Sandals v. Shoes

I have a theory: you can tell people’s socio-economic status in Mumbai by whether they are wearing shoes or sandals.

            The heavy majority of people you see in Mumbai are wearing sandals. Folks walking down the street, street sellers, etc. You even see guys wearing a button down and slacks with sandals. Even though I look remotely Indian, people always seem to know I’m a foreigner, and I secretly think it’s because I’m often the only person around wearing shoes (and I sweat profusely in the humidity, while Indian folks seem to lack sweat glands or something). However, the one place in public that you see a majority of people wearing shoes is in the first class compartment of the metro trains.

            The trains here have 4 kinds of cars: the regular, second class cars, the ladies cars, a car for the disabled and elderly, and the first class car. Regular second class tickets cost about 10 rupees per ride (about 15 cents). A first class ticket costs about 50 rupees for a ride. I bought a three month 1^st class pass for 1500 rupees (about 25 dollars). That’s unlimited rides for three months for 25 bucks. For many of Mumbai’s residents, that is too much. The first class cars are a little less crowded, which is the most appealing thing about it for me.

            So, on the first class cars, you pretty much only see shoes. The folks in the first class car, like myself, are going to jobs in offices for private companies and organizations all over the city. In offices, you see shoes. In my office, most wear shoes, except for one dude. We have one secretary/admin type guy, who gets paper, signs for packages, runs errands, and doesn’t really speak great English. He wears sandals. I spoke to a few expats here, and found that this one person who does clerical stuff and wears sandals is present in many offices. I heard them referred to as office boys. Boys. I also heard the term “boy” in reference to the guys in the hostels I stayed at that cleaned rooms, brought hot water, carried your bags, etc. A group of 30 or 40 year old men that everyone referred to as “boy”. Maybe it is my upbringing in the United States, with our history of racial injustice and use of the word “boy” to denigrate an entire race, which shocks me when I hear the term. I don’t know.

            You see, Mumbai is a city of very rich and very poor. Although the middle class of India has been increasing in numbers for several years, Mumbai is a city of shocking disparity. A few weeks ago, I went to a very swanky bar on the roof of the 4 Seasons Hotel. It is in a very expensive part of town called Worli. The view was astounding. You could see the entire city. What struck me most though was that in between all the expensive high rise condo and apartment buildings, you saw slums. Right next to a high rise, or tucked in between a couple, you see a huge informal settlement of shacks with blue tarp for roofs. I felt like as far as I could see, there were tall buildings and an adjoining slum right next to it. Poverty is inescapable in Mumbai. Rich folks literally live on top of folks who live in shacks. The slums are not somewhere else, they are along your morning commute. On the street at night, you see tons of people sleeping on the sidewalk. I’m not talking about the odd homeless guy. I mean like hundreds of people sleeping on the street. You see whole families sleeping on a thin sheet on the sidewalk.

           

            One really crazy thing about India is how cheap labor is here. Every one of even modest means has a maid. Most people who are not poor have a person that comes and cleans the house daily. Many others also have a cook. At our office, this old woman comes every day for about an hour and simply washes our dishes after lunch. When I first moved into my apartment, my roommate wanted to hire maid.  I was skeptical, and I asked how much it would cost. She said that for a woman to come to our apartment three times a week for about 2 hours a day would cost 1500 rupees (25 bucks). I was shocked.

            Many of Mumbai’s wealthy have cars, but never drive them. Most have drivers. And this is how they get by. They live on top of the slums, go down to their garage, get driven away to work, and get driven back, constantly avoiding the poverty at their doorstep. 

Hindu Rituals

I’d never really seen any kind of Hindu rite or ritual. In fact, I don’t know really know that much about Hinduism in general. But for the past couple weeks, there has been this huge Hindu festival called Ganpati, celebrating the god Ganesh. Ganesh is the one that looks like an elephant.

So, the story goes (and I’m bastardizing it here) that Ganesh was the son of Lord Krishna. But apparently, father and son had not seen each other in many years. One day, Krishna comes to the house, and knocks on the door. Ganesh’s mother was bathing, and Ganesh, not recognizing his own father, refuses him entry. Krishna, not recognizing his own son, gets really angry, and chops his head off. (I know, it escalates really quickly. But religious stories usually do). His mother comes out to see what happened, and demands that Krishna go out, and bring the head of the first animal he sees to give to their son. And so, Ganesh has the head of an elephant. He represents wisdom, knowledge, and fortune.

