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