Law, Partially

Hill Road was the first road I walked on in India. I stayed in a hotel my first two nights on Hill Road. I was too overwhelmed by the absolute madness of the street to tilt my head back to look at the apartment towers when I was walking. I’ve spent more time looking up since then, and damn. There are some luxury apartments around here. My apartment is not. My apartment is just old, which isn’t to say that a construction crew couldn’t turn it luxury. Next to my apartment is a small clump of one story housing with corrugated steel roofs. The walls appear to be concrete, and therefore I’m thinking it’s not a real slum, whose house walls would be made of plastic or more corrugated steel. But anyway, when I stand on one of the two balconies of my 3rd floor (it would be the 4th floor in the U.S.) apartment, and look over the one-story housing clump, I can see into another apartment tower, and I see bourgeois appointments, complete with a huge flat screen tv hanging on the wall. So Bandra is

Probably the most narrow street I've ever walked on. This is in Bandra Village. Vinod (l) Mritunjay (r) at Vinod's Babu. I told him I was going to take his picture and he insisted on dressing up. Usually he just wears gym shorts and a tank top. A few days before, he turned the television onto How I Met Your Mother, which was not dubbed or subtitled, and he said, "I like." On Saturday night he watched the Miss U.S.A. pageant. Notice the picture of the guy over Babu's shoulder. That's the Parsi godfather character. That same picture is in every room in the guesthouse. Cows just be walkin' down highways here. Rickshaws taken from the back of a rickshaw. Wishful thinking and creative Indian English. Zebra crossing would be a crosswalk, and an Indian would never use one on purpose. This building and billboard is across the street from my guesthouse. Shooutout at Lokhandwala is the most massive hit of the summer so far, and my guesthouse is in Lokhandwala. Makes

Never before has it been more obvious to me that I am of northern European descent. My eyes itch, I have heat rashes, and now heat stroke. It’s hot here, man. Northern Europeans were meant to do things like eat dinner on patios and go snow skiing. Right now I’m thinking a summer internship in Geneva sounds pretty good. I found an apartment. It’s in Bandra Village. See if you can picture this. Bandra was a Catholic village north of Bombay. Eventually Bombay grew north to swallow this village of Bandra, surrounding the village with modernity – or the relative modernity of India. I live down a narrow village lane. There are small shops and crucifixes standing at most intersections. If France was this Catholic, it’d be like I’m living in a French village. In searching for this apartment, I spent my day walking from one place to another and then another place to another, during the hottest hours of the sun. I walked to the landlord’s, the apartment, the landlord’s, a coffeeshop to seal the

To my loyal readers Aunt Marti and Erica, Happy Birthday.

It’s been hard as hell for me to find a place to live for the summer. The guesthouse cannot be permanent. It is not for trainees. It is for investors and managers who come from Marico’s far flung offices. But no one has been here while I’ve been here. I’m experiencing what’s known as a landlord’s market. The landlords are holding the power because the whole world has designs on this city. The City of London is even opening a branch office here to encourage economic ties with this, India’s financial capital, and London, the world’s financial capital. No one wants to rent to someone for just two months. Get this: Landlords, real estate brokers, and credit grantors don’t want to work with lawyers because they think we’ll use the law to swindle them. I can’t tell the real estate broker tomorrow that I’m a lawyer.

Vinod, Mritunjay, and I went Punjabi tonight. Vinod and I each drank two Foster’s beers. That’s Australian for beer, maybe you heard. The restaurant was called Urban Tadka, a Punjabi “bestro” – that’s Indian English for you – contraction for best bistro. My friends described it as the kind of place one could pull off the highway to eat in Punjab. In my head I called it a Punjabi roadhouse. Before dinner, I ate some raw sugar cane. It was a small piece, cut from the large cane stalk. One must peel off the husk before munching on the innards. The cane is very woody, and you just chew out the juices and are left with some flattened woody strands. Then we had some spicy grilled vegetables. One eats spicy dishes first, and then the following dishes will be less spicy, to soothe the palate. We had rotis, including a buckwheat roti. Roti is the unleavened bread one uses to eat with – I’m not really into forks anymore – when in India, do as the Indians do. You just scoop up the slop with the b

