Juhu and Bandra

My cousins Gaurang and Ashwini took me on a tour of Parle (pronounced Parla when by itself and Villay Parlay when said in tis entirety) and some of the surrunding suburbs.  The areas north of South Bombay aren't really suburbs, they are technically part of the city, part of the newer sprawl.

One of these areas is Juhu Beach.  That's where many of the Hindi movie stars, like Amita Buchan, live.  His house was obviously grand but dwarfed by some of the industrialist's mansions in South Bombay.  We stopped by the Iskon headquarters and main temple, these are the Hare Krishna people.  I thought that this was actually an American thing but thurns out they have their roots in India.   The beach itself was pretty nice.  We walked along it for a while sipping cocnut until it was time for lunch.

Bandra is just on the other side of the bridge from Mumbai and is known having a lot of really good restaurants.  The place we went to was one of the better Indian Chinese restaurants but I don't think I'm a huge fan of the genre.  By the way, anything Asian is considered Chinese, so we started with a Tom Yum and progressed to Dim Sum, which is their term for dumplings and finally pomfrete which is a delicious local fish.

Later that afternoon I headed back to Mumbai from Vile Parle via autorikshaw, these are all compressed gas, back to Bandra where I took a regular cab the rest of the way.  Only full size cabs are allowed in Mumbai.  My cousin, Mumta, the two cousins she grew up with Anant and Tulsi, and all their spouses took me to the Willmington Club for a pre-dinner drink or five.  In Bombay, they measure each drink as a shot, larges are doubles.  I think singles are triples in SF.  Dinner was back in Bandra at 11, my third time in the area that day.

There are a surprising number of meat eaters in my generation.  A few are closet meat eaters and the others only have it outside the home.  They don't allow their children to partake and as far as they know their parents don't.  I wonder if meat is naturally enticing and we genetically gravitate to it because our bodies crave it or if it has a taboo appeal.  I think because I have the option of having it whenever I want that to me food is just food.  I wonder what it would be like if I didn't have it for a while, not that I would try that out any time soon.  I want to know what it's like to have not had it, then try eating flesh for the first time and if you then crave it from then on.