A maze of hundreds of rusting metal pipes interconnect dozens of gigantic metal vats. The structure is held together by a thin skeleton of metal girders. Everything - from the coffee cups to the toilets - has a purple hue. Purple men carry purple sludge from one storage tank to another, amid a persistent hum. The thick smell of ammonia coupled with the heat makes it heavy breathing.

I have not been smoking something.

This is a chemical factory, outside Mumbai, for which my uncle is a technical consultant. They specialise in producing purple pigments for various Western companies (including Cadbury's purple wrappers!). My guide is a quite smartly dressed man in his 30s. His moustache disguises a wide smile. Inevitably, his shirt is purple. Above the hum of the pressure vats and centrifuges he describes a surprisingly complicated process to produce the pigment.

The factory is located in an industrial area outside Mumbai city limits. It is notably poorer than Mumbai itself. The houses made of stacked bricks and corrugated metal cling to the hillside. Everybody seems to be a shopkeeper - one man sells peanuts, another sells carpets, one sells scooters, another does potatoes. It is difficult to figure out who buys their goods - since all shops lie empty with only the shopkeeper sitting inside. Most free space is filled with temporary landfill sites (on which I am dismayed to read an idiotic letter in The Times of India claiming that they are perfectly acceptable, and even a part of Indian culture).

Away from the city, the more stereotypical scenes of India are readily visible - women carry jugs on their heads, and one man is even carrying bricks. Elephants and cattle freely mix with the lorries and cars on the roads.