Asia 2006: Random Bozo briefly returns to Mumbai

Arrival in Mumbai

I wasn't a happy bunny by the time I arrived in Mumbai - my blog tells of more bowel problems:

I may have found my ideal location in India

It's in Mumbai and it's an air-conditioned cybercafe with fast PCs running XP, flat screens, reasonable keyboards and accessible USB ports and CD-RW drives. They even have a scanner, which will be very useful for me just now.

Downstairs, they have a clean sit-down toilet with a handbasin and soap. It doesn't have one of those nasty taps at mid-shin level which is for filling a bucket to manually flush away the goodies and which always leaks, soaking my trouser leg. (This has happened 3 times today to me at toilets in Mumbai station.)

Thank goodness for LJ. I can vent my spleen and sphyncter into it and no-one need get hurt. The alternative might be a Bruce ready to inflict physical violence. So what's been happening?

I arrived in Mumbai around 6am and immediately had to run to the toilets in the waiting room. Aarrgghh! They were all filthy and my trouser leg got soaked. The cisterns were all bust and the seats removed. Users had to either hover or squat on little footrests built into the seats.

I dumped my major bag into the luggage deposit and went to the post-office (blessedly near the station). A wonderful packer from UP made an extra cover for my parcel but left the top open. He warned me that speedpost might be a better choice - it would cost about half as much again (compared to registered airmail) to post but I would get no hassle in the process. I wish I'd followed his advice. Here's what happened!

1. The post office opened at 9am. Mr packer had been working since 8am.
2. The parcels office opened at 10am. This meant I could go into the parcels office (which had been locked, with a wax seal on the lock until 9.55) and sit, watching the workers straggle in and start yelling at each other.
3. I was given a photocopied form to fill in in triplicate. When I'd completed half of the first copy I was given some carbon paper.
4. I was then told to sit in various places until 11am when the customs people turned up. They had to check the parcel before it was closed.
5. They had just started dealing with me when a bloke came into that office to mop the floor. Everything stopped again for 20 minutes while he used a mop (which badly needed to be shoved up the office-manager's arse and then replaced) to dampen the floor and move the grot about.
6. The customs people then insisedt on opening every sub-parcel within the packed parcel, thus destroying the arrangement of cloth sub-parcels protecting the fragile ones and buggering all the labels I'd made saying who was to receive each sub-parcel.
7. I told them that this has never happened before* and they kept saying 'no problem', utterly deaf to my response that while they might have no problems with me or my parcel, I had a lot of problems with their tardiness, inefficiency and the fact that I'd always before been able to hand over a sealed parcel to the post office and just get it sent.*
   * Whether using registered airmail or speedpost (which could have been dealt with at the main counters at 9am but would have cost over Rs1000 more) from India before now (at Pune, Maharashtra, Margao, Ottapalam and other places), I'd never been through this charade. Couldn't they buy a fucking X-ray machine and a sniffer dog?
8. The parcel was sewn together again, nowhere near as neatly as it had been, once I'd re-sealed and re-labeled all the sub-parcels.
9. Other workers then sealed the parcel with hot wax. I don't like to think what that did to the contents.
10. At the payment counter, I handed over the parcel, the forms, the requisite cash and got a receipt. This whole bloody charade took 2 hours from finding Mr packer and should have taken 10 minutes! My guts were in uproar and I had to run again to the station toilet.

Back at the station toilet, I put my rupee on the counter next to the bloke who I thought was the attendant and waited for a cubicle. It turned out the bloke wasn't the attendant but simply another punter who was ahead of me in the queue for the cubicle. The real attendant returned, scooped up my rupee and then tried to make me pay again. I told him he'd just picked up my payment and that I wasn't paying twice for a filthy toilet and certainly not paying Rs2 when the sign on door said Rs1 per visit. The cubicle had a squat toilet and another tap at shin-level that squirted onto my trouser-leg.

When I came out, the attendant again tried to ask for money. I was in no mood for this and walked past him, ignoring him.

I'm now in a nice cybercafe, venting my spleen and occasionally my guts. I think I'm getting better but I'm going to take immodium tomorrow if it doesn't clear up. BTW, the cybercafe is Jenisys Computers and is at Jiji House, Ground Floor, 17 Raveline Street, Fort, Mumbai-4000 001 (tel/fax 2207 5213, email jenisys at hathway.com)

I think that's all for now. Gonna log out and ask if I can just sit here until I need to go to the station. See you later space-cats!