Day 1: Well Dressed and Almost Dead 12/24/13 Mumbai

Day 1: Well dressed and almost dead.

Tuesday

We landed in Mumbai at around 1 a.m. local time. The problems wasn’t that we landed at 1 a.m., the problem was that none of us were tired. One of the most difficult parts of traveling is the jet lag. The way one conquers jet lag is by entering the new time zone the way that people should function at that time. For example, if you enter at say 1 a.m., then you should go back to sleep for about six hours then wake up at a normal. But it was 1 a.m. in Mumbai and I felt like it was 11:30 a.m. Makes sense, because it was 11:30 the previous day back home in Portland.

*Factoid: Mumbai is thirteen and a half hours ahead Pacific time.

We came off the plane, briskly passed through customs, then headed to the airport exit. When we walked out the door of the airport and embraced the humid weather of Mumbai, we were sure to keep our eyes peeled for a man who was supposed to be waiting for us with a sign saying “Welcome Sanders Family!”. That man was our agencies driver and he was to take us to the Four Seasons Hotel where we are staying. But for some reason, there would be no such sign.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed before we decided to make some calls. To make a long, stressful story short, none of the people that we talked to knew that we were here or who we even were.

That was when a fity year old man about four feet tall with a hat saying “Playboy” tapped Dad on the shoulder and said “I am here to take you to the Four Seasons,” in broken english.

My Dad replied: “Who are you?”

“I am from Sunset Agency’s. We are subbing in for your agency. Come with me.”

The old man took Jack’s bag from his hand. Then Jack took his bag back; for safety reasons.

The old man lead us through a narrow alleyway to where his white van was parked. Realizing we had little choice, Dad instructed us to hop into the car and hope for the best. This man seemed to know nothing about us and we knew nothing about him. The only thing we could agree upon was that we wanted to go to the Four Seasons and that he was the one with the car.

When we started driving, it didn’t take me long to realize a few things about India.

1. INDIA IS A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!

• At first I saw the abandoned construction sites with people living in them.
• Then I saw the trash can fires on the side of the road, the filthy streets, the makeshift vehicles.
• Finally, I saw the slums. Slums are a tell all sign of poverty, and poverty is abundant in third world countries. On the left side of the road were tin sheds with pieces of cloth as the ceiling. On the right were hotels that looked like they were built (and abandoned) in the 80s. The walls, caked in mud, in lack of windows and light are home to many of India’s poorest people.

    2.   THE DRIVING IN INDIA IS CRAZY!!

• One of the first things you realize when in India is that the driving is a vicious sport. The drivers are intent on cutting you off, honking their horn at you, racing you, just to beat you to the light or the left turn.
• The steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle.
• There are no lanes; only one big street that cars swerve around in.
• People tend to walk on the shoulder of the road, not the sidewalk. This  leads to some very close calls. I swear to god. We almost took off several ligaments.

    3.     INDIA IS A HINDU COUNTRY!!

• After driving for about fifteen minutes, we began to realize that there were hundreds of people at 2 a.m. walking in the same direction with bare feet. We asked the driver and he said that these people were making a pilgrimage to a Hindu Temple that Worships the Elephant Goddess. The temple was on this road.

In the end the old playboy decided not to take us out back and shoot us or even kidnap us. He did the right thing and we arrived at the Four Seasons around 3 a.m. We went to bed at 4 and woke up 7:45.

We had a delicious buffet that the Hotel provided. Jack and I planned out our day over breakfast. Then we hired a taxi to take us to our first stop: Gandhi's Home.

“Mani Bhavan acted as the focal point of Gandhi's political activities in Mumbai between 1917 and 1934”. This is where he learned to card. Carding is a process of spinning wool to make very fine thread for clothing. Although the museum provided surprisingly little substance about Gandhi's life, it was quite moving being in a room where Gandhi used to do his thinking. I could almost see Gandhi in my mind’s eye pacing the halls, planning the next non violent protests and the next strategic way he could try and unite the Muslim and the Hindu people into one country.

Gandhi didn’t become such an iconic figure because of his brilliance and his political genius. Although these helped him greatly, he became the kind of father figure that he is now seen as because of how he led by example. Leading by example is something that is very rare in people these days. However, leading by example is in many ways the best kind of leadership and only way one can truly change the minds of others.

When we were leaving Mani, we asked the people at the front desk what are the other MUST SEE Gandhi museums in India. We got an interesting reply:

“There is this and then the home he grew up in in Porbandar and then his burial ground in Delhi. That’s it.”

This answer fascinating me as I thought about how Gandhi did so much to shape modern India and there are three major museums designated to him. Weird…

Our next stop was the Prince of Wales Museum. The biggest museum about ancient Indian art in all of India, this four storey domed, ornately decorated giant stands out in stark contrast with the slums that surround the premises. Inside, the poorly maintained and dirty rooms are filled with school children and elderly men and women alike.

