Mumbai by morn

Took a 6 a.m. drive to the airport today. (Well, more like 6:20 a.m.)

Literally hundreds of runners, joggers and fast walkers along the entire stretch from Cuffe Parade to the Sealink - all, no doubt, practicing for the Mumbai Marathon next Sunday. The roads were what Mumbai's roads should always be but only are during the wee hours - fast, clean, clear.

The airport too was blissfully uncrowded. Usually, the ratio of people coming to see off (or welcome) a traveler is 16 to one. And they all hang around till the flight takes off, probably in the belief that they can be seen from the air during take off and thereby provide support and reassurance to the traveler. Today there were barely ten or twelve cars at the departure gate and even the lone cop on duty couldn't bring himself to toot his whistle at them. Felt like Newark - except for the construction all around.

On the return drive, dawn was breaking and smog smothered the city. Roadside fires from pavement dwellers added black smoke to the pall that hung over the highway. From the Sealink, one could see the towers that define the city's skyline, emerging ghost-like from the mist. I couldn't help wonder what this city looks like to someone who visits it for the first time from rural or small-town India. Like some other-worldly place, no doubt, forbidding, alluring, foreign. It's no wonder it's been a magnet for so long.

And as we turned past Babulnath onto the ridged and scalloped surface of Marine Drive, the sun hung over Nariman Point like an incandescent fried egg.

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