India

Bombay

04.11.2008 - 17.11.2008 31 °C

So I’m in Bombay, and I end up staying rather longer than expected. In the week I arrive I have Diwali to contend with, therefore the all night gambling dens. There is an Expat evening playing music scores from Footloose, Dirty Dancing and Grease, where is Peter Kay? Unfortunately I’m nowhere near drunk enough to dance badly (although there are a few who do, whether they’re drunk or not is another question?). Just when we think it can’t get any worse (Jive Bunny!), the music stops and there is a raffle! Business cards are supposed to have been deposited in a vase at door (I don’t have one). Anyway some lucky woman wins, lots of whooping and clapping and a lovely magnum of non-descript champagne. Then we’re all made to stand in a circle and introduce ourselves on a microphone. At this point D and I can’t bear it any more, and fall over our feet trying to escape. P is already outside smoking a cheeky cigarette.
I have booked myself onto a train to Goa, leaving Saturday morning (6.30am), from the Victoria Terminus. It takes me two goes to book the ticket, the first visit, once I find the correct window at the station (round the back and upstairs). I queue for about fifteen minutes only to be told that I need my passport to book the ticket, bollocks. So I have to return the following day. After a monstrous week of partying, we finally reach Friday, which is also Halloween! As per usual, P has a good night in store. We have a concert first. The “Rock On” concert which is based on the Bollywood movie of the same name. I scour the area for ‘the walk of shame’ director I mentioned in my previous extract, but he’s no where to be seen. P has secured us some VIP passes which means we’re standing right at the front, in full view of the stage. We spy lots of Bollywood stars. Saif Ali Khan, Pritti someone… It’s rocking! Then it’s back to the car, which is waiting for us with driver right outside. Now this is the way to do concerts. Off we whiz, to another very cool penthouse in Colaba. The plan is we should be there till the early hours, so I will be delivered straight to the train station. Where I imagine I will collapse into a coma, and therefore sleep though any spectacular scenery I'd hoped to see along the way. At 2am though P and D feel like they need to head home. I'm left in the capable hands of a good friend of P’s called G. “G please look after Esther, and get her to her train on time”, “Yes of course P, it will be my pleasure!”. So then minutes later I’m perched on a stool at the bar (yes I’m in an apartment still, but there is a proper bar), downing tequila shots with new friend G. Then twenty minutes later we’re in the master bedroom en-suite. It is decorated in the most beautiful chocolate marble I’ve ever seen (wish list worthy). Two industrial lines are racked up, more tequila, more excess = I completely miss my train. G promises that he will fly me to Goa, but before he does he would like me to escort him to lots more parties, he invites me to stay another week in Bombay. Who am I to say no?! We have so much fun. He’s invincible. He has an infectious laugh and knows just about everybody in Bombay it would seem. The blond in tow of the Indian always goes down a treat. We’re like the new Liz and Arun. Well we’re not actually, but that’s another story. His flat is beautiful. A penthouse that overlooks the Arabian Sea looking west. It’s in a small hamlet called Banganga, which is a tiny village perched on the rocks down past Malabar Hill and Breach Candy. It’s a holy site. It’s believed to be part of the sacred Ganges. The village fills the area between the road (which the apartment stands on), and the rocks which then turn into the sea. In the mornings, when the tide is out you see the men of the village in their lungis going to defecate in the rock pools left by the tide. I sit cocooned in air con with marble floors and 46inch plasma TV, being waited on hand and foot. What the fuck is going on?!! These are the extremes that Bombay offers you, wide sceen. The sunsets from G’s apartment make me want to cry they’re so beautiful. I’m taken to chill out at ‘the club’, which is called Breach Candy and is up the road from G’s. It’s an old Raj British club, with a seen better days washed out blue salt water outdoor pool (but kind of in keeping with the ambience), indoor pool, sports club, restaurant and bar. Its lawns are manicured in stripes and the deckchairs are stripy too. We order Bloody Mary’s, served by waiters who look like they’ve been doing their jobs since about 1925. I feel like I am in Torquay, but I’m definitely in Bombay… I’ll be having a Mutter Paneer and Aloo Gobi with that G’n’T please… (Bombay Sapphire of course!)

