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| The Case of the Eager Auntie - Part 2 | | Print | |
| Written by Raj Grover aka Ross Grover | |
| Friday, 01 February 2008 | |
 Four hours later, I was pacing back and forth in my hotel room. My feelings had blended seamlessly through a cycle of eagerness, impatience, irritation, confusion, bemusement, and finally resignation. Had I become a schizophrenic, uttering nonsense while the polite people around me eagerly nodded their heads somewhere in between “yes” and “no?” Was I experiencing a Twilight Zone style alternate dimension where time moves more slowly? I knew that morning had faded into afternoon as the muffled cacophony of crushing traffic below reached its crescendo. No, this was merely my first experience with “Indian Standard Time.” The irony couldn’t be stronger. Being of Germanic heritage, I suffer from a unique cultural fetish – Punctuality. We love our precise machinery, especially clocks. That word, “clock,” really doesn’t do justice to our obsession with precision. I admired my Wenger “chronograph” with its brushed steel band, onyx face, and auto-wind action. Muttering to myself that if only these people understood the beauty of Punctuality, I nearly missed the muted chimes of my house phone. Apparently, according to the concierge, there was a “young gentleman” inquiring of me in the lobby. It seems he had offended the sensibilities of the doorman when he had ridden his motorbike into the semi-circular drive in the wrong direction. The concierge was implying that they would like to get rid of him ASAP. After much confusion, I established that Siddhartha was one of Mary’s friends who’d finished his shift in a call center a few hours earlier and had been dispatched to pick me up. Nobody had any confidence that I could navigate past the end of my street, so I needed a chaperone. He’d been in traffic for the last three hours, despite being on a motorbike. I saw him in the lobby, pacing back and forth just like I had been all morning. He looked exactly like an over-caffeinated sales engineer from back home; biker harness boots, Diesel jeans, and a Dainese sport bike riding jacket with a black t-shirt underneath. We met eyes, and he strode over, “Ah, Mary’s friend, Ross!” “Yes! Great to meet you!” I offered my hand for a shake, and instead got a fist bump and a wicked smile. “Call me Scott, and let’s get a coffee before we go.” “Sounds great!” My broad smile was met in return as we established an instant bond of kinship. I made a mental note of his relaxed American sprawl and realized he must have traveled. “So, Scott, what’s the plan? I’ve been waiting all morning to get word from somebody.” “Sorry man, I was on the phone all night helping people who forgot their passwords and such. I needed a drink! We were at Poison and then Mary told me to come get you on our way over to Enigma. Plus the traffic police are on strike today. It’s totally crazy out there!” “Are we meeting with Mary?” “Oh yeah, there’s supposed to be a big thing going on and we are meeting them there right now.” I nearly choked on my coffee at the abrupt transition from IST to hyper-caffeinated urgency. We jumped onto the back of his Suzuki R600, “No helmets?” With a disdainful laugh from Scott, we lurched out into the scrum. “If the riks get too close, just kick them in the shins, we will get through this quickly.”  My first experience in Bombay traffic was like playing a game of Frogger on meth. We dodged past elaborately decorated dump trucks known as ‘Goods Carriages’ spilling the occasional tomato onto the windshields of tailgating cars. We generously dispatched shin kicks to rik drivers and bicyclists. We attempted to run down pedestrians. We braked, swerved, and ducked to avoid cows languidly chewing their cud in the middle of it all. Just as I thought we were making progress, we came to the Great Mother of Roundabouts. I was in disbelief as we dropped over the crest of a hill and I saw five roads of eight lanes of traffic each converging on a roundabout that must have been at least a square kilometer in size. There was a frantic crush of humanity, machinery, and livestock at every possible angle at a total standstill. As we bumped and bounced over the traffic dividers at the outskirts of the gridlock, I saw the source of it all: An over laden bus and a rik had merged. There was a fistfight in progress between the two drivers. Scott informed me that they were at it on his way over. We finally arrived at the Marriott. It seems that all of Bombay’s beautiful people were there. I saw row upon row of Mercedes & drivers slumbering, girls in the choicest Euro fashions standing in tight clumps and shyly glancing around, men talking animatedly on their mobiles. We made our way through the crowd and into the lobby. Just then shrill screams erupted from the women and they rushed a gorgeous couple…  Raj Grover aka Ross GraberWriter, SPICE magazine online Raj Grover aka Ross Graber, is a project manager specializing in information security and fraud investigation. He has a BS in Cognitive Science and a Graduate Certificate in Accounting. He is also a certification junkie holding the CFE, CISA, CISSP, and PMP credentials. Ross is active in charity and supports a variety of causes including International Justice Mission (www.ijm.org). He can often be found indulging his masochistic love of riding a fixie through the streets of SF or getting an adrenaline high in the kickboxing gym. As an evolutionary psychologist, cultural nomad, and moral relativist, Ross is uniquely positioned to take on an undercover assignment (alias "Raj Grover") for Spice Magazine. |