Law, Partially

But what did I expect? I went to the Mumbai suburbs tonight and went to the biggest mall in Mumbai and a “hypermarket.” I went with my new Singapore friends. Alvin from work, his girlfriend Jingyi, and other people from their school – which is, I think, the Singapore School of Management, but they’re all undergrads. Christine was MIA. Tomorrow one of these Singapore guys is making dinner, and I’m invited. We’re having spaghetti, and no one told me to do this, but I’m going to have to figure out where to buy wine, which I’m sure will be warm. I almost figure that even if the wine isn’t warm when I buy it, it’s probably been warm at some point. It’s not easy to keep anything constantly cool here. Plus there are power outages that’ll shut fridges down. Singapore friends So these malls are a new phenomenon in India, and I saw Ruby Tuesday, Pizza Hut, Citibank, and who knows how many other American brands I didn’t see. I didn’t care to look too hard. I had a veggie pizza slice (called Jain ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...