View from the Big Vadapav

The day before I finally flew to Mumbai, my check-in at KLIA had turned into a bureaucratic farce. I was denied boarding for failing to produce the old passport referred to in my five-year visa. This meant buying a new ticket and, thanks to a helpful tourist from Bangalore, filling in the online arrival and Ebola surveillance forms. Apparently, getting on a plane to India now requires the paperwork of a small military operation.

Eventually, after a three-and-a-half-hour delay and a decidedly underwhelming Batik Air flight, I arrived at Mumbai’s mantra-sounding Bombay Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, expecting another round of officialdom.

Instead, at one o’clock in the morning, I encountered the most cheerful immigration officer I’d ever met. His smiles and chattiness put me at ease. He told me that his screen showed I had made five trips to India in the last three years, proof that I liked India a lot. He then gave me a waggly smile of proud satisfaction and stamped me in. For a moment, I felt as though I were at a ticket booth at a tourism fair rather than an immigration counter in a country that had turned form-filling into an art form.

He didn’t even want to see my old passport or the forms I’d spent so much time completing. I insisted he look at them.

For Ganapathy’s sake! I’d bought a new ticket and nearly lost the will to travel. The least he could do was admire my paperwork.

“Alright, yes, yes. Very good!”

There I stood, like a schoolboy proudly showing his homework to a teacher.

"To my eyes, the city was beautiful. It was wild and exciting. Buildings that were British Raj-romantic stood side to side with modern, mirrored business towers. The haphazard slouch of neglected tenements crumbled into lavish displays of market vegetables and skills. I heard music from every shop and passing taxi. The colours were vibrant. The fragrances were dizzyingly delicious. And there were more smiles in the eyes on those crowded streets than in any other place I'd ever known. Above all else, Bombay was free - exhilaratingly free."

Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram (2003)

From early Portuguese, English and Persian accounts to contemporary Indian writers, generations of visitors have had plenty to say about Bombay, now Mumbai. So much, in fact, that finding something new or surprising to say about India’s largest city has become a challenge for any travel writer.

Due to its edgy, outsider-made-it-big energy, its position as a trend-setting gateway to a continent-sized nation, and its clout in finance and media, Mumbai is often compared to New York. Deep down, though, I suspect that, with South Asian migration on the rise and the right platform, the globalist crowd, led by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty, would very soon expect people to call New York the Mumbai of America.

Mumbai must have one of the world’s best systems for directing arriving passengers to their e-hailing rides. Arrows on walls and painted floors lead you to the lift, which opens onto the right level, where staff in reflective jackets stand ready with signs to guide passengers to the correct lane in the car park. There, you simply wait for your Uber and if you have trouble deciphering Indian licence plates as I did you could simply hand your mobile phone to one of the boys on duty who would promptly type a message “kab time jayenge?” to the driver. The whole operation was impressively efficient and, unlike the usual airport chaos, a genuinely pleasant experience.

The ride to my hotel was equally highly-rated and fast: along broad, new, clean thoroughfares, bridges and flyovers.

Then, just as my mood could not soar any higher, near what appeared to be city centre, at a traffic light, an Ola Bike rolled up alongside my car, its pillion rider flipping her hair like a girl in a shampoo commercial — a thoroughly emancipated Bombay girl, I imagined, in a loose, crinkle shirt barely concealing her string top and sturdy legs, her raised rear illuminated by the motorcycle’s own tail light.

The lights turned green, and the taxi veered into an old neighbourhood lined with turn-of-the-century shops and houses. Crumbling colonial facades stood stubbornly amid the showy glass-and-steel structures and greedy concrete.

That pretty much summed up my first hour in Bombay, in the wee hours of a Friday morning, before I arrived at my one-star hotel on Lamington Road and climbed its dimly lit wooden stairs to my small, comfortable bedroom ready to power up for the five hectic days of discovery ahead.

Acknowledgments

This amateur piece on Bombay is only a snapshot of a great city, glimpsed over five days of wandering, mainly through the areas referred to by Mumbaikars or Bombayites as SoBo. Whatever I have managed to capture, and whatever affection that I now have for Bombay, are owed much to the friends who generously shared their knowledge, advice and love of the city with me.

To Bonnie, for his restaurant recommendations—though some were observing their weekly day off when I arrived; to Flocy, for arranging what became a life-defining visit to the “eco-slum” of Dharavi; to Ruchika, for insisting that I visit the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya and pointing me towards some of the city’s street-food delights; and to Ronnie, for his tips on what to do after sunset and how to stay safe, as well as for agreeing to put his Bengaluru bias on hold.

Last, but most certainly not least, my thanks to Suchet for his local insights, and especially to Zareen for sharing her knowledge of Bombay’s history and culture, introducing me to her favourite bookshop, Kitab Khana, and recommending books and places that helped me get to know the city better.

A word on the name: I know the city is officially Mumbai, but I still prefer Bombay. Perhaps it is habit, perhaps history; or perhaps I am simply not a fan of renaming places. Whatever the reason, Bombay has a ring to it that Mumbai, to my ears, just doesn’t quite match.

To all of you, thank you for your friendship. You made my five days in the city far richer than they would otherwise have been. Any shortcomings in this amateur account are, of course, entirely my own.

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