Just spent the last hour writing this journal entry into my phone at a train station, only to be moved on by the police for smoking in a stairwell, and while walking my writing was deleted. 2nd attempt …
I write this after arriving in Mumbai a little over a week ago, I arrived at 2am in a semi-fugue state after two days travelling through train stations and airports stopping at three countries on the way to Mumbai. I walked out of the airport and was quickly reminded how different some countries are in their offers of assistance regarding getting a tuk tuk, taxi, cup of chai etc. One guy walked at least a couple of kilometres with me while I tried to find an atm that took my card, not one did for several hours.
By 4am and in some more inhabited part of Mumbai the skies were cloudless and blue, the streets as busy as a European town centre in midday. Literally couldn't wrap my head around how it was 4am Indian time and bright blue skies.
I spent a couple of days walking around different parts of Mumbai, looking at the thousands upon thousands of street stalls, selling snack food, chai stands, tarpaulins with many clothes splayed upon them, people searching for an item they want to buy, reminded me of several markets I had visited in various countries.
Walking through different areas I saw some narrow entrances to different streets, and walked into several corridors, residential areas with left and right junctions that would make Ariadne proud of a more difficult labyrinth compared to the one she created to hold the minotaur.
It holds tied to first place with the back alleys of Marrakesh, and if it wasn't for my experience spending hours upon hours lost in their winding passages I would have no doubt after hours of walking through Mumbai's equivalent walked back into the street I had entered, falling to the floor, babbling and cursing and blessing at the same time the God of architecture for the gift of hubris.
Some nights I managed to sleep in a hostel that after booking existed and wasn't full, other nights after walking for hours I laid my head on my backpack and slept on the concrete for a few hours before picking it back up and walking for hours again.
A few days ago, I met up with a few guys on the streets and we got talking, went to a shop that sold cheap spirits, I bought a few bottles of Indian Reserve whiskey (not sure I had a reason beyond the suggestion, don't normally drink whiskey, maybe because I've never drank it before MJ the voice of temptations suggested it, sort of associated with electrochemistry in a contemporary art video game, that should be recognisable to some people).
We sat in front of a shuttered shop front and drank whiskey, while I listened to their current positions in life after telling mine. One guy was a tour guide, he showed me many of his clients, his children, and how he had moved to Mumbai several years ago and shown people from all over the world the sights to see in Mumbai and how happy they were with his service.
Another guy was married from Jaipur and looking to earn money to support his family, out of work, hooked me up with some decent greenery, and then a young lad who was introduced as Shiva told me how he could only find work at a vegetable stand for four hours a day, couldn't find a way to earn more and was looking for better work, I told him of how much he could get paid in Europe for picking vegetables, though we all knew how difficult it could be to get to Europe for a lad without a passport, let alone the money for visas.
Eventually we got seperated and I walked around several streets, into a different area of the city.
I smoked a couple of joints of cheap seeds, sticks, stalks and strands of leafybuds that were known as Thai quality in Amsterdam, and a joint of "Mumbai's best, sticky buds that were coated in something to make them that sticky to the touch.
Barricades had been set up blocking some streets showing as accessible on Google maps, other streets involved walking through tunnels, tip-toeing through people sleeping on a flip flop on the ground, after a while walking to a quiet area in the middle of the night.
I walked along these streets for hours, listening to the voice of society, of the street, part of the mindscape that makes up the collective hive mind of living things. I looked at a dog and seemed I could pick up it's thoughts, and observed how it reacted to the other thoughts that were also part of the city.
For example, I was walking along behind a dog, it's tail wagging happily from side to side and it had it's nose in the air, when an invisible clown from out of sight said, or thought "CATCH THE *APIST!" and the dog said/thought "CATCH IT! WHERE IS IT!" while barking and then other dogs joined in with their barks. For anyone who thinks it's only the plant that causes paranoia, being started at suspiciously from a number of people say outside converted storage containers while you, the only white person for miles around is walking next to barking dogs can certainly make a difference to one's mind.
Eventually I entered a different part of the city, unmolested save a nerve near my brain inside my skull throbbing from high stresses, maybe that can be an example of howolcommon such experiences can be - imagine walking into a saloon in the Old West with a sign around your neck saying "Down with the U.S.A." and you can get a fraction of the…paranoia that other experiences contain.
I am writing outside the train station, reminded of the consequences of hatred from an impersonal super A.I., and think of that is my fate, a immobile jelly unable to express it's torments, I may as well make the most of things before that "end". One would much prefer to relax in a hammock in a state of harmony and contentment, but the future seems mutable, how dull and boring it would be if not.
Decided to go the long way to Goa, see a nature reserve as I visit several small towns, and see more of the beauty of India. Namaste, as they say in Hindi, and may your divinity and infernality be balanced healthily.
.
