Deep in China Valley

Yesterday, with a bit of apprehension we took Deep to "China Valley" ... as our first eating-out experience with him had been a bit of a disaster. A few months ago we'd gone to Oh! Calcutta and the first thing he'd done was to pull the table cloth with the result that all the bone china dishes and glasses fell on the floor and were smashed. 

My own first memories of eating out at a Chinese restaurant is from Lagos '81 when I was six years old. We had Sweet and Sour Chicken and Chicken Sweet Corn soup. But more than the food a couple of unrelated memories remain vividly etched in my mind : 

1) We were seated on a circular table and there was this disc at the center which one could rotate to pass the dishes and sauces round the table ... I'd found the concept very interesting and for years I assumed that authentic Chinese restaurants would always have this kind of table. 

2) The restaurant had a collection of magazines and one of them had the entire story of "Rocky" in a series of snapshots from the movie ... Stallone gulping down 7 raw eggs at a go, running across the streets of Philadelphia, battling with Apollo Creed and losing the match in the end with a split decision. I became a life-time fan and rooted for Stallone through the sequels of Rocky and then Rambo ... even watched the 2006 sequel - Rocky Balboa for old times sake !!!

Deep will not remember much about his first visit to a Chinese restaurant ( unless he peeks into this blog in the future ) but for Piya and me this was a defining moment ... Deep behaved admirably and was focused on a plate of noodles from which he neatly ate one noodle at a time ... and allowed us to enjoy our food in peace ... a sign of good times to come !!!

Adieu Haji Ali !!!

The Haji Ali shrine, known as "Pearl of the Arabian Sea" ... you can see why thanks to Tyrone's photographic skills !!!

Many a times we've dutifully taken our elderly relatives visiting Mumbai for what we call our day long religious "Mumbai Darshan", covering ISKON temple, Siddhivinayak, Haji Ali, Mahalaxmi temple and Ram Krishna Ashram roughly in that sequence.

So powerful has been the word of mouth that our extended retinue of mamas & mamis, kakus & kakimas etc from Kolkata & beyond now land in Mumbai only after confirming our availability to play tour guide !!! 

Lunch break is invariably at Oh! Calcutta in Tardeo, a stone's throw from Haji Ali.  Tucking into delicacies like Shorsho Ilish, Mochar Ghonto, Prawn Malai Curry etc is always the high point of the trip for me ... then we walk down to the Haji Ali Juice Center to wash it all down with a Ganga-Jamuna-Saraswati.

Just learnt couple of weeks back that the 14th century dargah is finally being reconstructed after years of back 'n forth between the BMC and the Dargah trustees. I've myself noticed the steady deterioration over the last 8 years since I first visited Haji Ali and its only a miracle which has kept the shrine from crumbling down.

Looks like there will be a temporary stop to our Haji Ali sojourns but we'll watch out for the reconstruction progress every time we drive by the Tardeo / Heera-Panna junction and hope that the new dargah will be a worthy replacement ...

Those quirky Iranis and their Bakeries !!!

The Iranis I know are not particularly disciplinarian, mostly easy going i'd say ... but when it comes to running their Cafes and Bakeries in Mumbai they do an about turn. You cant miss a list of No-Nos which they invariably put up at the entrance ( often on slate written with chalk ... makes you wonder if they flicked it from a neighbourhood primary school ) and they abide by these written rules to the letter ... 

Nissim Ezekiel, the dark and somber poet ( remember "Night of the Scorpion" anyone ??? ), immortalised this strange Irani phenomenon in a quirky compilation of Irani No-No's : 

“No talking to cashier / No smoking / No fighting / No credit / No outside food/ No sitting long/ No talking loud / No spitting / No bargaining / No water to outsiders/ No change / No telephone/ No match sticks / No discussing gambling / No newspaper/ No combing / No beef / No leg on chair / No hard liquor allowed / No address enquiry ... by Order"

There is this tiny bakery down the road where I live, named impressively "Choice - The Irani Bakery" ... the Irani owner clearly influenced by recent Bollywood naming conventions eg. Daag - The Fire. Ok not a great example but top of mind right now ... by the way anyone on why the suffixed tagline is almost always in english ???

Yesterday on the way back from work I decided to stop by and pick up some "Shrewsbury" and "Cashew Walnut" cookies. Piya loves them ... "No Plastic bags / No Credit" was the abridged version of the No-No list, on a computer printout, which greeted me at the entrance.

This was clearly a Bollywood loving, Environmentally conscious, Tech savvy, Fiscally prudent Irani owner !!!

Purchases made, parcelled in paper bags and paid for with hard cash, I decided to take some snaps of the bakery, fished out my mobile phone and started clicking. Yes I upgraded to a mobile camera phone couple months back ... thanks to repeated snide remarks from friends ... specially one who works in Nokia and complained that I was clearly not the target audience for the Nokia 1100 with a B&W display ... I took the feedback but instead of a Nokia N series upgraded to a windows mobile Dopod ...

My Irani friend realised what I was upto and shouted "No Photography", an unwritten rule which I'm sure will be an addition to the revised No-No list when I visit next !!!

 

I'd taken a couple of shots of my favourite cookies by then though  !!!

Mamatidi paints in Singur

She paints oblivious 

Like Emperor Nero played the fiddle 

While Rome burned

Is this her political death knell ???

Time will tell ...

Ganesha says ...

Its my 8th year in Mumbai, 8 years of Ganesh Chaturthi. The biggest festival for the Marathis but its surprisingly easy for non-mumbaikars to miss except of course for the visarjan on the 10th day ... when the all roads to the beaches / lakes are clogged with ganpati processions.

My first brush with Ganpati was in Sept 2000 ... Those days I used to live in an apartment complex on Juhu Versova link road and I remember walking down to the Juhu beach to witness what till then I'd only seen as scenes in Bollywood movies. The whole beach was jampacked with people jostling to catch a glimpse of the ganpati idols and screaming "Ganpati bappa moriya". We were crushed in the crowd and I remember feeling terribly claustrophobic even though we were on a beach. I was with a couple of friends and one of them suddenly realised that he'd been pickpocketed !!! Since then I've always kept a safe distance from Juhu beach during the Ganesh Chaturthi period ( the 10th day is the biggest but there are visarjans every other day ).

Other than the visarjan bit the whole festival is very subdued and celebrated mostly as a family affair in individual homes and housing societies ... ( like the picture here from a small ganpati pandal within a housing society ). Even the few sarvajanik or public ganpati celebrations are low-key affairs ( the pandals are more like makeshift tents with little decoration and poor lighting ). The few notable exceptions are the celebrations @ Lalbaug, Wadala, Matunga and a few others which are truly executed on a grand scale.

This is of course in contrast with and relative to the Kolkata Durga Pujas ... the 10 day carnival when the whole of Kolkata takes a break and gets fixated with pujo, pandal hopping, fun and frolic. Its a public celebration which takes place on the streets and parks of Kolkata ... people go home only to sleep and get recharged for the next days festivities !!! The sheer magnitude and the complete participation of an entire city cutting across communities is unparalleled at least in India ... If you are in Kolkata you are automatically sucked into the spirit of the occasion. I'd expected something similar with Ganpati in Mumbai ... but have been disappointed.

Mumbai of course has other priorities ... its a city always on the move, a city which does not sleep, the engine which drives India's economy ... taking a break for some serious celebration would be a trivial pursuit the city cannot and does not want to indulge in !!!