We arrived in Bombay the night before last. Traveling here was somewhat unusual because of my medical condition... See I had been staying in New York on the upper west side in my cousin Georgia's beautiful apartment for a few days before we were scheduled to leave. It was a wonderful place to get my head and belongings together, hardwood floors, lots of afternoon sun, an overstuffed couch, and a comfy loft bed. I do two things when I am stressed out 1. Grinding my teeth in my sleep, and 2. Go walking in my sleep. I never felt like the sleepwalking could be a serious threat to my health, the worst things that ever happened usually involved waking up in an odd place, like under the coffee table, or in the bathroom. Well, at about 4 AM, on the morning before we were scheduled to fly to India, I ended up walking off of Georgia's 10 foot loft and landing with a crash on my right ankle. Being awoken in this manner was terrifying. I was completely confused and disoriented, and I tried to stand up but found I couldn't. My right ankle was in a lot of pain and I wasn't sure whether I was having a nightmare or not. So I crawled back to up the stairs bed and went back to sleep. I woke up at 7, assured that my injury was not a dream, and promptly began to lose it. There was lots of crying and phone calls to family. After a lot of agonizing, I decided that I had to go on with the trip, with or without the ability to walk. So Katie came over and dressed my ankle, Kristen came over and helped me pack, and then Jerry took us all out to eat and acquire crutches, and then dropped us off at the airport. And I got to ride. In a wheelchair. All the way through security and to the gate. It was honestly the most pleasant experience I've ever had at the airport. The flight was relatively painless, and when we landed I got to ride in another wheelchair all the way out to the parking lot. It was a surreal way to arrive in India people moved out of the way for me, there was much less jostling and shoving then usual.
Our driver decided to take the scenic route to our hotel--through the slums. The whole way he was winding us up in classic Indian taxi-cab driver fashion with the old "You can't trust anyone in India, everyone in India is out to get you, everyone will pretend to be your friend, but they are not your friend, everyone wants your money, you cannot under any circumstances trust anyone in India,
except me." I am familiar with this particular song and dance, and while it may become exhaustively annoying after a month or so in country, I actually found it sort of nostalgic and amusing in my jet-lagged state, so i sat in the back of the car and didn't say much.
The slums can be shocking to someone who has never experienced them, especially with western eyes. miles and miles of jumbled-together structures and lean-tos made of materials ranging from tarp and corrugated iron, to cement. Open sewers lined good portions of the road. People slept on the median. This was India at it's most difficult and visceral. I was a little confused as to why our driver would take this particular route to Colaba, Every other time I'd taken a ride to or from the airport we went along marine drive which is actually quite beautiful. At first I thought it was maybe a short cut. Then our driver stopped at a wine shop to get some whiskey, "for after", he assured us. It took us much longer than it should have to get to our hotel--well over an hour, but we finally made it. Poor Kristen was shell-shocked. She had been sitting up front the whole time as we raced through narrow slum-lined streets at 100 km per hour. She'd born the brunt of our driver's paranoia-inducing pitch. She was understandibly frightened and ungrounded. It was an unfortunate intruduction to one of my favorite cities in India--I tried to reassure Kristen and Katie that Bombay was actually an amazing multi-faceted city, that we had only seen one of it's realities. I think they believed me. We tried to sleep at a 10 hr. time difference. We were all exhausted.
