Just Another Day

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.

Dasera at the Dentist's

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

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.

Songs of Praise

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.

Welcome to India

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.

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.

When the cat's away....

...... the mouse takes his credit card shopping. Mr Roland’s on a course, and Monu won’t hear of having the day off. “New mall,” he says, bossily, “Nice nice shops.” Well, that’s almost what he says, but he can’t pronounce “sh” properly. He says “fis” instead of “fish.” He also says, “Sit!” when we hit bad traffic, but, in his defence, he doesn’t smoke or drink, and he only plays cards for matchsticks...
So, the Oberoi mall. New shopping precinct, with its paint still wet. It’s supposed to open the last week of May, but has flung wide its doors, a whole fortnight ahead of schedule. It wouldn’t happen in the UK. Over the gleaming entrance, it promises “Fun, food, fashion, films!” I tell Monu, that I’m not coming out again, until I’ve had some of everything.

First, there’s the gauntlet of security to run. At the entrance to malls and big hotels, the car’s searched too – we have to open the bonnet, and they pass a dubious Heath Robinson contraption – a makeup mirror lashed to a stick – under the back of the car, checking for “devices.” I could have a pocketful of grenades, and a stick of gelignite stuffed down my salwar, but the security man’s too busy saluting me, and saying good morning, to find out. (At the entrance to our local Haiko, my handbag’s not only searched, but locked, with a thin strip of plastic looped through the zip and round the handle. How do they think I’m going to pay, by osmosis?)
At the Oberoi mall, my bag and I go separate ways, for ratification. We join forces again, the other side of the metal-detector doorway, officially Fit To Shop.
In a heartbeat, it’s obvious how they were able to open the Oberoi a fortnight early. It’s not finished yet, that’s why. Three-quarters of the shops are still boarded up, promising marvels soon. It will be four storeys of gliding elevators and plate glass, thronged with middle India, out browsing, and spending its new wealth. The piped music’s making my contact lenses wobble. I can hear hammers and drills, the other side of the boarding, where Mothercare and Debenhams are about to spring into being, but the Body Shop’s already open for business, as is Mr Raymond’s, the gentleman’s outfitter. In Lifestyle, welcome garlands festoon the stairwell, while workmen huddle on the floor, finishing the grouting. Shoppers step over them, on the way to “Jewellery and Watches.” I take my purchases to the pay-counter, where no less than eleven assistants clamour to serve me. In fairness, one of them’s a displaced security guard, and there’s also a lady from accounts, going through a file – but I occupy at least five of the remaining cashiers, processing my transaction, and packing my shopping, as if they were freighting the Holy Grail across the subcontinent.
At the other end of the mall – when I have gone up and down all the escalators several times, so I won’t be out again too soon, and have Monu think his idea wasn’t a good one – there’s Central. The fragrances for men and women department has racks of glossy, underlit shelves, but no perfume or aftershave. The customers have arrived before the stock. I’m given a rose, which compensates me for much.
In Central’s Food Bazaar, I pick up what looks like a packet of pasta, but it’s a snack. I ask the assistant, if it has to be fried. He so wants to help, he’s almost in tears, but can’t understand the question, let alone frame an answer. He goes for his mate. His mate goes for his mate. I mime my dilemma - to deep-pan-fry, or not to deep-pan-fry? (I catch myself saying, “Small, small oil?” Monu has a lot to answer for) – but apparently, it’s the 4-star heart-attack option, bring on the ghee. Salt? I say-and-mime. No salt, mercifully. For a minute there, I thought our arteries were in trouble.
I choose a bar of chocolate for Monu, in the absence of any home-bred boys to pamper, and ask the confectionery-wallah the price – “This one, ten rupee.” He picks up a different bar: “This one, five rupee.... this one, ten.... this one, ten....” and, suddenly, I have nine treat bars in my confused hands, and a small retinue of well-meaning shop-assistants, come to watch big spending, western-style. I hope Monu likes chocolate...

