When I first met Shaa’ir I was stuffed in the back of a van in India, cars were wizzing by on my right and a gaggle of kids were grouping up on the right. She poked her head in the passenger door to say a quick hello before we headed out to our next video shoot location. Shaa’ir(Monica) is one half of the Mumbai based electro, funk duo Shaa’ir + Func.

A few days later the shoot was completed and Shaa’ir, my video director/producers and I headed out for some Diwali partying.(Func had to run off to a gig in Australia) But, before that we hit some grub. A chinese restaurant in Bandrha would do the trick. Shaa’ir ordered up a bunch of dishes and we all dug in.

Shaa’ir has a beautiful voice and a welcoming energy about her. She has an interesting story in that she grew up in the United States (did her time in NYC) but then moved to Mumbai because she felt the creative energy there was what she needed. Over the few days I hung out with her I could sense these two sides to her. On October 25th I realized why I had such a strong feeling of her character so quickly. We both celebrate that day as our day of birth. Although almost a decade apart scorpios know scorpios. Rather than me try and explain all this more, here is the final documentary we were filming of both Shaa’ir + Func. It will fill in their story much better than I could.

What we ate:

Spicy prawns
Chili chicken
Vegetable fried rice
Chicken kebabs
Fried Cabbage

I suppose this is something like when my Jewish friends eat Chinese food on Christmas day. Diwali is the Indian-Christmas-like-New-years celebration in which on the first 3 nights everyone plays with firecrackers from dusk ’till 1am. And, I mean non-stop. 4 year olds lighting off cherry bombs. 15 year olds setting off 190 books of firecrackers in the middle of a busy parking lot. No rules and no reaction from the locals. It IS the way it IS. Happy Dewali is all I can say.

To celebrate I was headed up to Andheri West, a northern suburb in Mumbai, to meet up with my friends Vik, Brian and Monica. the plan was to hit a few house parties after a very non-traditional celebratory meal. Indians love chinese food almost as much as they love indian food (which they just call food) so it is not hard to find an open spot late on a holiday evening willing and ready to serve. We did some quick ordering and wound up soon after with a myriad of dishes all cooked in the chinese style but with an indian flare.

The top pic (not enhanced in color at all I swear) was a noodle and chicken dish. The following is the rest of the order.

Chili chicken

Spicy prawns

Vegetable fried rice

Chicken kebabs

Fried cabbage

The food was washed down and we were off to house party number one in Bandra, another new suburb just south of the restaurant. On the way out I snapped this pic of the front of the restaurant to illustrate what a Mumbai suburb looks like. All those images of green lawned, neatly rowed, houses with driveways and picket fences should now be washed from your mind.

For those of you who don’t know what this is a picture of, let me channel Peppe Anello for a moment. High-voltage transmission lines are used to transmit electric power over relatively long distances, usually from a central generating station to main substations. They are also used for electric power transmission from one central station to another for load sharing. High voltage (HV) transmission lines are made of high voltage (between 138 and 765 kilovolts) overhead conducting lines of either copper or aluminum. One of the key concerns in transmission of electricity is power loss in transmission lines (called line loss or transmission loss), dissipated as heat due to the resistance of the conductors. The smaller the surface area of the conductors, the smaller the loss to heat dissipation. High voltages require less surface area, resulting in reduced line loss. With high-voltage lines, the voltage can be stepped up at the generating station, transmitted through the transmission grid to a load center, and there stepped down to the lower voltages required by distribution lines.

In short, there was a crap load of power running overhead as we ate chinese food that evening. There seems to be a small statistical correlation between various diseases and living near power lines, and some biophysical mechanisms for the promotion of cancer have been proposed (such as the electric fields around power lines attracting aerosol pollutants), although none have been substantiated. Locating a restaurant near such power lines seems odd, irresponsible and stupid. In Mumbai it is simply normal.

Wow, what a tough country. I am humbled. Although the above video shows great food and a seemingly nice slice of India there is much more to the story than that. I think of myself as a good traveller and a great eater, but India knocked me back. I went into this trip with the idea that I was going to eat and explore the deepest corners of Mumbai. My friends at home, who have been to India, warned me about the shocking contrast I would find. They had explained that the food, particularly street food, was dangerous and WILL get me sick. I heard their plea but pushed it as far back in my mind as I could. Through out this post I will show pictures that are appropriate for the words you are reading but not so appropriate for a food blog. Some are quite disturbing so please, if you choose to read on understand that this post is very different from the usual.

