No placard matches our names, phones say yes and not yet; Cesca’s fingers tighten on my arm, and Mumbai asks us to embrace uncertainty before it swallows us whole.

Phone pressed to my ear, I scanned the waiting faces outside Mumbai airport. It was late, dark, the air thick with unfamiliar humidity. The pickup area swam under the weak, yellowish glow of low-wattage bulbs that seemed standard issue across the subcontinent. A long, silent phalanx of taxi drivers stood holding placards, their expressions patient, watchful, like a Greek chorus observing our slightly bewildered entrance onto the Indian stage. None bore my name. They watched our every move, as if expecting us to suddenly achieve enlightenment, recognize our true designated driver, and claim our rightful placard. The phone connected, rang. A voice answered, heavy with the strong, musical cadence of an Indian accent — the very first I’d heard since stepping off the plane.

“Hello? Basho here. I booked an airport pickup? Just wondering if our driver has arrived?”

“Yes, sir,” the voice assured me confidently. “He is there.”

“Great!” Relief flickered. I peered again at the sea of signs. “Whereabouts? I don’t seem to see him.”

“Fifteen minutes, he will get there,” the voice replied cheerfully. “He is leaving now.”

Hold on. “Fifteen minutes? Leaving now? But… you just said he was already here. Is he here, or is he leaving?”

“Yes, sir. He is there.”

Confusion started to bloom, exotic and slightly thorny. “He’s there, but he’s leaving the hotel… now?”

“Yes. He is there.”

A sliver of incredulity, sharp and definite, pierced my weary politeness. “Right. So, let me get this straight. You’re saying he is here, currently, but he also hasn’t left the hotel yet, and he will be here in fifteen minutes?”

“Yes! I call him now, tell him to leave to come pick you up.”

“…Thank you,” I managed, and hung up, feeling reality wobble slightly.

Cesca approached, saw the baffled expression undoubtedly plastered across my face.

“Where’s the driver?”

“Ah,” I said, grasping for an analogy. “He appears to be in a quantum superposition. Simultaneously here and not here. He exists only as a probability wave until observed.”

She blinked, tired and unimpressed by my physics humour. “What?”

“Schrödinger’s driver,” I elaborated helpfully. “He hasn’t collapsed into a definite state yet.”

“Look,” she sighed, rubbing her temples. “I’m exhausted. Please just make sense.”

I handed her the phone. “You’ll have to open the box yourself, I’m afraid. Collapse the waveform.”

She took it, dialling with the weary resignation of someone humouring a lunatic, watching me as if I might spontaneously combust.

“Hello?” she began into the phone. “Cesca Bell here, I booked a pickup…” Her voice sharpened. “What do you mean, fifteen minutes? Your colleague just told my husband he was already here!”

I wandered off in search of bottled water, leaving her to wrestle with the delightful paradoxes of Indian customer service. Welcome to India, I thought, a wry smile touching my lips. This, I would soon learn, was not an isolated incident. That first hour encapsulated a fundamental truth about navigating India, one that took weeks to fully internalize: the profound cultural aversion to saying “no.” Ask a direct yes/no question, and the answer, overwhelmingly, defaults to “yes.” Doesn’t matter if it’s factually incorrect, geographically improbable, or logistically impossible. “Yes” is the path of least resistance, the polite deflection, the avoidance of perceived disappointment. How a nation capable of such sophisticated engineering and complex bureaucracy functions on this principle remains one of the subcontinent’s delightful mysteries. I pictured mission control:

“Astronaut Choksi, confirm docking alignment?”

“Yes, home base.”

“Excellent. Proceed with docking.”

“Fifteen minutes, home base.”

“Choksi, stop playing silly buggers…”

Stranger still, after immersing yourself in it for a while, this relentless positivity starts to make a perverse kind of sense. You begin to understand the weight placed on politeness, on not causing offense, even at the expense of factual accuracy. Saying “no” feels like a small act of conversational violence, a disruption. So, it’s simply… avoided. The traveller quickly learns to rephrase. “Is this the right way?” guarantees a “yes,” even as the person simultaneously grabs your arm to steer you in the opposite direction. The key is decoding the subtext, the non-verbal cues. Watch for the wiggle — that gentle, side-to-side tilting of the head, sometimes accompanied by a subtle hand gesture like screwing in a lightbulb. That gesture is the silent asterisk, the universally understood signal that translates roughly to: “What I am currently saying bears only a passing resemblance to reality, but isn’t it a lovely day?” “Yes,” the gesture implies, “this is the way… for a given, highly flexible value of ‘is’.”

Coming from England, a country whose shared social values often feel worn thin, encountering India’s dense, intricate tapestry of custom and unspoken rules was initially bewildering. We quickly coined a mantra, a verbal pressure-release valve for moments of extreme cultural dissonance. When faced with baffling bureaucracy, paradoxical directions, or inexplicable delays, one of us would simply whisper, “TII, baby.” This Is India. An acceptance, a shrug, a reminder not to impose our own rigid logic onto a system operating on entirely different principles.

