"All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim." ~Christopher Morley, Where the Blue BeginsTuesday evening, Matt and I were wandering around the Colaba Causeway looking for a restaurant he had read about in our ever-faithful Lonely Planet guide. We walked down the street stopping selectively at various vendors in the rare instance we had missed someone on our gift list or in the case we saw something specific we were looking for. After walking farther than Matt calculated the restaurant should be, we decided we would just stop in at some of the restaurants we had seen, look at their menus, and then decide from there.
We stopped in one place, and we looked at the menu. It included a wide variety of cuisines, and honestly, I was ready for some non-Indian food for a change; but, it was filled with tourists and I was skeptical that the food would be
that good. We decided the place was an option, but we would check out some other menus - which we did. After a couple of stops, we decided it was easier just to go back to the first place. Leopold’s Café.
I was still a little skeptical of the restaurant, as it seemed dubiously Western, but we were there, and there was a healthy mix of ethnicities. We sat down. I took in the atmosphere and went for the pasta recommended by the waiter. Matt, apparently hooked on South Indian food, tried the chicken tikka masala. Our meal was quite satisfying and after we finished we returned to the streets of Mumbai.
The street was bumping. Vendors continued to call out “hello – madam – Pashmina”, “silk ma’am”, “genuine leather”, “kurta”and others whispered in Matt’s ear, “hash?” “coke?”. The children and the women tried to beg for our money, and other tourists, travelers and topsiders continued to hustle with us and past us on the sidewalks. It was rare that we were reminded of the attacks that occurred a little less than one month before.
There is the occasional billboard or sign reminding citizens of their duties to report strange activity, and there is “Aamchi Mumbai,” the huge banner by Virgin Atlantic in support of the city. The Taj Majal Palace hotel is still blocked off on all sides, and the bullet holes are there, and the Oberoi is blocked off as well. But the city carries the energy that seems characteristic of pre- 26/11 and it is the energy that I love, emitted only from our world’s greatest cities – both in size and in ideas- and it is whole and heartfelt.
On our last night in Mumbai, we went out to meet another Fulbright teacher, Enddy. As we were talking over dinner the topic of the attacks came up. Enddy was telling us what route the terrorists took- beginning at the McDonald's nearby then moving down to Leopold’s. Matt and I looked at each other. Both of us were surprised. Of course, while we ate dinner, I had thought that it would be the perfect spot to attack tourists, but it did not occur to meet that that’s what happened.
We walked straight into the restaurant from the sidewalk when we entered the other night. To me, it appeared that the restaurant was intended to be open in the front. "You didn't notice the bullet holes in the windows?" Enddy asked us. "There weren't any windows or doors," we told her. We walked right in.
Prior to our visit that second week of December, there had been doors or windows or both at Leopold's. When we ate there, neither existed. There was a sign stating that leaving unattended items in the restaurant was prohibited, but I assumed it was a protectionist reaction to the Mumbai attacks, or that one of the terrorists had stored weapons at that particular establishment. I hadn't read enough of any one particular news story to know what happened there - my mother was visiting the week of the attacks. I was naive. People died there.
Neither Matt nor I had registered that fact prior to Enddy's transmission of the tale, and looking back now it seems an odd bout of irony, similar to beginning my career as a photojournalism intern on September 10, 2001. Another tale from my past life, something to pass on to whomever happens to be listening. Matt's wife had known about Leopold's, she said when he told her what happened. Most people had known how Leopold's was involved we found out, each time we told the story. Not us. We dined ignorantly in the din in the heart of Mumbai with all the others who occupied the packed restaurant that night. I wonder how many of them knew. I wonder how many of them came because they knew.
When I got back to Dubai, I began reading Shantaram. I picked it up at the bookstore when I was looking for a holiday gift. It came highly recommended and supposedly put Mumbai on the global map and Leopold's in the casual lexicon. I stopped reading the vivid account at some point when scenes in Leopold's intersected with the beginning of school again in January. Coincidence or not, I will pick it up again - probably when summer holiday begins. I will return to my beloved mega city.
Some of the vendors on the streets were selling “I (Heart) Mumbai" tee shirts on the streets. I only saw one woman wearing that shirt in the three days I spent in the city. I do not know what Mumbai was like in the first couple of weeks after the attacks, and I do not know what it was like prior to 26/11. Standing in the center of CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal), or Victoria Terminus (VT), where more people travel in one day than any other place in the world, it’s hard to imagine stopping the heartbeat of this city. But, I do know this city has the ultimate pulse of humanity, which one finds only in our greatest of cities, where people from every background, from every religion, from every caste, from every class, from every race and from every place come together and live, breathe and work in the same space. It’s the energy that revitalizes some of us and drains others and there’s nothing like it in the world. And I love it.
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