love and hate

I’ve started eating with my co-workers. I know this sounds a little weird but before I would get my lunch served to me at my desk every day. Now I eat with my co-workers in the lunch room. It’s nice because everyone brings their own food but we have a staff who heats it up for you and serves it to you at your table with fresh bread. A little luxury, indeed. I really like the group eating except everyone takes my popudums. I love popudums and apparently my cook is the only one who makes them or brings them because they are totally gobbled up as soon as they are set on the table.


Eating with everyone has modified our relationships slightly and when I look back on my time here it was a great mistake for me to wait so long to join them. I probably came off as a snobby American elitist. I think more than anything though it’s modified my mind frame. I feel a little more included into the culture as it were and I find I’ve become enamored with Mumbai’s ways.

Mumbai is all about a love hate kind of relationship and I think the more you start to love Mumbai you can’t help but get annoyed at it. The city and it’s people are so friendly and open. Why don’t you JUST BUILD SOME f’ing SIDEWALKS? The smells of food are so amazing. Why can’t you just improve santitation? Would it kill you to clean up the streets of trash? Religions and peoples of all backgrounds seem to live in peace and harmony. Why must there be a symphony of dog howls, honking horns, and firecrackers every single night??  

Mumbai, such a strange beautiful messy city.  Colorful Hijabs, cows and goats meandering down busy streets next to people in bmw's and business suits.  Techno dancing drowning out hindu chanting drowning out the constant noise of traffic.  Sometimes while I'm sitting in a car and watching a new arrival from our boston office staring out the window I realize how amazingly crazy it all is, and then I also realize in that same moment how less crazy and expected it is to me.  I like that feeling.  And I hope that the person staring doesn't get a bad idea of the place by all the filth and disorder on the streets.

But that’s kind of the deal with Mumbai. I love it because it’s vibrant, colorful, and chaotic. And I hate it because it’s smelly, dirty, and chaotic.  But it wouldn't be Mumbai without both elements.