Bandra Afternoon Egg Curry

How many years does it take for a city to grow on you? Most of this essay was first written with friends in the Ochre Sky writing community.

London. Paris. New York. Mumbai. Big cities. If you have grown up in small towns, they are like dreams you can never quite catch - shimmering, beautiful things always just out of your reach. Once when I was in college, I passed through Victoria Terminus while changing trains to get from Pune to Jamshedpur. With stars in my eyes, I peeped out at Mumbai through a narrow window in the ladies’ toilet. It was well after midnight. An endless row of black and yellow cabs lined the narrow street, parked for the night, resting. Their yellow tops caught the light from the streetlights above. The air was breathless with adventure. I took it all in for a moment before running for my train. Perhaps one day…, I thought!

As fate would have it, a few years later, I married a Mumbai boy. In July 1997, I got off a plane with him by my side and stepped into my married life. My newly minted husband lived in Vile Parle East, just across the gigantic Western Express Highway from the domestic airport. I had assumed we would get a cab at the exit and make a grand entry into our new lives. But my husband was already a Mumbai veteran. He started rolling his suitcase straight out of the airport exit. I scrambled after him with my own suitcase, hurrying to keep up, incredulous that I would have to walk right across the highway with my suitcase mumbling and rumbling and grumbling behind me.

Soon after, we moved into a fourth floor flat on Sherley Rajan Road in Bandra West. It was just off the Carter Road sea face, in an area that used to originally be two villages called Sherley and Rajan – street after street of multistoried buildings, interspersed with a few surviving bungalows: either grand, old, two-storey structures, or small cottages with tiled roofs. Like the past and the present living together cheek by jowl.

Some of them had small gardens in the front, and a little verandah with one or two easy chairs laid out enticingly. Out on a stroll, you might spot an elderly gentleman in a sporty-looking t-shirt and shorts, taking a power nap in one of the chairs, his cat following his example on the doormat. You might have to skirt the little roadside huddle of ladies buying fish from a fisherwoman with a large, round basket set on the road in front of her. You will hear the haggling over prices go on even after the fish is cleaned and cut, the voices of the women rising over the honking from passing cars swerving left and right to avoid the potholes. And if it’s Christmas time….!! Stars will be strung up on trees to go with the carols that waft out of the shops and cafes. Christmas shoppers will cause traffic jams on nearby Hill Road…but let us keep our thoughts inside the village for now!

Back in the day, the inhabitants came from the East Indian and Koli communities, and the area used to be covered with paddy fields and vegetable farms. Over time, people started pouring in from every corner of the country till the little village burst at its seams. Now, they rushed by on the streets in their flashy cars enroute to their plush offices all over town – my husband was one of them. Children hurtled down the roads in their yellow school buses – my child would soon be one of them.    

The little cottages had to keep making way for tall buildings, and the builders usually gave the families a few flats in return for their land. Our neighbour on the fourth floor was Aunty M. She wore sensible frocks with sensible shoes and tied her hair in a tight bun. When she realized that I was home alone most of the day while my husband went to work, she took me under her wing. Even more so when she heard that I was pregnant. Ting-tong would go the doorbell once or twice every day, and she would ask cheerily, “What are you doing??” She gave me endless advice when she heard that I was feeling nauseous throughout the day. Coriander seeds, she assured me, would cure me of all ills.

She started checking on me around lunch time. “What you ate??” she would ask. She did not look very impressed with my usual responses: dal-bhaat-bhindi or toasted cucumber sandwiches with mayonnaise, for which I seemed to have developed an unusual fondness. As my pregnancy progressed, my nausea just kept getting worse, and I started feeling a bit weak and tired all the time. One day, I was so down in the dumps, that I just gave in to my misery and could not bring myself to fix any sort of lunch for myself, not even the cucumber sandwiches. I felt hungry and nauseous and sick and sad all at the same time, and just lay down on the bed to focus better on feeling sorry for myself.

Ting-tong went the doorbell, and Aunty M strode into the flat, bearing a small stainless steel serving dish of steaming hot egg curry. The halves of two eggs, their whites stained with spices, were visible above the red-orange gravy. The small flat filled with the most delicious, coconutty, egg curry smell in the history of humankind. “Lunch!!” said Aunty M, slapping the dish down on the kitchen counter as if it was the most normal thing to do. Like it was every day that an angel sent from heaven above saved a poor soul from utter despair, hunger, and hopelessness.

It has been twenty-seven years. We moved out of Sherley Rajan years and years ago. Since then, we have lived in numerous rented apartments in Bandra, Khar and Santacruz, but I have never quite caught up with this city. It keeps getting ahead of me. It keeps going forward without ever looking back. But still, when I drive through Bandra, through the lanes and bylanes and especially through the old villages where exquisitely pretty bungalows still survive - some grand, some tiny, I think to myself - perhaps this is my Mumbai. Where fisherwomen still squat on the roadside, selling fish from their baskets. Where there are still easy chairs laid out on verandahs, waiting for tea-time. And where Christmas lights don’t flash, but twinkle.

Aunty M has since crossed over to the other side. She brought up her children, looked after her husband, and cleaned, dusted, and cooked for her family every day. She did not leave behind a legacy of riches. But she left behind a rich legacy of humanity and kindness. And, for me, sweet memories of a very, very special egg curry!

And Mumbai? Mumbai only grows bigger and grander with its new roads and bridges and tunnels under the sea; its malls and grand theatres; its metros and monorails and sea-links. It is to accommodate us that the city must grow – our homes, our jobs, our dreams, our children, our struggles, our broken hearts. Sometimes, when I am in a cab on the city’s streets - being one with the city, its roads, its traffic, its buildings, its sounds, its smells, and its sea, the city lets me think my deepest, most liberating thoughts. And then I think that it has taken twenty-seven years but perhaps, just perhaps, all this is slowly becoming my Mumbai too!

The cab is on a bridge passing over the Arabian Sea. The ripples on the water catch the sunlight, and the cab rushes to meet the tall buildings on the opposite shore. I see everything, I see nothing. I stare into the distance. The only movement in the cab is the wind playing with my hair. The only sound is the whoosh whoosh whoosh of the tyres on the road…

The photographs are mine. The illustrations have been generated on Miscrosoft Bing.