This diary written as part of the group Global Expats.
Amid the chaos in the news, this fine Sunday struck me as a good time to offer something different: further accounting of our year in Bombay, 2001-2.
We’d become recognized neighbors by the time December rolled around. We had out Friday night rituals of a cold drink and dinner amid the blasting air conditioning at the Oasis, followed by an evening watching Night Shift on Cartoon Network India.
Masala Deamin’ IV: Early December in Bombay
This diary written as part of the group American Expats.
Amid the chaos in the news, this late-Sunday morning struck me as a good time to offer something different: further accounting of our year in Bombay, 2001-2.
We’d become recognized neighbors by the time December rolled around. We had out Friday night rituals of a cold drink and dinner amid the blasting air conditioning at the Oasis, followed by an evening watching Night Shift on Cartoon Network India.
As we made our way back to our flat and the housing society it was part of, we passed the entryway guards, who were always friendly and happy to see us, as one stood, peering through the ground-floor window of an Indian family, watching their TV. In Bombay, as I’ve mentioned, one mostly encounters a polyglot of Hindi, the regional Marathi language, and English. The guard who loved us the most spoke instead a highly localized village language. And you know, between the languages he, my wife, and I had between us, we actually managed simple conversations pretty well. He often bragged up the wonders of the lunches his wife had crafted and packed for him.
Night shift was hosted by a desi man in military fatigues (Indian style, of course), who enthusiastically introduced “eh-night eh-shift-eh!” and who, for comedic effect, appeared during commercial breaks on sped-up video chasing a chicken around the host’s spare set.
Among the many things I did not know how to do was the laundry. We took our clothes to a stand across the street from our housing society, which an older gentleman with a massive, steampunk-looking iron ran. After a few visits, though, we realized that, while expertly pressed, our clothes did not, in fact, seem to be getting cleaned. We asked the proprietor about this, and learned that he only did ironing. So we asked around.
It is customary in Bombay, if one can afford it, to have a bai. We learned that it would be regarded as stingy if we, as “wealthy” Americans, did not, in fact, hire one. A bai is a cleaning woman, and this turned out to be our best chance of getting our laundry done. I never realized just what Calvinist Midwestern Americans we both were until we tried to wrap our brains around the notion of having someone around to clean the place up.
Our helpful neighbor next door recommended a woman named Prumela, and the chef from the ground-floor flat across our little yard contacted her and brought her to our place.
Again, haggling just isn’t in my nature. And Prumela was ready to haggle over the terms of her potential employment. At first, she quoted us 350 rupees per month and flat-out refused laundry duty. When I processed the conversion and realized that she was only asking for around eight dollars, I double-checked my math with my wife, who confirmed it. The Prumela went for broke; while the two of us were still recovering from the tiny amount she had demanded, Prumela upped it to 500 rupees, and offered to take on laundry duty in the deal. And so we had a deal, and a way to get our laundry done.
Prumela spoke mostly Marathi, which neither of us had much knowledge of – which is to say, my wife had very little Marathi and I had none. But again, somehow, through gestural and verbal means, we managed to communicate with her pretty well. Our flat was in an aging building with cement walls that left a fresh – and alarming – coat of freshly crumbled dust throughout the flat each morning. Prumela did our dishes, cleaned up and hung our laundry, and swept the place. Then, often, she would look at us and raise her hands, palms up from the sides, as if amazed that we didn’t have more to have her do.
The chef from the ground-level flat across our yard was always at the kitchen window, always looking out onto the yard, always, always making something, and it always smelled wonderful! She likewise spoke Marathi with a smattering of Hindi, but often insisted to my wife that she, the chef, would teach my Hindi-trained wife “Hindi.” (It was usually Marathi.)
But the chef also waved us over to sneak us mixed-vegetable pakoras – my favorite deep-fried snack – from her window.
We frequented a few places in the Southern, more touristy areas, as well, sometimes stopping at the sidewalk card-table shops to purchase Video CD movies to watch on our laptops. We stopped in at times at Cafe Leopold, a restaurant – or, as they call them there, a “hotel” – for a quick snack and to tourist-watch. Café Leopold was a tourist favorite, which is part of why it was attacked by terrorists in late 2008.
Getting to this part of town meant an hour in a taxi or on an air-conditioned bus. The bus was quieter, cheaper, and cooler, and the air quality within much better than a typical taxi lacking air conditioning. Across S.V. Road from the bus stop, and enterprising man-and-wife team staked out a spot on the roadside. They ushered their two big, docile cows to the spot, parked a flat cart bearing a mound of long, straight grass, and took rupees for the privilege of feeding one of the cows a handful of grass and taking its blessing. It was brilliant, really, a simple business plan for a Hindu-majority city such as Bombay.
By this point we were getting used to the constant racket of the megopolis, its siege on one’s senses, but from time to time we simply needed to head for someplace cool and quiet. When we visited New Delhi during this trip, we met a Canadian scholar staying at the same guest house as us. We gathered in the evening before dinner for a drink because, as she put it, I don’t do drinks before dinner at home, but in India, I must.
As we arrived home late in the afternoon one day, we unlocked the padlock on our low, wrought-iron gate, closed and locked it behind us, and ran across the chef from next door. From what we could work out, she could not understand why we didn’t have children. She asked whether something was wrong, something medical keeping us from doing so, and try as we might, we couldn’t make the notion of just being voluntarily childless for the moment make any sense to her. She paused before us, raised her hands in the air, and said a prayer for my wife’s fertility. Then she laid hands upon her shoulders, bowed deeply, and gave her a fertility blessing.
A few days later, around the same time of day, she met us on our way in and announced to us her plan: She would come to America with us, cook and clean for us, and nanny the child that she now expected to be on they way.
Previously:
Masala Dreamin’ I: An American Becomes an Expat in Bombay
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Masala Dreamin’ II: Desi Prices
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Masala Dreamin’ III: Finding My Sea Legs in Bombay
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