Category: Travel
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What’s in a Name?
Truckload of 229 boxes arrived today. Some in better shape than others. Pennywise, our organization hired the lowest-bidder for the job: turned out to be ‘Quality Services Moving and Storage.’ Boy, is that company smart! With a name like that, they’re free to provide ‘Terrible Quality Services,’ ‘Low Quality Services,’ ‘Lackluster Quality Services,’ and a…
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Cricket
Travels around India don’t have to include the Taj Mahal, the Gateway of India, or a dip in the Ganges to be special. Our four-day journey to Karnataka state included stops at Chamundi Hills, the ancestral village for which my father-in-law takes his name—Kuppahalli, and half a click from where we stayed, the Mysore Palace.…
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Peace Corps, the Musical
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Five years ago, I flirted with writing a musical based on ‘the generic Peace Corps experience.’ I tabled the idea quickly. The unique nature of volunteer service set abundant hurdles. Peace Corps Africa and Peace Corps Latin America are different beasts. The organization’s six decades presented another problem. We’d moved from the era of ‘Drop…
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The Elephants’ Thunder
Every night I hear the drums. Out there, on the fairgrounds in the dark, the big drums throb and the high snares crackle. Two weeks from now Ganesh will march the streets, Gunpatti’s thunderous procession to the sea shaking the city’s windows and doors. Hordes will carry idols of the elephant deity in waves across…
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Twinkle for Gents—A Close Shave
I ask around about haircuts. Authoritative Mumbai sources say: Twinkle for Gents. Five weeks into our stay, haircuts are essential. But am I to test Twinkle for Gents? I take a 2 and 3 across the sides and top. My sons buzz down to 4 and 5. Not haircuts, so much as a few quick strokes…
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Another One Bites the Dust
All in one Mumbai day we enjoyed these musical interludes. At Malabar Hill we toured the Hanging Garden (The Cure, Pornography, 1982). It doesn’t hang so much as stand upon a series of reservoirs that hold—depending on who you ask—30 or 90 or 300 million gallons of water. The garden’s benches and clocks and topiary fill the paths,…
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Mumbai Physics
I could be anywhere. Low in this cab the wall of traffic rises above and around me, looks the same and moves the same as it would in any other part of the city, dense and fixed. Rickshaws motorcycles Eicher lorries Uber sedans Suzuki Marutis Hyundais busses—including double decker busses—mopeds bicycles pedestrians vendors traffic cops…
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The Sunday Straphanger
We hopped a train at Bandra Junction toward the old Victoria Station, now called Shivaji Terminus, ten stops away. The tidy compartment carried just a handful of passengers scattered about on a few padded benches. Overhead the silver handles shook as the train departed. I offered the window seat to my boys. Turns out it…
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Elevatorwala
Mumbai has a wallah for everything, no task too big or small. Outside my 14th-story flat, one of four elevatorwalas pushes the button that takes us to the street and back again. The other night we ate our first dinner at a Parsi restaurant called—this is all one word—Sodabottleopenerwala. It’s a chain. Derived in part…
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Transit Post—Frankfurt
Just so I have a post from Germany. We have a decent layover in Frankfurt, and although it’s zero three hundred at my point of origin—hence the cobwebs in my head—it’s 9:35 here and past noon at our final destination. Normal workaday hours to write and post! Marginally related to all this, I’ve been tracking…
Ben East Books 