Fortunately it’s winter and the temperature was only in the
mid-twenties as we disembarked at Mumbai International Airport. A ten minute
bus ride to the terminal and a few fast-moving but long queues later and we exited
the airport terminal in a gas-powered taxi with a manically manual hooter on the wheel and behind the wheel…
Traffic is nothing short of organised chaos. Lanes are just there for show and everyone seems to have an insatiable desire
to regularly and often randomly hoot so that there is an accompanying
cacophony of honks and horns as drivers weave in and out and across without
causing too many jams. I have been in this kind of traffic before in Nairobi
and Dar es Salaam, but not with this much anti-musical accompaniment.
A forty minute drive and we entered the famed Colaba where
much of the story of Shantaram was set. In a side street just passed the Regal
Cinema we found the Abode Hotel in a building aptly named Lansdowne House. On street
level there is an unassuming and even somewhat dingy doorway with a lift ‘manned’
by a woman who took us up one flight to the hotel lobby. To say that the foyer
is a contradiction is to reveal my own preconceptions that were informed by the
air of grandiose decay that is prevalent throughout the old suburb.
An afternoon stroll for a smoke along the shore-front and a
much needed nap later and we headed off in search of what was to prove to be an
inspired introduction to the Bombay Blues…
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