Miss Adventures

Three days after record-breaking rains brought Bombay to a halt, I’m finally beginning to hear about my friends’ and colleagues’ unbelieveable journeys. South Bombay, as I’ve mentioned before, got hit with 7 inches of rain on Tuesday, but, save for the lack of bustle, it looked pretty normal on Wednesday. On the other hand, the suburbs saw a lot of death and destruction.
(more…)

Well, I’m still pretty high and dry here in Bombay. But now I see that the international papers have caught on to our little rain problem. So, it must be a big deal.

Actually, it rained about seven inches in 24 hous in South Bombay. The suburbs, on the other hand, got 27 inches of rain!! Too crazy.

Again, Anthony and I are fine. But it seems the stories are still developing. So if you want to keep track, check out Google News or do your own search:

Nine hours later and…it’s still raining! No flooding where I am, but most of the city is shut down. I guess this is the equivalent of a blizzard, so I’ll concede that flooding is inevitable at this point.

News about the Monsoon:

• Maharashtra rains leave many dead [BBC News]
• Rains bring life to standstill in Mumbai[Mid Day]
• Rains wreak havoc in Mumbai; 150 killed in Konkan[Times of India]
• What’s in store today[Mumbai Mirror]
• Monsoon brings Mumbai to halt [Business Standard]
• Heavy monsoon rains cause travel chaos in Bombay [Reuters]

I’ve been pretty unimpressed by the monsoon so far. Sure, it came in with a bang. Then again, the flooding has happened mostly in the suburbs, not in the city.

In fact, the weather in Bombay has been mostly overcast with occasional sun and sprinkles. The locals said that the rains had “regularized,” meaning that they were coming mostly at night instead of haphazardly during the day. There was a time last week when a colleague of mine was convinced she wouldn’t really need an umbrella for the rest of the season.

Monsoon is really just another name for a weather pattern, a storm. Even when it pours, it never really thunders. I was inappropriately worried about the monsoon shortly before it came, but now I realize that it’s nothing to be scared of.

“Thunder never happens when it’s raining…” Today, that changed.
(more…)

Until last week, visiting museums in this country has been a mostly unsatisfying experience. Luckily, we stumbled upon the last day of a week-long exhibit at the Jehangir Gallery entitled “Revisualising India.” Included in the show were pieces from the Osian’s Archive & Library of Cinema and Popular Arts, an auction house and archive center in New Delhi. On display were hundreds of vintage, painted Bollywood posters, photographs from film sets from the 1920s, Ravi Varma lithographs, political posters depicting Gandhi, Nehru, and other folk heroes, art deco style travel posters of Indian destinations, and - for some reason - several Communist-era film posters from Poland and expressive marionettes from Indonesia.
(more…)

In case you missed it, MTV launched its newest offspring the other day:
MTV Desi [press release]
From my Bombay-entrenched perspective, I’m surprised that it’s taken so long to put together the channel. Why not just beam MTV India into homes? Well, other than the fact that the VJs here go in and out of Hindi and English (Hinglish) so quickly and with so much slang, you can’t wait for the next video/movie ad to come on. The other problem is that most of the “videos” that are played here are basically musical snippets from up-and-coming Hindi films, many of whch will take a while to reach the DVD stores in Jackson Heights and elsewhere. At least MTV India plays music - I don’t think regular MTV has played a video in about 10 years.

I’ve made some really cool Bollywood/Indi Pop mixes for some of my friends back home that I’ll get in the mail one of these days. In the meantime, if you’ve got DirecTV and money to burn, take a look at MTV Desi. Alternately, here are links to some artists currently on my headphones. Yes, try as I might to avoid it, I have succumbed to the desi dance ishtyle!
(more…)

Tired of bland veg curries and dals? Think sheekh kebabs are the only non-veg contribution to Indian cuisine? Then, check out Goa. Thanks to the Portuguese, who left their Euro-Christian tastes for meat, Goan menus include beef and the ever-popular goan sausage. Being on the coast and blessed with wide rivers and creeks, Goan chefs also make the most of the bounty of the sea, with shrimp, lobster, and freshwater fish figuring prominently into daily specials and family feasts. And, although Goan cuisine is not that well-known, even outside of western India, one of its dishes has come to be a staple of curry shops round the world: the dreaded, but oft devoured, vindaloo.
(more…)

Why would anyone want to visit Goa, the ultimate beach destination in India, during the middle of the monsoons? I’m sure a lot of people will be asking that when I tell them that Anthony and I visited there last weekend, a good two to three weeks into the rainy season. But, around these parts, going to Goa at this time of year is one the best kept secrets. There are a number of air and hotel packages, the tourists are gone, and the rains revive the foliage to a lush green.
(more…)

If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’m a sucker for anthropomorphic humor. That kind of stuff is easy to find in the New Yorker, and luckily the mag in online.

I’m a little late posting this, but I only read this article over the long weekend, as I was tucking into back issues of all of my magazines while I enjoyed a vacation in Goa…more on that later.

Hope everyone in the U.S. and all you Ami-expats had a happy 4th.