Mumbai rocks... Metrotwin Mumbai

Hey, this is something very close to my heart and a dream come true for me.

Metro twin http://mumbai.metrotwin.com/ is a BA effort to add colour to Mumbai for foreign travellers. I am a strong believer in the tourism potential of Mumbai and India.

A lot of things suck in terms of infrastructure but there's so much to see and do here, there is so much character. We just need to get people excited. We can give tons of popular destinations a run for their money. We can't fix the roads and loos and the Governmental apathy but we can definitely help build the romance of India. The rest will change I am sure.

So please introduce Metrotwin Mumbai to your friends overseas.

Let's spread the Mumbai story.

Paradise regained in forty five minutes...Mandwa beach

Remember those scenes in movies such as Pretty Women or even in F.R.I.E.N.D.S where the heroine is leaving town at the end and the hero hasn't stated his feelings for her? And then he realises his mistake and runs to catch up with her. Often goaded by a friend. Usually he reaches the airport or train station late and then finds that she is waiting for her. And then they live happily ever after.

Well something like this happened to me recently. Except in my case the woman was replaced by an idyllic sea beach!

OK, this is a long story so please be patient or skip the next paragraph.

A few of our friends had made plans to go to Mandwa last Wednesday. I wasn't sure as I had a meeting on Wednesday. That got cancelled and I thought I will join them. Then I felt quite nauseous and had a headache on Tuesday night. So I told Kainaz to join the gang on Wednesday while I stayed home. K left for the Gateway next morning while I stayed back. Then I began to have second thoughts as I felt that I was missing out on an opportunity to do something different. That's when K's mama called me and said "what are you doing, just drop everything, jump into a cab and go". Pretty much like Phoebe in F.R.I.E.N.D.S and the hotel manager in Pretty Woman. I began to consider going when he called me again and screamed, "you are still not in the cab, what are you doing?!". I quickly exchanged my jammies for a pair of jeans, brushed my teeth and darted out. Well Kainaz and our friends who had set off early in the morning skipped the 8.30 AM catamaran for me. I arrived just in time for the 9.15 AM ferry and we set sail for Mandwa. I threw up over the side of the ferry as we reached Mandwa and the world seemed beautiful again.

The fairly empty and secluded beach of Mandwa is a forty five minute to an hour's boat ride from the Gateway of India in South Mumbai.

Mandwa is the entry to the more popular beaches of Alibagh and Kihim which are off Mumbai. You can reach Mandwa by a ferry or a catamaran. These leave the Gateway every hour and tickets range from Rs 60 to Rs 90 (1 to 2 USD) depending on the size of the boat. This service is closed in the monsoon months, approximately June to September. During these months you can reach Mandwa by a three hour drive. There are buses to take you from Mandwa to Kihim and Alibagh. The price for these are included in your ferry ticket and you don't have to pay separately for this.

Now the thing with Mandwa is that it is literally cut off from civilisation. It is not developed unlike Kihim or Alibagh. You have a few shops selling soft drinks, wafers and biscuits and a public loo at the jetty. Apart from that there is a tiny snack bar with a few tables and chairs run by a person called Guru. You get a few local snacks such as vada pao and missal pao and soft drinks and tea.

The beach is a bit rocky but if you are intrepid enough then you can base yourself at Gurus and spend some time at the beach. I believe that there are spots where you can swim too.

We didn't have to do any of this as two of our friends were members of the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. They took us to the Mandwa Club. Before you get any images of a fancy club let me tell you that Mandwa Club is just a little outpost with a few rooms and toilets and a verandah with easy chairs and sofas. They don't have a restaurant but you can get your own food and warm it in the kitchen. One of our friends got some lovely Chinese from 5 Spice and we had a great lunch by the sea. There is one, ancient attendant who runs the place.

There were six of us that lazy afternoon, by the sea. The lovely breeze brushed away the pressures and pains of the week. We chatted, we lazed, we stretched, we ate, we giggled ... some of us went into the sea and flapped around. I was really glad that I went as I felt very refreshed and rejuvenated... cut off from mad, manic Mumbai. If nature had a spa... then this would be one.

