Mumbai!

Some of the many taxis. It is commonplace to see drivers napping inside their cars during the day and night.

Clothe washing area. Many small hotels and households send their laundry here. Even though some more middle class homes now have washing machines, there is a belief providing jobs for other if at all possible so many families still send their laundry here.

I spent a week touring and exploring Mumbai on my way to Nepal. This journey being my first splash into India my mind was flooded with images of crowded trains, dirty streets, beggars fighting abject poverty, and delicious flavors and foods meant to exercise your digestive tract. After arriving and settling in some, although the city does have all these things, I was more than pleasantly surprised by Mumbai. The city is a bustling metropolis complete extremes ranging from 19^th-century British mansions and 60-story buildings built for a single person to shops barely the size of bathtubs and million-people slums built on only a few square kilometers. It’s a curious city.

The streets of Mumbai are busy always but there is an invisible order and respect that pervades the lanes of trucks, cars, taxis, rickshaws, and people that crisscross each other in all parts of the city. Although it is a stretch to say drivers follow the official rules of the road there is an understanding as to whom has right of way when and the meaning of the many different types of horn usage (automobile horns never stop honking) is understood by both drivers and pedestrians.

There are over 40,000 black and yellow Fiat built taxis trawling the streets of Mumbai. This figure excludes the additional thousands of auto rickshaws (ie-‘shaws’) that frequently ferry some of the 16 million Mumbaikars on shorter jaunts. From the use (or lack thereof) of headlights after dark to the stealthily placed ‘for hire’ paddles that adorn the ancient meters of both shaws and taxis, hailing a ride on one of these iconic vessels is far from easy. Although law states that all drivers must pick up passengers regardless of his or her desired destination, it is common to see people of all ages being turned down on a street corner by a half dozen or more passing by seemingly available taxis. A Facebook group has been started by the City to report complaints. Somehow it seems that the emotions of an old woman sneering at a cab in the pouring monsoon rains won’t be well captured in a Facebook post.

In addition to being turned down by taxis there were two occasions where my taxi driver stopped the car, exited the vehicle, and left me alone with only a vague idea of what was possibly going on. The first happened during my first hour in India at the international airport (affectionately called the Chhatrapati Shivaji airport after being renamed in the 90’s by nationalist politicians removing British influence. Other causalities included ‘Bombay’ and ‘Victoria Terminus’, one of the main train terminals). I pre paid for a taxi and found my driver. My bags were put into the trunk of the taxi next to an oblong rusted metal tank positioned directly behind the rear seat (my seat). This tank contained compressed natural gas (CNG) and looked less than safe (in the event of an accident or not). The taxis and many of the buses and vans in Mumbai run on government subsidized CNG in place of gasoline or diesel. As a result, air pollution in the city is better than in comparable cities and allows for a ~30km taxi ride to cost only a few dollars. These thoughts were all running through my mind as I was sitting on top of this bomb when my driver unexpectedly stopped in a dark alley next to a pre-historic bus not more than a few hundred meters from the airport exit, shut off the engine, and quickly exited the car. This was interesting. He reemerged a few minutes later with a stamped piece of paper. On we went into the Mumbai night.

Mumbai is full of activity but organized, dirty but romantic, and confusing but endearing. In short, the ‘Manhattan of India’ is one of social and economic extremes centered at the heart of India’s impressive growth.