A DAY IN BOMBAY

Monday morning: up at 5:15 a.m. and on to Mumbai (Bombay) from Kerala by Jet Airway flight at 8:30 a.m. where we were to check into a Le Meridian hotel to await our very-early-next-morning (2:30 a.m. Tuesday) flight to London. Only we learned upon arrival that we had a half-day city tour on tap as well! So off the four of us remaining on tour went, cameras at the ready (Diane left to join her relatives here in Mumbai visiting the South Asian side of the family for end-of-the-year festivities) …

The city of eleven to thirteen million official residents (seventeen to eighteen million likely in reality) turned out to be much more than either SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE or media coverage of the recent Mumbai Terrorist Attacks had led us to expect. We found the traffic horrific (especially after the relative sanity of Cochin); the air, smoggy; the construction cranes and high-rise condominiums, popping up everywhere. We noticed less trash around, fewer blaring horns and, surprisingly, no Sacred Cows or tuk-tuks past the city limits. At the sites we visited and on the shopping streets, fewer touts and beggars seemed in evidence. There was a palpable sense of energy in the air as well, yet lots of tumbledown shacks and shanties along the roadways. Bombay is clearly its own place: not as “advanced” as Kerala; not as chaotic as Delhi.

Our “photo ops” included a humungous outdoor laundry service sprawled over acres and acres right in the middle of the city, ...

... the main rail station, a drive along the waterfront, the fort area once dominated by the British, the monumental Gate of India and nearby Taj Hotel (reopened just yesterday), and the Hanging Gardens (now more a welcome open garden space atop Malabar Hill). The tour kept us occupied for several hours and gave us at least some sense of the city along the way.

And now to repack our suitcases and change some important mental gears, changing seasons from summer to winter and thinking “Christmas” for the very first time.

Actually, we’ve been “in transition” for awhile already. Kerala houses a substantial Christian population, and we consequently often over the past few days have encountered Christmas Stars and numerous other indications of the approaching holiday – which, evidently, everyone locally joins in celebrating. We even came across a rural village elementary school where teachers were busily decorating a tree in the courtyard prior to a visit by Santa Claus that very afternoon!. Then last night we dined with a Syrian Catholic family in Cochin; they had a crèche on display along with some other festive decorations. Even here in “deepest India”, it would appear, Christmas has made its presence felt!