They called you failure’s art…”
-Elliott Smith, “Tomorrow Tomorrow”
Locations: Delhi; Mumbai (Karnataka)
Photos:
Delhi: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050741&l=5fce5&id=1101094
Mumbai: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050744&l=6f174&id=1101094
Temperature: 97
Morale: 8
Spinning: Elliott Smith – XO, Art Brut – It’s a Bit Complicated
Reading: Lonely Planet, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
What's next (I think): Singapore
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I devoted my final morning in India to practical matters such as shipping Christmas gifts back to the States, booking a hotel near the Mumbai airport, and shaving. Yes, shaving. I had now been traveling for nearly a month, and I had yet to shave, so I had a decent beard going. I knew that this would not be an easy shave. So I let someone else do it.
Getting a shave in a third world country is a pleasant, if a little scary, experience. It’s quite luxurious to sit back and let someone else scrape all the hair off your face. But this someone else is not using a safety razor, and that’s the scary part. As the metal blade passed over my neck the first few times, my back stiffened and I silently hoped that this guy knew what he was doing. But after I developed some trust in the guy the experience was quite pleasurable. The shave took fifteen minutes and cost Rs 20. My, that’s cheap labor.
I shared a taxi to the airport with a Dutch woman who owned a furniture store in Goa. She spent four months of the year in Holland and the other eight on the beach in Goa. Doesn’t sound like a bad life.
My flight to Mumbai was one of the best flights I’ve ever taken. I flew Jet Airways, and the service was impeccable. Never before had I seen coach passengers treated like royalty. And the food was fantastic.
I met some American consultants on the flight—they were originally from Boston, but they had spent the last few years flying around India and consulting small Indian businesses. They were based in Trivandrum, which is a city in Kerala state, not too far from the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. I enjoyed hearing about their work in India, and couldn’t help thinking that this was the sort of job I would enjoy. I got a business card just in case.
I arrived in Mumbai and was picked up at the airport by an employee of my hotel. I was staying all of five minutes away from the airport, in a district called Juha. Given that my flight to Singapore left at 7:30 the next morning, I just didn’t have enough time to make it into Mumbai proper. It’s ok, though—I’m determined to make the southern India trip happen at some point.
It turned out that Juha was a relatively affluent suburb of Mumbai, and I was immediately confronted with an India that I had never seen before. After dropping my pack at the hotel, I walked out to the street to catch a rickshaw to the beach (because, what better way is there to spend your last evening in a country?). But each time I told a rickshaw driver I wanted to go to Juha Beach, he waved his hand and drove off. Was it possible that he didn’t understand me? No. As I found out later, traffic between my hotel and Juha Beach is awful, and clearly very few rickshaw drivers wanted to deal with the annoying trip. That logic seemed reasonable enough to me, but it didn’t fit with the India I had observed over the past several weeks. In general, Indians can’t afford to say no. Sure, driving a rickshaw through swarms of traffic sounds unpleasant, but what Indian rickshaw driver is rich enough to turn down a fare? Answer: Juha Beach rickshaw drivers. It was rush hour in one of the richest suburbs of one of the richest cities in India, and these drivers knew they had a better fare coming. So they waved their hands at me and left me standing by the roadside in shock.
I finally convinced my hotel’s security guard to help me find a rickshaw, but even he couldn’t convince the next few drives to pick me up. Finally someone agreed to take me, but the look of reluctance on his face indicated that he was doing me a favor.
The beach was beautiful, and just what you’d expect in an affluent suburb. Kids were playing soccer, teenage couples were watching the sun set arm in arm, and vendors were walking the beach selling cotton candy and popcorn. The whole scene felt more like a holiday than a random Tuesday evening.
I splashed around in the water a bit (my first brush with the Indian Ocean), watched the kids’ soccer game (while silently wishing I could join in the fun), and then got some dinner at a restaurant on the beach. I ate my first dosa (a South Indian dish) and watched a brilliant sunset.
As dusk settled and families started heading home, I strolled down the beach in search of one thing: beer. So far, India hadn’t been much for nightlife. I hoped Mumbai would change that.
I walked by a bar that had a deck overlooking the beach, and looked up to see a group of foreigners drinking Kingfishers. This seemed like a good place to get the night started, so I made for the steps that led to the deck. Just then, one of the foreigners spotted me, and yelled in a thick Australian accent, “Him! He’s got money! Go talk to him!”
