Walking in London and Mumbai

I've been walking or at least trying to walk these last 4 months in Mumbai.

This started because I spent the last year in London where I walked like I've never done before and enjoyed every moment of it. I walked there because I wanted to save some pounds (had to justify a lovely 2-bed & 2-bath Central London apartment all to myself!) and more importantly lose some pounds! The parks were beautiful in any season, the side-streets were not crowded, the weather conducive even given the light showers and my office was just a 25 min walk from my home with no direct buses or the tube connecting them. Once I figured the straight walk to work, I started experimenting with new streets every day and filled my mind with images of beautiful old buildings, mysterious private gardens and the many different kinds of people that I saw as I strolled along. (Also couldn't help thinking of 'Notting Hill' and wishing real life could also be filled with surprises just as you turn a corner! It never happened.) I hardly remember the names of the streets I wandered but all the impressions are clear in my mind and refresh me still - the poetry of what I saw everyday (green green grass or fall leaves lining the sides of the road and the creepers on red brick houses), the feel of perfectly paved pavements or the wake-up call of a sudden shower, the delicious smells from the delis as the day got on. Oh, I could walk forever in London!

When I got back home, I decided that I should walk around in Mumbai, perhaps even try to recreate that same refreshing, exhilrating feeling. So I started. The first couple of walks were up Malabar Hill and down Nepean Sea Road which are supposedly some of the best residential areas in the city. I tried one early morning but within 15 minutes of my setting out, there were milkmen and paper boys cycling downhill at speeds I couldn't imagine and soon after early morning office-goers in their smart fast cars were whooshing down the slopes while others were hailing taxis and running towards buses. This just made me feel like I was so wrong, ambling along when there was work to be done! I decided to walk in the evening. This time the sheer negotiation I had to do among a number of dog-walkers, hawkers, maids taking out kids for some fresh air, the small impatient crowds around the dosa stalls andthe grilled sandwich (with masala)-makers on the pavement, groups of cooks or drivers playing a quick game of of cards as an evening refresher took me 45 min to cover about a kilometre. The more difficult part was to closely watch the pavement or road, as it was in most cases, to avoid all sorts of undigested paan remains that people left behind or digested food remains that dogs left behind! Believe me, there was no joy in this!

I decided I couldn't walk on the roads of Mumbai so my next attempt to walk was on the lovely grass track along the cricket field of an exclusive members-only club. This started off as rather interesting because I could eavesdrop on so many conversations as I passed other people. I heard people talk about the state of the world economy, stock market predictions, comparing different schools that their kids went to and the sky-rocketing fees, what they had planned for dinner that night... but then the conversations came back to the world economy. I couldn't manage more than 2 rounds of the track both physically and mentally.

But I was going to try again and this time I went in search of a conventional park with a walking track. After eliminating a couple of the most popular upmarket ones in the area, I found a quaint little park tucked away in the farthest corner of the road that runs outside my home. It was fairly new, sponsored by a big corporate house and was positioned in front of 3 high-rise buildings and a rehabilitated slum housing colony. The track was only 250 metres long but it was lined with clean, youthful trees and shrubs and exuberant flowers. I could hear the sound of the sea on the other side of the wall which was more entertaining than any Ipod shuffle. The walkers were few and a motley collection - a couple of young mothers with babies in strollers, a few older people, some serious joggers in branded sports wear, a man who came regularly and walked about twice as fast as me in a pair of open sandals, some neighbourhood kids playing on the side in a large sand pit and a woman in a traditional maharashtrian saree, barefooted but wearing the most gorgeous pair of silver anklets that I've seen in a long while!

And as this combination of sights and sounds filled my senses, I knew that I had found my perfect walking spot in Mumbai with the kind of innate magic I would try to look for in yet another city some other time in life!