Q: How much of India does it take to travel seven blocks?
A: Apparently, about an hour and a half, 3 phone calls, 24 bystanders, 80 rupees, about a mile of walking, and 3 separate auto rickshaws. Yeah. No joke.
My last lil' bit in Mumbai has been nice. It has been filled with winding down from my time here and winding up for my time in France. Still, much remains undone here and much is left still to figure out once I land in Paris Sunday afternoon. In my final week here spent a bunch of my time talking to folks about 'pav,' the only (somewhat) traditional leavened bread I have found here. It's essentially the same fluffy white roll that you got on your lunch tray back in elementary school, but served with a wide variety of Indian thangs instead of ranch dressing. Some come with dhals, other with curry, but my favorite was a sandwich of pav with a samosa and some chilies in the middle. A stunningly brilliant combination of fried foods and puffy, sweet bread that would make any American proud.
Overall, the last forty-eight hours I spent here exemplified the highs and lows of my time here quite nicely. On Friday I had a swell day. Was able to catch a bus without significant trouble, get my shoes shined, a haircut (and massage, facial, shave, plus have a vibrator pressed against my skull for a while), buy some socks, and have a nice walk - all for under $3. People were friendly, food was nice, and life was easy. People talked to me about what I was eating. I even picked up the two shirts I was having tailored and they fit, first try! It took me nine attempts to get a shirt replicated accurately in Delhi a couple months back. This, was quite the welcome change.Saturday however, gave me mediocre food, folks trying to take me for a ride, big crowds, and the aforementioned rickshaw ride. I am not sure how the trip happened. It just seems to be that people can't say 'I don't know' here. We kept on stopping and people kept on giving us directions that sounded confident and right, sometimes from large groups of men who all seemed to agree, but they all ended up just spiraling us off into nowhere. When I finally got to my destination, it turned out to be not just seven blocks and only one turn from the station. The constant renaming of roads, the chaos in the streets, and the general panic all around just makes simple things like getting someplace really, really closeby not possible.
So, sitting at the Mumbai airport, I gotta say, I am excited to be getting to France. I am meeting with the bread professor that Carl implied I may one day turn into, I'll be looking at the twisted politics behind the baguette, and with any luck, in a couple of weeks I will settle down with an apprenticeship at a nice lil' boulangerie someplace. This is the time to shine friends. If you know any bakers, farmers, or people who have the ability to house me in France (or northern Italy, for later), please shoot me an e-mail.
1 comments:
Wow, that video is one of the most bizarre things I have watched in a long time. Though I suppose I don't watch all that much, and I'm sure there are MUCH more bizarre things on the interweb... That host has to be one of the most obnoxious men on the planet, but the bread professor was awesome and seemed like he would have had a lot of interesting things to say if Obnoxious Man had let him. You absolutely should become a bread professor. You'd be at least as amazing as Bread Professor 1 - and with the same faint hint of sex pest! Hurray that you are meeting him - let us know how it turns out. Maybe he will pass his secrets onto you, for the day you inherit his mantle!
(PS I love that you are having - I assume - one/some of your original four shirts replicated. I guess it's as close as you can get to stubbornly sticking to the originals for the full year!)
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