Home again, home again, jiggety jig!

I went home (or what 'was' home), to Mumbai, to surprise my ma on her 60th birthday, and boy was she surprised! For me, it was a mixed bag - it felt fantastic to be back in familiar territory, surrounded by familiar faces, spending time catching up on the changes since I was there last. Strangely, though I do love the big bad and mad city, this time around, I found it intimidating and quite grim. I don't know why, but I feel the need to disclaimer here. I went back this time after little over a year, but the circumstances of my trip last May were different, so in reality, it's more like a year and a half since I've been back. I am not sure the city has changed much, but I think I have. I was always the first to scoff at the nouveau NRIs coming back with thick foreign accents and grumbling about the crowds and filth. Yet here I was, scared to cross the roads, not wanting to take an autorickshaw because it left me exposed to the elements, and complaining about the heat! I even actually missed being 'home' in Oxford!

It has been a very interesting journey for me. I never quite understood why Dot didn't instantly fall in love with Mumbai. After this trip, I think I am one step closer to understanding. I think when you live in Mumbai, you train yourself to shut out the squalor and hordes - it's a survival mechanism. You learn to see only the good stuff, like the 'development' and the 'economic growth'. You know you can grumble all you want but the problems are bigger than ever and are only getting worse. So you force yourself to look at the bright side, make that seemingly endless journey to work every day, spend most (or even all) of your waking (and or sleeping) hours there, and trudge back, trying very hard to enjoy the ride. The salaries are headed skyward and money makes a great insulator. As Nodot once wisely said (among other wise things he usually says), "tinted (car) windows seem to make the hovels and street-crapping urchins seem almost endearing". But what lurks under there is real and not going anywhere.

There are great aspects of Mumbai living I know I won't experience anywhere else in the world, but I'm not ready to go back in a hurry.

The Lifestyles of the Very Wet and (Therefore) Famous

Look what you get when you mix 'pissing down' weather and a hot-shot journo friend!

Be very careful of what you ask for...

... you just might get it!

In the context of the current flooding situation in England, the title of my last post is almost eerie!

Just Water Please

There's an ad that runs currently on British telly, for Oasis, a fruit-flavoured still water (though I'm not sure it really is water) which has a tag-line that reads "for those who don't like the taste of water". Pray tell, how can one not like the "taste" of water? I guess you could (by some elaborate stretch of the imagination) not like the fact that it has no taste. Other than that, I see little or no trouble with it. I can hear the collective groan from all hardest-water-in-the-universe sufferers from the south of England, but that's easily remedied by using a water filter (which I think should be something that is dealt with at the municipal corporation/district council level, but that can be the subject of a whole new blog).

It doesn't add up - all the millions of taxpayers' pounds spent on health promotion material extolling the virtues of plain old water, talking about it as being central to keeping well and fit, and on the other hand, conflicting messages coming from advertising like this. It is hard to believe that all a fruit-flavoured drink contains is fruit and water. The thing is, I am apathetic to Oasis itself, it's just the thrust of the advertising that makes me very uncomfortable.

Ruddy Stunner

Therapy

Dot got himself some new local office space and that left us with a room that looked like a tip after the office furniture had been moved out and the remnants dumped in a pile on the floor. Call us sad but we spent virtually the entire weekend going through the papers, books, CDs and various other strange-looking bits and bobs (I will post pictures to illustrate 'strange'), and I am very proud to say we now have a clean room and a blank canvas. We hope to make this a 'den'. Hope is the word. We'll see how we go. Oh, I must say we didn't spend the entire weekend cleaning - the latter half of Sunday was spent lying horizontal on the couch watching live coverage of 'The Concert for Diana'. Yes, I can see our being-sad quotient going through the roof!

It is therapeutic - cleaning, and watching pretty-young-things-in-tiny-outfits, boys-with-underwear-and-bottoms-hanging-out-of-their-jeans, and has-beens (or should it be have-beens) perform live - you should try it.

On an unrelated note, we have pinky spiky poppies in the garden now!