million.
For decades, the poor farmers of India have been fleeing to the cities to escape the chains of debt that bind generations of families. Currently, there’s a suicide epidemic among the farmers in India who despair of drought and debt -- tens of thousands have killed themselves by drinking pesticide. It’s said to be a horrible death -- rips your guts out. Others simply drop everything and flee with their families to live on the streets of Bombay, Calcutta or Delhi.
Built on what is literally a landfill, this town has been passed around for centuries, starting with Hindu fishermen who fished a small archipelago of islands 1,000 years ago, then their Muslim conquerors who ceded the port to the Portuguese. The Portuguese named it Bom Bahia or “Good Bay,” and then gave it to the British as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, who married Charles II in 1662. Today, it has been renamed Mumbai after an age-old tribal goddess named Mombadevi.
My exploration of Bombay includes making the night scene at Chowpatty Beach for a mango lahsi, India’s popular yogurt drink. There must be at least 10,000 people gathered on the beach in the dark, bathed in the sherbet pink and orange light radiating from the huts of a dozen food vendors. I saw the so-so Gate of India, a much-touted arch on the waterfront built to honor the visit of King George V in 1911. It was here on the Apollo Bunder dock that tens of thousands of British soldiers and merchants arrived to plunder India over the centuries. I also poked around Elephanta Island, checking out the temples, and marched around the labyrinth of the Crawford Market.
It’s a bit spooky getting lost after dark in the tangle of streets between Chowpatty Beach and my hotel in an alley behind Bombay Hospital. I feel lost in a bee hive or an ant hill, teeming with endless unwinding coils of people. Surely, Edgar Allan Poe would have appreciated the horror of being buried alive in all of these people, I think, wandering past a train station which buzzes with humanity. The nuclear sun going down behind the station casts thousands of commuters in a searing backlight, rendering their bodies indistinct in shades of brown and red, like a vision of souls percolating in hell. The buzz, the hive, the endless faces and limbs and the skitter of bodies in the dark, seem almost overwhelming to a small-town boy like me.
I manage to find what must be the only lonely stretch of road in the entire city -- it’s completely dark and a seems like a great place to get jumped. It takes me hours of wandering a labyrinth of streets, alleys and paths before finding my hotel in the rain. I feel as if I’m swimming through a river of people flitting past one-another in the darkness. I try to wave down the stream of taxis passing by in the rain, but no one stops.
The trip across the city includes walking past many homeless people making their dinners on the street, who give me a cheery hello. Some of these folks are covered head to foot in dirt, but they manage to look pretty happy, just sitting on the sidewalk, making a new life in the big city.
I should sleep with them on the street, if only to exercise my half-assed credentials as a journalist. Jack London did as much during his Down And Out days of living in the ghettos of the East End in London. But I don’t get it together to make it happen. Also, I suspect that I’d have to stay awake the entire night, since the word would soon be telegraphed that a wealthy Westerner was camping out. There’s a thin line between being an adventurer and a fool.
For the most part, I’m the only Westerner on these crowded streets. I take few photos because I’m intimidated by the human tide coming at me from all directions and am mindful that I may be a target for pickpockets in these crowded streets. Plus, it’s hard to take photos when everyone’s looking at you -- hundreds of eyes sweep over me, wondering, perhaps, why the tall Anglo is walking far off the tourist track.
By the way, my sincere apologies to Cairo for calling it filthy. That immaculate jewel of Egypt is spic and span compared to Bombay. There are no trash cans anywhere here, not even in Colaba, the “classy” tourist part of town. Even Elephanta Island, one of Bombay’s premier tourist attractions, is strewn with trash as a result of the prevailing attitude: people just toss litter wherever they happen to be standing, creating a patina of grimy trash, excrement, urine and sticky gunk, cooking in the dense smog and 90-degree heat.
The Indians are meticulous about their hygiene and clothing, but don’t seem to give a damn about what happens beyond the confines of their own bodies (India’s intellectuals have puzzled over the fact that there is no civic spirit of public cleanliness here, according to journalist Suketu Mehta in his book, Maximum City). Besides, it would be pointless to have trash cans, because millions of homeless people would just tip them over to grub for scraps. As a result, everyone just throws their trash into the street.
