Gun Shopping in Bombay

My first experience in Mumbai was last summer when I landed late at night in the chaotic international airport. I was a lone white young female traveler coming from South Africa and trying to connect to my Delhi flight. I collected my baggage, made it through customs, and ventured outside. Not only was I greeted by sweaty heat, but also by hundreds of people who went dead silent when they saw me. The silence lasted about 5 or 10 seconds before men started bombarding me with their offers of help (for a ridiculous fee of course). I finally decided to pay someone to help me find the airport’s tiny secret elevator and get through the very involved flight check-in process. It was an overwhelming experience, yet a bizarrely appropriate introduction to India…

I would characterize my recent trip to Mumbai the same way: bizarrely appropriate.

Most of it was normal run of the mill off-kilter India: meetings, the worst traffic and horn situation I’ve ever experienced (15 hours total to travel several km. to our meetings within Mumbai + 12 hours to get to/from Mumbai), playing people-frogger to get across the street alive, haggling, staring, and blatantly obvious disparities- street food (or no food) & five star restaurants, beggars and corporate banks, new high rises and slums, etc.

My adventure on Monday afternoon, however, was probably my most memorable experience. Our day started off fairly normally (aside from the 2 hour drive to our first meeting). We had some tasty street chai and were treated to breakfast at a 5-star hotel by American businessmen. This was followed by salwar kameeze shopping.

When I asked Chetna how we would be spending our afternoon she replied (very frankly), “We need to buy a gun.”

Under normal circumstances the prospect of shopping for a gun would terrify me. I hate guns. I hate looking at them. I hate the sound they make. I especially hate that police officers carry them, and in India, police officers don’t just carry handguns; they carry rifles (which may not be as fast or easy to use, but they are big and therefore look much more intimidating).

… But I’m in India and in order to stay mentally healthy here I have to have a very lax, go with the flow kind of attitude. So my only response to the suggestion of gun shopping was to laugh.

And laugh I did.

We went in and out of several arms shops. It’s pretty rare for a woman to shop for a gun, and completely unheard of for a white woman to shop for a gun so we attracted quite a crowd of curious bystanders. Finally one of Chetna’s friends (a police officer I believe) joined us to assist in the search. Over chai, everyone debated which gun to purchase and haggled over how much it should cost, but not before testing the gun by shooting blanks right outside the shop (scary!).

When everyone was satisfied we finalized the purchase and Mann Deshi’s security guard (the arm-bearer) picked up the gun, and a permit to transport the gun, the following day.

And so we journeyed home with our new gun and its cleaning kit on top of the clothes that Chetna madam and Rekha madam bought for Mann Deshi employees, on top of our luggage, and in plain view of every single car, every single toll worker, and every single police officer on the road.

An unexpected experience- yes. But the previous weekend I unknowingly spent an afternoon in Mhaswad sitting with a sharpshooter for a gang in Bombay, so I can’t say I was entirely unprepared…

I can say, however, that I have given up on even the simplest expectations.