There were a few highlights to one of my favorite trips in India so far, and Drushya was certainly one of them.
She is a super cool girl who I met while working for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Sitting in the same office for about a month, we quickly became close friends. Together we giggled lots during and after work hours, smoked a few hookahs, danced up several monsoon storms, and got freebies from overly flirtatious waiters. Unfortunately for me, her internship ended much sooner than mine, and she had to return to college in Pune, located 2 flying hours away from Delhi. But thankfully, Pune is only 150 km away from Mumbai, which I was going to visit. So, to add a few more stories into our memory piggybank, we chose a weekend and got our travel tickets – I for a 2-hour flight from Delhi to Mumbai and Dryusha for a 3-hour train ride from Pune to Mumbai.
2. Itinerary and Pictures
Our itinerary was well crafted by another lovely Indian friend of mine, Richa, who had lived in Mumbai for over 2 years. The to-do list consisted of the following:
1) a few prayers and an embarrassing fall-down on my ass (it was slippery) at Haji Ali, a stunning mosque located on an islet that extends into the Arabian Sea
2) a four-hour tour around Dharavi, the biggest slum in Asia, organized by a charity; all proceeds go into building schools, medical clinics, and community centers
3) a comical play at the centre for the performing arts (made even funnier due to the Indian accent)
4) a club (of course!)
5) a visit to the Gate of India
6) a shopping spree in Colaba (a neighborhood in the south of Mumbai with a variety of cheap stalls)
7) a drool at the most expensive hotel in India, the Taj Mahal Hotel (the one that was bombed in 2008)
8) a promenade along the so-called Queens’ Necklace (a C-shaped road around the coast which lights up beautifully at night)
9) and a meal of street bhelpuri (Mumbai’s famous puffed rice dish with potatoes and tamarind sauce)
3. Elaboration on the Execution
While getting a pre-paid taxi at the airport, a few police officers were very happy to assist me and ensure that I am not attacked by local touts. It amazed me how well Mumbai is fighting with the tout phenomena. In most Indian cities, there is an extremely high chance that somebody is going to try to rip you off by, say, charging you 2,000 rupees for visiting a temple (entrance to any place of worship is free, by the way). Every time I get back to Delhi from my weekend trips, the rickshaw drivers at the train station try to quote quadruple the price that it takes to get to my flat. There are also various commission schemes in which a driver takes you to a shop and gets a cut from the amount that you spend there. Hence, I was really surprised that there wasn’t anything like that in Mumbai, even though the city is one of the most visited places by travelers. I guess the government finally realized that in order to bring in tourists – and with them, dollars – touting has to be eliminated.
During my drive to Haji Ali, I had my eyes glued to the window, marveling at the clean and green Mumbai. I was shocked! I expected it to be very dirty and full of chaos, as most financial capitals in the world are. Instead, I saw a variety of exotic trees lavishly blooming around modern glass buildings. The roads weren’t bumpy, and unlike Delhi, there were sidewalks for people to stroll along.
After a few prayers at the ladies’ compartment in the mosque and another taxi ride, Drushya and I met at our guest house. The price of 6 dollars per person per night was microscopic given the cleanliness of the place and the strategic location in the middle of downtown.
We showered, loaded ourselves up with some delicious butter chicken, and set out for the slum tour.
Dharavi slum is one of the biggest in Asia as it hosts an estimated 1 million working poor. It’s a whole different world out there, and I have a hard time describing it. On one hand, you see poverty; decrepit shacks, a.k.a. ‘homes’, are filled filth, dirt, and stench; skeletal, malnourished children with their skin covered in spots of some disease; there are no bathrooms…none; garbage and excrements fill the river canal; electricity cords hang freely everywhere, ready to electroshock the unlucky; children sit in dark rooms sewing yet another shirt that will be sold for $79 US in some fancy North-American mall; sheep are skinned for yet another Gucci purse; half-used disposable soaps that you get at fancy hotels are melted and made into more disposable soaps, again to be used in the same fancy hotels; fabrics are waxed first and then dyed in different colours in rooms that are too hot for human existence….I could keep going on and on about how appalling the living conditions are, but there is also a bright side to Dharavi and it’s certainly worth mentioning.
First of all, it’s a very tightly-knit community of people. Even though the working conditions are stratospheres below any imaginable standards, there is a minimum wage of 120 rupees ($2.5 CA) per day of work. Pay-per-piece structures are also prevalent, and those who work harder are compensated. People can then send the money back to the villages where they came from; there, they used to make 60 rupees a day. Even though it is the destination of garbage, nothing in the slum gets wasted away. Every piece of plastic and every shard of metal are recycled and resold. Reality Travel Tours, the organization that runs the tours around Dharavi, has built a school and a community centre where they run various educational programs. So, as sad as the conditions appear, I do feel that there is a light at the end of this tunnel, and hopefully in a decade or two, things will look differently.
Later that night, joined by two American tourists we met during the slum tour, we decided to be the biggest hypocrites and indulge in a little bit of Mumbai’s nightlife. When we entered Redlight Club (no connection to Redlight district), I almost felt like crying. We had just paid 750 rupees to get in and the place was utterly and completely deserted. As I realized that the DJ was playing exclusively techno, I wished I had brought a big towel to wipe my tears. To drown my sorrows, I decided to go all Russian with my drink and got a lethal and disgusting concoction of vodka, Kahlua, and Red Bull. I might as well have shoved two fingers up my throat. Twenty minutes and a few forceful gulps later I said “never again am I drinking this rat poison” and got myself a more reliable Smirnoff Ice. As the liquids went down and the clock hands approached midnight, the DJ smartened up and started playing hip hop. By 12:30am Drushya and I were rocking on the now-extremely-busy dance floor with our usual intensity. By 2am the place was so crowded that I couldn’t move my fingers without poking somebody. After the lights came on around 2:30am, we proclaimed the night to have been ‘super fun’ and proceeded to finish it off with a walk around the stunning Queen’s necklace.
We spent the next day wandering around and shopping. In the afternoon, after I saw Drushya off to Pune (with high hopes to see her again in this lifetime, be it in India, Canada, US, or anywhere else), I decided to walk by Mumbai’s University.
If you think U of T is pretty, wait till you see U of Mumbai. Judging by the architecture, the only degree you could potentially pursue there is Bachelor’s of Sorcery. I’ve never read Harry Potter, but I’ve played the computer game. I recall flying the poor Harry on a broom around his enchanted campus, and believe it or not, Mumbai’s campus looks exactly like the one in that game. I was genuinely surprised that the souvenir vendors in the area weren’t selling invisibility cloaks.
To wrap up my trip, instead of taking a taxi to the airport, I decided to ‘risk it’ and take a train. ‘Risk it’ because, first of all, Mumbai’s train station is pretty busy and the possibility of pick-pocketing is quite substantial; second of all, the schedules are mostly in Hindi; and third of all, the stops are never announced, so getting off the train is a guessing game. The good news is, however, that Mumbai’s trains, believe it or not, have ladies’ compartments! I have never felt so safe in India! Ever! After that train ride, I wish everything in India had ladies’ compartments. But, alas…I will keep trying my hardest to ignore the shameless staring that makes even the most devoted attention seekers highly uncomfortable.
By 2am, exhausted from the flight and the hassle with Delhi taxis, I was sound asleep at my flat and having sweet dreams of the next trip – to Amritsar!
Somewhere in India 