In the elevator with my boss, Vinod, and Mritunjay, leaving work, my boss patted my stomach and said, “How is the stomach of steel?” It’s getting a little soft I said. I’ve been eating a lot here. At meals, everyone insists I eat more and eat more, and people are always offering more, and in an effort to not be rude or difficult, I don’t turn down the offers. Things came to a head two nights ago at dinner when everyone else was done eating, and it was just Mritunjay, me, and my boss’s wife left at the table. She offered me more food. I was stuffed, but I didn’t yet know how to say no. I hesitated, and she said I didn’t have to take more if I didn’t want more. I told her I wasn’t sure if that would be rude. Mritunjay said it’s a compliment to leave food on your plate, but also a compliment to clear your plate. I said no more food please, and I told her of my difficulties with saying no. Later she told me there was a funny look of fear on my face, when I looked out across a table still h

I’ve been thinking about becoming a Hindu, or if not a Hindu, just joining a Ganesh worshipping cult. Ganesh appears to be the most popular Hindu god in all of India. Ganesh is Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s favorite god. He keeps a shrine to Ganesh in the Kwik-E-Mart. When Apu got married, Homer put on an elephant head to impersonate Ganesh. (I think Homer nearly ruined the wedding, falling over stuff with the elephant head covering his eyes). I mainly just like Ganesh because he’s kind of funny and cartoon looking, plus people here love him. My boss has a Ganesh rendering in a frame on his wall in his home's living room. Ganesh, my coworker, has a Ganesh rendering hanging from the wall at his desk. Vinod and my boss both have Ganesh statues on the dashboards of their cars. There’s a Ganesh in the lobby of my office. I saw a Ganesh painted onto the middle of a rickshaw windshield – that has to negatively affect your field of vision, man. And there’s a Ganesh in the elevator of the offic

I was having tea with two of my coworkers in the cafeteria of my office building. There are large windows all along the exterior walls, all were wide open, a breeze was flowing through, and we had a view of Mumbai proper across Mahim Bay. I pointed out the window and told my coworkers that I had walked down there on the shore of the bay, which is also on the “wrong side” of a highway, on my first morning in Mumbai. This was my ill-fated “jogging” adventure – the one where I walked around lost for almost 3 hours. My coworkers were surprised I had gone down there and said don’t go down there after dark. It’s not safe. On this wandering adventure I could tell I was on the “wrong side” of the highway, and there was a tunnel under the highway to get to the “right side.” It was a long tunnel, full of trash and a few people sleeping on the ground, and I was like, “Shit, what’s going to be on the other side.” I walked right out into a slum. I was wearing my dorky jogging shorts and running sho

We worked till 8:45 tonight, and around then we got food from Karachi. An executive guy – I forget his name, these Indian names are usually hard for me to remember – said, “Do they make steel in Pittsburgh?” Yes. “And your stomach must be made of steel too.” This is because I eat everything put in front of me. Indians are always worried I can’t handle the spice and fiber – but no bowel problems yet. I got the steel stomach, yo. Anyway, I was thinking to myself that I would go home and skip dinner. As usual, Vinod rode to Juhu with me and my boss, and my boss took us for a Formula-1 race car ride through the slow crush of traffic, but Mritunjay came with us too. I saw two cows pulling a rickety cart in rush hour traffic on Linking Road, which is the hottest shopping street in Bandra – Bandra being probably Mumbai’s hottest shopping district. (Rach, I’ll be going back there to buy you something) My coworkers all do a lot of discussion in Hindi, so I miss out on a lot of what they say. I

There is a restaurant that my coworkers and I get takeout from for afternoon snacks. It is called Karachi. At lunch we talked about going to Karachi to eat for dinner. I said, “You don’t mean go to Pakistan, right? You mean the restaurant.” My four Indian colleagues looked around at each other, then Mritunjay said with a small laugh in his voice, “Generally, Indians hate Pakistan.” I've been to Pakistan.

