Mumbai, India

Our plane from London landed in The Mumbai airport around two in the morning. 

There are some places that seem interchangeable--if you didn't look too carefully you could be in any number of similar sanitized cities. India is not like this--as soon as you step off the plane you know exactly where you are. The sounds, the smells, the weight of the air all announce your arrival to this land of 1 billion fellow world citizens.

It is hard to write about being in India because it is so large and so varied. Even in one city you could have a thousand different experiences, and each would be true but none representative of the whole. I am afraid to write something as if it is a given, or a universal event.

Of course anything written on this blog is told only from my own point of view and therefore is limited in its meaning, but probably none so much as whatever I write about India will be. Anything I say is guaranteed to only apply some of the time, or maybe not even at all.

I have to say I do love it here. There are a thousand things happening at once, and they all demand to be witnessed with the same urgency. Extreme soul-crushing poverty right at the feet of unbelievable wealth. A bicycle, a motorcycle, a 3-wheeled auto (taxi), a car, a bus, a truck, a stray dog, a cow, a fruit vendor, and a child in uniform walking to school all share the same narrow highway, the painted lines of which are only a suggestion.

The food is spicy and delicious, with coffee and chai tea in little cups. The ingredients are fresh. 

It is also always slightly uncomfortable. You have to be alert constantly when out and about, for traffic, masses of other people, where to put your feet. You see terrible things, hungry children and destitute thin people under overpasses. Horns honk at each other in a nonstop discordant symphony. There may or may not be toilet paper in the next bathroom and if there isn't you will use water, and then feel moist the rest of the day. You are generally covered by a layer of sweat. People ask you for money and you don't know what to do.

While driving around I had my phone propped up against the window with the camera up and was just taking pictures of things as they went by. At a stop light a small girl came around to the cars begging for money. This is fairly common. They ask anyone, but especially if they can tell you are a tourist. She came over and knocked on the window, making hand motions that she wanted something to eat. I clicked the photo button a few times without moving the phone as she approached and tried to see in the tinted window.

She went around to the other side of the car and knocked there, and then back around again. I sat inside with my iPhone and my money and did nothing. The light changed and we drove on.

We are in India for a month now, and then another month again in November. I am trying to learn some Hindi this time, if I can. I am curious to see how I will feel after two months here--how I will walk, how I will act, what I will have decided.

For now, every moment is an adventure!