She sells seashells

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On Bombay’s Bandra seashore:

Autorickshaw driver slumbers by the Bandstand wall, which is covered in Gaudí-like cracked ceramic

No Romancing, Sitting in Obscene Postures or Kite Flying — well, there go my Bombay plans

Worli sea link, a big-ass bridge which will ruin the view

Cool elevator panel at Shopper’s Stop, Linking Road

Malaika Arora pitches Yahoo

A nation of bikers

Importing Europe’s oral-entendre ice cream ads

Exhibition cum sale

Joggers’ Park

Ain’t misbehavin’ in Joggers’ Park

Thank you, ‘Sir’

Laughter Heaven

Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha! Look closely at the fence

Mad, wot?

Boats on the tidal flats awaiting high tide

Microsoft Office India

What happened to old whitey?

F to the U-N-K

A growing wine habit

Golds Gym, Turner Road

Gimme a slice of pesto

Glass-atriumed high rise behind a building with ‘rustic charm’

Sonia Gandhi’s traditional marketing

Jivesh Terraces: world’s biggest Lego set

Zod! Please Notice My Subtle Phallic Symbol

No, actually you don’t

Heinz India

The Good, the Bad and the Idli; Hum Appam ke Hain Koun?; Mother South India

Ads at the cinemas

Coffee Day, Carter Road

Coffee Day’s open-air terrace

Sunset on the Arabian Sea

54 thoughts on “She sells seashells”

  1. 1) It is Kolkat(t)a. (Next some one will say it is Rasgulla not Rasogulla, such philistines)

    2) I am not there.

    Nice pics

  2. Awww…familiar sights. Bandra love.. have you hit Zenzi yet Manish? I miss walking from my mom’s apt. on turner road to get an afternoon beer. I didn’t realize the laughter club was still going after so many years. Note to self – must spend more time im Mum-BHai

  3. The sea link will ruin the view but help the currently horrendous commute from Bandra into town.

  4. awww gotta love ur pics, spesh the sign with no romancing and obscene positions, oh how i long for the days of seein such signs…hope ur havn an awesum time but then who wouldn’t in the bestest city in the world.

    now i’ve got the ‘come to bombay’ song in my head. ‘ladies r nice, they r full of spice…’ haha hope u all get it in ur heads now too.

    pfft for the new ‘mumbai’ thing who else still calls it bombay in defiance?

  5. The sea link will ruin the view but help the currently horrendous commute from Bandra into town.

    By the time it happens Mumbai ka Manoos will travel by air -taxis.

  6. the master of captions… great pics, and lots of laughs… glad mumbai is treating you well… and i thought you were going to wash your clothes in the taj gardens…isn’t that where the dhobis hang out?

  8. Thanks Manish, feels like my sanity returned, and that’s a first since I landed on this continent 9 months ago. 🙂 Hope you’re doing the pav bhajis and Book street and bombay-pune highway drives, etc. And hope it rains for you. Flash floods aside, no place looks as beautiful as Bombay does in the rains at 6 pm. Sigh.

    And tashie, for one billion others it will always be Bombay.

  9. Great photos, Manish! The street signs and the official gov’t signs are sometimes the most interesting in India.

  10. Did you know Heinz India was voted an Indian Superbrand recently? Which means it is (supposedly) one of the top 20 brands in India. No relation to that information, quite independantly, the Heinz big boss was on the Superbrand jury the same year. They should put all the jury members in jail for five years…and only be allowed to eat tomato ketchup!

  11. Vanya, just wanted to let u know ur not alone in ur ‘sanity returned’ moment.

    as someone who only lived in bombay til the age of 8 and whos lived in new zealand for 11 years i can tell u that being from two places means that one day the following thing will happen:

    -eventually, you will the same sort of loveliness (maybe not as much, but still loveliness is lovely anyways) about not one but TWO different places in the world 🙂

    in the meantime, though, even people still watching the hindi dubbed tom and jerry and jem cartoons when they left the motherland still have that moment every time they see pics like these.

    ps opinion poll: if people saw similar pics of the cities they live in now, would they feel no/the same/more/less nostalgia and misty-eyed amusement than they do lookin’ at these pics? just musing…

  12. pfft for the new ‘mumbai’ thing who else still calls it bombay in defiance?

    Dont go by my name. I still call it Bombay. It would be fun if Manish went to Bandra station in the evening and took a Virar local to Vasai 😀

  13. Yay, Manish! I don’t have to leave comments begging for pictures anymore =)

    Great pics and great captions .. makes me want to visit even more.

  15. Lovely pics. My sister gets her hair cut at “Mad o wot?”. Apparently when you call to fix an appointment, the receptionist says,”Hello, mad o wot?”

  16. tashie,

    The US is actually the third country I’ve moved to. Funnily, I did not grow up in India and only moved there when I was 13. Although I can’t claim to belong to any one part of the country, Bombay to me is the best cross-section of India you can find.

    While I have nothing to complain of in Houston, it’s impossible not to miss standing in a local train amidst 75 other passive, waiting faces that mask the chaos behind them, against the odour of damp metal and the sound of frenzied crows and clanking iron. And now I’m slobbering and embarrassing myself, better get back to work.

  19. Manish,

    Thanks for taking me back home to Bombay (note Tashie et al, not Mumbai!) for a few minutes in the middle of the day.

    Back to being a cube monkey now…

  21. Awesome pictures Manish and very nicely put captions. Can you take pictures of food next? Hehe

  22. Thanks for posting the pictures Manish! You know how sometimes when an old song comes on the radio you start to feel the way you felt when that song first came out? That’s how I felt looking at these pictures. “Mmm…India!”

