Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws

by Laura Pedersen

  The multibillion dollar Bollywood industry is said to be run by the Indian Mafia. But in a place where a court case often takes decades to wend its way through the system, where it can take years for a farmer to get a loan, or months to have a landline telephone installed, this is probably a good thing, or else the movies would still be in black-and-white and possibly without sound.

  The archetypal Hindi-language Bollywood film is a form of escape, which is why it’s a three-and-a-half-hour musical spectacular of romance and violence. Usually a pair of lovers cannot be together due to some obstacle such as parental disapproval or betrothal to another. Best friends can be counted on to have a misunderstanding. The hero is a proud underdog, either a rickshaw driver or a laborer. The lovers fight all odds to be together, which involves the obligatory wet-sari scene, fight scene, sobbing mothers, and a car chase, until they’re finally united. Bollywood films are censored, and although the rules seem to be vague and inconsistent, for the most part you won’t see tonsil hockey kissing, nudity, or heavy drug use, and in 2005 smoking was banned, but rape scenes and bloodshed appear to be welcome. However, Indian filmmakers have recently been making high-quality films in other genres, including documentary and animation, that are doing well nationally as well as around the globe and being nominated for prestigious industry awards.

  A terrific place for respite from the hustle and bustle of Mumbai is the Hanging Gardens. With its splendid flower beds, sculpted topiary, and premier vista overlooking the Arabian Sea, this is the ideal place to watch the sun set. Best of all, there are no metal detectors, no noise, no crime to speak of, no one trying to sell you postcards, and no gangsta monkeys shaking down tourists for food. The famous thugs (marauding murderers) are long gone, and it’s even safe for a foreign woman walking on her own. If I received any strange looks, it was because Indians tend to have straight, dark hair while mine is more like an apricot-colored humidity gauge, and when you see it rising there’s a low-pressure system moving inland that’s usually followed by small craft warnings. Most visitors to the garden are couples strolling together or families having an outing, so there’s no unwanted attention from men.

  The sexual harassment that occurs on the street is known as Eve teasing, and, unfortunately, it’s rather prevalent in some places, particularly around boys’ high schools. Government officials insist that they’re in the process of making laws against sexual harassment tougher and having public areas policed more vigilantly, but victims claim the legal system currently works against them and in favor of the accused. However, if you’re an American woman traveling alone or with a few other women, these roadside Romeos shouldn’t be a problem, since Indians love to watch American action movies and will assume you carry a gun, like Angelina Jolie in Salt, and are not afraid to use it. This raises the delicate point that Americans don’t have a particular “look,” and theoretically anyone could be an American. That said, unless you’ve really gone native, most people can spot an American faster than a finger in their chili. Who knows? Maybe it’s the low-riding sweatpants with Juicy across the butt or the sweater with the appliquéd reindeer on the front or the bright green Crocs with yellow lightning Jibbitz.

  The other famous evening seaside promenade is Chowpatty Beach, a perfect stop for some local color and the occasional political rally. During the day, it’s mostly a place for the slumbering unemployed, but in the evening, there’s a carnival atmosphere featuring acrobats, monkey shows, head massages, pony rides, short plays, astrologers, and a Ferris wheel. Fast-food stalls offer cotton candy, corn on the cob, and coconut water, along with local favorites such as crisp puffed rice with vegetables and lentil-flour noodles covered in chutney served with puri, a deep-fried flatbread. It’s for you to decide whether or not you want to brave the local cuisine, but definitely don’t swim in the sea, as it’s polluted. And maybe avoid the ear-cleaning “doctors” with their six-inch, pointy steel pins while you’re at it. I don’t even want to think about what the eye washers get up to.

  The Chor Bazaar is where serious antique hunters head to find bargains on Victorian furniture, Ming vases, and Murano glass chandeliers. No one is certain how it got the name Thieves Market (a literal translation of chor bazaar), but one theory is that wealthy arrivals to Bombay would lose their valuables during the unloading of the ship, only to find them hanging in the bazaar’s famous Mutton Street the following day. True or not, Chor Bazaar is most certainly a place where stolen goods have been bought and sold over the decades, and for that reason it’s best that the buyer beware when it comes to purchasing “authentic” pieces.

