Travel with Indigo

There is first the matter of the city’s name, Mumbai or Bombay. In 1995 a far-right, xenophobic political party, apparently in an irritable mood, changed the city’s name from the classic Bombay, a pusillanimous gesture at ridding it of the last vestiges of the British Raj. Nevertheless English-speaking Indians still call it Bombay and so will I.

We had first planned that after leaving the Maldives we would pay brief visits to the Indian cities of Cochin and Goa, both of which had been heartily recommended to us by Indian friends. One exchange with our agent for India, however, quickly removed these places from our itinerary, along with any other stops other than Bombay.

We were reliably informed that in India each port—not each state, but each port—has its own entry protocols and requirements, that the forms and reports for each are different and require about six hours to complete, and that each of the 15 kleptocrats who will insinuate himself into the process, most quite unnecessarily, will demand to come aboard for an inspection and to be compensated for their troubles with a bottle of whiskey as a minimum bribe. Thirty bottles of whiskey was too high a price for visiting cities that are hardly among the world’s most desirable places to visit. I said no freaking way (a sanitized version) and with that we proceeded on to Bombay.

You know the city is near long before you actually see it. It’s the sea that gives the first hint of arrival. From the radiant clear blue of the Arabian Sea the water beneath Indigo changed slowly transforming itself through various hues to an opaque dusty green reminiscent of pea soup that had been left out too long. As we drew nearer expecting to see a skyline, only a toxic vaporous air lay in a thick blanket across our path. At a distance when we should have seen signs of a city, it still seemed as if we were gazing through the sort of tissue paper from which it’s possible to get abrasions from its overly vigorous use.

When at last the outlines of Bombay could be seen, it was we thought just a very large, ordinary city caught on a bad day. After all large cities when viewed from a distance at sea look pretty much alike. As our experiences would bear out, brief though they were, there was nothing ordinary about Bombay.

Assessing the city against the standards of others with which we are familiar is unfair and sure to put Bombay in an unflattering light. So it’s first essential to put it in a context from which thoughtful opinions might be drawn. Here are a few highly selective statistics that though sketchy convey something of the place. In no particular order then:
1. Its population is 13 million within the city limits plus another 5 million in the suburbs, and that’s only by official count.
2. Within a land area one-third that of Greater London it houses twice as many people. Its density is 27,348 people per square kilometer and up to 113,000 in the most crowded areas, while New York’s is 9,551.
3. Each day six million people board its suburban commuter trains and all head into the city. Trains meant to hold 1,700 passengers routinely carry 4,700. Seventeen commuters cram themselves into a single square yard of space, a figure I find implausible. Each day eight people are killed in the commute, mostly by falling off a speeding train or getting beaned by a signal pole while hanging out of a coach.
4. Just 29 out of every 1,000 citizens own a car.
5. Fifty-five percent of its population lives in slums. In these eight to ten people share a single home smaller in area than an SUV.
6. 14,000 people each year are infected with malaria, most during the summer monsoons.
7. Nearly its entire fleet of taxis is 50-year old Fiats, none with air conditioning.
8. While in India outside of Bombay the average wage is about $1.00 per day, in the city it’s twice that (note that with these figures I have only a vague recall of their source and so willingly stand to be corrected).
9. India’s per capita GDP in 2007 at purchase price parity was $2,700. Thailand’s was $8,000, Malaysia’s $14,500, and the Dominican Republic’s $6,600. America’s was $44,800.

What these few items convey in the most emphatic voice is that the people of India, despite years of overwrought hokum in the commercial journals to the contrary, are desperately impoverished. This lamentable fact is easily confirmed by the most cursory visit to Bombay. It was for me, and I can say for the crew as well, a sobering encounter with destitution on a scale I had only read about. A single example will suffice.

The hotel where I stayed a few nights just to get a flavor of the city was the unquestioned finest and located in one of the swankest neighborhoods, an area in which can be found most of the best restaurants, bars and clubs. In the very same block on which this grand hotel sits, I was repeatedly accosted by emaciated beggar women toting equally emaciated infants. In the late night as I returned from a foray I found these poor wretches asleep on the bare sidewalk, infants nearly nude and without the enveloping arms of their mothers, passers-by like me stepping over them with hardly a glance. And this was by no means unusual.

