Women in Saris catching some shade with the Gateway of India in the background, Mumbai
Crowding
India is a largely rural country, despite Mumbai quickly approaching the largest city in the world status. The country has about 1/3 the land area of the United States, but almost 4-times as many people. It's, um, crowded.
I've had a few people say to me that their big concern about visiting India is the huge groups of people. Obviously, no one likes to feel overwhelmed by a sea of people they don't know or really understand. This is clearly a sensible concern, but my experience has been a bit different. You do seem to SEE people everywhere, but each person or family really want their own space, even if it's not as big as what we are used to.
The only thing I can compare it to is when the President visited Manhattan while I was living there. The sheer number of police that appeared was shocking. They are on every corner of every street. And they make you nervous, even without contraband in your pocket. The police, however, are sometimes bunched up, but are mostly spread out enough to cover about a 20 square block area. They are standing around doing nothing - in extremely impressive fashion.
Now imagine each of those cops as an India man in a loose cotton button-down, or a woman in a colorful sari with a baby in her arms. There feels like a lot of people, but they are spread out and appear to just be there. Not much happening, as if time isn't of serious concern.
To me, this is one of the sides of India. You have the intense rush of traffic - all those ambitious programmers and call center operators we are reading about in The World Is Flat - contrasted against the many poor on the street who simply don't seem to be in much of a rush for anything to happen. Of course, there are also millions of poor people working their hearts out to improve the lives of their family, but that is mostly behind the scenes for the typical tourist.
So you aren't really crowded by any of them, instead you flow into the buzz of traffic -- or you pause, watching, and become part of the scenery.
Traffic
Weaving from the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Bombay, the taxi stops again in traffic. I look to my right and, for once, spot the cause. A man jumps from his old car and runs to the drivers side of the van in front, screaming all the way. They get into a pushing match, with the right rear door of my taxi being one of the ropes on their small ring. The heavy accents shouting in Hindi or Marathi, I begin to worry this will escalate as a crowd seems to be forming around us.
Somehow, the gridlock clears, and my driver calmly moves us forward, while I look back through the window to see the incident continue until the crowd closes in behind us. I ask, "What were they fighting over?" He says that the car in front somehow knocked the bumper off the car behind. The traffic in Bombay is so bad that we rarely go fast enough for the accidents to be worse, though I expect there are dozens of incidents every day fueling more traffic jams.
I flip the newspaper to a large article describing how excited people are about customizing their new Tata Nano car - the cheapest car in history by half. Personalization in India is very common, and I'm sure the economic impact has fueled some of the recent financial boom. Perhaps in the countryside there is room for more cars, but in Bombay and Delhi you won't make it more than a few blocks for any journey if the traffic gets worse. I applaud Tata's attempt to empower India's population with their innovation, but worry it can be counterproductive without a corresponding improvement in infrastructure.
I don't have any pictures that fit this story well, but I do have a fun shot of an elephant walking down the street in Goa...if you look closely, you can see his trunk is decorated!
A Hare Experience
"550 rupees," the young man in the passenger seat of my cab declared with a scowl. I reached for my wallet, and then the slow processing of his accent in my travel worn brain caught up with what he was actually asking me for. He was attempting to charge me over 5-times the normal price for my 30 minute taxi ride from the Bombay domestic airport to my hotel in Juhu. So I laughed, hoping that my apparent ease with his scam would bring him to reality. It didn't, and his eyes showed a serious lack of interest for my well-being. "550 rupees," he repeated....about $14 on what should cost $2.50.
I did have some suspicions this would happen. After I got the taxi from the "legitimate" queue at the airport, we stopped just outside the airport and picked up a young "friend" of the driver's who happened to be in the area. I've found this is fairly common in India, and I've not had an issue before. The 20-year old friend quickly began chatting with me in a friendly, but slightly too inquisitive fashion. I noted that his hair was slicked back with more gel than was typical of people I'd seen, giving him the look of an Indian version of a young Italian mobster - aggressive, even as he smiled to me as asked the usual questions of a tourist. Where was I from? How long was I in India? Had I been to Bombay before? He even played me some Hindi pop songs from his Nokia phone.
My real suspicion came when he asked if I spoke Hindi and shortly after stopped at a "Four Seasons" hotel. I guessed there was a different policy from the Four Seasons in London, as this looked like a complete dump. I had to convince them that I had pre-paid for my room already to get them to take me to the right place. So we arrived, and they were trying to stick me with a sizable bill - by comparison, of course. I'm happy to offer money to people who seem in need, of course, but wasn't too thrilled with funding a night out for these two sleazebags.
