Stars in Mumbai

I want to live in a 5 star hotel. The Mumbai Leela Kempinsky, the joint I’m holed up in now, will do nicely, thank you, with its palatial marble entry filled with cascading fountains, crystal chandeliers, massive golden sculptures, great ivory carvings, fine art, fresh flowers, carpets, fineries, and discreet servants at your back & call. My bedroom is a masterpiece of quiet luxury, with fine sheets & towels, sunken tub with perfect water, lamps that dim, even a scale in the bathroom. The Indian Times, wrapped in an embroidered linen sack, is delivered to my door in the morning. The Leela offers all the comforts I’m used to at home, plus perfect service, which I’m not.

Security is heavy here; the taxi wasn’t allowed past the front gate & my luggage was scanned before I could walk through the great front doors. After what happened at the Taj last year, I’m glad for that. Airport security outside the USA, however, is less scrupulous; going through the Hong Kong airport security check we could keep our shoes on & no one looked at the liquids in my quart-sized plastic bag.

Breakfast was a mile-long buffet table, with delicious coffee, croissants as good as real French ones, and everything one could possibly wish for to eat, Indian & western style, laid out on great porcelain platters and served under hot silver domes, from perfect, individually prepared scrambled eggs all the way down to home-made strawberry jam. I did my best.

The voyage was long & exhausting, but thankfully uneventful. I knew I was in India the moment stepped off the plane and caught my first whiff of air, thick with the odors of spice and smoke, and had to wave away the big-eyed, scrawny beggar children who crowded around my taxi at the airport, hands outstretched... medem, please, please medem, please.

Contrasts in India astonish; fast jets, slow roads, opulent palaces, homeless misery on the streets, 5 star buffet breakfast & starvation outside. All the things that remind me I’m in India.

(written in Bombay, mailed from Goa. More about that anon…)