Mrs Poppadum

Bleak House

2008-12-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

“Dear Sir,” writes Mr Roland, “We are moving out today. Please would you allow the removal van in the compound?” It’s not the enemy, at the gates, it’s Writer Relocations, and the security men won’t let them in. India’s India to the last gasp. Mr Roland takes the letter, hot from the printer, down to the spat in the foyer, and leaves all the uniforms to sort out their differences, in Hindi. Eventually, Sachin, chef d’équipe in orange, arrives with his team, in yellow. They kick their shoes off at our door, and begin to wrap our eastern world in tissue paper, ready for home. With toothpick-sized knives, they make cardboard boxes in situ, round our chattels, using up approximately a hectare of rainforest - still, my Rs 300 vase from Life Style should reach Nottingham in one piece. I say Rs 300, it’s worth a fiver of anyone’s money...

Head Honcho, Xerxes (who does the smooth talk and the measuring, and doesn’t sully his hands with sticky tape or bubblewrap) tells me, when assessing the original estimate, that the difficulty lies not in transporting, but in transporting intact. If they open a box, at Customs, things are inclined to grow little legs... The solution’s simple: grease palms. So, palm grease is included in the estimate. It’s good to know where we stand.

It seems we roll around India, accruing worldly goods, like a hedgehog collects leaves. Mr Roland signs over nineteen boxes, to Sachin. Our materialism’s very spiritual, though, at least half the boxes are full of Ganesh, with his chums Buddha and Shiva, a carved OM from Nepal, and a quarter of a ton of incense sticks. It could be worse – we’re leaving the bronze Hanuman behind, to keep an eye on Monu.

And then it’s done. At breakfast-time, it’s home. By morning coffee, it’s a bomb-site. By lunch-time, it’s a shell. Sachin and his boys put the “apart” into “apartment” without breaking into a sweat. The place has never been tidier, or cleaner. Under every piece of furniture the men move lurk huge dust-wallabies - like dust-bunnies, but three times bigger. Having no common language absolves me of the need to explain my sluttish ways, which is very liberating. I’m definitely ringing the Reykjavik branch of Pickfords for a quote, next time I move house.

When they go – leaving me one or two trees’-worth of tissue-paper, for wrapping plates to give to Monu – the flat looks unbearably vacant and lugubrious. We go out, to find solace in retail, while there’s still a rupee in our pockets.

The man, cleaning the mirrored walls of the lift, is 4’10”, so there’s half a yard of grimy glass out of his reach, a dado-rail of dust. You can see how wallabies might prosper round here. Outside on the pavement, a man in shorts feeds street dogs, with what looks like bread, out of a Haiko carrier-bag. (In case you’re interested, I give them my defrosted goat-cubes, too, to prove that terrorism will not win, and that the streets of Mumbai belong to the citizens of Mumbai - canine solidarity and faith in peace, with one cast. Obviously, it worries me, introducing unreproduceable richness to the scraps and gravel they're used to, but Mr Roland says, it’s a nice problem to have. I also buy a large bag of Rose and Jasmine-flavoured Tide, the day after the bombings, to indicate that we’re not going anywhere until we’re ready. And when we go, we’ll have clean clothes.)

The universal female panacea – a two-hour soak in extremely expensive bubbles – is unavailable to me here, with our three bathrooms and no bath, so I opt for the next best thing: the hairdresser’s. At the Renaissance Health and Beauty Salon (aspirational on all counts), I have a farewell eyebrow-threading, or, as we call it, in the West, torture. Vela The Impaler patters across the tiled floor, all smiles, with her little lacquered box of talc, and her innocuous bobbin of cotton. “Hold here, please,” she says, and you are thus an accomplice to the crime, while she rips out follicles with a twist of thread. I’m grinding my teeth to calcium powder, reflecting on pain-barriers, when I play back conversation with Monu, on the way here. His brother-in-law-to-be, Shikha’s soldier-brother, is shot, fighting terrorists in Kashmir. Only a flesh-wound, it takes him out of the action for a month – if I were Shikha’s Mum, I’d be seeing nothing but silver lining, here.

Reassuringly, the hair-dresser – even if he’s only a boy - looks at my hair dry, rather than the spritz-and-snip approach I get, last time I came here. (Chop-chop-chop: “You want trim, right?”) I mime what I would like (when did that ever make any difference, once you’ve got the free-size overall on, and a rubber mat round your shoulders?) – Layers, please, I don’t want to look like Crystal Tips, and leave the fringe alone (following ill-advised fringe DIY, don’t ask -). He mimes back his version of the Plan of Action – “Fringe, small small cut? ........ No, Ma’am, please...” He’s not impressed by my self-coiffing, then. I engage in jolly hairdressing-banter – “How long have you been a hairdresser?” “Are most of your clients here western?” “Does your Mum live near here?” He answers, “OK, OK!” every time. “WOULD YOU NOT CUT MY FRINGE?” - It costs me more than the sari for Rani-didi and the salwar-suit for Shikha, which Monu buys on my behalf. Mind you, if I’d done my own shopping, I could probably have had woven highlights, a couple of teeth crowned and a botox injection, and still had change.

You’d think, after switch-to-max Diwali only a month ago, our fire-crackers would be spent, but you’d be wrong. Christmas is coming, to Mumbai. This isn’t India being ecumenical, this is India loving to party. (Oh it’s Thursday, let’s put fairy-lights on the building society! It’s my brother’s wife’s pedicurist’s wedding anniversary, let’s make it a National Holiday and have cake! Hinduism alone has thousands of gods, so it’s never no-one’s birthday.) Before Diwali’s last diya’s cleared off the remaindered shelf at HyperCity, you can buy a fluffy snowman, brandishing a picket, saying “Let It Snow!” Christmas is still tackily Christmas here, the fake trees gaudily draped in multicoloured tinsel. If designer-trees are out of place anywhere, it surely has to be in the Land of Sequins.

HyperCity also boasts the thinnest, brownest Father Christmas you have ever seen. What’s the current UK stand on having your darling Snugglebum sit on the knee of a complete stranger, for a secret chat? Santa’s subcontinental surrogate strolls up and down the aisles, waylaying small children to offer them sweets from his satchel. I don’t qualify for a sweet, but I do get a photo.

All this frantic shopping for souvenirs, but what I most want to take home won’t go in a cardboard box. Don’t think I haven’t asked.

Jobs For The Boys

2008-12-13T04:36:00.000-08:00

At the Post Office, we’re shocked to have to lick our own stamps. It appears self-adhesive hasn’t percolated the sub-continent, yet. The glue on the back of the stamps is too busy sticking your tongue to the roof of your mouth, to do a proper job on an envelope, so there’s a handy yogurt pot of extra paste, with a dibber, to make up the shortfall. Here, self-adhesive envelopes mean exactly what they say, get your own glue: it’s Blue Peter time. We also have to hand-write “By Air Mail” on nine hundred and forty-two Christmas cards, but we’ve long understood that stream-lined and automated are never going to happen, in India, while laborious and time-consuming still have breath left in them.

It’s easy to get into trouble, by not understanding the system. We go awry constantly, in the early days, helping the cashier’s sidekick, to pack our bags, at the supermarket, or opening doors for hotel doormen, who are carrying seventeen suitcases. Nearly a year on, we still stub our toes against common practice, although the check-out pantomime’s wilful self-harming, these days. Even so, repatriation will be a culture shock, next week.

Pakistan and India continue to circle round each other, growling and snapping at heels, but I’m glad to see Verona’s stepped down from Red Alert. This morning, I don’t have to turn sideways to slip out of shackled gates, in the basement, they’re flung wide again, to let in sunshine and street dogs. Just inside the entrance, the security guard, in epaulettes and peaked cap, sits on a wonky chair at a wonky table, armed with phone, pen, and water-bottle. He nods and waves, when he sees me, before standing up to say Good Morning. He doesn’t salute, but it’s only a matter of time... I struggle to remember the set-up, in the basement of the building where I live in England, and then it comes to me – it’s my house. There isn’t a basement, just a cellar, where people over the age of nine can’t stand up - full of spiders, and dusty demi-johns, from when Mr Roland was going through his home-brew phase. And there certainly isn’t a doorman, or anything in the way of security, not since the dog lost interest in barking at strangers, or even in getting off his bed. Catapulting down thirty degrees of heat, overnight, is going to be the least of our re-adjustment problems.

In India, the level of service is over-whelming, but you get used to it, just like you get used to having tea without milk, by habit. Helpful insistence on independence can cost someone else his job, so keep your hands in your pockets – if you’re uncomfortable, look the other way. We salve our conscience by making a point of saying thank-you, which marks us as alien more clearly than our white faces.

My third favourite shop, in Mumbai, is Star Wines, down on Daffodil Row, Powai. (First favourite, the al fresco Lighting Shop, on Adi Shankaracharya Marg, for chandeliers and lifting of sorry hearts: second, Something Special, in Bandra, for everything you need from hand-rolled paper to candles which blossom into lotus flowers, singing “Happy Birthday To You” – and third, our local offy.) When we darken their not-door, the shop front, they swat thirsty construction workers out of the way, to clear our path. The builders’ tipple of choice - a medicine-bottle of GM (Government Made, apparently, although that doesn’t mean that the Government actually Made it, any more) costs twelve or thirteen rupees, whereas a bottle of Kingfisher’s sixty-three. We buy a box of beer at a time. You work out Mr Star Wines’ priorities. They even bring us a present for Diwali - liqueur chocolates we can’t even give to teetotal Monu, and a set of glasses ironically inscribed “Apple.” We never feel this loved, at Oddbins or Bottoms Up.

In Haiko, this week, a three-generation shopping expedition, in front of me in the queue – grandma’s paying for groceries, mother and child entertaining each other while they wait. Grandma puts her purse back in her bag, snaps it shut, then the whole family moves off. The maid steps up to the counter, collects all six bags of shopping, and falls into step behind them. Am I the only one who thinks this is unfair? I look round at the busy shoppers, busily shopping. Yes, I am. I’m not born into the system, and won’t buy into it, but neither can I opt out of it; it’s been a year on a tight-rope.

Next week, in Loughborough Sainsbury’s, there’ll be riots in Christmas queues, anxious to get home to their turkeys. I’ll be standing gawping, as my shopping piles up and tumbles off the end of the conveyor belt, with no smiling assistant to pack for me. You won’t be able to get in my house, for the sacks of rubbish spilling out the door, without an anonymous refuse-fairy, to whisk it all away in the night. I’ll sit in restaurants, hungrily looking at dishes full of food, trying to remember how a serving-spoon works. It’ll be a novelty, in the Ladies, turning on taps, squirting soap, filing used paper-towels in the bin, without assistance. I’ll break my nose cannoning into shop-doors, with no maharajah to sweep them open before me. Worst of all, I’ll sit in the back of my little blue Ford Focus, waiting for Monu to turn to me and say, “Today, Ma’am, what plan?”

With this particular deficit in mind, I buy a Monu-in-a-Box – a 3-D digital photo in a Perspex cube, so he can sit on a shelf, in my English kitchen, and watch me cook, at home. Well, we buy two, in fact, one for me, one for his Mum. “How did you persuade Monu to sit for it?” a friend asks, amused. Strange he should mention it, because I work out a very subtle plan. I say, “Monu, I need you now... Sit there... Smile... Thank-you.” The boy from Lucknow clearly thinks I’m as mad as a box of frogs – pagal, my new Hindi word – but he suffers gladly, there being no alternative. The final artefact is a thing of beauty thus a joy forever, we all agree. Well, Monu smiles and goes “Tch!” so I think he thinks so. I know his Mum will.

Per Ardua ....

2008-12-11T07:40:00.000-08:00

After yesterday’s Mexican wave of vomit, we’re up for a bit of grown-up culture, today. We head out of Mumbai, in search of ancient Buddhist caves, exercising what Monu calls “temple-interest,” with neither a child nor a crisp in sight.

We pull up, in a cloud of dust, in what appears to be a building-site. Monu says inscrutably, “No speak the people,” before cruelly abandoning us to the tourist touts. It’s the car, which attracts them. I’m sure if we wound our way up the hill, in a dusty tuk-tuk, or sitting on a pile of cotton waste, in the back of a ramshackle camel-cart, we’d slip through unnoticed. As it is, we seem to look like we need an alabaster Shiva, or a Taj Mahal keyring, everywhere we set foot. (Don’t panic, if you’re on our Christmas list, we’ve hardly bought any keyrings, and we like our Shivas in wood...)

Karla Cave is a rock-cut Buddhist temple, dating from around the second century B.C. The Lonely Planet promises it’ll be impressive, and so it is. What they fail to mention, is that you’ll have your alveoli hanging out, on the end of your tongue, by the time you scramble up nine thousand uneven cobbled steps to the entrance. Happily, there’s a panoramic view available every other cobble, so you can pause, and pretend to admire the vista, while your respiratory tract relocates itself where it belongs, every so often. Small stalls line the route, but who’s going to believe you’re interested in examining peeled cucumbers, or scummy pots of lassi, really? The cafe set in a cranny, halfway up, definitely takes the khari-biscuit for unpretentiousness, with its modest pair of sun-bleached garden chairs, for the comfort of passing patrons. There aren’t any, at the moment, so the waiter polishes his bottles of Fanta, again. I understand some of the retail opportunities on offer - for instance, a garland of flowers, a coconut or two, perhaps even a fresh tub of red kumkum powder, are all perfectly logical requirements, on the way to worship - but which pious Buddhist suddenly needs a new sari, at the temple-gates?

We arrive, only slightly rosier than when we set off, and don’t turn a hair at the two thousand percent mark-up on the entrance fee, for being pasty-faced. They clearly aren’t inundated by visitors from the west, or there’d be more evidence of maintenance. As it is, they slap on a bit of cement, when the cobbles are conspicuously falling apart, although I imagine tourist casualties have to hit double figures, before they crack open a bag of Birla’s finest. Still, we don’t begrudge them a hundred rupees a-piece, so we slide a couple of Gandhi portraits across the counter, and we’re in.

Sadly, so are about four hundred grey-uniformed school children, pencils and notebooks poised for cultural input. We create a ripple, just walking along. As they spy us, they put education on hold for a minute, to say hello, and ask us how we are. It will be a shock, being back in the UK, where very few people care how we are, and even fewer ask. However, all representatives of the Little Flower High School of Thane are fascinated to know, so we bask in pretend fame, while we can.

In the upper chamber of the caves, India finally gives in to graffiti, and I’m delighted to see that it’s in transliterated Hindi, so even I can get the point. - Scrawling on walls really isn’t a big thing, here, apart from hand-painted adverts for The Speak Well English Academy, or for Lux Cozi Innerwear For Men, which are creeping green with mildew, just before, just after, and during the monsoon. The one bit of graffiti you can’t help but notice, as soon as you step off the plane, is the word “Beanbag” and a phone number, sprayed in aerosol-paint, on every available piece of corrugated aluminium. We ask, and ask, wondering about this obsession with floor cushions, but no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming for ten months. Then, enlightenment: “Beanbags” are Ladies of the Night. Perfect. We’re given back-word, a fortnight later, but it’s too late, and “beanbag” has passed irretrievably into the family lexicon. – Here, on the cave-wall, it says, in the manner of lovesick British schoolboys, “Raj Prem Atish” – Raj loves Atish. I don’t know Hindi for “4 EVA” but I expect that’s there too.

While we’re peering into monastic cells and admiring stupa, up above, the beggars arrive for business. We hit Beggar Row, flaunting stumps and hollow-flanked babies. “Namaste – hello – hi – bakshish – money – bakshish – hello...” The litany follows us down the steps. Received wisdom recommends giving to an organised charity, not through car-windows to a syndicate, but round a bend, we pass an ancient lady, who takes up less room than a floor-cloth. We both turn, remembering the same line from the guide-books, and tip the coins from our pockets into her lap. Give to the old. We look at each other and laugh, because we now have no money for the sulabh-wallah, who guards toilets, so we’ll have to cross our legs all the way home.

Today, Buddhist temples are on a two-for-one offer, apparently, because we climb back into the car, and Monu says, “One more!” He doesn’t believe Mr Roland’s map, so we stop to ask for directions of every paan-seller and stray cyclist on the way. This time the car-park’s only vaguely within sight of the mountain trail leading to Bhaja Caves. – “See this stairs? Go!” says the boy from Lucknow, so we do.

There’s no big entrance, the wonky path just melts into caves, at the top. On the way up, we pass three goats, sprawled across the steps, enjoying the view, in the midday sun. I’m quite glad to see them, because, this week, it’s the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha. Think “turkey” and “Christmas.” “Cut the goat!” says Monu, slicing his finger across his throat. We see goats in their hundreds, led by the ears, along the street, or in double-decker lorries, all heading in one direction, to slaughter. Goats, with tinsel woven into their fringes, and ribbons tied round their silky ears, goats in necklaces. We see a child, kissing his goat goodbye, while another pulls the heads of two tethered goats together. Monu laughs. “Make the fight,” he says. Outside Mankhurd school, a boy straddles a branch, twenty feet up a tree, to cut leaves, for his goat’s last supper. On the road, I see small hooves sticking out of a sack, in the vehicle alongside us, then realise the whole truck’s filled with corpses. No refrigeration, nothing more subtle or hygienic than a hessian bag for a shroud. Lentils have increasing appeal. – So it’s good, to see goats still breathing in and out, after Tuesday.

When we get there, panting again, Bhaja Caves are empty, except for the man on the gate, who welcomes us in, then, before our shadows are well clear, hawks and spits on the floor. I’m almost certain it’s a coincidence. We look down into the valley, where bullocks are pulling a ploughshare. Or, plugging, according to our Delhi guide, Amit. I ask him, what they do with all the boy calves, since (Cow is God) they can’t be of use at the table. “They plug the field,” he says, simply. Outside Mumbai, just before we join the motorway, the sign reads, “No bullock-carts on the expressway.” They’re allowed in the maze of city roads, though. We often see them, impervious to seven honking lanes of maypole-traffic, trotting on with their water-tank or cartload of melons.

I peek over the parapet, down the hillside. You can peer over any ledge or wall, in India, however remote or sacred, and never not see an avalanche of litter below. It’s not that no-one cleans up here - they do - but then someone else come and tips it all out again, to sift through, and abandon. This country has the most picked over litter in the world. Picked over, just not picked up.

The caves are brilliant, better than the famous Kandheri Caves, in Sanjiv Gandhi National Park, better than the Elephanta caves, a boat-ride over the Arabian Sea. And, no crowds. On the way back down, we meet maybe a dozen culture-vultures, on their way up. A long way, we tell them, but worth the climb.

No Jhan-Jhat!

2008-12-10T10:43:00.001-08:00

The coast of Kerala’s trimmed with mile after golden mile of sun kissed beach, lapped by crystal sea, but we’re not in Kerala, we’re in Mumbai, so we go to Juhu instead, where the sand’s pale black and the sea’s soupy. It’s still more scenic than Mankhurd, though, so nobody minds.

“We will leave at eight o’clock, because the traffic will be small, early in the morning,” ordains Bhavika-didi, whose word is law. “You will come at a quarter to, do you follow?” Every child’s mouthing the catechism of rendez-vous, dress code, and kit-bag instructions, while slithering into chappals at the classroom door, two days before. I feel obliged to point out to Bhavika, that with such an early kick-off, I may well still be in my pyjamas. “Come in your pyjamas, Caroline-didi, why not? As long as we have your presence!”

This is my second marine day in a row, if you can have a row of two. Mr Roland and I make Monu drive for almost three hours, so we can dip our white toes in the Arabian Sea. The beach at Alibaug is black, too, but I’m thinking volcanic, and am happy to paddle. I find out later, it’s oil-dumping, but my feet are salty by then, it’s too late. At the water’s edge, buggy-drivers queue, offering rides across the sand spit to the island fortress of Kolaba, their ponies rake-thin, with coats rough with salt. The nearest pair have rainbow-coloured feather-dusters, stuck to their pommels, which nod, as they gallop through the shallows. Mr Roland and I go rock-pooling instead, and a meagre trawl it is. We find fish, only marginally more important than plankton, and crabs so small, they’d have to be polite to the spiders we get in the bath, at home. The rocks are covered with limpet-shell wreckage, but there’s not a gastropod in sight – either the locals are partial to fruits de mer, or the swell’s more brutal than it looks. On the other hand, there’s wild life under the rocks, along the promenade. Monu finds a litter of round-bellied puppies, playing in a rock-den, in the rubble, while their mum sleeps, unconcerned, under a concrete bench nearby. I’m just choosing the brown one, when I notice that Monu and Mr Roland are sloping back off to the car, in a disowning sort of way.

Back in Mankhurd, we pull up outside the tenement block, seven minutes late, ready to apologise, but find only Mehul and Rahul, sitting on the step of the padlocked door, clutching their waterbottles. Monu shrugs, “Indian time!” We’re shrouding the back-seats in bedsheets, just in case, when Rani-didi arrives, with a red rose tucked behind one ear, clearly in the mood for a party. Roll-call might take some time, at this rate, so we assemble in the upstairs classroom, away from the street with its decaying litter and opaque puddles. Rani-didi has this quaint notion about sitting quietly on a mat to wait, but Khaja arrives, with his built-in nuclear reactor, which only works on “Max,” thus knows nothing of “quiet” or “sitting.” We therefore rocket round the room in wild laps, pausing only for a cartwheel of joy, when exuberance overtakes us. Not me, obviously, the under-eights. I’m ready for a sit-down and a chocolate Hob-Nob, just watching them.

Finally, we crocodile off downstairs, with bats and balls and an orange Frisbee, to pile into the Monu-bus. We’re only an hour later than scheduled - quite punctual, by Indian watches. There’s a minor scrimmage, to decide who’s with me, in the front seat. I’m feeling flattered, and popular, when I remember the fascination of the dashboard, with all its switches and buttons. In the end, I promote Nikita to sit on my lap, because she has bones like a sparrow’s, and I’m not sure she’s up for the hurly burly of the back-seat. You forget what a novelty it can be, opening and closing an electric window. Before we hit second gear, Monu meanly disables all door and window controls, so Nikita has to make do with the AC fans and vents. She makes her hands icy cold then presses them on my face, for a few miles, until she’s distracted by a roadside hoarding, advertising pension schemes. “Do you have a plan?” she reads. Would that I did...

When we arrive at Juhu beach, an hour later, Ashish-in-the-back is olive green, and his eyes are dull. To be fair, there’s not a lot of sick, nothing that half a yard of wet-wipes can’t sort out, but Monu clearly thinks that some is more than none, in this case.

We decant, and corral the children in a wobbly circle, on the gritty beach. They park their bottles and chappals, pêle-mêle, and run off to play ball, and Frisbee, and cricket, all at the same time. Ashish sits on a mat, in the shade, a small heap of woe. We sift the sand for shells, and label everything in sight: helicopter, water, umbrella, dustbin. I-Spy, without the guesswork. Then Bhavika-didi says the magic word, “Sea!” and Ashish is cured. Salt water generally makes you sick, but in Ashish’s case, it does the reverse, and he’s in there up to his knees, before Bhavika’s finished saying, “Stay holding hands, in your group!” Sadly, his jeans are only wound up to mid-shin, but the sun’s got nothing else to do.

Saris have to be the least convenient thing to wear, for a paddle, I think. Then I notice Rani-didi, whose sari’s mysteriously eight inches shorter than a minute ago, although it’s beyond me, what she’s done with the spare bit.

The children squeal in terror and delight; the waves overtake them, then suck the grey sand from under their feet, on the way out, leaving a trail of cappuccino froth. Anand and Mayur grip my hands so tightly, my knuckles are fusing together. I soon discover, that it’s considerably easier to get the children into the water, than it is to get them out again. I marshal two of my group beach-wards, and turn back for a third. The first two instantly run away to sea - great fun for everyone except me. I see, yet again, that my discipline only applies, when I’m asking them to do something they already want to do. I have no control whatsoever over these briny brats, shrieking with laughter and running away from me in seven different directions. In my defence, I don’t lose any of them.

Back on the mats, there’s the silence which only comes with food. Let them eat crisps. (Or wafers, in Bhavika-speak.) A policeman comes to address us, while we munch, then we give him a hip-hip-hooray before he goes back to his patrol van. I assume it’s “Don’t touch strange objects!” – a slogan we’re seeing more than enough of, since 26 November – but I’m wrong, it’s a recruiting campaign. You’re never too young to be a police cadet, in Mumbai, it seems. His best bet would be to give away free sunglasses, as worn by all Bollywood stars and traffic policemen, that’d have them signing up in droves, but he’s gone before I can tell him.

Then we make our cardinal error. Orangeade. They guzzle gallons of fizzy orange, to wash down the last crisp crumbs, before we brush the sand off our feet and head for home. It’s hot, the car’s jerking in the stop-start traffic, and soon Kavita - whose name means “Poem” – is sick, in the back. Rani-didi’s closest, and she waves it off airily as nothing. I don’t find out how copious a nothing, until we’re in Mankhurd again. Halfway home, though, Salim’s sick, too, and before you can say ipecacuanha, I’m on the verge, sluicing vomit off rubber car-mats with Bisleri, with curious tuk-tuks whizzing past my ear. I tell Monu, it’s good practice for when he’s got Shukti and Pooja, but he doesn’t look convinced.

When I get back in the car, fragrant as a baby-wipe, Rani-didi’s telling Monu, that it’s all my fault. It’s in Hindi, but the words “Caroline-didi” and “biscuit” aren’t hard to isolate. We're talking gingernuts, here, not Waggon-Wheels. What I swill off the mats looks a lot more like orangeade, I say, pointedly. Then we need to change the subject, because the whole back row’s turning green.

“Sorry about the car, Monu,” I say, being careful where I sit, driving home.
“My car,” he says, sadly, “tch!”
“Never mind “My car!” - you’re supposed to say, “No jhan-jhat!”” I say - No problem! He looks at me, in the rearview mirror, and shakes his head.
“No jhan-jhat!” he smiles.

Mumbai Meri Jaan

2008-12-03T05:04:00.001-08:00

It’s a week on, and, although you couldn’t say things were the same, they’re making a good job of trying. The Leopold’s open, and thronged with defiant Mumbaikars. The Taj is cordoned off, but determined to rebuild. I can’t help smiling.

When they dig a road up, in Mumbai – usually before the tarmac’s set – to lay the cable or water-pipe, which they forgot in the first place, they then pat all the debris back in the trench. Well, except for this little pile here, which they leave in a tidy heap at the side of the mended road, to show where they’ve been: MMDC’s calling-card. For about four months, it weathers by attrition, and cows sitting on it, and dogs seeing if there’s anything to eat, under it. By then, it’s nearly time to dig everything up again.

So, clearing-up and rebuilding south Mumbai will be fascinating. They don’t need mementoes, there’s enough stored digitally by passing Kumars and curious Guptas, to paper the Taj inside and out. The Mumbai Mid Day carries a photo of people, taking pictures of bullet holes in the walls at CST station, with the caption “Titillation” – journalistic double jeopardy: clearly it’s not ghoulish, taking a photo of other people being ghoulish.

Even in leafy Powai, feeling’s running strong. This morning, a demonstration passes the foot of our building, with marching soldier cadets, waving banners and chanting, followed by ranks of uniformed school-children, in their ribboned plaits and snowy-white bobby-socks. There are candle-lit vigils, and the ubiquitous flowers-tied-to-railings. I’m still moved by posters on roadside billboards, with cameos of the dead framed in golden laurels, to applaud the mighty fallen and inveigh against evil. I’m duped, because I can’t read the small print. Let’s face it, in Hindi, I can’t read the foot-high capitals, either. The whole campaign’s condemned as party political inanity, capitalising on tragedy, as parties fall over themselves to out-mourn each other, or to be seen to out-mourn each other. Civic tenderness degrades into tastelessness.

“The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke, quoted in Mid Day, to launch their campaign of resistance: “Don’t stay Mum-bai!” I think it sounds more like an inducement to mass exodus, but they’re trying to urge everyone to have a voice. “Don’t stay mum – speak up!” Resilience is essential to survival, but picking up “old life” is not enough. “... that’s what cattle do after being attacked by leopards – go back to grazing.” I don’t think the world’s in danger of not knowing what Mumbai thinks, in these troubled times.

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, the BMC, is rewarding all firemen who participated in rescue operations, to help NSG commandos during the attacks, with two pay increments, plus two months’ salary, in hand. Bravo.

Mumbai Police only have one speedboat, I’m stunned to discover. In case you’re forgetting, this is the Mumbai which is built on a series of islands, with more water-front than Venice – THAT Mumbai. The one-boat police flotilla has no searchlight, no siren, no wireless set, and no night-vision binoculars. What, I hear you ask, have they done with the £4M handed over in 2006, labelled, Speedboats for Mumbai Police?

I have a theory: the Police probably spend most of their money on text-messaging. We get so many from them, I’m beginning to think we’re on their Best Friends listing. During the Ganpati festival at the end of September, they send us this: “For Ganesh immersion day: 1. Come early. No fire crackers on beach. 2. Entry on beach only for the car with Idol. 3. Drivers to remain in car.” Frankly, this worries me, more than reassures me, and I cast about for bubbles of riotous behaviour, but Monu says everyone gets the same message. At Diwali, in October, the Anti-Terrorist Squad send us this: “Be alert Mumbaikar! Look for any suspicious object and inform police on 100. Do not believe in rumours. Do not accept any article from unknown person. Join hands with the police in fight against terrorism. ATS.” At Diwali, the streets are littered with unexploded fireworks, and shells of spent crackers. It sounds like Beirut, at ground level – every street-dog and dead rocket looks suspicious, what do they want us to do?

Today’s offering from the police is hopeful oil on self-inflicted troubled waters. “False rumours are being spread thru SMS of possible attacks on schools and hotels.” - I know at least one lady, who keeps her children out of school, because of it - “We assure all citizens, city is absolutely safe. Pls don’t panic, nor add to rumours.” Quite tricky, this last, because there’s still only one topic of conversation, over every cup of masala chai, round here, how could rumour not be getting fat on it?

Rumour should be classified as a weapon. On Friday, in the middle of the siege, CNN abandons live action at the Taj, the Oberoi and Nariman House, to report fresh firing, at Victoria Station (CST). People glued to their televisions ring their nearest and dearest, in transit, and pandemonium breaks out, on the trains and the quays. False alarm. CNN apologizes for scaremongering.

So, what are you doing, tonight? If there’s nothing on tv, come and make a stand for peace. “Walk for Mumbai” starts at six - indomitable citizens are invited to meet at the Gateway of India, to march for peace and harmony, for not giving in, and for carrying on in spite of everything. The “I want my Mumbai back” rally is opposite the Taj, at the same time. You don’t need to decide which one to go to, you’ll already be at both, because opposite the Taj IS the Gateway. The ad can’t be accused of subliminal brain-washing, it says simply, “If you give a F***, then walk!” (To be fair, the asterisks are included, and it is a half-rhyme, technically... It comes quaint, though, from a nation of English-speakers who happily lay their tongue to words like “thrice” or “misfortunate” or “lest” in everyday speech.) You are asked to wear white, and a “Mumbai Meri Jaan” t-shirt.

Mumbai Meri Jaan’s a film, released a few months ago. Based on the 2006 serial blasts on Mumbai’s suburban railway network, it’s almost too pertinent. The lives it follows, coping with the aftermath of the attacks, are ironically those of a journalist, a policeman, a businessman and a coffee-vendor. I ask Monu, what “jaan” means. “Life,” he says. Then, at the next traffic lights, he says, “Jaan mean, you know...... love.” Life and love, in one word, how apt. I look it up, when I get home, and find it also means spirit, understanding, strength, essence – even wizard. I tackle Monu on the economy of language, the next day. He laughs and shrugs. “This is Hindi!”

So, Mumbai Meri Jaan – I love Mumbai. Mine’s a Medium, please, and a Large for Mr Roland.

Old Life

2008-12-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

Today, to borrow Monu’s phrase, old life start, a week late. Mr Roland goes to the office (albeit in a playing-out shirt, because he’s only going to say his goodbyes and collect his tea-cup), and I go to Mankhurd, in the hope of a bit of normality, on the straw mats, in the upstairs room.

Bhavika’s late, so we play Hangman until she arrives. I’m quietly confident, with my fourteen-letter word, and indeed, my chalk-man is dangling, with only one leg to go, but I’m reckoning without Swapnil (Prime Minister of India, circa 2045). He springs into the air from a cross-legged start (you try it), shouting, “RESPONSIBILITY, didi!” How can you not be impressed?

Bhavika arrives, and tries to slip in behind Anand and Kajal, who are also late. I’m not having this.
“Bhavika-didi, you are late! Go stand at the back, take your punishment!”
“Shall didi stand here, she is late?” Bhavika asks, laughing. “Come Anand, come Kajal, stand at the back with me, we must take our punishment...” The children drum their heels on the floor, for joy, and I realise, that’s what I’ve not done for five days, smile...

“What did you see, on the television news, this weekend?” Bhavika asks. Khaja – never loath to be first – is on his feet, spraying the class with imaginary bullets, before she gets to the question-mark. I don’t think on-the-doorstep terrorism’s any more real to them, than James Bond or Harry Potter, they’ll certainly not be in need of counselling. Older, wiser, we didis exchange scandalised looks, before we turn to composition.

Bhavika says her aunt and family live near the Taj (“this hotel, backside”) and hear every last bullet and grenade, of the three-day siege. I practically need sedating, watching it all play out on television, fifteen miles away: having live action at the bottom of the garden doesn’t bear thinking about. Mumbaikars are clearly made of sterner stuff, and pride themselves on their resilience: within hours, cafes, shops, offices, are all open again. On Friday, a hawker looks sadly at the empty street, as the traffic-lights wink pointlessly through their sequence. “I’m just waiting for a traffic-jam,” he says, “then I can sell my flowers.” His roses wilt, unsold, so the terrorists find their mark, here, too. Today, though, he’s poking bundles of flowers, scented with exhaust-fumes, through open car-windows, and the world’s the right way up, again.

Ashish pushes his book onto my lap. “My name is Ashish,” he writes. “I am a boy. I stay with my family.” So far, so good. His next sentence leaps off the page at me - “My Akanksha is war.” Maybe he is traumatised, after all? I read on. “My didi is war nes. Caroline-didi is war nes.” He beams at me, “I no help, didi – one star?” Bhavika, cruel but fair, only rewards DIY work. He reads aloud. “My didi is very nice....” So, not psychologically scarred by atrocity, after all. Relieved, I draw him a turtle and a milk-bottle (his request) to go with his star. Ashish is war nes, too.

The politicians continue to wrangle and snipe, but there’s no hope of their being stopped by Black Cat commandos. The latest SMS doing the rounds says, “Don’t be afraid of the men who got in with boats, fear the men who got in with the votes.” I fail to understand all the retrospective finger-pointing, about slack security, sea-side, at the Gateway – even Swapnil could have worked this one out. The little boats jockey for position in the harbour, and tourists pile on to the nearest one, until the plimsoll-line disappears, then it chugs away, grating along the seawall, ricocheting off neighbouring boats, whose crew fend it off, with their bare feet. Organised, it isn’t. Ticket vendors at the top of the steps have no allegiance to any particular boat, no one counts passengers on or off. Crisp-sellers, chai-wallahs, sun-hat merchants, all follow you on board, wheedling, cajoling, haranguing, and have to take a running leap at the disappearing harbour steps, as the boat pulls away, belching diesel fumes. You could smuggle in a bull elephant wearing a golden howdah, and no-one would blink twice. It makes a mockery of all the metal-detector doorways, and the mirrors on sticks, land-side. Small wonder they landed an arsenal, unchecked.

“Mumbai safe,” says Monu, stoutly, although his Mum wants him back in Lucknow, NOW. Being mobile again’s something of a novelty, so we drive to one of our early haunts, in Mulund, for a bit of affirming retail. On the way home, the opposite carriageway’s at a stand-still, blocked by dozens of men, marching in their shirt-sleeves. It looks like a political demonstration, and I’m about to duck, in case tempers are raw, when Monu says, “This funeral. You know, policeman, killed in troubles? This his funeral, local people come.” Behind the marching men, in their off-white shirts, a tow-truck, strung with orange flowerheads. Men in the cab, men on the cab, men in the truck-bed, keeping company with the departed, under his blanket of marigolds.

By the roadside, posters showing cameos of five of the officers who died last week, asking for contributions to help the bereaved families, in the hope of offering them each Rs 15 lakh. I’m sure they’d rather have their Dad back, than a twenty-thousand pound bonus, but it’s a good thought, and Mumbai’s digging deep.

Despite which, I come home tonight feeling saner and more whole. The past five days have been wall-to-wall bullets and blood, desecration, death, man’s inhumanity to man - and while they are part of life, they are not all of life. I just remembered that, in Mankhurd.

Just Another Day

2008-11-30T06:57:00.000-08:00

It all looks very normal, peering down at Powai from our poured concrete eyrie. Being nonchalant’s easy in the sunshine, but confidence leaches out, as the light fades. In the wee small watches, it’s a different matter.

The construction workers don’t stop, just because it goes dark round them. They release the rubble skip, which hurtles thirty floors down in its shaft, and you’d swear it was a building collapsing. The midnight dogs scream, and we turn up the fan to drown them out. At five in the morning, I wake to the sound of a plane landing on the roof. I have never noticed our being on a flight path, until this moment, so I get out of bed, to make sure it’s not trying to come in through the spare room window (directly the fault of CNN reporters: the phrase “Indian 9/11” seems to follow every comma for the past three days). It isn’t, but I’m up now, so I check out Powai. All quiet on the eastern front. I flick on the television, to catch the news. Ironically, but unsurprisingly, there’s nothing new. So little, in fact, I suspect the network of plugging in an old tape, to run through the night, so they can all slope off home for some well-earned shut-eye.

