Mumbai

Honking taxis and “no honking” signs, skyscrapers and tin shanties: Mumbai is a moloch and megacity. Anja Wasserbäch, editorial journalist for the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, gives an account of her first impressions from the Indian metropolis where even the number of inhabitants is unknown.

Mr Gopal laughs. “It’s from London,” he says pointing at his car. He gets in on the right. That’s the driver’s side. The English left behind driving on the left in India along with Colonial buildings and the Cadbury chocolate that is advertised all over.

Mumbai is loud – very loud. Cars are constantly honking their horns in about the same rhythm as they signal here at home, or thereabouts. Why use only three lanes when four cars easily fit next to each other?

Everywhere we see the yellow and black taxis that buzz about like bees, or perhaps more like heavy, fat bumblebees that cannot get moving. They want to, of course, but can’t really because traffic is not moving. Those are the ones without air conditioning, Mr Gopal tells me. He has been working as a driver for the Goethe-Institut since 1976. He knows the city. Yet, even he does not know how many people presently live here in Mumbai, which has been the sister city of Stuttgart since 1968. Mumbai grows and grows. Approximately 15 or 16 million people live here, perhaps even 20 million. No one knows exactly. Only a fraction of them drive cars, but still so many people are en route in vehicles: in taxis, Suzukis, rickshaws and carriages. Motorbike drivers do not wear helmets, but sometimes the white ear buds for their MP3 players. There’s so much honking you can’t hear if it’s meant for you anyway.

On the Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link, a kind of express highway connected the districts of Bandra and Warli that cuts the driving time from 45 minutes to a mere seven, skyscrapers are visible through the fog. If you squeeze your eyes a little, you might think it was the silhouette of Manhattan. It’s no coincidence that for some, Mumbai is the New York of the east. But, in front of them are many tin shanties; the slums are everywhere. Mumbai is a megacity and a moloch at the same time and most notably, everything is very close together. Even from the plane you can see the roofs of Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum. How many live here under a sea of grey tin sheeting? No one knows. Estimates lie somewhere between 600,000 and one million people.

Dharavi is the slum known from the 2008 film “Slumdog Millionaire” by Danny Boyle that won eight Oscars. Now, it’s right below us. It is so close that you can tell the people are football-playing children and women sitting about. Dharavi was surrounded by the city; encircled by high-rises and apartment buildings. Squalidness is here in the middle of the big city, for which the term seems too small. There are districts of the city such as Andheri that have as many inhabitants as Berlin.

It is Sunday. “A quiet day,” says Gopal, whose full name is Gopal Sudelei Muthu, but, here people are addressed only by their first name. “Tomorrow, on Monday, the traffic will be another thing altogether.”

He’s right. During the usual rush hour, which lasts far longer than an hour here, you need half an hour to travel three kilometres. That is about the route from Charlottenplatz to Türlenstrasse in Stuttgart. It would be faster by foot, but the Mumbaikar, as the inhabitants of Mumbai call themselves, never walk. If they can afford it, they have themselves driven. A three-kilometre taxi ride costs about 30 rupees, or 50 cents.

The next day, by the way, the fog still hadn’t lifted. It is simply smog and it’s always there.