Disembarkation

I'm too exhausted to come up with much; I arrived about two hours ago, whereupon Ninotchka's god-father, John, and his driver, Babloo, picked me up. The number of thoughts I am having are enormously outpacing my ability to document them, and rather than try, I'm just trying to make a point of 'blogging', as it were. So—I'm here, I'm safe, I'm tired, and the duress of it all has left me in shock (the infamous culture shock, in fact). My immediate impressions of Mumbai:

Warm, wet, aromatic, filthy, huge, organic, intimidating, cooperative. It is obvious from the first drive through the city that living here couldn't possibly have a rule book. I am interested to see how effectively policy can be deployed, here. Commerce, too, seems to be remarkably make-shift, as though someone had taken the early eighties, thrown them in a blender, and then begun to build shops out of the mix. But, this is the impression of a Canadian who's driven through the tiniest fraction of Mumbai at 4:30am after having had roughly two hours sleep in as many days. Now, I am going to lavish myself with a duty-free Twix bar and some alone time with my iPod on a balcony roofed by mango trees. Having introduced myself to India, it's now time to begin the enormous task of letting it reciprocate.