Are You Being Served?

                                                       

 A little fantasy of mine is that I am approached by one of the big retail companies, let’s say whoever owns Shopper’s Stop for example, and asked if I would like a job as customer services advisor. I can think of nothing that would make me happier. I would get stuck into that job like a pig snuffling for truffles only coming up for air when the profits had doubled.

This is not new territory; many regular readers will already know that I am often exasperated by shop assistants who follow me around a store at a distance of less than an inch and have once or twice even stepped on the backs of my shoes.  Yesterday an assistant actually leapt into my path, causing me to jerk backwards, knocking over my daughter who was walking behind me.

I do not wish to be rude but my patience is wearing thin. The one thing that is sure to send me straight back out of a shop is a pushy assistant offering me: “Something in bags?” It doesn’t even make sense. I understand customer service in the retail industry is a relatively new concept in India but it is a million miles away from where it needs to be.  For the sake of a little investment in basic staff training, millions of sales must be lost each year. I have lost count of the times my husband has calmly put down would-be purchases and walked out of the shop empty-handed after being made to wait for more than 10 minutes to pay. (Quite often where there are three tills or more, only one is manned)

There are exceptions of course, namely Zara and Good Earth.  Assistants at these stores have obviously been trained well and leave you alone to browse unless you specifically ask for help. The wait to pay is minimal and the retail experience is, on the whole, pleasant.

This month I had intended to write about either, my trip to the Mountains of Bhandardara or my full medical at Dr L H Hiranandani Hospital, both thrilling topics, but a last minute change was effected after a visit yesterday to Infiniti Mall Two in Andheri. It is with heavy heart, dear reader, that I feel we must revisit this perennial issue of poor and sometimes downright frightening customer service.

The moment I darkened the doors of Infiniti Two, a security guard gave me the once over with her security wand and then burped in my face. Charming!  First stop Zara. That was easy enough and out we came a half hour later with Polly kitted out for our upcoming holiday. In retrospect, it was a mistake to go  to Zara first as this meant we had to leave the bag at the entrance of every other store we visited, going through the whole rigmarole of handing it in and collecting tokens.

 In Accessorize the assistant legged it over as soon as we crossed the threshold: “Something in jewellery, madam?” What is the answer to that? “Yes, just give me something in jewellery, I don’t care what it is.” I gave her a curt smile and asked if I might be allowed to browse. She smiled back and continued to stand the customary inch away from me. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my skull as I handled the trinkets. The security guard also had his lasers locked on stun.  Finally, we selected a hairgrip for 445 rupees and took it to the till. I handed over a 500 note and you know what’s coming next.

“Do you have exact money please?”

And here begins my rant about till floats and it being the responsibility of the shop to provide change, not the customer. The security guard is dispatched with my 500 to find change but the shop girl, in a desperate bid to escape my tirade, darts into the staff room to get her own purse out in search of change. Polly has long since fled in embarrassment (with the token) and it is left to me to negotiate the return of the Zara bag without the token when the guard comes back, sans change. What a kerfuffle!

I catch up with Polly and we have a little look around some clothes shops where most things are sized S or XS. That’s good news for Polly because she is a petit 12-year-old girl so the women’s clothes fit her perfectly but I am an outsized hefalump because I am a size 10 -12. We are ambushed by assistants wherever we turn and when I make a joke about being too big for the clothes; it is met with confusion behind a rictus smile. I can almost see the thought bubble coming out of her head: “What is this foreigner saying? Her face looks happy but she is making negative comments. I do not know how to interpret this.”

For lack of anything better to do, we wind up in Pure Living which is a bit like a poor man’s Ikea without the self-assembly element. On the plus side, it is clean and seemingly organized. In the 15 minutes we are in the store, we are approached by no less than seven assistants. Each time I bat one off, another arrives until I lose my rag and wail: “For the love of God, just let me browse.” As I am filling my basket with candles, an assistant arrives to helpfully inform me that “these are candles, madam.” Bless him.

At the till, each candle is laboriously packed separately and then the fella gives my card to another fella who runs off with it out of the store.

“Where’s he going with my card?” I enquire

“Card machine is not working, madam, he is taking card to Puma to swipe it there”

Whatever, I have no fight left.

