Victor Feinman

You are only young and in Mumbai once. So why not spend 1/2 of my monthly paycheck on my drink/food/hotel bills for four nights and four days?

We started our fist day in Mumbai by sheepishly walking down the tarp enclosed walkway filled with makeshift street vendors. It was nice for the first minute or two to listen to the street hustlers trying to sell “hand made” drums, but that got real old real fast when I realized they were not giving up. The group decided to enter the first place we saw, which very nicely turned out to be a world famous café – Leopold’s. See http://www.outlookindia.com/photoessays.asp?serial=7&foldername=20060510&filename=shantaram&storyid=1&mode=1 AND http://dhruti.blogspot.com/2006/05/leopold-cafe.html for the Leopold’s story. At Leopold’s we ordered a few glasses followed by a huge cylinder full of beer with a tap on the bottom. I wasn’t planning on drinking, but they ordered this huge thing of beer and we needed to go so I had to help finish it. This was the start of the demise of the old Victor in India. After Leopold’s Café, we continued our walk, but not for long, because the next stop was Cafe Mondegar. At this café we drank a few pitchers as well. It was here where James got us dates for the night. After we were finished at Café Mondegar we went back to the hotel for a nap before our dinner reservations at Indigo. Indigo restaurant was great but since I drank a lot and ate at the café, I didn’t get to enjoy the meal. Before going back out to party, we went back to the hotel for some pre-gamming. We went to red light club, had a bunch of drinks, stayed until they closed, tried to get into another club, but they were charging way too much for too little time so we went back to our hotel to crash and exchange stories. The night was fun.

The rest of the weekend was more timid as Indians don’t go out to party on Sunday – Friday. A bunch of shopping was accomplished and plans were made for dinner with a NY Times reporter based in India. The NY Times reporter previously did a story on us being in India and as I understand it his article was ranked #1 on the website and was ran on the cover of the paper. Well this very young reporter invited us all out to dinner. When we all sat down he ordered food for everyone at the table and ordered bottles of wine as well. He also told the waiters to refill glasses automatically and bring out Wine bottles when they were finished. I was esthetic dinner and wine on NY Times. Awesome. Well when the bill came he took at and divided it up and asked Rs. 2000 from everyone ($50). I was pissed. I mean I wouldn’t have drank as much as I did. Also, he ordered from everyone EXCEPT for me. I ordered my own meal because I was the only one uncomfortable eating the seafood. So not only would I have not drank that much, but I wouldn’t have split the bill with everyone, I would have just paid for my order (aprox. Rs. 300 – a big difference from Rs.2000). On top of having to pay for my meal, I didn’t have money so I had to borrow it (which I don’t like to do) AND to top it all off the ATM wouldn’t accept our cards that night so I had to wait for the next day to get money to pay back my debt. Urgg did it make me mad.

The flight and subsequent cab ride back was fine. All in all I had a wonderful time in Mumbai and cultivated relationships I wouldn’t have done otherwise.