My weekend II: South Mumbai Treasure Hunt!

I heard the siren sound in the distance, and my body forced itself to muster its strength and struggle to reach the shore through a sea of sleep, to switch off the annoying cellphone alarm that is the inevitable bane of my existence, and my gateway to tiring, and somewhat consistently humdrum days.

Must…. be... ready… by… eight… is all my mind says during the Dandi march to the bathroom and the subsequential rinse-brush-clean-contemplation of my outfit. I have this propensity to experiment with clothing and style only with the WIAA, I have noticed, for some reason. Maybe it’s because I don’t know anyone else there. Or I simply want to look funky and seem like I can actually carry it off without people who know me previously and their preconceived notions and biases getting in the way. The last time it was jeans and a top and a tiee-n-dye belt with sunglasses that matched the colours on the belt. This time, 2 whole years later, my experimentative streak has exponentially grown *gasp* as I decide to go “South East Asian” or my meager attempt at it (given lack of native familiarity with style, or appropriate accessories at hand), from the primarily Singaporean blogs I follow. This amounts to navy blue super low-rise jeans (not skinny from ANY angle/curve unfortunately), a white tshirt (ho-hum generic so far), a pale yellow scarf from China with white and grey-blue flowers which I tie as a neckerchief with a dashing knot, hot pink medium-size metal hoop earrings, and 2 yellow, 2 green, 2 pink and 1 orange jelly bracelet all on one hand. I hesitantly tried matching a zebra-patterned handbag with it, but it looked too much and I didn’t want to go overboard with the experimentation for fear of failing ABSOLUTELY miserably (as opposed to relatively), so I stuck to a big beige bag. Oh, did I mention green sunglasses and a mauve rubberband? Hahaha.

So there I was, ready to scamper around Swiss fields waving my hands carefreely in a hot pink convertible, reading newspapers and counting the extra minutes I could have slept, when it was finally time for me to go down and get picked up by my couple friends and their adorable 2.5 year old daughter. We got to Hutatma Chowk (also known as Flora Fountain), dropped the husband to drive in the flagoff car with Johnny Joseph, and collected out details in our trusty car no. 88 (2 fat ladies…). (I am really feeling the dire need for a digicam to bring my weekend to life for you – because all this wordy description isn’t making it sound nearly as exciting as it was!) We waited almost an hour to flag off on our treasure hunt. (because each car had to leave a minute after the previous one so as to avoid jams, and points were going to be tallied on the basis of time and distance and we had to maintain an average speed of 25 km/hr anyway).

The parking lot where we flagged off from is on the right of the picture.

In our car were me, my girlfriend, her sister-in-law, her daughter and a DNA reporter. We were given the rules, a time check sheet to be duly filled in at every checkpoint and a quiz sheet containing the pictures of 3 historical monuments. The first three were all around Fort/Fountain and I can honestly swear I have never seen these monuments in my life! The St. Thomas Cathedral - the first Anglican church in Bombay, built around 1718 to improve the 'moral standards' of the British settlement - in the gullies behind, with towering ordinarily stark and grandstark Gothic architecture fused with graceful Spanish elaborations through the medium of stucco and tiled roof and windows, especially at the back…

The picturesque footpath in front of the cathedral.

Then we found some World War I memorial, which comprised a single elgant lamppost in the middle of a circular patch of grass with a wrpought iron fence around it (around which all the cars in the treasure hunt circled at least once, seeking the name and the builder, much to the bafflement of the officials at the gate across), and Ballard Bunder, one of the gates of Bombay. All of this on these backroads I doubt I've ever traversed in my life.. and they are merely 20 minutes away from my house! A whole minefield of history literally in my backyard and I never bothered or noticed!

We drove through various mindboggling labyrinthine gullies, (in which many participants became disqualified, due to the abstruseness of the 'tulips', or directions consisting simply of arrows and a few perpendicular lines denoting lanes to cross before taking a turn etc). The gullies are fascinating affairs, wide enough to fit in a car each way, besides some pavement parking, but degenerate into confused shouting messes at the advent of a truck. They seem darker than they might ordinarily be, due to the rundown grayness of its ancient buildings, that huddle close together in the onsolete snobby solidarity of having been there before much of the city, and the confused profusion of vehicles placed anyhow along the route - handcarts, lever-carts, bicycles, scooters, taxis. They are littered with the remains of Saturday night revelry and filled with boys playing cricket. We reached Kalaghoda "arts district", the location of the first timecheck (where the Kala Ghoda arts festival was being set up, and an active arty/cultural location with one of the most artistically done up restaurants I have had the pleasure of experiencing in my childhood - Khyber, with its dark sandstone hues with cave-like paintings of Afghan traders and camels, with dark nooks and graceful Indian lattices to create the impression of overhanging balconies, and fabulously spiced food, the Jehangir Art Gallery, where I once dragged a bemused friend for an afternoon date, Chetna thali joint and clothing shop, Rhythm House music store, various other mainstays of the office people and admen of the district - now home to Red Lite, the Noodle Bar, Copper Chimney, Ayub's, the paneer roll guy and favourite post-clubbing food guy, along with Bhavan's at Chowpatty and Bade Miyan's at Gateway, etc.)