The next morning, you might see some little old lady out cleaning up the mess with a willow broom -- perhaps the only thing that keeps India from disappearing beneath an ocean of trash.
I’m starting to look past the filth, however; Egypt was a good warmup and I don’t feel as flipped out as I expected. I’ve heard stories of backpackers being paralyzed with temporary agoraphobia by India’s overwhelming freakout -- they stay locked in their hotel rooms, afraid to hit the streets. Maybe I’m tougher than I thought, I think with some satisfaction. After awhile, you just block it out -- I’m sure the Indians don’t even see the trash they’re wading through.
***
A couple of times I put my ugly face on to say, “What are yew lookin’ at?” when some punk stares at me too long. Said this to some kid sniffing a vaporous substance like gas or glue at a cricket match and he responded with some hostile stoned babble, with a crowd of his teenage mates looking on in amusement. After awhile, it occurs to me that it might be a cool idea to get back in the fold of the ‘tourist bubble’ where I’m not such an oddity.
But having spent my college days living in Detroit’s inner city, I’m somewhat immune to the more intimidating side of Bombay. It’s a big dump, but not what I’d call scary.
Safety is a concern for any traveler, especially if you’re alone in a country where you don’t speak the language. If you get into trouble, you’re sure to be considered a pain in the ass by the local constables. Basically, you’re on your own.
Common sense and a healthy streak of skepticism are the traveler’s best defense against assault and a plethora of con games.
For instance, my friend Jim Hanson made the mistake of getting buzzed on wine and walking around the streets of Rome late at night some years ago as a 19-year-old backpacker. Someone hit him over the head from behind with a wine bottle and left him bleeding in the gutter. Jim woke up in a pool of blood with his pack, passport and all of his money stolen. He had a terrible time getting home to the States.
In Nicaragua of this year, I talked to a college-aged American backpacker who made the mistake of opening his pack in the notorious Managua bus station to find some change to tip a cab driver. “All of a sudden, everyone in the station swarmed me and stole everything in my pack,” he said. “I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I had most of my money in my pack and they got it all, along with all of my other stuff.”
Fortunately, he had friends in-country who were able to bail him out.
I too have been a victim of my own carelessness. While returning from a day of hiking around the Moorish fortress of Sintra in Portugal in the early ‘90s, I got on a crowded subway car in Lisbon. The car was packed, but I was still too busy rhapsodizing over the beauty of the favorite haunt of the poet Lord Byron to take much notice of my surroundings.
Wedged in like a cigarette in a full pack on the subway car, I suddenly felt hands restraining my arms, with other hands going through my pockets. “Hey, someone’s trying to rip me off!” I yelled, but none of the miserable subway riders took action, even though I’m sure they could easily translate my distress into Portuguese. For them it was just another ‘shit happens’ moment on the Lisbon tube.
Not knowing what to do, I got off at the next station and cradled my head in my hands on a bench. Oh fucking hell! -- surely Lord Byron would have said the same thing -- my passport and train ticket were gone, although I still had my money belt and all of my cash under my pants. What would I do? I knew it was horrendously difficult to replace a passport overseas and there was no way of crossing any border without it.
A few minutes later, a kid in his early teens sauntered around the corner of the underground station and handed me my passport. “Obrigado, obrigado,” I mumbled. Five minutes after that, he returned and gave me my train ticket -- the teenage gang of pickpockets had decided that my ticket and passport were of no use to them and took pity on a lone traveler. For their kindness, I pulled a bill from hiding and gave them the equivalent of $15 U.S.
On another occasion, while bumming around Europe in my teens, I was attempting (unsuccessfully) to catch the ferry from Palermo, Sicily to Tunisia in North Africa when I met a beautiful young gypsy girl at the ticket office.
“Can you help me?” she said. “I’m here all alone with nowhere to stay until my father and uncle arrive on the boat tomorrow. Could you stay with me on the beach tonight? I’m afraid to be by myself.”
