Monsoon is moving on

This is my sixth Mumbai Monsoon and the heaviest and longest we've had in years.  It's reaching the end now but it's not going out with a whimper.

My first Mumbai Monsoon wasn't great to look at although the weather was gloriously wet and fresh.  The flat I was living in had bars on the windows and overlooked a big blank wall so there was little pleasure in the way of views.  My classroom, while big and colourful with plenty of borrowed light, was internal so, again, no outside views.

Things have changed and I now have no shortage of things to look out onto both at work and at home.  So back to Monsoon.  The rains have been heavy and welcomed and lengthy and the skies have often been dramatic in a leaden sort of a way.  Here's a recent view from my new classroom window at 10am:

I love the rains but you can have too much of a good thing and I was starting to yearn for a bit of a break from the constant cloud cover.  No sooner said than done.  On Friday, this was the view from the flat:

Big and blue and beautiful and very, very welcome.

Mumbai Pharmacies

As a foreigner I find medicines are very cheap in India.  Locally produced versions of just about anything you can think of are freely available and I know lots of people who stock up on medicines to take back to family members, particularly people from the USA.

However, medicines must have very narrow profit margins as pharmacies also sell a wide range of other products.  Some of them make sense, blood pressure monitors, thermometers and food supplements.  Toiletries are another line so if you need toothpaste, soap or shampoo your local pharmacy is  a good place to go looking for it.  Other things stretch the imagination, biscuits, chocolate, potato crisps but they fill a space on the shelves and they must sell or they wouldn't be there.  The most puzzling is dog food.

Every pharmacy I've visited apart from those inside  hospitals has a shelf of dog and cat food.  I have no idea why but the local dogs seem happy about it.

WIndow Cleaner

It's been a while since I posted a picture looking down from our flat in the sky.  There's a window cleaner in this picture.

The windows are cleaned twice a year, around now and then again after Monsoon.  One person does them all, around 3.5 thousand, and all hanging from a rope.  Can you see him?

Mango Season 2016

It's mango season, specifically Alphonso mango season.  The flat is full of their seductive and decadent scent and I know they're not going to last long.

I'd had a tantalising few chunks of Alphonso in a fruit salad during my recent holiday to Goa and that seems to have kickstarted my mania for mangoes.  The price starts high and drops as the supply increases and typically I'd wait until the price had dropped a bit but I threw sense to the wind in favour of scent and don't regret it a bit.

I like to squeeze their flesh until it's soft then suck it out through the skin, the man likes his neatly sectioned on a plate but whatever way you want to eat them, the Alphonso is the richest, the most perfumed the most delicious fruit I've ever experienced.

It won't be the last box this season.

Holi Wares

Throughout the year, this neighbourhood shop keeps the locale supplied with brushes, basins, bowls and buckets but it's also the go-to store for all your festival needs.  Here it's stocked up with all manner of water pistols for Holi.

Optimistic New Year

In June 2015, optimistic pigeons started laying eggs in a planter on the balcony.  It's taken five clutches of eggs, each stolen by crows, but they finally hatched a couple of chicks.

The parents take alternating day and night shifts in their maternity planter which offers very little coverage from predators.  They're happy enough for me to sit on the balcony, so long as I don't go too near them.  They scarper when the balcony's being cleaned but don't go too far, and come back quickly.

First day out of the egg and I grant you, they are not the most lovely chicks.  I suppose they're delightful in Pigeon World.

I'm less optimistic about how the plant is going to survive but I suppose feathers trump leaves.

I'll keep you posted on their progress.  Happy and Optimistic New Year

The year in which someone got his name nearly right

The Man's name is "Stephen".  He's quite specific about that, not Steve, or Stevie or Stevo, it's "Stephen".  I support that, you should be called your name of choice and not have to put up with other peoples' interpretation or preferences of it.

He likes his spelling to be right too, it's with a "ph" not a "v".  So, when he books anything he always says "Stephen with a ph" and recently he got just that.

Bloody brilliant!

The year ... of the determined pigeons

I am very fortunate.  I live on the 29th floor of a tower block and balconies only start on the 29th floor.  It's  a precious piece of private outdoor space where I have a couple of chairs, a few plants, some lanterns and some very determined squatters.

 I started hearing them, cooing and billing and saw them gathering a few twigs together in a planter.  I shooed them off, I even, around Holi, squirted them with a handy water pistol.  To no avail, within a few days these appeared:

Pigeons, it seems, have minimalistic nesting requirements.

They settled in, one during the day, the other at night.  A few days later the eggs disappeared crows I expect.

And so the cycle began, fluttering and billing, a few more leaves and a couple of eggs would appear only to be gone again.  This has happened five times to date and still they return to the same spot.

Currently, there's a pair of eggs which have been sat on for nearly two weeks , a record and I am rather hoping there will be squabs- but one of them is cracked.  They may not be the brightest birds out there but you have to hand it to them for their bloody mindedness.

