This Is How We Do It

Saturday 24 May

Gave myself a break in the morning with a sleep-in, healthy breakfast and a few chapters of 'The Pregnant Guy' - a fun book written for someone like me; head swirling with a thousand thoughts about bringing a new person into the world. Had a home-cooked vegetarian lunch and a nap (the bliss!) before on-time.

Having asked for a briefing on the press conference I was to be involved in this evening, the PR agency came over and we discussed for a while what was going to happen. Apparently it's S.O.P. here to have no briefing, no key messages, just get up there and say whatever comes to mind. Though I found this a little unsettling, I'm enjoying the part of my job which requires me to be flexible and learn how different cultures work, so instead of going "WTF!" I probed them with questions to extract as much sense as I could (not much) and when they had gone, worked out my own key messages in the quiet of the guest house.

With an hour's worth of traffic in between us and the event venue, the car that was going to take us there failed to show up, so we jumped into a rickshaw which took us on the first part of the journey - hot, sweaty and cramped, but strangely I didn't feel a layer of grime settling on me like in Beijing. He took us as far as he could before we transferred to one of the ubiquitous 1960s Fiat cabs that ply the streets in their non-air-con and hunched up manner. While Jaymin was on edge I figured there was no choice but to suck it up and relax - I guess my training in KL with Kevin getting to the bus on time has served me well.

Eventually we sighted Chetan's car and he took us the rest of the way in the relative luxury of a Toyota Corolla, through downtown Mumbai and into a beautiful part of town with grand old colonial buildings and enormous trees which added more than a touch of class and greenery to the otherwise chaotic city.

The event was held at two adjacent clubs called Red Light and Yashab - three rooms in total with loosely executed work from the Merge, Rise and Gold collections. A bunch of TV crews and journos had interviewed me before the press conference even started, meaning I was well warmed up by the time I had to address the roomful of media. Fun.

As the party kicked off with three live artists doing their thing, I sucked back some beer and wandered around checking out the action. The live room featured a local jazz band but was pretty sparsely populated, while the dance room got more and more frenzied until it was wall-to-wall party people. I got disindividuated in there for a while and spotted a white model about 6'4" in heels - I thought she was an alien until she adjusted her bra strap. The premium crowd was in full effect, however I made my escape with Chetan before the cops arrived at 2am and uncereomoniously ordered the ugly lights on and everyone out with whistles. Our payment obviously didn't include the glamour premium.

Headed to a famous roadside stall for roast chicken rolls on the car boot - awesome. Tried a mutton roll thereafter but the texture was very turd-like so Chetan suggested not to finish it. Through the early morning traffic, getting home was much easier and again I made it to bed safely and slept like a log.