Tag Archive for 'Mumbai'

Two years after terrorist attack, Taj restores its heritage

Published on August 13, 2010 in Art, Heritage, India, Terrorism and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: Attack on Taj hotel, Bombay, Heritage wing, Mumbai, Mumbai terrorist attack, Old wing, Ratan Tata, Taj Mahal Palace, Taj Palace, Tata group, Tourism.

Vikas Bajaj from Mumbai in the New York Times:

When terrorists stormed this city nearly two years ago, killing at least 163 people, they also dealt a blow to the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, an architectural landmark that has played a critical role in nurturing and housing Indian art.

During a three-day siege the hotel, a Moorish-Florentine palace that opened in 1903, was ravaged by fires, gunshots and grenade explosions. The roof collapsed, and intricate woodwork was burned away. Paintings by modern Indian masters like Vasudeo S. Gaitonde and Jehangir Sabavala were covered in soot and fungus, which thrived in the humid air after air-conditioners gave out, and sprinklers and fire trucks doused the building with water.

Over the last 21 months a team that has at times swelled to more than 2,000 has gutted and renovated the hotel. A smaller group of five specialists spent 10 months restoring nearly 300 pieces of art, working in the Crystal Ballroom, where guests and staff sought refuge during the attack. More:

Also in the Times of India:

Mumbai: Great city, terrible place

Published on July 24, 2010 in Design, Economy and India. 0 Comments Tags: A Place in the Shade, architecture, Bombay, Calcutta, Charles Correa, Cities, Design, Mumbai, urbanisation.

In his new book, A Place in the Shade (Penguin India), renowned architect Charles Correa explains why, despite bad infrastructure, Mumbai gets better and better as a city. Excerpt from the book in Mint Lounge:

Perhaps we are paying too much attention to the physical and economic aspects of a city—and not enough to its mythical and metaphysical attributes. For a city can be beautiful as a physical habitat—trees, uncrowded roads, open spaces—and yet fail to provide that particular, ineffable quality of urbanity which we call: CITY.

We all know examples of this. Bombay, of course, illustrates the very opposite. Everyday it gets worse and worse as physical environment and yet better and better as city. That is to say, everyday it offers more in the way of skills, activities, opportunities at every level, from squatter to college student to entrepreneur to artist. The vitality of the theatre (and the evergrowing audiences), the range and talent of newspapers and magazines—there are a hundred indications emphasizing that impact (implosion!) of energy and people which really is a double-edged sword— destroying Bombay as environment, while intensifying its quality as city. More:

World Cup — Mumbai version

Published on June 12, 2010 in Sport. 0 Comments Tags: Bombay, Friendship Cup, India, Mumbai, Soccer, World Cup.

Arun Janardhan in Mint on Mumbai’s Friendship Cup that coincides with the Fifa World Cup and intends to bring children closer to the tournament being held in South Africa:

The Friendship Cup, like the World Cup that started on Friday, will have 32 teams representing that many countries, divided into eight groups, with a final on 19 June. So Patnaik’s “Spain” will be in Group H, with Switzerland, Chile and Honduras. Each team will play just one knock-out match in its group—unlike the World Cup where every team plays the other before the group leaders advance to the second stage.

The other variation is in the names. “Spain” will joyfully be called “Spanish Idiots” and “Switzerland” is “Swiss Chocolate”, but the players will try and get their jerseys as similar to the countries they represent, including, in some cases, getting the name of the sponsor.

At a practice session on Thursday at the Goan Sports Association grounds near Churchgate, Patnaik presented a range of teenage contradictions. Dressed in a Brazilian yellow-green jersey bearing the name of Ronaldinho on the back, he says his favourite team was England, but since they could not get that team, he was happy with Spain, which had his favourite player Xavi. “I want to play like him, I want to be him,” says Patnaik, after a busy exchange of headers with a player in Argentine blue-white bold stripes. More:

How Bombay made Hindi a heroine

Published on June 10, 2010 in Art, Culture, India and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Bollywood, Bombay, Hindi, Language, Mumbai, Parsi, Theatre.

Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph:

We do, however, know one remarkable fact: historically, before Bombay became the epicentre of Hindi cinema in India, it had already established itself as the beating heart of the subcontinent’s commercial Hindustani theatre. Remarkably, this Deccan port, a thousand miles from heartland of Hindi-speaking India, remained the hub of both commercial Hindustani drama and commercial Hindi cinema for a hundred-and-fifty years. It’s not a coincidence that India’s most successful repertory theatre and its most profitable film industry were both incubated in Bombay and that the medium for both was Hindustani.

Bombay’s history brought this about in two ways. As one of the principal sites of colonial rule in India, the city hosted English stage plays in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries which helped create a hybrid commercial theatre that drew on both European and Indian theatrical traditions. But this wasn’t unique to Bombay; the same could be said of Calcutta. What was peculiar to Bombay was the presence of a merchant elite from elsewhere that was willing to experiment with commercial drama in any language that would fetch a return. Parsi theatre happened in Gujarati, Marathi, Urdu and even English, but given the currency of forms of Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani in northern and even some southern cities, it was a cheerful and robust Hindustani that found it the largest audience.

