Sunday Shopping

In “The Princess Bride” we learn of several classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in Asia [hmm] and never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the cards. However they missed out the most important blunder to avoid: never try to plan a nice early start to a day trip (like, say, 12pm) when England have been playing in the World Cup the night before.

Out of 10 possible participants in our expedition today we ended up with 6, although to be fair one of the cancellations wasn’t football related. And of the 6 we did have, one was woken at 12.05 by a polite wake up call: “Good Morning, or should I say Good Afternoon…”. Names have been removed to protect the innocent. And the guilty of course!

Anyway, 6 people meant that the two cars that were booked weren’t stuffed full (we did have another 4 seats available between the two, but it would have been very intimate). So we drove down into Mumbai again (I ended up seeing some of the same sights again, but it was new for some people so that’s OK). We stopped at the Dhobi Ghats, and then from there went to Central Cottage Industries Emporium, a government shop that stocks traditional products from all over India (in practice this means that it has the same stock as the one in Delhi). It’s a good starting point for nervous (and confident) shoppers in Mumbai as it gives you a chance to see the sort of things on offer, and if you don’t want to haggle and buy on the streets then in the CCIE you get a fixed price and they wrap it up prettily. I bought a few things to give to people as presents (har har har) but no one else got anything.We went back to the Gateway of India for Sam's benefit. And Rambill got "got" by the Jain priest again:

Then we went out into the Mumbai equivalent of Janpath in Delhi. Janpath is a bit nicer, I feel, as each trader has their own little shopicle (a shop/cubicle – I’ve just made that name up by the way) and they have quite a lot of stock stored in the upper storey. Here, they are just stalls by the side of the road: on the “shop” side are proper (bigger) shops. They have tarpaulins stretched over the pavement, to keep out some of the sun (and some of the product of the dripping pipes from higher up… I don’t want to know what was dripping from them).
The stalls all sell similar things: there’s a shawl stall, a sunglasses stall, one with watches, one with sunglasses, one with souvenirs, one with shirts, one with compasses and telescopes and lanterns, then they start to repeat themselves. We walked quite a long way down, but there wasn’t much alteration to the products on offer. Most of our shopping party bought something from at least one of the stalls. (like odd shoes, Sam). And all the way (from the moment we stepped out of the car) we were trailed by two guys selling drums. And beating them. A lot. Very annoying! But it seemed to work as they sold 3. And then started trying to persuade the purchasers to upgrade from the basic model to the deluxe model! Without success, that time though.

A view of the dome on the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower (posh hotel).

A street scene: (Bata shoes on the other side of the road is like Clarks of India)

We also met three little children, Pooja, Poona and Rahel: Pooja spoke quite good English (enough to hold a basic conversation) and eventually persuaded Rambill to buy them some milk. Of course as he got to the milk shop all their friends turned up out of the woodwork too, but he stood firm and only bought “our” three some milk. I handed out a biscuit each to a couple of street children who were making the “feed me” sign (bunched fingertips towards the mouth) and they seemed quite happy with that. However we were in the car at the time and about to head off so they didn’t have the chance to get all their friends together to extract further largesse.

On a completely separate note, I have decided that Auto-Rickshaws need to be imported into the UK, as a fabulous shopping tool. They’re easy to drive (several SMEs have at one point managed to persuade the Auto-Rickshaw driver to let them have a go) and one would probably only need a scooter licence to drive one. It is protected from the vertical weather that we get in the UK (although not the sideways rain or the cold of course) and would be better around town than a proper car (I’ve seen the size of gap they can get through). I think mother would like one to get from The Wood to Invergarry. Doesn’t need to be fed & watered like a pony, easier to get the hang of than a car. According to our car driver, they cost less than £1000 each and are probably very cheap to run. You can even get LPG versions (or CNG: compressed natural gas, probably very similar. Don’t ask me, I don’t know about that sort of gas). Anyway, if anyone knows where to find one, let me know.

That was Sunday.

Monday was work. Just like normal. With several new people in the office this week I spent a bit of time getting things sorted out like making sure they could log in, and ordering access badges (you really don’t want to have to wait around for someone to let you through a door when you’re still adjusting to the local cuisine…), and trying to help sort out a new IS fault reporting procedure. And to top it off, at the end of the day our car was 45 mins late because he was dropping off an earlier batch.

Nice dinner (buffet again) then back to the room to write this up (will post on Tuesday though) and then bed...

At half time, the score remains at Mosquitoes 1: Livia 2. I’m relieved (so far) to find that the mozzies aren’t really putting out a full squad and can be apparently deterred by a forceful application of Deet 50%. Squishing them puts them at a disadvantage too. Of course they have the psychological edge in this match. They don’t fear my presence, or even the very suggestion of my presence, whereas I can become quite twitchy and convinced that they are At This Minute settling on my skin and starting to nibble. Psychosomatic. Definitely. Excuse me, I have to go and scratch.