Mumbai, Day 3
- At September 03, 2023
- By Jessica
- In Travel
0
In our opinion, no place better underscores the travesty of relying on news headlines for your impression of a place than Mumbai. You've just got to see it for yourself.
Take the slums, for instance. They do not fit our preconception of a slum. They are beehives of small industries such as leather tanning, embroidery, pottery, recycling, and others. The children all go to school and the adults all have jobs. Even begging is an organized industry. These people just have no place to live due to a scarcity of housing exacerbated by government policies we elaborate on below. Think of the slum-dwellers as the pioneers of the work-from-home movement.
India has no welfare, food stamps, or social security. Everyone has to scratch out their own living however they can.
There are some people living on the street but, frankly, it's not much different from the US homeless problem.
Every residential building 3-4 stories high contains rental apartments. All rents have been frozen since 1947. Rents are between $3-10 a month. Crazy, right? That's why the buildings are in such disrepair; landlords have no money or incentive to maintain their properties or retain tenants. We had a similar situation in New York for many years due to archaic rent control laws. Finally, the laws were changed.
It comes down to supply and demand. Not enough housing for 22m people. The housing stock that does exist is either astronomically expensive or tied up for many generations by the price freeze mentioned earlier. And incomes do not support costs of available housing.
In contrast, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Group and the richest man in India, built a 27 story home for $2B. He hired 600 staff from the Oberei hotel to wait on him, his wife, his mother, and his one remaining son who is soon getting married and moving out.
There are several private hospitals that are so good Mumbai enjoys a thriving medical tourism business. We saw one Muslim hospital built by the Aga Kahn that looks like a palace. It is open to anyone who can pay. The Parsi private hospital is also very good but only available to Parsis. If the mother is a Parsi and the father is not, or vice-versa, the issue of that marriage cannot be delivered in the Parsi hospital. If you are poor there are government hospitals that are not considered to be very good.
Mumbai is currently the 5th largest city in the world. It is the most European city in India and strikes us as such. It is laid out like a European city, with trees and parks, and all those gorgeous architectural masterpieces.
This morning we started out at the Gateway of India. It was built in 1911 to welcome King George V and Queen Mary. It is also the gate through which the last British soldiers left in 1948. The locals love to underscore the irony that the same gate was used to welcome the British and to usher them out.
Gateway of India
We passed by several other of the 94 historic buildings in Mumbai including the Reserve Bank of India, the Town Hall built in 1804, Barracks of British soldiers, the Natural History Society, the Police Headquarters, Mumbai University from 1857, and the Indian Naval Headquarters. The navy is very important in India because it is surrounded by water on three sides by the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Indian Ocean.
The British ruled for almost 250 years. They left behind fabulous structures, a legal system, a form of government, it's language, and infrastructure such as trains and a postal system.
Feeding cows and pigeons satisfies the Hindu custom of doing a good deed every day. Cow feeding stations exist throughout the city.
A fleet of 55,000 yellow and black taxis run on compressed gas cylinders that drivers keep in their trunk. In addition, there are 75,000 licensed Uber cabs. It is said there are eight religions in Mumbai. 64 percent of the population is Hindu, 15-18 percent are Muslim and the rest are Jain, Buddhist, Jewish, Parsi, and others. There is a ninth religion worshipped by all - cricket!
The Parsi religion, known outside of Mumbai as Zoroastrian, is fascinating. There are only 110,000 Zoroastrians in the world of which 50,000 live in India. The sect fled from Persia to India between 785 and 936 to avoid religious persecution by the Muslim majority. The Dadar Parsi colony in Mumbai numbers about 15,000 but includes some of India's wealthiest families including the Tatas, who own more than 100 Indian companies. The Parsis worship the elements of nature, not gods. Their places of worship are called Fire Temples where a fire burns 24/7. Only Parsis may enter a fire temple.
Hidden by Mumbai's Hanging Garden, so named because it hangs over a reservoir not because people are lynched there, are 55 acres of land (in the middle of Mumbai!!) owned by the Parsi. On this plot of land are the five Towers of Silence - or dakhma. Parsis do not cremate or bury their dead but place the bodies in these towers to be eaten by vultures. The bones turn into powder. This procedure is only and still performed in Mumbai.
After the Hanging Garden we visited the Mahalakshmi Dhobi Ghat. Dhobi = washerman. It is the largest open air laundry in the world. Over 8000 men work together where each man has his own cubicle, beats the clothes on a rock, air dries, then irons. Home pick up and delivery included. The Dhobi Ghat has been in existence for 120 and started as a service for the British.
Our last stop today was the former home of Mahatma Gandhi. It is now a museum. It was such a rich and moving experience we will dedicate a post just to that.
