Luxurious Living and a Eunuch Bodyguard

The sexiest man in Madras baby!
Who doesn't love a flesh coloured silk robe?

What's occurring mumb-aitches?!


It’s been a pretty colourful week and there is lots to tell so I'll just get straight into the action...


Firstly, I bring you glad tidings from the bowel region ... the turd has remained turgid for a whole seven days, and life has never been better!!!


So, the start of the week, my boss Kevin came over from the UK on Monday.  It should, of course, have been a straight forward flight over for him, but this is India and therefore it was simply inevitable that things would not run smoothly... 


He flies from London to Delhi and changes for the short domestic flight to Mumbai... or so he thought.   The plane reaches Mumbai in the usual couple of hours and then spends an hour or so circling over the domestic airport, waiting for a landing slot?!  Now, you would have thought that any scheduled major brand commercial flight going from the country's capital city to its financial capital, would have a landing slot booked in advance ...  ha ha, hell no, not here!  So after an hour or so of circling the airport at Mumbai, the pilot announces that the plane is about to run out of fuel and needs to divert in order to reach another airport before the plane conks out.  They head to a place about 300km away in the arse end of nowhere and land for a refuelling prior to reattempting the journey to Mumbai, with a view to actually landing the plane this time. 

This story of Indian inefficiency itself is brilliant but it is actually a quality observation made by Kevin during this comical tale that I love the most ...  He is sitting on the plane looking out of the window, admiring the wilderness that he had landed in, when the big aircraft refuelling truck, loaded with Kerosene, comes bowling along in the direction of the plane... followed by the fire safety team.  Pretty standard you think... but you misjudge the Indian aviation authority’s logic that suggests a small boy, running behind the truck, holding a fire extinguisher is going to be able to deal with the fallout of a jet fuel explosion!!! Because I wasn't there to take a photo, I decided to do you a (distinctly poor) sketch of the situation.


I can’t help but think of the obvious benefits with having the Indian Aviation Body operating Heathrow next time we had an afternoon of snow and the whole airport ground to a halt... I imagine they would not sit around and cancel a fortnights worth of flights... not when they could dispatch a boy or two with a can of de-icer to sort out the runways...!


Monday and Tuesday nights we went out for dinner, eating an incredible amount of food in the Taj hotel in Bandra on the second Tuesday.


Wednesday morning, I pack my suitcase ready for our couple of day’s business trip to Chennai (Madras).  The plan was to do a full day's work in the Mumbai office and head straight to the airport from work to fly out to Chennai.  I jump in a Ricky outside the apartment as standard and start the journey to work... we hit the usual traffic en route and encounter the usual intra-traffic beggars that float around the sides of linking road.... the beggar was an woman who, to be fair, looked like she could do with a few quid, but I intentionally don’t give to these guys as I got swamped by hobos when I gave to one during my first week and have learned since that  its much less hassle not to give cash at all.  I will give them curry/pizza or any other bits of food but not money.   This day however, she was not in the mood for rejection... 


She approached on the right, starting with the usual banter, succeeded by the standard issue hand reaching into the Ricky action that you tend to get from time to time with the persistent ones.  For the record, I have also experienced being prodded with a stump/beedle hand in the past couple of weeks so this didn't phase me too much.   


Anyway, the traffic wasn't moving and we must have been there for about 10 minutes and she just wouldn't go.  She grabbed at my trouser, pulling and shaking my leg ... I tried a solid shake of the head... of course this means both yes and no over here (obviously...) so just added fuel to the fire. After this, I moved to a stern 'NO' , in both Hindi and English,  just to be sure ... this just wasn't working so I grabbed her hands off my leg and pushed them away, followed by an obligatory 'will you just fuck off?!?' which I thought would be sure to do the trick... like hell it did!   


