Mumbai-June-2022

Visited the old haunts in South Bombay. The drive from MIG Cricket Club where I was staying, took me over the Bandra-Worli sea link, an exciting prospect as the link didn't exist in my time. 

As the miles flew past, I caught glimpses of signs that brought back memories of what Bombay was composed of -  Worli Seaface, Haji Ali, Pedder Road, Hanging Gardens, Chowpatty, Brabourne Stadium, Queens Necklace Marine Drive, Nariman Point, 

the Air India building in the distance with its logo on top - the parade of these landmarks is suddenly interrupted when the cab hangs a left at Madame Cama road, cuts across the maidan, MG Road, to Kala Ghoda, and then finally the Gateway of India and the Taj. 

Still standing after that horrible attack by Kasab (yes we are on first name terms considering how long they dithered about what to do with him) and his partners in crime. As a reminder of that frightening incident, the Gateway of India is no longer this wide open space that invited you to stroll right up to the edge where Bombay ends and the Arabian sea begins. 

Instead, there is an ugly railing 6 feet high, forming  a 100m perimeter around the monument. It took me awhile to figure out where the opening in this metal barricade was. An endless stream of people walk through a metal detector that is constantly beeping. The security personnel at the entrance act as if the beeping is due to a malfunction,  and show no interest in any of the people who were setting off these alarms. 

Everyone in the courtyard inside the barricade seemed to be taking selfies, positioning themselves with either the Taj or the monument. A few enterprising hustlers flashed albums containing portraits of people posing with the monument as if to suggest that the lowly selfie could be improved upon by dropping a mere 30 bucks. What if the guy made off with my phone, I thought. Patting myself figuritively for my presence of mind, I declined the offer and fidgeted with my phone camera settings before taking a few selfies. Next stop, Leopold Cafe.

Found the place pretty quickly and recognized Regal cinema as I rounded the corner onto Colaba Causeway. Blocks of vendors selling clothes, bags, jewelry, perfume - everything that invited the women to stop and consider the possibilities, even as the men kept filing past without breaking their stride. 

The famous Leopold Cafe turned out to be this very average Irani-restaurant looking place with cramped seating arranged around columns that partially hid some of the diners so you could see someone's food and their hands but not the rest of them. In a nod to the terrorist attack you are greeted by a woman who stops you in your tracks and waves a metal detector around your crotch before motioning you in. 

The "draught beer" I ordered came in a bottle, but before I could point out the error, my waiter held it up to me so I could verify the degree of "chilledness", prior to him opening it. This is a customary ritual in restaurants in India, intended to allay your suspicions and gain your confidence in the level of professionalism exhibited by the establishment. In this case it even managed to distract from the minor detail that I had not ordered beer in a bottle.

The menu was uninspiring, but having made the trip there I wasn't about to bail and find another joint. To be fair, the tandoori chicken I ordered wasn't bad and when I had picked the bones clean, my fingers were a mess from all the maneuvreing. I motioned to the waiter to bring me a finger bowl - by now I had fetched and dusted off the old restaurant script from the far corners of memory and proceeded to draw from it, making little rapid movements with my fingers, the universal gesture for a finger bowl- so I could get the grease off my hands. He smiled superciliously and shook his head. No finger bowl in Leopold, please! "An Irani restaurant that didn't even offer a fingerbowl?", I thought to myself, downgrading Leopold another notch.

I walked back along MG Road, past Regal, and saw Jehangir Art Gallery across the street from me. Something came over me and I was awash in a flood of memories in that instant. 

This was where I brought my new bride, assuring her that the place would honor her request for eggless dishes. I wanted to show off Bombay to this new arrival from Chennai, and the art gallery seemed a good symbol of the cultural heights that Bombay scaled. I could see her face and mine, all those years ago - she was not quite 22 and I was 28 - laughing and walking through those doors for lunch. 

A lump caught in my throat as I was brought back to the present with the realization that we had gone our separate ways. A lot of life had happened since.

I walked right past the Army Navy building (my place of work at Grindwell Norton) before I realized it was now home to a department store called Westside. 

My co-workers had included the woman at the switchboard who connected incoming and outgoing calls and doubled as a receptionist; rows of secretaries and typists interspersed with parsi men in scraggly beards who pored over ledgers; Rumy, the accountant with the quick reparte, who  accused me of flirting with the younger secretaries - loudly enough so they could hear it and feign shock and surprise; Polly, yet another friendly bawaji who made himself useful to the firm in ways that I could never fathom. 

Anglo-indians, parsis, tamilians and a handful of maharashtrians made up the Grindwell workforce. And then there were the IIT/IIM hires like me, brought in to inject a shot of professional management that would catapult this sleepy grinding wheel manufacturer into the 21st century. 

We reported to a layer of top management that was creaking at the joints and had worked their way to the top from the mailroom, as it were. 

