Lazy blogger? Maybe. Busy Man? Definitely.

My last two weeks were such a whirlwind, I won’t know what to make of them until I’m safely back in the States, which will be this Sunday night for those keeping track. I’ve largely finished my project at work. I detailed the legal aspects involved in regards to Marico’s commodity import portfolio. That sounds so jargoned. But Marico imports edible oils and oil seeds. I detailed where law comes into this technical process. I made a 7 page comparative study of Indian and U.S. intellectual property law. I’ve only briefly studied American IP (intellectual property) law, so really I was newly learning laws of two countries. I finished the project despite taking a five hour lunch break today, arriving at work yesterday at 2:30pm then leaving at 7, getting tipsy last night with my Sikh friend in Chembur, a suburb more distant than Bandra, and leaving work at 3pm on Tuesday.

Why am I slacking at work? Because I am a man involved with many projects past my legal education. Disclaimer: I hope to never be called a sanctimonious environmentalist. I despise people who love to tell other people how everything they do is wrong. But there’s no doubt that India is a polluted place and that the mass of pollution produced by this country is getting absolutely larger. And Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth may paint too dire a picture of climate change (none of us know for sure; none of us can predict the future), but there is an effort by a group in the United States to get the film translated into Hindi and popularized in India. The film’s predictions aside, I think that the general population here has no idea about pollution except that it makes our noses run and our skin feel dirty. We might as well throw these ideas to the general population, maybe scare them into polluting less. Of course I know that carbon emissions may not be the cause of climate change, but I think pollution sucks, and so does wasting money on oil, and so does traffic, and so does breathing in particulate matter (things like smoke).

So I met with the Director of the Bombay Natural History Society in South Bombay about supporting the effort. This is a prestigious man in a prestigious institution, and talking to him was interesting anyway.

Yesterday and the day before I also went to St. Xavier’s College in South Mumbai to visit the Life Sciences staff. My Pittsburgh friend Kanak used to teach there and wanted me to visit, so I did, and it was interesting. St. Xavier’s is a Jesuit school in a rather leafy and well-planned-architecturally area of old British gothic-style Bombay, near the domed and spire-laden shock that is the former Victoria Terminus, now known as the Shhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Shhatrapati Shivaji was a Marathi freedom fighter long ago, and in the wave of Marathi nationalism that swept Bombay in the 90s, almost everything was named after him and other Marathi heroes. Because everyone still refers to the streets by their old British names but maps and street signs only to the new Marathi names, Mumbai navigation is difficult. St. Xavier’s is in an old Gothic series of buildings and courtyards. The labs and classrooms look old-world, with huge wooden tables, open windows and ceiling fans. The classrooms remind me of the scenes in Indiana Jones when Indiana Jones is a professor in the 40s.

A fund raising organization in Pittsburgh started a school in a slum called Sangam Nagar in Wadala East, and I visited yesterday. Wadala is on the east side of Mumbai, on the harbor, and straddles the border of Mumbai proper. This slum was in worse condition than Dharavi. The roads were like dusty mountain trails, complete with jagged rocks. I was wearing my work clothes, polished leather shoes, wool pants, pressed cotton shirt. I didn’t get the movie star reception I usually get in lesser traveled Indian realms, and I wonder if it’s because I looked like a touring politician or some other tool, rather than a cool guy. Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention to the people because I was paying such close attention to where I put my feet on the treacherous streets as I walked. The various classrooms are spread throughout the slum, and I walked through mazes of alleys not wider than my shoulders to get to them. The children learning were around kindergarten age and classes were about 20 children big. But the children in the streets – it was a Wednesday morning, a school day – were much higher in numbers. The school administrator told me that parents don’t care to send their children to school, and teachers come door to door trying to bring children into the schools. The only students in the school are the ones whose parents would actually let them go. It’s a Muslim slum, and often parents prefer to send their children to madrasas where they learn only the Koran.

Today I had a leisurely European lunch with my Singapore friends on a happenin Bandra intersection. Today they’re off to Rajasthan to make what sounds like an awesome tour of northwest India. I wasn’t expecting to make good friends in India, but I did just stumbled into them. I’ll see them again when I return to Asia to go to law school in Hong Kong. Studying law in Singapore is also a possibility.

And then there’s Mr. Zend.
Mr. Zend is a 73 year old man with Parkinson’s disease who lives down in far South Mumbai in what must today be a ridiculously expensive apartment building but what at one time was probably not so expensive. He is a baker and owns a bakery in South Mumbai, and it appears that the baking business has bestowed him with economic wealth. He is of Iranian heritage, and he is a Zoroastrian. He’s not a Parsi, although they are of the same religion. Parsi’s emigrated earlier than Mr. Zend’s clan. Zoroastrianism is the world’s oldest monotheistic faith, and there aren’t many adherents left. Mr. Zend got kicked out by his wife when he was 41, and although it’s difficult to ever make out what he’s saying, it sounds like he’s been living it up ever since. Christine used to eat lunch at the bakery, and I guess because Mr. Zend loves women, he loves Christine too. I think he also took a liking to me though.

