TRAVEL\INDIA\letters\india10

BACK TO BOMBAY

We said goodbye to Eugene, who cried right on schedule (she and Vally have been through this before) and went into the airport to discover that our flight was delayed by 1 hour. Nothing very interesting happened at the airport although we wandered around the now-familiar airport having flashbacks to our delayed flight to Lucknow. The flight was notable for a meal that I was too full to eat, although Vally managed some of it. This time, though, rather than waste the food, I carefully rewrapped the foil tray in order to give it to someone who needed it after we landed. I also kept the sour cheese on crustless white bread sandwiches in their little plastic bags. Matthew met us at the airport and we hopped into a cab.

Beggars Beggars are omnipresent in India. If you are driving on a main road in Bombay, and you stop at a traffic light, odds are you will be approached by beggars. If you are walking in a market area, you will be approached by beggars. As I have touched on before, for an American, Indian-style beggars elicit a complex set of reactions. On the one hand, the going rate is 2 rupees or 6 cents, and you know you can easily afford that. In Chile, where the beggars sat on the sidewalk, and you either gave them money or you just kept walking, it was easy. Our friend Arnoldo, as you may remember if you read the Chile letters, always gave all of his small change (anything under a peso) to beggars as a matter of course. In India, as I have said, there is the problem that just like everything else is too crowded, beggars pretty much come in crowds, and if you give money to one, suddenly there, literally, are 10 more. Also, there is a certain way that beggars act. They are uniformly filthy and dishevelled and they come over too close to you, turn their palms up in a bent wrist stiff posture, sort of roll their eyes up and attach themselves to you energetically. Their stance is of "I won't go away from you until you give me something." They want you to heartily wish they would go away, but they want you to get rid of them by giving them money. And then if you do there is no moment of human connection and thanks, often they'll simply try for more. And its not as if you can't afford it except that your desire for self-preservation quickly overcomes your compassion. Matthew was dead set against my giving them any money, but if they were women with infants, as many of them were, I often did. I could put myself in their place. With deformed children, as I said, I felt like the money wasn't going to them. It was easier from the window of a car, because you are sure you can get away, and if you need to you can roll up the window. On foot you feel assaulted. I gave the tray of food from the airplane to the first beggar who approached the car at a light, an old man. I felt good about that. A few minutes later, we were again stopped at a light, next to a concrete island in the road. There was rubble on the island, and a piece of vertical corrugated steel. I looked down and thought I saw a mother curled up with a baby sleeping on the island. I took a photograph of them. I wanted to give her the sandwiches. The driver of the cab beeped and it turned out that it wasn't a mother with a child, it was a girl of about 5 curled around a naked boy of about 2. There was a third child, a boy about 7 with matted hair asleep behind the corrugated metal. All of them were filthy. I gave them the sandwiches because I didn't know what else to do, and the driver was pulling off. I wanted to cry. My thought was that no matter how bad things get here is the US, this would not happen. If small children were sleeping by themselves on the street someone would do something.

At Chrissie's We arrived at Chrissie's. Giselle and the baby had moved back home, so we would be sleeping

on Chriselle's trundle bed. Tim and Zena were there, although they had almost left because we were so late. We hugged them goodbye. It felt bizarre that we would not be seeing these people who are our family for several years. We had hoped that there would be a big dinner at Andrew's place on our last night, but it was a week night and Tim and Zena had to get up early and Chrissie was tired. I sent Matthew to his hostel to get the converter so that I could charge my computer batteries. Then, with Matthew in tow, we took an autorick to Andrew's place.

