The open windows of our battered bus gave us the aromas of spices, perfumes, diesel smoke, and the manure of oxen, in a steamy but not unpleasant mix, and voices rose up everywhere above ripples of unfamiliar music. Every corner carried gigantic posters, advertising Indian films. The supernatural colours of the posters streamed behind the tanned face of the tall Canadian.
"Oh, sure, it's a lot safer. This is Gotham City, man. The street kids here have more ways to take your money than hell's casino."
"It's a city thing, man," the short one explained. "All cities are the same. It's not just here. It's the same in New York, or Rio, or Paris. They're all dirty and they're all crazy. A city thing, you know what I'm sayin'? You get to the rest of India, and you'll love it. This is a great country, but the cities are truly fucked, I gotta say."
"And the goddamn hotels are in on it," the tall one added. "You can get ripped off just sittin' in your hotel room and smokin' a little weed. They do deals with the cops to bust you and take all your money. Safest thing is to stick together and travel in groups, take my word."
"And get outta the cities as fast as you can," the short one said. "Holy shit! D'you see that?"
The bus had turned into the curve of a wide boulevard that was edged by huge stones, tumble-rolled into the turquoise sea. A small colony of black, ragged slum huts was strewn upon those rocks like the wreckage of some dark and primitive ship. The huts were burning.
"God-_damn! Check that out! That guy's cookin', man!" the tall Canadian shouted, pointing to a man who ran towards the sea with his clothes and hair on fire. The man slipped, and smashed heavily between the large stones. A woman and a child reached him and smothered the flames with their hands and their own clothes.
Other people were trying to contain the fires in their huts, or simply stood, and watched, as their flimsy homes blazed. "D'you see that? That guy's gone, I tell ya."
"Damn right!" the short one gasped.
The bus driver slowed with other traffic to look at the fire, but then revved the engine and drove on. None of the cars on the busy road stopped. I turned to look through the rear window of the bus until the charred humps of the huts became minute specks, and the brown smoke of the fires was just a whisper of ruin.
At the end of the long, seaside boulevard, we made a left turn into a wide street of modern buildings. There were grand hotels, with liveried doormen standing beneath coloured awnings. Near them were exclusive restaurants, garlanded with courtyard gardens. Sunlight flashed on the polished glass and brass facades of airline offices and other businesses. Street stalls sheltered from the morning sunlight beneath broad umbrellas. The Indian men walking there were dressed in hard shoes and western business suits, and the women wore expensive silk. They looked purposeful and sober, their expressions grave as they bustled to and from the large office buildings.
The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future. I liked it.
"We're almost there," my companion declared. "City centre's just a few blocks. It's not really what you'd call the downtown area.
It's just the tourist beat where most of the cheap hotels are.
The last stop. It's called Colaba."
The two young men took their passports and travellers' cheques from their pockets and pushed them down the fronts of their trousers. The shorter man even removed his watch, and it, too, joined the currency, passport, and other valuables in the marsupial pouch of his underpants. He caught my eye, and smiled.
"Hey," he grinned. "Can't be too careful!"
I stood and bumped my way to the front. When the bus stopped I was the first to take the steps, but a crowd of people on the footpath prevented me from moving down to the street. They were touts-street operatives for the various hoteliers, drug dealers, and other businessmen of the city-and they shouted at us in broken English with offers of cheap hotel rooms and bargains to be had. First among them in the doorway was a small man with a large, almost perfectly round head. He was dressed in a denim shirt and blue cotton trousers. He shouted for silence from his companions, and then turned to me with the widest and most radiant smile I'd ever seen.
"Good mornings, great sirs!" he greeted us. "Welcome in Bombay!