Just when I'm starting to think the only way to sort this is either give her money or punch her in the face (lets be honest, It would have probably been the latter), my salvation arrived... in the form of a Hermaphrodite in a Saree!!! This is pure truth, a nearby Eunuch, who will be called Herman for the benefit of the story, (whilst busy extorting money out of motorists by threatening to kiss or curse them if they don’t hand over their cash), had heard my plight and came over and leaned in through the left side of the Ricky ... it was at this point, I took just a second to fully assess the situation: 


Time - 8:30am


Place - rickshaw, downtown Mumbai rush hour traffic


To my right - old tramp lady leaning in pulling my trouser leg for money


To my left - Hermaphrodite in a frock leaning in shouting at the tramp lady 


Now, this was all kinds of fucked up, even by my standards... what do you do in this situation?! Who knows, I imagine/hope the scenario is un-fucking-precedented.....  So I did what I thought any Englishman would do, I gave it the stiff upper lip, kept my trap shut and waited to see how it all panned out. 


As I didn’t have the camera on me at the time, I have done another sketch to help you visualise the situation: 


After a few minutes of aggressive banter and a bit of shoving around, the tramp lady moved on in disgrace, clearly outgunned by the ferocity of the mangina. Herman turned to me with a nod and a prayer-like hand gesture and walked away to the next car and continued with his/her clapping and extortion.


Still not 100% clear on what the hell it was all about but Herman clearly had no designs on hassling me for cash afterwards, I’m assuming he/she sensed there was a Cannock way about me and was therefore rightly worried about the outcome should he/she try to threaten me with a bit of the old Hermaphro-loving... A wise choice on the part of Herman, as I have been away from Sandi for a month now and times are hard...


Certainly a memorable experience and my utmost gratitude to Herman ... I’m sure our paths will cross again someday... 


This brings me to Wednesday evening and the flight out to Chennai.  We were not sitting together on the flight but I was pleased as I had secured a front row seat with extra leg room.  The plane was, of course, about 30 minutes late taking off, during which time, the craft became a veritable sweat lodge ... Recognising that a third of the passengers were about to pass away, the stewardesses came round with trays of refreshments...


The options on the tray were; some kind of warm milk (why the fuck would you want that?  It was probably just molten paneer being disguised as warm milk), orange juice and lime juice 


I thought to myself, ‘lime juice will be the most refreshing’ so I went for that.... again, I failed to account for the lime juice drink being apparently made using water from the Dead Sea!  Seriously, it was vile ... salty lime juice. Really, WTF? I’m in a smelly aircraft shaped sweat lodge on the verge of passing out and you give me salty lime juice?  I felt like tearing her a new one, but then I looked around and realised that everyone else was clearly loving the salty citrus beverage.  So, to avoid looking like an uncultured foreign pleb, I changed tack and gave it the old ‘chin up and down the hatch’ ... this was followed in quick succession by a good wretch and a small belch and it was all over.

Once we finally got up in the air, the guy next to me decided to slip off the old booties and park his smelly feet up in the air against the panel in front of us, at eye level!!.. It’s pretty hard to describe the situation so I decided to draw another diagram (left). 


So we arrive in Chennai and the rest of the week just goes from strength to strength... To set the scene, we are here to visit a company that our business has a long standing relationship with, and they really rolled out the red carpet for us!

Me (looking slightly glazed), Fernando and Rajesh

As we are coming off the plane, we are approached by a guys asking ‘are you Mr Kevin?’, to which Kevin answers ‘yes’.  The guy then phones ahead as we go on the shuttle bus to the terminal so that our fixer Fernando can meet us as we step off and fast track us through all queuing and security, straight to our driver who is waiting outside.  Now Fernando works for the company we were visiting and seems to be the most connected guys in the whole of Chennai...

The door to my room

We arrive at the Taj Coromandel hotel which is an awesome hotel anyway but at check in, we find that Fernando knows the manager and has arranged for us to both be upgraded to a suite... jackpot!  Fernando leaves and Kevin and I go to our respective rooms to settle in.  


As I’m walking down the 7th floor corridor with the beautiful concierge lady, she tells me that I have been upgraded to the Presidential Suite, I smiled .. When we walked in to the suite, I nearly burst into tears...

Bedroom - Main lounge - Piano Lounge

Piano lounge/gym room - Marble dining table - Giant bathroom

To say the accommodation was good just doesn’t do it justice, it was mind-blowing!!

