Dnyan. Mandir Road (II) (9)

I know, I know. But a vada pav laced with irony is not the same vada pav as before, is it? Darned if it didn't taste different, too. On my first trip, see, I hadn't registered how difficult, how obstinately contrarian an exercise it is to run a vada pav stand opposite a Jain temple. One swarming with white-robed, broom-and-bucket hefting, surgical-masked world-renunciators, at that. Saint Dnyaneshwar, it turns out, did so by burying himself in a cave on the banks of the Godavari.

If our culinary sins really do add up, I'll be coming back as a pork tenderloin. But the illicit substance being trafficked here is, of course, potatoes. They're excluded from the Jain diet to avoid inflicting injury upon earthworms, etc. So aLike a cash-and-carry shop opposite a mosque, or "Love it or leave it" t-shirts on the ACLU website, sales are outnumbered here by dirty looks. Those who play the odds are better off avoiding neighborhoods where Reliance runs ads in Gujarati.

Union Park Road No. 7 (8)

The morning vada at the Candies corner tastes nothing like the one at tiffin time. If I hadn't seen them mashing the potato, I might have guessed they'd filled it with upma: creamy texture studded with whole chana gram and curry leaves, mustardy without even a hint of coriander. The chutney slopped onto the bun was dilute to the point of absence. All that, plus the dewy desolation of the Sunday morning sidewalks, lent the neighborhood a profoundly foreign feel, as though I was in Southie being served "ethnic" Bambaiyya food.

Bandra Station (7)

Flagging early. Just the thought of Worli — halfway point of the half-marathon — still sets my legs to trembling. I'm facing exhaustion again: already stuck one pin to the north, in the koliwada; aforementioned Jumboree Maidan beyond striking distance to the east; racecourse to the south free, for the time being, from such intrusions; and simply no time for the option, yes, to the west: Haji Ali dargah. I'm scheduled all day: a meeting, an appointment, and a rendez-vous. So I buckled and, while waiting for my ride, washed one down with a cane juice. I am not pacing myself. I am in trouble.

At what point does a problem becomes an addiction? Is it when we start planning for the next fix? When it prevents us from seeing what's directly in front of us? When it pervades other areas of our lives? When our thoughts veer predictably in its direction? When it intrudes upon friendships? I'm worried that chaat and vada are colonizing too much of my mind. How can other bloggers manage it?

St. Theresa's (6)

Everything but the street stalls being closed today — Republic Day mubarak ho — I felt more or less assured of finding a newsstand with a fresh copy of Time Out. The Mumbai Festival is about to make its exit and the Kala Ghoda Festival is waiting impatiently in the wings. I wanted to check theatre listings and was pretty certain I hadn't just missed them in my Navbharat, though I do miss plenty. For instance, I see from the headline that one Chahat Khanna takes the position of "Expose ki khilaf." A highly controversial one, I may add — contortionistic, even. But all I got from the interview was at that at this point in her career she's "jitna kar rahi."

Anyway. Slipped out the door without disturbing the landlady's astrology session and slid down into town. Was pretty sure there was a Pali Hill Festival on today, but Nargis Dutt Rd. was Planet of the Apes. Pali Naka: zip. Turner Road: nada. Waterfield Road: kuchh bhi nahin. Finally I homed in on Bandra's spiritual center: National College.

The 15-m.-sq. park opposite it bristled with illicit couples. Householders in tight formation brisk-stepped around the jogging track like jawans on Janpath. Presumably they were squeezing in a whole year's worth of exercise. Opposite that, a newsstand. And opposite that (good thing Google Maps isn't up yet) a man, calling attention to himself with a Pesci-esque strut, lit a match beneath a kadai.

Dnyan. Mandir Road (5)

En route to the printer's from Dadar we circumnavigated an old-timer sleeping behind a basket piled with something sheathed in green. I glanced down as I walked on, and soon my curiosity got the better of me. They looked for all the world like tomatilloes, but I knew they couldn't be. Running back and nudging the guy, I got a name: "raspberry." Or did he say "ras bhari"? Two bucks later I was undressing it, the fruit inside just larger than a cherry, supple and voluptuously orange, and popping it in my mouth. Juicy like a grape, but seedless. Wish I'd saved it.

I'd eyed a snacks counter on the way, and hit it on the way back. I had my hand extended with the four bucks as I walked up and asked the kid for one with everything. He obliged with the works, two chutneys and a mound of the dried garlic stuff like I've never seen. Barely having broken my stride I bit down, and my tongue lit up. The burn lasted me the ride back to Bandra.

Worli Koliwada (4)

Friends often tell me I can ask just anyone on the street which bus goes where. They've failed to consider the extent to which people feel compelled to agree with me. I took the bus to Worli Village thinking that it would leave me close to the Nehru Centre. So very wrong. Not only was I several kilometers away, but walking toward the sea only entangled me deeper in the meshes of Koliwada, the fishing village. One gentleman even stopped me and, after inquiring very politely in grammatically perfect English where I was from, confirmed that, yes, this was the way to the Seaface. Soon I could see highrises — Prabhadevi — across the bay. But there was no point turning back. Finally I reached Worli's apex, surmounted by a fort that resembles a roofless church, swaddled in semi-pukka constructions.