It’s very Indian, having the opening launch, before the men have towed the final skip away. The Mahindra Bank opens its Powai branch, with flowers and balloons and potted bay trees, before the building shell’s complete, let alone the fixtures and fittings. The roof’s not yet on the sixth floor, and the surrounding shops are still having finishing touches like walls and floors installed, but the Bank’s trading. To safeguard unwary customers, a net’s vaguely looped over the shop front, to catch falling masonry. Well, hopefully, to catch it. Unit by unit, the little arcade sparkles into life – Papa John’s pizzeria, Adam’s and Cabbage Patch kids’ stores – all foreign franchises, no room for quirky one-off shops like Kuldeep Scooters or Shivam Glass House or the Chauhan Cloth Centre. The Mahindra Bank will be up for its first repairs, before the Subway Sandwich Shop sells it first Chicken Madras-filled focaccia.
I feel a real pang for the little lock-ups in the streets. I tell Monu about the death of corner shops, back home, and the aircraft-hangar multiples which have crushed them. We shake our heads, sadly. Mumbai’s turning into just another modern city, and they’re calling it progress. Looking around, though, at the cows grazing on the pavement, and the heaps of rubble lining every road, the day, you can’t tell if you’re in Mumbai or Barcelona, is a long way off.

Home, Sweet Home

Powai, we’re told, is “an up-market residential area.” We think fondly of leafy Cheshire, or manicured Mayfair. As it turns out, Powai’s a building site. There’s at least one dog per square yard of pavement, that’s if there is a pavement – most of them have been deconstructed, because the builders forgot to put in the phone/electricity/gas/water, so there are piles of do-it-yourself pavements lining every route. Pedestrians can teeter along a ledge skinnier than a spice-rack, or take their chances with the manic tuk-tuks on the open road. One peremptory beep, and they consider you warned. Anything that happens is your own fault.
Returning to India, I have a broader perspective on local real estate. I can distinguish the city pied-à-terre of Bollywood actors from no-lakh under-flyover housing, for example, with hardly any hesitation at all. Now I better understand the Mumbai property spectrum, I see that Powai’s quite like Hampstead, after all. There’s even a park, at the foot of our building, though when I go to investigate it, one afternoon, it’s closed. It opens again at eight in the evening, when Powai’s out and about for a pre-prandial constitutional. At the swings, I count eighteen mothers, accompanying children swarming across rope-bridges or hurtling down slides. The fathers huddle for political warmth, the other side of the fence. It’s late, for the two-year-olds, but no self-respecting toddler toddles anywhere here, in the heat of the day.

This is our building, Verona. Its twin sister’s called Avalon. Only ten years ago, this area was still jungle, with real tigers. Then Mr Hiranandani had a great idea and a serious bunch of rupees to spare, and, abracadabra, Hiranandani Gardens were born. We live at the top of Verona. Only the lift housing is above us, and some very brave pigeons. I try to go up onto the roof, out of goaded hardihood, but it’s locked. I’m not that sorry.
There’s allocated parking, within the gates, for residents. It takes four men, to paint yellow lines on the brick sets, marking the individual bays. Two squat, one holding the paint-brush, the other, the pot of yellow paint. The supervisor and the foreman stand over them, inspecting. Good job, though, no wobbles on the cobbles.
The entrance hall’s very flash, with its huge columns and marble plaques. The elegance takes a knock every evening at about seven, when the foyer turns into a playground. All the resident under-tens congregate for a screech and a punch-up, with the usual child paraphernalia of bikes and cricket bats and doll’s prams and mothers.
There are three lifts, but it’s not up to you, which one to use. The lift decides. It’s a Miconoic 10, so you can believe it probably knows better. You tap in your floor number, on the huge key pad, and it has a think, then tells you where to go and stand. Try not to get Lift C, though, I have my doubts about that one. “Walk into your assignated elevator, and enjoy the ride.” Every wall’s mirrored, which is a bit disconcerting, when you stroll in, unthinking, with your street face on. The air-conditioning’s just a fierce fan in the middle of the ceiling, so wherever you stand, you end up looking like Janis Joplin on a bad hair day. The lift pings when it gets to your floor, and ushers you out. I invariably turn in the wrong direction, so have to pretend I’m just counting the flip-flops outside next-door’s, before going home.

And this is home. We’ve done our pasty-faced best to make it cosy (not easy without the shag-pile and the dralon, believe me). When you come, you don’t have to be nice about the sofas(inherited) but watch what you say about the cushions and the hangings (lovingly chosen by me and chauffeured home by Monu). And don’t set too much store by the Bombay Mix on the table, either. It’ll probably be gone, by the time you get here.