Well, day 2 (isn’t it nice that day 2 happens on April 2? It makes the accounting much easier) of Family and Friends Fun Days started off early. As I mentioned in the day 1 entry, the car wash guy really likes to be paid. Early. Despite my bedroom being furthest from the front door, I was the only one to hear the persistent doorbell ringer. My husband stayed sound asleep, and if Mom and Auntie woke, they stayed safely behind their door. Fez, on our couch, was quite close to the door, but still sound asleep.
Groggily I got up and opened our door. We actually have two doors. One is a big solid affair with a bolt longer than my hand. The second is bright blue with a little trying-to-be artistic window that opens so you can hand money, food, etc through the door without actually opening the entire door. Anyhow, I opened the first door, the big wooden door, and then the little window. It was the car guy, of course. He is short and squat and wanted his money. 500 rupees. I handed it over. He taps the towel on his shoulder. “50 more, for towel”. Humph. I’m sure he is just cheating me on that, but I go back to my bedroom and grab a 50 (about $1.11) to hand over in addition to the 500. Easier to give it and go back to bed, in my opinion. But no, he wants to continue talking. Sigh. “Advance?” He asks, “3000?”. Yeah right. That is a six-month advance. He kept talking, but apparently ‘car’ and ‘advance’ are the only English words he knows, because he reverted to Hindi for the remainder of the conversation. Out of his mouth I only recognized the Hindi word for ‘boy’, so I guess he wanted the money for his kid. Whatever. He wanted the money because I am a foreigner and as soon as you see white skin it is a sign to beg for money. I’m sick of it. But I’m starting to become immune to it, because I just patiently listened for a minute or two and told him no.
I used to be terrible at saying no, bargaining, and being impolite. I’m still fairly awful at bargaining, but I am getting much better at being impolite. In fact, I’m getting quite good at being a jerk now that I live here. It is a survival mechanism. I just hope I can revert back to my normal self once I’m out of here. I’d hate to be this way forever. But I might as well live it up and enjoy being rude while I can.
I was up, though, because I’m a terrible sleeper. I tried going back to bed, but very shortly everyone (sans my husband) was wide-awake. I walked into my living room and looked around. I knew I had heard voices… and where the heck did all of my chairs go? Turns out they were sitting in a row on the porch, munching on toast, drinking coffee, and enjoying the early morning sights of the city.
When my maid/cook (Lady S) arrived, I asked her what she thought of my guests. She told me my Mom smiled too much to be a principal! She didn’t look serious enough! I think that is a good thing.
Lady S is from a fishing caste (drunken-husbands-or-fishing-caste), so she is quite the expert on cooking those sea critters. Like the mani-pedis from day 1, I am also terrified of seafood. They are just crawly, creepy, full ocean pollution, and smelly. But at my guest’s request, I had Lady S create a lobster concoction that would be worthy of her own family. The lobsters arrived just before we left for the day. And let me tell you, you will never have lobsters as fresh as these! She chopped them up while they were still alive! She simply put them in a white bucket, and you could hear them scuttling about the bottom and sides, crawling over each other. She pulled out a big knife, and place the first, still alive, lobster on the yellow cutting board. CHOP! Off go the skinny little right legs! CHOP! Off go the left legs! Oh my goodness, it was heart wrenching to watch. They were so crawly. Occasionally, one would escape and shuffled about for a few minutes in my sink before she ruthlessly picked it up, placed it back on the yellow board, and chopped its legs off. Fortunately, we left after only watching four or five lobsters get the chop. It still gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. Those long tentacles and scrawny little legs.
After a very yummy breakfast of puri with mango filling (which we fortunately ate before watching her chop off those poor little lobster appendages), we went for a drive around my neighborhood. The day before, Mom had very much enjoyed taking photos of the various animals, so I wanted her to see all of the pigs and goats that I used to drive past on the way home from school.
We also took many, many, way too many photos of…. gas stations. Well, petro stations, as they are known here. Why? Because Mom thinks they will be interesting to Gramps. I guess the price of gas is in liters rather than gallons, but other than that, they look just like the US pumps. My driver told me that here, some of the petrol attendants do their best to try and steal your money, since they pump the gas for you. So rather than relax at the car, the car driver has to get out of the car, look directly at the pump, make sure it is zeroed, and then let them pump. Otherwise they won’t zero it, and charge you for petrol that was pumped in the last car, and pocket the difference. I’m getting sick of hearing stories like that. Is honestly that hard?
Traffic was pretty busy- the finals of the Cricket World Cup would be held later in the day- and I guess everyone was out and about finishing their work before the match started. We drove through Bandra West to the Bandra Kurla Complex, and stopped to take photos at various spots that may or may not be interesting. My driver insisted on stopping and taking photos at the location of the big fire (one-dark-night), which felt a bit awkward, especially as he chastised us for smiling in the photos when we should have been looking sad. However, stopping for photos wasn’t very fun in any case. Each time we stopped, we would very quickly be swarmed by groups of men who would get too close and gawk at us. My driver insisted we were safe, but I decided to stay in the car for the last few shots. It just wasn’t enjoyable.
At one point, while viewing the pigs munching on trash, with five or six little kids gathering around us, begging to be in photos, a man in an auto rickshaw slowed down and shouted, “you are looking at 2 lakh housing!”. Good English, but bad economics, as that would be a rent rate of about $4525 per month! Although I guess he could have meant the entire cost of building the house…. the cost of building a slum house might be about that much, though it certainly seems a bit high. My driver told me the rickshaw driver was probably high. Great…. Tiny little open vehicles with drivers who are high.