My timing couldn't have been better. As I retraced my steps to the depot the scent of frying oil wafted from every doorway. Boys were exiting in droves with trays of samosas, pakoras, and yes, vadai, until I was just one member of a mouthwatering procession. I followed a tray of samosas into a sweet shop. Its cases were filled with multicolored burfis, marzipan strawberries and watermelon-slice kaju rolls. The owner gave the fresh vadai another five minutes. In the meantime I had a samosa with a surprisingly coconutty coriander chutney as we tried to hash out where I'd turned wrong. He concluded that my Hindi was "tutti-frutti," which is just about right. Five minutes later — 10:00 on the dot — I was striding briskly southward with a hot vada pav in hand. Now that's how eating and running is done.

Jamshedji Tata Road (3)

The street that threads the fraternal-twin pillars of Churchgate station (Victorian Gothic) and Eros Cinema (High Deco) is a fine example of Indian urban planning. If Churchgate is the beating heart of downtown Bombay, this is its vena cava. Yet the principle here is manifestly chalta hai. The 45-watt streetlamps, placed at vast intervals, cast an orange haze over the street but illuminate nothing. To the extent that the sidewalks are navigable, it is courtesy of the fluoro bulbs dangling from food stalls and the gas flames of peanut-roasters. Normally chased off of pavements for their presumed infringement on public goods, here the equation is flipped and the municipality mooches off of the little guy.

I'd much rather be having hakka noodles fried to order, an omelette, some chicken lollipop — all of which are within arm's reach. But I have made a commitment, so I sidle up to the tray of flattened bondas and grudgingly ask for one chutneywala. I force myself to chew. I swallow. 'Nuff said. (And it's only day 4. Is this what it's like to be married?)

[Yes, day 3 was a bye. I'll make up for it tomorrow.]

MG Road (Borivali) (2)

If I'm not surprised that somebody gave the Mahatma's name to this tiny nub of a street in Borivali, then it's just another sad coincidence, not ironic per se, that it would lead to the immense Sanjay Gandhi National Park. 777 sq. km., I'm told, but on a Sunday nonetheless too busy to be fully appreciated. Sumos chew up the available landscape and picknickers back up their Santros to the diodic strains of "Salaam|Namaste". Ah, nature.

Amit and I crossed under the flyover and no sooner did we get down to business than "Jumbo Vada Pav" leapt at us off a storefront. Unquestionably auspicious—have I ever seen another shop devoted to them? Someday, Bluetooth permitting, I'll yank the photo off my phone. The sign contained an ingenious devanagari ligature for which the stroke piercing the "ba" is rotated 45° off the usual (recalling Tristan's work on the Signs titles).

Nothing was jumbo besides the price: an extra 50 paise, presumably for table service. But the vadai themselves had been sunning in the glass case and were the better for it. They bit through with zero impedance, but were still fringed with a satisfying crunch. The usually tart coriander overtones had rounded and broadened. The tamarind chutney was sweet like jelly. The pav were the chewy, savory kind usually reserved for bhaji. Worth sitting for.

Nargis Dutt Road (1)

This time, the kick-off was fittingly enough made at home. The recipe came from Hooked on Heat, Indibloggies' Newcomer of the Year. Though its instructions weren't followed to the letter, it did embolden me to toss in 6 pinches of whole dhania seeds — "Bihari-eshtyle." Lalita and Rachel took over the kadai, for which I'm grateful. For some reason, I'm still not at ease around cauldrons of boiling oil. (Brings to mind a Dalrymple anecdote about the siege of some gurudwara and the "special jalebis.") I laid out a fresh coriander chutney along with the dried-garlic and tamarind, but to my delight a more popular garnish was stuffing the pav with my drippy Greek salad — "Tommy-eshtyle." After it all, we kicked back with a frosted glass of tinto de verano. Charmed life.

[A technical appeal: I'd like to start pinpointing my entries. Is there anything out there like the Google Maps API that works in Bombay?]

[False start]

Can marathoners take a mulligan? Only the ChampionChip knows for sure.

You'd have been correct in assuming I had fired the gun with my previous post. And breezed past the wire with a thoroughly unearned exuberance. I did take two samples at Lamington Road, one by Churchgate, and one at the stand absurdly placed in front of Candies. But if I don't blog it concurrently, it don't count.

Somewhat more devastating than that four-cart pile-up was the talk given a few days ago by investigative journalist P. Sainath. (Thanks to Anand for the tip.) He called it "The Moral Economy of the Elite: Rural Distress and the Crisis Before Journalism," I suppose to lay the groundwork for a crise de conscience among its attendees. But I'm imagining Lewis Lapham noodging him to call it "At Nero's Table." While the decision could be read as a victory of sanctimony over subtlety, for me it simply does a disservice to Sainath's critique. He appeals to our minds, our hearts, and our pocketbooks, but he doesn't privilege them over our stomachs. His analysis may be sophisticated but his reasoning is alimentary.

