The road to Neral (again)

So here's the deal: I'm just back from Pune tonight, on one of these babysitting trips that comprise a large part of my job and that I tend not to blog about for various reasons (but probably should). I left early Tuesday morning. K and I were up late Monday night making adjustments to our vacation plans (about which more later), plus I was still hyperthyroidic -- my dose is now halved, but my system is still adjusting -- so I got about four hours of sleep, and then got up early and packed. On Tuesday, I worked a 15-hour day, and then finally went to bed about midnight. To be woken by a phone call from my ward at precisely 3:09 AM. He wanted to complain about his headache and ask what he should do about it. Putting aside all sorts of interesting issues, like how I'm about the last person on earth, basic temperamentwise, who should be in a job like this, what it meant was that I've had seven hours of sleep in the past 48 hours (I can never get back to sleep after being woken up in the middle of the night), and shouldn't be anywhere near a keyboard right now.

I've got various notes about my trip to Matheran last weekend, but it'd be a very long entry, and I'm just not up for it right now. Thus, I'm going to divide up the trip report into at least two very long entries instead. Yes. Right now. Here goes.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Last weekend, we decided to make an attempt -- our fifth or sixth -- to reach Matheran, an allegedly lovely mountaintop outstation a few hours from Mumbai. True to the Matheran curse, on Saturday I was sick with a cold, but by Sunday I was feeling well enough that we decided to start early and make an overnight of it, especially as we were able to secure a last-minute reservation at the always heavily-booked Verandah in the Forest hotel, by Charlotte Lake.

There are no cars allowed in Matheran. I was entranced by the idea of being able to walk down high-altitude forest trails without being accosted every few minutes by "Taxi, ma'am? Taxi? Where you go?"

At the Mumbai train station, I managed to keep my cool through the usual gauntlet of touts popping up and plucking at our sleeves and launching themselves in front of us -- I swear, it's like a video game. "Goa train this way!" "Reservation stand closed -- follow me." "Taxi?" "This way no good. I take care of you."

At the ticket window, I dealt with the compulsory queue-jumper firmly, but, I think, calmly, limiting my didactic extemporaneous remarks on the correlation between cultural queue behavior and national standing in the arena of global opinion to no more than five minutes.

Digression: my favorite queue-jumping episode occurred at the Mumbai airport security line. I was waiting for the woman ahead of me to finish being wanded in the "frisking booth" before I walked through the metal detector, when a well-dressed woman (who was clearly not flight staff) come up out of nowhere and started to go through ahead of me.
"Hey," I called out, indicating the line behind me, "what do you think you're doing?"
The woman looked dazed for a minute, and blinked rapidly, as if noticing her surroundings for the first time.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Were you waiting to go through?"

No, lady. I just like to come out early in the morning and walk right up to the metal detector and stand there while holding up 50 people behind me, just to watch the shadows behind the curtain at the ladies' frisking booth. Foreigners are weird that way.

She received the 10-minute version of the speech. What really cracked me up was not the effect the speech had on the receiver (modest-to-nil), but on the women in line behind me. When Miss I'm-Too-Posh-To-Queue tried to fall in behind me, a stooped figure that was all sari, bangles and gold fillings began howling at her, joined with vigor by a crowd normally indifferent to such etiquette violations. I don't think I established a new social standard; I think they were just bored with waiting in line and it was diverting, but it was still kind of neat. Meanwhile, the woman in front of me cleared the booth, and I darted into it, leaving Miss Posh to be torn apart by the wolves. End of digression.

Back at the train station, I did end up chasing a child beggar out of our still-empty train compartment, but only because he was eyeing our stuff as if weighing a snatch-and-dash. The first guy getting in our empty non-reserved coach came and sat down right next to us. He didn't talk to us; he just sat there. That's another startling cultural difference (can you imagine getting on a city bus anywhere in the States and sitting right down next to the only other passenger on it?), and, since my personal space requirements are perhaps a bit more than the average American's, this one's been rough for me.

We reached Neral, the town we got as far as the last time we tried this. During that trip, the taxiwallahs tried to tell me there was a general strike in effect and I didn't believe them. This time, at the booth selling places in the shared taxis that ply the mountain, I got in trouble for believing the signs -- in this case, that a space in a shared taxi cost Rs 50. Thus, I was a little surprised when the guy at the ticket booth wanted Rs 125 for the two of us.
"No, no," I tried to clear up the obvious (if rather basic) math error. "Two spots, Rs 100." I pointed to the sign.
The guy ignored me.
I pushed my Rs 100 through the metal grate between us.
"Two seats, please."
The guy took my money.
And did nothing.
"Um...tickets...please?"
He pretended he didn't see me.
I snapped my fingers and waved my hand.
"Hey -- tickets?"
He looked away.
I reached in through the slot under the grate and began to help myself to a couple of tickets.
He came back to life and moved to guard the tickets. When I growled at him, he handed me my money back.

K and I wandered around the little town of Neral, offering fares to the surprisingly many idle autorickshaw drivers lining the streets, but everyone kept waving us off toward the taxi stand.
Nice racket if you can get it.

We found ourselves back at the ticket stand.
"Look," I tried, "these are very nice signs you've got here. Very professional-looking. But if the actual fare is Rs 50 plus 25 in your pocket, you really should just say so right up front."
The booth attendant looked vacantly off to the side.
"It's really not a lot of money," K pleaded.
"It's the principle of the thing!"
Some ten minutes later, I waited out on the street, while K paid the necessary bribes to get a goddamned taxi.

India is not a good place for people with principles.