Today was a better day. We got up early, allowing time for our “man servants” here to cook us breakfast. It was our third meal in the guest house, and it’s still a bit strange to have someone waiting on us, asking us what we want to eat, cooking and serving it to us, and then cleaning up the mess. Lunch and dinner yesterday was Indian food – very simple dishes that seemed familiar though not exactly the same as what is served in a Western Indian restaurant. This morning’s breakfast was more in the Western style with an omelette and toast with Tata strawberry jam. In a way, we feel like we are in a home, staying in someone’s spare bedrooms, but then I decided today that I would treat it a bit more like a hotel and lock my bedroom door while I was gone.
The monsoon season started recently, which apparently means Mumbai will typically get heavy rains for two or three days at a time, and then it will dry out. This will repeat over the course of the three summer months. The rain, however, could last for much longer, with some people reporting that it once rained for 22 days straight. According to our hosts, it’s been dry up until yesterday when we arrived. This morning, the city – and particularly the less posh parts – was completely flooded. On our drive in, we saw kids playing in the flooded areas, men wading through on their way to work, people in shanty houses ringing out their clothing. As we proceeded to the “Fort” area of town, which is the major financial district, the sidewalks, roads, and drainage clearly got better, though there was still a great deal of debris and the buildings were still strangely unkempt looking.
We were dropped at Tata headquarters where there were three stray dogs sleeping on the steps just inside the door. We were led then to the fourth floor, where we suddenly found ourselves in a fairly lavish boardroom – the Tata & Sons boardroom. This was our first glimpse how important this internship programme is to Tata. Tata personnel did a series of presentations on Tata Group and Tata’s community development objectives and offered us many opportunities to ask in depth questions about their motivations and vision.
At lunch, we were taken to a nice restaurant that served mostly western and other Asian cuisine (e.g., Thai green curry). The food we ate was quite good – vegetarian, fish, and chicken stir fry – but there were a few “Western dishes” on the menu that cracked me up, including one made up of spaghetti, bok choy, carrots, paneer, and barbeque sauce. No thanks.
After the presentations and discussions were over, we were offered some Internet time to connect with home. The Tata staff seemed a bit surprised when they realised that we really hadn’t been able to call home and confirm our arrival by that point. In fact, all around, they were highly concerned with whether our accommodation and transport needs were being met. They seemed apologetic that our places of residence weren’t as fancy as Western-style accommodation, although it was unnecessary as 1) I’ve stayed in much worse places in the US before, and 2) it has consistently been better than any of us really expected. I’d say the only thing I wish we had is Internet or phone connectivity in each place we go.
A car was scheduled to pick us up at 5:30 to take us on a brief tour of town and then on to dinner. We had a bit of time though so we decided to take a stroll in the area just around the Tata building. My first impression: a serious self-consciousness as we stuck out like sore thumbs and everyone just stared at us. This was amplified, I think, by the fact that one of my fellow interns is 6-foot-7. Indians, on average, tend to be shorter than Americans or Brits, and Grant, a 21-year-old Biology graduate from the UK is taller than the average American or Brit … so he’s a bit of a circus sideshow here.
The streets of Mumbai are … [can’t think of a word to describe them]. Most of the buildings have very modest entrances and seem to be rather dirty on the outside, often mildewed. The stock exchange for example doesn’t look like anything from the outside, but like the Tata offices, once you get inside, you see it’s all quite state of the art. On the outside of many buildings, there are long covered sidewalks under which vendors sell leather goods, mobile phones, fruit, juice drinks, pirated software, etc. There are also men pushing carts of fruit through the street. Sometimes, the street will open onto a green space. The Tata building for example is right near “the Fountain,” which is a landscaped area with a small fountain in the center of a large traffic circle. “The Fountain” marks the centre of Mumbai and is the point from which all distances from Mumbai are measured. It is here we first felt comfortable to get our cameras out. And it was here where we saw the first of a few Western travelers, girls in their early 20s or so.
At 5:30, we made our way back to the Tata building and were picked up in a car. Our main contact, the coordinator of the internship programme, traveled with us, pointing out sights such as the “Gateway to India,” a large gate on the ocean, the famous Taj Mahal hotel (nothing like the real Taj Mahal, but quite fancy and owned by Tata), and Marine Drive, a long road that borders the bay along which families and couples stroll in the evening.
Eventually, we made our way to the Willingdon Club, which turned out to be a fancy club, built by the British colonials, and belonged to by the Mumbai elite. It’s a place where wealthy Mumbai residents spend time golfing, playing bridge, and sitting on the gorgeous colonial veranda sipping lime sodas or Kingfisher beers. As we sat on the veranda, I decided to get a picture of the group and summoned the group to look my direction. Our programme coordinator, a long-time club member, immediately said, “No! No! You can’t do that here!” As I sat down, someone asked why we couldn’t take pictures. “Because there are sometimes celebrities here that don’t like their picture taken,” she replied. “Okay.” Hang on – what? How did we end up at this place?
At 7:30, we went upstairs to a very modern, Western-looking restaurant. The retired Managing Director of Voltas, a Tata engineering company, joined us, as well as his friend, who is the President of the Cambridge Alumni Society in Mumbai. Both he and the retired Managing Director are Trinity College, Cambridge alumni. We were also joined by the retired Managing Director’s niece, an American girl of about 25 named Lila. Lila’s parents are Indian, but Lila was as American as could be. She had attended Virginia Tech, spent six months volunteering in Costa Rica, and then moved to Mumbai to be near her boyfriend (another American).
Lila was seated next to me, and we had a great time chatting about what it has been like for her living in Mumbai over the last 2.5 years. Her first words were, “It’s great, but it’s not as convenient as the US. Sometimes, I’m just like, “Where’s my Target?”
Lila also talked about her experience working in Mumbai, which confirmed some warnings we heard from Tata staff about “Indian Stretchable Time.” Everything here moves much slower. If you need a phone line installed, be prepared to wait several weeks. If a lightbulb burns out in your hotel room, you can tell the front desk today, but it may not be replaced for 10 days, and only after several friendly reminders.
In Lila’s experience working as an advertising executive in Mumbai, she found that her co-workers stroll into work sometime between 10 and 11am. They then proceed to have several breaks for chai tea and after lunch, at about 1 or 2 pm, they finally get down to work. They then work until 10pm or so. She said that if she invited me to a dinner at her house, I would be early if I showed up at 11pm. Dinner would not be served until 1am. Now you may wonder: How do Indians then get anything done at home if they’re out to supper until 3am and at work from 10am to 10pm? Everyone of any means in India has drivers and other servants that run errands, do laundry, clean the house, and cook meals.
It's definitely a different life ...