We sat back for Mumbai by the 4.30 PM catamaran. The last boat leaves at 6 PM.

You can stay overnight at the Mandwa Club if you know someone at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. In fact they have a more modern set up called beside the Mandwa Club which has two rooms and a kitchen. This is air conditioned, has better bathrooms and is more modern. Both of these are right on the sea.

But I'd recommend going to Mandwa with a good book, a picnic basket and a beach towel if you are the sort who likes open spaces, likes the sea, wants a break and is fine with roughing it out a bit.



And definitely if you are lucky enough to have Jamshed Adrianvala as your friend.







Credits:
Jamshed Uncle: for organising the trip and waiting patiently for me
Shahazad: for the lovely Chinese from 5 Spice. Excellent choice of dishes
Rita and Malka: for making us break into peals of laughter
Freddy Mama: for his calls goading me to go
Kainaz: through whom I know the rest of the cast and for living with my indecisiveness

History lesson: Apparently the Mandwa Club was started after the Royal Bombay Yacht Club was opened at Bombay during the British rule of India. The Royal Bombay Yacht Club was meant for the higher officers of the British Army and navy. Ordinary folks from the ranks who liked to sail complained that there was nothing for them. That's when the Mandwa Club was set up. What's remarkable was the location chosen for the club. There was nothing around the area at that time but people had the foresight to pick this spot. The Mandwa Jetty is fairly recent and has come up in the last decade.

Follow the yellow brick road: Mumbai Pune Expressway

I still remember the excitement which was there when the expressway opened between Mumbai and Pune. We had rarely seen a road like that in India. And it cut down the distance by almost two hours from what it used to be.

It still is about a 2 hr drive and another 1.5 hrs to get in and out of the cities.

I have travelled the route over the years and have seen the highway grow. As have the food courts!

I did the route yesterday and I saw that the food courts have really grown in number and variety. There is something for everyone. I was telling my colleagues that I felt like I was seeing a baby grow. And it felt good!

Here were some of the pleasant discoveries on the way to Pune from Mumbai:

- The Mc Donalds at Panvel, which is actually before the highway while coming from Bombay – now opens at 6 AM and serves breakfast. I remember stopping there earlier at 9 and 10 AM in the morning and being turned back as they opened at 11 AM. This time we had some very nice sausage muffins (the bread was light and slightly crisp compared to the burgers), excellent pancakes with coffee and maple syrup, Georgia Coffee (very nice), Minute Maid orange Juice. A colleague had has brown potatoes which looked tasty. Most dishes cost Rs 50 (1 USD). I wished they served this at Bombay too. They had done up the toilets too and they looked nicer than before

- The side of the lane facing Pune has a largish stop in the middle with a number of restaurants which sell local Maharashtrian fare (upma, bata vad, etc), South Indian Stuff, juices and sandwiches. This is one of the first courts but has grown with time. The average dish costs Rs 20 – 40 (50 – 60 cents) here
- Now there is a stop at the end of the highway towards Pune. This is the second stop after it ends and you have a Coffee Day there if you don’t like the local coffee in the earlier stops. Good to buck you before a meeting or before entering Pune.

There are quite a few stops on the way back to Mumbai from Pune

- There is a stop before Lonavla which has a Coffee Day, a US pizza shop and local stuff as well
- Then there is a largish stop after Lonavla which has at least 6-7 options: Ramakant's vada pao (they used to serve local fare such as vada pao in a van on the highway before the food court), a Café Coffee Day, some other local stores AND a 24 hr Mc Donalds

My excitement would sound strange to people from the West or even from countries like Thailand. But these are big improvements in India.

I was travelling with a couple of colleagues yesterday who shared my love for food. We kept talking about food through the journey. Which was good as our meeting at Pune seemed a bit pointless.

