A few things I noticed in the past days

There was a taxi driver behind us, with on its roof a box of tomatoes belonging to the passengers inside. While the taxi was slowly navigating through the busy Bombay streets, a crow landed on the box, let itself be carried along a bit, then took a peck in the box, secured a tomato on its beak and flew off. The passengers sitting under the roof, oblivious to the theft taking place above them, talked on.

This weekend I was sitting in a sports bar in Lower Parel, waiting for the rest of our group to arrive. I had time to look around and spot some differences with what I would consider normal. First of all the volume of the music; obviously, this is a very general complaint, applying to most bars all over the world and is probably caused by young people’s inclination to consider loud noises as mood enhancing. But it was simply impossible to keep up a conversation. Every sentence was drowned out by music. Second, the music was the most random collection of eighties rock and early nineties pop. Third, the number of people serving us was almost as big as the number of patrons in the bar. And it was a big bar, pretty full. Lastly, suddenly, I was sitting there and then I heard this very classic Dutch song, Suzanne by VOF De Kunst, written in the early eighties, in a live English version. It was so strange; the crowd seemed just as familiar with the song as I was.