Tales from a Travelling salesman

Ardor for Barber   I am one of those persons who have been devoid of any hobby or passion. I have had a boyhood crush on cricket and postage stamps. I developed a weak passion for wine drinking much later in my life but soon gave it away for the fervor of the whiskey. Craving for the coffee came in almost when I entered the 60th year. A bias for the city of Bombay and affinity to its ocean also happened in the last decade. However, an unwavering passion that remains with me since youth is my ardor for the barber, my grit for grooming, and swish for a salon. I never tolerated unruly hair on my head in my impeccably orderly life.  I visit barbershop as regularly as the faithful go to the church. Like a king having half a dozen concubines, I maintain the number of salons across Mumbai city, and like a king, visit them often so as to not displease anyone. Waiting at these salons for my turn animates me gives me as if I am floating between two different worlds, a real and ...

Taverns and tea rooms As a child in a mofussil town like Jamnagar, I never saw an inside of a restaurant because there were none. Curiously, the term mofussil was coined by the East India company to describe India outside the main cities of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.  Our favorite food joints were all handcarts or shops dispensing freshly made foods to be carried home. Lots of this still happens and old residents of Jamnagar such as I prefer food from these carts. There were tea rooms but not the kind you have in Ritz, London. These were hole-in-the-wall places dispensing half a glass of water and a half cup of tea called 'cutting chai' which you had to partake standing outside. I love their tea and often visit these places when I am visiting Jamnagar. Cutting chai is now an institution across the country. The 80 ml concoction dished out of a small cart on the sidewalk is lethal in strength equivalent to 60 ml of Scotch.  In the early unemployed phase of my life, I was a...

The oldest friend  Lockdown gave me a bonanza of surplus time to read. My Kindle device has 3 books open. My average at present is 3 books a week. I have demolished the Russian, French and Chinese revolutions, British Monarchy, British Raj in India, Partition, and India after Gandhi and Nehru. I have knocked off hundreds of biographies; from Ramnath Goenka to BK Nehru, VP Menon to Katharine Graham, Shah Rukh Khan to PM Modi, to Gulzar.  I am a creature of habit so I read at fixed places and at fixed timings. The last slot is 9 pm to 10.30 pm when I am also listening to popular Hindi film songs on the radio.  Reading is my oldest friend, circa 1961. I attribute my zest for reading to our family servant, who taught me how to read during his siesta time.  My family could not afford a newspaper, so I fetched one from our neighbors. I scanned the headlines of the paper even when nothing made sense to a 10-year-old me.  I borrowed children’s magazines from a paper ven...

Maid for each other There are five things you need to live happily ever after in Mumbai; trusted maid, faithful driver, skilled barber, proximity to a great coffee shop, and walking distance to the ocean. My wife and I are lucky to have all five in our lives.  I should write a blog on each of these. But let's talk of our maid today. She runs our home and lives with great devotion, care, and efficiency. The routine of our day revolves around her. She breezes in and out of our home quite a few times in a day to attend the chores we need to be attended. We wait for her to serve us hot Rotis at lunch, make our afternoon tea, keep evening omelet in the microwave, and set and prepare the dinner menu before she leaves for the day.  Besides her devotion and hard work, her chief quality is a constant smile and frequent laughter. She lives with all the resource constraints of a Mumbai housemaid but has a striking ability to smile and laugh in all circumstances. She is also quite...

Summer in Mumbai   I wake up at 4 AM by the loud and persistent call of koel from the top of countless mango and asopalav trees dotting our home in Bandra. I open a window to the darkened world allowing sharp and scented summer sea breeze filling up my nostrils with intoxicating smells of raat ki raani, chemeli or juhi flowers from the garden as far as a mile away.  All these heralds arrival of summer. We like to spend the summer season in Mumbai. Going anywhere in summer is pointless be it London, Lucknow, or Lonavala, one ends up meeting people from Juhu, Borivali, and Bandra. Mumbai summer is special, like most things of Mumbai, with small telltale signs of an invasion.  Sunlight filters in the house early, newspaper arrives an hour early, and morning walkers are out in droves. Roads are devoid of roaring school buses and frantic parents ferrying children in cars as schools shut for vacation. Trains are less crowded, putting a smile on the face of every commut...