Discomforting Mumbai

I’d seen poverty before. I’d seen it in New York, I’d seen it in Rome, I’d seen it in Chicago, I’d seen it in Belize, I’d seen it in Wichita and Denver and Atlanta and Santa Fe and Minneapolis and Memphis and San Francisco and just about every place I’d ever been. I’ve used the adjectives “destitute” and “abject” and “squalid” to modify the poverty I’ve seen. But there are no adjectives to adequately describe the poverty in Mumbai (Bombay). Indeed, “poverty” is hardly an adequate term. Drive along the Western Express Highway, and as you rise up onto a flyover you’ll look out over a checkerboard of crowded tin-roofed rusted shacks, inches separating them. Take an off-ramp and you’ll pass uncomfortably close to rows of tarp lean-tos against the gray concrete walls, the clog of traffic forcing you to see, dogs and cats and rag pickers foraging through the garbage. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph it – poverty porn – and I’m somewhat uncomfortable putting up here a couple of photos I got from the Internet. But I can’t describe the squalor that these people live in, and somehow survive in, without visual evidence:

But what is most discomforting about the poverty in Mumbai is the vast spectrum of wealth that the country’s caste system still exerts, from those in the poorest of slums to those in the most lavish of grandeur to the many scattered somewhere along the axis. On our first day in Mumbai, our driver (yes, we had a driver, putting us somewhere toward the lavish end of the spectrum, though nowhere near the grandeur end) pointed out the $1.8 billion, 27-story “home” of the wealthiest person in India (and the fourth wealthiest in the world). Our own accommodations, the ITC Maratha Hotel (which we weren’t paying for, and couldn’t pay for), forced the disparity uneasily home for us:

We wouldn’t have even been in Mumbai, of course, if we couldn’t have afforded it (helped immensely by company funding), and so wouldn’t have felt the embarrassment or sympathy, at least as much as we could manage to wring out of our shock (the guidebooks call it “cultural shock,” but the shock doesn’t really need modification). We very much enjoyed our time in Mumbai, the sightseeing, the food, the art, the history, even the elegant chaos of traffic congestion. But there is in the city always the undercurrent of inequality that lines and spreads out from the Western Express Highway, a dingy gray carpet of uneasy inhumanity.

62 at Goa, India

A nice way to welcome one’s 62^nd year is in the Resort Rio in the state of Goa, India:

Sunset at Resort Rio

Baga Beach

Lawrencio’s Café, Candolim Beach

Here, There, and Everywhere

I sit in a hotel room in Mumbai, the sun setting, the evening BBC World News muted on the TV, listening online to NPR’s “Morning Edition,” reading tonight this morning’s New York Times and Washington Post. I just happened this afternoon to have bought a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, in which he muses on the relativity of time and space, as I experience it in real time and real space.

Mumbai Traffic

Mumbai (Bombay), India, is a city of elegant chaos, 18 million people, most of whom seemingly at any one time in traffic – in cars, trucks, taxis, buses, motored rickshaws; on scooters, motorcycles, bikes, foot – all moving in all directions, slow and stop and start (quick, sudden), a constant weaving between lanes, marked or not, ignored, accompanied by the incessant beeping of horns, some warning of coming through, some signal of allowed merging, some anger at attempted forced entry, none with a clear indication of intention (at least to the frightened initiate who marvels in wonder at the uneasy ballet) – the whole a mechanistic mess that in an odd way probably best smacks of the human circulatory system, with the constant shove for corpuscular position, not so much competing for any individual advantage but rather cooperating in a muddle of mass motion forward, however hesitant.

Welcome to India

I’ve been in India (New Delhi right now) for only about eight hours but I’ve already formed a cultural/social question I’m going to have pursue: Are the Indian people inherently friendly and helpful (to the point of obsequiousness), or is it a product of entrenched class structure and British colonial rule? From the gentleman sitting next to me on the plane from Chicago (who is an American born in India), to our driver from the airport to the hotel, to the hotel staff (I just had a couple of cups of coffee and cookies in the middle of the night (24 hour restaurant), not being able to sleep, and when I asked for the bill was told that it was gratis because I was a guest of the hotel). This is just the first (night) of nine days, but if this keeps up I might just have found a new favorite country – and people.

My iPhone

When I turned 60 a couple of years ago, my wife went out on a very thin limb and bought me an iPhone 3G, thus making me the last human on Earth to own a cell phone. I’d never had any use for a cell phone (discounting telemarketers and wrong numbers, I receive about two phone calls a week and make about the same). But I had been following the hype of the iPhone and was somewhat curious about all the bells and whistles (not actual bells and whistles, of course; I don’t know when actual bells and whistles stopped being included in appliances) that the iPhone promised – the internet, email, gps, camera, video, radio, iPod, and oh the billions of apps. I was dubious when I unwrapped the package and saw what it was. Not only do I not have much need of a phone, but my history with all technologies is a sad trail of confusion, contusions, and creative cursing. I dropped the phone while taking it out of the box, bouncing it off the floor. But I gave the iPhone a chance. The gift was well-meaning and intended to bring me at least into the late 20^th century, if not the early 21^st. And two years later, I use my iPhone regularly. I check the weather several times a day. I surf the internet, read newspapers, listen to radio, check my email, read books, try to find myself with gps, find restaurants, etc. with my four pages of apps. I’m still learning, and have a ways to go. (I don’t text message and never will. What’s the purpose?) But the one thing I still rarely use on my iPhone is the phone function itself. I happened today for the first time in two years to go into my usage summary for the current billing cycle (halfway through the month), and this is what I found:

Anytime Minutes	39 of 450
Night & Weekend	74 of 5000
Rollover Minutes	0 of 4257

Anybody want to buy some minutes? As I said, I don’t have a big need for a phone. I’m glad I have it. But my fascination is with the convergence of all the technologies into one gadget. And I’m considering looking into the iPhone4 (hey, it has video). But it’s a slippery slope. The iPhone5 – or whatever – is sure to be just months away. Maybe they’ll phone me when it comes out. Or text.

Two Contradictory Ideas

For many years, decades actually, I held in my mind two contradictory notions about my father. First, that he had never gotten beyond the eighth grade. And second, that he had played on the Wichita East High School golf team. One would think that a mind as sharp as mine would have struck upon this paradox long before his death, but the revelation of my obliviousness didn’t strike me until I was sitting with my mother in the office of the mortician, answering questions about my father’s life. “Wait a minute” – I thought to myself as my mother answered the question of how far he had gone in education with “high school” – “I’ve always believed he never got beyond eighth grade.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald quotingly said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” I don’t think he had my mind in mind at the time. But then he probably was talking more about abstract ideas than facts. It’s one thing to believe that there exists intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (based on theory), while also doubting that it does (based on lack of empirical evidence). It’s another thing to believe that one’s father never got beyond the eighth grade (figment), while also believing he played high school golf (fact). But the mind is a curious thing, and it’s just as likely – perhaps more likely – to hold the latter as it is to hold the former. Sadly, there just aren’t that many Fitzgeraldian first-rate minds. Certainly you aren’t reading one of them now.