Jul 17, 2004 10:34 PM
4195 Views
(Updated Aug 05, 2004 12:37 PM)
It was 12:30 a.m. in early October 2003. The plane was flying low over the hills of Mumbai, and I was glued to the window, trying to make out a pattern in the undulating lights below. The Lufthansa Frankfurt-Mumbai trip was mercifully on time, and after 20 hours traveling, I was just ready to drop into 8 hours of the old dreamless (to use a P.G. Wodehouse expression). Finally I saw the lights of the runway and prepared (well, braced myself) for the landing.
In my mind I was wondering what this new experience, my first trip to India would be like. I had looked at hundreds of web pages on Mumbai, the architecture, the tourist sights, the local restaurants and hotels, and was very impressed at Mumbai's new ranking as one of the prime Asian sites for Western corporate development, and thought, this must be some city, indeed! I disembarked and headed towards the yawning airport doors, expecting to encounter a Brave New World.
All of this vanished the moment I entered the terminal. I immediately had a flashback to the final scene in Peter Yates's harrowing film, ''The Year of Living Dangerously'' where Mel Gibson, bloodied and almost blind, is prodded by Filipino soldiers into a bleak, dirty, dimly-lit cavern of an airport, fearing all the time that he would be shot, as a military coup was underway in which Westerners were being slaughtered. Except for the Filipinos, it was a perfect recreation of Chhatrapati Shivaji Int'l Airport (the new name for Mumbai International), right down to the unidentified mouldy growths on the walls.
I suppose the dreary ambience--marble walls that don't seem to ever have been washed, fluorescent fixtures that barely emit any usable light, dirty, cramped passenger lounges--could be forgiven if at least the place was efficient. Well, it's not. Soldiers with machine guns (not Filipino, but just as daunting) stand at the ready, I suppose to shoot anyone trying to smuggle in an extra bottle of scotch (I don't mean to make light of this, but there are a LOT of soldiers, and it seems overkill). I was fortunate, I suppose, being a foreigner, as the customs line was much shorter than for Indian residents, but it was still long and extremely understaffed. The escalators weren't working, and trying to drag three bags down several flights of stairs was no picnic.
There were several x-ray machines (unaccountably, the last was out of the passenger flow, and some passengers easily bypassed it), each with long lines. When I finally was able to come out of the other side of this seemingly undending gauntlet, 45 minutes had passed, and I was ready to pass out from exhaustion. After a long walk to the exit with all my bags in tow--there were no carts available--I emerged from the terminal door into a sea of hundreds of ''helpful'' baggage handlers and taxi drivers, all eager to snatch my bags and take me to God-knows-where. Fortunately, after scanning the crowd for 10 minutes I was able to locate a driver from my hotel and when I got into the car I felt much as Mel must have felt when he escaped from the Filipino authorities.
Returning to the U.S. was just as bad. It's a really nice perk to be able to fly business class on the company dime, but not so much when you have to contend with the tiny, cramped, depressing business class lounge that is allotted to all of the airlines flying out of Mumbai. There is nowhere to sit unless you are willing to watch the sofas and dirty easy chairs like a hawk, so one is generally relegated to the paying bar in front, where a Coke costs Rs. 100. It was a huge relief to leave behind the decrepit surroundings for the luxury of my return flight home.
Mumbai has gained a reputation in the West as one of India's premier cities, the place where many companies want to do business and set up shop. However, it is sad and depressing that the first and last experiences that a traveler will have in Mumbai are at such an unworthy representation of her glory--it is high time that the government took the example of a city like Kochi and gave the traveler what s/he deserves: a gleaming new terminal that mirrors the image that Mumbai is trying to project.
UPDATE Aug. 2004
I flew back into Mumbai a few days ago, and I will say one positive thing this time around--it took practically no time to go through Customs. The plane was right on time (even during a downpour), and I went through Customs, got my bags, and was in my car headed toward the hotel 40 minutes after I deplaned. Compared with Heathrow, that is a miracle. As a result, I'm adding a star to Mumbai's rating (I had rated it 1 star, and am changing it to 2). It's still as dirty and depressing as ever, but I was happy with the efficiency.