Traveler’s Notes:
- These stops have ample parking
- Now there are signs directing them to you on the road so you are warned well in avance in case you want to turn in
- There is quite a variety of options, most places are reasonably clean and hardly any have dishes which cost more than Rs 50 (or 1 USD)
- Most of these places have washrooms which are ‘fairly’ clean

- There are gas stations/ petrol pumps at all these stops

- Most also have shops where you can buy local favourites such as chiki (nuts in hard boiled jaggery), chocolate fudge, jelly sweets, jams and juices which you can take as gifts

Mumbai 26 11...it is not business as usual

Frankly I was quite exhausted and emotionally drained over the past few days. And I want to thank everyone who called, texted, e mailed, scribbled on walls, commented on blogs asking about us. Kainaz and I were home safe and no one close to us was caught in the tragedy that hit Mumbai. Unless you count the city of Bombay of course!

I was glued to the telly for a large part of the last few days watching the horrifying events unfold. I was dazed and in a state of shock. VT station, Leopolds, The Taj, the Oberoi, these have all been places which have made Bombay special to me. Places which have made me fall in love with the city. I have vivid memories of each of them.

I first landed at the Victoria Terminus for a summer project presentation in 1996. I fell in love with Bombay then and shifted in a year later. Kainaz and I would often walk past the VT Station on our courting days for a Bengali dinner at Hotel New Bengal. Even today I always feel happy when I see the Gothic beauty of the VT station when I head to South Bombay for work.

Leopold is where my summer project guide had treated me to a beer, where I had spent many evenings with friends when I had moved into Bombay, where I have had many Friday lunches of beef chilly and prawn fried rice and brownies with Kainaz, where we had dinner on her last day at FCB Ulka, the office where we met. Years later I felt good reading about it in the book, Shantaram.

The Taj Hotel was of course THE hotel we all aspired to. I remember each of my visits there… a lot of them were to the Sea Lounge, the old tea room by the sea. It is hard to think that the place where I was introduced to the ice cream boat and then shared it with Kainaz, where I took my mom for tea… an experience she still remembers, the place where as a junior executive, eight years back, I had shelled out Rs 1500 (30 USD today) to treat Kainaz to a chocolate buffet (a kind, elderly waiter took pity on us and allowed us to share a plate from the buffet though I had paid only for one person, but that’s Taj for you)…to think that this place, the Sea Lounge, was apparently the last refuge of the killers is painful.

The Oberoi is just opposite the Nirmal building at Nariman Point where Kainaz and I worked together when we first met. We often used to go to the cake shop there for pastries and ham and cheese sandwiches and even now I get a cake from there on her birthday. The Oberoi had a chemist where I would buy Kainaz’s favourite Lindt Chocolates, for the then pricely sum of 90 Rs (2 USD), as a peace offering if we had a tiff. I have bought her a red tee shirt from a shop called Scarlett over there which she still wears.

To see these places, which are such a big part of my life pillaged numbed me. I was truly dazed.

And then there was the human misery and pain. The deaths. The bloodshed. The injuries. The massacred families. To think that we could have been one of them is a chilling thought. These were people who had welcomed me to Bombay and made me feel at home here. Or they were people like me who had come from outside to Bombay, drawn like a firefly to the flame.

I have consciously used the word ‘Bombay’. I know there are political parties who believe that Bombay should be called Mumbai. Well, if they really care about the city, then their actions need to speak for that. And so far the silence has been deafening.

We have been let down by the most inept political leaders which we have abetted by voting for them, or worse still, by not voting. And I know that there are many of my peers who have followed the American elections by the minute but do not vote here. To start with, I haven’t voted ever since I shifted to Bombay.

Hats off to the policemen, army men, ordinary citizens, hotel staff, journalists, firemen who braved their lives to stand up to the killers. I hope that I too would someday be able to do something for this city.