Ganpati lasts 10 days. Standard procedure is that families buy these statues of Ganesh, ranging anywhere from 1 foot tall to 8 feet tall. They set up a shrine around the statutes in their homes. On a given day (either the 2^nd, 5^th, 7^th, or 10^th day, each family does it differently), folks take their statues to the sea, and immerse them in the water. A co-worker invited me to his family’s house for their immersion, and that was the first time I’d ever seen any kind of Hindu ritual. Once you say some prayers at the house, you then take the Ganesh statue on a long, slow procession to the water. Along the way, there are groups of young men playing drums, people are dancing in the street, and folks are setting off fireworks. The whole thing kind of seemed like a non-alcoholic Mardi Gras.

The biggest Ganesh statues are often 30 or 40 feet tall. One of the biggest and most important Ganesh statues in Mumbai was about a block away from my office. Huge masses of people would wait up to 16 hours to see it. Someone in my office knew a guy who knew a guy, so we got to skip the line. I felt kind of bad, cutting a bunch of genuine believers who have been waiting hours to see this statue, but it was a once in a lifetime experience. The main line leading to the statue went straight back, for like a half mile, and you are in this giant crowd, being pushed closer, inch by inch, to the statue. We were in that line for about an hour. Once you get to the feet of the statue, it’s a fucking madhouse. It was kind of like being in a mosh pit. You are at the statue for like 30 seconds, before you are violently pushed to the exit by the mass of people behind you waiting for their turn to say their prayers to Ganesh.

The tenth day is the biggest day. All the biggest statues, including the one near my office, are taken to be immersed. My office was closed that day, simply because it would have been impossible to access the office. A huge truck carries the Ganesh statue, and a second huge truck in front carries literally a wall of amplifiers blasting Bollywood pop music. You would see this all over the city. It was intense.

About 2 weeks before Ganpati started, there was another festival (this one only for one day) called Dahi Handi. This one celebrates Krishna. The story is that as a child, Krishna loved butter in particular and dairy products in general. Traditionally, dairy products were kept in a particular type of clay pot. Krishna would go around, climbing on top of things, stealing pots of various dairy products. So during this festival, people string up these traditional pots like 30 or 40 feet in the air. Groups of young men then form human pyramids by standing on each other’s shoulders and try to reach the pot. Charitable rich people put up money to give to the winning team. Some of these groups were impressive. The tallest ones had like 6 levels of people on each other’s shoulders. These tallest ones had like 100 people in the group because the base has to be really large. The most surprising aspect of it was that the person on the very top of the pyramid was always an 11 year old boy, wearing only a helmet and a life jacket as protection. No one else had any kind of protection on. I didn’t see anything, but apparently people get terribly injured every year.

Food

The Indian food we get in the United States, while tasty, is a very limited selection of what India has to offer. Before coming to India, I was looking forward to all the tasty butter chicken and tikka masala I would. And while I've had my fill, there is a variety here that I had never known about.

            The food we get in the States is mostly Northern Indian, mostly Hindu food. The Muslim Indian food is a bit different (I like it better, to be honest). It tends to be thicker, something you would eat with naan, rather than put over rice. It also tends to be spicier, and meatier. My favorite dish has quickly become something called kadai. You can have chicken kadai, mutton kadai, veg kadai, etc… It is a mixture of tomato, cumin, chili powder, black pepper, bell peppers, and a bunch of other shit that I can’t identify. But it’s amazing. I’ve been going around Mumbai seeking out kadai chicken from as many places as possible.

            North Indian food is also different from South Indian food. I don’t know really know, because you don’t get much South Indian food around here, but I’m told it’s good. I’ve also been eating a lot of Dosas, which are like Indian quesadillas, but without cheese. It’s usually tomato and vegetables wrapped in thin, slightly crunchy flat bread.

            The most popular street food in Mumbai is something called pani purry. It’s really strange. I still really don’t know what’s in it. You get this like hollow, crunchy, ball made of filo dough or something along those lines. You then fill it with lentil (I think) and barley(?) – I really don’t know what’s in it. You then add a mixture of two different sauces, one red and one green, and eat. It is really a mystery to me what pani purry actually is, or why everyone loves it. It’s not my favorite thing.