On the flip side, I was in Bangalore last week and spent a glorious two hours with a rug seller in his opulent showroom. He laid out one silk rug after another until I fell in love with a 6ftx9ft Kashmiri beauty.  I had one figure in mind; he had another, so we chatted and drank chai until it was time for me to go. I offered him my best price, he made the pretend phone call to his “boss” before claiming that, sadly,  he couldn’t accept such a low offer, so I left.  I had reached the top of the second escalator before I heard him calling after me. Puffing and panting, he accepted my offer, herded me back to the shop and the deal was done.  I think we both enjoyed the experience and both came away feeling that we had stitched the other up –  shopping in India at its best!

My Big Fat, gin-soaked, Ex-pat Life

One of India’s leading make-up artists, Stafford Braganza, tells Elle Magazine: “If you want to fly, you’ve got to give up all the shit that weighs you down.”

A fine sentiment, Stafford, but not one to which I can easily adhere. You see, I am a bit like Emily from Bagpuss, I never quite know what I’ll be dragging home with me from one day to the next. This week, for example,  I bought a temple, some leeches for my maid’s husband’s severed finger, four compression garments (buy two, get two free) and a kilo of marigold heads (for the temple)

And this wasn’t even an unusual week. Last week I bought, amongst other things, a rosewood circus lion standing on a ball! I just like it. It reminds me of my childhood, not that I ever saw a lion standing on a ball but I did have some circus-theme curtains.

The flat is very small and is beginning to look like a storage area for a props department. As much as I enjoy collecting all this random stuff, I wonder, is it the thrill really in the chase?

I subscribe to a website called Tiny Buddha which sends out words of wisdom every Friday afternoon: This week it read: Humans Beings are in danger of exchanging ‘being’ for ‘having.’

There is certainly truth in this but is it not possible to ‘have’ and ‘be’ at the same time? Do I have to choose?

I bought the temple from a junk shop in Jogeswari street market. It was covered in dust and unloved sitting high atop a pile of junk. I took it outside, blew the dust off and could see it was made of rosewood. It was beautifully crafted and I wanted to bring it to life again. The old gentleman who sold it to me spent three days restoring it and now it sits resplendent and filled with marigolds and candles in my living room, bringing pleasure to me and my family.  Hopefully it will have pride of place in any house in any country I live in, in the future and remind me of our happy time in India.

I bought the leeches (Rs 150 each!) because my maid’s husband severed his finger in a car door, had it sewn on again, but needed the leeches to suck out the poison.  And talking of sucking, the compression garments were to aid in the contouring of my (hot?) new bod after having 6.5 litres of fat ‘liposucked’ out of it following years of people asking when the baby was due. I only wish I’d done it years ago.

So, all my purchases have made me happy. But do I have to get rid of everything to find true fulfillment? Is the pursuit of material things wrong?

I was inspired to write this today, not just because I read the make-up artist’s wise words in Elle, but because I am, as I type, being crucified in the comments section of an article about my family in The Mail Online for, it seems, getting my priorities wrong.

In December, I wrote about how a journalist in Delhi had contacted me about ‘doing a piece’ on reverse immigration as a nice flip side to the doom and gloom in the UK press. We agreed, had our photo taken and said some very positive things about Mumbai.

Today, the article appeared online, written by a person I have never even spoken to. She has me ranting: “Britain has gone to the dogs, the country’s bankrupt” etc.  The story was peppered with inaccuracies and left me feeling a bit gloomy.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the comments started to roll in from Daily Mail readers calling us ‘chavs abroad,’ ‘hideous people taking advantage of cheap labour.’ But worst of all the comment that we sent our son away to boarding school in England, neglecting his feelings, so that we could pursue material wealth.

The article was a rather skewed version of reality, written to satisfy the Mail’s agenda to claim that everything in the UK is terrible.

I don’t know why I am surprised. I know that a journalist must tailor the story to suit both news agenda  and publication. All I can say is Thank God for Facebook and Twitter so I could let our nearest and dearest know we didn’t actually say those things.

The people who commented have no idea of what it is like to live in Mumbai, no idea of my son’s educational requirements and no idea of all we have had to give up to be here.

