I want to be a Mumbaikar...

I spent five weeks in India so of course I had to take a few days to visit Mumbai...right? Yeah, sure. It's not that easy to be like "Hey, aunt, I'm gonna go to Mumbai for a few days, okay? Peace." Either way, I spent three days in Mumbai and it was definitely the better part of my trip.
I had never been there before, except to go to and from the airport, so I really wanted to see the city and what it was like. And I wanted to compare it to the city I know: New York City. Honestly, it's not much different except for the fact that there are a lot more Indians (obviously :P). There are just as many people walking on the streets and just as much traffic. There are as many street vendors and dirty local trains. Yes, I rode the local train in Mumbai. My cousin said that it was something I had to experience at least once. It wasn't as bad as she made it sound. It wasn't any dirtier or more crowded than a NYC subway during peak time. But something I found interesting is that they have "ladies only" cars, some of which are that way 24 hours and some of which are that way during the night and early morning. I guess when it gets really crowded you don't really want creepy guys all up close to you (not that they're all creepy, but those who are).
One difference in public transportation that I did notice though, was that it is a lot easier to get a rickshaw or taxi in Mumbai than it is in NYC. They may not always agree to take you where you want to go, but they are willing to stop and even pay attention enough to pull over if they see you coming out of a store, assuming you're going to need a ride to your next destination. I'm shy and was never good at hailing a taxi in NYC, but in Mumbai it was like we didn't even have to try that hard.
Speaking of rickshaws, remember that the last zero on the meter is for paise and doesn't count...so your fare isn't Rs. 250, it's Rs. 25. Yeah, I made that mistake and the driver looked at me like, "why are you giving me so much money?" My friend then told me I was stupid and counted out the correct amount. Embarrassing much? You betcha.

So my first stop in Mumbai was Cafe Coffee Day, also known as a CCD. It is now my new favorite place...a cute, modern cafe with couches and TVs and yummy shakes (and more of course, but I only tried the strawberry milkshake) :). And it's not just a hangout for the college kids, there was even what my friend called a "kitty party" there.

Next stop in the blazing heat: Juhu Beach. We may have been better off in the air-conditioned cafe. But a beach day is never a bad day and I sure won't forget that day ;).

Day two in Mumbai led us to the Gateway of India and the Taj Hotel. You can no longer get up close to the gateway, but here's a picture I took from afar:

The Taj Hotel is also pretty much back to normal with only a few windows that are still boarded up and needing to be fixed. It is otherwise mostly back to normal and you can't tell that anything ever happened there. Unfortunately, you still can't enter or go close to the hotel as there are barricades all around it.

Our final destination that day was Marine Drive in Colaba. Water from the Arabian Sea splashes up onto the upside down bucket shaped rocks, which some are brave enough to climb down onto. A beautiful view of the Mumbai skyline can also be seen from here. Below is what my camera saw, but I must tell you, nothing is better than seeing it with your own eyes and feeling the air with your own skin.



Okay, enough of the touristy destinations, let's go shopping :). On my last day I had a return train to catch in the evening so I did a bit of walking around and shopping with my cousin. I can never resist a bookstore, so when we entered Crossword, I of course had to buy some books. And why not? Books are much cheaper in INR than in USD =D.
Our next stop, was Globus, a department store. So what's so interesting about a department store? Well, unlike in the U.S., here the employees will help you find a size without you asking for help and take the hangers from you so it is easier for you to try on clothes. Now, some people might find that annoying and I definitely wasn't used to someone helping so much. I'm used to digging through racks of clothes myself for a size that doesn't exist, but at Globus, my new friend, according to his name tag, Yusuf, was pretty helpful. Unfortunately for him, while I was searching for my size I happened to knock most of the dresses off their hangers :(. We laughed it off and all was well...(other than the fact that he probably thought I was a crazy foreigner). Either way, I bought some clothes and enjoyed the hospitality.
Final stop before heading home: a quick walk along The Bandstand Promenade in Bandra. According to my cousin, mainly a couples hot spot, but worth checking out. It was way too hot to be outside so we didn't stay very long or walk the whole kilometer long walkway.
If I'm cool enough one day in the future, I would definitely love to live in Mumbai for some time and become a Mumbaikar :)

The way we are...

The way I am is nothing like the way they are. From children to adults to elders, the mood in India is just totally different from what it is here. Everyone is happy, even the poorest of people are happy with what they have. Maybe it's because they don't know anything different, but one can't help but be jealous of simple happiness.

Even the maids and workers don't ever seem to have a depressing day. They do their jobs contently and you can just tell they have no real issues with what they're doing. Here in the U.S. you can just read people's faces as they come home from work tired and in the mood to complain about this boss or that coworker.