So he invited Christine to a going away dinner on Thursday. Christine, Mr. Zend, and I had a lavishly expensive (by India standards) Chinese meal at the Golden Dragon in the Taj Mahal hotel. He showed us around the hotel after dinner. The hotel staff was like, “Is he staying here?” as he took us to the top floor and out to the guests only pool. We must’ve looked a strange crowd, a shuffling old man, a Chinese girl, and a big-headed, sunburned white boy. Chris and I then followed him on an adventure through some seedy back alleys behind the Taj Mahal Hotel. We went to the Baghdadi Café and ate some sort of custard desert. It’s a Muslim restaurant, and signs were posted all over saying that food would not be served to drunk people and that extra onions could only be had on receipt of cash. Indians love to eat raw red onions with their meals, and I’ve been eating them this summer too. (I know my mom will love that story.) Muslims at the restaurant were eating huge chunks of meat, including beef, with their fingers out of bowls of watery gravy. It was a run-down dump of a place.

We left the café and crossed the street to go down a seedy alley to a seedy liquor stand. Men were playing cards and drinking in an alcove. Other men were standing in the alley drinking beer and liquor. In India, Indians will always tell you that Indians, when they drink, drink to get drunk. And Mr. Zend bought me a Kingfisher, and I drank it standing in the alley, and he took my picture. Christine and I then followed him out of the alley, down some more roads, me still drinking that tall bottle of Kingfisher, wondering if drinking beer on the street was legal in Mumbai, and we went to a café where Mr. Zend ordered me another beer, but I paid. We then took a taxi ride to Marine Drive and went around to the other side of the Back Bay where we could see the Mumbai skyline, and the yellow lights of the other part of Marine Drive, across the Bay. The taxi took us to Mr. Zend’s house, where he told us the night was over, and Christine and I walked to Churchgate Station and took the train home. Few people were on the train, and I got a spot at the door where I could hang out and let the wind blow against my constantly sweaty face.

Christine and I went to dinner again with Mr. Zend on Saturday at a dinner club on the Harbor, down the street from the Taj. It’s called the Radio Club. While waiting for Mr. Zend, the hosts told us he used to be a boxer – he’s well-known wherever he goes. He must’ve been quite the character back in the day. I mean, he still is, but now he’s a mumbler and has Parkinson’s. He left us before dinner was over. Christine and I again walked to Churchgate, only this night we saw two people sitting on the sidewalk shooting heroin. This is the first time I’ve ever seen people shooting heroin in real life. I can’t believe they just do it on the sidewalk like that, but parts of Mumbai get sleazy after the work crowd goes home, and Amar my slum friend told me these heroin junkies don’t get arrested because the police can’t provide them with heroin, and police don’t want a withdrawing addict wreaking havoc or dying or puking in the jail.

Christine and Mr. Zend in the lobby of the Taj. Mr. Zend asked the pianist to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

Mr. Zend with some Parsi ladies. He took us into an exclusive Parsi complex of apartments with a large courtyard and a Zoroastrian fire temple. These are some old, old Mumbai families, and this is expensive property. Mr. Zend must've been quite the lady's man back in the day and still thinks he is.

Monday I was in South Mumbai meeting with my man at the Bombay Natural History Society, and Mr. Zend called and told me to meet him at the Taj. Christine had finished her summer internship and was out visiting some carved Buddhist caves in Maharashtra. So it was just myself and Mr. Zend. He bought me beer, and we sat by the pool in the courtyard of the Taj. We met up with a Parsi lady, Parvin, and went to dinner far from the Taj in an Indian restaurant. Dinner was rough because Mr. Zend had a spell where his mumbling was even more mumbled than before. I had to hold him up like a cane to walk him out of the restaurant and had to literally put his legs into the taxi. He has a helper boy, who’s actually kind of a slave. He bosses the helper boy around and always tells him to leave once we get to the Taj. But Mr. Zend and I took a taxi home, and the helper boy was at the apartment to carry him out of the cab.

And then last night I went out with my Sikh man (who doesn’t wear a turban). I was eating lunch at a coffee shop in Delhi, and a waiter asked me if I would be willing to share my table with someone. I said sure. This man named Mohinder Baines sat down and ordered beer. He asked me if I wanted some, and I wasn’t planning to have beer with lunch, but I said ok. It’s my policy to rarely turn down invitations. You never know who you’ll meet. This man ended up interesting. He had taught English in Kenya in the 70s. He said out of necessity he learned Swahili, so for those readers who wish to learn a language, drop yourself in a situation where no one speaks English, and you’ll learn the language. I thought he had said he studied at Oxford, but I was wrong. He was working in London in the 70s, not studying.

He owns a company in Bandra and invited me for drinks when we were both back in Bombay, so these drinks happened last night in Chembur, a distant suburb. My rickshaw driver got lost and dropped me off a country crossroads. I must’ve been a strange site, a white boy standing on an intersection in the middle of nowhere, but this is India, and there are always people nearby. A crowd of boys gathered round me. I had them call Mr. Baines, and they directed him how to drive to my location. So an hour and a half later we went to Mr. Baines’ gym club – it’s like a country club. I drank quite a bit of beer and he whiskey. Mr. Baines just kept throwing them at me as fast as I could rink them. We ate chicken kebabs, and we talked, and when the night was over, he hugged me and said I was his son.