Mumbai trip via the Vistadome.

Prologue.

In the winter of 2022, at the year-end, the Bear family took a trip to Mumbai. The idea was to travel by Vistadome (the railway coach with a transparent top and back) so that Baby bear could experience something new. The plan included a stay on Marine Drive (either through a club affiliation or some sort of deal, which eventually, Mamma bear wrangled through her Mayo contacts), a walkabout around South Mumbai, maybe some art, and some good food. Mamma bear sponsored the entire trip.

This is an account of those two days in Mumbai (and the journey to and from Pune). This appeared on Facebook in real-time as it unfolded, and has been collated here for posterity. Parts of it are in first person, as spoken by Baba bear, and parts are written in another voice. The reason for this is that the original narration appeared as discrete Facebook posts over a period of two days.

29 December 2022

Pune to Mumbai aboard the Deccan Queen.

Off the Bear family goes to Mumbai in the Vistadome of the Deccan Queen, Baba bear’s favourite train.

One thing, though: The Marathi announcements were as if a Welsh woman was forced at gunpoint to pronounce difficult words like ‘छत्रपति’ and ‘पर्यंत’ as third-degree torture.

Also, if the notifications on the screens were translated using Google, it would have done a better job. By the way, try and guess what the ones about ‘जोडीदार’ and ‘बाजूला ठेवू नये’ mean. I’ll buy you a beer for every correct English translation.

P.S.: This train, by the way, is an iconic one that runs between Maharashtra’s cultural capital, Pune, and its political one, Mumbai, just so you know why I am appalled at the Marathi.

P.P.S.: By the way, in case you are still wondering, ‘जोडीदार’ is a supposedly polite translation of ‘सामान’ (ROTFL) and ‘बाजूला ठेवू नये’ is about not leaving your luggage unattended.

By the way, this train feels like I am in some thriller movie, waiting for a handover to occur, which I am given the mission to intercept and steal. Am I in Mission Impossible. Or Bullet Train? If so, am I the protagonist, the antagonist, the sidekick, the innocent bystander, or the collateral damage? Only time will tell.

If not Mission Impossible or Bullet Train, at least this train has the Sholay feels!

On the subject of movies, here’s my hero, my beautiful child! I could look at her all day.

Lunch at Woodside Inn, Opposite Regal Cinema.

Grilled chicken sausages, Margarita pizza, fries with wasabi-mayo dip, No.15 Cold IPA, freshly squeezed orange juice, Mamma bear, Baby bear, and a relaxed winter’s afternoon in South Mumbai. Waiting now for 6-hour cooked pork shoulder with grilled pineapple and olive-oil-tossed potatoes to arrive.
Ah, life!

Thank you, Abbas Bagasrawala, you SoBo boy! What a recommendation! Loved it. Even that 6-hour cooked pork. Just. Brilliant!

A stroll to the Gateway of India. And a quick getaway!

This is ridiculous!

A WhatsApp Conversation.

Me: ‘This is such a nice place. Full of parents bringing their kids, and their kids’ friends.’
Muslim Friend who suggested this place: ‘Never really bothered with demographics before. Too lost, usually in the kitsch of the frames and the place. But it’s a kid-friendly place. My kid likes it because they have a righteous burger.’
Me: ‘Apparently, their burger is rather popular as I can see around me.’
MF: ‘I prefer it to the pretentiousness irritation that is Leopold or the crowded disappointment that is Mondy’s.’
Me: ‘I guess.’
MF: ‘Also, you’re less likely to die from a terrorist bullet.’
Me: ‘Then, there’s that. And if a Muslim says that, it is strangely reassuring.’
MF: ‘C’mon! Us terrorists know that if there’s anything that’s important, it is location, location, location.’
Me:
MF:
Me: ‘Touché.’

I have the best friends!

At Starbucks Reserve, Horniman Circle.

Gosh, Bombay has such beautiful, well-dressed, posh people! I feel like a villager who’s come to the big city for the first time!

High fashion. And its arrogance.

