Rediscovering Bombay

It’s been over four months since I stepped off the plane at the international airport in Northern Bombay. Not all that much time from some perspectives, from others, a lifetime. It is long enough, for instance, to begin a new life, to have relationships to develop in unimagined ways and to learn volumes. Short enough, though, to go by in the blink of an eye. Only now, two thirds of the way through my time in this city, I’ve begun to realize the finitude of my stay here. I always knew that it wouldn’t last forever, just as in my mind I know that nothing in fact does. But knowing intellectually and knowing with your experience are two different things. Knowing in experience means that one is more likely to act upon that knowledge in a more active way. And so that’s what I have been attempting to do.

Taking a stronger eye to the things that at this point strike me as normal but that are, in fact, phenomenal, has been a big part of rediscovering Bombay. The shocking living conditions that I pass on the ride to work do not shock me any more. My tongue barely burns now when I taste the chilies that find their way into all the food here. At the end of the day as I kick off my sandals my eyebrows only raise if my feet are clean. At first I was amazed at everything, but after four months the excitement, allure and exotic nature of life here that so many who visit speak of hides itself from view. It’s amazing how normalcy creeps up and simply inserts itself into life, in most unassuming ways, though with a presence akin to an elephant in a room.

That’s not to say that I would like to revive the experience of stepping off the plane, or that I wished that I knew nothing of what I know now about what life is here. On the contrary, what I take out of my experience here only becomes greater as time goes on. At the same time though, the learning experience can stagnate or atrophy if I decide that things here are a certain fixed way, and if I base my actions in a set of behavioral patterns that can be limited.

And so I take this knowledge that I’ve recently acquired, the knowledge that I won’t be here for too much longer, and I go out. I find different ways to rediscover the city. I go out with my camera, seeing things through a glass lens that changes the observing process, and makes me encounter insular moments with renewed interest and curiosity. I explore different neighborhoods, wander through areas that have always been close but never been traveled. My Hindi, for a while, stayed at a fixed level, so in my last month I’m starting up private lessons with our yoga teacher. These actions, taken on their own, are good and positive, but I've been taking them as all being part of this spirit of rediscovery that I want to nurture.

Yesterday, as I waited for a friend of mine at the train station, a man came up to me. He was speaking in Hindi and speaking fast, but it was clear that he was asking me about the red string that I had tied around my wrist. During pujas, religious rites done my many Hindus honoring certain occasions, red strings are tied around the wrist to mark the occasion. The one I had was from Dusera, a festival that occurred just as I arrived, when the director of my NGO invited me to his house for the puja. I told the inquiring man where I had gotten it, and he shook his head as he indicated that it had faded from red to pink. He pulled out of his pocket a ball of red string and wrapped it around my wrist a couple of times. As he did this he recited a prayer in Sanskrit under his breath. He finished, took a small knife out of his pocket, and cut the old string from my wrist. I looked up at him, somewhat astonished, and before I could process how fast the exchange had occurred, he was gone. Though I’ve been here a long time, I’ve never been blessed by a stranger in a train station. Bombay has so much more to be discovered, and I’m learning that if I keep my eyes open I find new and vibrant red strings hanging from my wrist.