When we first arrived in the city I had no real interest in seeing it. I could have easily bypassed the place and been quite content. A limo tour with an educated English-speaking guide did nothing to change that. Everywhere we went beggars seeing the small Mercedes stopped at a light invariably tapped on its windows offering up contorted limbs, skeletal toddlers, or just an anguished face in hopes that we might give them alms. Only the practiced steely heart of a native can endure these pathetic scenes without feeling deep and sincere sorrow for their plight. I tried to brush them from my sympathies as the driver and guide did but in this I was wholly unsuccessful. Yes, some of it is well-practiced scam for sure, and in this fact the locals take heart. They tell you how cunning the beggars are and how they really aren’t as poor as they make out. But after a day of driving around I remained unconvinced.

D’Nesh D’Souza is an enormously talented writer and social critic now with the Hoover Institute in San Francisco if memory serves. As a young man born in India into a high-caste family the world was his oyster so to say, yet he decided to chuck it all and move to America, where he graduated with distinction from I believe Brown University. When somebody asked him why he would leave the fine life of which he was assured in India his reply was telling. He said he wanted to live in America because there the poor people are fat.

My best day in Bombay was spent walking five hours in the sultry heat from my hotel along busy feculent streets and busier and even more feculent sidewalks to the stock exchange, a noted retail store, several shops along the way, and much else. It was a far more enlightening experience than the car and guide because I managed to get up close to the people and their way of life. I smelled and touched and heard the sounds of city life in ways you can’t from a car.

I ate lunch in Peshawar Restaurant, named for the region of Pakistan that is said to be the spawning ground and hideout of the most lunatic of the Islamic whackos. It also served up one of the tastiest meals I’ve ever eaten anywhere. In response to an innocent question from my waiter, an Indian, I made a mildly derogatory but accurate remark about radical Islam, which earned at my departure the hateful glare of the restaurant’s owner. I didn’t say fuck you! But it would have been a fine time to do so and I wish that I had. Still it was great food and not costly either.

Sidewalks in Bombay seem not to be intended for pedestrian traffic. They are marked by fractured pavement, crushed curbs and holes deep enough to break a leg. They are also the bedroom, living room and parlor for the people forced to live on them. You have to be careful where you step. I saw on these sidewalks a man getting a haircut and shave, shoes being repaired, sandals being made, laundry being done, piles of cheap jeans being sold, mid-day naps being taken, and, most popularly, wonderfully aromatic foods being cooked and served to long lines of eager customers. With all this, walking along a sidewalk in central Bombay is next to impossible, so people naturally migrate to the streets having a predictable effect on vehicle traffic.

What I learned during my brief stay was that much of the social calamity that is Bombay has little to do with its people, who after all came here from the hinterlands in search of a better life and are to a most surprising extent law abiding. It has everything to do with a corrupt, inept government which has been implementing for a very long time a lot of truly bad ideas nearly all products of its resolutely socialist past. It is a place that attracts the world’s top academic specialists in urban planning for the simple reason that it is known to be the world’s finest example of how not to run a city.

The whole place bustles with the energy of people eager even desperate to make an honest buck but struggling against the nearly insurmountable barriers of religious and caste discrimination, government’s strangulating hand with its attendant corruption, and intense poverty. I have come around over many years of thought and study and travel to a world view best described as secular libertarian. Singapore is my heaven Bombay my hell.

I came away from Bombay very happy that I had visited the place and I would go again making sure to walk the streets for hours. I would also spend a month or so touring the rest of the country. But in the end if India were a stock I would not buy it. Its government has a stranglehold on life owing to its socialist heritage and is not likely to let go. The absurd caste system about which nobody wants to talk except to act as if it doesn’t really exist only makes everything worse. I’d buy China or Singapore instead, a conclusion that’s deeply saddening.

Next stop, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.