(picture by Andre Pipa)

I don’t have to tell you what happened in Mumbai. You already know it. I wasn’t there that day, and although I may at some point in the future, I have never lived here. Not in the real sense of ‘living’ somewhere, with bank accounts and rented residences, or jobs. But Mumbai is my city, my friends are Mumbaikars, and I feel every bit one myself: I still call it Bombay, because Bombay is romantic and real and Mumbai isn’t; I love the city, have my favourite haunts in Bombay, both north and south, and know the city well.

Perhaps too well.

On any regular Bombay evening, my friends and I would be sitting at Cafe Leopold in Colaba Causeway. I’m there every night, not that I particularly like it. When the papers and news reports tell you the gunmen threw a grenade into a ‘popular tourist cafe’ in Colaba, you need to know first that Leopold isn’t just any popular cafe, Colaba isn’t any regular street… and Bombay isn’t any regular city. Leopold had a strange, inexplicable draw. Mr Shantaram was there, back when he was actually living in the slum a few streets behind it, and so were the real life cast that inspired his fictional motley crew of Bombay misfits, mafia and other things. Even now that Johnny Depp is going to play him in the movie, now that he’s a minor celebrity, he is still there. You never quite leave Leopold.

My friends and I at Leopold would just be like any regular bunch of friends who might be sitting there that night. Young and foreign — photographers, wannabe Bollywood stars, scruffy Bollywood recruiters, writers. Drawn by the magic of Leopold: the bad music, the bad pasta, the Kingfisher and Cobra beer that was never terribly cold, but the coldest the city could give. And our friends: each other, and the chattering yuppie Indian middle classes. When we were done someone might say, let’s go for a kebab. We’d pop around the corner to the famous Bade Miya, just down the road from the Taj, sit in a derelict building outrageously (and illegally) outfitted with fluorescent lights, while more young scruffy expats and Indophiles like me sat with each other and with our yuppie middle class Indian friends — smoking, eating with our hands, and perhaps someone would say let’s go to the sea.

Bombay is a city by the sea, but not in the usual sense of it. It’s beautiful, but only if you look hard. The Arabian sea engulfs it on one side, and on a hot Bombay night there is nothing more entertaining than sitting by the Arabian Sea, eating bhelpuri and drinking chai with your love — and Bombay is a city for lovers — on Juhu Beach or by the rails along Marine Drive. You’d look out to the domain of old Bombay money, Napean Sea Road and Malabar Hill, shimmering away in the distance. The majestic Taj hotel behind you. The Gateway of India, and all its pigeons and pigeon shit and tourists, to your left. Bom Bahai, Bombay, Bom Bahai the good harbour, as the Portuguese called it.

And CST was where it all started and ended. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, so renamed to please the frothing at the mouth Shiv Sena, Marathi supremists and their Shivaji cultists. Victoria Terminus, or VT, was what the rest of us called it. You entered Bombay at VT, stepped over sleeping bodies, crouched all over the station and platform floor. They never did that in ones, rarely twos — the Indians do everything in groups, and especially in Bombay groups of ten, twenty, will all be sleeping, chatting, sitting, drinking tea on the floor, squatting by their ancient-looking luggages, waiting for trains to take them homes. Some of them would have just got in to Bombay, destined to a lifetime of pavement-sleeping in this crowded city; others would be veterans, waiting to go home for the week after months or years in the big city. You can tell who’s been here for a while by the way they talk about the city: there’s a certain degree of Bombay smugness. Or perhaps smug is not the word — it’s the air of knowing. When you know Bombay, whether you’ve lived there all your life, whether you’re Parsi, Gujarati, Malayali, Singaporean, American, British, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, whether you go back to sleeping on your pavement, to a Malabar Hill Road address or your expensive room at the Oberoi. It doesn’t matter. When Bombay is your city, it shows. Whether you stepped out into Bombay in the morning at CST, or in the dead of night, they were there. And to get out you had to step over them, shove your way through the porters, and the thronging multitude carrying what seems to be hundreds of kilograms of things they were carting home: sweets, hay stacks, goods. When you left Bombay, you did so at CST too. If you left for a day trip you might go to a place like Matheran, where I like going whenever I’m in Bombay, and you’d take the train from CST to Neral Junction to get there. If you lived in Bombay, especially in the north, you would take a train home from CST, too. You’d get on one of those dangerously overcrowded suburban locals, the ones I so love.