Thursday Fernando picked us up and we headed to the offices.  On arrival, we were greeted my a welcoming committee and performed a ritual candle burning outside before kicking off the day... as you do.


The day was excellent from a work perspective, but I'm not going to bore you with the details.  

I will however share with you this picture of maybe the the best sign ever that I found on the back of their office toilet door when I was dropping the kids off after lunch


Its important to mention here that the minimum entry level requirement at this place is a degree, many with MBAs and the likes.   The floor I took this on was actually populated mostly company directors...

Reminder to flush and wash, no problems... we have all left a floater at some point and its just common courtesy.  It does, however, astound me that with 100% educated workforce, you would need to explain how to sit on a toilet!!! 


Who has ever been to the lav and thought, 'today matthew, im going to shit like a preying mantis???'


Thinking about it, Im sure this was a technique invented by Tom Jones in the 70's....  clearly the good people of Chennai are still rocking out like the welshman!!


So on Friday, Kevin left for the UK early doors and I was picked up by Rajesh (the company's comms manager) and taken to the Taj Fishermans Cove hotel for breakfast by the beach.  Overwhelmed with the breakfast selection, I came out of retirement and went gluttonous blaze of glory, clearing   three whole breakfasts back to back (JJ would have been proud!)


Afterwards, I headed  to the airport lounge with Fernando and Rajesh to get lubed up with a few beers before the flight home.

Crow vs bag of leftover curry

Did nothing on Friday night and hit a house party on Saturday night, after which I spent some time in the streets of Bandra trying to accost a stray and potentially rabid dog with a few friends.. just don't.. there was a shit load of vodka involved and things got a little out of hand as the evening progressed, it happens.

Crow vs bushel of coconut

So that brings me to the end of the blog and I'd like to finish by sharing a couple of snaps I took on Sunday, featuring more local Crows indulging in fine and unusual street cuisine...


Im actually thinking of making a blog entirely dedicate to the Crows of mumbai and their discerning palette....


I have Ahmad and Laura dropping by later this week so hopefully, there will be some good banter to report back on next time... I need to buy a saree before Thursday as Laura intends to pimp Ahmad out on the Eunuch scene for a couple of weeks to top up the travel fund...


Have a great week all and speak soon!


Gray

Camp Cabaret and a Ring of Fire

Well, it’s been an eventful week to say the least....

We've had some highs and several distinctive and frankly unpleasant lows.  But hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and having learned some valuable life lessons in the past seven days, I’d like to think I’m a wiser man for the experiences I have, well.. Experienced.

Last Sunday, I decided to go on a bit of a solo adventure around some of the villages near the coastal area of Bandra.  I figured there would be a good chance of finding some interesting/bizarre things to write home about... what I didnt expect was that probably the best thing i saw that day would present itself to me within 30 seconds of leaving the apartment.

Now, this may just highlight my unusual sense of humour but it just cracked me up when I saw it ... A crow eating a chicken’s foot.    

 

Just look at the beast, perched atop its
conquest, with an almost regal look on its face.  He (I assume it was a bloke) actually stopped eating when I approached him and posed for me...  it occurs to me that its ever so slightly cannibalistic but he doesn't look like he gives a shit so I say live and let live.  Of course, stumpy the chicken probably wouldn't agree...

The other highlights of the day included meeting this guy, who uses a modified bicycle to sharpen knives...

 

And running into a few coppers who had decided to take a short break from fighting crime, and have a game of cricket in a back alley with some local kids...

I stayed with them for a while just watching.  The old bill, clearly not concerned about getting into trouble for cricketing on the job, they literally insisted that I took their photos... 

Literally 10 minutes later, I grabbed this quick video of another group of kids playing cricket round the corner

Cricket is as much a social constant here as football is back home.  You don’t really see kids having a kick about in the street here but almost every road you walk down, you're guaranteed to see some street cricket in the offing...

So onto the working week....

Monday started out as any other Monday at the office... until Avi came over and asked me if I fancied going to see his friend in a production at the Mumbai Comedy Store... why the hell not, sounds interesting and I hadn’t planned to do anything else..  We left straight from work to save time and headed to SoBo ...

