As the flight was about to land I could see the water below and the high rises, and yes pleasantly a lot of green patches denoting fertility, and more so in today's time, some basic elements of leaning towards a liking for nature. As the flight grounded there was a flurry in spite of the captains announcement to stay seated. That's Mumbai for you, every one is in a hurry, all the time. Forget smelling the roses on your way to the office, people do not even notice roses.
In spite of seeing pervasive fleecing by auto-men in Madras, I decided to follow a non airport attached taxi man and ended up paying thousand rupees for a 15 minute drive in a car that was supposedly an A/C car but with so poor an A/C that the open windows proved more effective in cooling the air. I should have taken an auto, or an airport prepaid taxi. There was a large sticker on the dashboard in Marathi and English that said anyone caught smoking on board would be fined Rs 300, in spite of which there were smoking taxis, autos and even bikes all fumigating the Mumbai streets as if to rid the city of the raging Dengue currently "ravaging" the city as the Times of India chooses to phrase the 4000 odd cases.
The traffic was painful to say it at the least. As the innumerable cars, autos, bikes and buses vied for space and raced ahead amidst all the chaos, the sounds of honking was unbearable. It's like the people of Mumbai have been hardened to noise just like germs get resistant to drugs on persistent usage, and so the sounds need to be kept increasing in intensity and quantity - bikes have horns that normally are found in cars, cars have horns fit for use in trucks and so on. As my driver used a barrage of malicious combinations of curse words I sat staring out at the city. Every road was lined with commercial activities of some sort or the other, hardly were there any other buildings except for the stretch of road that housed shanties opposite the Mumbai University. There was construction and road work going on at intermittent points on the way. The crowds were all maddeningly rushing to work, to make what Mumbai is known to be - the commercial capital of our country. It lives up to that name without a doubt.
There is a bustle about this city, all the time, every day of the week. I took the train from Bandra to Church gate on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The trains are amazingly organized in Mumbai, the nomenclature of the trains are a blessing, add to it aural and visual messages about stations, timings and the such both on and off the trains was fascinatingly done and extremely helpful. I found it strange that a Sunday afternoon would bring so much of a crowd on the train.
At Churchgate I visited the pavement book shops at Flora Fountain and I was awe struck by the collections. First of all there was a vast quantity of books that were used and not pirated, and the titles baffled me. From Madam Bovary to Anna Karenina to Agatha Christie's to Sydney Sheldon's to Dan Brown's to Richard Flanagan's. It was all there. I picked up a good quality "Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, Encounters with Animals by Gerard Durell and "A brief history of the word" by Bill Bryson, all for a price of Rs 600. Going by the blogs of many Mumbaikers it was expensive, but for me it was a bomb! Not only do I not get books this cheap, I don't even get any titles beyond the Chetan Bhagats and Dan Browns. And as I finished my book hunting I came upon the sculpture of the first Indian in the British parliament, Mr Dadabhai Naoroji seated near the book shops looking on belligerently onto the Mumbai traffic.
South Mumbai's road from Chucrhgate to the Gateway of India is a treat for the eyes. The colonial buildings all standing tall with a lot of Britishness still exuding from their facades speak of a bygone era. The sculptures of famous Indian freedom fighters dotting this stretch will remind one of their history classes and decide they needed a brush up on their history lessons. After a nice glass of Hibiscus iced tree from the Starbucks coffee shop I went on to the Gateway of India. Somehow my mind muddled it up with India gate and my friend solemnly with a lot of seriousness corrected me and just in order to not disappoint him further I made sure I got it right after that.We saw the pigeons of the Gateway of India as they quite boldly pecked off grains from onlookers hands and then ran off into the crowd of their fellow pigeons, their heads bobbing, to relish their morsel.
From there we saw the post September 26th famed Taj hotel and the waterway from which the attack began. Post that there was a security check enforced at the Gateway when entering, nobody actually checked us. But seeing the crowd I got a feel of how much damage it would have caused when someone opened fire on the humongous gathering of tourists. Among the various men of the tourist spot was multitudes of photographers carrying cameras as well as printers, and a sole telescope man who had a rather peculiar way of wooing customers. He was petulantly calling to specific customers like they owed him a visit - "Come here now, see this view, Oy come here I say!". It wasn't an invitation, it was a command. I ambled on out of the crowd that was staring out into the waterfront as the ferries carried people on joy rides and started back for Churchgate.
As we walked back to the station we passed the famed Kala Ghoda art district which housed a massive building which we later found was the Jehangir art gallery. And then after a quick 20 minute train ride amidst swathes of men and women huddled around us, packed compactly in a compartment we were expelled at our station on standing at the entrance. We picked an auto and went home. The auto men of Mumbai, in stark contrast to the Chennai breed, are gentlemen, the worst they would do was refuse a ride they felt would deprive of them of better business. They didn't find joy in being pugnacious, nor did they find it amusing to quote ludicrous fares. Metre was the only mode of charging with sporadic cases of sharing on the lines of share auto system.
Mumbai is filled. Streets are filled, autos are filled,offices are filled, everything is filled. Try walking on the road without having to worry about being knocked down from not being careful enough. As I was signalling for an auto to stop, one stopped and before I could approach the auto guy, someone else got in and left as I stared bewildered.
As I sat at office repeating all this to colleagues, one colleague in particular, an expert on Mumbai, told us of all the insider info on the city and what it has to offer. In his voice I could hear unwavering faith to his city and as if to confirm my thoughts he said he was in love with Mumbai, he had gotten better job opportunities and he refused them simply because he had to move from this city. It only reaffirmed my belief that home is where the heart is, no matter what the city looks like, feels like or does to you, if its home, its beautiful.To every man his own. Though I am fascinated by Mumbai and its charms, in spite of its toll on the time of men, I cannot for the life of it imagine a better place than home.
