I had big hopes for my week in Mumbai, a list of companies and non profits to visit, and the big city nightlife to captivate me. Unfortunately, I will always remember Mumbai as the city where I got Chickenpox. I know, right. What the heck? I am definitely too old to get Chickenpox and most certainly no where near my mother's loving care. Oh well.
Before I got feverish and rashy I managed to enjoy myself and do a bit of exploring. My first night I was whisked away by Kunal, the lucky gentleman just engaged in Jaipur, to a rooftop birthday party under the full moon. Friends and family sang amplified Bollywood classics until the neighbors called the cops. Everyone was singing along to dozens of songs from decades ago. As it was explained to me by Kunal, The movie culture here is more of a religion than a pastime and of course it is all about the songs.
Next to the hotel I first stayed at was a massive Hare Krishna temple so I poked my head in for a look. It was quite ornate with plenty of marble, sparkling gold and silvery trim, and brilliant draperies with matching holy men. My Hare Krishna experience is limited to hippie festivals which is much less impressive than witnessing the source. Honestly, I always though it was some sort of cult. More cultish, that is, than a regular once a week sort of religion. So I bought a book from the temple gift shop to educate myself, Introduction to Bhagavad-gita, basically an intro to Krishna's version of the bible. And thats how I was converted. I'm not coming home anymore. Come visit if you would like. Just kidding.
I also snuck in a lovely sunset walk along Juhu beach. I was lonely as heck but delighted by the massive stretch of sand and throngs of Mumbai'ites out getting messy in the low tide. Strangely, I couldn't see the horizon because of the nasty air pollution which I learned more about later. The water was warm but too brown for my blood. Lots of fun games like cricket, capture the eel, and dodge ball were going on. With nightfall a carnival scene emerged with silly electronic fortune tellers along with vendors selling crappy, glowing, spinning toys from china.
My one sightseeing splurge was to go on a guided Slum Tour. Sounds miserable but the idea of the tour is to show a fun and highly functional slum with massive recycling industry, leather production, pottery, etc. My favorite part was the machine shops where they made their recycling shredders. Shoes and eye protection? Yeah right. Saddest part was watching toxic black smoke pouring from a kiln burning old paint cans. There were workers with their faces in it.
I wasn't so interested in sight seeing and such so I visited the Indian Institute of Technology to see what I could learn about transportation and pollution in India. I actually got to give a presentation to a dozen transportation students and some professors. I told them what I thought about stuff back home and asked them about theirs. The students were disappointingly shy; I probably looked cooler and more important than I actually am. Basically, India and Mumbai are all about trains. Six million folks commute by train every day just in Mumbai. I took the trains to get around too and they were great, came every three minutes, pay if you are in the mood, no doors, people pooping next to the tracks. The professor I talked to about air pollution had just finished a massive study to characterize the city's air which is cool because it is the first of its kind and signals a shift to awareness and possibly action.
Later I moved to the backpacker ghetto to make friends and share some company. Unfortunately, thats when I got the evil skin blistering poultry virus only meant for children. I was first incorrectly diagnosed and given antibiotics but disappointingly that didn't pan out. I just holed myself up for a few days in my spacious hotel room, had weird dreams, and commiserated with my Chinese come Australian roommate, Yan, who just had thousands of dollars of camera equipment stolen and is taking rabies medicine for a dog bite.
A really important thing to come out of my time in Mumbai is that I'm coming home early! I realized I'm not up for 6 more months away from home and especially not wandering around alone in scary places like India and China. So, I'm gonna visit my friends in Nepal, Papau New Guinea, and Australia and be home around April 18. Don't plan a party or anything.
One last thing. I had a beer at a table with a grenade crater under it from the November attacks. Pretty cool eh? Security was high.
