The End of the World as We Know It- And I feel fine!

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21-27/9
My last week in Mumbai was quite strange. On Monday my rickshaw driver didn’t come because it was Id, the celebration of the end of Ramadan. The day consists of praying and celebrating with family after a long month of fasting. There was a picture in a Mumbai paper of trains from Sunday literally crawling with people. People on the roof, on the side of the train, in the tracks- everyone trying to get to their families in preparation of Id. I decided just to work at home instead of trying to find a rickshaw and returned on Tuesday.

For lunch Tuesday I went back to Aaliyah’s house and had lunch with her and her grandma. After returning to the office I was feeling really hot. I attributed to the office which was 33 degrees Celsius or so according to the temperature reader. Soon I had a bad headache and couldn’t concentrate because my vision was kind of fuzzy. I decided I needed to go home and I would just work from there if I felt better. Upon arriving at the guesthouse I took my temperature which was 102.7F and I started to internally freak out that my brain was going to overheat. I slept until the evening when I could see the doctor. Emily, my travel companion, and Nisar, the man who welcomed me to India, were so kind and helpful and made sure I got to the doctor and got my prescriptions. The doctor said it was probably a variety of things, mostly just a virus, not swine flu and put me on bed-rest for 48 hours.

There were pros and cons to the bed-rest part. I watched about 5 really great Bollywood films so I became more accustomed with India culture. Now I have soundtracks to those movies and I really am starting to like Indian music, contemporary and classical. However, it was my last week at work. I missed being in the office Monday, half of Tuesday and didn’t return until Saturday because even on Friday I didn’t feel well. That means I missed almost a whole week, my last week, at Hindusthan. That was really hard because I wasn’t able to be in the office but I feel like it reflected poorly on me and my work ethic. Obviously nothing I can do about being sick but it was quite unfortunate I had to spend almost a whole week out of the office.

I worked on Saturday and finished up my projects. The staff had a going away party for me at the end of the day and bought samosas and chips. I took pictures with people in the office and they gave me roses. It was so sweet and a good way to leave.

Sunday I decided to explore the city on my own. Being busy with work, traveling and being exhausted I hadn’t gone to downtown Mumbai yet and I couldn’t live in Mumbai without seeing the touristy stuff. I’m still a foreigner. I went on my first train in Mumbai, having difficulty finding where to buy the ticket. I wasn’t sure what platform to go to either but Emily, who took the train everyday to her internship, had said to take the overpass to an inner platform. She also said to stand by the women because they would lead me to the women’s carriage, as the train’s carriages are divided by gender. As soon as I arrived at the platform a train pulled up and I hurriedly asked people “Churchgate? Churchgate?”, which was my stop, hoping they’d know if it was going the right way. I got a couple of yeses so I decided to jump on the train and see where it took me.

It did take me to Churchgate station and the train was beautiful. I love just being able to sit and watch the scenery because you learn so much about a region in a little amount of time. I saw so many different types of housing and people and advertisements along the way which was really enjoyable. When I arrived at Churchgate, I followed the map in my tourist book to Marine Dr. a famous area in Mumbai. I realized as I smelled the fresh sea air that I can’t live away from the water. The smell of seawater just connotes so much, makes me remember so many great memories of the San Juans and Seattle and Bellingham. I felt at home smelling the seawater even though I was so far away.

The only thing that could be better than the sea I decided was the ice cream sandwiches I had passed on the way to eat as I walked down Marine Drive. The version I had of strolling down the drive, slowly eating a wafer ice cream sandwich was soooo romanticized. Instead I walked out of the ice cream shop and the ice cream started melting all over my hands and onto my toes and on my clothes. So I’m walking towards Marine Drive, not even on Marine Drive yet, trying to finish the ice cream as quickly as I can so I won’t drip all over myself, with no napkins because paper products here are not given freely as in the US. It made me laugh out loud at the absurd divergence of reality and visualizations.
I ended up just roaming around downtown. I came upon a park with a large statue of Gandhi, watched cricket being played in a huge park, saw the University of Mumbai, all in an attempt to find a bookstore. I finally found the bookstore and then went to a nearby area called Colaba. Colaba is where the Taj Hotel and Gateway of India are as well as where the terrorist attack happened last year. After seeing the Gateway of India I met up with my friend Vishal for dinner. He offered to hang out with me that night as the other girls were on vacation and I was all alone. We had dinner at Leopold’s, a well known café in Mumbai and took the expressway to Bandra area to go dancing.

We went to a club and danced until 2:00 in the morning when I could barely stand I was so tired. He said he had to stop for food so I slept in the car while he ate at a roadside vendor. Finally we got to my house and he dropped me off at the entrance of my alley/roadway. When I got to the door I realized that although I had grabbed my backpack, I forgot my purse in his car- my purse with my house key and my cellphone. I didn’t know what to do because nobody was home and I didn’t know anyone’s phone number but my own. I decided I would just have to sleep outside until Raminee came in the morning which I was fine with except I had seen rats in the area previously and I didn’t want to wake up to rat bites. I realized that along the main road I had seen the sweets shop I frequent with lights on.

I went back to the sweet shop and motioned if I could use a cell phone because they don’t speak English. I called my phone hoping Vishal would hear it but I knew it was on vibrate so it was a slim possibility. I was truly out of ideas on what to do. I felt safer in their shop even though it was four guys and me than I did sitting on the porch alone so I decided I could maybe pay them to let me sleep there. Two rats kept running up and down the walls though so I was freaking out a little bit inside but what other choice did I have. I really have a thing about rats if you haven’t noticed. I don’t like wild rats, they freak me out. Plus knowing they live in the sweet shop I eat at, not the most comforting fact but something one just must live with sometimes.

The good thing about the situation was I got to see them making sweets and chips that they sell in their shops. They have huge wok bowls that they mix the sweets in. They poured tons of sugar and flour in and mixed everything by hand. The chips they friend in oil in the large woks and closed the plastic around them with a candle. They gave me a couple pieces of fresh sweets and chips and a bottle of Aquafina. They were so kind and the situation turned out to not be horrible. At 3:30 am I realized that I had the number of an advisor in the program, Sandhya. I felt so horrible about calling her but I knew if someone could bring me a key, that would be the best option. So I got a hold of her and she called Nisar to bring me a key. I also had Nisar explain what happened to the guys at the sweetshop so they didn’t get some weird impression of the foreigner in their store in the wee hours of the morning.

Finally at 4:30 am, I was safe in bed. It was definitely an unfortunate situation, however a legendary story of my time in India.

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