By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (18 page)

I took a moment to cast my mind back to 12 April, leaving Dad’s house and riding up to Kilkeel. After that it had been the scallop boat, the Isle of Man, the ferry. God, I’d driven a lifeboat, a Land Rover, we’d sailed a dinghy, I’d driven a Citroën that secretly ran out of petrol, sat with the driver of the
Orient Express
and been on the bridge of a hydrofoil from Venice to Croatia. We really were traversing the world by any means possible. A Yugo, an overnight train from Serbia, then right across Turkey in the Love Bus, then the Ural through the city where Stalin was born and where the Russians and Georgians were still flexing their muscles, another train, and then the mad dash for visas in Baku: driving around the most toxic city in the world in a UAZ with no brakes and very little steering. I thought of Asadollah in Iran and his Mercedes, and now here we were on this massive ship where the generators that powered the refrigeration containers were bigger than a double-decker bus. Oh yes - the double-decker bus. I’d driven one of those, too. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be doing this, and couldn’t wait to get moving again; India was beckoning, and I had high hopes for Mumbai - surely one of the most exciting cities in the world.

My excitement was tempered though; we’d just heard that there had been a terrible earthquake in Sichuan, China. It had been so violent that the after-shocks were felt 1000 kilometres south in Vietnam. The first casualties had been nine hundred students but they reckoned closer to ten thousand people might have been killed and thousands more were missing. What with that and the awful cyclone that had ripped through Burma, it didn’t seem to matter any more whether we ever got to Laos. It’s a strange, unfathomable world, really; poverty and privilege, hope and disaster. I thought of all those people in China and Burma, suddenly homeless. Parentless children; childless parents. I thought of Fariba the taxi driver in Tehran trying to feed her family because her father was bankrupt, and the gypsies in Novi Sad, Tomas with his mangy horse and handmade cart. And here I was on this ship about to land in India. It was humbling: there seemed no rhyme or reason to any of it.

I could only be thankful for the gifts I had been given - my wife and children, and the privilege of being able to travel the world like this. And I’d made some friends on the
Nedlloyd Tasman
- Kevin and Jim, Chris and Dave. It had been an honour travelling with them, and while Mumbai came ever closer, I was sorry to be leaving them behind.

12

Dial 1298 for Ambulance

The next morning we waited for the pilot to guide us into port. It was a beautiful day, and we could see Mumbai’s skyline stretching like a mini Manhattan along the coast.

The pilot had been due to arrive at eight a.m. It was now ten and there was still no sign of him. Mumbai is a tidal port and high tide was midday; if we didn’t dock by then we’d have to wait until midnight. My heart sank at the prospect; the city was tantalisingly close, but now I had visions of sitting here twiddling my thumbs until the early hours of the morning.

At last the tug came alongside, bobbing up against the hull. Once the ladder was secured the pilot, a little guy with a moustache, climbed on board. Then he saw our camera and wagged a finger at us.

He was not happy. On the bridge he told us we weren’t allowed to film and he was contacting port security. We explained we were making a programme for the BBC and that we had a permit. He was having none of it though, even after Mungo had gone to fetch the documentation. We decided there was no point in arguing, so we put the cameras away and let him get on with it.

As it turned out there was no problem with security or customs. I got the Indian seal stamped on my suitcase and within an hour of docking we were in the back of a taxi.

Driving into Mumbai was a mind-blowing experience. They say the smog is so bad it’s like inhaling two and a half packets of cigarettes. We bumped along roads lined with ramshackle open-fronted shops selling fruit and vegetables, behind them apartment blocks and flats scraping the sky. Crowds of people crammed the pavements and the roads were chock-a-block with trucks, cabs, cars - even oxen-pulled carts. I saw an entire family on one motorbike: two little girls on the petrol tank and Mum and Dad on the seat. It was everything I’d thought it would be, vibrant and buzzing and a huge contrast from the calm of the container ship.

Some of the newer buildings looked only half built, whereas others were old and beautiful: banks of apartments from the days of the Raj, beautiful stone balconies with balustrades strung with lines of washing.

I couldn’t stop grinning. We had the entire country ahead of us and a whole variety of different forms of transport planned - from ambulances and motorbikes to trucks, trains and boats; perhaps even elephants.

Our first stop, however, was R.K. Studios in Chembur, an area of the city where a lot of film production companies are based. We had a new guide with us called Rina, who could also translate for us when necessary, though luckily for me a lot of people spoke English. Rina had discovered that I had been acting since I was three, and thought I might like to see the studio that had been established by Raj Kapoor, a very famous Indian actor and film maker. It wasn’t quite Bollywood but it would certainly give us a flavour. Bollywood produces more movies a year than anywhere else in the world and I couldn’t travel through India without having a bit of a look.

When we got there they were filming a family singing contest; a bit like the
X Factor
, I suppose. We took up position in the walkway close to where the audience was sitting, boom-mounted cameras swinging above our heads. There were banks of lights and the set was pure kitsch - all bright pinks and gold. The presenter was a beautiful Indian woman and it looked as if her co-presenter was up there singing with his mum. She seemed very nervous, tripping over her words and breaking off before starting again. It was the final song, something of a finale, and the audience loved her. When at last she got through it they were on their feet cheering and clapping, it was a brilliant atmosphere. I knew then for sure that India was going to be fun.

Driving to the hotel, I peered out of the window, soaking it all in; the crowds, the old weathered buildings, the sights, sounds and smells of this huge city. Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra state and has a population of about twelve or thirteen million. If you include the suburbs it’s more like nineteen million, the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the world. At one point we pulled up alongside one of the city’s famous black and yellow Fiat taxis and saw three adults and ten children all squashed inside.

