A tale of two cities

I originate today from Agra in the lobby of the Mugul Sheraton which is 2.5 km from the Taj Mahal. The two pictures in the album above were taken before we left Mumbai yesterday afternoon. One shows a partially hardened river of sewage and trash flowing through a part of the city and the other shows the Inorbit shopping mall which features stores and luxury items that rival those in any modern Western city. The twist is that both pictures were taken while standing on the exact same spot, facing different sides of the street.

Our last stop in Mumbai was to visit a retail company that does a substantial amount of business from Inorbit. There it owns a bookstore (the Indian equivalent of Barnes and Nobles), a high end department store, and a type of “one stop” grocery store (similar to Target’s, only much nicer). After we were done with our visit, we crossed the street to wait for our tour bus and was treated to the putrid stench coming from the river of sludge that we initially smelled from across the street.

The scene was a reminder that India is a land of contrasts. You have on one side of the road a modern shopping mall modeled after western equivalents. Yet on the other side you have unprocessed sewage with garbage stacked on top of it. After we got into the tour bus, we felt so disgusted we all reached for our hand sanitizers.