Accountant Adventures: Mumbai Madness

Eating Paan

There are these paan shops all over town, where a guy has a little cart with all of these bottles and large paan leaves. They fill them with various things and then you put the paan in your mouth and chew it and when your mouth is full of juice you spit it out. The juice is a staining red and the stains are all over India from so many people chewing it. I decided to try some and I told the guy to make it sweet. It looked like a brightly colored ice cream sundae and then he wrapped it in the leaf and handed it to me. The thing was enormous, I stretched my lips as wide as they could go and stuffed this thing into my mouth. It barely fit with my jaw fully released, to make my mouth as large as possible. Then the taste hit me, it was like sugar covered flowers mixed with dirt. I started to chew and spit and chew and spit but it was so sweet and weird that I finally spit it out. It was interesting to try once but I think it’s better to not pick this habit up.

Instead of sitting in traffic all day to get to some other attractions we took an Auto to the train station. Then we literally ran and jumped on the train that we wanted to take us to a central location from which to see attractions. First we stopped at the Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai’s oldest and largest human washing machine. They have these concrete basins filled with water that the clothes are dipped in and then scrubbed and then beaten and dipped again. When I read that there are 1026 open air troughs, I was imagining lanes and lanes of these as far as my eye could see, but it was only two lanes and I could easily see to the end of them, it was a little disappointing but still interesting.

Next we headed to Haji Ali’s Mosque located down a long concrete walkway out into the Arabian Sea. This is where the floating casket of a Muslim saint who died on a pilgrimage to Mecca was found. Lining the walkway are beggars, mostly those who have lost at least one hand or foot. The beggars lay on the ground bouncing around and chanting various phrases to get your attention and more importantly your money. People bring flowers and candies to the Mosque to offer and then some are taken and placed around the casket and then some of the flowers and candies are given back for people to take the newly blessed items home with them. They also have a feather broom that a man who works there uses to hit and bless people with, Praj waited in line to get his smacks.

Then we made our way to the Siddhivinayak Temple, similar to Haji Ali’s Mosque only that it is for Hindus. Instead of a casket they have a golden god statue, but again flowers and sweets are offered up. The cab driver didn’t have change for the smallest bill Praj and I had, so I got change from a guy selling flowers and in turn purchased some. Then cameras were not allowed inside, so I had to leave my camera with a shop keeper who locks it up and isn’t allowed to charge for it. He is however allowed to insist that you pay too much for some sweets to offer in the Temple. Praj and I went inside with our sweets and flowers. The smell inside was so strong from the incense and flowers and reminded me of my paan from the night before, I felt nauseated.
Both the temple and the Mosque are supposed to be holy places for people of their respective faiths but they both felt like tourist traps to me. Vendors were pushing for people to buy things and workers were trying to get people to leave as quickly as possible. I hear the monasteries feel more like religious places and I look forward to visiting them.

Our last stop for the day was to be the Zoo. We hopped into a cab and asked the driver to take us to the zoo. Praj asked the driver if he knew what kinds of animals were there and the driver looked confused and said he wasn’t sure. After we had been driving for 10 minutes, I asked Praj to talk to the driver, the zoo was supposed to be 5 km away and it seemed like we had driven that far already. Praj spoke with the driver who told us it would be at least another half of an hour. We were really confused and discussed it with each other and the driver, figuring he was taking us to another zoo further away to get a larger fare. Then we discovered that he wasn’t taking us to the zoo at all but to Juhu Beach, a popular tourist beach. By the time we figured out where he was taking us, we decided to go anyway since we were now so far from the zoo and so close to Juhu. The beach was awful, it was dirty and there were many beggars. Praj drank some fresh coconut juice and ate some street food before we hopped in another cab to leave.
Last night we met up with some friends at a Karaoke Bar that was doing a tribute night to Michael Jackson. The Indian friends that were with us noticed some Bollywood celebs that were present and they talked about the various movies that they were in. Praj asked to borrow my camera and then turned to the celebs and asked “Can you please take a picture?” The face of the woman light up as she was recognized and then she understood Praj’s request, he didn’t want a picture of her or with her, he wanted her to take our picture. The look on her face as she went from elation to devastation was priceless.