Climbing back into bed, I’m felled by pains in my chest. I considerately kick Mr Roland (because, to quote our driver-friend Sanjay in Delhi, “it he job...”), for a bit of sympathy. “I’ve got chest pains!” I say. “Where?” he says, pretending to be more or less conscious. I don’t say, “In my foot,” and this is the most worrying symptom of all, but we doze off, before I can work myself up to a full cardiac infarction. As you can see, though, we’re skittish.

I try to ascertain how legitimate it is, being out and about again. Our French friends have emails and texts, from their caring representatives at the French Embassy. We have lots of emails and texts, too, but all from people on our Christmas list, and none of them is an ambassador, as far as I know. I do a little spirited research, to find advice, and there it is: they do care, after all! The British Consulate has a reception centre for British nationals at the British Council Library, in Mumbai, and it’s open all night. How much more solicitous could they be? Let’s get our coats... Hold on, where exactly is it, this haven of ex-patriate refuge? Nariman Point. Now that’s what I call handy. If you draw a triangle joining the Taj, the Oberoi and Nariman House, what’s in the middle? Right, the British Council Library. They want us to leave the safety of leafy Powai, to queue up for advice in the killing zone. Suddenly, I feel less cherished. Suddenly, I decide we can look after ourselves.

On the street, it’s just another day. Outside KFC, in the Galleria, the security guards are nursing rifles, but they’re still sitting on plastic garden chairs, to show their human side. The cricket’s back on, in the park, if not on the India-Pakistan Pakistan tour. At the side of the swimming-pool, a white woman’s painting her toenails red, with every appearance of unconcern; I decide it’s safe to assume the two boys hosing down the path and walls are, in fact, pool attendants. I can get back to concentrating on being annoyed by the chubby sons of Powai, who like to bob-bob-bob across my path, every second length. No point waiting it out, either: in my experience, boys don’t get out of water until they grow gills or get hungry. I resign myself to swimming self-righteous banana-lengths, before going home to pick up the marathon television vigil.

Nothing happens, while I’m deserting my sofa-post, except government ministers resign from this and that, before they’re pushed. East and west have more in common, than I imagined, it seems.

In between political finagling and analysis, they screen the funerals of “the brave hearts of India.” They don’t go in for muted mourning, here, the unshed tear, the bitten lip, the averted gaze. They don’t do discreet or contained, they do weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, pulling out hair and clawing at clothes, and I’m with them every sob of the way. There’s no shortage of pomp and ceremony, with fanfares on silver bugles, and solemn wreaths of funeral lilies. I can cope with solemnity. What takes the dhurrie out from under my feet, is the ordinary tenderness. They say goodbye to the man on the open bier, stroking his face, kissing his hair, patting a stray garland into place - little last tidying twitches, to give their hands something to do, while they’re thinking, like tucking a child into bed. And then, they light the pyre. Anaesthetising flames.

There’s fireworks, tonight, too, across the other side of Powai Lake. The explosions make us jump, until we see the sparks, flowering over the Renaissance Hotel. A wedding. At first, I think the timing is unfortunate, then I decide, it couldn’t be better.

So, Where Were We?

2008-11-29T04:50:00.000-08:00

At dawn, it rains, a benison on beleaguered Mumbai. In the morning, we wake to wet pavements and a free city. The temperature drops from the mid-thirties to a gentle twenty-eight - at home, we’d be rootling out the charcoal, and ringing round to see who’s got a bag of buns, to go with the sausages in our freezer, but here, it’s just nicely do-able.

The gates in the basement of Verona are still locked; the security guard has to unbolt them, to let me out. The air’s soft with rain and a new lightness, as yesterday’s determined chin of defiance sags with relief. Everybody goes about their business, not jubilant, just quietly glad.

“How difficult was it, for you?” a Times Now reporter asks a commando, as he hops onto a bus with his comrades, once the Taj is secured, and they’re allowed to clock off. He grins, and shakes his head. “For us, nothing is difficult.” Before the translator reaches the end of the sentence, I have tears in my eyes.

The Black Cat commandos are out, blinking in the morning sun, after sixty hours of unimaginable strain. They look like they could do with twenty-four hours’ sleep, a shave, and a hug from their Mums; not necessarily in that order. The camera catches one of them, mobile in hand, leaning on the harbour wall, overlooking the Arabian Sea. His smile says everything.

Azam Amir Kasav, sole surviving terrorist, is only twenty-one years old. On its front page, the Times of India refers to him, in a matey way, as Azam, but by page two, they’re calling him Kasav. Either way, he’s from Pakistan, and confesses the plan to blow up the entire Taj hotel. According to him, the team undertook the assignment, in the belief that they would come out alive: this was no suicide mission, the police find the chart of their proposed return route, by sea.
Word now is, the terrorists were heavily drugged. What is this drug, which will remove all fear, but leave a person capable of operating an AK47? Mad, misguided, barbarous, clean-shaven and well-pressed – yet every one of them, some mother’s son, as my Nan used to say.

Every visitor we have wants to see the Gateway of India. It’s disappointing, I always say. It’s in the Lonely Planet Guide, they always say back. So we go. “Gateway of India, please, Monu,” I mumble, as we climb into the car, avoiding his eye. Monu doesn’t say anything, but he can go Tch! with his shoulders, and does. The Gateway’s a two-hour drive, even with three Ganeshes on the dash-board and a following wind. (This is what I say to Worried of Stokesley, when the terrorists land in Colaba. Even if they had our actual names on a hit-list, we could be in London, with time to take in a show, before they reach Powai by road...) We pile out of the car, crumpled, and take in the grubby glory of the Gateway. In practice, you can hardly look at it anyway, you’re so busy swatting away touts, flogging everything from plastic Eiffel Towers to dubious ice-cream out of a bucket, as well as photographers brandishing digital cameras, with tiny portable printers round their necks, and picturesque child-beggars in rags and bare feet. I have yet to see the Gateway, not shrouded in tattered tarpaulin and bamboo scaffolding. Now you’ve seen that, I say, turning our visitor round, look at this. The Taj Mahal Hotel. The doormen wear puttees, and have moustaches as wide as buffalo horns – they’re very smiley, even when you’ve got a red nose and mad hair, straight off the boat from Elephanta Island. The Taj is an oasis of civilisation.

And now it’s gutted, despite all its tinkling chandeliers and priceless antiques. The cameras are allowed in again. In the ruined hotel foyer, where so many people died, a tall vase of gladioli stands, untouched, on a side table.

Security in India is stricter than in the UK. You enter every mall through a magic doorway, and have to surrender your bag for scrutiny. “What are you doing reading this poster?” chides the billboard on the steps of In Orbit, “when you could be looking around for suspicious objects?” I am routinely waved in with a smile, whereas Mr Roland gets frisked, every time – not because I am lovely and he looks shifty, it’s a boy/girl thing. Terrorist organisations across the world are coming to realise this loophole, and are using not only women, but women with mental handicaps, in burkhas, on suicide missions.

Five-star hotels are the regular stamping-ground of ex-pats, in a country which does neither pubs nor street cafés. We turn into the drive, and stop, while the security men give the car the once-over. Monu pops the bonnet open, and they look inside, to discover that that’s where we keep the engine. They run a handbag mirror, lashed to a stick-on-wheels, under all four sides of the car, in as many seconds. If they’re really rigorous, or short of things to do, they tap the boot, and Monu surrenders the ignition key, inscrutably, while they check out the monsoon box and the emergency umbrella. I sit in the back, smiling, trying to make the guards smile back. They always do, waving us on. “Just because the boot’s full of kittens and lollipops,” I say, “it doesn’t mean I haven’t got a grenade in my handbag.” Monu laughs. – It hasn't seemed so funny, since Wednesday.

The death toll stands at 195, as I write, comprising crack anti-terrorist officers, policemen, tourists, businessmen, waitresses, even children. Every Indian we speak to is angry, not scared. Now the guns are cooling, the name and shame game has begun, and politicians abandon the united front they assumed in troubled times. Obvious suspects, like Pakistan and Al-Qaeda, are top of the list, but Britain is also implicated, because two of the dead terrorists are carrying British passports. Even Taj staff are accused of complicity. It’s going to take longer to sort out, than it did to live through.

Our year in India is so nearly over. We won’t be bullied into scuttling home early, nor do we want to stay out of stubborn foolhardiness. When the dust settles – sadly, literally – we will see, and decide. Until then, a waiting game.

A City Under Siege

2008-11-28T00:21:00.000-08:00

High temperature, no appetite, listless, subject to mood swings – all the symptoms of cabin fever. Being besieged is less glamorous than you think. I recall gloomily that “siège" is French for seat, and that about sums up our crisis so far - glued to the sofas, noses to the small screen. We’re becoming couch aloo.

On Wednesday, we drop my brother at the airport. “Last guest gone,” Monu smiles, edging the car back into the seething traffic, heading for home. “Old life starts.” He couldn’t be more wrong. Just as Michael’s plane is taking off, terrorists put the “bomb” back into Bombay, with co-ordinated attacks in ten locations across the south of the city. “Old life” goes on hold.

Thirty-six hours later, the National Security Guard’s still operating to “sanitize” the three remaining occupied buildings. It’s difficult to know what’s happening – the NSG has gagged the media, because terrorists are tracking operations via television, but that doesn’t stop twenty-four hour coverage of the events. Old footage is played in permanent loops, with live voiceovers, and the flashing strap-line “Breaking News” – you get blasé about being on tenterhooks, after the first twelve hours.

We’re told to stay indoors, until advised otherwise, although the attacks are centred miles away in South Mumbai. I try to rustle up a sock-knitting, bandage-rolling attitude, and am grumpily ironing (in thirty-five degrees of sunshine, Stoicism doesn’t come near the mark...), when I discover that a colleague has gone outside to shop. If she can, I can, I think, reaching for my goggles. I know going for a swim would hardly cut the mustard, with the Maquis, but it’s a small gesture of defiance. Also, if I have to stay indoors a minute longer, I am going to start making friends with the cockroaches...

The heavy iron gates in the basement are bolted, but the security guard smiles Good Morning, and lets me out onto the street. And there is Powai, with his wife and golden Labrador, going about his business. Everything looks normal – the road diggers are digging the roads, the vegetable-man’s sitting on his stall, selling custard apples and guava, and a woman’s chasing dust-heaps, with a whisk-broom, back and forth. The only difference, today, is the tuk-tuks at the side of the road. They’re gathered in their usual nest, like a pile of beetles, but their drivers aren’t sleeping, with their legs looped over the handlebars and their feet poking out into the fresh air. The men in khaki are poring over the news, six heads bent over one paper. Something’s definitely up.

I peer into every young brown face, looking for the telltale signs of Deccan Mujahideen membership. It’s tricky because no-one had heard of them until now, so they hardly have a signature look, yet. Rumour’s running away with itself, with a microphone in its hand. Pakistan’s mentioned, the LeH, but officials won’t be drawn into speculation, and are prioritizing saving lives over apportioning blame, for the time being. Good for them. The bullets don’t fly any thinner or slower, for knowing whose finger’s on the trigger.

Yesterday, Bhavika rings in the early morning. “Akanksha centres are closed today,” she says, “so I will see you tomorrow.” I find solace in her supposing we’ll all be here by then, to tackle our three times tables down in Mankhurd. In the event, schools are closed, today, too, although the Indian Stock Exchange is trading again, I note.

Monu checks in. “Sir, you want this car?” More than anything, I want to see him, breathing in and out, but have to concede that this is perhaps not a good reason to drag him across a besieged city, so he stays in Malad. I assume he was breathing, to make the phonecall.

They even nip and tuck the advert breaks, on CNN, so the coverage is unbroken. The drama unfolds maddeningly slowly, it’s more padding than news, but you can’t not watch it, in case.... Every hour, a new tag-team takes over as co-ordinating front-men, in the studio. They edge in, from the wings, rustling an important fistful of A4 sheets. The veterans slide off their stools, and include them in the conversation, “So give us an update on what’s happening at the Taj right now, Yogita...” Then, as the new team take up the narrative, the retiring team nod sympathetically, without taking their eyes off the newcomers, whilst moving, crab-wise, out of shot. Le roi est mort, vive le roi. Seamless.

Within the hour, registration numbers of terrorists’ vehicles are on screen (MH01 ZA 102 and MH01 BA 579, if you’ve that kind of a memory and you’re in the Colaba area) followed by numbers to ring with information. We also wake up to chilling and very real requests for blood donations, from St George’s Hospital.

There’s more gore on screen, than in “Saving Private Ryan”. A man’s bundled into the back of a car, his head lolling, the pavement behind him red. “Is he....?” I start to say. “He’s unconscious,” says Roland, firmly. They fold the man’s legs in, like tidying up a trailing sleeve, escaping from a suitcase, and slam the door. We both know he’s dead. In the next half-hour, we see him summarily despatched at least a dozen times, by way of screen-saver to the unfolding news.

In the first gun-battle at Cama Hospital, the Anti-Terrorism Squad loses three of its top officers. The screen splits into three, playing over and over the last footage of each of them, alive. Ironic, poignant, ATS chief Hemand Karkare is shown being fitted with a flak jacket and hard hat, which clearly did him no service. Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte was India’s answer to Bruce Willis. The CNN journalist reporting his loss was at college with him, and says he remembers ACP Kamte winning the record for eating the most bananas in a day (18), because he wanted to be a body-builder, before he decided to join the force. This irrelevant, irreverent detail is very moving, somehow. Ridiculous, frail, human. We see the officer in his combat hat and fatigues, addressing troops, then the screen flickers to his funeral, where this man of action is still at last, his stern face peaceful, framed in garlands of flowers.

The police recover bags dropped by the terrorists. Money, rounds of bullets, RDX and survival supplies. I’m charmed to discover that these boys are armed not only with AK47s, but with bags of peanuts, too. A local shopkeeper now comes forward, and says the terrorists bought Rs 50,000 worth of dried goods, a couple of days ago; as if they were laying in for a siege, in fact. Almonds for Vitamin E, apricots to keep them regular. We, on the other hand, without the luxury of foreknowledge, are living on what’s in the cupboard. Unless the situation’s recovered soon, we’ll have to resort to the goat cubes I bought in a fit of ethnic enthusiasm, months ago, and which I’ve had neither the heart nor the stomach to cook. They’re in the freezer, with half a tub of ice-cream we got in, when Jacob was in residence. Don’t worry about us, though. We’ve also got two bottles of Kingfisher and half a bag of Bombay mix, we’re sorted.

I'm glad you're a camel too, Mabel...

2008-11-17T06:31:00.001-08:00

No turbaned maharajahs by scented fountains, no welcome leis, no bindi – we’re wondering what five-star tourism has come to. This is Osyan - we’re sleeping in tents, in the desert, tonight. Not what you’d call “grand luxe” but not exactly slumming it, either – as a veteran of the Dharavi tour, in Mumbai, I can confirm, this is definitely not a slum. Electricity and water on demand, there’s even an en suite bathroom, with canvas walls, and a stone pit for a shower – what’s not five-star about that?

Our welcome drink – the ubiquitous nimbu-paani, lemon water – hisses on the back of our parched throats. We’re on the edge of the Thar Desert. I suggest a swim, for a cheap laugh, and our host spins round, “Swimming-pool is here. Come, I show.” We’re so surprised, it’s some minutes before we get the wind back in our sails, to enquire about the ice-rink, for later.

We’re handed over to our personal minder, who has big brown eyes, and a small speech impediment. It’s a winning combo, I’m charmed already, and he’s only told us his name. Micky. I know, not very Indian, maybe his real name’s Suresh, and he’s given up the unequal struggle. He is, he says, at our service.

“This is your programme I have made for you.” I feel cherished already. “First, have the relaxing swim. Next, you will have the camel safari, one hours. Then, after one hours, come back, go to tent and fresh up.” You try this with a lisp, a stammer and an Indian accent. I ask him a question, just so I can hear him say it all again. “Next, seven o’clock, the entertainment. The singing and the dancing of Rajasthan. Then you will eat the dinner, no?” Sounds like a plan, to me, Micky.

We fall into the unlikely pool-in-the-desert, and warm it up a couple of degrees, only climbing out again when we reach thermal equilibrium. And then, we’re on safari.

Wading through the soft sand to the camel-park, I ask if all our worldly goods will be safe, back at base camp. Micky stops and turns, on a 50-paise piece, shocked. “All security men here is Rajput,” he says simply. He peers at me, because I don’t look impressed enough. “You see the earring and the moustache, no? This is Rajput peoples.” Rajput – warrior caste, race of kings. NOW I’m impressed. “Rajput peoples very honourable. Your things is safe.” So we drift off on safari, leaving our goods and chattels in the trusty hands of the sons of princes.

We hear the camels, before we see them, rumbling to one another. It’s all very well, hopping onto a low-slung camel, with his legs folded under him. You have then to stay on, while he stands up, back end first. I find muscles I’d forgotten about, trying not to catapult over Mr Roland’s head. I don’t exactly stay in my seat, but I don’t bite the sand, either, so I count that as a success. I have bits of string, instead of stirrups, which are doing a cheese-wire thing to my bare feet, so I abandon them. Then I nearly fall off again (it’s a long way down), so I opt for stability over comfort. In fairness, no-one said this was going to be a ride in the park.... Oh, no, wait, it IS a ride in the park....

“This is boy. This is boy. Both boy,” says the boss. (Unnecessarily, at least from where I'm sitting.) “This one Bappu, this one Moti.” Baby and Pearl. Perhaps it was more obvious, when they were what Monu would call “camel-child.” Also, you wouldn’t call them Scarface and Stinky, just to be honest, would you? Well, not in the nicer parts of Rajasthan, anyway.

The camel-keepers spend all day, every day with their beasts, it’s not surprising the novelty’s worn thin. I still think their nonchalance borders on neglect, though, as they stroll along, with a frayed rope draped over one shoulder, guiding ten-feet of bored camel a-piece. What if Bappu and Moti decide to have a race, just to relieve the tedium of the afternoon? Our keeper’s mobile rings, incongruously, in the middle of the desert, and he chats to that, on and off, as the signal dips in and out, for the whole hour. It dispels the Lawrence of Arabia feel, somehow.

At the furthest point from home, they bring the camels to a standstill, nose to nose. “See. Is sunset. Take picture. I take picture, you want?” So here we are. Moti’s the one with the coquettish red bobble, on the bridge of his nose.

It’s dark, when we get back. The floor show’s cranking up, so we slither into place, on one of the wide, backless settees, fringing the courtyard, camel-scented just as we are, with no time to “fresh up.” Flames crackle in a huge cooking-pot, in the centre of the courtyard, the musicians in a row behind, the dancers in front, bare feet on beaten earth. We’re all rapt, until the dancers peel off to recruit volunteers, then we all suddenly find the middle-distance fascinating. Robin-Sir isn’t quick enough, and we’re still laughing, when we’re all conscripted. She’s only four feet six, the dancing-girl, but I bet she’s Rajput, too. Without missing a beat, she slings a ladleful of kerosene on the sulky embers. It livens things up no end. As we whirl round, I’m too busy trying not to be sucked into the inferno, to feel self-conscious.

“What time you want the dinner?” asks Micky, solicitous.
“Eight o’clock, please,” I say.
Micky makes a note. “Eight o’clock, ok,” he says, then pauses. “Seven-thirty is also good time....” He works along the row, discovering dining preferences. We all sit down to eat together, at seven-thirty. Why didn’t he say so, in the first place?

After dinner, we’re herded into the bar, where Micky’s holding a trayful of glasses. “House on the rum!” he smiles. “What time you want the breakfast?” We’ve only got a plane to catch, tomorrow, so I think a late kick-off’s in order.
“Nine o’clock, please,” I say, foolishly thinking it’s up to me.
“Nine o’clock, ok!” You know what’s coming next. “Eight o’clock is also good time....” and he even has a programme, to prove it. “Eight o’clock, eat the breakfast. Nine o’clock, have the swim. Small swim. Ten o’clock, pack the bag and pshht!” He flicks his hand, as if he were swatting a fly, to indicate the parting of the ways. Resistance is futile.

The night’s broken by trains and mosquitoes. Local train-drivers like to play “Name That Tune” with a fog-horn at three o’clock in the morning, we discover, and anytime’s right for a bite, for a mosquito with the munchies. So, sleep doesn’t come into it much, but we need an early start, because we have a programme to get through. It’s not as if we’re on holiday, after all.

If you can’t get down to the gym, this week, have a go on a camel. Wear six pairs of trousers, though, it’s quite demanding on the saddle (yours, not the camel’s). Two days later, we all still walk like John Wayne, after just one hour on the hump.

PS: Jodhpur's Pants

2008-11-15T11:36:00.000-08:00

I bet you thought Jodhpur was one leg of a pair of dubious baggy trousers, which fit everywhere and nowhere, didn’t you? In fact, Jodhpur means, the City of Jodha (you can work out for yourself which bit means “city” then...) because Rao Jodha founded it in 1459. Jodhpurs, as worn on polo fields the world over, were invented here. Today, Shivraj Singh, the Crown Prince of Jodhpur, is captain of the city’s own polo team, the Jodhpur Eagles, so the tradition carries on. I like a bit of continuity.

The road to Jodhpur is long and often unmade. Mano’s a top driver, and the Innova’s newer than our own, in Mumbai, but the air-conditioning’s either temperamental or defunct, and any more than ten minutes driving anywhere leaves us all limp.

Along the dusty track, we pass a woman, toting a baby on one hip. She’s towing three more children, between two and five, and a goat, all on the same piece of string. (This is exactly why women aren’t in charge of UNESCO or the G8, or even ASDA – they are irreplaceable, multi-tasking and managing, on the domestic front.) I give her a sisterly wave, as we sail by, and she smiles, and waves back.

You can’t drive for two minutes, in Rajasthan, without meeting a cow. They drift along, with their own bovine agenda, unaware of the traffic whistling by their horns. Are English cows exceptionally wussy and skittish, or are Indian cows coolly phlegmatic and nonchalant, in the safe knowledge of their protected status? When they learn to talk, these Indian cows, their first words will be, “Two years in the clink, mate, mind the fetlocks....”

We swerve to avoid a stranded truck, flanked by four loose cobbles. It’s only the third time I see this arrangement, like Contrary Mary’s cockleshells, all in a row-ho-ho, that it comes to me – it’s a red triangle, Rajasthan-style. In Mumbai, they use a torn-off tree branch, as a Distant Early Warning of trouble ahead, but here, cobbles are clearly the way to go. Very pragmatic, since everyone’s boot’s usually full of passengers and goats.

We go round Mehrangarh Fort together, but not together. We have separate audio-guides, so we drift along in a pack, without speaking. We’re all more or less at the same spot in the tourist-blurb, focussed on the middle-distance, listening to a disembodied voice, and you can guess when we each get to the amazing/saucy bit, because there’s a small Mexican wave of silent gasps/giggles. We stare at the grim plaque, by the inner gate, where Rajiya Bhambi was walled in, to secure prosperity, when the fort was built. He volunteered to be buried alive, and his descendants still live on the estate, gifted to them by a grateful Jodha, more than five centuries ago.

From the walls of Mehrangarh, much of the housing you can see is painted blue. In Jodha’s day, only members of the Brahmin caste were allowed to use indigo emulsion – it is not only cooling, in the heat of summer, but it also acts as an insect-repellent. These days, I’m glad to hear, any old peasant can paint his house blue, if he likes.

Within the fort is the Chamunda Devi temple, where hundreds of worshippers lost their lives only weeks ago, during the Durga festival. There was a stampede, in the men’s queue. Our papers, in Mumbai, said it was because the stone path was slippery with coconut milk, from the ritual offerings, but the current theory is that an explosion nearby caused panic. They couldn’t get the death toll right for days, because people came to recover their own dead, without telling the authorities. In Mumbai, there were collections, even in Muslim communities, for the families of the Hindu victims.

While the boys are absorbed by cannons and scimitars, in the museum, I drift off to look at a nineteenth-century cosmetic box. It comes complete with an ivory-inlaid exercise-club, which I’d have trouble fitting into my make-up bag. I begin to realise that my four-minute wash-and-brush-up may be inadequate; there are apparently sixteen rituals of adornment for a woman, from painting the lips with beeswax, to placing the final tikka on the forehead, before she’s ready for love. This box clearly belonged to a woman who was not responsible for rolling out the chapattis or swilling down the fort sulabh, then.

In the courtyard, a man takes his hat off, and everyone applauds. We’re not so starved of entertainment, here in the far reaches of north India, that a bloke with his cap in hand creates a ripple of delight – this is millinery like you’ve never seen before. His mate holds the loose end, and by the time the bareheaded one has unravelled his hat, they’re at opposite ends of the courtyard. He then winds eighty-two feet of fabric (I know: I asked) back round his head, into a neat turban, and tucks the end in. More applause.

We admire the hookah, in its little alcove, complete with a real-live sheesha-wallah, with his curly moustache. He has a downcast look about him, probably because of the new smoking ban. Does it count as smoking, if your tobacco’s water-filtered? He’ll be relegated to weddings and bar mitzvahs, at this rate. I’m charmed to note, that the guide says, “Opium and hospitality go hand in hand.” Not in the East Midlands, they don’t.

When we finish our communal-but-separate fort-tour, there’s the unexpected bonus of a market, on the way out. Some of us are a little less up for this bizarre bazaar, than others, so they sit around looking bored, while I buy seventeen scarves and a pair of curly-toed camel-leather shoes. I only stop then, because Mr Roland squirrels away his credit card, before I find the jewellery stall. Look away, if you’re expecting a parcel, under my Christmas tree, and feign surprise and delight, when you open one of Ishfab’s tie-dyed specials. Ish is the craftsman, but his brother, Rav, has the patter off – well, pat, really. He switches to French, then Dutch, as variously flavoured tourists pass by. I ask him for “Look at these lovely scarves!” in German, then in Italian, and he doesn’t miss a beat. He can do Russian, and Korean, if you ask nicely, too. I ask him to say, “I’d like a cup of coffee!” and he admits defeat, laughing. He’s brilliant, if you want to know about washing instructions, or wax resist techniques, in a dozen languages, though. Camilla stopped to shop, when she was here with Prince Charles. I wonder if she got a free one, for buying in bulk? I did. Don’t worry, it’s not the one I’m giving you.

Then, glutted with culture and retail, we find Mano again, and head north-west, for the desert. Follow that camel.

Happy Baal Diwas!

2008-11-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

Nikita invitingly pats the space next to her, on the mat, in the upstairs room, at Mankhurd, so I sit down beside her. She smiles, and sighs, and leans against my knee. I could sit here forever.

Bhavika’s catechizing the assembled troops, meanwhile.
“Whose birthday is it today?”
“Chacha Nehru!”
“Right, Chacha Nehru! What is Chacha Nehru’s other name?” This one creates a ripple of dismay, and I have every sympathy. I know the answer, but I can’t get my tongue round it, either, even if you write it in four-inch capitals on a piece of paper, and stuff it into my fist, so I’m not rating their chances.
“Chacha Nehru is...... Jawaharlal Nehru. Who is he?”
“Jawaharlal Nehru!” No one else on the floor seems to find this unpronounceable, now they’ve had a steer from didi. Just me, then. I’ll stick to Pandit, I decide.
“And who was Jawaharlal Nehru?... He was the first Prime Minister of India! What was he?”
“First Prime Minister!” At least one person’s listening.
“Well done, Swapnil!” (Wouldn’t you know? With a bit of luck and a following wind, Swapnil will be Prime Minister himself, one of these days.) “Of which country was he Prime Minister?”
“India, didi, India!” Politicians can’t all be bad, it seems to me.
“And what did Chacha Nehru love?... He loved children. What did he love?”
“Children!”
“So what is his birthday, what do we say, Chacha Nehru’s birthday is.....?”
“Children’s Day!” We all smile so much, our teeth go dry, congratulating ourselves.
“So didi has brought cake!” The mats fizz with joy, and everyone’s tidy padmasan falls apart. Cake.

“Who will have cake, yes or no?” No-one has much of a problem, working this one out.

We’ve only just got over Diwali fireworks, and now it’s Baal Diwas, Children’s Day. It’s not news to me, they’ve been advertising it on the tv, all week, promoting a day-long cartoon orgy for all the family. And on the way into school this morning, we pass a fairy princess in a spangly crown, trying to tame her frothy layers of tulle and wave her wand at the same time, as she trips along at her mother’s sari-end. She strikes an incongruously exquisite note, in the detritus of the gutter, which laps at her tiny slippered feet.

The rest of the world celebrates Children’s Day on 20th November, but India makes a bid for independence, and lights her fireworks a week early, on Nehru’s birthday. It’s nearly fifty years since he died, but all the children of India still call him “Uncle” – Chacha Nehru.

“Celebrate Baal Diwas!” cajoles the poster on the hoarding by the link road. “Banish child labour!” A sobering thought, amid all the balloons and chocolate bars. “Make Children’s Day happy for all children.” If only. One of the cuties, on the mats, here at Akanksha, was found abandoned, two or three days old, in a dustbin, by the woman he thinks is his mother. It’s all I can do, not to package him up and mail him to myself, in the UK.

At the traffic-lights, Monu points to a child, hobbling down the central reservation, his foot swathed in filthy bandages, a padded crutch under each arm.

“See this boy?” We both watch him hop-skipping along, for a moment. “His foot complete.” So, the dressing and the crutches are his professional props? Monu nods. “See, this girl, too.” And sure enough, there’s his sister, equally misfortunate in the matter of sound limbs, crutches flailing. I say, someone should tell them to work different sets of traffic-lights, they add nothing to each other’s credibility. Unless they’re just a really accident-prone family. Still, I don’t expect there’ll be much in the way of Baal Diwas cake, doing the rounds, on the pavement where they live, tonight.

In our Values lesson, we’re doing Respect. What is respectful, what is disrespectful.
“If you want didi to teach you something, do you say, “Didi, teach it!””
“Yes!” says Sachin, and he’s right, that’s exactly what he does, except in mime. More exactly, he pokes you with his book, and pushes everyone else’s book off your knee, then pinches your arm, to make sure you understand. That’s Sachin’s normal MO.
“You will say, “Teach me!”?” says Bhavika-didi, scandalised. Sachin loves either/or questions, because when he gets it wrong, there’s only one answer left, and it’s always the right one.
“No, didi!” he bellows, and looks round for applause. He’s sweet, really.

We write respect words in our English note-books. Sorry. Please. Thank you. Excuse me. Not for the first time, I wish I had a video-camera, to make a salutary short, for Year 9 Citizenship Lessons, in the UK. Come to think of it, some of the favoured sons and daughters of leafy Powai could do with a bit of revision, in this module, too. At the swimming-pool, I’m just dripping towards the changing-rooms, when a boy of about twelve hurtles round the corner, and cannons into me. Without looking at me, or missing a step, he scrambles on. “Excuse me!” I say in my loudest, school-missiest, most sarcastic voice. “That’s ok!” he says, airily, over his shoulder. Indignation, more strong than a belt in the solar plexus, quite vanquishes me.

Meanwhile, Bhavika’s waxing warm to her theme.
“When Caroline-didi gives you little bottles of shampoo and soap, do you take one and say, “Didi, I have no gift!” – is that what you should do?” I think of the free shop, disappearing hand over fist, last lesson, and wonder if this rings a bell with anyone.
“Yes, didi!” says Khaja the Snitch. “Sonal, two soap!” He tugs on my sleeve, and points at Sonal, who pulls a face and turns away. Either she’s innocent as charged, or she doesn’t understand. It has to be said, her English isn’t that hot, though. “Hair-comb, didi, me?” Khaja croons, his nose pressed to mine. Forget thirty pieces of silver, the price of this super-grass is a plastic comb. I harden my heart, and refuse. I would give this child the sun, moon and stars, if I could find a piece of wrapping-paper big enough, but he’s not having a comb, today.

Before we go home, a game. We split into three: Team Sachin, Team Salim and Team Ashish. Each round, a player is nominated, who chooses which level question he wants, worth 10, 20, 30 or 50 points. After two turns, caution goes out of the window with no glass, and everyone’s bidding for tops.
“For fifty points, if I have ten sweets, then I get five more – wait, I haven’t finished, keep it in your head – then I give ten to my Mother, how many sweets do I have?” I hold my breath, but Khaja doesn’t.
“Five sweets!” Team Ashish do a war-dance of victory.

Swapnil goes for broke, too.
“If I have twenty-five sweets, and I want to give forty, how many sweets do I need?” He’s allowed to do it on the board, instead of the back of his eyelids, but even then has to have three goes, to get to fifteen. It’s not the maths lacking, it’s the nerve, but perhaps he should think of an alternative to the premiership, by way of career.

It’s looking like a walk-over for Team Ashish, raking in fifty after fifty. Then Khaja gets a ten-point penalty for dancing up and down to distract Rahul, so the race is on again.

It all hinges on Kunda, the last question of the last round. She’s a wobbly ten-point person, at heart, but she’s carried away by the madness of it all, and bids wildly for fifty. Didi writes “-ag,” “-ot,” and “-ip” on the board, and Kunda has to find three words for each. She’s thinking about it. I have to gag Naina with one hand and Khaja with the other, as Kunda begins to write “tag” in uneven nano-letters. By the time she gets to the last column, we’re all miming “sip” or “dip” or “pip” like it was New Year’s Charades, but she has her own ideas, and finally writes “lip,” bagging fifty for the team.

Final scores: Sachin’s team - 230; Salim’s team – 190; Ashish’s team – 240. Much cheering and laughter. No-one says, “My question was harder than hers!” or “He had help with his!” and mostly they don't say, “It’s not fair!” - so the respect lesson is well learned. I don’t know that the dangerous ten-point dock has taught Khaja anything about sitting-down and shutting-up, but the whole world’s out there, waiting to knock the stuffing out of him, there’s time yet for a bit of irrepressible joie de vivre.

Kunda’s so overwhelmed by her success, she gives me her cake, on the way out. She’s had a baby brother and a brutal haircut in the same week, I’m surprised she can still spell her own name. I put the cake back in her hand, and she gives me a shy smile.
“Happy Children’s Day, Kunda!”
“Thank-you, didi!” she says, and scampers off down the stairs.

Rajasthan, Land of Kings

2008-11-13T10:28:00.001-08:00

Our guide du jour is the silver-tongued, snake-hipped Karan Singh Rathore. He wants to be world-famous, and he might well be, one of these days. He’s learnt all his admirable English, not at school, but from tourists – he’s evidently had some street-savvy customers, over the years. His Pink City patter’s interspersed with snippets like “No wife, no life!” and “No money, no honey!” He’s not married, at the time of writing, so if you need a Jaipur guide, or a husband, ask me nicely, and I’ll give you his email address.

Jaipur has a population of five million. Most of them seem to be at the Amber Fort, with us. The walled city has seven gates, Karan says. “You know why seven? Because heaven itself has seven gates.” Obvious, when you know. The city’s painted “pink for happiness” and has been rosily so, since the Prince of Wales’ visit in 18-something – so he left his mark in Rajasthan in no uncertain terms. If you indulge in a bit of chromatic rebellion, here in the Old City, and splash out on a pot of mauve shellac or fuchsia gloss, for example, you’re up for a Rs 5000 fine, and two months in jail. And there’s you, all this time, thinking you can’t go wrong with magnolia...

We pass through the marketplace, where dairymen bring churns of milk to sell. Aluminium lids are wedged tight with a fistful of straw, straight off the floor of the cowshed, by the look of it. They’re prised off, for a potential buyer, who – here’s the tasty bit – dunks his hand up to the wrist in the milk, to test its quality with his bare fingers. What if he says no – what if the next punter, and the one after him, say no? By the time it gets to your breakfast Weetabix, your milk could have been through dozens of hands. – So, next time you’re in Jaipur, if anyone asks you, “How do you like your tea?” – say, “Black!”

We drive up the hill to the Black City, wiggling the Innova through tiny cobbled streets too congested for a push-bike. It’s most interesting, when someone else’s Innova’s coming the other way. Brinkmanship’s still the only rule of the road. Mano’s a passed master, and yields to none. There are shops selling rice and peas, full of veiled and sari’d housewives, jostling next to shops full of bermuda’d tourists, selling Rajasthani puppets and camel leather shoes. Eclectic retail.

Karan says, “Do you want to go to Fort by car, or by elephant?” Oh, Karan..... We drive to the elephant park where some of us are so excited, we can hardly get out of the car. Mr Roland and the boys tolerantly join the queue, trying not to look bored. We’re three steps up the elephant-mounting ziggurat – so close, I can smell the poo – when disaster strikes. Karan nips nimbly up the steps with a Don’t Shoot The Messenger look on his face, and I accept defeat before he opens his mouth. “Is too hot for elephant. This is last ride.” He points to the porky tourists climbing aboard even as he’s speaking, and I hate them. I don’t know who they are or where they’re from, they just look despicable. “We go by car,” says Karan. “Sorry...” Well, that’s better than having some poor pachyderm lumber up the hill, in the heat of the day, with a bunch of gora on his back, isn’t it? – No, frankly, it isn’t, but I work myself into believing it, by the time we get to the Amber Fort, prosaically on four wheels.

We’re just in time to nip into Ganesh’s temple, inside the palace, before closing time. We have to take off not only our shoes, but cameras, phones, and leather belts, before crossing the threshold. Between the statues on the back wall, and the rail to keep out the yeomanry, monks shuttle back and forth, ferrying offerings one way to the gods, and blessed Prasad the other, to the faithful. Not only fruit and flowers, we see one man hand over a bottle of gin (unequivocally labelled “Gin” to take the guesswork out of voyeurism) – which a monks upends into a flask. Incredulous, we ask Karan, and he says, “For Hindu, the fruit and the wine, is all offering.” Broad church, indeed...

