Iain's journal, May 13, 2006; Ahmedabad to Bombay

Bombay comes alive before me -- with trees of molten orange and rivers clogged with the refuse of the impoverished. The slums are endless. It is almost as if the train's front car is forever rolling out in front of us a carpet of palm trees, slums, and vibrant colours; of garbage-clogged streams and beggars; of slum cricket matches played with cracked pieces of tubing; of a past and present united in confused, exuberant failure; the arrows of clock towers falling forward as the traditional gauges of prosperity slip into the outskirts where they are mugged for pocket change and left knifed in a ditch.
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