And while the Parsi theatre as a mobile repertory form wasn’t confined to Bombay, it is in Bombay that many of the major companies were centred. It was Bombay that provided much of the entrepreneurship, and many of the patrons, financiers, managers and performers who helped the Parsi theatre create the largest ticket-buying audience in Indian stage history. More

Why Bombay is India’s arch-metropolis

Published on May 27, 2010 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Bombay, Delhi vs Mumbai, Maximum City, Mumbai, Sacred Games, Shantaram.

Mukul Kesavan in The Telegraph:

It’s hard to define what a ‘sense of place’ actually means, but Gertrude Stein summed up its absence nicely when she said, “there’s no there there.” It’s safe to say that there’s plenty of ‘there’ in Bombay; not only does the city have more than its fair share of iconic landmarks, but it also has a style, a swagger, a way of speaking that has been storied in film and fiction.

As someone from Delhi, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that Delhi’s neighbourhoods, its sense of itself, its historical landmarks, don’t resonate with outsiders in quite the same way. Why is this? Delhi is the older town, historically the grander metropolis, and politically the much more powerful city. William Dalrymple’s history of the rebellion in Delhi, Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi show us a city that once represented historical processes larger than itself. And you can see that in movies like Delhi-6, there are worlds to be evoked, there’s a nostalgia to be harnessed in the service of fiction.

So why is it that it’s Bombay that captures the pan-Indian imagination? The only time Delhi is used as a metaphor is in the course of political sloganeering, when one politician or the other says ‘Dilli chalo’. Netaji Subhas Bose pioneered the slogan, and a bunch of less distinguished imitators like L.K. Advani have echoed it. I can, without thinking too hard, think of three big recent English language books (Sacred Games, Maximum City and Shantaram) that take Bombay as their text. And this is a fairly thin sliver of Indian literary production: if we were to get started on the popular fictions that shape India — the Hindi films that Bombay makes which, in their turn, make Bombay — the list would be endless. More:

The Oberoi reopens after terrorist attack

Published on April 27, 2010 in India, Terrorism and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: Bombay, Mumbai, Mumbai terror attack, PRS Oberoi, The Oberoi, The Oberoi Trident, The Trident.

The Oberoi-Trident, Mumbai, which was completely destroyed in the 26/11 attack, reopened its doors to the public on Saturday. The Oberoi Group CEO PRS Oberoi in conversation with The Indian Express Editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta.

This was the battlefield.

Yes. They put bombs here. And a lot of grenades. They broke everything. They wanted to kill as many people and do as much damage as they could.

Where were you when you heard of this and what came to your mind?

Well, I was living in the hotel that day but I had gone to North Bombay for a function. While I was there, I was told there had been an attack. First they thought it was a gang war. Half an hour later, they said it was a terrorist attack. I didn’t know what to make of it. When I came and saw what they had done two days later, it was a shock. I was practically in tears. I didn’t how long it would take to restore the hotel. It has been completely rebuilt now. Everything, except the structure, is new. I must give credit to our people. They worked very hard to get it to this standard. More:

Mumbai’s twin towers

Published on March 20, 2010 in India. 0 Comments Tags: Hafeez Contractor, India's tallest residential towers, Mumbai, Skyscraper, The Imperial, Twin towers.

Rendering (c) Shapoorji Property Development

At The Imperial, Mumbai, with 60 storeys, an apartment can cost around $ 18 million (Rs 80-85 crores). From Mint Lounge:

Click on the graphic in Lounge for a tour

Construction on The Imperial, a set of twin towers in the heart of south Mumbai, started eight years ago. India’s tallest residential towers, at 827ft, have been designed by Hafeez Contractor.

The management — SD Corp. Pvt. Ltd, a joint venture between Shapoorji Pallonji and Co. Ltd and the Dilip Thacker Group — says 65% of the apartments have been sold and are now being handed over to owners so that they can start working on the interiors. The towers are divided into three zones and one celebrated interior designer is responsible for designing each one.

The Thackerays’ primitive charisma

Published on February 20, 2010 in India and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: Bal Thackeray, Congress, Marathis, Mumbai, Politics, Raj Thackeray, Shiv Sena, Thackerays, Uddhav Thackeray.

Aakar Patel in Mint-Lounge:

Bal Thackeray

Politicians respond to constituencies. Their positions are deliberate.

What is the Thackerays’ constituency? Mumbai’s Marathis, whom the Thackerays speak for.

Congress does not represent Marathis in Mumbai, and they have surrendered this space politically to the Thackerays. This can be seen in their organizational structure

Neither the Mumbai regional Congress committee’s president Kripashankar Singh nor its treasurer Amarjit Singh is Marathi.

Of Mumbai Congress’ 18 vice-presidents, 12 are not Marathi. Of its 19 general secretaries, 13 are not Marathi. Of its 13 secretaries, eight are not Marathi. Of its seven executive members, none is Marathi.

Of Congress’s seven members of Parliament from Mumbai, six are not Marathi.

Of its 17 MLAs, 12 are not Marathi. Of its two housing board chairmen, neither is Marathi.

