Sunday's Are For Relaxing and Chillin' with Relatives and Friends

Sunday, January 6, 2019
Bombay

Sunday's Are For Relaxing and Chillin' with Relatives and Friends

     Namaste from Bombay!
     I had a truly dreadful night--perhaps the worst I have had since coming to live in this studio in Bandra. I began my night by reading on my laptop when I became aware that my body was itching. On investigation, I discovered that hives had developed on my arms and around both my knees. That was it! I was paying for my crime of sipping one glass of rose wine at my new friend Ramita's home in Alibagh! I should have known better and opted for a beer, but I had not wanted to make a fuss.  Thankfully, Claritin was handy and after taking the antihistamine, the itching stopped about ten minutes later. How magical is medical science, eh?
     With my sulphur allergy under control, I tried hard to go to bed. But sleep simply eluded me. And to make matters worse, I was plagued for hours on end by a single mosquito that buzzed determinedly about my ear and feasted at will upon various parts of my face--the only exposed bits of body that remained available for its exploration as I simply had to breathe!
      In desperation, I awoke at about 1.00 am, switched on the light and tried to kill it. Because its body had become so heavy with my blood, it could barely move and in seconds, I got the critter and squashed it with the utmost pleasure! There! That was it! Mission Accomplished! I could now, hopefully, get to sleep. But no. The pathological insult I had inflicted upon my body by sipping caffeinated tea and then sulphurous wine would not allow it to oblige me when I expected it to quieten down.  To make matters worse, I could hear my phone pinging incessantly as so many over-enthusiastic (and equally insomnia-afflicted) Ephinstonians stayed up half the night and posted pictures of the Reunion on the group chat. Feeling compelled to see them all, I stayed awake.
     Finally, I decided to post some pix of mine as I was still wide awake and kicking. I sent them off to former classmates in Florence, Italy, Cleveland, Ohio, Toronto, Canada, Southern New Jersey and to Bombay. As soon as they received them, the responses began coming in. Who are all these people, they asked? My friends were blank--they simply could not recognize any of the classmates with whom we had spent four swift but unforgettable years, four decades ago! I then had to sit and caption each photo as they begged me to name people in the pix. Then, my friend Vanessa decided to what sap call me from outside Florence and we had a long chat--at 3.00 am! We were on the phone for half an hour when my friend Anita called from Cleveland--at 3. 30 am! I was chatting till 4.00 am...at which point I decided I better try to fall asleep or else there was no way I would be doing the Second Reading at the 9.15 am Mass.
     This time I was luckier. When I awoke, it was 8.00 am--I'd had four hours of sleep...but it was a Sunday and I was sure I would snatch some much-needed naps during the day.
     Accordingly, I read my Twitter feed (no time to blog today), and brewed myself some coffee as I got dressed for church. I wore black thights and my J. Crew navy blue blazer as it is cool enough in the mornings for me to wear my Connecticut spring wardrobe now. My Reading went well and at the end of Mass, I picked up a vada pau for Russel and spent 10 minutes at Dad's as I dropped it off for Russel and read him the Notices for the Week.
     Back home, I made myself a substantial bowl of breakfast--fruit-laden muesli with apples and fresh figs and sat to continue watching See No Evil--The Moors Murders which became more chilling as the two part film went on. I then decided to take a short nap and just a little later woke up to order a Vegetable Biryani from Bandra Gymkhana which I picked up and made my way back to Dad's. There, I fixed us a Date and Orange Salad with the iceberg lettuce I had bought for New Year's Day but never used.  With orange segments, pomegranate pips, chopped dates and almonds, it was amazing with a honey vinaigrette. Dad also had the roasted stuffed chicken with stuffing leftover and that was part of our lunch. Dad, Russel and I had a lovely time chatting around the lunch table where we stayed until 2.00 pm when I left and returned home.
     Another lovely nap later, I awoke to attend to the email that had piled up in the last two days which needed attention. This took far longer than I expected, but I did manage to get up to date. I then turned my attention to drafting a blog post on my lovely coastal getaway at Alibagh while also getting distracted regularly by posts filled with photographs that kept coming after our euphoric reunion.
     It was only at 6.15 that I jumped into the shower and got dressed as I had been invited to spend the evening at my cousin Linnet's place. So off I went (taking a rickshaw) to Linnet's who lives about ten minutes away in Bandra.
     It was a lovely evening with just a few of her close friends--there was Lynne, her husband Manu, Jean Turner (a retired stewardess with Air-India who knew my brother and his wife well) and Nosher, a Parsi man who was the life of the party in addition to my cousin Ruby. As soon as Nosher opened his mouth to speak, we burst out laughing. It was like he only had to utter a sound and he had us in splits. Some people just have the talent to get other people laughing.
     True to her word, Linnet's daughter Natasha did the serving of heavy snacks--a string of items came emanating from the kitchen. There was pita triangles with hummus, brilliantly marinated cocktail sausages on sticks sticky with soy and honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds, cubes of paneer on long skewers with green peppers and onions (expertly grilled), chicken stuffed croissants (purchased), prawn toast (made by Linnet) and for dessert, she had made Oreo cookie ice-cream which she served in cones--I asked for a cup. Manu kept ribbing Linnet and telling her that he was still waiting for dinner--and he refused to eat the ice-cream as he said he did not eat dessert before dinner! It was all good-natured and great fun and we had a grand time.
     In the course of the evening, when I was telling Linnet about the warm hospitality offered by my cousin Ashley and his wife Meena to my friends Michael and Cynthia of London when they were in Abu Dhabi  few days ago, Jean told me that she knew Cynthia! It turns out that when Cynthia used to work for Air-India in London (many decades ago), she had worked with Jean's father, Nat! She told me to give them her phone number so that they could call her when they arrived in Bombay in three days' time--when I will be in Chennai (and missing their visit to Bombay altogether!) What a tiny world it is--and as I grow older, I am more and more astonished by the connections that prevail among strangers we meet on the road of life!
     I took a rick and got home at about 10.30, spent a while revising my Alibagh blog post and fell asleep at a little after 11.00.
     It had been a lovely, very eventful weekend and I had ended it in the nicest way possible--with a load of laughs!
     Until tomorrow...