Dinner at Andrew's Andrew was out when we got there, and Natasha was asleep. One of Vally's cousins, one of Pauline and Eddie's sons, Viren, was there. There was a little drama going on across the courtyard. Apparently it is an ongoing soap opera involving an alcoholic father, his wife and an out-of-control teenaged daughter. The action can be seen and heard through the windows. When it got to the violent part though, the curtains were pulled. The neighbors have been watching this for months. Jenny had surprisingly little sympathy for the daughter. There was a call from Archena who told us she was coming over. Archena is Uncle Ralph's 23 year-old daughter, sister of Ayesha who lives in the US. Even though in reality they have only seen each other a handful of times, Archena and Vally are very close, and the first time he met her, when she was 11 he called her "My baby." Archena was a delight, vivacious and easy to connect with. In a way she is a very modern urban Indian woman. Her talents are artistic and she works in an advertising agency as an account supervisor. She is in no hurry to get married. Her career is very important to her and she is doing well. Against her father's advice she had worked for a film director for 9 months until he left the country. Vally was struck by how the last time he saw her she was a bud and now she has become a flower. Dinner was fantastic, because Jenny is a superb cook. I didn't have the chicken curry but Jenny made some rice crepes that were wonderful. We had a brief chance to talk with Andrew during dinner. As I have mentioned, Andrew and Vally were inseparable until Vally's family moved to Nagpur when they were both 11. Vally's memories were of being excited about going to a new place. I wondered how it was for Andrew. I asked him and he said he spent a long time asking his mother when Vally was coming back, but that he hadn't had anyone to share his feelings with.

A sleepy-eyed Chrissie opened the door on our return and we tip-toed to bed. I spent our last night in India sleeping 6 inches higher than my husband.

The Last Morning in Bombay One of my highest priorities was to fix our inflatable neck pillows or in the unlikely event we could find any in Bombay, get new ones. The second one had given up on the trip from Goa to Pangla. I knew we needed some sort of adhesive but I had no idea where to look. Our other projects for the day were to see St. Xavier's College of Bombay University which is Vally's alma mater and to do some shopping. And of course we had to get back in time to PACK. Xavier's is in downtown Bombay and Vally was worried about how much time it would take us to get there and back. I asked if we could go there by train and at first Vally looked at me as if I were crazy. "How about first class?" I asked. We checked with Chrissie and he assured us that there would be plenty of seats in first class at the time of day we wanted to go. Vally was greatly relieved because the train would be a 20 minute trip and the cab would be over an hour if we were lucky. We called Matthew and woke him up and while we waited for him we had Nescafe at Chrissie's. It was better than nothing. We took a cab to the train. Chrissie came with us, all dressed up in a suit and tie. He had a leather-bound desk calendar with him. He was on his way to discuss a tax matter on behalf of one of his clients, and this was a new official that he had not dealt with before. It was against his client's policies to try to bribe the official, but a small gift would be appropriate.

The Train in Bombay In the US we make a distinction between the subway or light rail and the "real" train, even the commuter train, but in Bombay there is just a local train. It runs on the same broad gauge tracks that the intercity train does, but the intercity train bypasses the stations on a special track. There are no reserved seats, but there are cars for women only. The one I saw was fairly crowded but there was room for the women who did not have seats to sit on the floor. In a way it does feel a little like the New York City subway. You enter the station area but you buy a ticket, the price being a function of first or second class and where you are going. There is a newsstand/drink stand right as you enter. One things that is different there though is that there is a smoldering rope hanging on the wall next to it. It is for people to light their cigarettes. You go up some stairs, through the crowd, just like NY, except there is a sleeping dog about halfway up the stairs, and the floor is filthy, with generations of spit and God knows what else. You stand on a platform, outdoors and a little bit wider than a New York city platform. There are little shops up the middle of the platform. That is where the similarity ends. There is a train every 3 minutes, at least during the rush hour and it stops for about 20 seconds. In New York the conductor checks to see whether everyone has gotten on or off. In Bombay its irrelevant. In second class, the car is totally full, literally bulging with people. The door is not shut and men are standing halfway out the door while the train is in motion. To get off, you work your way to the door before your stop, and you are disgorged when the replacements cram their way in. The only time a sane woman might ride in anything but the women's car is if she gets on at the first stop, thereby getting a seat, and then gets off at the last. We rode first class, which was much more civilized. Unlike the Shatabdi, where the seats were all in rows, the seats on this train were arranged in blocks, facing each other, with a lot of room and places to hang onto for standing. At the ends of the cars, the seats continued across the entire width of the train. Each area had its own switch which controlled the overhead fan. We got seats almost immediately. Once again, there was an overwhelming impression of green paint. A little boy came on and made a show of sweeping the floor with an Indian broom. Matthew approved of this, since he was "doing something for his money" and gave him 2 Rs. A few minutes later, a gypsy girl with flying hair that had partly escaped the ribbon at the nape of her neck, about 7 years old, wearing a patchwork dress and carrying a harmonium (think accordion but not exactly) got on. She stood in front of us and started to play. I decided to take a picture of her. She saw this and smiled, a 1000 watt radiant smile. I was totalled. I still don't quite know what happened. It wasn't that I felt badly for her, which I did because clearly she is leading a hard life. Rather, it was that I felt like I had seen her soul and the experience was overwhelming. I have the picture I took. She is not smiling. Every time I look at it, it stirs up a deep feeling in me, the emotion I would have if she were a child that I had lost long ago. Even writing about her brings tears to my eyes. I don't fully understand it. We had a bit of miscommunication because I thought that I was supposed to wait until she stopped playing to give her her money and she thought she had to keep playing until I did. I wish I had given her more, but I hardly ever carried my own money when we were in India and it all happened too fast.