There has been a spate of domestic help killing their employers. According to an article on the website of CNN-IBN, which is, I think, Indian CNN, employers sometimes won’t let the help out of house, won’t let the help ever see their parents or their children, won’t help them to attain education for their children. And employers look for excuses to beat the help. No wonder Babu smiles when he sees me. A former domestic servant, Baby Haldar, has written a book, A Life Less Ordinary, about the “experience and horrors” of being a domestic servant, and it has been a bestseller in India. Nevertheless, this morning as I was sitting at the table reading the newspaper, and I heard Babu in the kitchen frying some potatoes for me, I was thinking that this isn’t so bad. Those fried potatoes with soy nuts aren’t so bad either.

We worked from 8:30am to 10:00pm or so. My company is closing a deal where we’re going to start exporting some of our beauty and food products to Denmark. With the time difference between India and Denmark, later hours were needed for the faxing and communicating to get things done. We get some take out snacks every evening in the office around 5 – partly because people eat dinner later here, like 10 or past – and they tithe us over. Tonight we had them at 8:45, and I ate a lot. I didn’t want any dinner. I got home around 10:45, Babu opened the door, and he looked genuinely happy to see me. He said, “Guda evanging,” and smiled when he let me in. I told him, “No dinner.” I went to the bathroom, washed up for bed, came out, and he was sitting at the table where I normally sit, eating what looked to be my portion of rice and his portion of rice off a plate. I mean this was a major mound of rice. He was hunched over his plate and eating with his fingers and watching Hindi music videos. He

Seeing these people in the streets so poor, all these people setting up their shabby stalls hocking whatever they can, these road workers shoveling concrete with their bare feet, not to mention these massive slums, as the Indians call their shantytowns, and the little slums set up on sidewalks and in alleyways – seeing all of this on my way to work, I was thinking of how my Mumbaiker acquaintances and my guidebooks are so fond of saying how little street crime there is in Mumbai, how we’re not in danger when walking down the street, how these suburban kids in Lockhandwala are joking with each other as they walk right past a slum. Why aren’t these slums overrun with drug crime like the favelas of Brazil or the inner cities of the U.S.? Is this just not the Indian way? Is it that the Indian way is to work hard instead of pursuing crime’s quick buck? But isn’t selling drugs also hard work? I mean, it’s risk your life work. Maybe it’s because Indians don’t take as easily to recreational d

My company has offered us employees free tickets to a play: “When God Said Cheers,” “an intelligent comedy that makes you laugh and think at the same time! What happens when the man sitting next to you trying to snatch your drink happens to be God??!! When God Said Cheers!! is all that and a lot more.” The Statesman in New Delhi called it “A very interesting dialogue between Man and God.” The flyer goes on to say that the play “has been performed successfully in Hindi and in English.” I’m telling you, it’s a unique brand of English here. Verdict: I’ll go to the play if my coworkers do.

I took a rick to Vinod’s apartment where my boss picked us both up. In front of Vinod’s house there was a boy (of about 12 years) with an improvised stall set up on the sidewalk. He had an old dirty iron, and he was ironing clothes. The iron was a flat piece of metal, with sides on top tall enough that hot coals can be put in. There was also a handle. It basically had the shape of a modern American iron, except that it was all dirty black metal. All up and down the sidewalks there are stalls set up, or ladies sitting with baskets in front of their laps. All manner of goods are sold. Packaged goods even. Lots of produce – squashes, onions, tomatoes. I wonder if the produce came from the countryside earlier in the morning. Those people musta woke up early to get it to the sidewalk by 8am. (Keep in mind, this city is filled with strugglers from the countryside, here to earn money, and they sleep on sidewalks or live in shanties; these are barely city folk; they’re really country folk.) Th

Babu watched cheesy Hindi music videos while I ate breakfast and read the Times of India this morning. This is a pretty big step, for him to hang in the same room as me. Usually he serves me my meal, then makes himself scarce, then returns periodically to make sure I’m still doing well. I would communicate to him that I don’t care if he watches videos or even if he eats with me, but I, of course, cannot tell him this because he doesn’t speak English. Alas, when the music video show was over, he put the tv on Seinfeld, not dubbed, but the original English version. I guess he did that on account of me, thinking I wanted to watch it. It was a pretty funny one, though. Jerry’s girlfriend works sells paper goods, but she wouldn’t spare any tissues for Elaine. So then Elaine stole all the toilet paper at Monk’s from the lady’s room while Jerry’s girlfriend was going to the bathroom. Of course, this girlfriend was actually right in the middle of becoming an ex-girlfriend, as Jerry had just mo

