Mumbai aka Bombay

Bombay is the commercial capital of India and home to the oldest stock exchange in Asia. Bombay is also home to Bollywood, a name for the location of the Hindi film industry.

The city reminds me of New York City, since it has the same sense of urgency, vibrancy, and speed. It took me a while, but I have come to enjoy Bombay, the sprawling metropolis on the West Coast of India.

Bombay comes from the Portuguese words bom (good) and bahai (bay), and is a city rich in history. You can see vestiges of each group that were present in this city over the centuries: Maharashtrian, Portuguese, British, and Parsi.

The southern part of Bombay is referred to as "town" and consists of Marine Drive, Nariman Point, Colaba, Malabar Hills etc.

We toured downtown Bombay and drove through narrow streets of Colaba, home of the popular bar Leopold Bar and Cafe, a hangout joint for the tourists. Here we discovered many upscale boutiques and shops. India Gate is another popular tourist spot, and right opposite that is the Taj Hotel, one of the oldest hotels in the city. We have had some fantastic meals at the Masala Craft and relaxing evenings at the Harbor Cafe listening to jazz music.

Bandra/Pali Hill and Juhu are great places to explore since they have some a wide variety of shops and restaurants.

JW Marriott in Juhu reminds me of a Las Vegas Hotel with its two cauldrons of fires burning brightly at the gates of the hotel. The Italian restaurant in the restaurant was a disappointment. We went to the place twice but were not happy with the food. However, their coffee shop, Bombay Baking Co., is a good place to get a good sandwich and coffee and browse through the bookshop.

Do not visit Bombay during the monsoons. We first landed there during the monsoon, and I spent my time confined in the room since it rained relentlessly and the roads were all clogged.

The city comes to a virtual standstill during September, when they have the weeklong Ganapati puja celebration. Ganapati is the elephant-headed god and the god of preference for the people of Bombay. He is best known for mitigating obstacles. The entire city gets involved in the celebrations, and it is a spectacle worth watching.

Quick Tips:

Bombay's midday newspaper is a good source for information. There is a new magazine out on Bombay. I believe it is called Inside Bombay (I cannot recollect the title). Try the Outlook Traveller Magazine website for information and things to do in Bombay. You can also try www.explocity.com and search for things to do in Bombay.

Bombay has a rich theatre scene, and it is worth your while to catch a play while you are visiting. The Jehangir Art Gallery was bit of a disappointment, and it looked like the place had seen better days.

Best Way To Get Around:

Bombay has an excellent train network that can connect you to any part of Bombay, but travelling during peak times can be a test of patience. I travelled on the trains 10 years ago, but not after that. The same goes for buses, too, as they tend to be crowded. Car rentals are available, and I would recommend going with that or renting a cab for an entire day. Shop around for a rental car if you have the time. It is important that you have a good driver who can navigate the city.

Walking is a good option in Colaba, Marine Drive, and certain parts of Bandra/Pali Hill, but otherwise, don't walk on your own.

The Leela is one of the older hotels near the Bombay International Airport. It is truly a nice experience to stay at this hotel.

We have stayed at this hotel many times, and once for an extended period of time. The hotel is bit on the expensive side, so make sure that you ask for their best rates when you book the rooms. During the monsoon season, you might be able to get a good package that includes breakfast. And their breakfast is a fantastic spread that can tide you over until dinner.

One time, we were assigned a room right above the discotheque, and the staff mercifully have us a different room for the next day.

The hotel has a nice foyer that opens out into a big lounge on the left side. They have a duo that plays music most nights, but the music is sub par. I have spent many a day furiously typing away on my laptop while enjoying pots of green tea or cups of cappuccino and looking out at the pool side. If you lounge around long enough, you are bound to recognize some famous faces.

The single room comes equipped with a bed, fridge, cable TV, and complimentary fresh fruits. Watch out, though, as you have to pay for using the Internet, and there is a flat rate of about $10 per day.

If you are like me and like to read newspapers, you can find the latest copy of the Wall Street and International Herald Tribune in their business center. The nice folks at the center may just allow you to borrow the paper for a few minutes.

