November 17, 2007

• Glove miscalculation

  Apparently only 94 latex gloves, and they have been more or less safely delivered.  They’re still sitting in my hotel room, but only until Jo goes back to her hotel for the night. With great organisation, I have managed to book a hotel that is halfway across the city from her…

  Mumbai (suburb of) was a jumble of noise and colours and people and dust and lots of people sweeping up and splashing around water as though they were high priests ready to annoint the quick and the dead.  Native clothing is definitely the way to go: I would say I’ve got the hang of my dupatta now, but I actually think that today’s dupatta (cotton) is just more grippy than yesterday’s synthetic effort.  It’s ridiculously warm, and I spent most of last night not sleeping properly – having fallen asleep entirely randomly, at 8pm, with the light on, and no earplugs against the noise (and the noise my dears, is almost excreable.  Thousands of auto rickshaws with horns that are strident and blaring, or simply expiring and making a noise like a dying duck in a thunderstorm owing to overuse), I then woke equally randomly an hour or so later, and remained awake fretting about work, Guides, Brownies and Other Things over which I have no control.  Tonight will be better.

  We got up terribly early, and had intrestingly eggy breakfasts (I am a firm fan of upattams, which don’t involve wheat but in this case involved something oddly spicy at random intervals, much onion, the odd cashew nut, and raisins) before taking a taxi to Victoria Train Station (the really big famous one) and the train out to Pune.  The man in front of us wanted the fan on, the gentleman behind wanted it off.  Piggy in the middle here had control of the switch.  Fortunately, they settled it between them before, once again, I fell asleep in an entirely random fashion!  Pune is highly geeky, and I’m staying in Deccan Gymkana, close to the university.  There are all sorts of intriguing adverts for IT conferences and events.

  It’s very bizarre: there is an unreal quality to where I am at the moment.  It doesn’t seem quite real.  Partly because this is a culture of which I have no experience, and, partly I suspect because I’ve seen so much of India on the television (what with all the programmes to celebrate 50 years since Partition) and in films.  The films are very sanitised.  No disintegrating pavements there, and the sweepers have always been past recently.I keep wanting to adopt stray dogs: there was a beautiful dark brown cur with ginger eyebrows, and I thought that she was utterly huggable.  I might have difficulties with customs.  I do not yet feel strongly enough to emigrate, set up a dog sancturary, and drive around in a little auto rickshaw looking for strays to castrate.  I’m also allergic to dogs, which is another good reason for not going in for that as a line of business.

   

  xxx

  • 8:41 am
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