Mumbai memories

Over the years I’ve visited Mumbai many times travelling for business. I normally based myself in the Nariman Point district as our office was in a building on Barrister Rajni Patel Marg Road, almost directly opposite the infamous Oberoi Hotel. However, I usually stayed in the more modestly priced Trident hotel next door. This hotel, and the Oberoi, were the site of a horrific terrorist massacre that that made global headlines in November 2008.

At the time, the attack felt very personal. It took place in hotels I regularly frequented, and police sharpshooters used our office building’s roof to target terrorists holed up inside the Trident Hotel. These men were the last of ten members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamist organisation from Pakistan, who carried out 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai over four days. This includes attacks in the Oberoi, the Trident, and the iconic Taj Mumbai hotel situated on the Gateway to India waterfront.

My first trip to Mumbai was in August 2002. At the time, my company’s office was still based in Colaba, a narrow isthmus on the southernmost tip of the low-lying peninsula upon which much of Mumbai is built. The company put me up in The Gordon House Hotel, a delightful boutique hotel located a short walk from the Gateway to India (shown above). The hotel was a wonderfully calm and clean oasis amid the chaos that continually enveloped you on the streets of India.

I recall my shock upon entering the Mumbai office for the first time. To gain access you had to walk down a cluttered laneway, off Arthur Bunder Road, and across an open dirt ditch filled with debris and what was undoubtedly human waste. We relocated the office about a year later to the more established business district at Nariman Point.

This first trip to Mumbai was very much all about business. I flew in late on Tuesday, 20 August after transiting through Singapore earlier that day. I then spent a day meeting with the team in Mumbai before everyone boarded an overnight train to Goa on Wednesday evening. This was my second time travelling overnight on an Indian train. My first experience was an overnight trip from Varanasi to Delhi a few months earlier in March of the same year.

For the next three days, I lead an all-staff offsite for our entire Indian business. We were based at a lovely beachside resort on the Goan coast. Sadly, each day was filled with back-to-back activities and training workshops. As a result, I never got to see anything of Goa beyond a few passing glimpses of its decaying, Portuguese-influenced, colonial buildings from the back of a taxi while making my way to and from the railway station. On Saturday evening, the Mumbai team and I returned to Mumbai on another overnight train.

 On Monday, Madhuri, the general manager of our Mumbai office met me at the Gateway of India for a surprise outing. The Gateway of India is one of Mumbai’s iconic sights. It’s an imposing arch-monument completed in 1924. It was erected to commemorate George V’s coronation as the Emperor of India thirteen years earlier. In 1911, he’d landed at the gate’s location, making him the first British monarch to visit India.

Madhuri booked us a ferry excursion out to Elephanta Island. This island sits in the northern reaches of Mumbai Harbour and is renowned for a series of ancient caves and archaeological remains. Our rickety open-air boat took an hour or so to cross the harbour. It was quite an experience. I distinctly recall how exposed I felt sitting in a low-slung boat crowded with visitors, and little more than a single outboard motor to propel us.

The Elephanta Caves, as they’re commonly known, are a collection of ancient cave temples. All in all, there are five Hindu caves primarily dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, a few Buddhist stupa mounds dating back to the 2nd century BC, and two Buddhist caves with hand-hewn water tanks. Interestingly, despite the extensive infrastructure, very little is known about the island’s origins.

The caves contain rock-cut pillars and stone sculptures, mostly in high relief, depicting an eclectic combination of Hindu and Buddhist ideas and iconography. Sadly, with a few exceptions, much of the artwork is defaced and damaged. The largest cave extends an impressive 39 metres from the front entrance to the rear. Its main atrium, the cave’s central Shiva shrine, is around 27 metres square, with a roof supported by a series of carved basalt rock pillars. It’s an impressive structure despite its decaying condition.

Madhuri and I spent several hours exploring the caves and the island’s waterfront before returning to Mumbai on the same tiny ferry boat shortly before sunset. After dinner at a nearby restaurant, Madhuro and her driver returned me to the airport for another horrendous late-night red-eye flight to Singapore and on to Sydney a few days later. The flight to Singapore rarely took more than five hours, departing shortly after midnight, and then thanks to the magic of time zones, landed shortly after 8:00am.

One final note, the image that opens this post is the wonderful gothic facade of Churchgate station, recently renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. This stunning gothic building is one of the main railway stations in Mumbai. The 'church' in the original name refers to the nearby St Thomas' Cathedral, the first Anglican church in Mumbai. The cathedral was erected more than 300 years ago.