I was following the very questionable instructions of google maps, trying to reach Phoenix Market City – the biggest (and beloved by me) shopping mall in Mumbai. But google was leading me further and further down backstreets and I felt far from safe. Though my surroundings were no less fascinating than they were nerve inducing. To my right, traffic slid in the mud, veering round a flock of goats which stood calmly by as one of their comrades had its belly slashed open. It happened so fast I barely realised what had happened as the blood gushed down in great streams from the hanging carcass, running in rivulets along the street. The stench of raw meat, the manure and the flies which buzzed endlessly about made my senses fraught with excitement and unease.
The road wound up and down, veered left and right. People fried and tossed great slabs of naan upon enormous tawas; others shouted and waved to me from their cars. Children pulled at my shorts for attention, and one lonesome goat climbed into an empty auto-rickshaw. Then the ground seemed to shake and the mighty rumble of a jet-engine cut across the commotion as a plane soared directly over the slums, coming in to land at nearby Chhatrapati Shivaji.
I emerged from the back roads cursing Google maps, though also admitting I’d just had the most adventurous walk to the shops in my life. Safely inside the mall, I breakfasted on burger and crisps before getting unearthly frustrated as every single travel website rejected my bank cards. I was trying desperately to book a bus or a train – literally anything that could get me out of Mumbai. I had now been in India’s largest city for over two weeks, and it had been a magnificent two weeks, but it was time to leave – damn it! How long more was I going to be stuck here?
Travelling around India is not easy. Going to the tourist office means engaging in psychological warfare and more likely than not getting cheated of your money. To book a train ticket online you need a valid Indian phone number and you have to register this number along with a bucket load of personal details onto a government website, and when that’s all said and done you have to hope they’ll accept your international bank card. Which in my case they won’t.
I cooled off at a pub chain called The Irish House which is found throughout India. The Irish House serves Irish food like fish and chips and Irish beer like King Fisher. Yes… It’s extremely authentic. It was fascinating to be in a pub that was so heavily branded around Ireland and yet didn’t serve Guinness.
After my Irish Kingfisher 😉and a spontaneous visit to SMOKE – the sizzler for an overdue lunch, I got an auto-rickshaw to Bandra where I met a guy called Singh. I reached out to Singh from a volunteering website. He’s a Bollywood script writer trying to convert one of his scripts into an English Language novel, and is looking for native English speakers to help proof-read his work. His vacancy is already filled, but we agreed to meet for a coffee anyway. He was with a Canadian woman called Miri from Ontario. Miri had just flown in from Egypt. We drank some tea and talked about R.R.R. – the Bollywood film which recently won big at the Oscars for its original song Naatu Naatu. We also talked about Sing’s other projects and Miri told me about how suffocating it is to travel in Egypt. Not from the heat (though there’s that as well) but because everyone in Egypt assumes they know what you want as a tourist. You can’t speak or connect properly with people because they’re too busy trying to throw you on a camel. Then Singh took Miri and I on a walk and I ended up passing through yet more of the slums.
Back at my hostel, in a dark and shadowy dorm which I share with 13 other people, I spoke to the guy in the bed next to me. He was preparing to leaving India for the very first time. He was around my age and going to study at the university of Istanbul. He appeared very excited in a reserved way, and I felt excited for him. After wishing him good luck I ventured back outside.
Nitesh Prajapati pulled up on his scooter. He’s a local living nearby and offered to show me more of Mumbai before I leave. If I ever manage to leave that is…
Nitesh took me to the place where he went to college, and to the neighbourhood where he’d go out and party during that time. Hiranandani Powai – another hidden section of Mumbai I’d never have discovered by myself. We walked through the empty streets enjoying the peace. Nitesh is Hindu, but told me that most of his friends are Muslim. A breeze sprang up from nowhere. Where was it coming from? Why did I suddenly feel like I was in another land altogether?
I thought we were in the thick of a metropolis, but, when I got back on Nitesh’s scooter and we soared through the dark and windy passage of the night, I suddenly realised we had left the urban behind completely and were now in the thick of a forest. I was no longer in the heart of Mumbai but in its lungs. The vegetation around us created a welcoming cold. How had we so quickly bypassed such a huge city? It was like we’d shot through a secret passage and emerged many hundreds of miles away…
But this cold and welcoming forest was haunted, Nitesh revealed to me, as we sped further and further into it. People have seen figures standing between the trees at night. People have heard strange and unmistakable sounds. Mumbaikers avoid coming here after sunset.
I love hearing a good ghost story, but Nitesh went on to reveal that the forest is in fact populated with tribes. Many indigenous people live in this 3000 acre spread of land with no connection to the city that constantly encroaches upon them. While the presence of tribes’ people goes along way in explaining the ghost stories, somehow, this knowledge only made our surroundings feel even creepier. Then Nitesh mentioned the Leopards. ‘Wait… there are Leopards here?’ I asked. Of course there were Leopards. Why wouldn’t there be? And crocodiles too. The way Nitesh mentioned them you’d have thought he was talking about squirrels and ducks. But his tone changed when he told me that this place is in danger.
A large section of the forest is being cut down to make way for an extension of the Mumbai metro. Nitesh has been one of the protestors. He showed me a tattoo of a rose upon his neck and expressed his desire to get a grape vine tattooed across his upper chest. He cares so strongly about wildlife so he’s pretty cut up about the metro extension. I can see why he and other locals are angry. Muggy Mumbai needs a place like this. You can breathe different here. But for the tribes’ people of whom this place is home, the metro extension will be much more impactful. Potentially devastating.
I wanted to explore this place further. Aaery Milk Colony as Nitesh told me it is named. The thought of ghosts and leopards made it eerie as hell and I was captivated. It seems absurd that it’s soon to be invaded by the construction of an urban transport system. But it seems that in Mumbai’s periphery the urban and the wild are already at war. Leopards have regularly been sighted in the suburbs of East Goregaon preying on stray dogs, and in 2021 a 4-year-old boy was dragged away by a Leopard right outside his home before being rescued and admitted to hospital by locals. https://www.timesnownews.com/mumbai/article/4-year-old-boy-rescued-leopard-aarey-colony-mumbai/816987
Nitesh drove us back into the city and once again, it was as if we bypassed a couple hundred miles as we suddenly fell back into the muggy heat of East Goregaon. I now felt I wasn’t ready to leave Mumbai after all. There is still so much to see and explore here. Not only is it colossal and widespread, there are so many layers of history, outrageous wealth divides, clashes of culture, religion and geography, and secret places – pockets that can only be discovered if you go out and speak to the inhabitants of this crazy, fantastic and utterly mad megalopolis.
