Sam and I are woken in our slum quarters by the noise of Mrs. Khalsa’s family getting ready for school and work. Sam wastes no time in leaving to look for a better place to stay tonight, even before he considers breakfast. I pack up too, but tonight I am flying out of Mumbai International Airport at midnight. I don’t want to get there before the end of the day. I ask Mrs. Khalsa if I can stay until noon or late morning, or if I can at least leave my loaded bike at her place until she come home at three so I don’t have to leave for the airport too early. She will have none of that. She wants me out the door before I can even shower or finish using the bathroom. She isn’t even a bit polite about it. There is no offer of coffee or anything. She has my money, which is all she wanted. Now she wants me to get the fuck out.
I do without a fight, only because I find her despicable. She asked me if I was a good Christian before asking me to stay with her. I should have asked her the same, though I am beginning to think that combinations of words is an oxymoron. I stew about her meanness, deceit (stealing business from her Christian workplace) and greed for a couple hours after I leave. I even contemplate reporting her actions to her workplace, but that would require me making a scene since she is the receptionist. I am best to distance myself from her and her Christian pettiness.
There are no places I can enter with a loaded bike and I need to stay right with it to avoid having things stolen from it. I pick up breakfast at an outdoor café, but in this city one wants to avoid patios because of the filth and noise, and the ever-present beggars. I wheel my bike over to the Gateway of India and try to hang out there, but today there are too many people trying to crowd in around my bike to get their hands of something so I have to move on. I return to the Prince of Wales Museum for a reprieve from the hassles of the city street life.
I am too restless to remain, and decide that I want out of this city. It would have been better to have found a place last night where I could leave my bike for a few hours today, but that’s a mute point now. I throw my leg over my bike for the last time in Asia and make my way across the peninsula to Back Bay. I follow its shore north and west to the top of the bay, then head north past the Long Distance Bus Depot and continue on towards to the airport.
Less than half an hour north of the bus depot, I pass through Dharavi, the worst urban slum I have encountered anywhere on my trip. It is a slimy, stinky wasteland of pollution and overcrowding. It holds me spellbound while I crawl by it, keeping one eye on it and the other on the traffic congestion. Pools of contaminated with sewage and other human-related waste lie between the flimsy buildings. At one point a pass a young boy, nine or ten years old, squatting with his pants down not more than six metres from the road. He is in the process of passing a large tape worm, a metre of which is hanging out of his asshole. I am not feeling too well.
I keep going. The airport is only 5 km further. It is larger than Lisbon’s but almost as accessible. It is definitely smaller and less congested than Toronto’s Lester B Pearson International Airport. I welcome its comparative order and cleanliness, after surviving the traffic and the slums. It is even less congested and at least here I am left alone with my bike as I sit with my back to the wall off to the side.
It is only 2 pm when I arrive, a full ten hours before my flight. It is a waste of time but at least I am here and in easy range of my transportation back home. I remind myself there are worse places to be while I try to read and keep myself awake. I know it will be a long haul to get home, perhaps the longest of my life in airports and on planes in one go, but I know I can endure it this once. It can’t be worse than that train ride from Quetta to Rawalpindi, and at least for this trip I am in good health. Frank should be arriving in Mumbai today and Kersten, my host in Copenhagen, will have arrived in India three weeks ago. I have no way of contacting either.
The rest of the afternoon eventually passes and at 10 pm I prepare my bike for the trip by removing the pedals and reattaching them inside the pedal arms, half-deflating the tires, taping the pump to the frame with duct tape, turning the handlebars sideways and curling them under and removing the odometer, water bottle and any unnecessary add-ons. I have brought with a new duffel bag I bought yesterday and I load all my bags into it except for one pannier, half-emptied, into which I stuff my handlebar bag. I check my duffel bag and take the bike to the special baggage counter. By 11:45pm I am seated on my Swiss Air jet bound for Hong Kong. At 12:15 am, Valentine’s Day, the flight coasts down the runway on time and takes off.
PHOTO: Dharavi slums
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