But it all fell apart. The city of dreams is burning. Those sleeping bodies on the station floor are probably all dead, and so are the waiters at Leopold — two of them. So are the sorts of people I might have met and chatted up at Leopold. Heck, my career started in Leopold when a roving photojournalist chatted me up there and we found we had an incredible chemistry and worked well as a team, sealed off with Kingfisher, Gold Flakes, and Indian whisky at Gokul just around the corner. I never went to the Taj or to the Oberoi but as India’s finest hotels, they are not mere hotels — they are symbols, testament to the power of this city and its dreams. As a young man Ratan Tata’s great grandfather, Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata, walked into the colonial Watson’s hotel and was turned away — because he was Indian. He vowed to build a grander hotel than that, and he did: the Taj hotels are the pride of India, and the Taj Mahal in Bombay was the crown in the jewel: the Beatles stayed there, and so did endless other kings and queens, especially the ones that matter most to the Indians, the cricketing gods. For the pavement-sleepers, scruffy backpackers, middle class Indian tourists, and locals alike, The Taj was — and still is — the landmark in the city by the sea.

If something like this could happen to any city, it would be to Bombay, and it would be to these sites of great emotional resonance. The city has never been an easy one to live in. It is full of crumbling buildings and bureaucracy, it is the symbol of Indian inequality of class, wealth and status, it is the city full of people who have nothing right by the people who have everything. It is hard to imagine why anyone would live here. But Bombay, like Leopold and its terrible pasta, like the Taj and the Oberoi and its occasionally contrived grandeur, has an inexplicable aura that draws her people — and their hearts — to her. And she demands you love her despite the terror attacks, despite the gangland wars, despite the everyday inconveniences of living in a place like this with no living space, no drinking water and no dignity.

Other writers more talented than myself have made the New York connection, and it’s true: Bombay is where people come from all over India, even the world, to chase and live their dreams — I did — and they’ll do it by grumbling a heck lot, but will always grit their teeth and survive. If the terrorists wanted to take Bombay apart and show the world that they’ve destroyed this great city, they will never succeed. They do not understand this city is a very different city, and its 14 million inhabitants are hardy people who are toughened but never disillusioned — go take a walk around the chawls and slums, including Asia’s biggest one at Dharavi, and in the midst of poverty and suffering there is always an air of incredible hope and optimism. It is a city of 14 million who have fought back floods, bombs, shootings, racial riots and gangland wars, because they fight daily the misfortunes of everyday living in this city of tough love. More than any other city, Bombay knows how to survive. And will.

So be strong, my beloved Bombay. I will be with you shortly.

And we are going to start shooting some of the first few fortylove.tv episodes. I guess that’s fitting — Europe and Asia, and one of the most exciting cities in the world, and all that.

If you haven’t already, please feel free to hit up our Facebook group and join it. If you count yourself among the Twitterati, do please follow us.

We’re about one month away from launch, and hope to do so well before Christmas!

Please find attached the likely cover for next month’s issue of our food magazine.

P.S. Our cover model was most cooperative, and took to turmeric particularly well. She, however, fluttered off and never came back when she was told that no, she may not dip her feet into the curry. We cannot stand for such diva behaviour - I’m the photographer - I’m supposed to do that! (At least where this food chain is concerned)

P.P.S. Will be glad to pursue further avian-gastronomic photography when I get my ass to Istanbul in two days. A bird and Turkish delights? A bird peeking into Turkish coffee? A bird smoking shisha? A bird nesting in the arms of my furry Turkish man friend, Alp?

Regards,
Your Photographer

Okay, so this is why I’ve been so busy: I’ve been having a baby. Sort of. With someone five thousand kilometres away. Shortly before leaving for London and Dubai respectively, somewhere between Amsterdam, London and Kuala Lumpur, we decided to try our hand at combining the four things we love: travel, postcards, the web.

And here’s a sneak preview.

In a nutshell: over forty twenty weeks, M. (that’s lola to most of you) and I will be living in London and Dubai, separately. We both happen to travel a lot. KL/Singapore. London/Dubai. Europe/Middle East and India. Geddit? We both meet loads of interesting people.

Our work will take us, over the coming months, to parts of Europe, Middle East, India, possibly even North Africa. Update: What’s wrong with me? It’s twenty weeks Forty weeks, forty videos — twenty each, one per week. They could well be about arms markets in Yemen, or Georgian cooking classes, as they might be about music video travelogues of Dubai set to Sudanese beat poetry, or Perugia graffiti artists, Eurochocolate, and interviews with the little people project. Things like that — the things that keep us travelling. Our artsy friends will draw and photograph postcards of London, Oman, Dubai, wherever we go in the course of fortylove.tv, and our store will sell these home-made (well, Zazzle-made, home-designed) postcards — support local artists and all (these artists are mostly British, Malaysian and Singaporean). Submit your video, and you may just win prizes.