This surrender hasn’t come because Congress does not want Marathi votes, but because it cannot get them. Congress is inclusive by nature and cannot offer Mumbai’s Marathi what the Thackerays can, which is anger and resentment. More:

How slums can save the planet

Published on February 19, 2010 in Economy. 0 Comments Tags: Dharavi, India, Mumbai, Poverty, slums.

Dharavi, Mumbai, where population density reaches 1m people per square mile

From Prospect:

The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents. To a planner’s eye, these cities look chaotic. I trained as a biologist and to my eye, they look organic. Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density—1m people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.

Not everything is efficient in the slums, though. In the Brazilian favelas where electricity is stolen and therefore free, people leave their lights on all day. But in most slums recycling is literally a way of life. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 ragpickers. Six thousand tons of rubbish are sorted every day. In 2007, the Economist reported that in Vietnam and Mozambique, “Waves of gleaners sift the sweepings of Hanoi’s streets, just as Mozambiquan children pick over the rubbish of Maputo’s main tip. Every city in Asia and Latin America has an industry based on gathering up old cardboard boxes.” There’s even a book on the subject: The World’s Scavengers (2007) by Martin Medina. Lagos, Nigeria, widely considered the world’s most chaotic city, has an environment day on the last Saturday of every month. From 7am to 10am nobody drives, and the city tidies itself up. More:

We’re all Shah Rukh

Published on February 4, 2010 in India and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: Bal Thackeray, Bombay, Mumbai, My Name is Khan, RSS, Shiv Sena.

The RSS, the BJP, Mukesh Ambani and Rahul Gandhi are on the same side — against the Shiv Sena. Can Mumbai finally find its voice? Samar Halarnkar in The Hindustan Times:

On June 26, 1963, US President John F Kennedy, showing solidarity with beleaguered West Berliners, famously said (in a grammatically incorrect statement): “Ich bin ein Berliner.” I am a Berliner.

After 9/11, the French paper Le Monde declared: “We are all Americans.”

On Monday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said: “Count me as a Bihari.”

The wise often argue that silence speaks the loudest.

Not always. Not now. Not in India.

There is a reason the world’s best car companies install powerful horns in the automobiles they sell here. Indians need to say it out loud. Injustice triumphs when the powerful are silent, when standing strong only needs a voice.

So, in a city where business tsars and Bollywood stars are infamous for grovelling whenever a politician frowns, it was a relief to first hear Mukesh Ambani and later Shah Rukh Khan stick it to parochial politics and the Shiv Sena, incongruously named after Shivaji the Great.

“You can only say what you believe in and stand by it, and hopefully I will have the strength to do so,” Khan said in New York about the Sena’s threat to ban his latest movie, My Name is Khan, and to prevent his return to Mumbai. “As an Indian I’m not ashamed, guilty or unhappy about what I said, neither am I sorry.” More:

Herodotus, and the Parsis at Thermopylae

Published on January 31, 2010 in Faith and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: Asia, Cyrus, Darius, Greek, Khatri, Kshayarsa, Mumbai, Parsis, Sanskrit Kshatriya, Tatas, Xerxes, Zoroastrians.

Aakar Patel at The News:

In 480 BC, Persia’s emperor Xerxes attacked and defeated Greece. He bridged the Hellespont, the slim neck between Europe and Asia now called the Dardanelles, and marched his army of Iraqis, Iranians, Egyptians and Indians across to Macedonia and then south into Greece. Most Greek states on his path surrendered to him. Sparta lost one skirmish against his army and then refused to fight. The people of Athens abandoned their city to Xerxes and fled to an island in the south called Salamis.

Xerxes had invaded in anger, after Athens interfered militarily in one of his colonies on the west coast of Turkey. Reaching Athens, he burnt all of it down, including the Acropolis. Then, realising that the Athenians would not defend their state, took his army back to Asia.

We know all this because it was recorded by a Greek historian, Herodotus, who was born a few years before the invasion. It’s a simple and conclusive story. But over the centuries, one part of the invasion, that skirmish with the Spartans, has been used by Europeans to tell a different story. This is the story of freedom-loving individuals (Europeans) defending themselves against slavish barbarians (Asians). And this brave stand of the Spartans, according to the movie ’300′ and a recent BBC Radio 4 programme called ‘In Our Time’, “saved civilisation”.

It is a bold claim to make, because it assumes that civilisation is entirely European and there was no civilisation on the Persian side. It is also a factually untrue claim on two counts. The first that the skirmish, the battle of Thermopylae, was fought between 300 Spartans and 5.2 million Persians. The second that Xerxes lost the war.

Xerxes is Greek for the emperor’s Old Persian name, which was Kshayarsa, from the same root as Sanskrit Kshatriya and the modern caste name Khatri. More:

Taliban may be descended from Jews

Published on January 17, 2010 in Science. 0 Comments Tags: Afghan, Afghanistan, DNA, Ephraim tribe, Ethnicity, Israel, Jew, Jewish, Jews, Lucknow, Mumbai, Muslim, National Institute of Immunohaematology, Northern India, NWFP, Pashto, Pashtun, Pashtun Afridi tribe, Taliban, Technion Israel Institute of Technolog.

Click here to watch part 2 and here for part 3

The ethnic group at the heart of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan may descended from their Jewish enemy, according to researchers in India. Dean Nelson in the London Telegraph:

Experts at Mumbai’s National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten “Lost Tribes of Israel”.

