22 Mar India Day 11: Shopping Day!!

Day 11 (Shopping Day!!)

After having a full schedule the entire trip, it felt nice to wake up to no plans and leisurely have breakfast at 9:15 with Paul and a small group of stragglers (Aimy, Jeff, and Kevin), who were staying in Mumbai until 6 pm. I joked that, to save money, I would eat enough to last until dinner. The only real plans consisted of meeting with Suma’s little brother, Sujeet, at 2:00 pm to receive a cell phone that Suma’s family graciously allowed us to borrow. As breakfast ended, we planned to meet again after we all checked out of the Trident at around 11:30 am for a shopping adventure.

Around 11:30 we made our way to the Bombay House. Steph and others had piqued our interest about this place, so we decided to explore and buy a few more items for friends and family. Unfortunately, the high prices and lack of selection disappointed us so much that we abandoned Bombay House and decided to walk around in search of Fabindia.

During our new found quest, we passed through rows and rows of merchants selling random every day things such as clothing, food, and kitchenware. Our favorite row, which we now refer to as “Dildo Row,” had an assortment of random items: dildos, cell phone parts, flashlights, other dildos, some adult movies. What an odd combination of items to sell in the open. Being our usual mature selves, we made jokes and snickered all the way down the street.

As we walked we passed a group of men with an assortment of containers, which we had learned earlier from our tour guide that these containers were lunch boxes. It is apparently quite common for people to hire others to pack and take their lunches to them during the work week.

Along the way, we filmed various scenes for our side music video, “Black and Yellow.” Paul even paid 50 rupees to feed and dance with two cows, one that was black and the other yellow. Then we found graffiti spelling out “YMCMB,” which we interpreted as Young Money, Cash Money, Billionaire. So I filmed Aimy next to it while she nodded her head like a gangsta. Seriously, what else could YMCMB possibly stand for? On passing a cricket game we decided to dance in front of that as well, and when I asked a curious cricket player whether we could play, he flat out said “No.” We laughed so hard at how fast our offer had been rejected.

I spotted a Reebok store that had cricket bats in the window and Paul got all excited because he had wanted a cricket bat for a while. Before going in, he had us guess the prices he would see. I guessed 6000 rupees, Jeremy guessed 1500 rupees, and Kevin guessed $1 USD. Paul said his BATNA had cost 1500 rupees and that if any of the bats came close to that, he would walk out with a bat.

Paul walked in and started flipping all sorts of crazy over the bats. The first bat, “The Legend” cost 5499 rupees, pretty much what I had guessed. The second bat, “The Super Smash” came in around 1500 rupees and Paul proceeded to give us a victory dance through the glass. The next bat, “The Smash” was 1200 rupees and the last bat, a little tiny kid-sized toy bat, was about $1 USD. Coincidentally, we had all guessed correctly! Excited at our new found guessing abilities, we went inside the store with Kevin and Jeremy now wanting bats. After ten minutes, we walked out with two full-sized cricket bats for Paul and Kevin and one kid-sized cricket bat for Jeremy’s kid. Our next course of action involved returning to the cricket game with the real bad-ass cricket bats and asking if we could join (I’d film the reactions, of course), but those plans fell through.

However, with no Fabindia in sight and Paul needing to head back to the Trident to meet with Sujeet, we split up and would meet together back around 3:30 pm. After taking a cab and spending an hour in Fabindia, I emerged with a scarf and a shirt and Jeremy bought little Indian shirts for his sons.

We met up with Paul and Sujeet and went back to Khyber for lunch. You remember right? The place with the balls for dessert. Naturally, we only went into this restaurant so that the boys could order the balls dessert and laugh their heads off. (1) Where are my balls? (2) When your balls come out I’ll start filming (3) Want to share my balls? (4) I like my balls (5) My balls taste great…. The list goes on. Poor 18 year old Sujeet. He did not join in our hour long affair with bad ball jokes. He must have been thinking, “crazy, immature, Americans!”

Still wanting to shop, I pulled my friends into several jewelry stores in the Colaba Causeway. After buying some scarves and a few more hours of shopping, the boys expressed exhaustion. For the next hour in front of the water at the Trident, before Aimy, Jeff, and Kevin had to leave on their flights, I filmed the boys with their cricket bats in various poses, in slow mo, and fighting with the bats. Pretty. Ridiculous. Footage. At this point, however, Kevin realized that the bats would probably not fit in his luggage. Great timing.

Paul and I said bye to Aimy, Jeff, and Kevin and proceeded to head to our new hotel, the Godwin Hotel (3 stars), with Sujeet. Three star hotels have distinct differences from five star hotels, but for the amount of time we planned to spend in the hotel, the place would do. After Sujeet left, Paul passed out and I downloaded and converted footage, blogged, and edited. At around 8:00 pm, we left to meet some of Suma’s friends, Devang and Darshan at a restaurant called Saffran. Time passed fast and we took a taxi to meet Devang. I did not know what to expect, having never met Devang and not really paying attention to any of the emails between Paul and Devang.

Devang and his friend greeted us with beers in their hands and I knew a good time awaited us. “We’re not allowed to drink on the streets, but here you go” they said, as they handed us their beers.

After sitting down in the restaurant, we discovered that Devang and Darshan were food connoisseurs. Both of them knew the history and taste of every item on the menu and when we gave them free reign to order whatever, they consulted with one another to decide what to order. The exchanges seemed to focus on regions in India, spices, etc. Super. Cute. Devang would argue for the Briyani, while Darshan would argued that the Briyani would fill us up too quickly. Back and forth they would banter. Have I mentioned how cute this was????

Paul and I found ourselves in Nirvana when the food came out. Before each course, we took as many pictures as possible for Suma, since this was one of her favorite restaurants and Paul evilness emerged. Every dish was unique. The first looked like a mix between a bruchetta and pizza; the second dish, mutton; the third, lamb biryani; and the final dish some sort of small balls (ha!) in a creamy sauce (double ha!). Heaven.

Then we headed to the first bar, which was packed and chilled there for a little while before heading to a more of a café looking place. Unfortunately, by this time I kept passing out. I felt terribly tired as my eyes kept watering and my eye lids would not stop drooping, so ended up heading home pretty soon afterwards. Devang probably thought we were extremely lame because he warned us in the car that we had to be prepared the next day (since we were obviously not today) to go out. “Take a nap. Make sure you’re ready to stay out until 2:00 am,” he said. We promised that we would.

I remember the days when I could stay up until 6:00 am without a problem. I must be getting old. Paul and I stumbled into the hotel. He passed out sitting upright on his computer and though I tried to put in a few more minutes of work, I gave up and went to bed as well.

I wonder what Devang has planned for us tomorrow?