Lessons from Mumbai

Even more than the rest of India, Mumbai was an experience of immense contrasts. Maybe that’s understandable given its eclectic history. The city was called “Bombay” until 1995, a name meaning “Good Bay” bestowed on it by the first Portuguese explorers in the 1400’s. At that point, “Bom Baim” was not a single place but a series of seven separate islands in the Arabian Sea that were later merged by land reclamation. Today, the land (of the conglomerated islands) that supports metropolitan Mumbai is only 14 miles long and 3 miles across, yet houses over 16 million people. It’s a city with one-third of its population living in slums, while gigantic billboards advertising “state-of-the-art luxury communities” tower over nearly every street corner. Out the left side of the bus windows we could see a man among the exposed cement-and-rebar of a semi-completed building washing two young boys in loin cloths with water from a plastic mixing bowl. Meanwhile, on the right-hand side of the road was a billboard showing a well-dressed, seductive-looking business woman with text that read: “Platinum. Very rare. Very you.”…

We arrived in Mumbai in the evening following the short flight from Goa. It was Ginger’s birthday, so we sang to her on the bus ride from the airport, and John presented her with a pyramid-shaped bouquet of flowers. Our hotel was a high-rise decorated in an ultra-modern theme with a glass elevator climbing the full height of the lobby and plant stands of various heights adorned with stones, water and flowers. The rooms were furnished with surprisingly appealing wooden art deco furniture in colors like mustard yellow and matte black.  

The first order of business was our yoga practice, an event which had become slightly urgent due to the oncoming darkness. We would be practicing in a small city park a short distance from the hotel, and we had no idea if the area would be lit after sunset. The park, rather tiny by our standards, nevertheless contained a startling amount of people engaged in diverse activities. Two older men and a woman walked brisk laps on the sidewalk around the small area of grass; a veritable horde of excited kids arrived with a couple I assumed were the grandparents; younger kids played games like tag among the gazebo-shaped marble pavilions, while the older kids (mostly boys) played a boisterous game of soccer in the adjoining dirt lot and older girls giggled and whispered behind their hands.

Only a short distance from a four-lane road packed with cars, motorbikes, rickshaws and smoke-belching buses, we could hear the sounds of traffic and see the sleek skyscrapers looming over us on almost every side. More than once, a stray soccer ball landed in the midst of our Emerging Butterflies or kids skirted among us as we lay in our Spinal Twists…and yet…it was one of the most powerful yoga practices I’ve ever had! Because there was room for all of us. Though the park was tiny and the grass sparse, and the games were active and loud and the kids were many…there was space enough for all of us to do what we felt was important while everybody else was doing the same. This, I realized, was one of the main lessons I would take home from India, a crowded country of opposites. Respectful co-existence, I realized, was how the country contained such extremes of technology and tradition, history and progress, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jainists, Christians… 

When we finally moved to seated, then standing, poses after a long time spent doing stretches and breathing on the ground with our eyes closed we saw that several of the kids had joined our practice. It was hard to keep from laughing out loud as we watched them watching us with curiosity and mimicking our movements! At the end of the practice, we invited them to join us in a circle and we all honored each other in the only way understood by all: a bow with hands in prayer position at heart-center and a friendly “Namaste.”       

 After checking out of the hotel in the morning, we had nearly a full day before we needed to be at the airport to start the long journey back to the U.S., so we toured Mumbai. Our first stop was the sprawling, outdoor laundry. Our guide told us that, historically, Indians built “ghats,” stone staircases to the river bank where they can perform ceremonies as well as do their laundry (and suddenly all the staircases I had seen along the sacred Ganga in Rishikesh suddenly made sense). Without that option in Mumbai, the solution was the cement and cinderblock outdoor laundry: Acres and acres of clothes and sheets drying in the wind, while underneath, men in loincloth-type things beat the wet clothes clean while standing ankle-deep in tubs of soapy water.

Next we went to “the house of Gandhi.”  Though it was not, in fact, Gandhi’s house, it was a place where he’d stayed over the course of many years whenever he was in Mumbai. At that time, the house had belonged to one of Gandhi’s friends, and today it is a museum that honors Gandhi’s work. Its three levels were packed with books on civil disobedience, racial equality and treatises written by Gandhi, plus rudimentary panoramas depicting the pivotal moments in Gandhi’s life using clay figures in glass fish tanks. Ancient posters and original newspaper articles hung in frames on the walls to document some of the activities leading to India’s independence from Britain (achieved in 1947) and Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu nationalist (in 1948).

All in all, it looked like the museum had received no significant funding in the last thirty years. My first reaction on seeing the inside of the museum was a sense of disappointment and mild outrage that a museum to such an important person as Gandhi could be so shabby. Surely, there should be monuments in marble (as big as the Lincoln Memorial) or buildings of city blocks painted with murals, and lots of state-of-the-art learning programs at the museum for Gandhi! Daily fireworks shows! Live symphonies! Interactive computer displays!...

…and then I came to the part of the museum that was a replica of Gandhi’s quarters while he lived in that house:  A single room with a bare floor and white walls, a pallet of blankets for sleeping, and no furniture except spinning wheels and a stunted table for writing while seated on the hard floor. And suddenly the rustic and simple museum felt more appropriate.

Next, we walked through the “Hanging Gardens” of Mumbai, so named (not because of any hanging going on) but because of its position at one of the highest points in the city. It was a huge stretch of topiary bushes and pampered flowers, separated by wide gravel pathways and overlooked on all sides by ritzy high-rises. From the far end of the garden, we could see the pillared sky-scraper of the third richest man in the world who occupied then entire 20-plus story building with just his family. Then we crossed a busy road to another section garden, this one with only grass and trees – and a two-level replica of the shoe from the nursery rhyme. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do…

After taking a few pictures of this novelty, we enjoyed the view from an overlook that made we realize for the first time how high we really were. Far below, we could see miles of coastline, the white sand and slate-colored water simply broad swaths of uniform color from this distance. A semi-circle of skyscrapers stood facing the ocean impassively, as well as a gorgeous, domed palace-like building, which we found out later was a hospital.

We ate another immense, gourmet lunch, this time at a restaurant with ceilings so low that the men in our group had to duck to keep from bonking their heads. After that we had only a short amount of time before we needed to begin the hour-and-a-half drive, through the perpetually jammed-up Mumbai traffic, to the airport. We spent the time shopping on a street packed with vendor carts and fabric stores. Actually, I don’t think many people got much shopping done, veritably trapped in the throng of people, constantly waylaid by spice hawkers and tea wallas and young women begging with babies on their hips.

And before we knew it, it was time to go. Our time in India was nearly over.

To see photos of our trip, please visit our Facebook album at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=271796&id=294275506729&l=894d81c871

About Inner Connections Yoga
Inner Connections Yoga, in Castle Rock, Colorado since 2002, is a place where the ancient traditions of Hatha yoga are brought into the experience of our modern lives. John and Jeanne Adams, the studio owners, help their clients to unite the interconnecting aspects of body, breath and spirit, and also connect yoga enthusiasts in a supportive, friendly community. Every year, Inner Connections leads a group yoga trip to an international location. Past trips have included Brazil, Fiji, Honduras and Costa Rica. For more information, please visit http://www.innerconnectionsyoga.com/.