Bombay in Style

With the holiday break over, and Rajasthan a pleasant memory, I plugged myself back into the Gurg’s bubble. But not for long. Client work again ramped up, meaning the past week was spent in Bombay. Not wishing to leave Jen behind, I packed her along with other travel necessities and re-installed myself within India’s capital of cosmopolitics. As this business trip saddled the weekend we thought it best to remain and look around Bombay. I’ve now travelled there about ten times for work but have not spent any meaningful time taking in the sights, so it was exciting to have a weekend at our disposal to properly explore.

Bombay proper is made up of one main and seven peripheral islands, and was once a coastal fishing town before commerce stampeded in, scaring the fish away and turning the anglers into stockbrokers and movie producers. Actually, commerce was invited by the British, who played patron by commissioning hotels, monuments and infrastructure for it to gorge on. Bombay, now, is India’s Manhattan. An island overweight from its population but still vain from its accomplishments. There are remarkable differences between this city and other, smaller cities in India. Traffic is held up by young fashionistas on mobile phones rather than cows, and the splutter of auto-rickshaws replaced with the grunt of large European cars. Bars and other nightspots adequately match anything in the West, both in terms of slick clientele and astronomical drink prices.

As with Manhattan, the best approach for visitors is to just dive in and experience the madness from a pedestrian perspective. The shopping is excellent, with the available goods being of much better quality than other places. Jen bought enough stuff to keep the State of Maharashtra’s economy afloat at least until something else sinks it. Actually, Jen settled into Bombay living extremely well, but that was to be expected given the circumstances in which she was travelling. As I flew down for work, Jen enjoyed business class air travel and five-star accommodation during our time there. While I was off during the day (and much of many nights) with the client, Jen had to make do with massages, high dining, limousines and a lengthy cocktail hour at the hotel.

The only purely touristy activity we undertook was a visit to the Mahatma Gandhi Museum. This was good but also very dusty. An annoying legacy of Mr. Gandhi was to have most streets in almost every city named after him.

Interesting discoveries:

• Bombay has some impressive colonial architecture
• Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa
• During the period when breakfast is served, in the ITC Grand Sheraton Hotel in Bombay, on the first floor dining room, in the corner behind the jams, one will find a jar of vegemite.

Administrative facts:

• Curry-o-meter: 91 consumed.
• 26^th of January is India’s Republic Day – a day when it’s prohibited to buy alcohol. This is interesting as this date is shared by Australia Day – a day in Australia when alcohol receives the opposite treatment.

Song of the moment:

You and Whose Army? by Radiohead