Mumbai - Day 8

Today we made a trek to one of the most fearsome places on the earth for husbands - a jewelery store.

My mother wanted to go there.  Fortunately for me my wife doesn't like jewelery, especially that tacky stuff covered with diamonds, sapphires and emeralds.  Unlike being in hardware store, I can just sit back and not pick anything up.  The store was very unpretentious, just single door with the usual security guard in front.  Once inside, the owner greeted us and we said that we had been recommended by my sister-in-law.  From the gleam in his eyes when I said that, I reckon my brother has a problem on his hands.  "I'll take you upstairs in a minute," he said, "but maybe you'd like to look around here first?" "How about one of these lovely carved animals - maybe a good present for friends".   I said that I have no friends.  "How about one of these excellent silk scarves?"   "Nobody wears scarves in Australia", I replied.

It's bad enough having to visit a jeweler without them ambushing you with a foyer filled with buy-able stuff. 

"How about a genuine antique brass compass once owned by a maharajah?"  I felt like saying "Hey man, my wife has a GPS so she hardly ever gets us lost these days", but I politely declined.  I kept eying the stairs hoping that we could go upstairs, but he wasn't finished yet. "How about one of these pashmina shawls made from the finest cashmere and silk".  While they did feel and look really nice, I couldn't think of whether modern Australian women wear shawls any more.  I don't remember seeing them at Target or Best and Less.

Eventually we were invited upstairs to where the real sales battle was to take place.


My mother enquired about pearl earrings.  "I have just what you want here," he said, pulling out velvet-covered boxes. "But first, how about looking at these diamond rings?" He deftly laid out a handful of yellow and white gold rings encrusted with diamonds, sapphires and other precious stones.  I reckon that I saw a copy of Princess Diana's engagement ring in there somewhere. 

"Maybe you should put that one aside," said my mother, who is obviously hooked by anything glittering and expensive-looking.  The salesman was really getting excited by this reaction to the opening of a single display box.  He clicked his fingers to an assistant and ordered us tea and coffee.  He knew that we were all in for a long session.  I remembered then that we'd just got out of our car earlier and I told the driver that I'd call him when we were ready to be picked up; I hope he was able to find a parking space in one of the busiest cities on the planet otherwise he'd be driving around the block a very, very, large number of times.

"Pear earrings," my mother said.  "You were going to show us some pearl earrings".

"Ah, yes, earrings. I have them here".  He opened another box that contained no pearls, but lots of sparkling light that I now recognised as diamonds and other precious stones. "Maybe madam would like to try these on", he said, obviously ignoring the word "pearl" and handing her some white gold earrings covered with diamonds and royal blue sapphires. He draped an extremely expensive matching bracelet on her arm and said that the two look very good together.  My mother declined the bracelet, but he realised he had her with the earrings.  "I'll just put these over here with the others".

We finally got him to recognise the word "pearl", so he snapped a command to his assistant who then returned with a box crammed with pearls, from the tiny ones that I hope my wife likes to ones the size of marbles.  The box probably had many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth inside.  He pulled out a few.  It must have been music to his ears when my mother kept saying "larger.."  I got bored with this and wandered off to take pictures of the massacre.  Remember I said a battle took place upstairs?  Well we lost. Big time.  They argued about settings and such, and I took pictures and admired the stuff that my mother was leaving alone.

Finally the pain was all over.  Or so I thought.  He opened a draw and pulled out dozens of rings.
"Here are a few trinkets. Very cheap."  "Maybe you would like to buy a handful for friends, with Christmas coming up soon", he said helpfully.

"The stones are only garnets, citrines and amethysts," he said like a snake,  "they make good presents and nobody realises that you didn't pay much for them".  I reckon that he had an x-ray machine that had detected that we still had some small change left in our pockets.  He was desperate to get even our lunch money.

We reaffimed that we have no friends so we didn't want to buy any more, then made a dash for the door.  It's funny how you can spend such a large amount of money and only have one pocket stuffed full.  In JB HiFi I could have filled a small truck.

He farewelled us at the door and said that we should come back and have tea and coffee again because he has some really good pieces that we haven't seen yet.  

