Monday, December 05, 2005
Mumbai
So... I am finally in Mumbai.
It is good to be here. The whole place strikes me as fairly insane, but that is true of most places for me.
For the most part, it's just like I pictured it, except that picturing it is never quite the same as being there... otherwise, why would we go? The air is smoky, it's super-congested, active, colorful, stratified...
I've just been here for part of one day, and I've spent a lot of time doing something I usually do in a new place-- walking around with purposeful aimlessness, just taking it all in, processing, storing.
There are a couple of frustrations. In communicating with people, it's true that English is widely spoken, and many people are fluent, more so than in Thailand. But I am finding that fluency can actually make people harder for me to understand, since they are chattering away freely in the local variant of English that is often so heavily accented that it is hard for me to follow. I just haven't developed an ear for it yet, which bugs me since I think I'm normally quite good with accents. There are only so many times I can ask people to repeat themselves before I fear insulting them and just let it go. At a certain point it begins to feel like an implicit accusation ("Your English is bad"), and while a Thai person might shrug and laugh that off, I detect a different sensibility (and sensitivity) here.
Also, finding internet access was harder than expected. My original hotel reservation here was for a couple of weeks ago, and I never got around to making a new one. So I went to one of those windows at the airport where they broker hotel reservations. They checked with the hotel where I had originally planned to stay, and it was sold out with convention business. So I let them recommend a place. I didn't ask whether it had internet access. I hoped it would, but I figured if it didn't there would surely be a stray wireless signal or a cyber cafe something nearby.
The hotel didn't have internet services. So I tried searching for wireless signals in the hotel. None at all. I was surprised.
I asked the hotel staff about a cyber cafe, and they assured me there was one "just over there." They said it was a 5-minute walk at most, and gave some directions that sounded like they might be pretty simple, until I went out the door and tried to execute them. That turned into my first purposefully-aimless stroll in India. Really good, but the primary objective remained unfulfilled.
I stopped in a couple of places as I explored the crowded streets to check again for wireless signals. I was again surprised to find no signals of any kind anywhere, not even secured ones. Of course, having been online since the 1980s, I do remember the days when getting online was a challenge even in Los Angeles, and it generally meant a very slow connection over a telephone line. But to see no wireless signals at all in a really dense urban area is something I haven't experienced in this century, and didn't really expect to ever see again... until after The Collapse of course.
Most people appear not to take much notice of me here (more about that in a moment). But when I stopped in the street, one man did approach to peer curiously at my laptop. Not too many people sitting around pecking on laptops in his neighborhood I guess. Perhaps there would be if there were wireless signals around, but of course there weren't. Back to the hotel.
I went back to the hotel and said I'd had no luck finding the cyber cafe. They seemed perplexed, and began to repeat the directions, which sounded very much the same. I told them I didn't know the area, and asked what a cab would cost. They said 10 rupees (about 23 cents). I asked them to summon a cab. They flagged down a moto-rickshaw for me, and I was ushered into it and on my way before I realized that no one had explained to the driver where the cyber cafe was, and he didn't speak English. I did succeed in conveying that I was looking for internet. He took me on a much-longer-than-expected ride (45 cents) to a coffee shop that offers wi-fi. Cool.
The courteous and fluent-yet-substantially-incomprehensible woman at the coffee-shop counter explained to the tin-eared American that, although they did have wi-fi gear, they were out of the little scratch-off cards with login and password information. Bummer. She then told me three times where to go and what to say to the next moto-rickshaw driver. Since I hadn't quite understood after three times, I thanked her and went back out into the street.
I just walked for a while. It turns out there aren't nearly as many internet shops here as in Thailand, although I had expected there would be. I asked at a couple of shops and nobody knew of anyplace nearby. I stopped and tried to make a call to a friend overseas, and that didn't work for some reason. Eventually I ended up in another moto-rickshaw. I was able to communicate easily well with my new driver, and he knew where to go and shortly I came to this cyber cafe where I now sit, writing to my blog fans (whoever you are), and enjoying being back online with my own laptop for 60cents/hour. (I suspect I'm paying a premium, but I'm quite content.)
Before leaving Los Angeles, I half-jokingly warned a couple of my friends not to presume they'd ever see me in L.A. again. Someone asked me if I was going to "go native" in some exotic destination.
I don't feel I ever "went native" in my country of origin... So does that make it more or less likely that I would do it somewhere else?
One of my Indian friends in Los Angeles, Arun, assured me as I was preparing to leave that I do look very much like a northern Indian. I seem to have a certain ethnic look that places me at or beyond the swarthy end of Caucasian, and within that range there is something highly adaptable about it. I am routinely adopted on sight by Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Indians, Arabs, sometimes Italians or Spaniards, and occasionally Hispanics as "one of their own." People chatter at me in the respective native tongues of all of the above with a remarkable presumption of comprehension. So that is happening here as well.
(In case anyone is curious about my actual genetic background, it's mostly European (English and German) and a bit of Native American (the one thing nobody ever guesses).
Blending (or at least not looking "American") has its charms, especially in an era where anti-American sentiments are on the rise. I don't worry too much about being presumed guilty of anything as long as my passport is tucked away in my pocket.
Time for lunch and more strolling. I am quite unsure about exactly how far I have traveled away from my hotel at this point, but I will soon resolve that question. I hope to find a map in one of these million little storefronts.
