Good morning on this second day of my stay in Mumbai. Hopefully, I can get out of the hotel today and explore a little. I am not in a rush, but I do realize my stay in Mumbai is pretty short and. if I am going to do some shopping, this is the time and place! I also need to make my annual excursion to the Taj Hotel for lunch and a walk around. It is one of my favorite places to just be.
I posted this photo last night with no explanation, so I thought I’d tell the story. I am staying on the second floor and across the way, workers are renovating an apartment. Becasue we are doing a bit of a renovation project back at NoHo FUMC, it peaked my interest. So I sat and watched them for a while, from my dry spot in my hotel room.
While I watched, the rain picked up and persisted. It is Monsoon season after all, and everyone here says “we need the rain.” There were perhaps eight men on the crew working. The one I was initially focused on was the man plastering the balcony, leaning over the top and plastering in the rain. It looked like he’d rebuilt it, or part of it, because it was all bricks and mortar when he started and he smoothed it out to be a lovely surface. Then I noticed the guy on his left in the window, standing in an open hole, laying the marble tile around the window sill. (It is pretty far up…) Then I noticed the guy on his right, sitting in an window space, maybe taking a break. Inside the apartment I could see people walking around making decisions on wall surfaces, electricity, painting and other inside whatnots.
I am always surprised and amazed by the way people adapt to their situations; the way we are productive even when the circumstances aren’t just right; the way other cultures make it work. It helps me to realize my privilege and also wonder at how unnecessarily complicated my culture can be.