She was a dark-eyed beauty with long, sleek hair, about 15 years old, and I thought with horror of this vulnerable girl cowering on the beach alone that night. Palermo was a sinister place, full of sleazy young mafioso types lounging on every street corner. Stone greaseballs who gave me the evil eye and a curling lip at every turn. But I had already bought a train ticket on my way back to Italy and wasn’t anxious to hang around Palermo. Owing to my long hair and ratty torn jeans, the ferry officials had denied me passage to Tunisia unless I paid a $50 deposit, and I didn’t have the money to spare. I barely had enough left to make it across the continent to the airport in Luxembourg. With my heart breaking with regret, I begged off and caught the train.
I always wondered whatever happened to that poor girl at the ferry terminal, torturing myself that I hadn’t been her Sir Galahad and imagining that she got raped on the beach. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that it had all been a setup. Of course it had -- no family from her culture would have let such a treasure wander around Palermo on her own. More likely, she was the bait for a naive young American backpacker, with the reward being a good shit-kicking and a robbery down on the beach that night.
Since then, I’ve come to realize that anytime a stranger asks me for help in a foreign land with some tale of desperation, it’s probably a con game. Would I ask a Japanese or French tourist for help if I were in a jam back home? Of course not -- I’d seek help from my friends and family. The same logic applies overseas.
Another strategy for safety that I learned from my days as a student in Detroit is looking over my shoulder every 100 feet when I’m in a risky neighborhood. Turning around and taking a good look identifies anyone who may be following you and puts them on notice that you’ve got their number. Or, lets you know it’s time to run...
It’s a habit I put to use while wandering the streets of Bombay late at night; but I’m cheered to find that no one seems the least bit interested in giving me a hard time.
***
I read two depressing bestsellers on Bombay to prepare for the trip: Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts and Maximum City. Both authors went on and on about how this city is crawling with gangsters, pimps, whores, murderers, bombers, religious fanatics (ie. Hindu nuts who will gladly set you on fire with a can of gasoline if you’re a Muslim), and hit men who hire out for $5 or less. But both authors also swore they love this place, saying there’s nothing so grand as lively old Bombay.
Personally, I think there’s nothing more butt-ugly than crummy old Bombay, but that honor, I’ve heard, goes to Delhi, up north of here.
And far from gangsters, I’ve found that this is the land of the Helpful Harry.
I was walking down the street yesterday when some guy came up to me and said, “Excuse me sir -- there’s a wasp in your ear.”
“Wasp?”
“Yes, wasp, I help.”
Oh my God -- I’ve heard of bugs crawling in your ear and this is the buggy tropics. Is it possible there’s a tiny wasp in my ear? But it turns out this guy was saying there’s “wax in your ear” and wanted to dig it out with a metal sliver. He actually stuck the thing in my ear.
What the fuck! “Get the hell away from me!” I yelled, fleeing down the street. But I soon perceived that earwax removers are an honorable profession in India, and other people were having the procedure done on the sidewalk. He was just being a Helpful Harry.
“Do you want a giant balloon, sir?” a vendor asks, waving what appears to be a bouquet of eight-foot-long condoms. No thanks. “Would you like a spirograph to make little circles on paper, sir?” No. “Would you like a dress, sir?” No. “Drink?” No. “Jewelry?” No. “Postcard?” No. “Are you sure you don’t want a postcard, sir?” No. “Very nice postcard?” No, no. “A mat to lie on sir?” No.
You can’t go 100 feet in the tourist part of town without Helpful Harry appearing by your side. Just now, I was looking at the sign outside the internet cafč and a Helpful Harry appeared. “That is internet cafč, sir,” he said, pointing.
“Yeah, thanks -- I got that.”
Hazards, crime, problems, warnings, danger, etc. All of the above as mentioned in this essay, but basically the tourist zones of Mumbai (Colaba, south Central, etc.) seem quite safe, barring the occasional Pakistani terrorist shoot-out at the Taj Hotel of course. The biggest problems you're likely to incur is the incessant hassle of hawkers and taxi cab scams.
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