Other miscellaneous pictures:

• indian taxi
• typical sidestreet (our driver took us through some backstreets)
• oxen delivering kerosene with the commonplace rubbish on side of street

One thing I saw late this afternnoon was on the building site next door.  Talk about sex discrimination!   This group of women appeared on the building site and they gave them the easy job of carrying bags of cement on their heads into one of the buildings.

Bye for now.

Mumbai - Days 6 & 7

We've had a leisurely couple of days with not a lot to report that is different from what I've talked about before.

One remarkable thing happened on the building site opposite.  We looked out the window to find that a group of workers had surrounded another; a few minutes later somebody appeared with a big stick and started whipping him.  After about 10 minutes the security guards arrived and took him away.  He probably did something heinous like stealing or lifting his feet up so his wife can clean.

In the evening we went to a friend's place to have a barbeque while we watched the sun set through the smog. 

The next morning we had a relaxing breakfast at the JK Marriott hotel. 
The restaurant has a huge ceiling and overlooks a fantastic artificial lake (see picture).  Beyond that is the Arabian Sea with Oman on the other side.  One quirk with this hotel is that they don't like you taking pictures of the flowers - a little man runs up and tries to stop you.

Afterwoods we went to the Indian equivalent of Harvey Norman to look at furniture (see pictures).  The furniture shopping district contains lots of narrow shops with a single aisle in the middle that you can just walk through. 

Oh, they also have attack goats to guard the furniture. 

Opposite is one of the popular shopping malls (joke).

It was so hot we went for a cold drink at the Renaissance Hotel and then shopping for saris and stuff at a fabric shop.  I picked up a few silk outfits for Karyn.  I hope they fit, because it seems that in India, they have sizes of small, very small, very very small, and large.  I hope Karyn doesn't get upset that I had to buy her size Large clothing, but every other size seems too tiny.

Just outside was a curious barricade manned by 3 guards (picture).  It barricaded the footpath, not the road, and we, like everybody else just walked around it.  Nobody seemed to know why it was there, but everyone thought that the guards were doing a sterling job because nobody had stolen the barricade so far.

Anyway, that's all to report for the weekend. 

Mumbai - Day 5

Another long day.

Today we took another trip to South Mumbai. It only took 2 hours of dodgem-cars. See the video I uploaded to YouTube to see what it is like - note that the concept of "footpath" is foreign to these residents of Mumbai.

Although the thought of a two-hour trip just to get to the centre of the city seems bad, there is something to see everywhere. Wherever you look there is something interesting, strange, or colorful to see. I've included a photo of a motorcyclist attacking a taxi driver with his fist.

One thing I noticed while driving was the electrical wiring for some of the houses - there are power lines hanging everywhere (see picture). Its no surprise why there are power failures when it rains.

One nifty innovation are traffic lights with countdown timers (see photo below). When the lights go red the counter starts counting down so that you know when they will go green. When they go green, the counter starts again so you know when they are going red. It should work well, but if the road is clear, then cars start driving off when the counter has got down to 10 or so. If they don't, the 100 or so cars behind them start honking their horns.


Going into southern Mumbai, the older and more established part of the city we traveled on long flyover that crosses over a vast number of buildings and accommodation. Looking off to the side (see photo) you can see hundreds of side streets below, packed with people and vehicles, that seem to just go on an on into the distance. You get the sense that this city is packed with people for tens of miles in all directions.

When we got to the heart of the city we went to the museum once called the Prince of Wales Museum but now called: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. I think that this is so westerners can't find it any more.
You pay to go in, and then you have to pay if you want to take pictures. I thought this was OK, and paid up. When we went to go in they searched our bag and found my bottle of water. "No water inside," they said. Apparently they wanted to confiscate it. It was strange to stand there in the swelting heat to be told that you can't carry any water with you - and we were still 100m from the entrance. Instead we drank it and left the empty bottle - think that they must be applying the same rule as the airports in not allowing you to carry more than 100ml bottles - who knows? I thought to myself, "well it's only a short walk to the museum building, and it'll be better inside"

Once inside, I realised that there was no airconditioning - it was just as hot inside as it was outside. So much for not needing water.

I took a photo, and immediately a guard rushed up to me and said that I can't use a flash. I then realised that although I'd paid to be able to take pictures, I couldn't actually take any pictures because it was too dark inside.

