Thursday, April 18, 2013

RTW Trip: Day 48-50 (4/12-4/14) - Mumbai



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.

Leopold Cafe, as it always is


About Me

I am a man who will go by the moniker dmstorm22, or StormyD, but not really StormyD. I'll talk about sports, mainly football, sometimes TV, sometimes other random things, sometimes even bring out some lists (a lot, lot, lot of lists). Enjoy.