Mumbai and the Proximity of Elegance and Squalor

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  12.06.07 | 9:47 AM ET

imageThe middle of the night is “not such a bad time to arrive” in Mumbai, Thomas Swick writes in a engrossing story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The darkness hides the city’s sins, such as the searing poverty. By daylight, however, you see the slums but also the garlanded temples, Bollywood wealth, the elevator operators reading Oliver Sacks, the carnivalesque tourist district of Colaba, the “harsh, utilitarian cacophany” of Crawford Market.

It is, Swick writes, a place that exemplifies “the Indian proximity of elegance and squalor.”

Photo by Humayunn N.A. Peerzaada via Flickr (Creative Commons).