We finally arrived at our stop and emerged into an older area which looked more like I expect a city to look. The sidewalks were broken and uneven and the 4-story Victorian era buildings were dark with soot but it still seemed more normal to me. Our first stop was the Parsee dairy for some kulfi. Ever since our experience in the market in Lucknow, I had been eager to try some real Indian kulfi. According to my Indian recipe book kulfi is made by slowly boiling milk until is becomes very concentrated before sweetening, flavoring and freezing it. The Parsee dairy is one of many commercial ventures run by the Zoroastrians, followers of the prophet Zarathrustra. Zoroastrianism began about 6 or 7 hundred years B.C. in what is now Afghanistan, and spread at one time from India to the Mediterranean. The word Parsee comes from the fact the these people first came to India to escape persecution in Persia. Zoroastrianism was one of the first religions in the world to have an invisible, omnipresent God, Ahura Mazda, the God of light. This God is symbolized by an eternal flame which burns in their fire temples. You can't convert to Zoroastrianism and if females marry out of the religion they are no longer considered Zoroastrians. Males can marry outside, but their non-Zoroastrian wives cannot come into the temple and their offspring are not recognized as true Zoroastrians. Its not too hard to see why their numbers are shrinking, although Vally estimates that there are 100,000 of them which is a very small minority of 900 million. They believe that there is an eternal conflict between good and evil, and that their role on earth is to ensure the triumph of good by good thoughts, good words and good deeds. They have their own language and live in a tightly knit, closed community. Many, but not all of them are notably fair-skinned and they are often made fun of. Probably as a result of inbreeding, there is a tendency for Parsees to be brilliant eccentrics, even idiot savants. Vally remembers one of his fellow students who was absolutely brilliant at electronics and could fix any electronic device. At the same time, he could not pass physics, which was his major, because anything except electronics was beyond his ability. Parsees are often very successful economically, and because there is also a Parsee community in Karachi, Parsees have served as go-betweens between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan when things got tough.

Because they believe in the purity of the 4 elements, earth, air , fire and water, they do not cremate or bury their dead. Rather they leave them in special "Towers of Silence" and the vultures quickly take care of things. Vally had described an expensive high rise in Bombay which had the misfortune to be built near a Tower of Silence. There the wealthy residents have to cope with human body parts which are periodically dropped onto their balconies by the vultures.

We got our kulfi to go. The hockey-puck-shaped slices were placed on small paper plates and we were given wooden spoons. Each of us got a different flavor. I remember one was clearly pistachio, one was tan and sweetly spiced and one, I believe was peach. We ate and shared as we walking up the street to Xavier's.

