Mumbai

Mumbai is everything and even much more. In the last close-up from Mumbai, it is time to take stock.

In the beginning was the map: folded neatly and without any torn creases. Of course, it only showed a part of the megacity of Mumbai: the southern tip, districts like Colaba and Fort, the green square of Flora Fountain, the bright lawn of which is watered daily, the crescent of the beach over to Malabar Hill. Beautiful, globalized world: I ordered the city map online and drew in dots where I would be living and working. No imagination helped, reality caught up with me the very first day as I frantically fidgeted with my map and showed the taxi driver where the newsroom of the Times of India is located. He just refused to understand me and in the end demanded three times as much as usual for the trip. Tourist trap, I thought to myself.

The Mumbaikar do not use maps, they navigate using familiar spots and squares. Turn right at this square, then another left, for example. Mumbai is constantly on the move, but then comes to a halt. It stalls all the time and everywhere: on the pavement, on the street and on the train. How do you become familiar with a city? The best way is on foot. You amble through the streets like a vagabond. This does not work in Mumbai. It’s too hot, there are too many people, too much smog. Plus, I am a woman, a blonde woman who is immediately conspicuous. It is impossible to take a stroll here. Sit down and read a book? Impossible! The city lacks public spaces.

The first rail journey gives the term elbow society new meaning. There is constantly someone’s pointy bone poking your ribs. At rush hour you feel like livestock on the way to the slaughterhouse: squeezed in, pressed in, sandwiched between sweating people and saris in the head wind. It’s what you might call very-mass-passenger transport. There appear to be no rules. The pack wants to get off, another crowd wants on, at the same time. There are no doors, which is practical for those who do not fit all the way in. They even ride on the roofs, which leads to injuries and deaths. People spit out the windows, clean vegetables for the evening meal. Good use has to be made of all of the time spent by thousands of commuters on the train. Mumbai is a city of immigrants and Mumbai is a city of commerce. Paperbacks like the bestsellers The White Tiger and Shantaram and fashion magazines are hawked through the taxi window. Hirjas, the city’s eunuchs, panhandle in the train compartment. If you don’t give them anything, they put a curse on you.

Mumbai does not present itself to strangers on a silver platter. For many tourists the city is just a way station anyway. That is cruel and like saying the best thing about Stuttgart is the autobahn to Munich. The tourists foray to Mumbai for a night or two, have a drink at the Café Leopold and let themselves be cheated by jewellery dealers on Colaba Causeway. The people who move to Mumbai come for a better life, but the tourists come to carry on to Goa, Kerala or Hampi. In Mumbai you meet yoga disciples, ocean cruise package tourists, Ayurveda fans and Europeans in their mid-twenties hoping to find India, themselves and perhaps enlightenment. Aneesh from my hotel ridicules them a bit. For example, Tatjana travelled through India for three weeks and talks at breakfast about “incredible India.” Yes, she puts the national tourist board’s advertising slogan in her own mouth. But, Mumbai is not for her. “This is not India.” Aneesh shakes his head and smiles. He knows better. “Mumbai is all of India,” wrote Salman Rushdie.

Most of all, Mumbai is a city that constantly challenges you. One moment, you are inconceivably angry about the poverty, misery and injustice. A moment later you are moved and happy at the friendliness of the people. As everywhere, I had good and bad days here. Sometimes it was strenuous to be constantly stared at and photographed, but it often just was part of the package, like the noise; the constant background racket.

Sukhada told me about her cousin, who emigrated to America with her husband. There, far away, she heard her stomach growl for the first time. In Mumbai you cannot hear yourself, nor can you smell yourself. You hardly perceive yourself because you always seem to be immersed in the crowds of people. Over half of the people here are younger than 25. They believe in their city and in themselves. The city vibrates. Sometimes you think it will explode any moment. It is quite appropriate that the literary portrait of the city, Bombay – Maximum City by Suketu Metha is a 725-page tome. The city cannot be grasped on any map in the world. After four weeks, you begin to get the hollow feeling that you understand it even less than before. Mumbai is the biggest culture shock imaginable. People who I met over these past four weeks who had just been in Delhi found Mumbai downright green and relaxing. Not me, though. I was downright shocked. Mumbai was an attack on all of the senses.

Mumbai is a city that wears you out and churns you up. It is also fascinating. The city brings me to the limits of what I never knew before. The beauty, you can see it and believe everyone who says that Bombay is the best city in the world. Even though you can’t say why. Before my journey, a friend who has seen much of the world and has been living in Shanghai for three years warned me: “Four weeks? That’s far too short a time to learn to hate this city.” It took me four weeks to learn to like this city.