So this is the point at which things started to get surreal... and, quite frankly, gay.  It turns out that the Comedy Store was hosting a Valentine’s Day celebration of love special cabaret!!  Now, in his defence, Avi claimed that he was unaware of the specific details of his friend’s production ... personally, I’m not buying it and still suspect I was being primed/groomed for a tactical fruiting.

Before I know it, I find myself in a darkened room, glass or rose in my hand, listening to renditions of Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and even Chris de Burgh. 

The entertainment later progressed all the way to an ABBA medley (right) and a guy getting up on the stage and proposing to his girlfriend....

I was slightly impressed to find out that the whole thing was choreographed by Longinus Fernandes (the guy in the middle sporting a white shirt, dark glasses, beard & mullet), the guy that choreographed Slumdog Millionaire and several other Bollywood blockbusters.  At the end of the show, he came over to introduce himself to me and have a chat.  I’m not entirely sure why but can only assume that he spotted me and thought:

'A - Only white guy in the place B - no sign of a date C - wearing a suit D - drinking rose.... he must be in the trade'

Monday over and in possession of a wealth of piss taking collateral for Avi in my pocket, I took forward to the rest of the week, as it could surely only get better from here...

So it’s Tuesday night.  Now for background you should know that I hadn’t pinched a loaf for a few days at this point (sorry) and was starting to get some stomach pain... So far I have been fairly proud of not having the shits and so a little constipation was the lesser of two evils from my perspective.  I popped to the pharmacy/newsagents round the corner and tried to explain the situation to the guy behind the counter:

He just said 'bad stomach?', I said, 'yes', he reached under the counter and passed me a little foil strip of tablets called Spasmonil.

Great, that was easy I thought so went back to the apartment and downed a couple.  A short time later, I start to get convulsions and a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth...   At this stage, I decide to look a bit closer at the old Spasmonil... went on google and looked it up.  Turns out it’s a prescription only treatment for IBS sufferers ...  good one doc!

I go to bed, stomach still bubbling away.  I know deep down that it’s only a matter of time before the glacier melts and the tsunami begins... I put a towel down to be on the safe side.

About 2am, I woke suddenly and knew straight away that judgment day had arrived.  I hobbled to the lav, dragging the towel underneath me in case of spillage... and unleashed the fury... I then repeated this process about once every two hours until lunchtime on Wednesday, by which time my arse was nothing more than a habenaro pressure washer!!

Needless to say, work was out of the question on Wednesday, so I stayed in and ate bread for 24 hours to try and firm up again.

So back to work Thursday and Friday.  On Friday, Avi comes to me and suggests we go to the wedding reception of a guy from work.  I was cautious from the start, given the events of Monday, so I checked the story out with some other colleagues and it all seemed above board.

It was a pretty decent night all in all.  I’m not sure how standard the set up was but I would like to think that all Indian wedding receptions have the same array of integrated services that this one had. To highlight just a few, we had:

1. All you can eat food stalls
2. Masseuse
3. A potter (like as in someone that makes pottery)
4. A bangle maker
5. A mystic that can calculate your future

The food was great, the masseuse was a bloke and therefore a disappointment, the potter had literally no reason to be there, the bangle maker was fairly skilled as he was using some kind of barbeque to craft jewellery, which brings me onto the mystic...


Im not sure how many of you saw the episode of An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington, but he goes to see one of these guys and I found it hilarious to watch so thought I would give it a crack.

He, who shall be known as Merlin, wanted to know a few things before we kicked of:

1. Dad's name - Rod
2. Dad's age - 59
3. My age - 27

So from here, Merlin did a few sums and took a look at my right hand for a few seconds and declared he knows everything about me and that he could answer me two questions about my life (for the nominal fee of 31 Rupees).

Question 1 - How old will I be when I get married?

Answer - 28 (shit...)

Question 2 - When will I die?

Answer - well, he refused to answer this one

Question 2 (b) - How old will my future wife be when I marry her?

