Belated Mumbai Post

Our airport taxi driver pulls over inexplicably as we start to leave the airport area, walks away. A woman with a child begins begging at B's window. Out of an upstairs airport facility window, someone throws out a bucketful of brown water and trash. Okay, we're a little freaked out.

On the ride from the Mumbai airport. A man riding a bicycle through the slum with two exquisitely and traditionally dressed boys perched on each handle bar. Our first sight of Brahmin Cows pulling an old man perched on a cart made out of an oil drum.

"Honk please OK" painted on the back of most cars. You can't possibly see where everyone is. You need them to tell you. You can't possibly dodge every vehicle, you have to have to honk and have faith they'll hear you, avoid you.

Groups of boys in flared pants and silk shirts strut among the traffic and madness of the slums. It's a disco look. Everyone has great posture here.

How do these houses not fall down? Three stories high and made out of paper and twigs by all appearances.

The grandeur of the British buildings in Fort. Now there are huts built on massive granite balconies. B: "It's like aliens landed on an abandoned planet."

Our Mumbai hotel, a shabby but clean affair, must have twenty bellhops, from kids to old men. They sleep, read newspapers, eat in the hallways. There's a window in the hall outside our door so they conglomerate there. I've seen some sitting in empty rooms watching cricket on television. We had an "A/C" room so a group of four kids carried in an AC unit for the window. One oversaw the action from the hall. It seems like in India, like they say about ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, the technology that powers the society is human-power, just lots and lots of people.

I'm constantly curious about the economics of things. Who gets paid, how much? At night the staff of restaurants sleep on and under the tables they served food on. Is this their pay?

The book talks about how the Mumbai slums are a massive recycling factory made up of a million single rooms. Melting down tin, saving scrap silicon, turning rocks into gravel.

At times this country seems TOO efficient. A squatting man soaks up extra oil at a gas station to us for... what? There's a leak in a hose outside a museum and ten women gather to use the water for laundry. Everywhere you look is a testament to human resilience and creativity. And also to a population exploded out of control. The planet can support this many people, probably billions more, but do we always need to test that maximum capacity?

From our hotel window we watch the people sleeping on the roof below us waking up. Someone dressed in fancier clothing comes and wakes them rudely up. Most of them go back to sleep after he leaves, but one old starts doing laundry in a bucket. When we get back that night she's still at it.

Just beyond the roof filled with sleeping people is the Gothic and grandiose Victoria Terminal.

Part of the thrill of India is like watching the dynamics of an anthill, except you're an ant yourself. How does it all work? How do people know where to go? What to eat? What to pay? What to carry? How do I fit into all this?

First night out, while B sleeps. No street signs. Too scared for now to venture off the main roads into the teeming back alleys. A kitten tries to cross the street, walking first under a temporarily stopped taxi. There must be seven more vehicles to pass to get to the other side. It seems like certain death. I can't watch.

Everywhere you see people squatting flatfooted. Working on something, resting, brushing their teeth. It's very hard to do. Try it. Your legs and ankles start to hurt.

Potato chips flavored after different Indian meals. Yum.

Jet lag. We can't seem to stay up late enough for the sunset. We We wake up in the middle of the night. "You awake?" "You awake?" The honking has miraculously died down. Where are we?