Bombay Dreams.

Just wanted to check in from Mumbai, India, city of dreams.
Got here the day before yesterday after about an 8 hour drive from Ahmadnagar, complete with stops for tea and visits with my friend Sandeep's wonderful extended family who let me shower and fed me the most delicious prawn curry and fresh chapatis I've ever had, and this delicious milk desert thing with tiny short little noodles of some sort and yellow raisins that just set the thing off perfectly.

I rode out to Mumbai to meet my wonderful Auntie Susan, who was flying in from America with her toy poodle. She reckons it is now the only toy poodle in the entire country. She might just be right. Some Indians have no idea what kind of animal it is. They think its some kind of lamb. Ha!

So after picking her up from the airport I crashed out with the boys (Sandeep and Shirish, professional Indian drivers) in the car. Because that is what Indian drivers do, they sleep in the car, while their benefactors chill in their plush rooms. Luckily, Indians have an amazing ability to sleep anywhere, another reason I think I must have been an Indian in my last life. I had no problem crashing out in the back of the car and slept like a log.

We got up the next day and checked out Juhu Beach a little. Apparently, its a very plush place where a lot of rich Indians live and hang out, including "The Big B" - the undisputed king of Bollywood - Amitabh Bachchan.

We went and had some food at the Marriot Hotel, which was 5 stars and damn plush, really nice place. Although, it was a little nerve racking considering the Marriot in Pakistan was just brutally bombed. Nevertheless, the place was wickedly impressive and crawling with well-to-do Indians.

Anyway, now I'm in Colaba, a really fun place. Its considered the tourist area of Mumbai, but India is still just way to real to have any place that has that icky tourist feel. Instead, to me, it feels so much like the streets of New York, kinda like St. Mark's Place 10 years ago, that great melting pot city vibe with that undercurrent of fantastic energy.

Yesterday I hung out with an awesome guy named Adil Ghandy who is also a Baba lover and took me to his family's gallery, Chemould Prescott Road, which, it turns out, is basically one of the raddest galleries I have EVER been too, and has been showing the absolute best work I have seen in India yet. I was almost crying with excitement, truly. I couldn't believe my luck that a Baba lover actually owned the place!

We ate at Leopold's Cafe afterwards which, if you haven't read Shantaram (and by the way, if you haven't, do it now), is a bumping little place that serves all sorts of interesting characters and people from all over the world.

Now I'm heading off to check out more art galleries. Got a lot on the docket for today and the next few days, I've got to print out my absentee ballot and send it off for one thing and then I'm gonna hit the town tonight with some old Baba-lover friends that grew up here in Mumbai.

Will try and update frequently in the next few days. Oh, and while I'm at it, I've uploaded some pics I've been meaning to get to from my trip to my friend Sandeep's family farm a few weeks ago. Got a lot more pics I'll be catching up with too soon. You can see them here. Oh and by the way, you can follow along with the captions as a sort of blog in of itself. Enjoy. :)

Oh, and here's another fun shot for ya while I'm at it:

Here's my room at home. Do you like my new portrait of Swami Vivekananda? Swami Vivekananda was one of the first Indian "Gurus" to come to America, back in 1893! My Dad always loved to tell me about him, as well as funny stories from when he visited America. Baba said that Vivekananda and Inayat Khan were the two souls most responsible for paving the way for his work in the West, and especially in America, by bringing consciousness of transcendental mysticism to the West for the first time. Apparently he said that if he had tasted ice cream before he became enlightened it never would have happened either. Ha!