We admire the Hall of Mirrors, its tiny mosaics winking in the sun, and the royal bathrooms, where you could swim in rose-scented water. The walls are tinted, but not with paint. The sixteenth century decorators ground up the off-cuts of semi-precious stones, from in the inlays, and mixed the powder with lemon juice and oil and seventeen other secret ingredients, to form a paste, which they used to paint the marble. I salute their parsimony. Like making jam tarts, with pastry scraps, I say, but no-one quite sees the similarity.

The Maharajah who built the fort, Raja Man Singh I, was a man of many talents. Not least, he ran twelve wives and two hundred concubines, simultaneously. (Mr Roland says that he has trouble running just the one. It’s all very well, being witty in company, but he’s going to have to be alone with me, sooner or later...) Each Mrs Raja Man Singh I had her own quarters, and her own kitchens. One woman, one kitchen, you can see the wisdom of that. When RMS was in residence, the wives weren’t allowed to talk to each other, which proves that, despite having two hundred and twelve women all to himself, Raja knew nothing about the fair sex. When he was off, going to war to have a rest, of course they talked to each other. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? “So what did he get you for Diwali, then?” “Is that a new tiara, or have you had it ages?” - The queens, he visited in their separate chambers, but the concubines were slumming it, three or four to a cell, so they were summoned to his rooms, as required. It comes as no surprise when Karan says, “You want to see the secret passages?” RMS has a rabbit-warren of interconnecting hidden corridors, so he could think his business was his own. Men, who’d have them?

The Crown Palace

2008-11-12T10:05:00.001-08:00

I look around the lift, on the way down to the lobby: we’re an unprepossessing lot. In all fairness, it’s still dark outside, but the muezzin’s up before us. As far as the boys are concerned, there’s only one 5.30 in any twenty-four hours, and this isn’t it. No-one speaks, but “It Had Better Be Worth It” is ricocheting, loud and clear, off the mirrored walls. The Taj Mahal will be up for the photo-shoot, but the camera lens will need more Vaseline than a baby’s bottom, to soft-focus the bags under our eyes. Then I remember the magic that is photoshop, and chalk up one to technology...

Downstairs, Niraj is waiting for us, in his crisp cotton shirt and pressed jeans. You can’t not notice, that his face and chest are badly scarred by burns. I lean in to catch his words, watching his mouth, then look away, in case he thinks I’m staring, so I miss the next bit, and have to look again. This delicacy ping-pong continues, until I understand that it’s my problem, not his. Niraj, with his disfigured face, spends every day showing off the most exquisite building in the world, with no thought of irony.

Mano takes us halfway, up to the combustion-engine exclusion zone, where we hop into an electric tuk-tuk for the last lap. The ambience teeters between surly and laconic. The conversation’s not monosyllabic, though, because someone would need to say something for that...

The day dawns, as we join the queue. It’s fully light, but with a blue filter. The early birds are opening their shops for the tourist worms. We watch the stall-holders, with their whisk brooms, sweeping up dust from the shoes of yesterday’s customers, which they leave in tidy piles at the doorway, for today’s customers to walk through and bring back in. I love recycling.

Most of the silent queue’s as pole-axed as we are, except the talkative American lady behind me. She’s clearly a morning person, but she doesn’t have long to live. Then, just as I’m going to have to stab her, the kaleidoscope of fate turns, and the queue moves forward, so she lives to chat another day.

We’re herded into separate lines, men on the right, ladies on the left, and at first, I’m winning, because my team’s numerically challenged. The advantage is temporary, though, because the men’s queue processes at walking pace, a quick flick with the bomb-detecting paddle, then, Next Please! The ladies, however, are all carrying enough stuff to put Mary Poppins’ carpet-bag to shame, plus a family picnic in the other hand. I’m twitching irritably, watching kitchen sink after kitchen sink clatter onto the security man’s desk. Do these women know nothing? My capsule handbag contains a lipstick, a phone, a tube of mints and a hundred-rupee note, folded small, for emergencies. (In England, £1.25 would not get you out of many emergencies, I know, unless you were desperate for half a cup of coffee, but in India, Rs 100 pretty well has you covered.)

It’s the last Saturday of the Diwali hols, and the turnstile’s spinning. There’s a queue inside, for posing on the Princess Di seat and looking wistful, with your head on one side, but fortunately, we don’t want to. On Fridays, the Taj Mahal’s closed. The mosque on its left, looking from the gate, is still used for prayer, by the workers who live in the outer courtyard. The mosque faces west, which puzzles me, until I have a geographical epiphany, and work out that Mecca is only to the East, if you are west of Mecca...

Niraj shows us sneaky Hindu lotus blossoms, in the inlaying, inside the central dome. Shah Jehan was Muslim, but his mother was Hindu, and this is a wink to her. Niraj cups his hands round a section of curling fronds of petals and leaves, in the carved wall panels, and there is a perfect marble OM.

The four towers on sentry-duty, at the corners, tilt outwards, so that, in an earthquake, they would fall away from the central dome. They think of everything, these seventeenth century Mughal architects, don’t they? You used to be able to climb them, until fifteen years ago, when some thoughtless love-shorn desperado threw himself off the top of one of them, onto the unforgiving marble beneath. I trust SHE was satisfied. One more copycat suicide, and the authorities drew the bolts for good, to prevent a stampede of unrequited lovers. Not very nice for Mumtaz.

I thought this was the fairest of Indian monuments, but I was wrong. Not in the mirror-mirror sense, I mean racial equity for tourists. Foreigners pay Rs 750, and, last time, I thought Indian residents paid Rs 520, which makes the mark-up for pasty-faces a reasonable fifty percent. In fact, Indians pay Rs 20, you can do the maths yourself. Don’t be indignant, though – they have to pay two rupees, to use the toilets, by the exit, and we get in for free. I don’t find this out, until we’re leaving, or I’d have gone twice, to get my money’s worth.

Shah Jehan also built the Red Fort, at Agra, so we give that the once-over, before hitting the Jaipur trail. The Fort has twin towers, where the royal princesses slept. The first, for Jahanara, is of white marble. Its partner looks identical, but is made of red sandstone, painted to match. This was the bedroom of Gauhara, whom Shah Jehan was never able to forgive, because his beloved Mumtaz died giving birth to her. Explain that one, to a four-year-old...

On the way to Jaipur, we linger longer at Fatehpur Sikri, to complete a hat-trick of World Heritage sites in one day. It’s a whole city, built in the late sixteenth century, to be capital of Uttar Pradesh, but abandoned after only a decade, for lack of water. Even though I’m still not speaking to Akbar the Great, after yesterday’s revelations, there’s no denying its loveliness. I especially like the open-sided five-tiered palace, which looks like a Buddhist temple. This, the guide informs us, is where Akbar would retire to take the evening air and, “have joy with his wives.” Small wonder it needed to be five-storied, then.

Next stop, the Pink City.

On The Road Again

2008-11-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

Before we leave the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Delhi, I raid the free shop in the bathroom, and my conscience keeps its own counsel. It’s amazing how rapacious you can be, in someone else’s name. As I scoop all the little bottles, for my Akanksha cuties, into my free Taj Mahal Palace bag - how thoughtful of them to provide a bag, too! - I notice a tempting invitation from the hotel spa, hooked on the back of the door. “Try our exclusive massages at our wellness centre, by our professional masseurs, as they take you to a world of private bliss.” I don’t think they have “wellness centres” in the slums of Mankhurd, back in Mumbai, or if they do, they’re very discreet about it. “Relax, Relive, Rejuvenate,” oozes the brochure. The advice on the wall at Akanksha’s mission control is similarly alliterative, I recall, if slightly less hedonistic: “Rigour, Relevance, Relationships, Reflection.” Back in the hymn to hygiene, which is the tiled bathroom attached to Room 256, at the TMP, I tally the cost of gratification. A “Classic Swedish” will set you back Rs 2000, or, if you’ve had a bad day, and need more pampering, you can restore the balance with a “Balinese Massage” (don’t ask!) for a mere Rs 3,500. The star prize, however, is the Special Spa Package imaginatively called “Indulgence” which lasts a hundred and twenty minutes. It’d need to, for Rs 4,500. It’s difficult to square that, with what’s lapping up the marble steps, just outside. Two hours of “Indulgence” costs nearly as much as Rani-didi earns in a month, working six full days a week, at the Akanksha centre, and she keeps herself and four children on it. I look into my TMP bag, bristling with freebies, and tip in all the bedside pads and pencils, and the sewing-kit, too.

To make up for the shambles of yesterday’s sight-seeing, we fast-forward, this morning, through the edited highlights of Delhi’s World Heritage Sites. The Qutb Minar’s still standing, though Dinesh laments that the public’s no longer free to scamper up its unbanistered spiral staircase, inside. In 1981, a child slipped and knocked down all his classmates, climbing up behind him, like so many skittles. Eighty-five children suffocated, and the tower was shut. The warmth goes out of the sun, for a while.

The adjacent Muslim mosque is built resourcefully from bits of ransacked Hindu and Jain temples, as you can see from the carved pillars. Muslim architecture usually scorns animate subjects, preferring geometrical or floral decoration, but here, human figures and animals are sculpted into the stone. Before they incorporated these borrowings into their Mosque, though, the Muslim builders thoughtfully chipped off the faces of the Hindu gods. Quelle finesse.

Dinesh abandons us to the rest of our lives, at this point, so we say a golden goodbye to him, and head off for Agra with our tour driver, Mano. (I know, so near, yet so far...) The road’s a string of grit and hardcore, welded together with the odd stretch of tarmac. No-one’s fussy about which carriageway to use, which makes for a bit of extra-curricular cardio-vascular exercise in the passenger seat. It’s a long drive, it’s a good job that camel-carts are so charming. We while away the miles playing “Spot the Over-Loaded Tuk-tuk,”- an oriental variant on standard in-car Eddie Stobart hunting - as the road unravels before us.

Mano reckons we’re not going to reach Agra by sunset, when the Red Fort will be more in the way of being the Black Fort, so we console ourselves, en route, with Akbar’s Tomb, instead, where we mop up a bit of culture while the sun’s still shining. I’m very fond of Akbar. He was a mighty Moghul king, famous for contriving harmony out of strife, binding Muslim and Hindu into co-existence if not unanimity. I know this, not from the Tomb Tour Guide, but from Bollywood, having munched Bombay Mix and swigged Kingfisher, through three hours of the film epic “Jodhaa Akbar.” (Very nice frocks, but a mite over-long, and more gory than need be, in places – grand finale with elephants, though, so ultimately redeemed...) I imbibe the romantic fantasy wholesale, as I do the beer, and am thus Stunned and Dismayed to learn that Akbar had two other wives, one Muslim, and one Christian. Is this not taking ecumenicalism to the point of attenuation? Jodhaa the Hindu was his documented favourite, because she produced his first son, but this doesn’t cheer me up much. Bollywood also failed to make even the most passing of references to Akbar’s three hundred and fifty concubines. Absent-minded, to say the least. It’s too late, though: I’ve gone off Akbar big time, I don’t care if he was a peace-maker. He’d hardly have the energy to make war, after all....

We star in Other People’s Holiday Albums, on our way out, holding grizzling babies, embracing some random Grandma/daughter/uncle and saying “Cheese!” (I always wittily say, “Paneer!” but no-one ever, ever laughs.) Robin and Owen are much in demand, and have to bracket giggling brown beauties, one by one, while trying to look casual, relaxed, happy, and white. Why would you want a photo with a complete stranger, whom you’ve never met before and never will again, whose name you don’t even know, and whose face will clutter your holiday snaps and puzzle your friends forever? We wait for strangers to get OUT of the frame, before we click, where I come from. I am at a loss. I could live here for another thousand years, and still not understand.

If I could say one word to you about the Taj Hotel at Agra, it might be “don’t!” The turbaned fortune-teller, in the lobby, and the sitar-player, in the bar, lend a certain ambience, but the food’s lamentable. The menu’s more fun than the meal, though, every line’s a gem. I am tempted to slip one into my gooodie-bag, for future delight. Maybe we should have opted for the champagne dinner, instead of fish and chips? “Sparkle your love with cheerful personal evening discovering each other through the flight of culinary tastes.” - A tall order, for a prawn cocktail, by any standards. - “Treasure this evening as memorable moments of your life and make your better half realise how much you love and care for.” Care for what? It doesn’t say. If the sentence had stopped after “realise,” I reckon it would be worth Rs 5000 (plus taxes) for Mr Roland’s and my cheerful personal evening.

The first thing I check out, upstairs in our new room, is the free shop. Just as I suspected, lean pickings. Good thing I picked up the shoe-shine kit and the slippers, in Delhi, then. It'll be like Diwali all over again, for Rani-didi, when I get back.

PS: Delhi Revisited

2008-11-10T06:13:00.001-08:00

Dinesh is Our Man in Delhi. His eyes aren’t quite interested in the same thing, behind his pebble-glasses, and he comes up to about Mr Roland’s third rib. Within a heartbeat of his whipping into the front seat of our Tourist Innova, we learn that he has two sons and a daughter, 18, 16 and 11, that he used to be a jeweller, in Bandra, Mumbai, that he speaks Japanese, and that he’s lived in Delhi for twelve years. We’re well out of the diplomatic area, with its spacious embassies and copiously-sprinkled lawns, and into the Mumbai-familiar scurry and scramble of Old Delhi, when Dinesh sees fit to mention his wife, before segueing smoothly back to his tourist patter. It seems the Presidential Palace of Delhi was home to the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, who employed more than four hundred gardeners, to service its grounds, and fifty soldiers, as human scarecrows....

At the Jama Mashid Mosque, we feed single file through the bomb-detecting door-frame, and up the wall of stepped slabs beyond. The threat of terrorism's never far from anyone's mind, here, so it's not surprising, that they're so hot on national security. What is surprising, though, is that the bomb-dectecting door-frame's not wired up to anything other than fresh air. Indian security's so... Indian.

We’re just kicking off our shoes, breathless, before entering the central courtyard, when we’re shooed away by sentries – it’s four o’clock, and the muezzin’s revving up for the evening call to prayer. As we’re littering the doorway, with our mouths hanging open like bumpkins fresh in from the west, a posse of youths clatters up the stone stairs, three at a time. They flick their shoes to the chappal-wallah without breaking their stride, pulling their lacy skull-caps straight: they’re late.

Dinesh, apologetic, offers to bring us back in half an hour, when prayers are said, and the faithful no longer need protecting from the taint of prying observers, but I point to the schedule of house rules, by the entrance archway. “Number Eight: Women are not permitted to enter after the evening prayer.” I am the only female fly in this particular ointment, so I consider offering to wait outside, while they go in and fulfil themselves touristically, but I think better of it, before my kindness gets past my teeth. So, we peek in at the gateway, and that’s as much mosque as we see today.

At the foot of the steps, a whole Muslim community springs up on every side. If you don’t spot the crocheted cap stalls, the butchers are a dead giveaway, their counters curtained with grim carcasses, and laid with strings of dark meat. I turn away quickly, but not quickly enough, I’ve already seen the basket of goat-heads on the floor. Dinesh says, “Very danger area,” and flips the central lock. (Does that remind you of anyone you know? Anyone from Lucknow, for example?) At night, here, our man from Delhi says, only Muslims walk abroad.

We crawl through the maze of packed streets, happy to drink in local colour now we’re locked in - small shops, wooden stalls, or even bits of rag, spread on the bare pavement, then arranged with fragrant piles of garlic or heaps of toasted nuts for sale. There’s a whole unglamorous row specializing in car parts. “We keep the car moving,” says Dinesh, sagely, “We stay still, ten minutes, all car gone.” Just like Liverpool, I think... “Then, we come here, buy car back again, one piece this shop, one piece next shop...”

We drive to the Gandhi Memorial, and our afternoon of untourism is complete. It’s closed. The guard slouches on his plastic chair, his rifle leaning cosily against his khaki knees, but he wakes up for a consultation with Dinesh. Thus we learn that tomorrow’s the anniversary of the assassination of Indira Gandhi – 31 October – so the park’s secured twenty-four hours in advance: you can’t get in to mooch round the mausoleum, in case you’ve got a bomb stuffed down your salwar. Fair enough. “Is just square of black marble,” Dinesh says dismissively, as we do another U-turn, “... and eternal flame.” I wonder, why we were going to see it in the first place, since it’s such a non-starter, but I don’t say...

Plan C’s Birla’s Temple, and – desperate for some sights to see – we agree before Dinesh reaches the question-mark. We screech away from the lights, as soon as they turn green: dust and exhaust-fumes shroud the motley crew of somersaulting beggars, lady-boys, and coconut vendors, plying their various trades. An occupational hazard, if you live at the cross-roads.

Happily for us – and even more happily for Dinesh - Birla’s Temple’s a winner. Mr Birla’s big in construction, second only to Mr Tata, here in India, so the temple’s by him, rather than to him. It’s also known as the Lakshmi Ganesha Temple, but you could guess that from the statuary at the gate. Mr Birla has a statue of his own, but it’s in the back garden, to eliminate any possible misunderstanding.

Indian enterprise is ever alert to a retail opportunity. Before being overwhelmed by spirituality at this place of worship, they slip in a tourist shop by the front entrance. It doesn’t say “Tourist Shop,” obviously, it says, “Foreigners this way!” and by the time you realise it’s actually a shop, they’ve got your shoes. And, in our case, your mobile phones and your camera, too... There are elephants-in-elephants on sale, and pashminas, and sandalwood Buddhas, but there’s no obligation to buy. Not unless you want your phone back, that is. The temple’s dedicated to Ganesh, the God of Business, and to Lakshmi, the Goddess of Money, so how could there not be a shop on the way in?

Dinesh kisses the steps, and makes for Ganesh’s shrine, for a private word. With the ring-finger on his right hand, he presses a red kum-kum bindi, first on his own forehead, then on each of ours. His wife must know where he’s been, I say, when he gets home, of an evening.

The bell above the central arch, on the way into the main temple, is suspended out of reach, so you have to jump, to hit the clapper and make it ring. A French lady asks Owen to pick up her friend, to help him sound the bell, so he does. The Frenchman’s fairly substantial, and I’m just wondering why he needs a lift, when I notice, he’s blind.

On the way out, I buy a lacquered elephant, to redeem our shoes. In my own defence, it’s very small and blue, and therefore inevitable. Or, that’s what I tell Mr Roland.

We’re staying at the Taj Palace Hotel, in Delhi. So are the Australian and Indian cricket teams. We draw up at the grand entrance, and are swept out of the car and into the hotel, by Maharajah doormen in cockaded turbans and curly moustaches. The marble steps are flooded with reporters and random passers-by, brandishing cameras and mobiles, but I don’t twitch my kurta straight, or even pat my mad hair. Dinesh jostles importantly past the liveried flunkies. “So, tomorrow,” he says, avoiding the chief doorman’s eye, “we meet here in the foyer, nine-thirty, right?” I’m almost sure that’s right, because it’s what we agreed in the car, less than fifteen seconds ago. Dinesh needs a passport beyond the plate-glass doors, though, and we’re it. He abandons us instantly, and scuttles off to harass cricketing legends, and to be swatted out of the way by their minders. I’m thinking, it’d be nice to take some photos, too, for our cricketing boy, back in Mumbai, but there’s a small snag. I wouldn’t recognise Sachin Tendulkar if he served me my breakfast egg, unless he was labelled. Mr Roland contrives to catch Australia between floors, though, without getting punched, so our happy conjunction is not lost to posterity, after all.

School's Out

2008-10-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

On the way to school, I point to a man, carrying a sleeping child across each shoulder. “Look, Monu, could be you, this time next year. You, with Pooja and Shukti.” Monu laughs. These are his favourite girl’s names. “But I bet you have a boy, first!” He slaps the wheel and shakes his head, “Boy very danger!”

“Danger” is the most useful not-adjective I have ever come across. In Monu World, it describes urban decay, local traffic - and local traffic police, for that matter - the Aarey Milk Colony after 9 p.m., muslims, lemon juice from the street vendor, tuk-tuk drivers, Dharavi and all its million residents, alcohol, beggars, pollution in general, Mumbai railways, Kashmir, and now boys. That’s a lot of work, for one little word. I’d be surprised if it didn’t want to go to bed early, tonight.

Boys are not danger, in my book, but Monu’s still going tsk! tsk! and shaking his head, so I tell him my wysiwyg theory, about the nature of your basic boy. “A thought comes into a boy’s head,” I say, miming Ashish doing his takeaways, putting a number in his head, “and it comes straight out of his mouth. No problems. Direct.” Monu nods, being a bit of a wysiswg boy himself. “A thought comes into a girl’s head, and stays. Think-think-think, then yak-yak-yak.” I make my hands bicker with each other, on the back seat. The driver of the tuk-tuk, pulled up next to us at the lights, is mesmerised, and forgets to drive off, when the lights change. “Girls, all time thinking,” Monu says. He’s wising up, the boy from Lucknow. “Boys have a problem,” I say, warming to my theory, “Boy Number One hits Boy Number Two on the nose, problem sorted. Carry on with the cricket.” It’s getting like Punch and Judy, in the back, but without the hand-puppets. Naked Punch and Judy, then. “Girls have a problem, no punch, just yak-yak-yak, all day, and the next day, and the next day.” I mime infinity. I love charades. “Girls mouth-fight,” Monu nods, “very danger.” Too right.

Today, at Akanksha, we break up for Diwali, so everyone’s demob-happy. Bhavika-didi writes some sentences on the board, for copying into our English books.

At Diwali we pray to God.
We wear new clothes.
We eat sweets.
We light diyas in our homes, and burst crackers in the street.
We wish everybody a Happy Diwali.

When we get to the “new clothes” bit, Ashish lifts up his blue Ananksha t-shirt, to show me the yellow one, underneath. Two bags of Diwali goodies, one from Bhavika-didi and one from me, are glowing, gently radioactive, at the front, drawing all eyes. How can they concentrate on seven minus nine won’t go, borrow ten? I’m so excited, I can hardly do it, myself, and I stopped using my fingers and toes as an abacus, years ago. The air’s simmering, but we still have to do ascending and descending order, and fractions. Khaja solves his excess of energy, by tickling my feet, every time Bhavika’s eagle gaze is elsewhere. I might have to go and stand at the back, in a minute, for laughing. “Go, take your punishment!"

Instead of punishing me, though, Bhavika presents me with a gift – a photo-frame, and a little embroidered bag for my mobile phone – together with thank-you cards made by the children, laminated for posterity. I promise to keep them forever.

We fold our legs, join our hands and close our eyes early, today, because we have one last Diwali treat, a Medical Check-Up - not as laugh-out-loud jolly, as a picnic or a theatre trip, for example, but more useful. The medical’s sponsored by Larsen and Toubro - the largest engineering and construction business in India – proving that a conglomerate can have a face, after all. Good for them.

We crocodile through the tenement blocks, waving like royalty. The doctor’s in another Akanksha classroom, in an adjacent street. We tiptoe over rotting rubbish and foetid grey puddles; I note that Aanchal’s barefoot, but she’s not bothered, so what right have I to be fastidious? We pass the crowd, gathered round the policeman, beating a man with a stick, and pick our way up the littered stairs, to register and queue. There’s a class before us, and the one after us is already at the door. It’s a long wait, and it’s hot.

At last it’s Ashish’s turn. The doctor holds his hands, looking into his eyes, as if no-one else in the world existed, gently asking him questions, sounding his chest, checking his glands. Ashish is a little soldier, I’m bursting with pride. Next up’s Khaja the irrepressible; I’ve never seen him so quiet. I whisper to Bhavika, that we could do with the doctor in all our lessons, maybe...

The children are given a paper, which serves as a prescription, for the mobile medical van, waiting on the street, downstairs. Ashish gets a bottle of medicine for worms, and stuffs it precariously into the top of the plastic bag he uses, to carry his books. He’s long since chewed off the handles, so has to cradle it in his arms.

“My home, didi, come!” He’s desperate to show me where he lives, and I spare a fleeting thought for his poor mother, unsuspecting of her son’s lavish invitation, nursing the pot of dal at base-camp. Bhavika says it’s ok, though, so we go.

We climb three flights of stairs, stepping over broken furniture, paintpots, abandoned shoes and assorted debris. The fragrance is indescribable. Ashish disappears in front of us, on his little dancing feet, then pops his head back out, to make sure we’re following. He’s the Distant Early Warning System, so his Mum and his sister, Savita, are on the landing to meet us. They’re both small and beautiful, unsurprisingly. Then, here we are.

Inside, all the walls are bubblegum pink, and everything’s picture-perfect. To the right of the door, a sofa, where Ashish slings his tatty school-bag, and on the left, above head-height, a small temple with a Ganesh, all pooja’d up for Diwali. Through a doorway, I see a little kitchen, but can’t investigate, because Ashish whisks me behind a curtain, to show me his bedroom, which is also pink. He points at a tiny table, and a mirror, “Didi, see, didi!” - all the mod cons, in fact. “For makeup,” Savita says. Not Ashish, surely? Nor Savita, I tell her, she’s already sundar.

Now I’ve met his Mum, I feel guilty about wanting to take Ashish home with me. I’ll just have to be firm, that’s all.

In the car, on the way back to Powai, I show Monu the children’s cards.

“Didi helped me in English. – Mehul”

“Didi, thank you for helping in Maths. - Kajal Brijesh Gautam.” Sunday-best name, too, Kajal. Good job I won’t be here, when you’re tackling differentiation and integration. My mathematical savoir faire stops with goes-intos.

“She hep me in learning. - Sachin” I think we should all hep each other, if we can, don’t you?

"Thank you to help us in all the things. – Naina” I’m just beginning to feel like Mother Theresa, when I see Sadabh’s offering.

“Thank you for the choclate, didi.” I applaud his spelling, and his honesty. See, boys are not danger, after all.

Riotous Times

2008-10-22T09:36:00.001-07:00

I nearly rang you yesterday, to tell you that we were ok, despite all the riots in Mumbai, but then it occurred to me that you wouldn’t know who Raj Thackeray was anyway, if he jumped up on the table in front of you and stuffed a paratha down your patiyala. RT’s got very big for his Size Tens, this side of the Arabian Sea, though. Also, it was 4 a.m. where you are, when you’d be still hopefully pushing out the zeds, so couldn’t possibly have started worrying about us yet. Now you’re awake, you’ll be glad to know - we’re ok.

Thackeray – the press chummily call him “Raj,” as if he weren’t a criminal – has been arrested again, charged with provoking hatred among communities and endangering public safety, so his MNS cronies are up in arms. The basic posit of Raj’s party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, is that jobs in Maharashtra belong to people born here, not interlopers from the North. A lot of tuk-tuk drivers are Bihari, it turns out, and our very own dear Monu’s from Uttar Pradesh. Raj hasn’t got global monopoly on territorialism gone mad, we’ve heard it all before, but India’s political palate is less jaded than ours in the blasé west. Things are getting so heated and so sticky, we’ll be making treacle toffee before long, just in time for Bonfire Night. It’s no longer just words and insults flying about, either, it’s sticks and stones. Real sticks, and real stones. Tuk-tuks overturned and set alight, tyres burned in the road, generally Much Unpleasantness, out and about. The word to the wise is to stay indoors. So we do.

Thus it is that I do the first politically active thing, of my entire life. I’m feeling quite cutting-edge and urbane, except that it’s not really an act, and I’m not really the agent. I consider trail-blazing women, standing up and being counted, like Joan of Arc or Emily Pankhurst, and the glamour fizzles out of my staying at home instead of going to school. I had to change my plan because of a political situation, then. Except, I didn’t change it at all, Monu changed it for me.

This is the pattern of all my days. Monu says, “Ma’am, tomorrow, what plan?” So I tell him what I want to do, the next day, and he unfocusses his eyes, and wags his finger to and fro, tick-tock, while he has a think. Then he tells me what I am, in fact, going to do, which quite often has a passing resemblance to my original plan. It works very well. Don’t be thinking I’m being bullied, here, it’s merely submission to the Voice of Reason. Well, Reason and Geography. I’m inclined to concoct unlikely schedules – for example, Mankhurd school in the morning, Good Earth for lunch, then a quick whisk round In Orbit in the afternoon. This is the Mumbai equivalent of going to Nottingham for a couple hours, then to Plymouth for a bowl of soup, then popping back to Brent Cross for a browse. You can see why I leave it to Jeeves.

We’re nearly confined to barracks, today, too, because Raj spends the night in custody, and the streets are still running with molten tyres, when we get up. But there are eighty thousand police out there, enforcing Law and Order, so we risk it, and arrive scatheless, at office and school, respectively.

This morning, we limp out of Powai, on the wrong side of the road. They’re digging up all the nice tarmac again, mostly, I think, because it’s not been interfered with, for at least six weeks. Where road surfaces are concerned, Mumbai District Councillors are like schoolboys, in a field of virgin snow. They don’t stop us using the road, while they’re working on it, obviously, so we bob and weave, in and out of the pneumatic drills, and the steam-rollers with OM painted on their noses, and it takes an extra three-quarters of an hour, to get anywhere. We’re jubilant to notice that they’ve nearly finished the new flyover, so we have our first go on that, this week. Only on the way home, though, the outgoing carriageway’s not ready for business, yet.

India should have In Medias Res running through its core, like Blackpool rock. There’s never an end or a beginning, everything’s permanently simultaneous or over-lapping. I go to the swimming-pool, this afternoon, and it’s only at the end of my third length, that it percolates through my unlovely rubber hat to my thick skull, that there are swimming lessons in progress. Then I notice twenty-five Mums in saris, perched on plastic chairs, at the edge of the water, encouraging their chubby little snugglebums with the waterwings and floats, to listen to the teacher. I’m parked at the deep end, trying to exude nonchalance, and failing, watching the sun dip behind the building-site next door. I’m thinking they’ll have to get out in a minute, because there’s only so much chlorine a six-year-old can swallow in any one afternoon, so I’ll sit it out. The temperature’s in the mid-thirties, but I’m still beginning to get goosebumps on my corrugated goosebumps, so I sling my goggles back on, and swim across to ask swimming-didi, how much longer they might be. “Three hours,” she says. THREE HOURS. Why don't they close the pool to the public? “Club members can still come and swim,” Aqua-didi adds, graciously. With a dripping hand, I indicate all the small brown people, splashing and floundering their way to mastering the crawl, and shrug. You don’t need words, sometimes. “Come back at six,” she smiles.

India’s very good at interleaving its jobs. When I have the washing-machine on at the same time as the dish-washer, at home, I think interleaving’s a key skill. I’m beginning to think otherwise.

This evening, friend Raj has been released on bail. I thought you’d like to know. Just so’s you don’t worry.

Our Day Out

2008-10-20T10:10:00.001-07:00

I absolutely can’t decide. I’m trying to weigh all the options, but there’s not a chapatti to choose between them. I could do what Mr Roland does, when I’m in a shopping-fix, ie shall I have the blue or the turquoise? Have both, he always says. This passes for generosity, in our salad days, but now I see he just wants to get out of the shop, asap. As a decision-making process, though, the system has its merits, so, OK, I’ll have them all. Nineteen for Heathrow, please. Does Jet Airways do discounts for block-booking? Window-side if possible: these scallywags have barely been outside Mankhurd before, they’ll be wanting to see everything. Get ready to kill the fatted lentil, Akanksha’s coming to England.

Today’s our day out. We bring the Diwali party forward to this afternoon, instead of Thursday, because Kavita’s going to her home village for the holidays, and Bhavika-didi doesn’t want her to miss out. Monu gives up his day’s cricket with the lads, to chauffeur the Monu-Bus. By the time we find out Kavita’s not coming, after all, the picnic’s already packed. What’s Hindi for, c’est la vie?

Monu’s polished the car show-room clean, which is a bit like tidying up before Christmas, in my book. January’s full of pine-needles woven into the carpet, shreds of tinsel behind the radiator, and corks under the sofa; this evening, our car will be up to its axles in crisps and sweet wrappers, paintwork and windows invisible under small smudgy hand-prints. We’re outside school, engine running, at ten to one, and there’s not an Akanksha t-shirt in sight. In England, the kids would have been ready and queuing since ten in the morning, for a one o’clock kick-off, but we’re on India-time.

Our children emerge, one by one, from the tenements they call home, more carefully dressed and coiffed than I have ever seen them, cross-legged on the mats, in the schoolroom upstairs. Their hair’s smarmed down with oil or water, their faces pale with “woman’s powder.” I’m hoping this unnatural state won’t last long: in my experience, children can’t have fun unless they’re making a) a noise and b) a mess.

“New cloth, didi!” says Salim. I agree he’s looking very sundar – my word of the week, beautiful – in his kingfisher-blue trousers, and sparkly shirt. The girls are desperately trying to act normal, when clearly all they can think about is their sequins and frills. They seem very grown up, in floor length skirts, but their matching stoles give them away. Instead of being artfully looped about their necks, they’re pinned at shoulder and waist, so the girls can run around without unravelling. The flawless Miss India poise you see in every shop/office/street, has to start somewhere, I suppose.

Rani-didi arrives, also in her Sunday best. It begins to dawn on me, that it doesn’t quite cut the lime pickle, picking Any Old Thing up off my wardrobe floor, this morning, flicking the dust away, and throwing it on – I was thinking, cartwheeling about the park and sitting on the grass, whereas everyone else was clearly thinking, Night at the Opera. Must get more sequins out, next time...

The children are as high as the kites, which polka-dot the skylines and phone-lines of Mumbai, these days. Just to tip them over into hysteria, I produce my camera. “I photo, didi!” It takes forever, because they clamour to see each picture as soon as it’s taken. We’re just starting to hyperventilate with joy, when Bhavika-didi decides we’re quorate, so we can take to the carriages. It’s a good thing Bhavika ordains uniform t-shirts, on top of all the glitz, because I’d surely pack in a few bystanders, otherwise.

Monu-bhaiya marshalls the milling troops, and stacks the car, filing seven small bottoms into the back seat, then seven more on the row in the middle. We have seatbelts for six – a three and a three - but we carry fourteen. Not including Ashish, who’s on my knee in front. Fifteen, then. (Don’t say what you’re thinking, I think it too, but I bet you’d do the same.) Monu’s curiously unencumbered. He’s got his impassive Whose Idea Was This? face on, so I give him a chocolate éclair. He says two words of Hindi to his diminutive passengers, over his shoulder. I’m assuming it’s “SIT DOWN!” – not that I’m getting secretly fluent, or anything, it’s just that fourteen little faces instantly disappear, like bubbles popping, so it’s not hard to work out. Inevitably, after three seconds, it’s Khaja who pops back up first, laughing, then the rest, one by one. It’s good, though, that Monu shows them who’s boss, right from the start. “You beat them with stick?” he asks, hopefully.

Then, with much waving to Mums and Dads and Big Sisters, we’re off, like a royal cavalcade, merely thirty-five minutes late, so, quite good, by Indian standards. We’re in with a chance of seeing most of the film, except we get slightly lost, and prove instead that it’s better to journey, than to arrive.

At Imax Dome Theatre, finally, we still have time for a quick photo-shoot, before crocodiling into the auditorium. We watch Island of Sharks, a wrap-around film about assorted aquatic life on a coral reef. The commentary’s in English, and, since the children’s marine vocabulary only extends to “sea” and “fish,” I can only assume much of it goes over their heads. Literally. Their enjoyment is undented, however. Happily, there are no more than three members of the ordinary public in the audience with us, as our children take it in turns to shout “WOW!” and “Didi, I scared!” every time a hammerhead shark puts his nose up to touch ours.

A hermit crab shuffles up to a new shell, checks out the vacancy, and does a nifty shift. “Crab eating, didi?” asks Swapnil. No, I say, he’s moving house. Old house, new house. Swapnil thinks for a minute, then says, “Crab room-change!” Which makes complete sense, if everyone you know lives, with all their family, in one room.

In real time, the starfish appear to be doing nothing, just drifting with the ebb and flow of the water. It’s a different story, on fast-forward: they’re tumbling and sliding over and under and around each other, co-ordinated and chaotic, at the same time - like Mumbai traffic, but with more grace. Khaja shakes my arm, “Didi, starfish dancing!” I am enchanted, and not just by the fishy cha-cha.

Back in the main entrance hall, Bhavika - out for her money’s worth from the adventure - spies an escalator. We have to negotiate with the escalator man, who’s fearful that we might nip off for a sly pre-view of Quantum of Solace, ticketless, while we’re upstairs, but with eighteen children, four didis and a bhaiya, we’re not going anywhere unseen or unheard. So, we joy-ride the escalator, and come clattering back downstairs again, where the lady in Crossword says we can show the children round her shop. Looking’s free, isn’t it? Bhavika makes each child put both hands on the shoulders of the child in front, so we can conga round the aisles, without touching any books. She makes them read aloud the section headings, “Children’s Books,” “Food and Drink,” “Self Improvement.” I don’t know if anyone else is felled by the irony.

Even having a drink in a plastic cup, from the water-cooler, is an adventure, if you look at it the right light. Crocodiling back to the cars, we break rank only to hold hands.

On the way to Bhakti Park, for our picnic, Swapnil and Sadabh have a knee each, in the front seat, fizzing with excitement. They’ll eat their crisps by osmosis, if they’re not allowed to open the packets, soon. We process through the park – the crocodile increasingly raggedy – until we reach a covered bandstand, where they kick off their chappals, then hurtle back to the slides and roundabouts. They don’t stop squealing and rocketing about, until Bhavika says the magic word, “Snacks!”

