India - Mumbai (Bombay)

Leaving Bombay, Day 3

MUMBAI, Feb 20 – My ride to the airport in Mumbai was in full daylight this bright Sunday morning.  And, as you will see, the sights it revealed were even more stunning than those from the night of my arrival. 

But unlike the ride from the airport squished in a tiny cab, this time, I was traveling in style – in the same private car that took me to and from the hospital the night before.

The driver, however, was different.  Which was kind of a bummer.  I had asked Sundar, whom I really got to like last night, to drive me to the airport as well.  He said he would. Yet the new driver looked nothing like the skinny Sundar with slick black hair.  He was chubby and balding.

“And what is your name?” I asked the neatly uniformed young man. 

“Vijay,” he replied.

“Vijay, huh?  Like the famous Indian tennis player.”

The driver smiled nodding in acknowledgment.  “How are you feeling this morning, Sir?” the driver asked.

“How am I feeling?” I repeated surprised at the form of small talk the driver had chosen.  “I am feeling fine.  Thank you.”

“I am Sundar’s brother,” he added by way of the explanation.  “Sundar drove you to the hospital last night.  He had to attend to one of his kids this morning and asked me to take his place.

“Isn’t that nice,” I said.  “Pleased to meet you.  Hope there is nothing seriously wrong with his child?”

“No, nothing serious.  Just a little infection.”

Infection, I thought.  That’s the one thing I have luckily avoided so far.  Knock on wood.  Another business friend of mine back in the States told me that whenever he traveled to Bombay, he got sick.  So he said never to touch any fresh fruit or vegetables or drink anything but bottled water.  I have been heeding his advice.

We rode in silence for a while.  Then we drove by one of the slums, not far from the fancy Taj Mahal hotel we had just left.  

The sights made me almost sick.  Not physically.  My soul ached to see human beings living worse than animals.  I wanted to look away, but forced myself to keep my gaze affixed on this human tragedy.  If I could not help, and I could not, at least I wanted to remember and share with my well-to-do friends.

Then we came upon this open air market, right in the middle of the street.  Vijay dipsey-doodled around various piles of veggies and fruit.  I noticed somepeople wearing turbans among the mostly Hindu-looking people.

“How many Muslims are there in Mumbai?” I asked Vijay.

“Oh, maybe 20% to 25% of the population.”

“So it’s a significant minority,” I said.  “And how do you get along with them?” I asked, assuming my driver was a Hindu.

Vijay’s face darkened.  “We don’t.  Nobody can get along with the Muslims.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, prodding him to go on.  “Why not?”

“They eat spicy; they talk spicy; they fight spicy,” he summed up his opinion of the Muslims.  “You cannot trust them.  They are like two sides of a coin.  They’ll tell you one thing, and do another.”

He paused for a moment.  “And if you get into a conversation with them, they are ready to fight after two minutes.”

“Are they like that just with the Hindus or also with each other?” I asked.

“They are like that with anybody.  They don’t care whom they assault or take advantage of.  They only care about themselves and their personal interests.”

“Well, that’s a strong and succinct opinion,” I thought but did not say anything.  I changed the subject.

Then we came upon more slums... this time right in front of some pretty nice apartment buildings.  They gave a whole new meaning to the expressrion "a fine line" between the have's and have not's.  It was like no line at all.

A little ways down the road, we came upon this colorful scene.  "Are there still riksha's in India," I asked Vijay.

He pointed to the three-wheeler on the left, as if to say, "here's one."

"No, I mean the real riksha's... the man drawn carriages," I said.

"Oh, no.  We have not had any of those since the early 1980s," my driver said.  "But you can still see then in some Indian cities.  Mostly as a tourist attraction."

More slums... in an area that Vijay described as "the worst slums of Bombay."  Actually, they all looked bad to me.  

But nothing was as sad as this scene... a woman wearing a colorful pink robe scavenging for food in the middle of the city dump, through the heaps of trash.  Nor was she alone.  If you look carefully, you'll see some more people doing the same in the right hand side of the picture.  

I got a lump in my throat again.  But the bouncing of my car which jarred my bladder and catheter quickly refocused me on my own troubles.  The road in this section of the trip to the airport was completely torn up, as if we were driving through the craters left by the mortar shells.  And I saw plenty of those in Bosnia during the wars of the 1990s.

Finally, I was at the airport, ready to say goodbye to Mumbai.  An hour and a half later, Bangalore awaited me, tucked deep in the south of the Indian sub-continent.

Bangalore, Day 1

(to be continued...)

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