Trip to Mumbai - City of Holy Cow

First time arrived in Mumbai.. it was around midnite. So the road to staff house was empty and dark. But still I can’t help myself to skip the slum and bad road condition. Still I think it will be similar to some part of Jakarta which is also lots of slum and not developed yet. In the airport lots and lots of Indian faces.. quite similar like what will I get in Jakarta Airport. Where they are pushing and keep trying to offer you vehicle.

I slept in Chrys’s staff house in Powai. It is quite a posh-suburb area with huge, 30-floor building for apartments. I was fascinated with the big pillars of the entrance to the apartment. The design is meant to be similar with European-old style, massive towers and beautiful pattern of the marble tile. The apartment is in 26-floor.. 4-bed rooms, 1 TV room and kitchen.

Just in the morning then I realize how city of Mumbai really look. From the apartment window, it is quite green with lots of trees surrounding the building. Several other towers are standing nearby with similar design. Unfortunately that the maintenance is not too good here, that caused the buildings look old and neglected.

Went down around 8 o’clock in the morning. There is a small park nearby with the children playing ground. I am trying to figure out the area around the apartment, and I can’t say that it was easy for the first time how to find the way out to the main road.. even after asking several people.(which then I found out that actually there are several short-cut routes from the front, behind or beside apartment) I manage to reach the main road and just walking along the road, passing a school, small shops area, office building and end up in a supermarket.

Thing that I notice here is that so much crows everywhere.. in the bulding terrace, apartments windows, roofs, street, parks, trees.. They are flying and squeaking and shitting everywhere and everytime. At a glance it is similar as the crowd of dove in Paris, but when I noticed them more they look more fierce and that noisy squeak that differ them from doves.
Another thing would be the slum that is very close to the posh-building area. Those people live peacefully, sitting in front of their card-house, chanting, kinds playing and sometimes they enter the building park to watch people walk, at one time a woman just stopped me and beg for some money when I passed by.

These kind of situation, after I see them more and more in another parts of the city and also after I read several books about India from western people’s point of view (try Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts and Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald) made me getting used of them.. but still can’t understand.. especially of how those people can stand living in such condition and neither feeling depressed or unhappy about it.
In Shantaram, the author explain of how they are actually not disturbed of their condition which is quite different from the normal standard that we normally perceived. Altough I come from Indonesia which this such thing is not the new thing for me.. but still it amazed me.

First and second day in Mumbai still make feel uncomfortable and feel insecure when walking around alone, although everybody told me that it is quite safe to go out alone. But I think I would be myself who don’t let me to be careless since this is safe and then ignore about everything. Just in the third days that I started to be accustomed to it. And also it is because the people there, the appearance is so different compare to people back in Indonesia that make me to take extra attention since I am not familiar with the condition.

And it is really happen that cows are being treated special, in the way that they are allowed just to wander around in the streets and not being eaten. In one occasion even I saw a man passing them and then reach one of the cow to touch its body and then tough his chest with the same hand to show gratitute and respect.

But it is India.. and to be specifically it is Mumbai!