It is probably too late for a first impressions review by now. I could date back this entry but that would confuse the reality that I am a damn lazy bum. Luckily, I took notes which, now, help me put together my initial thoughts.
The airplane was about to land in Mumbai. I never really gave a thought to what was about to happen to me. But then it hit me. I was entering a strange land and probably one of the most fucked up cities in Asia. It’s hot, humid, dirty, malodorous and densely populated by over 13 million people jostling in an area of just 437.71 square meters. What a dump. What the hell was I thinking? That would have been an adequate moment to freak out. So I did. Mildly.
On the airport I got a slight handsel of the city’s taste. One of those elusive, tingling odors you have problems allocating. After I passed the security check (again!) I got the full taste. The elusiveness was gone and all that was left was all there was. This smell was physically all over the place. Like a drunk, fat chick (or guy, whatever) coming on to the entire party. I suddenly realized that this smell was to stay with me until I’d leave; and maybe a week longer. It was one of those odors that you can practically taste.
Okay, one more I got on my stack: Imagine a concert hall full of teenagers, thousands of them waiting to see the Backstreet Boys perform, dancing, crying, shrieking and perspiring. Merely without the teenagers.
After all, I was in luck. My friend, ex-roommate and co-worker in spe Jan picked me up in his Golden Cage and turned the A/C way up. His cage turned out to be the Maruti Suzuki “Swift”, the Indian-Japanese Mini “One” knock-off. And of course he did not drive his vehicle himself. No one in Mumbai drives by themselves it seems; except maybe the superrich who can afford Porsche, BMW and Mercedes and are too proud to let someone else reap the looks and joy of being behind the wheel.
Driving from the airport through the outskirts of the city by night gives you a fairly gentle first impression of the whole disaster that is Mumbai. At day this appraisal will certainly change. The night hides the city’s otherwise obvious and staggering truth: The sheer absence of beauty, of quiet and ease, of snugness, of -well- coziness. It’s probably foolhardy and presumptuous to expect a place far away from home to actually excite something like a haimish feeling. But don’t we all do it? It’s human nature. Here, I had to fight this instinct very hard. The dirt, the millions of people, their evident poverty and the huge gap between poor and rich is just too ubiquitous to concentrate on the good sides, yet.
And of course there’s the traffic. Traffic, that seems to be the major topic of conversation. Besides Cricket and the weather. Even though the city is always on the way it’s not getting anywhere because of the horrendous traffic. For not even ten kilometers a good driver takes almost 45 minutes, if the traffic is not too jammed. When there’s a festival going on two hours can be expected.
This number I cannot validate but just bear with me: Per square kilometer 400 taxis and 1000 auto rickshaws can be counted. One of our drivers introduced me to this urban legend. It is mathematically impossible to fit 1400 vehicles of some sort on such a narrow space but it shows the people’s perception of their city and it’s traffic related problems. There are so many taxis and even more rickshaws it’s mind-boggling. I found some figures on the internet to give you an idea: Currently Mumbai has 3400 buses on 335 routes and 50.000 taxis accounting for 6 per cent of the overall volume of traffic (the latter number dates back to 1998).
And to finally put an end to my rambling: New York is supposed to be the city that never sleeps. I’ve never been to the Big Apple but I believe it cannot be any worse than Mumbai. This city actually never sleeps. There are so many people. And they are everywhere. This is probably the strangest thing Europeans have to get used to. And there’s practically no single space that is not taken over by someone, not a single spot where you can be alone, all by yourself. Impossible. No matter if day or night, anyone is always on the run. Mumbai has no downtime.
0 Responses to “The Backstreet Boys Are Back In Town”