The Renaissance is located far from the maddening crowd on the lakes of Lake Powai. We have stayed at this hotel a bunch of times and have always enjoyed our stay. It is amazing how quiet and peaceful this hotel is when compared to its sister property, the JW Marriott in Juhu. The JW is a veritable zoo, and the noise level can be deafening at times. Try and get a lakeside room if you can. You can usually get a free breakfast with your room. The front desk staff is extremely friendly, and they keep plying you with handmade chocolates as you wait to collect your keys.

The single rooms in this hotel come equipped with a coffee machine, complimentary sachets of tea and coffee, fruits, and water. An Internet connection is available for a flat fee of about $10 for 24 hours, and the clock starts to tick from the time you log in. I found that the rooms at this hotel are a tad smaller when compared to other hotels, which cramps your style if you have big pieces of luggage.

The hotel rooms tend to fill up very fast because of the convention center. The room rates tend to be a couple of hundred dollars per night. Again, here is an age-old tip: try and negotiate a better deal if you get a rack rate.

The hotel has great swimming pool that overlooks Powai Lake. Their well-appointed gym also overlooks the lake. A plus point is that the trained personnel at the gym can help you with your workouts. The gym has saunas located in the women and men's section of the changing rooms. Be careful of the sauna, though. I kind of felt unwell after using their sauna, and I think it has something to do with the proper maintenance of the sauna. There is a Jacuzzi of sorts where you can relax. If you have the time, you can also get a great massage at the gym.

The hotel's beauty salon is a definite highlight. This unisex salon has a very friendly staff where you can get a hair cut, manicure, pedicure, and facial, the works, for a great price. You will get your money's worth at this salon.

The hotel has three different restaurants. The Emperor's Court (Chinese cuisine) is a tastefully appointed place that reminds you of 1920s Shangai and serves great food. The Lake View Cafe is best for its breakfast spread. I found that their lunch and dinner spreads are not that great! You can order á la carte and get better food. The Nawab Saheb, the Indian restaurant, is a disaster. I would not recommend eating at this place.

The only thing that is jarring about this place is the dreadful dolphin statue right outside their foyer.

After a hot and tiring few hours of shopping in the blazing sun, we had a hankering for a nice Italian meal. We walked into the cool interiors of Spaghetti Kitchen at the Phoenix Mills mall to satisfy our craving for Italian food. The restaurant had a nice decor and ambience, and we got a place to sit right away. We got a corner table that provided us a nice vantage point to survey all the diners. But the nice part of the dining experience stopped right there. After this, it was a downhill journey with poor service that continued to progressively decline with every passing minute.

The menu is rather extensive and consists of pastas, risottos, seafood, and breads of various kinds. They had rather creative and mouthwatering dishes like sandwich in a bowl and cappuccino of four-mushroom soups. While they sounded interesting, we stayed away from them since we were unsure how they would turn out.

We ordered an appetizer of spinach artichoke dip with corn chips and focaccia sticks (Rs. 135). This was a disappointing choice. The portion was woefully small, and the dip was awfully oily, with spinach and almost neglible pieces of artichoke. The corn chips were very oily and nothing like the corn chips I was used to eating. Since we were hungry, we ploughed throught the chips and ordered our entrees. We decided on a black pepper chicken served with roasted veggies and mashed potatoes (Rs. 295) and vodka prawns with pasta (Rs. 295).

I got my order of chicken and was surprised to see that it did not vaguely resemble any Italian dish that I had ever eaten. The chicken and veggies were swimming in an unappealing brown-colored sauce, and one bite of the dish proved right away that I had made a terrible mistake. The entire dish looked more like a poor subsitute for a Chinese dish, rather than an Italian dish.

We had to remind our waiter about our second entree a bunch of times before it was served. The vodka prawns were a far better choice, but the tomato sauce had a heavy creamy feeling to it. My palate was expecting a nice, light tomato sauce with a touch of cream.

The saving grace of this place was the coffee, which was served promptly, and the cappuccino was not bad.