The Israeli government is funding a genetic study to establish if there is any proof of the link.

An Indian geneticist has taken blood samples from the Pashtun Afridi tribe in Lucknow, Northern India, to Israel where she will spend the next 12 months comparing DNA with samples with those of Israeli Jews.

The samples were taken in Lucknow’s Malihabad area because it was regarded as the only place safe enough to conduct such a controversial project for Muslims.

Shanaz Ali a senior research fellow, will lead the study at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Tel Aviv. More:

Mumbai’s messy motorways

Published on January 13, 2010 in Economy and India. 0 Comments Tags: Bombay, Cities, Honda, Maruti, Mumbai, Traffic.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Traffic has become so bad in my home of Mumbai that I don’t bother to make friends on the north side of town anymore. I have to rudely refuse all dinner invitations from suburbanites because it takes more than two hours to reach them some days.

I’ve been monitoring Mumbai’s motorways for more than a decade: first from the front of a Honda scooter and recently from the back of a Hyundai Sonata. Back in the 90s there was already too much traffic but at least there was enough space to squeeze my Honda Kinetic past the idling cars. Today even that space is gone. The tightening knot of sub-compact cars, rickshaws and Tata trucks has expanded to the curb and beyond. Scooter-straddling families are stuck in the mess with the rest of us – except for the few that ride on the sidewalks.

I, like many Mumbaikars, am strangely proud of my city’s traffic mess. Any traffic story from anywhere else in the world, I can top. My best, awful story involves the traffic jam from hell in the late 90s. The 30 kilometers to the airport took seven hours – the last 30 minutes pushing my Padmini taxi through waist-high water. I still made my plane though. My flight’s crew was stuck in the same jam. More:

Residences of the rich and famous

Published on November 22, 2009 in Society. 0 Comments Tags: Ambani, Antilla, Mittal, Mumbai, New Delhi, wealth.

A rendering of 27-storey Antilla in Mumbai, the future home of Mukesh Ambani family.

Aakar Patel in the News, Pakistan:

Indians invest in two things mainly: gold and property. India is the world’s largest buyer of gold, much of it being turned into heavy and ornate wedding jewellery; and most Indians (Gujaratis excluded) would rather invest in property than in equity.

The world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, lives in the same three-bedroom house in Nebraska he bought 51 years ago. That would never happen in India, because for us our status comes from the size of our residence.

The billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man, bought a house in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens for 70 million pounds (about 560 crore Indian rupees) in 2004, and it was then the most expensive residence in the world. It had 12 bedrooms and parking space for 20 cars, and was sold to him by the Formula One championships owner, Ecclestone.

In 2008, Mittal broke his own record and bought another house in the same neighbourhood for his son, and this cost 117 million pounds (Rs 936 crore). For his daughter, Mittal bought a house in Delhi that cost Rs100 crore ($ 22 million). None of this would have dented his wealth, estimated by Forbes magazine last week, even in these times of recession, to be $30 billion (Rs140 lakh crore). More:

Bal Thackeray vs Sachin Tendulkar

Published on November 17, 2009 in Cricket, India, Politics and Sport. 1 Comment Tags: Bal Thackeray, Chauvinism, Hindu fundamentalism, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, MNS, Mumbai, Raj Thackeray, Regionalism, Sachin Tendulkar, Shiv Sena.

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray

Bal Thackeray, the leader of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena, has criticised cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar over his remarks that Mumbai belonged to all Indians. The right wing party champions the rights of local people, the Maharashtrians, often with violence and intimidation. Sena offshoot the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), run by Thackeray’s nephew Raj Thackeray, has also taken up the “Maharashtra for Maharashtrians” cause.

Sachin Tendulkar had said, “I am a Maharashtrian and I am extremely proud of that. But I am an Indian first. And Mumbai belongs to all Indians.”

Now, in an open letter addressed to the cricketer in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, Thackeray has slammed Tendulkar for “hurting Marathi sentiments.”

The Indian Express has the full text of Thackeray’s ‘open letter’ translated from Marathi:

Dear Sachin,

You have played like a king on the playground. You have got international fame, lots of money. You have not only become a lakhpati or crorepati but also an abjopati (billionaire). But nobody is complaining about it. Instead, we are proud (of you)! On the playground you are shining with a new glow. But before the Marathi mind could come to terms with your straight drive, you made a statement — “Though I am proud of being a Marathi and a Maharashtrian, I am a Hindustani first” — at a press conference, leaving cricket and venturing into politics. You have said something more: “Mumbai is not the monopoly of anyone. All people of Hindustan have an equal right over Mumbai.”

Sachin, the Marathi mind was shattered after hearing this. Was it necessary to say this when everyone is poised to grab Mumbai? Why did you take this ‘cheeky-single’ while talking about your Marathi pride? Here you are ‘run out’ on the pitch of Marathi Manoos. We don’t understand why only the Marathi Manoos get such epileptic fits? (You don’t know) how Marathi Manoos secured Mumbai, as you were not even born then. Maneater Murderji Morarji Desai had gone on a rampage. This rampage resulted in Marathi Manoos bleeding on the streets. Hundred-and-five Marathi people sacrificed their lives for Mumbai. This Mumbai can’t belong to the father of any parprantiya (people belonging to another region). More:

A year after Mumbai’s 9/11: Rebuilding the Taj Hotel

Published on November 16, 2009 in India, Terrorism and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: Bombay, Mumbai, Mumbai terror attack, The Taj Mahal Hotel.

