Tulsi Pipe Road

Under the over, as it were. Those fortunate enough to be endowed with four wheels are cruising past Phoenix High Street and a seemingly endless succession of Times Now advertisements. The media franchises have all pissed on their respective trees close to where they stash their employees. The building names are all laughably recherché: Marathon Innova, Peninsula, and the Times' own Brady Glady's Plaza.

One flight down, the Chinese fast food stall has no name at all, just a couple of numbers and a "CONTACT: MILIND" advisory. "Sri Ganesh Prasanna," inside double shloka-sticks, tops the menu – but mistaking that for a name would be like calling a store "Pull" because it's written on the door. Though there's a Sanmica bench and table set up on the raised pavement, and something like a diner counter projecting from the wall, I follow standard procedure, pull up a plastic stool, and start eyeing the ingredients.

The ad agencies and lad mags have spawned a sort of printing ghetto down here in the former Sun Industrial Estate. That's what dragged me down here, as well as the peons (when will this word go the way of "coolies"?) swarming street level with finished color photocopy jobs. Perhaps in the rosy flush of 1000-rupee notes, the free time, the glorious reemergent sun they feel they can blow 13 bucks on a half-order of hakka noodles or 16 on (the oxymoronic) Schezwan hakka noodles.

A lot of carrot and cabbage, not a lot of scallion, and a splotch of hot sauce. The chicken cubes had been deep-fried earlier and tossed on top like croutons. It was hot, and a plateful was more than I could eat – I ate it anyway – and I walked back to Lower Parel station so giddy that I almost got on the wrong platform. Hmm... K. Rustom's, anybody?