Tag Archives: paris

Astad Deboo

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Yesterday I went to the Prithvi Theatre in Juhu to see Astad Deboo, one of the few Indian modern dancers/choreographers. The Prithvi Theatre is quite an interesting venue; I had wanted to go see something there for a while. Tickets are only a bit more than a dollar, but unfortunately there were many empty seats, and probably not because the evening’s program leaflet was almost half the price of a ticket. I can’t say I loved it all, but it definitely had its moments. He is quite fascinating to watch, and the eight dancers (all of them deaf teenage girls) were very impressive.

Afterwards, I went to a place called Seijou, which had its regular French DJ evening. He wasn’t so great though, but the place is nice (and pretty much empty until midnight), despite the assembled collection of blinking red yellow green blue orange lightbulbs. Maybe those were leftovers from Ganpati, or maybe they are already preparing for Diwali or Christmas or something. Or maybe they thought it looked cool, which it didn’t.

In other news, I don’t know what my maid did today, but she must have done something to disturb my local cockroach population, because when I got home, there were five big and fat ones running around in the kitchen. The strategically placed can of NEW! HIT! COCKROACHES! came in handy though, so that was the end of that. Unfortunately, I also dropped my bowl of yummy Indian food, so there was a nasty mix of dead cockroaches and food on the kitchen floor, and me without any idea where the maid keeps the mop. I do remember her buying one, or at least asking for money for it, but I ended up using old issues of the Times of India, which gave it a nice original touch I felt.

I also ventured out onto the Western Express Highway for the first time in two weeks or so, just to see how the highway construction mafia is coming along. Not surprisingly, they are doing great, and so the highway still looks like one of the tougher stretches of the Paris-Dakar Rally. So I was thinking, if even a Texas DA can manage to finally get Tom DeLay by his balls and hopefully throw the guy in jail, I wonder how long it will take … But, ah well, I guess until then I will take the local roads to get to work. And this weekend I am set on getting out of town to Kashid, which is supposedly a very nice and quiet place, one of the nicest beaches outside of Goa, and only three or four hours outside of Mumbai.

Lonavala

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Originally, I had wanted to drive out of town yesterday, but then it was raining cats and dogs, so I just ended up going for a coffee at the Juhu Mocha with a Scottish expat whom I had met a week ago at the other Mocha in Bandra. I find myself going to Mocha quite a bit. Anyways, this Scottish expat is a teacher in training at the Mumbai Rudolf Steiner School, which is kind of interesting. On Wednesday she, her friends and I went to a club called Seven, which happens to be located in the sixth floor of a shopping mall. This club actually would have a nice view, except it was of course dark. The music was as usual total crap – why on earth people love Bryan Adams so much that they have to play three songs of it, is beyond me. But the crowd was ecstatic and sang along with full gusto.

Then yesterday I went to Club IX with our American Mumbai tour guide, her boyfriend and another expat from work. Club IX has equally atrocious music, but at least no-one is singing along and the place feels a bit like a Jugendzentrum – i.e. one of those youth clubs they have in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere, where 15 year olds (like me) grew up on beer, ping-pong and foosball (which we called kicker). It had plush brown couches and incredibly tacky paintings, but the Kingfisher was cold, and so what else can one ask for. And despite being called Club IX, there was no dancing.

So this morning I set out to drive out of town. It takes a good hour to actually get out of town, but then heaven starts. Well, at least there’s a real highway with three lanes in each direction, actual lane markings, and a surprising lack of potholes. This is the Mumbai-Pune express highway, and my little silver machine did a solid 120km per hour, no problem. I was tempted to go a little faster, but who knows what happens if you push your luck with a new Ambassador. I wanted to go to the first destination listed in the 52 Mumbai Weekend Getaways book, but of course the important directions are in Hindi, or maybe I am blind, but in any event I missed the exit to the road towards Goa.

So I drove to Lonavala instead. Lonavala is pretty high up in the mountains, and as I drove up, the rain and the fog thickened with every kilometer. When I was still in the plains, the views and the green were really quite fantastic, but here I was, crawling up the mountains to Lonavala. I guess if it weren’t for the fog and rain, the views from up there must be quite spectacular, but as it was, the view was gray. Nevertheless, the place was packed with weekenders. There’s lots of waterfalls there, and everybody just goes take a shower in full clothes. Truckloads of young men (hardly any women), singing and dancing next to their parked cars, drenched from the rain and from their adventures in the waterfalls and rivers.

