How exciting to wake up in India! Dan and I were here for a few days in the 1970s when we explored New Delhi and Agra’s Taj Mahal. Dan was back once on business, but this is my first return trip.

Seven islands originally constituted Mumbai. In the 17th century these islets were joined through drainage, reclamation projects, and through the construction of causeways and breakwaters to form Bombay Island. It is the capital of the state of Maharashtra. With a population of 21,000,000+ it is India’s most-populous metro area.

Getting through the face-to-face immigration process got our day off to a really s…l…o…w start with a two-hour wait in line. Some folks had to have their finger prints taken as well as their picture. Seems the computers were being difficult and it’s a bit of business as usual. We were told to expect this, so few people grumbled.

Cleone and I had attended an India presentation, so we were ready to ‘experience the city, not see the city.’ Per recommendation we ‘looked for order in the chaos’ and ‘watched solutions unfold’ in the Indian way. Streets are for all forms of vehicles as well as pedestrians. Double parking is standard so navigating around these vehicles combined with bumper to bumper traffic, jaywalkers, the odd cow, bicycles, and scooters made for slow moving. Pedestrians, shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks, had their fair share of challenges navigating around the small kiosks selling everything from food and drinks to housewares.

Our guide pointed out apartment buildings where the well healed as well as ultra rich live and the hovels and shanties where those living hand to mouth, 68% of the city’s population, live. Amazingly, the rich and the poor are neighbors. We passed public study halls where poor children go to do their homework, temples, museums, hotels, and the huge beach-lined bay nicknamed the Queen’s Necklace. We passed the famous Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Victoria Terminus, and the Gateway to India which is a triumphal arch built to commemorate the visit of England’s King George and Queen Mary. We had a bird’s eye view of all of this from our perch on the bus.

Once off the bus we had three special experiences. The first was a train ride from Churchgate Railway Station. Thankfully it was not rush hour, so we had a car virtually to ourselves. We saw the women-only cars and enjoyed the sign informing us that Section 156 of the Railway Act prohibits traveling on the roof.

Our short ride took us to the Dhobi Ghat, the city’s 140-year-old, open-air laundromat. Oh my, what a sight! A half a million articles of clothing are washed, sorted, ironed, and hung out to dry each day. We saw large, square concrete tubs with a stone block in each for beating the clothes and linens and row upon row of closely strung clotheslines. It offers an indispensable service to the millions who have no facilities or space to do laundry for themselves. Our guide explained that storefront laundries send things here also unbeknownst to their clientele who assume the storefronts have their own automated facilities.

Our other special experience was a stop at Mani Bhavan, the home of a friend that served as Mahatma Gandhi’s Bombay base between 1917 and 1934. It is now a museum and memorial to the Mahatma, founding father of an independent India. The museum has a research library of more than 20,000 volumes; his sitting room/bedroom; a number of personal artifacts including a letter to Hitler asking him not to go to war and Gandhi’s correspondences with Roosevelt, Tolstoy, and Einstein.

Because the observance of Diwali was unofficially extended by a day or two we missed seeing the lunch-bearing dabbawallas at work. Our guide explained that the typical Indian worker prefers homecooked meals to fast food or takeout. Because the typical long commute by train prohibits going home at lunch, a lunchbox delivery and return system was created some 100 years or so ago. For $15 a month you get your homecooked meal delivered to you at work. Seriously.

Here’s how it works. There are some 5,000 groups of up to 20 individuals (not counting your mother or wife who is doing the cooking) who coordinate their efforts to get hot meals from homes to offices for a quarter of a million people a day. Pickup at private residences is at 10:30 in the morning. Depending on the distance to work, the pickup guy passes off the meals to another guy who gets them to the local train station where he passes them to a guy who takes them to a clearing house in Mumbai proper where they are passed along to whatever number of guys are needed to deliver lunch by 12:30. Return of the lunch container is included in the price, so the dabbawalla who delivered lunch waits for one hour before the relay system is reversed.

Our guide made the unilateral decision to take us back to the ship two hours early. She used the traffic as her reason. Some were happy to be out of the chaos I assume, but I was not one of them. We had come a long way and were disappointed and felt cheated.

… Fun Facts …

Mahatma is used in India as a title of love and respect.

Currency: Indian Rupee (INR).
1 INR = $0.012 / 100 INR = $1.20.

The 89-year British occupation of India, referred to as the British Raj, ran from 1858 to 1947.
In those days Mumbai was known as Bombay, a name the Portuguese, who
occupied India before England, popularized.

As the national animal, India holds tigers in high esteem and has 50 tiger reserves
and more than 3,000 tigers, 70% of the world’s wild population.

The average monthly salary in India is equivalent to $300.