Musings of an Idiot

2 days in Mumbai

Indians don't like following rules and give it to them to break them, bend them, ignore them and refuse to recognize them. It is alright when 1 person does it - that person would be called a visionary but when you have a billion and a quarter doing the same thing what you have is utter chaos that is fascinating and frustrating in equal turns - a true paradox. 2 days in Mumbai reminded me why I moved out of India and also why it is hard doing business here. People have the best of intentions but they don't have any sense of time and do end up dicking you around to the point where you don't care for the outcome. India has this way of grinding you down and beating you to pulp till you surrender to it's ways and play the game by it's own weird rules. In 'The Dark Knight', Batman spent 2.5 hours trying to deal with Joker - all he should have done is book a one way ticket for The Joker to India and his job would have been done. Joker was trying to prove that given a choice a city turns into chaos - well he doesn't have to prove anything because there is a whole country that lives in chaos.

The landing in Mumbai wasn't exactly the smoothest one but wasn't the worst I've had either. That didn't bother me as much as the Indian couple who were sitting 2 seats besides me, who wouldn't switch off their cellphones even after repeated announcements and kept talking on their cellphones right up to the point where the plane accelerated for take off. And I guess that in a way re-calibrated my system to what India was going to be like.


Dad's friend had arranged a hotel room for me and by the time I got the hotel it was early evening. The humidity and the crowds and the traffic took me by surprise and I decided to stay put in the hotel for the night and do the sight-seeings and 'meet & greets' on the following 2 days. I was slightly famished, so I went down to the local 'dhabba' {no frills eating joint} and had a vegetarian meal that cost me NZ$2 all up. Food is cheap and delicious in India and that's probably one of the few aspects of India that I miss when I am over in NZ. Dad's friend also arranged for a car to drive me around and I was feeling very humbled by the generous gesture and at the same time felt it was kind of an unecessary thing to do and man was I wrong.

The next day, I got the driver to drop me off in South Mumbai in Colaba where most of the tourist attractions are and asked him to pick me up the next day morning at 6.30 AM, so I could come back to the area and check out Elephanta Caves - which is supposed to be a day trip. The distances in Mumbai are huge and the map I had didn't really give a clear indication of the scale of distances and combined with the heavy and chaotic traffic - the drive from central to south mumbai was long and tiring. Enroute I sussed out Hajji Ali Mosque from the road itself and stopped over briefly at Nariman Point to take a couple of snaps. After that it was off to Gateway of India.


Once the driver left I roamed about the area looking at the places, taking the atmosphere in and also searching for a couple of places that I wanted to check out. After checking out Gateway of India area, I was walking around and the heat and humidity really got to me - Hong Kong was humid and hot as well but Mumbai definitely raised the level a couple of notches. I soon found a popular Parsi restaurant called 'Jimmy Boy' and tried one of their signature dishes called 'Saali par edu' - a dish put together with potato wafers, eggs and salad as the main ingredients, and it was awesome and again the cost of the meal was a couple of dollars. After the brief respite I explored the area some more and ended up at Jehangir Art Gallery.



Jehangir Art Gallery is a place for emerging as well as established artists to showcase their art and I spent a chunk of time there and spent even more time upstairs where there was an exhibition by Venantius Pinto . I loved a couple of his paintings and asked him if I could take his photograph with one of those artworks and he obliged me. At that place I also met another creative person called Alarich, who was doing stuff for radio and who incidentally also happened to have spent 7 months in Auckland in 2006. Talking to both of them - one thing was clear - the plight of artists and creatives in India is even more of a struggle than in other countries. I checked out another artists work and then went to Cafe Samovar which is located within the art gallery building. The food there again is cheap and delicious. Since most of the touristy things were around and I had already checked out most of them, I didn't want to go back as I was supposed to catch up with one of the people I knew from my MBA days who was now working in film & television in Mumbai, later that evening.


