Running Errands for Dad and Another Interview

Thursday, December 13, 2018
Bombay

Running Errands for Dad and Another Interview

     Namaste from Bombay!
     Awaking to the coolness of Bombay's 'winter' weather is so pleasant. I am actually sleeping at night now without even a fan. It is a bit droll to see people wearing shawls and sweatsuits when it is so perfect for someone like me, weather-wise. But, of course, Bombayites are not used to the temperature falling anywhere below 75 degrees--so you can imagine! Dad is too cold already and it will not be long, I know, before he pulls out his merino cardigan and muffler!
     I got going at 6. 30, following my morning's routine--blogging, tweeting, responding to email. When I do not have to do an interview in the morning, I can take it easier and get to the gym. Today was one of those days. I had my breakfast of two home made potted meat sandwiches (given to me by my friend Marianel--they were delicious!) with coffee while watching The Two Fat Ladies and then I dressed and left for the gym.  Before I left, I had called Dad to ask if there was anything with which I could help him today as I know that this holiday season means more tasks that he has to accomplish.  As it turns out his TV and his washing machine were both on the blink and he was quite stressed. He was also in the middle of writing his Christmas cards, he said, and needed to go to the post office to mail them off. I immediately volunteered to go to the post office for him (I am a masochist, I am--remember my incident at the post office of two months ago???) and he was very grateful to take me up on the offer. I told him I would go to the gym, shower and then get to his place to pick up his cards for mailing.
     Some more reading of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones' Mad About The Boy followed before I came home for a shower. I then left for Dad's, taking two of Marianel's sandwiches for him and Russel. I picked up his cards and took a rick to the post office. I was dreading the entire ordeal but it was far more pleasant today.  That said, they did not have any stamps in denominations of anything beyond Rs. 5--had Dad been there, he would have thrown a fit. When I asked why, they said that the GPO has stopped sending them anything beyond Rs. 5 stamps because at the time of demonetization, people were rushing to post offices to convert their black money into stamps of high denominations!!!  They did not have Rs. 4 stamps either (demand is too great, at the moment) so I was given stamps of Rs. 3 and Rs. 1 for local Indian postage. For foreign mail, I had to put 8 stamps of Rs. 5 each on each envelope for a total of Rs. 40 each! Honestly, the saga continues! It was better than putting 40 stamps of Re. 1 each which I had to do the last time.... remember? Anyway, I got my stamps soon enough and having carried Dad's glue gun to the post office (again, one learns from experience!), I did not need to use their ghastly paste pot which I watched another Catholic woman using to mail off her cards to Dubai, she said. The entire errand was accomplished in about 15 minutes and I took a rick and went back to Dad's to give him the extra stamps I had bought. Then, I sat and put them on his remaining cards--all of which, he said, was a great big help to him. He has now asked me to do some Christmas gift shopping for him which I shall accomplish in the next couple of days.
     I then left his place to have my lunch: chicken curry, cutlet, white pumpkin--and to continue to watch my friends, The Two Fat Ladies.  They were in Mayfair, London, this time, cooking at the Brazilian Embassy where they made caprinhas and bacalao (cod cakes), etc. The second installment saw them in a school called Westbirke out in the Cornish country somewhere. The concept of this show is so clever as it includes cooking, tourism, a taste of local artisan food production (honey hives, cheese makers, prime butchers, goose farmers, etc) and the absolutely entertaining conversation of the two ladies.
    I only managed to send out our Christmas letters to a few more people before it was time for me to go off for my appointment. I was meeting Bharat Dabholkar, an advertising man who has produced, written and directed about 32 plays from 1979 to date. His biggest triumphs were the Bottoms Up series (which I remembered seeing before I left India). Written in a very different vein (as revues, more than anything else), they broke away from the very colonial tradition of British and American theater in Bombay as they introduced the indigenous element (appropriate, I suppose, in the post-colonial ethos) with a use of what came to be known as Hinglish--i. e. the mixing of registers--Hindi and English in the same sentence--which is how contemporary Bombayites routinely speak.  I did not know that Bharat was responsible for initiating this tradition although he says that he was not responsible for naming it--that came from another unknown source.
     Interviewing him at the Salt Water Grill in Bandra was a very interesting, if unpleasant, experience.  The place downstairs was taken over by an atrocious group of advertising women who made such a sorry spectacle of themselves with their lack of consideration for any other patrons of the place. They were loud, rude and terribly uncouth in their behavior. It is things like this in Bombay that continue to appall me--the complete lack of consideration for anyone other than oneself. I sat through their din but when Bharat (who was late) turned up, I asked if we could leave as I needed to work in a quieter atmosphere. As it turned out, he knew the obnoxious women as they were also advertising personnel. It is a small world, advertising, composed of loud women who smoke in public in a manner that seems to demand a trophy for their 'emancipation'. If only they knew that the most feminist women are also the most feminine--I keep thinking of the Swedish academic Toril Moi whose lectures I had attended at Oxford who was the epitome of ladylike-ness and yet had beliefs and wrote treatises that championed the causes of women far more effectively that any smoking or drinking would.
     Anyway, Bharat and I moved to the top floor of the restaurant where we could not receive any service but where I was able to conduct my interview with him.  He was a very fast speaker--so I had a hard time taking notes. But everything he said was interesting and was pure research gold. It was a very enlightening experience as he gave me so much invaluable information and promised to send me chronological details of the names and dates of all his plays. He is an incredibly talented, prolific and creative human being and I was amazed, that like Alyque Padamsee, he has run a dual career for decades--he owns advertising agencies in Bombay and Tanzania--and has continually been producing highly successful shows that have garnered the largest audiences ever of English theater in Bombay. And not just Bombay...for his plays have traveled to various parts of the NRI world and are commercially viable and productive.  What's more, he is multi-lingual in various Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati apart from having attained creative fluency in English only after entering Elphinstone College--my alma mater--from a Marathi vernacular school education). Totally incredible! I look forward now to seeing him on Jan 4 at the grand reunion of our college mates (current enrollment numbers have reached 360!) as he too will be attending.
     I got home at 5.30 and had a cup of tea with two cheese biscuits and a slice of cake before I left for Dad's. He had gone to pay a condolence visit to the family of a friend of his who had passed away--so I kept Russel company for the evening. At 6.45 (just as Dad returned), I left for church. Dad did not come as he wanted to watch the India Vs Netherlands hockey match (sadly, India lost!)--so right after Mass, I got home to have my dinner--a repeat of the afternoon--and to watch a movie on You Tube called Thorne: Sleepyhead starring David Morrisey which is grizzly but absorbing. I watched half of it as I also ate some ice-cream and then called it a day.
     Until tomorrow...