I was in the van with our driver today, headed to an errand, and about a mile from my apartment we hit a guy on a motorcycle in the middle of an intersection while going about 30 mph. I saw the whole thing coming, and yelled three times for him to watch out, but between the language barrier and the closure rate, it didn't help. We basically t-boned the guy, and he flew up and hit the windshield right in front of me, from which he then flew about 15 feet. I always thought it was hyperbole when people say someone looked "like a rag doll" but that's exactly what it looked like. Remarkably after he landed he got up and limped over to the median. He didn't have any visible injuries, but his leg was obviously hurt, and he was holding the back of his head, which I'm sure he hit on the car, as he wasn't wearing a helmet.
A little background info here. Street justice is a thing in this country, and it happens a lot. The events in that link happened just last week. Often crowds can get violent when there is a perceived injustice, and there's little the police can do about it.
So, after the impact of the collision, my driver got out to see if the guy was ok, at which point a large crowd began to gather. It wasn't long before they had basically surrounded the van that I was sitting in, yelling at me. I wasn't driving, of course, but the guy in the car with the phone that costs more than they make in 6 months was an easy outlet for them, I guess.
At this point, the driver got back in to move our van out of the flow of traffic, whereupon he gave me the most unnecessary bit of advice I've ever received, stating "stay in the car, sir." Once again it wasn't long before the van was surrounded by the mob, and it was starting to look like it was going to escalate. I got on the phone with one of my teammates at that point, to give him the details of where we were, and what was going on, just in case things got worse. Thankfully, a police officer showed up, and he prudently jumped into the back of our van and we got the hell out of there. We got to the police station so my driver could go through the formalities and reports, and I found a rickshaw to take me back to my apartment. We later found out that the guy on the motorcycle was at fault (basically he ran the light), and his only major injury was a broken arm. I honestly thought he was going to be dead.
Can't say I ever want to go through this again.
On a lighter note, they're redoing the sidewalk in front of our building with these interlocking paver bricks that are EVERYWHERE here, so they've brought in this big metal box thing and filled it with water. I guess they'll use it to mix mortar with. Anyway, it wasn't even there 12 hours before this happened:
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| Well, the sign does say "green Mumbai clean Mumbai..." |
As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of issues with people's access to clean water here, and these kids were taking full advantage of this opportunity. They were having a blast, laughing and splashing around, but they'd also thought to bring/find some soap with them, and you can see the guy in the t-shirt washing some clothes. They later washed themselves with it too, and dunked back into the water to rinse off. There's no way to know how long they'd been able to clean up like that, but from the way they acted it seemed like it had been a while. I think the bricklayers are going to be in for a surprise when they try to mix mortar with that soapy water.
We also finally got clear of another of the last couple remaining requirements for documentation for our residency here. As I'm told other countries do as well, even though you have a visa allowing you to be in the country you still have to obtain a residency authorization. I won't bore you here with the labyrinthine process, but just know that it was an enormous pain in the ass, even though we'd hired a specialist to help us through the process. I don't think it would even be possible otherwise. We had to visit this dank office on the 4th floor of a British era building, which was staffed by people along the lines of what you'd find at the local BMV attitude-wise, but adding in the language barrier. We managed to get through it without causing an international incident, which was about as well as we could have hoped.
The one good thing about it was that we had to go to south Mumbai, where you can actually see some interesting architecture. We were driving, so I wasn't able to get many pictures but this one came out ok:
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| Try to imagine it without the taxi in the foreground |
That is the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the largest train station in the city. Two of the three local train lines terminate here, as well as trains to/from other cities, so as you can imagine it sees an alarming number of people every day. I'll try to get more pictures of the interesting buildings the next time I'm in that area.
I'll leave you with this:
Number of people I've seen actively shitting outdoors, in broad daylight, while living in Columbus: 0
Number of people I've seen actively shitting outdoors, in broad daylight, the month that I've been here: 2
I hope to not need to update this statistic, but the trend is not promising.
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