India
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| The tall building is the Mumbai (Bombay) stock exchange. While it may not be the nicest-looking building when compared to stock exchanges in other parts of the world, it contrasts, perhaps sadly, to the old residential buildings in the foreground, symbolizing the huge gap between the riches and the poors in India. | The building behind is the Oriental Building at Flora Fountain, which houses, among others, the American Express (banking divison) offices on the ground floor. It is one of the colony-era office buildings in the busy commercial district of Mumbai. The address for this building is now: Dadabhai Naoroji Road, Mumbai 400 001. This road was formerly called Hornby Road. (Courtesy of Margaret Shroff) | Situated in a large urban plaza at Bori Bunder, is the Municipal Corporation Building which is the Headquarters of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. (Courtesy of Margaret Shroff) | ||
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Victoria Terminus (VT), now renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) is the century old headquarters, in Bombay (now Mumbai) of India's Central Railway. VT was named after Queen Express Victoria while CST is named after a noted Indian ruler : Shivaji (Courtesy of Margaret Shroff) At night, the exterior of the building is lighted to provide a palance-like feel. |
The state-police station near the Gate of India. | Gate of India---a monument build by the English to commemorate the port where they first officially entered India. It is a now a famous sightseeing spot for both indians and foreigners, where many locals earn their livings by taking photos for and selling [baked corns?] to tourists. Tourists who do not suffer sea sickness can take sightseeing ferries from this port to have a small taste of the Indian ocean. | ||
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| Mumbai is a commercial city---where the jobs are. People from rural areas rush to Mumbai hoping to earn a better living. However, the city is super-crowded, and there have not been too many new residental buildings in the city since the English left India. High living and transportation expenses force many of these people to live near where they work. In many cases, they just convert the pedestiran pavement to become their home. Each 'home' is about a couple meters wide as seen from the above. Education costs money. Many kids do not go to school and simply hang around where they live. | Taxi and traffic jam! From this perspective, Mumbai is similar to New York, only that it is a lot hotter and most taxis are without air conditioning. The vegation in the photo may look nice, but the air quality in the city is actually worse than many other cities in the industralized nations. Sometimes, the traffic becomes so bad people just stop the vehicles and hang around them. | A view of downtown Mumbai from an apartment in Colaba, a southern penisula of Mumbai. | ||
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| On the other side of the apartment where the previous photo was taken, there is another common scene of riches and poors living side by side. The above shows a small ghetto area in Colaba (which is an expensive area). People brush their teeth and dump their organic waste at the 'beach' near the bottom left corner of the photo. The north side of this area is a miltary helicopter facility where Indian army floes their big and nosiy helicopters to perform daily routine missions. There are no foreign countries nearby, and I don't believe that their 50-years-old helicopters can fly long distance. So what exactly are the goals of those missions... | ||||
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