Mumbai nights (and days).

Well I don't have any pictures to prove it, because I don't feel great about bringing my big camera around while I'm "making the scene", but I promise you, I have in fact been partying down in Mumbai. For those of you who have only ever seen the side of India that we are familiar with: great spiritual places, amazing squalor, the realness that pervades all areas of life, I can tell you there is something else going on here too.

Turns out Mumbai is seriously getting down at night.

OK, sure, it's not partying with the reckless abandon of New York or Ibiza yet, but just to see a scene at night anywhere in India has been mind blowing, and believe me, this is a serious scene. Last night I had the pleasure of joining my new friend Adil at a bar called "Not Just Jazz by the Bay" which was right on the famous "Marine Drive." And as Adil told me, is the only place he knows of in Mumbai that actually has a cover charge. The place was happ'nin, and the brilliant news, they were having a Karaoke night. And for the record, I love the way Indians do Karaoke. They take it very seriously, and the people that run it always do a good job.

It also turns out that Adil is a ridiculous, let me repeat, RIDICULOUSLY good singer, as in a dead ringer, and I mean a DEAD RINGGEEEERRR for Sinatra. I am not exaggerating!!!!! So that was a lot of fun, Indians are so funny and endearing when it comes to praise. They are always honest. Like when I sang "No Woman, No Cry," which was out of my range, they shook my hand, "good try man." When Adil got off the stage, 5 different people came up, "You are amazing!"

Before Jazz by the Bay I checked out SBX Sports Bar in Colaba which was decent actually, loud, and had some damn good Indian Buffalo wings.

The night before that I went out with an old friend who grew up in Mumbai, and I got to see the young peoples scene. She took me out with her friends to a restaurant called "Maharaja" which was so damn swanky and really tasty, and after that it was off to a place she called Mumbai Gym, which was basically a country club the British started right in the middle of the city way back in the day, and is still in use as such by well-to-do Indians who kicked the Brits out.
They were having something called "Bar Night" which seemed to be quite the exclusive event, and also, extremely eye opening. It was basically like every educated and loaded Indian I had ever met or gone to school with in America or met overseas on their home turf and in droves getting completely smashed on the lawn of the country club. It was fascinating, and fun.

Anyway, I gotta run. Gotta go meet an artist in Juhu beach 1 and a half hours away (gah!). Turns out I might have the opportunity to help this young Indian printmaker named Tanuja Rane do an edition for her upcoming show! I'm really excited. I hope the meeting goes well!

In the meantime, I've posted a few pics,
such as my time at an Indian McDonalds,


from my jaunts around Mumbai, check them out here.

Until next time,
Namaste peoples.

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!

India finally.

***Author's preface: This blog may be confusing for some people who are not familiar with Meher Baba, who is actually the whole reason I have been going to India since I was seven years old. So if you wanna learn more before proceeding, please visit this fantastic article on Wikipedia here. Otherwise, enjoy . . . ***

As I write this I am working on uploading multiple photo albums to facebook.

I have found that as the internet gets more and more sophisticated and "web 2.0"-like, I am finding it increasingly more difficult to figure out which services to focus on. It's like I don't want to leave anybody out because they are all so good and deserving.

Who to post my photos too? Flickr is the $#*&. So many good photographers on there, such a great interface, and the global tagging feature - UNREAL! . . . buuut,

Hot Damn! now that I can upload my photos directly from iPhoto to facebook and tag all my friends in each photo, putting said pictures right on their dashboards instantly . . . $@#*!, facebook kicks ass!

But, wait, what about MySpace?, my long forgotten step-son staring at me with watery eyes from the corner? What about him, he hasn't been fed in months, you neglect him like a mangy dog, won't you at least give him something?

. . . Ahh @&#* him.

Anyway, that's probably real interesting, so f-that let's talk about India.

So here I am . . .

In India . . .

Been here for almost 2 months already . . .

How in the Baba did that happen!?

And what on earth have I been doing with myself? Why have I not updated this blog?

Well . . .


Can I be perfectly candid? . . .

It's kinda strange being here. I'm kinda in a funk. I feel like I'm not quite doing it right . . .

Here I am in the place that I have longed to live my whole life, that I have always told myself and those around me is the be-all and end-all of the world. The place to go and find yourself. So why do I not feel like everything is right with me? I guess that sounds (and feels) kinda sad. But, it feels like I haven't been doing much with myself, and here I am in Baba's HOME, in the place he LIVED for the majority of his life, the place where he did the majority of his work on the Universe.
Yea, and here I am on the internet, watching previews for Surfer, Dude (which by the way, even as a life-long surfer, I am not completely appalled at, I actually think it looks like it might be kinda fun) at www.fivethrityeight.com every five minutes. . . .

(**note to reader, un-spiritual political discourse proceeds below, tread at your own risk. Blog can be resumed here
free of political diatribes)

by the way . . .

