Sweet Home Mumbai?

I was showing my little Nigerian roommate some pictures from my last trip to India. My last photograph taken in sweet sunny Bombay was from the window of the plane, showing the airport with a huge board with "MUMBAI" written on it.

Me: So that's my last photograph of Bombay.

J: (looking intently at the photograph) Ohh, is that how you spell it? I'd think you would spell it B-O-M-B-A-Y.

Me: ???

Then I realized the poor girl thought we pronounced it "Bombay" but spelt it "Mumbai"!

This incident happened on Thursday late evening. I was in the bus, and pulled on the string to let him know to stop at the next stop, and as I did that, my jacket brushed against my left eye, and all of a sudden my vision blurred. The first thought was, okay, my contact lens is displaced. The second, more frightening one was, has it fallen off? As the bus came to a stop, I requested the attendant to allow me to use one of the rear-view mirrors to make sure my lens was still in my eye. It wasn't. Then I asked him to "please look into my eye, maybe you can see it". How embarassing. He couldn't. Then he shone this bright light into my eye and made me look into the mirror, in case that would show the lens. Nothing. I started getting really flustered. I asked him to drive on, I told him I'd keep looking for the lens on the floor of the bus, and whenever I found it, I'd get off. I cannot but appreciate him, he turned off the engine of the bus and started looking for it himself, along with me. There was only one other passenger in the bus apart from Elderly-Bus-Attendant-With-Poor-Eyesight and Young-Idiot-With-One-Lens-Missing, and we requested her to "please look into my eye...", etc. Then we requested her assistance in looking for the lens, because it seemed as though she was the only one in the three of us who wasn't partially blind.

After about five minutes, she located the virtually transparent and less than 0.75sq.cm. lens in the center aisle on the floor of the bus.

(To clarify the magnitude of this situation, you must understand that these days I live in my lenses, I find them a lot more comfortable than my glasses; and that I have only one pair!)


POSTSCRIPT

After a million thank-yous and good-byes, I started walking back in the direction of home, the left lens still in my hands (I couldn't possibly put it back in my eyes, and moreover, I hadn't even ascertained if it was alright or scratched, or broken, or anything else.) I was still in a state of shock and horror. I called Fi, and told him what had happened. He listened, hmmmmed at the proper places, but that was all. Then,

"Aren't you horrified?"

"No. Why?"

What's he talking of? Well, he didn't have to live it himself. I'm wayyy lucky today.

"Well, isn't this one of the stories we 'tell our grandchildren' ?"

"No need, there are juicier ones of yours for that."

Humph.

But well, that's true too!