![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2012\/01\/DSC00217-rotated.jpg\")
<\/a>ncarnation, is a yogi, and in another is a master dancer).\u00a0\u00a0The one-time temple has major sculpted stones depicting stories about Shiva, and picturing his well-known son, Ganesha, the god with the elephant head.\u00a0\u00a0By the time the Portuguese reached Bombay, the temple had been abandoned, so the Portuguese used the cave, in part, for target practice. The Portuguese connection was part of Portugal\u2019s quest for spices under Henry the Navigator, which for a time created far-flung trading ports that included Goa in India and Macau in China.\u00a0\u00a0Claiming what was then seven islands, the Portuguese claim became part of a dowry of the Portuguese princess who married Charles II of England; hence, Bombay passed into the arms of the British East India Trading Company.<\/p>\nMuch of what we saw today dated from the British period (which lasted until 1947) and is close to the area around the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. The Victoria Train Terminal, built, like so many of the late 19th<\/sup> century buildings, such as the High Court and the sumptuous The new and the old is reflected, as well, in the local dhobi ghat we visited.\u00a0\u00a0A dhobi ghat (the name of a train station in Singapore) is an outdoor laundry (dhobi is a washerman; at least all the workers in the ghat, which is a riverbank, were men), and this one constitutes one of the largest slums in the city.\u00a0\u00a0There are four of these areas, and I understand that workers in the slum earn about $200 a month, which is enough to send money home to families left behind.<\/p>\n We saw the former home of the Tata family, India\u2019s largest group, who also call Mumbai their headquarters.\u00a0\u00a0They represent an interesting theme in Indian history, too, being Parsis\u2014Persians who emigrated centuries ago and found a home in Bombay.\u00a0\u00a0The Parsis worship fire, and you may know them as Zoroasters.\u00a0\u00a0We were supposed to go to a Parsi temple, but it was closed; we did go to a Parsi restaurant for a \u201cwedding feast.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0One memorable feature was eating the meal on a banana leaf.<\/p>\n Tomorrow, we\u2019ve visiting two more companies to learn how India has gone from 1947, and one of the world\u2019s poorest countries, to one that still has 30% below the poverty line, yet has shown enough progress to merit the statue of progress that is on top of the Victoria Terminal (130 years later!), and the focus of the book I mentioned yesterday, the India Way, published by Harvard Business School press.<\/p>\n Namaste.<\/p>\n Good night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our touring today demonstrated in several ways main themes in Indian history. The contrast between the old and the new:\u00a0\u00a0In Bangalore, we passed Dr. Jain\u2019s Cow Urine Medical Shop.\u00a0\u00a0That was the old.\u00a0\u00a0It is now an Ayurvedic Clinic (maybe using the old herbal formulation, but substantially updated). Major parts of its European colonial history: \u00a0We took … Continue reading “A free day in Mumbai-Bombay”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8470,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/8470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> University of Mumbai (the city was originally Mumbai, but the Portuguese gave it the name Bombay because, I believe, of a local god), are in the Indo-Saracen<\/a> architectural style. The terminal was the biggest building project in 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century Asia.\u00a0\u00a0Even today, it services 7 million riders a day (scale in the East, in China and India, is somewhat mind boggling for Americans.\u00a0\u00a0Bombay has the population of Australia!).<\/p>\n<\/a> Within sight of the dhobis, is Marine Drive and the Malabar Hill, which have the highest priced real estate in<\/a> India.\u00a0\u00a0There are a number of wealthy families who have made Mumbai home, including many businessmen. One of the newest homes is an 18 story edifice built for Mr. Ambani, whose story I just bought in the bookstore in the Taj (books are a real bargain in India\u2014priced for sale only in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal); Mr. Ambani, the CEO of Reliance, one of India\u2019s major conglomerates, has 400 servants for his family, which consists of him, his wife, and their child.\u00a0\u00a0Who says the maharajahs are gone? Though most of the maharajas \u2014 the Indian rulers under the princely states which were subsumed in 1947 \u2014 had their political power stripped, some still have palaces.\u00a0\u00a0Several of the palaces have been converted into hotels, so you can sleep in a palace, as Mrs. Hoyt and I did in Jaipur.<\/p>\n<\/a> The final place we visited brings us up to \u201cmodern India\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India, lived here from 1917 until 1934, and the home where he stayed is one of a dozen Gandhi museums in India.\u00a0\u00a0The story of his life, documented in Richard Attenborough\u2019s film several years ago, was retold in the home: sent to London to become a barrister (promising his mum, as the British would say, he would have neither wine nor women), he eventually went to help the Indian community in South Africa.\u00a0\u00a0He even got a medal in the Boer War for being part of a hospital corps. Evicted from his first class compartment because he was \u201ccolored,\u201d Gandhi turned to non-violence and for the next almost fifty years, using a simple but powerful lifestyle, helped mobilize Indian and world opinion to get the British to leave India in 1947.<\/p>\n