Mumbai, India

My expectations were set high for the city of Mumbai, both because of my love for the movie slumdog millionaire and the excitement of getting to visit the city it was filmed in.  It was naïve of me to think that enjoying the movie in the safe confines of a movie theatre would have the same feeling as wandering the streets of the city.  This is the first city where I have really felt a sense of danger.  I can’t really explain it, but there was something about the city that made me feel as though something could happen at any second to put my at risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We spent a lot of our time here riding the tour bus through the busy streets, not traveling far, but taking a long time fighting slow moving traffic. Our bus finally stopped along the busy street to let us out for our walk up to the temple. We wandered the back alley, too narrow for the bus, with open-aired shop vendors lining both sides of the street.  The shops were filled with flowers, candy and other small gifts.  Although you would assume they were for tourists, they are for the local Hindu people to buy as offerings to their gods on their walk up to the temple.  When we arrived at the temple, we were asked to remove our shoes, as usual.  Here in the middle of the busy alleyway we took our shoes off and placed them along the wall amongst the hundreds of other pairs of shoes.  I left my beloved rainbows with much hesitation and felt a slight anxiety as I imagined the rest of my trip without them. (Those of you who know me well, know this would have been a hard last month without my rainbows.) There was an irony in the metal detectors that we walked through to reach the insides of the temple. The outside courtyard had a small simple building in the middle where the lines divided men and women from walking up separately.  Hindu men and women carried their offerings up to what looked like a counter where you would order food.  Their offerings were handed off to the man behind the “counter” who would set them in front of the gold statue god to be blessed and then handed back.  A red powder dot was then placed on your foreheads to cleanse your spirit.  I opted out of every part of the previous explanation, but watched from afar in great interest.  I was both relieved and surprised to find my shoes where I left them when I got back.  I don’t know how the people here do it every day and come home with the same pair of shoes, especially because all of their shoes look exactly the same.  I have never seen so many people wearing sandals in all my life.  They wear sandals with everything here. Not that I am against this idea at all, I actually would fit in quite well with that aspect of their dress code here. India has a very unique cultural dress code. Most countries have adopted a westernized look to their clothing but everyone in India still wears very traditional clothing.  I only saw a handful of people wearing jeans.

The second temple we visited was even more crowded than the first.  The same gift shops lined the streets as the first, with people carrying their baskets of flowers and presents with them into the temple. Here, we waited almost fifteen minutes in line to get up to the “counter” where the golden statues stood awaiting their offerings.  The massive crowd here must have been a result of lunch hour or something.  After waiting our turn in line we got up to the counter which felt like a crowded bar; people surrounding you, pushing to be the next in line to be served.  I was made aware of my staring expression as one lady even tapped me on the shoulder and told me to hurry up.  She was probably wondering what in the world I was doing here, I very much looked like I didn’t belong.  I quickly pushed my way through the crowd to a more open room where people were lying on the floor with their arms out in front of them, worshiping to the golden statue that stood behind the crowd of people surrounding the bar.  Another statue of a mouse had a line of people waiting to whisper things into its large solid gold ears. It was a very surreal experience, watching people of another religion and culture so engaged in their daily rituals as I sat on the outside wishing I could ask the hundreds of questions that were racing through my mind.  My experience in Mumbai was one I will never forget as I left with knowledge, wonder, and my rainbows safely on my feet.