Surviving Mumbai

The Mumbai portion of our expedition has been successful. Our intent was to have a safe place to hole up and adjust to the new time zone, local conditions, the experience of India, etc etc. We got plenty of rest (upwards of 14 hours a night) and still have found time for a slew of adventures: Elephanta, the Colaba Market/slum, learning to haggle, meeting up with an old co-worker of Laura's for lunch & hanging out yesterday afternoon, and Chowpati Beach last night. But now it's time to leave this tourist Mecca and head to another: Udaipur, home of one of the few remaining Maharajas. As India took all his income when the British withdrew and the country unified (or congealed, or whatever it did), the Maharaja in Udaipur has turned his various palaces and estates into a series of retreats and hotels. We'll let you know when we get there. As well as the excitement of Indian rail travel.

Everything in India is an adventure/hassle/haggle. It took us an hour to buy train tickets last night, including having to cross a 6-lane major street (a common circumstance) to get to an ATM to withdraw money AND bring back a receipt to prove that we had legally obtained said money. Or something like that. Terrorism is real and very alive here in this crazy melting-pot of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, various tribal regions, and (of course) tourists. Yet people smile, are patient and take life in stride.

I was trying to communicate that to Laura's friend Gunjan over lunch yesterday, but my cold had turned worse (not uncommon) and it was painful to speak. Gunjan had spent several years working in the States and was comparing children in Boston to children in Mumbai.

"They're so well behaved in the States," she exclaimed. "Here children are spoiled. They run around everywhere and climb over everything. They do whatever they want and no one does anything."

Laura and I exchanged looks. "You should get out and see more of America," we both said.

"Boston is a little different," I continued. "Very New England-stuffy. We get it from the Brits."

"Go to any McDonalds in America and you'll find the same thing as here," Laura agreed.

But Gunjan was right. There is something different in the way we treat our kids.

"Kids are incredibly disciplined in the US," I said after some thought. "They still run around like crazy and raise a ruckus, but it just makes people upset. Adults yell or slap their kids to quiet them down."

"They definately don't do that here," Gunjan said, horrified. "We would never hit our children!"

I think that's a good analogy for our cultural differences. In America we're tired and get bent out of shape. The world is on our shoulders: we are driven to succeed. In India people take things in stride. The social strictures are also liberating. How do I put this? There are similar pressures, similar tiredness attested to by a group of (untouchables?) taking a mid-afternoon siesta after a long day's work digging up and re-laying the brickwork for the sidewalk across the street from our hotel. (The town is laying new drainage pipework, I think.) The parents, men and women, were splayed on carts, in the dirt, on the newly-laid sidewalk taking their naps while their young children relaxed nearby. A brother and sister, no older than 6, huddled together. The sister drew some designs in the dirt while the brother "read" a newspaper.

Is any of this translating? The family needs the money so they all go work together. The women were earlier digging the ditches as fervently as the men. And the children? They hung around, chased each other along the sidewalks, never straying too far. The family stuck together. The people made do.

The poverty is striking here, but it is honest. I've been thinking about it a lot since arriving (and, honestly, long before I got here -- Nicaragua was eye-opening). A common theme in the West is how terrible the poverty is here. An Australian cricket star caused a ruckus recently by calling India a third-world country. The Western eye understands visible poverty this way. Maybe we were deeply scarred by The Plagues during the middle ages (this is where Foucault begins his history of operationalized separation of social space in the west, if I remember correctly).

At any rate, and to be less esoteric, I keep waiting for the drama of poverty to strike me. But it's not. While we were shopping for more conservative clothing (especially for Laura) yesterday it occurred to me that I simply don't feel comfortable judging visible poverty. I'm not the first to say this, but India has different standards for dealing with poverty than we do. We call poverty a crime and lock people in the poor house ... er, jail. Out of sight, out of mind. That's the drama that is bothering me. Calling India third-world is dishonest, and makes us in the West look like idiots. I'm not thrilled with the caste system by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm grateful for honesty.

Alright, time to check out of the hotel and head to the train station. Next stop Udaipur!