How a camera flash will damage a 2,000 year old statue carved from granite, I don't know. But, here is a picture of a 2,000 year old Persian carving that I decided to damage with my flash without anyone noticing.

The museum was quite run down, a common scenario with historic buildings I was later to realise. The building was filled with schoolkids running around, pointing out the naughty bits on figurines to one another. It reminded me of when I was younger.

There were some very old paintings on one of the floors, but they were so darkened with grime that they were difficult to see properly. Also many of the antique gilt frames were damaged or covered with mould. When you think about it, a non-airconditioned museum with 35+ degree heat and 80% humidity isn't exactly the best place to store classical paintings. It was also difficult for me to appreciate history when all I could think about were swimming pools and icy-cold gin and tonics.

Exhausted from the unrelenting heat, the intrepid explorers headed off to the Taj Mahal Hotel for some tiffin. Surrounded by the luxury that we deserved, we downed iced coffee until we felt better. It is a great pity that several weeks later some Pakistani terrorists decided to remodel the hotel using handgrenades and machine guns.

Did you know that upmarket hotels have staff in the toilets to escort you to your allocated urinal? Unsettling, if nothing else. They then turn on the taps for you to wash your hands, then hand you a freshly-laundered handtowel, and then turn the taps off for you and open the door for you to leave. I don't know if the women have it so good.


The hotel is just opposite the Gateway to India, the most famous landmark in Mumbai that was constructed for the monarchy to enter and leave from. Like everything else here is is being repaired. But very, very, slowly. I think that erosion is going faster than the repairs.

We eventually toddled back home to Powai (pictured), another 2 hour drive, and you can see the difference. There are footpaths! It seems silly to miss seeing them. I heard later that some Indians don't like Powai because the architecture and layout of the suburb doesn't look Indian enough. Maybe they'd feel better if people stole the paving and dumped rubbish around the place.

Anyway, that's enough for today. We are having a rest day tomorrow, so I'll have to sit around and watch the maid do the housework and dream of a better life back home.

Mumbai - Day 4

We went for a bit of a drive around today.  It was a big public holiday today, so the roads were surprisingly empty.  

The car got up to at least 80 kph - any faster and you risk falling into a pothole or running into a beggar. 

Yep, we got accosted by two today - one old lady (picture on right) who apparently wanted money to get her teeth fixed, and another who came up to the car with a baby in one hand and an empty baby bottle in the other, crying that she needed money to feed the baby.  When we ignored her, she started banging on the car window with increasing fervor.  My brother said that they usually have a bandage around the baby's head for good measure with some tomato sauce for effect.  He said that some beggars actually rent babies for the day.  It would have made a good picture but I couldn't get a clear shot.  I understand that these poor women must have disobeyed their husbands or not kept their houses clean enough and were therefore banished to the streets.

The trip took us to south Mumbai in only an hour - on a normal weekday it takes between 2 and 4 hours.  Last night it took my brother over an hour and fifteen minutes to travel home from work that is only 7km away.  

Most of the old British Raj buildings have fallen into disrepair. There doesn't seem to be much drive to preserve these buildings.  

One building that is really nice is the Taj Mahal Hotel (picture below) It's is one of those really expensive hotels where you can only just afford a coffee.  Here I was forced to buy something disgustingly expensive for my wife, just in case I couldn't find anything else.  The problem is that we can only really shop at "westerner-friendly" shopping malls and shops as these are the only places where we can safely eat or drink, and they only sell western-style stuff for the well-to-do Indians.  Surprisingly, there are few Indian souvenirs for sale, and I can't say that I've even seen a souvenir shop.

We had lunch at the Marriot hotel - one of those hotels that terrorists like to blow up.  By now we are used to the mandatory car search, the bag search, the bomb-detecting ion scan and the metal detector treatment before you are allowed to enter places like this.  We had lunch there because its one of the few places where people who aren't used to the local disease-producing bacteria can eat.  Presumably you have to be careful about the water used to wash the lettuce in. In the hotel food shop you can also buy bread sliced thinly!  The usual sliced bread that we've been able to buy is 1 inch thick, and it doesn't make a good sandwich.

I'm just getting the hang of having a driver.