The day I arrived I was picked up in a brand new Mercedes by my driver Salim. He was an off duty police office arranged by Yahoo! to be our transportation as well as our security detail. After all, we were staying in the recently terrorized Taj Hotel and Towers. The airport was not as crazy as I had expected but as soon as we exited the perimeter of Sahar International a swarm of tuk-tuks, cabs, people and animals swallowed our car. Shacks and trash lined the the streets as vendors, children and livestock popped in and out of them.

It took over an hour and a half for Salim to navigate Mumbai traffic and deliver us safely to our hotel. As we approached the roundabout, at the entrance of the hotel, a small army of guards approached with bomb sniffing dogs, guns and that crazy mirror on a stick device for looking at the undercarriage of vehicles. Not the first time my car was checked for bombs with me in it, but disheartening none the less. We were cleared and allowed to approach the front doors. Another army of people rushed out. This time the army was made up of servants ready to whisk us, and our luggage, from the car into the hotel, and up to our rooms. This journey from the airport and into the hotel was my first experience with the huge gap between rich and poor in Mumbai. The next four days was a series of experiences that compounded this reality and threw me into a complete tailspin.

4 days later I was sitting in North Mumbai in a conference room at the Yahoo! offices. Across from me were 4 locals all helping pull together the October project. The conversation turned to food and I explained how I wanted to visit Khao-Galli (the food lane) before I left. All four of them replied the exact same way every other local has in the past 3 days. “You can’t do that” they warned,”You’ll get sick”. Despite that warning they always caveat their statement with a note that street food in India is delicious. This left me torn between the best street food I will ever eat and dysentery on a 9 hour flight to London.

My conscious and the nightmare of a bad flight kept me in the hotel for the fourth straight night. The next morning I woke early. I was antsy. I felt I had missed India. I couldn’t let this town get the better of me. I decided I must take a “walk” before I had to leave. Even this was a tough decision.

A few days earlier, upon arrival, I had taken a walk around the neighborhood. This walk was the second chapter in my Realization-of-India tour. As I stepped from the hotel driveway to the sidewalk the world changed 180 degrees. A new army swarmed us, this time made up of beggars, children and hawkers. The only difference between my earlier car ride and my current walk was the lack of steel and glass separating me from the locals. I was thrown straight into the center of this Bombay life and it was not pretty. Not by any means. A 7 year old boy carrying a 5 month old infant tugged at my shirt. A man with a giant blow up balloon followed me for 10 minutes. A hawker carrying an old wooden box first offered me maps and postcards. When I refused he flipped the maps to reveal bags of hash flattened under the weight of his stock hoping he would make a sale. Because I was not ready for what I was exposed to, the walk did not last very long and I quickly found refuge back at the hotel to regroup.

I was determined to make my second walk different. I had to beat India in some way. I had about an hour before I heading to the airport and I decided to head out one last time. It was only 6am and the streets were still quiet. I pecked around the side streets waiting to be poked, grabbed and accosted by the locales but I found none of that. What I did see was perhaps even more disturbing.

Apparently, the seemingly 24/7 Mumbai does sleep. The unfortunate thing is that they sleep where they work. As I walked the quiet streets I found families sleeping in empty fruit carts, on sidewalks and in shop corners. These same carts and corners would be brimming with fruit, trinkets and clothing only an hour later.

My walk took me to a corner where a shop owner was preparing 100 coconuts for the days sales. The large green fruits were spread all over the street impeding the passage of anyone else on the block. I visited the bus depot where drivers and dispatchers were prepping buses for the inevitable hustle and bustle that was just a few hours away.

My final stop before returning back to the hotel was the water. On the same street as the hotel runs a large boulevard that hugs the shore. There is no beach at this part of town just a thick retaining wall that separates the solid from the liquid. Again, no hassles, although as the sun rose eye contact with newly awakened locals increased. After one last stop at the Gateway of India I returned back to the hotel and reflected over a cup of coffee before it was time to leave.