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| 2 lakh housing |
Once we were done driving around and taking entirely too many photos of adorable pigs, goats, and children, we headed to another shopping center, this one suggested by Lady S. Along the way, Mom continued her game of ‘name that dog’. The day before, she had taken to naming each stray dog that we passed. This is quite a challenge, as there are as many stray dogs here as there are squirrels in Hickory Heights. I really wish we had counted all of the names, but I guess it will remain a mystery. Regardless, around this time she FINALLY found a dog to call Spot. Most of the dogs are a scruffy sort of yellow color, and not able to claim this name. So that was a very exciting moment for all of us. My driver was especially excited and giggly over the game.
We bought a dozen or so scarves as gifts for relatives and friends, and a few other odds and ends. But we were burned out and incredibly hungry, so we headed home for lunch.
We pulled the lobster dish out of the refrigerator. Wow. What a smell. And let me tell you, it was a disgusting smell for all of us, even the lobster lovers. My heart sank- this was the most expensive meal I’ve ever done in my house, and it smells like sweat socks. Looked about like them, too. The lobsters were still in their shells and coated in gray gravy. So gross looking.
Well, Auntie took pity on me and warmed it up so I didn’t have to go any nearer to it than necessary. Mom, Auntie, and Fez dished some up and I made-do with leftovers. The result? They said it was very good! I guess that is a relief, but it was a lot of work for them to eat because they had to shell the lobsters themselves.
After lunch, Mom conked out for a jet-lagged nap, and Auntie, Fez and I went for an ice cream walk. Along the way, we saw people picking mangos! It was quite the process. They had an extremely long stick, at least 12 feet in length, and attached to the end was a wire hook. They would hook it around the fruit, pulled, and the mango would fall to the ground. We clapped. After our ice cream we went to the market, bought some pop (that’s soda to you non-Michiganders) and took an auto rickshaw home.
After Mom woke, we headed to the elevators. My building has three elevators, but at any given time, only two are functional. Two elevators arrived on my floor at the same time, so Fez and I decided to race Mom and Auntie to the ground floor. We jumped into our elevator and rapidly pushed the close door button. We were prepping our stance for running out the door when we stopped on the 5th floor. No one got in, so giggling and worrying that Mom and Auntie would win, we kept pushing the close button. But wait- was that voices? Relieved, we realized Mom and Auntie’s elevator stopped on the 5th floor as well… and our door was already closing. We’re gonna win! Yes, we were just racing for pride. But I’m competitive, what can I say? When the door opened on the ground level Fez and I burst through the door and looked around. No Mom and Auntie! We won! We stared at their elevator door…. And continued staring…where were they? The elevator door finally opened…they weren’t on it…. Confused, we walked toward the exit. Did they beat us so badly they had already left the building? No…. wait…voices…. They were walking down the stairwell! Apparently, when their elevator opened on the 5th floor, they got out, thinking it was the ground level! I guess it wasn’t a fair win, but it was a good one to giggle over.
We went to Carter Road, which is the wide street that runs along the Arabian Sea in Bandra. We started south of it, looking at a beautiful, older than 100 years, Catholic Cathedral, which was Indian-ized by the vendors stationed next to it, selling wax statues of Mary and Jesus and plastic rosaries.
After the cathedral we walked along the sea, watching the waves roll over the black basalt and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. It was very peaceful and fun. Cricket fever was starting to swell, and we headed home to watch the last few hours of the match.
Now, I have a partially-written blog explaining the rules of cricket and comparing it to baseball, but I have yet to actually post it (it is still rather boringly written, even for my standards), so those of you interested in the rules will have to look them up yourself or wait until I finally post it. Regardless, the cricket match is LONG…. About 8 hours. It is for the World Cup, and is being hosted in India. More importantly, hosted in MUMBAI, which is where I live. Hence the frenzy. The match was India vs. Sri Lanka, for the championship. It is huge. Monstrously big. Pepsi has been marking for the World Cup it for months, and the commercials are incredibly funny. Sort of like the wax-on-wax-off process for Karate Kid (I guess I should update that to coat-on-coat-off for the new version of the movie), so I really liked watching all of the various TV ads. I guess advertising does work, because the commercials made me want to watch cricket, although they didn’t convince me to buy any Pepsi.
Anyhow, after our delightful walk, we came home, turned the game on and half-heartedly watched it while playing cribbage, and soon my driver came over with dinner. He’d promised me to make his special Briyani, which is a ‘Muslim honor’, and we enjoyed a second great meal of the day. It is basically rice with chicken (usually mutton, but I like chicken) and some flavoring that turns everything yellow.
After the match, which India won, we stood on my porch and watched the fireworks. The fireworks, at least in my neighborhood, are just set off by random people on the street. I’ve heard it is quite the time to be on the street with them- there are no safety regulations and you really have to watch out so you don’t get hit by one!
We went to bed full of laughter as Mom threw away her toothbrush because she got tap water on it. No worries, she brought three dollar-store toothbrushes with her! One down…keep count in later entries how many others she will throw away!
I'd like to add the disclaimer that I didn't take any of the photos on the FAFFD entries. They are all from Mom, Auntie, or my sister and her boyfriend.
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