90-Feet Road

The options were to stick around for another two hours of Pangea Day and then another hour or so until the trains started running, or to leave before the taxis dried up. I left. The Kaospilots were already stretched out on the chittai, and who could blame them. I prefer my Christiane Amanpour in small doses, with regular breaks for mortar rounds.

Girish, a Reality Tours & Travels guide, was kind enough to show me the way to a taxi. Of course one pulled up almost as soon as we stepped out of the community center—yes, at 1:15, in Dharavi. But even before it could, we stumbled over a kulfiwala—yes, at 1:15, in Dharavi. I flinched, uncharacteristically, upon seeing the color of the slush in which the tin capsules had been chilling. Now, I realize it probably had something to do with rock salt; then, without the benefit of chemical analysis, I said, "ah, fuck it."

With a surgeon's hand he popped the top, slid in the stick, and wedged out the resulting popsicle with a spoon. The creaminess surprised me. Nothing like the cassata slices you get from freezer cases, this kulfi was completely smooth, like the gelato I'd earlier that evening taken my students to try. Completely, that was, until I got to the bottom, where I met a question mark of a sour, icy plug. Some sort of thermochemical reaction squeezing the whey parts out to the frosty exterior? Requires more experimentation: swayam shikshan prayog.

The monologue in the cab ride was infinitely more entertaining (and, I daresay, promoting of cross-cultural understanding) than Pangea's spokesmodels-across-continents, international Idol shtick. Of course, I'd missed the ending.

Princess Street

The day-long stumble from Crawford Market to Zhaveri Bazaar spat us onto the Marine Lines downslope. B. and I were both thirsty, and my first thought was: a beer with Rashid Irani. Little did I realize I had missed the end of an era.

I'd been introduced to the Braebourne by Santosh, an aspiring filmmaker who saw Rashid as his muse and Princess Street as his museum. The way the narrow slice of morning light casts onto the stacked wooden balconies. The sheer density of aspiration crammed into the weekly rented rooms by emigrants from Bihar, Arunachal, or, as in his case, Orissa.

Did I notice, he asked, that the mirrors were positioned so that the man behind the cashbox could see every table? Did I see the various injunctions posted on the wall, always in incongruous pairs (No spitting/Treat your wife nicely)?

Such was the basic grammar of the Irani hotel, to which the food (kheema pav, khari biscuit) was just a reassuring adornment. In this case, beer was sold from a pavement-fronting counter over which presided a slightly crumpled man with three teeth and an encyclopedic knowledge of world cinema.

"Rashid's gone for dry cleaning," said the owner. The place, all old wood and San Miguel murals, is being transformed into a bakery. Good luck to them.

We slid into Pathakwadi where another winking proprietor beckoned. Taj Wines, "the little location with the big reputation," according to its Goan neighbor. Fully stocked with eagle decals and Zarathurstra portraits, the shelves ran the gamut from desi daru to your finer domestic scotches. Those Parsis are a tenacious bunch — don't count them out just yet.

Thanks and kudos to parsikhabar.net for outranking DNA on Google.