Even though the restaurant was not busy, we had to remind our waiter about four times before we got our check. The total damage was about Rs. 500 per person (roughly a bit over $10).

If you do go the restaurant, don't try anything exotic or new--stick to something that sounds familiar.

The concept for this restaurant is nice, but they need to shape up a bit when it comes to the contents of the menu and the final product that emerges from the kitchen.

The Bombay Baking Company, or BBC as it is popularly known, is the bakery cum deli at JW Marriott in Juhu. The deli reminds me of a nice upscale deli in the US. This is the place to go if you want your fix of brownies, bagels and cheese cream, cookies, sandwiches, coffee served up in different ways or salad. You can also pick up a loaf of bread (various kinds), but they get sold pretty fast.

I found out that this is a great place to hang out, relax, and indulge in some people-watching (you can catch some well-known movie actors hanging around this place) or browse through the books and magazine section located within the deli.

This is one of my favorite places to sit, nosh, and collect my thought, and catch up on my reading. And, strangely enough, this is the place I go to buy my copy of The Economist. I cannot seem to find the magazine in a regular bookstore!

The last time I went, I had a nice Lebanese sandwich. Basically, they slathered a French roll with hummus and used grilled veggies as fillings for the sandwich. It was a great sandwich, but my experience was slightly marred because of the seating arrangement. Since the place was full, I had to elect to sit next to a couple of chattering magpies. These two ladies kept nattering about who is travelling where, what they saw in London and in Switzerland, etc.

I almost forgot...the service can be a tad slow at times. So, if you are really hungry, I would suggest you sit inside the deli so that you can get your food served quickly.

Badshah Kulfi is a 100-year-old institution and a landmark in southern Mumbai. Ask any food loving Bombayite on where the best kulfis are sold and their unhesitating reply is always, "Badshah Kulfi."

Kulfi is a concoction of milk, cream, sugar, nuts, and saffron that is thickened, then chilled, and served either by itself or in a sauce of thickened milk and falooda. (Note: the Indian version of falooda is very different from the Persian dish.)

Besides kulfi, this place also serves vegetarian snacks and juices, but people flock to this place primarily for its kulfi falooda.

If you are anywhere near the vicinity of Crawford Market, then Badshah Kulfi is a must-stop place for its kulfi falooda. Word of caution: I have had an upset tummy a couple of times when I had the kulfi here. The reason for this is that I ordered a dish that had ice cubes floating in it, and I suspect that is what caused problems for me.

This place is a welcome haven on hot, muggy Bombay summer days, especially after you finish your shopping in the nearby Mangaldas Market, Lohar Chawla, or Crawford Market.

This eating joint, which looks its age, is an open, airy room, where your orders are taken as soon as you sit down and served even before you have placed your shopping bags on the floor.

As a first-time visitor, I dutifully ordered Badshah Kulfi, (about $1) on the recommendation of friends and friendly shopkeepers in Lohar Chawla. This generous portion of Indian ice cream was a rich concoction spiked with all kinds of nuts and flavored with saffron. I have tried other kulfi, like malai (rich cream) and kesar pasta (saffron and almond), but I think Badshah Kulfi is the one that I like the best. If you have a sensitive stomach, avoid ordering any of the milk-based dishes, since they come with ice cubes than can be the undoing of your stomach.

The Souk is the Middle Eastern restaurant at the Taj. The restaurant is located on the top floor of the hotel and provides a stunning view of the murky Arabian Sea. Just before the monsoons or during the monsoons, if you happen to be dining in the restaurant, you can see the high tide at sea.

We have eaten a number of times at this restaurant, and this is one of the better places that serves a good and limited selection of Middle Eastern food. You can either eat from the buffet or order a la carte. And actually, the buffet works out better.

The buffet has a series of cold and hot starters that includes different types of salads and soups, along with the standard fare of hummus and baba ganoush. Other dishes included well-made hot kibbehs, falafel, sambussa, and chicken/lamb preparation. Hot pita bread is served at your table.

The one thing I noticed, and I clarified with the sous chef in the kitchen, was the difference in taste in hummus and baba ganoush. The chef pointed out that the taste had been modified to suit the Indian palate that apparently prefers less garlic and lemon. Other than that, everything else tasted delicious and was well made.

