Namaste. A greeting in India to show respect to the other person. This seemed like the best way to start this entry.
This will be a particularly long Blog entry because there is so much to say about Mumbai. So, just read the parts you are interested in. I’ll start with a short history and a few quick facts about India and then Mumbai.
India is about 1,270,000 square miles. English is widely spoken and is the business language – with 21 other languages. 81% of the people are Hindu and 13% Muslim. Delhi is the capital of the country which is a Federal Republic. The currency is a rupee.
Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and is the most populous and cosmopolitan city in India with 20 million people. It is the commercial capital as well and houses important financial institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies. It is the largest seaport town in western India with 40% of all of India’s imports.
Now for our day. We took the four hour Marvels of Mumbai tour to experience the highlights of this city. Fortunately we did this on an air conditioned bus since it was 95 degrees and high humidity. And with the traffic and driving patterns, we were glad we were not driving. Road lanes are merely and suggestion for traffic. Someone said you need a good horn, good brakes and good luck. That pretty much sums it up!
I will describe the true highlights of this tour, since we passed many places in the bus, but did not stop for photos, etc. Our first brief photo stop was in front of the Victoria Terminus railway station. It is a huge conglomerate of domes, spires, minarets, and Corinthian columns - a Victorian Gothic style that is way overdone. And it is big serving 5 1/2 million people daily! A train leaves/arrives every 45 seconds. I had to buy a postcard of it – it was too large to get a good photo – and you couldn’t step out into the street without getting run over. I would have liked to have seen the inside even if it probably would have been overwhelming.
We took a drove down Marine Drive which goes all along the curving coast of this city. There are cricket fields, high rise hotels and condos, restaurants and shops all along this street. It basically ends at Chowpatty Beach which is not a swimming beach as much as a gathering beach for friends, mainly in the evening. I will write more about Marine Drive later since we did this by night as well.
We next passed Malabar Hill. Next time I hope to spend more time in this area. While we didn’t see this, we saw pictures and heard about it in the port lecture. From the top there is a good view of the coastal area. There is also a botanical like setting with sculpted Hanging Gardens. For children, there is a huge wooden shoe for them to play in and around near this area. But I found the most interesting the Towers of Silence. There are 7 towers (surrounded by walls so you can’t see them) where the Parsis people put their dead instead of burying them. Men, women and children are all on different towers. They are left for the vultures to devour them. It is a part of their religious practice.
While this sounds gruesome (and it is!), the guide on our bus was a Parsis. She told us a lot about her people. Originally these people arrived to escape Muslim persecution. They are now a small group of people – only about 140,000 in the world, with 50,000 in Mumbai. Vancouver has the 2nd greatest population of them. They worship the elements of nature. They consider fire to be the highest source of energy, so they keep a fire burning in their temple 24 hours a day. They value education and believe the greatest gift that they can give their children is an education. They live in their own small communities and no one else is allowed to live there. While they are small in size, they are hugely influential – far, far beyond their number. They provided the funding for many school, hospitals, etc. in Mumbai and are responsible for much of its economic growth.
Our next stop was the most interesting of all. It’s called the Dhobi Ghats – which is really a vast open aired public laundry. Dhobi means a washer man and Ghats is a public laundry.
There are about 5,000 men (only) doing the wash in this place daily. Each Dhobi rents a concrete open cubicle from City Hall and also the water used for washing. These men are illiterate. Each day laundry is picked up from hotels and homes in the Mumbai area and brought to the Ghats where they are washed, hung to dry, and then ironed (by the women) before they are returned to the owners. Only a number system is used – no names on anything. And this system works really well. It is labor intensive as the dhobis take the clothes, wash them on the concrete by slapping them against it. And it is amazing the clothes come out clean, looking at the water they are using. But they do. We saw the whites hanging on the lines – and they were really clean! These people are very poor and live in the shanties next to the ghats.