  It’d be hypocritical to criticize Mumbai’s lack of public toilets, since my hometown of Manhattan has even fewer public toilets than this city. There’s a reason that women live on average of five years longer than men, which is to make up for the time we spent waiting to use a restroom. So the rules remain the same as for visiting Times Square on a Saturday night: always go before you depart the hotel or restaurant, because the lav you know is better than the one you don’t; always carry a pack of wipes; and don’t overhydrate while out and about.

  For those who are mad about Buddhist history, archaeology, or spelunking, you don’t want to miss the Ellora and Ajanta Caves, which are an overnight trip from Mumbai. Literary buffs will be interested to know that the imaginary Marabar Caves in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India were based on the author’s visit to the Ellora Cave temples and also those in the Barābar hills. In the novel, this is the location of the famous (real or imagined) rape scene, and if searching for symbolism, one can easily connect the caves to the female form and their intricate decoration to the inscrutability of India.

  If you’re lukewarm about spending several days prowling caves, then you can get the CliffsNotes version in just a few hours by taking the ferry from South Mumbai to Elephanta Island to see one spectacular cave that is representative of the lot and a World Heritage Site to boot. Carved out of solid rock, the Elephanta Caves date back to 600 CE and were intended as a collection of shrines, courtyards, grand halls, and inner sanctums featuring sculpted Hindu gods and goddesses. The island also serves as a free-range petting zoo, with roaming dogs and their adorable puppies, cows, goats, chickens, stunning bird life, and monkeys. All seem to live in harmony to the point where one could start singing “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book movie, but the monkeys are actually bandits who lie in wait to perform smash-and-grab robberies on tourists. Much like at other attractions, young men offer themselves as guides, but in this instance, part of their service is to protect you from the monkeys. It’s an offer that should not be disregarded lightly. I’m not saying that tangling with a robber baron primate is actually dangerous, so much as being mugged by monkeys is one of those things that is so much funnier when it’s happening to a friend while you capture the scene on video and upload it to YouTube.

  Another tactic is to buy off the monkeys by giving them a banana or just about anything edible, since they’re not that picky when it comes to plunder. I tossed them several small packs of Fig Newtons. The terrific thing about monkeys is that opposable thumb, and they’re happy to do the unwrapping, which also buys you the necessary time to escape. The alternative is to make friends with one of the friendly island dogs, and the monkeys will steer clear of you, because dogs came out slightly above them in the food chain. However, you’ll need to feed the dog something in order to establish this relationship. But these homeless dogs are awfully particular, and anything without meat content is deemed unacceptable.

  Mumbai may be home to the stock exchange, but the lunch exchange is far more interesting. The Dabbawala system enables around two hundred thousand lunch boxes to be picked up by carriers each day from restaurants and homes and taken on heads, by bicycle, handcart, and train to a central sorting station, where a sophisticated scheme of numbers and colors (since most carriers are illiterate), routes them to their destination. The system has an error rate of about one in 16 million, which is far better than
that of our stock exchange, speaking from my own clerical experience. However, the white-capped Dabbawala is slowly being put out of business by the easy availability of fast food, along with an increase in the number of working wives, mothers, and daughters.

  All of India is suffering from the environmental challenges that face a populous and growing country, but the one facing the monotheistic Zoroastrian religion is rather unique. For centuries, the Zoroastrians have wrapped their dead in white muslin and left the bodies at the raised circular Tower of Silence on Mumbai’s Malabar Hill to be devoured by vultures. According to the tenets of Zoroastrianism, this is the only way their souls can be freed, since they worship fire and therefore view cremation a mortal sin, and burial is considered a contamination of the sacred earth. However, the vultures are no longer showing up and doing their part. Millions of South Asian vultures have died over the past two decades from feasting on cattle carcasses tainted by a painkiller given to sick cows. Conservationists estimate that more than 90 percent of India’s vultures have disappeared, creating something of a work stoppage with regard to the funeral rites of the Parsis (members of the Zoroastrian community). Three to four bodies arrive every day, and they’re coated with lime in an effort to hasten decomposition, but this is a process that, sans vultures, can take several months, even longer during the rainy season. Let’s just say that people are getting upset, especially since Malabar Hill has become one of Mumbai’s toniest neighborhoods, and for some reason, residents don’t care to have piles of rotting corpses in their backyard.