The desserts were also good.

If you happen to go for the Sunday brunch, you can go for the fixed-price meal that includes a shot at smoking flavored hookah at the end of your meal. It is quite a treat, but be aware the the flavors can be pretty strong and may not be agreeable with everyone.

This is a great place to go and eat a nice leisurely meal.

Masala Bay at Taj Land's End has an eclectic decor, with a combination of shocking and cool colors. The restaurant has an open kitchen where you can watch food being prepared.

The big plus in this restaurant was that the service was prompt and the staff was willing to make a dish with less oil. In fact they made a dish that was not featured in the menu. They also replaced our order of raita when we told them that it was too sweet for our tastes. They replaced the raita with a new bowl of raita with no sugar added to it.

The restaurant has an extensive menu with lots of seafood dishes from various regions like Andhra, Maharashtra, Keral, and Goa. We decided to order simple dishes and stuck with Khasta Roti which was whole wheat tandoori roti spiked with ajwain (Rs.85). We ordered a simple langarwali dal (Rs 75 per bowl), and cauliflower and peas dish that was not featured in the menu. We ordered Subz Dum Biryani that was cooked in a clay pot (rs. 395). The roti, dal, and sabzi were very tasty and flavorful, and the biryani was not too bad. I would probably skip it the next time around.

Selecting a dessert was a bit of a challenge because they had a wide selection and all of them sounded good. We settled on a Tilleywala Kulfi (Rs. 195) that came with falooda. The dessert was attractively serced with rabri, kulfi and falooda.

We enjoyed our dinner at this restaurant.

The only downside was that on our way to the restaurant we had to drive through an awful seafood smell that envelops the road leading upto the hotel. Apparently, this is a staple feature of this part of the city during the evenings, when the fisherman arrive with their catch. I am not sure if that was it or if there was an alternate explanation. Be prepared for that.

The names to remember when you are in this part of the city are SV Road and Linking Road. Both these roads will serve as landmarks for your shopping experience. I have done this circuit a few times now and know the beat, and I also know when to shop in these areas. Shop on weekdays between 11am and 4 pm and you will have a relatively good time.

Bandra and Santa Cruz are right next to each other. Shopping in these areas can drain your energy and leave you feeling very tired. Avoid these places during the rainy season, as the roads get horribly flooded.

Santa Cruz Market is close to SV Road and crammed with street hawkers and regular shops. I found that Seasons is a good store to shop for kurtis and tops. They tend to have a nice collection of clothes. Bhagwan Cut Piece is another store that stocks some really neat Indian fabrics and clothes, but the prints are not terribly refined, tending to be colorful. If you are looking for kid’s stuff, then the hawkers on the road offer some fantastic bargains.

Once you leave Santa Cruz Market, head for the famous Linking Road in Bandra, home to street hawkers that sell a wide variety of goods, from kid’s outfits to shoes and handbags. You might find a couple of good bargains in this place. Linking Road is also home to many shoe stores, and the one that I frequent regularly is Metro Shoes.

The place that I tend to go most often is Elco Market on Hill Road (where you, I believe, can see the latest Indian fashions and can get some clothes). Right opposite Elco is another mini mall where they sell material and you can some nice outfits tailored.

Getting directions in India can be a gnarly experience. Be sure that if you have to get somewhere, you have a cell phone handy and a knowledgeable person to drive you around.

If you are used to directions from Yahoo, forget that useful tool! It doesn’t work here.

The reason why it is a frustrating experience to get directions is that, for starters, maps are hardly used, and combine that with the fact that street names are hardly used. The best guide for charting the choppy, potholed roads is to look for landmarks.

Awhile ago, I had to visit an extended family member in Juhu in Bombay and got details on how to reach their place, complete with the number of traffic signals, the bridges to cross, etc. As an afterthought, she happened to mention that they are a stone's throw from Ambitabh Bachchan's old house. Amitabh Bachchan (aka Big B) is an Indian film superstar who is Clint Eastwood and De Niro rolled into one. Apparently the Big B has two houses in Juhu. I tucked that last piece of info away and hopped into the car.

