Mumbai

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Mumbai

Our visit to Mumbai or Bombay, as we know it, was quite different from Chennai, India. Bombay is a huge city with a beautiful harbor known as the Queen’s Necklace when lighted at night. What we saw was not the abject poverty of Chennai, although sections of the city were indeed very poor, but rather a contrast between the old and the new. The first stop was at a house, now a museum, where Gandhi stayed during his lifetime. He did not own the house, however. The building is full of fascinating photos, letters, books, and memorabilia including letters he wrote to Hitler during the war. He is indeed still worshiped by the people here.

We drove past the railroad station, a building unlike any other in the world for its strange spires, gargoyles, and architecture. The station is immense, taking up several blocks, and, as our guide pointed out, an extremely busy place from morning to night. The trains are always crowded, and people used to ride on top of cars and hang on from the outside until officials put a stop to that practice. The crush of people in the streets is unbelievable. Traffic is constant and to cross the street takes real courage.

Our next stop was the Prince of Wales Museum which housed some wonderful art as well as bronzes and sculptures. The day was warm and the building not, of course, air conditioned, but the porticos between buildings provided a nice breeze and some relief from the sun as we continued our visit. As we left, the vendors swarmed our bus selling everything from postcards to balloons, feather fans to scarves, and buddas to bronze camels. Then, there were the beggars. They were all around us wherever we stopped.

The last stop was, to me, the most interesting. As you know, India has a caste system which is, to some extent, still in place here. The lecturer on the ship talked about this. He likened the image of a man being cut in fourths - the head, the arms, the thighs, and the feet. The head is the Brahmans or academics, the arms the warriors or soldiers, the thighs the merchants or traders, and the feet the workers. At the bottom of the workers are the untouchables, or REALLY poor, homeless people. (Even those who sleep on the sidewalk must pay a fee!) This system is still observed here, although now there is some upward movement as the merchants become wealthier than some of the academics, although the caste system is not about money as much as it is about status and culture. I digress.

We stopped at the area of cement wash basins or huge concrete squares that are leased out to people who do laundry. They pick up clothes at your house, bring it here where they wash the clothes, wring them and beat them till they are clean, rinse them, beat them again, hang them up to dry, iron them, and return them to your home. This is still being done in spite of the number of people who now have automatic machines. There are hundreds of these “tubs”, if you will, and the clothes look very clean. I understand the disadvantage is the number of broken buttons one finds when the clothes are returned. This was a fascinating place to visit and there is none like it anywhere else in the world.

On the way back to the ship we passed the Taj Mahal Hotel, built by a man who was not allowed into the “best” hotel because he was considered a native and not the right caste. So, being a wealthy man, he said,” then, I will build my own hotel” and he did. It is now probably just about the best hotel in town. Roger and Marie Louise went there on their tour where they decided to go to the bar where Marie had gone years before, and have a drink. They each ordered scotch and water, and sat and enjoyed their visit. When Roger got the bill, it was $72 US, or $36 each! Reminds me of an ice cream cone in Tuscany.

So, Mumbai is indeed an interesting city and now we head for the Sultanate of Oman.

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