Then there’s quiet, for at least forty-five seconds. You can’t say much, with your mouth full of crisps and mango juice.

We wipe the sweat from our brows, and reform marching order to shout Hip-hip-hooray! before winding our way out of the park, singing “Old MacDonald had a Farm.” We pile back into the car, only slightly sticky, and sing along to the radio all the way home. Well, I think they’re singing along, in seven different keys, with child-distorted lyrics. “Singer kin, singer kin, singer kin!” they croon. I look at Monu, since Singh definitely is King, in our car, and he’s laughing, despite what’s happening to his upholstery. On my knee, Nikita puts my lipstick on, and Rahul tries on my sunglasses.

Nineteen for Heathrow, then.

Water, Water, Everywhere......

2008-10-17T07:07:00.001-07:00

Bhavika takes me somewhere for lunch, where I would not boldly go alone: the Cafe Madras, in South Mumbai. At ground level, it’s heaving, so we climb the narrow stairs to the mezzanine layer, ducking under the padded beams. It’s like tiptoeing into someone’s loft. I want to cast about, looking for boxes of Christmas decorations, but it’s 35 degrees out there, that’s no place for jolly robins and fat Santas. We slide along our plastic seats, filing ourselves out of harm’s way, industrial fans whistling round our ears.

Bhavika calls the waiter Bhaiya (older brother), but I don’t think they’re related, and anyway he looks about twelve. Ordering’s so slick, when you know what to ask for. We’re slick-with-knobs-on, in fact, because we don’t even use the menu. Some people love menus, like food pornography. Pas moi. I’ll have what you’re having, unless it’s a) duck or b) artichokes. Bhavika chooses. We have Mysore Sada Dosa, which comes folded onto stainless steel trays, with a crop of satellite dishes, brimming with spicy or coconut sauce. I sit on my left hand, so’s not to show Bhavika up in public, but no-one’s looking, which is as well, since my plate’s carnage within two bites. It’s delicious, substantial, but insubstantial. Then we have Onion Rawa Sada Dosa, which is even deliciouser – lacily crisp, more holes than pancake. Onion, green chillies and coriander seeds, glued together with batter: what could be nicer? We wash it down with tap water, which I don’t remember not to drink, until my stainless steel cup’s empty. I’ll let you know, later.

“You like juice?” Bhavika asks, back on the street again. I’m so used to her in the classroom at Mankhurd, I keep expecting her to say, “Yes or no?” I do like juice, I say, but Monu won’t let me buy any from the street stalls. (“Dirty waters, no washes glass.” The Juice Gestapo.) Bhavika’s juice-stall of choice is a bit more credible than the usual orange crate with a lemon-squeezer, though. I stop understanding the menu, once it gets beyond pure single fruit, and put myself at Bhavika’s mercy - I just hope she’s not a fan of Lassi, that’s all. My good manners reach as far as, but do not include, fermented milk. Happily for us all, she orders a Zoom and a Boom. See, I said you have to know what you’re talking about. The juice-wallah kindly splits both, so we use up four glasses, for the sale of only two juices. I feel like offering to wash up for him. The Boom’s pale green and foaming, made with sweet lime, lemon and khus, which I’ve never heard of, as fragrant as guava. (Vetiver, I later discover, if you care, a relative of lemongrass. Educational as well as scrummy.) We’ve barely wiped off our froth moustaches, when Juice-Boy thrusts the Zooms into our hands. Pink and bubbly, sweet lime and lemon again, but with rose, this time. I thought Tropicana Pure Premium Sanguinello was cutting edge, juice-wise. I have much to learn. Sated, we head for the car.

Last night, at about nine in the evening, a little man arrives on our doorstep, to deliver our gym membership cards. You know, the ones which come included in the apartment lease, THOSE ones. How long is it since our arrival, I hear you wonder. Nine months, exactly. I could make – and have made – a whole new human being, in that time, yet they struggle to laminate two gym cards.... Indian efficiency at its shiniest, I feel. Today, I go for a swim, to celebrate.

It’s a decent twenty-five metre pool, a proper rectangle, I’m glad to see, not amoeba-shaped, like a poncey spa-pool. It’s open-air, as is the building site next door, unsurprisingly, but by the time the chlorine’s clouded up my contact lenses, what I can’t see, doesn’t bother me. A swimming-cap’s compulsory. Which sadist invented these? Getting it to go on and stay on, is more of a work-out, than flick-flacking up and down the pool for an hour. I’m supposing, rather defensively, that Indian heads are smaller than English ones, although curly hair does use up more room, I would have thought. I pop on my new goggles to complete a truly stunning ensemble. Small wonder that I waste no time at all, getting into the water. There’s only so much you can ask, of Lycra. Put your hands up, if you think you’re invisible, once you’re up to your neck in swimming-pool?... So do I.

At first, there’s only me and a pigeon, unless you count the assortment of pool attendants on hand. Whether they’re there to life-save, garden, or spectate, laughing, is anyone’s guess. I’m on my twenty-ninth lap, when it occurs to me that I’m in water. There seems little point, brushing my teeth in bottled water, and refusing ice in any drinks, and not eating salad, then going swimming. I’m assuming, here, that I’m not doing my best breast-stroke in 47,000 gallons of Bisleri but it ain’t necessarily so, as Porgi once said to Bess. I conclude, newly karmic, that it’s a done deal by this point, so there’s no point getting out now.

I’m on my thirty-sixth lap, heading for forty, when half the jeunesse dorée of Powai emerges on the balcony of the badminton hall, at the deep end. Except they’re not golden, they’re brown, obviously. Jeunesse bronzée, then. They’re still there, laughing and chatting, when I reach my target, so I have to stay in the pool, hiding, to do some more. I’m on forty-six, when they saunter off, twirling their bats, but there’s not only Mr Roland with OCD, in our house, so I notch up a half-century, before crawling out, hoping my legs don’t buckle under me, frightening the pigeon.

I linger longer in the shower, wallowing in the wateriness of it, compared with the spasmodic fizzing spout we still have at home. Then I hop about in the toilet, trying to get dressed without breaking one or both elbows. There’s something about communal changing-rooms that I can’t take to. The communal part, I guess. It takes forever, to thread my damp legs into my churidar, and I decide to wear something different, next time, something less taxing. Or, to bring the talc. Or alternatively, to dry my legs properly. I put on my sunglasses, to hide the attractive panda-weals left by my new blue goggles, and slope off home, forgetting to sign out. They’ll be looking for me, come ten o’clock tonight, when they want to close up and go home.

So, today, I have drunk tap water in a cafe, random juice from an anonymous street stall, and a swig of swimming-pool, by way of dessert. I can hardly wait for tomorrow.

Because You're Worth It

2008-10-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

When I slide into my seat today, on the floor next to Aanchal and Kunda, we’re doing subtraction. (I called them take-aways until I was in senior school, but there’s no such namby-pambying here. When we do fractions, in Mankhurd, we do numerators over denominators, no less. The kids aren’t the only ones on the floor to learn something that day...) So, forty-one minus seventeen, then.

“Where do we start, with the ones, or with the tens?” Bhavika asks. The general consensus of opinion on the mats, is that we start with the ones. “Which is greater, one or seven? Seven, right... So can we take seven from one?” Rahul, who has been watching an ant on the floor, not the writing on the wall, accidentally says, “Yes!” and Bhavika pounces.

“Yes, Rahul? We can take seven from one?” Rahul casts about him for moral support, or just a clue as to which way to jump.

“No!” Swapnil says, helpfully. Bhavika’s eagle eye swivels to Swapnil.

“And you are Rahul, no?” She switches the heat back to Rahul. “One is greater than seven, Rahul, yes or no?” Rahul back-pedals furiously, “No, didi!” – and we’re on track again.

“We cannot take seven from one, so what do we do? We go to the tens place, and we say, “Can we borrow some?” – Ashish, do we borrow one, or do we borrow ten?”

“One!” says Ashish. Bhavika’s voice drops an octave, into tragedy.

“We borrow one?”

“No, ten, didi, ten!” Seven voices from the floor. Take-aways were never this dramatic, in my day. It’s King Lear and Aladdin rolled into one, in Room 112.

“So we put ten here, in the ones place. Now we have ten plus one, what do we have?.... Accha, eleven. And here in the tens place, we take away the four, and we put?... Three!” It’s a triumph.

The next bit’s my favourite, I could watch them do this all day.

“And now we have eleven, and we have to take seven. Put seven in your head, and count to eleven.” The young mathematicians smack themselves roundly on the temple, inserting the seven, then count forward to eleven, on their fingers. Then they count their fingers, to get the difference.

“Four, didi, four!” Bhavika pretends to put four in the tens column, to see who’s awake, but no-one’s napping now. The climax is on the horizon, galloping towards us.

“And one from three is? ... Two! So the whole answer is? .... Twenty-four, right?” I feel a round of applause coming on. Maths have never made me laugh out loud before.

These children are six, seven, eight years old, and they’re doing all the functions – adding, subtracting, carrying one - in a foreign language. I don’t think Ofsted have a category called “Tour de Force” but that’s where Bhavika belongs. I can’t wait to do goes-intos, after Diwali.

Khaja’s first past the post with his finished worksheet, as ever, so while the others are still
wrestling with ascending and descending order, he chooses “Rabbit Gets Lost” for a reading book. I point out Rabbit’s chums, Piglet, Pooh and Tigger. He patiently corrects me, “No Tigger, didi, Tiger!” so I let him have the right of it. In a wanton moment, I explain what “bounce” means, and Khaja leaps off like a frog on a rocket, going “Boing!” and landing on anyone too mathematically distracted to move out of his way. “Quiet reading” has no meaning, here.

Libraries should chuck out their “SILENCE!” signs, and tackle literature with Khaja’s zest. I bet it’d get A A Milne’s vote. Go and have a quick flick through “Rabbit Gets Lost” and count the bounces and boings. It’s a serious workout, for active readers, but by the time the happy ending rolls round, Khaja’s energy’s not even dinted. He’s not unlike Tigger, in fact. I mean, Tiger.

“I have some good news,” Bhavika says. “We have the results of the Akanksha assessments today. In English, our centre got 79%! Is that good, yes or no?” We all clap. "And in Maths, we got 89%! What do we say?"

“Thank-you, didi! Thank-you!” they chorus.

“No, we don't say thank-you! We say, HURRAH!!!” So we all cheer, and shout “hurrah!” and punch the air, like we’ve just won an Olympic Gold, and why not? – I’d like a re-run of results day, in the school hall, in August. There should definitely have been more hurrahs.

Down to earth with a bump, Bhavika has to warn the children about playing alone in the compound. A brother and sister have been murdered, and their kidneys harvested, in Mankhurd. I mention it to Monu, horrified, and he says in Malad, where he lives, three people – two adults, one child – have died the same way. It doesn’t bear belief. “If someone you don’t know offers you a chocolate, what must you say?.... No!”

They know me, however, so I’m allowed to give them gifts. On our Kerala trip, Melanie-Ma’am and I scoop up the rows of little bottles of shampoo and shower-gel, in the free shop - ie the bathrooms of all the smart hotels we stay in. Today, I bring our booty-bag to school, for sharing. I’m not sure Khaja and co, with their petal-soft cheeks, will be needing the shaving-kit any time soon, so I take it out, to give to Monu instead.

If you’ve ever felt a frisson of disappointment, opening your fourth bottle of bubble bath on Christmas Day, you need to come to Mankhurd, with your fists full of soap, to find out how fascinating toiletries can be, with the right mind-frame. We have some energetic mimes, of what talc and toothbrushes might be for, but body lotion requires more than re-enactment, it needs authenticity. I open a bottle, dab some on my wrist, and rub it in. A forest of skinny brown arms appears before me, and soon we’re all silkily fragrant. The boys sniff their arms, and do backward rolls of ecstasy. It’s funny, the point of body lotion passes me by, until today. There should be a re-cycling scheme, for hotel toiletries, it would make more of a difference to the world, than nobly using the same towels, two days in a row.

“Join your hands, fold your legs, close your eyes,” says Bhavika. Time for prayers. They thank God for the world so sweet, and run out, laughing and dancing, into the sunshine of the slums, their hotel freebies clutched in their hands. Who needs the perfumes of Arabia?

A Votre Santé

2008-10-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Don’t tell Pakhi the Pigeon, but we have new feathered visitors – four green parrots, sitting on our window-sill. They only stay long enough for a brief squawkathon and a photo opportunity, and then they’re gone. A propos matters avian, the eggs on our bathroom ledge have hatched out, you’ll be glad to know, despite the hostility of the crèche facilities, here on the thirty-third floor. I know the pigeon population of Mumbai’s hardly what you’d called endangered, but it’s churlish, not to celebrate new life. Hello, boys - I mean, Namaste! The hatchlings are already bigger than their Mum and Dad, but that could be all fluff, for as much as I know.

On the way to school, we pass men painting a zebra-crossing on the road. The road’s still in use, of course, this is India; we have to slalom round them. How can a white line survive, unmolested, I wonder? It comes to me, that road markings are cosmetic here, where a three-lane highway hosts seven seething streams of traffic, so who cares what’s written on the tarmac?

Further along, a man’s drinking water, from a stainless steel cup, chained to a tap. There’s a row of taps, each with its fettered cup, for drinking, with the lads. Drinking’s a new skill, for us, here. Bottle or cup, you pour your drink into your mouth, without your lip touching the vessel – you try it. Can I just say, you can’t do it, and walk at the same time.

Speaking of drinking - when we appear at Star Wines (next door to The Great Punjab, long live their jeera rice...), they flick all their other customers out of the way, like ants off a picnic. We demur, but they have good reason, because we are their Most Cherished Clients, with pockets as long as our drinking arms. We order Kingfisher Beer (“Half and half, chilled and room temperature, yes?” See, it already comes ready to drink, how cool is that?), Sula wine (who’d have thought they could make a decent Cabernet Shiraz, in India?), and a crate of Bisleri (we don’t care if this comes chilled or un-, since it’s just water...). We’re swept into the inner sanctum, to make with the PIN number and signature (never one or the other, here, always both), and then they dispatch an unmuscled minion to carry it all home for us. From Star Wines, you could do two cartwheels, then a hop, skip and a jump, and you’d have your feet on our Welcome mat. (OK, a very high jump...) They still insist on freight. We wander home unburdened, then give the beer-wallah ten rupees and a glass of water, which seem to be enough. It’s going to be tough, getting used to Sainsbury’s, again.

The small persons, in dhotis and brickdust, swept aside to make way for Mr Roland’s credit card, are construction men, straight from work. I can’t catch what they order, but it comes in a tiny bottle, from under the counter, and goes into a tiny brown paper bag. A tiny note changes hands, then they tuck their purchase into a fold of their loincloth, and saunter away. I consult the Lucknow Oracle, and he says it’s GM, the local moonshine, guaranteed to take the enamel off your teeth and turn your liver into a pumice-stone within a week. It costs twelve rupees. If you’re only earning Rs 120 a day, any more would be out of your reach. I’m looking for the moral high ground, here, and finding none.

The next time we stop to stock up on eau potable, out of devilment, and spurred on by the presence of Melanie-Ma’am and David-Sir, I ask for a bottle of GM. Star Wines ceases trading for a moment, while all the guys come to watch the white lady buying bootleg liquor. “Twenty-five rupees,” the boss says. Full of glee, I accept what’s clearly the pasty-face price, and can hardly speak for laughing, when I get back to the car. I whip off the brown paper bag, with a flourish, and Monu’s truly gob-smacked. I’m delighted, so far into our relationship, that I still have the power to surprise him. He doesn’t know whether to confiscate it, or laugh too. He puts his head into his hands, with a rueful smile. And our bottle’s twice the size of the worker’s nightly medicine, so it isn’t a rip-off, after all. We have a thimbleful each, later, and it tastes like greasy cherries in gasolene. Come to think of it, that’s probably the recipe. I would definitely buy it again, to polish my furniture, or give the kitchen floor what-for. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

At school, Bhavika’s planning a Diwali treat. We’re going to the cinema, bring on the popcorn. She thinks it would be good, if the children could go in our car. I say, gormlessly logistical, there are twenty of them. She says, “No, no...Nineteen.... And they are so small and so thin.” Well, that’s alright, then... Monu will have one on each knee, then three rows of tiddlers behind. He’s from Lucknow, he’ll cope. I’ll sit in the boot, with the Monsoon Box. I just hope we don’t see the danger Traffic Police en route. Twenty rupees, at least....

On the way home, we see the Dog Patrol Car. I’m fearful of what this may mean, given the huge population of street dogs, but Monu says it’s a Force for Good. “Catch the dog, check the body.” So, not Officer Dibble territory then. I’m relieved, thinking the Dog Patrol may have had more sinister motives. “Kill the danger dog,” he says. Oh.

Nearer home, the cow with the curly horn’s been busy, of late. The calf’s only a couple of days old, when the monsoon’s last tantrum washes us all into the gutter, one more time for old times’ sake. But either he’s made of sterner stuff, or the rain hit harder in Goregaon, where I was, than in Powai, where he lives. Après le deluge, moi, then.

Intermittent Showers

2008-10-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

Today, the taps gush with fresh air, hissing and fizzing. No water. Mr Roland the Unwashed enquires of the concierge, and is told, “Pump problem. Five minutes, fix.” Two hours later, we’re still trying to work up a lather with hiss and fizz. I may bob round to Monu’s, later, to see if I can pick up a slot in his water-line. (On yet another tour round Dharavi, this week, we ask about water supply in the slums. “Water available two or three hours a day,” Krishna says, smiling. “No problem with supply.” In the UK, I say, two to three hours a day would be the problem. We are very high maintenance, in the west.) At midday, the taps burp rustily, and the water runs brown for a minute, then sparkling clean. Good job it’s the weekend.

The magnificent sweeping new entrance to Haiko Mall is unveiled, I note, flanked with lollipop trees in pots, and festooned with the usual auspicious orange garlands. When work first begins, in June, we’re surprised to find the Culture Shop, on the first floor, still valiantly open for business, in the middle of a building-site. When our supplies of elephants-in-elephants run low, we have to infiltrate the shop the back way, using the service elevator, past mingled heaps of discarded boxes and unpacked stock. On the half-landing, amid the debris, a street dog’s having a quick nap, out of the rain. When will normal service be resumed, I ask my favourite assistant. (Every time I put my nose round the door, he arrives at my elbow, and escorts me straight to the elephants and Ganeshes aisle, so I don’t waste any time perusing the appliquéd cushion-covers and lacquered tissue-boxes. That’s what I call Customer Care...) He’s airily confident. “One more week.” Four months later, the sheets of plastic are finally gone, and the plate glass doors are at last flung wide. In quintessentially Indian style, there’s the grand opening, with fanfares and a uniformed doorman, on his plastic chair with his Mumbai Express, yet the marbled foyer’s still littered with workmen’s trestles and decorating ladders, with the odd dusty bucket on its side, in the front window. In India, it’s never over, ‘til it’s over.

I go to see my new Best Friend, Ramona, twice, today. First at hospital, and later at her own clinic in Powai. In Hiranandani Hospital, Dentistry shares a waiting-area with Cardiology, and the Hair Loss Therapy and Replacement Clinic. Obvious, when you think about it. I’m sitting there, clutching my file – patients keep their own case-notes here, not the dentist – and as I’m nudging my contact lens around, trying to make it settle down, I feel someone staring at me. The old lady opposite is watching me. I slide my eyes sideways, Britishly, but when I furtively check again, she’s still staring, with the unblinking gaze toddlers use for the television. Against everything your Mum ever told you, staring’s not rude, here. It’s impossible to be offended, because there’s no malice in it, and it’s fundamentally more honest than the eye ping-pong we reserve for people-watching, on the QT, at home.

Ramona drills away the temporary filling she put there yesterday, which I quite liked, I’m not sure why we’re discarding it. The radio’s playing “Om Shanti Om,” and Ramona’s assistant’s crooning along behind his mask, as he dreamily whirls the suction-nozzle round my gums. He sings like Monu. He swabs my eyebrows and ears, and Ramona says, “We like to make sure you get a shower. Free water!” So I try to be glad, damply. She drills up as far as my cerebellum, and I have to remind myself that she only has me down for a porcelain crown, not a frontal lobotomy. It’s taking me all my energy, not to bite her, then she whips out the drill and says chummily, “Do you want me to inject you?” I’m beyond caring, at this point, so choose martyred pain over comfort. She makes an impression (of my teeth, not à la Rory Bremner) with some clever strawberry-flavoured gak, which turns from pink to yellow as it hardens. I have to see her again later, so she can fit the temporary crown she’s going to make while I’m not-having lunch. The radio launches into “Singh is King” – a big favourite, in our car - and I’m so blissed-out at the absence of the drill in my head, I join in. La, la, la....

Ramona’s other surgery’s in the Galleria. All these months, I have been staring at it, unknowing, as I munch my garlic nan and tarka dal, at Kareem’s, the other side of the galleried courtyard. And now, here I am, at Doc Thakur’s, unable to munch on anything, staring back at Kareem’s. And at Mocha, Powai’s best coffee-shop, which has had to have extensive alterations inside, to cater for the new smoking ban. My favourite bit’s the smokers’ corner, sectioned off with purple organza strips, tapered and beaded, which I love because of its label, “For Hookahs Only.” I’m sad to see that the diaphanous tent’s gone, replaced by glass partitions, to segregate those “desirous of smoking” from those clean of lung. I’m unsure why this doesn’t still count as smoking in a public place, and intend to snitch, as soon as I find an honest bobby. Then again, it was a source of much innocent entertainment, for Mr Roland and me, watching the waiter, with seventeen-inch hips and a pinny down to his flip-flops, lighting and relighting the embers on top of the hookahs; we’re going to have to start talking to each other, now.

The waiting-room chez Ramona’s as big as two phone-booths glued together. You can work out how many patients are already waiting, by counting the shoes, lined up outside, and dividing by two. A couple with a small child, a man on his own, and me. And then we are seven - another man arrives, with a small girl, who has the slenderest feet I have ever seen, her perfect toes like vermicelli. She passes the time, air-writing Hindi script, which looks alien even when it’s invisible. The other three-quarters of the little lock-up form the L-shaped surgery, the other side of the sliding door. In the crook of the “L,” what I think is an unused shelving unit is, in fact, a flight of shallow steps, leading up to a closed trapdoor. Presumably someone lives above the shop - not Ramona, I’m thinking. It takes her two minutes to pop in the temporary crown. She tells me the name of her favourite dress shop in Bandra, and promises to ring. Then I’m out on the hot pavement again, looking for Mr Roland. It’s thirty-eight degrees, all the dogs are asleep and the tarmac’s sticky, yet it’s only four days since the roads ran like rivers. The UK hasn’t completely monopolized the market in Interesting Weather, then. I find Mr Roland in the Culture Shop, panic-buying door-swags for Christmas. It’s already October, after all.

Dasera at the Dentist's

2008-10-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Today is Dasara (or Dasera, or Dasehra), the tenth day of Navaratri, and a public holiday. Well, for everyone except Monu, obviously. And my dentist, Ramona, who brings my appointment forward to eight-thirty this morning, to free the day for festivities.

We segue straight from the Ganpati shindy into Navaratri, with barely enough time to get new candles. Navaratri’s the Festival of Joy, to celebrate the victory of Rama over Ravana, who had captured Rama’s wife, Sita. Rama’s a model of continence and piety during the separation, and attracts the admiration of all, including the monkey-god Hanuman. (Don’t go thinking you understand: nothing’s ever this simple in Hinduism, so Rama is one of the incarnations, or attavars, of Vishnu, as Sita is of Lakshmi. The legends and stories are more intertwined than the ribbons on a maypole.) Or the celebration marks the vanquishing of the wicked Mahisha by the ten-armed goddess Durga. Whichever version you favour, the cause of all the joy (and new clothes, let’s be honest), is the victory of Good over Evil, and every moment of today is considered auspicious. Not a bad day for a dental appointment, after all.

In Powai, the pandal takes forty days to build – this is serious construction, for a transient place of worship and partying – but they whisk away the last stick of bamboo scaffolding and have every last fairy-light and flower-head in place, with seconds to spare. The streets are gridlocked in the evenings, as all Mumbai brings his wife and mother-in-law in their sparkly new saris, to admire and worship. This year, the inspiration – and indeed, the builders and the materials – have been brought from Calcutta. Or Kolkata, if you want to be PC. The end result is breath-taking.

We visit several times during the preparations, and are welcomed by organisers and builders alike, all enjoining us to come back for the grand opening. Free food, stalls, music, dancing. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking about. When we visit officially, we have to join queues for security screening, segregated by gender not creed, to pass through the electronic portal into the pulsating courtyard beyond. To the right of the temple, a concert-arena is set up, where known idols of the Indian pop world will produce enough rocking decibels to crumble the fake plaster off the pretend walls, with a warm-up act of small children, singing and dancing to their loving Mums and Dads on the front row. The programme’s eclectic, and as all-embracing as Hinduism itself.

This replica of the Dakshineswar Mandir in Calcutta, dedicated to Durga, is made of expanded polystyrene on a wooden frame, and will be dismantled after today, leaving scrubby wasteland again, where shining fantasy now has its brief moment. Inside the temple, the centrepiece is a twenty-foot plaster model of Durga in the very act of defeating Mahish with his curly moustache. I’m pleased to note Ganesh gets a place at top table, too.

This morning, the whole world’s pooja’d, even the tuk-tuks. Monu’s horrified at the idea of my walking to my hospital appointment, and I’m just thinking, how dear of him, when it comes to me that he doesn’t think I shouldn’t, he thinks I couldn’t, because I am so lardy and white. I am Trex Woman. I walk anyway, to show him, and arrive in a slight glow. The heat of the morning, you understand.

As I arrive, two dental assistants are climbing on chairs, to string garlands of bells and orange flower-heads over the door. More dentists should consider a bit of pooja, I feel, basking in the festive orange glow. There’s a man already queuing, shouting into his mobile, so that all independent thought’s suspended. Ramona turns up. He snaps his phone shut, kicks his shoes off, and nips under the bells and flowers. Clearly disconcerted, Ramona comes back out of the surgery to explain. He’s pushed in: he didn’t confirm his rescheduled appointment, therefore has no appointment: “I am coming in for you, not for him! There will now be a ten minute delay!” Vodafone boy’s supine in the chair of torture, complacent, but within earshot. I’m just glad to be informed. Can you imagine it, down at your local walk-in clinic? “Mrs Gower, this baby’s swallowed a pin-cushion, so we’re fast-tracking him through A&E. We know you were here first, with your suspected sprained thumb, but we hope you understand.” There’d be a lot less chunnering, at the WRVS stall, is for sure. Information is key.

“Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” croons the radio, as the dental assistant pads about in his socks, whipping a green napkin under my chin, and lining up the medieval ironware on the trolley. Ramona’s doing a telephone consultation, even as she pings on her rubber gloves. They don’t do single-tasking, here. “Catherine, if you feel pain,” she says, “raise your left hand.” I devote my whole self to worrying about her getting my name wrong – what if “Catherine” is rhesus negative, for example, and I get a toxic transfusion, when everything goes papaya-shaped, in a bit? I forget to notice the lack of anaesthetic, until she’s flailing about with a drill. Descaling’s more of a trauma than root canal work, and I’m so tense, I hover six clenched inches above the bed under me. Ramona, meanwhile, entertains a casual visitor with idle chat. “Where’s your dupatta?” she chides, hollowing out a cavity the size of Portugal, where I used to keep my lower right sixth molar. She’s addressing a colleague who’s just sauntered along, in a snowy kurta and pyjama bottoms. He shakes his little pony-tail sadly, “No dupatta. My son already says I look like a girl....”

I’m still in shock, when she processes me through her pooja’d front door, back into the marbled stadium of a reception desk. "Don't you do anaesthetic, here?" I venture to ask, now she's not got a drill in her hand. "Only if there is pain. You didn't have pain, did you?" she says with retroactive confidence. Now you mention it, no, I didn't. Neither did Catherine. I don’t even get an “I’ve been a good girl at the dentist’s today” sticker, and I'm still shaking: Ramona only stopped twice, during the whole half-hour, for me to spit lead and blood into the basin. There’s a flower on the credit-card machine, however, which consoles me for much. “Happy Dasera!” Ramona says. I smile my new smile, and wish her the same.

Nothing but the Tooth

2008-10-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

The flash lunch we have at the Renaissance proves costly, since I succumb to the temptation of that well-known Indian delicacy, lardons, and crack a tooth. I should have stuck with idli-sambar, I realise now; the irony is not lost on me. By way of compensation, a whole new world of subcontinental medical care unfolds in front of me, today, and that has to be worth a molar or two, in my book.

It says on the wall outside, and on every piece of headed paper inside, that the Hiranandani Hospital in Powai aims “to be the preferred choice for healing and good health.” Thus inspired with confidence, I creep into the huge marble atrium masquerading as an entrance hall, where a uniformed receptionist directs me to the first floor - “Take this stair here!” (I obviously don’t look very intelligent, then...) There, another fleet of administrative accolytes waits, one eye on their flickering computer screen, one ear glued to a phone.

The waiting area outside the dental suite is busy, and I have to choose my slot along the row with care. What I think is an abandoned pile of rags turns out to be a lady in a blue and yellow sari, lying curled across three chairs. It doesn’t happen down the Queen’s Medical Centre, in Nottingham, I can tell you. Nor do you have to take your shoes off at the door, before you pad in, barefoot, to open wide and say “Ahh!” When in Mumbai, do as the Mumbaikers do, however. I kick off my sandals, leave them jostling cosily with all the flip-flops by the door, and enter.

There seem to be about seventeen people in white coats and green facemasks, milling about with patient files under one arm, or glinting surgical weapons in their fists. I am ushered into a chair by the desk. A long, low cupboard separates administration from treatment, so discretion is a matter of mutual politeness and goodwill. I haven’t met my dentist yet, but we’re already on first name terms. Ramona. She tells the man on his way out - in English then in Hindi - that he can’t expect to wear the same set of dentures for fifteen years, without causing damage. I think the English is for me, so I don’t feel left out. When he leaves, Ramona chats to a young disabled girl, who’s sitting by me, waiting for her mother to be treated. We like Ramona. She tells me her name and her qualifications, then asks, “Would you like to meet me?” I’m thinking, I just have, but agree anyway. I notice she’s left-handed, and has a particularly nice bangle on, so I relax completely.

I’m not taking such a karmic view of things, three minutes later, when the torture chair flips back and winches up. Over my head, Ramona finishes her consultation with the previous patient - he must use a soft brush, up and down, not side to side. (Please note, the dentally careless among you, it may save you Rs 265 later down the line, not to mention the odd canine.) She pings on her medical Marigolds and fills my mouth with prongs and mirrors. “Oh, you didn’t go for your check-up, last year!” she says, sadly. I hate to disappoint her. She tells me not to worry about twelve times, so I begin to wonder if she’s seen the first stirrings of some dread and possibly fatal buccal decline, but apparently it’s a cracked tooth. Even I knew that.

The entire gamut of enamelled retail possibilities is available to me, because, Ramona says, they don’t have dental insurance, here in India, and all pockets have to be catered for. So, I can have a crown made out of an old clothespeg and a bit of Blutac, for Rs 2000, or a full porcelain job for Rs 16000. Or an inlay, with gold inside the porcelain, for Rs 12000. (Since when has gold been cheaper than china? Someone should tell Hallmark to realign their wedding anniversary range.) I consider the rock and the hard place, and say, like I always do, that I’ll consult my husband. This is not financial dependence or uxorious subservience, it’s my get-out line. Then I have a dental epiphany, and treat myself to the best of the best – not quite such a paradable souvenir as a Mr Raymond suit, but hopefully longer-lasting.

Ramona and I make our farewells, wreathed in smiles, and I head for the door and my sandals. It then takes me approximately three times the length of the consultation, to pay. Shopping at Fabindia’s the same. I have ample time to read the industrial-sized flat-screen on the wall (I skip the Hindi pages), where I learn that everyone has a right to “uniform care, whatever the class of patient,” which presumably explains why I am allowed in, and to “personal dignity and privacy during consultation.” I can’t quite square this with the overhead chats I’m party to, while prostrate on the chaise longue of torture, but no-one else seems to mind, so how can I object? I’m more than tempted by the Body Contouring Clinic, but the screen flickers before I can write down the number to ring. “Anyone desirous of smoking,” it now advises, “may kindly use the open spaces outside the hospital premises.” I smile, because this is newly illegal: India’s public smoking ban will be a week old on Thursday. Monu’s danger-boss gets hauled over twice in a week, for infringement, Rs 200 a pop. (Monu and his mates, need I say, cartwheeling with joy...)

Queuing, still queuing. Fellow patients make and receive phone calls on their mobiles, to while away the wait. I offer the receptionist Rs 500, to cover the Rs 265 charge, but she can’t make change, so I have to pay £3 with a credit card. As I fiddle with my PIN number, she answers the phone, and, between one sentence and the next, dials out on a second phone, while tapping at her computer, and dealing with stray enquiries passing by, thrusting banknotes at her. Small wonder, that it takes forty minutes, to process my piffling account. A man comes to remonstrate – as in all hospitals the world over – that he’s been overlooked in the queue. I think he’s got a plaster on his head, and should be seen immediately, but on closer inspection, I see it’s a very fancy bindi, so he can wait his turn like anyone else.

On the way out, I spy the Mahesh Stores, in the glossy foyer, where you can buy flip-flops, or sheets, or t-shirts, or baby-bottles, or coca-cola, or sponge footballs, or shiny magazines. At the above-mentioned QMC, there’s a whole floor dedicated to franchises from Costa Coffee to W H Smiths, and here it all is, in a stall the size of the Tardis.

I can’t wait to go back on Thursday.

Welcome to Mumbai

2008-10-06T06:32:00.001-07:00

I note that this week’s Wikipedia “Hindu God of the Week” is aptly Indra, God of Weather. (He’s also the war-wallah, but I’m choosing to ignore that bit, focussing on Indra’s Michael Fish incarnation.) Yesterday, the five-day forecast read, “chance of storm,” whereas today, it says, “chance of rain,” so things are definitely looking up. Just as Monu the Oracle said. “Monu-magic,” according to David-Sir.

We now have David-Sir and Melanie-Ma’am, under our leaking roof, but it’s all looking good. It’s quite difficult to type with all my fingers crossed, but the monsoon appears to have stopped monsooning. Last shower: Saturday evening. It politely holds off, until we have our feet curled under the table at Utsav; we don’t find out, until we hit the pavement again, fragrant with garlic and ginger. (We all eat the same, so there’s no social disruption.) We splash home through the puddles, which seep blackly up my trouser-legs. As my Mum was wont to point out, I am a nice one, for white. My wardrobe will be glad to see the turn of the season. There’s no laughing and clapping in the rain, now, torrential downpour’s lost its jolly, so the sunshine’s a welcome novelty.

Clear skies and unrelenting sunshine are a must, anyway, since a wet washday’s no fun, and the Dhobi Ghats are top of our agenda, today. This is where All-Mumbai gets his shirts and socks washed, for a fistful of rupees. We hang over the bridge at Mahalaxmi Station, and watch the dhobis flogging the stone troughs with somebody’s kurta. I’m sure they’re very efficient, but I don’t know that I’d send my sparkly-best salwar-kameez here, to have all its beads and sequins whacked off on the unrelenting concrete. I’m thinking they don’t use Lux flakes, for that extra-gentle wash. As well as line upon line of bedlinen, hotel staff uniforms gather here for laundering – it could be some bloke in Bandra with seventeen pairs of identical buff cotton trousers, I suppose, but I favour the corporate theory. The whole railway cutting’s zigzagged with strung linen, it looks like Navy Day on Plymouth Hoe.

A small lady, her arms bristling with embroidered purses, explains that each man washes “a hundred cloth” every day. I watch them, stripped to the waist, torturing pillowslips, and wonder what on earth they have for breakfast. They must have corrugated toes, standing up to their knees in opaque tepid water, all day, every day. It’s a family business, so their fathers had wrinkled toes, before them. The purse-lady (good thing she’s not selling bags) points out the covered sheds where the dhobis iron the sundried linen, and the adjoining shacks where the families sleep. For all her cunning sales-talk, which only after the tourist information broadcast, subtly turns to retail, it’s a lost cause. All my worldly wealth is in the car, with Monu the Custodian, the only thing at the bottom of my pockets is the bottom of my pockets. I thank her anyway, but she clearly feels you can’t put a smile and a grateful Shukria! on the table for dinner. In all fairness, she started it...

Our pasty-faced presence does not go unnoticed among the beggar-community, either. Just as the purse-lady melts sadly away, another woman appears at my elbow, toting a child on one hip. She bunches the fingers of her free hand, and rapping them again and again towards her mouth, then towards the child’s mouth, before thrusting her open palm at me. No word is said, but there’s no mistaking what she wants. I note irrelevantly that the child’s wearing a Red Riding-Hood cape, so she’s Muslim. Doesn’t make her any less hungry, I know. She could have everything in my kitchen cupboards, and welcome, but it’s not food she’s after, because she can’t fob the beggar-master off with half a bag of lentils. Turning away doesn’t get any easier.

This time, as we scramble out of the car at the frantic junction by the Haji Ali mosque, Monu forbears to issue the usual “Only look, no speak!” advice which generally precedes contact with Islam, in our Innova, but his work is already done. It’s all I can do to make eye-contact, here, with passing locals. I warn Melanie-Ma’am about the heart-wrenching gauntlet we’re about to run, through the double row of beggars lining the promenade out to the island-mosque, parading their stumps and flaunting their blindness, as they rattle their tins. There are tiny children, and very, very old ladies, abandoned. I’m steeling myself to test the tensile strength of the quality of my mercy, when we reach the pier. Not a beggar in sight: monsoon stops play, apparently. I cannot pretend that I am not relieved.