Shoot Out at Lokhandwala – tagline: “based on true rumors.” Based on true rumors, huh? Indian English is an interesting variety. This is one of the hugest movies yet of the summer, and I’ve read more than one article in the Times of India reporting that this person or that person portrayed in the movie is upset because he or she says that’s not how it really went down – the story” based on true rumors.” Although the larger suburban region that houses my hood is called Andheri, my immediate vicinity is called Lokhandwala. I think this movie is about an “encounter” with the police. An encounter is where the police get the gangster they’ve been chasing, then shoot him, and plant a gun. Encounters are apparently quite common. And these Mumbaikers are fascinated with the gangsters of Mumbai. The most famous gangster is probably Ibrahim Dawood, and I think he has left Mumbai for Dubai. The business of these gangsters is extortion – extortion of whoever is known wealthy. These gangsters bankr

Wouldn’t you know I’d be holding it down in Mumbai by now? Today: got to work on my first try, fended off beggars, studied the Indian Constitution, kicked it with coworkers, had some Kingfisher beer at a lawyer’s apartment, got toothpaste, now Babu is cooking me dinner. I might not really be holding it down, but at least three different beggars were hitting me up today when I was in the back of rickshaws, and none of them paid me any extra time cause of my pasty face. After work I walked through a busy traffic circle, dodging cars from all sides and them dodging me. I mean, there were cars coming from every which way, and I crossed at least 7 lanes of converging and diverging traffic. This is just how it’s done in India. I’d say walking through traffic like this is manly, but there was a teenage girl walking with me. It was a rush at least. The streets and even the highways always got people walking amongst the traffic. I hadn’t done any shopping on my own yet, but after braving the in

I ventured out to Mocha (you know, “coffee and conversations”). I am for sure being a pretty big pussy, thinking that everyone is always staring at me. Maybe people here im Mumbai glance a little, but it’s not like anyone is hassling me, except for that kid that latched onto my shirt. I do have a bad memory of the day I walked down 125th St. in Harlem and someone yelled, "Damn! Now that's a white boy!" Blonde hair, I guess. Whites have a long history of showing up at places where they’re in the minority: Western Africa, India, China, the Americas. Trouble is, wherever they showed up in the past, they subjugated everyone. (The commies among us would argue that capitalism is a further subjugation of everyone not-white – “take $.20/day to make these shoes, and I’m a buy a Park Avenue Penthouse!”) I’m reminded of what the Chinese used to call the goofy ass Westerners (with what the Chinese thought were goofy clothes, long noses, ugly light-colored hair, horrible body odor): w

This Indian dude in Mumbai, Tony (the one who likes Bryan Adams), has been helping me along. I knew he was going to offer me a lot of help, so I brought him an iPod Shuffle, thinking it would be a lot cheaper in the U.S., and that it would be a hot, hot item here in Mumbai. This iPod is no longer in my suitcase. My suitcase didn’t come with me on my plane from Amsterdam, and my bag went through customs without me. KLM delivered it to me about 36 hours after I got to India. I could tell from the disheveling in my bag that someone – I assume customs – had rooted through it. And the iPod Shuffle is gone. I’ll drop an email to KLM when I find the Internet. Piece of crap.

Babu made me breakfast, and I’m planning to venture to another coffee shop today to see if they have wireless. CCD didn’t. I kind of like it up in my safe flat (guesthouse). I’m always so embarrassed by my pasty ass in the street.

Adding to the haphazard feel of Bandra is that roads are all dug up. The Times, a major Mumbai newspaper, reports that close to 35 percent of Mumbai’s roads are dug up (suburbs included). I’m guessing this has something to do with India’s growing economy. There’s money now to fix roads. Good roads are needed if investment is ever to be had. Et cetera. The fact that so many roads are dug up is a problem because these monsoon rains are coming in a few weeks.

