I lived in Mumbai, India, from 2004-2006. During that time, I did a lot of traveling throughout the country. I also came to love so many aspects of life in India, from food to festivals. Here are a few snippets of writing from my life there as well as posts on the latest sights, sounds, and style from the subcontinent.
Another sign that Bombay is booming: it seems like a new club opens each week. Since I arrived over 15 months ago, a number of new clubs, including Zenzi, Seijo and the Soul Dish, and Squeeze have opened in Bandra (north Bombay), the home of the nouveau riche, Bollywood stars, and the majority of Bombay’s…
Bombay has changed to Mumbai. Madras to Chennai. Calcutta to the much less evocative Kolkata. Now, it looks like Bangalore is jumping on the renaming bandwagon. It intends to change its name to Bengaluru, which means “the town of boiled beans” in the local Kannada language. Is this really necessary? When a friend sent me…
I’m finally back to work after three restful weeks back in the States. Besides traveling around and seeing family and friends, I had the chance to while away a few afternoons in some national and state parks, including Wakulla Springs, where I saw alligators grinning in the sun, and Sagamore Hill, the former home of…
September Ho Gaya…September is gone. And I didn’t even have much time to blog. I did some traveling – again to the Golden Triangle (see below) – went to a film shoot (see my last post), attended the Elle Decor India Design Awards, and also found time to check out the Ganpati Visarjan (immersion) on…
Much has been made about a possible link-up between Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan, two of Bollywood’s biggest stars of the moment. As I’ve mentioned before, Rani is on a hot streak, having had hits with Black (a remake of the Miracle Worker) and the recent Mangal Pandey, as well as lighter fare like Hum…
As Indian states go, Gujarat has a long way to go before becoming tourist friendly. It may be the homeland of many a global Indian (the Patel clan comes from there), but it’s lacking in some of the things that draw tourists, namely the Taj Mahal and alcohol. Nevertheless, as Gujarat borders on Maharashtra, we…
No matter what the raging controversy is about the new film about Mangal Pandey, whether it was too harshly anti-British or that Pandey, India’s first so-called freedom fighter, was blasphemously portrayed as a having a relationship with a nautch girl, the picture was a pleasure to watch. I went to the film with approximately 20…
The first thing I thought of when reading this front-page story in the Times of India today was, “Couldn’t they have let the poor thing live somewhere in the country?” As I’ve said before, animal rights have a long way to go in this country. Full text of the “hobra,” an animal oddity similar to…
I’ve often mused at the title of “I’m Not Rappaport,” the play-then-film about two men from varying backgrounds coming to terms with the ravages of old age. Even though I’ve never seen the play or the film, I was always tickled each time the phrase was used as the punchline of any dumb joke. After…