Answer - either one or two years younger than me (sorry Sandi... its not going to work out.  According to Merlin, you are too old and I need to trade you in for a younger model)

So lets be honest, the guy is a fucking chancer of the highest order.  People were queuing up to fill his pockets with cash in return for him filling their heads with complete and utter guff.  I cracked a joke about him being a charlatan in front of some of the work guys and they were not impressed... they really believe this shit.. 

How can a man tell the future by asking your age, your dads age and your dads name, then  looking at a slightly soiled palm?   Would it have made a difference if I had washed my hands after using the bathroom just before going to see him?

So on to this weekend... 

Saturday I hung out with Preeya and we went rummaging through a beachside landfill/slum kind of area looking for weirdness to photograph... it was a great laugh to be fair, although im pretty sure that disease was rife and we both now have about 10 days to live.

The day offered up a vareity of comedy animal sightings, from the slightly cute to the downright sacrilegious ... 

First off,  beach pigs... not particularly weird by i just found them hilarious as I have never known pigs to live on a beach before. This pig in particular was ace... he was just arsing about with a carrier bag and occasionsally griefing the goat from next door..

Next up, we found a gang of fundamentalist goats trying to break into a temple...

The second the heard the camera, they abandoned the burglary and came over to straighten us out....

This dog succeeded where the goats had failed.  By the time we got there, he had already secured the village shrine.......






Anyway, Saturday night, we headed to a house party, via a minor chastising by the poilce for drinking neat rum in the streets...

Sunday, we headed to a genius daytime event that I can see becoming a regular weekend hanut.  The Hilton hotel in Mumbai holds a poolside brunch from 12 - 4 every Sunday.  You basically pay 1000 Rupees (about £13-14) and its all inclusive. 

The food is unreal, with about 60 odd different starters, mains and deserts inside and about 4 specialty counters including a barbeque outside.  You just go up and tell them what meat you want (even steak!"!!) and they cook it and bring it over.  To go with this, unlimited Champagne, cocktails and beer waiter served to you and complete use of their pool and sun terrace whilst the DJ plays 80s classics on a massive outdoor soundsystem!!


This is Avi btw, and apologies for the cock-grab poses ..  quite a few lychee martinis had been sunk by the time this was taken...

Have a great week and I'll speak to you all soon Mumb-iatches!

Moody gold, dodgy cheese and a cheesy foreigner...

Well, its been a busy week and a fairly social weekend but I finally got round to it ... have just finished Sunday afternoon High Tea (will explain another time) and am about to sit back and enjoy Sharpe's Waterloo (which im sure is a type of dysentery over here) so thought it would be an ideal time to reflect on what life affirming events the week has offered...

I have been fairly trigger happy with the camera this week so will be furnishing you with a few of my favourite pics ..and maybe even a video...that is of course if the broadband recovers enough to be able to upload one .... its sub prime at the best of times but today has been utter shite, even by Indian standards!

I thought I would kick of this week with a few snaps of Mahal Bridges.  These photos are of my building, my apartment lounge and of course, the boudoir...


OK, now for the week's highlights.....


.... i'll start with last Saturday and my first adventure into Sobo.  btw, sobo is what they tend to call South Bombay here, its not just me being a ponce.

you really start to get a feel for the size of this city when you try and get from one end to the other.... I was with Avi and Preeya and the plan was to head to Chor Bazaar, which is a massive area of flea market shops and stalls..

We decided to slum it (excuse the pun) and use the public transport.. in this case, the train.  The station was dirty and stupidly busy, with traders peddling their wares all over.  I do have to question the marketing strategy of some of these guys though, as there was one with a stand selling small models of commericial aircraft.... needless to say he wasnt shifting any...  What he failed to consider was that the chances of someone walking through a dirty, busy, sweaty train station thinking 'I could really do with a scale replica of a BA 747-400 right about now' are pretty slim...Now personally, I would have probably gone for either selling model trains in a train station (at least then its relevent, although still completely useless) ... or if model planes is all you have to sell, then the airport may be a better place to flog them.

Anyway, as the train came into the heaving platform, there was the familiar scent of london tube platform tactics in the air as every man and his dog (in some cases, literally) scrambled to secure prime location to dive through the train door when it finally stopped... there was also another familiar scent in the air which i believe is most likely down to the fact that deodorant appears to be on the controlled substances list over here!

