Sunset in Mumbai

The Novem­ber ter­ror­ist attacks on Mum­bai was some­thing we had wor­ried about before land­ing in the city, but to look at the place it was as though they had never happened. In any city with such a var­ied and eth­nic pop­u­la­tion, it had prob­ably not fully been dis­sem­in­ated. Some­times, I have wondered about the quick dis­sem­in­a­tion of news. Does it actu­ally help or hinder? Is, in a very real sense, ignor­ance bliss? In India, of course, they are as used to ter­ror­ism as any Lon­doner. Ter­ror was in at the birth of this nation, it was in the sep­ar­a­tion from Pakistan, it never leaves. I think per­haps that they have become numb to it.

This is what I thought as I sat at the table. Leopold’s café is a trav­el­lers legend. Not least of all because of the fam­ous gang­ster novel, sup­posedly mostly true, called “Shant­aram”. In that book, which I read in two days (a sure sign that I didn’t enjoy it), the main char­ac­ter is taken here by a local guide and it is here that he meets his friends for the first time. In my mind, I ima­gined some­thing grander. Some­thing with a “old empire” feel, like some of the journ­al­ist bars we had vis­ited in places such as Cam­bodia. In fact, it is noth­ing of the sort. It is a café like a greasy spoon.

Albeit one with machine gun marks on the walls.

Sure enough, the ter­ror­ists struck here too. I wondered if a lick of paint would cover the dam­age. We ordered stand­ard trav­el­ler fair, bur­gers with chips, ate and then left. Shant­aram is a unique book, a spe­cial book. It changed a friends life, it opened the minds of many people fas­cin­ated by India and Mumbai.

It is a fantasy.

The real­ity, as always, requires that you come see for your­self. The real­ity is, even by the stand­ards of Shant­aram, richer and more com­plex. And at the same time, tra­gic­ally run down and heart break­ing. Everything you would want to see, and much that you would not fol­lowed by things you simply wouldn’t, is all over Mumbai.

Cesca had a plan for the day. The plan was to visit the museum (which I was really look­ing for­wards to) and then to visit Fab India cloth­ing store (which I must admit that I was not look­ing for­wards to). She smiled at me and reminded me that we were going out on the tiles tonight, so I could relax. As we left, and for those who have read Shant­aram: I prom­ise you this really happened, a man came up to me. He was dark and Indian, but clearly used to West­ern­ers and spoke excel­lent English,

“Hello sir,” he said.

I pulled back slightly, “Hi there.”

“Excuse me sir, I am an agent for a film stu­dio. May I ask you, would you like to be in a Bol­ly­wood movie? We will pay you 1000 rupees.” He smiled genu­inely, clearly this was a deal that would sell itself.

A lot of things went through my mind. Firstly, my nat­ural sense of danger wondered about being lure some­where and then sub­jec­ted to an attemp­ted mug­ging, then I wondered about being able to tell people that I had been in a Bol­ly­wood movie, then I wondered about miss­ing the museum, and then I remembered the bol­ly­wood films that I had seen in my life.

Bol­ly­wood films all have the same theme. It doesn’t mat­ter what is going on in the rest of the movie, what the char­ac­ters names are or the look is, it doesn’t even mat­ter if the story is set in the past, present or future, they all fol­low the fol­low­ing template:

Firstly, there is a son. He is a good son, and his mother loves him. He is a little bois­ter­ous, per­haps too easy going and a little bit of a fool, but he has a big heart. He comes form a good fam­ily. Then there is a girl. She is the per­fect women for this boy, she is kind, beau­ti­ful, sweet and tender. I would nor­mally add that she could sing, but then so can every­one else in the film. The only prob­lem is that she is from “The wrong side of the tracks” and thus their love can­not be for soci­etal reas­ons. Love blos­soms, but the par­ents try and stop the lov­ers. Then son gives her up because he loves his mum (This part is a ref­er­ence to the Ele­phant God Gne­sha – who never mar­ried as he couldn’t find a women to match his mum. Mind you his mum was a god­dess, so…) Then in comes the vil­lain. He fan­cies the girl and nom­in­ates her for his bride. He can do this because he is a man, but also he is rich and/or power­ful. The son finds out, makes the choice and res­cues her. He then stands up to his par­ents who see­ing the love in his eyes, let him have his bride. Then every­one starts singing and dan­cing. A dance rep­res­ent­ing the cycle of life and love. Thus it is a story that touches all the poten­tial audi­ence, the mums love duti­ful sons, the fath­ers love the bit­ter sweet­ness of chil­dren grow­ing up and mar­ry­ing, the girls love a romantic male lead, and the guys love sexy ladies in skimpy tops body-popping to big musical numbers.

