Mumbai Day 16, 17 and 18: Rite Of Passage

With the bosses in town for the event, meetings (or rather, waiting for meetings) takes up most of my time.

The office is a bustling hive of activity. Now that we’ve been press covered, the calls start coming in. The numbers are encouraging for sure. So after another late night in the office, I head back to the hotel without dinner.

While trudging through the cratered mess that doubles as a road, my stomach tells me what a complete wanker I am. I’m too lazy to head to the mall (800m), the diners (700m) or the MacDonalds (600m…and I hate the food there anyway), so I head into the nearby cafe, Mintu’s.

Mintu’s is a cafe that serves sandwiches and pretentious local fare:  a neatly dome-shaped serving of rice next to an otherwise unappetizing plate of chicken masala. The masalas I’ve tasted from J.Prakesh – the office’s favorite place for takeout – are thick and rich with chunks of meat in them. Herbs and spices ground into a rich sauce that soaks into the meat and sends you taste buds into a tailspin. Calling Mintu’s authentic Indian fare is a bit like a supermodel with no boobs, no ass and no face – functional, but otherwise unappealing.

You wanker! You wanking piece of dogshite! You completely ignore me for eight fucking hours and now you’re writing a fucking piece of literature while I play Ghandi on a hunger strike!

My stomach has a flair for the theatrical.

I’m not particularly hungry-That’s because I’ve died, shit head!-so I pick up what looks like the least unappealing of the lot. A chicken tikka sandwich. I’ve been told to avoid mayonnaise, and anything that isn’t cooked, meaning no tomatoes, lettuce or any green stuff. The chicken tikka isn’t actually chicken tikka, which is large chunks of chicken skewered and slow roasted so that each piece oozes juice when you bit into it, it’s actually a mash of meat and some sort of reddish gravy. Already I’m a little apprehensive.

But I’m hungry, so I pay and head back to my hotel room.

An hour, and a chicken tikka sandwich later, I’m feeling hungry again.

One Animal Planet documentary later, my stomach starts making gargling noises.

Five minutes later, a queasy pressure builds at the rear hatch.

Forty-five minutes later, I look down at the toilet to check the fruits of my excruciatingly explosive labor. I did a pretty good job repainting the inside of my toilet bowl. I have now undergone the rite of passage that anyone who goes to Mumbai should experience.

It’s too cold, so I kill the AC and crawl into bed, bundling up the thick blankets to keep warm. Only…I’m still shivering. The blankets in the hotel are double layered, and reasonably thick. I check the AC – off. I put my hand on the window – warm night. By now my teeth are going clicketty-clacketty like a set of trick teeth. Never a good sign.

Pressure building on the rear hatch captain! Prepare emergency evacuation procedures!

Drama whore.

One very nice thing about the hotel is the abundance of hot water. I’ve stayed in a few places where it feels like you’re bathing with ice cubes, so having hot water is something of a luxury to me. I squat under the shower for all of 10 minutes, keeping the water just shy of scalding hot. Fantastic. I can actually feel my toes again.

The rest of the night is spent popping panadols, charcoal tabs and drinking all four bottles of water. I think I nodded off a few times.

Welcome to Mumbai.

If you’d had taken my advice the first time and fed me like I said, you wouldn’t be in this mess you bloody pixie!