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“I cannot enjoy this city no matter what.” |
I must say, I find Mumbai hard to swallow. It’s a bustling, entrepreneurial city, which is to India what New York is to the U.S. Mumbai is also the center of the Indian film industry. It apparently produces more movies than Hollywood. So it is naturally an affluent and vibrant city, the closest to the Western cities. At the same time, Mumbai has the largest slums in India and the poverty of the slum-dwellers is most jarring against Benetton and Armani storefront windows. In fact, poverty is so overwhelming here that you start to question the humanity of the Mumbai citizens.
The homeless sleep everywhere, including highway medians. They often beg for food rather than money - children with their bellies swollen with hunger, mothers with naked babies, orphans standing on every corner, at every street light, sticking their hands into taxi cabs asking for a handful of the peanuts you are eating.
I cannot enjoy this city no matter what. I don’t believe in karma, and I cannot walk these streets and look the other way. The museums and the colonial architecture mean nothing in comparison. I spent three days here mostly doing my laundry and arranging flights to the south. My money is running out fast, as I cannot keep it to myself in this sea of poverty. I am leaving tomorrow. I am eager to return to the simplicity of rural India.
previous travel blog entry
Magda says:
It is a real joy to read your journals. We love the pictures too. I was thinking how would that be to travel when you are a woman, don't think it would be as safe. Please don't stop writing, attach all the pictures you can since it is like a little "window to the world" to all of us readers, if I can speak for all of us.