I read the instructions to the person driving the car and checked to see if he understood the directions. "No problem, we will ask," he assured me in Hindi. We ran into problems right after we pulled out of the hotel gate. The guy was clueless in Mumbai.

We pulled next to an auto-rickshaw driver and asked him the directions to the first flyover/bridge we had to cross. We made a series of unscheduled stops to get the directions, and finally, I took charge and simply asked, "Where is Amitabh Bachchan's house?" All the light bulbs went off, and suddenly we got great directions to Big B's place.

Reaching Big B's place was just the first part of the journey. My host had to drive down, and we followed them back to their home.

My takeaway from this experience was that anytime you have to drive, do not ask for directions, but ask for landmarks and use your cell phone to complete the last leg of the trip.

My second foray to a new destination was a little bit more successful. I had to go to an advocate’s (a lawyer) place in Navi Mumbai (New Bombay) and called the aforementioned office to get directions.

"Hello, may I get the address and directions to your office?" I asked.

"Where are you madam?" (I mentioned where I was put up. Remember, a question is always answered by a question.)

"Do you know the Vashi bus depot?" she asked. (I did not know the depot, but I answered yes.)

"We are close to the depot, next to Bombay Mercantile Bank" she responded.

"What is the name of the road where the bank is located?" I asked.

"I don't know madam. But ask anybody; they will know BMC," she said. BMC, I figured, was the bank.

"May I get the address?" I asked.

"Please note down...," she replied.

Armed with driving instructions, we drove down to Vashi Depot and spotted BMC.

Triumphant that we had landed at the landmark, I called the advocate's office on my mobile and asked for the final set of instructions to reach their office.

"Hello, I am in front of BMC," I announced to the receptionist.

"Which side of the bank are you on?" she asked.

Flummoxed, I looked around and noticed that we were the crossroads of a major intersection and staring straight up the bank. Of course, there was no name for the road.

"Well, I can see the front of the bank," I responded.

"I, too, can see the front of the bank," she responded.

Puzzled, I looked around trying to locate the office.

"Do you see Perfect Driving School?" she asked.

We spotted the landmark and answered in the affirmative.

"We are close to the school," she offered in explanation.

Armed with the last piece of perfect information, we made a U-turn, turned right at the intersection, and parked in front of the school.

Guess what? The advocate's office was set back from the road and flanked by a series of real estate offices. Relieved, I got out of the car and headed to the advocate's office.

What happened there is a whole other story.

Bread Boutique is the latest bread place that has opened for business in upscale Bandra. In my quest to find a good loaf of bread, I have braved many traffic congestions and travelled far to get the right loaf. And I believe I have found a good place in Bread Boutique. (Word of caution: this is a new place, and they might be romancing the customers with good-quality stuff. I have to wait and see if they continue to sustain their quality.)

This is a tiny place with enough room for two tables and chairs. What they don't have in space, they make up for in what they offer. They offer various kinds of bread: wheat-grain, 7-grain, soya, pita, focaccia, etc. You can either buy them as regular loaves or elect to buy a sandwich roll.

Besides bread, they have a nice selection of cakes: real American cheesecakes, chocolate cakes, Napoleans, muffins, and croissants.

They sell a limited variety of spreads like basil butter and toppings. You can also buy pre-packaged chocolate cake mix.

We choose the seven-grain roll, pita bread, and focaccia sticks and were very pleased with our buy. The roll had a nice texture and flavor and made a great base for a cheese sandwich. The focaccia sticks were nice and crisp.

I can see myself making a beeline to this bakery anytime I am in Bandra. The only downside is that there is no parking available. We had to park right outside the bakery, which is a major traffic choke point, while we made a quick sortie into the bakery.

Bombay is filled with hawkers, restaurants, and upscale eating joints. The interesting thing is that Bombay caters to both strict vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and eating joints tend to maintain a fairly strict distinction in some places. If you are not used to Indian street food, then I would urge you to be careful, to stick to well-known restaurants, and to order bottled water when you eat out.

