Dhobi Ghat - where the laundry gets done.
They have a system and it works.
It's not pleasant work that's for sure.
Also - please do not send them your "delicates".
The nearby Mahalaxmi Train station - the trains are standing room only.
The work is never done.
A mother and daughter looking for some help.
Sophia and I above the Ghat.
At Leopold's - a Bombay institution.
Random street scene. You see it all there.
It has now been a year since we moved to Singapore. During that time I have visited many cities I had never seen before. I knew, or thought I knew, what to expect in many of these places from the pictures painted in my mind by books I have read, movies and TV shows I have seen and travel magazine articles. Each city has turned out to be very different in person then any book, magazine, movie or TV show can convey.
Manila with its Spanish names, jitneys, poverty and traffic - Jakarta with red tile roofed slums, mosques, modern buildings and palm trees - Singapore with its clean streets, endless blocks of apartment buildings, food courts and diverse ethnic population - Bangkok with it's smiling citizens sporting yellow shirts in support of their King, river traffic moving goods and people in all directions, street food vendors, tuk tuks and markets - Beijing with its wide streets, massive buildings, crowded sidewalks and dirty air - Ho Chi Minh City with its psycho traffic of overloaded motor cycles, sidewalk vendors and coffee sellers and Melbourne with its modern almost US, almost Canada, almost London look and its hip pubs and trendy shops. Every one of these places has a unique identity and is both attractive and daunting in its own way. I submit that Mumbai is the most interesting, satisfying, scary and exciting one of all.
Our first full day in Mumbai was spent touring with a car and driver. We hit the key sites (of which there are only a few) including the Gateway to India, Victoria Terminus, The Chhatriapati Shivaji Maharaj Vatsu Sangrahalya (formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India), the Ali Haji Mosque, the Taj Hotel, Chopatty Beach, Naraman Point, the Queens Necklace and more. Most of the key sites are leftovers from the Brittish era. The buildings built by the British with great style and grandeur are peppered throughout the city but sometimes hard to pick out as time, the elements and general lack of upkeep have made the city look, on first glance, like a city in ruins.
From the moment we left the hotel we were engulfed in a sea of people and activity. People in cars, trucks, taxis, motor bikes, push carts, bicycles and on foot traffic were everywhere. I mean there isn't one place to look in Mumbai where your field of vision isn't filled with people. The people ranged from rich to dirt poor - they were dressed in many styles including Western business suits, saris, designer wear, kurta pyjamas, Muslim attire and salwar chemises. there were beggars, street vendors, bankers and lawyers all moving in different direction. Traffic is chokingly slow so any trip afford one ample opportunity to observe.
Our first stop was at Dhobi Ghat. In Singapore, Dhoby Gaut is a nice new Subway station located in a nice neighborhood next to a nice shopping mall. In Mumbai it is a slum and an institution. The words mean something like "laundryman's place", and the scene is amazing. Set in a small low lying area next to a very busy train station one finds the place where hundreds of men do the laundry for thousands on locals. The laundry people and their families live and work in this slum. Outside of their doors are rows and rows of cement wash basins with attached flat stone areas for swatting, smashing and wringing the clothes and linens. The work looks hard and backbreaking. All day each laundry guy hand washes piece after piece of linen, pants, shirts, underwear, towels and the like.
After the rigorous washing process the clothes are hung to dry - arranged by color. From the bridge above where a few tourists venture it looks like a painting - big patches of white, red, orange and blue garments waving in the breeze hung around and above the huts and shanties while shirtless men work hard in this basins. Kids run around and women keep the shanties neat. The question that naturally comes to mind is how do they keep track of the laundry to make sure that it gets returned to the right people. I understand they have an intricate system of marking the individual pieces of laundry with dots and lines that allows anyone in dhobi ghat to immediately determine who the laundry belongs to. This life is passed from generation to generation. http://www.mumbainet.com/travel/dhobighat.htm
There is s similar system in place for lunch deliveries in Mumbai. Each day hundreds of lunch wallas pick up thousands homemade lunches in bright steel tiffins, deliver them to working men at their offices, pick up the empty tiffens and return them to the homes so the women can prepare the lunches for the next day. Unfortunately we did not get a chance to see these guys in action. http://www.kk.org/streetuse/archives/2007/04/indian_dabbawallas.php
One of the most amazing things about Mumbai is the slums. These slums are not like the ones we would see in the US where people are living in rundown house and buildings in cities but rather people who have set up squatter neighborhoods with homes made of sticks, scraps, tarps , newspapers and other found items. The slums can cover many square miles and house almost 1 million people. I've been reading a book called Shantaram http://www.shantaram.com/ which is a good semi autobiographical read about a guy who escaped from prison in Australia and ended up in Mumbai. For over a year he lived in one of the slums. The book is relatively well written and the story, while it wanders at times, gives a really good insight into many aspects of life in the city. After his many adventures the author is back Mumbai now. A movie starring Johnny Depp will be made soon so if you don't like to read I guess you can wait.
One of the Shantaram's haunts is a restaurant called Leopold's. http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/India/State_of_Maharashtra/Mumbai-1101422/Restaurants-Mumbai-LEOPOLD-BR-1.html
Sophia and I found it and stopped in for a beer. It was fun being in a place where a great deal of the action in the book took place. While it is now quite a tourist spot it was a nice feeling to sit in a place we had read so much about.
After an exhausting day we headed back to the comfort and clean bathrooms of the Marriott.
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