The next stop was Mani Bhaven – now a museum honoring Gandhi. It was his home for a while between 1917 and 1934. It is the place where Gandhi conversed with his colleagues and inspired his followers to the ideals of truth and non-violence. It was also where he was arrested in his tent on the terrace in January 1932. It houses lots of photographs, research books, and letters he wrote. Two interesting letters he wrote that are framed are ones to Hitler and President Roosevelt requesting they consider non-violence. On the second floor they show what used to be his living room and working place including his spinning wheel and antiquated telephone. Adjoining this room is the exhibition depicting his life through clay mini figures in about 28 tableaux. Mumbai University uses this place for research since it has over 50,000 books in its library.
In contrast to this home museum, our next stop was the Prince of Wales Museum with its garden setting. It is called this because King George V (also known as the Prince of Wales) laid the foundation stone in 1905. The architecture is a combination of Hindu and Muslim style. It has 3 floors. We spent about 45 minutes looking around on our own. One of its main attractions is its exquisite miniatures which was closed for restoration. However, we did see many interesting exhibits about the deities and stone statues. One was an original from the Elephanta Caves we are going to visit tomorrow.
Around noon, from the bus, we saw tiffin wallahs. These are the people who deliver hot lunches (made at home) to the office workers in the city.
They are put in stacking tins (called tiffins) and then tied to the bike or motorcycle of the person making the delivery. Again, no names are on these – just color and number coded. After lunch, the wallahs return, pick up the empty tiffins, and return them to the homes again. This system is 99.9% effective. It is amazing!
On the water stands an icon of Mumbai – the Taj Mahal Hotel. It was here that the bombing and fires were set about a year ago. Most of the hotel is now fully renovated – all the public places. However, there is great security to get in – and you can only get in through the front. It is a beautiful building.
Across from it is the Gateway of India – one of the city’s most famous landmarks. It was built in 1924 to commemorate a visit by King George V and Queen Mary.
We drove through many market areas which were crammed with people selling their goods. Some are in air conditioned stores, but for the most part, the “shops” are small cubicles lined up one after the other. Others just sell from the streets. And, of course, the tour ended with time for shopping in some of the government approved stores.
After the tour, Doug and I went to the Taj Hotel for an Indian lunch. It was a very special treat. Our server helped us decide what to have since most of the items on the menu were not ones we see back in the States. Between us we had a lamb and basmati rice dish, a chicken curry, and garlic Nan bread. For dessert we tried their version of an individual baked Alaska. The whole meal was wonderful and the service was superb. Our server brought us complimentary coffee so we could try the Indian style. After he added the sugar, he took the two cups and poured back and forth between the two to mix the sugar. However, it was with great flair and with his arms spread as wide apart as he could make them . . . and he didn’t spill a drop! It was quite the ending to an excellent meal and experience. To think we were actually eating Indian food in India!!! Wow!!!
After checking out the shops in the hotel, we wandered the streets, in and out of some smaller shops. But it was so hot and sticky, we decided to go back to the ship and cool down. At the terminal, however, we did poke around a bit more making some purchases before boarding the ship.
A shower never felt so good and refreshing. After a quick snack, we got ready for our evening ship excursion called the Queen’s necklace. It was a bus ride on Marine Drive to see the lights around the harbor that resemble a necklace since the harbor and city are on a curve. We turned back around at Chowpatty Beach, which was very different at night than in the day. There were lots of people gathered there to talk and enjoy the evening together. Also, they had lots of snack shops open. As our guide said, the Indians love their food, and that was evident throughout the entire day. It was interesting to see some of the same sights at night – all lit up. We only wish we had been able to stop and get out of the bus to take a picture of all the lights. However, there were so many more people out at night, I guess it would have been rather difficult for our buses to let us off.
Back at the ship, the ship’s entertainment was the Kala-Bhairavi Indian Cultural show. It was a great show with dances and songs by young men and women in colorful costumes – very energetic and fast paced.
Around 11 p.m. we went back into the terminal to make calls back home. Because of the time change, it is hard to find a good time to call the States. We were lucky to get hold of everyone except for Ted. It was in the middle of everyone’s work day. After that we crashed because we knew we had another full day tomorrow.
Poverty in India is significant. I will deal with that in tomorrow’s entry.
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