Mumbai Diary

Christened in Fables

Mumbai’s place names tell us a fascinating story of the city’s life and times. Byculla, for example, takes its name from a bhaya, or yellow laburnum tree, that once stood here, apparently in a khala, or threshing ground. Charni Road, equally pastorally, takes its name from charna, or a place where cattle grazed. And Chinchpokhli suggests a grove of chinch, or tamarind, trees—difficult to believe today. Pydhonie was a place where the tide washed inland and, receding, left behind a stream of water near a temple, where people washed their feet—hence pai dhoni. Matharpacady, bewildering as it may sound at first, can be deciphered as Mhatre pakhadi, or place where a community of Mhatres lived.

Some place names are obvious. Cooperage, for example, was just that: a shed where coopers plied their trade, making wooden casks for the East India Company. The original Church Gate, near St Thomas’s Church, was one of the three gates of Mumbai’s fort (the other two being the Bazaar Gate in the north and Lion’s Gate in the south). One of the tougher names to crack, however, is Breach Candy. The story is this: there was apparently a great breach in the rocks here, through which the sea historically flooded into the low-lying lands between Mahalaxmi and Worli. That breach was finally closed, circa 1780, by the building of a vellard, or khind—which was duly anglicised to ‘Candy’. There was also an English missionary, Mr Candy, whose bungalow was by the breach, and it’s possible that his name too somehow became intertwined with the place over the years. That’s the way it happens, sometimes.

Between the Slices

According to popular mythology, the sandwich was invented by the Earl of Sandwich when, in 1762, he first placed a piece of beef between two slices of bread. Nonsense! A moment’s reflection will tell you that making a sandwich is a universal and timeless instinct, which has given birth to countless avatars, from the Greek gyros-pita and Vietnamese banh mi to Mumbai’s vada pao.  And then, of course, there’s Mumbai’s footpath ‘sendveech’, a more recent phenomenon, made possible by the advent of the electric sandwich toaster in the 1980s. Some people consider it a gastronomic abomination; others pine for it in exile in London and Los Angeles. To each his own.

The masala-fied sendveech would give the Earl of Sandwich a conniption: it’s typically stuffed with alu and tamatar, slathered with kothmir chatni, spiked with chaat masala, grilled, and quickly slashed into hot, bite-sized pieces. Many of the best sendveech stalls seem to be found outside Mumbai’s colleges (for reasons that are not hard to figure). The sendveech, topped with beetroot and cabbage shavings, and delivered in foil packs, has also now become a feature of working lunches in corporate conference rooms, replacing the pizza in these bean-counting times. At the other end of the snobbery scale, meanwhile, there’s an upmarket sandwich chain started in the US by the descendants of the original ‘inventor’. They’ve named it—what else?—the ‘Earl of Sandwich’

The Melting Diplomat

In John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, Trent tells Paul, “When rich people do something nice for you, you give them a pot of jam.” Well, that may be so in the US, but it doesn’t work in Mumbai; here, if rich people do something nice for you, they’d much prefer a box of Patchi chocolates.

Created by Lebanese chocolatier, Nizar Choucair, Patchi chocolates come in 30 exotic fillings, and cost around Rs 3,600 a kilo (which according to my calculations is nearly 40 per cent more expensive than the best Lindt chocolates). But then these are not mere chocolates: presented in their characteristically plush ‘arrangements’, they’ve somehow transcended the category to become a symbolic gesture of gracious gifting (when I was at their Worli boutique, the staff were excitedly wrapping gift sets which, through careful eavesdropping, I learned had been ordered by Mrs Bachchan). Patchi has apparently been ranked as the No. 1 luxury brand in the Middle East—a market that obviously takes its luxuries very seriously—and at Harrods, you can buy a special box of 49 hand-wrapped Patchi chocolates for £5,000. Still, they’re not the most expensive chocolates in the world: for that you’d have to go to Knischildt, an American chocolatier, who’ll custom-create dark chocolate truffles for you, for approximately $5,000 a kilo. Mrs Bachchan, please note.

Killjoy Was Here

You’ve seen those intriguing graffitti’d ads for bean bags on walls all over Mumbai, right? Well, there’s a rumour going around that “bean bags” is just a code word for hooker services. Gosh, what a clever idea—except that it’s completely untrue, as I found out when I phoned to discreetly investigate. When I asked the girl who answered the phone exactly what kind of—er, um—bean bags they could offer, she briskly directed me to check out their website: www.dolphinbeanbags.com.