So, like I said, for the past week I’ve been in India helping my girlfriend and three friends shoot a documentary on their interests in India (primarily Bollywood and Sustainable architecture).. They are there for another 2 weeks, but I spent the first week in Mumbai (or Bombay depending on who you talk to) with them.
Their blog, if anyone would like to check it out is: http://threeindias.wordpress.com/
I only have a couple pictures in here btw, because the girls' pictures are much better (they were photo minors). check out their blog to see some of them (I also promise there will be more than just the one that is up right now- internet is down and i cant load more than one. Welcome back to Zambia Oliver)
India, and especially Mumbai (Mumbai/Bombay, whatever), is literally insane, and astonishingly overpowering. I’ve never seen so many people. Or so many people crowded together almost wall to wall. And Mumbai is no small city. But the sheer size of its population is enough to make your head reel and any city seem insanely congested. The noise, the pungent smell and the obscene humidity contribute to the overpowering feel of the city.
The city is a contradiction in numerous ways. The hustle and bustle of the city, the traffic, and the never ending honking of the horns hide the spiritual core of so many of the people in the city. There is a spirit of calm and serenity in much of the population that is easy to miss. The biggest contradiction is the extensive amount of growth that the city has seen and the decadence of so much of it versus the immense amounts of poverty that can exist on the very sidewalks outside the buildings of international corporations and banks. The most glaring example is the 2 Billion dollar (Yes, TWO BILLION DOLLARS) house with something close to 50 floors that one oil giant has been constructing in downtown Mumbai, where much of the city’s poverty is still very visible
Two BILLION dollars
Anyway, if I try to describe all of the city and all the sides of it that I saw we will be here a very long time. So I’ll cover some of the events from my time there.
Rachel and I arrived in Mumbai at 2 PM on Tuesday September 21, 2010. We had arrived just at the end of the monsoon season (hence the humidity I think). After moving into our hotel (Le Royal Meridien Mumbai- the first thing the lady who took us to the room told us was that they hired a Grammy award winning musician to do their elevator music) we grabbed a cab and headed towards downtown Mumbai.
Only on the drive into Mumbai did we realize just how massive the city was. Our first hint was the concierge telling us it would take an hour and a half at least to reach the other girls. Our hotel was right by the international airport, and their hotel was all the way downtown. On the map it didn’t look to far, but the actual distance and the traffic made each time we went to see them an expedition. Then driving along the coast, the city literally never seemed to end. around bends on the coast the city would just keep continuing on with no sign of stopping. Even for the parts where we were moving it seemed as if we would never reach our destination just because of how long the city was. After an hour and half we reached the girls and they got started discussing the movie. Then Rachel and I got back in the cab and drove another hour and a half back to our hotel.
The second day I went on a walk to explore the city while the girls worked on the documentary. The first person I run into in the street is obviously a guy from Tanzania. Of course the first person someone like me would find is a guy from Tanzania. After tossing what little Kiswahili I remembered at him I continued on. Now, the next part I’m not really sure how it ended up happening so I won’t try to describe it, but I ended up in a Hindu/ Buddhist temple where they were cremating bodies (I know, it’s a long story that I don’t fully remember). Anyway this guy who I met on the street offered to take me there because some big ceremony was going on, obviously this guy was looking for money and I was getting swindled, but whatever, I was interested, I had nothing to do, and how many times to I get to go to a Hindu cremation ceremony right?
After talking with the head of the temple/ crematory for some time, I came to realize just how prevalent some parts of old Indian culture are today. Primarily, the Caste system. The Caste system, which separates people into strict levels of social classes, goes as far as the type of wood and the type of oil used to burn bodies. The sight of bodies burning with different types of wood was a really shocking scene to drive home just how much these century old traditions still hold sway in Indian culture today.
The rest of the day we spent walking along the boardwalk to see this big Hindu celebration that was going on called the Ganesh Chaturthi Festival where people go to the beach to watch statues of their God Ganesh sink into the ocean. It was an amazing sight to see, the whole city was in celebration and all around us were people beating drums dancing in the streets and setting off firecrackers (which I admit started to worry me considering it was also a kind of tense period in Hindu Muslim relations regarding a court decision on rights to land in Utter Pradesh that about 18 years ago led to the largest Hindu-Muslim clashes since partition). But it was a great thing to see.