  Another famous feature of Indian life may also be disappearing. One of the most pleasing sights is the millions of sari-clad women darting about who resemble brightly plumed birds. Saris are intended to be vibrant. Swirling yellow, green, and red are considered to be festive and good luck, and also helpful with regard to fertility. Red is used as a bridal color in many parts of the country. White is only for widows, since life without a husband is thought to be a life without color. Black is considered bad luck on its own and must be mixed with other colors, while blue suggests the life-giving force of the monsoon and the beautiful boy-god Krishna. Saris are often stitched together with metallic-colored threads and festooned with shiny rhinestones, trim, and appliqué. Add to that several pounds of chandelier earrings, jeweled necklaces, cocktail rings, bangle bracelets, gold anklets with brass bells, and coiled silver toe rings, and it’s safe to say that bling-bling is right at home here. A girl fight would be very ugly indeed, and a female game of crack the whip could be downright deadly.

  While traversing the streets of Indian cities, I saw a large number of young women dressed in Western-style clothes and said to my Mumbai guide that I thought perhaps the silk sari was going the way of the Full Cleveland, a plaid leisure suit with a wide white belt and white dress shoes that came in lime green, Ramada orange, and neon plum. He became indignant and insisted that the sari would always be worn by the women of India. I asked him about his mother, and he replied that she wore a sari all the time. His wife sometimes wore a sari, his teenage daughters not at all. “They wear jeans and T-shirts like you have on.” As if to highlight the transition, I saw two trailblazing gals sporting saris underneath Hard Rock Cafe and Hello Kitty hoodies. The sari will survive the same way native dress has in Africa: for weddings, ceremonies, celebrations, special events, and, of course, putting on shows for tourists. However, modern saris feature an embroidered phone pocket just below the waist on the left.

  Can you don a sari and go native, as the Brits liked to say? Absolutely. In fact, it’s encouraged, and any number of shops will whip up a custom sari for you within a day. But trust me, you will feel silly. Wrapped like a burrito in green and gold silk, I looked as if I’d just returned from a spoon-bending party.

  All Aboard!

  If you guessed that Walmart, with its 1.8 million workers, is the largest employer in the world, you’d be correct, as far as private companies go. But Indian Railways is the second largest state employer, with more than 1.5 million workers. (The Chinese army is number one in manpower, with 2.3 million.) The British are credited with organizing this extensive rail system throughout India, which was considerate, but one can’t overlook the fact that it’s impossible to have a productive colony without a way to move your raw materials across wide expanses of desert, mountains, and jungle.

  When one thinks of the railroad in India, what probably comes immediately to mind are Internet photos of overcrowded trains with people piled atop the cars, spilling out doorways, plastered against the locomotive, hanging off the sides, and clinging to window frames, which is jokingly referred to as “ninth class” and gives a whole new meaning to the words mass transit. Unfortunately, those pictures were not photoshopped but taken of actual Mumbai commuter trains that transport 7 million workers per day (imagine the entire population of London hopping on trains) back and forth from residential northern suburbs to jobs in the city. Rush hour congestion aboard these death traps, where dozens of riders are killed or maimed every month, should soon be eased as a result of the metro system and monorail that are currently under construction.

  However, traveling by long-distance express train in an air-conditioned chair car or sleeper, where seats and berths are reserved, is a safe, convenient, inexpensive, and comfortable way to see India, if you have the time. There are also several luxury trains, such as the Maharajas’ Express, the Deccan Odyssey, Golden Chariot, Palace on Wheels, and Splendor of the South, that do specialty tours.

