MUMBAI IS NOT LIKE I REMEMBERED BOMBAY

Thursday – 2 April 2015 – Mumbai, India

Early morning fishing boats in Mumbai Harbour

The Ballard Pier terminal building hasn't changed in 25 years

Mumbai is known as the financial and filmmaking center of India. It is the gateway to India for most tourists. We sailed in early passing a long photogenic line of moored fishing boats. The bizarre Ballard Pier Terminal looked the same as I remembered from my visits 20 years ago, but modern Mumbai wasn’t to be familiar at all.

Many line handlers are needed to do the job in Mumbai

Judging by the number of line handlers, one thing that apparently hadn't changed was the role of the government as the low pay employer of many.  In most ports one or two people dockside line-handlers attach each ship's mooring line to bullocks as they are thrown from the ship as it docks. In Mumbai it seemed to take an entire union local for each rope. Judging from the sights at the port, I recalled much of what I had seen during my earlier visits: much poverty, filthy streets, and crazy traffic that made it difficult to determine which side of the road the Indians actually drive on. The most disquieting sights were of the sad beggars approaching the tour buses at each stop.  

Our tour guide in Mumbai was as good as the one in Cochin was poor

We had signed  up for the half day orientation tour of Mumbai, essentially the same tour I had taken once as a passenger and twice as the ship’s bus escort in the early 1990s. I wanted to see what—if anything—had changed since my earlier visits. Everything in the city seemed to have changed for the better: the streets were clean, the traffic was much more orderly, and we saw no beggars. Barriers had been constructed in each major thoroughfares' medians. The earlier problems were no longer evident in the downtown business district or in the tourist areas. The iconic sights there were still there, of course.

Busy Victoria Terminus is perhaps Mumbai's best example of British colonial architecture

The still viable Dhobi Ghat open air laundry's days are numbered as modern construction grows all around the valuable site

The first tourist stop was the spectacular Victoria Terminus, Mumbai’s main railway station. Built in 1887 Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as it is officially called is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the busiest, if not the busiest, train stations in the world. Over 2.5 million commuters come through the station each work day. In addition, it is a main terminus for India’s extensive regional and long distance rail network. The other Frederick Williams Stevens British colonial architecture was a knockout as well. Mumbai is famous for this architecture, and the Indian government has kept the buildings in good repair. Next we visited the other extreme of old Bombay, Dhobi Ghat.

This massive outdoor industrial laundry is unique. The excellent guide explained how laundry from the hotels and restaurants was picked up and washed daily by “illiterate workers who were paid little and who cannot get other jobs.” She could not, of course, say the word Untouchables as the lowest caste (but certainly not the others we knew) had been officially eliminated.  Then to her credit in answering one of our questions, she admitted that the laundry workers were actually of that former caste. It was because of discrimination that this laundry could still be in existence. It makes money for the owners as a result. For how long is hard to say. Modern high rise construction appeared to be all around the site. Because of real estate considerations, the future of Dhobi Ghat was uncertain. I took our guide's candor to be another example how India had changed in the last 20 years. Then all tour guides were government employees who lectured only from approved scripts. Questions were often evaded or ignored.

Near Dhobi Ghat a tourist cow was visible, the only cow we saw in Mumbai during our tour

To keep with the legacy of Dhobi Ghat and perhaps to acknowledge its being a tourist sight, down the street was a woman tending to a couple of sorry looking cows. She asked politely for donations to maintain the animals in exchange for a photo opportunity. This was as close to begging that we saw in modern Mumbai. Otherwise, there were no other cows, sacred or otherwise visible during the tour. They have been banned in the business area since my earlier visits. Business, as they say, is business.

Back Bay's beach was a lot cleaner than during my earlier visits to Mumbai

The billion dollar plus residence is evidence of India's growing prosperity

The bus tour continued as it had in the past, along Queen’s Drive on Mumbai’s Back Bay. Like most the rest of the city, the beach had been cleaned. People on this bank holiday were enjoying the beach rather than only vagrants sleeping on.  More striking was the massive construction all over downtown Mumbai, especially of upscale residences. The guide pointed out what she said was, “The most expensive residence ever built”, a more than billion dollar multi-story perch owned by an Indian industrialist I've never heard of.  Most investment in India, we were told, was from the red hot Indian economy itself. 

The Prince of Wales Museum built in 1915 incorporates a mixture of Indian architectural styles. 

The Gateway to India arch has welcomed visitors to Mumbai for over 100 years

The Gateway Arch is a major tourist destination for Indians and foreigners

 

The beautiful Taj Mahal Palace Hotel has been the premier place to stay in Mumbai since 1906. The luxury hotel is located adjacent to the Gateway to India

After a brief  visit to the beautiful Prince of Wales Museum with its small but interesting collection of Hindu art, we made a stop at the Gateway of India. Everyone who comes to Mumbai makes a stop at the Gateway. According to Wikipedia, the arch was authorized to be built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay in December 1911. Unfortunately, they only got to see a cardboard model of the structure since the construction did not begin until four years later. We stopped at the real thing, perhaps the only really crowded tourist site on our brief tour. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. At the Gateway, modest dress was more evident than during my earlier visits. 

The arch is located next to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Built in 1906 by the Tata family, it too has become an iconic site and arguably one of the very best places to stay when visiting the city. (See my comment in the prior entry about where to stay when visiting India.)  This tour didn’t provide time for us to visit the coffee shop at the Taj, as it is universally called. I had a couple of local Red Stripe beers there in 1994. The crowd in the coffee shop was very diverse then. There were businessmen in three piece suits, tables with women in burkas, and curious looking guys at tables looking like Sydney Greenstreet. I remember the Taj coffee shop reminded me of the famous bar from the first Star Wars film. 

After leaving the Gateway with just a glimpse at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, we stopped at the house where Gandhi lived after he had become a legend. It seemed a lot less relevant to modern India than during my prior visits, and the elegant tree lined street looked a bit downtrodden than when I had been there before. We toured the museum quickly and walked up and down the street until the tour bus pulled up.

The Gateway to India (on the right) and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel (at left with the dome) as it might have appeared to King George V and Queen Mary during their visit to India in 1911 was visible from Silver Wind as we sailed out 

Oil rigs being built in Mumbai's Harbour for India's new oilfields

We sailed out of Mumbai in the early evening, catching a glimpse of the Gateway to India as it might have appeared to King George V and Queen Mary had it actually been there. Perhaps the cardboard version looked the same anyway. In the harbor were a number of new oil drilling platforms being built. Apparently, there are some newly discovered oil fields in India's territorial water west of the city.  During the following two day crossing of the Arabian Sea to Oman, I resolved to call the city I visited in the 1990s, “Bombay”, and the modern city, “Mumbai”, as I have attempted to do in this blog entry. Except for the tourist attractions, the two cities are most definitely not the same place.