In my hotel room I switched on the TV and caught up with what was going on around the world. We’d had ‘Ocean News’ on the ship, a computer printout that was updated every day, but now I was able to see just how devastating the cyclone in Burma had been. Thousands of people had been killed and thousands more were homeless. There seemed to be real difficulty getting aid into the country and foreign aid workers weren’t allowed in at all. It was heartbreaking. According to the reports much of the aid that had managed to get through had been stolen by the army.

Then there was the terrible earthquake in Sichuan Province in China. It seemed that the epicentre had been in Chengdu, pretty much where we’d planned to travel. Our journey wasn’t important though, not when I saw what had happened to so many poor people. One report described how a school had been flattened and the body of a child brought out still clutching a pen. It really brought home China’s one-child policy: the earthquake had destroyed whole families. It showed in the faces, despair, incomprehension; survivors hunched in the rubble, their stares vacant in shock or filled with impossible grief. I thought of Olly and the kids, and once again I was struck by how fortunate I was.

 

I woke the next morning with a sense of real anticipation and headed downstairs to meet Rina, who was waiting to take us to a Mumbai slum. I’d been to slums in Swaziland, and also in Brazil when we had been filming in the Amazon. In fact, Mumbai reminded me a little of Belem: the heat of the place, the colour and noise; the way humidity marked the walls of the old buildings.

But the slum we were visiting today was different from any I’d seen before. There were no open sewers and the air was quite fresh. In fact, the place was generally pretty clean, and you could see the inhabitants took pride in their homes and their work. They were pottery makers, a cottage industry that has existed in this part of Mumbai for generations. The car pulled up in a busy street and I skipped between trucks and taxis to the other side, narrowly avoiding a guy on a bike piled high with trays of eggs.

Stepping into a narrow alley that ran between two ramshackle shops piled with terracotta pots, I passed a woman carrying a massive bowl of clay on her head. She wore a beautifully coloured sari and wrapped cloths round her head to form a flat surface for the heavy bowl. The strong smell of clay being fired hung in the air. Ewan and I had seen bricks from the Nile being fired in Sudan but this was different; here the air was thick with it, as strong and pungent as a large bonfire.

I was in the heart of a cluttered enclave. Secondary alleys - little tributaries from the main alley I was walking down - led off at all angles. Flowerpots and bowls were stacked in piles waiting to be collected. The smoke drifted, catching in my throat, and I tried to imagine what it must be like living with that all the time. The houses were a real hotchpotch - some of the walls were made of tin, some from stone, some of the doorways had proper doors while others had nothing more than a quilt hanging over a length of string. My first impression had been right - the place was clean, and while there was no doubt that these people were poor, I could feel the spirit of a real community.

The alley opened into a series of wider yards where the buildings were less oppressively close and the floor was set with massive stone kilns - great boxes steaming away. We were told that the clay pieces were made by hand then stacked in the bottom of the kiln. After that a great pile of shredded cotton was dumped on top and set alight. The cotton smouldered and burned very slowly, keeping the heat in and firing the clay. Ingenious and inexpensive, this was the way that the kilns had traditionally been used.

Rina explained that the community had been here for at least a hundred years, generation after generation making clay pots which sold for forty or fifty rupees - about sixty pence. Others believed it had actually been there for a thousand years but whichever it was, this was a slum where the residents had created their own way of life.

It was really hot, though, and - sorry to lower the tone - I was getting a sweaty arse. I was wearing my favourite light-green combat trousers. They’re very comfortable, but unfortunately when they get wet the colour changes and I was getting a wet patch around the crack of my bum.

‘Are you OK, Charley?’ Rina asked. ‘What’s wrong with your bottom?’

It was so embarrassing: there I was in the slums of Mumbai and a woman I barely knew was asking me what was wrong with my bottom. Red-faced, I explained that there was nothing wrong, I was just a little hot and sweaty. Mungo was laughing so hard he could hardly hold the camera.

Moving on quickly, I stepped aside to let a guy wheel his bicycle past, two massive milk churns hanging off it. Kids were taking jerricans to get water, some were playing with footballs or cricket bats; it didn’t look as though any of them went to school, though it was hard to be sure. Groups of white-haired women squatted on their heels, working the clay into different shapes and sizes.

We went into a house littered with pots ready for firing and mounds of malleable clay. A guy was sitting on a stool with a manually operated wheel between his legs: he was lining a mould with clay prepared for him by two women working alongside him.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s really cool. Tell me, how long have you been doing it?’

‘Since this morning,’ one of the women piped up.

I fell about laughing.

Smiling wryly, she sat on her heels and studied me. This was her business; she ran it with her husband who was in the next room making smaller pots with lids. He could put out thirty-five a day, he said; and the guy with the hand wheel could make fifteen of the larger ones. They had had the business for fifteen years and the guy I’d spoken to worked for them. He’d been making pots all his life, as had his father before him and his father before that: a long line of potters going right back to his great-grandfather.

There was a real buzz and sense of purpose to this area, and a lot of good humour, too. People took pride in their homes - there were flowers and neat lines of washing. Some streets were more established than others, as if the people there had a little more money; in fact one was quite wide with lean-to porches over the doorways and even the odd low-walled yard. In other areas great banks of homes were strung together, made from a mixture of cloth and banana leaves. Above them the electrical wiring that powered the place was a mass of tangled plastic. If that lot sparked the whole place would go up.