When Mother Yashoda ordered the infant Krishna to open his mouth to check if he had eaten any butter stolen from the Gopis, the milkmaids of Gokul, she was mesmerized to see entire worlds within his mouth. That wonderful story came to mind as I set off on a quickie, three-week trip to India and tried to pry open the nation’s mouth to see what was going on in there

Like the universe inside Baby Krishna’s mouth, contemporary India — bright and vital and incredibly young and of course bone-achingly old and wise and unchanging — showed me all the different worlds that existed within it.
I had always viewed India with the eyes of the returning prodigal daughter, through the prism of nostalgia. I’d catch up with family, meet old friends and eat well-remembered treats.

This time I was going to see it through many different eyes, those of a journalist as I worked on a story about health tourism in India for Little India, and of a volunteer working for health and education in India, through a New York nonprofit organization, Children’s Hope India.

I was also being given the chance to see India as a complete outsider, as a foreigner, through the eyes of 20 American women who were traveling to India for the very first time as part of a businesswomen’s delegation. What must it be like to be exposed to the juggernaut of India — color, confusion, extreme beauty, extreme riches, and extreme poverty — for the very first time?

When I landed at Sahar International at about 3 am, the metropolis of Bombay was deep in slumber. My first glimpse was of a sleeping giant as the driver sped through a silent dark city, oddly deserted and calm, as if it was on medication and sedated.
My immediate first impression was of the visual changes that multinationals had brought to the city. There were several towering five star hotels as we exited the airport and the endless billboards, like flying temple pennants, advertised an array of consumer goods, real estate and financial services.

I saw the Haji Ali Mosque rising out of the water, the beaches of Chowpatty and other familiar landmarks — oddly distorted in the dark. How would the city look in the morning light when its energy and its chutzpah returned with its people?

I was not disappointed. As in every morning in Bombay since childhood, the pigeons woke me up with a grand orchestra of gurgling and cooing. Then the crows and the street vendors got into the act with their rancorous caw-caws and monotonous chants, and you knew yet another day had begun in bustling Bombay.

I raced across to the Taj Hotel, which was just down the block and where the delegates had gathered at the coffee shop to begin their encounter with India. Yes, it was going to be a clean encounter, India seen through the glass of air-conditioned buses and from the vantage of fabulous rooms in the Taj, overlooking the Gateway of India.

The group I was traveling with was extraordinarily accomplished — heads of museums, financial institutions, foundations and arts organizations. The mission was to show them the many Indias each wanted to see. Being part of the American delegation was an invigorating experience. It allowed NRIs like me to be on both sides of the aisle — as an Indian and as an American.

So it was that I sauntered into my own country as an outsider — honored guest and tourist, getting a full blast of the famous Indian hospitality. From the moment we landed, there were garlands, dance performances, music recitals and a super dinner hosted by the Taj.

“You are in India at the right time,” said Shashi Tripathi, formerly India’s consul general in New York and presently secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. “India is today full of confidence. It is a rich country, but it is full of challenges, has always been. Today we are the fourth largest economy in the world with a GDP that is hitting 6 –7 percent. We have low inflation, we have high forex reserves. The predictions are that by 2020 India will have outdone China and by 2050, it will be the topmost global player in the economic scene in the world.”

Speaker after speaker extolled India’s rise and potential. Of course, the American media are replete with similar stories, but as an Indian from across the ocean, there was a special thrill in having all these facts reiterated by the players themselves, in a sun-filled room with the Arabian Sea gleaming right outside. This was no dry report in the New York Times or Washington Post — we were actually in India, in the middle of all the action!

A real eye opener was a visit to the 300,000 sq. foot state-of-the-art research center of Nicholas Piramal India Ltd, a pharmaceutical company that has revenues of $350 million. It was built in 11 months at a cost of $20 million, numbers which Dr. Swati Piramal, the director, said couldn’t be matched in the United States or Europe. “We’ve assembled a team of 400 world class scientists, we’ve reversed the brain drain. Many of them who had gone abroad to study have come back. And it’s amazing to see the kind of people who are coming back — very intellectual, PhDs, scientists. And the reason they’re coming back is because they want to make a difference.”

Clad in protective gear, we toured the art-filled hi-tech facilities and were pleasantly surprised to find that most of the research scientists working on diseases from cancer to diabetes at the center were women.

Over the following days the delegation met the movers and shakers from every field. And everywhere we went, along with the economic and scientific reports, there was food and more food.

Indeed, when it comes to nurturing guests, India has no equal. It is always on overdrive, be it drink, food, entertainment or warm embraces. We’ve all seen the caring in our own extended families in India. but I was taken aback to find it here in the larger context. For the next five days the members of the delegation were hosted, toasted, loved and made welcome in the very special way that only Indians have. You become instant family — and remain family forever.

Yes, I ate paneer cooked in 20 different ways, more gulab jamuns and gajjar ka halwa than I could digest, and was hugged by more people than I can remember. Perhaps the most stunning encounter was at the HR College of Commerce and Economics, which is wedged in between residential apartment blocks in Churchgate.

