Claire Brummet & Colin Whitchelo in a Bollywood film

Claire wrote me about her adventures traveling back to Mumbai and on to Goa, after we parted company last week in Pune.  She and Colin ended up appearing in a Bollywood movie!  From her email:

"After leaving Pune and arriving in Mumbai we walked with our backpacks in the heat of the day from VT to Colaba. It was sweaty. We found the Salvation Army [jack note: no relation to OUR Salvation Army] hostel right behind the Taj. They didn't have any double rooms available so we had to get separate dorm bunks. Usually, we opt to pay a bit more for the double room when we stay at hostels. So, this was actually my first time staying in a dorm bed separate from Colin. The beds each cost Rs. 200 [jack note: about $5]. That included breakfast and lunch. Very cheap. The price fit the place. It was nasty. Bugs, smells, cold water, noise, and plenty of young dirty peers."


"Our first day [back in Mumbai] we were approached and asked to be in a Bollywood movie. A day of work with three meals included and you get paid Rs. 500 [jack note: about $12 USD] . It was a Tuesday when we got there and our train didn't leave until Saturday morn so we said yes. We had lots of time to kill. We did the Bollywood movie on Thursday."

"They picked us up at 5am and drove us three hours to a hill station outside Mumbai. The location was amazing and although the day was long and hot seeing the area was worth it. Once we got there, they dressed all of the girls up in short skirts and tank tops. They did our hair and makeup. I'm pretty sure they get foreigners because we have no problem dressing like skanks. The shoot was a trip. The movie was supposed to be a comedy like Austin Powers they said. There was an elaborate set (which reminded me a lot of AmC) and hundreds of people in hilarious outfits. The plot of the movie was vaguely explained to us and it made no sense. I wrote down the name of the movie and it comes out on December 24th. Hopefully we will be able to download it. Once I can show you the pictures it will make a lot more sense."
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One more reason I love Bombay--an ox cart among the taxis, buses, trucks, and sedans

I couldn't get a good shot because there was too much traffic by the time I got my camera out, but you can see the red horns of two ox, drawing a cart behind a bus in insane traffic. The 70'ish looking oxcart driver (and the oxen) seemed entirely unflappable among the crazy driving, non-stop beeping horns, and exhaust.

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Visiting Bombay High Court, where Ghandi told the Brits to take a hike

This beautiful building was completed in November 1878--it
is four floors, many very utilitarian courtrooms, and some gorgeous ones.

The Bombay High Court is one of the oldest Courts in India. It is the Appellate court over the States of Maharashtra, Goa , Daman and Diu. 75 judges and many hundreds of attorneys work there.

We actually got to sit in on some trials and hearings, and visited the courtroom where Gandhi underwent a famous trial and defied the British overlords. That courtroom was gorgeous--spare, but artfully designed. He was jailed then, for like two years, but there is now a large framed photograph of him on the wall.

The trials were pretty interesting. All attorneys wear suits under black robes and white ties. Everyone holds, shares, and passes around huge volumes of documents and papers. There were computers around but little sign they helped to abate the massive volume of paperwork.

It was also the first time I've seen carbon paper in use in about thirty years!
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Dharavi - a three hour 100 degree walk through the `slumdog` slum

Notice the mosque with its stately minarets in the midst of the rubble.

There are also Hindi and other churches in the slum, as well as medical

clinics, and other services

We went on a harrowing, sometimes heart-breaking tour of the Dharavi slum in Mumbai today. It was a guided tour, with proceeds going to a most joyous school, which we visited at the end. Over one million people live in an area roughly the size of Central Park, which they say makes this the densest "city" in the world. Most of the slums--that hold half of Bombay's people--are much smaller.

It was better and worse than we expected. Single room dwellings line both sides of tiny back streets, with kitchens and bedrooms coexisting in roughly 100 square feet or so, with up to ten people in each. Most of the alleys/streets were about three feet wide, and everything anyone uses, eats, drinks, etc., is hauled in on your back. The dwellings have no electricity or plumbing. There are community toilets--unplumbed. You must bring water when you use them. There are both open (and some closed) drains and sewers, all of which drain into a large channel at the edge of Dharavi (which empties into the Arabian Sea about two miles "downstream").

There are central water sites scattered throughout Dharavi--everyone must go get the water for their family. You fill metal buckets with drinking water and bring them to your place. You also own a large barrel near the waterspout--this is for your family baths and washing (because a barrel would take up too much room in a 100 square foot dwelling with eight people inside).

As depressing and hopeless as it seemed, there are a few signs of hope. there is an increasingly large recycling industry, processing recyclable waste from other parts of Mumbai. There are something like 15,000 single-room factories there. Some of them are doing incredibly toxic operations right among the living quarters.

