Hannah BW

Mumbai: Day 26

It's a good thing that I caught up on my daily journaling for days 24-25 this morning because my brain is so fried that I might not remember anything otherwise. I blame this brain condition on a combination of the weather and the sandwich that I ate for lunch yesterday (more on this later). The good news? The team of gastroenterologists living under my bed (they say hi, Mom) tell me I don't have dysentery. Just a headache and flu-like symptoms.

On Tuesday I woke up and it was monsooning again, so I caught a cab to work. As soon as I turned the corner I saw that the door was locked, so I called Pratidnya, who told me that class was cancelled because all the trains were flooded (she lives in the suburbs). Of course, by then my cab was gone. So I hitched a ride on the bus back to Colaba and spent the morning drinking coffee, reading, and making to-do lists. Then I went to see Made of Honour with a friend, which satisfied a craving for silliness.

On Wednesday it was reported that 2 people drowned in the flooding. This city is entirely incapable of dealing with its weather. The combination of hundreds of centimeters of rain with high tide is just nightmarish. I'm no structural engineer, but maybe this is an example of how letting 16 million people live on a tiny spit of reclaimed land below sea level is a bad idea. Just wondering. The afternoon teacher, Kajal, keeps warning me that now's the time to get sick. Every day in the paper there are articles about how to avoid leptospirosis (wear closed-toe shoes--impossible) and how to keep your hair dry in the monsoon (just inane). Everyone warns against eating raw fruits and vegetables. I may well return with rickets.

Which brings me to the above-mentioned sandwich. On my way back from work yesterday morning, I stopped at the Jai Ganesh snack stand and ordered a "veg cheese toast." Veg cheese toast: two slices of white bread spread with green chili, between which are thinly-sliced onion, potato, beet, tomato, pepper, and cucumber, and a generous grating of cheese, are buttered and placed on a grill. After a few minutes the sandwich is pulled off, dabbed with more butter and chili, covered in another grating of cheese, cut into nine squares, and eaten, standing, at the Jai Ganesh counter. All this for a mere 18 rupees (<50 cents).

After my afternoon class, when Kajal told me I looked washed out, I kept thinking: please don't let it be the cheese toast. It's the best snack I've found! At dinner I was told my eyes were glassy, was sent to bed, and slept for 12 hours. This morning I called in sick. When I went out for breakfast and coffee to clear my head, I was sidetracked by two men at the Gateway of India who wanted pictures with me "for their collections." Sure, whatever. Now I have to go back to bed so that I can teach fractions this afternoon. Maybe this is called "under the monsoon"?

Monday's mystery sweet is called a kachori. Hold that thought.

Labels: bread, engineers, monsoon, rain

posted by HBW @ 1:25 AM