Mumbai, (Bombay) India Day 1 of 2

Mumbai, (Bombay) India. This place is amazing. Depending on whose version it is, there are 15 to 18 million people living here. From the looks of the streets, they all drive cabs. Actually, there really are not very many vehicles for the number of people and half are taxis.

At 2:00 PM we took a tour called Jewish Heritage. We were taken to see all the Bombay sights considered worth seeing. The Gateway of India, Dhobi Ghats, Malabar Hill, Marine drive, Chow Patty Beach, The Cricket Fields, The Crawford Market, The Taj Hotel, the Prince of Wales Museum, The Victoria Terminus and many Colleges, schools and other buildings of noted architecture. The most amazing was Dhobi Ghats. This is the place where they wash the laundry by hand on rocks in the river. Many thousand of pieces daily.

The Dhobi is the lowest class or cast of Indian people. They neither read nor write and there is very little chance they or their children ever will. They come to your house and pick up your dirty laundry or you drop it off. They somehow mark it and very rarely mix up anything. These Dhobis also run a lunch service. They come to your house and pick up a lunch that someone at your home has made for you. They carry these lunches on a 2 foot by 8 foot board they place on their heads. They walk this board full of lunches to a distribution point where they get help putting it down and then the lunches are sorted by destination and forwarded by other board heads.. Supposedly they never mix them up.

There were many very interesting sights and buildings but our main interest, this tour, was the Synagogues. We had a very good guide. She was about a 35 year old Jewish Indian named Yael. There are now only about 8,000 Jews in all of India and 4,000 in Mumbai.

The first temple we saw was Magen David Synagogue built in 1861 by the Sassoon family. They had escaped from Iraq after being persecuted by the Pashas. They were merchants and business men and they made a bundle here dealing opium. It was legal back then. They all left for England and other places in the late 19th century. They identified with the English culture and wanted to stay with it. Before they left they set up huge trust funds that still pay for the Synagogue, schools, uniforms, regular school, religious school and libraries. The students and their families pay nothing. They were not of the Indian race but the present Indian Jews are. Many of these Indian Jews immigrated to Israel. In 1948, when many tried to enter Israel the Orthodox were in control there. They refused them entry saying they were not Jews. For many reasons they changed their minds.

The Rabbi was with us on this tour. In each temple he opened the ark and red from the Torahs.

Once back outside there was a large bunch of boys, the students, coming toward us. They were all in uniform of white shirt and nice slacks. They had just left the School next door. We took pictures with them. We all entered the bus while the rabbi was still talking with them. Bobbi had brought a large bag of chocolates. These are the ones they leave on our pillows nightly when we are too full to eat them. Bobbi brought them out to the Rabbi. It’s a good thing she left and got back on the bus quickly. As soon as they figured what the Rabbi was handing out they mobbed him. I thought they were going to knock him down and they darn near did.


The second temple was The Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue. This is the temple where Bobbi took a picture of me carrying the Torah in its silver box and later reading from it while holding the silver pointer. The picture is real as is the Torah, but I can’t really read Hebrew. I faked it really good though. I wore my glasses and mumbled gibberish very well. You gotta see the picture. The only thing that might give it away is my hat. It was my Nike cap rather then the traditional kind worn for such ceremonies.

The third temple was The Tiphereth Israel Synagogue. These people came from Galilee in the second century. They are the Bene-Israel Jews. The other two had asked for donations in their very obvious donation boxes and then they asked for donations for the cleaning help. This last one had a donation box but you could not find it. Once you did find it, you could not put money in as it was so high on a wall and the slot was so small. These must have been the rich ones. Yael, our guide’s husband was here. He told us that the Temple had just been air conditioned. He was the president.

We then drove back toward the ship making a couple of stops on the way. Traffic in a city of about 15 million is ridiculous. Here too, you barely ever move and you drive by the bluff and shove your way in system. The bigger you vehicle, the more rights you have. Taxis will really run into you if you don’t move. These suckers need some serious slapping around. They are almost as bad as NY cabbies and both probably come from the same place.

There are very few high rise buildings of any kind for the number of people and the size of this city. There are very nice expensive buildings right next to slums. Except for the very expensive hotels and a few expensive apartment buildings, everything is filthy. Dirt hangs form the buildings. Garbage is everywhere. This is a filthy place in most areas. There are multitudes of people living on sidewalks inside boxes and other pieces of material. A bed for a baby was tied in the air between a lamp post and a street sign. Their trains are so crowded people are hanging out the doors.

One of our stops was the Taj Hotel on the way back. It was really beautiful inside and is supposed to have restaurants with decent food. There were some stores but not much was priced under $10,000 US.

Back at the dock there was a warehouse we had to walk through to get to the ship. We had been there that morning. It had about a dozen stalls with Indian junk. We had been there in the morning and Bobbi liked an elephant and some scarves she saw. We said we would be back if he could get more to look at. He did and Bobbi bought about a thousand I think. Earlier she bought a large brass elephant, she said I bought, from a nice old woman. Now we have elephants carved from wood, stone and brass. How did I ever do without them all these years?

Even though it was very crowded everywhere we went and there were many vendors asking you to buy things, no one got nasty on the streets or in the stores. People would say thank you for coming to my store even when they showed you a bunch of things and you bought nothing. While insistent, the street vendors and beggars never got in your way, not allowing you to pass, called you names, or made rude gestures. That was left behind in Cochin. You did feel safe on the streets here even when they were so crowded you couldn’t see two feet ahead.

As I said, this is a very interesting place to see. The history is amazing as are the different peoples. I am very glad to have seen it but I could never live here.

Shamas Sherm Out

(Posted on behalf of Sherman Rootberg)