India...Wow!

October 16

Immediately, as I sit in my seat on the Air India flight bound for Mumbai, I introduce myself to the Indian couple sitting next to me, Jude and Myrna, and discover that they are returning to Mumbai and that they’d been in Canada for a month visiting his brother who lives there. Their stay at Frankfurt Airport exceeded mine by about 12 hours!! We talk about our kids, how spent we were in the airport, and where we are going. They are surprised to hear my story of going to Tamil Nadu to see my brother’s child and her 5 kids. The flight is long, something like 8 ½ hours, and towards the end of it, I ask Jude if he would mind talking to the guy in the airport at Mumbai who’d find me a hotel. He says “No problem!” and I express my utmost thanks.

When we arrive at the airport, we’re treated to a half-hour of waiting with the power going on and off while they set up the gate from which we’ll exit, and when we get off we still have to fill out a declaration slip. Since I put no address on mine, the customs duty officer starts to hassle me but Jude tells him I am going with him. Since I’ve only got that heavy little suitcase, I have to wait for all six of their bags to arrive before we can get on the way. Once we find the guy who tells us he only has rooms for places in excess of $150, Jude says, “Come home with us. We’ll help you find a place tomorrow.” Gratefully, I accept. So, I watch him perform the same set of steps he’s told me to do: get a driver (ha! ha! I can’t see myself unflustered in that crowded lot of taxi drivers numbering a least 250 at 1:00 a.m.), bargain for the price, permit the driver to go in and get the paper the price is written on ok’d by the police, and then go off, after getting the piece of paper ok’d again by the police at the exit. To make matters even worse, Jude and Myrna live in I guess what you’d call the suburbs, Boriuli or Kandivalli, at least 45 minutes away; I have to get a map tomorrow. We leave the airport with two bags in the trunk and four on top, and I’m marveling at this feeling of being in Mumbai in the mist of early, early day - looking at the shanties, people sleeping on the street, cows roaming - when we get a flat tire! Myrna and I get out of the car and Jude waits for the driver to remedy the situation: either fix the flat or find us another cab. So, he comes back in ten minutes with another cab and takes us to their apartment in Kandivalli, where we all take showers and fall asleep exhausted, somewhere past three a.m.

When I open my eyes, Myrna is standing in the doorway of the bedroom we’ve shared and I ask her the time. “Two o’clock,” she exclaims. “Oh, no! You’re kidding,” I say. I
get up and say, “Good morning, er – afternoon, Jude.” We excitedly chat about a few things and unsuccessfully try to hook me up on their cable which makes me wonder what and where those tiny ants were and came from that I found crawling in my backpack… I look on Myrna’s laptop at the Internet and find a hotel which won’t cost me over $50 or so and be where I can find a more inexpensive place, and then he suggests we get going to get me some money at the bank, have lunch and get me on an auto-rickshaw to the hotel. We have lunch (fish curry, dal, rice and chapattis) and then their daughter, Sierra, calls via Skype from Dubai, where she’s a stewardess for Qatar Airways. Their daughters are lovely; Madeline, greeted us earlier when we first got in. She’d been staying at their house while they were away, and her husband’s away with the boys in Goa for a few days. Quickly, Jude and I go to the bank and oddly enough I can only get out about 4,600 rupees, roughly 120 dollars’ worth. After showing him pictures of my kids and Jim’s family, I say goodbye to Myrna and we leave, and he arranges a ride in an auto-rickshaw and I proceed through rush-hour traffic to a place called Hotel Classic. I pay the driver 200 rupees and enter the hotel, but they have no space for me. So, he ships me to the Jewel Hotel, and arranges for a ride for me. The driver asks me for a tip, of course…

Upstairs, in the room on the fifth floor, and certainly no way worth the rupees a $50 hotel should rate, I am washing up, and have the t.v. set on, when the lights go out! After a couple of minutes, the lights come back on, but I can’t get the air-conditioner back on, so I call the reception area and am told that it should be working now. I capture the attention of the bus boy and he turns it back on… Out of the corner of my eye, I notice something moving on the ceiling near the drapes. It’s a salamander or a chameleon or a ... gecko?

It is dark now by now. I ask downstairs if they have a map and they say, “Oh, madam, it’s too late now! You should try tomorrow, in the morning.” I go out and procure a pack of Camels for 90 rupees (which I mistakenly hear as “nineteen” rupees!) and buy a bottle of water for 20 rupees when upon opening it, discover that it’s not “mineral” h20… Wonder what that slight feeling of disapproval I felt was as I left the hotel?