When I was home I tried to sum up my experiences in as short a timeframe as I could and I often found myself trying to whittle down the life of Mumbai to one word (an obviously futile exercise but one due to timing; not wanting to repeat myself continually I tried to do in order to be gracious to people who wanted to hear a little about it without a 5 hour lecture from yours truly). I usually would say: chaos. On coming back after my brief respite home I realize that my word choice was incorrect. It should have been: juxtaposition.
I have not communicated how strange and sometimes wonderful, sometimes shocking, the worlds and lives of Mumbai intersect. There seems to be many different types of life here, ranging from the poorest you can think of to the most decadent you could imagine.
Walking outside and glimpsing the activites happening you can catch the varying differences. Old school cabs mixed with new Mercedes. High skyscrapers and racing technology mixed with carts driven by ox or people pulling them. It’s like a fantastical gateway of two planes of time colliding – one, not able to catch up, the other too far distant to hold back. It's one of the many many things in life that can only be experienced in India.
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