I returned with water — blessedly cheap, ubiquitous bottled water, a necessity given the notoriously unsafe tap supply. Hundreds of brands existed — Coke, Pepsi, Kingfisher all had their own labels — yet they all possessed the same faint, slightly metallic tang, a taste utterly unlike UK water. Cold, though. That was the main thing. Cold and sealed. Cesca took a long draught.

“Well?” I prompted.

She just fixed me with a look that needed no translation and handed back the phone.

Eventually, perhaps fifteen actual minutes later, the driver materialized, seemingly collapsing into a definite state of ‘here’. He was completely unflustered by the situation and nonchalantly ushered us through the crowds. We climbed into the Ambassador taxi — those wonderfully archaic, tank-like vehicles that seem to run on sheer stubbornness — and plunged into the Mumbai night. The city unfolded around us, a chaotic blur of lamplit street stalls, crumbling colonial facades crammed against makeshift dwellings, honking traffic, and sudden intrusions of massive, modern flyovers that seemed entirely disconnected from the human-scale tangle below. It looked… a mess. An energetic, overwhelming, utterly slick mess. I felt a strange nervousness prickle my skin, though looking back, I can’t pinpoint why. Just the sheer scale of it, perhaps? The raw, undiluted Indianness after the more familiar landscapes of Southeast Asia? We sped through the night, eventually pulling up beside a busy road, overshadowed by a large flyover. Our hotel. Relief washed over us. We’d made it.

The hotel itself was… well, TII. Old, slightly dilapidated, staffed by a brisk, vaguely unwelcoming family who seemed perpetually harried by our presence and swished the paperwork of checking in with a sort of annoyed flourish, stapling passport scans with a clipped repressiveness. The price, by Indian standards, felt astronomical, but it was late, we were tired, and this was our first night-rookie tax, essentially. An ancient, rattling lift, seemingly held together by hope and paint, deposited us outside our room. My first thought upon opening the door was that they’d accidentally shown us the broom cupboard. Nope. This cramped, narrow space, barely wide enough for the two single beds inexplicably arranged end-to-end, was our “Two-bed Deluxe.” Terrible doesn’t quite cover it. Cesca tried the window; it opened directly onto the shared corridor toilets. She closed it again quickly. We exchanged weary sighs, perching gingerly on the beds. I stood up to take off my shirt and immediately cracked my hand painfully on the perilously low ceiling fan. Lesson learned: vertical movement inadvisable. Crouching slightly, I undressed for bed. Cesca fiddled with the ancient TV; it appeared permanently tuned to the “God Channel,” broadcasting an American evangelical “Hour of Power.” Felt less like a coincidence, more like a coded message from previous occupants. Ten minutes in this room, and I was already contemplating prayers for deliverance myself. Sleep. We desperately needed sleep before attempting to make sense of this overwhelming city.

Cesca pulled her silk sleeping bag liner from her pack, shaking it out. And froze. There, stark against the yellow silk, was a small, brown, unmistakable evil-looking bedbug. A moment of pure, frozen horror descended. Then, swift execution. The discovery triggered Operation Decontamination: frantic emptying of backpacks, meticulous inch-by-inch inspection of every seam and fold, a desperate hunt for siblings. Only when Cesca was reasonably satisfied her bag was clear did I dare lay my head on the pillow. It felt like resting on a hessian sack filled with straw. Solid. Unyielding. About as comfortable as a house brick. I quickly checked the pillow’s contents. It was indeed stuffed with straw. Incredible. TII, I thought again, burrowing uncomfortably into the lumpy mattress. This is India. What, exactly, had we let ourselves in for?

The next morning clarified things somewhat. The ‘shower’ was located directly above the ‘toilet’ (a simple hole in the floor), a single, dribbling showerhead promising lukewarm baptism. Still, months in Southeast Asia had somewhat steeled me against rudimentary plumbing. Wash, shave, tell yourself it’s all part of the adventure. A month later, surprisingly, I barely missed a proper British bathroom.

Ready to face the day, we sought breakfast. The hotel staff vaguely recommended the place next door. It looked like a basic works canteen, open to the street, metal tables bolted to the floor. We sat down anyway. The patrons, all men, eyed us sourly. Not hostility, I realised after a moment, but surprise, maybe disapproval. Cesca was the only woman present. Another invisible social boundary stumbled across. We’d walked into the equivalent of a men-only working club back home. We ordered the only thing on the menu that felt safe: toast. It arrived quickly. We ate quickly, paid quickly, and left quickly, feeling the weight of their stares on our backs.