Now the train doors alone are worth noting... and indeed finding, as they appreared to have been removed from the entire train on both sides.  It was a real health and safety nightmare as people were bulging out sides, hanging on to the grab rails for dear life as we departed the platform.  There definitely used to be doors by the look of it so I can only assume that the executive decision was made at some point to remove them in order to be able to maximise the capacity of the train.  

Now this is just one of many instances where I have had the pleasure of witnessing Indian logic and efficiency at its very best... 

Anyway, we arrive at Chor Bazaar, specifically the main street which I believe is called Mutton Street.  This place is like Brick Lane on crack ... you can buy literally anything old from almost anyone. One guy was flogging old war cannons, and another was trying to flog a sofa, whist his own goat was eating it!!! The whole visual experience was accompanied by a strong whiff of fine tandoori chicken in the air from one of the many food stalls.  I must admit it looked appealing but I was going no where near.. it had a weeks worth of bum wee written all over it!

After a while, we came across a guy selling old watches.  I was pretty interested as I had been thinking getting a new watch for a while.  He had some old swiss watches and after whipping the back off one and seeing the ruby encrusted movement, it realised they were the real deal.  some 10 minutes of negotiations later, I walked away with a 1965 Tissot for about 25 quid (left).  Got it back to the flat and searched the hallmark and serial number from inside only to discover that the casing is 14k gold and the movement contains 17 rubys... result.  It works ok but needs some tlc to restore it to former glory..

Oh yeah, also saw some eunuchs, knocking on doors or cars stuck in traffic and scaring drivers into giving them money.  Im going to actively seek them again to get a picture for a future update...

Last sunday was pretty subdued (as a result of being leathered on Saturday night) so I will give you the highlights of the working week:

Monday - attended the British Business Group in the evening, a networking event in Sobo where ex-pat businessmen go to chow down on the preverbal corporate pole.  To be fair, I did pick up some decent contacts there and will certainly go again but there is a limit to how much business card speed dating I can take in one evening so bailed at a reasonable hour and went home for a cold shower.

Tuesday - highlight was probably seeing a pimped out Ricky outside work (right).  This baby was sporting a crazy set of window wipers, what i can only describe as a trumpet stuck on the side and some evil looking bladed rims that look like they are geared up to mangle the ankles of pedestrians or seriously fuck up someone's car in the midtown traffic jams.  Either way, class on a  stick.   

What you may also notice is that the uber-cool (and completely unconscious) ricky driver's feet are hanging out of the vehicle.  

As for the rest of the week, I feel like I spent much of my time dodging cheese.  Its taken me until Friday this week to find a decent place that will sell me meat related food.  Up until that point, I had to deal with the local purveyors of fine vegetarian food, or as I like to call then... the Paneer Pushers.

Dont get me wrong, the quality of the food is still outstanding but when you walk into a curry house, you do not expect the following to occur:

1.   You arrive, walk up to counter, ask what decent chicken or lamb currys they do to take out.

2.   Be told that they dont sell 'non-veg'. 

3.   No problem, pick a veggie dish... the waiter tells you not to have it.  he doesnt give you reason (i mean, why should he?!)

4.   He suggests a Paneer dish... you tell him i dont like paneer

5.   He tells you its cottage cheese and is just like Chicken.  Now thats utter bollocks because:

 A - Paneer is nothing like cottage cheese... you cannot fry cottage cheese but you can fry paneer (why you would want to fry cheese currently escapes me, but they love it here) ...

and 

B - Cottage cheese is the least chicken-like substance known to man! I don't care where you buy your chicken or whether it is as battery as an Eveready AAA, I guarantee you it will not resemble cottage cheese!

6.    So you carry on and pick another dish, labelled Vegetable Jaipuri... this time the waiter is magnanimous enough to accept your choice, stops back-lipping you and goes to sort out to order.

7.   15 mins later, he gives you your bag and you go home to get stuck into your vegetable curry sensation....