If you are a tourist, then chances are that you will stay confined to south Bombay, near Colaba, where the favorite hangout place is the ever-popular Leopold Cafe. Apparently, you can even get a chance to appear in a Bollywood film. Agents come scouting for talent at this café.

Kulfi falooda is a must-have dessert in Bombay. This falooda does not remotely resemble the Iranian version, and instead has a clear Indian stamp. Kulfi is a rich ice cream of sorts that is available in different flavors. One of the best places to eat kulfi falooda is Badshah Kulfi, near Crawford Market. The other place to eat kulfi falooda is Elco Chaat Place in Bandra.

Vada pav is this city's favorite dish. Vada is a concoction of potatoes and other vegetables that is liberally sprinkled with spices and butter, while pav means bread. Pav is actually the altered version of the Portuguese word for bread, Bombay and the neighbouring state of Goa were influenced by the Portuguese.

There are good eating joints all along Marine Drive, where you can get a bite to eat. I prefer to go to Taj near Gateway for my fix of Indian or Middle Eastern food.

Bandra/Juhu/Pali Hill is the other major hub where you can grab a good bite of food. However, I cannot vouch for the quality and consistency of some of the food. Bandra Bandstand has a Coffee Cafe Day where you can sip your coffee and look out at the Arabian Sea. Be aware that your nostrils maybe assailed by a strong fish smell towards the evening hours. Farther down the road is Taj Landsend and Hotel SeaRock. This Taj is a smaller hotel that has a couple of restaurants and a bar. The food at Masala Bay is not too bad, and you can kick back and have an aperitif at the lounge before heading to your restaurant.

Bandra also has the newly opened Bread Boutique; Elco Chaat Place; and Olives, the happening Italian joint. Olives has a decent selection of Italian food and bread, but like many Indian-Italian joints, they tend to focus excessively on rissotos and heavy, creamy, cheesy pasta offerings. If you are hankering for a California kind of Italian dish, then you will be disappointed.

JW Marriott on Juhu Tara Road is a good place to hang out for sandwich and Indian food. The couple of times I have gone to their Italian restaurant, Mezzo Mezzo, it has been a disappointing experience.

If you travel farther up, close to the international airport, you will find a slew of great five-star hotels with some fantastic restaurants. The Leela has The Great Wall, Jamavar, and Citrus. The Grand Maratha has a great lounge, Dakshin, and a couple of great northeastern Indian cuisine place. Then there is the Hyatt, with its share of restaurants.

If you travel west from Andheri, you will be travelling towards Powai, which has Hotel Renaissance. This is a great place to hang out and relax away from the maddening crowd of south and central Bombay.

Chor Bazaar

Chor Bazaar literally means a thieves' bazaar. The local myth has it that this is the place where people came to sell their stolen goods. Today you can buy a mixture of old and new stuff at the bazaar. Local people will urge you to take a dekho at this place, but will warn you to look out and be careful. There is a popular saying that if you go to shop in chor bazaars, don’t be surprised if you find your car tires being sold in one of the shops!

These few sentences are more than enough food for your brain to go on over-drive. Right there your mind starts to conjure up images, and you start to wonder if you should go anywhere this place. Put your knee-jerk reactions and instant analysis aside and venture out to this shopper’s paradise, which has lots of hidden treasures to offer. The place is not clean and spiffed up; instead, the maze of streets, with their crammed, dusty shop fronts, can be a bit of a shocker the first few minutes, but it quickly wears off when you realize how passionate and knowledgeable the shopkeepers are. If you don't know something, fess up, and don't pretend like you know everything about various kinds of wood, grain etc. And, be sure to ask if the furniture they are selling is an old piece, or a new piece that has been recreated.

A word of caution: it is best to wear closed-toe shoes. Do not venture into this area if it is raining. It is also best to go with someone who can speak Hindi or the local language.

I put all my misgivings aside and ventured to this place accompanied by a seasoned guide: my husband. After one trip to this place, the man was enamored by chor bazaar and their range of goods. Every weekend he makes a beeline to the dusty storefronts, eager to know what he can uncover from these shops.

