Rite of Passage

Mumbai is a fascinating city with much to show and tell. The systems in place are incredible. and with limited resources (as we know them) and millions and millions of people, the chaos is functional. For example, the ghats (discussed in the previous blog), and perhaps the most intriguing to me is the dabawallah system. Thousands of women throughout the city prepare lunches to be delivered for the working people, and specifically their husbands. So between the morning hours and lunchtime, the food packaged in aluminum trays travels through many hands, on bikers' handlebars, shoulder poles, carried on heads, and for the millions delivered, rarely is one ever delivered late or wrong.

I hope that I have not painted a negative picture of the city, although I would not be telling the truth if i said the smells, large quantities of trash (trash cans are hard to find), the smog, and the extreme poverty didn't effect me, because it definitely does. And sleeping is tough...because i have become hypersensitive to anything crawling or touching me (a piece of hair could be a mosquito carrying malaria or the wind from the fan brushing against me could actually be a rat), but mostly some of the images are haunting.

With so many people packed into the city, the poverty is obvious - young mothers holding a mostly naked child begging for food or money, small children defecating off of the curb, a man collapsed on the sidewalk (possibly dead, maybe still alive. people had left bananas and crackers at his side, but perhaps it was too late), animals sick and wounded, and just quick glimpses into one of the many slums of a city where over 50% of the 16 million live. And the smells that accompany it due to lack of facilities and garbage containers is overpowering. it is difficult to know how to react or what to do, but it leaves me with a visceral response. where do you start? how did these injustices happen? I want to search for the dignity that seems to have been lost somewhere along the way. But their spirits are strong and alive and so is their will to live. There is no fault there. And it seems that a majority of Mumbai residets carry smiles on their faces and are genuinely welcoming and friendly.

i am ready to leave the smog and hustle and bustle of the city (i have never been one for big cities), and am still processing the experiences of mumbai. but i guess, in a sense, it was a rite of passage (if there is one) into India.