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 ...

A taste of Mumbai

At least I have started typing Mumbai instead of Bombay after all these years.. that is a sign of accepting the changing times. 

Our day 2 in Mumbai was mostly spent shopping. There was a plan for me to go meet my college buddies that did not come through. Also I was going through some emotional pain.

There is a back story that starts on day 0 of the trip. I was on an Air Asia to get to Chennai via Malaysia. Given I booked it on Cheapo Air, it came as a surprise to me that the ticket included NO check in bags at all. I assumed that the one suitcase 23kg default is there. Apparently the base ticket they sell online has no baggage allowance and if you need that one suitcase, you have to pay 60 USD. We did pay that 60 USD last minute to reserve that weight. Usually I have a backpack and a single carry on. This time I was lugging a camera bag and a larger bag that was going to be checked in. 

The lady at the Air Asia counter was so adamant in breaking each bag to 7 kg that she insisted that my camera bag go into the big suitcase. I was explaining to her that my total allowed weight was still under what I paid for and it is all going into the same plane. What difference does it make if it is on the overhead bin or check in. She said "I am okay but if any supervisor catches you, I will lose my job". So in front of an audience of 100 or so folks in line, I had to open my suitcase, check in bag and distribute the contents of my camera bag to meet the weight standards for check in vs. carry on. She said she would put a "Fragile sticker" on the bag given the 2000 $ lens and with a heavy heart I agreed. 

On my one day in Chennai, the camera bag never came out. The first time I opened it was to take pictures of San's cousins baby. While looking at the photos, I noticed that there was light streaks on most of the pictures. Turns out the lens cap had come off on the 24-105 and it was scratched badly!  Luckily they had a long living room and the 70-200 worked.  This also meant that I had to go shop for a UV filter in Mumbai. The actual Air Asia flight was pleasant and nice. Just that they messed up my lens. Where were we? Emotional pain.. yes.

We went to a few shops in the CHembur area and they all had new cameras, but none of them carried filters. They all said we had to go to Dadar area to get accessories. 

Spent most of day 2 just shopping in the local area, visiting Siddhi Vinayak and having some yummy sweets and savories at the local Jhama store. It is now becoming a new tradition for the family to visit Jhama while in Mumbai and it is an experience that does not disappoint!

One funny thing that happened was that at Siddhi Vinayak, all the flower sellers were calling me "sethji", because I was wearing a fancy shirt with gold buttons and embroidery.

So the wife and kids kept making fun of me and called me Sethji for the rest of the day and in return I called Jr. "sethji ki beti". 

At night we tried a few more shops for the filter and found out that the only bet was JJ Mehta and sons in Dadar West and that was where the next afternoon was spent.. 

More later. . .

Transcending space and time

The first planned event on our India trip was to attend the arangetram of Kavya. I have never been to an arangetram in India, but have attended two dozen or so of these events in the bay area. 

It was a treat to watch Kavya dance. Sat there wondering when this little kid we are so used to seeing got so mature in emoting! The audience in India is more of an untamed beast. The average age of the crowd that attended was a good 20 years older than the audience in the US, which in itself is not a bad thing. They do not have bladder control though and there is a constant stream of people walking in and out of their seats to hit the restroom. 

So here is a tip if you are used to seeing arangetrams in US and you go watch one in India. Get to the front seat! 

We also got to hear a few words from the Legendary Chitra Visweshwaran on art forms that have gone to foreign lands and are kept alive and well. She talked about the challenges kids face both in India and abroad but how the parents abroad give that extra priority to keep things going to get to an arangetram or a stage performance and not give up because of "board exams". 

Thought of recording it, but then switched the camera off and just listened to her talk.

Hearing that I realized that we put our kids through a lot here in the US and they also push themselves hard because of peer pressure. 

Hoping that BB will post pictures or videos of the event in his blog. I am still getting goosebumps going back to that evening. 