We are not the ‘vilest of expats’ or ‘chavs.’ We are just here to make a living like everybody else and if I want to buy a flippin’ temple or a lion on a flippin’ ball, leeches or liposuction, I will do.  I can ‘be’ and ‘have’ at the same time. The only shit that weighs me down is people who think it’s ok to pass judgment on other people when they only know them through shit they read in the Daily Mail.

The funny thing is, we have now been approached by one Sheldon Lazarus, Creative Director, who wants us to consider participation in a BBC documentary entitled: ‘Brits in Bollywood.’ Can you imagine? It will be like ‘My Big-Fat-gin-soaked-days-of-the-Raj  Ex-pat Life,’  a fabulous mix of ‘Desperate Scousewives’, ‘Porridge’ and ‘It Ain’t  ‘alf Hot, Mum!’ A quality production I am sure, but this memsahib for one ain’t doing it!

Sleepless in Mumbai

In the words of British trip-hop and trance band, Faithless: “I can’t get no sleep.” Night after night I lay in bed listening to what sounds like dogs ripping each other’s ears off and also, to my husband’s incessant,  monotone snoring. The pile-driver on the adjacent building site is more pleasing to my ear.

It’s the same night after night. I go to bed in all good faith at 11ish, read my book and turn the light off. I lay on my back; I lay on my front, then on each side and then on my back again, open my eyes and stare at the ceiling as the orchestra of dogs tune up for the night’s performance.

Ten minutes later the steady breathing next to me reaches a crescendo; there is a brief pause, and then an almighty, earth-shattering snort. From this moment onwards the snoring comes thick and fast and is quite relentless. Sometimes there are accompanying funny, little whistling sounds. Other times it is as though he is possessed by the devil, so deep and guttural are the noises. There have been times, when, had he opened his eyes, he might have seen, by the light of the moon through the crack in the curtains, me, hovering above his face with my pillow, just deliberating. If I didn’t love him so much in the day time, God knows I would have smothered him by now.

I believe the snoring is actually absorbed into the mattress and amplified ten-fold by every spring and fibre. It is at this stage, when the bed is actually vibrating with the snoring,  that I usually pick up my pillow and cotton blanky and schlep into the lounge where I make up my trampy little makeshift bed on the long bit of the corner sofa. The only other bedroom in the flat is occupied by my daughter who talks as much in the night as she does in the day, yattering away in the darkness about Justin Beiber and shoes. I can’t go in there.

But, sadly,  it is a case of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ as the lounge comes with its own set of unique problems. The crack of light under the front door illuminates the room and the constant ding-donging of the lifts drives me nuts. Who is travelling up and down in the lifts at three in the morning? I guess it’s the same people who take their kids out to play in the playground beneath my window at midnight and later.

So I lay on the sofa, blinded by the light, and listen to the dogs and the lifts until I finally drift off into a fretful, shallow sleep.

The incidence of mosquitoes is naturally much higher in the lounge as they gain entry from all sorts of nooks and crevices, not to mention the half-inch crack below the door. (Anyone know where to buy one of those sausage-dog style draught excluders?)  The buzzing in my ear will start literally seconds after I fall asleep. There is no point in getting up and trying to swat it with my special electrified mossie-killing racket because we both know it will disappear the minute the light goes on and carefully camouflage itself in the fold of the curtain, waiting patiently for me to go back to sleep so it can return to my ear hole.

Delirious with fatigue by this time, I have to choose between a rock and a hard place. I pad back to the bedroom, clutching my pillow and banging into the coffee table as I go. By now the snoring is bouncing off the walls and I lay there thinking about how hard my husband works, the early morning flights and the long hours he keeps and then I prod him sharply in the ribs and hiss: “stop snoring.” Like an obedient child, he stops immediately, only to start up again a minute later.

When it gets to four o’clock and I am still awake, I feel I am within my rights to order him up and out into the lounge. Let’s face it, he could sleep on a washing line and the mossies never bother with him.

It is not just at home that I have difficulty sleeping. On long haul flights, I walk up and down the aisle deeply resentful of everybody who is asleep. How can people sleep on a plane?  I manage to drink six or seven half pint plastic cups of white wine and still remain sober and wide-awake while my husband and daughter are crashed out either side of me. No rest for the wicked, eh?