A colorful entrepreneur that we met was Niranjan Hiranandani, one of the biggest real estate developers who’s put up many of the luxury hi-rises one sees across the city, including an entire township in Powai. Once a sleepy enclave with a lake, today it’s a city in itself with the residential towers of Hiranandani Gardens, with landscaped acres, playgrounds and clubhouses, surrounded with shopping malls, food courts and entertainment centers. Interestingly, Hiranandani, his father and his brother were all physicians before getting into construction, and have recently put up a huge hospital in the Powai area, making it a totally self-sufficient area.

So, I asked him, when will there be developments for the low-income people who live in the slums and on the streets? His response: “This is the last vestige of that socialistic policy which has not seen a reform process. Now it’s starting to creep, to happen so we are going to see a huge amount.”

He pointed out that once that takes off, India would see a paradigm shift in GDP growths because of housing, since there is such a huge deficit in affordable housing. Construction, which is the second largest employer of people in the country today always provides jobs for the low income and the illiterate, something industries like information technology do not.

He added, “If this type of change which is required to happen in the country does take place, information technology will be just the icing on the cake or the cherry on the pie, but the real cake will be the construction, real estate and housing sector and that’s what we are looking for.”

All too soon, the discussions and the talk fests came to an end. Our five days were over and some of the delegates were returning to the United States while others were heading on to a resort in Cochin for a touch of health tourism. We all said very Indian, very emotional goodbyes.

In India, with the delegates gone, I was tourist no more. I switched roles and was back in my Returning NRI mode, catching up with relatives, stopping for a drink of coconut water on the streets and visiting the Siddhi Vinayak Temple in Prabhadevi, marveling at the crowds that churned around the temple. Indeed, how could one visit Bombay without paying obeisance to the God of Auspicious Beginnings?

A stop for kolapuri chappals in Colaba is a must, as is a final walk down the waterfront and a final look at the Gateway of India — unchanging and quite wonderful. But Bombay is headed in new directions. Take a ferry to Alibagh, an island of multimillion-dollar homes of the rich and famous, and you see quite a different Mumbai. Extreme excess and extreme poverty are just two of the many faces of this complex city.

On my last day in Mumbai, I visited friends for dinner in a sparkling new apartment right in the heart of this congested metropolis. It was hard to imagine how it was possible to get so much space. But now we have young Indian professionals working with multinationals and it’s showing in their lifestyle. The apartment was airy and art filled and yes, could have been right in Manhattan. To that are the added benefits of having an army of helpers, and a large extended family at shouting distance. Seems a lot like having the best of both worlds to me.
Friends had told me that you get everything in India now and I hadn’t quite believed it until I went to Crawford Market, the bustling bazaar of fruits and vegetables — and now every possible product from abroad, such as name brand chocolates and cookies to cosmetics. There were Ferrero Rochas chocolate boxes with Arabic writing, familiar names such as Kit Kat and Cadburys, and countless products with the ubiquitous Made in China label. In fact, China is in your face everywhere with just about everything from clothes to noodles to elaborate light fixtures for the home.

One evening we were invited to the launch of Lao Mehndiyan, a new Music Today CD of Punjabi wedding songs sung by Minu Bakshi, a noted socialite who also happens to be a wonderful singer. The venue was the five-star Meridian Hotel and the guests had been asked to come in all their wedding finery. The crème de la crème turned up, all dressed to the nines, and yes, resplendent in all their diamonds. The food served was as opulent as that at a princely wedding banquet. This was Delhi high society in play mode.

The next day I was flung into a very different world — Kathputli Colony, a rough and tough slum town on the outskirts of Delhi, inhabited by Rajasthani migrants, many of who are puppeteers and performers. It is a ramshackle maze of narrow streets, open drains, tiny homes and thousands of people clustered in close proximity. Our non profit group Children’s Hope is active in the community and it was wonderful to see the effects of our programs up close. How the micro-credit programs, for example, had brought out the entrepreneur in women in the community. We stood outside a brand new tea stall in the colony, which one of the young women had opened for her husband with micro-credit. She herself was taking the beautician’s course through vocational classes and hopes to work at a beauty parlor. Now that is beautiful!

For me, three weeks in India flew by like three days in this orgy of seeing, experiencing, eating, greeting and meeting. On the last day I was too exhausted to try yet another happening hot spot so we decided to call in for McDonalds. (Dominos had already stopped by with pizzas for the nephews) And as my sister and I sat there, watching spicy Indian serials on TV and munching on burgers and fries from McDonalds — it seemed the most natural thing in the world. In fact, McDonalds is fast becoming an Indian institution and soon there will be a generation of kids who have grown up always having a McDonalds around. That’s globalization for you!

Indeed, ‘globalization’ might be a clichéd, over-used word but it seems to be omnipresent: almost every urban family — not to mention rural families, especially in the Punjab - seems to have some foreign connection, be it to the United States, Dubai or the Far East. Either through work or family or friends, everyone sees further than India. Even the yoga teacher who came over to give me a few quickie lessons during my whirlwind stay wanted my New York contact number — just in case!