The city doesn’t necessarily smell that bad, but this morning I’m sitting by my open window in my bedroom, thinking before it gets too hot I’m going to get some fresh air in here. I’m on the 9th floor, but occasionally there is still a stank wafting in. Even though there are at least four empty beds here at the guesthouse and two couches, Babu slept on a blanket on the tile floor. I guess this is just the way it is.

I heard what sounded like a car crash outside my window this morning. I’m on the 9th floor overlooking a major road and intersection. I looked out my window and saw that a rickshaw got smoked in a hit and run. It’s bound to happen. Riding in rickshaws, already I’ve been involved in two incidents where my rickshaw came to a screeching halt to avoid an accident. These streets are chaos, and every man for himself. Most intersections don't have traffic lights, and people pull out into them hoping some one stops. There are always walking people weaving in and out of traffic. Traffic is always trying to bunch up as tight as possible. The traffic and driving manners here make New York look like an army falling into orderly formation. Makes Paris looks like an army with lesser discipline falling into orderly formation. I don’t think anyone was hurt in the accident. These autorickshaws are three-wheelers. Someone kicked the front wheel back into place, and some guys helped push the rickshaw

Lonely Planet Mumbai says that over 60% of Mumbaikers live in shantytowns. My company is letting me stay at their guesthouse for a few days. It’s actually a rather posh flat in what is supposed to be a rather posh suburb, Andheri. Bollywood stars supposedly live around here, and on the way here my Indian friend told me we passed the compound where Mr. Khan, the man who married Aishwaya Rai, supposedly lives. So it probably is a posh address. I mean, there are three coffee shops at this intersection, and only the moneyed and leisured can waste their time there, you know, having conversation. I went walking again yesterday, which was Saturday, and of course, less than a block away from my building are two different shantytowns. I walked past them. Also walking past them also looked to be lots of well-to-do Indian teenagers, probably bored and just hanging out on a Saturday afternoon. But really, the poor and rich are always in a mix, like it ain’t no thang. I saw two Abercrombie and Fitc

Dude, you should see me cross the street. I act fearless. Dude, I got to. If I don’t, I’d never get across the street, or I’d look timid, therefore also looking like I just don’t fit in. Cross walks barely exist. Jay-walking through thick traffic is how it’s done. And you just gotta trust drivers won’t hit you. Sometimes you man up and just fucking step out in front of a car or autorickshaw and you just know he’s going to stop or at least swerve. Dude, I’ve gotta get cross the street, and I don’t want to look like a big pussy.

I took another cold shower tonight. I turned only the hot water on, and I turned it on full blast, but the water was still cold. At my hotel the past two nights, I also took cold showers, confronted with the same problem: hot water all the way up, water still cold. I have a few theories about this. 1. there is some sort of switch that turns the hot water heater on, and I don’t know which switch it is; my room here, and my hotel room, and their bathrooms, all had more switches than I was able to ascertain functions for 2. this is as hot as water gets, which doesn’t appear to be any hotter than straight cold water 3. there actually is no hot water, stupid, this country doesn’t waste energy as obscenely as the U.S. – but that being said, there is a hell of a lot of air conditioning in this city, which leads me to guess this city is using a lot, a lot of electricity So, to repent of my guilt for using so much energy on air conditioning, maybe it’s ok I’m taking cold showers. A cold shower

Indians tend toward being very religious. My autorickshaw driver today kissed his fingers and stuck his hands out the window when some trailer with a godess shrine on it drove by. I also saw some lady who, while walking by a Catholic church, stopped to close her eyes, bow her head, cross herself, then casually keep walking. There are a lot of Catholics in Bandra. Lots of Catholic Churches. I told an autorcikshaw driver that I wanted to go to the Met Building, to go to work. He said, “McDonalds’?” No, Met. “Oh.” Then he took me to Mount Mercy Catholic Church.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, these Zoroastrians were fleeing Persia where they were being persecuted by Muslim Persians. These Zoroastrians that would become Parsis fled to India, and Mumbai has a somewhat significant Paris community. Signifigant because they have a way of being successful in their ventures, and sometimes famous. I believe Freddy Mercury was a Parsi. I don’t exactly understand my guesthouse arrangement. It is my company’s guesthouse, but I guess it’s owned by some Parsi guy. His name is on the front door (but so is my company’s also), and there is some Persian (I’m guess Persian, and not Arabic) script above the front door. Also, there is this picture of this dude in all the rooms, and a huge picture in the living room. This dude looks almost white. My Indian friend told me he is like a godfather to the Parsi people.

