A different Mumbai after many years..

This is the first detailed post on the rushed India trip..

We had landed almost two hours late in the morning.

The last time I visited Mumbai and spent time here was 2017! After reaching Chembur, we had less than an hour to get ready to visit temples! It was all planned by MIL. There was some chai and fresh pav for us to gobble up before leaving the apartment.

We visited Mahalakshmi first. Was drooling thinking of fresh hot kunukkus behind the temple at Laxmi Bajiya house.. was told that things have changed. No more shops in the back.. No way to go to back either to see the ocean because of constuction. There is a freeway coming that has totally changed the ocean view.. 

Then went to Siddhi Vinayak. In spite of the crowd that pushes relentlessly, there is some peace that comes to me when visiting this place. Do not know why! We walked out and decided to eat right outside the temple. First rava dosa in Mumbai was amazing.. everything we ordered was amazing. Cannot beat food in India!

We spent the rest of the evening visiting San's cousins with her uncle. Her baby cousin (who incidentally was the oonjal kid in our wedding) has been married for years, but I never got to meet her hubby and in laws. Managed to meet him finally! 

We spent the next morning at the Chembur Murugan temple with San's uncle. Got to recite Rudram with him and watch abhishegam. Got to meet my collegemates and chat without realizing how time passed. 

we tried to recreate our first portrait but both of us were laughing and it did not come out as planned.. 

Ate at a few places like Arya Bhavan (which is okay given the hype) and Mani's which lived up to the hype on this instance(where we ate tiffin items) and did some shopping! 

we had to wait to be seated practically every place we went to eat.. every place is crowded! I came to the conclusion that Mumbai doesn't have enough restaurants for the local crowd.

Got to sample food at Sadhguru which was amazing and GuruKripa in Sion with my classmates and both places were good. However, there was no Chai at GuruKripa.. I was in shock. The samosas were amazing!

Was so happy chatting with my buddies. Was glad to see we are all doing good and are in decent health!

I also met a cat that does yoga in Mumbai..

and another cool cat that is happiest when in Mumbai..chillin.. this one misses the beauty parlours a lot when in the US. If San is sad and needs to cheer up, all she has to do is go to Mumbai, eat pani puris and vada pav and get some henna, facial , handial, leggial etc. and voila.. we have happy San again!

Just like that three days gone and it was time to fly to Chennai ...

Time...

Today I happened to be waiting for my classmates for lunch. Was meeting these guys after two years. I had a good 15-20 minutes to while away. So I wandered to the beach in Sivaji park at Dadar West and stood on the view point.

There were a group of crows and a solitary pidgeon who were flying in to the wave front and picking things up to eat. 

Captured the waves and crowd in time lapse.. 

and the crows in slow motion.

also took a few Panorama shots with the iPhone

Then my buddies showed up... and time lapse, slow motion, freeze frames were all put into a different context! 

When you are with friends, time doesn't mean anything!

From Lanka Gate to Visvesvarayya...

As far as trips down the nostalgic memory lanes go, this is the biggest for me!

After almost two decades, visiting the place where this boy became man, or at least half a man if my classmates would agree..

The video says it all, but here are some pictures as well of the brief ride into the past!

Oh, what a trip!

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Saturday Night Food

Another blast from the past post from the good old Banarasi Babu days. We used to go to a dhaba on the edge of Lanka road, outside the college gate called Sebak and eat the "usual" dal tadka and tawa rotis, followed by some rice with yogurt.

Then we used to stroll across the street (which was all of 10 feet wide) to get some hot milk or rabdi (this is north Indian liquid'y Therattupaal for those South Indians reading this blog) before getting back on our bicycles and riding back all the way to the hostel. By the way, the only two cycle shops in Lanka gate which compete with each other are still there but we see a lot more bikes and scooties inside BHU than cycles!

We stopped at Sebak and my wife and FIL gave me a look. San's eyes said "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" while my FIL looked at this thing with amusement. He said "I am not sure if Sangeetha or the kids will come and eat at this dhaba but if you want to go ahead, eat".. so off I went and ordered the usual and finished it off in record time.

The street outside sebak is only wide enough for two autos or pat-pats. A Toyota Innova completely blocks the road and that meant I had to eat before a cop came and pushed us out. We took the Dahi and rabdi "to go" and Pahelwanji said thank you in his usual style..

He asked me "Aap kitne saal baad vaapas aaarahe hi?" (after how many years are you coming back?). Must have been an obvious guess from the way yours truly was drooling at the rabdi on that giant plate!

Later at night the little one who loves sweets gave her verdict

"This is really good Appa!"

It is a crying shame that we don't have the likes of Sebak and Pahelwan here..

One can always wish!

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Sundar Salmon Narayanan...

My visit to Varanasi aka Banaras for a few days made me realize why Salmon get so much hype when they swim upstream to visit their birthplace!

Twenty two years since I first set foot in Banaras as a kid who had not yet sprouted a moustache, it was a wonderful experience to just go stand in the place where I spent most of my happy times..

No, not the Department of Metallurgical engineering (which gets a 2nd place) or my hostels but the chai shop that made me want to wake up on many winter mornings and may have been the single motivating factor for going anywhere outside the hostel on hot summer days!

The highlight of this India trip was two days in Varanasi and one day in Allahabad. The rest of the trip was a little on the dark and gloomy side what with us coming to grips with "Chennai becoming a large scale old age home", not my words but my mothers!

Back to lighter subjects... Chai!

Jr. was the only one brave enough in the family to volunteer to take the EOS 5D and shoot this picture. Gave her a crash course in holding a heavy camera so we could get this moment saved for the blog.

There were changes. The son runs the shop now after 20+ years. We used to see him as a small boy running around the shop. Missed the old mans smiling face, but the young Bihari is a replica of the father. He even spoke through gritted teeth with his paan filled mouth and said "photo keechna hai to keechiye saab!". He must be used to it with all the alumni coming to relive their chai drinking days!

His dad used to make special "tulsi" chai for me when I would come wheezing into his shop on some winter days and give me advice on how to deal with breathing problems.

Today, the gutter that runs between the shop and the place where we eat still flows like a mini ganges. Prices are in line with inflation. Probably the only thing that was inline in the trip. A chai used to be 75 paise and a samosa 1 rupee. Today the Chai was 3 rupees (4x) and the samosa 5 rupees (5x). Prices double every 10 years at 5% inflation and in quadruple every 4 years. We might as well graph inflation with the Bihari Chai price index!

While the price and the generation have changed, the taste of the Chai and the samosa have not changed a bit.

Absolutely divine!

More on my eating and drinking nostalgia binge tomorrow..

ps. Never missed a certain Durgaprasad Rajaram more than those few minutes at that tea shop.
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