            By far the best meal I’ve had in Mumbai was at a Parsi restaurant. Parsis are folks who have their ethnic roots in Iran, and are often practicing Zoroastrians. Their food is a very uniqe mixture of Persian and Indian flavors. Some of my co-workers told me I had to go to this one place, called Britannia. The first thing you notice about this place is that there are three flags on the wall, the Iranian flag, the British flag, and the Indian flag. Right to next to that is a picture of the Queen, as well as a picture of Gandhi. I don’t know if you can have both of those on the same wall. It sends mixed messages.

            This very old man, maybe in his 80’s, comes to take our order. The guy I was with is from Scotland. Once he finds this out, he says “When you go back to the United Kingdom, give the Queen my regards, and tell her we love her, and that we want her back!” He then tells me how awesome Hilary Clinton is, and that she will be the next US president. The second time I went there, the same old man took my order. This time, we brought out a stack of papers. One was a post card from Prince William and Kate Middleton, apparently sent to him after he sent them a shitload of fan mail. His prize possession, however, was a letter from the Queen herself. Well, not from the Queen, but from the Queen’s “Lady in Waiting”. The letter said that the Queen was grateful for his many letters, an appreciated his loyalty to the Queen and the crown. It was intense.

            Apparently, most Parsis live in or around Mumbai. During British rule, many Parsi families worked in industries like shipping, and did a lot of business with their colonial masters. Many Parsis became fabulously wealthy. To this day, most huge Indian companies, and most of India’s richest people are Parsis. Huge conglomerates including Tata, Godrej, and Reliance are owned by Parsis. I think that’s why some Parsis may have a slightly more favorable view of British rule. It’s like that in many societies that have gone through political change in recent years. I see it often among Iranians. Many Iranians that were doing well under the Shah’s regime thought he was a great leader (though most people don’t). I saw this especially among my grandmother’s generation.

            Anyway back to food. The weirdest thing about eating in India is the service. If you go to a decent restaurant, they’ll bring you your food in a bowl or something, and then bring you a plate. You waiter will then serve you your order onto your plate. And the waiters stay on top of you the whole fucking time. Once you finish what’s on your plate, they’ll rush over and put more on your plate. If you ordered a soda, once you finish what’s in your glass, they’ll rush over and pour more from the can. It’s actually kind of annoying.

            This kind of emphasis on overly formal service exists at bars too. There are no “regular” bars as we might think of them here. You don’t go to the bar and order your drinks. At every bar, you get a table, an a waiter. And you order your drinks from the waiter. You know how when you order a bottle wine at a fancy restaurant in the States and they show it to you so you can pretend like you are a discerning connoisseur of French wine? They do that here with bars. A lot of the bars play super loud dance music, even if there is no dance floor. Any almost every bar makes their employees wear silly shit. This one bar that I frequent, Toto’s, the staff wear these Mario style giant bright overalls. This other bar that I went to, Bora Bora, the staff wear super deep cut v-necks, ripped up jeans, sideways trucker caps, and a shitload of plastic jewelry. It is obviously an interpretation of western fashions with something (many things) lost in translation. That is one thing I miss about the US, a normal fucking bar. 

Infrastructure, or, How To Survive in Mumbai

I think I’ve figured out what one needs to do to survive in Mumbai. But to in order to explain, I have to tell you a bit about the infrastructure here.

Infrastructure in Mumbai is often in a poor state. The sidewalks, where they exist, are especially problematic. Some parts of the city consistently have sidewalks, others do not. However where the sidewalks do exists they are wildly inconsistent in quality from one stretch to the next. The sidewalk might be nicely paved for 100 feet, then will be cracked for the next 100 feet, then just won’t exist for 100 feet, then will be there again, and then decrease in width by half for another 100 feet. In Bandra, where I am living, the main road has sidewalk, but it will go from 12 feet in width to 4 feet in width. Or all of sudden you might be walking in mud, then back to a paved sidewalk. Other streets in Bandra, however, will have sidewalks as thin as 3 feet. This is a big problem considering how many people walk in Mumbai at any given time of the day.