Maybe I just can't explain what it's like there in words...it's the kind of thing you really have to experience yourself. But I do know that having so much in the U.S. makes us prone to complaining about everything we don't have. Even the Americans in India complained about heat, lack of air-conditioning, flies, etc. I don't like flies either, they were annoying as all hell and they creep me out. But whatever, they existed so I just had to shut up and wave them away with my arms.

The little children were my favorite. I've always been in awe of the innocence of children anywhere, wishing they could stay that way because I don't want them to have to experience such a world. My young cousins here in the U.S. have so much...toys, video games, crayons, computers, etc. I'm not saying the kids in India have nothing...all the same things that are available here are just as available there, albeit expensive. But I never heard a kid ask for a Nintendo DS or the latest video game or say they're bored because they have nothing to play with.

There was a little boy playing with his broken toy truck and he took my hand and brought me to the backyard to play with him and his truck. The adults told me he does have a new toy truck so I asked him, "where's your new truck. will you show it to me?" But he was just so happy with the broken one...he'd tell me, "look, it stopped. it's broken. this is how you fix it." And then he'd continue on driving it along.

Even I changed after 5 weeks in India. Before I left, I'd spend most of the day in front of my laptop or clicking away on my Blackberry. But there, I brought none of that with me and only had the chance to go online a few times during the whole trip. In all that I realized that I have no real use for these fancy gadgets, at least not 24/7.

Life in India was just calmer and more relaxed. None of this hustle and bustle, always being technologically connected, fancy gadgets, etc. Yeah, most people there have mobile phones, but it's not like here where 10-year-olds are texting away on iPhones because apparently they have oh-so-important things to talk about.

Sometimes I wish I could go back, if only for the atmosphere, the simple happiness. I wanted to move to India at one point, but my family in America said I wouldn't be able to handle it, but my family in India think that of everyone I am the only one that can handle such a move. Maybe one day, we'll just have to see...

Horn OK Please

If you thought traffic in New York City was bad, then you've never been to India. Yes, NYC taxi drivers seem crazy as they weave in and out of lanes to get you where you want to go as fast as possible, but at least they drive in lanes, right? I mean, in India people drive in lanes, too, until they decide they want to go around someone, but the only room to do so happens to be in between two lanes.
When driving on the narrower roads, cars come at you from the opposing lane as they are passing the vehicle in front of them. That's when driving or even sitting in the passenger seat can get scary. I've gotten used to vehicles coming at me, but if you've never driven in India I advise you not to sit in the front seat. At least in the back you can just look out the side windows. The front seat forces you to look out the windshield, and well, you maybe have the urge to scream a couple times. Although I will have to say, for all the "crazy" driving, I didn't see any accidents. You would think that with drivers passing by going into the oncoming lane there would be more accidents. I guess in the end it's all about the skill :)
Speaking of skill, "how many Indians can you fit on one motorcyle?" is a fun game. Well actually it's not really a game, it's more a "hey if you've got nothing else, then this is what you have to do." The most I've seen is three men on one bike. The number four comes up when you start adding children to the equation...a family of four (two parents, two kids) seems to fit quite comfortably on a Hero Honda Splendor. I swear as soon as the child can sit up on it's own, it will sit in front of dad on the bike. Child number two goes in the middle while mom takes the rear. Two-year-olds in India have more experience sitting on a motorcyle than I do. Then again, I don't sit on motorcycles that often.
And then there is the use of the horn. You cannot drive in India if you don't have a horn on your vehicle. The horn is used to warn pedestrians, bikers, other vehicles of the fact that you are there behind them, going around them, or coming around a bend. Whether you're driving in the city or in the village, you'll hear people honking their horns. Even the trucks ask you to honk your horn at them if you want them to get out of the way. The back of all trucks are painted with the words "HORN OK PLEASE" or similar statements such as "BLOW HORN," "SWEET SOUND," "AWAZ DO."
The trucks are actually my favorite part of Indian roads. I don't know why, but I've always liked looking at them. It's probably because the trucks there happen to be prettily decorated/painted with flowers and designs and such. That, and my weird self has fun reading the license plates and trying to figure out what state the truck is from.
Oh and another fun part of Indian vehicles is the revers tones. Here in the U.S. mostly big trucks and school buses have a tone for when they are reversing. But in india even small cars have reverse tones. Some tones are songs or just catchy tunes or a simple beep. But then there's that one guy who decides he wants to be unique so he makes his reverse tone the sound of a ringing telephone. Yeah, you're unique alright, but your tone is going to be noticed by no one as it sounds like a phone! No one pays attention to ringing phones unless it's their own!
And how can I forget to mention that roads are shared with cows, bullocks (oxen) and goats. As far as I'm concerned, the animals respond better to honking than the humans. At least when you beep at the goats in the road they move out of the way quickly. Humans, on the other hand, move only after repeated honking or they don't move at all (mainly the large groups of possibly drunk party-goers) so that you're forced to slowly inch forward until they have to move for fear of being run over.