And this is the only story in bollywood.

Sure they may play with the format, they may change around the act­ors, and the set­ting. An ele­phant is often involved, or other love rivals, but the story remains the clas­sic tem­plate of a thou­sand movies. Sud­denly, I real­ised that I knew my answer,

“No,” I told the man. “I have already seen this film.”

He was aston­ished, “bwaa? But, but sir, we will pay you 1000 rupees.”

I smiled at him. Obvi­ously he has never had someone turn him down like this and also I guess he saw his com­mis­sion dis­ap­pear. I con­tin­ued and said, “I really don’t want to miss the museum, sorry.”

The look on his face made it very clear that this was not, in his opin­ion, the sanest thing he had ever heard. Per­haps he had not met a his­tory geek before. He was hov­er­ing in front of me, won­der­ing what to say next, he had obvi­ously chosen me based on two char­ac­ter­ist­ics: firstly, I am a tall, white and Brit­ish – in other words exotic to India. Secondly, I was com­ing out of the tour­ist hot­spot of Leopold’s.

Unfor­tu­nately for him, I didn’t like Shant­aram. I have had many books change my out­look on life, so I sup­pose it was up against stiff com­pet­i­tion, but frankly it was terrible.

We walked around the area and around the Mum­bai hotel that had been the tar­get for the attacks. The ter­ror­ists choice of this hotel was obvi­ous, it is right oppos­ite the enorm­ous Gate­way to India. At the time, I wondered at the motives of the ter­ror­ists, but now I know bet­ter. We walked out of the area and caught a cab to the Museum.

The Mum­bai museum is housed in one of those clas­sic Brit­ish build­ings that we simply don’t make any more. It is huge and chunky, lined with pil­lars and exud­ing imper­ial power. It is won­der­ful. All over the world, I had come across such massive struc­tures, so pur­posely built, so unique and imme­di­ately known they were the work of my coun­try­men. Why we no longer build like this I don’t know. Simply build­ing a few of these would sort out the “who are we ques­tion” the Brit­ish are ask­ing themselves.

The grounds were littered with statues and Cesca and I wandered around for half an hour before buy­ing an audio tour and pro­ceed­ing inside.

Audio tours are a com­mon­al­ity in Brit­ish museums back home. So, I am not easy to impress in this regard, but the audio tours in major Indian sites – all over the coun­try – are of an excel­lence that is equal or bet­ter to any­thing I have ever heard.

I learned so much about India, about the past of this coun­try – vital to know­ing its soul – about the effect of the uni­fi­ers, the des­troy­ers and the Gods that my under­stand­ing was blown wide open. Yes, it was that good.

After four hours of learn­ing and won­der, we left for Fab India.

This bas­tion of Indian cloth­ing is a firmly placed to serve the middle classes. It is very sim­ilar to many Brit­ish insti­tu­tions such as Hobbs or M&S. The place was heav­ing, full to the brim with sari’s and sari wear­ing women. Cesca imme­di­ately loved it. She rushed in, gasped in joy and star­ted pulling out top after top of all col­ours and patterns.

With the sari its cut, its cloth and its col­ours are all vitally import­ant. It relays a mes­sage to the viewer, a mes­sage in code.

Some col­ours mean that the women is a new bride, or a new mother. Some col­ours mean that she is a widow, some mean that she is avail­able. Where the sari is from is equally import­ant. Rich, mod­ern fab­rics are the order of the day, unless it is a spe­cial occa­sion. Most Indian women will have a col­lec­tion of spe­cial sari’s that she has care­fully sourced. These ones may even be quite plain, but they will be imme­di­ately noticed as spe­cial. They would come with a story, some­thing about a “little vil­lage” and “tra­di­tional weav­ing”. All craf­ted to be worn when try­ing to be “eth­nic” and “eco”. The lady will turn up in such a sari and her friends may say,

“Oh, what is that?”

Onto which she will pounce and be able to brush off the rare, spe­cial and authen­tic nature of the sari by say­ing the Indian equi­val­ent of, “What this old thing?” before rat­tling off a story prob­ably involving an old blind lady in a vil­lage in the moun­tains who is the final inher­it­ant of ancient sari mak­ing tech­niques. Prob­ably with a gauche wave of her hand, say­ing, “Oh, you simply must get one. When you have the means,” fol­lowed by a bene­fi­cent smile.

