City with a soul

I know you don’t like the city of Bombay.

For me, Bombay is like me. I identify with this city more than any other city or place that I’ve been to.

Like I can be a million different women for a million different people, Bombay is the city that can mean a million different things to the more than 14 million people who call it home. For some it’s a harbinger of death, some lose everything they have, except their lives, some lose their soul, some gain power and wealth, some win, some become famous and yet others disappear into the passages of insignificance.

As a city, Bombay offers everything anyone could possibly ask for. From the squalor of the slums, the stench of the fish markets to the fragrant and hollow insides of seven-star hotels and corporate offices. From the crowds in the local trains to the crowded roads of Colaba – filled with the best four-wheels that money can buy. On the local trains, each person is an island. In the four-wheels too, the story is the same.

For me, Bombay represents hope.

She gives you what you want – all of it and more. But Bombay never gives what you need. Like with everything else in life, you need to fight for what you need. Bombay’s a city overflowing with opportunities – and it’s merciless with those who come looking for solace and are blind to the opportunities. All kinds of people can survive and even do well in Bombay – from the scrupulously uncorrupted to those born into corruption. The only one common ability in everyone who wins in Bombay – they snatch the opportunities presented to them and don’t know the word “no”. They don’t know how to lose.

On the surface, Bombay’s your dirty, filthy, overcrowded, indifferent, rotten-place-to-call-home city.

But have you walked the by-lanes in Bandra during Christmas season? Have you walked the Marine Drive during the peak of the Monsoons’ fury? Have you walked the roads under the scorching sun and dripping humidity? You have to “walk” Bombay to understand her. To know her. There are more people in Bombay than on the continent of Australia. That’s what makes Bombay. It’s people. Without the people and the history, Bombay is just another New York without soul.

The decimated textile mills, the sexy high-rises built on land reclaimed from the slums and the sea. The buyers and the sellers. The beggars and the eunuchs. The dance bars and the salsa dance classes. The malls and the roadside book sellers. The Parsi colony and the biggest slum in Asia. The wailing police sirens and the dying man’s call for help. It’s a city with a soul. I’ve never felt more alive in any other city. When I step foot in Bombay, I’m alive. Bombay is so…real.

Japengos Cheese Cake

I love the cheese cake at Japengos! [ Restaurant in the CR2 complex in Nariman Point - the same one that houses Mumbai's INOX ]. The cheese cake is expensive though – comes to about INR 416 inclusive of taxes – but it’s worth every rupee!

And their internal lighting is also quite innovative. As far as I can make out, they have taken apart the common Indian broom and fitted a bulb smack in the middle. Looks nice.