Summing up Mumbai

Photo by Cididity Hat (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

During this cruise we had a lot of problems with the internet. It was largely inaccessible or just crawled along - the worst connectivity of any cruise we have ever been on. Normally I can upload some photos of the day and do some commentary on the day's excursions and sights to post on Luxury Cruise Talk.  On this cruise, due to bandwidth limitations and the fact that my normal upload site, Photobucket, was blocked by Regent, I spent my time creating photo collages, reducing them down in size, and uploading them via my Smugmug camera app to that site in order to get the required IMG code for posting on LCT. A couple of our travel companions provided the commentary.

My friend Andi is a keenly observant traveler. Her recall of the details of the day is astounding. In Mumbai she and her husband took an all day tour and below are her impressions of her day in Mumbai:

"We had now traveled 875 miles up the west coast of India from Cochin. We had been told about the masses of humanity awaiting us in Mumbai. We only had one day in Mumbai, which is a limitation of cruising in that you only get a taste of a place. I was expecting a sea of people and a horror of mankind. We decided to take a full day tour of this key city in order to fully gain a grasp of what folks were talking about. 

By Vegpuff via Wikimedia Commons

The first aspect of this city that alerted me that I was in for an awakening was the architecture. It was not as I imagined and it would be the beginning of new surprises for me. I expected slums.
I was immediately struck by Old Bombay's gorgeous 18th and early 19th century Gothic and Victorian architecture that could have come directly from Cambridge or Oxford, known as “Bombay Gothic.” in fact, Mumbai is one of the most characteristically Victorian cities in the world, displaying its British past in all its glory. What's interesting, though, is that it is combined with German gables, Dutch roofs and Indian arches. The most magnificent of these buildings was the railway terminus and the state and college buildings lining the tree lined greens and were as stately as any I have seen in London. The gorgeous Taj Mahal hotel was exquisite and housed Gucci and a Morumoto restaurant.

Mixed in with this Bombay Gothic is the second largest number of Art Deco buildings in the world, second only to Miami. In contrast to Miami, they are not colored in the striking blues, pinks, greens and yellows but are dingy and tired looking. Art Deco in India (and especially in Mumbai) evolved into a unique style that came to be called Deco-Saracenic. Essentially, it was a combination of the Islamic and the Hindu architectural styles. The main features were the construction of domes, arches, spires, stained glasses and minarets. The interiors have Victorian influences while the exterior was Indian. Deco details touch every architectural aspect – lamps, flooring, wood panelling, lifts, railings and grills, mouldings, cornices, verandas and balconies, bronze and stainless steel fittings, brackets, etched glass and ornamental sculptures. Many of these buildings overlooked sandy beaches not unlike what you'd find in Miami.

So far, not the slums I expected.

We were then given a walking tour through the Portuguese area. This enclave was hidden behind a typical old city area comprised of old apartment buildings and shops not unlike what you'd find in lower Manhattan, perhaps in Chinatown. It was definitely not upscale, but not any different than what would expect from a large city. Laundry hung from the windows, fruit and vegetable stalls lined the streets.  Khotachiwadi, a historic area of Mumbai, is invisible to all but those who know exactly where it is or are determined to find it. We followed our tour guide across busy streets into a hidden alley way. Inside, we were well-rewarded: Khotachiwadi is a colorful, quiet and quirky world, a maze of crumbling 19th-century wooden bungalows and chawls (communal living quarters typical in Mumbai) painted in bright colors, with latticed windows, overhanging balconies and winding wooden staircases.

Khotachiwadi  photo  © Charukesi Ramadurai 

We were taken of a tour of designer James Ferreira's beautifully preserved home. Mr. Ferreira himself is a storehouse of information about the Khotachiwadi community. His family was originally from Portugal and intermarried with East Indian Christans. The wadi is believed to have sprung up around 1840 and plots of land  were sold to the growing group of East Indian Christians. Many originally lovely 2000 sq. foot homes are now falling apart. Because of rental laws, landlords are not allowed to raise rents or force out tenants and tentantsbcan sub lease in perpetuity. Many of the rents are as low as $3 per month. Khotachiwadi sits on prime land in one of the most expensive areas of Mumbai, and property developers have been eyeing it for many years now. So, landlords are refusing to fix up their properties, allowing them to be comdemned and torn down, making way for tall modern skyscrapers in this enclave. It was declared a Mumbai Heritage Precinct in 1995 as part of a serious conservation effort across the city but it seems like a losing battle. If a building is torn down, the resident gets a shiny, new 2000 square foot apartment in the new building...a win win for the developer, landlord and resident.

(click here for some photos of James Ferrier'as bungalow. And here for his clothing designs.)

Our visit to Khotachiwadi wasn't all seriousness, talking only about architecture and the situation of real estate, We took time out for refreshments and trying on saris...I felt sorry for the guys who were looking increasingly bored.

Again, back to my day of surprises about this poverty stricken city. A 100-square-meter luxury residence in Mumbai costs about $1.14 million, or 308 times the average annual income in India. Prime-location home prices in Mumbai averaged $11,400 a square meter, while India’s per-capita purchasing power was $3,700.

Economists are explaining that there are big differences in wealth levels in an emerging market like India compared to the developed world, which is part of the course for economic development. In the first phase of growth some people make big fortunes and bit takes time for this to trickle down as the middle class develop and generate their own wealth.

Mumbai is even the home to the world's largest and most expensive home: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai with a cost nearing $2 billion. It is 550 feet high with 400,000 square feet of interior space. Atop six stories of parking lots, the living quarters begin at a lobby with nine elevators.

All this wealth is integrated with the poverty of shantytowns, which are not segregated from these enormously wealthy areas. They can walk out their doors and be faced with India's poverty at their doorstep. There are no truly segregated areas in Mumbai...no gated communities that separate the masses.  All exist, so to speak, shoulder to shoulder, though there is a strong caste system.

