CALCUTTA-BOMBAY-JOHANNESBURG

RANEE'S SOUTH AFRICA DIARIES: JOURNAL 1
May 18-20




May 18
CCU to MUM on 9W616 arriving into Bombay ( I am not ever going to call it Mumbai!)around 8.45pm. Sinha picked us up at the airport (where we were also met by a concave little ineffective-yet-officious man called Joshi who told Sinha to “get the car to the airport entrance” for Sahib), fed us a good “5 Spice” Chinese meal, organized an “adda” with Partha and put on some good “old times” music to get us all into nostalgic mood.

The kids played video games on Sushmita’s laptop or watched TV. Partha’s kids came. Kittu is 3 months older but much bigger than Rubik. Jeet is much younger and both seemed quite shy and didn’t talk too much. Overall, they didn’t quite seem very happy to spend time with our bunch.

It was past 2 before we went to sleep. Bombay was so uncomfortably humid and seemed much hotter than Calcutta (y'see--no Kolkata for me either!) has been since the pre-monsoon showers.

May 19
Sanjib went and got “Vada paos” and “Jalebis” for a typical Bombay breakfast for us. Then Sinha and Sanjib went to the fish bazaar to get some king prawns.

Next, all 4 adults went for a long drive to see Hiranandani near Pawai, a post-modern, very European “colony” for the rich Mumbaiya world-citizen. The heat and humidity were suffocating and Sushmita had the brilliant idea of cooling off with some Natural ice creams—with flavours like tender coconut, chikoo, malai, sitaphal etc. The ice-cream comes in normal cones, hot waffle cones and plastic cups and actually has chunks of fruit. Really delicious and really pertinent on this particular day!

Eventually returned to the Sinha residence to a sumptious lunch of hot rotis and fried Surmai (Rubik was very happy!) along with dal and subji.

Then a little rest and we were off again to South Bombay where we drove around seeing all the landmarks including Dhirubhai Ambani’s Sea Wind; bought “Russian” binoculars (probably made in China or Taiwan!) from a dingy, first-floor, “Canning Street” type of shop for all of Rs 650, came back home, had dinner of Jackfruit cooked with King Prawns, bathed, changed and adda’d until it was time for Joshi to arrive (12.30 am, 20th May) and for us to proceed to the airport in two cars.

May 20
Early morning—1am— we were at the Mumbai International airport; Joshi was doing his stuff at his ineffective best, more getting in the way than helping, but insisting on carrying our papers around with him so very officiously and “’umbly.”

The terribly rude Kenya airways counter-guy had mistakenly given us great seats. We found ourselves with ample leg space on row 33—the emergency exit and beginning of the 3rd major section in the belly of the almost-new 777—individual screens and all!

Obviously, the kids were re-settled onto the last row of the 2nd section (a move they liked because then they could we away from us!) and the rest of the ride was smooth.

Changed planes at Nairobi (putting our feet for the first time on the African continent but just rushing past without savouring it) with almost no time to spare.

Conveniently, a smoking zone materialized en-route, just before our own gate. This time we got an almost-too-old aircraft with not-so-good seats. Still, JNB was only 3.5 hours away, so it wasn’t too bad.


At Jo’burg’s Oliver Tambo Airport, we walked through immigration before the luggage had come rolling in. Soon enough, the luggage came through and we were out looking for Anthony Colia who turned out to be a 24 year old white kid contrary to my expectations of a 35-ish black man.

Sanjib did the usual exchange rate inspection without satisfaction and then we were off to Anthony’s place in Banbury Cross in Sandton in a white van. A cold front was supposed to be coming in that night, Anthony told us with a grin as he steered us into the traffic leading out of the airport.

As we travelled to Anthony’s apartment, the huge expanse of land that Jo’burg occupies finally hit us.

Johannesburg was huge, frenetic-paced, spread-out over many, many miles and reaching into Pretoria, chaotic, traffic-snarled, crime-infested, dangerous—all of those things we had heard and read when we were doing our travel-research.

We saw black people crammed into illegal SUV taxis—sometimes more than 20 of them together—and flouting traffic rules with impunity. Corruption was rampant among the traffic cops, said Anthony. According to him, the cops stop people only in the hope of a bribe (sounds familiar, huh?).

There’s integration now, but most black people still live in the old “townships”—ghettos made for them during apartheid—that have now been assimilated into the city. White people live in gated communities with electrified fences and gun-toting 24-hour guards. The murder rate is the highest in SA—and that’s saying something—and most people have been victims of crimes.

"You can be mugged for as little as your shoes," an old-time Johannesburger-turned-Miami retiree told us on our way to the Kruger a few days later. All Jo’burg cars have GP on their registration plates and when the kids asked Anthony what GP stood for, he only half-jokingly quiped: “Gangsters’ Paradise.”

We reached Anthony’s place at about 1.30pm. It was a 2-bedroom first-floor apartment in a gated community called Gleneagles. There was a fully equipped kitchen, washer, balcony, 2 bathrooms—thoughtfully provided with fresh towels, shampoos, bath-gels and soaps—all we could ask for and more.

Anthony was very sweet, offering us use of everything in his kitchen cupboards and his 3G card as well. Finally, Anthony left and we left too, after toilet breaks, to walk to the Banbury Cross Centre KFC for a latish lunch. Fulfilled, we walked back, showered and slept.

I stirred at 6pm to find everybody fast asleep. It was very cold, so I lazed for a while more. Then I finally got myself out of bed around 7 and rummaged around Anthony’s kitchen looking for stuff that I could cook into a reasonable meal. There were no real spices, but I did find a packet of Hake in the freezer, some basmati rice and a few red-potatoes (“rangalus”). I defrosted and marinated the Hake to shallow-fry later, put on some rice and made a make-shift potato curry with the sweet chilli sauce that I found in the fridge.

Finally, at around 10, I woke up the family for dinner, which was wolfed down in no time. Sanjib took over the washing as usual, while I pottered around packing the stuff we would take to Livingstone the next morning. Most of our stuff, thankfully, would be left at Anthony’s. The cold front had kicked in completely and the temperature was in the minuses, it would be -3 in the early hours and already felt like -1 after dinner. Freezing, shivering, feeling completely under-prepared for the weather, we were worried about the rest of our trip. Our first night, though, would be comfortable enough because Anthony had thoughtfully laid out some extra duvets for us.

And after dinner, amazingly, we fell asleep again.