90-Feet Road

The options were to stick around for another two hours of Pangea Day and then another hour or so until the trains started running, or to leave before the taxis dried up. I left. The Kaospilots were already stretched out on the chittai, and who could blame them. I prefer my Christiane Amanpour in small doses, with regular breaks for mortar rounds.

Girish, a Reality Tours & Travels guide, was kind enough to show me the way to a taxi. Of course one pulled up almost as soon as we stepped out of the community center—yes, at 1:15, in Dharavi. But even before it could, we stumbled over a kulfiwala—yes, at 1:15, in Dharavi. I flinched, uncharacteristically, upon seeing the color of the slush in which the tin capsules had been chilling. Now, I realize it probably had something to do with rock salt; then, without the benefit of chemical analysis, I said, "ah, fuck it."

With a surgeon's hand he popped the top, slid in the stick, and wedged out the resulting popsicle with a spoon. The creaminess surprised me. Nothing like the cassata slices you get from freezer cases, this kulfi was completely smooth, like the gelato I'd earlier that evening taken my students to try. Completely, that was, until I got to the bottom, where I met a question mark of a sour, icy plug. Some sort of thermochemical reaction squeezing the whey parts out to the frosty exterior? Requires more experimentation: swayam shikshan prayog.

The monologue in the cab ride was infinitely more entertaining (and, I daresay, promoting of cross-cultural understanding) than Pangea's spokesmodels-across-continents, international Idol shtick. Of course, I'd missed the ending.