A Dinner Party Ends a Routine-Filled Monday

Monday, June 24, 2019
Bombay

A Dinner Party Ends a Routine-Filled Monday

     Namaste from Bombay!
     When I used to be told that Bombayites party every day of the week, I did not believe it--then I saw it for myself! Today promised to be routine--and was--until the dinner party to which I was invited.
     Up at 6.00 am, I did the routine things I do without even leaving my bed--Twitter, email, reading novel and newspaper on Ipad. And then I was off for the day. The bread man sounded his bell and I ordered a broon which I had with mince!
     This made it the traditional kheema gutli which I so remember from my childhood. It used to be sold in the canteen of St. Mary's School in Mazagoan for 25 paise each in the 1960s! It was either a lunch (if you were a small eater) to many a school boy or a hefty snack at elevenses when the school had "short recess". I ate dozens of them while watching Sunday matinee movies that used to be screened in the school hall and which my entire family used to attend (My mother used to cook our Sunday afternoon chicken curry lunch on Saturday so that she and my Dad could attend the matinee too!). I ate the crisp-shelled gutli with the warmed mince and I enjoyed it immensely. I watched the last bit of the P.D. James murder mystery I had started watching last night (The Word is Murder) starring her Detective Commander Adam Dalgleish (not with Martin Shaw, but the other actor whose name I now forget). It was good if rather complicated.
     That done, I sat down to work. But then I realized I had not sent off my blog post and because it was based on the last heritage walk I took yesterday with Nafisa, it took absolutely ages to write. When it was finished, I started to actually do work--first of all, I had the last of the two interviews left to be transcribed and I finished one of them as lunch time drew up. This leaves me just one more interview to transcribe and my backlog will be history!
     Lunch was leftovers that I brought back from my meal at the Bandra Gym with Marianel, two days ago--Lasagne Verdure with one chappati and Greek Salad. I had some delicious dusseri mango for dessert. In the process of savoring the city's mangoes, I am also learning the different species of them.
   I decided to have my short 20 minute nap after which I faffed around a little bit, then went in for a shower and shampoo. When tea-time came round, I had a pot of tea with one cookie (my new M and S stash that I picked up from London--Pineapple and White Chocolate Cookies) and a slice of fruit cake that I had frozen after picking it up from Nahoum's Bakery in Calcutta when I was there last December. It is extraordinary! 
     Then it was time for me to make a few phone calls and send out whatsapp messages for interviews that I would like to schedule going forward and that took a bit more of my time. When that was done, I got dressed and walked to The Bagel Shop to buy bagels for the friends who had invited me to their home for dinner. I thought that bagels would be a typically New York present for a New York guest to give! From there, I walked to Dad's and spent the evening with Russel as Dad sorted through a bunch of things he had to do. I had to leave just a little earlier for Mass today as I was the Lector assigned the Second Reading. Right after Mass, I left the church and walked back to his gate with Dad.
     From there, I ordered an Uber and it showed up to pick me up within four minutes. The journey to Worli Sea Face where my friends live took all of 12 minutes and I was only the second guest entering their home--the guy who beat me to it was from Washington DC! Only the expats, it seems, have any sense of dinner party timing in Bombay!
      I always have a good time with my hosts Liz and Jeevan who are great company and whom I feel I have known forever although I have only met them about three times--through a mutual friend who visited Bombay from Connecticut. Soon we were joined by three or four other couples. The guest from DC happened to be a guitarist who once played with a group in Bombay and it was not long before Liz produced a guitar, placed it in his hands and asked him to strum for us. He did so willingly, but, believe me, I have never been to a party where the guests suggest a song, sing three lines of it before someone else pipes in with another suggestion and the switch is made. Nor have I been to a party where the singing was supposed to be 'community' but one person, sitting close to the guitarist thought he was the soloist--the only one at the party--and was completely oblivious to the fact that others at the party were also singing. It was the most weird session of community singing I have ever come across. At one point, while we were right in the middle of a song, one of the guests jumped up, asked the guitarist if he knew a particular song and when he said No, proceeded to find the song on her phone and then play it to us! Later, this same guest asked Alexa (who probably had the most attention throughout the evening) if she could play the song! The poor guitarist was left with the guitar in his hand wondering why he had been handed the instrument and why he had been asked to play. I was most amused! That said, the guests were the friendliest lot ever and several jumped up and took to the floor when the rhythm dictated! I even spoke to Alexa for the first time in my life and asked her to play "Waterloo" by Abba which then make me pull Jeevan up on the floor and get him to jive (the first time in his life!) What a fun time we all had!
     If community singing was a disaster, dinner, on the other hand, was simply superb. Liz is reputedly an excellent chef and I got a taste of her talents as she filled her table (as Indians always do) with an array of dishes from her Keralite thoran to continental specialties such as a Vegetable Lasagne, mushroom filled crepes, a watermelon and cucumber salad and Indian dishes like chicken curry with plain steamed rice. The food was so delicious that I'd have loved to have taken seconds but I was too full and there was dessert yet to come--home made Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Ice-cream. It was a meal fit for royalty and Liz probably killed herself putting that spread on the table. 
     I was all set to get an Uber when I discovered that one of the couples was actually driving over to Bandra to pick up their daughter who was working late. They offered to drop me off which was wonderful as I got a ride that made my life really easy at that late hour.
     Indeed, Bombayites do party with a vengeance every day of the week--granted this lot were all retired and can afford to have leisurely lie-ins tomorrow...but still. It was odd for me to be in the middle of a rollicking party at the beginning of a week and I have to say that I had a grand time.
     I came home, changed, brushed and flossed my teeth and went straight to bed.
     What a crazy start to a new week!
     Until tomorrow...