Colaba Baba

Here stands the "Green Thandai," which translated in Hindi literally means "Green Chilled."
And here I sit quite satisfied.

I'm at Woodside Cafe, one of my favorite haunts of Colaba for an after work drink when I'm feeling frivilous. Woodside Cafe is a beautiful place, an old colonial building refurbished to perfection. It has a wonderful atmosphere, plays a pretty endearing regular mix of 90's pop-grunge and or soul-grunge like Counting Crows, etc, which isn't too bad. Its got very warm real wood decor offset with refreshingly freezing A/C which needs only a short dip outside into the boiling mud-flat wonderland of stank humidity that is Mumbai to be apprecaited anew should it get to cold for ones taste.
I enjoy coming here from time to time to get an overpriced cocktail or Corona (at 245 rupees (about $5) not bad actually for a high class bar).
Tonight was a thrilling sucess of mouthy delights however as I began by deciding to give the Cocktail of the Day a try, again, the "Green Thanda."

Let me just try to do this thing justice. Its kind of like a mix between a grasshopper

. . . (by the way, if you've never . . . had a grasshopper at the Golden Nugget or Binions Casino late at night on Freemont Street in old Downtown Vegas surrounded by your closest mates and authentic memorbilia like cow horns hung by Mr. Binion himself, at a 2-deck blackjack table gambling at 17 years old on a fake ID lovingly made by your brother, wearing a stunning dark chocolate brown $500 leather jacket made of leather you didn't know could be so soft, sold to you in downtown Sydney Australia, by a gorgeous older woman in a white form-fitting power suite, charcoal black hair in a clipped bob, and a thick russian accent, and your on a serious hot streak with a stack of cash sitting in front of you like you've never seen, getting dealt by some veteran guy that's seen it all but is rooting you on as the pit boss feeds you coupons to the all-day pancake house where you'll soon relish your winnings over steak and eggs with your mates as you laugh and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, and they'll make up stories about how your known strictly as "boss," to the curious onlookers . . . well, you haven't lived) . . .

and a mojito and a mint julip tea in all the best possible ways. F-ing incredible.
I don't claim to be some kind of cocktail conosiour, not that I don't appreciate the complexities of fine beverage,

Anyway, in other news things are going well in Mumbai.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Shivaji Maharaj's birthday. As I was taking a cab home late at night the night before his birthday I came across this, just another beautiful and ridiculously ornate temporary celebratory construction in Mumbai. How I love them. Isn't it amazing?
By the way, for those of you who don't know, Shivaji was the 16th century guerilla genius King of the Marathis who essentially single-handedly won vast portions of India back from the Moguls and made India what it is today, instead of an Islamic nation with a huge population of repressed Hindus. Those of you interested in Meher Baba out there, should really check this out by the way.
Well, more coming soon. Batteries dead. Much love from India.