The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai

From The Economic Times:

When the 34-member restoration team led by Indian Hotels V-P Sumit Guha set about its task, the obstacles came in many sizes and shapes, even in the form of dry fruits.

In what is left of Wasabi, the once-iconic sushi joint, workers found a bag full of bullets and almonds. The area had to be vacated and NSG was called in. It was the last elusive bag that the terrorists, who devastated India’s commercial capital on November 26, 2008, had left behind.

Guha says the total workforce involved in executing this dream is 1,000. The quest to achieve and even surpass the past glory of the 3,00,000 sq ft area hasn’t lacked either intensity or eye for detail, with the vice-chairman of Indian Hotels, Krishna Kumar, personally going through every little detail, from fabric to fittings.

The focus was threefold, themed suites to bring the hotel’s ballroom back in a classic avatar and make food and beverage the central hubs of the hotel. This made the hotel management sweep through the world’s best hotels with similar positioning, from Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel to Singapore’s Raffles, among scores of others to get an understanding of what the focus areas are. More:

[Image: The Taj Mahal Hotel website]

A year after Mumbai’s 9/11: And then they came for the Jews

Published on November 1, 2009 in India and Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: Jewish centre, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Mumbai, Nariman House, Oberoi Hotel, Oberoi Trident, Taj Mahal Hotel, Terrorist attack on Mumbai.

Last November, more than 150 people were killed by terrorists in Mumbai. One target was a centre run by this young Jewish couple, who were murdered and perhaps tortured; miraculously, their toddler son escaped. Alastair Gee went back to Mumbai to find out what really happened that night. From the Sunday Times:

Commandos landing on Nariman House, Mumbai

It is a sticky monsoon day in Mumbai, and Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz walks through the shell of Nariman House. Today, the ruined five-storey structure is testament to the ferocity of the terrorists’ incursion and their battle with Indian commandos. It seems impossible that anyone could have come out alive. All its window frames are empty. The lift is slumped at the bottom of its shaft, and giant, jagged chunks of the internal stairway and handrail are missing. At one point, a section of wall many metres high is gone, and the stairs would be open to the sky if not for a plastic draping. Some rooms appear almost untouched; in others, the walls are pulverised, the splatter-marks of gunfire everywhere.

Berkowitz is an American charged with recreating the Mumbai outpost of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a Hasidic outreach and educational organisation that sends emissaries around the world. “We are in deep shock,” says Berkowitz, 33. “They have left a gaping hole in our community.” The questions the Lubavitch movement faces are being asked of thousands of other people in the city: what to take from tragedy, how to heal, how to go forward. But even as the organisation looks to the future, uncertainty lingers over what took place during those 48 hours last November. During the siege, six foreigners were murdered inside Nariman House and three Indians were killed on the surrounding streets. Four people from inside the house survived. The building was run by Lubavitch, and was part of a larger attack on hotels and public buildings across Mumbai that resulted in the deaths of at least 166 people. But for the terrorists themselves, Nariman House was different. It was the only Jewish target, and the terrorists would be told by their handlers in Pakistan that the lives of Jews were worth 50 times those of non-Jews. The organisers had sought it out with care. Most Mumbaikars knew of the Taj Mahal hotel. Few were aware of the small Jewish centre tucked away on a backstreet.Strangely, considering Nariman House’s central place in the attacks, the events of the siege are a mystery. The full story of what happened, of how the siege began, of the hostages who escaped, and of the baby who was rescued, has never been told. More:

Raj Thackeray: The nephew also rises

Published on October 23, 2009 in India, Indian elections 2009, Leaders and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: Bal Thackeray, BJP, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Raj Thackeray, Shiv Sena.

In Mint, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha profiles Raj Thackeray, whose fledgeling party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a breakaway faction of his uncle’s right wing Shiv Sena, won a dozen seats in the state election.

Mumbai: There are two political events in Mumbai where crowds do not have to be hired and trucked in to create a false show of strength: the death anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar on 6 December and the annual Dusshera rally addressed by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. These are the two days when loyalists come on their own in packed trains, alight at Dadar railway station and then walk another 15 minutes to reach the Shivaji Park area where the city’s big political rallies are traditionally held.

So old timers in Maharashtrian-dominated area took notice of the fact that this was happening all over again when Raj Thackeray held a political rally. It was an advance warning to other political parties that the leader of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had struck a chord with his growing band of supporters, even as his divisive political acts threatened Mumbai’s famed cosmopolitan culture and made him the man many love to hate. More:

Eating fish in Mumbai

Published on October 5, 2009 in Food, India and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: Fish restaurants, Mumbai.

From the New York Times:

Surmai fry at HIghway Gomantak, Mumbai

Any true Mumbaiker knows not to eat seafood during monsoon season, from June to September. The choppy, churning waters stir up mud and grime, making it hard to find a fresh catch. And the government enforces a seasonal ban to keep the fish population sustainable.

