30 May Wednesday

I woke up to another hot and sunny morning. The consistency of the weather is quite striking. It’s probably the sustained nature of the heat that makes summers in Bombay so harsh, not the temperatures or humidity levels which are generally quite moderate. I had a rushed conversation with F. because I had to leave with my parents today morning. I had plans on spending the morning with my cousins Reshmi and Deep. Pishimoni left for Kolkata. She had to go there to receive the truck carrying Pishomoshai and Pishimoni’s furniture. Pishomoshai left moments before we did to drop her off at the airport. We dropped off Baba at his office, the head office of the Great Eastern Shipping Company Limited, called Ocean House. The office is located in the Worli neighborhood of Central Bombay, about forty five minutes from where my parents live. After dropping him off, our chauffer Milind drove my mother and me to the suburb of Bandra to drop Mum off at her school Peridot Nursery. The car then dropped me off at my cousin Reshmi and Deep’s apartment in the Pali Hill neighborhood of Bandra. Reshmi and Deep are relatives on my maternal side. Reshmi’s maternal grandfather and my maternal grandfather are brothers. They live in the second storey of an apartment building. Reshmi is three years younger to me and she is a doctor preparing to move to Boston this fall to pursue a graduate education. Deep just gave his twelfth grade exams and is busy applying for pretty much everything ranging from pure sciences, engineering, medicine, and even hotel management. Reshmi and I got a chance to have a nice chat as I accompanied her to the Bandra-Kurla complex, a massive business district north of Bandra. She had to pick up some paperwork from the headquarters of State Bank of India, the largest bank in the country. Their head office was very impressive but I wasn’t too pleased when they didn’t let me enter because I was dressed in shorts. On our way back we stopped at Carter Road, a long sweeping road hugging the coastline with a lovely promenade, to buy gelato. We then went to Reshmi and Deep’s apartment for lunch. Mum joined us for fried rice and chicken. We then crashed in Reshmi’s bedroom, turned on the air conditioning and chatted for almost an hour. Mum and I got back around four thirty, just in time to open the door for the maids. In the evening Mum and I went out for our usual swim. While we were swimming a coach was training very young children in the shallow end of the pool. One of the children, all of a sudden jumped into the pool without her life vest on. The poor thing nearly drowned and had to be fished out, it was really shocking!!! Children that young should not be allowed in the pool unless their parents are close by. I came home ravenously hungry and we enjoyed a very good dinner of comfort food – rotis, potol, dal, and fish curry. We were all so sleepy that we passed out immediately without me getting a chance to update this blog which I was able to do only much later so it got posted only today: look below.