Mumbai is a city surrounded by water. And it is not a surprise that Mumbaikars love to find their bit of solace by the sea side. It may be just an outing on a Saturday or Sunday with the wife and kids, or maybe some low cost lovey dovey time with your girlfriend, or just to unwind yourself with your friends, the sea side is one of the first choices for Mumbaikars. Even the tourist have all the sea side location prioritized in their must visit places, even though in a weird way they are seeing the same sea every time i.e. Arabian Sea. So what makes these various sea sides of the same sea different? Actually it is not much of the sea that people look forward to but the flavor each place by the sea has to offer. So here we go with the 7 most popular waterfront public locations of Mumbai.
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Manish at Ultrabrown says

It’s 84 degrees and sunny today. It feels like California in Bandra, a confluence of left coast mausams. Certain climes have deeply saturated colors, and the closer to the equator, the more vibrant the hues. For all its natural beauty, Seattle never breathed intensity through my lens the way San Francisco did, a peculiar trick of sunlight. Bombay does.

I agree we have been getting some extra-ordinary looking skies than usual.

Not to mention Rainbows I’ve seen two this last fortnight.

Two friends - Bombaywallah and Mumbaikar - discuss the sudden spate of miracles in Maximum City.

Mumbaikar: Our neighborhood is in news once more and not because of Shiv Sena, for once! Thousands of people have visited Dadar and Mahim beaches on Friday night and Saturday to drink sea water that has turned sweet!

Bombaywallah: Yeah, I heard. I was driving back to Worli from Bandra on Friday night, and saw hundreds of people on the street at four in the morning! For a moment, I thought that it was Id!

Mumbaikar: They must be visiting the the Durgah of Makdoom Ali Mahimi, at Mahim beach. They say that the sweet water is due to the blessings of the 13th century Sufi saint and can cure illnesses.

Bombaywallah: Blessings, indeed! There’s more water in Mithi river in the monsoons, so more fresh water flows into the creek, diluting the sea water during low tide and making it less saline. Elementary, my friend!

Mumbaikar: Actually, such dilution happens all along the Western coast during the southwest monsoon. In fact, people have also reported sweet tasting sea water at Teethal beach in Valsad district of south Gujarat.

Bombaywallah: It must be that or the pollution! I’m told that coastal sea water in Mumbai is lethally toxic; must be, with all that sewage floating around!

Mumbaikar: Yes, health officials in Mumbai have put the city on a high alert for water-borne diseases, after thousands of people drank the water, filled it in their bottles for family and friends, and even bathed in it!

Bombaywallah: And, have you heard the latest? Thousands of people on Sunday night thronged temples across the country to watch deities of Goddess Durga and God Shiva ‘drink’ the milk offered by devotees. In 1995, it was Ganesha, wasn’t it? Since they couldn’t come out with a new miracle, they decided to change the deities instead!

Mumbaikar: It’s quite a tamasha, really! Almost like a “who’s miracle is bigger contest”! If your God can turn seawater sweet, our God can drink milk!

Bombaywallah: Next, we will have Jesus statues walking on water!

Overheard outside the Mahim police station.

Read the other entries in the series here: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5).

Adil Jussawala is one of India’s foremost poets. I once had an opportunity to hear him recite some of his poems at a poets evening which had the likes of Dom Moraes and H. Masud Taj sharing the stage.

In a response to the Partition of India in 1947, Jussawala penned this poem.

Sea Breeze, Bombay

by Adil Jussawalla

Partition’s people stitched

Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind.

An opened people, fraying across the cut

country reknotted themselves on this island.

Surrogate city of banks,

Brokering and bays, refugees’ harbour and port,

Gatherer of ends whose brick beginnings work

Loose like a skin, spotting the coast,

Restore us to fire. New refugees,

Wearing blood-red wool in the worst heat,

come from Tibet, scanning the sea from the north,

Dazed, holes in their cracked feet.

Restore us to fire. Still,

Communities tear and re-form; and still, a breeze,

Cooling our garrulous evenings, investigates nothing,

Ruffles no tempers, uncovers no root,

And settles no one adrift of the mainland’s histories.

I came across this poem on Amardeep’s post on Sepia Mutiny. Continue there to read Amardeep’s analysis and commentary.

read this
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,18345978%255E2765,00.html

Though I don’t like this linkage but it surely speaks volumes of what the rest of the world thinks about India and its Trains.

A few years ago, before hindi television channels bought rights for the latest movies, they would repeat their collection of ancients. Day after night after day, we’d watch Amitabh, Shashi Kapoor, and Prem Chopra. They’d be in bell bottoms, psychadelic shirts, doing the twist, in chains while their mother/sister/baby/wife/everyone loved were about to be lowered into a molten steel pit. These movies were also a pretty good record of what Bombay looked like back then. There seemed to be more fewer cars than people and, more importantly, there seemed to be plenty of space. The sort of space you can now only find at night. That, however, might just change.
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Even though the Island City of Mumbai has been inhabited since the stone age it is not always been the sprawling metropolis we see today. Pre-1817 Mumbai was seven assorted islands off the coast of western India inhabited by Kohli fisherfolk. Then along came an English civil engineer named Hornby Vellard who decided to merge the islands into a single amalgamated mass, reclaiming over 400 km

A great injustice has been corrected today.

For the last 500 odd years Bombay (now mumbai) has been one of the “world cities”. A city on the west coast of India. A city that would be on every mariners chart. A city that would become the gateway to India, first for the foreign rulers that ruled over the country. And then in later years for the throngs of NRI’s returning to India.

Bombay, the financial and economic capital of the country. The home of the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange. Bombay, the city where the first railway ran. Bombay, the city that gave India, the Tatas, the Birlas, and even the Ambanis.

A city where everyone throngs to, to make their dreams come true.

Bombay a city that is home to the largest movie industry in the world, Bollywood. A city where filmstars mingle with the locals.

Ever wondered what New York and LA rolled into one would be ?? It would be Bombay. Cultural and economic powerhouse.

Then with so much going for it, why oh why was there no place for this great city on metblogs.

Well the prodding and pushing of the metblogs admin, by a few of us bombay bloggers, has made it possible for this “great injustice” to be corrected, and Bombay finds its rightful place in the pantheon of cities on metroblogging.

Stopping by here will give you a flavor of what makes Bombay thrive. Bhelpuri, Juhu Beach, Chawls, and so many other terms will become your local lingo when u frequent here.

So sit back and take a peek at everyday life here in this one of the greatest cities of the world.