Xavier's College The walk from the train to Xavier's was about 4 blocks. For those of you who are familiar with Bombay, Xavier's is located near the famous Victoria Terminus (or VT) train station, a monument to the British occupation of India. On the way we passed a policeman in earnest conversation with some laborers who were standing near a cart on which they were hauling some concrete pipes. "That policeman is trying to make some extra money" said Matthew. Vally concurred. Such things are routine. Xavier's was built over 100 years ago. It is an elite Jesuit school, the sort of school that children of famous movie stars go to. The campus occupies about half of a city block, and consists of three quadrangles, all in a row. The older buildings are made of cut stone. Outside, in front, there is a sort of garden with a lot of old trees and a circular driveway. To enter we went through an archway in the middle of the front wall which had an open iron gate. There was a guard there who eyed us suspiciously. There were small knots of college students everywhere, all in casual but hip western dress. Except for the hostel, which formed one side of the last quadrangle and has 4 floors, all of the buildings had 3 floors. The first quadrangle was paved and used as a basketball court mostly, but sometimes for concerts and plays. The second was a kind of walking garden with benches, the equivalent of the commons on many campuses. The third quadrangle was simply an open area where Vally used to play cricket. Between the first and second quadrangles is the auditorium with the library on top of it. Between the second and third, the cafeteria with the student center on top of it. On the sides are found classrooms and various department offices as well as the chapel. Also, on both sides of the front entrance there is a museum with a collection of very old stone carvings and other artifacts from all over India. The classrooms are interior and the hallways exterior and open on the courtyard sides, like the upstairs halls at the Bishops's house. The third floor is mostly where the Jesuit priests live. Also, behind the last quadrangle is a sort of slum where the school servants stay.

Vally led us to the chemistry department. Everything seemed very old and nothing had changed since Vally was there. The paint was peeling, and the tiles were falling off the wall of the faculty bathroom. The cement floors were grey and the wooden furniture was dark and scuffed. I expected an elite school to be more luxurious. The chemistry department consisted of a huge wooden table in an open area with one office behind a partition to the right. Each member of the faculty has one drawer in the huge table but the chairman keeps his stuff in the office. To the left, on the perpendicular wall is big sideboard with a hot plate on it and a small sink next to it. There is a "peon" whose job is, among other things, to make chai for the faculty. When we arrived, Peter Fernandes, an old friend of Vally's, and a member of the faculty was sitting at the table. Peter was already on the faculty when Vally was an undergraduate and was the senior author of the first paper Vally ever published. He recognized Vally was delighted to see us, but told us they were about to have a faculty meeting in the office next to us. First, of course, he served us chai and cookies. The topic of the meeting was how to spend 5000 Rs which was available to the department. It was a heated meeting because everyone had a different idea on the subject. Hoshang Master, arrived, a little late for the meeting. Hoshang had just finished his Ph.D. and joined the faculty at Xavier's when Vally was working on his Master's degree. They became very close friends. Vally kind of belonged to his gang, and Hoshang helped him in any way that he needed. Hoshang was the head of the hiking club and they used to go on hikes together. Hoshang still leads hikes and he showed us the notice for one of them on a bulletin board. As I understood it, his usual strategy was to coax students to go on hikes with him by minimizing the danger and difficulty. By the time the students found themselves climbing a sheer cliff, it was too late to do anything about it. Hoshang was sort of roly poly, although not really overweight, with a warm, playful quality. I did not find out until we got back that he is a Pharsee. Hoshang Master introduced us to Cyrus, one of his graduate students. This was a case where something was going on that I didn't know anything about. The way it was presented was that Cyrus, who is Iranian and doing a Ph.D. under Hoshang in Bombay, is looking for a post doc in the US. We had an earnest conversation with him about what he needed to do to strengthen his credential and how to go about looking for a postdoc. Later Vally told me what was really going on. He had gotten a letter about a year ago from another faculty member, whom I did not meet, asking for Vally's help in finding an American postdoc for Cyrus. Shortly after that he had gotten a letter from Hoshang, describing Cyrus as a hard worker who does okay once he gets him mind in gear. While we were talking with Cyrus, another friend of Vally's a woman named Chawla came in, said hello and joined the meeting. It was very strange meeting Chawla, because she took Vally's place. Right before he came to the US to do his Ph.D., Vally had accepted an instructorship at Xavier's. When he left Chawla took his position. So I was looking at where Vally would have been, the job, the people, the place had he not left India.

