MOLI VIEW™

Mumbai is a total assault on the senses. We deplaned from our 14-hour direct flight from JFK near midnight and emerged into the humid, fluorescent-lit chaos of the arrivals area. A black cloud of hungry mosquitoes waited to greet us, but nowhere among the sweaty, faux-turban-clad Indian men dressed in polyester tunics did we see a sign with our names on it, or our driver to the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower. It was near 100 degrees, even at night, but I'd read in my Lonely Planet guidebook that women are expected to cover their arms and legs, so I wandered curbside in yoga pants and a long-sleeve tee, dragging my wheely suitcase and doing my very best to ignore a dead dog, run over and left in the middle of the road leading away from the Chhatrapati Shivaji (try saying that three times fast!) International Airport.

Quite a few people spoke English and tried to be helpful. Finally we stumbled upon our driver for the night – or at least a driver: It was unclear if he was our original chauffeur or just someone volunteering for the job. We went veering through the dark streets, which were teeming with people who I soon realized weren't just hanging out: They had nowhere else to go. The sidewalk was home — where they lived, slept, ate, went to the bathroom, and possibly, judging from the number of little children afoot, had sex. A few rags scattered on the ground sufficed as a bed, and even prime real estate – the sidewalks in front of museums and monument buildings — were not off limits to the poor, who migrated in the hundreds if thousands each month to the city that is still called Bombay by most residents, despite the 1996 name change. Bombay, where, as Indians like to say, no one went to bed on an empty stomach (even if they never really went to bed on a bed per se).

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