Twelve hours in Mumbai

So I had 12 hours to spend in Mumbai (why? Don't ask...). I arrived in the central train station at 9 a.m., and had to be back to catch my 24-hour train to Delhi by 9 p.m.

Naturally, I knew nothing about Mumbai save for what I'd read in Suketu Mehta's book and the 11/26 coverage, and (of course!) what I'd seen from watching Slumdog Millionaire umpteen times as it played on loop on an interminable Emirates flight. Images of Muslim-Hindu riots, a smoking Oberoi Hotel and slums. SO well-informed.

So:

9 a.m. The train station is a zoo. People sit on overstuffed bags, force their way up crowded stairways out of the station. I stow my bag in a locker-room type place, haggle over a city map and head out into blinding sunlight.


9:15 a.m. Stop at a corner to get my bearings, buy paan from a paanwalla from Lucknow. Leave with betel-stained teeth, little comprehension of where in the city I am.




9:30 a.m. Ocean! At Chowpatty Beach. Glorious in the already stultifying heat. Wade through warm water to amusement of passersby. A young couple perches, legs swinging, on the seawall just above a trash heap where a family has set up a house.







10 a.m. Stop to watch a cricket match at the Police Gymkhana. Still don't understand how this game works.



11 a.m. Made it to Kalbadevi. Wander through crush of markets, small stalls with vendors vending cotton, jewellery, toys, fruit juice, electronics. Crawford Market is a quiet respite from the chaos, with neatly stacked heaps of fruit gleaming in the bizarre, grey, gothic building. Adjacent pet market reeks.



12 p.m. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus) is imposing stone. What's odd isn't that the enormous gothic building is out of place; it's that they seem entirely natural in a city by Portuguese and British flavours. The place is packed, but the nearby shady park is closed to the public. WTF?




1 p.m. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum--are we noticing a trend here, courtesy of Bal Thackeray et al?) is closed on Mondays. Argh. But the nearby Jehangir art museum offers air-conditioned respite from the crush of activity and heat on the street. And some gorgeous b&w photos.


3 p.m. Gateway of India isn't nearly as impressive as I had hoped. Just lots of tourists, lots of people looking to scam tourists. Rahhhh colonialism.





3:30 p.m. Taj hotel isn't looking too shabby, under the circumstances. Clientele frighteningly posh.


3:45 p.m. Vendors can't figure out why I laugh at their oversized oblong balloons. Sigh.



4 p.m. Less than 100 metres from India Gate is a collection of ramshackle lean-tos next to a beach that seems to be used both as fishing dock and public toilet. Um, minor problem? (the slum itself, however, is the most friendly place I've yet encountered in this city)






5 p.m. Wander through colourful and fascinating mazes of Colaba, end up in a navy base. Feel distinctly unwelcome. Manage to grab public bus going...somewhere.



6 p.m. End up in Nehru Park in Malabar Hill after bus ride to the north of the city, and then back. The park is crowded with young families, elderly people on strolls, young couples.


8 p.m. Try to walk back to train station, get hopelessly lost (how is that possible? Map made them look so close), take most unreasonably expensive cab in the history of the world.


9 p.m. Back at station and manage to almost miss train thanks to scramble at luggage check. Luggage attendant finds this hilarious. Still think I should charge for entertaining entire subcontinents with foreigner antics.

Soldiers, separatists and soggy houseboats

Kashmir feels like a place under siege.


The northern valley, which Jawaharlal Nehru famously described as " the face of the beloved that one sees in a dream and that fades away on awakening," is supposed to be known for its natural beauty and the trekking in nearby mountains.


But far more striking for any visitor are the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, police and paramilitaries patrolling every inch of the still-disputed territory.


A brief recap by someone who knows precious little about, um, anything: Both India and Pakistan lay claim to all of Kashmir, which was divided along a Line of Control in 1972 following decades of conflict after partition in 1947. Over and above bilateral hostility and violence, a local insurgency (fuelled, so India says, by money, arms and militants from Pakistan) has been continuing since 1989. Tens of thousands of people have died in the past 20 years.


But Kashmir is supposed to be approaching normalcy as militant activity has died down. Foreigners walking through Delhi's Paharganj are accosted by people enticing them to visit Srinagar houseboats. Everything's fine now, they say; the place is quiet.


