Mumbai: Gujarati Thali Again and the Sad Story of the Asiatic Society

Another rainy day in Mumbai. I'd stopped being so disappointed - it's foolish to be disappointed by rain in Mumbai - but I was by this point growinfg bored, cooped up in a moldy hotel room with only a terrifyingly huge snail to keep me company. There just wasn't a hell of a lot to do in Colaba when it rained like this. I could sit in Barista and drink surprisingly all right cappucino, and regard knowingly the boy with a copy of Nabakov and a wispy beard one seat over. I could while away a few hours in an internet cafe that smelt of pee, catching up with my friends to the sound of the Muslim owner's Arabic pop-music, piped in the background. I could leap through puddles and slosh through buckets of mud to the local gas station to purchase a Diet Coke, listening in while a Mumbai Society Lady upbraided the properitor on his disappointing biscuit selection. These were the entertainments provided to me. At least I had some books.

I tried to visit the Asiatic Society Library. The Asiatic Society certainly had a good pedigree: founded in 1804 by Scottish judge and professional dilettante Sir James Mackintosh, the society intended to gather "useful knowledge, particularly such as is now immediately connected with India". An Asiatic Society in London followed, and the current building was finished around 1830. It currently functions as a library, with over 100,000 books in the collection, andover 15,00 books classified as rare (including one of the two extant copies of the Divine Comedy).

I was hoping for a colonial and welcoming library like the one I'd found in downtown Bangalore - a calm oasis of learning full of amiable egg-heads who might be willling to talk to me. I might even be able to find a book or two on Hampi, the ancient Vijayangar empire, a personal obsession of mine. It sounded promising.


Abroad is always under construction.

. I dutifully tramped over to Kala Ghoda, slightly soaking myself. The Asiatic Society sits in the middle of a large and impressive looking ring-road, or at least it might have been when new, back when it occasionally saw something approximating maintenance. Now it's old and the buildings ae stained with grime and moss, but they retain a certain grandoise, out of place appeal - there are not very many people here, for Mumbai, and the little park in its center is a nice enough place to while away the day. (I had found myseld trapped in this part of town two years ago, in the hottest part of the day, and had stumbled slightly dazed into this park - it was so crowded with people with the same idea as my own that we all jockeyed madly for butt-space, there was nowhere to retreat. I ended up sitting half on an ant pile next to a girl studying French: I had a nap anyway).

I am sad to report that the Asiatic Society was a vast disappointment. They were theoretically renovating it - there was scaffolding up around the outside - but the interior was dusty and dirty, and the books were all locked away. (I find locked away books in a library vasly offensive - surely thre are security reasons for such, but the browsing element of a library is destroyed, the sense of discovery mooted). There was no attendant to ask to unlock the books, and it was nearly impossible to see through the faded glass, anyhow. The rain kicked up ferociously as soon as I got inside, and I sulkily retreated to the "Ladies Study Area" to look at a book on South Indian History I had in my backpack. Cooing from the ceiling: a pigeon family had taken up residence inside the library's main room.



I had lunch at the Copper Chimney, in Kala Ghoda. It's one of those upscale North Indian/tandoori places favored by power-lunchers and Punjabi families dressed up for a weekend outing. Curiously enough, it's downstairs from a trendy buffet/gelato/Wesern restaurant, and is decorated in a very contempo fashion. I went for my usual picks - tandoori chicken, tandoori gobi.


Could someone familar with Mumbai and/or able to read Hindi tell me who this man is and why he has a statue?

It always amuses me that many Westerners don't know how tandoori chicken gets that red. It's food coloring. They don't use it here, usually a sign of a higher quality establishment. This was excellent. Lots of yogurt coating left on their.

Saleem and I had been hoping to meet up again, but I recieved a call from him around 8:00 PM, after he got off work. "It's raining so hard they've stopped running the trains from Bandra," he said.

"Jesus," I said. "That's not normal is it?"