At the gateway to the inner mosque, a stallholder stands behind a wall of thin packages, wrapped in newspaper and string. We are mystified. We leave our shoes with the Chappal-Minder, and our soles sizzle on the hot slabs. David-Sir peels off right, through the Men’s entrance, to view the ninety-nine names of Allah on the ceiling and walls.

Melanie-Ma’am and I are consigned to the side entrance, where we're allowed to peer at male mysteries over the fence, with other women, cloaked in suffocating black. The mystery parcels turn out to be squares of bright flimsy fabric, in red or green, with sparse tinsel tacked round their four sides. The receiving priest unwraps them, shakes them free of creases, and whips them over a mound of similar cloths, under the central canopy. This is the tomb of Haji Ali, Muslim merchant saint, who died on his way to Mecca, and whose casket floated back to fetch up on the western shores of India. We come back out into the sun, blinking, to find our hot shoes again.

As we reach the wooden promenade back to the mainland, a family arrives. Before they enter the mosque, they pause, to hurl tied plastic sacks into the sea, where they bob gently on the incoming tide. A floral offering, I assume – but what I take for a red rose turns out to be a coke tin, so this is tidying-up, Mumbai-style. Small wonder the Arabian Sea doesn’t sport many swimmers.

We crawl home through the stop-start traffic, to the familiar music of beeping horns. Tuk-tuks cut across our path, at right-angles, weaving in and out of the lanes, like girls, dancing round a Maypole. Men stretch out on the pavement for forty blissful unconscious winks, covered by a ragged blanket, or nothing at all. Women bend over to slap their washing on the kerb, rinsing it in the puddles at their feet. Children crouch to defecate on the pavement, a handy pot in their right hand. Black kites wheel and drift in the warm air, and the sky-scrapers turn red as the sun dips below the horizon.

Welcome to Mumbai.

A Walk on the Wild Side

2008-09-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

We have a new friend, of the winged variety. I’m fighting the urge to give him a name (hopelessly anthropomorphic, I know. I had a tea-pot called Enrico, so there’s no hope in this department...) and was considering Percy, but that would get him mobbed, here in Mumbai. I’m now thinking Pakhi, which means “bird.” What do you reckon? Anyway, he comes every day - if you sit very still, he comes right in. Mr Roland’s less than thrilled by the advent, because Pakhi’s a pigeon, but I’m honoured by his presence. I choose to believe that it’s the same pigeon, every day. The possibility of there being Pakhi I and Pakhi II and Pakhi III, ad inf., is unpalatable to me, so it’s fortunate that all pigeons bear a passing resemblance to all other pigeons. Flying rats, Mr Roland says, but I think you have to be a bit more ornithologically condolent. I’m not feeding him (yet), Pakhi comes to peck between the window runners, where I can only suppose there’s microscopic life.

There’s also life, on the ledge, outside our bathroom. Pigeons, again. A man comes to check for leaks, since the rains are giving all the mortaring what-for, on the roof. He opens the louvred door between our shower and a hundred yards of fresh Powai air. This is a first for me - I look at the little bolts, as I slap on the conditioner every morning, but I’ve never actually opened the door. Now I do, I quite see why I haven’t. Our man doesn’t find any leaks, but he does find eggs. Poor, poor pigeons, making a nursery out of hostile concrete. But, human babies are born, every day, on the streets of Mumbai, with paving-slabs for cradles, so it should be no surprise that the birds have to make do and mend. The nest’s right by my window, which explains why I think Ma and Pa Pigeon are actually under my pillow, cooing and flapping, first thing in the morning, with their avian PA system. The only drawback that I can see, is that, should we ever have a break-in, as the burglars jemmy their way into our apartment, we’ll just say, “Oh, drat the pigeons!” and roll over back to sleep, as the felons stuff their booty bag full of laptops and carved elephants in elephants. The Pasty-face Who Cried Pigeon.

Yesterday, the discussion, in the car, concerns the Cow with the Poorly Leg, which lives on the road, as you turn into Powai from Parkside. She has a problem with her front nearside leg, which seems not to bear weight. I wonder, since cows are objects of veneration, here, and you can expect two years in prison, if you run over one, why no-one has brought this limping specimen to the attention of a vet. According to Monu, “Many people no like the cow!” Today, he says that, retracing his steps after dropping me at home, yesterday afternoon, he comes upon the cow again, and this time he stops, and gets out. “I examine the cow,” he says. Dr Singh reckons it’s a birth defect, there being no sign of injury or breakage. You can take the boy out of the farm, I tell him, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy. I’m just being utterly charmed, when I remember. How come he’s allowed to touch the cow? I get out of the car, to take a photo of the Cow with the Lying-Down Horns, on the road to Powai Lake, and Monu whips on his Bovine Police hat. “No touch the cow, very danger animal!” Aforementioned cow does not want to be patted, I discover, but I think it’s a language-barrier thing. A toss of the head, a flick of the ears, even I can understand that. When the ears wiggle, the horns move too. If you don’t believe me, here she is. Or he is. I wasn’t born on a farm in Uttar Pradesh, like some, so what would I know?

Since we’re on a wildlife roll, here, let me tell you that the kites are back - black kites, and plastic kites, both. The birds are such a feature of the Mumbai skies, I don’t know if they get wet feathers and stay indoors, for the monsoon, or if they slope off to sunnier climes for the duration – I imagine the thermals are a bit damp, in the rainy season, for lazily looping the loop all the livelong day. But, they’re in circulation again, which has to be a good sign. The little – and not so little – boys are back, too, flying their kites, to the peril of life and limb. They balance on a concrete plinth by the roadside, spanning the railway, with power cables overhead – it couldn’t be any more dangerous, unless they had a burning sword clenched in their teeth, and a loose tiger fore and aft. If kite-flying were an Olympic sport, we’d all be whistling Jana Gana Mana by the end of Week One. It’s an art-form, and these boys are masters, even with a kite made from a supermarket carrier-bag.

What's more, it's dragonfly season. At home, it’s rare to see more than two, in one eyeballful, but here, they hunt in packs. Or flocks. Or shoals. Whatever the collective noun is for dragonflies, they’re doing it, and very beautifully too.

The monsoon’s still monsooning, and I’m getting twitchy about our UK visitors, due this weekend. On Tuesday, the rain’s so heavy and insistent, the roads flood. Monu and Tariq can’t get back across town to go home, and have to sleep in their cars. I’m just about to ask, if they were warm enough, when I have a small internal geography lesson, concerning climate, and keep my mouth shut. (It was bound to happen, at some time....) I refer to the car, wittily, as the Hotel Innova, but I am appalled, nonetheless. This morning, however, the sun’s streaming through the windows, like the first day of the summer holidays in Enid Blyton stories.

I delegate meteorological responsibility to Monu, who’s quietly confident. “Last rain, Saturday. Sunday, no rain. I arrange.” I’m not the only comedian round here, I see...

The Morning After The Night Before

2008-09-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Monday traffic whisks by, kicking up spray from last night’s rain. Pedestrians jostle at the roadside, waiting for a crack in the attention of any passing driver, before surging forward to claim the highway. More often than not, they stake their camp across the inside lane, anyway, reducing traffic flow just by standing still.

Everyone’s looking a bit more Mondayish than usual, on account of yesterday’s Ganesh farewell shindies. Even in sedate Powai, the fireworks were still going strong in the wee small watches of the night, so you’d have no chance of a little shut-eye, in downtown Mumbai. Our very own non-smoking teetotal vegetarian Monu didn’t go to bed at all – “All all night, enjoy the festival!” I’m happy to note, he’s changed his tune, though – at the beginning of the festivities, he wasn’t up for partying with his colleagues, choosing instead to take us shopping, on his day off, because “all driver drink the wine, then sleep...” – a fair synopsis of most parties I’ve ever been to, as it happens. He sounds more chirpy than he looks, and definitely has a serious snooze in his diary for this afternoon. We play “Spot the Muslim” for a bit – it’s Ramadan in the Islam world, and they’re not eligible for Ganesh Jollies, anyway. They’re conspicuously, annoyingly, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, this morning. At the same time – who said men can’t multi-task? - we do the usual nature trove (a vanload of chickens in cages, a flock of sheep, two goats, and a fat little puppy: a good haul). The miles fly by.

In the midst of all the jaded business-as-usual, there’s a funeral procession. Not all families were out, dancing Ganesh on his way, last night, it seems. A straggle of mourners precedes the hearse-cart, and another trails behind. The man leading the cortege has a fat-bellied terracotta pot of smoking incense, and, behind him, a second official dips into his carrier-bag, flinging rice by the handful over his shoulder, showering deceased, mourners, and passers-by alike. The flat-bed cart’s very plain, just rough wood. On it, the man making his final journey, in a bed of flowers. Flowers for a pillow, flowers for a blanket. His face is showing, he looks like he might wake up at any moment. There’s nothing indecorous, nothing without grace, but it still shocks, so I’m almost afraid to look at the face of this dead stranger, in Mankhurd.

We live under a Perspex dome of polite usage, in the west, and death’s processed into social acceptability. Here, there’s no such filter. So it’s normal, for the Bombay Times to publish the photograph of a dead two-year-old, by the roadside, after a car accident. We think tacky, intrusive, voyeuristic. They think, real.

Even in the supermarket, the difference is clear. I wander into the segregated zone for carnivores - charmingly called “Non Veg,” because the majority is other – looking for protein. Normally, I allow Mr Roland to do this, fulfilling his hunter-gatherer aspirations, because I don’t like the smell. As soon as the doors sense your approach and slide open, the smell wafts out and sucks you in. I usually slope off and check out the coffee-cups, or drift further, to the incense and candle aisle which promises to cater to all my Pooja needs. This day, however, Mr Roland is too busy hunting and gathering rupees, to forage in HyperCity for a pack of chicken breasts, so I have to take a deep breath and Go It Alone. I find what I am looking for, but I also find polystyrene trays of chicken gizzards (yum), frozen Emu cubes (check out what Jamie has to say about that), and goat trotters. I don’t know why I’m surprised that they look like little goats’ feet, because that’s what they are. Real.

And yet, they do censorship. The sub-titles of English-language films are heavily edited, here, not even words like “damn” or “knickers” get through. By the time they’ve taken all the effing and blinding out of your everyday drug-running gun-toting Bronx special, the sub-title typists need hardly touch the keyboard. The sieve also filters potential religious slights. In the Julie-Andrews-squeaky-clean “Music and Lyrics,” Hugh Grant’s line, “She thought the Dalai Lama was, in fact, a llama,” survives as, “She thought.” We all have our agenda.

At school, you can tell who’s been tripping the light fantastic. Rani-didi, for one – not in bed before four in the morning, and her, a mother of three, who should know better. We have a new volunteer, who’s going to do Saturday mornings with the catch-up crew. Her name’s Didi, so the smalls have to call her – yes - Didi-didi. It makes me laugh, but She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is kind enough not to send me to the wall of shame. - “Go stand at the back,” she says to non-producers of homework, without ruth, “take your punishment.” And they go, quiescent as lambs. No answering back, no “yes, but...,” no rolled eyes, no finger-drumming.

We do “-ub” words. Rub, tub, cub - “pub” doesn’t come into the “-ub” story, for some reason. “Akash has a small cub,” Bhavika reads, “What is cub?” I’m the only one who knows, but I don’t put my hand up. “You,” she says, pointing at Khaja, her visual-aid, “man:child. This, lion:cub!” And thus Kipling becomes clear to me, after all these years.

On the way back home, we see empty wooden carriages, with hoods, like gypsy wagons, painted silver and gold, parked at the kerb. The horses paw the wet tarmac, idly. “This, funeral car,” says Monu. So, he got a good send-off, after all. I'm glad.

Anyone for Prasad?

2008-09-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

If you’re wanting to give blood, or get your hearing tested in Mumbai, now’s the time. I don’t quite understand the link, myself, but the ten-day Ganesh Birthday Bash has community medicine among its many more openly festive traditions. Imagine celebrating Christmas by having your blood pressure checked (not a bad idea, now I come to think of it....), or popping into the clinic to get your personal plumbing MOT’d, before buying your Easter eggs . The roads here are strewn with mobile health units, which Monu has added seamlessly to his All-Mumbai Tour: “Madame, you know clinic?” He takes one hand off the wheel, to direct our attention to the right. “This eye clinic.” Sure enough, there’s the camper-van, with the hand-cranked ophthalmoscope and the reading-charts. They’re probably all in Hindi script, anyway, so I wouldn’t even be able to read the top line. It occurs to me, that I can’t read the top line in English, even when it’s always a “Y” - thus myopia gives me racial inclusion.

Day 10, and the community-Ganeshes are taken for a final triumphant procession, before the aquatic farewell. For the past week and a half, families have been taking their small domestic Ganpati to immerse in the lake – I say “small” – some of them are bigger than the oldest child in the family – but, for the grand finale, the municipal Ganeshes, from the local pandals, take centre stage. Day 11’s the send-off. Except, it’s pouring down.

In England, we do wellies and umbrellas; at a push, waders and sou’westers. Here, rain-evaision is an art-form, requiring much ingenuity and no expense. There’s the ever-popular chef’s hat carrier-bag on the head, which you would clip a four-year-old for trying. There’s the casual newspaper draped from ear to ear – Look, Mum! No hands! - Not for blondes, this one, unless you want yesterday’s headlines inked into your barnet for a week or so... A much-favoured resort is the ubiquitous orange cloth. As soon as you stop at traffic lights, someone appears at your window, flogging a pile of what look like tea-towels. For some reason, the orange ones are always on top. “Is cloth for car,” says Monu. Is also cloth for rainhat, as far as I can see. I ask, what they cost. “This man say, ten and fifteen rupee, and you say six and eight rupee, and he say, ok.” THAT’s how you barter. Well, you may do, not me. I just go, “Fifteen rupees, ok, here you are,” thereby ruining the whole system. They like taking your money, but they’re aggrieved at the lack of harangue, which is all part of the process. I’m not built for the east.

My far-and-away winner, in the rainwear category, is the bloke nipping in front of the simmering lanes of traffic, just as the lights turn green. Wearing a dhoti (like Gandhi) and a polyester shirt (not like Gandhi), he steps barefoot across the puddled tarmac, holding a banana-leaf over his head for an umbrella. I’m too busy applauding, to get the camera out. Sorry.

Armed with an umbrella a-piece, we stroll down to the lake, where all-Powai and his wife - and the kids, and grandma, supported by a string of nephews and neighbours - are singing Ganesh home. The air’s heady with incense, and the drums call to each other, from truck to truck. Everyone appears to be wearing orange, although there’s so much colour powder in the air, they may well have set out in white. The jasmine-and-rose-flavoured Tide’s going to have all on, getting this little lot clean, tomorrow. As we turn off the road onto the track leading to the water’s edge, a man dips his forefinger into his bag of powdered dye, and paints a red stripe on our foreheads, wishing us a happy Ganesh Chathurti. We feel very welcome and participative, if a little conspicuous with our pasty faces.

Ganeshes are arriving in tuk-tuks, in the family car, on the heads of believers, in horsedrawn Cinderella-carriages, strung with fairy-lights. Communities hire lorries to carry Ganesh – and themselves – to the waterside. We see statues as small as tea-cups, and others as large as grown elephants. Everywhere, lit trays of incense and spices. A man beckons, and shows us what to do: you take a pinch of spice, scatter it over the statue, pass your hand through the flame, and then over your face and hair. Excellent, have a piece of Prasad.

Tonight, even though four policemen are sitting on plastic chairs, having a bit of a picnic, there’s some evidence of crowd control. A rope cordons off one side of the thoroughfare, to separate arrivals and departures along the spit, and speed up the throughput. At home, there’d be a row of temporary posts in the ground, to hold the rope, but here the job’s done by a team of ladies in black and white saris, with yellow basketball caps. Unlike the policemen lining the route of royal processions, in England, who have to face the crowds and miss the fun, these ladies have prime viewing spots, for the parade of Ganeshes, making their final journey to the water. Parties start arriving as soon as it goes dark, at about seven, then there's an unbroken flow of celebrants, until the small hours. It’s a long night, for the rope-gang.

Another length of womanned rope holds back the crowds from the very edge of the lake. Only the families, whose Ganeshes are finally reaching the water, are allowed into the final pen. Before we reach the rope, we’re ushered in, even though we’re clearly Ganesh-less. Positive racism, I think.

This time, instead of the queue of swimmers, the boys in the orange t-shirts are crewing two rafts. The land-crew collect the Ganesh from the family, and carry it to the raft. Some need two porters, others, four. A huge Ganesh arrives, and no fewer than ten men shuffle it across the landing stage. We wonder whether the raft will capsize, but it doesn’t.

The raft is poled out a few yards offshore, and the statues are slipped into the water, one by one. The smaller ones are dunked in and out, one, two, three, by the kneeling porter, before being dropped into the lake. The boys lift a large Ganesh over the side of the raft, and he slips from their grasp, and plunges underwater, without ceremony, irrecuperably. The watching family are clearly disconcerted, and stop their chanting mid-morya. When the next hefty statue's shuffled overboard, two boys slide into the water to receive him, so that due dunking can be observed.

We duck under the cordon, to head for home. It takes us a while, to find the road again, because we have to stop to shake hands or say “Namaste!” every two paces. When we reach the shadow of our building, the heavens open, so we do need our umbrellas, after all.

At the lakeside, the festivities are clearly undampened. From our window, we can’t smell the incense, but the pipes and drums and firecrackers will be keeping sleep at bay, yet a while. Tomorrow, it’ll be business as usual, but for tonight, there’s still time for another round of Ganpati Bappa – Morya!

Water Features

2008-09-12T06:53:00.000-07:00

Mumbai will never be finished. When the steam-rollers pull out, a new road’s show-off weeks are numbered, before the flip-flop gang are back with their drills and pick-axes, to dig the perfect surface up again, because they forgot to lay the phone cables. It’s only five years since the no-lakh housing estates of Mankhurd were wiped off the map, to make way for high-rise tenement blocks, trading horizontal slums for vertical ones, and already the roads have more potholes than Derbyshire, since local tarmac has the tensile strength of a Chocolate Krispie. And don’t say wear and tear, I hardly think four tuk-tuks and a bloke with a cartload of bananas constitute aggressive over-use, day to day.

On the left, as we drive through Parkside – just before the newsagent’s stall - there’s been a landslide. A whole side of someone’s house has slithered into the road, courtesy of yesterday’s rains. Much of this estate perches precariously on an outcrop, which must make for uneasy sleep. The raw cliff-face is netted and pinned, though what protection that would offer, should two metres of cliff lose the battle against water and gravity, it’s hard to discern. The monsoon brings more than the inconvenience of mildewed shoes, to Parksiders.

To our right, long-limbed youths bowl their way to school, literally: there’s never no time for cricket, here. Their school uniform’s pink polo shirts and mauve shorts, yet they’re still laughing. Find me a single Year 9 English boy, who’d be happy to show his knees in public, in mauve shorts, and his name will be Billy No-Mates. I don’t want to stir the silt of racial stereo-typing, here, but the British are chromatically challenged. Is it the climate, or are people, who are happy to eat mashed potato and Rich Tea biscuits, temperamentally inclined towards beige? (Not forgetting the timeless appeal of classic black, navy blue, and bottle green, of course. If you ask me, you can only pull off bottle green, if you’re a bottle...) I take my taupe hat off to this sequinned nation.

Nearing Bandra, smoke billows across the street. I flinch, thinking of the car which stopped the traffic, weeks ago, blazing in the outside lane, costing two lives. I’m almost too afraid to ask. “Fire?” “No fire, is ..... medicine,” says Monu, making nipping movements with his fingers and thumb. “Fumigate?” I say, inspired. “You mean, cockroaches?” I nip my fingers, too, in the panglobal sign for “vile crawling thing which will survive an all-out nuclear attack and rule the world.” “Cockroach,” Monu does Incey-Wincey spider, again, “...and small small thing.” We come level with the open Piaggio Ape, trailing clouds of insecticide. Spraying’s a weekly treat (if you’re a besieged resident, that is - obviously if you’re a beetle or a bedbug, it’s not that much fun). In Powai, we don’t get the fumigation-wagon, we’re too posh for cockroaches. They could do the evil deed under cover of dark, like in Camelot, I suppose, but they’d have to have a hundred metre nozzle, to do us any favours, up here on the thirty-third floor.

Vimala Dermatological Centre, it says on the vehicle in front. Ambulance. No flashing lights, no sirens, it’s filled to the rafters with parcels and packages. “This part-time job,” Monu smiles. “What if it’s an emergency,” I say, “do they deliver the post first?” I also wonder, uncharitably, if they have “Ambulance” painted on the side, so they can melt through the traffic more quickly, thus get their deliveries done on time. But then I remember, no-one moves over for an ambulance, in Mumbai.

The clouds look peevish and threatening, like on a Sunday School picnic. A policeman secures a polythene bag over the business end of his gun, with an elastic band. Coming towards us, a lady rides side-saddle, behind her turbaned husband, her petal-perfect sari hidden under a pakamac. It’s a duller world, when it rains. No wonder we paint our hallways magnolia, under more temperate western skies.

Today I learn what the water-line is, and it has nothing to do with plimsolls. Monu’s yawning, and I think it’s Mr Roland’s fault, for wining and dining a customer, last night, ‘til our Innova turns back into a pumpkin. But no, Monu says he was up and doing, when the dawn chorus was still snoring, because “water come in my room.” Only yesterday, we talk of roof-lagging, to keep the monsoon out, so I assume he means a leak. I’m wrong. He means, it’s his turn, for a wash.

The water-line is the queue, at the standpipe. Monu says his “water-number” today is 510. I think he means, five hundred and ten, but it’s not a number, it’s a time. 5.10. As in, a.m.. If he wants to wash, he has to get up at five in the morning. After ten minutes, the water stops, and it’s the next person’s slot. You quickly learn to be fairly nippy with the shampoo, I imagine. There are boys, of my personal acquaintance, who stand under the shower for ten minutes, just to come to terms with being awake, before they even think about abluting.

In Malad, the water supply’s switched on at four in the morning, so people are allocated, every day, to sacrifice sleep to cleanliness. Monu says, if you’re on at four, you wash, and go back to bed, clean, for a couple of hours. In the evening, there’s no water at all. Electricity’s another matter, though. Monu lives in the shadow of In Orbit mall, so is happily on the same circuit, and can plug his kettle in, at any hour of the day or night. There won’t always be water in it, of course, which is a great pity, because tea’s the only thing he can cook.

In our flat – which we treat like a Wendy House - we have three showers, and only one body each. Hot water on tap, at two minutes’ notice. It’s not fair. Stop me if I’m boring you, it’s not the first time I’ve said it, nor will it be the last. I offer Monu our spare room, and he laughs. I’m not joking, though.

Songs of Praise

2008-09-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

In the middle of the road through Parkside, the no-lakh housing estate, cheek-by-jowl with leafy Powai, the newspaper vendor has his pitch. He sits on the crumbling wall, separating the two carriageways, with tuk-tuks zooming or not-zooming by his ears, and sells his papers through car-windows as they stop and start by, or to pedestrians prepared to zig-zag across impatient morning traffic. He’s one of the landmarks I use, to pin down the unstable geography, which is Mumbai, in my head. He’s also my barometer. On a sunny day, he fans his papers out, along the wall in front of him, for ease of choosing. On an uncertain day, they’re stacked, between his knees, under a plastic sheet, and you have to know what you’re asking for; no mooching. Today, he’s not even there. Serious sou’wester weather ahead, then.

As we leave Powai, there’s a man taking his dog for a walk, in the rain. A honey Labrador, wearing a blue raincoat. A minute down the road, in Parkside, I see a child dressed in a supermarket carrier-bag, holding the hand of an even tinier boy, wearing nothing but a piece of string, for a loincloth. All of life rolls by our window.

At school, we can’t concentrate, because of Ganesh. Not that religious fervour has elbowed fractions and dictation out of everyone’s mind, it’s the music. In the courtyard, framed by the four tenement blocks, a pandal has been erected, amid all the flotsam and jetsam of slum life. It looks like a builders’ shack, from the outside, but it’s cloaked in tasselled orange glory, within. Every waking moment, piped music fills the air and all our senses, at such a volume as would shatter the window-panes, except we haven’t got any, here in Mankhurd. Bhavika-didi cranks her personal volume up 'til her throat’s on fire, and presses on with tenses.

“Yesterday I was sad,” thumb jerk to the left, crying face. "Today I am happy!” Forefingers down to the ground, big smiles. “Do you follow, yes or no?”

“Didi, and tomorrow?” says Swapnil, clearly aware of the transitory nature of happiness, a child after my own heart.

“Tomorrow, no, Swapnil!” Didi barks, “Tomorrow comes after. We’re thinking about today!”

Rani-didi – Woman of Many Parts, Distributor of Worksheets and Custodian of the Erasers – closes the door, and pulls the skimpy curtains across the metal bars of the window – they don’t reach, at either side. We can either hear, or breathe, but not both, it seems. When the electricity cuts out, the room plunges into murkiness, and the fan slithers to a halt. The heat washes in instantly, and Rani-didi cracks the door open again. Ganesh’s glee chorus has stopped – power-cuts aren’t all bad news – and silence fills the courtyard, for an interval. We work in the gloom for a bit, peering at smudgy pencil on rough paper, then the light comes on – fiat lux! – and the fan whirrs into action. Before we have time to blink and refocus, the air’s throbbing with joyful music, again.

Think of Songs of Praise. Now think of everything that isn’t Songs of Praise - mewling women, pulsing drums, and a thousand decibels – and you have Hymns to Ganesh. I don’t know how Indian music is annotated; they’re very hot on syncopation, yet seem to sing everything glissando, if that’s not a musical paradox. Whatever the theory, it’s all very catchy. I hum along happily, in the car, for miles (well, hours), playing “Name That Tune” with Monu. Joss Stone and Jack Johnson, and everyone else who lives in our CD drawer, in Rempstone, are going to have to spice things up a little, when we get home.

Bhavika-didi writes “YWBAT” on the board, corralled tidily off to one side. I watch her do this maybe twenty times, before I associate it with what she’s saying as she writes – “You Will Be Able To...” Even in a classroom with no chairs, no desks, no glass in the windows, we still have to have Aims and Objectives. Today, YWBAT understand co-operation. That’s a tall order, for most undergraduates I know, but here’s a floorful of seven-year-olds desperate to tackle it, in a foreign language. Co-operation is working together, didi says.

“What is co-operation?”

“Working together!”

Yesterday, we did responsibility, which most of us understand better than we can pronounce. It’s not just about spelling and sums, in Akanksha, you know.

Bhavika-didi’s telling the story of Aju, a big fish with scary teeth, who bites a hole in the fisherman’s net, to save all the little fishes caught inside, proving that even people, who don’t seem kind, can be caring. I’m supposed to be testing Ashish on his sight words, mother, father, cupboard, same, different.... but clearly Aju’s adventures are far more exciting – for Ashish and me both – so I ask the Boss if we can go and sit on the terrace, to read. She smiles at me, the way you smile at people of impaired understanding, and says no. Apparently the modus operandi for local housewives is to dispose of anything unwanted straight out of the window. Dirty water, paper scraps, yesterday’s leftover dal, vegetable peelings, and worse. And even worse. So, sitting on the terrace outside, for a spot of paired reading, in peace, is not an option.

Back at the apartment, and the clouds are gathering with intent, so the newsagent-barometer did well to stack his Hindustani Times. I can hear the rain, but I can’t see it, looking straight out of the window at the leaden sky. The end of the street, where you turn left for the Great Punjab, or right for D-Mart, is thinly visible, but this is more folk-memory, than sight. Beyond that, it could be the nearside of Powai Lake, it could be a cloud-bank. The other side of the Lake might as well be Kathmandu, for all I can tell.

Down below, the green-grocer’s stall is cloaked in blue plastic, but there are no takers, this afternoon. The stall-holder sits, cross-legged, with his empty balance and weights, behind his pyramids of custard-apples and papaya, waiting for the rain to exhaust itself, and his customers to come out again. I hope he’s got a crossword, then, because the heavens are rocking and rolling. It’ll be a while before anyone’s in the market for snake gourds.

A Word from Our Sponsors

2008-09-08T09:53:00.000-07:00

Rain stops play, here in Powai, so we become couch aloo, and spend the day channel-hopping, great exercise for thumbs. We vacillate between HBO (Home Box Office) and Star Movies, depending on whether we’re up for Kindergarten Cop or Rambo First Blood Part 2. There’s going to be a lot of pec-flexing, whichever way we go.

Currently, about half of the ads on television, here, are pushing technology. Cars are a big feature, which puzzles me, since we hardly see anything four-wheeled which is not a taxi or an Innova. Well, bullock-carts, I suppose, but none of them has a catalytic converter or a cigarette-lighter. The rest of the road’s filled with fringed lorries and bulging single-decker buses, with a tuk-tuk or two in every nook and cranny in between. So why do they spend so much money, advertising cars no-one buys? “Changes your style,” purrs the ad for the all-new Indica Visita, “Changes your life.” The sleek red car hurtles round bends, gobbling up the road. “Changes everything.” Well, it would have to change the traffic in Mumbai, for starters, or you’d never get out of third gear.

Toyota’s Corolla Altis – “designed to inspire envy” – has a campaign fronted by Orlando Bloom, even if they do think he’s from Hollywood, not Canterbury. I’m sad to note that he’s in a tux, not his Legolas outfit. And don’t even think of saying, anachronism, because I’m willing to suspend belief for pointy ears and a swishy cape... All he says is, “Tonight, I’d like to introduce a new star...” and then the car zooms up the catwalk. Not a bad day’s work, by any standards. Still, the new Toyota can hardly be flying out of the showrooms, in a city where most people earn less than £2 a day.

On the other hand – or rather, in the other hand – plugging the mobile phone makes more sense. I’m possibly the only person on the sub-continent, who can’t handle a phone which does anything apart from make phonecalls. Jockeying for business is fierce. In Dharavi, Mumbai’s largest “social housing” area, we see barefoot workers, lolling on sacks of recyclable rubbish in their stinking factories, having a break, doing what idle youths do the world over, to fill a fallow moment, texting their mates. People who don’t have shoes, have a mobile phone, it seems. Technology’s the birthright of youth, though, or so the telly says. “Ciao, babe!” says the Aged Parent, in the Motorola advert, mimicking his son, as he dances and poses in front of the mirror. LOL, as they say in txt-spk. Evidently, you’re not allowed to say “Ciao!” if you’re over 25. Unless you’re Italian, I suppose... The boy in the Virgin Mobile ad is immobilised in a hospital bed, begging the pretty nurse to answer his phone for him. She searches his pockets, to his clear delight. He tries to return the favour for his mate, but his door’s opened by a male nurse with a gelled quiff and a glint in his eye. “Keep calls between friends free!” chuckles the punch-line. Propaganda with a smile. ROFL, even...

Wrinklies have their moment in the limelight, though. The ad for Masti Mobile music downloads has Grandma on her deathbed, surrounded by grieving generations. She gasps her last request, which puzzles Son, but Grandson opens his mobile, and downloads her favourite Golden Oldie, which plays on her pillow. Thus, Grandma can slip away, smiling beatifically. Never get past the censors, the Yorkshire Pudding side of the Arabian Sea.

Interestingly, the only foods to make it onto the small screen, are imports, Domino’s Pizza and the ubiquitous MacDonalds. Obviously, this audience need no introduction to rice and dal, and anyway, everyone eats their Mum’s, at home, not some shop-bought preservative-laced travesty. Both pizza and burger ads feature senior citizens, because the younger generation have long since sold their souls to the west, and are past seducing.

This afternoon, we see more overt sexuality, in tv adverts, than in all of the Bollywood movies on our groaning shelf, put together. No such thing as the watershed, here, then. However much writhing and wriggling about the leading man does around/with his leading lady, in a film, his lips never get to touch hers. You just think they’re going to – after a hundred and twenty minutes of build-up, you’d be quite glad if they would – when she tucks her chin in, and he kisses her chastely on the brow. You might get a glimpse of his gleaming six-pack, if he’s swash-buckling about vanquishing the villain, but there’s no hand-to-hand wrestling for the hero and heroine. You’ll see sequinned tops and diaphanous baggy pants, in the set-piece dance routines, but no underwear on show, not even passion-quenching Nora Batty tights or clip-over-the-shoulder Bridget Jones knickers. Imagine our surprise, then, to have our living-room suddenly pulsing with body after body – male and female – clad only in the odd spiral of colour and clever lighting. Mr Roland and I exchange scandalised looks over our Bombay Mix. Kansai Nerolac’s campaign to launch their new Impressions range certainly catches the eye, even if it leaves the imagination redundant. This is where my Hindi lets me down – I assume it’s yet another skin cream, because the slogan runs, “Show your true colours!” and there’s a marked obsession here, with skin-lightening. Turns out, it’s paint. – You wouldn’t have known, either....

Several other paint manufacturers are showing their colours, too, which speaks of the monsoon. As soon as the last drop of rain is squeezed from the last cloud, there will be an emulsion-frenzy, in time for Diwali, at the end of October. "All people, paint the house," according to the Mumbai Oracle, at the steering-wheel. The competition’s underway already. My money’s on Kansai Nerolac, now I know that’s it’s for slapping on the walls, not on my chops.

Beauty’s big business, though, with or without the Impressions range. In deference to the season, a desperate woman irons her hair on the ironing board. Then she discovers Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine , which restores a patent gloss to her silken tresses, and we all live happily ever after. “Bye-bye, frizz!” As one who has long cultivated the monsoon look, I take exception to this. Mere shampoo – even one boasting “olive strength” –is surely not up to tackling the unravelled tea-cosy which is and always will be “le look” as far as I’m concerned? If Mr Roland ever sees himself reflected in my Sleek and Shiny hair, he'll know he's in the wrong house. Let’s hear it for tea-cosies....

Ganpati Bappa Morya!

2008-09-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

Powai Lake’s lit like a Christmas tree. The approach road’s jammed, strings of headlights tailing off into the distance. Fireworks pepper the sky, and the night pulses with the beat of drums. Ganesh is going home.

One and a half days after Hindus welcome the figure of Ganesh into their homes, with special prayers and rituals, he’s carried out to be sent on his way again, by being symbolically immersed in a body of water. The enormous public Ganeshes, in communal pandals, remain in place until the end of Sarvajanik, after the full ten days’ celebrating. So, tonight is family night.

The family go to the idol-maker, to collect their Ganesh, and pay him in cash, wrapped in a mango leaf. The journey home’s precarious, because if the idol’s mishandled, and chipped or damaged in any way, the celebrations are over for the family, for that year. It’s with considerable relief, all round, then, that Ganesh is safely installed in the home, duly anointed with kumkum and presented with the traditional brass tray of fruit and vegetables, the PhalavaLi.

From our apartment, we walk round the block, into the centre of Powai, where it’s business as usual. People are shopping at D-Mart and Crossword, Papa John’s Pizza restaurant’s full, the paan-seller’s got his circle of punters, like every other night. It’s hard to find a pandal. “Rich people, no interested in Ganesh festival,” says Monu flatly. By the lake, where the labourers live in the no-lakh housing estate, there’s a pandal every hundred yards, so there seems some justification in Monu’s dismissive categorizing.

We leave the shops and restaurants, and walk down to the lakeside, following the sound of drums and singing. By the edge of the water, it’s like a funfair. Tuk-tuks pull up at the kerbside, and whole families spill out, in all their sequinned finery. Further along, in the lamplight, peering through a windscreen, we make out Ganesh sitting on Grandpa’s knee, in the passenger seat of the family car, Dad driving, and Mum, Grandma and the kids crammed in the back seat. The air’s electric with excitement and incense.

We’re a bit diffident about intruding – we’re not going anywhere unnoticed, not only do we have radio-actively pale faces, but we’re just about the only people not wearing orange – so we teeter diffidently at the entrance. Within a heartbeat, we’re hailed like long-lost relatives, with smiles and waves, and pulled inside. Within a minute, our hands are full of food.

Special dishes are prepared for this evening, and carried with the idol to the water’s edge, where final ceremonies are performed. Once food which has been offered to the deity, it’s considered to contain his blessing, and is distributed to share that blessing. Prasad. I have in my cupped hand sweets like tiny asteroids, shredded coconut, rice, shards of jaggery. Mr Roland, more conservative, accepts a green lemon.

Definitely spectators here, we’re longing to take photographs, but politeness stays our hands. After the fourth family take our photos, though – with or without the baby – we decide this can be a reciprocal arrangement, and Lord Lichfield gets the camera out.

Lining up by the water, a row of men - smooth-cheeked youths and grizzled elders alike - wearing orange or yellow t-shirts and loincloths. They stand, fidgeting on the uneven shingle in their bare feet, their chapals abandoned on the rocks. A family approaches, singing and chanting. “Ganpati Bappa...” shouts the man of the house. “Morya!” his family respond. “Mangal Moorti...” he calls. “Morya!” they finish. O Father Ganesh, come early again next year. It’s quite catching.

