Every year in Britain, nestling there amongst Ms Rowling and her ilk, one of the top ten best-selling books is the ever-popular Highway Code. It's quite a hefty tome, too, with a squillion obscure rules that everyone diligently memorises in case they ever come into conflict with a member of the local constabulary.
In Mumbai, after a few hours in the city, one taxi journey and lots of wandering amidst the traffic, I can be fairly certain that the rules of the road are as follows:
In other news, buying tickets is also fun. I did two whole circuits of the Wankhede Stadium before finding the ticket office, who decided to place me in the Vijay Merchant stand (there was another English guy there, but he looked older and richer than me so he got the Sunil Gavaskar Stand for an extra 1,000 rupees. I reckon he got ripped off though: yeah Sunil may have got 34 Test centuries, but Vijay ended up with a first-class average of 71, which I think wins under Top Trumps cricket rules). Best of all, although i handed over my money today, all i got was a receipt: i have to go back next week to get the actual tickets. Genius. Now i see what Nehru got for all those close ties with the Soviet Union.
A chap who claimed to work for the railways buttonholed me in the vast teeming madhouse of CST station (I was the confused, white boy - it wasn't difficult to spot me) and ordered several other guys to go and sort out my ticket. I let them go off with my money on condition that he stuck to me like a limpet - for the next 40 minutes, as it turned out. He claimed that this was the quick way of doing it. Still, i have my ticket and on Saturday morning I will wake up with the dawn, on a train hurtling down the coast at speeds in excess of 10mph. Should be fun.
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