Mumbai Blue
Mumbai frightens me more than any other city. It’s a place which can swallow you up and suffocate you in a cloud of diesel fumes and funeral pyres without anyone even noticing. It has more people, more billionaires, more beggars, money, traffic, gangs and everything else than any other place.
In the old India there were westeners who had ‘lost it’. People who’s minds had failed in the attempt to process all the chaos and terror around them. They stood vacant-eyed on street corners or sat hidden away in cafes, talking to themselves. One woman I knew was continuously going through her multi-pocketed shoulder bag, removing and re-arranging the many useless objects she had acquired. I wondered how close I came to that state and many others must have had the same thoughts. It seemed destitution was always just a false step away.
If you got too stoned and lost your passport and your wallet on a hot afternoon on the other side of town, how would you make it home? Would there be a home? How could you ever get your life together again long enough to escape this Gomorrah and make it back to Germany, or Brazil, or Australia? How long before someone stole your shoes and left you helplessly trapped in a nightmare of desperate survival in the endless streets, alleys and freeways?
This time, however, there was no pressure. I had plenty of money. I wasn’t stoned and I would soon be out of there and on my way to Pune, a few hundred miles to the East and up on the cooler Deccan Plateau to which the English overlords retreated during summers a hundred years ago when the old British Empire was in its final days.
Krisna the rickshaw driver was a cheerful, helpful soul; the only one I met that time in Mumbai. He spoke good English and regularly referred back to his mobile phone where some business seemed to be going on. Asians certainly love their mobile phones. Everyone is in contact with someone and things are speeding up with food delivery apps and taxi apps and instant access to friends and businesses and no one seems to mind answering the pernicious little things.
But Krisna was unaffected by this or other concerns. He was pious and well-mannered. He was simply doing his job with great respect and attention. When he could he disappeared into his device but he was relaxed, smiling and grateful for any small tips or compliments he received.
He took me to a small suburban centre which had a village feel to it. I imagined that place thirty or forty years before, on the outskirts of the city, with the local people unhurried as they went about their leisurely days, unwilling to exert themselves too much in the heat and humidity.
We had chai and I went to the shops. As I entered the small general store I overheard two locals saying “lumboo” which means ‘long’ and was a joke often made at my expense in India. I chuckled and repeated the word out loud to myself, remembering the street kids in Pune who shouted “Hey lumboo!” at me as I was walked past, to the amusement of any bystanders. The proprietor offered to sell me some hash but I wasn’t interested in smoking until I had arranged a way out of town. I was not relaxed enough to enjoy being stoned, so I declined the offer.
That evening I wandered out again to explore the immediate environs of my hotel. There were many shops, some open sewers, broken footpaths and innumerable vehicles, bikes, scooters, cars and trucks. A small alley led to another realm with different people, shy and distant. They had a temple there in the square, and their own dialect. I bought a brush-comb from a salesman who had a cart piled with everything plastic and he asked me where I was from. We chatted briefly and then I walked past a dark shrine. I paid my respects to the deity inside and went into a couple of shops.
Back on the main road I passed a Kashmiri store and the owner, standing outside struck up a conversation. When he found out I was Australian he mentioned that he was a friend of David Warner, the famous cricketer. At least he had met him once and chatted to him at a cricket match. It was vaguely plausible. He invited me in, offering tea and conversation. He was suave and friendly, spoke English very well and was anxious to show me the quality of his wares, which he assured me were of a unique quality. I told him I had no room for even the tiniest purchase as my bags were full and I was in transit but he answered each point immediately. Who said anything about selling me anything? He simply wanted to show me the quality of his carpets. And anyway, I didn’t have to carry anything as he could post any item to anywhere in the world without any trouble at all. He joked that he could even post my suitcases, suitably shrink-wrapped, to my next destination, if I so desired.
We went inside to a room lined with cloths and rolled up carpets piled around in an orderly fashion which was quickly disrupted as he threw rugs on the floor with a flourish and explained to me the finer points of carpets of which I had, until then, been totally unaware. Sheens and weaves and colours, which were all beyond me as I sipped the cinnamon-laced Kashmiri tea without milk or sugar and wondered how I could extract myself from this master salesman’s clutches.
I was considering buying one of the tiny trinkets on his shelves when his phone rang and he became engrossed with the caller who seemed to be a better prospect than me and, grabbing the opportunity, I excused myself with some mumbled words about tomorrow, thanks and bye bye and I was out the door.
Travels to Nepal 