Singing in the Rain

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.

Don't tell Monu...

Mr Roland rather racily suggests taking a tuk-tuk home. We’re at the D-Mart, which is only a hop across an open drain, and a skip over a pile of rubble, away from home. But we’ve got our arms full of pineapples and lentils and guava juice and cucumbers, and it’s 36 degrees. Even the construction site workers are melting in the shade of a tree, on the hot pavement. I say, “What will Monu say?” And Mr Roland, with his habitual Akela-logic, says, “Monu isn’t here.”

(We go out with friends to a hotel restaurant, and I make the mistake of offering Monu the night off, after he drops us, so he doesn’t have to kick around on the pavement, waiting for us to emerge again at eleven. “We can take a tuk-tuk home.” Monu takes his hands off the wheel, in shock – “No tuk-tuk, THIS car! Tuk-tuk danger drivers!” I’m suitably chastened, then Monu relents and says, “My Mum, she like tuk-tuk. No you.” And that’s final.)

I concede reluctantly to Mr Roland’s anarchic idea – I’m never going to broach life in the fast tuk-tuk lane toute seule, after all. He leans into the tiny cab, and says, “Verona?” The driver shrugs and shakes his head. I see this all the time, waiting for Monu outside In Orbit mall, the tuk-tuk drivers are picky about where they’re prepared to go. Would-be passengers shrug back, and stroll on to tackle the next little black and yellow cab in waiting. Mr Roland, incarcerated in his air-conditioned ivory tower all the livelong week, doesn’t know this, however, and leaps in with alacrity, saying, “I’ll show you!”
So we climb in, stowing our worldly goods at our feet. Before our backsides have made contact with the plastic seat, the driver pulls out of the queue, wrenching right on the handlebars, to turn perpendicularly into the stream of traffic. He’s got one bare foot tucked cosily under him, and is patently the Indian son of Evel Knievel, since he Knows No Fear. He’s also a Star Trek junkie, his maxim clearly being To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before. Never mind man, he goes, we now discover, where WD40 wouldn’t.

It comes to me, with what I imagine are my last breaths, that our lovely Monu is a Top Driver: he slows to zero miles an hour, to tackle the tussocks and crevices of the highway. “I sorry, Mumbai road, no very good!” he says daily, laughing at me, doing my aerobic work-out, to keep upright in the back of the car. Our tuk-tuk driver, on the other hand, seems to think it’s a steeplechase, and hits every pebble full tilt. Even a brand-new tuk-tuk has 0 suspension to worry about, so it shouldn’t be surprising.

In Jaipur, we see tuk-tuks - “three passengers only” hopefully painted on their sides – with ten, twelve, fifteen people on board, hanging on by their toenails, with a baby or a goat held between the teeth. We’re only two (plus shopping), but I’m still deeply unsure about the whole endeavour. Did I say, there’s nothing but fresh air between me and the tarmac, as we pole-vault our way home? It’s entirely due to gravity and momentum, that we stay in our seats, at all. I hate relying on science.
We’re back at Verona, in less than two minutes. It’s only a couple of blocks, but it whittles years off my life. Mr Roland airily hands over ten rupees, while I try to make my wobbly legs work again. Maybe Monu has a point after all.