Reading Matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.