So I walked back to Gateway of India and enquired when the last ferry to Elephanta caves was. I wasn't hopeful since it was late in the afternoon and they only run the ferries to Elephanta Caves till 2.00PM but as luck would have it they had extended the times and the last one was leaving at 3.00 PM, which is the one I caught. The return tickets cost Rs. 120 {about NZ$4} but the journey itself was such a mission. It took an hour and a half to cover the 10 KM distance - if I could walk on water I could have easily have done that distance in that amount of time easily - that's how slow it was. And the Elephanta caves themselves were anti-climatic and definitely over-rated. Don't get me wrong the sculptures and rock carvings and stuff were amazing but for that long of a journey I didn't particularly enjoy it much. The trip back took an hour and was definitely much more pleasant.


After landing at Gateway of India I searched out an eating joint called 'BadeMiya' which makes awesome kebabs. Again I had a couple of different kinds of kebabs and the cost again was a couple of dollars.



I rang up the person I was supposed to meet but they bailed out of the meeting as they were busy with something else and the plan was to aim for the evening of the next day for the meeting, so I decided to try and walk back to the hotel. I only got till Nairman Point when I decided that the best course of action was to catch a cab back otherwise I would never get back to the hotel. Nairman Point/Marine drive at night is like a couple's retreat - you have heaps of couples - young and old, enjoying the sea breeze while whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears. I was surprised at the level of PDA since India is a pretty conservative country. I flagged down a cab at the same time as another girl but gave her the choice to catch that cab and walked a little bit more before I found another cab. An hour and half later I was back at the hotel - exhausted from all the commuting. I was also trying to fix a personal meeting as well and I hadn't heard back from that person in a while, so I presumed that they didn't wanna catch up but I got a message saying that maybe we could catch up the next day.

The next day - the first stop was Sanjay Gandhi Park which is a wildlife reserve set right in the city, which I think is an amazing achievement. I had the option to either go on a tiger/lion tour or go to kanheri caves and I took the option of walking to Kanheri caves {about 6 KM's one way} and decided to forego the option of either renting out a bike to drive till there or catching a bus till there. The walk was great - it took an hour to get there and I was drenched in sweat by the time I got there and en route I got growled at {without any reason} by one of the monkeys that were roaming about {I am presuming it was the alpha male leader of that group}. Kanheri caves were a revelation and I enjoyed it so much more than Elephanta caves - it was like coming across a lost city since there were so many caves {overall I think there are 119 caves in that area} and the amazing thing was that they are carved out of the mountain. One of the tour guides showing a foreign tourist around stopped by to have a chat with me and asked me if I had walked all the way to the caves and when I replied in the affirmative he was surprised and at the same time seemed to admire me for doing that {no one else walked to the cave during my trip there or back}. After rehydrating myself I walked back to the car and en route the same monkey growled at me again as we crossed paths again and as I got near the end of the walk the guide I talked to earlier and the tourist went past me on their motorbike. The guide slowed down enough to yell out 'You walk fast' and honked the horn a couple of times and then zoomed away.


By the time I sat in the car I was drenched in sweat - head to toe, so the first thing I did as soon as I got back to the hotel was take a cold shower and drank heaps of water and had a short nap. Once I woke up I gave both the people I was supposed to meet later that evening a rang - only to find out that one of them backed away completely while the other one had postponed the meeting further into the evening. After much fluffing about I finally got the instructions for the meeting place.

Once I got there, the meeting itself was pretty good and I met another of his friends who also worked in film and television. We discussed state of television and film over a couple of mocktails and compared notes and experiences and it was during that time I kind of made up my mind that I didn't want to work in India or try and raise money from India for any projects - atleast till the scene changes and there is a little bit more professionalism injected into the industry. The comparision between getting the money from there and the cost of emotional and physical upheaval of the process don't match up and when that equation is a little more favorable I'll give this another shot. After the meeting I went back to the hotel, packed up and went to bed early for the early morning flight to Hyderabad.

Overall I liked the cheap but delicious food in Mumbai but I didn't like the traffic, the pollution, the humidity and the lack of time sense in people. I like Delhi way better than Mumbai in a lot of respects - I might be biased because I grew up there but that's my preference. It will be the first time I'll be spending a good chunk of time in Hyderabad and I am looking forward to it.

Thats me for now,
Amit

Labels: Mumbai, Travel

posted by Amit @ 3:26 PM