Mumbai (or Bombay?)

Monday, 28 December 2015

Mumbai or Bombay it’s always good to revisit the business (and Bollywood) capital of India. A wander around central Mumbai took me past plenty of interesting architecture, like the art-deco Eros Cinema. ►

St Thomas Cathedral has an extensive collection of British memorials, all seeming to feature imperial Britain at the height of its Indian glory. So there’s a certain amount of whacking it to the Indians, but the French also get a go (thank you Captain George Nicholas Hardinge), there’s no shortage of valiant disaster in Afghanistan (retreating here, going down in flames there) and even a gallant death in Antarctica. Henry Robertson Bowers died on Robert Falcon Scott’s disastrous trek back from the South Pole.

 

 

Poor Major Eldred Pottinger didn’t die valiantly in battle against pesky Afghans, at the age of 32 he succumbed to a ‘malignant fever’ while en route back to England and died in Hong Kong. ▼

▲ Symbols of another religion are tied to a railing outside the cathedral, holy cows. It’s nice to know that even in the 21st century urban cows can hang on right in the city centre.

▲ I look in to Leopold’s Café, a prime target for the Pakistani terrorists when they attacked the city in 2008. In business since 1871 Leopold’s features ‘wobbly ceiling fans’ and ‘crap service’ according to Lonely Planet’s India guide and has always been a backpacker’s favourite. You haven’t been to Mumbai until you’ve had a beer in Leopold’s. It looks totally unchanged from the first time I visited back in the late ‘70s, even back then the fans were wobbling.

▲ Finally just a stone’s throw from the Gateway of India another sign of imperial Bombay, and emphatically Bombay, none of that Mumbai business at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club.