The thing to keep in mind here is that the taxi and autorickshaw fairs in Bombay are in constant flux depending on inflation, the severity of the monsoon, and a number of other factors that I can't pretend to understand. So the driver has a standardized meter accompanied by a conversion card that tells you by what multiple to increase the fair. So the correct response in this situation is to immediately ask to see the conversion card, pay the amount you calculate, and get out of the taxi. Even if they protest, chances are that the police would side with the knowledgeable tourist in this situation. Keep in mind, however, that printing fake conversion cards is big business, so even that approach isn't perfect.
I was a bit shocked by the price, since I'd paid only 400 rupees ($10) for my hotel room in Goa the night before, and so that "correct" approach didn't occur to me until later. Instead, I tried to bargain with them, starting with the generous offer of 200 rupees, already twice what I thought the fair should be. The slicked-back hair friend continued to insist that 550 rupees was the price. The driver said very little, occasionally giggling to himself....exposing himself as the less experienced con artist of the pair.
So I tried another strategy that's worked for me before - I pulled out 250 rupees and tried to just hand it to them, thinking they would just see the money and go for the bird in hand. No luck, and he continued to insist. Since these were young, thin guys, and I am significantly larger than them, the next "I should have done" thing that came to me later was to grab my bags, drop the money and just get out of the cab. Maybe even saying something dashing like, "if you want the rest, come out and get it!" That's assuming they'd see my towering height and just drive off. But I'm not that cool (or that tough). Plus, I worried that I wouldn't be able to get my big backpack out of the cab fast enough before they grabbed it from me and sped off as I was tumbling out.
He eventually offered me the low, low price of 500 rupees, and I realized that time was on my side - I was losing nothing by just sitting there, while they were missing out on the chance to extort other tourists. So I sat and refused. That started to work, and we eventually settled on 350 rupees. I was still unhappy giving them so much extra, but I knew that when I stepped out of the cab, that would be the end of it, and closure on the conflict was important to me. I left with a parting word that this was bad baksheesh, using the local word for tipping or bribe (depending on the context). This was my feeble attempt to make them feel shame for ripping off tourists....I'm pretty sure it didn't work.
I walked up to the high security Hare Krishna complex and asked for their Iskon hotel. I was pointed to a tall, very pink, bizarrely rounded building attached to the temple, and I entered to the overpowering music of tambourines, cymbals, and many voices chanting "Hare, Hare Krishna!"
The temple itself is a large, ornate structure where you check your sandals outside before entering. There are three main sections at the front with what appear to be museum exhibits in them. These are actually shrines where followers will pause in front, say a prayer, and provide a small offering.
I did that, then made my way through and bought some small cakes at the bakery around the back and attempted to fit in while the locals mingled outside in the courtyard. I was approached by two Indian men whose faces lit up as they came near me. They wore bright smiles and the joy in their eyes instantly made me calm after my confrontation in the taxi. One pulled out a camera and asked, "Please could you be for picture with us?" I smiled and agreed with a laugh while they quickly tracked down a friend to be photographer. After the picture with our big smiles and Krishna pastries, a young Indian man sitting nearby said (in a startling American accent):
"Indians still are surprised by your white faces, man."
"Ha, yeah, I think my height was a bit surprising to them as well."
"Yeah, Indian guys are short as anything!"
For me, this seems to show my experience in India. There are many negative encounters with cold, hard people who will do anything to get the change in your pocket, but if you don't let that stop you, the next turn will have people filled with warmth and laughter. And even that joy can be overwhelming, but it's a pleasure that I believe is unique to India and I anxiously await my next journey.
The other part that made this trip exciting for me was that I picked up the amazing novel Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. If you'd like to learn more about the Bombay underworld through Roberts' sensitive, inquisitive eye, I strongly recommend this book. The story is at once shocking and fascinating, and as I near the end now, I'm wishing it could go on for another 950 pages. As one Amazon reviewer suggests, consider picking it up at the used book store, if you can, as Roberts spent much of his astonishing life as a wanted man and serious criminal, so you may want to think twice before directly supporting him.
Also, I found this article on the Paradox of Mumbai very interesting. It touches on the huge variety of religions found there, something that shapes the daily life of every person in the city.
Cheers,
Dan