Promptly after the performance ended, we ran out to find an auto! Yes, that was a real challenge as autos are not easy to find after 9PM in that area and we had to catch the first flight out in the morning to Mumbai! 

We had to transcend to another space in short time. 

After reaching Mumbai, our plan was to go straight to see San's cousin and her new baby! We had no idea that the supposed 45 minute commute will become a 2 hour plus ordeal! Lunch plan became tea plan and we were exhausted by the time we reached her cousins place. 

Then a cute baby made us forget everything! 

That was again transcending time. They say you can see god in a baby's smile! There may be some truth to it...

After another 2 hour ride in rains and traffic, we made it to the in-laws place by dinner time, and that was day 2!

Mumbai might drain faster after a quick rain but when it comes to traffic, it is a lot worse than Chennai. At least that was our experience. 

Will continue blogging after coming back. . . 

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!

India, Pakistan, Iraq, USA, gooooo Wikileaks! *

Finally got to a mirror site to read some Wikileaks. For some reason the links would not work on the sites or Firefox would scare me. Tonight the stars aligned and this site let me in..

This was nice reading. Was hoping to have a laugh at what came out of Delhi but found this one from Islamabad and it was interesting..

These two paragraphs really made it interesting..

Pakistan/India
--------------
¶8. (C) Petraeus said the most important threat to Pakistan was on the western border and internally. Terrorists were an existential threat to Pakistan. Kayani agreed. However, Kayani observed that he had postponed a missile test. The Indians, he said, in contrast, had conducted one just a few hours before. Kayani said he had no intention to resume missile testing as long as the current tensions persisted. He promised to be transparent with allies about his plans and had briefed us about his move of 6000 troops to the Indian border. Kayani said he was determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India. He recounted that he had taken no
ISLAMABAD 00000155 003 OF 003
action the evening that Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had supposedly called President Zardari and threatened to declare war. Kayani asked to be alerted if the U.S. had any warning of another attack - he understood that the Indians had been warned about the Mumbai attack. He mentioned that discussion of the consequences of a follow-on attack made both India and Pakistan hostage to extremists and increased the likelihood of an attack. “If there is any clue about another attack,” he said, “please share it with us.”

and

Swat Valley
-----------
¶5. (C) Kayani was clear that the GOP had lost control of the Swat valley. He said the police had no ability to come in after the army to “hold” territory. He recounted that half of the 600 police officers, supposedly from the NWFP’s elite police units, destined for Swat had deserted, largely because there was no command structure. Petraeus replied that the U.S. had confronted this same issue in Iraq, describing it as a “clear and leave” strategy, requiring the retaking of the same ground multiple times. Petraeus observed that the police are the most vulnerable, since they are exposed in communities. Petraeus noted that increased measures to control population movements would probably have to be put in place throughout the country, which would require considerable manpower.

Pakistan has similar issues like Iraq when it comes to controlling extremists.

The military leadership is patient enough to not go for war. That is great. Maybe, maybe there will be a lasting peace when India and Pakistan jointly fight extremists.

The USA for its part is playing both sides. Well, that is to be expected!

India could have hastily gone to war and would be in the same boat as the USA. Thankfully there was no war. Looks like India was warned by the US about the attacks and the Pakistanis could not do anything about it either.

Just go through this stuff.. you might even find out who in India was warned about the attacks and what they did when they were warned!

This is one treasure trove of information which shows you that inspite of all that press and google and facebook being ubiquitous and in our face.. the hows and whys are always wrong!

Educated folks react to information thrown at them by the "in your face" media. We assume so many things, sway to popular opinion or in cases where we think we are better than the person who gets their news from facebook friends because we read and read a lot.. well, we read garbage!

If the press did what Wikileaks exposed on a daily basis, a lot of war, bloodshed would have been averted! A lot of politicians would have been exposed and their true colors come to light. People, countries might be more civil towards each other...

Well, maybe..

Go read it!

*.. this one is equally interesting..