So if you’ve lived and travelled vicariously through the photos and text on either Popagandhi.com or at M’s site, stay tuned to Fortylove.tv — live, play, eat and discover. Coming to a screen near you, mid-December 2008.

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and all that stuff.

And you think I have a job?

P.S. If you work in a tech company, airline, or travel site — and/or have prizes to offer — I want to hear from you!

I’m trying to make sense of why I’m here and what I am doing, not doing a good job at all but you’d have to pardon me: the traffic here is mind-numbing. I spend so much of my time dealing with it, trying to avoid it, trying to get out of a jam, trying to get somewhere on time, trying to find a taxi. Finding it difficult to grapple with such a car-centric society, especially one that loves its cars but drives this badly.

I’m not sure I like it. I’m not sure I hate it either. That’s mostly because it’s hard to put a finger on what Dubai is about — if it is about anything at all. Mostly, it comes across as a schizophrenic mish-mash that isn’t so much about the sum of its parts adding up to make something coherent, as it is about individual parts just appearing together at different times. I have five months to make up my mind about it, which is fine: I don’t think I can stay any longer. All the wrong things are so easy, and all the things that should be, aren’t. It’s easy to buy a hulking car, but not easy to cross a road. It’s easy to build a neighbourhood so pruned, so perfect, it reminds you of the Truman Show, but it’s not easy to live in one. I wear a ring everyday so I can say I’m married, when the wrong people enquire. For now, the incredible air connections and the opportunities still tilt this heavily towards the positive side.

P.S. If you know DXB at the back of your hand — please tell me your food secrets. There’s no shortage of restaurants and cafes of every stripe and cuisine and budget, but I’ve yet to find one I’ve been truly impressed by.

P.P.S. Istanbul and London tips needed, too!

I love the Middle East.

Posted by email from Dubai Unsubbed (posterous)

So this is it. I’m leaving. First to Dubai, various parts of the Middle East, Oman, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, wherever, then… wherever the wind takes me. There were a million things I wanted to say when I got here but I don’t know what good they’d do. Everyone’s used to me going away for weeks or months — I did that too much, but I always came home. That’s it. I always came home.. But this time?

I only know I have to go.

I’m not comfortable with being comfortable. Singapore, as you know, thrives on comfort. This country wouldn’t exist without it, and its people wouldn’t know how to live without it. The air-conditioned schools, buses, malls, air-conditioned everything. The well-manicured city. What little control we seem to have over our lives and fortunes, in a life that was planned out in steps for you, that could be yours for the taking, if you so desired. It terrifies me and for as long as I can remember I have wanted nothing more in life than to do the things that scare me the most. Because I can. Because I choose to. I’d rather be wrong and know I chose to be, than be right and comfortable and not because of my choices.

I love my friends, I love being home, the wonderful family that I have. But if I’m not throwing myself into uncharted territory or crowded buses to nowhere, I don’t know what I am. It’s a big world out there, so how can one possibly be happy with 699 square kilometres of it?

Last night in Haji Lane, close to 40 people I most wanted to see before I go showed up at Going Om to send me off and to celebrate my 23rd birthday.

It didn’t hit me until last night that I was leaving. I’d been so busy with life, love, career, with being everywhere but here, that I don’t think it even once entered my thick skull.

Until my best friends sat there making toasts, giving the world the low-down on the most embarrassing bits of my life circa 17-21.

Until 40 people I loved filled up that room and met each other for the first time.

Until I found the idea of going away semi-permanently jolts people into making peace: my ex outside, lecturing me about writing, life and love as she always does; other people who hadn’t spoken to me in years deciding this was as good a time as any to finally accept my apologies for having behaved terribly towards them, years ago.

Until I sat back and found that D., S. and I have come a long way from messing about skipping economics lectures and running away from Miss K, to being the best friends and beautiful people that they’ve been for the last six years. Through all kinds of drama — a lot of it.

Until I found myself comparing bank accounts to expedite the process of saving, spending and moving money across three countries, and staring intently at a mileage redemption map on Emirates.com, trying to figure out how best to accumulate miles to London, and found myself panicking. I’m turning… twenty three? What the fuck does that mean?

It means I’m fucking scared but that only makes me want to do it even more. It means I’m going to vacation in Yemen even if I need military escorts with machine guns to take me around the supposed capital of the Queen of Sheba.

It means I take with me the good luck to have known and loved all these wonderful people here, and I’d better start packing, even if I’m not taking very much with me.

29 hours, a lifetime, and the big, wondrous world out there.