Mumbai Our plane, bucking and twitching wildly, finally dropped out from the thick monsoon clouds that cloaked the city to reveal a sodden mess of concrete and tin. Lurching ever closer to the ground we flew above an untidy unity of beige tower blocks, gleaming malls and, filling the spaces, tin shack villages, shanty towns, slums. As we neared the runway the turbulence subsided and we smoothly cruised above another slum, so low now that the tumble of individual shacks, hovels, homes that formed the confused whole could be seen, most with blue corrugated roofs, some with less. Narrow, convoluted and muddy alleys, sewers, streets could be seen veining the whole; carrying rickshaws, cows, dogs, shit, people. Two minutes later, landing gear down and barely feet above the ground, we skimmed the last shack and made
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