Homely Mumbai

Dobi Ghat - where the washing is done in Mumbai

The most expensive private residence in the world

A view of Mumbai from the hanging gardens

It is about half six in the evening and I am on Marine Drive, and the view around the claw of the bay is beautiful - a hazy glitz lended by the light smog that is jostled by a  breeze that drifts over the water, dozens of towerblocks rising up into the blue cloudless sky. The air tastes only slightly acrid, and smells only mildly of fumes and toxicity - much better than London fares in 32 degrees of heat.
To my left as I head north is the majestic sweep of Chowpatty Beach, and on the concrete hoarding that seperates me from the sand thousands of people sit chatting and eating stall food. Boys, mostly domestic servants so I am told, hold hands in friendship as they walk along the concrete. Everyone seems to be catching the post work sun - great wealth in designer gear strides alongside begger's and vendor men on the pavement.
I am trying to hail a cab with no luck so I follow the general meadering up this great artery, still arrested by the cityscape and the languid activity of the people, occasionly waving my hand in hope for a lift. After ten minutes or so a taxi pulls alongside. The driver does not know where I am staying. We debate this a while, and I scan a painfully inadequate and tiny map of Greater Mumbai in my Lonely Planet to try and give him a neighbouring street or landmark.
"Can I help you?" a voice says. It lilts in that Indian way, and is also mildly clipped and interrogative, showing a thread of poshness. A women of perhaps 22, clear skinned and fresh faced, is addressing me. I notice that she has an engaging way of moving her head expressively as she talks - a motion that seems part California valley girl, part ubiquitous indian head waggle. I had seen her down the road trying to flag down a cab to no avail, and in my strategically sound yet unsentimentally British way passed ahead to outflank her.
I explain the situation, and unfortunately she does not know the road either. I rack my brains for the name of the main highway close by, but turn up a blank. A thought comes to me - remembering I had seen the building the night before while walking. "It is near the most expensive private residence in the world" I say, "the..... . Antilla, I think?"
      "Ah, I know it." she says and jumps into my cab, so I follow her in.
      It's the sort of thing that rarely happens in London, the sharing of cabs. I mention this to Jade, as she tells me her name is, once we are on the move. "In India it happens all the time, neccesity really - at rush hour there aren't enough cabs to go round". I gaze out at the vast sea of yellow topped black taxis that clog every artery of the city and this statement is hard to believe. But then you look out at the tower blocks that stretch for miles, and the slums that grip to the clear spaces of the suburbs and you can credit the thought again.
      Jade and I talk for sometime as the traffic turns a fifteen minute drive to a forty five minute one. She works in Bollywood as a set designer, although she is working out her notice period before going to college to study psycology. Mumbai is a city of students, dozens of colleges and universities, tens of thousands of graduates, ambitious and bursting, like the towering residence up in the sky.
And despite the intensity of the hub bub and the crush which I thought would come down on me there is a homelyness here. Perhas because I have been lucky to stay with such a great family - the parents of a friend who have treated me like a king - but also there is a warmth in temprement that, if Jade is right and is born of neccesity, has flourished in a vistor's eyes to be genuine.