Jumboree Maidan (call it 42)

Uma asked whether I'd ever made it to the end of my marathon, and I said, no, but it wasn't entirely a loss – a man's got to know his limitations. So I got to thinking, now that I've caught my breath, why not pick up where I left off?

Kidding. The mere thought of batata wada makes me blanch. But one whiff off of the kadai never fails to reel me back in. And since I was making a trip to Muktangan anyway, I thought, why not tug on a loose thread and see what happens?

BDD Chawl overlooks the road running from Worli Naka into the heart of Girangaon – a non-neighborhood, a ghost of Bombay past. Gandhi Maidan is a dusty, eerily empty patch keeping the two wings of the chawl separated, as though to prevent a fight. How the moniker stuck is hard to imagine. But 'jumboree' doesn't begin to describe the bhajiwala free-for-all running riot on the pavements between buildings. The late-afternoon squeeze of China bazaars unfurled from tarpaulins and pushcarts stacked higher than seems advisable guarantee, uh, informal relations with the neighbors.

Same dopahar, different demographic: the food stalls are thronged with schoolkids, assembled in teams of tartans. Follow the uniforms and you will reach your vada pav. And there it was, a stainless-steel operation wedged into a general store. Practically indoors! But by far the biggest surprise was that it appeared to be a matriarchal organization. Women fried, women assembled, slightly older women took cash. I may not have done the 42, but I've seen enough to know it is the rare food-stand setup indeed that puts women at the helm. You'll see them hawking on their own, but with all this equipment? Must be something special.

Oversold, I'm sorry to say. Merchandise – fresh, even – was puny and the pav thin. Even the flavor eluded the palate. To top it off, or rather to fail to, the pudina chutney was out. A puddle of it, beyond the reach of spoons, taunted me from the bottom of a bowl set into a spotlessly clean steel counter.