Back in the motherland!
Man, it’s great to be back in Mumbai. I missed the city and my friends and family here!
My flight landed at just after 1 A.M., but by the time I got my bag and got through the various immigration and Swine Flu checkpoints (yeah), it was about 2:30 A.M. I called my friend Mahzarine, at whose house I’m staying for several days, and discovered that she’d had to rush off to Pune (a nearby city) for a couple of days and that she had mis-read my email and thought I was arriving the previous night. Late-night international arrivals are a pain in the backside for the local hosts at the best of times, but she had stayed up almost the whole previous night waiting for me to arrive before she finally got on her 5 AM train to Pune. She was really gracious about it but I’m sure she had a miserable night.
Speaking of gracious hosts, my hosts here (Mahzarine’s family) have been just incredible. Besides making sure I was comfortable when I got to their house at 3:30 AM, her brother had a pre-paid local cell phone ready for me when I arrived, a huge lifesaver and convenience that allowed me to get going on visa stuff immediately the next morning and has called me several times a day to check on me, as has Mahzarine from Pune, and even one of Mahzarine’s friends. Her mom has kept me well-fed and looked-after. And I’ve a mango with my breakfast of scrambled eggs on both days, which is possibly the best way to start the day ever. (For those of you who haven’t eaten an Indian mango in-season, an Indian Alphonso mango is to a regular mango what Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas is to a slot machine at a drug store in Reno, a sensory experience on a higher plane.)
Yesterday was a quintessential Mumbai experience. After a leisurely morning and a sit-down breakfast, I rushed off to run some visa-related errands, hopping from point to point in taxis that cost about 40 cents each. At about noon I was lucky to grab one of Mumbai’s new, clean, airconditioned Meru cabs I’d heard about the night before. A vastly better experience than that rickety yellow-and-black cabs – more like having a private car and driver – and only marginally more expensive. I had a long chat with the driver about the cab company, the week-long training for drivers that includes etiquitte training on how to treat passengers, the business model, and more. I kept the cab for about 2 hours, after which my fare was Rs. 220 or about $5. I was so impressed with the whole experience that I tried to tip the guy another Rs. 60 (a bit of an overtip, but he’d even run out into the rain to help me with something at one point) but he turned it down, saying it was unnecessary as I was a nice passenger and he had enjoyed chatting with me. You just can’t beat the service and the hospitality in India.
More soon!