Off the corridor that led to the "department" were the chemistry research laboratories where Vally had worked. Although there was dusty glassware and there were jars of chemicals around, the place was clearly abandoned, like a chemical Pompeii without the lava. Vally pointed out that, as he had told me, there were no hoods. If you have never been in a chemistry lab, hoods are like the kinds of hoods people have over their stoves, but bigger, with fans vented to the outside so that the chemist does not have to breathe the dangerous fumes from the experiments. The labs were abandoned when Professor Nadkarny died about 7 years ago. Vally refers to Professor Nadkarny as his "guru." When Vally finished college, he had no clear direction. Exam scores determine your standing in Indian professional society and Vally's scores were low. Job prospects were bleak. Vally had heard of Professor Nadkarny and someone suggested that he study with him. Peter Fernandes went to see the Professor and he agreed to take Vally on. Although he died 10 years after that, even at that time Professor Nadkarny was not well enough to come to school. His students came to his house, once a week, on Saturdays, and sat in his bedroom, some literally on his bed, while he talked about chemistry. After a year of this, something suddenly clicked for Vally and his understood for the first time what chemistry was about. Vally and Professor Nadkarny became extremely close and Professor Nadkarny tried to teach him about life as well as about chemistry. His message had a profound effect. Professor Nadkarny was not a Catholic, in fact he was a follower of Ramakrishna. In the US, devotees of Ramakrishna are members of the Vedanta Society. Ramakrishna was a real person who lived about 200 years ago. His followers believe that he took on the form of Christ and Mohammed and all of the other prophets at some point in his life. One story Vally tells is that for awhile there was a rumor that the school was going to close the research lab. Vally was very upset. Professor Nadkarny told him "Valerian, if Ramakrishna want this lab closed it will be closed, and if Ramakrishna wants it open, there is nothing anybody, not even the principal can do to close it down." Another thing Vally remembers him saying is "The verb 'teach' had two subjects, the students being taught and the subject being taught. If you want to be a teacher you should love both the students and the subject. If you don't then you have no business being a teacher."

We followed Hoshang to his small office. There he began sorting through some folded note cards with pressed flowers on their faces. It didn't occur to me to wonder why he was doing this, but suddenly, he presented us with an assortment of beautiful cards. I was totally surprised. Vally reminded me later that when we left Havana, we bought a bunch of Cuban stamps for someone in India. Now I understood about the stamps had been for.

Vally suggested that we go to the cafeteria and have some chai for old times' sake. The cafeteria hadn't changed either. I was getting caffeined out, so I had a lassi. It came in a soft plastic bag with a thin plastic straw inserted it. Over the next hour or so, both at Xavier's and later, I attempted to drink the lassi. The straw kept collapsing. Finally, with my lips sore from sucking, the lassi a little over half finished and my hands all sticky, I jettisoned the lassi into a sewer.

Hoshang said he had a surprise for Vally at the hostel. We followed him to the second floor. We passed a classroom, with a lecture in session and then stopped in another, adjacent empty classroom. Vally was dumbfounded. We had come to where his room had been. Sure enough, we could see the outlines of where the rooms had been by the patterns in the stone tile floors. They were quite small, maybe 8 X 10 and housed two students. We decided to take the elevator down, although it was only one floor. It had a small, accordion cage-fronted manual door. We went down to the first floor, only the elevator kept going, maybe another 6 inches. I guess it was overloaded with the 4 of us. The door to the hall refused to budge. We went back up to 2, figuring we would get out and walk, but the elevator missed that floor also. Then we went back to 1. No luck. At that point Vally said "Let me see if I still remember my old tricks." He reached through the cage up to the right of the door and found a lever. The door popped open and we were freed. Things hadn't changed much.

