Leaving Mumbai chumps, arriving to luxury though

Ello all, I write this retrospectively so I will have forgotten all the deep reflections and novel contradictions that make traveling such a jovial experience for the traveler and a pleasurable-material-input-source for the reader. So sorry.

We left Mumbai on Imodium, after having paid our taxi driver to take us to the central station, only for him to take us to the wrong side of town and the wrong terminal. Before I forget to mention, the reason that there is two names for Mumbai/New Delhi is as follows, the coast was initially colonized by the portugese who named it beautiful bay ‘bom baih’ (sorry for the spelling, portugese is a crazy language). When the british came, they changed it to the more sensibly named Bombay, mixing the portugese Bom with the acceptably pronounced Bay. After the british were rightly kicked out of the country, the city maintained its name until recently when the local hindu nationalist party changed the name to reflect their belief in (enthusiastically insert name of Hindu goddess that I can’t remember the name of, starts with ‘M’). interestingly, the name Bombay persists despite its colonial heritage, primarily because the non-hindu nationalist presence in the city unsurprisingly does not appreciate the religious fervor that gave rise to the name change and perceive it as an affront to their own beliefs.

Anyways, our anal side allowed for the auto rickshaw (three wheeled contraption that manages not to crash into anything despite the drivers refusing to care about the presence of anything, ANYTHING ELSE on the road) driver’s mistake, and we were fine to get on the right train in the right train station.

The journey from Mumbai to Pune is a couple of hours and is supposed to be one of the most beautiful landscapes in India: Mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls. I was a little sad because we traveled on 1^st class which ironically meant that we were chilled to the bone with opaque windows which blocked out the scenery. Luckily there were doors found ajar at the end of the carriages where we could warm our bodies and marvel at the scenery. Such an amazing country!

We arrived at Pune station and some good friends of singoalla’s family came and picked us up. They were so nice to us, we could only say ‘thank you’ over and over again as they put us in a very nice hotel, showed us around the city, cooked for us and bought us many unmerited colourful gifts. I found it very interesting to talk to the father of the house, who was happy to talk about philosophical concepts and the philosophy attached to the various religions of India. I particularly appreciated what he had to say about the importance of attention. It’s the most precious thing we have, the one thing that allows us to control what will happen to us. Concentrate on yourself, your goals, your own existence, rather than letting your impulses guide you. It is a constant battle to fall for what is easiest to hand, to satisfy short term desires, but eventually these things do not fulfill you, but drag you down. You have to learn to appreciate your own existence, that you think, that you can lead your life despite the constraints that may arise, that you can be happy. Just concentrate J.

Some people might take that the wrong way though. You could, and some do, just take this as a way to ignore or dismiss the suffering around you. The point is that you acknowledge and work towards alleviating suffering, but at the same time you think positively, not in constant anguish about the suffering of people because this won’t help people and would make you a very depressing person to be around. You ain’t ever getting rid of my dialectical materialist side, ya get me.

Who cares about any of this anyway, I have colourful traditional clothing now! Oh, I was also continuously sick whilst here too, having at one point to rush into the most disgusting public toilet you could imagine. Thank god it existed.

On the topic of god, I also forget to mention something that hit me from the beginning of my journey here. This is probably the most religious and spiritual place I have been too. And yeah, I know, a lot of you atheists out there would probably be horrified to hear that. But I don’t frown on it here. The festivals are beautiful to behold, the statues of gods are equally dazzling and ornate, whilst most of the values and the morality that Hinduism espouses are both positive and deeply meaningful. Maybe we have been really lucky on our trip so far, but most of the people we have had the pleasure of properly meeting and talking to have refreshingly been upright, descent humanitarian people. Despite what many atheists may believe, a lot of the positive values we hold in the west are derived from the teachings of Christianity and provides us with our ‘non religious’ moral compass. In a way, the more atheistic we’ve become, the more nialistic we have too. Nothing matters to people growing up anymore, status and drugs matter. The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater in this respect.

That’s enough talking about what everybody knows already, just one last thing. Got a new phone number yesterday so you can phone me (not after 7pm british time though) or text me on 0091 990 274 0486. I would much appreciate your greetings.

Much love, Carlos.