You say Bombay and I say Mumbai...

I spent the weekend in Mumbai (well, I spent half of it in Mumbai and half of it on trains going to/from Mumbai) and it was interesting, to say the least (apologies for the lack of photos...)

I've become increasingly adept at navigating India. I now have a good sense of what things should cost (and when people are trying to rip me off) and I am a pro at figuring out the train system.

That said, figuring out Mumbai was still new and pretty frustrating. In Jodhpur, you bargain with a rickshaw driver every time you go somewhere. In Mumbai, they use metered taxis. At first, I was excited for the relief from bargaining (after all, I always feel silly and guilty bargaining over what often amounts to a dime). But as I soon discovered, this metered system makes it soooo much easier for the cabbies to rip you off if they think you're a foreigner. For one thing, as it's based on mileage, they can drive around in circles in Mumbai for the extra money and I wouldn't have a clue. But they also use antiquated meters (that reflect what price your taxi trip would have cost roughly 10 years ago) and then whip out a chart that converts the number on the meter to the current cost. Lo and behold, they often also have fake charts, used on tourists to make them pay more (and I feel I was victim to one of these when I first took a car from the train station to my hotel). It's absolutely infuriating. What's more is that, like in the rest of the India, the cab drivers seem unable to say "no," so even if they have no clue where your destination is, they won't tell you this until you've driven around for 10 minutes asking other drivers for directions. This isn't a huge problem in Jodhpur because even if they waste 10 minutes looking for a place, you've already settled on a price. But in Mumbai it can get expensive fast.

Mumbai as a city seems to pretty metonymic of India as a whole. You get slums next to skyscrapers and cows and beggars roam streets that have billboards for Indian Fear Factor hovering over them. As Sarah MacDonald wrote in the interesting, but also self-absorbed and mildly offensive, Holy Cow, "India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It's rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid. It's all the extremes. India defies understanding..." I find this statement to be right on and I struggle with the never-ending juxtapositions surrounding me every day.

Moreover, Mumbai is definitely modern--with coffee shops and nice pizzerias and air conditioned shops all over the place. But it's still uniquely Indian. For example, women in Mumbai wear kurtas, but, in stark contrast to Rajasthani kurtas, they tend to be sleeveless and worn with leggings. They also wear makeup and, to my absolute horror, held hands with their boyfriends (disgusting!)

Though my time in Mumbai was a bit shorter than I would have liked, I still got to see some of the major sites.
I went to the house where Mahatma Gandhi used to live when he was in Mumbai (and where he began his historic fast). Along with an amazing photo gallery (filled with interesting letters Gandhi wrote to Hitler, Tolstoy and others), there was a strangely beautiful room where Gandhi's biography was told in a series of dioramas. There was also an extensive library downstairs filled with Gandhi's own writing, books about him, and books reflecting Gandhian philosophical principles; it was fascinating, and I wish I had more time to spend there.
In addition to Gandhi's home, I saw Victoria Terminal (a mammoth train station that looks more like a cathedral), Chowpatty Beach, a few markets, and the Gateway of India. I also went shopping and, on Saturday, had dinner with the friend of my dear Anna Wiener.

Other than that, I spent a ton of time on the train (and because of this, in the past week, I've finished four books!). The trains in India are great and I love train travel, though the company can sometimes be interesting. This time, it seems (though the story is too complex to get into here) that the engineer sitting across from me wrote me a love note. And on the way to Mumbai, I almost went crazy when this guy decided to play his MP3 player out loud (wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn't playing, of all things, horrendous Tracy Chapman remixes--where it wasn't Tracy singing, Kids in the Hall, and an Umbrella remix).

I'm now completely overworked at my job, so I may have less time to write in the near future, but I will try to post soon.

Also: the schnoz is still a bit sore, a bit misshapen and nonfunctional, but otherwise, I seem to have recovered fine.

Signing off for now and wishing you all a happy summer,
Julie