I didn’t win. India definitely scared me and held me down. Yes, I only had four days. And, yes, I had a lot of work to do. But, these are only excuses that I could use to validate my failure. I am not going to do that. Instead I am going back. The October project will have me back in Mumbai and I plan on evening the score.

One thing I have failed to mention that you should know is that I have a bit of a love affair with India. It has been at the top of my travel list for 2 years. The culture, spirituality, food, history, beauty of the people, colors and climates all are points of intrigue. Like a beautiful, independent woman India can not be controlled. I just hope to be allowed to enjoy her company.

So my approach will be different next time. Time is the key. Or at least I think and hope it is. After the October project is complete I hope to spend a few days in Mumbai exploring. Then, I will travel for a couple weeks to the south. Hopefully India will fuel my love affair and not break my heart as it almost did on my first trip.

It’s no doubt to anyone who has been following this last week that I love the breakfast at the hotel. In four days I have had four different breakfasts from the same buffett. All anchored with my delicious American coffee, I dove deep into Indian breakfast favorites, savored the fresh fruit bar, pounced on the made-to-order-omelette station and supplemented with everything from a banana smoothy to a hard boiled egg. But my all time favorite was a simple treat that anchored my stay in Mumbai.

Before leaving on this trip I professed my hatred for most things coconut to my friend Preethi. She swore to me that the coconut chutney was to die for. Well I was wrong and she was right. Pictured here is coconut chutney with roasted tomato in it. Stuck in it, a simple almost flavorless cake. After every dip the cake soaked up the goodness of the chutney giving my mouth a reason for celebration over and over.

Coconut chutney might just be on the menu at the next REEL TASTY. Look for it.

On our final night we opted to sit out in the humid air by the pool. I decided to knock back a few cold ones to accent the successful business trip. We had accomplished a ton in the 4 short days and it was worth a mini celebration. My first was in honor of our host country.

Second, I opted to relive another fantastic business trip in Singapore.

And, my third choice was an old favorite. A little closer to home and just as tasty.

The girls reveled in some Riesling as I soaked up my suds. After our celebration we found ourselves hungry and headed for the all day dining spot in the hotel. I opted for an Indian/American mix. I found that in this chicken tikka sub. Not a bad deal. Next time I would say hold the melted swiss.

We ate in another of the Taj Hotels amazing restaurants again last night. This is part of what I meant by India is winning when I said that in my last post. Masala Kraft did an amazing job or creating dish after dish that please the palette and tantalized the tongue. The above picture was a flavor layered crisp with a pomegranate on top. Great accent. And, especially tasty because it was not ordered BUT compliments of the chef. Here is what followed.

Dilli ki chhalli corn on the cob from the streets of delhi

Doodhiya murg tikka-creamy chicken kebab infused with green cardamom and burnt garlic

Khushk raan-whole leg of baby lamb immersed in a blend of spices, braised and grilled

vegtables

This was a clove and prune dessert. It was supposed to help in digestion

I have not spit out much in the last 20 years. This, I am sad to reply, broke my streak.

Weird but true, Jen nicknamed me On when we were in Berlin a few years back. On is short for Jas(ON) in case you missed that. Our site check yesterday took us to the Phoenix Mills mall in Mumbai. Of course we needed to sample some chow as we discussed business. We settled on a spot in teh food court named “On a Roll” I had this paneer malai seekh roll and the below biryani rice as my first foray into Indian Fast Food. Not the best BUT at this point in the trip, India is winning. More on what that means in a few posts.

Anything you can imagine from any country you can imagine, minus Africa.(I know that’s not a country)

Chutneys that go with the cakes below. My favorite? The orange one. Coconut chutney. That is the one I never thought I would care for. WOW.

Lentils

This is a slow roasted lamb shank. When I tell you melt-in-your-mouth, I mean it. Jen and Brit both ordered chicken dishes that were even moister. I have never had chicken that tender and wet and flavorful all at the same time. My friend Preethi warned me about the delicious chicken and it blew any idea of what I thought she meant from my imagination.

This was dinner on night one. We went to the top of the tower in our hotel to Souk, a Lebanese themed restaurant. Of course the meal was packed with cultural differences, stories about service standards and other anecdotal fun but in keeping true to my goal I will stop with the meat and let you imagine the deliciousness. Next up breakfast.