8.   You plate up and settle in to watch telly and enjoy your veggie cuzza with a nice can of Kingfisher

9.   You take your first bite and know straight away that something is wrong.... you cant be sure what... is it chicken you can taste? No.. Is it cottage cheese you can taste?... No.. its f*cking Paneer, simple as that!!! 

Now that is just malicious, isnt it?

I intend to call up on a revenge technique I conceived several years ago when I suspected my Nottingham home was being turned into a squat by vegan hippies.  It involves frag grenades made out of raw minced beef.

Other than this, I have had a work mate take me to a place that more or less only sells Paneer and forces me to eat it and have also been stung by two work lunch tiffin boxes.  I know I praised the tiffin box in my last update, and I do genuinely like them other than their one flaw.... the fact that you cant request the contents, you just open it up at the table and find what you are going to eat.  Its exciting but you always run the risk of your tiffin being a paneer filled trojan horse....  

Now I would like to talk a little further about Indian efficiency ... this will most likely be a common theme in many updates as im finding examples in all kinds ok places.

The example of the week is the office cleaner ... not to mistaken with Manuel, who is a seperate person altogether.  The cleaner, lets call him Mr Muscle for now, has a work ethic that seems to follow the same physical properties of gas... this may sound strange so I will explain:

A gas, by nature, will expand to fill the container in which it is placed.  Likewise, any task given to Mr Muscle will expand to fill whatever time is available, in most cases, the entire working day or week.

For example, Mr Muscle was tasked with giving the chairs in the office a wipe over.  Now there are, by my reckoning, about 60 chairs in the office.  With a cloth, I could wipe a chair in about two-three minutes,  lets go for a conservative estimate and call it three.  In which case you are looking at about a rate of 20 chairs per hour and a total effort of 3 hours to do the lot.... you would imagine anyway... but Mr Muscle sees things differently..

... he knows that if he finishes the chairs in a half day then two things will happen:

1. He will have to do something else with the rest of his time
2. He will be expected to do it in half a day next time

Well, that is not how 'The Muscle' rolls ... so he seemingly makes the task stretch out, for the best part of two days!!!

And how does he do this i hear you ask? ... simple really ... he uses a F*cking toothbrush and spends approximately 25 minutes on each chair !!! NOT REQUIRED

There is no illusion that his entire job is a couple of hours per day tops but as his role most likely costs very little to the business, it doesnt really matter.  People seem to be the lowest value commodity over here (at least in certain jobs).  It is, therfore, a bizarre truth that inefficiency genuinely does seem to pay in India.

 

OK, rant over, I thought I would just share a few more photos with you:

First off, as promised ...  here is one of the notorious Rickshaw TB stickers. 

Incidentally, this week I had the pleasure of watching one of my ricky driver's hock on the floor of his own vehicle.  i didnt even bad an eyelid.. you just become de-sensitised to it all after a while..

This one is pure class ...  I assume the sign warns of the peanalties associated with the antisocial activities of (right to left); pissing against a wall, flobbing (or maybe vomiting) in the street and throwing banana skins/ninja forks in the street.  An interesting point here is that, according to the sign, the latter two of these ASBO-worthy activities also involve sporting some kind of toliet brush holder in the left hand.

This is just a classic shot of typical Mumbai traffic ... I absolutely love the weird handpowered lowrider tricycle!

A shot of, potentially the most ridiculous looking  health centre known to man.  Its called the 'Free Medical Camp'  ...

Seriously, MRSA would be the least of your worries ...

This is my tailor ... He did tell me his name, but, foir obvious reasons, I will be calling him Penfold going forward. 

He is busy working on turning up a pair of Levis for me at this very moment

This next guy is a bonifide moron.  I have no idea what he is trying to achieve by standing in the middle of this busy road

And I leave you this week with the most amazing news ..  Mumbai truly has arrived as a cultural and musical epicentre ... yesterday marked the landmark music event of the year so far in this amazing city ...

.. Ladies and gentlement, I give you the one.. the only... Foreigner.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend however, I have not ruled out an domestic flight to catch them on the next leg of their Indian tour..





Anyway, hope you all have a great week, look after yourselves and remember not to eat the salad!


Gray