The David Sassoon Library opposite Kala Ghoda - an example of Indo-Saracenic architecture

Wow, I didn't know that It's called Kala Ghoda because the 'black horse' belonged to King Edward VIII! Silly me thought it had something to do with Shivaji!

Here, we were handed another sheet with more partial pictures of structures that we had to identify. This round took us to the Taj, where we identified the lighthouse opposite Radio Club, then through Colaba to the Nariman Point Fire Brigade (which is not even at Nariman Point but wayyy behind the Maker Tower office district, and all the way down Marine Drive to a little agiary (Parsi/Zoarashtrian Fire Temple) at Walkeshwar.

Marine Drive by day - isn't it beautiful!!!

We asked the bemused priest what the name of the agiary was , and he asked what was going on. I was a little scared, to be honest, given the insular nature of the Parsis and my fear of holy men in general, but he was kind enough to spell out the name for me - Sohrabji Thooti", in front of the Shapoorji Pallonji bungalow, and tell me to keep a share for him when we win the treasure hunt!!! So sweet! I love gujarati! Then we drove around teenbatti down the narrow winding Dungarsey Road, where concerns were raised regarding the ability of a fire engine to be able to navigate its way down and reach a home here. Down to St. Elizabeth's nursing home (where my sister was born) we went, for a seocnd timecheck and clue sheet, through Chandralok, quiet unlike its bustling weekdays with women sifting through piles of material and mountains of bindis and bangles, to Warden Road up Peddar Road, where we picked up some food for the child, down Vivek Singh Lane to Breach Candy (or Bhulabhai Desai Road, whose name I would only remmeber because of the repeated Benzer ads of my childhood), home of the US consulate and its infamous lines and guards notorious for their arrogance (talk about mimicry, but I suppose the poor things can't help it, so many grovelling people trying to get in and try their luck in the US), among other famous locations such as Amarsons and Snowmans, Cymroza Art Gallery, Breach Candy Club, Breach Candy Hospital, and our first location, Anand Bhavan, Govt residence of the Dept. of Atomic Energy.

Breach Candy club with its sea-water pool in the background. Hey... it's quite India-shaped. But half of Kashmir seems to be cut off :s

Off we went past Haji Ali to Worli, to locate the INS Trata Building. There was a third building also, but I forget. We got to our timecheck, and drove off towards Shivaji Park, past the Siddhivinayak temple at Prabhadevi, which I am not very happy with, for a fourth timecheck and clue sheet. This one had the face of Minatai Thackeray, whose statue is located outside one of the gates of Shivaji Park, the Rajni Patel statue all the way back at Haji Ali Bus Depot, and the Love Grove fcatory chimneys. This Love Grove is a big mystery to me. Why is it called Love Grove, and even if it is some garden, why are there chimneys there?

We then drove over Peddar Road, where we dropped off the 2 year old, who had really been pretty well-behaved, and along Dharam Palace to Marine Lines. There we had a fifth timecheck and clue sheet. This cluesheet took us to the more famous landmarks of Mumbai, the Bhika Behram well at Fashin Street, the oldest Parsi well in Mumbai, and a Grade 1 heritage structure made in 1725, and which was vandalised on March 11, 2004 by some sickos, who are as sick, if not sicker than those people who stole money from temples.

The next stop was the BMC building, or the Brihanmumbai Mahanagarpalika Mukhyalaya or, umm... (Bombay Municipal Corporation?) building, near VT... opps CST, both of which is really very pretty. See for yourself:

BMC building

Victoris Terminus, so named to commemorate Victoria Jubilee Day in 1887, rechristened Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the largest railway station in Mumbai, and appparently, modeled after London's St. Pancras. The statue on top is the figure of Progress.

For more lovely pictures and information on the edifices of Mumbai, click here.

Then it was back to Fountain (which was the last clue) for our final timecheck and for some yummy brunch of upma, idli, medu vada, sambar, chutney and cold drinks (I had Thums Up after AGES! It's my favourite carbonated beverage). Oh, the food was courtesy the Breach Candy dosawalla, and his tomato chutney is KILLER. Its textured and flavourful and spicy and actually tastes tomato-ey! Idli and upma was also damn good. But i miss my coriander chutney with upma :(

My friend and I went home without waiting for the results. She needed to be with her daughters and I needed to sleep!

P.S. I hope you had as much fun reading this picture essay of South Mumbai as I had writing it! I really must do something to follow up on my love for history.