Most days I can’t make heads or tails of my feelings for Madonna. Do I hate her? Am I sorta okay with her? I’m well aware that I never love her. But how deep are my feelings, and am I really committed to all-out hatred? Madonna may have been on some sort of goodwill or fact-finding trip when she recently visited Mumbai. She toured the slums and ate lunch in a fishing village, but refused to speak with reporters. Thus it’s not really possible to say why she was there. She was escorted by Gregory David Roberts. Roberts is a convicted robber who escaped from an Australian prison and fled to Mumbai. He turned his experience into the best-selling novel “Shantaram,” which is currently being made into a movie starring Johnny Depp.

The singer, who is on an extended New Year’s break in India with family, walked around Cuffe Parade, a seafront neighborhood where million-dollar high rises sit next to fishermen’s huts, typical of the gulf between the city’s richest and poorest.

Madonna was seen entering a fisherman’s hut in Cuffe Parade with a woman companion and later walking into a roadside vegetarian restaurant, warding off eager journalists and photographers.

They visited a motorcycle mechanic’s garage and a market of old curios in a grimy Muslim quarter where she looked at the shops from inside her car. Roberts has set up a free health service for some of Mumbai’s poor, and also does some teaching. Madonna ushered in the New Year along with Guy Ritchie, her film director husband, and their children in the deserts of Rajasthan state before reaching Mumbai.

[From Yahoo! News]

I’m curious as to what Madonna was actually doing in Mumbai, but none of the articles written on her visit seem to know. The Internet Movie Database doesn’t have Madonna listed as associated with the “Shantaram” in any way. Perhaps the trip was just for personal enrichment, though somehow I find the whole thing very curious.

Picture note by Jaybird: Header image of Madonna at Ciparani restuarant, Mayfair, London on December 14th. Images thanks to Splash Photos.