Back on the street, we headed towards the city proper. We were clearly staying outside the main tourist enclave, which suited me fine. I loathe the feeling of being insulated, curated, presented with a sanitized experience. Give me the grit, the authenticity, the chance to ‘muck in’. (A sentiment that would be tested repeatedly in the coming months.) For now, a simple mission: retrieve the Lonely Planet India guide Cesca’s mum had kindly posted ‘Poste Restante’ to Mumbai. Simple, in theory. The city sprawled before us, a river of ancient Ambassador taxis flowing between crumbling buildings. Crossing the road was an extreme sport. Cesca nearly achieved martyrdom on our first attempt, saved only by my frantic yank backwards as a police car, lights be damned, sailed through a red signal. Traffic lights, apparently, were mere suggestions here, especially for authority figures. Heart rates returning to normal, we located the General Post Office. A colossal, magnificent old building, grandly imperial, the kind of structure long since converted to luxury flats or chain pubs back in London. Inside? Utter, glorious chaos. Hundreds queued before dozens of counters, while platoons of staff wheeled vast wicker baskets overflowing with mail. It felt like stepping onto the set of a 1940s film. Finding the Poste Restante window felt like searching for a specific pebble on a vast beach. Enquiries were met with blank stares, vague gestures, or complete incomprehension. After several false starts, we realized we were in the wrong enormous building. The correct enormous building lurked behind it, equally vast, a labyrinth of corridors like a major hospital. Wandering hopefully from section to section, we finally stumbled upon the right office. A couple of clerks listened patiently, nodded, rummaged briefly in a filing cabinet, and miraculously produced Cesca’s package. Success! Total time elapsed: over two hours. Fingernails: significantly shorter.

Now, armed with the holy scripture of the backpacker — the Lonely Planet, indispensable for its maps alone — we felt equipped to actually see something.

“TII, baby,” I said to Cesca, grasping her hand. “Let’s go exploring.”

First stop, though? Food. And a reconnection.

“I’m hungry again,” Cesca announced. “How about we try and visit the Landor office? See if Lulu and Anaheeta are around for lunch?”

Her former colleagues from Landor London. “Great idea.”

Half an hour, a few phone calls, and a taxi ride later, we found ourselves on the rooftop of the sleek, modern Landor building in North Mumbai — a world away from the crumbling chaos downtown. Lulu and Anaheeta greeted Cesca warmly, whisking us up to their breezy rooftop canteen. Under shaded umbrellas, tucking into delicious, fresh food, the contrast was jarring. We chatted about our journey so far, our vague plans for India. An idea struck me.

“Can you teach us a few useful phrases?” I asked. “You know, ‘please’, ‘thank you’, the basics? Helps break the ice, blend in a bit.”

They exchanged glances. “Sorry, Basho,” Lulu said gently. “Not really practical.”

“Oh?” I felt a flicker of disappointment.

“No one outside Mumbai would understand you,” Anaheeta explained.

“Why not?”

“How to put it…?” Lulu began.

Anaheeta jumped in. “Do you have an Indian banknote?”

“Sure.” I pulled out a 50 Rupee note. Gandhi gazed serenely from the front, a constant presence on Indian currency — fitting for the man who shaped modern India, arguably second only to Buddha in historical significance here.

“See the panel on the left?” Anaheeta pointed. “All those lines of small text?”

I squinted. Fifteen lines, stacked neatly, each in a different script. “Yes?”

“Each line says ‘Fifty Rupees’,” Lulu explained. “In one of India’s official languages.”

“Fifteen official languages?”

“At least,” Anaheeta confirmed. “Plus countless dialects. These aren’t just local variations; they’re distinct languages spoken by millions. India has over a billion people, remember — four times the US population. Each state pretty much has its own language. Someone from here in Maharashtra probably won’t understand someone from Tamil Nadu or Bengal any more than you would.”

The sheer scale of the linguistic diversity hit me. “Blimey. So… how do people communicate across states?”

“Simple,” Lulu smiled. “The common language isn’t Hindi or Marathi or Bengali. It’s English.”

“Exactly,” Anaheeta added. “If someone from Mumbai wants to talk business with someone from Kerala, they speak English.”

Cesca grinned. “Cool!”

One less thing to worry about, at least.

Lunch ended, Lulu and Anaheeta needing to return to the world of branding and deadlines. But Anaheeta had one more offer.

“My husband and I would love to take you both out for dinner tomorrow night?”

Cesca’s face lit up. “That would be wonderful! We’d love to!”

Plans were made. “Where are you heading now?” Anaheeta asked.

“Down towards the museums, maybe Colaba.”

“Ah, if you want to try on Indian clothes, proper stuff, check out FabIndia near there. It’s great quality, perfect if you want to go local stylishly.”

“Perfect!” Cesca beamed.

As we left the modern, air-conditioned calm of Landor, I glanced back at Cesca. I saw her taking in the familiar office environment — the sleek design, the creative buzz, the ghosts of deadlines past. I wondered how it felt, revisiting this former life. The camaraderie, the creativity, yes, but also the stress, the politics, the illness that had ultimately prompted her escape, our journey.

“What do you think?” I asked gently, as we walked hand-in-hand back towards the city’s embrace. “Landor life. Could you ever go back?”

I held my breath, trying not to load the question with my own hopes. She turned, met my eyes, and her smile was radiant, utterly unburdened.

“No, baby,” she said softly, decisively. “I’m free now. I’m never going back.”

I smiled back, relief flooding through me. She was free. Cured. And so were we.

Ready for whatever Mumbai, whatever India, decided to throw at us next.