The Ganesh is handed over, on his plinth, to two of the bearers in the queue. Between them, they carry him to the lake, and one of them swims out, backwards, with the bobbing idol, so the family, on the shore, can watch their Ganesh enter the water. When the swimmer’s out of his depth, he lifts up the Ganesh, then plunges him underwater, then again, then again. When he immerges the idol for the last time, he puts a foot on him, to keep him submerged, until the lake seeps into the plaster. Ganesh, water-logged, is gone for good, thus safely on his way home to Kailash. The swimmer does a fast crawl back to shore, where he recovers the plinth, and deposits a symbolic nugget of river mud in its centre, before returning it to the family, who bear it off triumphantly.

The swimmers are paid, individually, by the family whose Ganesh they carry. They wait in patient line, but if a family tarries too long, chanting and waving and video-ing the departure of their Ganesh, the queue of porters gets restive, and encourages them to move on with unmistakable hand gestures and equally unequivocal unholy words.

We stand and watch, as family after family arrive, for the send-off. There’s no organised order of play, as far as we can determine, but the crowds seem to flow into order accidentally, like the Mumbai traffic at a crossroads.

An objective onlooker can’t help but see an element of competition, here, as neighbouring families strive to out-Ganesh one another, keeping up with the Kumars. It’s not a phenomenon exclusive to India, think of the flashing reindeer and inflatable snowmen which proliferate on English lawns in December. Not on the street where I live, obviously. Nor you.

On the way out again, we pass waves of new arrivals, and collect smiles and handshakes, as well as a palmful of fruit salad. Mr Roland declines, but I munch my way through chunks of apple and unpeeled lime, dotted with bright pippins of pomegranate. I have a furtive ball of modak, steamed rice dumpling, screwed into a tissue in my handbag, because I can’t swallow it, but I’m up for chopped fruit, any day.

At the entrance, there’s a right song and dance. A Ganesh has arrived, in a lorry, framed by fronds of palm, accompanied by a band of drummers and musicians, and an entire dynasty doing jigs and reels in its wake. Their painted statue is too beautiful – and surely too costly – to dissolve in the lake, but the belief is that Ganesh takes all your worries with him, so his loss is ultimately your gain. And there’s always next year, to look forward to.

La Donna è Mobile...

2008-09-04T09:24:00.001-07:00

“Indian army,” says Monu, pointing at the five trucks lined up in front of us, going nowhere in the stationary traffic. They’ve drafted in the boys in khaki, to add backbone to Mumbai’s police force, during Ganesh Chaturthi, since, as well as being a time of celebrations, it’s a time of civil unrest. After the riots of 1992, the peace between Hindu and Muslim is only ever queasy, at best. Monu takes a hand off the wheel, to gesture at the trucks. “Army, all-time guns!” I look into the back of the open truck, at the crammed rows of soldiers in camouflage caps and shirts, leaning casually on their guns. I also see, peering closer between the rows, several bare brown feet waving in the air. ”These soldier, sleeping.” Course they are, having forty off-duty winks, just like the tuk-tuk drivers at the side of the road. I don’t know that I could concentrate on sleeping, with my nose pressed up against the stock of someone else’s gun, but perhaps this is what the military mean by fatigues.

Monu adjusts the garland looped round his three dashboard Ganeshes. Orange and yellow marigold blooms threaded together, punctuated with folded mango leaves, with a faceted disco-bauble, in eye-catching electric fuchsia, as the centre-piece. Thirty rupees, half price. A bargain.

We’re mobile shopping. I don’t mean, that we kerb-crawl, hopping into the car for the four seconds of pavement between shops. I mean, my phone’s given up the unequal struggle, and acceded defeat. Vodafone, nil – Monsoon, one. Vijay Sales is air-conditioned and roomy, with three uniformed assistants to every gleaming yard of glass counter. If you can plug it in, they sell it here.

It takes perhaps four minutes, to choose the only Nokia available, which doesn’t tell jokes, sing lullabies and double as a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine. “This model, no Bluetooth,” Sanjay the mobile-wala says, shaking his head, sadly. “This model,” I say, picking up my defunct phone, “I can’t work the calculator, so this model, no Bluetooth – no problem!” In a rare break from tradition, I opt for the pink version. I know, revolutionary. Sanjay returns, smiling, apologetic, destined to thwart. No pink in stock. By way of consolation, he brings me the blue one, which proves what I have long thought, that blue is my destiny. I’m not meant to stray beyond the turquoise-to-navy quadrant of the spectrum.

Another four minutes, and we have selected a small Philips cd-player. Silver and chubby, it also plays tape-cassettes, which only teachers and Indians still have on their shelves. Impressively, we’ve been in the store for under ten minutes, which qualifies as what Mr Roland calls “surgical shopping.” (Most men do not understand the concept of shopping as a pastime, I’ve noticed. “What are you looking for?” he will ask, helplessly. “I don’t know until I see it,” I reply, shuffling my credit cards, meaningfully.)

Just when we’re getting complacent about retail precision, it takes more than forty minutes, to pay. Our cashier, Ameeta, rejects Mr Roland’s credit card because he can’t prove he is who he claims to be. But, you never know when you might need to leave the country in a hurry, I think, so I have my passport about my person. My ID is documentable, even if I do look slightly like Myra Hindley before she had her roots done, so I still count as the better credit risk at Vijay’s. Ameeta sends off a minion, to the photocopier in the basement, so we watch the cashier beside her, stock-taking. The crumpled carrier-bag on her desk looks as if it might contain old gym-shoes, or last year’s Christmas cards, but she delves in, and draws out a fat wodge of banknotes, which she counts, moving her lips. (I’m desperate to know if she’s counting in Hindi or English. At our local D-Mart, many of the sales staff don’t speak English, so when you ask for sticking-plasters, for example, they have to whistle for their mate, then their mate’s mate, before they can be of assistance. If you should ever be stuck in Powai in need of plasters, by the way, ask for bandages. It’s a vocabulary thing.... And yet, in the middle of a stream of Hindi, they will give a price or a product code in English.) Our Vijay cashier wraps small torn strips of paper round each wad of counted notes, before she rubber stamps the bundle, four times, in the innocent belief that an elastic band provides some kind of security. A thin boy, with an even thinner moustache, approaches, on the public side of the cash-counter, to collect carboned invoices of the morning’s work so far. For the first time, I notice a plastic-mesh laundry-basket, at the feet of each cashier. The office-boy tips the baskets, one by one, into his own laundry-basket, and drifts back to HQ, kicking it in front of him.

A man stands barefoot on the ledge which runs round the cash-desk, doing a spot of painting. He steps off the ledge, onto the cashiers’ work-surface, to swap his paint-brush for a hammer, then climbs back up, to nail a strip of plastic edging, over the still-wet paint. His sidekick’s in the music centre showroom, the other side of the plate glass partition, with a tray of emulsion and a roller, less than a foot from the home cinema display. They don’t do Closed For Refurbushing, here, which I find utterly charming.

We manage to pay, at last, with only four signatures, and are given a letter of ownership, together with a certificate of exit. We go to two separate counters, to collect our new belongings. Then, at the door, we’re stopped by the security guard. He has not missed a heartbeat of our transactions, since there’s precious little else going on, on the shop-floor, but we have to open our bags while he checks that the product code on the goods tallies with the numbers on the exit certificate. He sends his friend, to bring our salesman, just to double check. You can’t be too careful, can you?

As Monu nudges the car out of the surprisingly leafy car-park, we pass yet another security guard. He’s using one plastic garden chair to sit on, and another to rest his bare feet. He’s fast asleep.

Ganesh Chaturthi

2008-09-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi! Today Mumbaikers celebrate Ganesh’s birthday, and pink elephants are definitely on parade. The building sites are silent, the school-rooms are empty, everyone’s on holiday.

Time was, the goddess Parvati needed a guard for the door, because she wanted to have a bath. She made Ganesh out of what she had to hand - sandalwood paste, for her bath - and breathed life into him. When Shiva came home, Ganesh challenged him at the threshold, so Shiva lopped his head off. I imagine it didn’t take long, for Parvati to point out to her husband the error of his ways, but there could be no quick-fix, because the head was nowhere to be found. Shiva sent out his troops, to bring back the head of the first animal they came across facing north, the propitious direction. They came across an elephant, and the rest is Hindu history.

Bhavika-didi brings a small Ganesh to school, as a visual aid. Well, he is supposed to be the Supreme God of Wisdom, and the Remover of Obstacles, so it makes good sense. We are doing Ganesh, for our Caring Lesson. She's ready to begin, so I unwind my handbag from round Sadabh’s neck – he’s pretending to be me - and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that I am not so much an assistant, as a distraction, in the classroom. We face forwards. I love being read to.

The shops of Mumbai are bristling with statues, tiny hand-held ones for domestic use, to elephant-sized Ganeshes which need a flat-bed truck for transport. They have collections, within each community, to buy not only the statue (the big ones cost more than £200), but also the pandal, the temporary pavilion, set up for the shindig. Built of scaffolding and blue plastic sheeting, they’re swagged with organza inside, decked with garlands and strings of twinky lights to within a two-watt bulb of their lives, and they make Oxford Street at Christmas look subtly underlit.

The gods came to Shiva and Parvati, Bhavika says, to ask which among them was the chief god.
“Whom do they ask?”
“Shiva!”
“What do they ask him, who was chief.....”
"God!” Bhavika’s brilliant at question-and-answer routines.

The Mankhurd children are fizzing with excitement – I’m feeling a bit giddy myself, and I don’t even know where the story’s going. They fidget, spilling out of their padmasan, then quickly scramble their limbs back into position. It could be genetic, or it could be my wonky knees, but my padmasan’s still a bit lop-sided, even after weeks of sitting on a concrete floor with only a rush mat for solace. Bhavika’s too discreet to mention it, but continues with the Ganesh-tale.

Shiva decrees that there will be a race. The gods have to go round the earth three times – or “thrice” as they are fond of saying here – and the first to report back to Shiva and Parvati will be declared the chief god. Ganesh is more than a little cheesed off, at this point, and who could blame him? His own parents, and they cut him no slack...

Ganesh Chaturthi is a moveable feast – like Easter - somewhere in the last week of August, and the first week of September. Hindus believe Ganesh bestows his presence on earth among his followers during the festival, and when he leaves again, he takes their troubles with him. No wonder they sing and dance in the streets.

“Ganesh has which vahana?” asks Bhavika. Even I know the answer to this. - All Hindu gods have a vehicle, a vahana, which is unique to them. This bearer always takes the form of an animal – for example, Shiva is borne on a bull, and Parvati on a lion. Ganesh’s vahana is ............ a mouse. You can see why he might be a little put out, that the chief god is to be chosen by means of a race.

“Does the mouse go fast or slow?”
“Slow!”
“If he goes slow-slow, will Ganesh win the race, or lose?”
“Lose!” The situation's not looking great for Ganesh.

These birthday celebrations last ten days, and conclude with the immersion of the idols in a body of water, sea, lake or river. Ganesh is carried into the water, to send him on his way back to Mount Kailash, where his parents live in perpetual meditation. (Hindus and Buddhists make pilgrimages to Kailash, in the Tibetan Himalayas, although they are forbidden to set foot on its slopes. Out of deference to their beliefs, no other climber sets foot on the holy mountain, either.)

But, Ganesh isn’t the Remover of Obstacles for nothing. He leaps on his noble steed, the mouse, and runs rings round his Mum and Dad. Three rings, to be precise. He then says, his parents are the world, to him. Thus he fulfils the task. Shiva acknowledges not only his son’s filial devotion, but also his wisdom, and declares Ganesh the chief of the gods. The children cheer. I have tears in my eyes. (It’s like the infant school nativity: I have no defence against small people with tea-towels on their heads, nor against clever elephant-boys, it now appears.)

“So, at the temple, Ganesh is always...?”
“First!”

This year, having solicited the blessings of Ganesh for spiritual and material success in any auspicious undertaking, the big focus is on the environment. The Indian on the street is encouraged to enjoy an eco-friendly Ganesh Chaturthi, and the message is rammed home by politicians and soap-stars alike. Originally, when the festival was privately celebrated, at home, the models were made of clay, and would dissolve harmlessly in river or lake. For the last century, Ganesh Chaturthi has been a public event, thanks to Lokmanya Tilak, a social reformer, who wanted people of all castes to have a common meeting-place. Increased demand has meant the idols are now made of Plaster of Paris, which is slower to dissolve, and poisons the water with toxic elements. Fish die in their thousands, at the end of Ganesh Chaturthi. So, it’s go back to terra cotta, or introduce the recyclable Ganesh. The jury's still out.

“Who did Ganesh show respect for?”
“Parents!”
“We must respect our parents and elders! Whom do we respect?”
“Parents!”
“And?”
“Old men!” says Kajal, cross-legged next to me. I think this is not going in any good direction, and, if you ask me, it’s high time Bhavika-didi got out the teaching-clock, for a bit of practice with our quarter tos and ten pasts.

Monsoon Virgins

2008-09-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Monu looks at me, tentatively, through the rear-view mirror. “You angry, Mam?”

Angry? The only reason I’m not doing a jubilant double somersault with a back flip, is that I’ve got my seat-belt on. Not especially angry, then.

“Eight day late. Tariq say, Mam very angry!" Monu’s best friend, Tariq, has been our fill-in driver for the week. He wears a baseball cap, and drives carefully, always smiling, never late. What he doesn’t do, is channel-hop on the radio, to find my favourite song (Pehli Nazar Mein),or pre-select the lightest bags of shopping for me to carry from the car, or draw my attention to passing bullock-carts, if I’m gazing out of the wrong window, or smile and nod, at street barbers. In short, he’s not Monu.

“Not angry,” I say, “sad.” I tell him about the spore invasion, in the flat, and he tells me about his father’s farm, in Lucknow. He shows me a picture of Shikha, who is very beautiful, as I secretly suspected, thus not like a buffalo, after all. A hundred and one percent happy, all round.

It turns out, the creeping mildew’s our own fault. The owner of the flat – who owns the whole of the top floor, in fact – comes to highlight our shortcomings, as tenants. When he arrives, slipping his shoes off at the door, Mr Kumar fails to strike me as a South Asian potentate, more like just the bloke next door. As it happens, that’s exactly what he is – eight months, we’ve been chasing him, to sign our Hiranandani gym application, and he lives on our landing. Or rather, we live on his. He insists I go into his apartment, to check its mildewlessness.

I get a crick in my neck, swivelling round to drink in all the lusciousness: he has a plasma-screen the size of a billiard table, a life-size oil-painting of his mother (or her mother, I guess, or even his mother’s mother), and a tasselled jhula, rocking lightly, in the breeze from the open door. He also has a gated staircase – to the roof, I can only imagine? (Would you go to a roof-terrace barbecue, thirty-three floors up?.... Quite. I decide not to feel peevish about not having a balcony.... Although next-door have adjoining double balconies, from either end of the football-pitch-sized living-room... Still a mile high, though. No, really, no balcony is fine....) Maybe Next-Door is an eastern magnate, despite everything. Slack-jawed, I forget to eyeball his walls, and pad home, barefoot.

Ventilation’s the answer. Locking up before going away, we do what any sane person would, and batten down the hatches. One of us (the one whose mouldy chinos we throw away, the one with the dainty respiratory tract, the one who wasn’t in Africa at the time, in fact) – leaves the air-conditioning on, as an added pre-cautionary measure. So, for a fortnight, the cooled air has nowhere to go, except to condense on every surface and create a cosy home for wandering microbes.

What we should have done (now they tell us!) was to turn off the AC and leave all the windows ajar, to enable the free circulation of air. Where we come from, we’re bred to be more concerned with the free circulation of thieves and vagabonds, it goes against every instinct to fling wide the casements and high-tail off to the airport. I suppose, you don’t need a burglar-alarm, a hundred yards in the sky, unless Spiderman gives in to the dark side. Still, we’ll know, next time; the rainy season won’t catch us on the back foot, again. Pity the monsoon doesn’t reach Nottinghamshire, we’d be a fount of meteorological knowledge, and a boon to all who knew us.

Maybe the habitual hardship and misery of the monsoon dictates that this should be festival season, Christmas in December. Last week, it was Janmashtami, Krishna’s birthday. A moveable feast, like Easter. Terracotta pots, dahi-handi, are filled with money and strung high in the air. Youths make human pyramids, to reach them , and claim the booty within. These days, they can contain hundreds of pounds’ worth of rupees. In Mumbai alone, more than four thousand dahi-handi dangle in the streets, to tempt the Krishna gangs.

When Krishna was a child, he lived with a cowherd, Nand, and his wife Yashoda, who fostered him, to protect him from his wicked uncle, King Kansa. Krishna was full of mischief, and used to steal butter and curds from the pots in the dairy. Yashoda would hang them up high, to hide them, but Krishna found he could reach them, by climbing on the backs of his friends, which gave rise to the tradition of dahi-handi.

Mr and Mrs Andrew and I see dahi-handi being made, in Kumbharwada, the pottery of Dharavi, in central Mumbai. The clay is drawn from a nearby estuary, then trodden to soften it. In the workshop of the potter we visit, the clay has been prepared for the next day by his own mother. She sifts it through her fingers and thumbs, to find and remove any small stones, then divides it into slabs, weighing about twelve kilos a-piece. The potter’s finished for the day, when we put our heads round his door, but he takes a block of clay from tomorrow’s stash, and switches his electric wheel back on again. He apologises that the clay is a little soft for working, because it normally would have the chance to dry out a little, overnight. From the one block, he makes eight pots in as many minutes, fat-bellied and identical. Each litre pot, once fired, sells for five rupees. The pot-man on the street sells them on for ten rupees. This is what India means by “disposable” – not tissues or nappies or tablecloths, which take years to biodegrade, but terra cotta pots, which will melt back into clay, earth to earth.

If it’s still Krishna you’re wanting to celebrate, and you’ve got more than ten rupees to spend, you can buy a silver figure of him, with his lovely bride Radha, at Frazer and Haws, in Bandra West. It will set you back more than Rs 79,000 (a thousand of your English pounds). Something for every pocket. As they say, it’s a broad church.

I know the weather’s not playing fair, in the North. I know that rivers are bursting their banks, changing course, and wiping whole villages away. But it’s more real to me, that Monu’s Mum is having to hand-rear Lali the calf, because her mother drowned in the flood. Fields of crops are under water, none to eat, none to sell. It’s going to be a tough year, in Uttar Pradesh. Small wonder, that our Indian Boy was eight day late.

Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back

2008-09-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

“Excuse me, are you real?” asks the man, eight or ten steps below me on the escalator. We’re suspended in the atrium of In Orbit mall, gliding towards the ground floor. Allergic to confrontation, I slide my gaze sideways into the middle distance, focusing on nothing. It’s not hard, when myopia is your factory setting.

“Excuse me, Ma’am? Is this eyes really you?” He points at his own peepers, then mine. Guilty as charged, I say, Mum, Dad, brother, sister, and me, I say, all blue eyes. This is how I was born. “Thank-you! Thank-you so much!” The escalator tips him out at street level, and he turns left, heading for Life Style. He’s beaming, like I’d just given him a winning lottery ticket. I try to reduce my beam to a smirk, and turn right, towards Shoppers Stop. Here we are, again: India.

Coming back after six weeks away, I thought India would be a constant, in the flickering kaleidoscope of life, but it’s changed. It’s still monsoon, but a weary monsoon. I look at the grimy bedraggled streets, and struggle to remember the triumphant first rains, when umbrellas blossomed on every pavement, and laughing children waded in the floodwater, playing with plastic bags and paper boats. You’d think three months of relentless rain would wash the city clean, but you’d be wrong. The all-pervading dust simply turns to mud, and the street dogs are grubby and wet, instead of just grubby. It’s like the end of summer, in England, when the leaves on the trees look fed up and jaded, as autumn limbers up, in the wings. The monsoon’s nearly ready to be over.

It’s not over, in our apartment, though. There has been an invasion, in our absence. Walls, ceiling, furniture, clothes – every surface is covered with wispy fungus. We strip the bed and bin the bedding, irrecuperably black-spotted. My favourite kurta has grown an extra layer of gauzy mould, which happily washes out, but Mr Roland’s chinos are beyond saving, ditto my suede sandals. Crocs go in the washing machine, to un-fungus. The trays of salt in the wardrobes, our Heath Robinson dehumidifiers, are standing in water. All our Fabindia furniture – bookshelves, bedside cabinets, console and laundry basket - is whiteover with mildew. The drawers are warped and wedged shut, the lid’s buckled, and we could wish we had gone for plain, not latticed. Sheesham’s no fan of the monsoon. And so say all of us....

The wisdom of hindsight comes rushing in, too late as per usual. In HyperCity, as soon as the monsoon shows its wet nose round the door, there’s a whole aisle devoted to covers – handkerchief covers, television covers, saree covers, microwave covers, transparent blouse covers (that’s the cover, not the blouse.... I’m supposing...). You name it, they’ll zip-lok it into plastic for you, and now I know why.

We spend the whole of Sunday, cleaning the walls with a pan-scourer, and excavating the King and Queen of Nepal from beneath their shroud of dust and mildew. Disgruntled doesn’t come close. Try hysterical. It’s like being burgled, but without anybody to arrest. Violation.

We move into the Rodas Hotel for the night, since Mr Roland’s alveoli aren’t up to spores, and I try to get my 10,000 rupees’ worth out of the occasion, steeping in a cocktail of revitalising ginseng bath foam, and bio-basil hair salad, and aloe vera lotion. I line the little bottles up along the edge of the bath, hopefully. An hour later, I emerge, corrugated and unsmiling - there’s only so much you can ask, of bubble-bath.

So, our Indian home has been taken over by microbes. The mango season is over. We have no internet connection. The al fresco lighting-shop on Adi Shankaracharya Marg, which never fails to lift my spirits, has packed up until the sun comes back, ironically. And, the unkindest cut of all, Monu’s not here. He’s still in Lucknow, with his Mum, and his newly-met bride-to-be, Shikha. I did say, as I left, in July, that, if his Mum needed him, he should stay. But I didn’t mean it, obviously. And he’s got a return ticket, I checked.

All things considered, Mumbai has not got a great deal going for it, currently. I have the resilience of a tooth-pick, slightly used and infinitely snappable. Mr Roland, solicitous, wary, asks what he can do. Take me home, I say, fingering my passport.

Then, not on a white charger, but in a white Airbus, come Mr and Mrs Andrew, to save the day, and our Indian adventure, and quite frankly, our marriage. In the forty-minute trip from the airport, I say more words, than in the whole of the preceding four days. Common courtesy obliges me to pull my face straight, for once. The Hostess with the Leastest. It’s almost painful, smiling.

Welcome to Mumbai, I say. This is our poxy flat. Here is your room, with the unmade bed and the excessive spore-count. Would you like a cup of tea after your flight? Oh, no milk, forget the tea. Would you like a glass of tepid water, instead? Very refreshing. There’s nothing for lunch, because I haven’t been here for six weeks, but I know where the shop is. Unless you fancy parmesan cheese and mango jam? Mr Roland’s hysteria-antennae are twitching, as well they might be, and he slopes off to work, in a dutiful but cowardly manner.

Mr and Mrs Andrew and I – duly restored by above-mentioned tepid water – tiptoe across the building-site which is leafy residential Powai, to sample the moderate delights of the Haiko retail experience. To whit, we buy a kilo of tomatoes, a bunch of coriander, a fistful of cucumbers, and a bag of milk. We pick our way, over the open manholes and pitted roads, back to Verona (the scenic route), where we lunch in splendour on tuna salad. “What lovely wall-hangings you have,” says Mrs Andrew, guava-juice in one hand, ladleful of oil in the other, for pouring on troubled waters...

By the time Mr Roland reappears, several hours later, the status has found its way back to the quo.

Story Time

2008-07-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Monu and I are reading “The Magician’s Nephew.” We were doing grammar, but he can spot the difference between the simple present and the continuous present, with one brown eye closed (more than can be said for the majority of native English speakers, I fear) – so I thought he was ready for literature. If you’re wanting a parallel text in Hindi, it’s either Narnia or Harry Potter, down at Crossword. I choose Digory and Polly, with the promise of wardrobes to come. I wonder what Monu will make of it, but he wipes out my misgivings immediately, “Very nice, nice story.” Bring on Mr Tumnus.
We run across the phrase, “as quiet as a mouse,” and I stop. (Did CS coin this phrase, or does Oxford claim professorial immunity, to the blood-on-parchment law about avoiding clichés? Just wondering...) “Do you know what a mouse is?” I ask. Monu doesn’t so much as lift his eyes from the text. “Small rat.” A few pages further, we come upon “guinea-pig.” Not a simile, this time, a real one, as used by wicked Uncle Andrew in his magic experiments. I explain about pets, and cages, and flick up a gallery of guinea-pigs, on Google Images. Monu takes one look. “Is rat.” No, I explain, flicking again, “THIS is a rat.” But he won’t be said, our Indian boy. “All rat.”
Back at Matheran, horse-leader, Krishna, kindly points out local fauna, as we clip-clop by. “See, Madame,” he says, “Indian squirrel.” It takes me a moment, to unpick his words and understand them, because he says “squirrel” without any vowels. You try it. In any case, when I locate the sqrrl, spiralling up a tree, it turns out to be a chipmunk. Or possibly a chpmnk, I don’t know, I can’t see properly without my glasses. I know, they’re related. But related isn’t the same as, is it? Do they call lions and leopards and fluffy tabbies all cats, then? You don’t get whole raw wildebeest, in the Kit-e-Kat aisle, at Sainsbury’s, do you? As Bhavika-didi says daily, “Opposite of different is?.... Same. Opposite of same is?.... Different.” Couldn’t have put it better, myself.
Meanwhile, my Hindi vocabulary’s growing somewhat slower than moss. My acquisitions are slightly random, but still precious. I can say ladder – siddi – because we pass a B&Q-type small-small shop, every day, and love – pyaar – because there’s a new film out, "Thoda Pyaar, Thoda Magic" – Some Love, Some Magic, and washrooms – sulabh. Other than these wayfaring gleanings, I’m still stuck at the fruit and vegetable stall. It comes in handy all the time, though. The assistant in Life Style’s helping me compile a name plaque, on a wooden rack. He offers me a small picture tile, to fill in the end gap. “You want this, madame? Is Indian religious symbol.” It looks like a pot-plant, to me, but I humour him. “This, leaf, this, coconut,” he explains. So it is. “Like at weddings?” I say. “Coconut - nariyal!” I’m showing off, now. “Madame, you speak Hindi!” He puts his hand on my arm, delighted. I’ve got myself up a gum tree, here, no mistake. I’ve already used up half my Hindi facility, and he’s wanting to chat. I confess to ignorance, and drift off, blushing, to pay, while he glues my plaque together. He gives me an extra layer of bubble-wrap, for at least trying. Sukriya, I say, unable to quit while I’m winning. Thanks.
At the jewellery counter, next door, in Spencer’s, I learn another new word, firozi. It means sky-blue, and I can’t think how it’s evaded me all this time, given my preferred slice of the rainbow. “This black, this red, this firozi,” says the bangle-wallah. I slip the blue one on. “Look! This bracelet very nice!” he says, pointing. “Look! This salesman very good!” I reply, pointing back. I buy all three, anyway, just to prove myself right. One girl wraps them, while four more assistants parade the rest of the stock before my eyes, tempting me with what they call the “buy-one-get-one” offer. Head of Sales writes down “firozi” for me. “Kali, lali,” I say, pointing to the black and red bracelets. I only know this because that’s what Monu’s Dad calls his two calves – I’ll let you work out why. (As a person who called her black cat “Blackie” I have no criticism to offer, at this point...)The salesman looks at me, and writes “kaala” and “lal,” but he’s just being pedantic, in my opinion.
Monu’s boss goes to see “Thoda Pyaar, Thoda Magic” and says it’s rubbish – no romance, no action, “Three hours, all bored bored.” I see a poster for it, in English, which translates “pyaar” as “life” not “love,” so I question the oracle. “Life, love, same,” he shrugs. Back to same and different, then. Shikha, Monu’s unseen bride-to-be, is a lucky girl, if he thinks life and love are the same thing. The prospect of marriage no longer daunts him, now he’s breathed in and out a few more times. “How’s the happiness quotient?” I ask. “One hundred and one percent!” he smiles.
At the where’s-my-hankie? sad end of for better, for worse,“U Me aur Hum” - out on dvd at last. It’s months since I bought the soundtrack – they launch film music before films are released in cinemas, here - so I warble along happily to all the songs. What’s more, with benefit of subtitles, I can now find out for the first time, what I’ve been crooning, all these weeks. Poor Piya’s diagnosed with Altzeimer’s not long after the first anniversary of her marriage to Ajay. When she nearly kills the baby, by forgetting she’s put him in the bath, Ajay has to have her committed to a care home. Several song and dance routines later, he’s smote by conscience, and brings her home again, where she belongs. It doesn’t say, but I presume he baths the baby, from now on. Fast-forward twenty-five years, and they’re celebrating their silver wedding, on a cruise, with resuscitated son bringing in the cake, at the end. “All people, all-time weep,” says Monu. There are wet eyes, in our house too - pass the Kleenex - and Mr Roland’s so traumatised, he falls asleep. In all fairness, he’s had a hard day.

One for Jamie and Nigella

2008-07-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, you’d have thought it was the monsoon. Schools were closed, but not the office, to the chagrin of administrative Mumbai, including Mr Roland. Hours of serious rain, until the chocolatey floodwater was swishing right up to the tops of your wellies. Even when it wasn’t raining, it felt like it was still raining, the humidity was so high, crinkling the papers on our coffee table with damp, even through closed windows. The dusting of grime’s now iced firmly to the glass panes, but it gives me the bends, just thinking about cleaning them, so we’re getting used to the new defused view, up here on the thirty-third floor.
Today, not a drip.
The fruit and vegetable stall, on the street corner, below our apartment, has moved back to its original pitch, now the road-works are finished (Indian-finished, I mean with a souvenir heap of leftover grit and rubble, as a testament to industry, for the next eight months, or until they dig the road up again, whichever’s sooner). Such hither-and-yinning is of no avail: whichever side of the crossroads the Veg Man pitches, he’ll have soggy root ginger and wet lemons, as soon as the cloud bursts, because it’s in a dip. The retail instinct’s indomitable, here, though. Unaccountably, the lighting shop, closed since the beginning of June (no lights on, but somebody’s home), has opened for business again, stringing up a selection of new pink chandeliers, between two leaning trees, rosily winking to tempt passers-by. The chandelier family had retreated under a yellow tarpaulin, as big as a double garage, but with fewer amenities. They’ve now have popped out again, on the offchance of a little trading, between showers. I don’t see anyone stopping to buy, though. Monu always slows down, as we pass by, so I can rubber-neck properly.
At school today, we make fruit salad. First, Varun-bhaiya takes a select group to market, to market, to buy a fat mango. I give Varun the benefit of long experience: I tell him to count his charges, before he goes, and to bring the same number back. Preferably the same ones. The smalls, meanwhile, are in a ferment of excitement. They must go shopping with their Mums every day, to the same street-stalls, but this is by way of being An Expedition. (I tell Monu, the children have to do their own shopping, to see how many bananas they can get for ten rupees. If I had ten rupees, I say.... and he laughs. We both know that I would come back with three wrinkled grapes and half a banana, without supplementing the budget....)
We do “Community” in a circle, and I get to read the questions. “What’s your favourite thing about school?” I ask Aanchal. She holds her hands out, with a coy smile. “My favourite thing about school, is teacher,” she croons, her head on one side. (I’m very susceptible to a bit of verbal. On the street, a boy’s trying to wheedle a coin out of flinty-hearted Mr Roland. “Maharajah, one rupee!” he begs. I’m just curling a derisory lip, because Mr Roland patently fancies himself in the role, wouldn’t he just, when the beggar-boy turns to me. “Maharani, just one rupee!” I’ve never been called a maharani before, I’m just handing over bank details and arranging for a standing order, when Maharajah spoils it all, and drags me away...) Poor Aanchal, it so nearly works, her winning line in flannel. It’s too late, though, I’ve already asked Bhavika-didi if I can have Swapnil to take home with me, at the weekend, and she definitely said, “Yes.” I have witnesses. I just need to re-arrange my packing a little bit. I can bring the forty-seven sacks of Hibiscus Tea, next time. Or maybe I could also jettison the consignment of elephants-in-elephants, for the time being, and bring Aanchal, too?
The happy shoppers come back, twittering like a bunch of parakeets. I count nine, and look anxiously at Varun, but he gives me the thumbs-up: nine was the allocation. He only just brings back enough children, then. While the fruit salad is being chopped up, onto a tray, in the corner, on the floor, we limber up with a bit of work on opposites. This is one of my favourites, because I like watching Bhavika-didi do fat and thin, in her Lulu-husky voice, mirrored by the rapt audience at her feet – although Khaja and the gang couldn’t look authentically fat, even if they jumped into a barrel of melted chocolate and rolled around in Coco-Pops for a bit.
Then it’s time for our picnic – the children have never sat so still and straight. The fruit’s doled out onto little squares of newspaper, cupped into waiting hands. As well as the statutory mangoes, it turns out to contain not only cucumber but also tomatoes, in an interesting new take. And the sliced bananas are tossed in, skin and all. I’m looking dubiously at the portion in my hands, when I notice Varun refuse his, and the mango-slice screeches to a halt, half-way to my open mouth. Does he think the children need it more than he? Or does he quail at eating banana skin salad, with yesterday’s news printed on it? Or is it – surely not? – a hygiene issue? Too late, now, for misgivings. In for a paise, in for a rupee, I always think, though I do delegate my banana to Raj, cross-legged by my side. Tomato and mango’s quite an interesting combo, after all, once you open your mind and your tastebuds to a new experience. Expect it, next time you come to dinner at my house.

Stationary Stationery

2008-06-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

Rani-didi helps out at Akanksha, because her daughter’s a pupil. Her English isn’t as confident as Bhavika’s, and she often lapses into Hindi, taking the unavailable-to-me short-cut to understanding. She sounds cross, but don’t be fooled. You only have to see her, lavishly pencilling in whole constellations of Well Done stars, on the kids’ books, to know that she’s a soft touch.
When they’ve finished an exercise, the children come clamouring for it to be marked. Mehur flops his book onto my lap, only to have Swapnil flop his on top. One-potato, two-potato.... The trend picks up steam, (Rani's not the only soft touch...),but before I suffocate under a pile of maths books, I beg for mercy, disinterring Mehur’s and Swapnil’s books from the bottom of the heap, as prior claimants. When I investigate, they’ve both already been marked by Varun-bhaiya, a student-volunteer. This seems to be of little interest to the boys, who thrust their pencils into my hand, wanting me to sign their work, “Didi, name!” and add any further embellishments I think they may have earned, “One star, Didi? Three star?” I feel Rani-didi’s somewhat cornered the stellar market, so instead, I draw a little heart on one, and a cup of tea on the other. This is where it all begins to unravel, like the mats we’re sitting on. We lose the drift of our Odd or Even? number-work, in the Harrods’ sale quest for artistic approval. (I say, artistic, we’re not talking M F Husain, here, we’re talking clip-art, but this lot are definitely know-what-they-like merchants, so I’m home-free.) “One more heart,” says Khaja. “This small heart,” he points, “Make big heart, here.” Since I lost my heart to Khaja weeks ago, I see no problem with this. Sultana, on the other hand, is resistant to market change, and remains faithful to the star system. I have to rub out a primitive house on her book, and draw a sprinkling of stars. Naina gives me her book, and three centimetres of pencil. She’s not happy with the “Very Neat Work!” already inscribed, she wants, “Excellent!” “No!” says Khaja, “no excellent this!” It’s a cut-throat world, approbation. I’m also unsure that Bhavika-didi’s going to be thrilled, to see the kids’ careful columns of figures doodled into extinction, as the teacups blossom in the margins...
Next, we tackle Grammar. We learn to start sentences with a capital letter, to leave a space between words, and to put a full-stop at the end. Sentences in Hindi end with a line, like the end of a bar, in music script: the full stop’s a whole new concept. Sonal’s much inclined to put her football full-stop on the line above, rather than the line where her writing is, but other than this, we’ve largely got the idea. We’re all issued a wooden lolly-stick, to mark the divide between words, our “Spaceman Stick.” I decorate mine with little flowers, as well as my name, then so do all the little girls around me – it’s not tricky to work out, why I like coming here. Khaja, on the other hand, colours his a jolly black. You can’t win them all.
Each child’s “folder” is a green cloth bag, with Velcro tabs, in which all books and stationery are kept. A quick eyeball along the row, reveals that some children have magpie tendencies (check Sultana’s bag for an Aladdin’s Cave, if you can prise it out of her hands...). Number One hot-hot-hot property is the rubber, much prized and fought-over. I see Nikita using a rubber the size of a pea, but then she has tiny fingers, I suppose. Next favourite, in the worldly goods line, is the pencil-sharpener, or the cutter, as the kids call it. This is why Naina’s pencil is so short, they love sharpening. They have a few crayons each, but the interesting colours are whittled down to shards.
I can solve this, I think, in my Lady Bountiful way. I go to Something Special, on Hill Road - my favourite shop in Mumbai, but the grimiest outlet in the whole of retail, every last box of paperclips filmed in dust. (If I have mentioned it before, you’re allowed to go to sleep for two lines, but... are there more than four pairs of scissors in your house? Can you lay a ready hand on at least three kinds of sticky-tape? Do you own any glitter-glue AT ALL? If the answer to any or all of these is “Yes,” you need to get yourself down to Something Special. No, really.) I buy packs of crayons, rubbers, and pencil-sharpeners, twenty-five of each. It costs me £4. And some smiley face stickers. Well, who could resist?
“Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” – my signature piece – is by way of being an Old Favourite, by now. It’s chaos, but everyone’s having fun, until Anand gets an elbow in the eye, and we have to curtail proceedings. I wonder about the wisdom of putting our left leg in, and then out, and then in, and then out, and shaking it all about, next time, but I haven’t seen a First Aid Kit in Didi’s cupboard. Still, bring on the Hokey-Cokey, I say.
When I hand over the booty-bag to Bhavika-didi, she says thanks, but then stashes it on a high shelf, out of reach. I’m allowed to give out just three rubbers, to share. At the end of the morning, only one comes back. I’m about to launch a thorough-going investigation, upending everyone’s folder, starting with Sultana’s, Chief Squirrel, when it occurs to me, that these small people probably don’t have much, in the way of possessions, at home. If they want an orange rubber, they’re welcome.
We give Bhavika a lift home, and in the car, she says, that if they have rubbers and sharpeners, they will spend all their time, rubbing out perfect work and sharpening already sharp pencils, just for the pleasure of using the facilities. I’m awash with sympathy, remembering Miss Miller’s desktop sharpener, with the crank-handle, at Beaumont Juniors. We used to stab our pencils, under the desk, to snap the point, so we could queue up to use it.
Tomorrow, says Bhavika, she will explain, that any pupil writing a whole page, with no rubbing out, will get a smiley-face sticker, to cheer up the so-far empty Star Chart on the wall. If the scheme works, I think, the rubber stash in Didi’s cupboard will still be healthy, when Khaja’s grandchildren are on the mat in Room 112, thanking God for the birds that sing.