It seems the Australians were in the midst of being pestered by some young beggars, and they were delighted to be able to put the children off onto me. As three children ran toward me with their open hands extended, a chorus of laughter erupted from the balcony. I sidestepped the kids and hopped up onto the balcony, all the while glaring playfully at the raucous Aussies.
“Sorry to put those little buggers off on you, mate,” said the Aussie who had pointed the kids my way. “We’d just had about enough begging for the evening. Here, have a beer on us.”
My past travel experience had led me to believe that Aussies generally went about the world drinking, laughing, and generally having a grand old time without much care for what anyone around them thought. I’m happy to report that these Aussies did not break my stereotype. I spent the next couple hours drinking with the Aussie posse, which turned out to be a group of flight attendants for Qantas Airlines, and they proved to be excellent nightlife buddies. Not only were they good-natured and more than willing to let me invade their social circle, but they also knew the nightlife scene for many of the places I was going in Southeast Asia. They talked most about Singapore, my next destination, which they had visited often, and they couldn’t say enough about how much they loved Clarke Quay and a place called C.H.J.M.E.S. I promised them I’d check out their suggestions on my first night in Singapore.
Though I was having a great time talking to my new friends from Down Under, I still hoped to catch a Bollywood film and check out a nightclub before the end of the night, so I excused myself and caught a rickshaw to a movie theater a few kilometers up the beach. I bought a ticket (Rs 175) for the movie that was about to start and headed into the theater. Needless to say, I was the only foreigner in attendance, and I got some stares from the rest of the audience that said, “What are you doing here?”
The stares made sense as soon as the movie started, because the film, called Apna Asmaan, was in Hindi (with no English subtitles) and was decidedly not a romantic comedy with an easy-to-follow plot. The film was seemingly about a couple and their autistic child, but beyond that I wasn’t able to follow much. Deciding there was no point in sticking it out, I left at intermission.
I headed for a nightclub called Enigma, which was in the basement of the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Juha Beach. Supposedly Bollywood stars hung out here from time to time, so I had high expectations for the place. Unfortunately, though, it was Tuesday night, and when I arrived the place was mostly empty.
I sat at the bar and tried my best not to look like a dirty backpacker, but I don’t think I was very successful. I ended up talking to a middle-aged guy who was Indian but lived and worked in Dubai for most of the year. I told him about my travels (he was very interested to here about my time in Kashmir), and he talked about Dubai a bit.
After a while the club started to fill up, mostly with young, attractive Indian girls, and the guy I was talking to started pressing me to go talk to them. “All these pretty Indian girls in this club and you’re sitting here talking to me? Go talk to those girls over there!” he said. “I don’t think they’ll want to talk to me, man,” I said. “I don’t speak Hindi and I look like a dirty backpacker.” “Of course they’ll want to talk to you. You’re American. Now go.”
Unable to come up with any more excuses, I walked gingerly over to the table of girls and said, “Hey girls, mind if I join you?”
They turned to look at me, and their expressions were not encouraging. Then one of them responded, “Um, no, sorry, we’re having girls’ night.” “Oh, sure, ok,” I said. “Sorry to bother you.” I walked quickly back to the bar and glared at my new friend, who just sat there chuckling.
“See, I told you they wouldn’t want to talk to me!” I said. Why’d you make me do that?”
“Look, I’m surprised they turned you down. What did they say?”
“They said they were having girls’ night.”
“Oh! That’s not so bad. They probably are having girls’ night. I mean, there are six of them there, and they haven’t spoken to one guy the entire night. Well, except for you.”
I glared back at him. “Yeah. Nice pick.”
“Sorry, sorry. My mistake. You should pick a smaller group. How about those two girls over there? They have an extra seat at their table. Go talk to those two.”
Against my better judgment, I decided to give it one more shot. I approached the two girls, asked if they would mind if I joined them for a bit, and promptly got shot down once again.
“See? I told you. Good looking Indian girls do not want to talk to dirty American backpackers.”
“Well what did they say when you asked them?”
“No.”
“Just ‘No?’”
“Yep, that’s right.”
“Hmmm. OK. So maybe you’re right. Nice try, though.”
My confidence shattered, I talked to my friend for another few minutes and then decided to head back to my hotel. My night in Mumbai, after all, had been a success: I had managed to find a cool Indian night club filled with lots of stylish Indian girls. The only problem is that stylish Indian girls are far too good to talk to me.
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