We toured plastic, paper, and even metal recycling factories. Factories doesn't do it justice--we saw an aluminum recycling operation in a high ceilinged room, maybe 20 x 30 feet. It had two forges. After people had washed aluminum cans (beer, Coke, etc.), they were dried, and then fed into buckets in forges. When melted, the aluminum was poured into molds that created six pound aluminum ingots. These are transported--like everything else--via someone's back--out to the highway and sold back to the canneries, breweries, and soda plants that made them in the first place. And the cycle begins again...

I think you can see some apartment buildings in the photos above. These are on the edge of Dharavi, and are built on razed slum dwellings. Because of these illegal mini-factories, some people are actually able to move into small apartments. Our tour guide claimed that in ten years those apartments would cover what was the slum. That is hard to believe. These apartments remind me of some of the worst projects in Bed Sty or Harlem in NYC in the 70`s. Nonetheless, they are an exponential leap from the slum rooms. However, they are a hard sell too--in the slums, there is no rent, no electric or water or sewer bill. You don`t buy paint or light bulbs. The 100 rupees (two or three dollars) you make in recycling, tanning leather, or sewing don`t go very far outside the slum.

And despite the disease, the smell, the rubble, and grinding poverty, there was some hope--we saw children in a Muslim school joyously shouting their numbers from 1 to 100 (in English of course). We saw many smiles, and some laughter. Many kids shook our hands and wanted to say hello. Most adults ignored us, but many would smile and joke. The other slums have no work available, and hard and dirty as the work is, it gave the people in Dharavi some sort of leg up. There were doctors around.

As terrible as things are, there is at least a shred of hope. I don't know what we can do to help the people of Dharavi, but I hope we somehow can. There are possibilities and some glimmer of hope if they can just get a little more help. Let's face it--their money comes from being seriously exploited by companies manufacturing without health and safety regulation, no taxation (this is almost all underground) and paying wages one fifth of what they would pay in other places. Isn't there some kind of middle ground for benevolent capitalists...or is that an oxymoron?

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Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya - the old name was easier for a westerner!

The Buddha

Ganesh

Painting of a challenge

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya

On Wednesday a few hours after arriving, and about four hours sleep, we lit out. I wanted to see the former Prince of Wales museum, now called the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. It is a gorgeous old museum, with a stragely eclectic collection, spanning incredible Buddhist and Hindi sculpture and miniature paintings, an extensive collection of Chinese porcelain and jade (boring), and even a few galleries of western paintings by the like of William Gainsborough, Titian and Rubens' school, and even a painting of Lanky Abe Lincoln!

The museum has around 50,000 items from ancient Indian history and objects from elsewhere (Like Abe Lincoln). The museum is more or less divided into three parts: Art (largely western paiting), Archaeology and Natural History. The museum has thousands of Indus Valley Civilization artfacts, and other relics from ancient India from the time of the Guptas and Mauryas. As always, we were most interested in the archaeological artifacts--mostly scupltures, and the like. What we loved most were the ancient scupltures of Buddha and the various Hindu deities.

Since it was a holiday, the place was filled with Indians and only a small handful of tourists. One thing I found really heart-warming and amazing about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya was how joyous and relaxed it was. The guards were smiling, and there was much talking and laughter--quite a contrast to our more staid and library-like museums. I bought a camera permit for a few dollars which allowed me to take all the photographs I wanted. I'll share as many as I can.

After much walking around town, we stopped for beers at the famous Leopold's (140 years old, a site where Indians, Africans, and Brit, German, and America tourists eat and drink together). Leopolds was the site of a terroist attack in 2008. You are wanded and your bags are checked before you enter. The beer and mint lime-ade was cold and cheap. Later Tuesday night, we had an awesoe vegetarian thalli, nan, and mineral water dinner down the street.

Back at the hotel, we chilled, drank much water, and fell out. I got in a few chapters of Rick Stieves Travel As A Political Act.
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Bombay calling! Getting there

We left Seattle at around 2pm Sunday.  We arrived in Bombay sometime around 3:30 am Tuesday. It took about 24 hours to get here on a Boeing 777...ten hours to Seoul Korea and a couple of hours there, then a nine hour trip from Seoul to Mumbai-Bombay. 

At the airport we took a wild ride (note: they are all wild rides!) to our hotel.  You ride through the famous slumdog slum, dodging may pope dog and other cars and taxis, beeping the horn whenever you near another vehicle or person.  There were maybe thirty red lights on the way; we did not stop for one.  More about traffic here later.  I wonder if any gringo is crazy enough to actually rent a car...

I walked around outside at 5am, and discovered literally dozens of people on our block, sleeping beside their stands or their trike-rickshaws.  As I discovered later, they mostly arise around 7 am, and begin their day.  More soon!  jack
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