Hey, yo, I went to Pakistan. My flight couldn’t land in Delhi because there was bad weather, and the airport was too busy anyway. So, our plane circled for a while, but started running out of fuel, so we went and landed in Lahore, Pakistan. We couldn’t get off the plane, however, and the airport at Lahore kind of looks like every other airport I’ve ever seen. Plus, I wasn’t sitting by a window, and it was dark outside. While in Lahore, our plane broke down, and according to our captain, there are lots of legal documents involved with fixing a Dutch airliner in Pakistan. Lots of faxing back and forth of forms. By this point, I had been traveling for, I don’t remember, 20 hours. I was not caring about a whole lot. The Indian dude next to me had just graduated from an LLM program at Vanderbilt Law School. He was throwing back the Chinese beer. I didn’t have the energy to talk to him. I was thinking to myself, “I remember when I used to like drinking beer. Like, 14 hours ago.” Sampling Mul

It is hot here. There is also just a general film in the air, probably dust and pollution, and this film makes you always want to be drinking water. Luckily, there seems to always be servant boys around to be bringing you water. Well, not everywhere, but at restaurants, at work, at my guesthouse, at my hotel. Pitchers and water glasses are a common fixture of rooms. As hot as it is here in Mumbai, it’s only a few degrees hotter than St. Louis during the hottest weeks of the year, and everyone around here says Delhi is about 5 degrees Celsius hotter than this. Suckers.

I’ll tell you what I’m loving: Timbaland “Shock Value.” Especially “The Way I Are,” “Give it to Me,” and “Bombay.” It’s my favorite album since Röyksopp “The Understanding.” Mumbai, however, as gauging from last night’s party, is all about their electronic dance remixes of cheesy 80s songs.

Among the bourgeoisie – with whom I’m currently trying to blend my white ass – coffee bars are popular. I’m staying in this upscale suburb this week, and there are three coffee chains at this major road intersection outside my building. Mocha, Café Coffee Day (CCD), and Barista. Mumbai is hot and humid, and I’m going to propose two theories that partly explain why these bourgeois Mumbaikers like to drink coffee in this climate. 1.) Starbucks is of course phenomenally popular in the U.S. and U.K. People all over the world, especially places populated by lots of people who have been to the U.S. and U.K. or have family and friends there (i.e. India, from which comes the India Diaspora), like to do as those Anglo-Saxons do. And for whatever reasons Starbucks is popular among the bourgeoisie of the U.S. and U.K., these coffee chains are popular among the bourgeoisie of Mumbai. Here I could say something about middle-class aspirations being the great cultural leveler, instead of blaming cult

I asked my Mom what the bug is that gives travelers diarrhea. She said something, probably jokingly, about Montezuma’s Revenge. What exactly is Montezuma’s Revenge? I’d guess it was some sort of diarrhea inducing bug that the conquistadors got in Mexico. No Revenge for me yet, although the closest came after I ate half a large Pizza from Pizza Hut. A few notes about my pizza: 1. it was what we’d call a “vegetable special” pizza in America; here, it was called a Jain special 2. it tasted just like a Pizza Hut pizza from the U.S. (I’d imagine Pizza Hut takes considerable efforts in buying it’s grains, produce, and cheese, so that everything will bake together to taste just this way) 3. the Indian large size pizza is somewhere slightly smaller than an American medium

I’m a little uncomfortable with skinny dudes always standing around waiting on me. I’m staying at my company’s guest house, and these dudes are always just waiting to do something for me. These Indians don’t think much of it. Oh, you need some water? Babu! Water! Or however you say that in Hindi. (At work, water, coffee, or tea is as easy as dialing 333 on the phone, and a pantry boy will bring what I want) At my guesthouse, I come out of my bedroom to blow my nose in the bathroom and Babu is watching tv. When I come out of my room he jumps up and looks at me. Dude, even if I wanted you to do something for, you couldn’t understand me He doesn’t speak English. Luckily, after eating a Pizza Hut pizza, I was able to explain that the toilet paper was all gone, and one of the dudes got some more for me. Crisis averted. So, now I want to leave my room and go get coffee. This is a big deal because it involves a white guy venturing out to the sweltering streets. But I also just feel awkward wi