Fivethirtyeight.com is a site my brother turned me on to, and I don't know whether to thank him or curse him, but either way, I'm addicted. The thing is amazing, and REALLY uplifting at the moment for us Obama fans. Oh, and by the way, part of me really doesn't want to get political on this blog, especially since I am writing from Meherabad (a place where discussing politics is essentially barred), but come on, I feel like at this point it really almost goes beyond partisan politics this year to some sort of global crisis that must be dealt with at all costs: That crisis being the Republican Party being in charge of the US government. I mean, OK, obviously there are still a whole ass-load of people who consider the Republican party worth more than two shits.
And you know what, honestly, truly, I can understand. I really don't feel any malice. Truly, I can't stand either party, they both represent corruption, separation, and hate between people, as basically any established political party of the world does. And so I understand how one could be swayed to one side or the other, especially with the ingenious, and utterly diabolical mind-games that the political operatives for the Republican Party unleash on the public. Really, its unfair and too much to ask for sweet ordinary people to have to think in a political frame of mind and figure out how they are being manipulated. And it's exactly these kind of people that the Republicans prey on, the ones who know that it is not good for your soul to figure out political messages all the time, and just go with whatever consensus is going to bring the least amount of ire into their lives. So therefore, there are definitely a shit-load of damn good people that are Republicans.
And just for the record, I really dug the fringe candidates on both sides this year. A Kucinich/Paul or Paul/Kucinich ticket would have been a dream come true for me (well, as long as Ron Paul's immigration ideas were nixed). So I'm not against Republicans all the time. Paul was actually talking about the utterly beyond-the-pale shit that the CIA has perpetrated around the world over the past 50 years and how we need to get rid of them in the Republican debates! NOBODY ever talks about that!
So anyway, enough about how I think Republicans have redeeming qualities. To get to my point, I think that its pretty clear, especially in light of the recent economic meltdown (which, by the way, if you want explained, my brother has provided another fantastic link, click LISTEN NOW for the audio) and the rising tide of regimes that are actually (yes, maybe just barely, but still) legitimate becoming ever more hostile toward us (as in Pakistan, Venezuela, Russia, Bolivia, and Iran), not to mention the clear evidence that the whole world thinks we suck worse than ever (trust me, as someone who has been traveling the world his whole life, I know), that it is time for a change. And I'm sorry, no matter how much McCain tries to convince me that he can provide greater change than Obama (and to be fair, McCain was one of the best candidates to come out of the Republican field in this department by far) it is simply common sense that big changes are not going to come from a Senator who has been in the house 25+ years and is part of the party who has flushed our country down the toilet the past 8 years, voting with the President 90% of the time.
So my final word is vote Obama because its our only hope to right the ship. If nothing else, it is going to send a BIG message to the world that we are no longer about isolating ourselves from them.

Somethings gotta give.

. . . And I'm done. I'm sending in my absentee ballot from India and I'm through with politics. Let's pick back up where we left off . . .


. . . I just feel sometimes like I missed out. I wish I could have been here in Meherabad in 1975 (or 1925 for that matter) when being here was like being on the moon, just in the orbit of the rest of the world, but a different place completely. I guess I was kind of expecting the kind of experience that you hear about from residents of Meherabad of the past, westerners and others who gave up so much to come and live in such a remote and stoic place for the only reason that they burned with the fire to know and experience the Truth: the Truth and the experience that love alone prevails, but that it is by no means easy to achieve.

. . . And here I am on my laptop all day keeping up with all the bullshit, plugged right in to the outside world I should be escaping . . .

Then again, this is my business, and in order to actually make living in India a reality for the future, I have to do this now, I have to make some sort of thing work where I have some income.

I found myself talking to Merwan Jessawalla the other day actually, one of Meher Baba's mandali, and younger brother of Eruch Jessawalla, Baba's right hand man. It was just brief, but he gave me such wonderful little tid-bits.

It wasn't much at all, but just what I needed to hear. I saw him only briefly but he asked me what I was doing.

I told him how I was working on some Baba web projects with Bif, and working on my own business as well online, and how it was hard for me to be here but be working at the same time.

All he said was, "we must be practical."

But just that, coming from him, meant so much. Because from him it was coming from a place of being with Baba. For him, he lived it. And I knew in that instant that it was alright, me working while I'm here. I knew Baba approved, and I also knew, that whatever I was doing, whether it was work or volunteer work on Baba stuff, that I had to do it one hundred percent.

And so I'll leave it at that. It's taken me 2 days to finish this blog, and its 5 in the morning and I'm supposed to be leaving for Mumbai tomorrow at 9am for 4 days of gallery visits and fun. I'll try to send some shots from the road and finally catch up on this thing. I know I have at least two fans in my mom and my sister.

Until then . . . Jai Baba from Meherabad.

-Mikey