kazador -

Alone in the biggest city in the world

The reason why I?m writing in English today is because of the people that I am writing to, I will explain shortly.

Last week I was in Mumbai at a business trip, I was alone, and I had almost nothing to do. Mumbai Is according to some statistics the largest city in the world, still I did not know anyone, and the people I talked to felt so different from me.

People here were either paid to be nice to me, or they saw me as a walking ATM, someone to get some money from, by selling some junk or just by begging.

Anyway, I decided last Thursday to go to the Iron Maiden concert that was going to occur on the Friday, even if it meant that I had to go alone, I would anyway be able to SEE someone who KNEW who Iron Maiden was.

People here hasn?t grown up with our music, when I Played a cd with Elvis Presley to our driver, and he did not have any idea at all who Elvis was. And our driver isn?t uneducated, he speaks good English and has been in college for two years.
Still he had never heard Elvis, nor even heard about him.
That?s how alien I felt in Mumbai.

So, Friday morning I read a small article about iron maiden, where it said what hotel they where staying at, and it was a hotel only one kilometre from where I staid. Nothing else to do, I walked to the other hotel, and what I saw made me so glad, I was not alone in this city anymore.

There sat a bunch of Indians, all with appropriate iron maiden t-shirts, just waiting for something. I walked to them, started talking, and they immediately welcomed me as if I where one of their own.

I didn?t exactly look like a hard core Iron Maiden fan, blue collar shirt and clean jeans, just like the business man I want to look like when I?m working!

Either way, they accepted me.

So, even if meeting the greatest legends in modern time was, pretty awesome, it was almost as awesome to find some heavy metal soul mates treating me just as one of their own in this land of hindi music!

Is as the band itself says, maiden fans look out for each other!

So, I also took some pictures of them getting the autographs, so I?ll upload the pictures here for them to look at, and because I want them to be able to understand what I?m writing, I am writing today in English!