The Dal Queen

2008-06-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

Dal wasn’t a big feature on the menu, when I was growing up. We had mushy peas, though, and that’s more or less the same, isn’t it, just without the eastern promise? What’s a few cumin seeds, between friends? Old habits die hard, and my first few attempts at proper dal turn into either pease pudding or lentil soup. Today, I watch an expert at her craft: the Dal Queen, whose masala tin I am unworthy to take a spoon to.
Since I’m sous-chef to her Delia, I prepare for her arrival by doing skill-free labour, such as chopping onions and tomatoes. I leave them trailing round the hob, in a flotilla of satellite dishes, just like on Delia. I’m very pleased with myself, until she says kindly, “We would usually chop the onion finer than this for the dal.... but it’s ok.” So now I can’t even chop onions. Dammit.
First into the hot oil, go the mustard seeds. When they start to go snap, crackle and pop, add the cumin seeds, and as much ground chilli as you’re up for. Let this sizzle around for a bit, but don’t abandon it. That way charcoal lies. We add the onion (magnanimously overlooking coarseness of inexpert chopping) and powdered coriander, turmeric, and asafoetida powder. (Helps digestion, that’s all I know. I can spell it, though, that surely counts for something? I look it up, for some retroactive wisdom, now I own a little pot of it. It’s from the parsley family, and it stinks so much, that, across the world, its common names mean Devil’s Dung - “Merde du Diable.” Given that, in its freshest state, it smells like garlic going off, whoever thought it’d be ok to pop it in the balti, in the first place? Very handy for Jains, though, who aren’t allowed so much as an onion to pique a tired palate...)
Back to the pan in hand. Add garlic, and root ginger, peeled, chopped, sliced, crushed, however you prefer to subjugate it. Then it all fizzes away to itself, until the onion’s transparent. I quite like crispy little brown edges, to the onion, though this is probably a taste born of necessity – onions, in my kitchen, always sneak past the required, softened stage, into something crunchy, when my back’s turned, usually when I'm rootling in the fridge for half a lemon to go in my gin and tonic. Cook’s perks.
When everything’s nicely got to know each other, add chopped tomatoes. Not as many as today’s hopeless sous-chef has chopped. Just some. Indian tomatoes, I have learnt, keep their shape when cooked, unlike home ones, which collapse if you show them a frying-pan. Put the lid on your onion-mix, and wait until you can see the oil reappearing, round the edges of the tomatoes. Now you can add your lentils, which you've already washed until the water runs clear. Add water, bring to the boil, and simmer, for fifteen minutes. Less water for a thick dal, more for a runny one – it’s not rocket science, lads.
While that’s all going hubble-bubble, you’ve got time to make chapatti. Tip a mound of wheat-flour into a two-tone metal bowl, dribble in a little oil, to soften the dough, and enough water. Less is easier than more, to correct, it’s always good to remember. Corral all the loose flour, squish everything into a ball, and give it five minutes’ gentle knuckling. Pull it into egg-sized balls (small eggs), flatten them slightly, and dip in more flour. If you have a marble chapatti-rolling-out block, and a wooden chapatti-rolling-out pin, now’s a great time to get them out. If not, improvise. Chopping-board, milk-bottle, whatever. Each egg-ball of dough should roll out thinly to a circle about eight inches across, but don’t get the tape-measure out, it's not that kind of a chapatti.
Now. Have you got a tawa? We have. Admittedly, it still has the sticky label on it, because we only bought it yesterday, in HyperCity. There’s no HyperCity, near your house, you can live dangerously, and use a frying-pan. No oil. When the pan’s hot, flap the first chapatti in, and watch. When the edges turn white, turn it over. You have to pat it, with a cloth, lovingly, and turn it again, and again. If it’s behaving itself, it will start to puff up. When it gets little brown freckles, it’s cooked. Take it out, with your asbestos fingers, and put it on that handy plate you’ve already got out. The chapattis stay soft, if you wrap them in a cloth. (You need a lot of cloths, for this recipe. Clean ones.) Then start again. The first one’s often tricky, while the pan gets used to the idea – just like pancakes, I say, supportively. This afternoon, though, the first one’s perfect, like the next eight, so we have nothing to offer hovering boys or dustbin dogs. Just as well, since both are in short supply.
The dal’s done. All it needs, is as much of the pile of sous-chef-chopped coriander leaves, as you can fit in your bunched fingers. This is comfort eating, big time. The Dal Queen says that, in India, they cook rice and lentils, onions and spices together, to make khichdi, a dish traditionally fed to invalids. We turn it into kedgeree - why do we have to add flaked fish and boiled eggs? I blame the Raj.
Nothing's weighed or measured, here, you will notice. Learning to cook Indian food, hanging on the loose end of your Mum's sari, everything's down to fingertips and intuition. The scales can stay in the cupboard.
So, anyway, pasta’s edging off the last-meal-before-you-die radar. Dal’s my new soul food. Next, I'm wanting to tackle aloo gobhi, but there's the small matter of onion-chopping, to sort out, first.

Matheran

2008-06-28T07:17:00.001-07:00

We turn our backs on the rags and rubble of Mumbai, heading across the estuary, in search of some green and pleasant land. Monu suggests Matheran, a hill-station about sixty miles east. We’ve never heard of it, but we give it a go. It turns out, when we get there, that he’s never been, either, so it’s a bit of a pig in a poke. (Not very pc, I know, given our current co-ordinates, but you think of a veg alternative – ‘an aubergine in a hessian sack’ doesn’t quite do it, does it?) Happily for Lucknow’s favourite son, Matheran exceeds all our green hopes, even the monsoon hides in the wings, until we’re back in the car, on our way home.
As soon as we leave the expressway, nature takes over. Against all expectations, it’s like Scotland, hill after craggy hill, head in the clouds and feet in the mist. We wind the windows down, and the hot air rushes in. So, not quite like Scotland, after all.

We see a washerwoman, by the well, slapping her linen on the rocks, wringing it out, then piling it into her basket to carry home, on her head. I think we should have basket-balancing on the National Curriculum, it does wonders for deportment and posture.
Women bend, ankle-deep in the flooded rice-fields, weeding. Only a quarter of each field is green with new shoots, the remainder to be seeded as the season unfolds. I feel sorry for the bullocks, straining to pull their ploughs through the mud, but Mr Roland, the country-wise, reckons they’re up for it. I don’t recall seeing many bullock-carts in Buckinghamshire, so I’m unsure how he knows, but I suppose he’s right.
The local school’s painted egg-yolk yellow - farm egg, not supermarket egg, obviously, I don’t think they do colour-chart chemical interference, here. The small girls wear navy-blue pinafores over white blouses, with red ribbons in their looped plaits, just to be cute. Their school bags are bigger than they are. Their older sisters wear long white kurtas over navy salwars, with navy dupattas. Simple, but stunning. For the first time, I see that the words “elegant” and “school-uniform” can be in the same sentence, without starting a fight. The boys are in white shirts and beige shorts, or beige longs, depending on the size of boy.
The further up the mountain we go, the more crumbly the road, which makes interesting driving on hairpin bends. Monu’s slightly inclined to survey the scenery, so I offer to drive. He laughs. I don’t doubt him for an instant, which is more than I can say of Mr Roland, swerving up and down the Gorges du Tarn...
Near the top of the hill, we run into a dead-end. Cars aren’t allowed any further, in the interests of pure air and tourism. As soon as we slow down, we’re surrounded, and Monu replaces his chauffeur’s cap with his guide-and-protector hat. If we want to reach Matheran, we have three choices. We can walk, we can take the mini-train, or we can go on horseback. Guess?
We choose c)... I know....
We invite Monu to come with us. “This very long price...” he says, doubtfully reporting negotiations so far, but then he capitulates. “OK, I come.” So the horsemen bring our noble steeds. Monu gets a pony (“Very nice horse, very small, very fast. I like my horse.”) Roland gets Meghraj, King of the Clouds, speckled brown and white. And mine is beautiful, a glossy chestnut called Raja, just a foot taller than everyone else’s. Now is this because a) I look instantly like a competent horsewoman, exuding equestrian savoir-faire; b) Raj has the nicest nature, and I visibly need all the help I can get; or (depressingly) c) I have such an enormous backside, a smaller mount won’t do? Don’t tell me what you think...
Despite having read every word from J Cooper’s pen, I still think horse-riding’s not really a sport. I mean, the horse does all the work, doesn’t it? You just have to sit there, enjoying the view... Head Horseman Krishna accompanies Raja and me (thus supporting possibility b) above – also Raja’s his top horse, so it’s in his interest to hold onto the bridle every inch of the way...). “Straight back, straight back,” he reproves, “no soft back.” I sit up, and immediately forget how to hold the reins. “This brake, this left, this right. This finger, this finger, like this. Hold tight.” My spine sags. If you think it’s easy, go and give yourself a scrub-down with a curry-comb right now. It’s harder than it looks. So this is me, eating humble pony-cubes.
I ask Krishna, if Raja’s a boy or a girl horse, because I’m too busy, getting my handbag trapped on the pommel, as I hurl myself into the saddle from a standing start, to check out Raja’s credentials. I think he says, “she,” so I ask, interestedly, if she’s had a foal...Puzzlement. A baby horse? Blank. A horse baby, then? Light dawns. “This boy horse, all boys,” he says. No baby, then. It seems he didn’t say, “she,” he said, “this sneeze,” when Raja was spluttering. It’s going to be a long trek.
About a million miles up the stony path, we sidle to a halt, and I winch myself off Raja, glad to be on terra firma, even with wobbly legs.

In the rapid exchange Monu has with the drivers, I hear the magic words “restaurant” and “market” – shopping and lunch, what could be nicer? Apparently, though, we’re here for the view. Well, once we scramble down a steep track, through a copse, we are. En route, Monu stops, and points to a craggy mound of red earth. Mr Roland and I crane forward. “This snake house.” We take a step back, to admire it more fully. “He sleeping,” says Monu, confidently. He’s turning into a bit of a Patrol Leader, our Monu. We tiptoe away. No-one likes being woken up from a nice nap, do they?

The thing about getting off the horse, is that you have to get back on again. When you go by plane, it’s not the actual flying that’s dangerous, it’s the takeoff and landing. Same with horses. I can cope with the clip-clop, clip-clop in between, just about. Fortunately, there’s a handy wall, so it’s more of a walk-on, this time.
“You like, go fast?” asks Krishna, “you stand, you sit, stand, sit, one-two, one-two.” Before I can answer, he says something in horse, with his tongue and his teeth, and we take off. I think I may be doing sit-stand, instead of stand-sit, because I get a thorough saddle-spanking, and it occurs to me Raja and I aren’t ready for the Way the Farmer Rides, just yet.
The mud’s a darker shade of Heinz Tomato Soup, witness Mr Roland’s fawn trouser-bottoms. I ask if the horses have to be washed every day, like our car, but Krishna says, only once a fortnight, more often’s not good for them. “But every night, massage.” I think he means the horses.
We stop for another view, down another track, but ignore the verdant panorama in favour of a monkey-dog fight. Four snarling dogs, one very persistent monkey. Youths lounging nearby encourage him, in English, for our benefit, shooing away the dogs. “You no hear what I speak?" They punctuate their request with stones. "Go away, no-good bastard dogs!” The dogs yelp

back up the path to the street. After a little while, the monkey follows. He’s clearly not had enough.
There’s another conference about lunch, but it’s destined not to be, so we sling our legs over our horses’ backs, again, for the homeward trek. We meet men, pulling and pushing cartloads of stones and grit, up to the village. “Indian men, very small, very strong,” says Krishna, steering out of their way. We stop, where the railway track crosses the path, waving to the train as it squeaks to a halt. Like the local Mumbai train, this one has doors which are never closed, and the passengers loll out, on all sides.
“This horse jump,” Krishna informs me. He clicks twice, and Raja does a spirited wiggle and a kick, at the end of which, I’m lying across his neck, sliding sideways, stirrups flying. Monu, ever supportive, is behind me, laughing. It’s alright for him, on My Little Pony, back there...

We ride to within three feet of the car, which is as well, because I can’t walk, once Raja and I go our separate ways. “You want see this horse jump?” Krishna asks, as we’re leaving. We do. He manoeuvres about a bit, then does a standing leap, Heigh Ho Silver, without banging his nose on Raja’s neck. We clap and wave.
I roll the window up, as we gather a little speed, but the damage is done. Out of conditioner this morning, open-window drive, horseback exposure to elements, natural tendency to madness – factor in the monsoon, and you have a coiffure like a mousy pan-scourer. I will not get a comb through this until next Tuesday.
In the car, I ask Monu why we don’t have lunch, and he says, “No nice. Village women very dirty.” He pulls in, at a road-side stall. We drive home, munching Magic Masala Balaji Wafers, aka crinkle-cut crisps, washed down with mango juice. Or coke, if you’re Monu.
A perfect day.

Ticket to Ride

2008-06-27T09:16:00.000-07:00

“Buy ticket from ticket office,” Monu says, “no from person outside station.” He means it – inside the station, on the wall, a notice declares, “Ticket from a tout is a ticket to jail.” So we queue up, duly chastened.
Victoria Station – V.T. to its friends – is about two hours’ drive from our flat. We climb out of the car, and do a quick double-take – V.T.’s the twin of London St Pancras, contriving to be impressive and pretty at the same time. Inside, you couldn't be anywhere but India. We're confronted by dozens of ticket windows, with explicit, but, to us, incomprehensible directions, about which stations are served from each. A kind man, in a pale blue shirt and cream trousers (unofficial official uniform here, as for Michael Palin), sees our white-faced bewilderment, and tells us we need the first floor, desk 53 for foreigners. Monu’s words ringing in my ears, I’m inclined to doubt him, but he wants neither payment nor thanks, so we do what he suggests. Halfway up the sweeping marble stairs, where the first floor’s cut away to accommodate the staircase, there’s a plinth lagged in cushioned plastic, for the protection of unwary heads, who presumably choose to bound up four stairs at a time. I look around me, and the only head, I can see, in need of protecting, is Jacob’s.
Buying a ticket’s the most cumbersome, time-consuming exercise I’ve ever seen. You have to fill in a form for every journey you want to make, with train time, name, number, and date, as well as everything about the passenger you’d need, to register with Dateline. Now, and only now, we discover that they only accept pounds or rupees. Everyone puts his credit card back in his wallet. Happily, there’s a magic wall on the ground floor, in its own little kiosk, so Jacob and I go to collect a million rupees, then slope back upstairs, trying to look inconspicuous. By now, three people have been served, but one has pushed in, so it’s still not our go. The ticket lady, with a lab coat on over her sari, slides a wooden sign in front of her window - “Please wait” – and disappears. “She go lunch,” says the pusher-in, fatalistically. Painted on her window - underneath the depressing news about credit cards - “11.50 – 12.10 lunch.” The ticket clerks obviously dine alone, at Indian railways, a twenty-minute lunch-break doesn’t include time to chat. We chat, though, to some nice Americans in the queue, behind us, swapping travel tales and life stories and Soft Mints. Some would-be travellers try to start an ancillary queue, to my left, so I put a proprietary arm out, casually, to the marble counter, blocking the pass. It also fences in the pusher-in, but it serves him right for pushing in, in the first place. If anyone else tries to queue-jump, I will cheerfully punch them. Happily for international peace, no-one does, and, when Mrs Patil finally comes back from her chapatti-wrap, new-minted tickets are handed over. She needs to see the ATM receipt, though, in case I might have been counterfeiting rupees in our spare room, with hand-rolled paper and a box of crayons, of an evening. You’d be brilliant at drawing Gandhi, if you did, his face is on every banknote.
The foreign tickets allocation only covers journeys within two days, so we have to join the scrum on the ground floor, to buy tickets for the rest of the boys’ Indian adventure. It’s like at Sainsbury’s deli counter, you have to get a token first, and wait for your number to be allocated. Sadly the ticket-for-a-ticket queue snakes round the whole of the ground floor. We join it, disgruntled but resigned – isn’t queuing our specialist subject, in the UK? Before we’ve properly exhaled our first sigh, another charming man in a blue and cream ensemble, tells us we don’t have to queue, if we have credit cards, so we skip off to windows 11 & 12, and are served almost instantly. The bloke behind us openly reads our forms over our shoulders, inching forward bit by bit, until he’s one of us, then at the counter between us, and I even have to ask him to move, so I can sign the receipt pushed under the screen. They don’t do personal space, in Mumbai. Well, logically, there’s not room for it.
So, we succeed, but Monu doesn’t. He needs a ticket home. An Indian person, at an Indian railway station, wanting an Indian ticket, from Mumbai – in India - to Lucknow – also in India – and he needs ID. Not a single word of ill-will against British Rail will ever pass my lips again.
The boys’ train’s early evening, so we spend the day touring Elephanta Island, to get our money’s worth out of the repeat two-hour trek to south Mumbai. Back in the car, all sporting bizarre monsoon-tan, we have lots of time, until we drift to a standstill. We were always going to hit traffic, because that’s Mumbai, but this is carpark-traffic, and our hour and a half leeway’s beginning to melt. “Sit. Sit. Sit,” says Monu, so we know it’s bad. “Today, V.V.I.P. visit Mumbai, all all road stop.” In a bold move, we leave the car, and cross the road, to Marineline Station, where we catch an urban train into Central Station. Only three stops. Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?
Put aside all the articles you read about Mumbai railways having the highest passenger fatalities, not to mention over-crowding and pick-pocketing. None of the signs, blossoming on every post, is in English. It’s definitely our lack, for not understanding Hindi, but knowing that, doesn’t make it any easier to find a ticket, or a platform, or a train. We hop up stairs, across walkways, down stairs, no ticket office, ask again, increasingly desperate. The boys manfully tote all their worldly goods, without a murmur. I’m finding three cartons of juice and a bag of caramels for the train, almost more than I can bear, though in fairness, I’m also weighed down by an invisible rucksackful of panic. Our tickets are seven rupees each. Platform 1.
A million Indians are on Platform 1. We excuse-me, sorry our way through the throng, turning heads with our white-and-Elephanta-Island-pink faces. I ask four different people if the next train’s to Mumbai Central. Apparently so. We move forward, as the next train comes in, and everyone round us laughs, wagging fingers, holding us back. Ladies only. A whole train, just for ladies. It’s a very short train, with daylight visible between fluttering saris. It looks like a very nice train, but – I check out all the y-chromosomes around me – it’s not for us.
Less than two minutes later, a train we can board. Well, with some polite elbowing then hefty shoving, we can. Sardines have room for potted plants and scatter cushions, in their tin, compared with this. My second foot’s barely landed, when the train starts to move, and I turn back, to count the boys, in a panic. One, two, three. Mr Roland, bonus. It’s all a bit real, clamouring for attention from every sense, but olfactory has it, by a nose...
An Indian friend tells us about four businessmen he sees, travelling on such a commuter-train into the city, who balance a briefcase on top of their four pot-bellies, to play a hand of cards. I don’t think it’d work, with a back-pack.
Think sausages. When you puncture a sausage skin, the unconfined sausage, inside, just pops out. So, the urban network, here. “Indian train, doors all-time open, very danger,” says Monu. People hang out, catching the view or the evening air, or pushed by the sausage behind, I’m not sure.
We pull in to Central Station. People behind us are already tunnelling through us, to get off. We burst out together, onto the platform. I count heads. Roughly quorate. Chelo.
Local’s divided from national by a slender footbridge, and it’s another world. We’re still the only westerners visible, but there’s slightly more organisation in the air. After all the adrenalin, there’s an hour in hand. On the platform, no train, but a passenger list, including Gower, Pomeroy and Hardy, our own trio of musketeers.
Whole families are camped, in the main waiting-area, picnicking or sleeping. The boys buy chips and coke from the unlikely MacDonald’s, but Jacob – eager to embrace the whole Indian experience, his insides still unruffled – prefers idli, and watermelon-juice.
Freedom’s just a boarding-step away, so the boys allow a photo-opportunity, before they escape.

Monu – like Radar – appears at our side. We would have made the train, if we’d stayed in the car. It takes us more than two hours, to drive home. As we pass a tv shop, Monu leans out of the car to catch the cricket results. India’s winning. By the time we get home, the boys are halfway to Jaipur.

Welcome to India

2008-06-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Well, they’re here.

Driving to the airport at four in the morning, even Monu’s looking pale. We’re all glad of the covering darkness; at least two of us close our eyes for a bit. On the other hand, the roads are a piece of chum chum, and we whisk along in under fifteen minutes, instead of the usual fifty. I suggest rescheduling office hours, to maximise the benefit of this early morning facility, but it falls on stony ground. I pass round the Soft Mints, and we chew our breakfast in silence.

At Arrivals, we feel less like the only people left on the planet, because they’re queuing six-deep, by the exit doors. This isn’t just to catch the first possible glimpse of a newly de-planed Grandma, or long-lost Cousin Rahul, it’s because the air, escaping from the airport lounge, has been conditioned, and is therefore cool, rather than the ambient warm felt.

I’m not sure, if Indian people understand about queuing, or is it just the ones in our immediate vicinity, who get it wrong? First off, if we sense someone, elbowing into our personal space, we step back, and usher them past. Then, it occurs to me, they’re not muscling through, to reclaim their abandoned child, who’s wriggled to the front, at the barrier, they’re just muscling through, full stop. So I wind in my crowd-etiquette antennae, ignore the signals, and stand my ground. Futile. The man on my right hand – literally – insinuates himself in the not-space between me and the woman in front, like cramming a too-fat newspaper through a letter-box. He ends up standing on the other side of Mr Roland, where he could have walked, round the back of us, with no worming at all. Maybe he likes a challenge. I think of Hugh Grant, going to the arrivals lounge at Heathrow, in Love Actually, to have his faith in humanity restored, and I can only assume he doesn’t go at four thirty in the morning, when everyone’s crabby and unlovely.

The security officers nurse their rifles, nonchalantly. The one sitting down, overwhelmed by the responsibility of superior rank, nods off for ten minutes. Mayhem’s too tired to break loose. He wakes up, and compensates for taking his eye off the ball, momentarily, by snapping orders at small sari’d ladies, with impossibly loaded trolleys.

It’s a long time since yesterday’s four-word conversation with itinerant son, from Gatwick. Between then and now, he has the possibility of missing not one, but two flights, including the hurdle of not letting his stop-over, in Qatar, turn into a sleep-over. It’s not without anxiety, that I scrutinise every emerging face. In all truth, I can tell pretty quickly if it’s Jacob or not, without even having to play the telltale genetics card. Baggage-trolleys emerge round the corner in front of their owners, and I know Jacob’s not likely to be bringing a microwave oven, or a home entertainment centre with him. If the first thing I see is a box of mangoes, or a washing-airer, all swathed in bubble-wrap, I don’t even look at the person pushing. Ditto, matching designer luggage – it’s the raggle-taggle gypsies I’m waiting for, so tatty ruck-sacks will be the order of the day. I even think, no trolley.

And there they are, blinking in the fluorescent light, hefting seasoned back-packs, trolleyless, after all. They look pale, but they’ve been in transit for twenty hours, the pre-dawn light leaches the roses from their cheeks, and everyone else is brown - how could they not look pale? I have no leis, nor bindi, with which to welcome them, so I give them a Soft Mint, instead.

We motor through untypically deserted streets, but they won’t know, until tomorrow, how much of a miracle this is. It’s still dark, so it’s like looking round a house, shrouded in dust-sheets. Once across the threshold, they have showers, eat a loaf-ful of toast, and fall into bed, asleep before they’re horizontal. After six hours, we winkle them back into consciousness with more tea.

The promised rain doesn’t arrive until we’re stranded in the middle of Powai, but, since we’re sitting on the canopied terrace of Mocha Coffee Shop, upstairs at the Galleria, we’re happy to spectate. We brave the scrum at D-Mart, in search of what Monu calls “rain-dress,” but Mr & Mrs Kumar of Powai, et al., are out and about, panic-buying moths-balls and brown jaggery cones, so the aisles are too thronged, to be able to turn round, let alone try cagoules on. Going for a browse round D-Mart seems to be the local pastime of choice, on a damp Sunday afternoon, much as people, in the UK, idle away the slack hours til tea, mooching around yellowing trays of impatiens, at the garden centre. We buy a bag of khari biscuits, to eat on the way home, and some grandpa vests for the boys, to test out the Indian theory, that it’s cooler, with the extra insulation.

The boys make bold plans to quarter the sub-continent – so much India, and so little time. The Rough Guide may well fit it all on one page, but they're not going to fit it all into one month. We walk to Utsav for dinner – ordering in the hot evening air, outside, eating in the saving cool, inside.

When we get home, Jacob has his third shower of the day. They say, no-one can come to India, and remain unchanged. QED.

Ars gratia artis

2008-06-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

So, where’s that monsoon gone, then? We haven’t had wet toes since last Saturday, seven days of drought. I’ve got two umbrellas which haven’t even been unfurled yet, except in the shop. The corporation water tankers are out, today. I see a little bloke up a ladder, with a big green curly hose, force-feeding a civic tree gallons of water. We had about a foot of rain last week, I can hardly believe the local flora’s spitting feathers, just yet. Maybe he gets paid per bole.

I think it rained, in the night, but our windows are indented, thus immune to splashing, and there’s only so much you can say for definite, at midnight, as far as damp tarmac’s concerned, a hundred yards below. In traffic-light retail, back at day-time street-level, umbrellas have ceded the field to colouring-books and car-polishing cloths, again, so we’re lulled into thinking the monsoon may be remarkably short, this year. Four months, down to eight days - global warming, I’m thinking.

Today, we spring-clean, in anticipation of house-guests. Scrubbing three toilets and ferreting the dust-bunnies out from underneath the sofas, I’m not unaware of a certain irony. The third scion of the House of Gower is the least tidy person the world’s known, since Man first stood on his back legs, and said, “This cave could do with a spruce up, Maureen, where’s the Ewbank?” Jacob’s more than happy, to slouch in front of his computer, curled up in a blissful mélange of lecture notes, toast crusts, beer-bottles and unwashed boxers. He lives, what you might call, in medias res – the detritus of living laps chummily about him, and, if you ask him to do something, he’s always just in the middle of doing something else. More sensitive to words than bacteria, he’s offended if you say “mess,” or “pig-heap,” or “e-coli,” in his presence. “I don’t know what you mean,” he protests, stung, “I tidied up for you...” The ironic thing about this piece of irony, though, is that it doesn’t make any difference: even as I tell myself, that Jacob and his mates won’t a) notice or b) care, I’m still hurtling round the flat, like a whirling dervish, with a mop. I make the beds, with the seven-piece embroidered coverlet set, matching the curtains. I have yet to meet a man who can see the point of cushions, but I tweak and fluff, nonetheless. Mr Roland, meanwhile, prepares for the invasion by laying in a crate of beer, and even I can see that this is the targeted kind of forward thinking, which knocks embroidered pillowslips into a cocked hat, as far as noticing and caring are concerned. We are what we are, I reflect, peevishly polishing the bathroom taps, and unwrapping peaches and fruits moisturizing soap with aloe vera.

Out there, on the streets of Mumbai, last week’s initial skirmishing, with torrential rain, has given the lorries a much-needed wash and brush-up. In India, the lorry’s an art-form unto itself – a vehicle in more than one sense, then. I feel, increasingly, that we’re repressed, lorrily, in the UK. We have acres of vanside devoted to “Eddie Stobart” or “Alfred McAlpine” – how interesting isn’t that? Here, the only limit’s your imagination, and why not? We see not only butterflies, and shells, and flowers – the lotus is very popular, for obvious reasons – but also whole scenes unravelling, on the flanks of passing trucks. There are pastoral tales, with calves suckling, or balmy beaches, or birds in flight. There are religious tableaux, with Ganesh and his missus, or Krishna, cavorting with his flute and his glee-chorus of cowherdesses. Often, the petrol tank’s painted with a tiger, its mouth snarling round the inlet. And propaganda, “India is great!” just above the "HORN - OK - PLEASE." I wonder, if you have to be handy with a paintbrush, to drive a lorry, here, or if there’s a fleet of peripatetic truck-artists you can employ, to embellish your rig, in a lay-by somewhere. I wave and smile at a lot of lorry-drivers, to while away the long hours of traffic-jam prison, and they smile and wave back, but I don’t yet know any of them, on first name terms. When I do, I’ll ask. Even the cement-mixers, down on the building-sites in Powai, are painted with flowers. We’re missing a whole aesthetic opportunity, here. Why not lorries?

Chain-fringeing’s also a favourite, here, along lorry bumpers, but it passes my understanding – does it have a function (lightning conducting, for example), or is it just heavy metal lace? Long tassels of tinsel dangle from the wing-mirrors, and swags of orange flowers festoon the cab. A hundred years ago, in January, it seemed tawdry, but now, it’s normal, so a lorry, without garlands, looks positively lustreless and bah-humbug.

Wasp-waisted 1950s showgirls, in swimsuits (or not), languish on the windscreens of lorries back home, next to a loving inscription - “Christine” or “Waynetta” – wife? girlfriend? 1950s showgirl, maybe? Here, there’s not a cab you couldn’t show your Mum – the decals depict praying hands, entwined with a blooming rose, or a jolly god, having a think and setting the world to rights, or just a spangly “Om.”

Monu’s picking us up at four o’clock in the morning, to meet Jacobsir’s plane. Guess when the monsoon’s scheduled to make a reappearance? Timing is all, I always think. Hope the boys have packed their sou’westers, wrapped round their Lonely Planet Guide to India. I've parked my broom, because we're ready, more or less. As well as Mr Roland’s stash of Kingfisher, we’ve got an industrial sack of Bombay Mix in the cupboard, and enough pappads to tile the whole apartment. Just need to pop to the Culture Shop, to see if they’ve got any guest-towels with Ganesh on.

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

2008-06-18T11:08:00.001-07:00

Bhavika-didi’s a better man than I am. We’re doing opposites, today, and she says, “Is Didi fat, or is Didi thin?” Catch me putting my own head on that particular chopping-block. She prompts the children with mime, blowing out her cheeks and stomping among the rows, like an elephant. The kids shout, “Fat!” Fat!” and squeal with delight. Bhavika-didi obviously has a healthier self-image than mine.
Self-esteem’s on the curriculum, here at Akanksha, though, and Didi’s getting tough. Just as, with our happy triggers, there came a point when mangoes weren’t allowed to make us happy, and we had to find something a little more cherché (like coming to Akanksha, or reading a book), so, now, the same upgrade, with compliments. Although Didi at first accepts, “Raja has a nice t-shirt,” or “Ashish has nice hair,” she now says we’re done with nice this and nice that, “I want something more about Ashish inside.” “Ashish is a good friend,” says Kajal, with a little prompting. And we’re off. Within ten minutes, we’re all good friends, but I like to think that that doesn’t stop our having nice hair, as well.
We also do what makes us unhappy (not-smiley face on board) – which turns up fascinating results. “I don’t like it when Didi shouts.” “I don’t like it if my friend cries.” “I don’t like it when my mother beats me.” The Child Protection Agency’d have a field day here. It’s a lot more direct and honest, somehow, a small clip round the ear. If a child’s fidgeting, Bhavika gets hold of his arm, swivels him back into position, taps him on the head, and restores order, all without breaking the flow of her odd and even numbers explanation. In the UK, a pupil can whip a knife out of his pocket, and the only sanction we have for protection, is to threaten to keep him in at playtime. Show me the youth, brandishing a broken bottle in your face, who will be cowed into submission at the prospect of doing lines after school... If Bhavika were unkind, the kids would simply stop coming. As it is, sending them away is her most powerful weapon: they’ll do anything, to keep their place on the frayed mats in Room 112. I think again, of the UK education system, where consistent truancy is punished by exclusion – how did we get that crazy?
Education’s not free, in India, but, as with all retail, there’s a whole spectrum on offer, depending on your purse. You can buy a sari for less than £2, down at D-Mart, or you can spend hundreds of pounds on a designer number, at Sakhi, in Santa Cruz. So with education. For those of more slender means, there’s education to be had at Rs50 a month (60p). Or, for something a little more up-market, you can pay Rs1,500 a month (nearly £20). Before you think, that’s less than you spend on cigarettes/wine/Indian takeway in a week, do a Mr Micawber balance-sheet, and consider that the average income, here in Mumbai, is between three and five thousand rupees a month (£50-£60).
For your child to be eligible for the Akanksha scheme, he or she has to attend state school, your monthly family income has to be Rs5,000, and you have to have a ration card. To get a ration card, you have to be resident in Mumbai for five years. (Our own Monu thus has a ration card, entitling him to buy basic commodities at a special price, “All cheap – flour, sugar, rice – all, all cheap.” Since making a cup of tea stretches the outside edges of his culinary capabilities, though, he’s not best placed for this to be much of a financial advantage.) The point of the salary and the ration card, by way of guarantee, is all about stability. Every day, another thousand people come to live in Mumbai, to discover, like the thousand from yesterday, that the streets are paved with rubble and excrement, not gold. Akanksha needs to make best use of its resources, by supporting children who will come week after week. It’s not a holiday club. In the state school, there’s no limit to class size, the average being around sixty pupils. There’s little in the way of interaction – child-centred learning hasn’t reached the sub-continent yet - so Akanksha, with classes of no more than twenty-five, hopes to furnish the missing personal touch. They can’t cover the whole curriculum, in two and a half hours a day - which is why attendance at state school is also necessary - but they undertake the TLC side of things.
In Mumbai, there are more children, needing educating, than there are centres of education, so the school premises work a double shift, starting early morning (as early as 6 a.m.!) and finishing in the evening. Some areas have a primary shift, then secondary, others, vice versa. My Mankhurd class loses Akash, because he’s changed state school – he was doing Akanksha in the morning, and ordinary school in the afternoon, but his new school runs in the morning, so he’s been reallocated an afternoon Akanksha session elsewhere. I’m very sad, he was extremely cute, but who am I to stand in the way of a boy’s education?

At the end of every session, there are parents waiting at the door, to complain to Bhavika about their wayward offspring, not wanting to go to state school in the afternoon. Bhavika keeps them behind, after the rest have thanked God for the world so sweet, etc., and been dismissed. She gives the recalcitrant scholars a right old drubbing, first in English, then in machine-gun Hindi, for good measure. Didi doesn’t believe in sitting on the fence.
Today, I'm in charge of “Head, shoulders, knees and toes,” which we do with more enthusiasm than melody, it has to be said. (I’m glad to note, that I can still touch my toes, without involving the knee-joint, although my padmaasana’s still lop-sided.) In a bold move, I try to get the children to miss out the word “head,” just doing the action instead, but it creates primordial chaos in about fourteen seconds. It does wonders for my playground cred, though – when Bhavika asks everyone to sit in a circle, Khaja and Sultana pat the floor next to them, invitingly, tugging at my dupatta, “Didididididididididi...” I don’t need asking twice.
When we do our thinking and stretching, at pack-up time, Bhavika says, “How does a mountain stand? That way we’ll always stand. Like a mountain.” We go back out into the world, with straight spines.

Reading Matters

2008-06-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Crossword - India’s answer to WH Smith – has a branch on every street corner, not to mention pocket franchises in department stores, such as Life Style, at In Orbit mall. Bigger outlets, like the one at Mulund, have a coffee-shop, toilets, and a play area for visiting children. They take their reading seriously, here in Mumbai.

