Mumbai

On Tuesday night Ashraf asked what time he should pick up “Peggy Ma’am”, but we got a call Wednesday morning from him saying he was having car problems and would send another driver. This time we convinced him that we really didn’t need a car. I walked Peggy to and from work and was content to spend the day working and working out.

When Ashraf called again the next day to tell us another driver would be picking us up, I called Prakash to ask what was going on. He told me that Ashraf was having car problems but he would have another good driver take care of us. I asked him if Ashraf would be driving me to Mumbai the next day to pick up my brother, Jody, at the Mumbai airport. He mysteriously said he wasn’t sure about that. So at that point I called Ashraf and demanded an explanation. The story was pretty benign. Ashraf’s father-in-law was in the hospital with a kidney stone and Ashraf was expected to do his part by attending to some of his father-in-law’s needs.

We had earlier learned that a stay in the hospital is a family affair in India. Hospitals here do not attend to day-to-day needs of a patient (eating, bathroom duties, showering etc.), they cater only to what they deem to be the patient’s strict medical needs. So Ashraf, as a good son-in-law, was needed to help with these tasks.

Even so, Ashraf called me later that day saying I had to send an email to his boss demanding that only Ashraf be allowed to drive me to Mumbai the next day. I didn’t want to get in the middle of any power struggle that might be going on at Excell Cars, but I definitely wanted a known quantity, Ashraf, to take me on that arduous journey so I did exactly as he suggested.

But we did have a fill in driver for the day – Nellish (call me “Neal”), a very nice driver who replied “why not!” to everything I asked of him. He drove an identical car to Ashraf’s Misubishi, except in Black instead of White. We ran a few errands, then came back to Magarpatta to pick up Peggy so she and I could go to lunch with Rajan Thaokar.

Rajan, as alert readers will remember, is the young lawyer we met in the Delhi airport at the conclusion of our great Rajasthani adventure. He was in Pune for a day and invited us for lunch.

We met him and a law school friend, soon to be partner, named Gaurav. We had a wonderful lunch, learning more about Indian custom, the Indian upper middle class and the wide-spread corruption that every Indian seems to accept with resigned weariness. The two lads are just cranking up a new business (bank-rolled by Rajan’s father) to provide legal and paralegal services to international corporations wanting to do business in India.

My confusion was multiplied when I called Neal Friday morning to ask him to come pick Peggy up and he said he would relay the request to Ashraf. I told him I could call Ashraf myself, so I did and was apprised that his father-in-law was out of the hospital and he (Ashraf) was back on duty.

That was a good thing because I had a very important Cricket question to ask him. Namely, why would Sri Lanka “declare” their innings over instead of continuing to bat until they had 10 outs (the number that normally signifies the end of an innings, which, by the way, is a term used to signify a single time period rather than a multiple number of time periods). Ashraf couldn’t really explain to me why they would give up some of their outs (thereby forfeiting many runs as well).

But after reading a brief description of Test Match Cricket, I figured out the strategy. In a Test Match, which lasts 5 days, each team gets two innings. Each innings normally lasts for 10 outs. There are 11 men on a cricket team, but you have to have two batters active at one time, so once 10 are eliminated, you only have one batter left and your innings is over.

Because outs are pretty rare, an innings can easily last a day or more. In the Test Match that was being played between India and Sri Lanka, the Indians had batted first and made 426 in their first innings that lasted two days. A good score, but really not nearly enough. Sri Lanka piled up 760 in their first innings, with only 7 wickets falling (i.e 7 outs). They could have continued batting the next day, but needing to let India get a full innings in, then possibly needing to bat themselves in their own second innings, Sri Lanka decided it would be wiser to declare their innings over, take the 760 and hope they could get India all out in their second innings for less than another 344 runs, thereby winning the match. Whew!

As it turned out, India batted well enough over the next two days to go over 760, but because Sri Lanka did not get to bat in their second innings, the entire 5 day lollapalooza was called a draw. Many Test Matches end in draws, a boring result, that may end up consigning the Test Match format to the dustbin. The much more exciting 2020 game (each side gets 20 overs, or 120 pitches to try to score the maximum number of runs), has proven to be much more exciting to Cricket fandom.

Peggy and I wanted to go to Sujata on Friday afternoon to pick up my custom wedding suit and the remaining pieces to the 3 custom wedding suits that she had ordered weeks earlier. But Ashraf begged off, rightfully reminding me that he had to drive me to Mumbai that night then safely drive Jody and me back to Pune in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

So Peggy and I decided to have a little adventure and hailed down an auto-rickshaw just outside of the Magarpatta Gates. An auto-rickshaw is a three-wheel conveyance powered by a two-stroke motorcycle engine with a small bench seat up front for the driver, a slightly wider bench seat in the back for 2-3 adults and a black canvas cover on top to keep passengers and driver out of most of the elements. Although this contraption can comfortably hold three people (driver and two passengers), in the same fashion as motorbikes they are often overloaded, sometimes with as many as seven people stuffed into the cramped interior along with the driver. Being only two, we seemed to fit OK, but I could not imagine how we would cram another 5 folks into such a constricted space.

