From Bombay to Mumbai

Another day, another port, and here we were arriving in Mumbai. We had yet another 6.30 alarm call for what was a seven hour trip around the city and weren’t sure what to expect, We suspected that this might be another version of Delhi. It wasn’t.

Mumbai is much greener and much, much more orderly than the cities of Rajasthan. The old colonial city (again known as the fort) has a magnificent array of buildings all very much like the museum area in Kensington. Most are still very well maintained and most still have important functions. Along the esplanade and for a few blocks behind it, is what is apparently the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world.

Our first ‘event of the trip was ‘an authentic Indian railway experience and one that had given us greatest pause for thought when booking the trip. As S put it, authentic or not, she wasn’t going to sit on the roof! Our guide had wisely avoided the rush hour (when there are an average of ten fatalities a day!!) and being a Saturday, it was not unlike getting a train mid-morning from Waterloo. The single biggest difference is that due to the absence of AirCon, they leave the door open! This was a temptation not to be missed and to S’s extreme disapproval, I had to have a go at hanging out, happily avoiding being decapitated by the 7.08 from Hyderabad by a relatively safe margin.

Then it was to the worlds largest outdoor laundry. This was an indescribable sight, over a couple of city centre acres alongside the railway. They take in laundry from individuals and from business (hotels, restaurants etc) and wash, air dry and iron everything by hand to be back within 24 hours. It’s impossible to say how anyone ever gets their own items back but it works for them.

From there it was a walk around the remnants of the old Portuguese ‘village’ that was the first port. This had some quaint old house tucked away in a few streets, all in narrow alleyways but nonetheless a thoroughfare for innumerable motor bikes in a hurry!

This area was a microcosm of the debate about India’s past and future. We were told that one school of thought was to preserve this area as heritage spot and celebrate it as part of the past. There is another school who will accept a certain amount of history but are keen to minimise any European, and especially British, influence. It seems to be this group (led by Hindu nationalist politicians) who championed the name change of the city itself and are busy changing the street names back to Hindi to the exasperation, it seems, of a lot of ordinary folk. The third opinion group don’t care about the past but are very interested in future property values and would happily flatten the lot of it! This is evident in the new Mumbai, which was springing up in the distance as the financial capital of India.

As we returned through the old British-era buildings, inevitably several games of cricket were in progress on the board green area in the middle. Our guide, happily chauvinistic, explained that although the British had brought cricket to India, the Indians had now taken charge of its future development and were spreading it all around the world, especially to the US. The North Americans looked puzzled, some Brits started muttering ‘Hang on a mo’’ and a Aussie growled ‘Now look here, mate.. ’ in a threatening tone.

Unabashed, our guide explained that although the Brits had started the cheating in cricket with ’Body Line’ and the Aussies had taken it forward with ball tampering, it was the Indians and particularly Sunil Gavaskar who had introduced match fixing and that the Indians were now world champions at this also.

There was silence while the cricket fans on board decided whether or not to be outraged.

Lunch was at one of the hotels that suffered a bomb and gun attack about ten years ago. It had a poignant memorial to those who were killed and we all looked a little more kindly on the ever-present security guys.

The last stop was the Gandhi museum, a little house in the backstreets that told his story very well, although again not in a way guaranteed to make the Brits feel good. In pride of place in the entrance was a written piece from Barack and Michelle Obama on the occasion of their visit and this provoked an ‘exchange of views’ between some of the Americans present!

This had been a thought-provoking day; the name change from Bombay to Mumbai is symbolic and significant not just for India, but for us also. The highly-idealistic view that we Brits have of our own history is not only not shared by those ‘who were there’ but is also being erased as a physical presence. Drawing on an increasingly mythical past does not seem to me to be the best foundation for the future.

Back on the ship, as the sun sank, I noticed the outline of an aircraft carrier in the naval dockyard.

A quick ‘google’ confirmed my hunch that this was the old HMS Hermes, the flagship of the Falklands War and now laid up in Mumbai. The sun was indeed setting on a rusting old remnant of the British Empire.