Bombay is a city that may never have made acquaintance with a broom. The streets, though made of stone, are dusty enough to leave your feet in want of a good bath. Seated on many corners of these dirty streets are women, some with babies wrapped around their middle and some who looked ancient. On a ground cover spread around them were colorful fruits and vegetables that they hoped to sell, though they didn’t try to sell them to us. I don’t think I would have purchased any, either, unless I could have given them a good washing. The fumes from the bumper to bumper, constant horn beeping traffic that surrounded them no doubt added a certain flavor to produce.
For our first full day in Bombay, Abbas met us at the hotel and brought along his friend Karen, who took us on a tour of old Bombay, which is now also known as Mumbai. Though it was first called Bombay by the Europeans and renamed Mumbai by a political faction wanting to reclaim the city’s name, Abbas said Bombay is how he has always known this place and he is not happy about the name change. Karen and Abbas both speak English as well as we do. In fact, they are so fluent that with the mixture of their Indian accents and the pace of their speech, Sam and I had t listen hard to catch everything they said.
“ How do you spell your name?” I asked Karen. “K a r e n,” she said. “I’m Catholic. My family has been Catholic for centuries. Since the British invited the Portuguese here because they needed cheap labor to build the seaport.” Karen guided us through the backstreets of Bombay, pointing out temples, some neglected and others well cared for and all of them closely surrounded by cement dwellings where drying clothes and various plants hung from the windows.
Karen lead us down narrow stairs and streets, almost alleys at times. We passed a man who was surrounded by clotheslines full of blue jeans and white shirts and what might have been hotel uniforms. “He washes them for tourists mostly and even irons them sometimes,” she explained. At the end of many of the tiny streets were even tinier cement booths where you could purchase a bag of chips, pack of cigarettes, gum or water. They reminded me of the little booths at airports. The people we passed, sitting on the small ledges in front of their ramshackle cement dwellings, watched us with interest. Nearly without exception, everyone that I smiled at smiled back at me with warm liquid eyes and smiles that seemed to come from the center of their beings.
Our final destination in old Bombay was the edge of the water, where the Indian Ocean met large rocks on the shore. “Don’t go down there,” Karen warned us. “That’s where people shit and piss,” and as if to prove her point a man came from around a corner zipping up his pants.
There were small children playing where the crumbling cement steps lead to the rocks. I asked Karen if it would be okay for us to take a photo. “Yes! People love to have their picture taken. They love to have tourists come and see them.” Sam took out his camera to photograph a young boy and, seeing him do this, another young boy came racing over and stood next to the other one, posing for the picture. I wish we had had a Polaroid so we could have given them a copy.
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