It doesn't quite feel that way. Despite largely successful local elections earlier this year that boasted high voter turnout and put a relatively moderate "pro-Kashmiri" party in power, there's still widespread anger over what locals see as a militarization of their home. There's one security forces officer for every seven Kashiris, and the forces in Kashmir are granted almost total immunity under Indian law. As the civilian death toll mounts, so does the anger and tension underlying what have become weekly (if not daily) protests in Srinagar and surrounding villages.


Not one of the Kashmiris I spoke with wants to join Pakistan. Frankly, given what's going on there right now, can you blame them? But they all--even those not actively advocating independence--were furious at the Indian government, felt alienated from the rest of the country and defended the actions of protesters and separatists as necessary in fighting for freedom and their civil rights.


As one angry student put it, the army isn't there to protect the people--it's there to fight them. So why not fight back?


The soldiers I spoke with, of course, saw the situation differently. They laughed when I asked what would happen if they left. The militants would run amok, they said. And angry citizens? They're just stirred up by local separatist groups.


A Kashmiri soldier said people who advocate independence are kidding themselves.

"Have you seen Kashmir?" he asked, laughing and spreading his arms wide to encompass the entire valley.

"We couldn't exist on our own."

That doesn't make people any less angry, however.


So how does this translate for a clued-out gori (white woman)? Think barbed wire and soldiers decked out in camo everywhere, and frisking checkpoints every time you want to enter pretty much any public building. People are eager to air their grievances with the lost-looking foreigner. If only she could speak Kashmiri.

Scooter diaries: A Taj-tastic odyssey

Let me be clear: I had no intention whatsoever of seeing the Taj Mahal while in India.

If this sounds idiotic or pig-headedly non-conformist, that's because it kind of is. Cool as it looks in photos, the Taj has never really enticed me all that much.

But when a friend offered to take me to Agra via scooter, I found the offer hard to resist.


So off we went, leaving Delhi around 2 a.m. in the hopes of making it to Agra by sunrise.

The trip was, well, a trip. Flyovers and other pavement edifices flew past, replaced by fields punctuated with streetside chai- and chapati-selling dhabas hung with strings of lights. Why we weren't squished in the inky darkness by a passing truck, I have no idea.

Then around 4:30 a.m., it started to get cold. Really, bone-chillingly, seriously fucking cold. We stopped for chai in Chhaat, a place discernible only by the road sign and the godsent dhaba that was inexplicably open at that ungodly hour. The hot, cardamom-spiced liquid was one of the greatest beverages I have ever had--dirty glass be damned. I was tempted to curl up on a pile of blankets on a nearby bench, never to emerge.

We didn't make it by dawn--we hadn't even made it close to the Agra city limits when a painfully bright orb peeked over the edge of the horizon and made the ride a little less frigid. But by 7:30 we were lining up--easily the grubbiest, most suspect-looking supplicants come to pay respects to a marble wonder of the world.

I'm not gonna lie: The Taj Mahal may be Uttar Pradesh's biggest cash grab. It cost an exorbitant 750 rupees to get in, and every subsequent junction featured another way to fleece handycam-toting tourists of all they were worth. 75Rs to check my bag? Really?

But, in the interest of total honesty: The structure itself is pretty incredible. The outer gates and surrounding stone structures, including two beautiful temples flanking the head honcho, are beautiful. But the white marble edifice is beyond stunning. To circle the thing is to be awed by one man's bordering-on-maniacal obssession with architectural perfection--and its largely successful realization.

What's sad, though, is the toll the area's disregard for minor considerations like pollution is taking on the Taj. Crap from nearby factories and refineries, which had coated me in a delightful layer of grime during our morning scooter ride, is also harming the structure, taking the sheen off the previously gleaming white marble. A digital reader in a corner scrolled through levels of pollutants in the air--particulate matter was more than twice what the digital reader stated as the WHO's safe limit, in parts per million.

That's reassuring.

We lunched at a small dhaba on the rural edge of Agra, near a field of grain (hops? barley?) I was told the resident family used to make beer. My travelling partner fell asleep and I spent a couple of hours engaging in stilted, largely incomprehensible conversation with my server and fellow patrons.