The next day we flew to Bangkok and a couple of hours later back to Mumbai. We hadn’t had breakfast and wanted to go to duty free; there was no time for either. The IndiGo lines were extremely long, and we soon discovered why. When Glenna asked a friend of hers what he wanted her to bring back, he said a 42” flat screen tv. She took that as a joke. Well, it wasn’t. At least every third person in line had a TV or more than one on his cart. I wondered how in the world they got the right one when they got to Mumbai. It seemed to me that it would be easy to walk off with a bigger one than you had bought. Passport control was slow too; by that time our flight was well into boarding and we had a long way to walk still. But we made it, and Glenna even got a gift for a friend. The immigration lines were crazy in Mumbai also. We came in at the same time as a large flight from Riyadh. Lots of cutting in line.
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| TVs on their way to Mumbai |
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| Glenna in her drums class |
The next day, my last day, we went back to Churchgate so that we could go to her drums class. It was fun for me to observe her playing the drums, both with the others and individually. There was a wide range of talent in the class. We didn’t have time to stay for her other classes. We had to have Irani chai and bun with butter again! Then it was off to the Fulbright office to do some business and then back to the train station where we got another vada pav before going back to Bandra West. I had seen a YouTube video DabbaWalas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTkGDXRnR9I) a couple of months ago showing their fascinating system for delivering a hot lunch to the men in the offices. The wife makes the food in the morning at home; it is picked up by a DabbaWala, identified by an exacting system, transported, and delivered hot to her husband for lunch. Well worth watching. Well, anyway, outside the train station we saw it in operation. They were sorting the containers getting ready to deliver them. At lunch I had my last pineapple shake. Then we did last minute shopping and errands.
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| DabbaWalas organizing lunch |
Back at the apartment we worked on the presentation she was going to give at the Fulbright conference the next week and packing the large suitcase I had brought to bring some of her belongings back. To save time, we had dinner delivered (common in that part of Mumbai), mediocre Italian with the also so-so wine we had bought at the Whiskey Village in Laos.
I had to get up at 1AM to get to the airport for my 4:40 flight. Glenna put me in a taxi, and away I went. I was on Qatar Airlines with a change of plane in Doha. We came into the terminal to join a massive throng which seemed to have no order. Eventually we discovered that there was a line to go through security (never mind that we had done that in Mumbai). It snaked back and forth. After about 40 minutes new people started cutting in line. The orderly Westerners tried to get them to queue up, but eventually gave up and pushed with the best of them. Coming in an hour late, we didn’t have time to be polite. And then we had to go through security again at the gate. My conclusion after encountering lots of duplication at airports in many cities is that these are just ways of giving jobs to people. You just have to put up with it.
On the long flight to Washington, DC I slept reasonably well and watched TinTin and the second episode of Mildred Pierce. By the time I arrived in South Carolina, I had been traveling for 27 ½ hours. When I got back, it was the evening of our monthly community social. When I walked in, I got a hand! Wow, what a lovely end to a wonderful trip.
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