Category: Travel
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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…
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Posting from a New Home
After five years posting from DC, BenEastBooks moves on to Mumbai. Expect the same focus on craft and reviewing serious books by independent authors. Expect new writing invigorated by travel and adventure. Expect postings flavored with the exotic, the ancient, the extraordinary, and the very new. I welcome contributions, requests for reviews, and sensible observations. When…
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