I had been prepared for the abject poverty rampant throughout India because people had warned me about it, and because I have seen the scenes on television, in movies, in journals.
It was impossible to miss the signs as soon as I left the airport. As I waited for my luggage at the airport it might have been a little busier, but otherwise was not very different from any baggage claim in any airport; but as I walked out it was bedlam. There are over a billion people in India... and it seemed that they were all waiting for someone at the Mumbai airport.
My big mistake was that I walked past my driver without seeing the sign with my name on it. The truth is I do not think he was there when I walked past the first time, and I was immediately accosted by someone trying to give me a list... and thirty of his friends. Nothing I could do would get rid of them, and finally I started raising my voice and telling them to stop following me. With my luggage I muscled my way through the throngs of people, and eventually got back to the airport exit, where I saw my name and grabbed the guy. As he led me to his car I witnessed numbers... there were likely no fewer than four thousand taxis parked waiting for fares at the airport, and it was truly a sight to dwarf any parking lot I have ever seen... literally thousands of taxis on one side, on the other thousands of private cars, including my driver's.
As we left the airport and everywhere we went I would see people sitting by the side of the roads, and it took me a minute to realize that these were not people out for a stroll, these people lived there; in lean-tos hastily constructed of whatever material was available I would assume, often nothing more than a string strung between two poles and a blanket for some remote semblance of privacy. The scenes I witnessed - everywhere, not just in the slums - would redefine the term ramshackle. I have nothing in my experience that could compare to the conditions that thousands of people live in here.
I have been to several places where drivers have a reputation for being reckless. I lived most of my life in Montreal where drivers have such a reputation, and until I leave and come back I do not see it. However when I went to the Middle East I saw bad drivers for the first time... real bad drivers. In Argentina I was pretty sure that the drivers were all on the road to scare me... I joked that they drove by osmosis, and still remember some of the incidents I witnessed and experienced there. I now look back with fondness at the drivers in all of those places, because in India there are a thousand times the drivers on the roads, and if there is any semblance of order or respect then I could not see it. I do not know how many people are killed on the roads here on a daily basis, but it has to be significant. I would have taken pictures or video, but I was certain that I would have lost my dinner in doing so.
It was difficult to grasp the poverty, but the hardest thing to reconcile was the vast differences between the sheer opulence - my hotel, the building in which Microsoft's offices are located, and palatial residences visible from the road behind well guarded gates - and the utter poverty just outside the walls. Driving into the Windsor Building - where the offices are - you turn off a secondary road onto a dirt path consisting of potholes; this is not a road that has fallen into disrepair, this is a road that has not seen better days. My driver turned right into the gate area and was waved in by the guards after a close inspection of the car - and its occupants. Then there is the building itself, one that would put to shame some of the beautiful buildings in which I have worked. In the driveway there was not a speck of dirt, the pavement shone, the building was likely cleaned top-to-bottom hourly. The security staff visible numbered in the dozens... easily thirty on duty on Sunday, more still on Monday. Interesting to note that while their uniforms were pristine, they wore no shoes.
Within these walls there is no poverty, or at least none outward. I doubt that many of the people in the streets have ever used a computer, but I am afraid to ask my students how widespread it is - and how it affects them. I suspect that many of them will not earn this month what I am paid this day, and will not even speculate on the going rate for IT Professionals in a country where many doctors probably do not earn what we in North America would consider a minimally respectable wage.
I almost wish that I had not been prepared for what I saw because scenes like these should be shocking to the system if not as a call to action, then to make us aware now and forever of how some people are forced to live... and to make the ungrateful understand how much they really have that they should truly appreciate. I have over the years learned to appreciate what I have and how I live, especially since it was not that long ago that I too contemplated minimum wage jobs. When I leave Mumbai that appreciation will grow because where I thought I had once known how bad it could be for some, I now know how bad it is for so many.