A Farewell visit to Mumbai?

The wheelchair service by the Airlines has helped me travel alone more confidently. My trip to Bombay this week reinforced this belief. My original plan was to only attend the `Navjote` function of the grandkids of Sam Balsara, the big Boss of the Madison group with whom my agency Anugrah Madison had entered into a tie-up as the rural division of the group. It was a lovely evening where I not only met Sam`s family but also a lot of old friends from the advertising fraternity. The vegetarian fare at the dinner table with many typical Parsi dishes like Dhansak, Undhiyu, etc was delicious.

Thanks to my wonderful hosts in Mumbai, Sundaresan and Leela, a couple who are hospitality personified, I could visit Shirdi Sai Baba temple by Vande Bharath Express- leaving Mumbai in the morning and returning the same night after a very good darshan of Sairam. I was traveling by train after six years and by Vande Bharath for the first time. While the train in terms of space, ambiance, and spacious toilets stands out as a train with a difference, I found the dinner served on the train was no different from what they serve in Shatabdi, which I never liked.

During my stayin Mumbai, I had the pleasure of having lunch with 92-year-old Vijay Menon and his wife Shanthi. Meeting their daughter from New York on a visit to Mumbai was a bonus. Vijay, a friend for over fifty years, had opened up a whole new world to me when he roped me as the country representative of AMIC in 1984. He had  left the post to take over as the Secretary General of AMIC, an NGO headquartered in Singapore, promoting the cause of Mass Communication in Asia Pacific Region. My long association with AMIC led to my involvement with WAN-IFRA, another NGO devoted to Newspaper development headquartered in Germany. While at Anugrah Madison I had to explore the hinterland of the country, WAN-IFRA gave me opportunities to travel abroad every year. It was a fascinating experience.

One evening with my school friends at the Matunga Gymkhana was memorable. During the first 26 years of my life, I had seen Matunga Gymkhana, opposite Podar College where I studied, almost every day. It was a popular Club for Cricket and Table Tennis with some other basic facilities. It has been redeveloped into a first-class Club with several additional facilities and a couple of restaurants with a five-star ambiance serving some unusual dishes as starters.

Spending a pleasant evening with a client turned-friend Swamy( ex-Philips) and a quiet lunch with relatives Rajagopals  also happened during the trip. I visited Matunga where I had lived for the first 26 years in Bombay. I had a sumptuous and tasty Thali Meal at the Udupi Sri Krishna Boarding, near Matunga station, an iconic restaurant. It was a nostalgic experience indeed! Any trip to Mumbai is never complete for me without a visit to Chedda Stores, ( a small grocery shop turned into a big department store) and buying my favourite Theplas, Khakras, and other Gujarathi snacks.

Though I am impressed with the several new modes of travel that the government has introduced to reduce travel time (like the Freeway from Chembur to Masjid ), I am shocked at the number of high-rise buildings that have come up in the name of redevelopment, making Mumbai a concrete jungle. I found the city claustrophobic and heavily polluted. Frankly I don`t enjoy visiting Mumbai anymore . I told my host that this probably was my farewell trip to Mumbai!