Going 0 to 60 on an unpaved, potholed road

When you’re a foreigner, you’re asked a lot of questions….by everyone you meet. So when someone asked me how long I’ve been in India, I reply, “just a few weeks” and thought nothing of it. But later, when I was glancing at a calendar, I noticed that I’d already been living in Mumbai for the past four weeks! I can’t believe that I’ve already been here a month. When I stop to think of things, sometimes I act as though I’ve lived here for years...and other times, I feel like I’ve only lived here a few days. Every day, I hail a rickshaw, then hop on a train and then finally catch a bus, and think nothing of it. I know that if my rickshaw fare came to 15 rupees, I know to give them only 14. If someone told me a few months ago though that I would have to do all of that just to get to my internship, I would have thought that there would be no way I could pull that off and still end up at my internship. But, as Professor Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady” says, “By George, I really did it, I did it, I did it!” And after coming back from my internship, I easily pick up milk and bread at the market then walk down to the road to get my fruits at the fruit vendor. I’m no longer clueless about where to go to get towels or a phone card for my phone. And if someone asks for directions, in their thick Indian accent, who knows, maybe I’ll be able to point them in the right direction. It feels so wonderful to get that comfort feeling, in a city that is so big and so disorienting at times.

But of course, there are other days, when I feel like I just moved into the city. If I had to take a cab somewhere, the cab drivers would probably love me and hate me at the same time. First, I’d either not know how to tell the driver where I wanted to go or second, end up paying a much higher rate because I didn’t know how to work the meter. In a city that tries every which way to make a living, you really have to be conscious of what you’re doing and where you’re going, because in the end, only you can look out for you.

When I was on the phone with my family from back home today, they asked me how it's going for me over here. I told them that today, I love it here. But if you ask me tomorrow, it could be a whole different story. To me, Mumbai is a city of good days and bad days. As I read what I've recently written in my blog, I realize that I'm constantly changing my mind about the city. But, it seems like Mumbai is that kind of a city. Just a few experiences could make your day or break your day.

"Maximum City", the book that I have to read for my social work class has definitely shown me some insight on this huge, chaotic city. The book is written by an Indian who talks about life in Bombay/Mumbai, specifically the gruesome, not so pretty side of the city. I’m only 25 pages in, but already I’ve found great passages that truly help to explain Mumbai.

“India desires modernity; it desires computers, information technology, neural networks, video on demand. But there is no guarantee of a constant supply of electricity in most places in the country. In this, as in every other area, the country is convinced it can pole-vault over the basics; develop world-class computer and management institutes without achieving basic literacy; provide advanced cardiac surgery and diagnostic imaging facilities while the most easily avoidable childhood diseases run rampant; self-washing machines that depend on a non-existent water supply from shops that are dark most hours of the day because of power cuts; support a dozen private and public companies offering mobile phone services, while the basic land telephone network is in terrible shape; drive scores of new cars that go 0 to 60 in ten seconds without any roads where they might do this without killing everything inside and out, man and beast” (Mehta 25).

And to learn the caste system of India, that is still going strong, here’s this insight from the book...

”...the live-in-maid won’t clean the floors; that is for the “free servant” to do. Neither of them will do the bathrooms, which are the exclusive domain of a bhang; who does thing else. The driver won’t wash the car; that is the monopoly of the building watchman. The flat ends up swarming with servants. We wake up at 6 every morning to garbage, when the garbage lady comes to collect the previous day’s refuse. From then on, the doorbell rings continuously all through the day; milkman, paperboy, knife sharpener, wastepaper and bottle buyer, massagewali, cable man. All the services of the world, brought to my door, too early in the morning” (Mehta 23).

But somehow between the rickshaw honks, the vegetable man yelling about the fresh produce he has, and the tap tap tap on the car door of the five-year-old girl begging for money, life in this city is somewhat calming. Somehow, I think that when I walk out of the airport when I arrive in the U.S. and I don’t hear all these noises, the day will be a little too quiet.




Mehta, Suketu. "Maximum City: Bombay lost & found". New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2004.