Our driver seemed somewhat surly, and he reneged on his agreed upon price when he couldn’t find the shop right away and we had to call Sujata to get detailed instructions. Even so, we asked him to wait for us to complete our transaction, which he seemed begrudgingly happy to do.

My royal purple outfit with golden stretch pants was pretty amazing. I’m glad I have a wedding to wear it to, because I doubt I’d have the nerve to wear it anywhere else. It was even embarrassing to see myself in the mirror when I was all alone in the dressing room.

Back in the rickshaw, our churlish driver slalomed his way to Pune Central, one of the city’s more upscale department stores, agreed once more to wait, then took us back to Magarpatta, whereupon he demanded not only an unwarranted fare but also some stipend for “waiting time”. I shoved 300 Rupees into his hand, added another 50 when his dark mood took a turn for the worse then told him that was it and walked away. Despite his grumpy peel-out when he left, I’m absolutely sure that he earned 350 more Rupees than he would have by remaining parked in front of the Magarpatta gates all afternoon.

Ashraf picked me up promptly at 7:30 pm and we began our tedious trek to Mumbai. Even though the 6 lane expressway between Pune and Mumbai is (mostly) a well maintained road and traffic is relatively light, getting through the outskirts of both Pune and Mumbai is a mind-numbing slog and the 80 kph limit on the expressway (which Ashraf religiously follows) makes for slow-going indeed.

Ashraf and I chatted for a while, whereupon he once again tried to subtly convince me that we needed to schedule a weekend trip to the hill station he calls Panchgani. This time he just happened to mention that maybe he would bring his wife along because she had never been to such a fine hill station before. I declined to take the bait, resorting to the all-Indian stall by saying we’d have to talk about it later.

I dozed a bit, but as suspected, Ashraf stopped at the McDonald’s-anchored rest stop about an hour out of Mumbai. I took the hint and asked if I could buy him a chicken-burger meal which he gratefully accepted. While I did that, he proceeded to buy us each a Vada Pao, thereby assuring that at least one of us would arrive in Mumbai with Acid Indigestion.

We hit Mumbai shortly after 11:00 and it was hopping. Everybody in the city seemed to be out on the streets, which were lined with stalls, carts and all manner of commerce. I had to laugh out loud when Jody later told me the Indian guy he sat next to on the plane told him he would like India because it was really quiet at night. Actually, not everyone in Mumbai was participating in the frenzy – I saw many auto-rickshaw drivers asleep on a thin blanket on the hard sidewalk, their trusty rickshaws standing silent sentry duty at the curb nearby. I don’t know if these guys are as itinerant as those images would suggest, but I assume it’s possible. Do they really own nothing but the change of clothes on their bodies and two thins blankets to get them through the night?

Traffic in Mumbai was just as crazy as the action on the streets, so it took close to an hour to get to the airport and crawl through the line of cars trying to find parking in the monster garage.

When we got to the receiving area off the International terminal, it looked like the Beatles were due in town. There were thousands of people waiting around a huge outdoor bull pen, everyone presumably there to either greet someone arriving from overseas, or maybe just to try to pick some pockets. Whatever the reason for so many folks to be there after midnight, there was excitement in the air and I was thrilled to be part of it.

Ashraf suggested we go get a few winks in the car seeing as how Jody’s plane was still an hour out. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, but I gave it a try. Ashraf did doze off, but when the arrival time for Jody’s plane clicked over on his watch, he insisted we hustle back to the waiting area so we wouldn’t miss Jody’s arrival. I tried to convince him that we would still have a good hour after arrival before my brother would actually walk out those doors, but Ashraf was having none of it. I then tried to convince him to stay in the car and sleep and let me go meet Jody, but Ashraf is still convinced that I’m basically incompetent to do anything in India, so he insisted on coming along.

But an hour of standing on his feet, looking expectantly at me every time a white guy came through the doors only to have me shake my head, finally got the best of him. He ruefully told me he needed to go back to the car to sleep, a proposition to which I earnestly agreed.

Even though the wait was long, it was not boring. The electricity in the waiting masses was palpable. Many were hired drivers holding “Welcome Mr. XYZ” signs, but even more were friends and relatives waiting for loved ones who were returning from overseas. The many hundreds of arriving passengers who walked out the of the terminal seemingly in some state of shell shock, invariably brightened or became emotional when they were found by their waiting attendants. I thought to myself that if I lived in Mumbai I would go there every night just for the hyper activity, energy, excitement, anticipation, hesitation and joy

An hour and a half after touch down, Jody strolled nonchalantly through the doors, looking like a guy who travels to India every week. It was great to see him and even more fun to see his reaction to the throngs once he grasped how big and boisterous the crowd was.