welcome to mumbai, expect the unexpected

Has to be my strongest and best travel memory ever.  Arriving in Mumbai on New Year's Eve 2008 is like arriving in a parallel universe.  Forget rhyme.  Forget reason.  Mumbai dances to its own chaotic beat.  It is evident from the moment I arrive at the airport.  Where is my backpack going to appear?  Is it going to appear?  I wish you'd put that assault weapon away mr policeman.  You're making me nervous.  Mumbai is on high alert.  The terrorist attacks are a near memory.  I make my way outside the airport to be greeted by chaos.  People everywhere.  Masses.  Swarms of humanity waiting to be reunited with a loved one or,  as is my case, waiting to pick up an unsuspecting traveller to be initiated into the mayhem of India's biggest city, its beating heart.  After a good half hour walking up and down the passenger's makeshift catwalk, like an unclaimed piece of luggage on the carousel, I meet my man.  My way into the city.  My first substantive contact in the subcontinent.  I am safely in the front seat of my ride into town.  All is good.  Still in the airport car park I receive a surprise.  First time in my life that I witness a driver, my driver, speed up when he sees a pedestrian meandering across the intended path.  Nothing like giving someone a bit of a hurry along I guess.

The ride into town is spectacular.  Fires burn along the sides of the roads.  Muslims hold prayer sessions.  Animals wander across the streets.  My driver tries to tell me a little about where we are.  I don't understand too much of what he is saying, maybe it is his broken, difficult to understand English or maybe it is because I have fallen into a trance-like state at all of what has been presented in front of me.  I'm in India now and isn't India letting me know it.  After the hour or so long ride into town I am finally at my hotel (the term is used here because it is in the name of where I am staying).  I make it to my room, I am sure that in many countries gaol cells would be more spacious and comfortable.  It doesn't matter that I have been travelling for many, many hours.  It is New Year's Eve and I am in India god damn it.  Beers will be had.  I venture out into the streets.  Streets that exude energy.  Streets that ooze vibrancy, streets that weep with poverty.

I am back in the hotel lobby.  I have some bottles of Kingfisher in my hand.  I am ready to retire to the shabbiness of the hotel balcony to see in the new year which by now is a mere twenty minutes away.

No sir.  No you shall not.  Fate intervenes in the form of three Russians.  Russians ready to party.  Bottle of rum in hand.  The streeets are calling us back.  With my new friends in tow it is back to the streets of Mumbai.  We set out on the streets of Fort with no fixed destination in mind.  Indians greet us with cries of "Happy New Year", head waggles are liberally given.  Not everyone is welcoming the new year with such vigour though.  Important lesson to learn when walking the streets of Mumbai, the footpath may be a pedestrian thoroughfare but it is also the permanent slumber zone of thousands of poverty-stricken Indians.  Watch where you're going.  Don't want to cause any trouble now.  After hours wandering around the city streets one of my new Russian friends decide the time has come to welcome ourselves officially to India by visiting the gateway to India, built to commemorate the visit of George V.  As we saunter our way down there we witness two young Indians punching on and then wrestling in the middle of the road.  A vehicle approaches and a momentary armistice is reached to clear the way but with the passing of the car hostilities are resumed.  "No you can not, can not pass, not open", security banishes our intention to get closer to the gateway to formalise our arrival.  This is Mumbai in the early epoch of a new era.  Finally it is decided it is time to make it back to our dingy domicile.

I wake up on New Year's day with a throbbing headache and a throat more parched than the Murray-Darling.  I need to get out of this claustrophobic, windowless box.  Mumbai streets by day are calling.  Again as I wander off with no real destination the feeling of having slipped into a whole new world comes over me or is that overcomes me?  I'll have a chai thank you very much.  We'll have your equivalent of five cents in Rupees thank you very much.  Nice deal.  I can deal with that.  I wander on.  The alleyways are buzzing with life.  The start of the new year is no cause to rest.  The start of the year is the time to make a new start, to make a prosperous start.  I feel alive to be walking along as an extra in these street scenes.  I, by chance, arrive in Colaba, the main toursit district of Mumbai to be encountered by all manner of streetside vendors selling there wares.  Some ganga sir? How about some crack?  We have nice young girl, you want?  I get through the onslaught of offers and settle for a English language newspaper.  I sit down for a break, to get lost in the paper and I succeed in drifting off into my own hungover daze.  Only for a moment though.  India has a way of letting you know where you are.  Don't get lost in your own thoughts and world for too long, she says.  In this case I am wrenched from my reading by a loud cracking.  It is as though a gun has gone off right in front of me.  Huh?  What the hell was that, I think.  I lift my eyes and am visually bamboozled by the appearance of a shamanistic gent right in front of.  Brightly coloured clothes, matted hair, a vision of a man unlike any I had ever seen in my preceding life.  A large matted whip in his hand has been cracked and is the cause of my sudden shock.  As I am trying to come to terms with what I am witnessing, an equally eccentric lady with an infant in her arms appears, seemingly teleported from afar.  Talk about sidling!  The sadhu proffers his hand, he has performed his part of the bargain now it is my turn to come to the party and hand over some rupees.  Expected the unexpected in India.  You never know what will happen next.