Chor Bazaar is located off of Mohammad Ali Road in South Bombay. You turn into the lane where Al-Rehmani Hotel is located. You will go past Gulistan perfumes, Bajaj Choice Center, Alamgir Hotel, KGN Bakery, KGN Chinese Food, Tip Top Lights and then you make a left into Mutton Street the start of chor bazaar.

We have great pieces of furniture and artifacts that we acquired from various shops on Mutton Street. The trick to shopping in this place is to bargain. You will always be quoted a higher price, but bring down the price by 20-30 percent. If you are not an expert, do not pretend to be one. These guys know their stuff, and they can smell when you are faking it. Instead, ask them to give you details. You can ask if the piece is a new or an old one. What I found is that they will let you know if they are selling you an old or a new piece. One shopkeeper who had a huge stock of Spode and other China stuff confessed that he gets his stock from UK and sells it in his shop!

The best time to visit the bazaar is on Fridays, I am told. However, you might want to check on that. The best time that has worked for us is the 10:30 am to 4:30 pm time-slot.

Last year there was a wedding in our extended family in Bombay, and I was dazzled by the clothes that the bride had chosen. No, not the bridal clothes, but the nice everyday outfits that one can get to wear in India, other than the boring trouser-and-shirt combination. Yes, you can dress it up with a nice pair of pumps or accessories, but it does not come close to the colorful Indian outfits.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I asked the new bride where she got her selection of outfits, and she had two words, "Mangaladas Market." I had vague recollections of having read about the market and had been dissuaded by many not to go there. "Oh, it is too crowded and you won't be able to make it through the narrow gullies," they said.

My timing was off since it was Ramadan, the Muslim festival, and Mohammad Ali Road and its surrounding areas turn into a veritable all-night market, with people milling around various eating joints to break their fast. I was advised to select a different time of the year to visit the market.

In the meantime, I had made many sorties in this neighbourhood and familiarized myself with the general layout and navigation of the streets. Armed with a good reading of the contours of this area, I finally paid a visit to Mangaldas Market, the place where designers from all over the world come to scout for fabrics of all various shapes and textures.

I almost missed the entrance to this huge, densely packed market, where the shops are packed from top to bottom with textiles, textiles, and more textiles. This is the place to get the fabrics of your choice. There is raw silk, pure silk, china silk, silk mixed with cotton, tussar silk, mugha silk, and more varieties of silk than you might care to know. There are bolts and bolts of lovely embroided material on silk, cotton, crepe, georgette... you name it they have it here.

Strangely, haggling, or bargaining was frowned upon by some of the shopkeepers, who firmly said that they only sold fixed price.

I bought yards and yards of material in black, ecru, saffron, mustard yellow, canary yellow, lime green, etc., etc. By the end of it, I was weighed down by bags and bags of shopping and was not sure if I would be able to make it to the car that was parked a couple of blocks away. But, before I could make it to the car, I made a quick detour to Badshah Kulfi, which was mercifully around the corner.

I have since unpacked and safely tucked away my precious silks, and am now scouting around to find a good tailor who can make my outfits. India is a great place to get your outfits made, provided you find a good, reliable tailor.

If you are ever posted to Mumbai and looking for a place to stay, try Hiranandani Gardens in Powai.

Located opposite IIT, Mumbai, Hiranandani is a modern, self-contained complex that consists of high-rise flats, hospital, school, shopping center, and offices. In addition, Hiranandani has the biggest go-kart ground in India (and possibly in Asia). The reason this place is ideal is that the residents of this complex do not have to trudge to south Mumbai for their shopping or dining out. The complex has a series of shops that cater to the needs of the people. What is more, you can call the shops and they will deliver grocery to your door-step. The local branch of Crosswords bookstores will also deliver the latest fiction after you place the order via the Internet or the phone.

Mariott's Renaissance Hotel is located right across the complex and is a great place to have brunch or lunch or pamper yourself in their spa.

Apartments in the complex tend to run on the higher side, and the best way to rent an apartment is to go through a realty company.