Unfortunately, we were under time pressure, so we had to cut our visit short. I wish I could have spent more time with the people we met. We zoomed through part of the museum, said goodbye and hailed a cab. We drove past the VT station, about a block away, and all I remember is a huge, ornate terminal building. I had no idea where we were going but knew that we were going shopping. We wound up at a place called The Gate of India. Another case of "wish I had read the tourist guide first so I had some idea what was going on." The Gate of India is a huge, Arc de Triomphe-like monument built in 1922 and placed at the edge of the sea, commemorating Bombay's heyday as a port city. There is a large plaza around it, crowded with people and vendors and you can stand and look at the sea. Also, it is the site of the famous and expensive Taj Mahal hotel which is shaped like an ordinary tall hotel, except there is inlaid marble at the entrances and perhaps in the interior. It was built as a luxury hotel early in this century, and was designed by a French architect who sent the plans to India. When he came to inspect the work, he realized that it was being built with the back side towards the sea, not the front as he intended. He was so distraught that he committed suicide.

Since the Gate of India is a major tourist attraction, it is also a good place to buy souvenirs. There was a row of souvenir stands, selling similar but not identical goods. We bought some more silk Mughal painting and some jewelry, including some earrings that matched a necklace I had bought at Anjuna Beach. Vally bought himself a wooden cobra which now lives in our upstairs hallway. At every stand, I would decide what I wanted and then leave so that Matthew and Vally could haggle. In a couple of cases the vendor managed to sell them two of something where I had only planned on buying one.

Our next stop was Sahakari Bandar which is a government run co-operative department store nearby. Vally told me that there was no bargaining at this place, but that the prices were reasonable. Its too bad we were under such time pressure, because I found this store absolutely fascinating. The store itself was on one floor, probably the size of a small urban supermarket. For me it was a museum of ordinary Indian life. Much of the Indian clothing and many of the household objects that I had seen in use were on sale here. For example, there was an incredible collection of stainless steel pots and bowls and tiffins of all sizes. I saw sets of the types of insulated serving bowls and tea carafes that had held our food and drink in so many homes. I considered buying one, but didn't see any I liked enough. I also saw kitchen utensils whose purpose I could only guess, and a lot of cheap plastic. Here they sold a dizzying assortment of saris and bedspreads and shawls and blankets. I was trying to look and make decisions all at once, and it almost felt like one of those all-you-can-put-in-your-shopping-cart-in-20-minutes shopping sprees that people sometimes win, except there were no cart. We got some bedspreads, a woolen blanket, and a couple of shawls but it felt like a random decision. The check out system was similar to that in Chile. Each time you committed to buying something, the salesman took it, and gave you a receipt. When you were done, you got on a line and waited to pay for your purchases. Each paid receipt was stamped. Then you took your stamped receipts to another part of the store and waited again while someone matched each of your receipts with an item that had been stashed behind the counter. It took about 15 minutes to check out.

We still had the pillow problem and Matthew could think of only one place in Bombay where we might be able to buy inflatable neck pillows, a complex called The Asian Market, so we took a cab there. The Asian market is sort of like an updated, narrow-aisled 5 and 10. It sells a little of everything that can be imported from the rest of Asia, like electronic goods, camera, luggage, etc., all on one floor. It may be that each department, or at least some of the departments are independently run. It didn't feel like everyone there was working for the same boss. We went to the luggage area. No luck. Then somehow we found where they sold glue. After a brief discussion with the clerk which included a live demonstration of the problem, he sold us some Super Glue and assured us that it would fix the leak. Matthew drifted over to the CDs. CDs were cheap and we bought some for him and a couple for us to take back as gifts. There were food stands in the middle of the store, mostly selling sweets. Since we had eaten nothing but sweets all day we searched for an alternative. I settled on a chutney sandwich, which consisted of crustless white bread with some kind of chutney spread on it. I didn't really like it, but I ate it anyway. Then Vally spotted some samosas and bought 4 of them. The Asian Market was near the Churchgate train station, so we walked to the train. On the way we ate the samosas. Vally ate most of them. I ate about half of one, but they were so spicy that it was painful and I gave up. I remember noticing that Vally was handling them with his bare, unwashed hands.