But this was pre-Excel (The PC would not be invented for another 3 years) so all we could do was dictate letters in flowery language, urging the regional sales teams that dotted the length and breadth of the country to do more, and threaten them with visits whose intended purpose was to identify and root out the deadwood. Reality played out a little differently as these regional managers wined and dined us and spun yarns about growth and future orders so that we went back to HQ and wrote glowing reports of our trips to top management. Nothing like travel to improve your perspective.

I walked past a building that  had been cordoned off with construction barriers and scaffolding hugging its entire facade, even wrapping around the sides in case I dared getting a glimpse from an unsuspecting angle. This was the building that housed IMRB, a market research firm where my wife (at the time) had started her career. I found her that job. All I had to do was walk in, ask to speak to the boss, introduce myself  to Thomas who turned out to be from XLRI, and get him to promise to interview my wife. The rest, as they say, is history, four decades of it. I knew Grindwell had long moved away to a larger space  in the northern suburbs. I guess IMRB had too. Then again, so had I.

I was suddenly taken by the urge to get out of there. I no longer wanted to wallow in the past. I did stop at Churchgate station to  look at the trains rolling in from Borivli and Virar. I had commuted to work on this line from Mahim, where I lived as a paying guest with my aunt, when I was still single. I decided to skip VT station  where my wife and I used to get off the train from Ghatkopar. If you've seen one station, you've seen them all, I told myself. 

The Uber came almost as soon as I called it and I was soon whizzing past the familiar sights on my way back to Bandra. This time we took the inner roads, through Dadar, Kings Circle, Matunga. Sion. Eastern Railway I thought. We passed VT almost as soon as I got in the cab. Those terrorists had hidden out there, firing a fusilade of bullets, before being gunned down to the last man. 

We passed Voltas House, where I joined as a graduate trainee fresh out of IIT, the first job that I and my buddy Bulls would take up. We attended classes in Airconditioning & Refrigeration, taught by a senior member of the management team, a gentleman from Andhra Pradesh who loved the subject and knew it cold (no pun intended). 

2 months into our training, Bulls and I decided this wasn't for us so we hightailed it to Telco (Tata Motors) in Pune. It was only when we were crossing the western ghats that it dawned on us we hadn't informed anyone at Voltas about our decision. Ah to be young and irresponsible again!

I took pictures of the pricy real estate of Bombay, huddled together with dilapidated buildings that had never ever gotten a lick of paint from the day they were built. 

Balconies were closed off with metal grills  even if they were 17 stories above street level.  I guess there was no telling what ingenious scheme the thieves would fashion to break into these apartments if you omitted the metal grill. 

The cab hung a left and we passed through Dharavi, Asia's largest slum and home to over 1M people who live and work in the unorganized sector there. I tried hard not to let the sights get me down but couldn't resist staring at the squalor, much like passersby craning to take a peek at the scene of a gruesome accident. I needed a shower and a drink.

Cloud 9 bar (MIG cricket club)

I'm sitting in Cloud 9, the bar in MIG. Bunch of old, out of shape guys, nursing their concoctions while waiters dressed in ties and monogrammed shirts hover in the vicinity, looking miserable, unwilling bit players in this colonial charade.

Most are drinking whisky. You can tell the regulars by the second glass which contains the next round, positioned reassuringly beside the one they are working on.

This second glass serves as a source of inspiration for voicing bold proclamations that surprise even the speaker. When the last drink arrives, the tone shifts to a more mundane delivery as the inevitability of reality weighs heavily on the night. But it's all good,  since one must defer to the law of nature which promises another sunrise if you do your part by going to bed.

As I prepare to make my own exit after the customary two rounds, my waiter places another round before me with a triumphant expression. 2+1 he explains, lifting my spirits as I come to terms with my good fortune. "Free" never fails to hit the spot.

Driving to the airport to catch my flight to Delhi the next day, the image of Voltas House popped into my head. It occurred to me that the decision to quit Voltas was the first in a long line of career decisions I had made, seemingly without much consideration, as I followed the bidding of an inner voice.

And here I was. Should I feel regret? When I recount the career paths chosen by my peers both here in India and abroad, I can't help but conclude that it doesn't matter what path you take! So long as you have enough to live a comfortable life, the rest is mere details, important not even to you. 

The Bombay I left behind 40-some years ago, comprised a rich tapestry of human connections involving me. Almost all of that had been washed over by the passage of time. Sure, new connections had formed in their place but they didn't include me. So all I saw now was this bustle of activity. Like watching bees making honey in a jar - except I wasn't one of them. To bee or not to bee, if I may repurpose Hamlet's quandary as my own. 

The value of connections, of relationships, was sharply apparent in that moment. This is what people are most proud of or lament the lack of, when they take stock of their lives. Nobody mentions missed promotions or falling short of some monetary goal. I felt a sudden desire to hug my wife and kids.