His job is to drive you wherever you want to go and then wait until you want to go somewhere else.  He normally drives my brother to work each morning, and then waits until he wants to go home at about 6pm.  That's it.  If Richard decided that he needed to go somewhere, his job is to be ready.  So if you go shopping, he drops you at the door of the shop that you want (racing around to open the door for you), and then disappears until you come out of the shop and he magically appears to drive you to the shop 100m away.  Etiquette allows you to walk into an adjoining shop without being driven there.  I shudder to think of what this would do to Australian women and their shopping habits (and their backsides from not walking).

I'm having to type this in Notepad at the moment because the internet is down.  I realise that there is a pattern emerging where the internet goes down whenever it rains.  My brother said that in Hyderabad where he lived before Mumbai, every time it rained they lost power as well. That explains why he has his computer connected to an uninterruptable power supply.

I got a classic picture today of a person driving a motorscooter and texting at the same time.  Here everyone is wedded to their mobiles.  Even the people running around the exercise track seem to carry them.  I'm not getting many good photos taking them through the windows, but the driver doesn't want the windows down or the doors unlocked just in case a beggar tries to steal things when we are stopped in traffic. 

Speaking of mobiles, I've been lent my sister-in-law's mobile.  All day long it goes off with pre-recorded messages trying to sell you stuff.  The problem is that the messages are in Hindi, so all the cute jingles they play just go over my head.  Also you get bombarded by txt messages offering you things like mystical-image-of-the-day wall papers.  If any Australian phone company ever says that they are going to allow advertising, I suggest that you change companies immediately.

I've also attached a few more street scenes, like the following one that shows our apartment block in the distance, looking a lot like the ivory towers they are. 


You can see from the shop frontages why you can't walk on the footpaths. 

A common street shop.

Oh, yes, here's also one of a woman weaving baskets on the street. Her son-in-law has picked a space for her in front of a bus shelter (sitting in the bus lane).

Anyway, that's all for now.  the internet is back up (its been down for a day) so I can send this and get started on Day 5.

Mumbai - Day 3

Not much to report today. We stayed at home to watch the torrential rain instead. There's nothing like watching 20cm of rain come down in one morning. Even the thunderstorms are different here... one minute the sun is obscured by dark brown smog, and then the smog seems to get darker as the clouds come in over the top. By comparison, Canberra thunderstorms are tiny - here you actually seem to be in the middle of them because we are surrounded by new constructions that have, guess what? thousands of rods of reinforcing steel pointing up to act as lightening conductors. I'm sure a few workers got blown off the building sites. But who cares - plenty more workers available - and apparently they only cost $3 day.



The buildings here are designed for rain. You step down about 8 inches into the balconies - although they have drains in them, they look like they are designed to hold about 1 thousand litres of rain water before there's any risk of the water coming into the apartment.

Because we didn't go out today the cleaner had to work around us. There's nothing like putting your feet up and watching a woman work. And especially one that can't talk English or nag. The cleaner comes in every day for two hours. A young lad comes in to scrub the bathrooms. The girl sweeps the marble floors then washes them, wipes over all the furniture, puts the washing on, hangs it out to dry, mops the balcony floors, wipes over all the balcony fences, etc.... its lovely to watch a woman work so diligently (without complaining).

Some kind of festival period finished today, so we have been subjected to the Indian equivalent of Kylie Minogue being played through loudspeakers all day. It was ok for the first hour or so, but the enjoyment soon wanes. Especially when you have a 5am start because of the Muslim call-to-prayer that starts around then, followed by somebody in Canberra calling my mobile at 10:30am your time forgetting that its 5am here.

Now that the festival is finished I expect that our driver will put some shoes on. My brother said on the first night not to comment about his bare feet - apparently he is fasting and can't wear shoes until it finishes. Different customs for different places.

Reminiscing about the roadside accommodation we saw yesterday, it was interesting to see that most people were spotlessly dressed with razor-crisp creases in their clothes. My brother says that they are extremely clean regardless of their situation. Their houses/shacks will be immaculate, however they have no problem with throwing their rubbish onto common property. Its a different spin on "not in my backyard".

In the next day or so, we hope to visit of the busiest slums in the world. Apparently there are 200,000 people per square mile.  I just can't imagine how tightly the people must be packed together, remembering that this doesn't include high-rise buildings - everyone lives at ground level.

