When I arrived in Bombay, it was still very dark. It had rained over night, but it was warm and very humid. There were few people on the streets, but there was a heavy military and police presence. I got a taxi to take me to my hotel, in the
Colaba district, but that is where the terrorist trouble had been, so many of the streets were blocked off. My taxi dropped me off about six blocks from my hotel, at a police checkpoint, and told me just to walk a few blocks down the street to my hotel. It was more than a few blocks, but with a bit of help from the street people of the night, I found my way to my hotel, verified that I had a room, dropped my bag off at the desk and headed out to find some breakfast. Bombay is a large and busy city. It is a center of business, finance, fashion and movies. Some of the town is rich, but much of it is poor. Over half of the people in Bombay live in shanty town slums. These people work in sweatshops in the slums, are beggars, or have small sidewalk stalls. The sidewalks are lined with small merchant stalls. The name Bombay originated during a period of
Portugese rule. In 1996, Bombay was renamed as
Mumbai, after a goddess,
Mumba, who was important to the fishing communities that lived in the area at least back to 2 BC.
After I got myself settled into my room in my Hotel in Bombay, I got out my guidebook and picked out some local bars and restaurants to checkout in the neighborhood. One of the places prominently mentioned, in the bars section, was Cafe Leopold. I came across it while I was out exploring and I decided to go in and check out the menu. They had a big menu, but it did seem more like a drinking place than an eating place, so I decided to come back later in the evening. The waiter made me promise to come back. I looked around, there were very few people inside...but there were throngs of people looking in the two big doors out front, snapping pictures with their cell phone cameras...weird, I thought, as I stumbled out to continue my exploration of town. Later in the evening, after I had some great grilled chicken on a stick at a street vendor's booth, I dropped back by Cafe Leopold. As I was going in, someone told me that bad things had happened there, and that perhaps I should go somewhere else. It is a standard tactic for competitors in India to scare off people from other establishments and steer them to their place, so I brushed the guy off and went into Leopold's. I sat down, ordered a beer, and a guy came in and asked if he could join me, I said OK. This guy had been in town for five weeks and so he filled me in on the recent happenings at Leopold's. It had been one of the targets of the terrorist commandos. Thirteen people, mostly foreign tourists, had been killed there. He had planned on being at Leopold's that night, but had decided to stay in his room and read instead. He was a 29 year old jew from Chicago. He had been living in China for the past five years teaching English. He was shaken by the events, but he decided that he wanted one more evening in Leopold's before he left the country. He was cutting his stay short and returning to the USA the next day. This was the first day that Cafe Leopold's was open again since the rampage, and it was a big story that it had opened up again, local and international news photographers and video crews were in and out of the place all evening. We got interviewed and photographed many times. It was spooky! There were bullet holes in the walls and in the front window. The beer was good and the company was engaging.