Prince of Wales Museum (more info)

When we were driving through the slums of Mumbai, the taxi driver was quick to point out the most expensive house in the world. This billion dollar structure looks like a luxury apartment building-that has only one tenant. The owner of the house is the owner of the massive conglomerate “Reliance”. He lives with three other people and has 600 butlers. Like boss

The taxi driver then dropped us off on the Miracle Road. The Miracle road in India is called the Dadabhai Naoroji in Hindi. The Dadabhai Naoroji is an old mile long road that stands as an elegant display of architecture.

The thing that interested me quite a-bit about the buildings here is that the architecture seemed to be a mish-mash of English and Hindi construction. The buildings have the imperial red brick with flying buttresses, and they are ornately decorated by the diferente God and Goddesses found in the Hindu Religion. This mash up of styles seemed to tell a story about the British and the Indian cultures clashing.

When we were walking the street of the Miracle Mile, we stopped into the local Baskin Robbins and the Nike store. When we were in the Nike store we asked about the prices of the shoes. We were told that an average price of a pair of shoes was about 2000 Rupees. This is equivalent to about 34 bucks! Shoes that in the states are a hundred - two hundred dollars are 30-50 dollars in India.

But past the Ice Cream and Shoe store, past the homeless men and women begging for many, even past the fountain, we found the tailoring store. The men that owned the store were an uncle and his nephew appeared to have been in the “Biz” for many years. It started out by us just curiously asking about the price for a shirt or a suit. Then the men (who spoke in perfect english) pulled out a set of swatches, all different. When Jack proposed his interest to get a suit, the older man wrote in his book (the book looked like it had been in the “Biz” even longer than he had) everything that he would need for the tailoring process. Then he started to interrogate him about what he wanted on his suit. Dad and I decided to let Jack have the first say on what he wanted on his suit before stepping in and correcting his answers because he was obviously making a huge mistake when he requested two pockets in the back instead of one.

Then the man took out his measuring tape and started meursing Jack’s abs, calves and pecks, each time muttering things to himself. The words that he said were probably vitally important to the tailoring process, however-call me crazy- I heard a little Bruno Mars being uttered.

Then came my turn. I was to get a beautiful striped shirt that actually triggered more questions than Jack’s entire suite. Let me ask you a question: “Where should the pleat go? On the side, up the middle, diagonally, no pleat?” One more question: “How many pockets should go on a shirt? One, two, no pocket, five pockets?” This is the kind of pressure that I just can’t take!!

After we confirmed the pick up of our clothing on the 27th, we strolled out of the shop and found our taxi driver, waiting for us.

It was about 2:30 when we visited the business part of Mumbai. But I gotta tell ye, we kinda stumbled it.

The taxi driver  dropped us off at the flora fountain, instructing us to walk around in about fifteen minutes.

We were walking around the fountain, viewing the ornate carvings in the fountain when Dad decided to take a alleyway path to observe the people that live in this part of Mumbai. On the first alleyway we traveled down we found a vegetarian restaurants with people. All these people happened to be wearing identical button down white shirts. The people entering the restaurant were wearing white shirts. The people exiting the restaurant were wearing a white shirt. That was when we realized everyone on the street were wearing button down pressed shirts.

However, Jack began to realize the difference in the people who were entering the restaurant and who were exciting the restaurant. Everyone leaving the place had an identical droplet of Dahl on their shirts. Every person had the same kind of dahl in the same place on their shirts. The only difference in the people was the way that they reacted to the droplet of dahl on their shirts. Some on the men really didn’t give a shit. Others were viciously scrubbing the red spot, trying (but failing) to remove the stain from their shirt.

That was when we saw it. The fifty story tower with the sign on the top that read: BSE or “Bombay Stock Exchange.” All these men were business people who worked at the stock market!

Leaving the exchange was when we almost died. As we were driving down the road, taking in the people living in the slums and the man living in the Billion dollar House we came upon a traffic jam. There were two paths of cars slowly meeting each other head on. Our vehicle was coming in at the side of the jam. But we needed to be on the other side of the jam. And as one of my favorite children s books on told me “You can’t go over it! you can’t go under it! Gotta go through it!” So there we were. Our cute little taxi attempting to go straight through the jam. There were cars coming at us from all sides, honking their horns and yelling at the top of their lungs.

We eventually, and surprisingly, made it out of their alive.

The last stop of the day was the world's largest laundromat. Actually it is the worlds largest amount of holes in the ground filled with muddy water. Every place in Mumbai has their clothes washed their. The hotels, hospitals...If you were to ask the hotel to wash your clothes for you, they would go to Dhobi Ghat. They would pay the people there two-four bucks a day to do the laundry. Then they would bring it back to you and pretend that they had done it all themselves.

When we got back to the hotel, he took a swim and went to bed.