And then there are the endless debates on the ‘spirit of Mumbai’. Three calamities back, this was good and much lauded. The flavour of the day now is to ridicule this term. The ‘spirit of Mumbai’ is the reality of life anywhere in the world. You need to eat to live, you need to earn to eat, you need to work to earn. People get back to work after each of the hourly blasts in Kabul and Kashmir, shops remain open after bombs exploded at Delhi, Jaipur and Guwahati, the fishermen are out after the cyclones in Bangladesh and the tsunami in Thailand and Tamil Nadu. That’s the truth of life. And that much more if you are a daily wage earner. So let’s face reality folks.

You want to know what Mumbai is like? It is like Sylvester Stallone in any Rocky movie. Battered in round after round. A broken nose. Blinded vision. Paralysed speech. The assault continues. Except in the movies, ‘it ain’t over till its over’. Rocky picks himself up for the umpteenth time and finally lands the sucker punch which fells Apollo Creed, Mr T, Ivan Drago and other challengers. Mumbai has the bomb blasts of 1993, the communal riots after that, the floods of 26/7, the commuter train blasts, the blasts at Ghatkopar and at the Gateway and now the carnage of 26 11.

And people are scared. Everyone stayed home on Thursday. I went to office for a short time on Friday. I asked my team mates to leave when there were rumours of more explosions. They said they were scared to leave. The cabbie who drove me to work kept muttering about how scared he was and how he didn’t want to get his work out. Fear has cut across. Even to the young… or to the poor, those who normally carry on in the face of danger.

And I have an eerie feeling that this is not the end of the fight. After all the politicians are still at their games. And there are many who act like it is business as usual. Well it is not business as usual!And this nighmare will not end till we realise that.

Life obviously doesn’t stop. We will get back to our spread sheets and power points and our rat races. Even I have gone about my daily routine over the past few days. But at least let’s care about the citiy. Let’s do something. And I don’t mean candle light vigils or being part of internet ‘communities against terror/ politicians, etc. Let’s not support the killers by turning against each other. And let's, for god's sake, vote. For all those who admire Obama but who have given up on our poilticians...let's not forget Obama's message of change.

PS: I am posting this on both my food and travel blogs, though this has nothing to do with either, so that I could reach out to as many people as possible

A city for all seasons: Durga Pujo in Mumbai

I moved to Mumbai ten years back. So technically it is not a 'faraway place' I have made this lovely city my home and it has welcomed me with open arms.

But there is one time of the year when I feel very home sick. That is during Durga Pujo, the biggest festival of us Bengalis. The first time I realised how far away I was from home was when I had visited the Durga Pujo at my adopted home of Bandra at Mumbai ten years back. That's when there were boulders in my throat.

There were just too many memories of Durga Pujo in Calcutta - the year long anticipation, the new clothes, the hair cut two weeks before the festivities, no studies, countless hours spent with friends, the puja in my building - Debjan Apartments, the food, the pandal hopping through the city with friends - all of these came back back in a rush of black and white images as I stood at the Bandra Pujo, fresh out of Calcutta.

I have tried to make it back to Calcutta most years since then during the Pujos. Though I must say that a bit of the magic has gone with the friends I grew up with being available only on Facebook and Orkut, if at all.

I didn't go back this year. But I did see a couple of nice Pujos at Mumbai. I went to the Balkanjibari pujo for the first time at Santa Cruz on my way to the prayer meetings for Mamma (Kainaz's grandmom who had just passed away). I said a prayer for her. The setting was just right as the Pujo was very well organised. I got a a fairm amount of peace and quiet in the pandal that afternoon to be alone with my thoughts. A far cry from the community Pujos of Calcutta which are like big fairs with streams of people pouring in. This reminded me of the pujo in our apartment complex in Calcutta.



I went to the Bandra Pujo on the penultimate night of the festival. Again, I entered the premises peacefully. Something one could not imagine in the big pujos of Calcutta. I went to the prayer area and was there for quite a while. I am usually not very religious and don't leave offerings at religious places. But this year I left some money at the Santa Cruz pujo for Mamma and at the Bandra pujo in appreciation of the way Bandra has welcomed me over the last decade.