As for me, my hot,steamy mistress Madras awaits my return.
In spite of seeing pervasive fleecing by auto-men in Madras, I decided to follow a non airport attached taxi man and ended up paying thousand rupees for a 15 minute drive in a car that was supposedly an A/C car but with so poor an A/C that the open windows proved more effective in cooling the air. I should have taken an auto, or an airport prepaid taxi. There was a large sticker on the dashboard in Marathi and English that said anyone caught smoking on board would be fined Rs 300, in spite of which there were smoking taxis, autos and even bikes all fumigating the Mumbai streets as if to rid the city of the raging Dengue currently "ravaging" the city as the Times of India chooses to phrase the 4000 odd cases.
The traffic was painful to say it at the least. As the innumerable cars, autos, bikes and buses vied for space and raced ahead amidst all the chaos, the sounds of honking was unbearable. It's like the people of Mumbai have been hardened to noise just like germs get resistant to drugs on persistent usage, and so the sounds need to be kept increasing in intensity and quantity - bikes have horns that normally are found in cars, cars have horns fit for use in trucks and so on. As my driver used a barrage of malicious combinations of curse words I sat staring out at the city. Every road was lined with commercial activities of some sort or the other, hardly were there any other buildings except for the stretch of road that housed shanties opposite the Mumbai University. There was construction and road work going on at intermittent points on the way. The crowds were all maddeningly rushing to work, to make what Mumbai is known to be - the commercial capital of our country. It lives up to that name without a doubt.
There is a bustle about this city, all the time, every day of the week. I took the train from Bandra to Church gate on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The trains are amazingly organized in Mumbai, the nomenclature of the trains are a blessing, add to it aural and visual messages about stations, timings and the such both on and off the trains was fascinatingly done and extremely helpful. I found it strange that a Sunday afternoon would bring so much of a crowd on the train.
At Churchgate I visited the pavement book shops at Flora Fountain and I was awe struck by the collections. First of all there was a vast quantity of books that were used and not pirated, and the titles baffled me. From Madam Bovary to Anna Karenina to Agatha Christie's to Sydney Sheldon's to Dan Brown's to Richard Flanagan's. It was all there. I picked up a good quality "Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, Encounters with Animals by Gerard Durell and "A brief history of the word" by Bill Bryson, all for a price of Rs 600. Going by the blogs of many Mumbaikers it was expensive, but for me it was a bomb! Not only do I not get books this cheap, I don't even get any titles beyond the Chetan Bhagats and Dan Browns. And as I finished my book hunting I came upon the sculpture of the first Indian in the British parliament, Mr Dadabhai Naoroji seated near the book shops looking on belligerently onto the Mumbai traffic.
South Mumbai's road from Chucrhgate to the Gateway of India is a treat for the eyes. The colonial buildings all standing tall with a lot of Britishness still exuding from their facades speak of a bygone era. The sculptures of famous Indian freedom fighters dotting this stretch will remind one of their history classes and decide they needed a brush up on their history lessons. After a nice glass of Hibiscus iced tree from the Starbucks coffee shop I went on to the Gateway of India. Somehow my mind muddled it up with India gate and my friend solemnly with a lot of seriousness corrected me and just in order to not disappoint him further I made sure I got it right after that.We saw the pigeons of the Gateway of India as they quite boldly pecked off grains from onlookers hands and then ran off into the crowd of their fellow pigeons, their heads bobbing, to relish their morsel.
From there we saw the post September 26th famed Taj hotel and the waterway from which the attack began. Post that there was a security check enforced at the Gateway when entering, nobody actually checked us. But seeing the crowd I got a feel of how much damage it would have caused when someone opened fire on the humongous gathering of tourists. Among the various men of the tourist spot was multitudes of photographers carrying cameras as well as printers, and a sole telescope man who had a rather peculiar way of wooing customers. He was petulantly calling to specific customers like they owed him a visit - "Come here now, see this view, Oy come here I say!". It wasn't an invitation, it was a command. I ambled on out of the crowd that was staring out into the waterfront as the ferries carried people on joy rides and started back for Churchgate.
As we walked back to the station we passed the famed Kala Ghoda art district which housed a massive building which we later found was the Jehangir art gallery. And then after a quick 20 minute train ride amidst swathes of men and women huddled around us, packed compactly in a compartment we were expelled at our station on standing at the entrance. We picked an auto and went home. The auto men of Mumbai, in stark contrast to the Chennai breed, are gentlemen, the worst they would do was refuse a ride they felt would deprive of them of better business. They didn't find joy in being pugnacious, nor did they find it amusing to quote ludicrous fares. Metre was the only mode of charging with sporadic cases of sharing on the lines of share auto system.
Mumbai is filled. Streets are filled, autos are filled,offices are filled, everything is filled. Try walking on the road without having to worry about being knocked down from not being careful enough. As I was signalling for an auto to stop, one stopped and before I could approach the auto guy, someone else got in and left as I stared bewildered.
As I sat at office repeating all this to colleagues, one colleague in particular, an expert on Mumbai, told us of all the insider info on the city and what it has to offer. In his voice I could hear unwavering faith to his city and as if to confirm my thoughts he said he was in love with Mumbai, he had gotten better job opportunities and he refused them simply because he had to move from this city. It only reaffirmed my belief that home is where the heart is, no matter what the city looks like, feels like or does to you, if its home, its beautiful.To every man his own. Though I am fascinated by Mumbai and its charms, in spite of its toll on the time of men, I cannot for the life of it imagine a better place than home.
As for me, my hot,steamy mistress Madras awaits my return.
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