Sitting in an Irish pub back in Melbourne watching an Australian Footy League game on the large-screen TV (Kangaroos vs Carlton Blues) I realise that I should have written more about India while I was in India but it was quite a bit to digest. Bombay was renamed Mombai back in 1996 in an apparent ploy for votes. Mombai is the local tongue name whereas Bombay is in the Queen's English. Interestingly many locals are adamant in maintaining usage of Bombay. I have a feeling it is a socio-economic issue.
Heading into the actual city of Mombai during the morning from the outskirts the buildings became more urban, quite unlike the tin shacks that surrounded the hotel. There were still tons of people milling about. There were plenty of advertisements for new cars and home loans and most of all for cell phone providers. There are a good number of Toyotas and other familiar cars on the streets but also a large number of cars by the local manufacturer Tata. Some of the Tata cars are apparently resold as Rovers elsewhere in the world.
On the way to the Taj Mahal Hotel the driver asked us if we'd like to stop at Ghandi's house. Ghandi's house is on a small residential street with other houses that are three and four stories high. It reminded me a bit of Ben Gurion's house in Sde Boker. Along the walls are pictures of Ghandi in various stages of his life. There were pictures of him in South Africa, studying law in the UK, picking up salt from the ground during the Salt March. Now, I don't know what the Salt March was all about but it seems that the ability to use salt in India was once dependant upon what caste you were a part of. The two most interesting things to me were copies of Ghandi's letters to Hitler and Roosevelt. To Hitler he wrote in the late thirties. He said that Hitler was the only person that would be able to stop the impending war. He wrote to Roosevelt in 1942 or so telling him that while the Indians had been careful not to pressure the British while there were busy fighting the Axis that only if the Indians were independant could they take part in helping to end the war. As we went back to the car there were a few people trying to sell us postcards. It was pretty similar to the kids on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Even when the door to the car is closed they knock on it and try to convince you. At the few traffic lights there are also people begging. usually it is young boys or young girls holding their babies. On one occasion one of the beggars was a man with only a stub past his elbow. Besides beggars there were lots of people selling books. Most popular were John Grisham books and copies of the Harvard Business Review on Marketing and Management.
From Ghandi's house we headed to the Taj Mahal Hotel. All in all the Taj Mahal was about an hour drive from our hotel. The Taj Mahal in Mombai is a beautiful hotel. While the Grand Hyatt in Mombai is brand new with high ceilings and large open spaces, the Taj Mahal is much narrower and much more ornate. We were told back at the Hyatt to eat at the Indian restaurant in the Taj Mahal and it was quite good. After dinner we headed across the street to the Gateway to India.
The Gateway to India is a large arch that the British built shortly before being thrown out of India. Picture the Arch de Triumphe in Paris sitting on the edge of the water with the Arabian Sea surrounding it on three sides. As we walked through the parking lot a little boy approached my colleague. "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" "How many brother's and sisters do you have?" "I have the same number!" "Give me some money." I guess I'm callous but I knew from the get-go to just ignore the people trying to talk to me since at the end of the day they are just going to want money. As we went around the end of the arch a man came over with some red and yellow colored yarn. As he tried to put some crystals of salt or something in my hand the little boy was saying "Holy man! No money!" The man repeated the same and assured me that there was no payment needed, he just wanted to give me a blessing. Not that I beleived him but I acquiesed and stood still. He then wrapped a piece of the yarn around my wrist and someon else started to say, "Money not for him, for hungry people." At this point he wanted to put some flower petals in my hand. I started to walk away. He followed me saying "Money for hungry people." They didn't stop following us until we crossed the street and disappeared back into the hotel.
At this point we figured there must be some place in the city that we could wander and look at the shops without being hounded. We ask the concierge and are told that if we went out, turned left, went three blocks, then left again we'd be on the XXXX Causeway. There were shops there were were assured. So we headed out. Not 20 feet along and a woman is trying to tell us that we are going the wrong way. We should come with her. Another woman with a baby said, "Don't beleive her, she lies, I know her," and pointed in the direction that the hotel had told us. As we continued walking she'd look back now and then and smile and nod to reassure us that we were in the right direction. We started to make our way down the road past the shops. There were shops on either side of the sidewalk and it reminded me much of the Arab market in the Old City in Jerusalem. There were shops selling cheap watches, t-shirts and the odd guy selling 'hubbly bubbly'. Now and then a more serious shop selling clothes with a guard at the entrance. At one point we saw a western couple sitting in a shop with Iranian food and the prices were well below what we were paying at the hotels. Other than that couple we saw only one other pair of westerners walking down this street and they were clearly backpackers.
We noticed that the woman with the baby was still ahead of us and looking back every now and then. She stops and lets us catch up to her and asks if we can help her baby. We keep walking and eventually she says, "No money, come over there and buy milk for my baby." We'd learned from the experience with the Holy Man and simply never responded to her and carried on with our stroll. Eventually we find a cross street with the sea at the other end. I figure that if the sea is there then the hotel can't be far. We head down this street and get to the side of the hotel. We walk down the side of the hotel to the first entrance so we can avoid bumping into the crowd at the Gateway to India again.
The most dependable way to get around is to hire a car from your hotel and have the driver either stay near you or give you a number to reach him. As we wouldn't be at the Taj Mahal for long we told the driver to stick around and got his cell phone number. When we were ready for him to come get us we called his phone and within five minutes he was in front of the hotel. We didn't know where to go and I'd forgotten about the plan to head to The Fort so we just said to drive us around a bit. He drove us first to the port. In the port were lots of men, women and children cleaning fish. In groups there were cleaning different types. Some were cleaning off scales while others were cleaning squid. I then noticed that the fish and squid and whatnot were simply on the blackened ground. There was no cloth or canvas or anything under these fish, they were on the asphat or tar or whatnot. When they were done they'd put them in the back of an open dump truck.
From there we headed to the Afghan church and then to an area called Santa Maria. The name stems from a church at the top of the hill in the middle of this neighborhood. The spot we sat at had a beautiful view of the sea and a walkway along the top of the stone wall that ran along the sea. Evenly spaced along the wall were couples. It seems that this is a place where couples of all ages come to gain some privacy and enjoy the beautiful view and each other's company.
As we headed back north towards the hotel the drive asked if we wanted to see the laundry. We were in no rush so we agreed. He took us to a bridge running over some railroad tracks and suddenly stopped at the side and said that we should get out and go look over the other side. Taking our lives in our hands we crossed the road darting between cars and over the other side was a huge area with people doing laundry. There were large stalls to do the laundry, billows of steam rose over pots and in the distance clothes lines with dyed garments all in the same style. The driver told us that in the city there are small shops that take laundry from people then send it here to have it washed before it is delivered back to the shops.
India has a large traffic problem. There are more and more cars and the narrow streets twist and turn through the neighborhoods. Above these main routes they are building raised roads. These roads are about three floors above street level and twist and turn in the same route. They cut down the time for travel since you don't have to go through intersections. In Delhi they are building a raised road like this and we were told that when it is done in three years it will cut time travelling to the center of the city from an hour to eleven minutes!