"Oh, no." he said. "Not normal." Mumbai after all is sub-aquatic city, a city mostly accustomed to being buffeted with rain. Well, within reason - there were the floods back in 2007. This monsoon wasn't flooding, not exactly, but it was persistent, it wouldn't quit, it just kept on thumping away.

The Monsoon, the goddamend monsoon. I was fairly insulated from it in Bangalore - a town with remarkably pleasant weather - but this years monsoon has been the worst in 20 years, a remarkably persistent SOB. Well, according to this article, not the worst by a long shot. (Actually, rather dry on average) Simply one of the most maddeningly erratic. Back in the day, you knew when the monsoon would start and when it would end. Now? All bets are off.

It was pissing down rain, as it had been for the past four days, and I was the only person in Golden Star Thali, situated near the Opera House, opposite Carni Road railway station. The host was small and thin and had an extremely grand manner to him: he ushered me to my seat in a fairly theatrical fashion. "It's all you can eat, madame," he informed me, as the metal thali plate was set before me.

Christ, did he ever mean it.



This montrosity is Golden Star's 300 rupee thali. Not exactly a major investment for a comically large amount of food. It's less refined then Samrat's thali, but it's a little tastier - got more "soul" as we'd say in my native tounge. Loved the stir-fried cabbage and the variant on aloo gobi. It's not as sweet as Samrat's either. (No, I didn't ask for the ketchup. Came with). The Gujarati dahi? Fantastic. I'm very keen on all Indian dahi/curd products and this did not disappoint. You cannot stop them from pouring ghee all over the plate so don't even try. They also bring you masala chaas, a yogurt drink with turmeric and ginger. Incredibly refreshing and a fantastic way to restore electrolytes in Mumbai's climate.



This is, I believe, Gujarati Dal Bati. Basically, it's dal with bits of wheat dough - these seem to be Gujarati "crackers" or biscuit bhakris. Golden Star is very fond of running specials on every day of the week, be they unlimited Bengali sweets, unlimited desserts of another sort, or other items of their choosing. See what's on when you visit. They give you a card which, if stamped ten times, scores you a free thali. I love these guys.

Gujarati Thali and Yet More Rain

The Chor Bazaar, being damp.

I had earlier that day made a desperate and completely unsuccessful attempt at visiting the Chor or "Thieves" Bazaar in Mumbai. It is supposed to be a fascinating, colorful, and slightly maddening place, full of little shops of pilfered antiques and people who might pick your pocket, the sort of thing one wants to experience while at a bazaar in a weird old Indian city. It was pissing down rain of course, the warmish pee-scented rain that Mumbai excels at, but I decided I was going to ignore the rain, I was going to join Mumbai's intrepid and hungry millions and go out and have a look. Surely Mumbaikers, accustomed to the wet, would be out in force at the Chor Bazaar regardless of the weather. I hailed a taxi. "The Chor Bazaar," I told him confidently.

He regarded me over his luxurious Marastha mustache. "As you wish, madame," he said. Idiot, he was doubtless thinking, as he fiddled with his malfunctioning and sorely needed windshield wiper.

I got there and of course, it was totally empty. A few people in colorful outfits crouched under their stalls with ponchos over their heads and resigned expressions on their faces. An occasional auto-rickshaw splashed by, tossing mud up into the air. "Why the fuck are you here?" everyone seemed to be saying to me. This was a good question, but I popped open my umbrella and walked down the street anyway. Maybe I could walk myself into something interesting. Getting lost? Not a problem - there was always a taxi, eventually.

This was a swell plan until my shoe broke. I was left standing beside the road in a considerably sized puddle, standing on one foot and trying not to think about the detritus in the water that swirled around my feet. But this was Mumbai - a cab was inevitable. Or so I thought. The rain had driven seemingly the entire city into the tender embrace of its cabbies, and all the cabs that came by were full. I waited, damp and hungry and in a remarkably pissed off mood, for about twenty minutes until an empty cab finally sailed by.