I do have a guilty secret, however. Shall I tell you? Every Tuesday and Thursday, when my presence is not required at eight am yoga, I get up, make the sandwiches and pack the family off to school and work at 7.45. Then I slink back into bed with the Mumbai Mirror and a cup of tea. Sometimes I don’t wake up until one pm and that’s only because the coconut man rings the bell. Lucy goes about her house-keeping business very quietly on those mornings and we never speak of it.

On Saturday evening we went to see Sherlock Holmes at the cinema and apparently I was asleep shortly after the National Anthem. I slept sitting up and through noisy scenes of charging horses and gunfire.  I am a conundrum to myself!

Apparently, I missed a great movie.

Happy Families

You know those happy families whose smug mugs feature in the Daily Mail, showing off about how clever they are because they moved abroad before the recession, well, that’s us, that is.

At the time of writing we have not yet appeared in said rag but I am told it will be soon because of the current media trend of ramming India’s great booming economy down the throats of everyone who stayed at home. Even Jeremy Vine off of Radio Two came to Mumbai last week to broadcast his show from Café Leopold.  He was running up and down “Colaba Street” comparing the Gateway of India to the Arc de Triomphe and punctuating his blather about Tata and Tesco with Katie Perry records. From the way he was waxing lyrical about Mumbai, I imagine everyone listening at home will be on their way right now. Will the last one leaving Britain please turn the lights off?

So how come we are lined up to be in the Daily Mail? Mick wouldn’t normally wipe his arse with my mum’s newspaper of choice but soon he will be gurning at her from its centre pages, extolling the virtues of living in Mumbai. She’ll choke on her egg!

 A journalist from a Delhi-based news agency read my blog and contacted me about ‘doing a piece’ on 'reverse emigration' as a nice flipside to all the doom and gloom currently in the British press.

He went on to ask me why we had made the move and how our lives had improved since making it. To be honest, I spend so much time moaning about all the things I don’t like about living here, I hadn’t really thought about the positives. But now he comes to mention it...

Obviously the main improvement in my life, since coming to Mumbai in 2009, is the acquisition of my Mulberry handbag. I used a variety of plastic bags when I lived in the UK, so this is definitely an improvement.

And here’s another good thing. It’s 3.20 pm now as I write and instead of driving like a lunatic to the school, I am here in my office sipping tea (thanks Lucy) while Sameer does the honours. Nor do I have to worry about going to Asda or what’s for tea.

I am being flippant, of course. Although I wouldn’t say life is infinitely better than it was in the UK, it is infinitely different. Last night, for example, Mick was invited to the MI 4 world premiere with Tom Cruise. He most definitely would not have been afforded that opportunity in London.

And on our son’s last visit from boarding school, we flew to Nagpur and drove on to a tiger safari in Madhya Pradesh. This is not a sentence I ever thought I would write.  Our annual holiday used to be a fortnight in a caravan in France but here we are taking ad hoc hols to hitherto unknown destinations. (We didn’t see any tigers, by the way, and it was galling, at G and T time, to hear the tall tales of those who did: “Yeah, we couldn’t believe it; it took down a deer in front of our very eyes!” Hmmm, we only saw a leopard pooh).

On the second week of Hugh’s visit we hung out on the beach in Goa and knocked back some Long Island Iced Teas. Yeah, it’s not so bad living here, is it?

Back to the Delhi journalist’s question: Why did we make the move?  I think I said that it was a fantastic opportunity blah for Mick to work in a burgeoning economy with its young and dynamic population blah, blah or something pat like that but the truth is, the opportunity arose and we took it. You go where the work is. We were lucky; I don’t know what would have happened had we stayed in the UK, maybe nothing. I am beginning to hear of friends who have been made redundant and, there but for the grace of God’ I suppose.

Just the other day, after a Mumbai Connexions do in town, a group of ladies and myself went off to the Taj to look at diamond earrings. Again, that would have been a sentence alien to me a couple of years ago.  Time was, not so long since, I wanted a cardigan from the Boden catalogue but couldn’t afford it. I waited and waited and ended up getting it in the sale. Good things come to those who wait.

The acquisition of material things is, of course, one positive aspect to making this move but sometimes I feel I am acquiring them as compensation for not having other things - fresh air, walks with the dog, dinner with old friends or chatting with my mum at the kitchen table. What price these?

