Salaam Bombay!

My last Mumbai experience sucked but this time, I came prepared. Laura recommended a nice hotel that is clean and well-lit and not plagued by power outages or poor water pressure (sorry, Davina, j'adore my electricity). There's also cable! I watched a Ladytron video and a Divine Comedy video!

Nat gave me a list of what to do and see (she rocks) so I started my morning with a cappuccino (oh, don't start) from Barista, India's Starbucks, and then moseyed around Colaba, loving all the Victorian buildings and the water and the Taj Hotel to end all other Taj properties. I wish my Aussie homegirls were here to love it with me.

The weird thing about being here is that suddenly, I see Westerners. They're everywhere. Aside from the handful of guests at Davina's while I was on sick holiday, I saw about eight white people in Kerala, and more than half of those were in the airport. And Chennai's not really a backpacker's hub. So to be here, seeing shorts and the sandal-and-sock combination (note to Germans everywhere: Please stop this) and overhearing a Brit and an American on what could have only been a Nerve date last night (they covered How My Last Relationship Ended...always a tip-off) and finding a copy of Us magazine (hurrah!) and seeing streets without auto-rickshaws, only taxis: it's like India Lite.

Not that I'm qualified to hold forth on what does and does not constitute an authentic Indian experience, since after enjoying my British Marie-Claire, I got a pedicure and drank a chocolate milkshake.

Indian Airlines and I

I left Kerala with little fanfare (except for Ganesh's offer on the way to the airport: "Madam would like to stop for baby bananas?") and got ready to head to Mumbai via Indian Airlines. IA has some definite perks--like the pineapple juiceboxes and hard candy they give you at takeoff and the good snacks (banana fritters for everyone!) and then it has a whole host of eccentricities, like the fact that tickets are still handwritten. No matter. In Trivandrum, you board the plane in the middle of the runway, '60s jetsettah-style, and I was loving that. The whole flight to Mumbai, scary music (imagine the Hawaii Five-0 theme song playing in reverse...totally HJ's) played, which was sort of a drag, but that was minor since I was hell-bent on not getting on my flight in the first place.

In my defense, I was a wee bit aggravated by the space-invader man standing next to me in the check-in line. Despite ample room in our line, he kept coming to within an inch of me, which is up there on my Least Favorite Things list, so I kept turning abruptly and backing into him--all the things one does to set boundaries, but he was ignoring it. When I got to the front of the line, he stood next to me, even though there is only one agent. I glared. He didn't move. Finally I spread my arms out over the counter (all 18 inches of it) and said, "You have to give me some space!" He looked at me blankly. So then I had to pushthe man away. Crikey.

In this positive frame of mind, I went through security, only to get stopped because of the kid's scissors I carry for needlepoint. These scissors had made it onto every other IA flight I'd taken thus far, so I kept showing the security guard that the blades weren't sharp by pressing them into my palm and he kept saying "NO!" and then I sort of got a little overly ballsy and said, "The scissors have gone on two other IA flights. No one's stopped me! I'm taking them!" This, unsurprisingly, did not go over well. We went back and forth for a while, then there were some stern conversations in Mayalam between the other security guys and then a higher-up appeared who told me to come with him. At that point I was thinking "Well, I hope someone good plays me in the Lifetime movie adaptation of how I ended up stranded in a Keralan jail without bail" so I followed him outside to where all the checked baggage was being held. He asked me to show him my bags, and I did, and then someone came over, took the scissors, and put them inside my bag. So then I thought maybe it was time to chill with the attitude.

Tragedy averted, I returned to the security guy, who then insisted that I needed to remove the lighter from my backpack. The lighter? I had to unpack things to show him that there was no lighter, and attempt to make nice.

The lesson learned here is an obvious one, but don't attempt to argue with security guys at the airport. Der.

Mr. METY Owes Me a Massage

Hold up. How did I forget to post this earlier? (Shame?) I think I also forgot to mention that during our last weeks in Chennai, he took it upon himself to wear a dhoti (sort of like a sarong for men) one day and a lunghi (a short sarong for men) on another. Yeah, he is a madman.

So I bought a cheap messenger-style bag in tapestry-like fabric adorned with a few mirrors at a Kashmiri shop in Spencer Plaza and Mr. METY complimented me on it as the program was coming to an end. It wasn't the sort of thing I thought I'd use in the States, and I was feeling a guilt hangover for spending so much time internally snickering at him, so I said, "Okay, let's trade." But Mr. METY, all non-attachment, said he didn't have anything to trade...unless I wanted a massage. Which is not quite as bowmpchickabowow as it sounds, since he's a trained massage therapist, and a good chunk of the KYM kids are bodyworkers, so between classes you tend to find some healing happening.

Long story short, the plans to meet up for said massage got all confused, so he has my bag and I have nothing. Well, except for an email from him apologizing, signed "Affectionately." Bowmpchicka.