I’ve been back from Mumbai, India for two weeks and it has taken me this time to pause and reflect on how I can describe what this experience meant to me. As a deeply intense person who experiences things intently, I hadn’t ever felt this level of emptiness after a holiday, and needed time to digest why this was. Through the ongoing process of learning to master my emotions, I have learned the importance of retreating, reflecting and then responding to the meaning I attach to things, rather than to react. So I spent two weeks giving myself this “head” space before committing myself to paper to record how this was for me.
Mumbai was a dichotomy of experience. On the one hand, I saw and experienced things that I thought were ghastly but yet in the same breath, beautiful. Each experience teaching me something new about how I interpreted my world, or how I had learned to adapt to the world in which I lived, divided from this place that I found myself in. My experience captured below is this, my experience. It is raw as I saw and experienced it and may not be suitable for all readers. I am not going to apologise for this as my extract may say more about me than it does about Mumbai and I accept this. I hope you can too.
This journal will record my philosophy of my experience whereas next, I will write about my adventures in Mumbai with the “Gerald Durrell/Bill Bryson” style of humour which I so enjoy escaping into.
Arriving in Mumbai is an avalanche of sensory experience – the sights, sounds, touch, smell and tastes were all foreign to me in being a native of England for 19 years. Growing up in the era of apartheid South Africa, I had witnessed poverty, heat and deprivation, but never to this scale and certainly not perhaps with the naivety I had gained with living in a 1st world city where everything is instant. An example: the district we were staying in didn’t have supermarkets or corner cafes. If you wanted a 1-stop shop, think again. An adventure down any road would mean walking past several different stalls all selling their wares. A man selling tyres would be located next to a man selling tobacco, conveniently located next to a barber cutting hair that would blow onto the dirty roads where gutters didn’t exist. Waste water would be running down the street and in it, litter. Walking down through the market, I think I was most aghast to see a man selling chickens. You could buy the chickens eggs, the whole chicken, or if you preferred, he would cut the chickens head off there and then, with his guillotine, enabling you to walk home with your ready to cook chicken. What horrified me, was that the head fell into the road, where it would be carried away by a rat or cat. One of the things I reflected on is how far removed I am as an urban Londoner from the realities of how my meat arrives to market. Is it that this method is brutal to reality, or that I am so far removed from reality and that this is how it is? This was one of the first things I had to come to terms with – how desensitized we are living in a 1st world city where everything is convenient and adapted for our consumption. Whilst I thought this was horrific, it is indeed perfectly normal and if I was to be honest with myself, I probably wouldn’t eat chicken knowing how it met its end.
An outing onto the road was an experience in survival. Firstly, the multitude of traffic trying to squeeze onto the narrow, pot-holed and unmarked roads blowing their horns and hooters 24-7. The noise was deafening. Taxi’s, tuk-tuks, cyclists, motorcyclists, buses, cars, lorries and pedestrians sharing the space. I watched a you tube video of a traveler showing you how to cross the road and his words “I think a little bit of poo might just have come out!” – I understand him as that was my experience. I failed to mention that amongst all this chaos on the roads, were the animals you expect to see only on a farm, not on a city road. Cows, bulls, goats, sheep, chickens and then stray dogs and cats who have not have the benefit of a loving human hug. Despite these being animals, and many of them looking like they were within an inch of their lives, they continued to survive and had their place on the streets. Then you had the homeless. Watching little kids no older than 4 years of age, playing on the side of a busy road whilst their caretakers sat nearby working on a craft to earn them a meal for the night, was mind blowing. One instance I witnessed was of a child, I am certain of the age of no more than 4, who was watching over a young toddler and 2 other babies, who sat in an adult like state, taking complete responsibility for the wellbeing of these children under their care. Unwashed, possibly unfed, with little care in the world, the love for fellow humanity was humbling. Big brown eyes and wide toothless smiles met me at every street corner.
Another reality to face was that as a Westerner, I had become attached to material things. Whether admittedly or not, convenience and luxury items are privileges I take for granted. I would describe myself as someone relatively devoid from materialism, yet here I was confronted with people who were happy to have a piece of cardboard on a smelly road with no sanitation or the likelihood of their next meal, just happy because they had this moment and they were alive. A mental state that I had thought I resided in, but didn’t until I realized how blessed I am with who I am and what I have, and take this for granted. It showed me the need to be far more grateful for everything I was blessed to enjoy.
I would describe myself as a humanitarian and a person with a compassionate and loving soul. Yet here I found myself frozen and unable to respond to the needs of others in the way in which I would normally. A walk down any street had loud hooting cars assaulting your ear drums and then trying to avoid being knocked down by a tuk-tuk or motorcyclist whilst melting in the hot 40 degree + heat and looking at people trying to earn a living selling sugar-cane juice from a side corner of the street. This was persistent and an attack on my central nervous system. I simply started to shut down emotionally to cope with it all.
When finally knowing I was safely on board my flight home, I was able to relax into the flight entertainment and I decided to watch “the Lion”. It tells the story of a little Indian boy who founds himself separated from his older brother and ends up travelling by accident on a train that takes him almost a 1000 miles from his home. He survives on the streets for 2 months before being taken in to police custody and then is adopted by an Australian family and grows up in another continent. You journey with him as a child in India and subsequently as an adult in Australia, who then seeks to find his way home. What opened up my temporarily closed compassionate heart was the feelings this movie stirred in me. This little boy reminded me so much of my 8-year old nephew and I couldn’t understand how any adult seeing that he was in distress wouldn’t come to his aid. It was then I realized that I may have walked past this little fellow day after day several times a day, whilst holidaying in Mumbai and I felt deep shame. I had soul searching to do.
Whilst my experience of holidaying in Mumbai was not as I had anticipated it, I am so grateful for the feelings and emotions it stirred in me, allowing me to see more of myself that I needed to improve upon. I am very blessed it would seem to live in a first world city and experience first world privileges. One I will not easily forget or take for granted again anytime soon. For me it’s about balance. Finding equilibrium. What can I take from this experience, what can I leave behind and how can I grow?
What I know is that I want to love. I don’t want to judge others or be judged. I reflect on the lyrics from George Michaels song “Jesus to a Child” where he talks about charity being a coat you wear, twice a year and how we rationalize our wealth. I don’t have answers to how it is that there are those that enjoy wealth and those that don’t, to those that are sick and those that aren’t, and to many other polar opposites that we find in our world today. What I do see though is that I am aware of all that I have to be grateful for and to know that I want to make a difference in this world in which I am blessed to participate in. I want to contribute, to be of service and to add value. I want to use the skills and talents I have been born and blessed with. To come home from a holiday with this level of insight is a treasure. On a serious note Mumbai, I thank you. I will take these learning’s together with the fun and laughter I was blessed to enjoy and build on these.
Namaste.
Authentic You 