people complain a lot about the traffic and congestion of mumbai, and how terrible it is. i dont know what they are talking about. i along with two other nourish folks went to mumbai for about four days and we LOVED every second of it. I think i've fallen in love with Mumbai.
It's such a cool city with so much, SO much going on. It was hard to come to terms with the fact that yes, for this leg of the trip i am indeed a tourist. a tourist is what i am. i am not doing anything 'productive' or working on anything, i am just absorbing as much as i can about the city with the little time that i had there. visiting places, shopping, going to bunches of art galleries, museums, walking along marine drive, EATING our little hearts out, attending a Kathakali performance, and watching our first bollywood movie in the theater (please do not watch Kal Kisne Dekha, it is a terrible terrible movie. the movie industry took a pretty bad hit with the multiplex strike for a couple of months so this was the only movie that was out while we were there. the theater was cool and that's pretty much it and i didnt know that everyone had to stand up before the movie started to sing the Indian national anthem, so that was kind of cool too. the movie is terrible.) is how we spent our four days there. the buildings, roads, architecture, of mumbai are amazing, as are the yellow and black cabs! cabs surprisingly saved us so much money and was so much more economical than rickshaws.
THE FOOD in mumbai was INCREDIBLE. I dont think there was any single meal where i was blah.
for anyone planning on going to mumbai, you MUST go to Swati Snacks. It's a cute little restaurant. and all they serve are the amazing indian street food, accept in a restaurant using safe water and all. it is AMAZING. i completely indulged in my pani puri and pav bhaji and a whole bunch of other stuff we shared. i'm not sure how many cups of chai i've consumed so far. i'm a chai addict. but that i always was.
Who knew Irani food would be good in Mumbai? We ended up going to the same Irani restaurant at least four times to get a delicious finger licking plate of Chelo Kabab.

Of course all of our experiences were good (minus one small incident in a cab). but that's because we took on the role of tourists to take out and absorb all the materialistic and fun happy things that Mumbai has to offer. One of the first things I saw in Mumbai was a woman lying down on the side of the road, half sleeping. her son, must have been about three years old, completely bare and without clothes, just roamed around the streets, walking from here to there, exploring like little kids do. He walked over to play with dirt, and made mounds of little miniature dirt hills and he kept on playing with them as he was defecating in the street. he finished his job and ran around some more and walked over to where his mom was to play with more dirt. I guess those streets were his home and he was extremely comfortable with where he was, no fear of the ongoing traffic, no fear of crossing the street as a kid that small. no, he was navigating his territory.
it's a weird irony that street beggars end up becoming objects. what i mean is, we've been told (and i also believe this) that giving money to beggars is never a good idea, after all you dont know what the money is going towards and perhaps you're adding on to the problem and these people are being exploited by a third party. They take on the role of beggars and because we don't respond to their pleas, and their constant nagging as they follow with their stretched out arms and sad eyes, they end up becoming less human somehow and end up becoming annoying objects that you ignore and try to dodge. you end up wanting to focus on anything but them because it's easier that way.
seeing the occasional beggar ends up becoming a part of the 'experience' of being here, you know because that's just how south asia is.

it's hard to reconcile these truths as you experience them simultaneously.

I'm in Gujrat now staying with a friend and his family. now it's experiencing a different kind of india, and as i've thought many many times, the REAL INDIA. a village, with a wonderful family. the graciousness of them all has been overwhelming and another challenge has been that i can't convey my gratitude in any way because i dont speak a lick of gujrati. great. for a person like me who talks as much as i actually do, it has been extremely frustrating (internally) to not be able to connect with the people that have taken me into their homes. i just smile a lot and gesture sometimes, but man language is such a huge crutch.

more to come later.