“Where are we?!” Emily kept saying as we strolled along the Palladium Mall. With everything including a Cartier, a TGI Fridays to a Comedy Club all within a truly elegant and high-end five story mall environment, we found ourselves feeling like we were anywhere but India.
In fact, the Palladium is just one of three malls in the multi-mall Phoenix complex. We didn’t have time to see it all – but everything we saw was shocking. It reminded me heavily of Singapore with its air-conditioned mall culture. Only this isn’t Singapore….this is Bombay….
Of course, someone’s going to think – why would you go to a mall, of all places on your first day in India? Because when we want to leave the hotel room – and our hotel room here is on the smaller side – to work at a cafe with good WiFi, and we’re not succeeding searching on foot, malls always come through. I personally discovered the power of the mall as a sanctuary of respite or an embassy of the first world in Bangkok. For the purposes of our WiFi emergencies, we broke glass in case of emergency for the first time in Tel Aviv.
Sure, no one wants to say they spent their day in the mall when they’re in India – but no one wants to be working until midnight because they didn’t know what part of town had the cafes with WiFi. Big cities take a little longer to map-out for resources than the small places. In Patmos we were working on the beach by noon on the first day. In Istanbul, there was more going door to door, “Do you have WiFi?” At least here, they smile when they tell you no.
The good news is that we’ve discovered several WiFi hotspot systems from different high-speed providers. So, now we have lists of places we know we can use for a small fee. Mumbai is wired for speed.
But the “where are we”s began again in the evening when Emily decided it was time to get her sushi craving met. Mumbai is a truly international city and despite the initial, “Can’t you die from eating stuff there?!” reaction that I venture to say most reasonable people would have to the idea of sushi in India – there are first tier restaurants here.
Only, Emily didn’t realize just how first tier she was choosing. She looked up sushi in a restaurant guide at our hotel. We grabbed a cab and went. We arrived at an area of beautiful old British buildings which now house numerous fancy and elegant restaurants. Entering this Asian-fusion restaurant with sushi offerings didn’t leave us wondering about the safety of raw fish, but whether or not we were good enough to get in.
I have promised not to divulge just what she was wearing and how she looked, but let’s just say Emily decided that warm weather meant being as casual as she wanted. I will freely admit I was wearing jeans and a brown t-shirt, which seemed fine for walking around the streets. But Mumbai is not Patmos – and that restaurant filled with very wealthy Indians and foreigners was even less so.
We had one of the nicest and fanciest meals we’ve had in a long time as we watched how the wealthy Indian families yelled at and demeaned their waiters. We may have been shlubby looking, but we at least had more class and dignity in how we treat people who are serving us.
The surprise of surprises to us has been that so far, Mumbai isn’t really that different from other large cities. We fully expected some places with large roads and others with cows and piles of dirt and people laying by the side of the road. While there are definitely some shacks and slums in certain areas, it’s not that pervasive. Unlike Kathmandu, there are no animals eating the trash spewed everywhere on the roads.
Bombay has nice sidewalks, public trash cans, and very nice roads. Walking around feels safe and people have been nothing but pleasant and helpful so far. There are definitely serious traffic jams and I know there have to be areas not as nice as the ones we’ve walked or driven through. But for the amount we zipped around the city yesterday, it’s pretty amazing how very nice this place is.
When getting a first taste of Mumbai, two things jump out at me.
First, the British did very nice road-work. Almost every former British colony I’ve visited is left with some very nice infrastructure. There is no mistaking some of these nice thoroughfares, roundabouts and statued squares as the work of the British. They may have been colonizing bastards, but their roads are very nice….
Secondly, Mumbai is a city on the move. It screams business, upward mobility and wealth. New, tall office buildings abound. There are restorations of old things and constant development of new. This is a capitol of industry and movers and shakers are running around moving and shaking – and then going to the mall for a movie, a Thai foot massage and a scoop of Jamocha Almond Fudge at Baskin Robbins.
Because of work yesterday, we’re just beginning our real exploration today. But in warm, tropical city with a little British, a fair amount of Indian, a heap of globalization, a touch of beach and a load of masala, – I see only good things.
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