Moment:
Thursday, November 21st at 2:54 PM
*admiring the beautiful architecture while sitting at a bistro table on the balcony of the 20th floor in the middle of the afternoon, writing a paper while listening to rave music playing in the distance*
I’m finally done with exams! To celebrate, I decided to jet off to Mumbai for five days to meet up with some family and friends, as well as explore the city’s many sights.
My trip started out with a 6 AM flight, which meant I had to leave for the airport at 3, so as soon as I got on the plane, I almost immediately fell asleep. I woke up about 45 minutes later to the sound of applause, which was confusing because usually people only clap when the plane has landed. Then I looked out the window and saw that we had, in fact, landed, which didn’t add up since it was supposed to be a 1.25 hour flight. Then the pilot announced that they encountered technical difficulties about 20 minutes into the flight, so they turned around and went back to Hyderabad. People were clapping because we actually made it back to the ground alive, and I slept through the whole thing!
After taking another flight and landing at around 1 in the afternoon on Wednesday, I headed over to the home of my study abroad program director, Sumana, so we could go explore the city together. She took me to South Mumbai, where we went to a cute cafe called Pantry and walked around admiring the British architecture. There’s a gorgeous railway station called the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly known as Victoria Terminus), and the first thing I said when I saw the front of the building was, “Wow, it looks like the library from Between the Lions!” because there were two statues of lions (which I have officially named Lionel and Leona after the siblings in the show lol) flanking the two sides of the entrance.
Sumana pointed out that this city is the epitome of old and new coexisting together, and it is absolutely beautiful. The dichotomy of high-end boutiques sharing a wall with small family-owned business, graffitied walls across the street from a historical synagogue, and museum artifacts displayed in under TV screens showing flight information at the international airport terminal was so representative of what it is like to live in Mumbai today. Strolling down the sidewalk (there are sidewalks here!) like taking a time machine back to the colonial era, but driving the streets is a constant reminder of the metropolitan hustle and bustle.
We headed a bit further down to Marine Drive, which we reached right as the sun was setting, so we got to see the Arabian Sea in the daylight then watch all the lights on the “Queen’s Necklace,” a curved road that supposedly resembled Queen Victoria’s glittering necklace, turn on after it got dark. Mumbai used to be seven islands that were all joined together through land reclamation efforts, so it is completely surrounded by water on three sides, so on the way back home, we took the Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link, a 7-kilometer cable bridge going right over the sea to connect Bandra in West Mumbai to Worli in South Mumbai.
I had the opportunity to go visit Stella Nanamma (my paternal grandmother’s sister) at her home. Her husband, Steaven Thatha, is the pastor of a Telugu Methodist church in Mumbai that has existed for over 80 years, and their family lives in the church quarters. She is my grandma’s youngest sister, so she is young enough to be my aunt, and therefore her kids are young enough to be my cousins. Her daughter, Annie Akka, picked me up and we talked for literally hours as we sat through Mumbai traffic, then we got to their house and had a wonderful time recounting memories with our family members over a meal.
One of our program activities includes a cooking class, so for dinner back at my director's home, Sumana taught us how to make Masala Dosas with tomato chutney, all the way from soaking and grinding the lentils to make the batter, to perfecting the swirl technique when making the dosa on a pan. We formed an assembly line to make the dosa, fill it with the potato masala curry, then fold it into a crepe-like roll, and after dinner, we had a wonderful time with her family talking and playing music...we honestly probably stayed up too late but it was worth it!
We left the next morning to drive an hour to the Gateway of India, so we could catch a ferry to Elephanta Island, where there are caves that are intricately carved directly into a rock face.
We were told that tickets were available for purchase directly on the ferry, so we got in line behind hundreds of people under the beating sun, waiting to get on the ferry for a nice Saturday day trip. We finally got on and bought our tickets, and settled in for an hour-long ferry ride, breathing in the fresh sea air and enjoying the breeze.
There was a group of friends sitting close to us who had brought a whole karaoke set-up with them, complete with a wireless microphone, and were belting out their favorite Bollywood songs. We had mentioned to one of them that we were excited to go to Elephanta, and it was like a record scratch. The guys turned off the music and looked at us intently, asking “Wait, you guys want to go to Elephanta?” and when we said yes, they laughed and said that this ferry was headed to Mandwa Beach.
So at this point we had committed to a two-hour round trip to a place we had no intention of going, but we were told there are a lot of water sports and restaurants, so it seemed like a pretty fun time. However, when we got there, we realized that no one was really spending time in the water, so we just wound up walking around then having lunch there (and had the best prawns curry I’ve ever had) then heading back to Mumbai on the next ferry.
We got off the ferry back at the Gateway of India, and across the street was the Taj Mahal Hotel, which took up basically the whole block and is so uniquely beautiful that it was the first building in all of India to essentially copyright its architectural design. We walked around a bit and explored some cathedrals and some street markets, then I left to meet up with my aunt and uncle, who also live in Mumbai.
They took me out to get some delicious Mumbai street food, and I finally got to have Pani Puri, after months of our directors telling us not to eat it for fear of water contamination. We then drove around the city, looking at various monuments and heritage sites, and wound up passing the terminus multiple times in an attempt to reroute around the metro construction that is currently running through the entire city.
That Sunday, we went to church, and I had the opportunity to teach some songs to the Sunday school kids. It was so fun to be back in that setting, because the energy of the kids as they sang and performed the actions was absolutely contagious. The students are preparing for a Sunday school rally, where they will be performing songs and acting out a skit. The group of guys that teaches them were all incredible musicians, and they trained the kids well, especially since they seemed to have even more fun with it than the kids did. Just as it is for us back home, church here is an all-day affair, so we had lunch at the church before heading to my aunt’s friend’s home, where we spent the evening until I had to head to the airport.
My Mumbai trip was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, because for the first time, I traveled on my own, but I was never alone, because I got to meet up with friends and family that I haven’t seen in a while. If I had to count the number of things that I did or saw while on vacation, the number is pretty small, but I made a lot of memories and learned a lot of things that can’t just be put on a checklist or tourist guide.
