A Shadow of Myself

While reading the New York Times Travel supplement yesterday--the thick glossy magazine that adds a pound to the already bloated Sunday paper--I came across a small blurb that reminded me of "home," meaning the place I will head towards today, not the places I've been visiting the past two weeks. "Indian Vogue" it read. I stopped to skim over the paragraph. Seven splashy new shops have opened in Mumbai featuring Delhi designers. "Find them in Khar West (the West Village of Mumbai) on Khar Danda."

Hold your horses. Where?

Khar West is MY neighborhood. Khar Danda is my STREET. When I land in Mumbai I will tell the taxi driver exactly these words. Khar West. Kaha hai? Khar Danda.

These shops, these posh shops which have nothing to do with anyone who actually lives in the neighborhood, are three blocks from my apartment. They opened just a few weeks ago next to a life-size statue of a man many Hindus consider worth praying to and who has been draped with an orange robe that I'm sure these designers think is heinous.

Until you come to Mumbai and see my little street, with it's open sewers and corn on the cob grillers and udder-bulging cows, you will not comprehend how crazy it is that this septuplet of shops unfolded on my street, and how delightfully incongruous it is for the New York Times to be documenting it--like it's 5th Avenue! It makes me cluck like an old man with a good hand of cards.

Not to mention the comparison: "the West Village of Mumbai." All along I've been thinking I am an alternative hipster for living in the Brooklyn of Mumbai. Au contraire, says the New York Times, putting me in my place. As much as you deny it, you are merely an approximation of your formal self. Yes, you moved across an ocean. Yes, you left all your belongings in 11 boxes in the basement of a Marriot hotel in New Jersey. Yes, you sometimes wear Indian clothing and a bindi on your third eye. But you are the same.

For 5 years before I moved to India I lived in the West Village of Manhattan. And here I am again, living in the West Village of India. If I was looking to escape myself, I've failed. Some things change, but most things stay the same.
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