Flying into Mumbai at 4am is actually quite charming. The flight itself is a nightmare, with its token noisy, intoxicated Westerners, screaming children, and mothers who are louder and more annoying than their children in their attempts to silence them. The decision of whether or not to sleep from the 11.30pm departure is a tricky one, and the time difference doesn't help. Nevertheless it's the reward at the end of the flight that really catches you; it even hugs you a little. As you drive through the streets, across highways and through narrow alleyways, Mumbai shows signs of slowly waking up, stretching its legs in preparation for a bustling day. The sky envelopes you with its dark; it is not black, but a deep, velvet blue holding a promise that it will soon give you lightness and humanity. The city is not without light and the streets reveal crumbling colonial buildings rising next to towering new apartments, delicate Hindi script on shop fronts lining the streets, and semi-naked people sleeping on the sidewalks, resting before the heat of the day and the sheer volume of the population disrupts them. Autorickshaw drivers doze in the back of their vehicles, dark limbs hanging casually out into the dawn air, while the only hazards the taxis face are young hoons who are still out from the night before. The air is clear of horns, for a change, and you find yourself peering into those few apartments already lit behind grates and window frames; warm and filled with hanging washing and a smattering of kitchenware.
The smell is as you expect from one of the most densely populated cities in the world; stale, musty and tainted with sewage. The heat and humidity fill the car, making one grateful for the breeze coming through the window. It's going to get hotter; much hotter. Suddenly, on the road ahead, there are hundreds of people jostling on the lanes and the sidewalks. Tens of cars and trucks line the street and the smell of coriander fills the taxi. It appears the entire coriander market of India is converging on this one spot, sorting, counting, bundling, trading, and loading in the dim light; readying themselves to distribute the gentle herb to the city. The scent fades as we continure and a truck filled with chickens passes by in astounding silence. The streets become familiar once more as the sky continues to lighten.
Monuments appear in green, grassy enclosures as the streets get smaller and even quieter, nearing Colaba. The Hindi signs have faded into a cacophony of English-named stores and overwhelming colour. Fewer bodies can be seen on the sidewalks, and the streetlights only reveal piles of rubbish and motorbikes lined up in orderly rows. The old cinema rises up on the corner of the roundabout and the taxi winds through to the guesthouse. I wake up the service staff, sleeping across the chairs in the foyer, as the security guard comes racing through, realising he has missed a trespasser. The windows of my room let in some of the growing light that the sky begins to offer as we near 6am. Mumbai is not awake yet; it is still calm and only beginning to move. But it will be, soon, after I collapse onto the hard mattress to catch up on lost sleep.
