Asim Shah draws a short travelogue from Amchi (our) Mumbai

I had to pick my wife up from Bengaluru. Being a frequent visitor to India and hearing about all new changes from people around, I decided to surprise my wife with a short visit to Mumbai. Little had I thought — I was in for a great surprise!

Instead of taking a train from Bengaluru to Mumbai, I took the National Travels’ bus service. Its interior sets the bus apart: cosy bed where seats would be, giving you ample leg space. The bus passes through four-lane highways and well-managed toll checks that only European highways offered.

The dawn of day one in Mumbai was as regular as you can hope —Gateway of India flocking with people from the entire world, the Hotel Taj offering an exclusive Indian cultural taste and hospitality, and a ferry ride into the ocean that never seems to end, while never letting you feel that you can conquer the world either. What sets Mumbai apart from rest of India is the walk down Marine Drive in the evening, and the brackish smell pushing through your nostrils that automatically makes you homesick. Mumbai is always bright — a city that never sleeps, and the street food that never gets cold.

Deriving a background that calls to Bollywood by default, Juhu Chaupati is a red carpet. From celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Hritik Roshan to the who’s who live around Juhu and a sightseeing tour to this locale feel like a ceremonial march. The same applies to PVR cinemas, where while watching ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’, we had our eyes browsing the seats — maybe we could catch King Khan or other celebrities enjoying their family time. It was, however, not our day!

Haji Ali Darga, for us, became one of the most important visits this time. An insignia of Hindu-Muslim fraternity serves not just as a consignment of spirituality, but welcomes tourists with the warmest of embraces. Mumbai, now has its metro circuit too, travelling from Bersova to Ghatkopar was a travelling novelty.

Mumbai has the best of locals that you can hope for. While the dialect is callous to the ears, people from Mumbai are

the warmest in their hearts. A local suggested that we try the local train while traveling from Andheri to VT Station (now

called CST), we got a first hand experience of how the platform system works for local station in India.

The local ‘autowalla’ was equally sympathetic. Laden with the memory of negotiations that go for several minutes for hundreds of rupees in Kathmandu suddenly seems cruel in Mumbai. The polite auto-ricksaw driver will return you your deserving Rs one if his metre tells him to do so. It just makes you wonder, “It’s the little things that matter if you ever hope for your country to exit out of the suffocation of corruption.” I kindly handed him Rs 50, and didn’t even turn back to take any ‘chillar’.

And Ola makes everything easier. While crowding over the small window of a taxi would make people lose their senses in Mumbai heat, Ola app gets you a public transportation as though you own a private car. A click on the button in your mobile phone performs magic: lo, and a taxi comes receiving you for your trip back home.

Google becomes your friend if you are a newcomer to Mumbai, and another app, M Indicator tells you where exactly to face North and exactly where your next best eatery is, or even how to plan your entire itinerary.

While in Mumbai it truly does make you feel that it is ‘Amchi Mumbai’; a city that you can call your own.

For its safety, hospitality, offers and an open heart, with respect, since we cannot always be there, I extend courtesy to Mumbai as ‘Ninte Mumbai’, your kind and generous city — Mumbai!