I think the image of being thrown into a body of water and told to "sink or swim," has been widely unappreciated and stamped with the demoralizing label of dead metaphor, when really only a small piece of its significance is being taken into account. True, it is often used in reference to swiftly adapting to a new situation, completely out of necessity, but I think some of the more interesting components of this metaphor are being overlooked. This method of swimming acclamation operates under the assumption that everyone has some sort of natural ability to adapt. Maybe it seems a little harsh, but there are plenty of successful classes built around the concept of throwing a newborn into a pool of water and letting them tap into the abilities nature has graced them with. And I think this is the part of the concept that people are overlooking- yes I have been tossed into a brand new situation, but the important part about that is some part of me is equipped with the natural tools to adapt, and those are the exact tools I have been exercising over the past two weeks.
I have never been the type of person who would prefer easing into situations. My comfort zone is not exactly treated with the care and delicacy it should perhaps be afforded. I much prefer sudden challenges; being presented with something big to deal with at my own pace, rather than being given little tid bits of change over a longer period of time. After all, you need a full context in order to properly understand any kind of differences, so that is exactly what I was looking for upon arrival in India.
My first full day in India was spent in Mumbai and was exactly what I was looking for- full cultural immersion, greatly from the role of observer, though not entirely. My day was not filled with your typical tourist obligations (though that is not to say I didn't visit the Gateway of India, for example), but rather I got to have a more day-to-day Mumbai experience. We had a task for the morning of running two pretty simple errands, both of which in Old Bombay. Old Bombay is the original heart of the city located on the main island, and New Bombay (Navi Mumbai) is a sea of suburban apartment complexes, houses, parks, the works.
Anyway, the first thing we had to do in the morning was pick up a transformer from an electronics store in what was so charmingly introduced to me as the "grey market" of Mumbai. We were searching for a tiny shop on Lamington Road, a road comprised almost exclusively of electronics shops. In Old Bombay areas are organized by what they sell, so you have lots of tiny shops that sell a couple of very specific things. Store owners find really cheap sources for one or two products so they will only sell those things, to ensure that you can always find whatever you are looking for at the lowest possible price. All of the stores that sell similar things are blocked together so that if one place doesn't have it, they can just give you the name of another store that might. This way everything is reasonably accessable and, most important of all, cheap.
It was in this first task that I encountered the sort of leisure that I noticed throughout the city, and in India in general for that matter. Bombay is a huge city so on the surface it appears to never be at rest- so many moving individual parts initially give it an overwhelming and hectic feel. But no single part is actually in any particular hurry to get things done. On the car ride over we passed people wandering from place to place, stopping to stand and enjoy a cup of chai, or just to have a conversation on the side of the road. When we got to the shop (after a considerable amount of confusion and stumbling through tiny streets in our search) we discovered that they didn't actually open until just before noon. It is simply understood that things are going to get done, so why rush around to get there?
After a stop at a store in a different area that sold almost exclusively pasta, cookies, and cheese (it isn't a guarentee that the specific items will have any semblance of a connection), we headed to Colaba for lunch. This is the area of the city that your average tourist would probably be spending time in, so I didn't receive quite as many qiuizical stares in response to my wandering about. We ate at a Chinese restaurant, where I was first exposed to the Indianization of various cuisines. I had never really thought about it, but since Americans tend to pull foreign foods in their own comfortable directions, it stands to reason that other countries do the same. So I got my first taste of an Indian rendition on ethnic food, and I must say it was pretty great. Probably truer to the actual flavours than Asian-American food, but the spice is gloriously cranked up.
That more or less concluded my day in Mumbai. There was a bit more wandering around, but for the most part the rest of the evening was fairly relaxed. All in all, I think it was exactly what I needed for my first day- glimpses of the types of things I had in store (though of course urban and rural India are two very different things) that allowed me to start building a basis of the cultural understanding I should always be looking for. It let me start to formulate questions and impressions that would act as a framework for the weeks to come.
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