  25. I totally want to stage a sit-in protest of something where people sit-in obscene postures.

    I second!

  26. Fabulous photos Manish. So, have you met the ‘girl’ yet? Did you share a coconut by the beach? Pix please.

  27. I totally want to stage a sit-in protest of something where people sit-in obscene postures.

    Me too me too!

    And manish, I’m glad you are actually taking pix of the suburbs. Way too much attention gets focused onto the ‘city’ and not enough on the suburbs, which is where the majority of people live.

  28. I see no coconut pictures, bro. And yet you continue to entice me with your text messages. 🙂

  29. Actually, my idea of protest would be for a (large) number of people to get together at a specific place and time, co-ordinated on the internet, passionately french-kiss for a minute or two, and melt away before the moral police can do anything about it..

    It would be great to do that in front of the Police HQ, or the Parliament, or the RSS HQ or something like that. I wish someone could organize this 🙂

  30. I totally want to stage a sit-in protest of something where people sit-in obscene postures.

    I’d like to see sit-in protests where the protesters sit in unpleasant things.

  32. dude, you are in my neighborhood.

    You are standing in front of my building when u take that shot of Jivesh Towers….

    and u didnt even shout out and say hi !!

    very baad.

    and please please…..stop calling it mumbai…..

  34. Oh! the memories come gushing back. Me getting all nostalgic. Nice pics and nice captions. While you are in Bandra try the currylicious food at Lucky’s – close to Bandra rly station – awesome food(but are you a veggie? in which case..umm..I dont know). Also do try the vada/samosa-paav(I assure you it’s all safe) right on the open-air stalls outside station. ummm… Falooda sharbat at that famous place outside station..(heck, can’t get its name off the top of my head, some ‘garibnawaz’ or some Muslimish-sounding name, anyone else want to try?)

    I am sitting in my cubicle..but mentally I am soo Bandra right now I can’t put it in words. Sharukh’s bungalow is bang on Bandstand, named ‘Mannat’. Click it if you want some lurrve from all the SRK-loving chicas on SM. Also if you want to check out how a million-dollar bungalow’s view at a prime spot can be ruined by a highass security gate.

    For a feel of village setting bang in midst of all this, catch BEST bus no 241(214?) to “Chuim village”.

    And just for some ‘diversity’ fun, to contrast all these experiences, take a peeko in Bandra(east).

    Arzan dikra : tu bhi Bandra mein? man..this is getting all so too much for me to take. I am just itching to be back in Bbay….just 20 more days!

  35. “No Romancing, Sitting in Obscene Postures or Kite Flying”

    See now, that’s the trouble with India….sheesh!

  36. On Friday, April 21st, at 7pm, as part of The Social & Material Life of Indian Cinema, there will be a screening of Mira Nair’s documentary “The Laughing Club of India” (2000). Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 547 West 27th Street.

  38. Another Bandraite here..born and raised…:)..my home is a stone’s throw from Bandstand…

    Suhail bhai, the bus route is 214 ..

    If you are taking a bus route, I recommend 211 …all the way down Hill Road and then via Bandstand upto Fr Agnel College..

    Manish have a good time and try to learn some Bandra lingo …

  39. Images say a 1000 words. Miss the Bombay autorickshaw, BEST and locals. The pic at the beach with the chaat walla would complete this portfolio for me.

  41. Can you take pictures of food next? Hehe

    I second that motion. Manish buddy, we need photos of paani puri, pav bhaji etc etc 😉

  42. mmmm…. most of the “everything except walking and talking is prohibited” noticeboards i’ve seen (but then, in delhi) specifically mention “no drugs.” (or do they say “narcotic substances”?) noticeable then, when the phrase/concept is missing in this photo…

  43. BostonBbayite: you see age catching up with me and all 😉 It’s been some years I’ve traveled down those roads, so thx for correcting!

  44. Nice pics, Manish!

    It’s interesting, your choice of what to take pictures of. Your India is modern, unpopulated, with a few twists.

    Quite different than pictures taken by white Americans I know who have gone to India – those subjects are all rustic, overpopulated, chaotic…

  45. Your India is modern, unpopulated, with a few twists.

    It feels rude to take photos of people without asking permission.

    I checked out Zenzi and Seijo tonight. Seijo’s anime walls and pod-and-rushes decor are very cool.

    Thanks for the recs, everyone.

  46. It feels rude to take photos of people without asking permission.

    Well, that’s true, if you insist on not objectifying and Orientalizing people. 🙂

  47. Manish,

    You didn’t take a picture of the huge a$$ trench to be crossed to reach Cafe Coffee Day?

    Or better yet, all and sundry shimmying across the single plank of wood.

  49. Amazing pics and kick ass captions. Thanks for taking me back to Bombay. sooo want to be there.

    must agree about the rain. no place looks more beautiful in monsoons. Do not miss the mangos(fruits). More servings of pics please, with a generous toping of captions.

    And guys just let me know the date of the (obscene) protest. Will join u’ll.

    Thanks Vij

  50. Hi guys, Im a straight up fob from India living in the mecca of Indian americanization: Edison,NJ. I havent been back to mumbai in about a year and a half, but these pics rock…reminds of the culturally bizarre world that bombay is now, and also how weird our Indo-Brit English is. I myself am being from Marine Drive, and am glad to see so many comments raving about my home. Great pics, keep em coming.