An interesting incident happened on our way from Starbucks at Horniman Circle to the Asiatic Library. We passed two shops: Christian Louboutin and Hermes. Now, both of these are high-end fashion designers/retailers of luxury products. So, naturally, they had very attractive showcases that displayed their wares to the general public in well-lit glass-fronted windows that lined the walkway alongside the road. And naturally, little Baby bear thought she could click a photo or two of these beautiful display windows. And so, she did. Or tried to, when two large men (later joined by two more large men) came out bolting and told her (and us) that photography was ‘not allowed’.

Not allowed? Under what law? We were on a public road clicking photographs without touching anything of something that was ostensibly put out for public consumption! I told them gently that the law was not on their side and it was not for them to decide what we could or could not photograph, especially since we were photographing a publicly displayed object. I even told them that consent only applied to humans, and as long as any non-human is displayed or available to see in a public space, and as long as there is no threat to security (like it is at defence installations, for example) to restrict photography, I did not see any reason to comply with their illegal & arbitrary orders.

This incensed them even more, and they started gesticulating and threatening to ‘report me’. I dared them to go right ahead and do so. Also, I offered them my phone number and email id so they could send their legal notices and sue me, in which case, I promised them that I’d take their owners’ and employers’ chaddis off in court, since they clearly thought they owned the streets.

Suddenly, their tone changed and they pleaded that they are only doing this to stop others from ‘copying’ their designs. I pointed out that these designs are made available in high definition by their own website and marketing collateral to anyone with an Internet connection, and it would be rather silly and inefficient for someone who really wanted to copy them to come all the way here to photograph them in this light. I also informed them that INSIDE their shops, they had all the right to enforce whatever photography policy they bloody well chose. But out here, in the public space, they could kindly take a right royal aerial fornication.

They backed off. But I realised that the reason they did so was because I was not only firm in my stand, but also in my tone, and with a raised voice that alternated comfortably between chaste English and Marathi, they really knew they had no defence. But what if it was someone not as assertive, or as sure of what is allowed in a public space, or as fluent in the lingo? What if it was just some middle-class young couple out on a stroll to see the posh side of Mumbai? What arrogance do these luxury retailers have that they think they can push around common folks! And this is not just in India. I have seen this around the world, where the staff at such locations is excessively rude, uppitty, even condescending to regular people. I wonder whether their HR hires for arrogance, or trains for it?

That said, what intrigued me most was that without their fancy uniforms and suits (as issued by their employer), these very people who are acting as gatekeepers of luxury, would be the regular middle-class folks on the other side of the display window. How, I wonder, do they get themselves to perform this duty of shooing away and mistreating people exactly like them?

And then, I remember the Sonderkommandos.

At The Asiatic Society.

Always wanted a photograph with the Asiatic Library and the moon in a single shot.

Also, here’s my Baby bear.

At The Girgaum Chowpatty.

Bom bom bom bom
Bombay meri hai
Bom bom bom bom
Bombay meri hai…

A full cafe. And a life lesson.

And, once again, demonstrating to Baby bear how to use what you have to get what you want by creating a connection with another human, Mamma bear cuts a 45-to-60-minute wait at Cafe Mondegar to a 30-second minor inconvenience, simply by starting to speak in Nepali, which gets us a table that didn’t exist, in the airconditioned part that was full, and three people crowding us with ‘Didi-Bhenaju-Baby’ endearments, fetching our beer, suggesting starters, taking Kym to the jukebox, getting her to stand on a chair so she could select her song, and then depositing her back safely, all the while as other patrons wait their turn patiently in the humid Bombay heat on the pavement outside.

Having witnessed this magic multiple times during the last 10 years, I am not surprised, though I make the right noises and use a selective Nepali word here and there just to keep the appearance that somehow I too am one of them, quietly hoping they don’t find out (usually, someone does, as they did this time too, and then they tell Tashuji how lucky she is to net a Marathi chap, which is another story altogether).

P.S.: I can’t wait to go to China with Kym in 10 years and watch in awe as she speaks in Mandarin.

The Queen’s Necklace, Marine Drive.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The demographic dividend and us.

Why are we, as my friend Amit Bhattacharya says, pissing on our demographic dividend in this fashion? What a tragedy!

30 December 2022

The Gateway. Once again.

