Reflections on Things at Hand: Bandra

Yes, back to India again. Mrs. Gary's Apartment was located in Bandra, which was about ten minutes or an hour (depending upon the time of day and that moment's level of traffic insanity) from Champlain's campus. It was also only a few blocks from the ocean. It was a very nice neighborhood, alternating between upper middle class and pretty posh, especially for those lucky enough to have places on the beach. There were nice restaurants and coffee shops and ice cream parlors, and also more mobile food stands where you could eat in the park down by the waterfront. Almost every evening, when it wasn't actively in monsoon season, I would end up walking in the direction of the shore - plenty of tree-lined cool streets. Sometimes I would make it to the waterline, and other days I would just wander for hours around the neighborhood. Even in a neighborhood that nice going for long walks took lots of negotiating because it was difficult to find a long stretch of "uninhabited" sidewalk - people would put up little shops on the sidewalk ("we don't need no stinking permits") so you were constantly climing up and down off the sidewalks. There was this one little boy who was in charge of this huge cart full of bananas and I would stop by every couple days to haggle - I'm sure he now owns property based on what I overpaid. There was also a man with a roadside stand of used books and, as is sometimes the case when I'm overseas, I start getting "homesick" for Dickens. Before I go anyplace I sit down with my friend Sarah Cohen, the librarian who talked me into writing this blog in the first place, and figure out what book I should read on the trip - so, for instance, before I went to Morocco for the first time we figured out which Paul Bowles novel to read, etc. I had brought several India-themed books, but I was over there for an entire summer and eventually I needed to read some Dickens (my favorite). I found a beat-up used copy of Great Expectations at this little stand and, even though it was missing the last ten pages, I still was going to buy it - I'd already read it a couple times and even had two copies at home anyway, but I got it into my head to buy it anyway, figuring that I'd end up leaving before I finished anyway, and at that point I'd just leave the book in Mrs. Gary's Apartment. However, the merchant, sensing that I was operating under some sort of Dickensian mania, would not haggle with me - again, assuming that as an American, and a large American, I was rolling in money. I would literally stop by almost everyone day, for something like two weeks, and resume this high drama. Finally, one day I was in another part of town and stumbled into a more legitimate used book store, and bought an actual complete version of Great Expectations and went back to the stand and showed the merchant that I had bought a copy and told him how much I had paid (which was less than what he wanted for the more dog-eared incomplete copy) - he just smiled, and asked me if I wanted to buy one of the other books. When not pestering poor Indian used book salesmen, however, I would usually just end up sitting down by the water's edge, watching the sun go down.