Farmer suicides are occurring in India's rural districts in alarming numbers. The underlying cause is indebtedness, and the effect, increasingly, is the inability of farmers to feed their families. Even as the urban middle class eats better than ever before on its soaring purchasing power, the rural poor have gone hungry at a rate unprecedented since the Bengal famine of 1943.

India's highest-growth industry, Sainath forcefully asserts, is not IT — it's inequality. The causes to which he attributes this precipitous rise are
(1) liberalization of agricultural imports
(2) reallocation of subsidies, and the simultaneous
(3) restriction of credit to small farmers in favor of automobile owners.

These three policies, he claims, were adopted as part of the BJP's "India Shining" campaign. One typically vivid (and unsourced) statistic: as car sales nearly doubled over the '90s, tractor sales halved. Sainath doesn't spare the current UPA government, however. Baramati MP and BCCI member Sharad Pawar, nominally in charge of the situation, was described as "Union Minister for Cricket."

Beyond the overwhelming need to address this problem, the talk brought home two points. The first is that there are two Indias, one of which is still totally foreign to me. (I had accepted this contention vis-à-vis America two Novembers back.) Even as urban India becomes more and more an open book, I'm still ignorant of how the vast majority of Indians live. The contrast could not be greater than in my last post, when, for example, I lament the ongoing disrepair of my coastal parkway while shoveling in biryani.

Second is that this blog, though conceived to deal entirely in mundanities — nay, inanities — can do more. No, I'm not planning on taking any turn toward the high-minded. That market is saturated, and well-served. But if we agree with Sainath that journalism is in "crisis," we admit that to the extent that we have readers, we have a responsibility to inform. I don't know whether eating for hunger awareness is ridiculous (any more than, say, running for disability awareness) but I am, brace yourselves, pledging this marathon to that service. I'm no SEA-EAT but it's a start.

Azad Maidan

Gandhiji went to a lot of trouble to get his salt. If only the British had had Fritos. Neither man nor nature has devised a system more perfect for delivering vital minerals. Yet this crowning accomplishment of our species, that which separates us from beasts, remains unknown to Indians. So what would I reach for after completing my 21.06 km?

The overpowering sensation was thirst. Could there really be no water on offer? (I had laid my hands on only an airplane bottle since Haji Ali. The "water" handed to us as we limped past Girgaum turned out to be a sweet-salt sharbat so thick it almost made me gag.) Thanda matlab... kya?

As I emerged from the chute I was struck by a vision glinting in the 9 a.m. sun: a beautiful, milky, very rectangular slice of heaven. Some reckless optimist had positioned her kala-khatta cart at the finish line, anchored by a 100-lb. block of ice. I was hoping to be bludgeoned with it. The next best thing was a nimbu pani or, as it became as soon as I could fetch my wallet, three. Though again both sweet and salt, they were of course cut with lemon and oh-so-cold, fished pensively from the glacial runoff with a long-handled cup ladle.

It took until Bandra to lay my hands on the appropriate foodstuff. Lay's my hands, that is — with the flavoring from their special-edition "Latino Style" potato chips. Though made by the same people as Fritos, they are no substitute, as I quickly realized. "Hot Peppers & Salsa" tastes suspiciously like barbeque. To Frito-Lay's's credit, the bag is not, as on the "Spanish" flavor, adorned with a maraca-shaking Saif Ali Khan. (Instead, these anonymous flavor ambassadors are playing sax. N.B. The project of cataloguing the other Lay's varieties was cut short by an allergic reaction to Saif Ali.)

After a nap, my first impulse was for a chicken tikka biryani. I clambered over the still-upheaved Carter Road to the recently renovated Mezbaan. The fan inside was out thanks to a short circuit, so I sat on the terrace in the beating sun and downed glass after glass of water. When they inquired politely whether I wanted "anything else" I asked for bijli and sadak. This joke went over with a resounding thud. Maybe my delivery was off.

While I was glad I hadn't tried anything so suicidal as the full marathon (which, as I finished my biryani, was only 4:00:00 on), I had recovered enough to feel let down. I hadn't challenged myself. But why push myself to run, when I really wanted to push myself to write? As usual, I needed a conceit. A blogging marathon. A challenge:

42 vada pav in 42 days.

This, I know, sounds like a laughable goal to anyone who went to college in town. My classmate Priya, in her own words, could "down five at a sitting." But the object here is not gourmandizing, nor is it mere snacking. I am seeking out 42 unique specimens from every corner of the city, from the Jumboree Maidan parcel shop to the Teen Hath Naka quarter-pounder. I have been training for months. I am ready and set. Wish me luck.