Viking World Cruise 2017-2018: April 7, 2018 Mumbai, India

Spread over once was seven islands, Mumbai is a major financial and cultural capital of India. Once an archipelago of fishing villages, called Mumbai, this coastal region was transformed by the Portuguese in the mid-1500s, when they renamed is Bombay. It was then ceded to the British East India Company about 100 years later. It was not till the American Civil War that Mumbai became important. During the civil war, Great Britain could not get cotton from the South, so they looked to India for the cotton. With this Mumbai became known for its textiles. Today it has a lot more industry than textiles, but that is what put it on the map.

It was known as Bombay until 1995, and still enjoys its magnificent seaside setting and is home to some of India’s most beloved landmarks. Perhaps none is as glamorous as the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Overlooking the Arabian Sea, it has hosted celebrities and presidents. Mumbai also hosted the house where Mahatma Gandhi stayed when he was in Mumbai.

Today 22 million people live in Mumbai, and that is not counting the suburbs. One of the suburbs as 10 million people. Of these people 68% of them re either homeless, live in the slums or live in Chawls. Chawls are a Mumbai phenomenon of multi-storied terrible quality tenements, typically a bit higher quality than slums. 80 per cent of chawls have only one room, which is their living room, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. There is one bathroom per floor at the end of the floor.

We have been to Mumbai before, in fact, we took a similar tour to the one we took today, when we were here three years ago, but we did it again and we saw things we missed the first time.

The first place we stopped just for pictures was the stately Gateway to India, built for the 1911 visit of King George V and Queen Mary. No other British were ever welcomed through the gates. The only time it was used by the British, was when they left in 1947.

Our next stop was at Mani Bhavan, the Mumbai residence of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi; today, it is a fascinating museum. Mani Bhavan was the focal point of Gandhi's political activities in Mumbai between 1917 and 1934.

The mansion belonged to Revashankar Jagjeevan Jhaveri, Gandhi's friend and host in Mumbai during this period. Once you enter the place, there is a library with statue of the Mahatma where people offer tributes. I included in these pictures one of his sayings about women. Our tour guide had one of the men on the tour read it out loud. She was an anomaly of what a woman is in India. She was single, lived in a nice condo be herself, had lived in the US, and was very liberated, but still enjoyed her customs (except arranged marriages). She was probably in her late 30’s and was terrific.

On the first floor (to us the second floor) has a photo gallery with photographs from his childhood till his assassination, along with press clippings. This included a letter that he wrote to Hitler and to Roosevelt. The room that Gandhi used during his stay there is on the second floor, where through a glass partition people can see two of his spinning wheels, a book and his bed on the floor.

Right off of this display is the terrace, where he was arrested on Jan 4, 1932.

The rest of the floor is a hall where photographs and paintings of his lifetime are on display.

The next stop was to the Hanging Gardens and Kamala Nehru Park Kamala Nehru Park is a children’s park with great views of the city. The problem is that they have terrible air pollution.

Across the street were the Hanging Gardens, also called Sir Pherozeshah Mehta Garden. The park was laid out in 1881 by Ulhas Ghapokar over Bombay's main reservoir, some say to cover the water from the potentially contaminating activity of the nearby Towers of Silence. When seen from the air, the walkway inside the park (Hanging Gardens Path), spell out the letters PMG (Pherozeshah Mehta Gardens) in cursive. We were not in the air, so did not see that.

As we came out from the garden there was a tree with a strange blossom and fruit. She said it is known as the cannonball tree because of the size of the fruit.

I mentioned above the Parsi Towers of Silence, which we knew nothing about. The Towers of Silence is a place which many of us may find difficult to fathom for two reasons. One, it is an open well like structure where bodies of people from the Parsi community are laid after their death. These are left here to be devoured by encircling birds of prey. Two, they exist (there is more than one such burial well – currently three) within a large forest area, spread over 55 acres on Malabar hill in South Mumbai.

Zoroastrian tradition considers a dead body—in addition to cut hair and nail-parings—to be unclean. Specifically, the corpse demon was believed to rush into the body and contaminate everything it came into contact with, hence the rules for disposing of the dead as “safely” as possible. To preclude the pollution of earth or fire, the bodies of the dead are placed atop a tower—a tower of silence—and so exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. Thus, putrefaction with all its concomitant evils is most effectually prevented.

While driving down Malabar hill, the walls on the left climb so high that one cannot even begin to imagine what lies on the other side. This has been done purposefully, for the Tower of Silence, if visible to the public eye, gets disqualified from serving its purpose.

The Parsi originally migrated to India from Iran to escape persecution by the Muslims. Our guide said there were about 65,000 Parsi in the world and about 45,000 lived in Mumbai. She also stated that half of them were single and the other half were crazy. She knew a tour guide who was Parsi and he told here 12 out of 13 Parsi were crazy.

Obviously, we have no pictures.

The next stop was at an outdoor laundry called Dhobi Ghat. This style of laundry originated from when the British were here and needed their uniforms washed every other day. There are rows of open-air concrete wash pens, each fitted with its own flogging stone and is called the world's largest outdoor laundry.

The Dhobi comes to your house and picks up your laundry and brings it here. They also do laundry for many of the hotels. The clothes are first boiled overnight. The next day they are flogged against the stones. They are then hung up to dry. That evening they are then ironed. The next day they are delivered back to you. Only men do the laundry as women are not strong enough to pound the clothes against the stone.

The last stop was Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus) railway station. Striking, extravagant and swarming with people, Victoria Terminal is the city’s most exuberant Gothic Building. Named after Queen Victoria to honor her, it was opened on her Golden Jubilee in 1887. It is a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site. The railroad employees one million people and 14 million travel on the trains daily. The trains are built for 1,500 people, but each carry 4,000+. Our guide told us that if someone is not standing on both of your feet, you have a lot of room.

Going from place to place we passed many interesting people and here are a few.

The dabbawalas constitute a lunchbox delivery and return system that delivers hot lunches from homes and restaurants to people at work in India, especially in Mumbai. The lunchboxes are picked up in the late morning, delivered predominantly using bicycles and railway trains, and returned empty in the afternoon. They are also used by meal suppliers in Mumbai, who pay them to ferry lunchboxes with ready-cooked meals from central kitchens to customers and back. Our guide said that Indians prefer home cooked meals and that is why this exists. Here is one we saw and the statue of one.

Our guide pointed out a house to us. It was a $2 billion house. It has five residents and 600 servants. The owner, Mr, Ambiance, is the richest person in India. The first five floors are parking and the 6^th is a garage. The next three floors are for entertaining. The living room accommodates 5,000 people. Then three floors for guests and three floors for the family. It also has a snow room, spa, gym, salon, etc. And, there are three heliports. However, since he lives in a residential area, he cannot land his helicopters there.