The first thing you notice upon arriving in Bombay from Delhi is the breeze. The air that comes off the sea saves the city from Delhi’s dustbowl climate.
As the sun sets by the coast, most of Bombay seems to gather around India Gateway, a huge grey basalt arch stnding tall in front of the ocean, built to commemorate a 1911 visit by King George V (it must have been some guest book to sign). Children are pulled from the edge of the sea wall by hassled parents. Groups of young boys swagger in and out of people peddling almost anything: earrings, chai, samosas, pastel-coloured ice lollies, multicoloured marbles. One man is sitting on an outspread rug blowing up plastic bubbles and sticking them together in a tower formation. There are several men dragging around enormous orange marbled balloons the size of motorbikes. An emormous silver-gilded carriage, attached to a healthy looking horse stand on the road, decorated with smaller balloons, waiting for an unsuspecting tourist.
People stand around watching the boats come in. One man is holding a contraption that looks like an enormous tin ear-trumpet, but turns out to be a telescope that he charges five rupees to use. The breeze is gentle this evening. Two boys tug at black and yellow kite that has proved entirely useless.
“Please, ma’am, have photo taken with my friend,” one man says, grabbing my arm. I politely refuse, but he continues, grabbing Elsa also. “Have picture taken with my friend. No rupees, I charge you nothing.” Quite why we would want to pay for the privilege is beyond me. “Don’t you like your Indian friend?” Eventually we agree, posing politely with a young scrawny man who giggles as we stand on either side of him. It really does feel a little seedy. Straight afterwards, we are asked again. Unwilling to be seen as a source of entertainment, we agree so long as they’ll leave us alone. Just as we are posing for photo number two, we notice that the two men from photo op number one are gathering around a cordless photo printer. It turns out someone’s running a lucrative business selling snaps with the foreigners. You have to admire the ingenuity.
Over the road, the Taj Mahal Palace hotel looms over, intimidating the gateway with its sunset shadow. Its domes and spires spike the sky. It was built in 1903 by JN Tata, one of the founders of Tata Motors, now the second biggest company in India. He pledged to build it after being ejected from another Bombay hotel for being ‘a native.’ As we sneak in to use the bathroom, scruffy and sweating profusely, we have a peak into the courtyard marked ‘residents only.’ A smattering of white tourists sit drinking beers in the sun. Others swim a lazy stroke or two in the pool.
Out on the streets of Colaba, sellers press jewellery on goggle-eyed tourists. Pashiminas, bangles and handbags onto leather-skinned skinny backpackers, who generally dress like Indians might have fifty years ago, but with the mandatory dreadlocks/hair dyed pink. In Leopold’s café, two Italian women are working their way through a yard of beer. They finish it and order two more Coronas and a ramekin of peanuts. Outside, a man sets up a stall selling nautical memorabilia – ship’s compasses, pocket telescopes, charts and antique deep-sea divers’ helmets – along with a collection of old comedy car horns, a saxaphone, trombone and a trumpet. Somehow he must do business. I suppose setting up shop late in the evening at the exit to a bar allows you to sell as many brass periscopes as knock-off t-shirts outside Brixton Academy.
As we jump, exhausted, onto the ladies-only carriage of the rusty train at Churchgate Station, it’s the greatest feeling to have the breeze on your face. We pass shanty houses lit warmly with star-shaped paper lanterns, their kitchens open to the railway tracks. People hang out of trains, nodding to passengers travelling the other way. The lights of skyscrapers twinkle in the distance.
This is Bombay.
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