That was what Canada told the U.S. in the South Park Movie. When I make a phone call on my cell phone here, there is a song that plays for a few seconds instead of hearing the other person’s phone ringing. And so far, every phone call that I’m made on my cell has been none other than Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69.” My friend here asked me, “Have you heard of this singer Bryan Adams?” “Are you serious?” “We love him.” I wasn’t going to dance last night, but all my coworkers got so fired up once “Karma Chameleon” came on, everyone insisted that truly, this was the song to dance to.

And at the party, some young dude, who supposedly has studied the science of palm reading, read my palm. I forget what he said, something like I had health problems in the last few years – not true at all – and trouble would besiege me between the ages of 45 and 50. 13 is a lucky number for me. 2 is not. I’m going to live to be in my 70s. I’ve lost love. This dude wasn’t a coworker but someone hired for the party. He wore some kind of white Arab-looking skullcap and had orange paint between his eyes and on his earlobes.

I’m pretty much just eating, drinking, and trying whatever I see other people eating, drinking, or trying. I even danced with my boss, a middle-aged dude. Hey, that’s what everyone else was doing, and when in Mumbai, do as the Mumbaikers do. I had this theory that if I ate less food I would have a lesser chance of getting a bug that would upset my g-I. I also heard a lot of people tell me to not drink the water. “Don’t let them tell you that they drink it every day and they’re fine. They’ve been drinking it their whole lives and are used to it.” Well, I’m just doing whatever anyone else is doing. If my friends or coworkers are drinking it, I’m drinking it. I went to this work party last night, and everyone just kept telling me to eat this, eat this, so I ate everything, and maybe I’m going to put on weight in India instead of losing it. And even though meat has a greater chance of making someone sick, and an Indian told me to avoid meat during these hot months in Mumbai, my coworkers

Mumbai is a huge city. I haven’t even been into Mumbai proper yet. But the suburbs appear to just keep going and going. And to go into Mumbai proper, that seems like a world away. I look at the map, and I see all these tourist sights in South Mumbai – things the British built back in the day, mainly – and those things seems almost a world away. I could take a rickshaw or a cab, but with this always gridlocked traffic, it would take so long to get there. Hours maybe. And it would be hot. Riding in the back of a rickshaw in this heat all the way down there would feel like a full day of work. There is no subway, but there is a railway system. Indians in America tell me to not take the trains. If you’ve seen pictures or videos of old-looking trains with Indian men hanging out the doors and from the windows, you’ve probably seen the Mumbai suburban rail trains. A front page article in the Wall Street Journal in May said it was the deadliest train route in the world, something like 1300 pe

Dude, there are a lot of people here. Upon leaving the airport in Mumbai, the streets appear to an American as complete chaos. There are so many people here, there are even walking people crammed between the cars gridlocked into the traffic. And there are no lines on the streets because the cars, rickshaws, and cabs have to cram up into the tightest possible. There is no space here to waste.

I made a whirlwind tour of Missouri and Iowa last week, saying bye to lots of relatives before I go to Bombay for the summer. Fayette My Great Uncle Bob is a 78-year-old retired farmer, still living in his same farm house outside of that small, small town, Fayette, Iowa. He's growing asparagus and rhubarb this summer. He's got bad knees. One of my aunts said to him, "Why don't you pick us some asparagus?" and he said, "You can pick it your god damn self. I 'bout killed myself yesterday out picking some for myself." He wasn't mad. He's just not a delicate man. When there's a lull in conversation, he says "Yup," and then repeats part of what he just said. For instance, had there been a lull in conversation after the asparagus request, he probably would have said something like, "Yup. 'bout killed my back." He's also fond of the mysterious word used by the elderly in Iowa, "pretnear." I think it's a