For the love of Mumbai

“We ate like snakes,” Grandma Fayazi would yap through toothless gums. “When there was something to eat, we ate enough to last for a week. When there was nothing, we didn’t eat. Now when there’s everything, we should leave nothing for tomorrow. Like the birds.”

Grandma wouldn’t stock a slice of leftover pau in what she called the “fezideer” (she couldn’t pronounce frigidaire). Annoyingly, she ingrained in me the piety of being grateful for our daily bread, the shaky-at-the-foundations house we inhabited, the rather unvoguish clothes we wore, you know, the roti, kapda aur makaan syndrome. She also insisted that I should feel grateful to be living in Bombay. As a young woman she had run away from her Jind district in Haryana to find her fame and fortune in the big city, which was, then, chockful of lords and ladies. They always rode in horse buggies, she wanted to ride one too.

She found a very wealthy trader, who had several horse carriages, even a Buick, a Cadillac. She married him in a snap of a finger — so what if she was his second wife and 25 years younger? She was looking ahead, she wanted her kids, grandkids, great grandkids to be happy. “So you better be happy, you naalayak,” she would chastise me every second hour, “Otherwise you’d have been carrying gobar in a Haryana gaon. You can’t take the sun here; there you’d have fainted.”

So there I was, indoctrinated for life, happy to be a Bombay boy. Other cities just didn’t have the same allure, the sexiness, the diversity. New Delhi was Defence Colony, each kothi resembling a set from Pakeezah. Chennai meant Mount Road, where every man wore a moustache. Kolkata was the Chinese joints on Park Street and obboshoi Manikda, aka Satyajit Ray.

All other cities had their attractions, but they weren’t home. “Go, go, travel, you’ll come running back,” Granny Know-all harped. She was a bit distressed when I announced that I wanted to get a job in London, New York, wherever. Mumb…oh forget it…Bombay just didn’t have the right opportunities. Even today, by the time I reach the airport, I’m hit by the homesickness flu. It's better to be at the Victoria Terminus, Juhu-Vile Parle or, as kismet today has brought me to, Lower Parel. Be grateful, the mantra continues to unspool in the theatre of the mind. And heart.

Yeah, Bombay meri hai, and I love it for so many reasons that I would have to be an Ibn Batuta-like chronicler to do my city justice. Suffice it to encapsulate my love for the city in 10 top reasons.

Okay, so that’s what grandma Fayazi did. I still keep the fridge empty and leave nothing for tomorrow. Like the birds.

Perfect ten

1) The sea face stretch at Narayan Dabholkar Road, once known as Prem Nagar, because it attracted illicit lovers. Now there’s only the uninterrupted sea.

2) The drive around Afghan Church, very hilltownish, and matched by the chlorophyll green drive through Chhota Kashmir at Goregaon.

3) An Irani friend screaming in his restaurant over the phone to be heard over the traffic beeps.

4) Former royalty homes at Mount Pleasant and Peddar Roads, littered with antiques, silver chairs and Persian carpets.

5) The kababs at Bachu ki wadi, and, close by, mujra girls blushing like new brides.

6) The Sushi restaurant, hard on the wallet but…

7) Dolly Fullwadiwalla of Tardeo, Aalamai of Sleater Road and Sooni Taraporevala of Breach Candy, all as marvellously sweet as the Parsi lagan nu custard.

8) The old music shops in town, from Elvis Presley to Bach to AR Rahman, the best collection in the world

9) Bandra bandstand, very early morning

10) Flora Fountain, Ballard Pier, very late at night