Day 7 (Mumbai)

After hearing him talked up by a proud cousin-in-law (Salil!) it was slightly jarring that Luke Kenney made such an informal entrance, hopping onto the bus with his girlfriend, Deviki (Salil's cousin), from the side of the road where we had appeared to have stopped for no reason. With fair skin and shaggy brown hair, Luke's European blood is obvious, but he speaks English with a Mumbai accent. Though he had a lot of interesting things to say, it was Luke's background that was maybe the most fascinating. Born to an Irish father and an Italian mother, he grew up in Mumbai without the typical expat crutches of international schools and foreign neighborhoods and thus, in upbringing, is a normal Indian guy, most comfortable in the local dialect and habits.

As Luke narrated this story, he directed the bus into what appeared to be a nature reserve on the outskirts of Mumbai, but actually turned out to be a Bollywood studios. We were shown a set under construction for an upcoming airline commercial, the village set for a soon-to-be aired tv show, and even got to see (from a distance) the filming of a temple scene for a movie. We weren't close enough to figure out what was going on, but Salil laughed heartily at us stumbling across the most stereotypical scene in the Indian film industry! Our Bollywood tour ended with a visit to a relatively new film academy, where we got a better sense of the different steps of movie-making (such as sound processing) and India's developing academies for this industry. To no one's surprise, as we stepped out of the building, the rain was coming down in sheets. Hello, monsoon!

Despite the rain, we stopped at the beach; unfortunately, without the sun to distract us, most of us came away with negative impressions after noticing the massive amount of garbage strewn everywhere. But we had a fairly amusing communication failure with a woman peddling henna. After holding a stamp to Sasha's nose and declaring, "10 rupees," she proceeded to cover Sasha and Grace's hands (including each individual finger) with the stamp at lightning speed. When she was done she demanded, to our horror, 150 rupees. We were much more careful about what we were getting ourselves into after that!

But the fun wasn't over. We paid a nighttime visit to a corner of the Mumbai slum to see a leather-working factory. It was a visit of contrasts, both of expectation and situation. Some of us were terrified, while others didn't notice anything scary. The entrance to the slum was a 20 ft. strip of garbage, but the tiny street was relatively uncluttered. We peered into single-room houses, but contrary to popular image the homes were real structures rather than makeshift shacks. Someone claimed to even have seen a laundry machine; there were definitely a few tvs. The leather-working factory in the middle of this slum produces material for top European designers, but in the corner there's a high stack of rejected strips. Less than a hundred yards further down what appeared to be a quiet alley, we burst onto a busy street crowded with bicycles and people. It was interesting to see more Muslims in this neighborhood, particularly women in burkhas, than we had seen in other parts of the city...more diversity in lower-income areas.