Back at Chrissie's

We got back to Chrissie's by 3:30. The family was eating lunch on a table that folded out from the wall in Chriselle's room. I hadn't noticed it before. They urged us to eat and even though I wasn't very hungry, I made a game attempt. I wanted to buy two more things, some multi-vitamins with iron for Eugene and silver ankle bracelet for me. I had gotten an inexpensive one at the fair at Anjuna beach, and I enjoyed wearing it. Matthew, ever-helpful, volunteered to take me to a shop and do the negotiating for me. We left Vally to pack and walked to a chemists. Although we very clearly stated what we wanted, the chemist showed us several varieties of vitamins that did not contain iron before he found one that did. We got a 3 month supply which I hope Bart will pick up when his unit flies into Bombay and deliver when they fly to Delhi. We took an autorick to a small store which sold silver jewelry, something of a rarity in a country that favors gold. There were only two choices, so I quickly picked my favorite and learned that you are supposed to wear ankle bracelets in pairs. I didn't fight it. I left the shop so Matthew could negotiate the price. I stood outside in the grey air, looking at the grimy, run-down buildings and watching the insane dance of traffic, and I realized that it had come to look perfectly normal to me. I decided that maybe I had been there a little too long.

The packing was going well and I had time to take a shower, a high priority before our 28-hour trip. Even though Chrissie's shower has a little divider on the floor between the shower and the rest of the bathroom, there was no bath mat, and I got water all over the place. I noticed how different my first and last showers were in India. The first time I felt terrible about getting water all over the floor. This time it was nothing.

We wound up giving Matthew one of our suitcases and Chrissie the other by default. I'm not sure he was that enthusiastic about it since there wasn't an inch of extra space in his place, but he mumbled something about storing it at his in-laws. Vally unloaded as much of his clothing as he could. Oddly enough he lost his Reebocks, but we have no memory of actually seeing them in India. So much so that we were surprised that they weren't here when we got home. Matthew busied himself repairing our pillows with the Super Glue. It was easy to see where they had burst, at a seam. Remarkably, the glue was perfect for the job and, as advertised, set up almost immediately. We put the remainder of the Super Glue in a plastic bag for in-flight repairs. Even though Chrissie says he hasn't seen it, we are hoping that it was at this point that we lost our roll of film and that it will turn up under the bed or something. At last we were packed and ready to go. We were carrying two small backpacks with inflatable pillows, earplugs, vitamins, toiletries, changes of underwear and socks as well as a walkman and some tapes. We also had the bag we had bought in Panjim, stuffed with pillows and sweat shirts for New York. We had a few nervous moments as the cab was delayed in arriving because we had insisted, probably without needing it, on one with a cartop carrier for our luggage. The ride was as routine as driving in Bombay gets. It wasn't very hot and we never got caught next to the exhaust of a diesel truck. Matthew promised me the opportunity to give some money to beggars, and sure enough every time we stopped on the road near the airport, there were swarms of them, almost all filthy women with babies in slings around their waists or toddlers on their hips. I had a collection of rupee coins to give them. I also had two 50 piesa coins (1/2 rupee) and accidently gave the one man only one of them. He was insulted and I realized my faux pas and gave him the other one too. I didn't get rid of all of the rupees and made Matthew promise to give them to beggars, although I told him it was okay if he gave them to beggars who were old women, since those were the ones he felt compassion for.