The buildings here are designed for rain. You step down about 8 inches into the balconies - although they have drains in them, they look like they are designed to hold about 1 thousand litres of rain water before there's any risk of the water coming into the apartment.
Because we didn't go out today the cleaner had to work around us. There's nothing like putting your feet up and watching a woman work. And especially one that can't talk English or nag. The cleaner comes in every day for two hours. A young lad comes in to scrub the bathrooms. The girl sweeps the marble floors then washes them, wipes over all the furniture, puts the washing on, hangs it out to dry, mops the balcony floors, wipes over all the balcony fences, etc.... its lovely to watch a woman work so diligently (without complaining).
Some kind of festival period finished today, so we have been subjected to the Indian equivalent of Kylie Minogue being played through loudspeakers all day. It was ok for the first hour or so, but the enjoyment soon wanes. Especially when you have a 5am start because of the Muslim call-to-prayer that starts around then, followed by somebody in Canberra calling my mobile at 10:30am your time forgetting that its 5am here.
Now that the festival is finished I expect that our driver will put some shoes on. My brother said on the first night not to comment about his bare feet - apparently he is fasting and can't wear shoes until it finishes. Different customs for different places.
Reminiscing about the roadside accommodation we saw yesterday, it was interesting to see that most people were spotlessly dressed with razor-crisp creases in their clothes. My brother says that they are extremely clean regardless of their situation. Their houses/shacks will be immaculate, however they have no problem with throwing their rubbish onto common property. Its a different spin on "not in my backyard".
In the next day or so, we hope to visit of the busiest slums in the world. Apparently there are 200,000 people per square mile. I just can't imagine how tightly the people must be packed together, remembering that this doesn't include high-rise buildings - everyone lives at ground level.
Because travelling here is so difficult (it could take 4 hours just to get to the other side of Mumbai), it looks like we aren't going to be able to tour like we expected. However in hindsight maybe that's a good thing - what we are seeing it the real India - warts and all. Looking at the guidebooks there are actually very few tourist trips or places to go to - and you can see why when travelling is so difficult. Who could compare visiting some ancient temple with visiting the world's largest slum!
The pictures I've included today are scenes from our apartment. There is a playground and park direcly in front and the building site out back. The playground could be anywhere in the world if you ignore the fact that the women are all wearing saris.
Out the back, it was good to see husband and wife construction teams making the concrete. Bringing the kids along also saves on the childcare.
I'm not sure if I mentioned it already, but our apartment block is in a group of 8 12-storey apartments arranged in an oval surrounded by a 12 foot security fence with big metal spikes on the top. There's a guard in the foyer of each building as well as a couple on the gates to the compound. There are guards stationed on each corner of the complex as well so that they can monitor the service entrances there. There are also guards that patrol the various walkways - these guys carry big sticks that I think they use to beat any children that walk on the grassed areas. You certainly can't complain about the security. One of the roles of the foyer security guards is to search the cleaners so that they can't steal anything.
Anyway, I think that that's enough of my ramblings today.
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