Because travelling here is so difficult (it could take 4 hours just to get to the other side of Mumbai), it looks like we aren't going to be able to tour like we expected. However in hindsight maybe that's a good thing - what we are seeing it the real India - warts and all. Looking at the guidebooks there are actually very few tourist trips or places to go to - and you can see why when travelling is so difficult. Who could compare visiting some ancient temple with visiting the world's largest slum!


The pictures I've included today are scenes from our apartment. There is a playground and park direcly in front and the building site out back. The playground could be anywhere in the world if you ignore the fact that the women are all wearing saris.


Out the back, it was good to see husband and wife construction teams making the concrete. Bringing the kids along also saves on the childcare.


I'm not sure if I mentioned it already, but our apartment block is in a group of 8 12-storey apartments arranged in an oval surrounded by a 12 foot security fence with big metal spikes on the top. There's a guard in the foyer of each building as well as a couple on the gates to the compound. There are guards stationed on each corner of the complex as well so that they can monitor the service entrances there. There are also guards that patrol the various walkways - these guys carry big sticks that I think they use to beat any children that walk on the grassed areas. You certainly can't complain about the security. One of the roles of the foyer security guards is to search the cleaners so that they can't steal anything.

Anyway, I think that that's enough of my ramblings today.

Mumbai - Day 2

Hi all,

Another memorable day in India.

Did I mention that it's hot and humid?   Well it is.  Forget my previous comparison to the Gold Coast - at least it cools down there occasionally - here it seems unrelenting.  It was a real shock to open up the balcony doors at 6:30am and get a blast of hot, humid air.  Subconciously I'd been expecting to open the door and get a lung full of crisp, cool, morning air.

Last night we went on our first shopping trip to a supermarket.  My brother said that it was "just around the corner" vaguely waving in one direction.  I was expecting to walk, but outside was the chauffeur with the car.  In Mumbai terms, "just around the corner" means half an hour of continuous just-misses and much blowing of horns.  We were warned not to sit too close to the side windows - apparently the potholes can cause to to smash your head against the glass.

Our driver, with incredible patience and bravery, would take any risk to avoid the big potholes and give us a comfortable ride.  Even though this meant crossing the road into the oncoming traffic.  I think that Hummers would sell well here.

When we got to the supermarket, we had to climb over the piles of building rubbish to get to the front door.  We didn't realise that we were in the up-market part of Mumbai because the piles were so small.  We only realised this today - but more about this later.  In the supermarket, the fresh vegetables look like the stuff that we would throw out.  It appears that this is just because they don't use fertiliser or pesticides.  So the fruit and vegetables are often small and discoloured.  The best carrots were about 4 inches long.  Everthing however was fresh and still tasted OK.  Another disturbing thing was the people standing in each aisle trying to sell you things.  It seems that in India, labour is cheaper than colourful retail displays.  Imagine rows of smiling people suggesting that you would like this brand of chocolate or this brand of soap powder as you walked around the store.  When we wanted some frozen chicken, there was a man standing at the freezer just to get it out for you (probably so you couldn't stand there with the door open and enjoy the cold for a minute).  

Then back in the car (and airconditioning) for the 100 metre trip to the bread shop where you buy toasting bread 1 inch thick in packets of 8 slices.  Apparently Indians don't eat bread in the shape that us Westerners do, so it's a "specialty" item.

I have now finally got the hang of the water here.  There are 3 types:

• tap water (drink for CERTAIN DEATH)
• filtered water (probable HOSPITALISATION)
• bottled water - SAFE TO DRINK

Can you imagine having a shower and not getting any water in your mouth?  Tried cleaning your teeth without rinsing your toothbrush under the tap?   If I'm 3 weeks late for work you can anticipate why.

Today we went to a shopping mall called inOrbit.  Only about an hour of screeching brakes and honking horns.  When we got there, there were about 10 policemen searching cars for bombs.  Mirrors under cars, searching car boots etc.  There were elevated watch-towers so that they can supervise all the cars.   Must be the safest car park in the world.  I think that people who break into cars just get shot.  That probably goes for kids on skateboards too - I haven't seen a single one.

