On our last day in India, we were awakened by the alarm at 5 a.m., eating a continental breakfast in the dining room at 5:3o a.m. and on the road to the Jaipur Airport by 6 a.m. There we were amazed that just before the announcement to line up at the gate for our flight, the Indians were already in line.
Mumbai is the capital of India and provides 80 percent of the export/import business and 70 percent of the taxes for the country. The official population of the city is 15.5 million but no one knows how many people sleep on the streets. In order from Numbers 1 to 10, the major businesses are cotton, pharmaceutical drugs, computers, Bollywood, fishing, silver, gold, diamonds and leather. Ten percent of the residents are very rich, 60 percent are middle class and 30 percent are poor. However, the rich are so wealthy that it is impossible to imagine while the poor are so poor that they cannot afford food. Our guide, whose name we never got and who had his finger in more pies than Sara Lee, explained to us that "you can find a job in Mumbai, you can find a girl in Mumbai but you can't a house in Mumbai." Home prices are similar to those in New York City. He also told us that India is always in crisis so the country is used to crises. As for religion, 80 percent are Hindu, 5 percent are Muslim and 4 percent are Christian from the British influence. In 1997, the city's name was changed from Bombay (British influence) to Mumbai (Indian influence). Indians are very relaxed people who can sleep in the street and be content.
If India overtakes the United States, our guide gave two reasons: (1) a different philosophy about the stock market, and (2) the US has spent a lot of money on foreign wars. India is favored to win the World Cup in Cricket with the final game being in Mumbai, and our guide planned to buy a ticket if India is in the finals. The kindergarten students wear school T-shirts so "they should not get lost." Visitors should not buy peacock-feather fans hawked by every other vendor because the peacock is the national bird of India.
Okay, the previous information is probably more than you ever wanted to know about India and Mumbai but our guide was a wealth of information until our driver was stopped by the police for breaking the line, which is driving in the middle of the road. This was the first time we had encountered police up-close and personal in India. It seemed that people in Mumbia actually stopped at red lights and obeyed traffic laws. We think that the driver paid off the police. Our guide spent the rest of the tour yelling at the driver and providing him with specific directions.
Our first stop was at the Hanging Gardens where our biggest thrill was seeing people from the ship: Adele and Roger, Andrea and Mark, and dancers Ashley and Tim, who were dressed in native garb because Ashley had been wrapped in a sari and didn't want to wrap it again by herself. We passed the graveyard where birds eat the flesh of dead bodies in two hours. Because fewer people are dying in Mumbia, the birds need to be feed now. Then we waited 10 minutes at a traffic light so we need to stop complaining about how long the stop lights are in Florida.
Two highlights of the tour were the Gandhi Museum, which is a small museum in the house of his friend, and the laundry. At the museum, we saw Gandhi's epic-making books. When his right hand was exhausted, he wrote with his left hand. Gandhi started his fight versus injustice after he, as an Indian, was put off a train by a white man. Because the "inner oneness pervades all life," he pleaded for the upliftment of the downtrodden Untouchables. When he was approached by his assassin on January 30, 1948, he said, "If I am to die by the bullet of a madman, I must do it smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips." We loved the diorama displays of Gandhi's life, especially the one of his cremation spot that we saw in Delhi.
The laundry service is used by people who are too poor to own a washing machine and dryer. Men do all the washing in water that looks black but even the whites seem to be sparkling clean. With the growing middle-class in Mumbai, the laundry does not have as much business as it used to have. One of our guide's many endeavors was giving tours of the slums of Mumbai so he took us through a small alley to the actual laundry--last year we observed it from above--so we experienced the sights, sounds and, especially, the smells (sweat and urine) of the laundry. We saw a stall where a man was using a stain remover on the collar of a shirt to remove the unforgivable "ring around the collar."
Then we thought we were on our way back to the Pacific Princess, our home away from home. Our guide was replaced by a representative from the travel agency. The representative asked us if we had our yellow cards. Having no idea what yellow cards were, we showed him our stateroom keys. But when we tried to go through the gate to enter the port, the guard demanded yellow cards. The line-up of vehicles behind our van was long but the guard shouted for us to back up and go to the nearest police station to pick up our yellow cards. Our guide, who was probably off working one of his other ventures, should have told the representative from the travel agency that we needed to stop at the police station to collect our yellow cards. Did we ever say that India was efficient? When we completed the 10-minute ride to the police station, we all sat and posed for a picture by Diana looking forlorn while our guide talked to a very loud official. Suddenly, our guide started screaming at the official, and we wondered if our stay in India might be extended with our accommodations being a jail. Then the guard handed us our yellow cards with great disgust. They had been completed entirely by the Pacific Princess and all we needed to do was provide our signature. Our guide had told us that "the more corrupt you are in India, the happier you are, and the less corrupt you are, the sadder you are."
When we got back in our van, our guide told us that the official had demanded payment for our yellow cards because the port authority officials are very corrupt and he refused to pay because he did not want to encourage that behavior. He planned to report the official and encouraged us to submit a complaint to Princess Cruises. This time we were allowed through the gate and proceed to our ship where Sara discovered the port did not have a store where she could spend our remaining rupees. Again, a misconception for her that was created by our guide. The tour company representative said he would go outside the gate to buy her as much Kingfisher beer as possible and she was to meet him in one-half hour. She already decided to give him and the driver a tip. The representative returned with 10 beers for 800 rupees and 100 rupees left over (you do the math and determine that another beer could have been purchased) He fully expected the 100 rupees as a tip. Sara was so pleased that she gave the tour company representative her original tip plus the 100 rupees. Finally, we were home!
How would we describe our experiences of being in India? In some cases, pure magic took place, whether it was simply the beauty of the surroundings or the small miracles that happened, like a breeze in a courtyard when we thought it could not get any hotter. We witnessed the good, the bad, the ugly, the unbelievable and the unthinkable. Are we glad that we took this incredible trip in India? Definitely. Would we put India on our list of countries to which we want to return? Probably not.
The tour company representative said he would go outside the gate to buy her as much Kingfisher beer as possible and she was to meet him in one-half hour.
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