Less than a minute after arriving in Mumbai I had already caused a scene. Upon reaching the top of the escalator from the train platform to the exit, I felt something pulling me back. It quickly became apparent that one of the straps from my smaller backpack was trapped in the escalator. A mildly chaotic scene unfolded as I fought with the strap, while a steady flow of people kept arriving at the top of the escalator. A small group of men gathered to help an eventually after a few minutes a man pulled a knife out of his pocket and cut my bag free.
After eating some food from the nearest restaurant, I was treated to another unfortunate situation. I had ordered an uber to my hostel, but in classic Indian uber driver style, the driver had decided it was best not to come to the exact pickup point. Instead he was waiting somewhere in the general vicinity and was calling me to tell me this (in Hindi, then in broken english). After realising I had no clue what he was saying, he instructed me to ‘give phone to someone’.
I quickly handed the phone to the nearest man, who after a confused look, began speaking to my driver on the phone. After 30 seconds he hands me the phone back and simply walks away. So I’m left pacing up and down the busy street looking for my uber.
After a couple more minutes I feel something pulling on my bag, it was the man who I handed the phone to! He tells me to come this way and points down the street. I decided to follow him as I had no other ideas of how to find my driver.
He grabbed my wrist as we crossed the street (not a completely unusual thing for an Indian person to do), but then he managed to position his arm so he was resting against my boob. I pull away and he asks ‘what happened?’, to which I simply respond ‘no, no, no’. After grabbing my arm much harder with both hands, I shout for him to get off and pull away.
At this moment I finally see my uber and rush into it, only to see that I’ve been followed and the man is getting into the front seat. Luckily the uber driver shouted him out of the car and we were safely on our way to my hostel at last!
Katie's Escape 