Mumbai — Bollywood style

A night in India's city that never sleeps looking for Mumbai, Bollywood style.

“I'll show you the real Bombay” says Priya over the noise of the bar.
It's not the real‚ Bombay I want to see. I'm after the Bollywood illusion pumped out in the 800 or so Hindi movies made each year. There's been little sign of it during a couple of days walking Mumbai's streets. Luckily, it turns out it's the luxurious all-signing, all-dancing version Priya has in mind.

India is a country of extremes, nowhere more so than Mumbai, its biggest and richest city. Mumbai is India's city that never sleeps. The first impression, however, is of the masses that don't have anywhere to sleep, not the all-night party people.

We're drinking Kingfisher beer in Leopold's Café as evening falls. On a previous visit to this central city hangout I'd been recruited as a movie extra, one of eight travellers plucked off the street to make up the audience in a nightclub.

The scene was a dance routine. The actor, backed by six beautiful dancers, was undeniably charismatic despite using a combination of Enrique Iglesias pseudo-suave facial expressions and Saturday Night Fever dance moves. We'd been required until four in the morning and were paid ¥1,500. Strangely, being a breathing prop inside the dream machine was too close to the illusion to satisfy. Well, actually, it was just a long night spent in an abandoned warehouse, hastily converted into a drafty film set, watching other people work. For ten hours. On a five minute song.

A taste of the Mumbai highlife, Bollywood style, had eluded me.
Somehow I did get a taste for masala movies — a spicy mix of action and forbidden love between muscled heroes and former Miss Universes played out against a Lifestyles-of-the-Rich-and-Famous backdrop, with plenty of song-and-dance routines thrown in to complete the three hour minimum. Many even have glamorous international settings. My favourite, Dil Chahta Hai, featured a third of its screen time in my hometown of Sydney.

A yellow and black cab takes us into the night. Priya, a writer for a men's magazine, tells me that despite their demigod status, Indian stars are often seen in Mumbai nightspots. After watching a couple of dozen movies, I might even recognise them.

We drive through gothic Victorian architecture vaguely reminiscent of London, passing the Gateway of India that commemorates both a regal arrival and later the point where the last British formally quit India in 1947.

Opposite sits the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, built by the industrialist Jamshedji Tata in 1903 as a magnificent comeback after he was refused entry to a hotel with a whites-only policy.

We leave the cab, slip down an alley opposite the Indian Ocean and emerge into a swanky courtyard complex. Then Priya leads me into
an art gallery opening that's an instant form of reverse culture shock after acclimatizing to Bombay's street-level culture. The room is packed with exquisitely dressed people. Within seconds I'm being introduced to a stunning green-eyed fashion model with a spotlight bright smile. The artist, Raghava Kalyanaraman, is dressed in a regal, deep red, full length outfit.

In his early twenties, with knowing eyes and velvety skin, he has the appearance of a boy maharaja. I point out my favorite painting, a red dancer painted, like all his work, with his hands. “Inspired by flamenco on a trip to Barcelona‚”
he says. Photographers circle, snapping people famous to everyone in the room but me.

We accept a lift to VeloCity, Mumbai's largest nightclub. The lights of the city's high rises twinkle dimly through tinted windows as we speed down the long curve of Marine Drive.

Deep bass pounds from the speakers as we pass Mahalaxmi. Earlier in the day I was here watching Hindu worshippers stream into a temple overlooking the ocean. Women in kaleidoscopic saris had offered bright yellow garlands to a beatific blue skinned Krishna and a deep green Ganesha.

A sea of people congregates outside the club, all glammed-up Western style, not a sari in sight. We make it into the VIP lounge. The club is spread over four large rooms, with this one overlooking the main dance floor. We stroll through the crowd, with Priya stopping along the way to talk to male models, all six foot four and full of muscles. We squeeze through retro and funk rooms before heading onto the main dance floor, which is packed with a few thousand people. There's a sprinkling of Europeans, but it's mainly Bombay's middle to upper dance class. The music is eclectic; Indian bhangra and dhol dance music alternates with house, drum
& bass and hip-hop.

Priya finds messages on her cell phone and leads me on to a couple of smaller bars, each one packed full of the beautiful people dancing and drinking.

One bar strikes me as familiar — it's just like the one in a crucial scene in Dil Chahta Hai. I have this moment of clarity at around three in the morning. Then a couple of actors are pointed out, a few future Miss Universes sway by and I'm offered substances more invigorating than the usual fare on the menu of the latter day India hippy. Celluloid dreams can come true, Bollywood style.

It's the break of dawn by the time we leave clubland. Outside it's India. We take a cab back through the streets of first impressions. Even at first light the streets are lively with people awakening to another day, but I can think of nothing but sleep.

Text & Photos: Will Marks