The air was very nice and fresh, but the weather was too crap for any pictures. I had some chicken masala, which I think ended up being mutton, but what the hell. I was hoping to be able to sit down and continue reading Maximum City, but unfortunately it was a bit too wet and crowded. Maximum City currently is quite the bestseller – it’s written by a guy who left Bombay when he was 14, lived in London, Paris, and New York, and then returned 21 years later. So far, it’s great, because it really helps me be able to actually read the newspaper, as it gives a lot of context to the daily reports on the incredible extent of corruption, the Shiv Sena party (which is basically made up of thugs and religious extremists, and which rules parts of Mumbai), the slum lords (which apparently control the majority of the Mumbai population). Not to mention the currently almost daily riots by commuters who are fed up with the non-functioning railway service, so they frequently start attacking railway workers, block trains for hours and wreck all kinds of additional havoc on a weekly basis.

Leningrad – Moscow – Delhi – Mumbai

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Well, I made it. All the way from NYC to Nice, Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Delhi, and Mumbai. We carried three suitcases and three carry-ons each, which turned out to get a little pricey. From the US to France, they charged us only $90 each for the extra two suitcases, but from Nice to St. Petersburg it was the criminal amount of 12Euros per kilo above 20kg each. So that turned out to be 1300Euros. Ooops. Of course that price tag came with a puffed up attitude on the part of the Air France employees and three different ones of them telling us off for bringing three carry-ons. Nevermind they were all small ones (the carry-ons that is), and there was plenty of space on the planes. They all had to give us a good lecture. But the food on Air France is excellent, so there: you win some you lose some.

Of course going from St. Petersburg to Delhi was another $11 per kilo above 20kg, but luckily we left a lot of stuff with Ksenia’s best friend in St. Petersburg, so my bill was only $300 and I guess we’ll see how much Ksenia’s bill will be when she gets here in two weeks.

Russian and Indian airports seem to be in competition on who can be the most ludicrously inefficient and annoying (then again, on the way into St. Petersburg, one Russian customs guy helped us quite a bit, when one of our suitcases didn’t arrive and he didn’t make us go through customs again when we finally picked it up the next day). NYC airport gets the first prize for having a complete bitch of a security woman not even flinching a millisecond and simply continuing her blank fuck you all stare as she drops my passport and waits for me to pick it up while my hands are full. Anyways, for some reason, you pass five or six security stations in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Not that anyone really seems to look at anything and it’s not like anybody at all couldn’t just walk around from the street straight to the aircrafts in St. Petersburg without much hassle. But for some reason, in St. Petersburg, the boarding cards get ripped off the tickets on the stairways to the aircraft, in wind and rain, by a single Aeroflot employee with a broken umbrella.

Aeroflot food was predictably crap compared to Air France, but the aircraft had an unbelievably high ceiling and the seats weren’t numbered at all. Or so I thought untill I found them above the trays on the back of the seats. Except those seat numbers indicated the seat whose back they were on, not the seat from which you could actually see the number. Luckily I was not the only one who was confused; half the people on the plane, most of them Russian, had no clue, so there was a lot of moving about to get into the right seats going on before everyone was happily settled. It was all very amusing.

The security procedures repeated in Moscow. In fact, I had thought the three hour layover would be plenty of time to have some food and a beer for bedtime, but they were barely enough to make it to the next plane. Different terminal, incredible security checks, ludicrous customs/passport controls, and of course three different lines to pay my $300 for excess baggage. Needless to say, noone knew, let alone gave the slightest fuck whether I’d get charged again in Delhi or even whether my baggage would actually go all the way to Delhi.

Yes, the story repeated itself in Delhi, except at higher temparatures, with more humidity and in the middle of the night. Some more papers to fill out, very important passport checks, the usual drill for the potential terrorists, smugglers, and tax evaders that we all are, and of course I had to schlepp my entire luggage around yet again. For some reason, in Delhi it seemed like one had to get out of the airport all the way to the hot and humid street just to get back into a different door in the exact same building to make the connecting flight. On the street, an army of cab drivers tried to convince me that my flight in fact leaves from an entirely different airport. Maybe I should have taken my cigarette break elsewhere, but it was 3:30am or so and I didn’t really mind, but was rather impressed that they seem to know all flight numbers and times by heart, so they actually backed off when I could give them my exact connection to their satisfaction.

The last leg was rather uneventful, if you don’t count my seat neighbor, who was belching, farting, and scratching his balls with gusto. After landing semi-safely in Delhi, the whole passenger cabin was clapping their hands, but no such entertainment now. To make up for that, the luggage arrived on the wrong conveyor belts, but they did arrive. The air wasn’t quite as bad as it had been in April, since it had rained a bit that night. My hotel pickup driver found me right away, carried me off to the Grand Hyatt (nice pad! yes, slums right next door!), quick shower and off to work. Well, not so easy, nobody in the army of drivers and hotel car pool managers seemed to understand where the hell my office was. So this was the first of what I expect will be endless encounters whereby I am waving a map and giving street names, but it never seems to matter, as not too many people understand my German accent I suppose, know how to read a map, or give a damn about street names in this town. Well, somehow, eventually, my cab driver and I get there. Luckily, I recognized the last stretch from April, so it turned out to be easy. The first day at work can begin.