Embarcadero, S.F., Fourth of July, in an ill-fated attempt to see fireworks long since cancelled at that spot:

Bandstand, Bandra, Feb. ‘07, in the general direction of Shah Rukh’s house:

Parag reppin’ D.C. on a glorious summer morning at Lands End in the Second World

My buddy Parag Khanna launched his book The Second World at a clutch of readings around Harvard last Friday and had a chi-chi launch party at Sparks House, the residence of Harvard’s official chaplain.
When I was living in Bandra, my pad […]

The moon is burnt sienna out my window, but it’s far too gelid to stay and watch. My last eclipse, I stood atop a Bombay apartment building in the slumbering hour between midnight and two, threading my way between a cat’s cradle of cables, trying not to wake a worker sleeping on the roof. […]

This WSJ story on Rasmalai Stallion Azim Premji and his company Wipro, née Western Indian Vegetable Product, says Partition was a natural immigration sieve (thanks, Kautilya):

The Muslims who abandoned India included large numbers of the most educated and successful. Those remaining after partition have become “economically, socially, educationally… India’s most backward community,” says Mahmood Madani, […]

How to run cable

During my year in Bombay, I hung out with other Indian-American tech entrepreneurs with development teams in the desh. We all struggled with the same basic things. India is enamored with the BigCo’s of the world, but it won’t have its own Silicon Valley until learns to care for startups. BigCo’s build […]

Balle balle, Bombay to L.A.:
It took me three days of work just to exit India (foreigner registration, converting rupees to dollars 10K at a time, filling out two pages of forms and having my passport photocopied). In contrast, in London they converted the remainder in seven minutes flat without even asking for ID. The immigration […]

Ravan & Eddie is author Kiran Nagarkar’s funny, insightful 1995 pæan to growing up in a Bombay chawl during the ’50s. The titular twins of fate are forever bound to each other, like Rahu and Ketu, after Ravan accidentally kills Eddie’s father. Eddie the Christian becomes a budding Hindu extremist, Ravan aspires to be a […]

For years I suffered through explanations of desi holidays in the local S.F. Bay Area papers. It’s usually a photo in the feature section with a short, two-line description and a whiff of well-meaning leftism. Then Johnny Hart, R.I.P., would embed some baffling Biblical allegory in B.C. every couple of weeks, which I could decode […]

Film City in Goregaon East is a hilltop jungle like JNU, interspersed with office buildings like Adlabs and Whistling Woods, the new film school advertised before Bollywood flicks. Many of the mid-’80s Bollyflicks’ fight and rape scenes were filmed on these hills. We saw a set of the main street of a little village, but […]

My mom loves digging up an old photo of us during a Bombay sojourn when I was around three. I’m in a knitted fishing hat and knickers pulled up to nosebleed level. She’s slim, stylish and is holding my hand in front of a playhouse like that of the old lady who lived in a […]

Chimbai is a little colony nestled between the popular seaface promenades of Bandstand and Carter Road in Bandra. Fisherman walk out onto a pier behind the colony during high tide and leave their boats on the flats when the waters recede. At seven thirty in the morning, the only people at work are Christian coffin […]

Couples walking out to makeout point at sunset

At sunset, those who go a-courtin’ in Bandra walk out in slippery rocks past the tidepools to the very tip of the mangrove levee. Only the most determined make it, it’s hard work and difficult to reverse in the dark. One morning two weeks ago, a couple lost […]

Pro: Don’t have to spell my name anywhere. Even the band-aids come in my skin color, not pink.

Con: My seventh broadband ISP is on the fritz. Says a friend:

I call support, but I also call the local engineers, I have all their numbers. I keep calling them till they give an explanation…
Related posts: On the […]

Posters of The Namesake at downtown Bombay’s art deco Eros theater:

Being Punjabi, living in Bombay, working with customers in the U.S., I’ve figured out how to never work a day in my life. Here’s the secret:
Celebrate every holiday.
All of them. Take every U.S., Indian, Hindu, Punjabi and Maharashtran holiday and merge them until your Outlook become as sea of beautiful, striped off days.
Thanksgiving? Check. Diwali? […]

PortaGranny:

The consensus is that Russell Peters was a hit in Bombay. He flew in a few months ago to work on local material for this city, Bangalore and Delhi. I ran into him late one night at the Taj Lands End in Bandra; he had three groupies on his arm, whom he probably expensed as […]

i. On top

ii. Sideways

Seen: Half-naked man receiving personal services after midnight.
By Washington Square Park: Getting fellatio
By Union Park: Getting maalish

Courtesy of a Bombay tabloid, I present to you the Ganesh tomato, so named for its head and trunk:

Which was worshipped for a week before immersed, putrid and stinking, in a suitable body of water.
They should’ve embalmed it and put it on eBay.

Related posts: Use original parts, Remover of rupees, Who loves ya, baby, God […]