It's taken a while to centre myself and move beyond the various fears that were arising around this trip. They took me by surprise and I wanted to analyse and understand them, which of course, only made things worse in the arena of the mind. Arriving in Mumbai, as much as on a deeper level my being was delighted by the warmth, the higgledy piggledy order, the new sights, sounds and smells, I was resisting the noise, the dirt and the discomfort; I felt fragile, grumpy and fearful! How had I ended up here and what on earth did I intend for the next four months?
After learning that Mumbai was the most expensive city in India, we'd signed up tardily to couchsurfing and sent some couch requests to see if we could find some locals to stay with. A woman had offered us her home in Navi Mumbai - a planned satellite township built on the outskirts of Mumbai in the 70s to reduce congestion - so we called her from the airport, only to hear her say she'd fallen ill and could we ring her back tomorrow! I'd been unsure about the offer in the first place but hadn't followed my instincts, so this was an early reminder of those infallible tools we are gifted with. Instead we headed to Colaba, the old colonial part of town, and found a grotty room for the night, because we were too tired to traipse around. To my horror, we saw a rat run across the corner of the room before getting into bed! Needless to say our first night's sleep was restless and we changed to a different hotel and a clean room for the rest of our time in Mumbai.
The city is full on and teeming with people; I feel we merely experienced a tiny snippet of what lies beneath. We spent four days ambling around, locating good food to eat and getting over the jetlag. Couchsurfing came good on our last night, when we were invited by a girl called Aditi to a Shubha Mudgal benefit concert for the closure of a campaign marking 20 years since the 92/93 riots in Mumbai (a whole other story I've yet to read). It was in the grounds of a beautiful college and it was a welcome splash of culture amid the struggle for daily survival.
I thought it would be relatively easy to draw on my experiences of having lived in Ibague (Colombia) and travelled in Brazil ten years ago, yet I've found it's taking time for the patchwork of memories, and the skills woven therein, to resurface. Two weeks into the trip and they are starting to reawaken my being with useful mettle for things like crossing the road and holding my nerve when dodging traffic and discerning the similarities of the mundane life we all live each day.