On the way back to our hotel Rachel and I took the train (Driving would have taken 5-6 hours with the festival traffic), which was an experience in itself. Again so many people packed into one space. Oh and the doors were open the whole way so people were just hanging out of the train.
The next day was just as crazy as the last as the team made its way to Film City on the outskirts of Mumbai to shoot some footage of Bollywood crews and sets while hopefully getting some interviews as well. One of the girls (Laura) had set up a meeting with one of the managers of the studio but two of the girls (Carlee and Micki) and I got separated from them and instead ended up in a basement office of some Public liaison bureaucrat who started asking for names and contact info while trying to kick us off the studio grounds which was a “Secure Government Agency”. Luckily we were able to stall and contact Rachel and Laura to meet up with them and start driving around. But after seeing just one set the guy with us started asking for money and accusing the girls of being professionals instead of students and hence not allowed on the sets. After talking him down I gathered the girls and we went back to talk to the manager and instead started viewing some of the production near the set. In total we got to see a car accident scene for one TV show, a pilot episode for another TV show, and got to spend a lot of time on the set of a soap opera. The Soap was great because all the crew talked to the girls (which other TV shows were not willing to do) and invited us for lunch and chai tea.
The day was made much better by our driver Om who helped a lot with communicating with other people and letting us know what was going on in the conversations people were having in Hindi. Om is a really terrific guy who we all enjoyed spending time with. At the end of the day, he invited us all to see his Temple the next day and have lunch there. He promised it would be the best vegetarian food we’d ever have. As it was right in the neighborhood of the girls interviews that day (at BBC Worldwide) we happily accepted.
While the girls interviewed at BBC I took a long walk around Bandra, the neighborhood we were in. Bandra was farther north, closer to our hotel, and not in Downtown Mumbai. It was my favorite area of Mumbai that I saw on the trip. It was not too crowded, there were tropical trees lining the roads, and it was on the beach. I spent a long time walking down the beach, enjoying the ocean air, the feel of the water and the sights of kids playing cricket on the beach. After 3 months in a landlocked country, it was a great feeling to be back by the sea.
ALSO, quick note. Being in a landlocked country (Zambia) means you hold off on the seafood most of the time. Going from a landlocked country (Zambia) where you hold off on seafood and going to a seaside city (Mumbai) famous for good food in India means you GO TO TOWN on the seafood there. I had some of the best fish I’d ever had during my stay in Mumbai. Rachel and I went to a Indian restaurant in one of the hotels nearby where we ordered a seafood platter that ranks as one of the top 5 best meals I’ve ever had in a restaurant.
Anyway after the girls’ interview we went to Om’s temple. We had had lunch there before the interviews and Om hadn’t been kidding. The food was unbelievable. We feasted on a buffet of all vegetarian food containing no garlic or onions for religious reasons.
The temple itself was really interesting too and after seeing it we met with Om’s Guru, who was kind enough to sit down with us and describe his temple’s religion and their beliefs to us. It was actually pretty interesting, but I thought the way he presented it to us didn’t really speak to the spirituality behind the religion itself, and it was a little weird at the end when he asked us all to buy books from him (Mind you all 7 of them would have cost less than three dollars, money was not his objective, but it did feel like we were having the religion forced on us a little).
Two days later and it was already my last day. The girls spent the day figuring out their train tickets and then I went with Rachel and Micki to interview a Real Estate company executive for Rachel’s segment of the documentary. He was an incredibly nice man who took us to lunch at a well known club in Mumbai. It was great to talk to him and then have the interview outside with all sorts of new construction going on in the background to drive home the theme of Rach’s segment.
Anyway, so yea. After that we went back to the hotel, I packed my bags, said bye to the girl, and got in a cab to come back to Zambia. And 24 hours later I made it. So now I’m back here trying to get back into the swing of things. Its really weird going from new and different in Zambia to EXTREMELY new and EXTREMELY different in Mumbai. You’d think it would make coming back here kind of like coming home. I wish it had, but it did make me appreciate a lot of the things here that I take for granted and helps me to note the things about life in Lusaka that are great and worth enjoying. I’m not going to lie, it was also strange to have such a big part of life back home come here. And even weirder coming back without it.
But in the end, life is great. And I can’t help but think how amazingly fortunate I am to do and see so much in this year. I really am a lucky guy.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the novel. I’ll leave you guys here and look forward to updating everyone on life when the next adventure occurs!!
Love to everyone at home and abroad.
Peace
O