The one thing that we are all getting in spades here is life experience as well as diamonds, new teeth, liposuction and bags. We are the pioneers who lived in India before the days of Tesco and Wal-Mart, before it became as homogenized as any other country in the world and then we'll have some tales to tell, gnashers gleaming, diamonds a-twinkling.

Yuatcha - Youbetcha!

I have put an inch on each thigh and God knows how much around the middle this week because of all the eating out I have been forced to do. Last night, a Sunday, all I wanted to do was slob around and watch the telly, nursing a hangover from the night before, when we were suddenly invited out to a Chinese restaurant by an Indian family we know. I had just finished my Sunday Lunch of roast chicken and Yorkshire pudding but because I am a trooper, I put on my lippy and hauled my behind off to meet them. I was so full when I got home, I was like Mister Creosote out of Monty Python, I couldn’t have eaten a wafer-thin mint!

I cannot get used to all this late night eating; it is getting out of control. I always make the mistake of eating all the hors d’oeuvres and then being surprised when I think it’s time to go home and suddenly everybody is called to a sit down dinner. How many times have I been caught out like that? The last thing I want after a skin full of sparkling wine and a bellyful of fancy little snack-lets is a full-on four course Indian meal.

Lots of my skinny Indian friends are ‘feeders’ too and insist I try everything, especially the gulab jamon and will not take no for an answer. I watch with awe at the beginning of the evening when they all sit around shoo-ing away the waiter’s offerings and declining alcohol, “Just a little room-temperature water for me, please.” If only I could be so disciplined. Everybody is so serious; I need to drink to lighten the mood a little even though I know I will pay for it in the morning, especially on a school night!

So, when Mumbai Connexions members were invited to the preview opening of new Bandra Kurla restaurant Yauatcha, I was pleased to hear it was a lunch time event and there would be no alcohol served – only tea.  Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find everyone sitting around cheerfully with a glass of wine in hand - on a Tuesday afternoon as well! It’s profligate, but it’s also free, so I ordered a nice glass of chilled white.

Yauatcha is the little sister of our favourite Cantonese restaurant, Hakkasan; it is, essentially, Hakkasan-lite.  It’s a lighter, brighter canteen but invokes the same underwater atmosphere with its huge tranquillizing aquariums.  Soon to arrive at the table in thick, ceramic bowls was the steaming Cheung Fun– a type of dim sum, they have 45 different varieties here!  Most are priced between Rs 225 and Rs500, with a couple of very fancy exceptions (the Chilean Sea bass dumpling with lotus root  at Rs950) The table went very quiet while we devoured the Cheung Fun with the sublime accompanying sauce. There was only one ‘mention of ‘slimy’ but that particular critic was pretty quickly silenced by the ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘ahh-ing’ of the others.

The service was speedy and the wine flowed and next came the aromatic crispy duck. People were visibly salivating as the waiter shredded the duck at the table and we couldn’t plum-sauce-up our little pancakes quickly enough! Along with this we were served glistening, tender pork-belly in a perfectly balanced sweet and tangy sauce. Along came the Sea Bass in ginger and after that, it all became a blur.

Just when we thought we couldn’t eat another thing, a plate of jewel-coloured macaroons was placed before us. The idea is that you accompany them with one of the huge array of teas. The waiter will advise on which tea complements which particular dish. There are all sorts of delicately-flavoured mousses, ice creams and desserts to choose from, it’s knowing when to stop!

Now the question is which is better - Hakkasan or Yuatcha?  It’s a toughy, maybe I will have to try them both again!

Yuatcha is open from 12 noon to 1 am and can be found at Raheja Tower, Bandra Kurla Complex (E) Call: 26448888

Big Game

         

Sometimes when I am out shopping in Mumbai, it feels like I am being hunted down like big game. My hearts sinks when I walk into a shop where I am the only customer. AC’s are suddenly whacked up and I can feel the eyes of the hunter/assistant boring into the back of my neck. I am a helpless gazelle, quivering, looking for a way out but it's too late. My personal space is invaded and a painful ‘I know you are there but I am not going to look at you’ dance ensues.

My eyes fall randomly upon an item. The hunter says: “That is a stapler.”  I move on trying to show absolutely no interest in anything at all, which is hard for me because I am a tactile shopper. I want to pick things up but I can’t bear the statement of the bleedin’ obvious that will follow as sure as night follows day: “That is a pencil.” I want to scream out: “For the love of God, I am not blind or stupid, you are making me uncomfortable, leave me alone.” 

