Mumbai Yarns

Mumbai is truly not a city for knitters. The weather is all wrong; too much humidity and no cold winters. Even now during the beautiful monsoons it is too humid to wear a jumper for long, even though things start to get cooler. The wool supply is also as a consequence not that great. Most of the yarn is nylon, and the most fancy thing you can find is pure wool (scratchy) or a wool/nylon mix (passable).

My knitting sources tell me that there is a man in Bangalore who supplies pure silk wool if you contact him and ask nicely enough. There is also a store in the Fort area of downtown Bombay, the entrepreneurial owner contacted me through Ravelry. It’s almost time for me to leave the city though, and my house is in disarray for packing. Even so, I plan on making room in my bag for more wool just in case my Fort trip proves fruitful. I like to think that knitters are practical in that regard, albeit in a really impractical way!

In honour of this beautiful and maddening city, I have created a list of the twenty things I will miss the most.

1. Paani puri
2. Filter coffee
3. Monsoons
4. Disgustingly over the top saris
5. Fresh hot pav rolls from the bakery around the corner
6. The woman in the train from Vadala to Bandra who sells (at various times of the year) meetha orange, meetha phanas, lichi and mosambi. [translation: sweet orange, sweet jackfruit, lychees and sweet lime]
7. Hinglish
8. Hot milky chai in little plastic cups
9. Hot salty pakode in greasy Marathi newspapers
10. The Arabian Sea
11. Aunties of various descriptions; the old disapproving ones in the trains, the younger ones with friendly kids, the hot ones who exercise up and down parks all along the seaside, the lovely ones who feed you and house you and give you mangoes or laddoos to take home, the shocked ones who can’t stop staring at you because of your skin colour/height/weight, the overly friendly ones who shove their children in your lap to take photos. Last but not least, to the two aunties on a late night Borivali to Churchgate who tried (through my broken Hindi and their broken English) to set me up with their son/nephew who worked for Air India.
12. Ashish book sale
13. Stray cats
14. Stray dogs with furry, curly tails
15. The smell of cooking kebabs on my way to and from the train station
16. My downstairs neighbour, who sounds like a turkey whenever she’s angry
17. My downstairs neighbour’s son, who sings out of tune at the top of his little lungs
18. Harbour Line trains
19. Making fun of Navi Mumbai
20. The ease of communicating with auto drivers without needing to know the language well.

I reread this and realised how much of it was about food. Oh! But who could go past it. The next time I go back, hopefully I can add another Aunty to this list. An Aunty who will teach me how to cook!