It is the Indian ver­sion of Hab­itat drift­wood tables.

Into this bewil­der­ing world we dived. I tried on many dif­fer­ent Indian male tops but, although some of them fit­ted me, I felt that I looked like a pir­ate and so passed on pur­chas­ing. Cesca, on the other hand, looked like a mil­lion dol­lars. So I bought her some tops and scarves for our din­ner with Ana­heeta and he hus­band that evening.

After all that shop­ping I needed a drink. The day before, Ana­heeta had recom­men­ded a hotel bar over the other side of the city and we repaired to it. this part of the city has money, lots of money. In fact, the hotel turned out to be five star lux­ury. Imme­di­ately upon enter­ing I knew this was a place out of our league fin­an­cially. Cesca how­ever, was sud­denly feel­ing at home. She hugged my arm and, tidy­ing myself up a little, we entered. We firstly had some drinks in the lobby bar — very good — and then entered the lift to the roof bar. It was open plan and had an incred­ible view of the sea.

We sat in peace for a good few hours, talk­ing and mak­ing plans and hold­ing hands as the sun dipped down. Above us buz­zards tracked and dived for the pigeons and Cesca was soon snap­ping away at them with her cam­era. How­ever, all this rich­ness, this exal­ted pos­i­tion, was mak­ing me think about the gap between rich and poor that is very notice­able in India.

I felt I was on the wrong side of this gap. I sud­denly felt priv­ileged to have been born in my coun­try and to my fam­ily, for while we were poor for Brit­ish, we were very rich for India. And not just in money, oppor­tun­ity as well. I sipped my drink, the cost of which would prob­ably feed a fam­ily of 5 for a day in the slums, If not more. Around me, rich Indi­ans and West­ern­ers exper­i­enced India. I no not raise myself above them or look down at them from a moral high ground, I would only hope that these people, on their air-conditioned car tours, their 5-day Indian “adven­tures”, actu­ally man­age to peel some of the lay­ers away from their eyes and see what is actu­ally going on here bey­ond five-star. Over the next few months, we would meet many people who were unable to let India chal­lenge them, who were only here to indulge them­selves. We would also meet some, who des­pite their – in some cases immense – riches were on a spir­itual jour­ney to the heart of this coun­try and through to the heart of themselves.

We left and walked the streets. All around me hun­dreds of people watched and walked too. The loc­als of Mum­bai love the beach front as the sun­set is amaz­ing. As we crossed back towards our area of town, the bright lights dimmed, the shops became mom and pop stores and side­walk stands. The clothes became dirtier and the streets piled high with burned lit­ter and wild anim­als feed­ing in the gut­ters. Chil­dren pulled at my arms beg­ging for food, for money, for any­thing. I have never been one to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between so called high and low on the basis of fin­ances. To me, it is all just life. I have little pride in that respect. But, Mum­bai was the first city since San Fran­cisco to make me exam­ine that feel­ing. To look at it anew. Sure, life is life, whatever its cir­cum­stances, but I was to see things in India that would make me – if I had the power – start the world again. There is one par­tic­u­lar vis­ion I will never be able to remove form my mind. But, that exper­i­ence was a month away and on the other side of this coun­try. The chil­dren on the streets of Mum­bai were here now and they fol­lowed us ask­ing for money and, strangely, a “school pen”.

I don’t sup­pose that they have ever been to school.

We made it back to the hotel and got changed to go out. Cesca really did look amaz­ing in her top with a large Indian scarf around her neck. We didn’t want Aneeta to real­ise the state of our room and so we waited in the street for her and her husband.

Soon they arrived and we jumped in their car. They took us to their club, built around the cricket ground, and we had a very nice din­ner. They then took us for a drive around town and showed us the area from some of the vant­age points. Then we went to Cha­patti beach and tried Indian Kulfi Ice-cream, which was simply divine. They were really friendly, really nice and treated us with a warm wel­come. I hope one day to be able to return the favour. The dynamic of the mar­ried rela­tion­ship here is very dif­fer­ent than in Bri­tain, but we all made a good effort to get along and ignore it.

As we got back to the hotel that night, we made our plan for mov­ing out of the city. We had another day to go (see the Gandhi entry a few before this one) and one more night, which I will talk about next time. Then, our adven­ture was going to begin for real, for we were head­ing into the wilds of India to visit the fam­ous Elorra caves…

… by third class rail!

Regards,

Basho

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