Day 48-50: I’m Coming Home
For 9 years, I hadn’t been to the heart of Mumbai. I went
there in 2001, but then my Grandmother who lived in the heart of Mumbai died in
early 2002. Until 2011, I barely spent any time in Mumbai, and hadn’t once
gotten any closer to Mumbai proper than Worli. That all changed on my return
from my cousin’s wedding (chronicled in my “A Wedding in India” series), when I
spent a day in Mumbai, arriving early in the morning and leaving on the 2:00 AM
flight on Etihad out of Mumbai. Still, that wasn’t really spending time in
Mumbai. However, later that year I went to India to do my summer internship,
spending seven weeks straight in Mumbai, at the height of the Monsoon season.
Yes, it was rainy and gloomy, and I didn’t see blue sky for the entire period,
but I still enjoyed my time there, chilling with my cousin Robin, holding fort
at my Grandmother’s apartment in Mumbai, the house where my Dad and his family
grew up.
This trip to Mumbai will be done in three parts. The first
is this weekend, and I will have a companion, as my Mom joins me for this part.
The next will be next weekend through two Wednesday’s from now, as I enjoy my
last few days in the heat before I jet off to Australia during what they
consider winter (60-70 degrees, sign me up). Finally, I will be here for the
final three days of my trip, choosing to end my journey where my Dad started
his. Yeah, Mumbai (and apologies in advance if I call it Bombay at any point
during this, as I often do out of habit), and more specifically, that single
apartment has been a constant presence in my life, and I like to think that it
is meaningful that it is the place I will be beginning the 2nd leg
of my trip (in the literal sense, the 2nd Mileage ticket is
Mumbai-Melbourne-Tokyo-Bangalore), and ending the trip in totality. Yes, it is
a city that means many things, and for three days, it meant being able to
experience a different side of it.
My Grandmother’s apartment is in Colaba, which means a lot
to those who know Mumbai, but probably not a lot to those who don’t. It is
directly across from the Leopold Café, a place people might have known well,
but probably know better as it was one of the sites that was shot up in the
infamous, tragic terrorist attack back in 2008. Actually, most of the sites of
that attack took place in South Mumbai, many in Colaba, including the Leopold
and the Taj, which is visible from the apartment. My Aunt and Cousin, who live
there now, say they could hear the audible gunfire on the day of the attack.
When the attack happened, I hadn’t been to Mumbai in 7 years, so I didn’t
really remember just how close it was, but going back, and having to say
‘Leopold Café’ to the taxi drivers makes you never forget.
The apartment was extremely dark and old near the end of my
Grandmother’s life, and slowly but surely since they moved in about five years
ago, my Aunt and cousin and revamped the place to where it is totally
acceptable, with one main exception: the lack of cross-ventilation making it
really, really hot. Mumbai in total was cooler than Bangalore during my time
there, but the apartment itself was quite hot, a reminder that you can never
truly escape the heat in India. The city was exactly how I left it 20 months
previously, a bustling, crowded, underratedly clean and charming center of
Indian culture, but one piece was missing.
When I came two summers ago, my cousin and I went out for
beers quite a bit, and the leading destination of ours was Extreme Sports Bar,
on the ground floor of the famous Regal Theatre, Sports Bar wasn’t as crowded
as Leopold’s or Café Mondegar, or Café Royale, and less gloomy than Gukkul
(those are all the bars in walking distance), and was clean, comfortable and
crowded enough to get the energy up. The best part was through our many visits,
we befriended the DJ, Francis; and when I say befriended, I mean forced him
into playing the music we wanted to hear. Our crowning achievement was getting
him to play ‘Master of Puppets’ in a crowded bar. Sadly, the bar mysteriously
closed a month back, to be replaced, much to the dismay of my cousin, by
‘Bank’, as the man he asked told him.
This time, things would initially be a little more calm and
quiet. My Mom and I made the requisite visits to her family members living in
Mumbai, a ritual that isn’t always as boring as it seems (at least for me, it
rarely is boring for her). We visited my Mom’s cousin, who of course, given the
largesse of Mangalorean families, is around 80, and has a daughter (my 2nd
cousin) who is my Mom’s age. Our visit included the India tradition of being
called over for appetizers and being given four or five appetizers to eat, and
because I am young, the host expects me to eat and drink enough to make up for
the people old enough to use their health as an excuse to eat less. We had
plans to go out with my cousin for dinner at Ling’s Paradise, a Chinese
Restaurant in Colaba, and he didn’t come for the visit, so while he was hungry
at home, I was gorging up. We came back, and because it was a Saturday in
Mumbai, the wait was still forty-five minutes and Ling’s so by the time we got
to eating, we were all hungry enough to join Robin.