Now that the rains have receded, the city is breaking its collective seafood fast. There are the no-brainer choices you’re likely to find in guidebooks, like the king crab at Trishna or the Goan fish curry at Mahesh Lunch Home. But if you are looking for something off the tourist-beaten path, better to head for a few lesser-known places that serve authentic coastal seafood.

A good spot to start is Highway Gomantak (44/2179, Gandhi Nagar, Bandra East; 91-22-2640-9692; www.highwaygomantak.com), a Goan specialist that’s been around for two decades. There are no napkins, air-conditioning or English spoken, but there is a focus on food. (As at all the other places below, pointing is a perfectly reasonable strategy: most of your fellow diners will be locals, and they’ll know the drill.) More:

Unshakable faith

Published on August 23, 2009 in Faith and Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: Consciousness, India's 9/11, jihad, Lashkar-i-Taiba, Mumbai, Mumbai terror attack, Spirituality, Synchronicity Foundation, Taj Hotel, The Oberoi hotel.

The Mumbai terrorist attacks killed two pilgrims from Virginia, but not their companions’ belief that everything, and everyone, is connected. April Witt in the Washington Post:

Naomi bent over the exotic, blood-red flower blossoms that flourished in the ashram garden and breathed in. It was a delicious moment of perfect peace: Naomi Scherr, just 13 years old, her shoulder-length strawberry-hued hair damp from the Indian heat, her face full of wonder at the beauty of a world she was just discovering. It was the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008.

Lingering in a sacred garden on the outskirts of the busy Indian port city of Mumbai was just one more blissful interlude on the 10th day of what had been a joyous spiritual journey for Naomi, her father, Alan Scherr, 58, and 23 fellow pilgrims with an international meditation group based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Inside the ashram, young monks chanted hauntingly beautiful prayers in Sanskrit for the spiritual tour group from the Synchronicity Foundation. “It was heaven,” recalled Helen Connolly, a yoga teacher from Toronto who was Naomi’s roommate on the trip. Afterward, as their giant tour bus threaded past the tiny motorcycle taxis called tuk-tuks that clog Mumbai’s streets, Helen had the dreamy sense of being inside an orca as it swam through schools of minnows.

Later that evening, in a rented hall in downtown Mumbai, the pilgrims sat meditating with the America guru who had led them to India: Master Charles Cannon. Indian locals wandered in to join them and greet the visiting guru, a trim, quietly charismatic 63-year-old mystic with a down-to-earth manner. Master Charles teaches a holistic view of the universe in which everyone and everything — sunlight and shadow — are one unified consciousness; and in which the events of this world, whatever they may be, are somehow meant to be. As Master Charles brought this night’s session to a close, pilgrims and locals spilled onto the dark streets, still relishing the blissed-out, almost opiated state that some longtime meditation practitioners achieve. Master Charles, however, sensed shadow. As the guru and his followers made their own way back to their five-star hotel, the Oberoi, Master Charles had the incongruous sense that something was about to happen. Be alert, he thought: Ah, it’s very close.

Four days earlier, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 22, a small boat launched from the Pakistani coastal city of Karachi. Its passengers were 10 young men who had spent months training for this moment. Each carried a large rucksack stocked with Kalashnikov ammunition, two 9mm pistols, hand grenades, an Improvised Explosive Device and a cellphone. The young men, terrorists recruited from across Pakistan, journeyed into the Arabian Sea. They were headed more than 500 nautical miles south — to Mumbai. More:

Zoroastrians launch ‘Facebook for Parsees’

Published on August 22, 2009 in Faith, India and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: India, Mumbai, Parsees, Parsis, Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrians.

Rhys Blakely from Mumbai in the Times:

During their brief history, social networking websites have united millions of long-lost school friends and diverted millions of office workers from, well, working.

But can one save a 3,500-year-old religion on the brink of extinction?

Zoroastrianism, whose fire-worshipping followers subscribe to the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster, is possibly the world’s wealthiest and most influential faith, but it faces a crisis. Its bachelors tend to marry late, if at all, while women who marry outside the community are excommunicated. As a result, there are only 120,000 Zoroastrians left, a third of whom are over 60. A dwindling birthrate has raised fears that adherents – known as Parsees in India, the religion’s main stronghold – are dying out.

They hope that the key to survival is a website designed to create a database of its young that will encourage them to intermarry. It is being billed as a kind of “Facebook for Parsees” that will place a heavy emphasis on matrimonial matters. More:

The luxury of solitude

Published on August 15, 2009 in India and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: Bombay, Drugs, Mumbai, Traffic.

In a Mumbai greenmarket, David Farley hunts for the Indian city’s most precious commodity. From World Hum:

As soon as I closed the door of the cab and told the driver where I wanted to go, an uninvited visitor leaned in my window. “Opium? Weed? Charlie?” he asked. “You like the Charlie?” Before I could open my mouth, my driver barked a few terse sentiments and put his foot on the gas pedal, launching us into the miasma of concrete, steel and perpetual honking that is the Mumbai road system.

“That man,” said my driver. “He’s bad. Don’t buy nothing from him.”

