Going anywhere by myself in India is an adventure.
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 appearing more to me to be the upmarket neighborhood it was touted to be. When you’re Indian, you’re used to this madness in the street. Plus, you don’t have to deal with it as much. You’re driven or you drive. And servants run your errands.
I live, let’s say, 1,000 ft. from the seashore. Tonight after work I walked there and walked along the esplanade. I lived on an esplanade once before. It was in New York, and the esplanade was on the Hudson River. There were a lot more people on the Bandra esplanade. You can’t go anywhere in Mumbai without the place being overrun with people. There are a lot of people here. This esplanade was my destination on my first morning in India when I got lost. Remember that I saw lots of toolbags dressed like me on the Esplanade, but most of the rest of the adventure was spent lost in more run down parts of town. I saw mainly middle class people. Girls were more usually in pants and shirts rather than salwar kameez or saris. Something about the middle-classes aspiring toward the West.
The sea here has a large tidal change. The tide was partway out tonight, and when the tide goes out in Bombay, you’re left with trash on rocks. The rocks are black, and I wonder if they’re black from deposited filth or because they are just a black variety of rock. Also exposed by the low tide were large drain pipes running from under the shore. I’m guessing they dump either sewage or storm water into the sea.
I saw some couples sitting on the stone wall, leaning on each other. That can be a dangerous proposition in India. Every once in a while, moral police like to put these kids in check. I don’t think most people take this too serious, though. There were lots of middle-class kids goofing around and middle-age people taking their elderly relatives out for walks. Like all over Mumbai, I saw young men holding hands. I don’t know why they do this. Maybe it’s tradition from their village. They’re almost definitely not gay because being gay can get you a quicker and stricter punishment than kissing on a girl in public. I also saw a group of boys and young men washing from buckets out on the rocks. At the end of the Esplanade there was, of course, a small slum. I guess if you’re going to live in a shanty, you might as well live on the shore.
There was a breeze coming off the sea, but the lingering humidity left it feeling hot, and I of course got sweaty. The monsoon hit Kerela, in the southwest of India, this morning. On the news there were people standing in the rain singing their favorite rain songs.
I went into a store that sold beer. It felt a little scandalous in teetoling India, and the store was run down. I think the men working at the counter – let’s call ‘em beer wallahs – were Nepalese, and I also think that the Nepalese here have a reputation for being really poor strugglers.
Also, for the first time, I bought from a street vendor with no Indian friends to help me. I got 6 apples for 100 rupees, and 6 mangoes for 120 rupees. 100 rupees is $2.50. 120 rupees is $3.00. I may have gotten ripped off, but these prices aren’t bad by U.S. standards. I’ll ask at work tomorrow, and if I did get ripped off, it will give my coworkers something to make fun of me about. Making fun of me for being a foreigner gives us a lot to talk about.
Now I’m sitting in my apartment, sweating, drinking a Kingfisher beer, wearing just my boxer briefs. The ceiling fan helps a little bit. From the low-rise housing under my balcony, I can smell cooking spices blowing into my window. I’m watching lawyers on the television news slapping a young man they tied to a tree outside of a courthouse in Agra.
Last night, my first night here at my apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I got bit by mosquitoes all night. My brilliant plan for sleeping tonight is that there just won’t be any mosquitoes, and I’ll sleep better. You realize there’s no air-conditioning in here, right? It’s ok, the monsoons are coming.
I live, let’s say, 1,000 ft. from the seashore. Tonight after work I walked there and walked along the esplanade. I lived on an esplanade once before. It was in New York, and the esplanade was on the Hudson River. There were a lot more people on the Bandra esplanade. You can’t go anywhere in Mumbai without the place being overrun with people. There are a lot of people here. This esplanade was my destination on my first morning in India when I got lost. Remember that I saw lots of toolbags dressed like me on the Esplanade, but most of the rest of the adventure was spent lost in more run down parts of town. I saw mainly middle class people. Girls were more usually in pants and shirts rather than salwar kameez or saris. Something about the middle-classes aspiring toward the West.
The sea here has a large tidal change. The tide was partway out tonight, and when the tide goes out in Bombay, you’re left with trash on rocks. The rocks are black, and I wonder if they’re black from deposited filth or because they are just a black variety of rock. Also exposed by the low tide were large drain pipes running from under the shore. I’m guessing they dump either sewage or storm water into the sea.
I saw some couples sitting on the stone wall, leaning on each other. That can be a dangerous proposition in India. Every once in a while, moral police like to put these kids in check. I don’t think most people take this too serious, though. There were lots of middle-class kids goofing around and middle-age people taking their elderly relatives out for walks. Like all over Mumbai, I saw young men holding hands. I don’t know why they do this. Maybe it’s tradition from their village. They’re almost definitely not gay because being gay can get you a quicker and stricter punishment than kissing on a girl in public. I also saw a group of boys and young men washing from buckets out on the rocks. At the end of the Esplanade there was, of course, a small slum. I guess if you’re going to live in a shanty, you might as well live on the shore.
There was a breeze coming off the sea, but the lingering humidity left it feeling hot, and I of course got sweaty. The monsoon hit Kerela, in the southwest of India, this morning. On the news there were people standing in the rain singing their favorite rain songs.
I went into a store that sold beer. It felt a little scandalous in teetoling India, and the store was run down. I think the men working at the counter – let’s call ‘em beer wallahs – were Nepalese, and I also think that the Nepalese here have a reputation for being really poor strugglers.
Also, for the first time, I bought from a street vendor with no Indian friends to help me. I got 6 apples for 100 rupees, and 6 mangoes for 120 rupees. 100 rupees is $2.50. 120 rupees is $3.00. I may have gotten ripped off, but these prices aren’t bad by U.S. standards. I’ll ask at work tomorrow, and if I did get ripped off, it will give my coworkers something to make fun of me about. Making fun of me for being a foreigner gives us a lot to talk about.
Now I’m sitting in my apartment, sweating, drinking a Kingfisher beer, wearing just my boxer briefs. The ceiling fan helps a little bit. From the low-rise housing under my balcony, I can smell cooking spices blowing into my window. I’m watching lawyers on the television news slapping a young man they tied to a tree outside of a courthouse in Agra.
Last night, my first night here at my apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I got bit by mosquitoes all night. My brilliant plan for sleeping tonight is that there just won’t be any mosquitoes, and I’ll sleep better. You realize there’s no air-conditioning in here, right? It’s ok, the monsoons are coming.
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