Mumbai, a city in turmoils

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Mumbai, better known as Bombay was our first step in India but we didn't have time then to discover it. Because of the events of the 26 of December, this short visit in the economic capital of the subcontinent had an emotional touch.

We arrived at 6 in the morning from Ahmedabad and had our train to Aurangabad leaving at 2 in the afternoon. We had to change stations to go to the emblematic Victoria Terminus. It was built by the British in the 19th century with extravagant gothic style. As this station was renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji

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Terminus, its only then that Maite realized that we were going to the train station were some of the killings happened... It's the busiest and biggest train station in Asia and with the past events we didn't feel like staying around too long, so we left our luggage in the cloakroom and went for a walk around.

The station is at the start of the colonial districts called the fort area and Colaba which ends with the Gateway of India in front of the Arabian Sea. This triumph arch built in honor of king George V, was ironically only used for the last parade of the British regiment as India marched toward independence. Facing the Gateway is the now sadly famous Taj Hotel build by JN Tata as he was refused in one of the European hotels. Tata is the biggest Indian conglomerate and its monopoly notably in the car industry (FYI they own Jaguar now since some years) and communication are really impressive.

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Our pilgrimage through the 26 of December sites didn't stop there as we had breakfast in the 19th century Leopold's cafe... but there as in the other places life goes on and just some details recall you what happened (see the picture of Maite)... Although there were huge protests against terrorism in the first days after the attack this quickly stopped as the life of the ordinary people goes on. One of the main reasons is that the ordinary man cannot take the time to stop as most of the days is a struggle to make ends meet and ensure he can provide a better life for his kids.. However the media and government are currently still talking about it every single day with what seems sometimes for an outsider a lot of fuss without much substance though this is not the case… Something that surprised us as occidentals furthermore was the first reactions about what to do with the bodies of the terrorists (question we wouldn’t have thought about) but for both India and Pakistan this was a very delicate topic as none did want to have them on their soil for the bad karma it would bring (also both religions, Hinduism and Islam have different approach about death, the first one is cremating its dead when the second one is burring them), in the end we don’t know what happened with them…

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All in all our visit to Mumbai was brief but good as we had already big city life in Delhi and prefer the more quite nature of the smaller towns..