Sylvia's Journal

I am now in the area in Mumbai (New Mumbai) where there are lots of engineers. I gather it is a desirable place to establish headquarters. I can tell from the many 4 and 5 star hotels in the neighborhood. There is less traffic, it’s more open/less crowded than in Mumbai proper. There are shopping malls for, what I imagine, the young and monied educated elites like to have close by. It’s a modern side of Mumbai. Reliance, the big company that appears to have its fingers in countless economic ventures has its corporate HQ here. I am going to have lunch there tomorrow, with my Indian team mates and one of their clients. I am being presented as one of them.

The hotel is not quite the Holiday Inn. It has fewer stars than the international business hotel chains in the area. But it will do for one night, and the price is right. It also has a spa with reasonable prices. I got talked into an immediate massage by the owner of the ‘Pink Door Spa’ who told me excitedly that she is going to start a branch in Manhattan (there are relatives to implement this ambition).

She recommended I wait with dinner (not good to be massaged on a full stomach), and  talked me into a 60 minute Lomi-Lomi massage. Lomi-Lomi would relieve my tension and bad feelings. How did she know about my bad feelings about the motor cycle tour operator I wondered, and then handed over my credit card. I got an immediate 15% off, without asking. I think Mondays maybe slow days.

I can’t tell one massage apart from another, and sometimes wonder whether the masseuses can either, as the massages all seem rather similar. Except, that is, for the one where one is bathed in at least 2 liters of oil or have a slow drip-drip of oil on one’s forehead. 

After my massage and the recommended glass of water and cup of green tea (“you will feel hungry by then!”) and not knowing the neighborhood, I opted for an in-house dinner. In a fit of ‘I earned this’ I ordered a cocktail, the only one without syrup or sugar. It was served in a skull shaped glass (or is it a dog?) with a rusty screw cap and a paper straw through a hole in the cap. It tasted like really bad medicine. I did not earn that, but by now I had spent my alcohol money.

The hotel’s main dining room’s claim to fame is fish and is named accordingly: “Something Fishy.” But there was nothing fishy about the restaurant. I had my best meal yet: two giant tandoori baked prawns and a garlic naan that did its name honor. I think I am going to be sweating garlic from all my pores for days.

When I walked into the restaurant the waiter to guest ratio was about 10 (waiters) to 2 (guest, myself included). After a while more guests came in, and more waiters too. I settled into a warm corner in the over-cooled dining room. From my corner perch I had a good view of the comings and goings of waiters and staff. 

Decades ago, with an MSH colleague, since deceased, we played a game in a restaurant in Lesotho: spinning yarns about the other guests. We giggled until we were red in the face. I had so much fun spinning these yarns, partially because I was taught to never to judge people on their appearance – which is of course what we did, unapologetically. It felt rather naughty and irreverent.  Although it is more fun to do this with someone else it’s still a great pastime when dining alone. On my right was a dour looking German or Swiss guy (an engineer no doubt) who washed down his meal with only one beer (Swiss then?), hardly ever looking up from his smart phone. No desert. Then entered a group of 4 middle-aged paunchy Indians and one young Anglo-Saxon. Everyone drank whisky on ice, except the young man who drank German beer; once I heard him speak I settled on the Saxon part – a German engineer, just out of school (although when he smiled he looked older, maybe 35). 

I made him to be on his first trip to India, and watched how he related to his Indian table mates. At first, he was quiet but after two beers he was gesticulating wildly with his hands. I imagined he was telling what the Indian engineers needed to do to solve a sticky engineering problem. The Indians watched him politely, smiled now and then and stirred the ice cubes in their whiskeys. They were going to pay the bill, and they were here forever (unless they were going to emigrate to the US).

Watching the imagined drama being played out at this table reminded me of one of my many sins – talking too much about what I (thought I) knew to be true.  I did not always read the signs of polite listening very well. I know a bit more now (I’d like to think). Although I will be presented as a wise expert coming from far away (some of it true), I will have to walk a fine line between the wise, the expert and the novice (on India certainly) . I brought Ed Schein’s Humble Inquiry to remind me about curiosity and not knowing.