Powai Crossword has a small frontage, but don’t be deceived. It’s a Tardis, and goes on and on forever, once you’re inside. There’s a doorman, to usher you in, then a baggage person, to relieve you of your umbrella and already-shopping, then, unencumbered, you’re free to browse. Browsing’s second only to cricket, by way of top national sport, here. Chairs are placed in strategic nooks and crannies, and small stools or beanbags pepper the Children’s section. Or alternatively, readers find a book they fancy, and just drop in their traces, for a more comfortable floor-based peruse, before purchase. Consequently, as you hoover along the shelves, you have to pick your way over the sprawled legs of absorbed almost-customers. I make it a policy, never to buy the front copy of any book I want, anyway, so this thorough raking-through, before paying, does not disconcert me, unduly. (It reminds me of when I bought a copy of Brideshead Revisited, for my Mum, one Christmas, then developed tunnel vision, trying to read it, without opening it more than an inch, and cracking the spine. It acquired a certain thumbed air before long, so I gave it to her for not-Christmas, in October, instead...)
In HyperCity, just after you and your bag have been frisked by the laughing-but-ruthless security guard, but before you enter the shop proper, there’s a DesiCafe, then a Crossword. (I have a fondness for the Desicafe, because it’s where I have my first Chola Batura – basically a pancake, served with sauces, ranging from hot to paint-stripping. The pancake’s inflated, so it arrives on your plate like a fluffed-up pillow, but it collapses as soon as you puncture it. You definitely have to try it, for entertainment value, if only of your fellow diners.)
Today, there’s the monsoon gauntlet to run, before getting inside HyperCity. Mr Roland’s all for turning back, because of undue exposure to the elements, but we see they’ve rigged up a ramshackle bamboo shelter, roofed in sheet plastic, for the convenience of patrons. Well, in order to have any patrons, at all, in fact. Unexpected waterfalls, spilling from backed-up rooftops, still make me laugh or squeal (depending on preposition: looking at, or standing under) – and I have to keep reminding myself that everyone else sees this every year, like we see Christmasses come and go. We're the monsoon virgins, here.

The HyperCity edition of Crossword’s tiny but packed, though the shelves appear to have been stocked by the pin-in-a-book-catalogue method. The central island, on promotion this week, can only be described as eclectic. As well as cookery books and tv guides – including the Sunday Times Where To Eat Guide, for some reason – there’s a mountain of PG Wodehouse, Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” and the Complete Works of Kahlil Gibran. (This is only 225 rupees, for all twelve books, in one volume. Not really a bed-time, or even less, a bath-time read, unless you have reinforced wrists, but a bargain, nonetheless. Am considering starting Christmas shopping right now, except see above, re insatiable curiosity leading to tunnel vision.) How "Cozy Country Cottage Decorating" gets into the window display, I'll never understand. Whether you're under cardboard and tarpaulin, at the traffic lights, or on the fourteenth floor of a tower block, or even if you're Shah Rukh Kahn, with his million-lakh pied-a-terre in Juhu, country cottages don't come into it. But then, coffee table books are for coffee tables, not for reading, the world over. There are about 47 copies of Doris Poosner’s “An Indian Man’s Guide to Success” - whether they’re hoping for a big run on it, later this afternoon, or whether they radically miscalculated their order, only time will tell. Nestling next to Ms Poosner’s magnum opus, there’s “The Greatness Guide” by Robin Sharma, then a stack of “Mein Kampf” in gilt-embossed leather. Or guilt-embossed leather, I have to suppose. It flits across my mind, to stay here all day, to see who buys this stuff. The heaps of Salman Rushdie and Khaled Hosseini, you’re kind of expecting, but who would have nominated J Archer, as sub-continental fave read? Pas moi, for one. Yet there he is, Lord A, pushing Paolo Coelho off the top shelf. We’re not short of classics, with Tolkien, and Agatha Christie, and C S Lewis, or neo-classics, like James Herriot, or even neo-neo-classics, like Sophie Kinsella. I said, eclectic, didn’t I?
Whichever branch of Crossword you’re in, by far the most shelf yardage is dedicated to the Self Improvement Section, comprising everything from Teaching your Toddler to do Sudokus, to Living your Life True to Marxist Ideals. The most significant sub-category fathoms the what-where-when-how-and-why, of Getting Ahead in Business – how could you turn your back on “Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters” (Jerry Porras & Co) or “The Magic of Thinking Big” (David J Schwartz)? Most of these have a distinctly transatlantic flavour to them, but if there were ever a ripe audience, India has to be it, a whole population dedicated to climbing out of wherever they are, or to grafting untiringly, so their children won’t have to. I pick up “Seven Mantras to Excel in Exams,” by Prem P Bhalla – clearly an Indian writer, but on the same onwards-and-upwards bandwagon. It’s exhausting, just being in this aisle. I slope off, without ambition, to pastures more comfortable.
And there’s Mills & Boon, the ultimate salve, right next to the till. They’re celebrating their centenary this year, bless them - “One hundred years of Pure Reading Pleasure.” A chacun, as they say. Impulsive, compulsive reading, at 99 rupees a pop, how could you say no? Except, I do, abjuring the temptation of “The Millionaire’s Inexperienced Love-Slave” and even “The Sheikh’s Blackmailed Mistress.” Instead, I buy Binoo K John’s enchantingly entitled, “Entry From Backside Only.” Contrary to what you’re currently thinking, shame on you, it traces the history of the quirky, hybrid language which is Indian-English, with all its quaint Victorian phrasing and subverted usage. (Mention this phenomenon to any Mumbai ex-pat, and they will smile, and say, “Backside!” Monu says, “Rolandsir backside!” when he means, behind the office where Mr Roland works. You can see how confusion might arise, though.) Roland fluffs up his gravitas, and selects “Maximum City” by Suketu Mehta, “a brilliantly illuminating portrait of the megalopolis and its people,” - according to the blurb on the back cover, anyway. Sadly, the only non-fiction I’m happy reading, is by Jamie Oliver or Collins-Robert, but I do know that the lack is in me. While Mr Roland’s footling around for small notes, in his wallet, I show my cultural colours, by asking the assistant when “U Me Aur Hum” is out on dvd. Look, it’s still culture, you just don’t have to work so hard for it. There's substantive evidence of the same Arabian sea change, not only on bookshelves and film collection, here in Powai, but in fridge and wardrobe, too. To adapt Sanjay-from-Delhi’s global blood-is-blood-God-is-God philosophy, culture is culture. “All same, no different.”

A Sunday Stroll

2008-06-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

We try to go for our Sunday pre-prandial constitutional, but turn back, before we hit daylight. As we’re putting our first toe on the pavement outside, it starts to rain, juicy, fat, splatty drops, darkening the concrete as we watch. By the time we get back to the thirty-third floor, though, it’s stopped, so we turn again, a la Whittington, suitably armed against the caprice of the clouds. (Our umbrella-pot now has five occupants, ie three already ones, and two newcomers: a telescopic number, forgotten by a visitor, and a fourth purchase, printed with a patchwork of Indian newsprint, destined for coriander-nostalgic rainy days, back in the UK. I might need to get a bigger umbrella-pot, soon.)
We walk to Mr Roland’s office, first through the building sites of leafy Powai, then up into the one-lakh housing estate beyond, eventually coming out on Vikhroli Road. It has to be said, we turn more heads in the inner-city village, than we do round our way. We drive through this area twice a day, there and back, but it’s very different, having actual dust between your toes, and direct eye contact with the residents. I’m longing to go inside one of the cramped hutments, but can quite see that you need to be invited, first.

Each front door opens directly onto a deep flood-drainage channel, bridged by a paving-slab. Even the tiniest children know to take care. A bit of loose scree serves as pavement. Just as in the UK, Sunday’s clearly the day for tinkering with the car, so we have to pick our way through the roadside tuk-tuk clinic. The danger drivers are stripped down to their loincloths, up to the elbows in axle-grease, their tuk-tuks tipped up, for under-carriage maintenance, like dogs, with a leg cocked. We pass small-small shops, selling car parts which look like they’ve already been in three different engines. One tyre-shop claims “tubless tyres mended, all kind of puncher.” Not all of the auto-rickshaws are in dock, the rest of them saunter up alongside us, offering a ride. Obviously, we don’t look as if we could or would or should go anywhere on our own feet.
Some of the houses are well-equipped, patched with corrugated sheets, and scraps of blue plastic sheeting, to deal with everything the monsoon can throw at them, when it’s on the rampage. Some of them are even up a short flight of six or seven stone steps, hoisting them well out of harm's way. Others are not so well-placed, the whole house being below the surface of the road, which means that heavy rain puts the lives of entire families in jeopardy. On the outskirts of the village, there are those even less fortunate. The no-lakh housing estate, on a piece of rough ground. The women and children sit in front of their tent, laughing and chatting. The stench is unspeakable.

At Parkside Cricket Club, up to a dozen matches are in full flow, on a field the size of a football pitch. I can only assume the players know which is their ball, in the same way a hen knows her chicks from the farmyard scrum. The gathered spectators are suddenly more interested in the pasty tourists, taking photos, than in any of the games in front of them. We move swiftly on.
Pavements are reinstated, up the hill, but don’t be seduced into thinking you can use them. Manhole covers have been lifted by Municipal Corporation workers, to ease flooding. You can walk into the voids easily enough, if you’re busy rubber-necking during the day, or even when you think you’re being careful, after dark. When the flood's in full spate, the murky swirling water conceals everything. Right now, the drains we peer down are clogged with bits of branches, rags, broken flipflops – little wonder they flood. So much for Mumbai Council’s much-vaunted “ninety-nine percent drain clearance” – unless we’ve chanced upon the one street still left to do? No, I don't think so, either.

We stop at Cafe Coffee Day, where the waiter’s stammering with apologies, before we even sit down. “AC no working, is ok?” The only way Mr Roland and I will ever be “cool” is with the help of air-conditioning, so it’s a great pity, but we’re British, and good at adversity, so we sit down, anyway. It takes four of them twenty-five minutes, to produce two coffees. He’s just parking my latte, I can even smell it, when he misjudges the relationship between table and saucer, and upends the whole frothing cupful. I can’t decide if they’re more aghast at the waste, or at our trying to help them mop up.
I see, from the mirror in the Rest Room, that I'm coiffed with bed-springs, and begin to understand the term “monsoon hair,” in the Fructis adverts on tv. I ask Mr Roland, if my hair looks mad. “No madder than usual,” he says, unthinking. The chasm of conjugal infelicity yawns at our feet, like a monsoon manhole, but a) I’m too hot to argue and b) he’s right anyway. Accha.
Abjuring tempting offers from passing tuk-tuks, we wend our way home, creating little eddies of interest, as we pass, among both bunches of hard-hatted construction workers, going back to work after lunch, and posses of small boys, drifting about looking for trouble, as aimless boys do. They stare, we smile, they grin. I say, “Hello!” and they erupt with joy. “Hello, Merry Christmas!”Their laughter follows us up the hill, where we come upon three Sikh gentlemen, sitting on a wall. They’re bare-legged, but in long sleeves, and their beards are whiter than their turbans. They put their hands together, and bow, greeting us with a smile. “Namaste!”
We pass two boys, with bikes. The smaller one’s trying to mount a bike taller than himself. “Big bike!” I say, and his face splits in a grin. He wobbles off, and I wave. He takes one hand off the handlebars, to wave back, and I have a small cardiac infarction, right there on the pavement, as he swerves out of the way of a lorry, coming the other way. I see, breathing again, that he’s ok, and he waves again, as he wobbles out of sight. Maybe I haven't got the hang of karma, after all.

Sticky Moments

2008-06-11T12:32:00.001-07:00

Today we don’t have to stop to ask twenty-seven assorted tuk-tuk drivers and newspaper-sellers for directions, so we get to school on time, just before nine o’clock. Monu’s been once, and like a boy, has logged the co-ordinates of Mankhurd Akanksha School, into his Mumbai Knowledge. I still have to be virtually in the shadow of our building, Verona, before I know where we are. To be fair, it casts quite a long shadow. I have patch pockets of The Knowledge, little snatches of awareness – like where my favourite street barber has his pavement stall, opposite the flyover, or where the closed-until-the-sun-comes-back lighting shop is, on the road out of Powai, or where the scrawny calves live, in the alleyway between the no-lakh hutment and the chai-seller, at the junction – I just don’t know how they all fit together, into anything coherent. It’s a kaleidoscopic world, mine. Unsurprisingly, I miss my own house, sometimes, sailing past the end of our drive, and we’ve lived there since 1996.
“Good morning, didi!” the early-birds chorus, even before I have kicked off my crocs at the door. Bhavika has them spaced to the last quarter-inch, on the mats, where she wants them. If they fidget, she invites them to entertain the whole class with a dance. I’m very aware of changing position every two minutes, myself – marble’s very unforgiving – so I resolve to practise my lotus on the floor, at home. I seem unable to sit cross-legged, without one knee being higher than the other, yet, when I do a surreptitious scout-round, no-one else’s padma’s asymmetrical. Reluctant joints creaking, I put it on my To Do list, and make a conscious effort to be still, in case didi asks me to dance...
Akash arrives. He slithers out of his chappals at the door, and curls round the jamb, balancing on one foot, until Bhavika notices him. “Didi, may I come in?” I’m felled by such charm - in the hurly-burly of school corridors, back home, it’s every man for himself – but no-one else in Room 112 bats an eyelid. Two minutes later, he goes out again, to liberate a spider with academic aspirations. He returns it carefully to the wild, then hovers on the threshold again, waiting for permission to come back in.
By way of starter, a prayer:

O god, give us strength.
O god, give us peace.
Make us good.
Make us strong.
Make us good and strong.

Eyes open. “Good morning, didis!”
Bhavika writes “Values” on the board, underneath the date, and we revise being happy, for a bit. Kajal wins the laurels with “It makes me happy, when I read a book!” – laudable, if visibly propagandist, given the context. You can’t have happiness without sharing, so the next logical step is paying a compliment. Didi – bold as brass – asks for compliments. “Eating a banana,” volunteers Anand. “No!” says didi firmly, “we are done with being happy!” A bit drastic, for seven year olds, I reckon, but she’s only thinking of our Values lesson, not Life In General. “Now give didi a compliment!”
“Didi’s dress is clean!” says Rajul. To her credit, didi manages not to look crestfallen, evidently believing in taking compliments gratefully, as and where she finds them. Anyway, battling through drifts of slurry, to get to school, with her frock unscathed, deserves special mention. “Who can give Caroline-didi a compliment?” She chooses Khaja, with the cheeky eyes. “Caroline-didi’s hair,“ - I hold my breath – “is very nice.” I smile at Khaja, and feel like my birthday and Diwali have come all at once.
In my group this morning, I have Swapnil, who’s cute enough for me to overlook the small matter of a runny nose (seriously cute, then...), solemn Mehul, who takes some winning over, Ashish, who likes to work on his knee, where I can’t see it, rather than flat in front of him, on the floor, where I can, and Sultana, who strokes my earrings and needs to sharpen her pencil – already as pointy as a syringe – several times, before settling down to write. Once she starts rubbing things out, they’re all clamouring for the eraser, so I have to confiscate it, gloating with power. This is what teaching’s about, being in charge of the rubber.
We make sentences, using “a,” “an,” “am,” “and,” and “after.” Ashish tries the scatter-gun, two-birds-one-stone approach, and says, “I am an elephant.” I’m not convinced he’s completely GOT this.
When we do the Days of the Week, all my hard-won classroom skills are really put to the test. Bhavika has a sheet for everyone, with the days scrambled out of order, so it’s time – deep joy – for a bit of Cutting and Sticking. What’s more, we can’t drop bits on the floor, because we’re already on the floor. With only one pair of scissors for every three or four children, progress is slow – particularly with Swapnil’s key-hole surgery approach to cutting-out. However, Bhavika-didi doesn’t know that Caroline-didi can slice up worksheets, sitting in the dark, at the bottom of a swimming-pool, with one hand tied behind her back. AND I have a secret weapon. Don’t tell anyone: I wipe a stripe of glue down the middle of the page before we start, which saves anyone from sticking Sunday to their own knee, by accident. It also means that I have to be a bit nifty, intervening, if anyone slaps down Tuesday in front of Monday, for example, but on the plus side, I am the only one with sticky fingers, at the end. I don’t wish to blow our own trumpet, here, or anything, but MY GROUP FINISHES FIRST!!! Yes, alright, alright, I know it’s not a race, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be the winners, does it?
By way of plenary – you guessed – a prayer. These children have waded here, through unspeakable flotsam and jetsam, yet they still have the innocent grace, to give thanks for the world being so sweet. The breath sticks in my throat, for a moment, then Khaja cheers me up, with a high-five, on his way out. “Bye, didi!”

Looking on Clouds from Both Sides

2008-06-10T08:52:00.001-07:00

How trusting is this? The unmanned brolly park, at the entrance to Mr Roland’s office. We have bought three umbrellas in as many days, but it’d do no harm to have a look, would it?
It’s not all paper-boats and rainbow waterproofs, the monsoon. According to the Mumbai DNA (Daily News Analysis), the rains have claimed three lives already. One hundred and thirty-five accidents have left dozens injured, and it only started raining on Thursday night. This year, instead of blaming potholes and unfinished road-works, they’re blaming finished ones, for a change. The notorious Eastern Highway has been re-surfaced too smoothly, it appears. If it means anything to you, it’s mastic asphalt, not enough grit in the mix, according to the wisdom of hindsight. With a glug of oil and a few hundred gallons of water, the road’s turned into a skating rink. Factor in local disinclination to adjust speed, unless the water’s lapping high enough to disable the windscreen-wipers, and you have an accident waiting to happen. Or not waiting, in fact.
Arboreal casualties are even higher – nearly forty trees, roots-up, in less than a week. When the rain starts to fall, not only does it weigh down the canopy, but, even as it reaches the roots, it loosens the soil, so all it needs is a wilful storm wind, for the tree to topple, like a ninepin. They’re all still out there, blocking roads and strewing paths – I don’t know if Mumbai council (BMC ) is trying to make a point, or if they’re waiting for a clear day to do the tidying up. The trees will have turned into coal, by September...When a fully-grown tree’s lying across half the carriageway, and the other half’s under a foot of water, no-one’s going anywhere, fast. The BMC claim, from behind a bolted door, I imagine, that the flooding’s caused by the one percent of drainage channels or nullahs, which they haven’t managed to desilt between the end of last year’s rainy season, and the beginning of this year’s. All I can say, looking around, is that it’s a good job they had time to fit in the other ninety-nine percent, or we really would be up to our knees in trouble... Oh, we are.
It’s reassuring to note that Mumbai’s metropolitan police force boasts five thousand officers – “2000 of them specially trained” - ready to “wade in” to combat monsoon emergencies, in flood-prone zones. What about the other 3000, were they filling in traffic reports or making butterfly cakes, when their mates were learning CPR?
On the plus side, I see a tuk-tuk driver this afternoon, ploughing through the brown lake which used to be the over-taking lane, and he’s actually laughing – you only need to be in Mumbai for quarter of an hour, to know that that’s an aberration of nature. Where the greater malady is fixed, and all that...
It’s 94% humidity, today, according to World Weather on the BBC. Actually, you could work it out for yourself, if you had a packet of Bombay Mix to hand. Tip a handful into a clean bowl, out of a newly opened pack, and it loses its crunch, before the head’s settled on your Kingfisher. How damply unfair’s that? I decide to invent the Bombay Mix Pig (adapted canapé version of the salt-pig), but I’m thinking I might have to market it under a different name.
If it weren’t enough, taking the bite out of your snacks, the wet air creeps into your wardrobes and along your bookshelves, leaving a wanton trail of mould and rot. Not all is lost, however. You can tempt the damp away from your Prada suit and your Armani jacket, by the judicious placing of open packets of rock salt, in the bottom of your closet. This strategy also works with Primark jeans and BhS t-shirts, thankfully. If you have limp books (I mean the paper, not your poor choice of author) – sprinkle talc along the edges, leave them for a bit, then shake off excess, et voilà, Robert est ton oncle, dry books (again, I mean non-soggy pages, not stuff about comparative linguistics or paleontology, or somesuch – why are you determined to misunderstand?).
I know people who decamp for the monsoon, and leave their ceiling fans on for four months, unattended. How can they sleep, cosily tucked up in Seattle, when their ventilator might break loose and decapitate a burglar in Mumbai, at any minute? People don’t take worrying seriously, these days, I have noticed.
Today’s the day for Monsoon Shopping. I don’t mean buying a satin sheath-dress encrusted with seed pearls and sequins, I mean Emergency Provisions. When Monu was trapped in the car for eight hours, in 2005, he and his passenger had a small bottle of water between them. Did they have anything to eat, I ask, showing him our in-car emergency picnic (juice, biscuits, dried apricots, mints, and cashew nuts - unsalted, we won’t want to be more thirsty than we already are, because that will have only one consequence, and I haven’t steeled myself to bucket-shopping, yet). “No food,” he says. “Was it a Tuesday?” I ask. – (Tuesday’s Monu’s God Day, and he fasts.) – We all chortle at my extreme wit, but I look it up, when I get home, and 26 July 2005 turns out to be a Tuesday, after all. I hope, if it’s given to us, to be trapped in the car, for hours, that it’s not a Tuesday, because Roland and I will be chomping our way through packet after packet of Punjab Shortbread, while Monu spectates wistfully, in the rear-view mirror... Maybe all bets are off, in dire circumstances? I park the picnic, with the baby-wipes and tissues, and the spare umbrella, in the boot, and Mr Roland and Monu exchange a maddening “Women! What will they get into their little heads next?” look, entre hommes. Don’t think I don’t see it, boys. They’ll be glad, when we’re marooned down a pothole in Colaba – well, if it’s between Wednesday and Monday, they will. Without my Girl Guiding instincts, we’d have to rely on the untrained MP officer, coming to our rescue with a Tupperware box full of fairy cakes, instead of oxyacetylene cutting-torch.

The New Didi - Akanksha

2008-06-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

In Lalubhai Compound, the road’s awash. Little boys wade out from the kerb, up to their shins, in the swirling floodwater, to play. They float paper boats, and waft a tatty carrier-bag to and fro, under the surface, to catch as much as they can, then they lift it clear, and shriek as it spouts and collapses over them. The monsoon’s not all bad news, it seems. They’re giddy with the novelty of their new game – the rains only started four days ago, no-one’s jaded yet, at least, no-one under ten - so I stifle curmudegeonly thoughts about pollution, and let boys be boys.
This isn’t the best-heeled end of Mumbai – in fact, it’s often not shod at all. Every turn takes us further and further off the tarmacked track: as each res we pass becomes progressively less des, the potholes in the road increase, until they’re in a majority, and the way forward is more broken cinders than made road. A goat kneels on all fours, to eat scraps from a stainless steel bowl. A white hen, and her half-grown chicks, fastidiously pick their way across the rubbish-silted path, trying to keep their feet dry. We’re in Mankhurd.
The tenements run into each other seamlessly, and the building I’m looking for has no name, only a number. The painted numerals aren’t Arabic, forcing me into the backseat, navigationally, as well as physically. We find it the way we find everything, by getting into the zone, and asking, and asking, and asking, until we narrow down the options to our ultimate goal. (I say we. I mean Monu. I loll about looking gormless, as always. I point out to Monu, that if I didn’t have him, I’d still be at the airport, bleating, “Can you tell me the way to Powai, please?” in ever shriller tones. He laughs, but it’s no joke.)
I’m after Room 112, on the first floor. Akanksha, the slum school. And here it is.
“Akanksha” - Sanskrit for “wish” - is a non-profit-making organisation, founded in 1990, by a young student with a vision. The scheme aims to improve the lives of less privileged children, through education, helping to make their dreams come true. These children don’t dream of Disneyland Florida or a new iPod, they dream of having a flat with running water, or a job in a decent hotel. It makes you think.
The original recipe was simple: enthusiastic, dedicated volunteers, unused rooms in forgotten corners of buildings, and youngsters, wanting the chance of a new future. Simple, but not easy - the establishment always resists change. Akanksha only needed one person with the imagination to take a risk. They started with one class of fifteen pupils. The programme now reaches three thousand children of all ages, in nearly seventy schools and centres across Mumbai and neighbouring Pune. A young girl explains what Akanksha means to her: “If I will not be educated, people will not treat me well, and then my life will be a waste. I’ll get married to an alcoholic, and have babies, that’s my life without education.”
It’s difficult to say how big Room 112 is, here in Mankhurd, because there’s no furniture, apart from a tall cupboard in the far corner, and a plastic stool to one side of the blackboard. The floor’s covered with small people sitting, cross-legged, on straw mats, all wearing red t-shirts which say, “Be The Change.” I walk in, then walk straight out again, to leave my shoes nudging cosily up to their little flip-flops, outside the door.
At the front, Bhavika’s in control. Eighteen pairs of brown eyes follow her every move. We’re in the middle of doing What Makes Us Happy, as far as I can tell. There’s a big smiley face on the board, surrounded by suggestions from the floor. Apparently, what makes us happy, so far, is eating: there’s mango, and chocolate, and ice-cream – children wouldn’t be children, otherwise - but Bhavika wants us to think beyond our stomachs, now. When Rakesh says “It makes me happy, when I eat banana,” she agrees, but it doesn’t make the blackboard. Khajit – with some coaching – finally produces, “It makes me happy, when I play computer game.” The whole room erupts with admiration. I clap too.
“You will notice we have a new didi, today,” says Bhavika. (I assume “didi” is “teacher” but I find out later that it means “big sister” which I instantly prefer to “Miss.”) I stand up, and tell them about myself. They think it’s very funny, that my baby boy is taller than me. It has to be said, he thinks it’s very funny, too. One by one, they stand up to return the compliment, the shy and the not-so-shy. You can spot mischief a mile off, even when all he says, is his name.
We do reading from flashcards, and sentence-building. We have to use “am” in a sentence, which is trickier than you'd think, because it's Hindi for "mango." Once over that hurdle, we get a bit stuck in the “I am a girl/I am a boy” groove, until someone says “I am a teacher,” which turns out to be witty as well as grammatical. “I am a doctor” brings the house down altogether.
We do personal descriptions, which takes less time than in a primary class back home. There’s not a single blonde hair or blue eye in the room (present company excepted), and, as they’re all below waist height, no-one fairly qualifies as “tall”. Even the girl/boy divide’s a matter of fact, not discretion. And then, I get sent to the back of the class. Not for being naughty. For Group Work.
Let me introduce you to my group. There’s Sultana, with looped plaits tied up with ribbons. She likes copying. Anand, with no front teeth for the time being. He’s very shy, but, it turns out, he’s a good speller. Kajal’s the tallest person in the class. She has dangly earrings and, a perfectionist, is over-fond of the eraser. She’s still drawing her fringe, for the twenty-seventh time, when everyone else is colouring in their t-shirt. And Khaja, who tells me he’s seven, but who’s very small. His self-portrait includes hopeful muscles on his arms, bulging Popeye kneecaps, and a rather fine frill of toes on each foot. Then he pencils in roller skates, for good measure. Open-topped ones, obviously. He demonstrates how they might work, until Bhavika tells him to sit down, from across the room. I would quite like to take Khaja home with me. I see that all four of them draw themselves with beaming smiles, and I’m glad.
Like diligent scholars, all round the world and back again, these children are longing to hear those three little words – “Right, pack away!” There’s a flurry of activity, then each child sits down again, in an enviably plasticine-limbed lotus, eyes closed, fingers and thumbs joined into little circles, palms turned up. We have a stretch and a think, and straighten our spines. Then we say,
“Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything.”
Bhavika-didi makes us do it again, because we were shouting, not praying. Everybody thanks everybody else, and the mat-monitors stash away the mats for tomorrow. Then they all scamper off, for a flip-flop free-for-all, on the landing. I tell Miss, that I used to sing the same poem, at school, when I was five, and she says, “Next time, you show us, we will sing.” So, that’s a plan, then.

Singing in the Rain

2008-06-08T11:14:00.001-07:00

Sudden onset Seasonal Adjustment Disorder and acute jetlag are not a great combo, I discover. Need new batteries for the body clock, and a replacement personal thermostat, because my one’s had it. Apart from that, reintegration’s going à roulettes.
How can an entirely locked-up, uninhabited flat accrue dust? It does, though, which proves we’ve got seepage. Or illicit lodgers, who don’t wipe their feet. Every surface – the dust isn’t picky about horizontal or vertical - is filmed with silt, so the flat looks like it’s made of Fuzzy Felt. And if you close a door which has been propped ajar for the duration, you will find out where dust bunnies go, in the mating season. Cleaning’s the usual self-defeating waste of time, because at best all you’re achieving is relocation. Can you tell I’ve got a mop in my hand, and my hair in a Flo Capp chignon? Mr Andy, meanwhile, sits on the sofa, with a beer in one hand, and the racing results in the other, shouting at the telly, with a fag stuck to his bottom lip. Well, ok, he’s wrangling with his tax returns, but that’s not as interesting, is it?
While I’m sluicing behind the washing-machine, something dark scuttles out from under the kitchen cupboard door. I squawk for Akela, because all I see is movement, and I don’t want to come nose to feeler with a cockroach. By the time he springs into action, I can see it’s a small lizard, still feisty, despite my bopping it on the head with my squeegee mop. Mr Roland gives chase, but it whips back down the drain, where it came from. Local practice is for kitchen and bathroom drains to be flush with the tiled floors, covered only by a perforated metal saucer, which sits loose over the hole. The one in the cupboard under the sink is askew, so I slide the trapdoor back into position, and ponder the $64K question: did the lizard climb all the way up to the thirty-third floor, or was he born here? And – bonus question - if the latter, where’s his Mum? We’re a hundred yards up, we look down, not only on the circling birds, but now, on the rolling rainclouds, so visiting lizards aren’t even on the radar. Or, weren’t. The moral of this story is, never clean behind the washer.
I open the windows, to let a bit of monsoon in. It’s going great guns, at ground level. The tuk-tuks leave the best bow-waves, because three-wheelers are more streamlined than blunt-nosed four-wheelers, it seems. Don’t mock, this counts as empirical scientific observation, if you’re me. Also, the tuk-tuks, with their danger drivers, make no concession to being up to their running-boards in chocolatey floodwater, so their speed’s undiminished. They’ve all sprouted plastic side-panels, like baby-buggy aprons, to entice custom with comfort, though the drivers don’t enjoy the same refuge.
On the forecourt of the block next to ours, Sunday cricket continues, though the rain’s falling out of the sky in a fat spate. Shouts of laughter float up to me, leaning on my dusty sill. Pedestrians saunter along, with or without umbrella, for all the world as if the plugs hadn’t been pulled, over their heads. I begin to wonder why we scurry along, in the wet, back home, like everyone except Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. I can’t suppose that Debbie Reynolds has enchanted every last Indian, down to the last humble hod-carrier, has she?
We wait for the storm to pass, but it’ll go dark first, so we sally forth wetly to D Mart, where all of Powai and his wife are out doing the weekly shop. First, you have to park your umbrella at the door. There’s a designated umbrella-wallah, whose sole and soggy job is to marshal the umbrella-sanctuary, giving each customer a numbered plastic dog-tag in exchange for the collapsed specimen thrust under his nose, scattering liberal drips like a shaggy dog. I smile at him, in a winning what-can-you-do? manner, looking for an ally in elemental adversity, but he’s having none of it. There’s only so much bonhomie you can muster, after seven hours on umbrella-parking, I suppose.
Inside the store – like at Haiko, coincidentally – the umbrella aisle’s doing a roaring trade. There’s patently no superstition, this side of the Arabian Sea, about putting up umbrellas indoors. Given the number of people I see getting poked with a spoke, there perhaps should be.
On the way home, my feet are wet in less than the time it takes to say “Wellingtons,” which means they swim backwards out of my sandals with every step. By the time we get to Crossroad bookshop, just a hop, skip and a jump later, I have got cramp in my toes from over-zealous clenching, so I take my shoes off and carry them. This flies in the face of every inch of monsoon survival advice in the guidebooks. Above all, they say, watch out for pollution, especially in the early days. If I don’t go barefoot, though, I’m about to fall over, possibly down a flooded manhole I don’t know is there, because it’s cunningly disguised as wet pavement, and the ambulance won’t be able to get through because the road’s under-water... You see the dilemma. I’ll spritz down with Dettol, when I get to dry land, honest.
The tv has also taken a turn for the rainy season. The adverts promote vitamin-enhanced fruit juices, to keep the germs at bay, or extra control conditioner, for unruly monsoon-hair. Apparently, this weather’s likely to make my hair frizzy. Perish the thought.
Tomorrow, I’m shopping for my Monsoon Box. According to received wisdom, you have to keep emergency supplies in the car, for if. One day in July 2005, Mumbai had 27 inches of rain, a world record; our very own Monu was stuck in the car, on a bridge, for eight hours. So, that proves it. Tomorrow, I’m collecting water, juice, biscuits, towels, spare shoes, a bucket and a blanket (don’t ask what these two are for...), as well as in-car entertainment. I’ll teach Monu how to play Uno, in exchange for Hindi lessons. I just hope the flash-floods don’t arrive, before we get to Hyper City.

Cataracts and Hurricanoes

2008-06-07T10:55:00.001-07:00

We hurry back to Mumbai, but the monsoon beats us to it. The temperature’s still in the thirties, but the pavements are glossy with standing water, and the air feels like wet felt. We find Monu again - omnibus rejoicing. He commandeers the luggage trolley, grinning. “Rains come!” he says, needlessly: we’re already holding our trousers up, clear of the puddled tarmac. We pick our way across the car-park, like curtseying ladies, marvelling at the pewter clouds, as if we hadn’t lived under Manchester’s cardboard skies for twelve years. Mumbai’s a different city, wet, but love not being love which alters, etc., etc., it’s still home.

It’s like Postman Pat’s Rainy Day, without Mrs Goggins or Jess. “It had rained and rained for days and days, and it seemed that it would never stop.” Greendale comes to the sub-continent.
On the way home, through pebbled windows, we admire the washed trees, which turn out to be green-leaved, after all, underneath the dust veneer. Not all of them make it through the storm, though. The pavement’s littered with split branches, and even whole trunks. It seems whimsical of nature, to say the least, to have them survive the long months of drought, only to fell them at the first drop of saving rain.

As the Reverend Timms remarked cheerily, “It rains on the just, and on the unjust!” It has to be said, it’s difficult, here in Powai, to sort out the righteous from the sinners. We can – and do – all get wet, it’s just that some of us have less access to getting dry again any time soon. I see the niftiest solution, this afternoon: a man – hatless, sockless, pretty well everything-less, except for his loincloth. Not an option immediately available to half of the population, but the man in his skin won’t still be waiting for the rain to evaporate off his shirt, this time tomorrow.

At the entrance to Inorbit Mall, a dripping attendant, in a floor-length mac, opens cars and taxis, to escort shoppers inside, under his rainbow umbrella. Sweepers draw endless figures of eight, criss-crossing the marble floors, inside and out, again and again, banishing wet footprints, again and again.

The “small, small shops” are open for business, but there’s no-one buying. Each shop’s about twelve foot wide, and the whole of the front opens up, by way of entrance, so it’s not a question of “Mind the step and close the door behind you.” Over the ironmonger’s shop, the blue plastic awning bellies with rain, so the ironmonger pokes it gently with a stick, and the water cascades onto the beaten earth. The pavements will dissolve before the weekend’s out. At the Great Punjab, our favourite street restaurant, the owner puts sandbags like stepping-stones, from the road to his front step, to enable his customers to dine with vaguely dry feet. Despite his forethought, we are the only takers. Is it the weather, we ask, putting people off? But no, three new TV shows start tonight. In the time it takes us to eat our rice and dahl, they’ve sent out twenty orders of takeaway, to be eaten off knees in homes across Powai, in front of the small screen. East and West are closer than we think.

Pavement life’s reduced to the diehards. On Barbers’ Row, we see one solitary barber, brandishing his razor, squatting – hopefully on a tarpaulin of some sort – to shave a customer, under a makeshift awning. The paan-wallah sleeps, curled under a golfing-umbrella. I wonder how rose-petal paste and betel nuts fare in the damp? A forlorn sherbert-seller rigs a sheet of plastic, in the overhanging branch of a tree, his lemons already running with water. Monu wouldn’t let me buy juice from this stall, in May. “Just photo, no drink! – No wash glass. Dirty waters.” Maybe his glasses will benefit from the extra rinse, now. A bareheaded man stands behind a barrow-load of wet bananas, his face the picture of karmic resignation. After the first minute or so, you can’t get any wetter, so there’s no point trying to keep any bits dry. The rain’s warm, anyway. “’It’ll be wet letters, and wet everything,’ said Pat.” Quite.

Post-deluge, everywhere has that newly-shriven look of the scrubbed schoolboy, but eight months’ accumulated detritus is a big ask for a single shower of rain, however diluvial. Slurries of waste lap at every kerb; the “Clean Up Mumbai” trucks are bulging. Rag-pickers still sift through rubbish-heaps with a poking stick. Their only concession to the monsoon, wearing plastic bags on their heads, like chefs’ hats, or draping their shoulders in a bin-bag cloak, like oriental super-heroes.

On the balconies of the high-rise flats, washing hangs limply to dry. Is this absent-minded or aspirational? In either case, you’d have not to be in a hurry for your white jeans, I think. I can only applaud the optimism. Most of the beggars, who conduct their fishbowl lives on the pavement, have upped sticks – literally – and gone back to the villages. The rare few remaining can’t be bothered to work the traffic, huddling further into the meagre shelter of the flyover. It’s going to be a long haul.

We’re in Haiko, busily buying tomatoes and lentils, when the clouds unzip, and pour forth. Monu’s parked only ten yards from the door, but the rain’s a whiteout, and we can’t see him, let alone reach him. Mr Roland ducks back into the shop to buy an umbrella. Would you believe it – how prescient of Haiko - there’s an umbrella section right by the till. Only a million to choose from. Sadly, I’m on trolley-guarding duty, so our new model’s maroon with a tartan trim. Yes, I know. Still, between now and when the rain eases off, in about September, we’ll have plenty of time to sample the entire waterproof catalogue of available umbrellas, so I’m unperturbed. We heave the dripping bags into the back of the car, and squelch in ourselves. Monu slams the boot shut, laughing. “Nice, nice weather. I like rain.” This is just as well, four months is a long time to be crabby. “Will it rain every day?” I ask. “All, all day, rains!” he smiles. I like rain, too, but mostly from the smug warm-and-dry-inside perspective. Currently, it’s fascinating. Give me ‘til Tuesday of next week, and ask me again.