I went into the Nike shop and the hunt started immediately with me ducking around rails only for the assistant to appear suddenly like Mr Benn in front of me. I touched a pink running top, only briefly and maybe by accident. I didn’t even like it.  Without drawing breath, she said: “We have that in an XXL.”

“Do you think I am an XXL then?” I asked.

She stared at me, a rabbit in the headlights (ha, the tables have turned) not knowing what answer to give. It was a trick question, I probably am an XXL but I wanted her to say something like: ‘they do tend to come up very small.’ Is that very British of me? I would prefer someone to be polite and lie than to be totally direct and honest.  I wanted to burst out laughing but instead, I turned on my heal and pretended to strop out of the shop.

If I walked into a shop with a placard that read: “I am only browsing, I will call you if I need you” would that be too subtle?  My Indian friend, Rita cannot understand my idiosyncratic Western ways. “This is a shop. That person is a shop assistant, let them do their job!” She is quite right; of course, it’s the Indian way to expect service. I just feel like a shoplifter under surveillance (guilty conscience, eh, Linds?)

Anyway, I’ll just have to get over myself because this Shop Review won't research itself.

And so to the newly-revamped ‘Turqoise’ in Bandra. (Yes, they spell it without the ‘u’)

The last time I tried to visit this store at its previous address; the door of my car was ripped off at the hinges by a rickshaw driver as my friend leapt out into the street.(yes, Hayley, you know who you are!)  This resulted in an ugly punch-up, an attempted bag-snatch and a James Bond-style rickshaw getaway so we never actually made it into the shop. I vowed never to go to back in case I was recognized. So I was quite pleased to hear that they had moved.

I arrived at the shop at about noon. Typically, I was the only person in there and fans and lights were switched on pronto. The sales lady, as per, is millimetres behind me and sure enough, tells me that the pink elephant I am looking at is a pink elephant.

“That is a pink elephant ma’am.” I bite my lip.

She is very attentive but her constant sniffing in the otherwise silent shop is a bit off-putting to the shopper (i.e me)

I was not bowled over by Turqoise, I felt that I’d seen it all before, yatter, yatter, yatter,  Buddha’s, tick, lotus tea lights, tick Crawford Market candles, tick.  It’s all here. But they had some other stuff too which I had never seen before (and hope never to see again!) namely, foot-tall musical instrument-playing welded ants! I am not a fan of the comedy ornament but there must be people out there who are because they are also selling these ‘sexy’ pink elephants reclining nude and looking a bit ‘come-hither’. Whatever floats your boat I suppose!

The following day, I took a trip down south to have a look at the new Design Temple in Colaba. I have been aware of Design Temple for some time as they organized an Art Workshop for kids earlier this year at BMB Gallery and I was well impressed  by the work my son produced with them.  I also bought a couple of the Animania prints they sell through Good Earth.

The shop is small and I want to buy every single item in it. The ‘Animania’ art work on the walls is a vibrant and whimsical take on the Sacred Animals of India. I quote: “It fuses the playful interpretations of seven graphic artists from across the globe with a subject of much gravitas in Indian mythology.” The exquisite mirror on the wall is inspired by the peacock artwork and the tiger rug is the most beautiful home décor item I have even seen. Gimme, gimme! There is even a space in the shop “for thinking.” Yes, even though it is only a small shop, they have provided stools to sit at and stare out of the window if you feel like. Artists? What are they like?

While I was in this neck of the woods, I popped into the new Attic just off Arthur Bunder Road, a little bit down and round the corner from Bungalow Eight (my second favourite shop after Good Earth) If you know and love the Attic in Khar, this is a bigger and brighter version, run by the same lovely sisters. Here we have colour, colour, colour and  lovely shiny things for all you magpies. The hand-made clothes are kooky, bright one-offs, there are shoes and handbags to drool over and bits and pieces for the house which are funky and different (hey, maybe I do like fun ornaments after all!) I spent over an hour in this shop and not once did the assistant ask if she could help me, she just smiled and said: “Just call me if you need me.” Now that is what I call good service!

