Ginger Without Borders

[Prologue: You may notice from the date of this entry that it has been almost a month since my last post about our India adventure.  We are now back in the US.  Please reread my last entry to see that Kingston’s travel plan did not get back to our hotel until almost 11pm.  I am sincerely sorry blog readers, but with my 70 years of experience, I know how important sleep is to an alert and healthy body. I needed both in India, so I made the decision to post less lengthy comments daily on my Facebook page (and our travel schedule made even that a challenge) and save my longer thoughts for this blog. These comments will not have the immediacy of summarizing my daily travels but I trust they will actually be a more coherent travelogue since I have had some time to develop my thoughts more clearly. When traveling in an Asian country, my “Western brain” needs time to digest my experiences before I express any comment. As the blog reader, you should decide if time has made any difference.]

Even though we had set our alarm clocks for 8am, we were awaked by our daughter crying “it is almost 9” the next morning. Our jet lag had made us more tired than we realized. We had slept thorough both of our phone alarms. Our hotel had a very extensive breakfast buffet, but we rushed through breakfast because Brother was picking us up early for a tour of the family’s “neighborhood’ before we meet Sister for an afternoon of shopping. Kingston’s formal Indian dress was a little dated and Lena wanted some more choices for her next Indian wedding.  As long as we were there, we also thought we might find something for us as well.

Our first destination was Juhu Chowpatty Beach, which is on the Arabian Sea just northeast of the Santacruz neighborhood where the family apartment is located.  It is the beach where Kingston spent his youth as did Brother and Sister. It is a little unclear to me, but the term “Chowpatty” seems to be used with most public beaches, so it is also proper to just call it Juhu Beach. As we came to find out, the beaches in Mumbai (particularly during Monsoon Season) are not safe for swimming. Partly this is because of the strong ocean currents that are become exacerbated by the monsoon waters. Now because of the polluted waterways of Mumbai, even the beaches are not clean enough for humans. So folks mostly just stand around on the beaches and maybe run through the shallows to get their feet wet. Brother dropped us off close to the beach and went in search of a parking spot. 

Our feet had barely touched the sand of the beach when the cloudy sky opened up and a squall blew onto the beach. Kingston’s warnings about the monsoon rains of August were coming true. The large crowd on the beach disappeared as everyone scurried for cover from the hard rain. I have never seen so many folks flee a beach so quickly!  We were prepared and pulled our raincoats and umbrellas from our backpacks. Brother had found a spot to park his van and rejoined us, so he quickly guided us over to the fairly old concrete food court built on the edge of the beach. The rain ended almost as quickly as it had arrived, so our umbrellas were stowed in our backpacks by the time we got to the food court. We noticed that the bigger waves would periodically breach the lower fourth of the food court, and those stalls were now abandoned. Brother said to him that this was his strongest evidence that the sea level was rising. He recalled that when he was a young man (some 30 years earlier), this same food court was several hundred meters from the shoreline. The shoreline now was eating at the food court. Kingston, the master of street food, was disappointed that we did not want to partake of any of the offerings of the food court.

Since our breakfast had been on the light side, we were in fact hungry but wanted a restaurant for lunch. So we loaded up the van and Kingston directed his brother to one of the places he knew. We were still getting used to what options were available, so Brother and Kingston did all the ordering. For an appetizer, they ordered the restaurant’s Persian specialty, Kadak Romali, a very thin flat bread that was the consistency of a cracker and as large as a pizza. It was sprinkled with various spices and served with green and red curry sauces. We followed that up with chicken for Lena and Dawn and Lamb Brianna for the guys (and one of the last beers I would have for a while).

After a leisurely lunch, we headed back to a shopping area on the streets below the sky walk for the Santacruz train station. Shops occupied the building fronts that lined the road beneath the sky walk. But the sidewalks in front of the shops were also filled with “informal” shops selling cheaper (and questionable) merchandise. While technically illegal, these shops operate in almost semi-permanent stalls. If and when the police chose to enforce the rules, the operators either quickly close the stall or make some payment to the police as a “fine.” But the jumble of “informal” shops along with the more established stores attracts large crowds looking for deals. While we were strolling through the “informal” shops, Sister arrived on the train from New Mumbai where she lives.

With our shopping expert in tow, we headed to the clothing shop that has served Kingston’s family for over 30 years. Kingston moaned that he spent far too many of the best hours of his young life in the company of his Mom as she spent what to him seemed too long shopping for a new sari. The store was two stories: the ground floor for men’s clothes, and the second floor for women. We headed up the stairs to the women’s floor, where there were shelves full of cloth and shelves of pre-made clothes in plastic bags arranged by size. There were no racks of hanging clothes. Kingston’s Mom usually only shopped for cloth and then had the shop tailor the sari. Kingston’s Dad did the same for his shirts. Since we did not have the time for clothes to be tailored for Lena, we began the process of looking through the bags of pre-mades to find something she would like. I felt like we were back in the 1950s when my Mom would drive us three kids from Burlington to Greensboro to go to Belk’s Department Store to buy clothes and shoes. There must have been 4 saleswomen in the one room where we were. The women’s floor appeared to have four or five other rooms, each with 4 to 5 saleswomen. In our room, one woman served as our primary contact and the others supported her.

Of course, having me, Dawn, Kingston, Brother and Sister along with our opinions did not help Lena’s decision making. After Lena had modeled about 10 different outfits, we finally narrowed down the choices and then it was Dawn’s turn. She only wanted one formal Kurta (a long shift over pants) and a less formal Kurta to wear for informal events. He modeling went more quickly and then the tailor came out to get the measurements of Dawn and Lena that were needed to make sure the premade items fit their new owners. And all the tailoring would be completed in-house by the time we returned to Mumbai in a couple of weeks. (Seriously folks, Belk’s in the 1950s had its own tailors to adjust clothing fit). Despite some protests from Kingston that his dated formal wear was “just fine,” he and I headed down to the Mens Level where again, there were 4 to 5 salesmen in each of the several rooms on that floor. I believe we were all ready to be done with clothes purchases, so our process was over fairly quickly. No tailoring was necessary for us. Our reward was a trip across the road to an alley where a pressed sugar cane drink maker maintained a stand (and apparently this was also Kingston’s reward when his Mom found her cloth). Pressed sweet sugar cane juice is a very tasty treat. And then the rain returned (not quite as hard as in the morning). Water started leaking into many of the informal stalls, causing the stall owners to cover their merchandise with plastic.

I had an idea of buying a pair of shoes I had seen at an Indian wedding, so Sister took me to several established shoe shops (she advised me not to look at anything in the informal stalls that still had shoes visible). The only pair I liked was not in my size, but she said there was a better selection in New Mumbai. So we all headed back to the family apartment for another of Kingston’s Mom’s great dinners.