While there, we sampled the local cuisine.  I particularly enjoyed my feast at Subway.  No surprises there.  My brother warned that Indian curries can upset the stomach if you're not used to them, and he advised us not to try them until he can take us to the right type of place.  He seems to have had experience with others from Australia to visit who eat the food and then spend the next few days in bed, or in the bathroom.

Travelling to and from the shopping mall we saw a wide range of accommodation.   It looks like most people live in blocks of apartments showing a wide range of decay.  From the roads that we travelled on, most of the nearby blocks were in particularly poor shape.  This is a real shock for someone from Australia like me where the majority live in houses even in the major cities.  I guess that with 18 million people in Bombay, bungalow dwellings are too inefficient.

The pictures I could take aren't very good because they were taken through the car window - but I'd rather have air conditioning than take them with the window down.  One thing that strikes you is the amount of rubbish everwhere, especially by the side of the road.  Piles and piles of rubbish.  Some of the building rubble looks like its been sitting there for 10 years or more.

Another big surprise was the number of people walking on the road instead of the footpath.

People walk on the road because:

• there is no footpath, or
• someone has built their house on the footpath, or
• there are piles of rubbish on the footpath, or
• there are great chunks of footpath missing, or
• someone has removed drain covers and left big holes that need to be jumped over

Makes you appreciate what we've got.

Regards,
  Andy

Mumbai - Day 1

Hi all,

Well, I'm finally here in Mumbai. It feels like a million miles away from Canberra. It's very hot and humid, but probably no worse than the Gold Coast on a bad day. My brother's place is airconditioned, but we reckon that it's best to try and acclimatise because you can't stay in the airconditioning forever.

I don't recommend 12 hour plane trips. You bum goes numb, especially when, like me you don't get an aisle seat like you requested so you can't get up to stretch your legs regularly.

The Airbus aircraft had entertainment systems built into the seats in front of you. Problem was, they run Microsoft Windows CE, so an hour into the trip the software crashed. They tried to reboot the system a few times, but ended up having to reinstall the software which took about an hour. Unfortunately, it ran for a few hours and then hung again, with another hour while they reinstalled the software again. Not a good advertisement for Qantas, Airbus or Microsoft. I'm sure glad that the aircraft flight systems don't run on Windows. At least I hope they don't. Here is a picture of the screen that I had to look at for a few hours.

When we arrived at Mumbai, as we expected, it felt hot and steamy after a long time in the airconditioning. Visitors aren't allowed in the terminal building, so we exited the building to be confronted by a sea of dark-skinned, dark-haired Indians. My brother was there somewhere. Under circumstances like these, I can recommend being picked up by a person about 6'2" with red hair.

Driving from the airport, we almost ran over a dozen pedestrians and just missed a few major crashes. Apparently they play Dare with cars. People seem to walk across roads and dare cars to hit them.

There seemed to be about a million pedestrians between the airport and our apartment. When we asked why there were so many people milling about, my brother was surprised and said it was just the opposite. Apparently the streets were almost deserted. I realised then that we were in for a few surprises in India, and it wasn't going to be a bit like clean and orderly Canberra where you can occasionally see people actually walking on the footpaths.

Overall, I got to go to bed 25 hours after I got up on Sunday morning. It had been a long day.

When I woke up this morning, I was delighted to see (and hear) lots of buildings being constructed next door. It was fascinating to compare the building techniques to those used on the construction site next to where I work.

No safety rails for these guys. They pour the concrete slabs on formwork held up by wooden posts.

They make the cement by hand and send it up the lift to the roof level in large wheelbarrow loads. No concrete pumps for these guys. And no cranes either.

Next to the construction site is the workers' accommodation. "No frills" is the best way to describe it. The stuff on the roofs consists of large rocks to hold the corrugated iron down, and general rubbish (out of sight - out of mind !).

While walking around our accommodation complex I saw a power cord snaking out from one of our buildings over the 12 foot security fence and into the luxury worker accommodation. If you looked carefully you could even see the occasional satellite dish. Interestingly, even though the shanty village was predominantly corrugated iron held together with string and pieces of rock, it seemed to be systematically laid out and not anarchistic.

And no, my camera lens isn't dirty. Its the smog. I guess the 18 million inhabitants of this city can give Beijing a run for their money.

Anyway, I have to go now. Indian Idol is about to start.

Regards,

Andy