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Published: December 12th 2010
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There are no words to describe the last week of my life. I have never been in such an exciting, beautiful, enthralling place. Soul crushing poverty, dirt, smells, tastes, miles of slums interspersed with high rise apartment buildings, toothless rickshaw drivers sharing the road with sports cars, naked children defecating in front of a well lit modern bank, and everywhere the sights and sounds and smells of a city and people that are simultaneously undergoing rejuvenation and decline. Everwhere are women dressed in the darkest purples and blues and reds, with babies propped on small round hips. Open spaces are covered with people dressed in rags and blankets among a zoo of dogs, rats, sheep, cows, and of course, people. Sometimes I feel like I have awoken to the post-apocalypse. The poverty is staggering, and as much as I would love to move among these people and make myself comfortable amidst the chaos, there is a devestating sense of pity and shame with each encounter with the desperately poor. It comes each time you see an emaciated woman sleeping on the sidewalk next to a naked baby, or the barefoot girl who sprints through traffic to stick her bony fingers into
the rickshaw begging for a few rupees. And then you feel the burn of the thousands of rupees in your pocket, the look in the mirror of a body and face unmarked by disease or starvation, a mind that has always known family and friendship. This has been a difficult place to come to terms with.
Downtown Mumbai was a lot of fun. Very busy roads, trash, and miles and miles of markets, foot paths leading into bazaars selling everything from spices to books to gold. I spent most of a day wandering aimlessly through the downtown area which was full of parks where men were playing cricket, Raj era government buildings, and modern high rise office buildings. Everywhere is something new and interesting, there is no need to be entertained, you simply need to walk down the street.
I had to take the local train back to my hotel, and I assumed that getting on around 8:30 at night would put me safely post-rush hour. I got on at the Churchgate stop, which is where the train originates. At first there was not an unusually large amount of people. The problem became that at each stop many
many more people got on...but very very few got off. Quickly I found myself getting tighter and tighter toward the middle of the train until I finally realized it had probably been a big mistake riding the local train. Everyone had to put there hands above their heads because there was no room to have your arms down. The press of hips and chests and shoulders and genitals pressing in on all sides, packed more and more. I had to go up on my toes because I found that there was literally no place to put my feet. The doors were open and people were hanging off the sides, using just a finger hold to keep from falling out the train. I was overwhelmed by the smell of thousands of people breathing, farting, coughing, the body odor of an infinite number of exposed arm pits. It was insane. As we left downtown and reached the beginning of the suburbs there became an intense, almost violent osmosis of people in the car, as some began to fight their way toward the door. At each stop as the train began to slow down people near the door would throw themselves onto the
platform. As it came to a stop the mass of people waiting on the platform would sprint to the car, and I actually saw grown men close their eyes, lower their shoulders and plow their way on. Each time there would ensue what I can only describe as a scrum or shoving match as the mob moving onto the train collided with the poor schmucks who were still trying to get off. Once equilibrium was finally restored the train would slowly move forward. Stuck in the middle of the train and knowing that my stop was getting closer, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. It was one of those sad moments where 25 years of life in America left me completely unprepared for something as simple as figuring out how to get out of a train in Mumbai. "I need to get off at the Andheri stop and I have no idea how I am supposed to do this" I announced loudly to the train, hoping a kind English speaker somewhere would give me a few tricks of the trade. Immediately hundreds of heads turned toward me, large eyes blinking at me, mouths grinning from ear
to ear, and all heads simultaneously "bobbling" wildly. "Andheri is in three stops, you need to begin moving to the door" someone said. "Through the people?" i asked. "yes" the man said in a manner that made me feel like a moron for asking a pretty obvious question. Using my knees and elbows I was able to claw my way through the wall of arms and legs, and seven or eight minutes later I had finally managed to move the fifteen feet where I would be within striking distance to throw myself out the door. I would later read in my lonely planet guidebook that the 1800 person maximum capacity trains in Mumbai regularly carry 7000+ people during rush hour.
I couldn't get out of Mumbai fast enough. The host at the hotel I was staying decided to show me how to book tickets online, at a place called cleartrip.com. The only problem is that you can't reserve a foreign tourist quota ticket, which is the two tickets reserved for foreign tourists that can't be purchased until a day or two before the date of departure. Additionally, regular trains in India sell out months in advance, so if I
wanted to book online I needed to sit in "second sitting" or general seating. I was pretty anxious about this, and I asked him if it was "doable." He looked at me like I was an idiot and replied "Of course it's doable, millions do it everyday." I couldn't figure out how to ask in a non-offensive way if it was doable for me, a person that has some very basic, if minimal, standards on personal space and hygiene that I wasn't confident his fellow Indians shared. In the end I decided that I was okay with making obviously bad decisions and I was shortly on a train heading for Aurangabad. The train ride actually wasn't that bad, but only because I was one of the lucky ones who got a seat, and a window seat at that. The car seating was benches running perpendicular to the length of the train. Each seat had another seat facing it so that your knees were about 18-20 inches away from the person across from you. Then another person would usually stand or sit in that small space between your legs and the person across from you. Quickly the three person bench began
to hold four or five and the children climbed up onto the baggage rack over head. I was glad to see that contrary to what I had been told, no livestock ever joined the journey. It was seven hours and it wasn't actually too bad. I noticed the people were very courteous to one another and everyone was happy to move when someone had to get off. At each station the passengers would hold plastic water bottles out the windows, and passing people would take the bottles to the small drinking station, fill them up, and bring them back. While it was crowded and hot, the whole seven hours went by with the sound of laughing and talking, and it was encouraging to see the smiles and friendliness of my fellow passengers.
In Aurangabad I have visited the Ajanta and Ellora Caves which are large Buddhist temples dug into the sides of a cliff leading into a canyon. They were lost to history until the 19th century when a British hunting party wandered upon them. I wish I could have been there for that moment, I can't even imagine. I leave here on wednesday for Hyderabad, my only real
plan moving forward is that I need to be in Visakh on the 30th. Also it turns out I do in fact like Indian food, and fortunately I have not yet been sick here at all, and feel better than I ever did in Egypt.
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