Monsoon

So, WordPress for the iPhone is now, finaly working. Combined with the new cut -and-paste feature, the world is a better place.

I’m back in Mumbai and it’s the monsoon. Many people love it because it makes the city a little cooler and you’re not obliged to wear a constant patina of airborne grime. I hate it because cooler still amounts to ~30deg C and the air, already super-saturated with moisture, refuses to accept my profligate sweat donations. Leaving me in a constant state of saline mildew. 

My current taxi is holding up traffic with the rest of the city. Decorated in a graduated velure tiger stripe and a polyester geranium matrix, it sports an annimated neon Ganesh and Sai Baba orange and clear acrylic temple, an 18″ rear view mirror and a full surround-sound 5 point audio system (short of an actual head unit and a couple of speakers but repleat with plenty of wiring). It is nothing special. I suppose that the two convex mirrors screwed to the windscreen posts are a little unusual. Especially as they are both orientated so I can see the driver’s nipples (and, disturbingly, so the driver’s nipples can see me). Thus, if I wasn’t writing this, I’d probably be contemplating the eternal “why do men have nipples” question… Ha! So there – the world is a better place for a working WordPress.

Amphibious

The amphibious Fiats once again ride the waves of the Indian Ocean as the monsoon pays its regular-as-clockwork surprise visit. Catching the local authorities and their drain cleaning and building programme off guard – “But just because the Monsoon comes at the same time and the flooding happens in the same places every year, how were we to know that we couldn’t get away with sitting on our thumbs for the last 10 months?” says the minister for excuses. “Ah, but we’re used to it and we didn’t vote for you anyway – in fact, we just didn’t vote” comes the local populace popular reply.

There’s also city wide water rationing to consider as you swim to the front door and head into the shower.

Indian Road Stats

Some news from the BBC: link

Manual Wiper

If you can’t make it out, he has his windscreen wiper, arm and all, in his hand. Brilliance.

Rubber

I’m in the back of a cab now. Initially pleased because it has full set of tires and moves forward without my assistance, I now notice that it is without wipers. And it’s raining. Hard. The driver must be navigating by memory and touch (i.e. stop when you hit something) as the windscreen looks like steamed up, wet Tupperwear.

Steaming Bearings

I have been delayed for a few more days here in bBay. Which is good for the work but frankly I’ve had enough. Now the rains have come, it’s gone from 40º, dry and dusty, to 36º, humid and muddy. The temperature drop is welcome but the humidity is not. Choosing a cab in the morning is a lottery as the Italian engineered, made by Indians taxis are, as you can imagine, a little bit sensitive to damp… This trip I have had to push one cab for 400 yards to bump start it and yesterday I got out of one because I became convinced the wheel was going to fall off. That’s because it was: I had a professional look and a kick when I got out and the bearings were steaming. I also noticed that the retread had come off and we were running mostly on inner tube but that’s fairly normal. It is however like running racing slicks on a wet racetrack – lethal. So, if finding one that goes wasn’t hard enough, finding one that stops is even more of a challenge.

Relative Calm

After about 7pm the sun starts to descend, and with it the bedlam, until midnight when the city is, by Bombay standards, relativly peaceful. Less traffic, less pedestrians and, as a result, less honking. 

It’s 11:30 now and I’m in the back of my habitual taxi on the way home. I’m not sure if it’s the Beach Boys playing on the iPod, if it’s simply relative to a frantic day or if it is genuinly calm. The breeze is flowing through the window, the roads are loosly moving with cruising cyclists, a few cars and the odd truck playing with everyone’s heart beat with a tricksy manover or two.

Rubble

I’m out of the house and into the back of a cab, lady’s shirt patterns in hand, green T-shirt, black braces, jeans and a light patina of sweat. Rob’s place is up a hill in a dead end side road, so the walk to the main road is short and downhill. You pass the French international school on the way. Normally closed up, I must have arrived at drop-off time this morning. Lots of fair haired, tanned children running about, being herded by parents and teachers.

At the foot of the hill, there’s an old man that spends his nights camped out with his dog in front of a shop and his days squatting in the shade of the parked cars. He never asks and I’ve never given, but I know Rob hands him Rs10 every time he goes out to buy cigarettes – some kind of penance I guess. I think he also gets a little something from the shop and perhaps the end of day cast offs from the surrounding fruit sellers.

There are lines of them. I’ve never understood why businesses huddle together like that. I presume that the increased sales compensate for tighter competition.

Anyway, I’m now in the back of a cab, Hindi music blaring out, compeating with the horns. I’m going to meet Mani at Shamim’s. The BMCC is demolishing all the encroaching buildings along the main road by Shamim’s factory. His is just ok, but the demolition – men with hammers – has weakened his walls.

Amazingly, the job of strengthening them lays with Shamim, not the landlord. I suppose higherarchy of needs dictates that he’ll be forced to act first. He’s got all his equipment, employees and himself to protect. Seems a little out of order to me.

The whole area is now almost unrecognisable. Rubble and wood covering the ground like a bomb’s gone off. Mani tells me that they’ll clear it and put in a new road to the port. Not, I suspect, before a few places have been rebuilt.

The Spanish Inquisition

You may not expect the Spanish Inquisition, but you can be sure that Indians will be pretty damn curious.

Thus today, through some fancy footwork, I narrowly avoided questions on the cost of my phone, laptop, hotel room (twice) and my age. In turn, I resisted asking where the taxi driver had found the “Finding Nemo in Pieces” chopped-up clown fish against a sea of deep blue and green plush velvet head lining; how the five nervous looking gentlemen in the cab next to us hoped to get to their destination in one piece, when the length of string holding the evidently full gas cylinders mostly in the boot and only inches off the floor, was so clearly inadequate; and, although I’m no medical expert, perhaps rather than poking it with a stick, the gentleman should get himself along to one of the numerous free clinics and have it looked at, or at least face the wall.

I did slip however and enquired as to why all the dogs have three legs. Apparently it’s because they’ve lost one….

Helping Foot

Auto-rickshaw being pushed to the nearest gas-station / mechanic / bar…