Turqoise , 2 &3 Sunbeam Apartments, Perry Cross Road, off Carter Road, Bandra (W) Tel: 3240 9827

Design Temple (by appointment only - so they say, but I just turned up unannounced)  No 11, 9 Best Marg, behind the Taj, Colaba Tel: 2282 1001

Attic, 5/5 Grant’s Building. First floor, HNA Azmi Marg, opp Café Basilico, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba Tel: 6565 0444

FRRO YOU!

The  time has come for me to reach far into the depths of my inner

sanctum and try to pull out the strength I need to make that trip

to the hell hole we all know as the FRRO.

Just the thought of entering those doors, ascending those stairs

and waiting behind those ropes until the clock strikes nine fills me

with a primal fear. 

 The sign on the wall says: “Do not stand beneath the ceiling” and

I know that once again I am about to enter the Graham Green-

esque world, the parallel universe that is the Foreigners

Registration Office with its surreal twists and turns. Even the extra

‘R’ in FRRO is there to confuse and torment me. I can’t even say

FRRO without sounding like a pathetic, stuttering dog.

The trick is to stay calm despite the nest of vipers squirming in the

pit of my stomach. I have in my hands umpteen copies of umpteen

documents but I know this will not be enough. Past experience has

taught me that if I have ten copies of a document, they will

require 11. Past experience has taught me that after a patient 15

minute wait to use the Xerox machine, someone will announce

the machine is broken: “Come back in some time.”

The dilemma is;  do I wait in the hope that the machine will

magically start up again,  just as magically as it broke down, or do I

go into the street and wait in a long line for use of another Xerox

machine – all the while painfully aware that the clock is ticking

and they will soon close for their two hour lunch meaning I will

have to return the next day and possibly the next and the next...

The very first time I darkened the doors of this ramshackle hell

hole I was an ignorant fool. I thought we’d just waltz in with our

British passports, get them stamped and then mooch off to Colaba

for a lovely lunch.  

No, that first time I had to be helped down the stairs by a

bemused European backpacker (whose handkerchief I still have)

as I cried “but I don’t understand” to the porcine official in the

regulation navy sari who made me wait for four hours before

telling me I had the wrong documents, without giving away what

documents I would need.

The next time I went, I took the kids as instructed and they sat in

their uniforms, again for four hours, before I was told I didn’t

actually need to bring them. You can bet your bottom dollar that

if I hadn’t brought them, they would have insisted on habeas

corpus.   On that particular occasion I broke the mouse on the

computer in frustration and stood up and screamed like the

Edvard Munch character as I failed, repeatedly, to register us

online.  A Japanese lady put her hands over her ears and began to

rock back and forth. Grown men wept. We were like the wretched

souls of Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. In hell!

That afternoon I was informed that I would have to come back the

next day with rupees converted from however many dollars it was

for our visas. That night, I took the conversion rate from the Bank

of India website and withdrew the exact amount in rupees. The

next day I stood in line with my rupees in a dirty, brown envelope

and when I handed them over, was told I was 500 rupees short.

“Whaatttt!!!”

I  Googled the rate and shoved the iphone under her nose.  

“We use the Thomas Cook rate,” she said.

“Arrrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, but it’s the Bank of India!”

“Either give me the correct money or stand aside.”

“Arrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

So that was the last straw. I handed over the extra money and fell

back into the plastic sofa, defeated, a shadow of my former self.

All anybody wants to do is to get into the chamber beyond the

ante-chamber because then there is hope. The queuing system,

which, on the face of it, looks as easy as taking a ticket in a Clarkes

shoe shop, is actually based on chaos theory and is impossible to

fathom. People just shuffle silently towards the door, pointing

their toe forward a little if it looks like someone else is going to

push in.

It was not until the third or fourth visit that we began to notice

that some people had agents. The people who appeared calm,

those who were not crying, had representation. I marched up to

one of them and demanded his card and since then, dear reader,

the experience has become a little less fraught.

We now go along with the agent, feeling like children in the

presence of an appropriate adult. We pay him an absolute fortune

and he does the necessary while I sit in a chair  like the Jack

Nicholson character in ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” after

he’s had the lobotomy. Silent and defeated.

I am tempted to go in this time wearing my Anna Hazare T-shirt

and white topi but I don’t want to make it harder for myself.  Let’s

just hope the ceiling doesn’t come down on the lot of them!