BOMBAY

I'm not even going to attempt to write anything much here. It will take me half a lifetime to do just that. What else can I say? This is where I was born. Spent 30 years of my life. Sometimes, being a Bombayite is easier for me than being an Indian. A travel freak myself, I have explored all the nooks and crannies of this great big city of, they say, 15 million, (half the population of Canada?) only to discover that I still have a lot to learn about this immensely complicated, vibrant & ever-changing city.
(Visit  my separate travel/photolog on Bombay city)

I love this place - and this time around, as always, I came back discovering things both good, and bad - exhaust & pollution, human over-crowding, roads overflowing with dinky foreign cars, cell phones, the ever-existent municipal bureaucracy and inefficiency, McDonalds & Pizza Hut, Cosmo & Elle, BEST's (the local bus service) impressive smart card service, insurance companies (insurance in India??), polite Customs officers at the airport, fabulous hospitality & service in the Indian skies,  road re-construction work & dust ... So why this romance with a city that has endless problems, a permanent state of chaos, and a confusing set of paradoxes?

Well, I'll miss ..
~ getting up to a perfect morning sun every single day (sigh, I might not feel so bad if it wasn't still winter in Canada even as I write this ..)
~ papayas, chikoos (sapota), guavas, mangoes, watermelon
~ a glowing sunset every evening by the beach (okay, okay - there's permanent smog hanging over the city now)
~ innumerable restaurants serving delicious food by the highways & roadways, the alleyways, the shacks, the road-side corners, the forbidden carts
~ family and dog (need I say more?)
~ more family - this time in the form of neighbours plying you with exotic dishes from their native cities .. "Please taste this and let us know what you think of it ...." shameless sampling by yours truly of wonderful home-made food from Kerala, Mangalore, Delhi and other far-off places!
~ pesky crows squawking outside my bedroom window just as I'm about to start my siesta
~ the sea air, the smell of fish (rotting sometimes!), and the taste of salt on your skin
~ aromas floating into our home from neighbouring kitchens .. aahaa - the T's (family initial's) are having chicken korma for dinner today, and the S's - they are having some kind of a fish fry - probably in red masala, oh, and B is making roti's in ghee, while K will be serving Mangalorean coconut curry ...
~ all those friendly faces that keep you busy answering your doorbell through the day - the doodhwala (milkman), the paperwalla (newspaper boy), the bhajiwalla (vegetable grocer), the macchiwali (fisherwoman) and the string of cats that follow her, the istriwalla (chappie who irons your cottons and ruins them sometimes), the jamadar (garbage-collector), the vaatchmen (security at the main gates), the maali (gardener), the pau-wallah (bread/bakery man), the bai (maidservant), the list seems endless .. ~ and all those faces you'd rather not see, like the telephone-wallah, the elektrishun (electrician), the palamber (plumber -groan), the gas-wallah (the cooking gas company), and oh my God - the Income-Tax wallah!!
~ coconut trees, sound of sea, crashing of the surf
~ ice-cream - I mean REAL ice-cream, not the wimpy non-fat kind which doesn't deserve to be called ice-CREAM!
~ unlike in wintery Canada, just wearing your slippers and going out through the door for a 'chakkar' (aimless walk) and some 'hawa' (fresh air).

On one of my last evenings there, I walked down to the jetty very close to my home in Versova to catch the sunset. I was in time to capture the huge sailing boats coming in from the seas and docking at the muddied shores. The scene at the beach was frenetic. Ice blocks (used to preserve the fish) were being carted speedily by young men to the boats. The women on the other hand, were sorting the catch, and some had laid out part of the catch for sale - crab, prawns, pomfret, skate, kite-fish, eel, shell-fish, catfish, kingfish, and much more .

The sea-bounty was extremely fresh and inviting, so after a bit of obligatory haggling, I bought some prawns. The fisher folk in Bombay are known for their friendly ways, and before long, I had acquired one of their rickety stools, and was being instructed in the fine art of selling fish. This is what Bombay is about - being comfortable with the person next to you ... being comfortable in a sea of humanity, even if it's one hell of a tight squeeze ... Being different is cool, getting along and having a whale of a time together is even cooler!

Among the friendly macchiwalis (fisherwomen) at Versova.
Now that's what I call a decent-sized fresh prawn .. yes some were still waving their feet at me.
The woman on my left, is shelling the prawns I just bought.

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