As the Oman Air 737 made its final series of sharp turns into the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, I strained to pick out some landmarks, some points of orientation in those unique pre-dawn minutes, but I could not. A flame here and there from fishermen's boats in the Arabian Sea, the intermittent flickering of kerosene lamps in the shanties that now come right up to the fence that cordones off the airport. The only thing I could pick out with certainty was the massive vacant hill which appears to be the only part of Mumbai that is not covered with structures and people. As soon as we passed over it, the plane basically dropped onto the runway.
I bought a voucher at the Prepaid Taxi Desk for an air-conditioned new car to take me to the Intercontinental on Marine Drive. Unlike most Intercontinentals, this hotel has about 60 rooms spread out over 6 floors. The ground floor is home to the Czar, a bar famed for its wide selection of vodkas, and next to the reception desk, all Japanese minimalist and pristine, is a staircase down to the disco, where the bold and beautiful of Mumbai and Bollywood dance the night away. The 8th floor, though, is truly spectacular, for there, a l'air libre, you find the ample white leather armchairs of the Dome, a foo-foo bar and restaurant that specializes in grilled lobster marinated in Korean hot bean sauce (to die for) and sushi expressly sized so that anyone, no matter how small his mouth, can eat it in a single bite, so as to experience that ideal melding of flavors and textures which, after all, is what true sushi aims to achieve.
But, I wasn't there yet. So, voucher in hand (Rs 485, or US$ 10), I pushed my stubborn cart through a sea of people waiting for their friends and relatives to arrive and scanned the millions of fuming yellow-and-black antiques for a single blue air-conditioned modern taxi bearing license plate number 5535. Out of the crowd -- and this sort of thing can only happen, and always happens to me, in Mumbai -- a hand out of the throngs reaches for my luggage and my hand, guiding me, saying, "Come, Sir, come, this way, car this way, Sir." And wouldn't you know it...he led me straight to car 5535.
Most normal taxis circulating the streets of Mumbai date from the 1960s and 1970s, and there is now a move, as I read in the paper, to deny re-registration of vehicles that are more than 25 years old! The gear shift, for example, is not on the floor, but on the steering wheel (like a turn signal)...I remembered this from my grandfather's Ford in the late 60s. My car was, comparatively speaking, brand spanking new...it probably dated from the early 80s. And, boy, did the air conditioning work, blowing right onto my knees, which were level with the windshield: for another characteristic of Mumbai taxis is that they were not designed for tall people.
Mumbai is an island...and not a terribly big island as islands go, though it has 19 million people. The road from the airport to southernmost Mumbai, the location of Marine Drive (originally called the Queen's Necklace when Elizabeth II's great grandmother Victoria reigned as Empress of India) and the three major international hotels -- the Taj Mahal, the Oberoi and the Trident.
As we waited to turn in and pull up to the front door of the Intercontinental, waiting for the morning power-walkers to get out of the way, I wondered whether I should have listened to others and stayed at the Taj. I always liked having a drink amid its old-world faded charm, or enjoying Darjeeling and scones at afternoon tea...but it never occurred to me to stay there. Too touristy, I always sneered. Stephen, my colleague in Muscat, had advised me to stay there -- "It's the only place to stay in Mumbai" -- but I could not be dissuaded. After all, I had already paid one night for the Intercontinental and couldn't get it refunded. Thank God almighty I had decided to remain stubborn.
After resting a few hours, I called a local travel agency that had been recommended to me, and Mr. Ansari came to pick me up to take me around town. I went to have lunch at Jimmy Boy's, the famous Parsi restaurant on Horniman Circle in Fort. Pomfret steamed in a banana leaf with spices, chicken masala, carrot pickle, pilau...a delicious meal for all of US$ 8. I actually wanted to go to Trishna, my favorite seafood restaurant in Kala Ghoda, a short way down from the VT train station (now, like most other landmarks, named after Chhatrapati Shivaji) and next to the Jehangir Art Gallery. They have the best butter garlic crab in the world: you pick the live crab, they weigh it, and before you have finished your cocktail, it comes to you in a neat, delicious, juicy pile of ivory white lump crabmeat. You smell from the garlic for days, and the butter permeates every last morsel. That, alas, would have to wait for the evening. Or so I thought...
After lunch, I told Mr. Ansari to take me to Colaba. I had read and savored every word of Shantaram, the celebrated book about Mumbai's underworld, which focuses on a place in Colaba called Leopold's Cafe, where all the down and out, wayward foreigners, drunks, tramps and drug addicts hang out. We stopped first at Cottage Industries, the exaggeratedly overpriced handicrafts emporium where the Kashmiri salesmen are so obnoxiously insistent and smarmy that I stormed out after a few minutes and said to the driver, "Come, let's forget about Leopold's, let's go to the Crosswords bookstore near Malbar Hill."
We passed the Metro Cinema. At that point, I remembered that I had wanted to see Dostana, the new Hindi comedy about two men, one of them the half-Parsi John Abraham, who pretend to be gay lovers living together so they could both be close to the woman of their dreams. But, instead, I passed by the Regal, another veritable old-world theatre across the street from the Maharashtra Police Headquarters and an excellent, normally priced handicrafts store with the unlikely name of Avante. The film was playing. Great...but later in the evening.
I had missed Trishna's, foregone the Taj and the Metro Cinema and postponed Leopold's Cafe.
Crosswords didn't have the guidebook to Mumbai I had left behind in New York, so we circled the car up Malbar Hill again, past the hidden Towers of Silence, the traditional spot where Parsis bring their dead, smeer the corpses in honey and ghee and leave them to the vultures to devour in a final act of charity. As we waited in a long, steaming, honking line of ancient cars, a leprous girl came to the passenger window and started banging her stump of an arm to get my attention. Her eyes was jaundiced, tired...she couldn't have been more than six or seven. "Ignore her," said Mr. Ansari, "she's just bringing this money to someone, it doesn't go to her." We turned off, back past Crosswords, and back along Chowpatty Beach and Marine Drive. I needed another nap to prepare for the evening ahead.
Little did I know what I was in for...
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