The sidewalks are extremely crowded here. Many people, in fact most people, just walk in the street because the sidewalks are so crowded. Another problem is that the sidewalk is often taken up entirely by vendors. A 15 sidewalk suddenly becomes 3 feet because vendors have set up tables and booths to sell everything from fruit to pillow cases. The weird thing though is that people seem kind of bad at walking in public with lots of other people. I’ve always thought that in New York or Chicago, where lots of people walk a lot, people tend to be pretty good at walking with lots of other people around. Folks move to one side or the other when there is another person approaching them, people generally avoid bumping into each other, and most people don’t take up the whole sidewalk. Mumbai is a crowded city with many pedestrians, but I cannot say that the pedestrians here very good at dealing with each other. People don’t move to the side, people walk right in front of you, or bump into you. If I am walking on a narrow sidewalk, and approaching someone walking the opposite direction, I’ll move to my left, but chances are the other person won’t even move 1 foot to the right to avoid a collision. So when we reach each other we both have to strangely contort our bodies to avoiding bumping into each other. Or I’ll be walking down to the street to the train in the morning, and people don’t seem to use their peripheral vision. Folks will suddenly cut right in front of me, like 2 inches from my face. Or people will all of a sudden bump into me. I think it is strange. You’d think that people would eventually get pretty good at walking in large crowds here. But sometimes I think that there are simply too many people and too little sidewalk space in Mumbai for even the most basic of pedestrian courtesies.

In some parts of the city, especially the northern neighborhoods, the city has built “skywalks” around the train stations, where many people walk. The skywalks are essentially pedestrian highways. They are built maybe 40 feet up, and are covered. I take the Bandra skywalk every day on the way to, and from, the train station. The street leading to the train station is nuts. There are tons of pedestrians, cars, taxis, three-wheeled auto rickshaws, and vendors. On top of that, the main bus depot and transfer center for the area is right there, which means buses are constantly coming in and out of the small street. So, I take the skywalk for about a block and a half to the train station. It’s safer, saves me some time, and offers an interesting view of the street below that you don’t see very often. If anyone has been to the High Line in New York, it’s a bit like that, but more crowded, dirtier, and with no landscaping or design.

You can also see Mumbai’s public infrastructure bursting at the seams on the city’s trains. I learned came across some interesting stats the other day. 85% of commuters in Mumbai take public transit to work. That’s a number that any transportation planner in the United States would drool over. Another 8% or so walk, bike, or take taxis, and about 7% drive. That’s the amazing thing. The streets here are packed. Cars clog the road most of the day. In many parts of the city traffic is something that drivers deal with from 8 am to 8 pm. With only 7% of the population here driving private vehicles, the city’s traffic system is just about operating at capacity. And as impressive as it is that 85% of Mumbaikars take transit, it really shows.

As I’ve mentioned before, the trains here are crazy. They are absolutely packed. During rush hour, the train will be full, and people will still stream inside, pushing their way in to get a spot. I can kind of understand (just a little bit) why people would want to get a car here, even if they have to sit in traffic all day. I’ll be standing on a packed train with literally no room to move. Someone will walk up to me, say excuse me, and look at me as if I’m supposed to move out of his way or something. Eventually they just push past me, shoving me into other people on the train. And when it is time to get off, you have to push your way to the door, and then push your way out through the crowds of people trying to get on the train.

And this is what I’m trying to get at. To survive in Mumbai you have to be patient, extremely patient. But you also have to pushy, sometime very pushy. When you are walking to the train in the morning to get to work, and people bump into you or cut you off, you have to be patient. When cars and motorcycles don’t stop for you, or almost hit you, you have to have patience and move on. If you don’t you are going to be frustrated and angry all the time. But, you also have to be pushy. People most likely won’t move for you, so you just have to keep walking through. If there are cars, you just have to walk in front of them so they’ll stop. If you keep on moving out of the way for people, of keep stopping for all the cars, you’ll never get anywhere. Or, when you are on the train, and hordes of people get on so that you are all packed in like sardines, you have to be patient. When people shove and push you to get by, you just have to be patient and get over it, or else you are going to be miserable during your entire train ride. But, when you need to get off the train, you have to be pushy. You have to push and shove to get off. Otherwise, you are not going to be able to get off the train, and will miss your stop.

That’s how you survive in Mumbai.