I got the cab to drop me off at the Sea Palace and hobbled inside to sulk for a bit, at least until lunch time. On the wrought-iron fence around the hotel, I spotted an immense object that resembled a sea-shell: it was in fact a freakishly enormous snail.

I gleefully unstuck the beast, palmed it, and took it inside. I am fairly certain the hotel staff noticed that I was taking a freakishly large snail up to my room, but were probably too shocked to make any sort of comment. I don't recall a No Snail clause in the sign on the wall, so it was probably perfectly all right in legal terms.



Then we had a gigantic cephalopod photoshoot.



Work it, baby. I am getting a brand new camera - Canon Eos 550 - in a few days and am drooling with anticipation over how much better macro shots of things like snails will look with that puppy in hand. That's your nerd public announcement of the day.

For lunch, I decided to hunt down one of Mumbai's signature food stuffs. I was going to find myself a Gujarati thali.

India, like the USA, is deeply susceptible to the allure of the All You Can Eat. However, India and Indians aren't overburdened with buffets - something that may come as a shock to Americans who have never encountered Indian food outside of a steam-table. In India, all-you-can-eat manifests itself in the thali, a steel plate filled with small portions of various curries. There's a profusion of places to get Gujarati thali in Mumbai. I decided on Samrat - it was both highly reccomended and reasonably close to Colaba. I didn't want to have to swim there.


Thali plate prior to filling.

I decided to try the Gujarati thali at the famous Samrat restaurant, in Churchgate. Samrat is an old, respected, and enormous place, with seating for over 200 and a cake and gelato shop attached to it. The interior is aggressively air conditioned, kitted out in the hip colors of 1975 (like many Mumbai landmakrs) and is very clean. The oldish and profusely moustached wait-staff possess that endlessly amusing, slightly snobby old-school Mumbai appeal. Pretty much everyone here gets the Gujarati thali, a mixed plate offering an assortment of traditional foodstuffs from the Gujarat region.

There's three universals with Gujarati thali. The first is that it is almost always vegetarian, in keeping with Gujurat's Hindu heritage. The second is that it is always remarkably sweet, usually flavored with plenty of jaggery. The water in dry and hot Gujarat is rather salty, and the locals believe the sugar counteracts the saline content. The sweetness of the Gujarati thali attracts the disdain of some hardcore foodies. Me - I think it's quite pleasant in moderation. Third: there's going to be plenty of it. A typical Gujarati thali joint keeps three or four servers with pots of food circulating around the eating area, ready to top off your array of little steel bowls (whether you need it or not). Come hungry.



Samrat has got the thali thing down to a science and the plate, once filled up, is truly a delightful sight. Gujaratis love whole wheat breads, and there's papad, roti, and the Gujarati's trademark wheat bhakri bread. There's a large portion of a dry vegetable curry (shaak) made with bitter melon, eggplant, carrot, and onion. The white stuff is kadhi, made with curds, gram flour, chili ginger paste, coriander, and the ever-present jaggery. It's remarkably refreshing in the heat. The spongy looking item on the right is a sweet dhokla, made of fermented chickpeas and served in a sweet curd sauce. It tastes considerably nicer then it sounds. The round ball is a kachori, a baked item filled with a stuffing of what tasted like sweet potato and peanut. The result was India's delectable answer to a peanut butter cookie. These things are dangerous.



There's a large portion of a dry vegetable curry (shaak) made with bitter melon, eggplant, carrot, and onion. The tomato dish is a sweet-and-sour curry, followed by a curry with stewed peas, and the usual chole, or chickpeas.



Gujarati thali demands a variety of condiments. There's mint chutney, sweet tamarind imli, the classic sweet peach chutney, mango pickle, and chili sauce. Some thali places will also bring you ketchup if you're into that kind of thing. (Indians really love ketchup).

Thali consumed to the extent possible - the waiters act a bit downtrodden if you refuse their endless refills - I headed outside again. Still raining. Still would be.