Fatal Attraction: Mosquitoes

Okay, so the attraction isn't all that fatal unless you happen to get malaria or dengue fever from said mosquitoes (don't worry, I kept up with my malaria medication so as not to make the attraction fatal.), but still, mosquitoes are not my friends. From my last trip to India in 2001, I returned to the U.S. with wonderful red welts all over my legs, courtesy of my friendly neighborhood mosquitoes. During that trip I also learned that Indian mosquitoes are immune to American mosquito repellent (namely OFF!). This time I was smarter; I asked my grandpa to buy a tube of Odomos (Indian brand of mosquito repellent) prior to my arrival.
Unfortunately, I didn't arrive to Mumbai bathed in Odomos so the biting began there at the airport. I swear that mosquitoes are attracted only to me, but I'm sure 15 others will swear the same thing of themselves. I am told they bite me because I have "sweet" blood...yeah, right. Either that or American blood tastes good.
I was already cranky from a 15 hour flight so having to scratch at mosquito bites while sitting in a restaurant with a couple friends was not what I was looking for. I just wanted to chill, not be annoyed, but I digress.
Luckily for me, the mosquitoes stopped biting me after about a week. My conclusions: either all the Odomos I applied seeped into my skin and therefore into my bloodstream (I highly doubt that's possible) or as my cousin suggested, my blood had turned Indian. Or maybe it's just because there weren't as many mosquitoes as there usually are during monsoon season because it was so darn hot.
So I thought I was safe, but darn the stubborness of Indian mosquitoes...they just had to bite me a few last times before I left. So the biting restarted about two days before it was time for me to return home. In the end, I was just glad I didn't return with welts like I did last time.

Airport Adventures - JFK to CSIA

So, the airport. Everyone's best friend or worst nightmare? For me, John F. Kennedy International airport in Jamaica, N.Y. was a neutral experience. On May 17, 2009 I left New York and was on my way to Mumbai on Air-India flight 140. Security was a breeze; the only part I was worried about was customs in Mumbai...but that's for later. My flight was at 9 p.m. and I got through check-in and security quick enough so I sat around for a good two hours before boarding.
From the number of people I saw at the gate, I didn't think the flight would be that full, but alas it was. My dad warned me before leaving that Indians bring as much luggage as possible and they will put it in any open overhead compartment they can find, even if it's not close to their seat. I'm a skinny, shy girl...I don't like having to fight for space, just don't get in mine. Luckily, I was able to put my bag above my seat with no trouble.
Oh and one more thing: as soon as I stepped onto the aircraft I remembered that Indian people tend to smell. Yes, I am myself Indian and I am saying this. Some people seriously need deodorant and/or body spray. I don't know the reasons for such smells, but I did read once that odorous sweat is caused by what one eats. And Indian people eat smelly (although very tasty) food.
Speaking of food, the meals on the airplane weren't too exciting. The food was rather dry and well, didn't taste good. Although I will admit that the food on the way back to the U.S. was better than the food leaving from here. And because of that I didn't eat all that was given to me and that brought me to wondering how much food gets wasted on airplanes?
The one cool thing about Air-India's 747s was that they have external cameras so that you can watch the take off and landing on the screen in front of your seat. It's like every seat is a window seat!

Moving onto my landing at CSIA... The plane landed early, but we were stopped for a good half an hour and then taxied for another half an hour with apparently no destination. In the end we de-planed onto the tarmac(which I've never done before) and headed toward a bus that would bring us to the airport building. Let me warn you that as soon as you step off the plane in Mumbai you will be hit with a blast of humid air (that was the one thing I remembered about my last visit to CSIA, eight years ago.) Okay, so I made it to Mumbai in one piece.
Upon entering the building I was faced with airport staff in medical face masks handing out forms. Unfortunately for me and probably everyone else, they didn't actually tell us what we should be doing with the forms. So I half-followed the crowd and then befriended a woman from Arizona who was also confused as to what we should be doing. We had to fill out the questionnaire, which asked if we'd had a fever recently or were feeling ill. Then to a person behind the counter who took the form, read it, confirmed that I wasn't feverish by asking again and then stamped the paper.
Well that wasn't too terrible. Now onto immigration. No questions asked, forms read and stamped. I was on my way to customs and baggage claim. My bags took forever to come out onto the carousel and all I wanted was to get outside and see people. And then I saw the customs line and feared that I'd have to wait even longer after I got my bags. Fortunately, after I finally did get my bags, I remembered that I had been advised to go toward the "green sign." So I walked on through, having nothing to declare and no questions were asked. I was safely in Mumbai, although sticky from the humidity and we won't even start on the frizz ball that was my hair...