We were struck by the number of poor living on the streets, especially the women and children. The pretty little girls between age 5 to 10 are already hardened to the street and begging. We noticed that they were backed by well dressed men in their late twenties on cell phones. When a child received money, she would hand the money to her "pimp." as I sat back in the bus and watched, this man gave the children certain hand signals as to who to target. One child would do cartwheels to divert, while another child would target the wealthy tourist by selling trinkets as they were leaving a restaurant, bus or hotel. One of our traveling companions asked one of these little girls how she learned English so well...answer "from trying to sell pocketbooks to English ladies." While the Indians we passed on the streets and the bus waved at us with smiling faces, Doug and I couldn't help but notice the sad, hard look on most of the women's faces. Theirs was not an easy life and it appeared that the women carried the burden in the lower class systems.

Regent showed us the good part of Mumbai. We really never saw the underbelly. We did not get to see Dharavi, the large Mumbai shantytown, with a population of over 1 million.  Dharavi has severe problems with public health, due to the scarcity of toilet facilities, with only one toilet per 1,440 residents.

One thing that struck us throughout India, though, was the filth caused by litter. Regent couldn't hide that from us. Bangkok, Cambodia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka were impeccably clean. India was not. I asked our guide what was the problem and he said "Indians for the most part do not care. Residents seem to have stopped using local toilets provided and leave their waste on the sea front instead, dirtying the area. The place also has plastic bags, cloth and newspapers, which no one picks up. Rains disrupt some clean up efforts by the city. City workers only take garbage from the bin and ignore other trash. There is little movement to supply shopkeepers and slum dwellers with boxes to throw their garbage in and clear them twice a day, and penalize litter bugs and educate people about the actual problems caused if hygiene is not maintained. ‘Fight the Filth’ is a new campaign which encourages the youth to participate as it is believed folks have become too used to the filth just being everywhere.

By Steve Evans from Citizen of the World [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps our most interesting stop was to watch and learn about the Mumbai Dabbahwalas.  A dabbawala (box person) is a person in India, most commonly found in the city of Mumbai, who is employed in a unique service industry whose primary business is collecting freshly cooked food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office workers (mostly in the suburbs), delivering it to their respective workplaces and returning the empty boxes back to the customer's residence by using various modes of transport.

It is actually a highly specialized service in Mumbai which is over a century old and has become integral to the cultural life of this city. The concept of the dabbawala originated when India was under British rule. Many British people who came to the colony did not like the local food, so a service was set up to bring lunch to these people in their workplace straight from their home.

Mumbai is a very densely populated city of millions with huge flows of traffic. Because of this, lengthy commutes to workplaces are common, with many workers traveling by train.  Instead of going home for lunch or paying for a meal and eating out every day in a café, many office workers have a cooked meal sent either from their home, or sometimes from a caterer who essentially cooks and delivers the meal in lunch boxes and then have the empty lunch boxes collected and re-sent the same day. This is usually done for a monthly fee of about $10. The meal is cooked in the morning and sent in lunch boxes carried by dabbawalas, who have a complex association and hierarchy across the city.

By Joe Zachs from Pune, India (The Bombay Dabawalla) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 A collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas either from a worker's home or from the dabba makers. As many of the carriers are illiterate, the dabbas have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or group of symbols. The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place, where he and other collecting dabbawalas sort (and sometimes bundle) the lunch boxes into groups. The grouped boxes are put in the coaches of trains, with markings to identify the destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). The markings include the railway station to unload the boxes and the building address where the box has to be delivered.  At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala, who delivers them. The empty boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective houses.

Although the service remains essentially low-tech, with the delivery men as the prime movers, the dabbawalas have started to embrace technology, and now allow tanuj wadhi for delivery through SMS. An on-line poll on the web site ensures that customer feedback is given pride of place. The success of the system depends on teamwork and time management. Such is the dedication and commitment of the barely literate and barefoot delivery men (there are only a few delivery women) who form links in the extensive delivery chain, that there is no system of documentation at all. A simple colour-coding system doubles as an ID system for the destination and recipient..

The service is almost always uninterrupted, even on the days of severe weather such as monsoons. The local dabbawalas and population know each other well, and often form bonds of trust. Dabbawalas are generally well accustomed to the local areas they cater to, and use shortcuts and other low profile routes to deliver their goods on time. Occasionally, people communicate between home and work by putting messages inside the boxes; however, with the rise of instant communication such as SMS and instant messaging, this trend is vanishing.

Each dabbawala, regardless of role, gets paid about $160 per month. In 1998, Forbes Magazine found its reliability to be that of a six sigma standard. This implies that the Dabbawalas make less than one mistake in every 6 million deliveries, despite most of the delivery staff being illiterate.

(Click Here for a Harvard Business Review article about the efficiency of the dabbawalas)

Gandhi Museum

Our last stop was the Mani Bhavan (Gandhi Museum). The Mani Bhavan is where Mahatma Gandhi lived from 1917 to 1934. The three-story home is now a Gandhi Museum that preserves the spirit of the man who put his nation before himself. The house belonged to a friend of Ghandi's. Whenever Ghandi was in Mumbai between 1917 to 1934, he stayed here. It was here in November 1921 that Gandhi conducted a four-day fast in order to restore peace to the city. On the terrace, a bronze plaque marks the site of the tent in which he was arrested in January 1932. He also used to sleep and say his prayers on this terrace. Inside the house is a library of Gandhi-related works as well as displays of photographs, posters, slogans, and person letters that document and explain Gandhi's life.

This was an extremely full and varied day for us and merely touched on a very complex city."

Andi W