Popagandhi

If there is one thing I remember about our Indian summer nights in the big city it is the unmistakable mixture of clammy monsoon-weathered bodies against Top 40s hits (from a jukebox ten years old), lubricated by cheap ganja and Indian whisky. The heat does that to you — you forget things.

Many people in that room seemed to have forgotten things. They forgot where they were, I pretended I forgot who I was, and together we all pretended we fit in.

The alliances were obvious.

The French enjoyed huddling together to discuss volunteer programs. At least that’s what I thought — they only ever spoke to each other, and only spoke in French. The Israelis had dreadlocks, ate only falafel, and spent most of their time trying to persuade other people not to hate them, usually to people who had no distinct feelings about Israelis. Whenever there was a sport on the television, usually football or cricket, the Americans would talk loudly and anxiously, wrongly call football ’saawwwwwwccceeeerrrrr’, needlessly proclaim their disinterest in cricket for all the world to hear, but announce their love for Asia (because India=Asia) for the yoga and cheap vegetarian food. India, dude, totally expands my mind. Ommmm.

California Chris was different. For one, he lived here. He was also a Bollywood recruiter — his job was to spend time at places like Leopold finding Western travellers to work as Bollywood extras. If you looked a certain way (cosmopolitan, meaning white), Chris could hook you up to a film and give you your only chance at being in a movie, even if it’s just to giggle and hold a martini glass behind a big Bollywood actor you’d never heard of. In turn you gave him the chance to continue overstaying his visa so that by the time he finally made enough to go home his fluent Marathi cursing could out-curse every goonda who dared leer the Ukrainian film extras he was so proud of.

Pete, the scruffy Yorkshireman and his Brazilian-Japanese girlfriend Aoki worked as a pair. He documented HIV among the hijra transvestite prostitutes; she sold his work and made it marketable with her design and writing skills. Johan was a social worker in Germany but every time he was in India, he instantly transformed into a movie star. What was tall and goofy back in Europe was big and intimidating here; he found a niche playing Russian/ Eastern European villains in many Bollywood movies, achieving considerable success in that specialized role. Proof: auto wallahs recognized him as the firang in Pepsi commercials. We all yearned to postpone our return ‘home’, wherever home was, whether it was San Francisco, London, Hamburg, Sao Paulo, or Singapore. Bombay does that to you.

The mob outside never remembers you, and keeps pouncing even if you walk by them several times a day.

“Slum tours, sirrrrrr. 450 rupees. Dharavi slum. Biggest slum in Asia. This month National Geographic cover story.”

“Madam buy map. Balloon? Pen? Comb? Trumpet? CD? Bollywood movie? Sponge?”

“Madam — buy a chick? Small and furry.”

“You want scissors didi? Very cheap.”

I never stayed long enough to suddenly need to buy a pair of scissors from the poor man. Never long enough to be socialized into the ranks of the foreigners’ only caste; I was always on the move, using Bombay as my base as I leaped off into the west, the east, the south, the northeast, always returning for a bottle of Cobra but never more. And when I did the map-selling, slum-tour operating sellers of furry little chicks in Colaba drove me crazy enough to prefer the hour long ride in the famously packed suburban trains of Bombay. Rush hour Bombay: I sprint across monsoon-soaked Bombay into Churchgate and jump into trains by shoving the rest of myself into a sea of people, while my hands gripped the sides of train doors. We chugged by Marine Lines, Charni Road, Grant Road, Bandra, Dadar, Jogeshwari, Malad; thousands more fling themselves in and out of train carriages and back into their chawls, finding the time to buy vegetables and nail polish from the noisy hawkers onboard.

A world away and ‘home’, finally, rush hour Singapore is quiet (everyone’s asleep or staring into space), soul-sucking (all those ties and high heels can’t be good for blood circulation), disheartening — even quietly sinister. I join the ranks of rush hour Singapore for one morning by rushing to meet a friend for breakfast on the other end of my island. My phone beeps with an email as I try to fit in and pretend to nod off. “Come back quick? There’s work to be done here!”

I try to ignore it but my mind has already been turned to this time last year, the year before last, and the years before that. I start feeling miserable immediately, miserable that my country is too clean, too efficient, too strangely lacking in chaos. I bury my face into my mobile phone so I fit in with the crowd that’s rushing to work. Instead of texting to say I’ll be late I end up checking Facebook. “California Chris’ status, updated yesterday: Chris is going back where he belongs tomorrow“.

I get the sense I know where he’s going back to; that we could even be thinking about the same place. I send a desperate message from where I am, somewhere in the Central Business District, Singapore. If there is one place in the world that can induce me into snoring while awake, this is it.

“Bombay?!”

California Chris, probably at the airport by now, replies immediately with a tinge of gleeful gloating. “Where else. When are you coming home?”

It starts to pour and not with regular rain — it rains a special Mumbai monsoon blend today. The special clammy feeling returns as I skirt around waterlogged pavements. I make myself a pot of chai to make myself less miserable.

As I step into the air-conditioning Singapore is famous for, I can’t stop wanting to cry. I’m not clammy, I’m too cold. I can’t shake off the feeling that if I don’t run soon I will fall asleep standing up against a handrail in the MRT and I won’t even notice it until I’m dead.

I bury my head into my mobile phone one last time and reply. “SOON.”

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