I felt a slight sense of relief. This cab driver and I had known each other for less than a minute, but it seemed he had my back, shielding me from the cacophony of unsolicited sales pitches that I’ve had to endure since arriving in the city.

“First time in India?” he queried, the question I’d already been asked about 17 times in the 36 hours since my plane touched down in this city. Yes, it was my first time. And before he could ask me the predictable sequel, I answered: “I’m not sure what I think of India yet. It’s just so … chaotic.” More:

The audacity of pop

Published on June 27, 2009 in Music. 0 Comments Tags: A.R. Rahman, India, Michael Jackson, Mumbai.

Irena Akbar in the Indian Express:

Michael Jackson was the Barack Obama of pop music. Or perhaps it should be put the other way round, since Michael came long before Obama did on the public scene. On Thursday, as the king of pop passed away, here’s what makes Obama and Michael so similar in more ways than just the fact that they are the world’s most recognisable Black faces.

Like Obama, Michael, an African-American youngster, had White audiences under his spell. His 1982 album Thriller, with 50 million copies sold worldwide, is history’s best-selling album ever. His concerts had Whites attempting to “moon-walk” like him. MTV, which was criticised for playing videos by only white performers, started regularly airing the title video of Thriller.

Soon enough, Michael had cast his magical spell all over the world, just like Obama’s victory was celebrated from New York to New Delhi. As an Indian child growing up in conservative Saudi Arabia in the 1980s -- I still remember Michael’s legendary numbers like Billy Jean and Beat It beaming out of racing sedans on the streets of Jeddah. Blasphemous it may sound, such was my craze for Jackson -as was that of any other kid in the 1980s -- I would play the number in our car when we would drive back to Jeddah after our pilgrimage in Mecca. Not to forget, we would play a videogame whose theme was based on his song, Smooth Criminal. And oh yes, who can forget the Bad poster that adorned many a wall of my friends there. More:

Below, another tribute:

And in Outlook, AR Rahman on Michael Jackson:

I met him personally after the Oscars in Los Angeles and we vibed very well. He said that he loved India and the Indian people. He said he heard good things about me and he was praising the chord progression of Jai Ho’s chorus.

He was bursting with energy and told me that every dance move he did, came from his soul and did a five second stunning example. It was like a lightning strike

He was concerned about developmental issues such as Global Warming and about wars and its damages to the human community.

He asked me to compose a unity anthem on the likes of “We are the World ” for him. I nodded in awe …! More:

Terror at Taj Hotel could have ended first night itself

Published on June 4, 2009 in India and Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: Attack on Mumbai, Bombay, Mumbai, Taj Mahal Hotel.

An Indian Express investigation:

The Taj Hotel in Mumbai, November 27, 2008.

Within the first hour of the firing at Café Leopold on 26/11, a small group of armed policemen who pursued the four attackers inside the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers Hotel were presented with 12 golden minutes to restrict, if not eliminate, them as they were holed up inside a room for that duration. Another, much bigger, opportunity came after midnight when the four terrorists took refuge in a second room for nearly two hours and the Mumbai Police had about 120 armed men to take them on.

CCTV footage accessed by The Indian Express shows that on both occasions, the police squandered the chance waiting for commandos to arrive from New Delhi and launch a counter-offensive – a full 12 hours after the attacks began. More:

Raj Thackeray on his politics and policies

Published on May 1, 2009 in India, Indian elections 2009 and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: Bal Thackeray, Mumbai, Shiv Sena, Urban immigritation.

Financial Times interviews the founder of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) or Maharashtra Renaissance Army:

FT: Do you believe there has been too much immigration into Mumbai?

Raj Thackeray: Every city or state has a limited capacity with regards to its ability to provide adequate facilities. The taxpayer is entitled to some essential things. Families should be able to provide their children with playgrounds and find places for them in schools. There should be enough hospitals. Water should be provided to all. Surplus electricity should be available. The taxpayer should be comfortable. Today there is such an influx [of people] that 40,000 live in slums next to the pipeline that provides water to the city of Mumbai. Then there is the issue of terrorism. We do not know who is a terrorist and who is a migrant worker…

FT: You’ve stated that the city lacks the capacity to house an influx of non-Maharastrian people. Should these people be stopped from coming.

Raj Thackeray: You have to stop these people from coming in because we have reached the maximum capacity of the city of Mumbai. We do not have places [for them] to stay. And then these people coming from outside and encroach upon municipal and government lands and set up slums. In today’s Mumbai, can you take your children out safely? Is there a place? Is there an open garden where parents can safely take their children out in the evenings? And then we have this daily influx of families. How will we discover who is a terrorist and who is a normal person? More:

A change won’t come

Published on March 27, 2009 in Conflict and India. 0 Comments Tags: Cafe Leopold, Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mimbai after terror attacks, Mumbai, Mumbai terror attacks, Nariman House, Oberoi Hotel, Taj Mahal Hotel, Terrorism, the Jewish centre.

Four months after the terror attacks on Mumbai, Naresh Fernandes takes a walk around the city to discover what lessons – if any – have been learnt since 26/11. From The National:

On the wall outside Nariman House, the Jewish centre in the crowded Colaba Market area in southern Mumbai in which a rabbi and his wife were among the hostages killed, the shrapnel indentations have been incorporated into a simple mural. Red circles have been painted around the dozens of bullet pockmarks. Under it a sign in Hindi and English says, “We condemn the 26-11-08 terror attacks.” Next to it is a large Pepsi logo. The building is still empty but on one recent evening children darted down the lane playing catch, scurrying past prams heading to the bakery at the corner.