I waited for almost an hour for Kainaz to join me. During this time I was seeing the entertainment programme which was going on and was part of the Pujo celebrations. It reminded me of the the programmes we would organise in our pujo at Debjan Apartments, the skits, the songs, the 'orchestra' to which we all danced.

Once Kainaz came, we made a beeline for the food stalls which are a part of our Pujo pilgrimage at Bandra. As you can see from my picture I really enjoyed the lovely food and downed chicken rolls, mughlai paratha, kosha mangsho (mutton) and sweets with great glee.

The prices were a bit extreme (Rs 50 for a roll) but I guess that's the price one paid for nostalgia. The quality of the food was largely pretty good. Though it's smart to stick to the snack items which are fried in front of one instead of the cooked meals.

The most famous Pujo of Mumbai used to be the one at Shivaji Park. I have been there a couple of times. It is quite huge and is filled with people. It reminded me of the Md Ali Park pujo in Calcutta as it is one of the older pujos and the crowd was comparatively less up market than the Bandra one. The equivalent of the Bandra Pujo would be Maddox Sqaure or Jodhpur Park in Calcutta which have a comparatively younger and trendier crowd.

I guess the most famous Pujo in Mumbai now would be the one at Lokhandwala. This is supported by the Times of India now and is patronised by the filmi or Bollywood crowd. I have never been there yet. The famous Lokhandwala traffic snarls are too forbidding.

And if you are at Bandra you don't really need to go anywhere else for anything in Mumbai!

Mumbai budget Eats

A reader of my food blog, finely chopped, wrote in yesterday asking for suggestions on where to treat an out of town friend at Colaba or Bandra at Mumbai. She requested me to keep in mind that she'd be footing the bill so requested me to keep a tight budget in mind.

Here's what I wrote to her:

I have tried to think of places which are economical yet seem special as you are treating someone. Some of these places don't serve alcohol. Alcohol jacks up the price.

List of around Rs 750 (USD 10) for 2 places:

Bandra:-

• Carter Rd Gully: Karims (he might get to see Malaika Arora there, I ate here last night a lovely Muslim dinner for two cost us Rs 315/ 8 USD),Kwik Wok (Oriental), Open Affair (no theme), Maybe (continental, very basic tastes), Crepe Station (ditto) all without alcohol...finish off with gelato or (romantic?) walk by the sea
• JATC (salads, pizzas, pastas, sand wich, subs) no alcohol but very alive
• 5 Spice: alcohol but expensive, food very value for money - one main dish more than enough for . Try - chilly chicken, burnt chilly rice or noodle, Thai curry. Desserts are 125 plus but very good - MY PICK
• Basilico, Out of the blue, Red Box very nice but will cross 1000 minimum
• If you are willing to slum it, Khaane Khaas, well within 500 lovely food, clean but spartan seating. Try tandoori chicken, black daal,jeera chicken, fish tikka. Great service, no crowd

Colaba/ South Bombay

• Churchill - lovely continental food, average price of 200 per dish -must have sausages in firecracker sauce, prawn newberg, ice tea. Long queues though
• Mocambo - beside Citibank in Fort. Lovely ambiance. Insist on theParsi menu. Conti stuff is 300 plus. But Parsi/ Goan stuff is around Rs100 per plate and can be positioned as unique to Bombay. Must trys -dhansak or pulao, daal, bheja cutlet, if adventurous - Ox's tongue. MY PICK given its a treat and has to be economical and should give a flavour of Bombay. You get alcohol too. Ice teas are very good, same management as Churchill
• Leopolds - very cult specially if he has read Shantaram. Sit downstairs though as upstairs is very expensive. Chinese is good and potions are large
• If he doesn't mind no meat or no alcohol take him to the Gujarati Thali places such as Golden Star at Charni Rd. Quite ornate, unique,food is plenty and prices are fixed (around 300 per thali)

Readers: please add in your suggestions. The brief is inexpensive yet not 'cheap'