With great regret, I must admit that all that is beautiful in Mumbai seems to be either British or Parsi in origin, and we haven’t even been able to do the minimum for their upkeep: maintain them and keep them clean & accessible to citizens.

What, truly, have we built since 1947 that is completely ours and as magnificent as some of the buildings that dot South Mumbai along every main street and even inside alleyways and bylanes of this beautiful island city? The Sea Link? The Coastal Road? The Metro? Do any of them compare to the majesty and grandeur of say, The Oriental Building, or the HSBC, or Crawford Market, or the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue?

I mean, what do we lack? We have the engineers, we have the builders, we have the money, we have the labour, we have all of it, save the vision. What a tragedy it would be when we would lose all of this heritage, if we haven’t already.

Breakfast. A stroll. And a new friend.

This afternoon, we checked out of our hotel, sat basking in the sun with Mamma bear on Marine Drive for a while until it got too hot, bought a soap bubble toy from a very stylish didi, walked to the ‘end of the Earth’, looked with awe at the vast sea, then took a U-turn at the NCPA, walked back to the Aarey stall manned by a deaf & mute, told him our name in sign language and asked his (Rahul), purchased a kulfi and a chocobar, played with two rather large mastiffs (Maggie & Teddy), and then boarded an Uber for Sassoon docks. Apparently, there’s an art project open there till the 22nd of February 2023 and we wanted to check it out.

The Sassoon Docks Art Project.

Lunch at Pizza by the Bay

One last meal before we leave for the station on our journey back!

Mumbai to Pune aboard the Pragati Express.

And after doing our ‘life’s Mumbai’, we are on our way back home. What a hectic two days!

Arriving on a train.

The entry and exit, the driveway and parking, the passenger flow and the information is so badly designed at the Pune Junction station that it boggles the mind as to what devious brain it came from and whether it is the fruit of evil or plain old stupidity.

That said, as I alighted from the train, my mind travelled back to my childhood and youth. And I realised that even with its hundred flaws, there is a slice of me within the railways that I miss.

I miss the days when one would go to the railway station to pick up visitors, and how they’d have to let us know what bogie/coach number they were travelling in, and what seat/berth, and so on, and how you’d be running from one end to the other searching for a TTE to ask where such-and-so coach would come, and how there would be arguments and disagreements within the welcome party as to where it will eventually come to a halt.

I miss the excitement of getting ready to go to the station, and the purchase of platform tickets, and telling everyone to gather under the clock if they get lost.

I miss the looking up of the railway timetable to see what time the said train arrives, and then trying through your ‘contacts’ to find out how late it is running (never ‘if’, only ‘by how much’).

I miss the sound and the smell of a train (literally) steaming in from far-off exotic locales, carrying with it the cargo of exciting strangers and long-lost cousins and friends.

I miss the frantic searching for them, running along the stationary train, peeking into all the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of your visitors, the happy hugs and touching of feet (sometimes accompanied by garlands of marigolds).

I miss the porters (‘Coolies’, as they were called then), the hand carts, the shouts of ‘chai-chai-chai‘ and ‘kaapi‘, the myriad vendors of stuff ranging from snacks, to water-by-the-glass, to soft porn quick reads, to the more serious stuff at Wheeler & Co, to the queues at the water fountain where the fathers would gather to refill the earthen jars, to the stinking public loos, to the stately waiting rooms with their high ceilings and whirring fans, to the urchins and beggars, to the guard with the green and red flags. So many things.

I miss all the moments Indian Railways has given me for all these years.

And so, despite the fact that the service on the return journey was shit, the food cold, the upholstery torn, the equipment inside the coach dilapidated, and the train itself over 40 minutes late, I must give a hurrah for the marvel that is the Indian Railways. It not just carries passengers and goods from across the country, it carries memories of joy. And a longing for days that will never return.

Good night.

Kymaia gets to watch tv so rarely that when she finds a chance, she never lets it go, even when she is so tired, she can hardly keep her eyes open.

P.S.: No, that’s not a stuffed toy next to her. That’s Rafa, her Masi’s Shih-Tzu. He snuggles with her when she sleeps in her room (which is when there’s no training early the next day).