Down the road at the popular tourist hangout Cafe Leopold, the bullet marks no longer elicit attention. Until it was pointed out to her, a tourist from Argentina who gave her name only as Estephania didn’t even notice that her table was right next to a mirror punctured neatly by a bullet. Farhang Jehani, one of the owners, said that the proprietors had decided against repairing the damage as a reminder of the evening when 10 people, including two members of his staff, fell to a spray of automatic weapon fire. He reopened for business approximately 90 hours later. He didn’t believe that he was being especially brave when he rolled up his shutters. “Life,” he said, “must go on.”

[Photo of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus by bettadesign; under Creative Commons license]

Banker offers to be Mumbai’s CEO

Published on March 26, 2009 in India, Indian elections 2009 and Politics. 0 Comments Tags: ABN Amro, Meera H Sanyal, Mumbai, Terror attack on Mumbai.

From The Indian Express:

Meera H Sanyal, chairperson and country executive, ABN Amro, is on leave till May 15. The reason behind the leave application: she will be “contesting for the most important job” – that of running the country. This Malabar Hill resident will soon be filing nomination papers as an Independent candidate from the Mumbai South Lok Sabha constituency.

After 25 successful years in banking, Sanyal’s move can’t be seen as a mere itch for a career switch. Instead, it’s an alert and bright citizen’s response to the call of making a difference. “Politics was not considered to be a dirty world when India got Independence. The best and brightest minds were in this field,” says the daughter of a Naval officer. “For long, Mumbai has wanted a CEO to take care of its affairs, here is one for them,” she says.

Dido has a slumdog moment too

Published on January 28, 2009 in Movies and Music. 0 Comments Tags: Dido, Let's do the things we normally do, Mumbai, Safe Trip Home, Shahana Goswami, Siddharth Sikand.

Cutting chai, crazy traffic, BEST buses and a woman taxi driver in Mumbai are all part of the video for Dido’s new song, Let’s do the things we normally do from her album Safe Trip Home. The video is directed by Siddharth Sikand, the man behind the Get Gorgeous promos on Channel [V]. Sikand’s brief was simple: he had to interpret home. So, he picked on a woman cab driver (Shahana Goswami) and all life’s drama that she watches unfolding in the back seat of her cab.

The slumdog story

Published on January 24, 2009 in Culture, Entertainment and Movies. 1 Comment Tags: Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood, Danny Boyle, Freida Pinto, Golden Globe, Hollywood, Irrfan Khan, Mumbai, Poverty.

How ‘Danny uncle’ and his ‘moral compass’ created the biggest ‘Indian’ blockbuster–and why you should watch it. Sanjukta Sharma in Mint Lounge:

Freida Pinto

Every morning, Jamal spends a few special minutes with himself in the loo. Squatting, chin resting in his palms, he dreams. Sometimes, the seven- or eight-year-old slum boy looks at the dog-eared photograph of Amitabh Bachchan that’s neatly folded and tucked in his pant pocket. The loo is makeshift-precariously perched on a wooden platform, which stands on swampland. His neighbourhood is the Juhu slum-the one we see every time our flight is about to touch down in Mumbai. The slum begins where one side of the runway ends.

At other times, Jamal plays gilli-danda or invites the ire of cops, making them chase him through grimy, narrow lanes to his matchbox tenement home.

And later, after his mother dies in a communal riot, Jamal’s life is endlessly and dangerously charged with adrenalin. He begs at traffic jams, palms pressed flat against car windows. He steals food through the windows of running trains.

Steel amid adversity: Tata after Mumbai

Published on December 22, 2008 in Business, Conflict, Economy, India and Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: Attack on Taj hotel, Corus, Jaguar, Mumbai, R.K. Krishna Kumar, Ratan Tata, steel, Taj Hotel, Tata group, Tata Sons, Tata Steel, TCS, Terrorist attack on Mumbai, The Tatas.

Joe Leahy reports from Mumbai in Financial Times:

Ratan Tata was at home in south Mumbai late on November 26 when the call came. On the line was a frantic R.K. Krishna Kumar, head of the Tata group unit that owns the city’s luxury Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel.

The unthinkable had happened, Mr Kumar told the Tata chairman. Terrorists had taken over the Taj, the 105-year-old wedding cake-like structure on Mumbai’s waterfront that was built by Mr Tata’s great-grandfather and is the pride of India’s largest private sector group. Scores had been killed. The building was on fire.

Unable to leave his apartment that evening because of the chaos on the streets, Mr Tata made it to the group’s stately south Mumbai headquarters, Bombay House, the following day. As the country’s politicians engaged in a blame game, Mr Tata was one of the few public figures who seemed to strike the right tone on the attacks. He bluntly criticised the state’s lack of preparedness while expressing grief for those killed.

“This is a very, very unfortunate situation which none of us are going to forget. My message really is that the government and state authorities should also not forget,” he told journalists on the steps of Bombay House.