It is good to be here. The whole place strikes me as fairly insane, but that is true of most places for me.
For the most part, it's just like I pictured it, except that picturing it is never quite the same as being there... otherwise, why would we go? The air is smoky, it's super-congested, active, colorful, stratified...
I've just been here for part of one day, and I've spent a lot of time doing something I usually do in a new place-- walking around with purposeful aimlessness, just taking it all in, processing, storing.
There are a couple of frustrations. In communicating with people, it's true that English is widely spoken, and many people are fluent, more so than in Thailand. But I am finding that fluency can actually make people harder for me to understand, since they are chattering away freely in the local variant of English that is often so heavily accented that it is hard for me to follow. I just haven't developed an ear for it yet, which bugs me since I think I'm normally quite good with accents. There are only so many times I can ask people to repeat themselves before I fear insulting them and just let it go. At a certain point it begins to feel like an implicit accusation ("Your English is bad"), and while a Thai person might shrug and laugh that off, I detect a different sensibility (and sensitivity) here.
Also, finding internet access was harder than expected. My original hotel reservation here was for a couple of weeks ago, and I never got around to making a new one. So I went to one of those windows at the airport where they broker hotel reservations. They checked with the hotel where I had originally planned to stay, and it was sold out with convention business. So I let them recommend a place. I didn't ask whether it had internet access. I hoped it would, but I figured if it didn't there would surely be a stray wireless signal or a cyber cafe something nearby.
The hotel didn't have internet services. So I tried searching for wireless signals in the hotel. None at all. I was surprised.
I asked the hotel staff about a cyber cafe, and they assured me there was one "just over there." They said it was a 5-minute walk at most, and gave some directions that sounded like they might be pretty simple, until I went out the door and tried to execute them. That turned into my first purposefully-aimless stroll in India. Really good, but the primary objective remained unfulfilled.
I stopped in a couple of places as I explored the crowded streets to check again for wireless signals. I was again surprised to find no signals of any kind anywhere, not even secured ones. Of course, having been online since the 1980s, I do remember the days when getting online was a challenge even in Los Angeles, and it generally meant a very slow connection over a telephone line. But to see no wireless signals at all in a really dense urban area is something I haven't experienced in this century, and didn't really expect to ever see again... until after The Collapse of course.
Most people appear not to take much notice of me here (more about that in a moment). But when I stopped in the street, one man did approach to peer curiously at my laptop. Not too many people sitting around pecking on laptops in his neighborhood I guess. Perhaps there would be if there were wireless signals around, but of course there weren't. Back to the hotel.
I went back to the hotel and said I'd had no luck finding the cyber cafe. They seemed perplexed, and began to repeat the directions, which sounded very much the same. I told them I didn't know the area, and asked what a cab would cost. They said 10 rupees (about 23 cents). I asked them to summon a cab. They flagged down a moto-rickshaw for me, and I was ushered into it and on my way before I realized that no one had explained to the driver where the cyber cafe was, and he didn't speak English. I did succeed in conveying that I was looking for internet. He took me on a much-longer-than-expected ride (45 cents) to a coffee shop that offers wi-fi. Cool.
The courteous and fluent-yet-substantially-incomprehensible woman at the coffee-shop counter explained to the tin-eared American that, although they did have wi-fi gear, they were out of the little scratch-off cards with login and password information. Bummer. She then told me three times where to go and what to say to the next moto-rickshaw driver. Since I hadn't quite understood after three times, I thanked her and went back out into the street.
I just walked for a while. It turns out there aren't nearly as many internet shops here as in Thailand, although I had expected there would be. I asked at a couple of shops and nobody knew of anyplace nearby. I stopped and tried to make a call to a friend overseas, and that didn't work for some reason. Eventually I ended up in another moto-rickshaw. I was able to communicate easily well with my new driver, and he knew where to go and shortly I came to this cyber cafe where I now sit, writing to my blog fans (whoever you are), and enjoying being back online with my own laptop for 60cents/hour. (I suspect I'm paying a premium, but I'm quite content.)
Before leaving Los Angeles, I half-jokingly warned a couple of my friends not to presume they'd ever see me in L.A. again. Someone asked me if I was going to "go native" in some exotic destination.
I don't feel I ever "went native" in my country of origin... So does that make it more or less likely that I would do it somewhere else?
One of my Indian friends in Los Angeles, Arun, assured me as I was preparing to leave that I do look very much like a northern Indian. I seem to have a certain ethnic look that places me at or beyond the swarthy end of Caucasian, and within that range there is something highly adaptable about it. I am routinely adopted on sight by Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Indians, Arabs, sometimes Italians or Spaniards, and occasionally Hispanics as "one of their own." People chatter at me in the respective native tongues of all of the above with a remarkable presumption of comprehension. So that is happening here as well.
(In case anyone is curious about my actual genetic background, it's mostly European (English and German) and a bit of Native American (the one thing nobody ever guesses).
Blending (or at least not looking "American") has its charms, especially in an era where anti-American sentiments are on the rise. I don't worry too much about being presumed guilty of anything as long as my passport is tucked away in my pocket.
Time for lunch and more strolling. I am quite unsure about exactly how far I have traveled away from my hotel at this point, but I will soon resolve that question. I hope to find a map in one of these million little storefronts.
