On The Ground In India

Airports handle millions of travelers from all around the globe, and yet there is no universal “intuitive” design to manage crowds with radically different cultural backgrounds. So the approachability of airport staff to answer and direct “lost” travelers reflects greatly on the impressions visitors form as they enter a country through these ports. The three hour transfer in New Delhi to my Mumbai flight was very similar to my experience as an international in-transit transfer through Heathrow where you go through a very thorough security check point which took the better part of an hour. With the potential of appearing a lot more threatening than I think was intended, it was nice that the uniformed personnel interacting with passengers were not visibly armed, while armed soldiers watched from nearby.

While English is an official language in India, there are likely hundreds of different languages that are used around the country, and I have almost no familiarity with any Indian languages. So one of my first requests has been to find a tutor to work with me on getting to know the basics of understanding what I am hearing and seeing on signs and directions. As I negotiated my way through the airports, it was clear that locals and travelling Indians spoke easily with a mix of languages that was peppered with English, and clearly NOT English. So at times it could be difficult to discern what I was hearing. The benefit of looking like a foreigner allows locals to address me in English, if they are able, without assuming that I understand Hindi or Marathi.

When I was on my own in China, it was a very different matter due to the fact that I am racially Chinese, so it was by my clothing and my physical attitude that strangers might guess I was a foreigner. I was born and grew up in Jamaica speaking English and European languages, and my spoken Chinese is rudimentary at best. And the reactions of locals in mainland China to “foreign born Chinese” can be startlingly judgmental, but this is another topic all together. Local reactions to me in India, have generally been kindly and polite. This makes asking assistance from strangers, official or otherwise, a little less intimidating.

People meeting passengers at Chhatrapi Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai are not generally allowed to wait within the airport building, so they line up against a barricade holding signs with names written as needed. However, it can be a challenge to find your name without getting quite close and walking carefully along a considerable line of humanity to find your name (which you hope is recognizably written/spelled). I admit to being decidedly relieved to find my driver, and given my tiredness from a day’s worth of travel, it was a small blessing that he spoke very little English, and I could not respond positively to his asking if I speak Hindi.

My hotel is not luxurious by the standards I know exist in Mumbai, but it is perfectly adequate for a short stay. I definitely look forward to having an apartment in which to settle. And once I found out that the Danceworx studios where I will be doing most of my teaching was a five minute walk away, the choice made a lot of sense. Some of the bonuses of being in a hotel is having access to WiFi (which is not terribly reliable), having one’s room cleaned, a bottle of water provided each day, access to room service (though I am not familiar with the names of many of the dishes on the menu), and in this case, an included breakfast.

My orientation with Ryan from the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) office in Mumbai was set for the afternoon after I arrived, and I found out from him that I am nowhere near where the offices are located. So, he had kindly decided to travel up to my hotel and meet with me, and it gave him the opportunity to visit Danceworx, my “host institution”, which is new to working with Fulbright. I had actually not ventured out of the hotel until we finished our meeting and Ryan accompanied me to go and find the dance studios where I would catch up with my “hosts.”

The section of Andheri West where I am currently staying is reputed to be one of the most crowded areas of Mumbai and in a city of some eighteen million people that is saying something. Additionally, I am a city block away from a well-established slum area through which the car services I have been taking negotiate throngs of people, “rickshaws”, motorcycles and other vehicles on roads that have not been repaired in so long that they may as well be considered unpaved. This is not in and of itself a problem for me as the similarities to sections of Kingston in Jamaica where I grew up are uncanny. I remember a bizarre sense of “déjà vu” the first time I visited India with the Taylor Company in 1997 as we drove through a slum in Kolkata.

It is a little hard to describe what it is about the slums and its environs in Mumbai that brings Kingston to mind for me in a weirdly nostalgic way, so I will just list a bunch of impressions that strike me.

- Concrete block walls, metal fences and grill work covers windows and doors of concrete buildings abutting the roads.

- As roadways give up their pavement to overuse and entropy the buildings become shacks constructed of corrugated metal sheets and tattered, brightly colored tarps held down by skull sized rocks that seal out heat and rain.

- Chickens, dogs, cows and scavenging birds can be seen amongst the constantly moving currents in a river of people on foot, in electric “rickshaws”, on motorcycles, in cars, in trucks, all gently inching their way around each other with the inevitability of a river of lava.

- During the day, Monsoon rains have mellowed and mixed the smells of open fires cooking fragrantly spiced stews, roasted vegetables and meats embattled with the stench of urine, feces, decaying foods, and more industrial noxious odors.

- People of all ages are conservatively clothed in full length trousers, saris, button front shirts, t-shirts, kurtas and colors pop against the background.

- Emerging from some slum towns are streets lined with stores that seem like giant concrete caves with wares spilling out beyond modest sidewalks onto the dirt embankments of worn out blacktop roads.

Mumbai and India might not be for everyone, but it is definitely a country of contrasts, and when I had a chance to meet up with Petra (my former student that is teaching in my stead for the original studio where I was to teach) in the Bandra area of Mumbai we went for a walk and could take in views that I had not yet encountered.