Hannah BW

Mumbai: Day 14

Here I am again, at the secret internet cafe down the stinky hallway on a side street. What a haunt. Today I went back to the mega-bazaar that is Crawford (I mean, Mahatma Phule) Market and surroundings. One of the really weird things about this market area is the presence of men who want to "guide" you around, who when you decline, insist they don't want money and then produce the government-issued pewter badges that label them "coolies." I won't pretend to understand, but once you get into the maze of little streets in back of Crawford Market, they disappear.

I went with two of the women I met at the hostel, and one of them pointed out as we entered the fabric market that if they hadn't been with me I would have been "eaten alive." This is true, if ''eaten alive" means "forced to buy umpteen beautiful silk saris, madam, silk saris very cheap, only 250 rupees," etc. I bought about a bajillion metres of cotton fabric. Then we wandered up to Kalbadevi Road, one side of which is lined with aluminum shops, the other with steel. I bought some stainless steel prep bowls. Old habits die hard.

Then we were hungry so we went to a restaurant where they serve unlimited Gujarati thalis. This merits a separate paragraph. They placed steel plates about 16" in diameter in front of us, then six or seven small bowls for dal, vegetables, etc went on the plates. (Etc. is code for ''I don't really know what we were eating.'') There were two men whose jobs it was to keep the bowls full, one man to give us pickles, one man to bring us the big pitcher of hot water to wash our hands, one man to show us desserts, and the roti man. The roti man was our favorite. He was clearly mocking us. He swung by the table approx. every two seconds to give us more bread. This all cost 160 rupees--4 dollars--and was delicious.

To me, the fact that there are 16 million people in this city is most evident when I'm in a place of business that is ludicrously overstaffed.

Then we went to the train station and I was going to try to buy a ticket to Agra but couldn't muster the energy (ticket buying here is really complicated). So we took a cab back and I lay in a stupor on my bed for a while. Then I took some of my fabric to the Smart & Hollywood High Class Ladies & Gents Tailor to get skirts made.

I'm beginning to wish that it would rain again. The paper says that if it doesn't rain soon there will be "water cuts"! Already sometimes when I try to shower in the middle of the day, nothing comes out, though that might be due to the construction on the second floor of the hostel. I don't ask. Today I saw two sparrows in the hallway. Nevertheless the lack of rain is good in that I still haven't figured out a proper rain-footwear situation, so we'll call it a draw.

Monsoon: 2 HBW: 1

Labels: bread, mahatma, monsoon, tailor, ugly shoes

posted by HBW @ 6:25 AM