May 10th, 2024 – Friday 

Sunrise in Mumbai is bright and early. I blink, light hitting my eyes, and roll over to check my phone – it’s only 6 AM. I am most definitely not a morning person, so I curl under the sheets and shove my head under a pillow – I'm asleep again in seconds. 

The next thing I know, my appa is nudging my shoulder, insistent that we should wake up and, in his words, start the day. People in India generally wake up early, I’ve noticed, whether because of the early-settled heat or simply to be more productive. Asok Uncle and Revathi Auntie have been awake for hours already: they’re eating breakfast in the living room. We join them, but I’m still groggy, so I sit back and listen to the conversation. The morning is appreciatively slow; I drink Indian filter coffee – the only coffee I truly enjoy – and watch the birds hop around on the windowsill. I eat a slightly ridiculous amount of pomegranate, papaya, and apple, and mentally start to plan my day. 

The main trouble I’ve had with finding interviews in India is communication. People tend not to respond to emails, especially if they’re sent far ahead of time. Whatsapp and phone calls are slightly more effective, but not much. The issue, Revathi Auntie tells me, might be my number itself – activists, journalists, and other such community members are unlikely to respond to queries from an international phone number. Still, I’m worried; after coming all this way, I want to speak to more people. Luckily, she has a solution – a friend of a friend who is the chairperson of one of Mumbai’s largest LGBTQ+ activist groups, the Humsafar Trust. At 10:30 AM sharp, I call him from her phone, and finally have success; he sounds very pleasant, and we plan to meet early the following week. 

Research abroad, though, takes more than a few lucky breaks, as I’m learning quickly. Flexibility soon emerges as the most important ability I can have. Depending on where I am, or even the time of the day, I have to be as adaptable as possible. When I initially planned out my interviews, I wanted everything to be set in stone ahead of my trips, with set blocks each day planned to visit or call a different person. In Tokyo, this worked; people responded quickly to my messages, and I was able to construct a day-by-day plan before leaving the UK. In India, I need to be quick on my feet. One of the most significant queer events in Mumbai, the Kashish Film Festival, is taking place at the end of next week, and I plan to attend; every person I reach out to suggests we speak there. I therefore spend some time reworking my interview plans to adjust for quicker, on-the-move conversations, and create PDFs of my information sheets and forms that can be viewed easily online. 

Lunch is a group affair; we sit together at the table, and I devour the chapatis, sabzi, and thayir sadam. My favourite thing is the mor milagai – chilies soaked in buttermilk and then deep-fried. Coming out of lunch, I am certain that all of my Indian heritage has landed in my stomach; the food is definitely one of the best parts of being here.  

After a quick shower, I settle down with a book. The official start of my research is tomorrow – and, as I feel sleep creep up on me, I’m grateful for the time to adjust. I doze off for an hour, leaving me fresh and alert, and then finish getting ready for my first official excursion into the city. My appa and I are heading to Matunga, the area of Mumbai he visited often growing up. As we drive there, he points out different parts of the city. Bandra, where we are staying, is busy and colourful. Rows of shops, bakeries, and local vendors line the streets, and a general chatter fills the air with a warm, comfortable feeling. What is unmissable, though, is the traffic; I don’t think I’ve ever heard this many car horns at once. People here do not follow road rules, and more than once I even see a motorbike driving in the wrong direction, or people darting into the lanes at breakneck speeds. 

The landscape changes suddenly as we enter Dharavi – India's largest slum, and the second largest in the world. The buildings drop in height, and fade into a mass of grey. Everything is packed tightly together: rooms upon rooms, buildings upon buildings, bridges, boats, grated windows. People are everywhere, sitting in the pockets of shade or cross-legged on roofs. The whole place seems stiller and quieter than Bandra. And yet, despite its reputation, Dharavi has certain thriving industries; it recycles over 60% of Mumbai’s plastics, and people living within the slum often train to be leatherworkers. I can’t see past the first row of buildings, but the slum houses an extraordinary number of people, estimated at anywhere between 600,000 to one million. 

The scene changes once again when we reach Matunga, the South Indian corner of Mumbai. In Bandra, I heard mostly Hindi whenever I stepped outside; here, I’m surrounded by Tamil. We find the Tata Building, a multi-story white structure. Steel terraces peek out from each floor, and as we walk around the corner, a line of mismatched flowerpots leads to the door. The building is seemingly just another residential complex – but to us, it has meaning. My appa’s grandparents, his thatha and paati, lived in the building for several years, and he would visit every summer. He still knows his way around, as is clear when we walk through the neighborhoods. We call an auto rickshaw to get further into the area: our next spot is Arya Bhavan, a local restaurant, where we spend the next hour eating sabudana vada, onion rava dosa, idlis, and coffee ice cream, washed down with sugarcane juice. We finish with another filter coffee before stumbling back into the heat. After a visit to the local chippie – literally a chip shop, not fish-and-chips – to acquire a variety of savoury snacks, we decide to head back home. I feel strangely happy to have visited Matunga. On my previous visits to India, I’ve seen the places where my amma, mother, grew up; this is one of the first times I’ve gotten to see what my appa’s childhood was like. 

On our way back, I actually have my first interaction with the LGBTQ+ community in Mumbai; unfortunately, it’s a sad one. Most third-gender and transgender communities in India are heavily ostracised. They were once accepted and were sometimes even revered as holy communities centuries ago, but because of British colonial law, they were oppressed and lost employment opportunities. The discrimination and hatred that started during the colonial era has continued into the modern day, and members of these communities are still unable to find work and therefore are barely able to survive. To get by, they are often forced into prostitution and begging. While we are waiting at a traffic light, a transgender woman walks between the vehicles, knocking on the glass. I am warned not to lower the windows; members of these communities are often violent if you refuse them money. It creates an unfortunate cycle; post-colonial rule, people were already fearful and hating of third-gender and transgender individuals. With no options left but to utilise that fear, these communities have had to find ways to survive in a culture that no longer accepts them. I feel horrific, and I feel helpless – I’m here to research queer communities with the hopes of creating positive awareness, and yet I am still keep my eyes locked on my feet as the woman passes. Honestly, I don't know what to do, but it reminds me why research in gender and sexuality studies is extremely important. 

When we get back to Bandra, Revathi Auntie is still awake. I open some boondi - a spicy snack made from chickpea flour – and finally try India’s most famous fruit, the alphonso mango. I’ve never been in the country during mango season, and it lives up to expectations: it’s sweet and tender, and in seconds there’s juice dripping down my hands and threatening to stain my clothes. 

Before heading to bed, I spend some time prepping for the start of my project tomorrow. My first meeting is with an LGBTQ+ student group at one of Mumbai’s largest universities, and I’m thrilled to get my work started. Research abroad can be extremely frustrating and tiring at times, especially when you find yourself hitting a dead end, but it’s also very exciting. I get my questions and forms in order, go over the structure of the interview, and re-familiarise myself with some basic history and information. Then, I speak with my interpreter in Japan briefly to finalise some messages to interviewees; since most correspondence in Japan is in Japanese, it goes through multiple levels of translation and checking. 

I can’t wait for the next day to roll around, and spend the hours before sleep staring at the ceiling, imagining what the interview will be like...formal? Casual? Maybe I should message them once again beforehand to make sure they are comfortable beforehand? I’m thinking and thinking – and eventually all my thinking slides into drowsiness, and I’m lulled into a late sleep.