Our trip to Mumbai

We had the lovely opportunity to visit Mumbai in March, for the wedding of my colleague Tara from IBM Research in New York. (She was born in the US, but her parents are from India, as is her charming new spouse.) We all flew down for the festivities, and to see Mumbai.

It was a lovely experience. The wedding was intricate and interesting and had multiple events. The city of Mumbai was impressive; from our brief visit it seemed much more developed than Delhi. In 4 days there, I didn’t see any men peeing in the street - - one very positive sign. The roads were in far better shape, and we drove across bridges and highways that were definitely western caliber. The shopping areas didn’t look nearly as run down as Delhi. Delhi has the super-elegant-super-expensive-all-marble malls, and then it has the markets. Even our market in Vasant Vihar - -considered a high-end neighborhood – has a tired, rundown-looking market with awnings and signage falling down.

The local shopping areas in Mumbai were much more impressive. I also didn’t see a single slum, which is peculiar – I was told that Mumbai is home to the biggest slum in Asia. We were driving for hours (albeit not *looking* for the slum) but we came across nothing like it. In New Delhi, you can’t avoid them. There are slums in multiple directions within a mile of our apartment. Here are some views along the road, during my very short commute to work in New Delhi...

Amnon commented that Mumbai looked like a cohesive city, while New Delhi seems more like disconnected villages with jugis (slums) as the ligaments.

Another point that I noticed in Mumbai was that they seemed to have fewer “under-employed” individuals than Delhi. To return to my earlier comments about the hair salon in Delhi…There is someone permanently assigned to standing by the door and opening it whenever a customer goes in. (There is an adjacent children’s clothing store; there is someone assigned there, to, as a door-opener.) At the salon, there is someone that shampoos my hair, another person that holds the hair dryer, and another person brushing it out. Sometimes I see women getting manicures and pedicures while also having their hair done, and there is cast of thousands surrounding them. When I had my hair washed in Mumbai, it was more like the standard US experience….I opened the door myself (which is just fine!) and one person held the blow dryer AND the hairbrush. I take this as a sign that there are more employment opportunities in Mumbai, and so some of these “busy-work” jobs don’t exist.

Note in the pictures of the “laundry” facilities in Mumbai. (Dhobi Ghat) People have their clothing picked up by these laundrymen and washed at these sites, where clothes are beaten against rocks. Our guide said the laundrymen are remarkable at keeping track of whose-clothes-get-returned-to-whom. With real estate prices in Mumbai booming, the laundry wallahs are supposedly getting phenomenal purchase offers for these little properties.

We saw lots of monkeys at the various historical sites in Mumbai, and we captured lots of them in the photo link below.