On the final weekend before I leave. We have a lovely Friday where we meet for lunch at Britannia. A very old school restaurant, in the Old Fort area above Colaba. We meet up with a collection of lovely new friends whom I’ve met during my week with G. The restaurant is all peeling paint and creaking ceiling fans. The food is legendary, sublime in fact, Parsi. Lots of fruits and nuts added. My mouth is watering thinking about it. Afterwards a friend of G’s called R, takes us to the US club, which has a very quaint Afghan (Catholic) church in it. It feels like I’m in an English Village, except for the palms, oh and the 30 degree heat. Bit ‘a’ culture though innit?!...Then that evening, a typical G one. We have drinks and dinner first at friends house in Worli Beach. Then another drinks at Indigo. Then a party in Alibaug, which we have to get a ferry to, from outside the Taj Hotel and the Gateway of India. It’s basically an island off the coast of Bombay. A whole gathering wobble onto the boat and about 40mins later we all wobble off to dis-embarque. We’re standing in the dark when three jeeps appear out of the darkness and we pile in to them. There are 8 people in ours?! I cab hardly breath but the journey is only short. We head up a long drive way, either side of us are fountains and statues lit up like Christmas trees. Where on earth are we going? We arrive at what amounts to an Indian Beckingham Palace. We fall out of the jeep and are ushered into a marble lobby from which double sweeping staircases fall and drop down to an expansive lower ground floor where there is a indoor pool, disco, bar, sports rooms which all open up to the garden. It’s amazing and ridiculous. What on earth am I doing here??! It’s so surreal. Hilarious evening and I meet two great English girls who are singers. Eventually and rather to quickly the sun arrives and sheds light on vast landscaped gardens with tacky Venus de Milo statues and Greek columns. It’s way past our bed time, and we need to catch to boat back. We get ourselves together (a bit of a mission). G has been swimming so has lost his bag. The house and grounds are so vast, god only knows where it could be? We jump into another jeep and head back to the pier we arrived last night. G’s bag appears in the back of the jeep, brilliant. Then there is a Bollywood movie being shot on the pier, so we have to saunter past Rambo (?) and his entourage. We fall into the boat and are whisked back to Bombay, before you can say ‘hair looks like it’s been dragged through a bush backwards’. What a crazy night. Sunday is spent under wraps.

Monday morning I finally have a flight to Goa! I make it, well by the skin of my teeth, wrong terminal again… Goa here I come!

Hair Report – (just for Louise) Indian Jennifer Aniston but blond (in fact very blond) and mini fringe has finally grown out.

G’s house boy Shadoo, sleeps on the floor of the back room.
Pickled ginger in lime juice and sugar.
Cristal the dog – she eats my lonely planet (entire index), my memory card (entire Vietnam photos not backed up), bitch.
Indigo dinner – first steak since Argentina? Amazing Oysters.
R's menu: tbc

I am flavour of the month.
The pasta bar: you go to the bar and decide what shape pasta you want and with what sauce, then it’s cooked for you in front of your eyes (this is someone’s private dinner party).
Sleeping in the sauna for an hour to hide from crazies (it was dark and off).
The Dhobi Ghats.
My lunch at veggie restaurant in Bandra. Dosa yum!
The Bollywood movie I act in, end up with the casting agent till rather late.
The very very drunk man at the party who tells us: ‘its grotesquely inappropriate, and a scandalous travesty of justice that we’re not in bikinis!’. He should have been a character in the Fast Show.
The rudest girls I’ve ever met, who I kick out of G’s apartment.
The Bollywood Eastender, Dalip Tahil who keep flirting with me because he thinks I’ll recognise him, I don’t. Only find out after who he was.
Chor Bazaar – too much cool stuff. But I visit at dusk and get quite scared being on my own. What is that I’m walking on in flip flopped feet in the dark?
80’s ski suite fest. OMG – fancy dress heaven, it has to be seen to be believed.
Crawford Market – buy spices and given a pocketful of cashews.
Give pocketful of cashews to taxi driver, he’s so grateful we stop off en route to give some to his mate.
Gateway to India – I end up in lots of different peoples holiday snaps.
The milk and rice scam – I’m taken by a barefoot Indian woman to buy her some baby milk and rice, she says she can’t get in the shop with no shoes. So we walk for about 15 mins. To a store on a corner. I buy her milk and rice for 400 rupees. It only occurs to me later that she didn’t actually need to go in the shop, so the bare foot thing was a lie. And then I realise it will have been her friends shop and she probably wont buy milk and rice, or if she does not at that price. Truly had, truly BLOND see above hair report.
Terrible fashion disasters – where are the Indian fashion police when you need them?
WWKMD? – what would Kate Moss do? Girls take this to heart please.
The White Tiger – interesting insight into the darkness of India.
The text message: Abyss in the liver – should have read abscess!
BOMBAY SUNSET – Cafe del Mar eat your shorts.