May 24

Daily Log
25 May 2007
This was a warm, sunny Friday. It was my first full day in India after flying in Thursday morning. It also turned out to be an excellent day. I was sadly unable to contact F because of a faulty internet connection. I did however have an excellent breakfast of parathans (a North Indian bread), aloo (potatoes), and delicious achaar (Indian pickle). My uncle and aunt are staying with us. I call them Pishomoshai (my father’s sister’s husband), and pishimoni (my father’s sister). They’re going to be here for a few days before making a possible move to Singapore. Baba (my father) had left for work early. The rest of us, Pishomoshai, Pishimoni, Mum, and I took off after breakfast. We got into Pishomoshai’s new car, a Suzuki Swift, and headed towards the suburb of Chembur to buy some fish. We got there after a short drive down the Eastern Express Highway. The market was an all out assault on the senses. It was visually very stimulating. The fishmongers were sitting on waist high platforms laid out in rows inside a large hall. Customers walked around in the passages that separated the platforms. The fishmongers either worked alone or in groups. We patronize the largest of these groups. The fish lie whole on the platforms, some quite alive. When a customer gives an order, the fishmonger chops up the selected fish in the manner requested by the customer. I watched fascinated as the fishmonger chopped off the head of a particularly lively fish, and the chopped off head actually continued to slither around. The place was also quite noisy. Customers and fishmongers were shouting to and fro as well as a large number of crows cawing incessantly. The crows were quite disciplined, taking care to pick at only those pieces of fish that had been thrown aside as waste. Their droppings on defunct light fixtures were the only really disgusting feature of the place. The most striking sensory effect of the place however was its smell. The stench of fish was quite overwhelming. I initially thought that I could bring over F to the place, but I’m not sure anymore. We came home for lunch, and were joined by one of my friends Aman Sachdeva. I knew him threw my father Aman’s father and my father were batch mates in college and worked at the Indian Register of Shipping for a long time. Aman is a senior at the Dalhousie Maritime Engineering Training Institute, Mumbai (Bombay). Unfortunately my jetlag began to hit around this time, and I started feeling very sleepy. Poor Aman might have gotten bored trying to make conversation with a very tired me. Lunch was excellent. Mum served mutton, fish, dal (lentils), and paneer (cottage cheese), with rice. After my afternoon nap I had a glass of cold coffee. Baba came back around eight. We had roti (another North Indian bread) with egg curry, and chicken curry. We then went out to a movie theatre down the street to watch Cheeni Kum (Short on Sugar). The cinema hall Huma Adlabs is in a mall called Huma. The mall was very crowded and we could not get parking and had to park on the street. The film itself was about a sixty four year old Indian chef in London, and his thirty four year old Indian girlfriend. The plot was a little too simplistic but the script was quite funny. I finally got to ride Baba’s new car, a Honda City, I loved it, but I’m still waiting to get a really good look at it tomorrow morning. We finally got home and went to sleep at two in the morning. It was excellent first day in India, and a very promising start to my trip.