After dinner, much to the dismay of my Mom and my Aunt,
though not to their surprise, Robin and I snuck off on the walk back to the
apartment and went to Mondegar, which had a slightly smaller line than
Leopold’s (the sick joke on the block is that the owner of Mondegar’s is really
envious that Leopold’s was shot up, as their business grew a lot after that).
Since we were a group of two, we were immediately seated at a stool-seated small
table tucked away in one corner of the restaurant, passing scores of larger
groups on the way. Then, as we did so many times two summers ago, we ordered a
pitcher (sometimes, depending on the place, ‘pitcher’ was changed to ‘tower’)
and shot the shit. We touched on all the topics we had, including a long,
rambling, slightly drunken debate on the Patriots, the Colts, Manning, Brady,
and all that stuff that happened so many times last time. It was incredibly
nostalgic and incredibly satisfying to be back in Colaba just chilling with my
cousin.
Sunday was a little more adventurous, as my Mom whisked me
away to Bandra, a foreign land one hour (due to traffic) away from Colaba,
where the grass (and trees) grows greener and the haunts are open later (though
that wouldn’t matter to my Mom). Bandra also happens to be where my Mom spent
most of her time when she’s come to Mumbai, as my Mom’s late brother lived
there. We stopped by his old apartment, took a picture and moved on towards
Bandra for the day. Having been through Rajasthan, the shopping aspect of
Bandra was unavoidably tiring, but seeing this part of Mumbai during the day
(my only trips to Bandra on my previous trip were at night) was interesting.
For lunch, we went to Candie’s, a large, self-serve type restaurant in the
heart of Bandra, one of the handful of restaurants that took over when its
father restaurant McRonnell’s died.
Both of my lunches in Mumbai had a familial connection, but
were different. On Saturday, all four of us went to Mahesh Lunch Homes, a
famous Mangalorean restaurant in Fort in Mumbai. The food was very good, cooked
in traditional Mangalore, South Indian style, a real taste of home from my
other side. On Sunday, it was Candie’s, which, as mentioned, is the offspring
of the restaurant that catered my Mom and Dad’s wedding, and currently stands
on the grounds of that restaurant. The restaurant had these White Chicken
Puffs, which is why my Mom initially wanted to come there. I wasn’t a huge fan
of those, but most of their food was very good. I was particualarly fond of
their Mutton Pan Roll and their Goan Sausage Puff. The restaurant also has a
terrific atmosphere, being a multi-level (about seven stories) indoor and
outdoor self-order restaurant. We came at the heart of lunch time, and it was
so full we had to share a table with a pair of Mumbai girls. We stayed on for a
while to soak in the atmosphere, and by the time we left we came up with a plan
to stop back and get some food to eat on the way out to Goa, a plan which,
unsurprisingly given the hard-to-predict traffic to the airport, never came to
pass.
That night, my cousin and I went to another area that was
awfully familiar: Lower Parel, in where I worked two summers ago. We didn’t go
to the office, but to the fancy High Street Phoenix mall complex, a large
collection of 3-4 malls in a sprawling complex. The main, and most branded,
mall is the Palladium, which is far more glamorous now than it was then, as it
had just been finished being built and wasn’t fully rented out yet. Our desired
location was the Manchester United Bar, tucked away into one corner of the 3rd
Floor of the mall. The bar was a oft-visited after-work site two years ago.
Because this was a Sunday Night, the bar was mostly empty, but that gave us
some good time to talk. The bar is very nice on the inside, with the requisite
4-6 Big Screen TVs (including one projector), and the necessary pictures of
Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney and Nemanja Vidic. As the bar was mostly empty, I decided
to try my luck with the DJ to get a song played, but his quick, rough ‘no’ made
me miss Sports Bar even more.
We returned quite late, but instead of heading off to bed
like normal people, my cousin and I did our final ritual from two summers ago,
watching VH1 at odd hours of the night. VH1 at night in India has a program
called VH1 ZZZZ…., which plays a collection of famous music and the most random
songs ever (some so odd the artist doesn’t even have an album), and when we
watch we make our usual snide humorous comments about the songs. All in all, it
is a small, but entertaining way to end the night, and end my first stint in
Mumbai.
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| Leopold Cafe, as it always is |