This year ... was the year of the Cigar Box Guitar(s)

The Man's a pianist and he likes to play the Blues.  This year he decided he would like to play the Blues even more on a guitar made from a cigar box.   So he got one, then another one and somehow, he ended the year with four of them.

The one in front is not like the others, it's made from a wine box and is, apparently, the bass guitar.

So now when we travel, so does one of the guitars.  The best place to play them, so I've been told, is barefoot on a porch with something nice to sip.   He's happy, I'm happy and so long as he doesn't plug in the little travel amp, so are the neighbours.

This is the year ... I hosted a cat

I've been remiss in updating the blog this year, but, in a mad dash to make up for it, I'm trying to fill in the blanks.

A most beautiful cat and sweet tempered with it.  Yet every single time I tried to take a picture I got a look that would freeze your soul.

Despite the look of unalloyed hatred ... this was the year I hosted my most glamourous house guest ever.

Christmas

I don't go seeking the "picturesque poverty" shots.  I usually avoid them. I don't want to invade the privacy of people who have so little of it to start with.  This was an accidental picture, I was trying to capture only the line of Christmas tat on sale but sometimes life just jumps up and slaps you in the face.

Seeing sights

There's a lot to see in Mumbai and here's a picture of someone doing their best to see a lot of it.

Faces on Oriental Buildings

I was taking a wander around the Fort area of Mumbai, one of my favourite spots for Gothic architecture.  I stopped off to say "hello" to the Flora Fountain.

Nearby, sits the impressive Oriental Buildings, originally a school and fully armed with spires, intricate carved borders and arched windows,

It has three carvings of Dead White Men which I zoomed in on to get a closer look.

The centre one looks Shakespearean but I have no idea, and can't find out, who the other two are.  Any ideas out there?

Cow Donation Box

At my local pharmacy this wonderful thing has appeared.  It's a cow and calf in a perspex box.  The cow is strewn with Gods and Sages and sporting a delightful earring and the best eyelashes I've ever seen.

I pushed aside the pouch of prunes and the jar of energy supplement, to add a few notes by way of a modeling fee.  I'm not entirely sure what I've donated to, cow care I think.  I couldn't read the script and was too bedazzled by the bovine beauty to think about photographing the words for later translation.

It's the prettiest cash cow I've ever seen.

On Three Wheeled Mobile Temples and Colourful Feet

On a quiet side street I heard music, chanting and tinkling bells and caught the aroma of incense.  Nothing unusual in India, but this time it was coming from a mobile, motorised shrine.  I hadn't been up close and personal to one before, it was delightful.

I dropped a few rupees in by way of thanks for a cheering sight, sound and smell.

It was only after looking at the picture closely, that I fully realised how striking the sari on the woman was.  I've finally become accustomed to Indian colours as evidenced by my feet:

They've got a lot brighter since I moved to Mumbai.

Markets

I like markets, I like the busy buzz of them, the smells and sounds and of course, the sights.  I particularly like that I can usually wander around markets and be largely ignored because people are too busy going about their business to pay any attention to a strange foreigner with a camera.

Here's a recent market picture.  There's a lot I like about it.  The dark interior full of fancy dress materials, a rack of sari blouses hanging up ready for collection.  Meera's beauty salon being given a little corner of the shop sign and a nice bit of greenery being given a table all to itself.  The two tailors taking in the sights and entirely oblivious of me and the arrow and label pointing to the hub of the tailoring business just in case you couldn't work out who did the sewing.

Return to the stamping ground

I was horrified to realise it was more than a year since I updated this blog.  I've not been out and about taking pictures as often as before for a variety of reasons but this weekend I charged up the camera and headed down to Colaba.

It took a bit of time to get back into the swing of things but, I'm glad to report, Mumbai is still as photogenic as ever.

Colaba Causway, home to stalls selling all kinds of touristic and fashion items.  I seldom buy but there are very few times I wander through here without seeing something I want to photograph.  In this case; wooden fabric stamps.

Lion Gate Mumbai

I wandered up Kala Ghoda with the express intention of taking a couple of pictures of Lion Gate, the entry to the Naval Dockyard but was shooed away by guards who, quite rightly, pointed to the giant "No Photography" sign on the wall.

A bit dejected, I carried on walking and noticed for the first time a brilliant mural on the external wall of the dockyard.  I'm not sure whether the no photography rule applies to further away from the gate but who can stop themselves taking a picture when someone pushing colour co-ordinated laundry passes a painting?

Thank you Laundry Guy for making what would otherwise be a boring picture much more interesting.

Juhu Beach

Mumbai's beaches are busy places, but there are moments of solitude to be found.

Religious observances can leave a lot of debris

but it keeps the beach cleaners busy

and the pigeons are well looked after too.

A Treat?

Currently appearing on the back of Mumbai buses.

 Hiranandani hospital has an odd idea of what a "treat" is.