  Trains get booked up far in advance, so it’s a necessity to make reservations via computer or travel agent several weeks beforehand, especially during the high season (October to May). However, a tourist quota exists, and therefore it is possible to check for train availability a day or two before your trip. Buying tickets at the train station involves a maddening maze of long lines rife with operators who want bribes, try to scalp real and imagined tickets, and specialize in misdirection for profit, so check with your hotel or a travel office. Or locate the tourist office in the train station, which the locals don’t usually know about and the scam artists don’t want you to know about.

  I reserved a berth on the Mandovi Express, which meanders down the West Coast from Mumbai to Goa and is supposed to take fourteen hours. However, don’t be fooled by the word express—although the train doesn’t stop at every village along the way, the switching system in India hasn’t been updated so that two trains can pass each other in many places, and therefore you stop and wait in various locations. If you’re twentysomething and backpacking, by all means go native and experience the world by purchasing a ticket in second or third class. For everyone else, here’s the breakdown: an American had best book first class, since this is equivalent to what we’d think of as third class, while Indian second class is the equivalent of our camping, and their third class is on par with our correctional facilities in the 1940s.

  The first question I was asked when booking a train ticket was my age. Odd. In middle middle age, I’m clearly not a child and not yet a senior citizen. Do the very young or the old and infirm have a lesser chance of completing the fourteen-hour journey? When I climbed aboard, was a conductor going to study my face and declare whether or not I looked good for my years?

  Half the fun of rail travel is experiencing the train station. Much like Indian roads, things have not been separated in Indian train stations the way they are in the United States, with specific areas for passengers, cargo, animals, and vagrancy. People and stray dogs lie fast asleep among burlap sacks of grain, fifty-kilo bags of rice, coils of rope, rows of fresh lumber, rolled-up carpets secured with coconut-fiber twine, and wooden crates full of live chickens. Shoeshine boys ply their trade between forklifts piled with boxes of watermelon and idle scooters. It’s the endless mishmash of an enormous flea market, except in the case of the ladies waiting room, which, while neither tidier than the rest of the station nor offering any particular amenities, provides a safe place where women and girls can eat, relax, and
sleep with their modesty intact.

  Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, which is still known by its former official name, Victoria Terminus (or VT for short), is a vast, Gothic cathedral-like complex with stained-glass windows, flying buttresses, pointy turrets, soot-covered friezes, and vigilant gargoyles, overflowing with humanity, from commuters racing the clock to those in a deep slumber. Much like at midtown Manhattan’s Penn Station, it can be hard to tell who is merely awaiting the arrival of a train and who receives mail there. Nonetheless, there was no begging, hawking, loud noise, molestation, or unpleasantness of any kind. Amazingly, the thousands of people walking, waiting, or just being in the enormous hall were all courteous, quiet, and respectful. Best of all, there’s no need to set an alarm if you have to be at work or catch an early train, since the crowing roosters will do the job.

  If anything, waiting in the Mumbai train station was akin to sitting in a large, unisex gym locker room. The main business of this transportation hub appears to be attention to personal hygiene. Hundreds of men and a few women were busy changing clothes, some going into the lavatory to do so and others not. It’s like watching a pantomime, since the entire process is accomplished quietly, although not unobtrusively. Almost everyone carried a towel, bar of soap, and, in some cases, a deodorant stick. Dozens of men even strolled to and from the lav with towels wrapped around their waists. Women came out with fresh faces, combing just-washed hair. There was a certain amount of ceremony to the proceedings, as clothes and towels were carefully folded and then neatly tucked away.

  The lavs were actually not that bad, and certainly no haven for any sort of inappropriate behavior. A sari-clad female attendant swabbing the floor with a mop had bare feet, as if daring you to question the cleanliness of her domain. Honestly, I’ve seen worse public facilities at major tourist attractions in Italy, New York’s Port Authority, Union Station in Washington, DC, most Greyhound bus stations, and Girl Scout camp circa 1976.